bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Christ and the Cultures
Authors: Newbigin Lesslie
Published: February 2009

In our programme of missionary training at the Selly Oak Colleges it is our custom to introduce the students at an early stage to something of the wide variety of ways in which Christ is pictured in different cultures. On a wall covered with vivid posters one can see together the Orthodox Pantocrator serenely ruling all the worlds, the Latin American freedom fighter with rifle over his shoulder, the black Christ, the tortured and defeated Victim of the medieval crucifix, and the blue-eyed golden haired boy from the neighbourhood of Dallas, Texas. Beyond these visual reproductions one thinks of the pen-portraits sketched in the innumerable lives of Jesus in the era of liberal protestantism, each reflecting the writer's ideal self-image, all sharing one feature in common—that the Christ portrayed might be a likely candidate for redundancy but an improbable one for crucifixion.
Christian Nurture and Critical Openness
Authors: Hull John M.
Published: February 2009

The nature of Christian upbringing today needs to be redefined. There can no longer be an easy identification of Christian development with general education. Religious education within the state school systems of modern, pluralist democracies cannot be regarded as intending to nurture Christian faith. But how can Christian nurture be distinguished from good education on the one hand and indoctrination on the other?
The Uniqueness of the Word of God
Authors: McConnachie John
Published: February 2009

We have entered on a period of history in which it is becoming difficult to obtain a hearing for the New Testament and Reformed doctrine of the Word of God. For it rests on the belief in a Word which God has spoken from beyond, once for all in time, and which is absolute, ultimate, and authoritative for the Church.

It is not a truth which can be arrived at by scientific investigation, and on that account it is a scandalon to the scientist, and to this scientifically-minded generation. It is not a truth which is discoverable by the study of history (although it has been given inside history), and therefore it is a scandalon to the historian. It is not a truth which can be reached by the processes of human thought, and on that account it is a scandalon to the philosopher—“ the scandal of particularity ”—because of its claim to be absolute, authoritative, and “ once for all”.
The Proclamation of the Church to the Congregation
Authors: Schmidt Karl Ludwig
Published: February 2009

The text of a lecture delivered in German by the author in September 1944 in the Church of the village of Riehen at the Conference of Members of the Church Courts and Commissions and the Officials, Presidents and Directors of the Parish Choirs of Basle, and in English in January 1948 before the Theological Faculties of the Universities of Cambridge and Manchester. The English translation is by the Rev. James W. Leitch, B.D.
The Church in the Gospel of Luke
Authors: Giles K. N.
Published: February 2009

The Christian community or as it is more commonly termed ‘the Church’ is usually thought of as coming into existence after the death and resurrection of Jesus. The purpose of this essay is to argue that, at least for Luke, the Church comes into existence during the ministry of Jesus. In Luke's presentation of the disciples and in his discussion on discipleship it is his intent to set before his readers a model Christian community. The disciples in the third Gospel are not meant to prefigure the Church nor to represent the Church in embryo: theyarethe Church, albeit in idealised form. This conclusion is based on a study of the way Luke uses and adapts traditions about the disciples in his Gospel. But before we turn to this evidence three possible objections to our thesis must be considered.
The Baptism of Our Lord—A Study of St. Mark 1.9–11
Authors: Cranfield C. E. B.
Published: February 2009

Both the construction ('And it came to pass… that Jesus came’) and the expression ‘in those days’ have a distinctly OT flavour (cf. e.g. Exod. 2.11). As neither is frequent in Mark, we might perhaps venture the suggestion that either consciously or unconsciously he is giving to his narrative a special touch of solemnity at the point at which he introduces Jesus for the first time.

That Jesus was baptised by John1 can scarcely be doubted. The fact that the submission of Jesus to a baptism of repentance caused the early Church embarrassment, as may be seen in Matt. 3.14 f and in the Gospel of the Ebionites and the Gospel according to the Hebrews (see Huck, Synopsis, 9th edit., p. 12), makes it extremely unlikely that the Church would ever have invented the incident.2

To the question why He submitted to baptism various answers have been given. Some have suggested that it was because He was conscious of sin and felt the need to repent3; but this seems to be ruled out by what Dr Taylor has called ‘the entire absence of the consciousness of sin in His personality, as it is revealed in the Gospels’.4 Others have suggested that Jesus was simply availing Himself of John's baptism ‘as a means of expressing the will to live a pure life’5 or that He submitted to it merely in order to show His personal approval of the Baptist's movement.
The Covenant Concept in Scottish Theology and Politics and its Legacy
Authors: Torrance James B.
Published: February 2009

One of the most significant words of the Bible is the word ‘covenant’. We read about God making a covenant with Abraham, renewing that covenant at Sinai, about David making a covenant with Jonathan, and again with the elders at Hebron when he became king. Jeremiah speaks of a day when God will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and in the New Testament, Jesus is presented to us as the Mediator of the New Covenant: ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood.’
The place of tradition in reformed theology
Authors: Peter J. F.
Published: February 2009

