This article examines an influential conceptual trope in theology and biblical studies: the disti... more This article examines an influential conceptual trope in theology and biblical studies: the distinction between 'individualistic' and 'communal' orientations as a typology for distinguishing soteriological frameworks. This distinction has been widely deployed in Paul studies, in particular, where for decades it has been invoked in order to illuminate problems with traditional Protestant soteriologies. The present article clarifies and extends recent critiques of the 'individualism vs. communalism' trope by drawing on conceptual tools from the fields of social cognition and social emotion. It argues that in appealing to the 'individualism vs. communalism' trope Paul scholars have often been operating with unarticulated assumptions about the shaping effects of soteriological frameworks on Christian experience that are subject to analysis and critique. After identifying four such assumptions, conceptual tools psychologists have developed for understanding the experience of social relation between human and human-like agents are explicated. It is argued that these psychological resources can augment and extend recent suggestions by Susan Eastman, Volker Rabens, and others that individuality and relationality are mutually entangled rather than opposed in Paul. Finally, it is suggested that analyzing Paul's soteriology through the lens of relational experience and social emotion can open up new hermeneutical vistas for both theologians and biblical scholars.
Much recent Christian theology has sought to reconsider the significance of the body in theologic... more Much recent Christian theology has sought to reconsider the significance of the body in theological reflection. At the same time, a number of areas of suffering traditionally associated with the experience of sin have come to be reinterpreted, for good reasons, as medical disorders without moral valence. The result is that the doctrine of sin has become increasingly dissociated from the body in contemporary theology. This article addresses this dissociation by exploring the difficulty posed to interpreters by the correlation in Psalms 32 and 38 between unforgiven sin and bodily suffering and dysfunction. After showing that this correlation has been a source of significant difficulties for modern interpreters, the essay concludes by examining the potential of an Augustinian reading of these Psalms in terms of the relationship between mortality and original sin.
International Journal of Systematic Theology, 2020
This article examines the relationship between the theological concept of grace and the effects o... more This article examines the relationship between the theological concept of grace and the effects of grace on human beings in bodies and in time, in critical engagement with John Barclay's account of Paul's theology of grace in Paul and the Gift. It begins by showing how one of the book's most significant contributions is its 'thick' description of the effects of incongruous grace in the world in terms of its socially transformative power in the formation of communities. It then argues that Barclay's account is substantially less successful at giving a compelling account of the more rapid and immediate changes that Paul also associates with encounter with divine grace in the lives of Christians. The article concludes by showing how Barclay's picture can be expanded and improved by examining how the 'incongruity' of grace functions to pattern experience in relatively sudden, emotionally immediate ways rather than just through the long-term formation of a Christian habitus.
This article argues for the dogmatic rather than just ethical significance of the biotechnologica... more This article argues for the dogmatic rather than just ethical significance of the biotechnological enhancement of human beings. It begins by reflecting on the close theological connections between salvation, sanctification, and affective and bodily transformation in light of the fact that affects and desires are in principle manipulable through biotechnological enhancement. It then examines the implications of this observation for questions of moral responsibility, asking whether biotechnological enhancement can be viewed as a kind of means of grace. The conclusion argues that theological reflection on the relationship between affects, soteriology and bioenhancement reveals limitations of the emphasis on embodiment in recent Christian theology.
This article examines a critique that has been levied against Martin Luther’s account of the pass... more This article examines a critique that has been levied against Martin Luther’s account of the passivity of the human agent in salvation, and his corresponding critique of Aristotelian and Scholastic accounts of virtue. According to Reinhard Hu€tter and Jennifer Herdt, among others, Luther’s theology of passivity is primar- ily the product of a philosophical failure to recognize that divine and human agency can be conceived in non-competitive terms. This article demonstrates through close analysis of Luther’s arguments that this philosophical critique does not succeed in refuting Luther’s theology of passivity. This is because it fails to recognize that Luther’s view of human agency and his critique of virtue are based to a significant degree on a different kind of argument: namely, empirical reflection on the experience of sin, including especially experience of the unmasterability of sinful affections through discipline, habit, or effort of will. I conclude by arguing that until Christian virtue ethicists have reckoned with this experiential argument, they have not engaged with one of the strongest theological critiques of virtue-based paradigms of Christian moral transformation.
