Ray Yeo

This paper brings together the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff and William Alston in speech‐act theory with the aim of providing a deeper understanding of the nature of divine speaking through the medium of Scripture. Despite the fecundity of Wolterstorff's seminal work on the philosophical theology of Scripture, aspects of his speech‐act centric account are underdeveloped and would benefit from the contributions of William Alston. In particular, his account of divine speech‐acts could be fruitfully expanded by incorporating the concept of ‘taking responsibility’ that is central to Alston's analysis of the nature of illocutionary acts. This would elucidate both the way in which readers of Scripture encounter divine practical authority in the reading process and the nature of the response of faith that is demanded of them.

This chapter makes the claim that character and virtue formation in the Christian tradition is distinct from its non-religious counterparts in its foundational insistence that genuine Christian character formation can only be achieved through the gracious gift of God, and cannot be had simply through human endeavors. However, the precise relationship between the transforming grace of God and the character transformation of the believer has not always been well understood. In light of this obscurity, the chapter attempts to provide a theoretical model for understanding the nature of the Spirit’s indwelling in transforming grace by synthesizing Jonathan Edwards’s theological psychology with William Alston’s model of indwelling. The significance of the proposed model for Christian character formation is then explored.

This paper brings together the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff and William Alston in speech-act theory with the aim of providing a deeper understanding of the nature of divine speaking through the medium of Scripture. Despite the fecundity of Wolterstorff's seminal work on the philosophical theology of Scripture, aspects of his speech-act centric account are underdeveloped and would benefit from the contributions of William Alston. In particular, his account of divine speech-acts could be fruitfully expanded by incorporating the concept of ‘taking responsibility’ that is central to Alston's analysis of the nature of illocutionary acts. This would elucidate both the way in which readers of Scripture encounter divine practical authority in the reading process and the nature of the response of faith that is demanded of them.

This paper brings together the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff and William Alston in speech-act theory with the aim of providing a deeper understanding of the nature of divine speaking through the medium of Scripture. Despite the fecundity of Wolterstorff's seminal work on the philosophical theology of Scripture, aspects of his speech-act centric account are underdeveloped and would benefit from the contributions of William Alston. In particular, his account of divine speech-acts could be fruitfully expanded by incorporating the concept of ‘taking responsibility’ that is central to Alston's analysis of the nature of illocutionary acts. This would elucidate both the way in which readers of Scripture encounter divine practical authority in the reading process and the nature of the response of faith that is demanded of them.