To ask ‘What place has tradition in Reformed theology?’ is to court from many adherents of that theology a vehement reply: ‘None!’ And such an answer is justified: there is ample evidence to show that at the time of the Reformation tradition was rejected. But there is also evidence to show that some elements of tradition were retained, and that in recent years its place has been reassessed. Those three ideas—rejection, retention and reassessment—provide suitable headings for our present study.
The Two Governments and the Two Kingdoms in Luther's Thought
Authors: Stephenson John R.
Published: February 2009

The facet of his thought commonly referred to as the doctrine of the two kingdoms has provoked some of the most intractable confusion and bitter controversy in post-war continental Luther scholarship, and the ripples of this debate which reached these shores have all too often amounted to a litany of sweeping statements which have done nothing to enhance the Reformer's reputation in England. Yet even before Hitler's war Luther had endured a century of disfavour among the leading academic and ecclesiastical circles on this side of the Channel. So marked was British — more particularly, English — distaste for Luther in the opening years of this century that the American church historian Preserved Smith devoted an article to the subject in 1917, listing Anglo-Catholicism, rationalism, socialism and — since 1914 — visceral hostility to all things German as four factors which had conspired to tarnish the Reformer's image in the minds of the English of that time. Fifteen years later the celebrated Modernist H. D. A. Major was to lament that, ‘Today Martin Luther, the greatest protagonist of the Reformation, is viewed as a vulgar, violent and mistaken man as hostile to humanist culture as he was to social democracy.’ The European conflict of the next decade provided the cue for the most damaging slur of all on the Reformer's memory, so that when in 1945 a third-rate pamphleteer denigrated Luther as ‘Hitler's spiritual ancestor’ his thesis had already been expressed by Archbishop William Temple, who had died the previous year.
The Fall, Freewill and Human Responsibility in Rabbinic Judaism
Authors: Hayman A.P.
Published: February 2009

This paper is an attempt to follow up and expand on the following statement which I made in an earlier paper published inSJT:The Christian doctrine of original sin has no place within a rabbinic system which avoids the crucial difficulty in Christian theodicy — that of the creation of evilex nihiloat the time of the Fall.

In developing this statement I would like to sound a warning note to NT and patristic scholars who utilise rabbinic sources as background material for the study of early Christianity. It is often assumed that rabbinic texts, along with the literary remains of the other sorts of Judaism in existence in the first century A.D., can be used as a mine of material for illustrating the sort of beliefs with which the early Christians started out and against which they subsequently reacted. Thus, for example, to approach closer to the title of this paper, in considering the famous Pauline passage on the Fall (Rom. 5.12–21), it is customary for NT scholars to marshall all the evidence from the OT, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and rabbinic Judaism to try and explain the origin of the Christian doctrine of the Fall and Original Sin. But all too often the rabbinic evidence is used rather indiscriminately without regard to the date of its origin or to the possibility that rabbinic views on these matters may have changed in the course of the centuries during which the Talmudic literature was evolving.
Sartre: A Christian Appraisal
Authors: Carpenter Peter A.
Published: February 2009

Man, Sartre once wrote, is ‘nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.’ If he is to bejudged, therefore, it will have to be on the basis of his actions. As long as he is alive, however, his actions remain incomplete; he may continue in the same general direction, doing more or less the same kind of things he has always done, or he may change his course, thereby giving his life a totally different meaning. It was just such a change that Kierkegaard was hoping to find in Bishop Mynster. Mynster, he believed, was betraying Christianity by the kind of preaching he did and the kind of life heled; but he could redeem himself by declaring that it was not really the faith he was proclaiming, but rather some watered-down version of it. Kierkegaard therefore waited till the Bishop died and only then, after all his acts were complete, did he begin his famous ‘attack on Christendom’. Up till April the fifteenth 1980, the day Sartre died, it was likewise possible that a dramatic change would take place — perhaps a confession, like Aquinas’, that all he had written had merely been ‘straw’. But that was not to be; apparently Sartre died, not regretting anything he had said or done. This does not mean necessarily that the way is now open for an ‘attack on existentialism’; but it does mean that Sartre has become himself totally, as he would have put it, and we are in a position to apply to him those words that Inez, a character in Huis Clos, applied to Garcin: ‘One always dies too soon — or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are — your life and nothing else.’
The Transcendental Method in the Theology of Karl Barth
Authors: Hendry George S.
Published: February 2009

The purpose of this essay is to examine the Kantian element in the theological method of Karl Barth and, more particularly, to show that this element, which is openly displayed in the Epistle to the Romans, did not disappear after the turn in his thought occasioned by his encounter with Anselm, but was carried over into the Church Dogmatics and forms an indispensable clue to the interpretation of the doctrine of reconciliation, which marks its climax.
Was Christianity a Monotheistic Faith from the Beginning?
Authors: Dunn James D. G.
Published: February 2009

