bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Parmenides, B 8. 4
Authors: Wilson John R.
Published: February 2009

The text of Parmenides 8. 4 is unusually corrupt. Most recent critics, however, agree that Plutarch's printed in the later editions of DielsKranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, should be excluded in favour of As G. E. L. Owen remarks (‘Eleatic Questions’, CQ [1960], 102), ‘[Plutarch's] is inappropriate since is to be proved from and not vice versa’.
NikoΣtpatoΣ ΔieitpeΦoyΣ ΣkambΩniΔhΣ
Authors: Fornara Charles W.
Published: February 2009

Publication by Eugene Vanderpool of the ostrakon with the name (Inv. No. P 27691) vindicates an inference made by Gustav Gilbert, Beiträge zur innern Geschichte Athens, 144 f. There he claimed that Nicostratus son of Dieitrephes (P.A. 11011) and Nicostratus (P.A. 11051), who is mentioned by Aristophanes, Wasps 81 f, were identical. Gilbert supposed that the qualities implied of Nicostratus in that passage were of the type to endear him to Nicias.
‘That Was No Lady, That Was …’
Authors: Fltton† J. W.
Published: February 2009

The tradition that Socrates had two wives at once, Xanthippe and Myrto, though an established one among ancient scholars, has met with blank incredulity in modern times. It impugns the character of Socrates, who has been established by Plato's martyrology as the unimpeachable patron saint of Western philosophy. And it appears to cast a slur on Greek marriage—not that the guiding lines of this somewhat ramshackle institution are perfectly known.
A Note on Aristotle, De Anima, A. 3, 406b1–3
Authors: De Ley H.
Published: February 2009

Ever since the first edition of the De anima by Trendelenburg, modern scholars have been in trouble as to the exact interpretation of this phrase and especially of the expression Although the right one, as we think, was suggested a long time ago by Shorey, a restatement of it seems justified, because the later treatment of the problem in the edition of Sir David Ross has apparently established a different (and, as we believe, a wrong) communis opinio.

The first detailed examination of the whole passage was given by Bonitz, who saw no other possibility of making the text render the required sense than to alter This is indeed ‘a rather improbable corruption’. It is also clear that such an emendation of a reading defended by the consensus of all our manuscripts should only be accepted if there really is no other way out.
Horace, Odes 4. 1
Authors: Bradshaw A. T. von S.
Published: February 2009

The introductory ode of Horace's fourth book has been given comparatively little critical attention, although it might have been expected to arouse exceptional interest, being the first-fruits of the lyricist's autumnal harvest. The neglect is due partly to the poem's deceptive simplicity but much more to the unease which it arouses in Horace's admirers: Venus does not seem the most fitting deity for the poet laureate to invoke, and moreover this is not so much an invocation as an appeal to be left alone; the young man who is the subject of Horace's eulogy was hardly a person of much eminence at the time of writing, though he became prominent later and is now prosopographically well endowed; above all, there is the disturbing picture of the elderly poet testily acknowledging an amorous urge and surrendering his dignity in pederastic dreams.
The European Parliamentary Assembly: Techniques of Emerging “Political Control”
Authors: Stein Eric
Published: February 2009

The English parliamentary system emerged from the dramatic struggle between the English Parliament and the Crown over the principle of political or “democratic” control. For leaders of the Commons such as Edward Coke a single false step beyond the line of the sovereign's endurance meant the Tower of London. Another struggle in a different key and on a different level has begun with little publicity on the Continent. The European Parliamentary Assembly in the newly established European Communities is seeking to assert some degree of control and influence not only over the mushrooming Commissions, but also over the powerful Councils of Ministers. Obviously, there is no danger of an irate Council of Ministers confining the obstreperous parliamentarians to the dungeons of Strasbourg. Moreover, the European Parliamentary Assembly is far from being a parliament. Members of the Community “executive” such as Jean Monnet have encouraged rather than fought the Assembly. In these as in other respects the analogy with the development of the English parliamentary system must not be pressed too far. But the broad contours of the contest, the pressures and counter-pressures, the use and abuse of legal argument, and the reliance on genuine and fabricated precedent offer an interesting study in the development of a parliamentary body.
France, NATO and European Security
Authors: Furniss Edgar S.
Published: February 2009

It is no secret from even the most cursory reader of the daily press that NATO has of late been undergoing what is commonly referred to as a “crisis”. Four factors seem to me crucial components of the difficult problems with which the fifteen nations are wrestling.
A Selected Bibliography on Regionalism and Regional Arrangements
Authors: Padelford Norman J.
Published: February 2009

