Reconsidering concursus

International Journal of Systematic Theology

Volumn 4, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 205-215

  Wright, Terry J ^a  

^a NONE   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149463671     PISSN: 14631652     EISSN: 14682400     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1463-1652.00081     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. John Polkinghorne, Science and Providence: God's Interaction with the World (London: SPCK, 1994), p. 6.
2. John Calvin writes that 'there is no erratic power, or action, or motion in creatures, but that they are governed by God's secret plan in such a way that nothing happens except what is knowingly and willingly decreed by him' [John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 1:16:3, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), p. 201.] His doctrine of providence assumes the truth of his doctrine of predestination, that providence is the outworking of God's plan by which he 'adopts some to hope of life, and sentences others to eternal death' (Institutes 3:21:5, p. 926). Karl Barth agrees: providence 'is the execution of the eternal decree of God's eternal election of grace.' [Karl Barth. Church Dogmatics trans. ed. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957-75), III/3, p. 6.]
3. Charles M. Wood, 'How Does God Act?', International Journal of Systematic Theology 1 (1999), p. 138.
4. 'How Does God Act?', p. 142.
5. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Leicester: IVP, 1994), p. 317.
6. Paul Helm, The Providence of God (Leicester: IVP 1993), p. 86.
7. Possible exceptions to this may be Eeelesiastes and the biblical apocalypses (mainly Daniel and Revelation). The apocalyptic genre features an explicit determinism that x will happen at t; without this determinism, a prerequisite of the genre, apocalyptic texts would not be apocalyptic. Thus any determinist element in biblical apocalypses need not be interpreted as a mechanical determinism where x causes y to happen at t. Similarly, Ecclesiastes, with its talk of 'a time ( 'ēt) for every matter under heaven' (3:1b), need not imply a rigid determinism. Neither Eeelesiastes nor the biblical apocalypses exclude the possibility of God calling things into action. 'Is it not obvious that in the Old Testament the creature - especially individual man, but also universal history and its events, and finally all natural occurrence - is set in train by a divine address, word, call, command or order?' (Barth, CD III/3, p. 143.)
8. Jonathan Edwards writes, 'God's upholding created substance, or causing its existence in each successive moment, is altogether equivalent to an immediate production out of nothing, at each moment, because its existence at this moment is not merely in part from God, but wholly from him'. Quoted in Helm, The Providence of God, pp. 85-6.
9. Calvin, Institutes 1:17:1, pp. 211-12.
10. 'God and man, the one as Creator and the other as His creature, do not exist on the same level. There is no rivalry between the divine freedom and the human. Thus the dependence of man's action on God's does not involve any weakening, alteration or finally destruction of its freedom or its character as decision' (Barth, CD IV/2, p. 753).
11. See Thomas F. Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997), pp. 23-5.
12. Torrance, Spare, Time and Incarnation, p. 1.
13. Thomas G. Weinandy, In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh: An Essay on the Humanity of Christ (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1993), pp. 96-7.
14. In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh, p. 97.
15. For an overview of the relationship between Jesus and the Holy Spirit, see Ian McFarland, 'Christ, Spirit and Atonement', International Journal of Systematic Theology 3 (2001), especially pp. 86-8,
16. and Tom Smail, The Giving Gift: The Holy Spirit in Person (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1994), especially chapter 4.
17. Weinandy, In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh, p. 102.
18. In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh, p. 108.
19. See Wood, 'How Does God Act?', pp. 147-8.