This article argues for the importance of attending to the subjective dynamics involved in retrie... more This article argues for the importance of attending to the subjective dynamics involved in retrieval of past theological traditions for contemporary purposes. Building on a close analysis of Martin Luther’s distinction between the ‘substance’ of a thing and its ‘use’, the article makes a theological case for the importance of attending not just to what we retrieve from tradition, but also to how and why we retrieve it. Analysis of Luther’s distinction suggests (1) that the meaning of theological claims remains unexpectedly fluid until such claims have been located within the ethical drama of ‘use’, and (2) that one of the best ways to get theological traction on the dynamics of ‘use’ is to attend to the affective economies in which theological reasoning is always located. It concludes by drawing attention to specific areas in contemporary ethics where new light can be shed through attention to the dynamics of ‘use’.
This essay is about the state of the doctrine of justification by faith alone today in light of r... more This essay is about the state of the doctrine of justification by faith alone today in light of recent critiques, and about the ways in which the doctrine continues to shape Protestants who no longer formally subscribe to it. The argument is first and foremost theological rather than historical, but it is driven by an interest in how evaluations of justification by faith have changed over time to get us where we are today. My hope is that a thoughtful evaluation of the current state of this doctrine as it looks from within the protestant fold will give us a some new insight into this important dimension of the relation between protestant and Catholic theological traditions, as we look back over 500 years of division. Ultimately, it will give us some new purchase on the old question of 'the nature of Protestantism' through analysis of a certain kind of orientation to psychological and affective realities in protestant theology.
This article proposes to take George Lindbeck’s project forward into new territory by taking his ... more This article proposes to take George Lindbeck’s project forward into new territory by taking his account of the role of doctrines in the shaping of religious experience and emotion into the realm of concrete examples. It calls this strategy attending to the ‘affective salience of doctrines’, and demonstrates how it can be done in an historical as well as an empirical mode by examining specific strategies of theological argument that emphasize the perceived affective consequences of doctrines. It then applies this approach to Philipp Melanchthon’s classic articulation of the forensic model of justification in light of critiques of the doctrine as a propositional ‘legal fiction’, in particular the recent version of this argument by John Milbank. The article concludes by drawing on contemporary psychological and philosophical accounts of emotion and cognition to demonstrate the surprising psychological plausibility of Melanchthon’s description of the relation between justification and its affective consequences in ‘love’, ‘joy’, ‘peace’, and ‘consolation’.
International Journal of Systematic Theology, 2010
This article uses resources from the theology of Christoph Blumhardt to argue that Luther was mis... more This article uses resources from the theology of Christoph Blumhardt to argue that Luther was mistaken in identifying a necessary theological connection between ‘enthusiastic’ views of the Spirit and naive anthropology. It demonstrates that Blumhardt successfully combined an abiding concern over the problem of spiritual self-deception together with a pneumatology that affirmed the importance of affective experience of the Spirit not mediated exclusively by the proclaimed Word of Scripture, through a conviction that the most reliable sign of the Spirit's activity is ‘negative’, in suffering and visceral encounter with divine judgement, in the first instance. This critical ‘enthusiasm’ helps explain Blumhardt's singular critique of the nationalistic ‘Spirit of August’ from the start of World War I.