The development of regional organizations and collective defense arrangements of a regional nature has been one of the principal features of international relations since 1945. The literature on the subject has already become voluminous. This bibliography is designed to provide a key to some of the principal writings on the subject found in the more generally available periodicals and other sources in the English and French languages. An effort has been made to index the basic documents establishing the different regional arrangements together with materials giving reliable summaries of what has been done in each area and throwing light on organizational and political issues.
The Changed Economic Position of Western Europe: Some Implications for United States Policy and International Organization
Authors: Diebold William
Published: February 2009

By the end of the 1950's Western Europe reached an economic position so different from that of a decade before that major new questions arose about the area's place in the world economy. It follows that the assumptions of United States economic policy toward Europe need to be re-examined in the new circumstances. Of central importance are questions about the degree and type of economic regionalism that the countries of Western Europe will pursue in the future. Their experience in the last decade and a half has provided unprecedented evidence of the compatibility of regionalism and globalism in some circumstances. As a result we are past the point at which the two tendencies can be thought of as necessarily sharply antithetical. American policy, which all along has sought to encourage a dual approach, has now to find ways of striking a new balance between regionalism and globalism, since the new circumstances have removed some of the important assumptions of the old policy.
The United Nations and Its Public
Authors: Swift Richard N.
Published: February 2009

No governmental functions are traditionally more suspect than those relating to public information. National legislators always demur at the public relations work of civil servants. They inevitably assume (at times, with good reason) that appropriating funds to inform people about the performance of government agencies only helps to preserve the bureaucracy and to create and nurture a public which ultimately will bring pressure to bear upon the legislature itself.
Trends in United Nations Administration
Authors: Sharp Walter R.
Published: February 2009

The Soviet attack on the United Nations during the Fifteenth General Assembly, along with the Congo operation, has served to dramatize the emergence of the World Organization as a far-flung administrative instrumentality. Initially organized primarily to manage meetings and to provide clearing-house functions, the UN Secretariat has progressively taken on a wide variety of “action research” projects both in New York and in the regional economic commissions. More important still, it has become engaged in a complex congeries of field programs which now absorb roughly half the time of its professional personnel. Not only does it help to plan economic, social, and technical programs of increasing magnitude, but it undertakes to implement such programs around the globe—often in cooperation with one or more of the specialized agencies. Certain of these programs, e.g., the Special Fund and OPEX (Operational, Executive, and Administrative Personnel), owe their design in large part to ideas originating within the UN bureaucracy: spurred by the Secretary-General's leadership the staff has dared to improvise and to innovate as the political climate has permitted.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Authors: Belshaw H.
Published: February 2009

One of the first of the specialized agencies of the United Nations to become active, the Food and Agriculture Organization has elicited interest beyond the specialized field of agricultural economists. Attempting as it does to solve one of the very basic problems of the world, that of an adequate food supply, the organization represents a significant and hopeful international attempt to create a world in which there may actually exist “freedom from want.” The objectives of FAO, as formally expressed in the preamble to the constitution, read as follows:

“The nations accepting this constitution being determined to promote the common welfare by furthering separate and collective action on their part for the purpose of raising levels of nutrition and standards of living of the people under their jurisdiction, securing improvements in the efficiency of the production of all food and agricultural products, bettering the conditions of rural populations, and thus contributing toward an expanding world economy, hereby establish the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.”
Peace-Making, 1946
Authors: Mosely Philip E.
Published: February 2009

The first days of December, 1946, saw the completion of the first round of the peace treaties. Except for the verification of the texts and the final arrangements for signature, the treaties with Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland were now ready, after fifteen months of back-breaking and often heart-breaking effort. The initial installment of peace-making had, in fact, taken more than fifteen months, for several of the thorniest questions—notably, the disposition of the Italian colonies, freedom of commercial navigation on the Danube, and Italian reparation—had received their preliminary going-over at Potsdam. And at least one question—the disposition of the Italian colonies—had been post-poned for later settlement.
Mythology and Theological Language
Authors: McLelland Joseph C.
Published: February 2009

Daniel Lamont, I think it was, once remarked that theologians should read more poetry. This insight into the nature of theological language has profound relevance for our contemporary concern with the problem of communicating the Gospel to modern man. Theology, as language about God, may be regarded in one sense as faced with an impossible task: ‘The maker and father of this Universe it is difficult to discover; nor, if he were discovered, could he be declared to all men.’ This hiddenness of the divine being is reflected even in the historical beginnings of the biblical revelation, in the cryptic tautology, ‘I am that I am’ (Exod. 3.14). Yet the fact of revelation was taken to mean, within Israel at least, not that the divine aseity was now compromised, but that this very self-sufficiency was revealed in terms of a purpose of love towards this people. The revelation was instrumental to the fulfilment of that purpose: the divine condescension used creaturely forms to communicate its truth and life to men. Therefore the theological language which sets forth this communicative revelation will be proportionately indirect or analogical.
The Sovereignty of God in the Natural World
Authors: Mackay Donald M.
Published: February 2009

