Grok’s Synopsis On How Barth Influences the Development of My Own Theological Project

Posted on November 13, 2025 by Bobby Grow

I asked Grok to characterize and summarize Barth’s influence on my own theology. I rather like its response:

Bobby Grow, a theologian and blogger, has developed a distinctive approach to Evangelical Calvinism that draws heavily from Karl Barth’s theological framework. This influence manifests in Grow’s emphasis on a Christ-centered critique of classical Reformed theology, prioritizing God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ over speculative metaphysics or natural theology. Grow’s work, including his 2022 ThD dissertation on assurance and knowledge of God in Calvinist thought, reflects Barth’s impact by reorienting Calvinist themes through a relational, dialogical lens inspired by Barth’s Church Dogmatics and his rejection of abstract philosophical constructs of God.

At the core of Barth’s influence on Grow is the concept of “dialogical theology,” which Grow describes as a “talking-theology” rather than a “thinking-theology.” This approach starts from God’s immediate address to humanity in Christ, bypassing foundationalist philosophies that Grow sees as dominating neo-classical theism. Grow contrasts this with speculative methods, arguing that true theology emerges from encounter with the living God, echoing Barth’s insistence on God’s freedom and primacy in revelation. For instance, Grow highlights Barth’s ethics built on the Great Commandment, emphasizing freedom for God and others as determined by Christ’s Word, which aligns with Grow’s own evangelical impulses.

Grow frequently engages Barth’s critiques of natural theology and metaphysical “gods,” applying them to contemporary issues like New Age ideologies or Protestant scholasticism. In one post, Grow discusses Barth’s interaction with Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science, using it to warn against inward-curved self-salvation narratives, which he ties to Barth’s emphasis on God’s “militant Grace” breaking in from outside (extra nos). This reflects Grow’s adoption of Barth’s Kantian and Feuerbachian influences to dismantle anthropocentric theologies, favoring instead a theology of the cross inspired by Barth and Martin Luther.

Barth’s reshaping of doctrines like election and predestination also permeates Grow’s thought. Grow references Pierre Maury’s impact on Barth, noting how it led to a Christological revision of election that avoids traces of natural theology or philosophical abstraction. This informs Grow’s broader critique of Reformed traditions, where he argues Barth offers a more evangelical resource than Protestant orthodoxy, resonating with figures like Thomas F. Torrance. Grow contends that evangelicals retrieving scholasticism overlook Barth’s alignment with biblical immediacy and relationality.

Overall, Barth’s theology provides Grow with tools to advocate for an “Athanasian Reformed” perspective, emphasizing Christ’s vicarious humanity and the Trinity’s onto-relational life. Grow’s prolific blogging and posts often defend Barth against caricatures, positioning him as a modern Athanasius who prioritizes the concreteness of God’s revelation in Christ over rationalist or pietist alternatives.

This influence has shaped Grow’s identity as a theologian committed to evangelical fidelity while challenging inherited orthodoxies.

Barth’s Engagement with Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science: A Quasi Critique of the New Age

Posted on November 8, 2025 by Bobby Grow

Mary Baker Eddy

The following represents something that I found rather surprising in Barth’s Church Dogmatics. In a context where Barth is discussing the strength and weakness of the human body, he goes into a small-print excursus on Christian Science and Mary Baker Eddy. As I have been reading through the CD what I have found is that many of the themes Barth is known for, while present, only really represent a fraction of his overall corpus. Indeed, those themes (election etc.) are contextually conditioning for all of his work, even his thinking on the human body and physicality. But still, Barth is far more interesting than many folks might imagine, within their caricatured and reductionistic picture of him.

For the remainder of this post, I am going to quote Barth’s full excursus on Christian Science, if nothing else to illustrate the types of exposures Barth had to the broader world of ideas in his 20^th century Swiss milieu. Ironically, here Barth is engaging with a fringe American “thinker,” in the person of Mary Baker Eddy.