Students of the New Testament will be familiar with the influential hypothesis from the first half of this century usually known as the Gnostic redeemer myth. This was the thesis, associated particularly with the name of R. Bultmann, that already in the pre-Christian period there was a widely held belief in a divine figure who came down from heaven and assumed human form in order to redeem the souls of men trapped within human bodies. They will also be aware that while Bultmann's thesis has come under heavy attack and is not widely held today, there are those who still attempt to argue for it, though usually in a substantially modified form. My purpose in this paper is to draw attention to one of the side-effects of this whole debate, an important side-effect which has not been given the attention it deserves. For it is my belief that the quest of the Gnostic redeemer myth within pre-Christian traditions, and the debate thereby stirred up, havetogetherconfused the history of Christology' beginings, particularly in the key issue of Christ's relation with God. Although principally concerned with soteriology, the discussion roused by the hypothesis of the Gnostic redeemer myth has raised the question of Christianity'sthelogy(in the narrower sense of that term). In other words, it forces students of Christian origins to askwhether Christianity began as a departure from Jewish monotheism, whether Christianity was in fact a monotheistic faith from the beginning.
Preadamites: The History of an Idea from Heresy to Orthodoxy
Authors: Livingstone David N.
Published: February 2009

To reconcile the early chapters of the book of Genesis with the findings of science has been the self-appointed task of Christian apologists for generations. Indeed in our own day the much publicized manoeuvres of a militant creationist movement reveal just how vibrant the debate remains in some quarters about how to relate the book of Nature to the book of Scripture. Over the years numerous harmonizing strategies have been advanced and, once hatched, they have, like organisms, evolved and adapted to the intellectual climate in which they have found themselves. Among these, the gap theory (postulating a lengthy period of time between Genesis 1 verse 1 and 1 verse 2 into which the whole gamut of geological history can be squeezed), the day-age theory (interpreting the creative days as geological epochs), and the ‘days of revelation’ theory (seeing the Genesis week as successive days of divine disclosure) might be specified as concordist schemes whose fortunes have changed with the passing of time. For ideas, it is clear, no less than individuals, can enjoy social legitimation or suffer from the lack of it.
The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit: Trinitarian Pneumatology
Authors: Moltmann J. , Kohl Margaret
Published: February 2009

‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all.’ This is an ancient form of benediction very generally used in the Christian church. I should like to take it up here, asking what is meant by ‘the fellowship of the Holy Spirit’? Does the divine Spirit enter into community with us human beings? Does he admit us into his ‘community’ with the Father and the Son? Why does the benediction not talk about divine sovereignty and absolute human dependence in connection with the Holy Spirit? Why does it so emphatically use the word ‘fellowship’ instead?
What is the Theology of Women's Ministry?
Authors: Edwards Ruth B.
Published: February 2009

The theology of women's ministry is a comparatively new item on the Church's agenda. It is less than two decades since the Church of Scotland took the historic decision to open its ordained ministry to women. At the time it seemed a controversial step, and many must have wondered where it would lead the Kirk. I think that we can truthfully say that it has not led to any dire disasters, but rather to the enrichment of the ministry. That has also been the experience of many other Churches which in recent years have opened their ordained ministry to women. But controversies remain. The 1985 General Synod elections in the Church of England were dominated by the issue of women's ordination, with feelings running high in pressure-groups on both sides. In some Churches the introduction of women's ordination has exacerbated divisions already existing among members. Some of the major Christian denominations, including both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, do not permit any form of ordination for women. Even within denominations like the Church of Scotland, where the introduction of women ministers has occurred without disruption, there are still members who have doubts about whether it is really right. In many small Christian groups women are debarred from all but the most informal ministry, because it is considered unbiblical for them to preach, address assembled Christians publicly, or presume to teach men about spiritual matters.
Anthropological Dualism in the New Testament
Authors: Osei-Bonsu Joseph
Published: February 2009

In reaction to the claim by some scholars thatsōmain the NT, especially in Paul, has a ‘holistic’ meaning, according to which the term refers to the whole person under some aspect, and not the physical body, or form, R. H. Gundry has argued for a return to a wholly physical understanding ofsōma. Gundry argues that the presence of anthropological dualism in the NT speaks against the holistic understanding of soma. He adduces a number of passages in support of his contention that there is anthropological dualism in the NT and concludes by saying that the ultimate source of anthropological dualism in the NT is the OT, and not Greek thought.
Baptism in the Church of South India
Authors: Garrett T. S.
Published: February 2009