The logical consequences of divine sovereignty for human freedom have been disputed for so long that one might doubt whether anything new remains to be said on the matter. Recent debate on the related topic of ‘Brain and Will’ has however brought up a logical point which would seem to apply equally in the theological context and which throws fresh doubt on the coherence of the traditional antithesis between predestination and human freedom. My object in this paper is to outline the argument and bring home some of its implications.
Baptisma in the New Testament
Authors: Lampe G. W. H.
Published: February 2009

Baptizo and baptisma are words whose lexicographical history either originates in, or has been radically altered by, Christian usage. In the LXX the former, in addition to an instance of its common classical meaning, to overwhelm or to sink, occurs in a quite untechnical sense in a few religious contexts. It is employed to describe Naaman dipping in the Jordan (4 Reg. 5.14), Judith performing purificatory ablutions during her sojourn with the unclean Gentiles, and ritual washing after contact with a dead body (Judith 7.7; Sirach 31, 34.30). Here the word retains its original sense of dip. It is only with the Evangelists' account of John that it takes on a technical significance and denotes a particular religious rite.
The multitude in the synoptic gospels
Authors: Citron Bernhard
Published: February 2009

The great German scholar Martin Dibelius is said to have expressed his admiration for the Scottish Church during a visit to Scotland some years ago by declaring: ‘You have not yet lost the masses.’ The attitude of the masses towards the Church largely depends on the attitude of the Church towards the masses. This applies to the modern Church as much as it applied to the Church in which the Gospel was first proclaimed. Martin Dibelius himself stated in his work on Form-criticism (Die Formengeschichte des Evangeliums, 1933, pp. 50, 54, 64) that in the Gospels the multitude forms an impersonal choir whose main function it is to express amazement and admiration.
Talk about Religious Talk: Various Approaches to the Nature of Religious Language
Authors: Gill Jerry H.
Published: February 2009

The response of the theological world to contemporary developments in empirical and language philosophy is beginning to take on a more definite and active form. Books and articles are now appearing which deal with everything from the semantics of the Old Testament1and the Church Fathers2to parallels between language analysis and Karl Barth's theology.3In addition, anthologies in the philosophy of religion are now including a section on ‘The Nature of Religious Language’.4

As the quantity and quality of this response increase there arises a need for a survey and classification of the various approaches of which it is composed. It is the purpose of this article to provide such a survey, and to make some evaluational comments and suggestions. It should be mentioned at the out-set that it is impossible completely to classify approaches; and yet there are similarities and dissimilarities among these approaches which enable one to point out ‘family resemblances’.

Obviously, such a survey cannot come close to being exhaustive, but certain tendencies can be noted. Moreover, an effort will be made to classify the various approaches according to a continuum. Those that are dealt with first tend towards maintaining the autonomy of religious language, while those that are discussed further along in the article would prefer to relate religious language to empirical experience. In between there are those who would advocate something similar to an eclectic view.
Lessing's Problem and Kierkegaard's Answer
Authors: Campbell Richard
Published: February 2009

Accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason.

It is a tribute to the perspicacity of Lessing and Kierkegaard that their way of investigating the problem of the role of historical investigation in the task of theological construction has set the tone of subsequent discussion. The centrality of their problem in our time is shown up by the way Diem depicts Lessing's question and Kierkegaard's answer as the starting-point of the contemporary theological debate.1 Diem's analysis here is penetrating, even if it only shows up the need for that starting-point to be critically examined.

In this article, after an examination of Kierkegaard's general position, what I wish to suggest is (1) that the problem as Lessing has posed it is insoluble, and thus Kierkegaard's paradoxical solution is no solution; (2) that nevertheless, despite his clear dependence on Lessing, Kierkegaard has restated the problem in the only way which shows any promise for a Christian theology; and (3) that the pursuit of this solution requires that faith be not sealed off from ‘natural inquiry’, and consequently, a serious grappling with ordinary historical problems is unavoidable in Christian theology—which is the opposite conclusion to that which Kierkegaard himself drew (and which is widely accepted at the present time).

