Inquiring After God when Preaching
12/2/04
TH 291
Final Paper
- January
13th – 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
- 20th
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
-