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Philosophy
Striking a Balance: Adventism and the Quest for Perfection
Introduction The God of the philosophers, who has influenced the understanding of God in classical theism, is a perfect being. In this view God’s perfection is a fixed and absolute state that does not accept new experiences. With such a definitional assumption, it is easy to read into the Bible ...
Greek Philosophy, Judaism, and Biblical Anthropology
Jewish notions of anthropology in the Second Temple period resist systematization. They floated in a sea dominated by Greek philosophy and ideas about the human soul, death, and the afterlife that themselves are diverse and at times somewhat contradictory. Unshakable was the Jewish conviction of ...
Goals and Spiritual Values of Existentialism
The existentialist philosophy holds today an important, almost an overwhelming, place in our society. Moreover, the feeling is there that it is destined to exert in the near future an ever more profound influence on the thought and the conduct of the masses of our fellow-men, just as much as on p...
Existentialism and the Basic Christian Doctrines
Of all the contemporary efforts to transform man’s understanding of his own being, the existential philosophy is among the most notable. Bernard Ramm calls it “a radical new departure in philosophy that was anticipated in Pascal and worked out more systematically by Kierkegaard.” In order to appr...
Dangers of Existentialism
The perils to be found in Christian existentialism are neither obvious nor easily discerned. On the contrary, existentialism’s claim to relevancy and involvement of the whole of man’s existence in truth offers much that is desirable. The word “existentialism” is an extension of the word “existenc...
Existentialism - A Survey and Assessment
During recent years various forms of existential philosophy have swept through college campuses, both secular and religious, in North America. Younger men have found enormous appeal in some forms of existentialism. At times the reaction has suggested the discovery of something new, and in theolog...
Faith As an Existential Experience
Faith is set forth in the New Testament as an existential experience. However, the rational unfolding of authentic Christian faith discloses a thought content radically different from that developed in philosophical existentialism. This radical difference between New Testament existentialism and ...
Of Covenants, Causes and Clarity
Theological clarity on any issue is a desired goal not only for intellectual respectability but also to legitimize and deepen spiritual experience. Certainly, if any theological issue needed clarification, the subject of biblical covenants, particularly the relationship between the old and new co...
Postmodernism: An Adventist Assessment and a Response
Contemporary Western society finds itself in the midst of an intellectual mood with an associated cultural expression which is generally called postmodernism. Its intellectual dimension has philosophical links, being anticipated already in the 19th century in the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche (1...
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View all“From Cause to Manifestation”: Rereading John 9:3
The disciples’ question in John 9:2 reflects an explanatory framework widely attested in Second Temple Judaism: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (RSV). Jesus’ response in John 9:3, however, raises an interpretive problem of considerable interest: “. . . but t...
Celebrating the Baptism of Jesus: A Chronological Case for AD 27
Introduction Jesus is the center of history, both theologically and chronologically. While His birth divides the Western calendar into before and after Christ (BC and AD), His death and resurrection mark a new chapter not only for human redemptive history, but also for all creation. Surprisingly,...
Religious Liberty and the Character of God
The great controversy is premised on a question about God's character. Is He just? Is He loving? Is His government established upon voluntary love, or merely required compliance? Consider any war between two sides. Two nations. Two armies. Both are looking for the same thing: an edge, the one a...