There does seem some truth in saying that any large-scale endeavour to work through a comprehensive programme of thought produces the radical critic who proclaims, after the manner of a prophet, that the programme is wrong-headed and misconceived, and who himself works through the programme for just one reason—to show, once and for all, that the only thing to do is to abandon an impossible investigation. Søren Kierkegaard was such a critic.
The Christian Understanding of Time
Authors: Brunner Emil
Published: February 2009

The Christian understanding of time is characterised by an event which is the very centre of the Christian message, and of which it is said that it happened once and for all. This ephapax is evidently an essential part of the theology of St. Paul and of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Christian conceives of time like everything else from this centre, i.e. from Jesus Christ, and therefore it is from this centre that our reflection upon the essence of time has to start. This must be stated explicitly because another point of departure has been suggested by traditional theology. Certainly it was an act of great intuition on the part of St. Augustine when in his Confessions he dared, for the first time in history, to put forward the idea that the world was neither timeless and eternal, nor created at a certain point in the time-series, but that the world and time were created together. Therefore if the world and time have the same beginning in creation, it becomes meaningless to ask what God did before the creation of the world. The whole schema of before and after, the framework of time, cannot be regarded as existing before creation, but as coming into being with creation, itself a temporal fact.
History and Reformation
Authors: Torrance T. F.
Published: February 2009

In A Recent publication, Professor Wladimir Weidlé of the Russian Academy in Paris has some things to say about early Christian Art which are of intense interest to the Church historian. Unlike the Christian artist of other ages, he declares, “the early Christian painter or sculptor made no attempt, even unconsciously, to let the form of his work answer in some degree to its specific religious and Christian content… The form in these paintings and carvings simply carries their content, and makes no attempt to express or embody it… What is most remarkable is to find this indifference not to be confined to form in the ordinary sense of the word, but to extend to the inward form—the dramatic or poetic rendering of the given subject… We find no attempt made to imagine how a thing must have looked at the time when it happened. The only peculiarity here to be seen is that the inward form is, in this art, simplified and condensed to the vanishing point; something there must be, but there is as little as possible.” (The Baptism of Art, pp. 8, 9.)
Martin Luther on Scripture and Authority and the Church, Ministry and Sacraments
Authors: Johansen J. H.
Published: February 2009

Throughout his mature life Martin Luther was actively concerned with the problems of interpreting the Scriptures. His biblical commentaries, which bulk large in his collected works, and which, one suspects, have never been adequately evaluated in determining the content of his theology, deal over and again with this subject, which clearly had a certain centrality in his thought. His earliest commentaries show his indebtedness to the traditions of medieval exegesis, but they give indication also of his independence in the use of older methods. In his first commentaries on Galatians, for example, we find him expressing radical dissatisfaction with the medieval fourfold method of interpretation: ‘Verum quicquid sit de illis sensibus, certum est hoc neque apostolos neque antiquos doctores observare, qui tropologiam, allegoriam, misticam seu misteria et spiritualem sensus prorsus indiscrete accipiunt.… Nam ista quadriga (etsi non reprobem) non scripturae autoritate nee patrum usu nee grammatica satis ratione juvatur.’ He did, especially in the early commentaries, use elements of this fourfold interpretation, though not in a mechanical way, but he was insistent, as early as 1516, on the primacy of the historical meaning: ‘Rectius igitur … primus historicus dicendus est.’ He contended, furthermore, that earlier glosses and commentaries were to be used only in a sensible way, to illuminate rather than obscure the reading of the texts.
Quo Vadis? Tradition From Irenaeus To Humani Generis
Authors: Oberman Heiko A.
Published: February 2009

This year's topic for the Dudleian Lecture is designated as ‘Roman Catholicism and Protestantism’, or, in the words of the statutes, this lecture is intended: ‘For the detecting and convicting and exposing the idolatry of the Romish church, their tyranny, usurpations, damnable heresies, fatal errors, abominable superstitions and other crying wickednesses in their high places; and finally, that the Church of Rome is that mystical Babylon, that man of sin, that apostate church, spoken of in the New Testament.’.
Israel's Creed: Sung, Not Signed
Authors: Anderson G. W.
Published: February 2009

In his introduction to the volume, Letters of Principal James Denney to His Family and Friends, James Moffatt records among a somewhat exiguous collection of Denney's obiter dicta these words: ‘The Church's Confession of faith should be sung, not signed.’ Though Denney was in some ways a champion of orthodoxy, he was also, on occasion, something of a trial to the orthodox; and it may be that there are those who judge that the remark is only what might have been expected of a man whose wife could say to him: ‘James, I think your preaching style has greatly improved since you took to reading those French novels.’ However, it is not my present intention either to defend or to impugn the orthodoxy of Denney's dictum. Since Moffatt has given no indication of the context in which it was uttered, I have taken the liberty of applying it, in the title of this address, to the Old Testament. So to apply it is to echo what the late Dr H. Wheeler Robinson once wrote: ‘the Book of Psalms is not only the living and passionate utterance of Israel's piety at its highest, but also supplies the data for an epitome of Old Testament theology.’ The elaboration of that theme, so far as that may be attempted within the limits imposed by the present occasion, is the task which I have set myself in this Presidential Address.
From Paul to Jesus
Authors: Duncan G. S.
Published: February 2009

