The “I call you friends” of John’s Gospel (15:15) implies the Christian anthropology that all human beings are created for divine and human friendship. The Ten Commandments of the covenant-creating and covenant-sustaining God of Israel is foundational for Christian anthropology. The God of the Judeo-Christian tradition calls and empowers all human persons for divine and [...]
Perhaps this analogy might be helpful for grasping how Christ saves non-Christians. If a total stranger saves you from death, it was not your knowledge of the person that saved you; rather, the loving solicitude and action (grace)  of your ”savior.” Christ has effectively given his life for the salvation of all persons. Even those who have never [...]
If the who that Jesus is has nothing to do with Jesus’ self-understanding/interpretation and personal communication, his call to faith in him would be ungrounded and meaningless. He cannot work miracles for people without faith in the who that he is and claims to be. To suggest that this approach is merely one approach implies [...]
Someone has described the relations which distinguish the persons of the Trinity from one another as three distinct “regards.” The Father’s regard for the Son and Spirit distinguishes him as a person from the Son’s regard for the Father and Spirit; and the Spirit’s regard for the Father and Son distinguishes it from both the [...]
There is no knowing, loving or enjoying God in the biblical sense apart from our knowing, loving or enjoying the concrete particularities of our concrete, particular, historical and relational existence: “If anyone is well-off in worldly possessions and sees his neighbor in need but closes his heart to him, how can the love of God [...]
God has created all human beings for happiness (Ver. 23.2)Â
The theologian considers human actions in so far as through them we are ordered to happiness (I-II, 7, 2).Â
The ultimate end of human life is happiness (I-II, 69,1).
The rational creature naturally desires happiness. Hence it cannot wish not to be happy (C.G. 4, 92).
Perfect happiness belongs [...]
Notes from Stephen R. Holmes, God of Grace, and God of Glory: An Account of the Theology of Jonathan Edwards. Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2001.
Edwards affirms that God’s internal self-glorification occurs in his knowing himself in his own perfect idea, his Son, and in his flowing forth in love and delight for himself in his Spirit. [...]
God’s plan for humankind, enacted through his election of Israel as promised to Abraham, is both to save it from the consequences of its sinful rebellion and to endow it with the fulness of life in his kingdom. God creates the universe to reflect his glory: to make it beautiful
 God is the Eternal Now/Love encompassing our past, present and future. The kairos is our graced experience of communion, community and communication with the Eternal Now/Love of God who has all the time in the world for everyone. Authentic prayer is our experience of living in God, the Eternal Now/Love which, in contrast to chronos,the [...]
Beauty is a dimension of divine and human happiness. Aquinas tells us that God is Ipsa Felicitas, Happiness Itself (S.T. I-II, q. 3, a.2). God’s happiness in knowing his truth, loving his goodness, and delighting in the beauty of his true goodness is the ultimate happiness of all the blessed, knowing themselves in God’s truth, [...]