Is it possible that biblical theology can provide a way of escape from the inherited dangers of “systematic theology”? Can we find here that sense of freedom, of openness to new approaches to the Bible as the Scriptures are brought into contact and confrontation with the world’s diverse cultural and social contexts? Is “systematic theology” [...]
We now suggest that eschatology, oriented toward the central significance of the coming of Christ in the history of redemption, provides us with more than a static theological formulation. It has deep and dynamic implications for the methodological significance of contextualization. It reminds us, to quote Vos, that “we ourselves live just as much in [...]
Biblical theology reminds us of the Christ-centered heart of the Scripture, of its history as the history of redemption. Theologizing, as the application of that redemptive history, then becomes eschatological in a deeper sense than we usually think. it is an eschatology defined not only with reference to the second coming of Christ but inclusive [...]
Harvie Conn citing Herman Bavink, “The Future of Calvinism,” The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 5 (1894): 23
“All the misery of the Presbyterian Churches is owing to their striving to consider the Reformation as completed, and to allow no further development of what has been begun by the labor of the Reformers…. Calvinism wishes no cessation [...]
“The danger of … abstractionist thinking [we can gain "objective knowledge" of God] has always been that things are viewed as existing in themselves without taking into consideration the relationships in which they stand to other things. It asks, What is God in Himself? No movement can be applied to God; therefore we confess that [...]
As I look back on my student years at Westminster Theological Seminary (1985-89), especially as the years pass, I am beginning to count it more and more of a privilege to have been at Westminster and under Harvie Conn’s influence. Truth be told, I left Westminster for Harvard more or less focused on learning as [...]
