My sister asked me once, “If you were to pick one theologian or author you agree most with, who would it be?” I answered,
For me, it seems like it’s always in flux. But so far I’d say Karl Barth, à la George Hunsinger.
Hunsinger would be my theologian answer. For teacher/writer, and one who is probably a far more accessible writer, Gilbert Meilaender, hands down.
Looking for some past reflection, I’ve been going through some of Meilaender’s essays published at First Things over the years.
This one seems fitting for me over the last year:
Push hard enough on the demands of the Christian life, we might say, and we will learn that the “person” cannot float entirely free of the “work.” What we do both expresses and determines who we are.
There is, however, one way in which [John Paul II’s] Veritatis Splendor might profit from adopting a little of [Helmut] Thielicke’s perspective. The encyclical exudes a kind of serene confidence about the Christian life that may sometimes be difficult to reconcile with the experience of individual Christians. “Temptations can be overcome, sins can be avoided, because together with the commandments the Lord gives us the possibility of keeping them . . . . Keeping God’s law in particular situations can be difficult, extremely difficult, but it is never impossible.” Surely this is true. We would not want to say of baptized Christians that the power of Christ’s Spirit cannot enable obedience in any circumstance. “And if redeemed man still sins,” Veritatis Splendor continues, “this is not due to an imperfection of Christ’s redemptive act, but to man’s will not to avail himself of the grace which flows from that act.”
What we miss here, though, is some sense of our weakness, of the differences in strength and circumstances that mark individual Christian lives. In the famous refrain of Book 10 of his Confessions—give what you command, and command what you will—St. Augustine also expresses confidence in the power of the Spirit to enable virtuous action. But in his repetition of that formula we sense something that is also present in Thielicke’s thought—the precariousness of our lives as Christians, the deep divisions that sometimes continue to mark the psyches of believers, our sense on occasion that the best we can do does not measure up to what we ought to do, our sense (so strong for Augustine) that God knows our character better than we know ourselves.