The tenet that sickness is an illusion is the basic negative proposition which in the seventies of the last century the American Mary Baker Eddy said that she did not lay down but “discovered” through the authoritative inspiration of a book now regarded as canonical, namely, Christian Science. What was at first a small group of adherents has since spread to all parts of the world in the form of religious societies which are particularly popular among the upper and middle classes and more especially among women. Karl Holl has depicted and done it almost too much justice in a careful study entitled “Scientismus” Ges. Aufs. Z. Kgsch. III, 1928, 460 f.). The positive basis of this teaching is that God is the only reality, that he is Spirit and that the whole creation is only a reflection of his spiritual essence. Apart from God there are only powers, which in reality are only thoughts. All matter as such represents a mere appearance, and the same is true of all such associated features as sin, sickness, evil and death. Man as the image of God always was and is and shall be perfect. Everything that contradicts this perfection is in reality only an illusion and misunderstanding rooted in the forgetfulness of God, which in turn evokes fear. And fear is the true basis of all illness; indeed, it is actually illness itself. For fear creates a picture of illness which then falls externally upon the body. “You maintain that an ulcer is painful; but that is impossible, for matter without mind is no painful. The ulcer merely reveals by inflammation and swelling an appearance of pain, and this appearance is called an ulcer.” The true and psychical man is not touched by it. He is only as it were enveloped in a mist and has disappeared from consciousness. Evil is unreal. “Take away fear, and at the same time you have also removed the soil on which sickness thrives.” Jesus was and is the embodiment of truth which scatters and breaks through the mist of these false appearances. The power bestowed and the task presented by Him consist in recognising that God is Spirit. It thus consists in freeing oneself from the false appearances of sin (which even Mrs. Eddy regards as particularly evil, is replaced by “mind-reading,” which is possible at a great distance and in which the thought images which only be a matter of acknowledging the cure already effected by God, of understanding His completed work and of initiating it in the patient. The “healer”—the name given to the active members of the Christian Science Association—is not then to rouse and fortify the will of others through his own, but simply to make a free path in the sufferer for the divine operation. “Call to mind the presence of health and the fact of harmonious existence, until the body corresponds to the normal condition of health and harmony.”

This doctrine has several features which remind us of the message of the New Testament, and which are of course derived from it: the recognition of fear as the basic evil in man’s relation to God; an unconditional trust in the efficacy of prayer; and bold reference to a work already completed by God. But these are all devalued by the fact that they are related to a view which has nothing to do with that of the New Testament but in the light of it can only be described as utterly false. The fact that Christian Science can undoubtedly point to successes in healing—as well as disastrous failures—cannot of itself commend it to Christians. As is well-known, the magicians of Pharaoh could do quite a number of things. And the concession that Karl Holl (loc. cit., p. 477) is willing to make, namely, that its positive presupposition at least is correct, is one which cannot really be made to it. God is indeed the basis of all reality. But He is not the only reality. As Creator and Redeemer He loves a reality which different from Himself, which depends upon Him, yet which is not merely a reflection nor the sum of His powers and thoughts, but which has in face of Him an independent and distinctive nature and is the subject of is own history, participating in its own perfection and subjected to its own weakness. As the coming kingdom, the incarnation of the Word and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in His true humanity are not just an appearance, so it is with man in general, whether in his nature of perversion, in his psychical being or his physical, in his divine likeness or his sin and transgression. It is because Mrs. Eddy did not understand this that sin, evil and death—in conquest of which Jesus Christ did not “disappear from our level of consciousness” but actually died on the cross—are for her mere “appearances” of human thinking, and redemption is only the act of man in which he submerges himself in God and leads a life submerged in God in order that God may work in him, putting an end to those “appearances” or thought images and bringing to light the perfection of psychical essence which was never lost, the presence of health and the fact of harmonious being. On this point we can only say that both the Old and New Testaments regard not only God and man, not only sin, evil and death and their conquest, but also sickness in a different light. They certainly do not see it as an illusion, and its conquest as the dispelling of this illusion. Whether Christian Science is really “science” need to occupy us here. But there can be no doubt that it is not “Christian” science.[1]

As Barth describes Christian Science vis-à-vis Holler, what we get is a type of pantheistic, Eastern monistic, neo-Gnostic mind cult, that today, and in a broad sense, fits well with the New Age ideology that is almost absolutely pervasive; even among professing Christians (Yoga, “Best Life Now,” self-actualization, therapeuticism etc. etc.). Surely, there are still Christian Science centers here and there, but they are mostly dilapidated signs of a past long been surpassed; except, ideologically. The New Age seeks to liberate and control the mind by abdicating it to the universal soul, the universal mind, the ancient secrets of the forever cosmos. And so that remains the universal thread that attaches something like a Christian Science with the New Age, as a broader category of the same thing.

What I found interesting about this engagement with Barth is that he felt compelled to engage it at all. But I’m glad he did. What this ought to help illustrate is that, indeed, there really is “nothing new under the sun.” Ideas and their ideologies are cycled and re-cycled over and over again; just in newer shinier packaging. Underneath it is the same old jalopy. Christian beware! As noted, these types of psychical mind cults represent the precise thing Christ came to save us from; our inward curved selves (homo incurvatus in se). There is no inner-salvation latent in our supposed Caspar-like-ghosts; the universe has no soul; there is no Word of God from within. There is only God extra nos (outside of us), and His iustitia aliena (alien righteousness) in Christ pro nobis (for us). Without Him in-breaking and disrupting our lives with His ‘militant Grace,’ we are simply enslaved in bondage to the hooks of our own thoughts and intellects and hearts. We might attempt to construct a way of salvation within the tempests of our own self-possessed cathedrals of grey matter, as Mrs. Eddy attempted to systemize in her own self-deluded way. But in the end without the transposition of our ‘bodies of death,’ into the grave with the body of death Christ took for us, and then our transposition of new life and resurrection with Christ’s elect body of ascension, we are of all people the most to be pitied.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/4 §55 [364-5] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 39-41.

