Inquiring After God when Preaching

12/2/04

TH 291

Final Paper

• January 13^th – due by this time
• send in campus mail with SBN listed on the front

Cornelius Plantinga Jr.

• book on preaching
• President of Calvin College (or Theological Seminary)
• picked two texts

Augustine / Calvin

• What is different between the two?

Augustine (general)

• claimed by Western church as father of the church (both Catholics and Protestants)
• cannot be an educated person unless you have read Confessions
• Augustine created psychology for the west
• cannot be an educated pastor without reading Calvin’s institutes

Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion

• I.1 - to understand God we must become displeased with God
• ignorance, vanity, poverty, infirmity, depravity, corruption in us
• self-despair
• I.2 – we seem to ourselves righteous, upright, wise and holy
• theological anthropology
• acting as a psychologist
• anthropology is a misnomer
• different views (basic assumptions) have led to different theologies
• starting principle of theology
• we need a straightedge to measure ourselves against
• Calvin – put on spectacles, spectacles are new in his day
• capacity to self-observe?
• no input from other people that leads to this view
• III.1 – awareness of divinity
• implanted at creation
• natural theology
• Calvin gets it from Augustine
• Calvin – uses contrast to get the readers attention
• contrast between God and us
• goal – to lead us to humility
• humility and piety are synonomous
• goal – wants us to change in to a new kind of people
• Calvin’s interest is not dogmatic or systematic, it is pastoral
• beginning – pastoral care, pastoral theology – concerned about us

• Calvin posits deep discontinuity between God and humanity
• Christian theology is therapy – return to true self

• “when there is nothing else to love the only thing God loves is his image of himself in us”
• similar to parent / child relationship

Augustine

• born with a conscience
• we know what to do even if we don’t do it
• basic psychological generalization – all human beings long for God
• Great Treatise on the Trinity
• created in the image of God
• made it the center of human psychology
• self-understanding – you are a homologue (reflection of the trinity)
• Augustine posits deep continuity between God and humanity
• we long for God because of Adam’s sin we lost it
• goal of theology – reclaim our proper identity in Christ
• Book I
• starting point – restless (vs. Calvin who said that we are self-satisfied)

General Discussion

• theologians map problems
• 20^th century – starts the idea that we do not have an awareness of divinity
• current thought – we feel bad about ourselves because someone told us
• come from outside of us
• more complicated than this
• “whatever I am it is because someone else did this to me”
• translated to feminism, race-based theologies