P. T. Forsyth

However, he increasingly came to the conclusion that liberal theology failed to account adequately for the moral problem of the guilty conscience.

Although Forsyth rejected many of his earlier liberal leanings he retained many of Adolf von Harnack's criticisms of Chalcedonian Christology.

This led him to expound a kenotic doctrine of the incarnation (clearly influenced by Bishop Charles Gore and Thomasius).

Where he differed from other kenotic theologies of the atonement was the claim that Christ did not give up his divine attributes but condensed them; i.e., the incarnation was the expression of God's omnipotence rather than its negation.

[citation needed] While many of Forsyth's most significant insights have largely gone ignored, not a few consider him to be among the greatest English-speaking theologians of the early twentieth century.

“Popular religion” had preached a God whose sole purpose was “to promote and crown [human] development.”[6] The “doctrine of progress” (first formulated by Abbé de Saint-Pierre) dominated Europe.

[7] But as Forsyth observed, the war's “revelation of the awful and desperate nature of evil” exploded these optimistic views and raised the theodic question about the goodness of God to full force.

[19] Righteoused is an obsolete verb meaning “made righteous.”[20] A theodicy designed to justify connotes rational arguments.