Divine Immutability: A Critical Reconsideration (Fortress Texts in Modern Theology) - Softcover

Welch, Claude; Williams, Robert R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0800632133 ISBN 13: 9780800632137

Publisher: Fortress Press, 1994

Synopsis

Occasioned by the nineteenth-century kenotic christological controversy, Isaak Dorner's essaywhich is here completely translated into English for the first timeremains one of the most extensive historical, philosophical, and theological treatments of immutability to date. Dorner was initially attracted to kenoticismthat the incarnation as a divine self-divestment implies that God undergoes changebut rejects it in Part One.

Part Two is a historical survey of the classical doctrine from the patristic period to Schleiermacher which shows the longstanding connection between divine immutability, God's goodness, and soteriology. Dorner concluded that this formulation was not mistaken, but extreme and one-sided, making positive relations between God, time, and history implausible.

Part Three offers Dorner's reconstruction.

About this title

About the Authors

Claude Welch is Professor, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. He edited God and Incarnation (1965), in which he translated Part Three of Dorner's essay.

Robert R. Williams is Professor of Philosophical Theology at Hirim College, Hiram, Ohio.

Isaak August Dorner (1809-1884) is best known for his histories of Christian doctrine, including his five-volume History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ (1846-1856).

From the Back Cover

Unqualified divine simplicity not only contradicts the central christological and trinitarian distinctions but it also renders implausible any positive relation between God and world, God and time.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0800632133
• ISBN 13: 9780800632137
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208
• Editor: Dorner Isaak August