#theologytoots

Spending my time on the train dipping back into this gem of a book... watch this space! #willmoore #boyswillbeboys #theologytoots

If the oneness of #God implies the absence of any but self-imposed forms of limitation, the consistency of the word "God” in philosophies like that of Alfred North Whitehead is cast in doubt, because the one God is thought to be limited by the existence of a world which is not his creation and by its creativity.

#TheologyToots
#WolfhartPannenberg
#Theology
#ProcessTheology

The problem with #ProcessTheology, however, is that it does not allow for a concept of creation, The Whiteheadian God is but a partial factor in the constitution of actual existence, which is basically conceived as self-constitutive. Therefore, the God of Whitehead is not the biblical creator God. Furthermore, the Whiteheadian God is one actual entity among others, though distinguished from them by being everlasting. According to this philosophy all actual reality is finite, even #God.

#TheologyToots
#WolfhartPannenberg
#Theology

A more serious problem is that many in the clergy seem to feel insecure about the reality of #God, and consequently they are even more desperate to adapt their message to the changing mood of the time. Instead, the idolatries of secular culture should be exposed. Within the setting of a secularist culture it is even more important than in a religiously informed culture to urge the ultimate reality of God upon the hearts and minds of the people, and there are no other agents to do it than the #preacher and the #theologian.

#TheologyToots
#WolfhartPannenberg
#Theology

The contemporary situation of doing theology is characterized by the fact that in the world of secular culture the word "God" is not taken for granted, or if so, it is taken as a token of religious language, valid only within the enclave of religious discourse. The word is not self-evident as pointing to the ultimate reality that embraces, governs, judges, and explains everything else. The spirit of secularism keeps in suspense whether there is any such ultimate reality, though the secularist may be ready to respect ultimate concerns of people or what people pretend to be their ultimate concerns. In fact, to the various forms of secularism, human beings and their society count as ultimate reality. That hidden idolatry of secularism testifies to the fact that one cannot easily get rid of the issue of God. But secularism wants to persuade everybody that this issue is dead. Unfortunately, the credulity among religious people is such that not a few of them believe this to be the case, at least in the realm of public discourse, although the joke of making the "death of God" into a theological slogan turned out to be a passing fad.

#TheologyToots
#WolfhartPannenberg
#Theology

In #theology the concept of #God can never be simply one issue among others. It is the central issue, around which everything else is organized.

#TheologyToots
#WolfhartPannenberg

It is only in the event of final #salvation that the reality of #God will be definitively established. The entire process of divine economy leading to that final consummation amounts to a self-demonstration of God's existence.

#TheologyToots
#WolfhartPannenberg
#Theology

If the oneness of #God implies the absence of any but self-imposed forms of limitation, the consistency of the word "God” in philosophies like that of Alfred North Whitehead is cast in doubt, because the one God is thought to be limited by the existence of a world which is not his creation and by its creativity.

#TheologyToots
#WolfhartPannenberg
#Theology
#ProcessTheology

If the oneness of #God implies the absence of any but self-imposed forms of limitation, the consistency of the word "God” in philosophies like that of Alfred North Whitehead is cast in doubt, because the one God is thought to be limited by the existence of a world which is not his creation and by its creativity.

#TheologyToots
#WolfhartPannenberg
#Theology

The task of #theology is not only to investigate the origin and the original content of the Christian faith and of the doctrine of the church, or the changes they underwent in the course of history, but also to determine the truth which is contained in that tradition.

#TheologyToots
#WolfhartPannenberg

We cannot honestly go on to identify ourselves as Christians if the story of Jesus Christ and of his God is merely a story (in the sense of fairy tale) - fiction, but not history.

The Christian faith cannot live by relating to the history of Jesus as to a myth of Christian ancestors, if it were just that. The problem with the term "story" is that it obfuscates the truth question, and I suspect that the term "story" is so popular precisely because it allows one to slide over the truth question.

The story of Jesus Christ has to be history, not in all its details, but in its core, if the Christian faith is to continue. The same applies to the term "myth": God must be real, not just mythical if we are to entrust ourselves to him.

#TheologyToots #WolfhartPannenberg
#Theology

In the history of #Christianity, there was always a fundamental question to be faced and to be answered, the question of why an individual person should commit herself or himself to be a member of the Christian church. In the ease of a Jew, one is born as a Jew. But one is not born as a Christian - one has to be reborn.

#TheologyToots #WolfhartPannenberg
#SystematicTheology