Christians typically deal with popular culture with anxious rejection or blithe acceptance, but more is called for. Popular culture and apologetics, properly understood, need each other. The author presents a brief theology of popular culture, presenting it as a religiously significant mixture of grace and idolatry that shapes desire. As such, it demands an apologetical response. He then presents an analysis of apologetics as persuasion, arguing that apologetics is not just concerned with facts, but with creating a bridge between the desires of the unbeliever’s heart and Christian hope. The connection between popular culture and apologetics is desire. Desire is not simply biological or emotional. It is revelation with eschatological significance; desire carries messages about the consummation of the world. The essay ends with an extended discussion of how desire is configured in the film An Education, and how it led to good conversations with his non-Christian college students.
Exploring an Interdisciplinary Theology of Culture
In this essay, “theology” and “culture” are placed together around a set of core social relations. The author defines and configures these relations within a Trinitarian and incarnational theological framework drawn largely from the thought of Scottish Reformed theologian T. F. Torrance. Then it is suggested that this particular theological vision, and the configuration of social relationships it suggests, not only accounts for the emergence of human culture and cultural activity but is open to insights from work being done in other anthropological disciplines. Convergence between these other disciplines and the theological vision developed here is demonstrated through brief considerations of the work of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker and sociologists Christian Smith and Peter Berger.
Special Forum on Paul D. Molnar’s “Thomas F. Torrance: Theologian of the Trinity” (Introductory Remarks)
This essay is interested in T. F. Torrance’s dogmatic theology, which was shaped from beginning to end by his belief that the doctrine of the Trinity was the ground and grammar of theology. Several of Torrance’s key insights were shaped by his belief that what God is toward us, he is internally and eternally within himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The author makes the point, along with Torrance, that when the language of theology is not shaped by who God eternally is and what God actually has done and is doing in history in his Word and Spirit, we are not only cut off from God but cut off from our neighbors. The doctrine of the Trinity is not only shown to be the center of all of Torrance’s doctrines, but moreover suggested to be the center of the reader’s.
The Contemporary and Ecumenical Relevance of T. F. Torrance’s Trinitarian Theology
This essay begins by applauding Paul Molnar on shedding light on T. F. Torrance’s importance for ecumenical discourse and contemporary theological debates related to Torrance’s robust and distinctive Trinitarian theology. The author begins by appreciating Molnar for comparing Torrance’s Christology with others’. Molnar decidedly enhances our comprehension by doing so. Molnar’s book provides the breadth and depth needed for this further work to take place. The entire work, though, demonstrates what is particularly and perhaps uniquely meant by theology being Trinitarian. After reading Molnar’s book, readers will have a distinct and compelling view of what Torrance thought being a theologian of the Trinity was all about. Simply put, through the Incarnation, the doctrine of the Trinity does indeed inform every single aspect of dogmatics.
A “Chalcedonian” Response to Paul Molnar
In T. F. Torrance’s Trinitarian theology, one of his theological passions is to again and again proclaim the connection between Jesus Christ and God. The author proposes that Torrance has a “Chalcedonian” understanding of the immanent and economic Trinity. The author goes on that it should not be forgotten that there is no God behind the back of Jesus Christ in Torrance’s theology. There is, however, a very close connection between Christ and God. Furthermore, in Torrance’s thought finds a parallel notion in the close connection between Christ and humanity. Just as we know God by grace through the revelation of Jesus Christ, we know who we are as humans through this same revelation. The resurrected and ascended Jesus is the ground of our true humanity. The author then goes on to explore Torrance’s Christology more fully.