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In this contribution the author responds to Bruce Marshall's Thomist critique of Barth's theology, at the cost of a certain revision of Barth's mature exploration of the “being-for-others” of the eternal Son in CD IV/1. Affirming the eternity of the Son, the Logos asarkosand thus of the immanent Trinity, socially modeled, the article argues that this revision follows the cutting-edge of Barth's thought and provides a dispositional ontology which both allows for a properly divine mutability in the incarnation and at the same time preserves the freedom of reconciling grace.

This symposium contribution scrutinizes Zahl’s treatise on the Holy Spirit and Christian experience from the perspective of his utilization of Augustine, Luther and Melanchthon. It exposits his argument as a critical retrieval of the early Reformation doctrine of justification by the Spirit’s sanctification which is the gift of faith, recognizable as affective transformation from servile fear to filial trust. It qualifies his genealogy of the discrediting of such affective experience in modern Protestant theology by tracing it to the Osiander controversy and its resolution in the 1580 Formula of Concord’s separation of justification from the Spirit’s sanctifying work in bestowing faith as the gift which receives the gift of Christ in his joyful exchange with the sinful.