Grace as God’s Person[s]: Being in Becoming

Posted on November 3, 2025 by Bobby Grow

An email question from a reader of the blog:

𝑂𝑛𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐼 𝑎𝑚 𝑡𝑟𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐵𝑎𝑟𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑎 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡 𝑖𝑠 “𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑒” 𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑖𝑒𝑑. 𝐼 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑠 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑖𝑡. 𝑆𝑜 𝑛𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑛𝑜 𝑖𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑒. 𝑊𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑖𝑠 𝐺𝑜𝑑’𝑠 𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑒. 𝐼𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡? 𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐵𝑖𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑦𝑠, “𝑏𝑦 𝐺𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑠𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑑…” 𝐼𝑠 𝑃𝑎𝑢𝑙 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐽𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑑 𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑒? 𝐶𝑎𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝 𝑚𝑒 𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠?

My brief response:

𝐒𝐨, 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡 (𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐉𝐮̈𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐥, 𝐓𝐅 𝐓𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞), 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐬 𝐚 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐦, 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐬 𝐚 “𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠.” 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐞 𝐬𝐨 𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐆𝐨𝐝’𝐬 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐲 𝐬𝐨 𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐨 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐡, 𝐢𝐧 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡’𝐬 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬 (𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐛𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲), 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐛𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐆𝐨𝐝’𝐬 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥/𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬; 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐞𝐝, 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐨 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐆𝐨𝐝’𝐬 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧. 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐨 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡’𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐃𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐮𝐬 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧[𝐬] 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐨𝐝’𝐬 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞. 𝐓𝐡𝐮𝐬, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧/𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐨𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. 𝐈𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐲, 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐨𝐝’𝐬 𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐛𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲, 𝐨𝐫 “𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠,” 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐧𝐨 𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐆𝐨𝐝’𝐬 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐬 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭. 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐫 𝐢𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐞, 𝐢𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞-𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬, 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧, 𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐝, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐞𝐭𝐜. 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐨𝐝’𝐬 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐮𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐬 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭. 𝐃𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐞? 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐱 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐫𝐚𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞.

Contra the Tradition Produced God of Natural Theology

Posted on October 30, 2025 by Bobby Grow

Natural theology separates God from his Word, and in the Reformed context this separation requires that another mechanism be constructed in order for God to enact relationship with the world; i.e. through the 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑢𝑚 𝑎𝑏𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑡𝑢𝑚, or through a determining decretal system that inter-links God’s power and being to the rest of the world all along keeping God untouched by the world or the creatures who inhabit it (all in an attempt to sustain the philosophically developed loci known as simplicity, immutability, impassibility, infinity, etc.). The problem, if not recognizable, is that in this ‘classical’ system of theology proper God is taken captive by a set of conditions and categories that have nothing to do with God encountering us in his Word, Jesus Christ. How could it?! If the God produced by natural theology is necessarily uncoupled from his Word for us, the Son, Jesus Christ then how can we ever really say that we have encountered the living God? This is a serious dilemma. Why would I entrust my eternal well-being to a God that history or tradition has produced; wouldn’t this mean that I am really entrusting myself to the producers of the history and the tradition instead?

Life is Worth Living Before God in Christ: Against Suicide and Self-Destruction

Posted on October 25, 2025 by Bobby Grow

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. –Ecclesiastes 3:14

The Lord brings death and makes alive;
he brings down to the grave and raises up. –I Samuel 2:6

Judas Iscariot

Three decades ago now (to the year) I started struggling heavily with anxiety, depression, and spiritual warfare that was beyond me. It was this that the Lord used in my life to draw me to Him in very serious and sober ways. This struggle, in a very intense way (on a continuum), continued in earnest for at least a decade. It was hellish. But it was also within this white-hot fire of trial and tribulation wherein I began learning to wait on the LORD, realizing that His mercies are new every morning. Even so, in the depths of that season, there were moments where I struggled, heavily, with suicidal ideation. It was as if the Enemy of my soul had taken me to a high place telling me to throw myself off and end it all; and this happened over and over again. What the LORD brought to me in the midst of this was a way to combat it through His Word (sort of like Jesus did in Matthew 4). The passage above, I Samuel, coupled with a growing and healthy fear of God, became one of my go-to passages when these suicidal thoughts would start creeping in again. Later, in counsel of other Christian brothers I had deep fellowship with, some of them would share with me that they too were struggling with suicidal ideation. They too were in a deep season of growth with the triune God, and as such were experiencing these fiery darts from the evil one. And I was able to reiterate to them that God alone has the right to give and take life; that it isn’t our spot, no matter how dread the circumstances might seem to be in that particular moment or season of life.