This is a chapter for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of 19th Century Christian Thought. It trace... more This is a chapter for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of 19th Century Christian Thought. It traces theological appeals to the category of 'religious experience' in 19th century theology from Schleiermacher to William James. Figures discussed include Schleiermacher, Coleridge, Bushnell, the Erlangen School, Methodist Holiness theologian Phoebe Palmer, Christoph Blumhardt, and James. The chapter contextualizes these theological appeals to 'experience' in light of the long history of Protestant debates over 'enthusiasm' and subjective experience as well as the search for new foundations for theology after the Enlightenment. Overall, it demonstrates the lasting and often underestimated importance of Pietistic and 'enthusiastic' theologies in 19th century Christian theology as both a resource and a foil for new developments.
Oxford Handbook of Theology and Modern European Thought, 2013
This chapter discusses three developments in European that had a profound effect on the Christian... more This chapter discusses three developments in European that had a profound effect on the Christian concept of atonement, the first of which is the enormous impact of the Enlightenment, in particular the so-called ‘anthropocentric turn’. This turn included a new confidence in the powers of human reasoning, unaided by revelation or traditional theological confessions, to discern the nature of God and the universe. The second development is that of a series of powerful reductive critiques of religion, including of atonement. The third has been closely linked with the first: sustained critiques of substitution and satisfaction-based models of the atonement (including retributive, sacrificial, and forensic models). The concluding section offers a brief overview of trends in constructive accounts of the atonement from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including classic accounts by Schleiermacher and Barth, and the non-satisfaction-oriented alternatives that have been rehabilitated in light of the larger developments.
This book identifies the impasse between classical Protestant and contemporary charismatic and Pe... more This book identifies the impasse between classical Protestant and contemporary charismatic and Pentecostal pneumatologies as a fundamental theological problem. Its goal is to contribute a constructive pneumatological proposal for moving beyond this impasse, based on the resources of the theology of Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt (1842-1919). The disagreement is over the question of unmediated experience of the Holy Spirit. Luther's rejection of 'enthusiastic' pneumatologies on the basis of a narrow concept of the mediation of the Word and a pessimistic anthropology became Protestant orthodoxy. In relation to classical Protestantism, the primary theological distinctive of charismatic theology is its strong affirmation of unmediated experience of the Spirit in Christian life and worship. The Pentecostal movement's rapid growth in the past century has brought this difference to the fore. Christoph Blumhardt's theology, which integrates pessimistic anthropology and unmediated experience, is well-suited to exploring the impasse between the two theological traditions.
What is the task of theology in a complex religious and secular world? What are theologians calle... more What is the task of theology in a complex religious and secular world? What are theologians called to contribute to society, the churches, and the academy? Can theology be both fully faithful to Christian tradition and Scripture, and fully open to the challenges of the twenty-first century? In this book, an international team of contributors, including some of the best-known names in the field, respond to these questions in programmatic essays that set the direction for future debates about the vocation of theology. David Ford, in whose honor the collection is produced, has been for many years a key figure in articulating and shaping the role of contemporary theology. The contributors are his colleagues, collaborators, and former students, and their essays engage in dialogue with his work. The main unifying feature of this exciting collection is not Ford's work per se, however, but a shared engagement with the pressing question of theology's vocation today.
This paper builds on the Christian pneumatological principle that one of the Spirit’s primary rol... more This paper builds on the Christian pneumatological principle that one of the Spirit’s primary roles is to bridge the gap between theological realities and subjective experiences, to ask how how far we can specify concrete ‘sites’ within human subjectivity where this ‘actualizing’ of God’s work in human experience tends to occur. Narrowing the question to the soteriological work of the Spirit in particular, it is argued that the area of affectivity and emotion is just such a ‘site’, in that a correlation can be identified between the Spirit’s soteriological work and a particular sequence of affective experiences commonly associated with Christian initiation. The paper then draws on several theologians who have emphasized this point - St Paul, Didymus the Blind, Philipp Melanchthon, and George Whitefield – to show how a focus on the affective work of the Spirit reveals unexpected points of convergence between forensic and participatory soteriological models, and to diagnose an implicit anti-experientialism in certain recent soteriologies.
