I’ve been enjoying a stimulating engagement with the classical theist understanding of God in conversation and dispute with Peter Leithart and Jeff Meyers at Church of the Redeemer in Monroe, Louisiana. You can listen in here. You can get a flavour of some of our disagreements, shared commitments, and differing concerns in the first question and answer session from this morning.
Ad`ver`sa´ri`a
n. pl.
A miscellaneous collection of notes, remarks, or selections.-
Recent Comments
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Alastair's Adversaria 
Your comments made sense. I think the opposition to classical theism comes from the assumption that the metaphysics replaces the biblical picture of God rather than clarifies which elements of the Biblical picture of God are more literal and which are more analogical. “I am not a man that I should change” fits the metaphysical picture of a first cause, whereas “the Lord regretted that he made man” doesn’t, but it communicates a truth about God that is very significant, namely, that God cares about man’s moral rectitude and relationship to nature. Anyway, I appreciated the discussion.
Thanks, Geoff! And, yes, I think you are correct.
Cool.
In my experience, while more ancient Biblical commentaries may be “less technical” with respect to background and exegetical detail, the older commentators were almost universally more educated in metaphysics than today’s Bible scholars. It’s funny, I mostly look to modern commentaries for pieces of the ancient world or textual resonances I may have missed or some syntactical detail I was unaware of, but almost never for specific conclusions about questionable texts. For that, it’s patristics and medievals.
I hope this will be available on your channel afterwards. I have been wondering about precisely this issue myself. I wonder if the biblical authors would have been foreign to the metaphysics created by Classical Thiesm. The metaphysics of Classical Thiesm is much less dualistic than much of contemporary Christianity.
I am just about to post the videos of the lectures and discussion periods.