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Speculating about Divinity? God's Immanent Life and Actualistic Ontology
Author(s) -
STRATIS JUSTIN
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
international journal of systematic theology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.149
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 1468-2400
pISSN - 1463-1652
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2400.2009.00476.x
Subject(s) - divinity , philosophy , reading (process) , ontology , doctrine , counterfactual thinking , epistemology , theology , resolution (logic) , linguistics , artificial intelligence , computer science
This article argues that counterfactual statements concerning God's life in himself are both theologically informative and genuinely warranted by Karl Barth's notion of God's ‘being‐in‐act’ as presented in § 28.1 of the Church Dogmatics. To this end, the proposed reading aims to mitigate recent emphases on divine Entscheidung as the primary category for construing Barth's theological ontology. Without offering a resolution to alleged ‘tensions’ in Barth's doctrine of God, the author nevertheless suggests that there are good reasons to prefer certain streams of Barth's thought to others, with the notion of God's love offered as a test case.