Since the first Synod of the Church of South India elected a standing Liturgy Committee and assigned it as its first task the drafting of an order for the Lord's Supper, that committee has never been without work in hand. SJT has from time to time given the hospitality of its pages to reports of the committee's progress, the most recent being Doing Over a Liturgy by the Rev. J. R. Macphail, which appeared in the issue of December 1954 and gave an account of our revision of An Order for the Lord's Supper. This present essay may be regarded as continuing in the same series and reporting on our experimental production of An Order for Holy Baptism, which was the task we undertook and completed in 1954. Our intention is to revise it together with An Order for Reception into Full Membership of the Church or Confirmation after about five years of use, when we hope to have an adequate body of criticisms to guide us.
Ultimate Triumph
Authors: Duthie Charles S.
Published: February 2009

It is a matter of agreement among Christians that there shines throughout the New Testament writings the bright hope, the clear assurance that in the long run, however long the run, God will triumph. He will achieve the fulfilment of the purpose disclosed in Jesus Christ. In that consummation God Himself, in the phrase of Paul, will be ‘all in all’. But as soon as we affirm our belief in this final victory, an inevitable question raises itself in our minds. Will that triumph be complete? Will all who have been fashioned in the image of God be united with Him within the redeemed community? Or will some persist obstinately for ever in the repudiation of His grace, self-excluded from Heaven? If God wills that all men shall be saved, if He was truly in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, if it is His purpose to gather up all things in Christ, are we not driven towards the expectation, perhaps even the certainty, that at the last all shall have found their way, or been led, to God ‘who is our home’?
Salvation History as a Model for Theological Thought
Authors: Peter James
Published: February 2009

The religious traditions in which the members of this Fellow-J. ship stand are at one in asserting that salvation is both needful and available. They are moreover at one in asserting that the prescribing and the provision of salvation take place within history, and that those who apprehend and appropriate it are historical beings.
Uppsala 1968 and the Contemporary Theological Situation
Authors: Thomas M. M.
Published: February 2009

The criticism that the Uppsala Assembly of the World Council of Churches did not give sufficient attention to theology is justified. But this fact should be set within the perspective of the deep crisis which the theological world as a whole faces today, and which constitutes the contemporary theological situation. What are some of the factors which have contributed to this situation? One may mention three of them.
In Search of a Foundation for Christian Ethics
Authors: Russell S. H.
Published: February 2009

At the present time the Church is frequently exhorted to give an ethical lead. Yet what would be the nature of such direction—the dissemination of practical wisdom from the Scriptures, the provision of a blue-print for the realisation of the Kingdom of God on earth, or just emotional encouragement to moral effort? Theological colleges offer courses on ‘Christian Ethics’, and for certain degrees there are papers bearing this title, yet what exactly is the nature of the discipline? Is it any more than the retailing of the moral judgments of distinguished Christians in the past, and information concerning certain important areas of life in regard to which Christians ought to come to some sort of practical decision? Is Christian Ethics a discipline at all, or just an unmapped, and possibly an unmappable, field between dogmatics and practical theology?
Is Fletcher's situationism Christian?
Authors: Götz Ignacio L.
Published: February 2009

The question whether or not Fletcher's situationism is truly a Christian ethics has been raised before. Fletcher himself tells us so at the beginning of his book Situation Ethics. According to him the accusation is that he fails to treat situation ethics within a theological framework. Fletcher's answer is that he does so on purpose, since the challenge of situationism does not ultimately depend upon one's theological or non-theological commitments.
Spirit-Baptism and Pentecostalism
Authors: Dunn James D. G.
Published: February 2009

Within Christianity down through the centuries there has always been a strain of teaching which holds that salvation, so far as it may be known in this life, is experienced in two stages: first the event of becoming a Christian; then, as a later and distinct event, some special and distinctive operation or gift of the Holy Spirit. In the history of Christian thought this disjointedness was first clearly formulated in the Catholic sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation. According to A. J. Macdonald, the idea that Confirmation confers the gift of the Spirit was held without question until the time of Wyclif. And today in anglo-catholic tradition, although the episcopal laying on of hands is commonly thought of as bestowing a strengthening gift of the Spirit, some continue to speak as though the Spirit is first received at that time. Indeed, since the question was reopened by F. W. Puller in 1880, it has been regularly argued, often with great weight, though not infrequently with greater ingenuity, that far greater significance (in terms of the Spirit) should be attributed to Confirmation than to Baptism.
Frontiers Of Meaning
Authors: Mcintyre John
Published: February 2009