This article examines an influential conceptual trope in theology and biblical studies: the disti... more This article examines an influential conceptual trope in theology and biblical studies: the distinction between 'individualistic' and 'communal' orientations as a typology for distinguishing soteriological frameworks. This distinction has been widely deployed in Paul studies, in particular, where for decades it has been invoked in order to illuminate problems with traditional Protestant soteriologies. The present article clarifies and extends recent critiques of the 'individualism vs. communalism' trope by drawing on conceptual tools from the fields of social cognition and social emotion. It argues that in appealing to the 'individualism vs. communalism' trope Paul scholars have often been operating with unarticulated assumptions about the shaping effects of soteriological frameworks on Christian experience that are subject to analysis and critique. After identifying four such assumptions, conceptual tools psychologists have developed for understanding the experience of social relation between human and human-like agents are explicated. It is argued that these psychological resources can augment and extend recent suggestions by Susan Eastman, Volker Rabens, and others that individuality and relationality are mutually entangled rather than opposed in Paul. Finally, it is suggested that analyzing Paul's soteriology through the lens of relational experience and social emotion can open up new hermeneutical vistas for both theologians and biblical scholars.
Much recent Christian theology has sought to reconsider the significance of the body in theologic... more Much recent Christian theology has sought to reconsider the significance of the body in theological reflection. At the same time, a number of areas of suffering traditionally associated with the experience of sin have come to be reinterpreted, for good reasons, as medical disorders without moral valence. The result is that the doctrine of sin has become increasingly dissociated from the body in contemporary theology. This article addresses this dissociation by exploring the difficulty posed to interpreters by the correlation in Psalms 32 and 38 between unforgiven sin and bodily suffering and dysfunction. After showing that this correlation has been a source of significant difficulties for modern interpreters, the essay concludes by examining the potential of an Augustinian reading of these Psalms in terms of the relationship between mortality and original sin.
International Journal of Systematic Theology, 2020
This article examines the relationship between the theological concept of grace and the effects o... more This article examines the relationship between the theological concept of grace and the effects of grace on human beings in bodies and in time, in critical engagement with John Barclay's account of Paul's theology of grace in Paul and the Gift. It begins by showing how one of the book's most significant contributions is its 'thick' description of the effects of incongruous grace in the world in terms of its socially transformative power in the formation of communities. It then argues that Barclay's account is substantially less successful at giving a compelling account of the more rapid and immediate changes that Paul also associates with encounter with divine grace in the lives of Christians. The article concludes by showing how Barclay's picture can be expanded and improved by examining how the 'incongruity' of grace functions to pattern experience in relatively sudden, emotionally immediate ways rather than just through the long-term formation of a Christian habitus.
This article argues for the dogmatic rather than just ethical significance of the biotechnologica... more This article argues for the dogmatic rather than just ethical significance of the biotechnological enhancement of human beings. It begins by reflecting on the close theological connections between salvation, sanctification, and affective and bodily transformation in light of the fact that affects and desires are in principle manipulable through biotechnological enhancement. It then examines the implications of this observation for questions of moral responsibility, asking whether biotechnological enhancement can be viewed as a kind of means of grace. The conclusion argues that theological reflection on the relationship between affects, soteriology and bioenhancement reveals limitations of the emphasis on embodiment in recent Christian theology.
This article examines a critique that has been levied against Martin Luther’s account of the pass... more This article examines a critique that has been levied against Martin Luther’s account of the passivity of the human agent in salvation, and his corresponding critique of Aristotelian and Scholastic accounts of virtue. According to Reinhard Hu€tter and Jennifer Herdt, among others, Luther’s theology of passivity is primar- ily the product of a philosophical failure to recognize that divine and human agency can be conceived in non-competitive terms. This article demonstrates through close analysis of Luther’s arguments that this philosophical critique does not succeed in refuting Luther’s theology of passivity. This is because it fails to recognize that Luther’s view of human agency and his critique of virtue are based to a significant degree on a different kind of argument: namely, empirical reflection on the experience of sin, including especially experience of the unmasterability of sinful affections through discipline, habit, or effort of will. I conclude by arguing that until Christian virtue ethicists have reckoned with this experiential argument, they have not engaged with one of the strongest theological critiques of virtue-based paradigms of Christian moral transformation.