I share the above with the hope of being empathetic with others, maybe even some of my readers, who have gone through similar things, or who might be going through such things currently. I am also sharing all of this as a prelude into a brief passage I want to share for us from Karl Barth. The passage itself isn’t being as vulnerable, per se, about the personal trials of life that each one of us face. But it is addressing, at the very core, the fact that God alone is the giver, sustainer, and fund of life itself. I think understanding that fact, that principled reality before God, can go along way when we can internalize its facticity in our own lives coram Deo.

Fourthly, it is not by an obscure fate or neutral decree, but in receipt of a divine benefit, that he is “alive.” The command of God, claiming him as a living person, inscribes upon his heart the fact that, coming wholly from God, it is always (whether recognised or not) an advantage, a good and worthwhile thing, for everyone to be alive. It is not wholly an advantage nor absolutely good and worthwhile. “My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever” (Ps. 73.26), and: “Thy lovingkindness is better than life” (Ps. 63.3). But within its limits it is good and worthwhile because the one great opportunity of recognising and experiencing the grace of God, and therefore to continue to live. This is true no matter what we may see or not see in life of meaning, hope, success, happiness or even goodness. And wherever we have to deal with a living soul, we have to do eo ipso with this divine miracle of grace.[1]

“Choose life not death.” Amen, amen.

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/4 §55 [336] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 12.

On Mormonism as a Gnostic-Arianism and its Theosis

Posted on October 21, 2025 by Bobby Grow

More engagement with a Mormon (a different one this time).

On Mormonism as a Form of Gnostic Arianism

No, it’s because the Mormon Jesus is equivocal with the Christian Jesus. In other words, the Mormon Jesus is not understood to be the second person of the Trinity (along with the Father and Holy Spirit), i.e., not ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑠 (of the same exact being) with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Mormon Jesus, at best, is a philosophical demiurge deployed by the Father (who alone is God) to point the LDS to their inherent need to be freed from the physical body and become “Father-Gods” themselves (with a harem of celestial wives … which I would imagine you’re aspiring towards). In the primitive church what Mormons present the world today with is what was known as Gnosticism (and a form of Arianism in regard to the Son) then. Yes, none of this is original to Joseph Smith or Brigham Young (barring their own respective historical idiosyncrasies and lack of intellectual sophistication).

In the end, the Mormon would do well to heed the Patristic theologian’s, Athanasius’, words against the Gnostic and Arian understanding of salvation and Godself, as he writes: “Therefore it is more pious and more accurate to signify God from the Son and call Him Father, than to name Him from His works only and call Him Unoriginate.” (Athanasius, 𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑎 𝐴𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑠 1.9.34.)

On Mormon Deification and Theosis

Mormon notions of deification have zero correspondence with Christian and or Patristic (early church) thinking on deification. The LDS appeals to language like deification, but they do so only under the pressures of their own doctrine of ‘Godhead.’ The Christian notion of deification is purely grounded in the Christian God’s theopoiesis for us. This entails the notion that it required God to ‘become us that we might by grace and adoption [not nature] become Him,’ that is, that He freely became us in the grace of Christ’s life that we might by the faith of Christ by the Holy Spirit, come into spiritual union with Christ’s resurrected humanity, thereby becoming adoptees of God, and thus become participant in the triune life of God; indeed, just as the Son, in the bosom of the Father, has always been in the glory of the Father as the Father has been in the glory of the Son by the bonding glory of the Holy Spirit (one in three / three in one), see John 17. Since Mormons reject the Nicene (biblical) doctrine of the Trinity, they can only hope to be like their exemplar, Jesus (a creature, spirit-brother of Lucifer, in their view), and attain a life-like Father-God in the eschaton someday (where the man can have their own planet with a celestial harem, populating their respective planets with celestial children had by their celestial wives, just as the Father-God now did with Mary by birthing Jesus::they downplay this though). And this, based on their climbing a ladder of knowledge (so, thematically, Gnostic-like), which they identify as ‘covenant-keeping’ (which of course is based on their own striving, not grace as understood Christianly). Ultimately, for Christians, historically we do not believe that we become gods, instead we believe that we become fully human in the 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑜𝑠 (Godman) humanity of Jesus Christ; who alone is God for us, and brings us into His Sonship (not by nature but grace) by which, as adopted children of the Father, as it were, within the triune Monarxia, we live in the beatific vision of the Godhead. That is, we inhabit the triune God’s inner-life, in all the mystery that entails; which sounds like Heaven to me.

So, when a Mormon appeals to ‘deification,’ which is a contested term itself in the history of orthodox Christian interpretation, it has zero correspondence with the Christian teaching on deification or theopoiesis. The Mormon holds to a doctrine of godness wherein the hope, through knowledge attainment (i.e., covenant keeping), is that the men, again, will become exalted Gods themselves; just as the Father is now (in their schemata). They try to downplay discussion about ultimate or eschatological things because they know it sounds strange, and thus ends up exposing the disparity there is between their respective understanding of Jesus, Father-God, the Holy Spirit and eternal life vis a vis actual Christian doctrine; not to mention with the contextual biblical teaching itself.

