The Divine Wisdom and the Divine Economy

I am warmly grateful for the constructive comments and insightful questions of a range of people in respect of the material articulated in this paper – John Behr, Christophe Chalamet, Paul Dafydd Jones, Tom Greggs, Friedrich Lohmann, Christoph Schwöbel, Janet Soskice, and (especially) Phil Ziegler.Peer reviewedPostprin

Reflections on The Analogy of Grace by Gerald McKenny

Peer reviewedPreprin

Ethical agency and actualistic ontology in the theological ethics of Karl Barth

This dissertation investigates the way in which the actualistic ontology which underlies the Church Dogmatics of Karl Barth affects his conception of ethical agency. It analyses this effect along three paths of inquiry: noetic, ontic, and telic. The dissertation therefore explores not only the discipline of theological ethics as Barth construes it, but also the ontological import which he attributes to ethical action and its teleological purpose. Along the way, it engages fruitfully with a variety of critiques of Barth's conception of ethical agency, and finds resources within his actualistic ontology to answer some of the varied criticism

From confessing to confession : Discerning the season under heaven

Non peer reviewedPublisher PD

The eucharist in post-Reformation Scotland : a theological tale of harmony and diversity

Peer reviewedPostprin

Markus Barth on the Lord’s Supper

Open Access via the Brill Journals 2020 Bridging AgreementPeer reviewedPublisher PD

The theology of preaching: a Reformed perspective

Paul Nimmo’s paper explores the larger framework of the Reformed tradition’s theology of preaching by drawing on a number of the classic sources and by examining the reasons why preaching has for so long occupied a central place in the life of Reformed churches. It goes on to consider the distinct but inseparable connections of the event of preaching to the Word and to the Spirit. In the face of the challenges facing the church in Scotland today the paper concludes by making the case that the need to reflect theologically about the centrality and significance of the preaching event becomes more rather than less necessary.Publisher PD

A Necessary Suffering?: John McLeod Campbell and the Passion of Christ

While John McLeod Campbell’s once controversial treatment of the doctrine of the atonement has now achieved a broad degree of acceptance, another aspect of the theory he put forward in The Nature of the Atonement (1856), his treatment of the role of Christ’s suffering in the atonement, remains highly contentious. This paper examines the issues at play here by first offering a brief outline of McLeod Campbell’s doctrine of the atonement, before moving on to consider in detail the nature and purpose of the sufferings of Christ within it. The paper proceeds in a final section to consider potential weaknesses of McLeod Campbell’s theory in this connection under three headings: the purpose of the sufferings of Christ, the cause of the cry of dereliction, and the logical ordering of the atonement

The 60 pc Environment of FRB 20180916B

Fast Radio Burst FRB 20180916B in its host galaxy SDSS J015800.28+654253.0 at 149 Mpc is by far the closest-known FRB with a robust host galaxy association. The source also exhibits a 16.35-day period in its bursting. Here we present optical and infrared imaging as well as integral field spectroscopy observations of FRB 20180916B with the WFC3 camera on the Hubble Space Telescope and the MEGARA spectrograph on the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias. The 60-90 milliarcsecond (mas) resolution of the Hubble imaging, along with the previous 2.3-mas localization of FRB 20180916B, allow us to probe its environment with a 30-60 pc resolution. We constrain any point-like star-formation or HII region at the location of FRB 20180916B to have an H$\alpha$ luminosity $L_\mathrm{H\alpha} \lesssim 10^{37}\,\mathrm{erg\,s^{-1}}$ and, correspondingly, constrain the local star-formation rate to be $\lesssim10^{-4}\,\mathrm{M_\odot\,yr^{-1}}$. The constraint on H$\alpha$ suggests that possible stellar companions to FRB 20180916B should be of a cooler, less massive spectral type than O6V. FRB 20180916B is 250 pc away (in projected distance) from the brightest pixel of the nearest young stellar clump, which is $\sim380$\,pc in size (full-width at half maximum). With the typical projected velocities of pulsars, magnetars, or neutron stars in binaries (60-750 km s$^{-1}$), FRB 20180916B would need 800 kyr to 7 Myr to traverse the observed distance from its presumed birth site. This timescale is inconsistent with the active ages of magnetars ($\lesssim10$ kyr). Rather, the inferred age and observed separation are compatible with the ages of high-mass X-ray binaries and gamma-ray binaries, and their separations from the nearest OB associations.Comment: Updated version: Updated Figure 2. 16 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Published in ApJ Letters. Comments welcom