This article argues for the importance of attending to the subjective dynamics involved in retrie... more This article argues for the importance of attending to the subjective dynamics involved in retrieval of past theological traditions for contemporary purposes. Building on a close analysis of Martin Luther’s distinction between the ‘substance’ of a thing and its ‘use’, the article makes a theological case for the importance of attending not just to what we retrieve from tradition, but also to how and why we retrieve it. Analysis of Luther’s distinction suggests (1) that the meaning of theological claims remains unexpectedly fluid until such claims have been located within the ethical drama of ‘use’, and (2) that one of the best ways to get theological traction on the dynamics of ‘use’ is to attend to the affective economies in which theological reasoning is always located. It concludes by drawing attention to specific areas in contemporary ethics where new light can be shed through attention to the dynamics of ‘use’.
This essay is about the state of the doctrine of justification by faith alone today in light of r... more This essay is about the state of the doctrine of justification by faith alone today in light of recent critiques, and about the ways in which the doctrine continues to shape Protestants who no longer formally subscribe to it. The argument is first and foremost theological rather than historical, but it is driven by an interest in how evaluations of justification by faith have changed over time to get us where we are today. My hope is that a thoughtful evaluation of the current state of this doctrine as it looks from within the protestant fold will give us a some new insight into this important dimension of the relation between protestant and Catholic theological traditions, as we look back over 500 years of division. Ultimately, it will give us some new purchase on the old question of 'the nature of Protestantism' through analysis of a certain kind of orientation to psychological and affective realities in protestant theology.
This article proposes to take George Lindbeck’s project forward into new territory by taking his ... more This article proposes to take George Lindbeck’s project forward into new territory by taking his account of the role of doctrines in the shaping of religious experience and emotion into the realm of concrete examples. It calls this strategy attending to the ‘affective salience of doctrines’, and demonstrates how it can be done in an historical as well as an empirical mode by examining specific strategies of theological argument that emphasize the perceived affective consequences of doctrines. It then applies this approach to Philipp Melanchthon’s classic articulation of the forensic model of justification in light of critiques of the doctrine as a propositional ‘legal fiction’, in particular the recent version of this argument by John Milbank. The article concludes by drawing on contemporary psychological and philosophical accounts of emotion and cognition to demonstrate the surprising psychological plausibility of Melanchthon’s description of the relation between justification and its affective consequences in ‘love’, ‘joy’, ‘peace’, and ‘consolation’.
International Journal of Systematic Theology, 2010
This article uses resources from the theology of Christoph Blumhardt to argue that Luther was mis... more This article uses resources from the theology of Christoph Blumhardt to argue that Luther was mistaken in identifying a necessary theological connection between ‘enthusiastic’ views of the Spirit and naive anthropology. It demonstrates that Blumhardt successfully combined an abiding concern over the problem of spiritual self-deception together with a pneumatology that affirmed the importance of affective experience of the Spirit not mediated exclusively by the proclaimed Word of Scripture, through a conviction that the most reliable sign of the Spirit's activity is ‘negative’, in suffering and visceral encounter with divine judgement, in the first instance. This critical ‘enthusiasm’ helps explain Blumhardt's singular critique of the nationalistic ‘Spirit of August’ from the start of World War I.