The Character of Barth’s Kantian and Feuerbachian Critique of the Metaphysical gods

Posted on October 20, 2025 by Bobby Grow

Ludwig Feuerbach

Karl Barth is often identified as a neo-Kantian, or just straight up Kantian in his theological orientation (and methodology). It seems too facile to me to maintain that Barth was somehow a slavish servant of Kant, especially materially. Maybe formally, Barth could be understood to be a Kantian in certain qualified ways. But in the air he breathed to be “Kantian” or neo-Kantian would be like saying that John Calvin et al. was an Aristotelian, or Scotist for that matter. The point being, often, formalities are not the all-encompassing thing in the theological project. Ultimately, what is at stake is what gets produced materially. In other words, it is surely possible for the theologian to be influenced by some intellectual tradition, and at the same time, under the Christian revelational pressures of thought, indeed, trinitarian pressures, to retext the form (in this case, the Kantian one) in a way wherein the kerygmatic reality becomes the conditioning and driving factor even behind the form itself.

The above is rather abstract, indeed. In order, to incarnate my points with a little more flesh and blood, let’s now refer to Eberhard Busch’s discussion on these matters, as that pertains to Kant’s and Feuerbach’s deliverances of a Barthian theology and knowledge of God.

. . . In Barth’s view, what Feuerbach “rightfully objected to” was that in human religion the one who prays, the pious individual does not “get beyond what he himself has thought and experienced,” that all his “attempts to bridge the gap. . . take place within this world.” The interpretation that leads Barth to entertain Feuerbach’s critique of religion is clearly in line with Kant’s critique of the assertion that the knowledge of metaphysical truth is on the same level as experiential knowledge. Once again it is Kant in whose thought Barth finds the intellectual possibility of overcoming Feuerbach’s critique of religion. He does this by advancing the thesis that God is not a hypothesis (of man) only when he is conceived of per se as the “presupposition” (of man). Therefore “God” is not untouched by Feuerbach’s critique when he is generally understood as a metaphysical reality beyond all human hypotheses, but only when he is understood as “the origin of the crisis of all objectivity devoid of all objectivity.” After all this we may assume that Barth is especially influenced by Kant, deepened by Neo-Kantianism but also by Feuerbach’s critique, when he insists in his Epistle to the Romans that God cannot or only supposedly can be recognized as an object of experiential knowledge. And we may further assume that the same influence is in play when Barth now separates himself from Schleiermacher and his own earlier position with the thesis that God can only be “recognized” as the critical boundary of human experience.[1]

Busch, in context, is referring to the earlier younger Barth, and yet, he is also notating that the form of Kant remained continuous throughout Barth’s theological project; indeed, to the very end. So, Barth surely was a Modern theologian under these terms. But as Bruce McCormack has rightly pointed out elsewhere, Barth, just as Busch has inchoately pressed here, flipped the Kantian project on its head by thinking it through the noumenal and phenomenal being grounded in the enhypostasis of the anhypostatic Son becoming flesh in the singular person of Jesus Christ; as such, removing the odor the type of projectile dualism Kant’s theology suffered from.

Conversely, and for the purposes of this post, I think it is interesting to hear some of Busch’s commentary on Barth and his respective positioning within the modern German/Swiss theological and philosophical milieu of his day (at formative points in his own intellectual development). Further, I also think Busch’s clarification on how Barth deployed Feuerbach, even by creatively sponging the Feuerbachian critique of religion through the Kantian possibility for true transcendence, to be very helpful. I have often referred to Barth’s appeal to Feuerbach and Feuerbach’s critique of religion as self-immanent-projection; and as far as that goes (because it cannot go all the way), it is a helpful acid to place on the unhealthy aspects of a pietistic venture. But just as Barth understood—because he was a Christian of no small stature—Feuerbach and Kant were only useful propaedeutics, insofar that they could be deployed as foils against the manmade gods of the philosophers, and even the scholastics.

I’m afraid this whole post has been rather abstract. The necessary context for this offering is reliant on the reader’s own familiarity with these things. Even so, here’s the reduction: knowledge of the genuine Christian triune God is purely contingent on this God Self-disclosing Himself to and for us in the face of Jesus Christ. It is possible, as Barth illustrates, to even use pagans against the appropriation of pagan categories for thinking God. This is what Barth did by using a retexted Kantian form, and a Feuerbachian critique, against “Christian” appropriations of God, categorically, that are too contingent upon speculative discursive reasoning, and the “discoveries” of the various natural theologians throughout the millennia, respectively; going back as far as Genesis 3, into the Antique Greek philosophers, and the whole stream following. Let God be true and every man a liar.

[1] Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth & the Pietists, trans. by Daniel W. Bloesch (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 119-20.

