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Open Theism
Open theism, also known as openness theology and free will theism, is a theological movement that has developed within Christianity as a rejection of the synthesis of Greek philosophy and Christian theology. Open theism arises out of the freewill theistic tradition of the church which goes back to the early church fathers. Open theism is typically advanced as a biblically motivated and logically consistent theology of human and divine freedom (in the libertarian sense), with an emphasis on what this means for the content of God's foreknowledge and exercise of God's power. Open theist theologian Thomas Jay Oord identifies four paths to open and relational theology: # following the biblical witness, # following themes in some Christian theological traditions, # following the philosophy of free will, and # following the path of reconciling faith and science. Roger E. Olson said that open theism triggered the "most significant controversy about the doctrine of God in evangelical tho ...
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Christian Theology
Christian theology is the theology of Christianity, Christian belief and practice. Such study concentrates primarily upon the texts of the Old Testament and of the New Testament, as well as on Christian tradition. Christian theology, theologians use biblical exegesis, rationality, rational analysis and argument. Theologians may undertake the study of Christian theology for a variety of reasons, such as in order to: * help them better understand Christian tenets * make comparative religion, comparisons between Christianity and other traditions * Christian apologetics, defend Christianity against objections and criticism * facilitate reforms in the Christian church * assist in the evangelism, propagation of Christianity * draw on the resources of the Christian tradition to address some present situation or perceived need * education in Christian philosophy, especially in Neoplatonism, Neoplatonic philosophyLouth, Andrew. The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato ...
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Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning on the European continent. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato is a central figure in the history of Ancient Greek philosophy and the Western and Middle Eastern philosophies descended from it. He has also shaped religion and spirituality. The so-called neoplatonism of his interpreter Plotinus greatly influenced both Christianity (through Church Fathers such as Augustine) and Islamic philosophy (through e.g. Al-Farabi). In modern times, Friedrich Nietzsche diagnosed Western culture as growing in the shadow of Plato (famously calling Christianity "Platonism for the masses"), while Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tra ...
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Clark Pinnock
Clark H. Pinnock (February 3, 1937 – August 15, 2010) was a Christian theologian, apologist and author. He was Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at McMaster Divinity College. Education and career Pinnock was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on February 3, 1937. He grew up in a liberal Baptist congregation. Pinnock once recounted that as a child he had little interest in the church. Even though he was brought up in Liberal Christianity, he later became part of the broad Evangelical tradition, and explored Reformed, Arminian and Pentecostal streams of thought. Pinnock described his shifts in thought as a pilgrimage: Pinnock studied in the Ancient Near Eastern Studies program at the University of Toronto and in 1960 he was graduated. He then was awarded both a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to Harvard and a British Commonwealth Scholarship to England. Pinnock decided to go to England to study under F.F. Bruce at Manchester University. The dissertation for his Ph.D ...
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Richard Rice (theologian)
T. Richard Rice (born 1944) is an American Seventh-day Adventist theologian and author. He is a leading proponent of "open theism". As of 2007 he is professor of theology and philosophy of religion at Loma Linda University in California. Biography Rice received an M.Div. degree from Andrews University in 1969, and an MA and Ph.D. in Christian theology from the University of Chicago in 1972 and 1974, respectively. He taught at La Sierra University, in Riverside, California until 1998, moving then to Loma Linda University, where he was (until his retirement July 2020) a Professor of Religion in the areas of Theology and Philosophy of Religion. He has served as a church pastor.''Reign of God'', iv Open theism Rice introduced the term "open theism" in his 1980 book ''The Openness of God: The Relationship of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will''. The book was published by Seventh-day Adventist publisher Review and Herald, but proved controversial within the church ...
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Millard Erickson
Millard J. Erickson (24 June 1932), born in Isanti County, Minnesota, is an Evangelical Christian theologian, professor of theology, and author. Early life and education He earned a B.A. from the University of Minnesota, a B.D. from Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, an M.A. from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University. Ministry Erickson, an ordained Baptist minister, is a fairly conservative and moderately Calvinistic Evangelical Protestant. He is accommodating of non-mainstream views on a number of issues, but one of the most vocal opponents of theological liberalism and progressive trends within Evangelicalism. Erickson is a prominent critic of openness theology as well as postmodern Christianity, including the Emerging Church movement. Erickson was Professor of Theology at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon. He was professor of theology and academic dean at Bethel University seminary for many years. He also taught at Baylor University. ...
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Sophiology
Sophiology (russian: Софиология, by detractors also called ''Sophianism'' or ''Sophism'' ) is a controversial school of thought in Russian Orthodoxy which holds that Divine Wisdom (or Sophia) is to be identified with God's essence, and that the Divine Wisdom is in some way expressed in the world as 'creaturely' wisdom. This notion has often been understood or misunderstood (depending upon one's point of view) as introducing a feminine "fourth hypostasis" into the Trinity. History Antecedents Personified representations of Holy Wisdom (Ἁγία Σοφία) or the "Wisdom of God" refer in Orthodox theology to the person of Jesus Christ, as illustrated in the Acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicaea II, 787): "Our Lord Jesus Christ, our true God, the self-existent Wisdom of God the Father, Who manifested Himself in the flesh, and by His great and divine dispensation (lit. economy) freed us from the snares of idolatry, clothing Himself in our nature, restor ...
