Kelly's ST volume 1
November 17, 2008
On Friday last week, Willie Mackenzie of CFP gave me an advance copy of Douglas F. Kelly's forthcoming Systematic Theology I: The God Who Is -- The Holy Trinity. It looks excellent. Three things are striking. First, Kelly interacts extensively with the Church Fathers, especially the Easterns (Athanasius, Cappadocians). Thus, the theology he writes is truly catholic by intention. That Dr. George Dragas read the MS inspires one with confidence that his treatment of all things Eastern is judicious and accurate.
Second, he uses literature, esspcecially Dostoievesky, to illustrate some of his arguments. I have for years argued that literature needs to be on systemtic theology courses -- Claggart in Billy Budd, Iago in Othello, and Pinkie in Brighton Rock are all brilliant portraits of evil just crying out to be used as illustrations to make the teaching of theology more interesting.
Third, Professor Kelly does have an inexplicable passion for the theology of T F Torrance. I guess at this point we part company: Aside from the typical systematician/Barthian anachronisms when it comes to understanding history, Torrance's writing always strikes me as opaque and unnecessarily technical in a rather self-important way. Where he makes a good point, he usually uses 250 multi-syllable complicated words so to do where a mere twenty straightforwards ones would have done the job very adequately. More time spent studying Cardinal Newman's sermons and less spent wading through the stylistically barbarian pages of the Church Dogmatics might have helped. A theologian who cannot communicate is a theologian who cannot teach; and a theologian who cannot teach is a theologian who perhaps missed his real calling as the writer of those 2 000 page user-friendly word processor manuals. Fortunately, Douglas Kelly is not such and this volume looks, at first glance, to be a model of catholicity, clarity and orthodoxy.
Second, he uses literature, esspcecially Dostoievesky, to illustrate some of his arguments. I have for years argued that literature needs to be on systemtic theology courses -- Claggart in Billy Budd, Iago in Othello, and Pinkie in Brighton Rock are all brilliant portraits of evil just crying out to be used as illustrations to make the teaching of theology more interesting.
Third, Professor Kelly does have an inexplicable passion for the theology of T F Torrance. I guess at this point we part company: Aside from the typical systematician/Barthian anachronisms when it comes to understanding history, Torrance's writing always strikes me as opaque and unnecessarily technical in a rather self-important way. Where he makes a good point, he usually uses 250 multi-syllable complicated words so to do where a mere twenty straightforwards ones would have done the job very adequately. More time spent studying Cardinal Newman's sermons and less spent wading through the stylistically barbarian pages of the Church Dogmatics might have helped. A theologian who cannot communicate is a theologian who cannot teach; and a theologian who cannot teach is a theologian who perhaps missed his real calling as the writer of those 2 000 page user-friendly word processor manuals. Fortunately, Douglas Kelly is not such and this volume looks, at first glance, to be a model of catholicity, clarity and orthodoxy.