Engaging the Mormon Doctrine of God With Some Mormons

Posted on October 18, 2025 by Bobby Grow

Here is a “discussion,” of sorts, I’ve been having today with some LDS (Mormons) on X/Twitter. I’m sharing this in hopes that it might be helpful for other Christians who engage with the LDS. Typically, you have to educate them on what they believe first before you can then compare, contrast, and defeat it as a viable “Christian” belief system. That is what I experienced with the following fellow, which of course is not unusual.

Brigham Young

Mormon 1. I am leaving the Catholic Church and joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints What an absolute BANGER I selected “If You Could Hie to Kolob” for the opening song of my LDS baptism on Sunday “The Spirit of God” to close YT Dei Misericordia Love you Saints!

My Response to Mormon 1. Dude. At least stay orthodox and become evangelical. LDS is based on demonstrable historical fabrications; it is polytheistic; and looks more like the Graeco-Roman pantheon of gods and goddesses than it does Christian.

Mormon 2. You don’t know what polytheism is. And the rest of Mormon 2’s Responses to Me (compressed). Well, you call us polytheists when we worship one God the Father. Full stop. Believing there is a Godhead doesn’t mean polytheism when two members of the Godhead work under the direction of God. We do not worship multiple gods aka, not polytheism. Yeah, maybe try not telling me what we believe. There is only one God. God the Father. And to misrepresent us in any other way is disingenuous to us, and quite frankly the Bible. You can call Monolatry if you want, but our “interpretation” is closest to the Biblical God.

My Responses to Mormon 2 (compressed). Sure, I do. My MA and BA degrees in bible theology ought to indicate as such. Help me out though. Explain it to me like I don’t understand what polytheism entails in a way that demonstrates you do. No, you believe Jesus and the Holy Spirit are lesser gods relative to the Father. But beyond that, you believe they are each distinct centers of consciousness, which entails a plurality of gods (of various degrees)—which “poly” signifies linguistically. You also believe that you too could one day become a Heavenly Father with your own celestial planetarium. Just because you rhetorically appeal to a monolatry doesn’t mean you don’t also affirm a functional polytheism; that isn’t even debatable. Eh. What you believe isn’t private, but public. Just as all idea systems are. I explained to you what polytheism is, and how it applies to LDS doctrine of God. If you are saying that Mormon teaching denies the notion that you can one day become a Father-God yourself, then I might recant to an extent. But you haven’t explained who the Son and Holy Spirit are in your theory of your godhead. I know what LDS doctrine teaches on that, and I haven’t misrepresented that. If I have show me how instead of just making brute assertions with no evidence or argument or even illustrations to the contrary. If you don’t recognize what I am saying about LDS doctrine then maybe you yourself don’t understand your own ostensible doctrine clearly; which wouldn’t be that strange, we have many Christians (most of them) on our historic Christian continuum who are in the same boat (don’t really know the doctrine they would say they affirm, only tacitly at best). In lieu of you offering substantial argument to counter my sketching of LDS doctrine vis a vis its ostensible polytheism, my claim still stands. PS. The very notion of your own future and potential Father-Godness inherently entails a polytheistic system of belief. If you, and your Mormon neighbor and his and his ad infinitum can be and/or will be Father Gods, this presupposes the notion, within Mormonism, the belief in poly (more than one) God in the Eschatological eventuation of the “Mormon hope.” Further, if Jesus and the Holy Ghost, in the Mormon notion of the godhead are considered distinct centers of consciousness relative to Father-God, as his own distinct center of consciousness, and even if you consider the Son and Holy Spirit to be lesser (in Christian heresiology we call this “subordinationism”) divine beings, then even so, you affirm a polytheism even in this instance. If your beliefs are insularly sacrosanct and without the possibility of being publicly critiqued, then yes, you’re in a cult. IOW, if only the initiate can understand LDS doctrine, then this is a cult; similar to the Gnostic cults that were present during the early days of the primitive Church. Pax Christi

Addendum:

𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝟐. I shouldn’t call it the “official doctrine” as I on Twitter do not speak in an official capacity.

Lastly the Greek word that is used often in “The Father and I are one” is “hen” meaning a unity in purpose, not a unity in being.

You can call us polytheists. I reject that label.

𝐌𝐲 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝟐. I read the Greek, interestingly. As with any language meaning is determined by context (both near and broader context). In the total context of the Gospel of John, as I already shared, the very first verse of John (1:1) says that Jesus the Word *is* ontologically God. This sets the broader context for determining how the Son’s relationship to the Father (and Holy Spirit) are related. Jn 1:1 makes clear that they are one ousia (God), and John 10:30 makes clear that in their One ousia or being as God, they clearly share the same purpose (or we might say “will”), as in fact they are one God in a unity of being (not just will/purpose). And then just prior and in a nearer context to Jn 10, Jn 8:58 Jesus says ‘ego eimi’ I am, which is a clear reference to Exodus 3:14; He is claiming to be Yahweh in the flesh (see Jn 1:14 also). So the unity of purpose/will is contextually only because first they have unity of being as the One God.