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Panentheism
Panentheism ("all in God", from the Greek language, Greek grc, πᾶν, pân, all, label=none, grc, ἐν, en, in, label=none and grc, Θεός, Theós, God, label=none) is the belief that the Divinity, divine intersects every part of Universe, the universe and also extends beyond space and time. The term was coined by the German philosopher Karl Krause in 1828 to distinguish the ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) about the relation of God and the universe from the supposed pantheism of Baruch Spinoza,John Culp (2013)"Panentheism" in the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''. Retrieved 18 March 2014. after reviewing Hindu scriptures. Unlike pantheism, which holds that the divine and the universe are Identity (philosophy), identical, panentheism maintains an Ontology, ontological distinction between the divine and the secular, non-divine and the significance of both. In panentheism, the universal Omniprese ...
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Sergei Bulgakov
Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (; russian: Серге́й Никола́евич Булга́ков; – 13 July 1944) was a Russian Eastern Orthodox Church, Orthodox theologian, priest, philosopher, and economist. Biography Early life: 1871–1898 Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov was born on 16 July 1871 to the family of an Russian Orthodox Church, Orthodox priest (Nikolai Bulgakov) in the town of Livny, Oryol guberniya, in Russia. The family produced Orthodox priests for six generations, beginning in the sixteenth century with their ancestor Bulgak, a Tatars, Tatar from whom the family name derives. Metropolitan bishop, Metropolitan Macarius Bulgakov (1816–1882), one of the major Eastern Orthodox theologians of his days, and one of the most important Russian church historians, was a distant relative. At the age of fourteen, after three years at the local parish school, Bulgakov entered the seminary in Orel. In 1888, however, Bulgakov quit the seminary after a loss of his faith. Bul ...
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Adam Clarke
Adam Clarke (176226 August 1832) was a British Methodist theologian who served three times as President of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference (1806–07, 1814–15 and 1822–23). A biblical scholar, he published an influential Bible commentary among other works. He was a Wesleyan. Biography Early life and education Clarke was born in 1760 or 1762, in the townland of Moybeg Kirley near Tobermore in Northern Ireland. His father, an Anglican, was a village schoolmaster and farmer; his mother was a Presbyterian. His childhood consisted of a series of life-threatening mishaps. After receiving a very limited education he was apprenticed to a linen manufacturer, but, finding the employment uncongenial, he resumed school-life at the institution founded by Wesley at Kingswood. In 1778, at the age of fourteen, Rev. John Wesley invited him to become a pupil in the Methodist seminary lately established at Kingswood, Bristol. In 1779, he converted to Methodism after listening to a preac ...
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Jules Lequier
Jules Lequier (or Lequyer,Lequyer's birth certificate had "Lequier" but in 1834 his father had the spelling legally fixed as "Lequyer." ; 30 January 1814 – 11 February 1862) was a French philosopher from Brittany. Lequier died, presumably as a suicide, by swimming out into the ocean. Philosophical work Lequier wrote in favour of dynamic divine omniscience, wherein God's knowledge of the future is one of possibilities rather than actualities. Omniscience, under this view, is the knowledge of necessary facts as necessary, and contingent facts as contingent. Since the future does not yet exist as anything more than a realm of abstract possibilities, it is no impugning of divine omniscience to claim that God does not know the future as a fixed and unalterable state of affairs: that he does not know what is not there to be known. Lequier's approach guarantees both divine and human freedom, and suggests a partial resolution of the apparent inconsistency of human-wrought evil and the pe ...
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Otto Pfleiderer
Otto Pfleiderer (1 September 1839 – 18 July 1908) was a German Protestant theologian. Through his writings and his lectures, he became known as one of the most influential representatives of liberal theology. Biography Pfleiderer was born at Stetten im Remstal (now a part of Kernen, Baden-Württemberg) in Württemberg. From 1857 to 1861 he studied at the University of Tübingen under Ferdinand Christian Baur, and afterwards in England and Scotland. He then entered the ministry, became tutor (german: Repetent) at Tübingen, and for a short time held a pastorate at Heilbronn (1868). In 1870 he became chief pastor and superintendent at the University of Jena and soon afterwards professor ordinarius of theology, but in 1875 he was called to the chair of systematic theology at Berlin, having made his name by a series of articles on New Testament criticism and Johannine and Pauline theology, which appeared in Adolf Hilgenfeld's ''Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie'', and by ...
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Gustav Fechner
Gustav Theodor Fechner (; ; 19 April 1801 – 18 November 1887) was a German physicist, philosopher, and experimental psychologist. A pioneer in experimental psychology and founder of psychophysics (techniques for measuring the mind), he inspired many 20th-century scientists and philosophers. He is also credited with demonstrating the non-linear relationship between psychological sensation and the physical intensity of a stimulus via the formula: S = K \ln I, which became known as the Weber–Fechner law. Early life and scientific career Fechner was born at Groß Särchen, near Muskau, in Lower Lusatia, where his father, a maternal uncle, and his paternal grandfather were pastors. His mother, Johanna Dorothea Fechner (b. 1774), née Fischer, also came from a religious family. Despite these religious influences, Fechner became an atheist in later life. Fechner's father, Samuel Traugott Fischer Fechner (1765-1806) was free-thinking in many ways, for example by having his childre ...
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