Friday, April 10, 2009

The Joy and Holiness of Theology

“Evangelical theology is concerned with Immanuel, God with us! Having this God for its object, it can be nothing else but the most thankful and happy science.”

Karl Barth
from Evangelical Theology

“No less than any other Christian practice, Christian theology is governed by the commanding, revelatory summons of God’s presence. It takes place within the sphere marked out by that presence; and, if it withdraws from that presence or falls into an attitude of anything less than fear of the holy God, then it has simply stumbled into absurdity….As holy reason at work, Christian theology can never escape the sober realization that we talk in the terrifying presence of the God from whom we cannot flee (Ps. 139.7)….When we begin to talk theologically about the holiness of God, we soon enough discover that the tables have been reversed; it is no longer we who summon God before our minds to make him a matter for clever discourse, but the opposite: the holy God shows himself and summons us before him to give an account of our thinking.”

John Webster
from Holiness

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