New beginnings as the key for biblically oriented dogmatics A dramatic-kairological approach

Abstract

This article develops a biblically oriented dogmatics that understands God’s action as a continuous renewal of creation through small and minute new beginnings presented by God. Jesus’ parables of the seed (Matt. 13) provide the hermeneutical key to this salvific action, in which Christology, anthropology, soteriology, and eschatology converge. The eschatological Kingdom of God appears in minimally invasive, highly potent, and at the same time vulnerable “seed” events that open people up to God in their innermost being and confront them with decisions (kairos): to actively continue the new beginning they have experienced or to reject it. From this dramatic, kairological perspective, a new understanding of grace and freedom emerges: God’s power of grace repeatedly places people at new beginnings, which do not overwhelm human freedom but rather set it free. This allows for compatibilist and libertarian interpretations of freedom to be brought into a fruitful relationship. Sin, accordingly, is the rejection of such new beginnings. Adam’s Fall (peccatum originale originans) is repeated analogously in every missed kairos of grace, in that a human being (= Adam) rejects the new beginning into which God places them, thereby setting in motion once again a dynamic of ruin that continues historically as original sin (peccatum originale originatum).