IT is an interesting commentary upon the place of theology in our Western culture and society to observe how many of the phrases we normally associate with it carry overtones of conflict and argument. ‘Science and religion’, ‘faith and reason’, ‘reason and revelation’, ‘history and the Gospels’, ‘proof and belief’—not all of them antithetic to one another, but all of them areas within which there has been in the last century in all cases and much longer in some, much violent discussion. So the picture has been built up of theology as contained within a ring of frontiers, across which it seeks to parley with those on the other side, to exchange meanings, to transfer information, if only to the extent of saying what each thought of the other.On one of these frontiers theology had a long conversation with science as to the understanding of the Genesis story of Creation in the light of evolutionary theories, or of the Christology of the two natures and the one Person in the light of modern psychological views of the unity of personality; across another frontier, with the historians as to what constituted the historically credible or possible and as to whether theological presuppositions distorted historical narrative; across another frontier with the sociologists, as to whether human responsibility could still be affirmed in the midst of the vast tissue of modern economic, social and political pressures; again with the moralists, over the reconciliation of grace and freedom and the imperative of morality with the indicative of faith; while time would fail to tell of the Gideons, the Baraks and the Samsons, who have broken swords with philosophers over the veridical nature of religious knowledge, over the proofs of Divine existence and the nature of Revelation.
2 Corinthians 5.1–10
Authors: Hettlinger R. F.
Published: February 2009

This passage must surely be unique in the variety and contrasts of the interpretations proposed by commentators and theologians. Not only are there at least three main lines of exegesis distinguishable, but within and across these general lines scholars disagree radically as to the source of St. Paul's teaching, its relation to 1 Cor. 15, its value as evidence of the Apostle's thought, and even its basic subject matter. Thus while Windisch (Commentary on II Corinthians, in loc), W. L. Knox (St. Paul and the Church of the Gentiles, pp. 128–43) and Rudolf Bultmann (Theology of the Mew Testament, I, pp. 201–2) regard the passage as evidence that St. Paul had modified traditional Jewish eschatology by introducing Hellenistic themes, Walter Grundmann (articles on εκδημεω,ενδημεω in Kittel's T.W.N.T. II, pp. 62–4), W. D. Davies (Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, pp. 308–14) and Schweitzer (The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, p. 134) maintain that the language can be explained without recourse to direct Hellenistic influence. Whereas Davies (op. cit., pp. 310–11) and Bultmann (op. cit., p. 201) believe that between 1 Cor. 15 and 2 Cor. 5 the Apostle's thought had undergone a significant development, G. B. Stevens (The Pauline Theology, p. 343 note 1), H. A. A. Kennedy (St. Paul's Conception of the Last Things, pp. 264–72), Alfred Plummer (II Corinthians, pp. 160–4), L. S. Thornton (The-Common Life in the Body of Christ, pp. 284–6) and H. L. Goudge (The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, pp. 45–55) deny any such development.
Radical Theology, Evil and Freedom
Authors: Idinopulos Thomas A.
Published: February 2009

A Secure grasp of Thomas Altizer's theology is not an easy achievement. But if I have correctly understood it, I would argue that it turns on an axis of three themes. These themes will be examined and evaluated here. The critical point I will develop is that the manner in which Professor Altizer has set the stage for what he defends as ‘radical theology’ results in two major deficiences—an inability to confront and wrestle with the reality of evil, and a failure to account for freedom as the source of evil.
Discovery and Theology
Authors: Gelwick Richard
Published: February 2009

Among the reforms needed for a relevant Christian theology today is a capacity for discovery. One of the chief powers of modern science is its ability to discover hidden areas of reality and bring them to our understanding. Science by its success in continually finding new levels and dimensions in nature testifies regularly that life is interesting and dynamic. The example of science has yet to be followed in theology which may explain why the layman today does not really expect much from theologians except the trite clichés of the past.
Christians and the uniqueness of christ
Authors: Lipner J.
Published: February 2009

In a short but pithy article entitled ‘Christ's uniqueness’, which appeared recently in an issue of the publication ‘Reform’, Professor John Hick outlines very compactly one of his latest presentations against the traditional Christian acceptance of Jesus' theological pre-eminence. My paper is not intended to present a full-blown argument either in defence or criticism of ‘the uniqueness of Christ’ (Except where another sense is clear, I use ‘Jesus’ and ‘Christ’ throughout as they are commonly used, viz. as proper names referring to one and the same person). More directly, its aim is to point out what appear to be serious objections to a view that is gaining increasing support from thinkers who study the inter-relations between the world religions at various levels; and which for the committed Christian raises fundamental issues any seraiousminded believer, scholar or layman, must eventually face. Professor Hick repeats and summarises here a position he discusses at length elsewhere, and perhaps it is fitting that the stance we shall now examine will be made in the context of a presentation of one of its leading exponents.
What is Theology of Education?
Authors: Hull John M.
Published: February 2009