It is better that the theme of a Presidential Address should be too general than that it should be too specific. On this occasion I propose that together we traverse familiar ground. Beginning with the broad river of Christian doctrine as we have it in the Epistles of St. Paul, let us take our way up-stream, trying to trace afresh some of the channels by which it is linked with the living springs that come from Jesus.
Karl Barth on the Doctrine of the Inspiration of the Scriptures in the History of the Church
Authors: Smith Noel
Published: February 2009

In the second volume of his Church Dogmatics (1.2) Barth has a long and valuable note in which he gives us a concise summary of the views that have been held from the Fathers to the Reformers on this question of the nature of the inspiration of the Scriptures. He deals first with the Pauline passages 1 Cor. 2.6–16, and 2 Cor. 3.4–18, insisting in his exegesis on the fact that, whilst Paul no doubt knew the theories of the Talmud and the Alexandrian-Jewish school about the divine-human origin of the Torah, his assertion of a special inspiration of the Scripture is always and only in connexion with his view of the present confirmation of God of the Scripture through the work of the Holy Spirit. Barth continues:

According to 2 Cor. 3 everything depends for him (sc. Paul) on that; without this work of the Spirit the Scripture is and remains veiled, however great its glory and however it may have come about. This is the case in and through the veiling of the countenance of Moses (Ex. 34) which foreshadows the reading of Scripture to-day in the Synagogue: the divinely prescribed is there, the human beings reading it are there, but over their hearts is a veil; their thinking is hardened—the open book is for them in actual fact a closed book. Only their return to the Lord could remove the veil and open up to them the way into the Scripture (p. 571).
Preaching Forgiveness to the Hindu
Authors: Stewart William
Published: February 2009

Some years ago, on Christmas Eve, I was invited to explain the significance of Christmas to a group of Hindu students in one of the Institutions at Sevagram (Mr. Gandhi's Ashram). In the discussion which followed the address, the thoughtful Principal of this Institution said something like this: “Would it not be correct to say that the real difference between you Christians and ourselves is that you teach that forgiveness is possible, while we believe it is impossible and the idea immoral?”
The Order of Public Worship in the Reformed Churches
Authors: Niesel Wilhelm
Published: February 2009

Comparison between the Simple Order of Service of the Reformed Church and that of the Lutheran with its richer content has led to the opinion that Luther merely purged the Mass of some objectionable elements; the Reformers on the contrary totally reconstructed the divine service according to the principle of their knowledge of God. Research into the history of the liturgy has proved that such is not the case. The Strasbourg order of public worship which was brought by Calvin to Geneva and thence passed on to a wider circle of Churches shows clearly its derivation from the medieval Mass, as with the majority of Lutheran orders. The sermon is inserted between two parts of the service which have their origin in the Mass, and the concluding portion of the service is so shaped that Communion may at any time be included in it.
The New Barth;Observations on Karl Barth's Doctrine of Man
Authors: Brunner Emil
Published: February 2009

The sixth volume of the Basel theologian's monumental Dogmatics (Church Dogmatics, Vol. III, Part 2) is not only, like the earlier volumes, a significant work, but like the fifth, and even more than it a work full of surprises. I have no hesitation in associating myself with the judgment of my Danish colleague Prenter,2 who calls it “the culmination so far of the whole powerful work”. Barth devotes several pages of this volume to a notable discussion of my own anthropology, published fifteen years ago (Man in Revolt). In it he puts to me the question whether we mean the same thing or not (p. 155 ff.). There arises thus for me not merely the occasion but also the necessity of abandoning our mutual practice of not reviewing one another's works. The following pages are not intended to provide a survey of the whole work but only to bring out some specially important points. Naturally, then, they will be fully understood only by those who have some knowledge of both works. I have already given a brief affirmative reply to Barth's question in the second volume of my own Dogmatics (p. 95) after a hasty glance through his Doctrine of Man which came into my hands only after the completion of my own MS., but feel myself now obliged to state more precisely the reasons for this assent and to add some qualifications.
The Judgment of God
Authors: Robinson W.
Published: February 2009

That the Judgment of God is a Biblical notion of profound significance cannot be denied. But it has never been popular with man, and in some ages of the Church's history—apart from the Liturgy—it has been entirely dormant. In a recent article in The Congregational Quarterly Dr Lovell Cocks describes the Edwardian Nonconformist minister as one “who endeared himself to his congregation as a big, brotherly fellow by having ‘no use for theology’”—a very true description of more than Nonconformist ministers in that age of prosperity—and then says that the same man to-day would “merely write himself down as a charlatan or an ass”. I wonder how true this is! Have we really so completely left behind that Edwardian optimism? I doubt it. The heritage of the second half of the nineteenth century, the age of progress and expansion, is perhaps not so easily got rid of as that. Whilst it is true that amongst theologians in the past thirty years there has been a revival of the notions of the Holiness of God, the Judgment of God, and of eschatological matters in general; and whilst Barth and Brunner and Niebuhr are names to conjure with, I am inclined to think that the general run of men and women, including many preachers, are still prone to cling to the comfortable and somewhat sentimental doctrines of the Love of God which were fashionable amongst theologians a generation ago.
The Number of the Sacraments
Authors: George A. Raymond
Published: February 2009