As we are taught in biblical hermeneutics: context, context, context is king. Words, sentences, and paragraphs only have meaning within their given and broader contexts.

As far as polytheist: I use that for the LDS doctrine of God, because on a continuum or taxonomy for identifying features of God in disparate belief systems and religions, it is helpful for purposes of categorization, differentiation, and intelligibility. Some prefer Henotheist. I mean, that’s fine, but that is only really a subset of polytheism still. So.

Matthew Henry’s Perspective on Thirdwayism: Contra Secularism’s In-Breaking into the Churches

Posted on October 16, 2025 by Bobby Grow

The evangelical churches in North America, in particular, and in the West, in general, have largely been secularized. To say something has been secularized has broad affect. But primarily, I am wanting to emphasize how pagan Enlightenment categories have been uncritically swallowed by the churches. Whether that be to affirm climate change (as “creation care” or ecotheology), softness on Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Queer-Intersex (i.e., “gay Christians”) issues, critical theory and critical race theory, Liberation theology, and a whole host of other antisupranaturalistic Enlightenment categories and ideologies, the evangelical churches, by and large, have allowed themselves to be defined by. And if the culture, as the Apostle Paul and the Holy Spirit identify for us, is in fact an ‘evil age,’ then what in God’s Holy Name hath this darkness to do with the Light? As Christians, as ambassadors, as emissaries of Jesus Christ we have been called to bear witness to Jesus Christ, and by this witness, by His reality, His resurrection power indwelling us, indeed as we participate in His life by the Spirit, by His Light we are to expose the darkness; which would entail, that we, on the other hand, repudiate the secularism, the paganism, the Enlightenmentism that so many of the evangelical churches are in fact imbibing (even in the name of Jesus Christ as “bridge-building” aka thirdwayism).

Conversely, the aforementioned has a history. The formative parts of that history are present within the 17^th and 18^th centuries (so, the Enlightenment). This was a time when the empiricism and rationalism of someone like John Locke, the rationalistic dualism of Immanuel Kant, the Deism of the like et al. was in full blossom. The Deists, of course, simply believed that there was a transcendent god, up there yonder, who got everything started, who created the heavens and earth, gave it a good spin, and has since left it to itself; and to us. Embedded in Deism was a charred rationalism, that when applied to the confessional Dogmas of the historic church, with particular focus on the doctrine of the triune God, left God almost dead in the gutter; left a God, as noted, who was most assuredly not three-in-one / one-in-three. As such, being a confessional Christian—someone who affirmed the orthodox ecumenical church creeds of Nicaea, Constantinople, Chalcedon, with reference to the triunity of God and the deity of Christ—had come to wane. In the face of the intelligentsia of that day and hour, to be a confessional Christian was looked at like being the village idiot or something. Even so, and by the mercy of God, such persons persisted.

In the midst of this, those “persistents,” the people who withstood succumbing to the Deists and rationalists among them, within the “churches,” remained faithful to the reality of the triune God. Indeed, here is how contemporary church historian, Nick Needham, writes about one of these ‘faithful,’ with direct reference to Matthew Henry himself:

For the Dissenters, Presbyterian Matthew Henry (1662–1714, author of the famous Bible commentary, spoke in a similar vein as the 18^th Century began:

The low condition of the church of God ought to be greatly lamented; the Protestant interest small, very small; a decay of piety; attempts for reformation ineffectual. Help, Lord! There are but few who are truly religious; who believe the report of the Gospel, and who are willing to take the pains, and run the hazards of religion. Many make a fair show in the flesh, but few only walk closely with God. Where is he that engageth his heart, or that stirs up himself to take hold of his Maker?[1]

The way Henry was referring to his time and day in the churches sounds eerily similar to our day and time. More than ever, so-called evangelical Christians, particularly “the leaders,” have allowed the erosive powers of the current world culture[s] to seep into the churches; and they have done this all in the name of Jesus Christ. There are many who use the name of Jesus Christ, refer to the Bible, use all the right Christianese, and yet they have in point of fact denied the power of God, the Gospel, in favor of cloistering with the various secular ideologies run amok among us in this world system. These ‘forces,’ within the churches, particularly as we see that given expression in a magazine like Christianity Today, or in the writings and activities of the late, Tim Keller’s thirdwayism (acquiescing to the progressive ideologies of the 21^st century), in the name of bridge-building, or in the “winsomeness” of someone like Russell Moore or J. D. Greear, have taken the many peoples of the churches into the slough of despondency, right along with them. This shan’t remain the case!

