Where Person Meets Word Part 1: Personalism in the Language
WTJ 77 (2015): 355–77 WHERE PERSON MEETS WORD PART 1: PERSONALISM IN THE LANGUAGE THEORY OF KENNETH L. PIKE Pierce Taylor Hibbs I. Introduction eformed theology has always championed the Trinity as the beating heart of the Christian faith. This is true not just of the mainstay his- torical Reformers, Luther and Calvin, but also of Dutch Calvinism, Old R 1 Princeton, and the Westminster heritage. Certainly, Calvin and Melanchthon were not alone in claiming that “God’s triunity was that which distinguished the true and living God from idols.”2 The true God is the Trinity. Out of this tradition emerged Cornelius Van Til and his insistence that the self-contained ontological Trinity be the basis of all human experience and knowledge.3 He claimed that “if we are to have coherence in our experience, Pierce Hibbs currently serves as the Assistant Director of the Center for Theological Writing at Westminster Theological Seminary. 1 On Luther, see David Lumpp, “Returning to Wittenberg: What Martin Luther Teaches Today’s Theologians on the Holy Trinity,” CTQ 67 (2003): 232, 233–34; and Mickey Mattox, “From Faith to the Text and Back Again: Martin Luther on the Trinity in the Old Testament,” ProEccl 15 (2006): 292. On Calvin, see T. F. Torrance, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity,” CTJ 25 (1990): 166. For an example of the Dutch Calvinist view, see Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003–2008), 2:279, 329. For Old Princeton, see Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2013), 1:442; and B.
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