How Does God Respond | Nicholas Wolterstorff
Channel: Henry Center
Date: 2022-09-09

2013 Kantzer Lecture #7 - God as One Who Speaks

Having completed his exploration of God as one who listens, Wolterstorff now turns to the understanding of God implicit in the belief that God is one who speaks. He begins by pointing out that in a good many of our liturgical acts we are listening to what God says by way of what humans say. Wolterstorff begins his exploration by critiquing Karl Barth’s account of the Word of God, finding it insufficiently grounded in the words actually spoken by Jesus, and too reliant on the concept of revelation, which plays a relatively minor role in Scripture. Also finding Barth’s claim that all of Scripture points to Christ as contestable, Wolterstorff suggests that David Kelsey’s account of three independent but interacting story lines—creation and preservation, redemption, and consummation—to be a more helpful guide. Wolterstorff concludes that God not only presently listens, but also presently speaks to us in the liturgy: it is an act of mutual address.

Nicholas Wolterstorff (PhD Harvard University) is Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University. He is author of many books, including Reason Within the Bounds of Religion (Eerdmans, 1988), Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton University Press, 2008), and United in Love: Reflections on Justice, Art, and Liturgy (Wipf and Stock, 2021).

The Henry Center for Theological Understanding provides theological resources that help bridge the gap between the academy and the church. It houses a cluster of initiatives, each of which is aimed at applying practical Christian wisdom to important kingdom issues—for the good of the church, for the soul of the theological academy, for the sake of the world, and ultimately for the glory of God. The HCTU seeks to ground each of these initiatives in Scripture, and it pursues these goals collaboratively, in order to train a new generation of wise interpreters of the Word—lay persons and scholars alike—for the sake of tomorrow’s church, academy, and world.

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