The third volume of my tetralogy on divine action represents a significant departure from traditional genres of systematic theology. On the surface, the work looks like a standard treatment of the loci of systematic theology and thus could readily be dismissed as archaic at worst and conventional at best. However, it is placed very deliberately…

There is something naturally compelling to Abraham’s call for theology’s return to the language of divine personal agency. It is as if theology had languished under a spell, which was preventing us from seeing the obvious: that there is no metaphysical quandary about the claim that God acts. Invoking an open concept of action, he…

In his search of a viable concept of divine action, Billy Abraham almost in passing provides a complete survey of Christian dogmatics. Ranging from the doctrine of God to eschatology, in this third part of his tetralogy all the main topics of classical doctrinal reflection are carefully probed. Given the fact that God’s actions figure…

When I requested the first two volumes of William J. Abraham’s Divine Agency and Divine Action tetralogy (Oxford University Press, 2017­–), I must admit I did not expect them to shape my thoughts on divine action and, by extension, providence quite so much as they have. Before reading Abraham’s fine work, I accepted without question…

David Fergusson’s The Providence of God: A Polyphonic Approach is an important recent contribution to studies of the doctrine of providence and divine action, and I am grateful for the opportunity to engage a little with it in a public forum. In this essay, I will focus on Professor Fergusson’s reshaping of double agency and the…

The doctrine of providence is harried on many fronts. Horrendous evil, human freedom, modern science, pastoral abuses, and the diverse witness of Scripture each challenge theologians, who seek to present providence. David Fergusson enters this fray with his recent release The Providence of God: A Polyphonic Approach (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Fergusson presents a cumulative…

I am not the first to observe that the loss of John Webster in May of 2016 was not only the loss of a leading theologian, mentor, and friend. It was also a loss for the discipline of systematic theology. Friends and I spoke of John’s yet to be published systematic theology in the way…

John Webster’s Oxford inaugural begins with praise for his predecessor in the chair, Rowan Williams. If the fact of praise is routine in such a lecture, the content may have raised eyebrows. Williams’s intellectual work is praised above all for being ‘prayerful’ (italics original), which is not a standard part of the Oxford lexicon of…

I write this on what would have been John Webster’s 61st birthday, 20 June 2016—if he had not gone directly to glory last month. I write to pay tribute to a person I described, long before his untimely death, as the greatest living theologian—the best theologian on earth. Such judgments of course say as much…

Dr. Douglas Sweeney has been the Director of the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding for over twelve years. He was recently recognized in TEDS Chapel by the President of TIU (Craig Williford) and the Dean of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Tite Tiénou) for his stellar service to both the Henry Center and…