An understanding of the nature of theology of education, as of any other field of applied or practical theology, will spring from some previous understanding of the nature and functions of theology itself. But here the theorist in the interdisciplinary field is in something of a dilemma. If he fails to make it clear that theology of education rests upon an interpretation of the nature of theology, his treatment will tend to be superficial. He will be exploring the theological implications of education, but he will not have shown himself aware of the implications for theology of the methods he uses in his exploration. Since his aim is to elucidate implications for theology, he must turn his scrutiny inwards towards himself as theologian, as well as outwards towards education. On the other hand, in setting forth the understanding of theology which informs his work in applied theology, he makes his work more controversial, since there will be other understandings of theology, and other understandings of applied theology will flow from these to relativise his own methodology. Or it may be thought that the interdisciplinary field necessarily rests upon this and only this understanding of theology, and then those whose understanding of theology differs will conclude that the whole interdisciplinary enterprise is misconceived. A relatively under-developed interdisciplinary field such as theology of education is particularly susceptible to this misunderstanding.
Karl Barth and St. Anselm's Theological Programme
Authors: Watson Gordon
Published: February 2009

It would be difficult not to agree with the judgment of Barth himself concerning his Anselm book; that, although of all his books he had written it with the greatest love, in America and Europe it was of all his books the least read. This is somewhat surprising, considering what is thought by most commentators to be the decisive influence of this book on the formulation of Barth's dogmatic method from 1931 onward. That is after the critical turn which Barth made subsequent to the publication of his first systematic attempt, Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf. This paper attempts to assess how Barth understood Anselm's theological programme and in what respects this understanding evinces a characteristic systematic weakness in Barth's own theological project.
Man the Creature
Authors: Hardy Daniel W.
Published: February 2009

It is, of course, no secret that theology is a tissue of many things in interrelation. Begin at any point in it, and you will quickly be led to all the others—or at least the need for all the others. Eschatology requires one to talk about judgment and reconciliation, and they require talking about covenant, but discussion of the covenant requires finding the circumstances or context of the covenant, fallen creatures; and ‘fallen creatures’ brings one to talk about the creature, and in turn to treat his context, creation; and any elucidation of creation requires discussion of the action of God. So it may be seen that each notion demands another as an immediate context, and others as an ultimate context.
‘Our Knowledge of God’ in the Theology of John Baillie
Authors: Klinefelter Donald S.
Published: February 2009

I have chosen this title for two reasons: first, to indicate that this essay will focus primarily on issues of religious epistemology; and, second, to acknowledge with gratitude my indebtedness to the work of that brilliant but frequently neglected Scottish theologian and churchman of the first half of this century, the late Principal John Baillie of New College, Edinburgh.
The Church of the Reigning Lord
Authors: Louden R. Stuart
Published: February 2009

We can trace a revival of theology in the Reformed Churches in the last quarter of a century. The new theological interest merits being called a revival of theology, for there has been a fresh and more thorough attention given to certain realities, either ignored or treated with scant notice for a considerable time previously.

First among such realities now receiving more of the attention which their relevance and authority deserve, is the Bible, the record of the Word of God. There is an invigorating and convincing quality about theology which is Biblical throughout, being based on the witness of the Scriptures as a whole. The valuable results of careful Biblical scholarship had had an adverse effect on theology in so far as theologians had completely separated the Old Testament from the New in their treatment of Biblical doctrine, or in expanding Christian doctrine, had spoken of the theological teaching of the Synoptic Gospels, the Pauline Epistles, the Johannine writings, and so on, as if there were no such thing as one common New Testament witness. It is being seen anew that the Holy Scriptures contain a complete history of God's saving action. The presence of the complete Bible open at the heart of the Church, recalls each succeeding Christian generation to that one history of God's saving action, to which the Church is the living witness. The New Testament is one, for its Lord is one, and Christian theology must stand four-square on the foundation of its whole teaching.
A Question of Words
Authors: Riddell J. G.
Published: February 2009

Every modern estimate of the religious situation in our country has laid stress on the drift from religion which is increasingly apparent and ever more serious in its effects. Not only is there widespread indifference to the claims of Christianity, but the separation between those within the Churches and those outside grows more decisive and complete. In habit and outlook, in conduct and ways of life, the contrast between Christian and non-Christian standards becomes more and more clearly marked.

Every diagnosis of this situation and every prescription for its remedy raises the question of words and their use. Even if we do not agree that the drift from religion is due to outworn theological terminology or to meaningless pulpit jargon alone, we must recognise that misunderstanding and indifference are often increased by the strangeness of the Christian vocabulary in the ears of the modern man. “ We feel bound to make some attempt to translate certain theological statements of the Eternal Gospel into language such as present-day hearers might themselves employ to express spiritual needs of which they are acutely conscious.” In making this statement the authors of Towards the Conversion of England, (p. 24) quote from the Archbishops' Report on Training for the Ministry, (para. 107): “Full attention should be given to training ordinands in the power of translating the technical language of theology into terms understood by ordinary people.”
Theological Models for Therapy
Authors: Taylor W. S.
Published: February 2009

