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Theopaschism is the belief that a god can suffer. Owing to controversies about the passion of Jesus and his divinity, this doctrine was a subject of ecumenical councils which affirmed the theopaschite formula.
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In Christian theology this involves questions such as "was the crucifixion of Jesus a crucifixion of God?" The question is central to the schism between those churches which accepted the First Council of Ephesus and the Assyrian Church of the East. While not Nestorian, [1] the Assyrian Church of the East, along with their greatest teacher, Babai the Great, deny the possibility of a suffering God.
Modern scholars, such as Paul Gavrilyuk, have argued that one of the central debates of the 5th century was how Christ suffered on the cross. It seemed that Cyril of Alexandria favoured a grammatical sense of theopaschism, meaning he was able to write statements such as 'God died' or 'God was crucified' in a qualified sense. This scandalised Nestorius who wanted a firm separation of the natures of Christ, and would much rather have said that Jesus Christ the man suffered.
A number of modern philosophers and theologians have been called theopaschists, such as G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche and Simone Weil. Kazoh Kitamori's Theology of the Pain of God (1946) [2] and Moltmann's The Crucified God (1971) [3] are two 1900s books that have taken up the ancient theological idea that at least "one of the Trinity has suffered" (unus de Trinitate passus est). [4] In the words of Hans Urs von Balthasar:
"At this point, where the subject undergoing the 'hour' is the Son speaking with the Father, the controversial 'Theopaschist formula' has its proper place: 'One of the Trinity has suffered'. The formula can already be found in Gregory Nazianzen: 'We needed a ... crucified God'." [5]
Some proponents of liberation theology have extended the theopaschist debate to the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit, questioning whether the Spirit may or may not have felt pain during the incarnation.[ citation needed ] This debate has had implications in ecclesiology, per Leonardo Boff's Church: Charism and Power.
In Christianity, Christology, translated from Greek as 'the study of Christ', is a branch of theology that concerns Jesus. Different denominations have different opinions on questions such as whether Jesus was human, divine, or both, and as a messiah what his role would be in the freeing of the Jewish people from foreign rulers or in the prophesied Kingdom of God, and in the salvation from what would otherwise be the consequences of sin.
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is the central doctrine concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, three distinct persons (hypostases) sharing one essence/substance/nature (homoousion). As the Fourth Lateran Council declared, it is the Father who begets, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds. In this context, one essence/nature defines what God is, while the three persons define who God is. This expresses at once their distinction and their indissoluble unity. Thus, the entire process of creation and grace is viewed as a single shared action of the three divine persons, in which each person manifests the attributes unique to them in the Trinity, thereby proving that everything comes "from the Father," "through the Son," and "in the Holy Spirit."
Maximus the Confessor, also spelled Maximos, otherwise known as Maximus the Theologian and Maximus of Constantinople, was a Christian monk, theologian, and scholar.
In Christian theology, the Harrowing of Hell is an Old English and Middle English term referring to the period of time between the Crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection. In triumphant descent, Christ brought salvation to the souls held captive there since the beginning of the world.
Jürgen Moltmann is a German Reformed theologian who is Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the University of Tübingen and is known for his books such as the Theology of Hope, The Crucified God, God in Creation and other contributions to systematic theology. Jürgen Moltmann is the husband of Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, a notable feminist theologian. Jürgen Moltmann described his own theology as an extension of Karl Barth's theological works, especially the Church Dogmatics, and he has described his own work as Post-Barthian. He has received honorary doctorates from a number of institutions, such as Duke University (1973), the University of Louvain in Belgium (1995), the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Romania (1996), the Chung Yuan Christian University in Taiwan (2002), the Nicaraguan Evangelical University (2002), and the University of Pretoria in South Africa (2017). Moltmann was selected to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures in 1984–85, and was also the recipient of the 2000 University of Louisville and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary Grawemeyer Award in Religion.
Andrew Purves is a Scottish theologian in the Reformed tradition through the Church of Scotland. He holds the Chair in Reformed Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
ErichPrzywara was a Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian of German-Polish origin, who was one of the first Catholics to engage in dialogue with modern philosophers, especially those of the phenomenological tradition. He is best known for synthesizing the thought of prominent thinkers around the notion of the analogy of being, the tension between divine immanence and divine transcendence, a "unity-in-tension".
Hans Urs von Balthasar was a Swiss theologian and Catholic priest who is considered an important Catholic theologian of the 20th century. Pope John Paul II announced his choice of Balthasar to become a cardinal, but he died shortly before the consistory. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said in his funeral oration for Balthasar that "he is right in what he teaches of the faith" and that he "points the way to the sources of living water".
John Saward is a Roman Catholic priest. He is Senior Research Fellow at Blackfriars in the University of Oxford in England. He previously held the posts of lecturer in dogmatic theology at St Cuthbert's College, Ushaw (1980–1992), Professor of Systematic Theology at St Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1992–1998), Professor of Dogmatic Theology in the International Theological Institute, Gaming, Austria, and Visiting Professor in Systematic Theology and Christology in the same institute.
Trinitarian universalism is a variant of belief in universal salvation, the belief that every person will be saved, that also held the Christian belief in Trinitarianism. It was particularly associated with an ex-Methodist New England minister, John Murray, and after his death in 1815 the only clergy known to be preaching Trinitarian Universalism were Paul Dean of Boston and Edward Mitchell in New York.
Sophiology is a controversial school of thought in Russian Orthodoxy which holds that Divine Wisdom is to be identified with God's essence, and that the Divine Wisdom is in some way expressed in the world as 'creaturely' wisdom. This notion has often been understood or misunderstood as introducing a feminine "fourth hypostasis" into the Trinity.
John Christopher "Aidan" Nichols is an English academic and Catholic priest.
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Kazoh Kitamori was a Japanese theologian, pastor, author, professor, and churchman. His most famous work in the West is The Theology of the Pain of God, which was published in 1946 in Japan and in the United States in 1965. He was a longtime professor at Tokyo Union Theological Seminary. He was, along with Kōsuke Koyama, a leading contributor to Protestant Christian theology from twentieth century Japan.
Theopoetics in its modern context is an interdisciplinary field of study that combines elements of poetic analysis, process theology, narrative theology, and postmodern philosophy. Originally developed by Stanley Hopper and David Leroy Miller in the 1960s and furthered significantly by Amos Wilder with his 1976 text, Theopoetic: Theology and the Religious Imagination.
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Mysterium Paschale. The Mystery of Easter is a 1969 book by the Swiss theologian and Catholic priest Hans Urs von Balthasar. The original German edition was published by Benziger Verlag, Einsiedeln. In 1983 it was reprinted by St. Benno-Verlag, Leipzig, including additions made to the second French edition Pâques le mystère, copyright 1981 by Les Edition du Cerf, Paris. The first English translation with an Introduction by Aidan Nichols, O.P., was published in 1990.
The knowledge of Christ refers to one of two possible, and at times related, topics in Christology: one addresses how Christians come to know Christ, the other focuses on the knowledge of Christ about the world. Discussions regarding the knowledge of Christ have had a central place in Christology for centuries. In the 20th century, the interplay between the two concepts was epitomized in the title of a book by Hans Urs von Balthasar: "Does Jesus Know Us? Do We Know Him?"
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