The Amsterdam literature has pointed out afresh the well-known fact that one of the points at issue between the Catholic and Protestant traditions is the number of the Sacraments, and it may well be that a discussion of this question would bring to light some of the other differences between these two traditions. An attempt is made in this paper to outline a Protestant view of the question. It is clear that “Catholic” is used here in a sense different from that which it bears in the historic creeds. Moreover, the contrast made between Catholic (chiefly Anglo-Catholic) and Protestant (chiefly non-Anglican) views is not intended to deny that the Church of England is in a sense Protestant, or to raise the question how far in loyalty to its formularies it can be other than Protestant.
Christian Vocation in the Missionary Enterprise
Authors: Stewart William
Published: February 2009

At this time when the Church is passing into the centre of the missionary enterprise, the World Dominion Press have reissued a powerful book first published in 1927: The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church, and the Causes which Hinder It, by Roland Allen. The passionate argument of this book seems to have been little heeded by the ‘Missions’ which then dominated the scene. It deserves a better hearing now. Assuredly the Church must think and think again before it will be satisfied that it must simply take over and perpetuate the pattern of work hitherto familiar.
Soteria
Authors: Wilson R. McL.
Published: February 2009

In the Gospel according to St. John it is written that ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have ever-lasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.’ In these familiar words is summed up the message of the Bible as a whole, and of the New Testament in particular. In spite of all that may be said of sin and depravity, of judgment and the wrath of God, the last word is one not of doom but of salvation. The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is a Gospel of salvation, of deliverance and redemption. The news that was carried into all the world by the early Church was the Good News of the grace and love of God, revealed and made known in Jesus Christ His Son. In the words of Paul, it is that ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself’.
The Place and Limit of The Wisdom in The Framework of The Old Testament Theology
Authors: Zimmerli Walther
Published: February 2009

The faith of the Old Testament has its origin in the fundamental fact that God encountered Israel in the midst of history. The preamble of the decalogue mentions it: ‘I am Yahweh thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.’ From this beginning Israel knows that her God encountered her not in a reaction but in a free divine action in history. Through this action He laid hold upon Israel, called her and made her His people. At a later time this previous deed of God came to be designated by the term ‘election of Israel’. The powerful word-event of Old Testament Prophecy made plain once more this structure of God's action: Yahweh, the God who addresses Israel in and through history by the word of His messengers and who is not only reacting against Israel's sin but acting by His free grace, proves to be the God who stands by the independence of His election.
St. Paul and the Law
Authors: Cranfield C. E. B.
Published: February 2009

When the Archbishop of Canterbury writes:

it is insufficient to pick things from the teaching of Jesus and the New Testament interpretation of his morality, without a thorough examination of the whole evidence about the morality of Jesus. We need to see the place which law had in the mission of Jesus; the way in which he did not abolish the law but fulfil it; the meaning of fulfilment, the interpretation of it in St. Paul and others; the nature of the gifts of the Holy Spirit; the significance of divine institutions within the natural order, such as marriage, the family, the state.
The Seven words from the Cross
Authors: Wilkinson John
Published: February 2009

The apparent lack of interest of the Gospels in the last words of Jesus seems strange to us today with our almost morbid interest in ‘famous last words’. None of them records them all. The Marcan tradition records only one, the Lucan preserves another three, whilst the Johannine supplements these with a further three, making a total of seven in all. It is possible that Jesus spoke more words than these during the six hours He hung on the Cross, but these are all that have been preserved for us. Their preservation is probably due more to the presence the women at the crucifixion than to that of the men for we hear of John alone of the disciples being present at the Cross. The rest, including Peter, were still scattered and afraid.
Baptism — Is Missionary Practice Inconsistent?
Authors: Young William G.
Published: February 2009

In his booklet The Teaching of the Church regarding Baptism, p. 46, Karl Barth discusses a curious Lutheran view ‘that baptism effects something quite different in children and in adults’. He adds, in a footnote: ‘Is it clear in present day missionary work, where there seems to be agreement in a double practice of baptism, that such presupposes a double teaching regarding the meaning of baptism?’ As a missionary, I should like to answer emphatically ‘No!’ When we are baptising a convert from another faith after careful preparation, and when we are baptising the infant child of believing parents, we are doing essentially the same thing.
Justification by Faith in Protestant Thought
Authors: Wingren Gustaf F.
Published: February 2009

