Redeeming Transcendence in the Arts by Jeremy Begbie

Author:Jeremy Begbie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eerdmans

1. I owe the phrase to a conversation with Rowan Williams. See C. Kavin Rowe, “Biblical Pressure and Trinitarian Hermeneutics,” Pro Ecclesia 9, no. 3 (2002): 295–312.

2. The phrase comes from David Yeago; see David S. Yeago, “The New Testament and the Nicene Dogma: A Contribution to the Recovery of Theological Exegesis,” in The Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Stephen E. Fowl (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1997), 88. On the kind of “scriptural imagination” I am seeking to employ here, see the succinct treatment by C. Kavin Rowe, “The Formation of Scriptural Imagination,” Faith and Leadership, June 17, 2013, https://www.faithandleadership.com/features/articles/c-kavin-rowe-the-formation-scriptural-imagination.

3. From Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur,” in Poems and Prose (London: Penguin Classics, 1953), 27.

4. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture references come from the New International Version.

5. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. III, art. 5.

6. For a particularly lucid discussion, see Ian A. McFarland, From Nothing: A Theology of Creation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2014).

7. Catherine Keller, Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming (London: Routledge, 2003), 16. In the late modern climate, “The ex nihilo tradition has been linked to patterns of exploitation, domination and colonialism as if the world was an artefact produced for consumption. As a web of intricately related living forms, however, the creation is better described, it is claimed, by a theology that offers more organic models of the God-world relationship. So immanence and indwelling tend to replace traditional themes of transcendence and otherness, while resources from other faiths are readily deployed.” David Fergusson, “Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Creation: Church-Bells beyond the Stars,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 18, no. 4 (2016): 414–31, here 416.

8. Here, “with” (pros) means something akin to “present to” or “in the presence of.”

9. It may be that the Jewish wisdom tradition is operative here, where Wisdom is pictured as the “master worker” alongside God in the creation of the world. See Marianne Meye Thompson, The God of the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 136; Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016), 308–10.

10. In John’s prologue, Jesus is described as monogenēs (1:14, 18). Although this has often been translated as “only-begotten,” scholars generally agree that the term is best understood as meaning “one and only,” or “unique.” Because the word was often used of a child, and because of the mention of “Father” in this context, Richard Bauckham believes it is reasonable to translate it as “God the only Son.” See Richard Bauckham, “The Trinity and the Gospel of John,” in The Essential Trinity: New Testament Foundations and Practical Relevance, ed. Brandon Crowe and Carl R. Trueman (London: Apollos, 2016), 83–106, here 88–89.

11. See, e.g., John 3:35; 5:20; 10:17; 15:9–10; 17:23–24, 26.

12. Bauckham, “The Trinity,” 102.

13. Richard Bauckham, “Revelatory Word or Beloved Son? Barth on the Johannine Prologue,” in Reading the Gospels with Karl Barth, ed. Daniel L. Migliore (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017). I am deeply indebted to Richard Bauckham’s writings in the first part of this chapter.

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