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Volume 67 - May 2014

Contents

Page 2 of 4

Book Review

Research Article

  • A promise is a promise: God's covenantal relationship with animals

  • Kris Hiuser, Matthew Barton
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    26 June 2014, pp. 340-356

  • The place of the nonhuman animal within Christian doctrine is a topic of increasing interest, as more theologians seek to describe where nonhuman animals fit on the theological stage. One area where there seems great potential, yet which has been relatively untouched, is God's covenantal relationship with nonhuman animals as described within the Bible. This article is an attempt to use the idea of God's covenantal relationship with nonhuman creatures to build a case for understanding them as creatures of value, with a corresponding human calling to treat them in ways suitable to their value. This case is made in two sections. In the first, the fact that God covenants with nonhuman animals, and calls humans into covenant with them, will be shown through examining Genesis 9 and Hosea 2. Given such a reality, what it means to be involved in a covenant will be examined, and ultimately two main implications will be put forward. First, that nonhuman animals are worthy of covenantal care and protection, and second that humans have a calling to exist in a covenantal relationship with them. Following this, this article then turns to its second section, where it examines the ways in which the Christian tradition has (or has not) intentionally chosen to live out such a covenantal theology with nonhuman animals. The doctrines of two contemporary Christian denominations (Anglican and Roman Catholic) as described in significant denominational documents are examined, as are two groups from these respective traditions which choose to pay close attention to the welfare of nonhuman animals to address the manner in which the covenantal relationship shared between human and nonhuman animals is recognised and understood in the church today. While the groups focused on nonhuman animal welfare continually call for the church to recognise the value of all creatures as described in the covenantal relationship all animals are involved in, their respective denominations often fail to live out such ethical implications. In light of the significance of the covenantal relationship, it is suggested that the church is called to engage in deeper acts of moral discernment on matters of animal ethics.

  • Forgetting the power of leaven: The historical method in recent New Testament theology

  • Seth Heringer
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    15 January 2014, pp. 85-104

  • Ernst Troeltsch and Heikki Räisänen have raised significant challenges to the way New Testament theology handles the relation of history and theology. Troeltsch pushed Christian scholars to apply the historical method's three principles of criticism, analogy and correlation consistently to their work and thus embrace empiricism. Räisänen continues this trajectory by splitting New Testament theology into its descriptive and reflective tasks, resulting in a programme which questions the unity of the canon, the appropriateness of prescription and the role of church authority in New Testament theology. With these challenges in mind, this article examines four recent New Testament theologies to see how they use the historical method. It finds that these works exhibit different ad hoc ways of using the historical method, picking it up and setting it down at will. Peter Balla accepts New Testament theology as descriptive and historical while claiming it can also be theological by studying the content in the New Testament. Despite this embrace of the historical method, Balla remains uncomfortable with bare empiricism and pushes back on its naturalism. Georg Strecker splits the world into two: one part which can be investigated by the historical method and another part which lies outside its normal subject matter. The result is that he uses the historical method everywhere except where his main theological concern lies – Jesus’ resurrection. I. Howard Marshall similarly holds the historical method to be necessary for New Testament theology but largely ignores it in light of narrative-theological concerns. Frank Matera takes a purposefully literary approach to New Testament theology and generally ignores the historical method. He does invoke it, however, when the text becomes difficult and alternative readings must be found. The methodological inconsistency demonstrated by these New Testament theologies leads the article to conclude that this type of historical New Testament theology is a failed enterprise. A theological understanding of history based on work by Murray Rae is then proposed as an alternative which allows for methodological consistency in synthetic work on the New Testament.

  • Apokatastasis and apostolicity: a response to Oliver Crisp on the question of Barth's universalism

  • David W. Congdon
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    10 October 2014, pp. 464-480

  • Oliver Crisp argues that Karl Barth is incoherent on the question of universal salvation. Making use of a modal distinction between contingent and necessary universalism, Crisp claims that Barth's theology leads to the view that all people must be saved, yet Barth denies this conclusion. Most defences of Barth reject the view that his theology logically requires the salvation of all people; they try to defend him by appealing, as Barth himself seems to do at times, to divine freedom. This article argues that, even though his theology does lead necessarily to the conclusion of universal salvation, it is still coherent for him to deny universalism on his own methodological grounds, since the necessity and the denial operate at different levels. Barth has other commitments in his theology than mere logical consistency. To support this claim, I argue that the necessity which belongs to God's reconciling work in Christ coincides with a double contingency: (a) the ‘objective’ contingency of Christ's particular history and (b) the ‘subjective’ contingency with which this reconciliation confronts particular human beings and calls them to participate in the apostolic mission of Jesus. In each case, necessity coincides paradoxically with a kind of contingency, such that, within Barth's theology, we can speak of what Kevin Hector calls ‘contingent necessity’ or what Eberhard Jüngel calls ‘eschatological necessity’. Most debates over universalism focus on the objective side. There the question is whether the necessity of Christ's universally effective work compromises divine freedom. But Barth's concern on this point is whether the necessity is ‘transcendent’ or ‘immanent’, that is, whether it is determined by God or the creature, and since God can indeed will the salvation of all, this poses no problem in principle for affirming universal salvation. Barth's central concern has to do with the issue of ‘subjective’ necessity. Barth denies that theology is ever a matter of describing what is objectively or generally the case regarding God and the world. On the contrary, he situates theology within the existential determination and subjective participation of the one called to bear witness to Jesus Christ. For this reason, he rejects all worldviews, including universalism. The rejection of universalism is the affirmation of apostolicity.

Article Review

Book Review

Page 2 of 4