It is appropriate to begin this presentation with an extended citation from Luther, where this founder of ‘Protestant thought’ develops what he means by ‘justification by faith’. We read in the Large Commentary to the Galatians:

Faith lays hold upon Christ and has Him present, enclosing Him as the ring encloses the precious stone which is set in it. And he who is found to have laid hold upon Christ with such a faith and have Him in his heart, God counts for righteous. This is the reason or the merit through which we receive the forgiveness of sins and righteousness. Because you believe in Me, says God, and because your faith lays hold upon Christ, whom I have given to you to be your Justifier and Saviour, therefore be thou righteous… And it is altogether necessary that God accepts us or counts us as righteous, first because we are not yet in this life wholly righteous, rather in this life sin always remains in the flesh. This sin remaining in the flesh God purges from us. Further we are also sometimes abandoned by the Holy Spirit and fall into sin, like Peter, David and other saints. But then we may always fall back upon this doctrine, that our sins are covered and that God will not impute them unto us (Rom. 4.7f).
Mark's Understanding of History
Authors: Robinson James M.
Published: February 2009

A century of intense research on Mark has largely failed to reach generally accepted conclusions either as to the theology of Mark, or as to the degree of legitimacy and the methodology of using Mark as a source for discussing Jesus. This confusion in Marcan research is due in large measure to a failure to reach clarity as to Mark's understanding of history, a problem which should logically have been resolved before any attempt was made to use Mark as a historical source for the study of Jesus. The nineteenth century, reaching its climax in H. J. Holtzmann, assumed that since Mark was the earliest gospel it was most historical, i.e. that Mark wrote history with much the same presuppositions as did the modern historian. History consists in the interaction of human wills and actions, and is to be explained by locating the causal connexions in the intentions and actions of men. For example, Mark 6.14–29 records the beheading of John by Herod; the next paragraph records Jesus withdrawing to privacy for rest with the disciples. Mark was assumed to mean—although remarkably enough he in no word hinted it—that one event followed chronologically upon the other and was caused by the other.
Thomas chalmers' astronomical discourses: A study in natural theology?
Authors: Cairns David
Published: February 2009

A few years ago a leading Scottish theologian drew attention to the recent tendency among continental Protestant theologians to ‘write off: natural theology. This, he suggested, had been accepted with undue complacency by certain Scottish writers, and he rightly drew attention to the fact that there was a great, indeed a predominant, tradition in the Christian Church, which accepted natural theology, and that among Scottish theologians, no less a man than Thomas Chalmers would have been shocked at the suggestion that natural theology was invalid.
Barth on Revelation
Authors: Parker T. H. L.
Published: February 2009

In 1938 and 1939 Karl Barth delivered the Gifford Lectures in the University of Aberdeen. According to the will of the founder, these lectures were established for the ‘promoting, advancing, teaching and diffusing’ of the study of natural theology. But Barth was, as he made plain on receiving the invitation, ‘an avowed opponent of all natural theology’. Three years earlier he had fiercely attacked his former theological associate, Emil Brunner, on this same question. He had then said of natural theology: ‘It has to be rejected a limine—right at the outset. Only the theology and the church of the antichrist can profit from it. The Evangelical Church and Evangelical theology would only sicken and die of it.’ When therefore he was asked to give the Gifford Lectures he was in a quandary. The way in which he resolved the problem has usually been treated, half-humorously, as an ingenious piece of theological juggling. In fact, however, when we consider it in relation to his attitude to natural theology in his controversy with Brunner and to his treatment of it in Church Dogmatics II.I, on the knowledge of God, and indeed against the background of the whole of his life's work, we can see that in his solution of this difficulty there is simply the same attitude sharpened to a clear-cut issue. What he did was to jettison natural theology completely and give an exposition of its opposite, the theology of revelation.
Consecration and Ordination
Authors: Torrange T. F.
Published: February 2009

In order to understand the NT teaching about consecration and ordination we have to examine the rites and language of the OT tradition. The rites were not carried over as such into the Christian Church, for they were fulfilled in Christ and abrogated, but the NT does use the language of the rites to speak both of Christ and His Church, and it does adapt some of the OT rites for its own use, but with entire freedom and new significance. The basic line we have to consider is the consecration of the priest, and king, and prophet in the OT, and see how they are fulfilled in Christ, and then see how in this Christ the NT thinks of the ministry as consecrated and ordained.
Religious Symbols and Demythologising
Authors: Galloway Allan D.
Published: February 2009

The following is intended as a contribution to the current J. demythologising controversy. I hope it will either bring some clarification or else add profitably to the prevailing confusion.

