Wolfhart Pannenberg

 I am including in this post a review of another book by Coakley. Review of The New Asceticism Sarah Coakley’s  The New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender and the Quest for God  Bloomsbury Continuum, 2015) is a compact but ambitious theological intervention into some of the most divisive questions in contemporary Christian life: sexuality, gender, priesthood, celibacy, prayer, and the meaning of desire. The book gathers essays around a single constructive proposal: the churches will not move beyond their exhausted polarities until they recover a serious theology of asceticism. Coakley is not calling for a return to repression, moralism, or ecclesiastical control. She refuses to enter the familiar debates over biblical texts, ecclesiastical policies, or competing ethical positions. Rather, she argues that Christian asceticism, rightly understood, is the lifelong training, purification, and intensification of desire in relation to God. The modern church has lost a coherent theol...

  I am going to explore an important part of Christian theology as it developed its notion of the identity of the Triune God. I will do so with the help of Wolfhart Pannenberg, Karl Barth, Robert Jenson, Walter Kaufmann, and John Macquarrie. The work of Thomas Oden in "Classic Christianity" helped to guide my reading toward their insights. I will conclude with my attempt to compose a brief statement of the trinity as inspired by these authors, although I will say that sometimes the inspiration is to respectfully move against them. Athanasius (293-393) born in Alexandria, Egypt, would become secretary to the bishop. That position became the basis for his involvement in the Council of Nicaea in 325. He opposed a priest also from Alexandria, Arius. Athanasius formulated the homoousian doctrine, according to which the Son of God is of the same essence, or substance, as the Father. Arius, on the other hand, maintained that the Son was of a different substance from that of the Fath...