For more than sixty years theological thinking has been influenced by developments in modern psychology, as even a cursory examination of the theological literature of the past half century will indicate. The movement has been largely one way: a borrowing of methods and concepts from psychology by the theologian. Now this situation is changing. There are signs of the beginning of a two-way movement, with psychology learning something from theology as well as contributing to theology. We may be at the beginning of a significant period of creative dialogue between the two.
The theology of themes
Authors: Hull J. M.
Published: February 2009

When in the nineteen-twenties and thirties the first Agreed Syllabuses of Religious Education were being devised, the main drive behind their formulation was theology. There was of course some recognition given to the need to adapt materials for the various ages of the pupils, but the main inspiration was theological not psychological. The hesitancy created by biblical criticism was giving way to a new confidence that the idea of God's progressive revelation of himself was the key to understanding the Bible. The new syllabuses were organised around this belief; God had spoken, and the task of Religious Education was to convey to pupils the drama of the divine unfolding, in the history of Israel, in the person of Jesus Christ, and on through the history of his people, the church.
The Authority of Grace in the Theology of P. T. Forsyth
Authors: Worrall B. G.
Published: February 2009

‘There is one note indispensable to a Positive Gospel, and indeed supreme; it is the note of Authority.’ So wrote P. T. Forsyth in 1904 (‘The Need for a Positive Gospel’, London Quarterly Review, vol. CI, p. 81). It was a theme which dominated his thought and found a place in all his writing. He insisted that the question of authority was the basic religious question, and that the church of his time lacked power for the lack of an adequate answer to it. As far as he was concerned the answer was, in principle at least, clear, and he never tired of giving it. For the Christian authority came from experience of redemption through Jesus Christ.
Karl Barth And The Development Of Christian Doctrine
Authors: Gunton Colin
Published: February 2009

It seems impossible to conceive of theology without some notion of progress. The Christian theologian is related to at least some of those who have preceded him, and his justification for writing at all must be a belief that he can say something better than they, whether this is conceived as saying the same things more intelligibly and authoritatively, or saying something that has not been said before. Interest must then centre not only in whether a theologian believes development to be possible, but also and chiefly in his conception of the character of that development. There may be a model of some kind in mind, or possibly a number of models, more or less successfully integrated. Whatever they are, they will be aids to a thinker's understanding of his place in history, of his relation to those events that he takes to be significant for this place, and of the reasons for the significance of those events.
Pneumatology and process theology
Authors: Woodhouse H. F.
Published: February 2009

This article attempts to take some ideas from process theology which may enlighten and help us to develop a deeper understanding of pneumatology. Pneumatology is the theological area where fresh thinking and new presentation is most justified because, as Berdyaev remarked, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is the most undeveloped part of Christian doctrine. It may be impossible to provide an exact precise formulation. We might frame ‘an open-ended’ doctrine, yet there is need to clarify our beliefs and our knowledge of the operation of the Spirit more fully. It has been remarked that even back in the New Testament St. Paul put forward ‘ideas which do not fully harmonise’. Gregory of Nazianzus, writing in the fifth century, said that people were very confused about the Spirit. He also said we live in an age of the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. Can ‘process theology’ help?
Language Theory and Analysis in Augustine
Authors: Ayers Robert H.
Published: February 2009

In spite of the fact that it is often ignored, one of the interesting features in the thought of some of the early Church Fathers, was a considerable skill at language and logical analysis. Given the basic liberal disciplines of Greco-Roman education it is not surprising that those Fathers who were fortunate enough to receive formal education were able to utilise the skills of rhetoric and logic as well as other skills of the liberal arts. Also it is ńot surprising that later great thinkers of the church informed by the liberal arts and by the writings of the earlier Fathers should make use of these skills. This is surely the case with Saint Augustine.
Word and Sacrament in the Fourth Gospel
Authors: Lindars Barnabas
Published: February 2009

Word and sacrament belong together in the Christian life. It has been one of the achievements of the renewal of Christendom in the present century to overcome the deepseated sense of opposition between them. This opposition can be traced to the polarisation of theological emphases in the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The divine activity in performance of the sacraments was stressed to such a degree that they appeared to be almost magical acts, encouraging a superstitious approach on the part of the people. The Protestant reaction placed all the emphasis on the word of God, appealing to the heart and the mind. There could be no operation of the grace of God in the soul except through the opening of the heart to God, through personal assent to his word and through the commitment of faith. Now it is recognised that sacramental acts have a social function in the organic life of the church, that they preach to the people through symbols and actions, so that they require (and also evoke) the proper dispositions for receiving the grace of God, and that the inclusion of scripture readings and a homily in the course of sacramental services produces a fruitful interaction between them. This recovery of the balance between word and sacrament has proved beneficial for the life of the church. It has also marked a return to the perspective of the New Testament.
Context and Variety in Religious Language
Authors: Prozesky Martin H.
Published: February 2009