I write as a man of faith to men of faith. That is to say, I am not here concerned with whether the Christian faith is true or how much of it ‘we can accept’. That is a question which must be discussed in quite another way and in quite another context. I shall assume that we accept it in the same way as Carlyle accepted the universe, only more so, for Christ is Lord of the Universe. I am concerned rather with the way in which the symbols in which we express our belief behave.
Priesthood in the New Testament
Authors: Scott W. M. F.
Published: February 2009

Theological discussions are not infrequently stultified because terms used in them are interpreted in different senses by the parties involved. This paper is offered as an attempt to clarify one such ambiguous term, that of priesthood, by an examination of the relevant New Testament passages. We must obviously begin with the priesthood of our Lord and much of our discussion of this point will centre upon the Epistle to the Hebrews, the only NT book which calls our Lord a priest. Here a preliminary warning is necessary against the danger of assuming that when you know what a thing means in the Old Testament you also know its meaning in the New Testament. It is quite true, of course, that you cannot know the latter without discovering the former, but that does not mean it is the same as the latter. Moberly has expressed the point well.
New Testament Eschatology
Authors: Barrett C. K.
Published: February 2009

In the terminology of classical Christian theology the word eschatology means ‘the doctrine of the last things’. A discussion of NT eschatology would, under such a definition, treat of the hope of life after physical death, personal immortality, the general resurrection, the last judgment, heaven and hell. This use of the word remains of course in current usage; but in modern biblical discussion ‘eschatology’ is commonly employed in a somewhat different way, which may be defined by the statement that in characteristically eschatological thinking the significance of a series of events in time is defined in terms of the last of their number. The last event is not merely one member of the series; it is the determinative member, which reveals the meaning of the whole. Such thinking inevitably assumes the reality of historical processes, and that they are meaningful; in this, of course, it is fully consistent with Biblical thought as a whole; indeed, it might be said that the Biblical view of history derives its characteristic pattern from the fact that the Bible is a predominantly eschatological book. This is not to say either that the whole of the Bible is written from an eschatological standpoint, or that eschatological writing is not to be found outside the Bible; but the Bible is undoubtedly the classical field of eschatology, dominated as it is by the belief that the Judge of all the earth will do right, but that the right which He does will not necessarily be seen to be right until it is brought to a full end.
Some Theological Reflections on Religious Education
Authors: Smith J. W. D.
Published: February 2009

At the beginning of the twentieth century two theological influences could be traced in the provision made within the Protestant churches for the Christian nurture of youth.1 The first was the Calvinist emphasis on saving knowledge. For the Reformers themselves such saving knowledge was the fruit of faith. But the perils of controversy led later Protestant theologians to regard faith as orthodox doctrine about God rather than personal response to Him. This Calvinist emphasis on knowledge was reinforced by contemporary educational theory. The influence of Herbert was strong and intellectual instruction was regarded as the main concern of the day school. It was natural, therefore, that a sound factual knowledge of the Bible and of Christian doctrine should be accepted as the prime objective of Christian education.
The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination: According to Peter Martyr
Authors: McClelland J. C.
Published: February 2009

The doctrine of predestination is commonly regarded as the normative dogma of Reformed or Calvinistic theology —but the contemporary demand for Christocentric theology is held to prove that this norm is not fully Christian. The impressive critical analysis of Karl Barth, for example, shows the Reformed doctrine of predestination, especially as it is worked out in the centuries following the Reformation, to be reduced to ‘double predestination’. This unscriptural teaching, Barth argues, derives from the misplacement of the doctrine in Reformed theology, since its proper position (Stellung) in dogmatics is in the context of Christology, and ‘not directly following the doctrine of God’.
The Debate About Honest to God
Authors: Holland J. A. B.
Published: February 2009

Honest to God has been the theological sensation of the decade, at least so far as the English-speaking world is concerned. The Honest to God Debate is the sequel and can appropriately be considered along with the former book. It consists of an introductory chapter by Rev. David Edwards, which is a sympathetic account of the contemporary radical movement in theology, of which the Bishop of Woolwich has become the most celebrated exponent, followed by a brief chapter by the Vicar of Leeds on reactions in the Church of England, the Church most immediately involved. Third, there is a series of readers' letters on Honest to God, edited by David Edwards, which is a striking indication of the contemporary state of confusion among laymen concerning the verities of the faith. The main body of the latter book consists of twenty-three reviews of Honest to God, by all sorts of men, Christian clergy and laity of all varieties and atheists, in many countries. Perhaps the most noteworthy of these are those by Rudolf Bultmann, the great German scholar and exegete to whom Dr Robinson is so conscious of his debt, and Father Herbert McCabe, O.P., the longest review to be printed. I must pay a tribute to the latter review, in spite of the apparent unfamiliarity of the categories in which it is expressed. Even though I am Protestant and Reformed, I found, on closer analysis, that Father McCabe had, with very few exceptions (notably his inevitably greater ethical rigorism), said exactly what should have been said about the book.