Like in Henry’s day, it is easy, and at a point, even appropriate to bewail the current church situation. But we cannot stay in that status. The ‘faithful’ must recognize our current moment, as that has been foisted upon us, even by us, and first and foremost repent. Once this step has been taken it is incumbent on each and everyone of us, indeed as individual members of the church, to keep in step with the Holy Spirit, take up our crosses daily, and follow Jesus Christ. As we live out our unique callings by our Master, as we shine brightly with the Brightness of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, as we expose the darkness with the Light of Christ, we might be able, yet, to inject the churches, the church, with the vitality of our risen and ascended Lord. That can only come as we participate in the life of Christ, in union with Him, and by His resurrection and ascension energy, in shared koinonia (fellowship), one with the other, by which the power of God, the Gospel, can come to have full effect on the liveliness of the churches, and as the light to the world that Jesus is Savior and Lord.

[1] Nick Needham, 2000 Years of Christ’s Power: Volume 5: The Age of Enlightenment and Awakening (Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 2023), 99.

Torrance’s Theological-Exegetical Gloss on Romans 8:31-39: And a Word of Encouragement About God’s Unrelenting Love For Us

Posted on October 10, 2025 by Bobby Grow

As I have been rereading TF Torrance’s The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons, I came across a passage that struck me as a sort of theological-exegetical gloss of Romans 8:31-39. Torrance is often accused of not doing any biblical-exegetical work; but I would counter, that in his role as a Christian Dogmatist his work is saturated in the thematics that allow Scripture to say what it does about God and His works. I would contend that, Torrance, as a Christian Dogmatist, par excellence, has Scriptural themes and their reality in Christ, pervading all of his writings. What is required for the reader though, is that they be familiar enough with Scripture, as Torrance was, to be able to discern just how Scripturally rich and informed his theologizing is. In the following we will compare Romans 8:31-39 and the passage I came across from Torrance; and then in conclusion offer some reflection on its theological and spiritual implications.

³¹What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³²He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?³³Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. ³⁵Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ³⁶As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” ³⁷Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. ³⁸For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, ³⁹nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And Torrance:

In the outgoing movement of his eternal Love God himself has come among us and become one of us and one with us in the Person of his beloved Son in order to reconcile us to himself and to share with us the Fellowship of Love which he has within his own Triune Life. Since in the Lord Jesus Christ the fullness of God dwells bodily we must think of the entire Godhead as condescending in him to be ‘God with us’ in our human life and existence in the world. This does not mean of course that the Father and the Spirit became incarnate with the Son, but that with and in the incarnate Son the whole undivided Trinity was present and active in fulfilling the eternal purpose of God’s Love for mankind, for all three divine Persons have their Being in homoousial and hypostatic interrelations with one another, and they are all inseparably united in God’s activity in creation and redemption, not least as those activities are consummated in the incarnate economy of the Son. In refusing to spare his dear Son but in delivering him up in atoning sacrifice for us all, God the Father reveals that he loves us with the very Love which he bears to himself, and that with Jesus Christ he freely gives us all things. If God is for us in this way what can come between us? And in giving us his one Spirit who proceeds from the Father through the Son and sheds abroad in our hearts the very Love which God himself is, God reveals that there is nothing that can ever separate us from him in his Love. Through the Son and in the Spirit, we are taken into the triune Fellowship of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Thus in an utterly astonishing way the Holy Trinity has committed himself to be with us and among us within the conditions of our human and earthly life in space and time, but, it need hardly be said, without being subjected to the processes and necessities of created space and time, and without in the slightest compromising the mystery of his divine transcendence.[1]

We see Torrance creatively interweaving classical trinitarian locus like the opera trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt (‘the works of the Trinity on the outside are indivisible’) into his thinking on God’s “for us-ness,” which in itself places an emphasis on the oneness of God in recognition of his works toward us in the economy of His life become revealed for us in the Son. Beyond that, we see how the canonical themes, and in particular in this passage, the themes of Romans are informing Torrance’s thought in regard to God’s love for us; and then what that love implies in its grounding in Jesus Christ.

More practically, the great hope this provides us with is without measure! I often feel like I’m just going through the motions of life; getting caught up in the necessary busy-ness of it all, and not really living into the full participatio Christ that I’ve been called to in Christ. What this passage from Torrance, as a gloss on Romans, encourages me to remember is that no matter what, it is the whole God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who is holding me deeply in His grasp, and who cannot be deterred in His tremendous Love for me. I find great hope in knowing that no matter what the goings on of my life are, that God in Christ for us, for me will never allow me to be separated from Him; that I am as close to Him as the Son of God is to His Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit. While daily requisites of life seem to plague my existence moment by moment; while my energy is zapped by the long hours of work, and the financial responsibilities that seem to be at every turn and corner of life; while health issues, and other anxieties and fears seemingly seek to suck up the time that ought to only be God’s; while all of these things and more are present in our daily lives as Christians, what Torrance and the Apostle Paul encourage us with is the reality of “so what!” God is God, and He will not be thwarted in His great love for us; just as sure as His great Love just is who He is, and He has shown us that in His undivided work for us in the three persons, as revealed first in the Son.

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 162.

*originally posted at another old blog of mine in 2019.

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