There has been much discussion of the logical propriety of religious language in recent years. The debate has been one in which lines of attack and defence have been fairly strongly drawn, often in an atmosphere of contention in which the humbler task of establishing the nature and context of religious utterance has been comparatively neglected. Without gain-saying the importance of exploring the logical implications of religious language it may yet be contended that those implications will be more clearly perceived when the facts about the subject are better known.
The Bible, the Holy Spirit, and Human Powers
Authors: Milavec Donald A.
Published: February 2009

This essay is written out of a sense of urgency. Christians have emerged from two centuries of vigorous battles with scientists, philosophers, and historians who attempted to reduce the Bible to their own disciplines. Under these battle conditions, Christians have fashioned the weapon of an unassailable supernaturalism which attested to the divine origins of the Sacred Scriptures and to the divine assistance necessary for infallibly interpreting them. Supernaturalism has been tried in conflict and has not been found wanting. The successes of supernaturalism, however, have so blocked our access to (and distorted our sense of) the natural origins of the Scriptures and the natural skills necessary to interpret them, that the Christian's best weapon is rapidly working for his own self-destruction. In swinging it so mightily, he has lost his balance. And, while he has saved his own life, his unbalanced position is unwittingly calculated to injure his own children—those who were to be the future generation of Christians.
Rudolf Otto: The Context of His Thought
Authors: Almond Philip
Published: February 2009

In Otto's mature philosophy of religion, as presented inDas Heilige, religions are viewed as consisting of both rational and non-rational elements. While religions have to do with theoretical and moral ideas, they are nonetheless not finally dependent on these. Rather, these rational components are ultimately referable to an object or ‘subject’ that can only be apprehended in a non-rational ‘unique original feeling-response’ that is the innermost core of all religions. The analysis of this non-rational numinous core of religion, and of its connection to religion's rational factors, is the overall aim ofDas Heilige, indeed of Otto's work as a whole.
Ethics and Transcendence in Bonhoeffer
Authors: Sutherland Stewart R.
Published: February 2009

This paper will use some of Bonhoeffer's writings as the basis for an examination of the concept of transcendence within the context of religious belief. The intention of the paper is to present an account of the nature of transcendence in ethical terms. The conclusions will include an assessment of the significance of this for the discussion of the relation between religion and morality.
The Non-Moral Element in Kant's ‘Moral Proof’ of the Existence of God
Authors: Michalson Gordon E.
Published: February 2009

In a discussion in this journal of Kant's ‘moral proof’ of the existence of God Peter Byrne describes what he takes to be the ‘fundamental incoherence’ of Kant's position. Kant, it is well known, wishes to hold together two claims concerning our epistemological relationship to God: the claim that we can have no ‘theoretical knowledge’ of God's existence; and the claim that we nonetheless have ‘moral certainty’ of God's existence. The first claim arises out of the Kantian criticism of the pretensions of speculative metaphysics, a criticism developed most rigorously in the Critique of Pure Reason. The second claim, in turn, arises out of Kant's so-called ‘moral proof which appears in skeletal form in the firstCritique and acquires more detail edelaboration in the Critique of Practical Reason.
Language for God and Feminist Language: Problems and Principles
Authors: Frye Roland M.
Published: February 2009

Language for God is not equivalent to the kinds of naming we use in ordinary speech. We say that what ‘we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet,’ and we recognize that ordinary names for creatures are subject to human custom, choice, and change. According to biblical religion, on the other hand, only God can name God. Distinctive Christian experiences and beliefs are expressed through distinctive language about God, and the changes in that language proposed by feminist theologians do not merely add a few unfamiliar words for God, as some would like to think, but in fact introduce beliefs about God that differ radically from those inherent in Christian faith, understanding, and Scripture. Briefly stated, that is the argument this essay will systematically expand.
Spiritual Circumcision in Early Christianity
Authors: Ferguson Everett
Published: February 2009

Modern ecumenical discussions and liturgical reform have given new interest to the ceremonies of Christian initiation. The Reformed churches have traditionally held the view that baptism takes the place of circumcision in the economy of salvation. The interpretations of circumcision in early Christian and patristic literature would suggest a modification, or at least a nuance, to that view.
2 Corinthians v. 1–10 versus Platonism
Authors: Glasson T. Francis
Published: February 2009

This passage has aroused much debate about the possibility that Paul is here using Greek rather than Hebrew concepts. Some, like W. L. Knox, have contended that in order to appeal to Hellenistic hearers, the apostle, after his alleged failure at Athens, realised that he must move away from Hebrew categories. (Cf the chapter ‘The Failure of Eschatology’ in St Paul and the Church of the Gentiles.) Others maintain that Paul's language and concepts in this passage can all be explained from his Hebrew background; e.g. W. D. Davies in Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, ch. 10).