God the Almighty: Power, Wisdom, Holiness, Love

God the Almighty: Power, Wisdom, Holiness, Love. By Donald G. Bloesch. Downer

Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995, 329 pp. $24.99.

In his two volumes Essentials of Evangelical Theology (1978), Donald Bloesch crafted an evangelical theology widely read both within and beyond evangelicalism. The summit of his long teaching and writing career is the ongoing seven-volume Christian Foundations, of which God the Almighty is the third and, to Bloesch's lights, the most crucial installment. This book is dedicated to the memory of Karl Barth and Emil Brunner. As Bloesch makes clear, however, memory is not about insipid nostalgia but about dynamic retrieval and critical reappropriation. Bloesch nowhere calls his theology one of crisis, but there is a definite situation, which goes far beyond academic theology to mainstream cultural trends, that Bloesch feels compelled to address. Few today take God's power with anything approaching seriousness.

Cultural decline may have accelerated since Bloesch's earlier systematic theology, but his methodology has undergone few if any noteworthy changes. Then, as now, Bloesch engages both friends and foes and after-often in the midst of-conversations and skirmishes sets forth his own views. He describes his stance as a dialectical one, criticizing both modernity and postmodernity. Neither does he wish to be premodern, which was perhaps Thomas Oden's departure in his three-volume Systematic Theology. In the preface Bloesch names names, acknowledging debts to mentors (Barth, Brunner, Reinhold Niebuhr) and friends (Kierkegaard and Thomas Torrance among others). Prickly foes include the likes of Paul Tillich, John Cobb and Rosemary Ruether. Question marks for Bloesch are in the persons of, among others, Karl Rahner, Jurgen Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg. Even a "progressive evangelical" like Clark Pinnock is not totally beyond suspicion.

Of the four divine traits Bloesch highlights in his subtitle, holiness and love are central. They "constitute the inner nature of the living God" (p. 141). God's love is holy and his holiness is merciful. The other theological options that Bloesch regularly canvasses-deism, pantheism, panentheism-get the balance between love and holiness wrong and stumble in virtually all other explications of God's character. A position to which Bloesch would seem to warm-the free-will or "open-view" theism of The Openness of God (1994)-is found to be dangerously close to process perspectives. Bloesch remains steady with his "biblical-prophetic" stance.

What might be considered the centerpoint of theological discourse shifts with the times. Two generations ago, Bloesch's work would seem progressive and maybe even in some ways liberal. The older Calvinism of a God seemingly bound by his decrees, which view Bloesch critiques, was at that time much more central in the world of evangelical theology. Now such decretal theology has seemingly been marginalized by the likes of The Openness of God. Where then should Bloesch be located? It is a question worth asking, since Bloesch is very interested in the company he keeps.

Bloesch pumps new relevance into the Kierkegaard-Barth axis of the "infinite qualitative difference" between the divine and the human. Others are saying similar things from beyond the evangelical world; for example, William Placher's The Domestication of Transcendence (1996). Bloesch is not simply parrotting Barth, however. Between Barth and Bloesch the renewal of trinitarian theology interposed, calling into question the very fact Bloesch trumpets in his title: God is almighty. Now it becomes a question: Under what conditions, if any, can God be considered almighty? Bloesch's God is almighty in essential nature, rather traditionally figured and understood, but willingly and freely ("freedom" perhaps belongs in this work's subtitle) suspends this as he condescends to create the world and redeem it through Jesus Christ.

Unnecessary mistakes occasionally detract from Bloesch's otherwise solid performance. We are told on p. 23 to refer to God as "the Absolutely Different" and "the Wholly Other" but warned one page later not to follow God as "Absolutely Other," since this is the God of mysticism (which phenomenon Bloesch seems unable to appreciate in the least) and existentialism. On the whole, though, God the Almighty shows a reputable evangelical theologian at the top of his form. Bloesch's engagement with a host of Protestant traditions, as well as Catholic and Orthodox voices, is a model for accomplishing evangelical theology. When completed, Christian Foundations will stand as a landmark in late twentieth-century evangelical theology.

Roderick T. Leupp

Asia-Pacific Nazarene Theological Seminary, Manila, Philippines

Copyright Evangelical Theological Society Sep 1999
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