How does God act?

International Journal of Systematic Theology

Volumn 1, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 138-152

  Wood, Charles M ^a  

^a Perkins School of Theology   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61149355055     PISSN: 14631652     EISSN: 14682400     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1463-1652.00010     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. See Charles M. Wood, 'The Question of the Doctrine of Providence', Theology Today 49 (1992), pp. 209-23.
2. Morris Weitz, The Opening Mind: A Philosophical Study of Humanistic Concepts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 141-87.
3. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 3rd edn, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1958), no. 593.
4. James M. Gustafson, 'Alternative Conceptions of God', in The God Who Acts: Philosophical and Theological Explorations, ed. Thomas F. Tracy (University Park, PA: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 64-5.
5. James Barr likewise advocates a more comprehensive view of biblical portrayals of the character of God's relation to the world in 'Divine Action and Hebrew Wisdom', in The Making and Remaking of Christian Doctrine: Essays in Honour of Maurice Wiles, ed. Sarah Coakley and David A. Pailin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 1-12.
6. This understanding of the task of Christian theology is elaborated in Charles M. Wood, Vision and Discernment: An Orientation in Theological Study (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985).
7. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/3, trans. G.W. Bromiley and R.J. Ehrlich (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1960), p. 30.
8. Church Dogmatics III/3, p. 31.
9. Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991), p. 116.
10. See, for example, Christoph Schwöbel, 'Die Rede vom Handeln Gottes im christlichen Glauben', Marburger Jahrbuch Theologie 1 (1987), pp. 56-81;
11. Schwöbel, 'Divine Action and Christian Faith', in God: Action and Revelation (Kampen: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1992), pp. 23-45;
12. Werner Bräddndie, 'Überlegungen zur Rede vom Handeln Gottes', Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 37 (1995), pp. 96-117;
13. For the most influential modern formulation of this critique, see Karl Rahner, 'Der Dreifaltiger Gott als transzendenter Urgrund Der Heilsgeschichte', in Mysterium Salutis: Grundriss heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik, ed. Johannes Feiner and Magnus Löhrer, Vol. 2, Die Heilsgeschichte vor Christus (Einsiedeln: Benziger Verlag, 1967), esp. pp. 319-27.
14. For an illuminating analysis and criticism of some important aspects of Rahner's own thinking on this matter, see Phillip Cary, 'On Behalf of Classical Trinitarianism: A Critique of Rahner on the Trinity', The Thomist 56 (1992), pp. 365-405.
15. On König's doctrine of providence and its reception, see Carl Heinz Ratschow, Lutherische Dogmatik zwischen Reformation und Aufklärung, part II (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1966), pp. 208-47.
16. Nicholas Lash, Believing Three Ways in One God: A Reading of the Apostles' Creed (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), pp. 51-5.
17. The translation is from Heinrich Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 3rd edn, trans. Charles A. Hay and Henry E. Jacobs (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House. 1899), p. 193.
18. For a fuller account of this distinction, see Charles M. Wood, 'The Events In Which God Acts', in An Invitation to Theological Study (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994), pp. 90-97.
19. For an account of one such episode see Margo Todd, 'Providence, Chance, and the New Science in Early Stuart Cambridge', Historical Journal 29 (1986), pp. 697-711.
20. These criticisms may be found, in somewhat different forms, in the following: Mats J. Hansson, Understanding an Act of God: An Essay in Philosophical Theology (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1991), esp. chs 3 and 7;
21. Maurice Wiles, God's Action in the World (London: SCM Press, 1986), esp. ch. 5;
22. and Thomas F. Tracy, 'Narrative Theology and the Acts of God', in Divine Action: Studies Inspired by the Philosophical Theology of Austin Farrer, ed. Brian Hebblethwaite and Edward Henderson (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1990), pp. 173-96.
23. They have been addressed in a way that I have found very helpful by Vincent Brümmer, 'Farrer, Wiles, and the Causal Joint', Modern Theology 8 (1992), pp. 1-14,
24. Christopher Morse, Not Every Spirit: A Dogmatics of Christian Disbelief (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994), p. 217.
25. 'Conservado est actus divinae providentiae, quo Deus res omnes a se creatas in suo esse, b.e. in sua natura & naturalibus proprietatibus & viribus, quas in prima sui productione acceperunt, conservat, quousque vult' (Theologia Didactico-Polemica, 1. p. 531).
26. 'Concursus est actus providentiae divinae, quo Deus influxu generali in actiones & effectus causarum secondarum, qua tales, se ipso immediate & simul cum eis & justa indigentiam & exigentiam uniuscuiusque suaviter influit' (Theologia DidacticoPolemica, 1, p. 531).
27. See William A. Christian, 'God and the World', Journal of Religion 28 (1948), pp. 255-62.
28. T.F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), p. 82.
29. D.M. MacKinnon, 'The Relation of the Doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity', in Creation, Christ and Culture: Essays in Honour of T.F. Torrance, ed. Richard W.A. McKinney (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1976), p. 99.