Systematic Theology (Revelation, Tradition, and Doctrine): Doctrine of God

On the nature of God.

Walter Kasper, professor of Catholic theology at Tubingen, has tackled the "God-question", proposing that the answer to atheism is the God of Jesus Christ and the trinitarian confession, which he proposes to rescue from academic obscurity.

A comprehensive look at the doctrine of God in the early church, examing extant sources from Nicea to Constantinople.

Subjects: God, Trinity, History of doctrines.

This book can be checked out. Summary: The fatherhood of God has had a central, if increasingly controversial, place in Christian thinking about God. Yet although Christians referred to God as Father from the earliest days of the faith, it was not until Athanasius in the fourth century that the idea of God as Father became a topic of sustained analysis. Looking at the genesis of Athanasius' understanding of divine fatherhood against the background of Alexandrian tradition, Widdicombe demonstrates how the concept came to occupy such a prominent place in Christian theology.

Moving from the Paleolithic age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the great lengths to which humankind has gone in order to experience a sacred reality. While noting that the changing face of the world has necessarily changed the importance of religion at both the societal and the individual level, she makes a powerful, convincing argument for drawing on the insights of the past in order to build a faith that speaks to the needs of our dangerously polarized age.

Subject: God, History of doctrines

Hughes breaches the philosophical construction of God and metaphysics by examining the argumentative validity that has historically and philosophically legitimized God as both essential and existent. Hughes tests the philosophical terms and presuppositions which underlie arguments alleging the existence and essence of God. He looks at the work of Aquinas, Ockham, Hume, and Kant by interrogating the "characteristics'' of God which have been philosophically central: existence, simplicity, omniscience, omnipotence, and goodness

Te Velde (U. of Tolberg) analyzes the most systematic and complete exposition work of Thomas Aquinas on the Christian doctrine of God, focusing on the existence of a twofold discourse, the metaphysical or "being insofar as it is being" and the reality. Using the notion that Aquinas did not isolate this discourse but instead sought it throughout his broad theological view, Te Velde examines the aims, method and composition of the Summa theologiae, the "Five Ways," including the role in the transition from metaphysics to physics, the threefold division of the treatment of what God is and is not, the place of God in language and knowledge, the causality of creation as God's proper action, and the role of God in human freedom in the form of divine grace. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The theme that God suffers with his world has become a familiar one in recent years, overturning centuries of belief in an impassible deity. This book both surveys recent thought about the suffering of God and proposes future directions for this important area of Christian theology. Fiddes discusses four trends of current thought--the "theology of the cross" in modern German theology as represented in the works of Barth, Moltmann, and Jungel; American process theology; "the death of God" theology; and the rejection of the idea of divine passibility by modern followers of classical theism--while reflecting on the main theme of his study. The book affirms that God freely chooses to limit himself, to suffer change, to journey through time, and even to experience death while remaining the living God.

This study advances the provocative claim that that the human mind is not 'bounded' on the outside but actually remains 'open' to the world and to God. As such, the mind is able to know the world and God with varying degrees of objectivity.

A great attempt toward the understanding the negative theology and its Platonic (Neoplatonic) background.