This is a chapter for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of 19th Century Christian Thought. It trace... more This is a chapter for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of 19th Century Christian Thought. It traces theological appeals to the category of 'religious experience' in 19th century theology from Schleiermacher to William James. Figures discussed include Schleiermacher, Coleridge, Bushnell, the Erlangen School, Methodist Holiness theologian Phoebe Palmer, Christoph Blumhardt, and James. The chapter contextualizes these theological appeals to 'experience' in light of the long history of Protestant debates over 'enthusiasm' and subjective experience as well as the search for new foundations for theology after the Enlightenment. Overall, it demonstrates the lasting and often underestimated importance of Pietistic and 'enthusiastic' theologies in 19th century Christian theology as both a resource and a foil for new developments.
Oxford Handbook of Theology and Modern European Thought, 2013
This chapter discusses three developments in European that had a profound effect on the Christian... more This chapter discusses three developments in European that had a profound effect on the Christian concept of atonement, the first of which is the enormous impact of the Enlightenment, in particular the so-called ‘anthropocentric turn’. This turn included a new confidence in the powers of human reasoning, unaided by revelation or traditional theological confessions, to discern the nature of God and the universe. The second development is that of a series of powerful reductive critiques of religion, including of atonement. The third has been closely linked with the first: sustained critiques of substitution and satisfaction-based models of the atonement (including retributive, sacrificial, and forensic models). The concluding section offers a brief overview of trends in constructive accounts of the atonement from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including classic accounts by Schleiermacher and Barth, and the non-satisfaction-oriented alternatives that have been rehabilitated in light of the larger developments.
This book identifies the impasse between classical Protestant and contemporary charismatic and Pe... more This book identifies the impasse between classical Protestant and contemporary charismatic and Pentecostal pneumatologies as a fundamental theological problem. Its goal is to contribute a constructive pneumatological proposal for moving beyond this impasse, based on the resources of the theology of Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt (1842-1919). The disagreement is over the question of unmediated experience of the Holy Spirit. Luther's rejection of 'enthusiastic' pneumatologies on the basis of a narrow concept of the mediation of the Word and a pessimistic anthropology became Protestant orthodoxy. In relation to classical Protestantism, the primary theological distinctive of charismatic theology is its strong affirmation of unmediated experience of the Spirit in Christian life and worship. The Pentecostal movement's rapid growth in the past century has brought this difference to the fore. Christoph Blumhardt's theology, which integrates pessimistic anthropology and unmediated experience, is well-suited to exploring the impasse between the two theological traditions.
What is the task of theology in a complex religious and secular world? What are theologians calle... more What is the task of theology in a complex religious and secular world? What are theologians called to contribute to society, the churches, and the academy? Can theology be both fully faithful to Christian tradition and Scripture, and fully open to the challenges of the twenty-first century? In this book, an international team of contributors, including some of the best-known names in the field, respond to these questions in programmatic essays that set the direction for future debates about the vocation of theology. David Ford, in whose honor the collection is produced, has been for many years a key figure in articulating and shaping the role of contemporary theology. The contributors are his colleagues, collaborators, and former students, and their essays engage in dialogue with his work. The main unifying feature of this exciting collection is not Ford's work per se, however, but a shared engagement with the pressing question of theology's vocation today.
This paper builds on the Christian pneumatological principle that one of the Spirit’s primary rol... more This paper builds on the Christian pneumatological principle that one of the Spirit’s primary roles is to bridge the gap between theological realities and subjective experiences, to ask how how far we can specify concrete ‘sites’ within human subjectivity where this ‘actualizing’ of God’s work in human experience tends to occur. Narrowing the question to the soteriological work of the Spirit in particular, it is argued that the area of affectivity and emotion is just such a ‘site’, in that a correlation can be identified between the Spirit’s soteriological work and a particular sequence of affective experiences commonly associated with Christian initiation. The paper then draws on several theologians who have emphasized this point - St Paul, Didymus the Blind, Philipp Melanchthon, and George Whitefield – to show how a focus on the affective work of the Spirit reveals unexpected points of convergence between forensic and participatory soteriological models, and to diagnose an implicit anti-experientialism in certain recent soteriologies.
Uploads
Articles
Books
Drafts
Book Chapters