bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Kant's Philosophy of Religion: a Preface to Christology?
Authors: Norburn Greville
Published: February 2009

Unless it is to resemble a voice without a speaker, Christology must pre-suppose a backing in Theism; and any talk of Revelation must assume some conviction, to be more or less rationally defended, of the existence of the God who speaks. Such a Theism, admittedly, can by no means be erected from the bricks of the discursive reason alone; for reason is often, if not always, simply the finding of reasons for what one cannot help but believe by a sort of insight, intuition–or even inspiration. Yet reason, together with the language in which it is bound up, is the common factor which we all share with each other; so that if Theism is to be given a hearing, it must be able publicly to commend itself by the displaying of some reasons, even if (as is the case) those reasons fall short of proof. Such at any rate is my excuse for what follows.
The Incident of the Blood and Water in John 19.34
Authors: Wilkinson John
Published: February 2009

There is no doubt that John intended his record of the spear thrust which produced blood and water from our Lord's side to be taken as historical fact. The description of the incident is concise and matter of fact. The character of the gospel as a whole makes it ‘unlikely that John is simply manufacturing an event for the sake of its allegorical significance’.1 Finally, it is followed by what amounts to a legal affidavit attesting its truth, which has been called ‘the most solemn protestation of accuracy to be found in the whole work’.2 However, the record has not always been taken as historical fact. It has sometimes been interpreted as primarily symbolical of the sacraments, and occasionally as fiction, or as ‘ecclesiastical redaction’ as by Bultmann.3 This is partly because the incident has been difficult to explain medically. This difficulty arises from the lack of detail in the description of the event, and not from its impossibility. The purpose of this article is to show that the incident is medically possible even though the exact medical diagnosis must remain in doubt because of the lack of precise medical information.
The Discernment of Triunity
Authors: Kaiser B. Christopher
Published: February 2009

The theological literature has been greatly enriched in recent decades by detailed studies of the nature of religious ‘discernment’ or ‘divination’. The works of Rudolf Otto, Mircea Eliade, and Ian Ramsey, in particular, and from various perspectives, have contributed much to our understanding of characteristic situations in which men may intuit or apprehend the immediate presence of deity. This ‘empirical-phenomenological’ approach (to characterise it as broadly as possible) represents a significant departure from the more traditional ‘proofs’ of deity based on logical argument or citations of scripture in that (a) it requires an empirical ‘grounding’ in concrete, historically conditioned situations, and (b) it necessarily leaves the question of truth value open to review and re-evaluation by its appeal to specific acts of personal intuition or discernment. Therefore, in comparison with the traditional ‘proofs’, there is a certain loss of cogency, but, on the other hand, a distinct gain in concreteness and accessibility to the religious imagination of the individual.
Kierkegaard on Becoming an ‘Individual’
Authors: Roberts Robert
Published: February 2009

Christianity, whatever else it may be, is a set of emotions. It is love of God and neighbor, grief about one's own waywardness, joy in the merciful salvation of our God, gratitude, hope, and peace. To be a Christian is to have these and other emotions, and so if it happens that I do not love God and my neighbor, if I do not find my sins abhorrent and find joy in my redemption, if I am not grateful, hopeful, and at peace with God and myself, then it follows quite clearly that I am not a Christian, though I was born into a Christian family and reared in the bosom of the Church, am baptized and confirmed and willing in good conscience to affirm the articles of the Creed.
Leprosy and Leviticus: A Problem of Semantics and Translation
Authors: Wilkinson John
Published: February 2009

For centuries the disease of leprosy and the book of Leviticus have been linked together. The description of skin disease given in the thirteenth chapter of that book has long been thought to be that of the disease known to medicine as leprosy or Hansen's disease as modern leprologists prefer to call it in order to avoid the stigma which still attaches to the name leprosy. As a result, the regulations in that chapter have determined the attitude of Western communities towards persons suffering from this disease, and have largely influenced the public health measures of control applied by these communities when cases of the disease were discovered.
The Freedom of God in the Theology of Karl Barth
Authors: Hendry George S.
Published: February 2009

The freedom of God is a major theme in the theology of Karl Barth. He treats of it at length in several places in the Church Dogmatics. It is a basic constituent of the being of God, and it plays a central part in the systematic connection between the being of God and his acts, as that is developed in the doctrine of election. It is the latter that will be examined in this article.
John Erskine of Dun: A Theological Reassessment
Authors: Bardgett F.
Published: February 2009

JohnErskine of Dun has recently been pigeon-holed as a ‘Lutheran’; his patterns of thought sharply distinguished from those of his colleague, John Knox. The aim of this paper is to re-examine the theological contexts of this neglected yet crucial Scots reformer and laird. His was a career of particular interest, combining the spheres of lairdly politics and leadership in the reformed Kirk. Besides, an active lifespan of sixty and more years was not given to many in the sixteenth century. John Erskine, laird of the barony of Dun in Angus (between Brechin and Montrose), in addition to enjoying an unusually long life, (born c. 1509: died 1589/90) is also distinguished by his capacity for political survival. One who was never to be so closely connected with the various political factions as to fall with them in their turn, he was rarely so far from the centre of power as to be endangered by any lack of influential friends. To this intricate personal balancing-act was added the further complication of a genuine search for God that brought him to a protestant faith at a date when such beliefs were both heretical and criminal, and later to a belief in the independent jurisdiction of the church at a time when successive governments of Scotland were attempting to assert their authority in ecclesiastical matters.
A Study in St Anselm's Soteriology and Karl Barth's Theological Method
Authors: Watson G.
Published: February 2009

Recent discussion of St Anselm's theology of reconciliation has again raised the question of freedom in respect to the relationship presupposed between God and man in this encounter. It has been asked whether in fact St Anselm's account excludes God's ability to act freely, ‘within the dynamics and development of the narrative’, and suggested that such exclusion derives from an understanding of God's ‘unchanging nature beyond the influence of persons and events within the narrative’.
Theodicy: Two Moral Extremes
Authors: King-Farlow John , Shanks Niall
Published: February 2009

Shake the leaky buckets of human meditation on theodicy. Out fall problems of moral perception, of linguistic and logical subtlety, of imagination in metaphysical work and biblical interpretation, of so much more. … They are disparately connected things which can suggest a Tower of Babel at least as much as any Tree of Good and Evil. But then such a picture is what one might fairly expect from a central mystery of theology, from something one can make (in this life, at least) only limited progress towards understanding.
Theology in the University — A Contemporary Scottish Perspective
Authors: Shaw D. W. D.
Published: February 2009

There is a tale which Douglas Young tells of a St Andrews University divine and which may well be regarded as cautionary. Thomas Jackson was born in St Andrews in 1797, and held the Chair of Divinity, first in St Andrews and then in Glasgow. When he retired in 1874, he returned to St Andrews to write his great work, designed to settle all the controversies of the centuries and bring discordant Scots into unanimity. He had one of the big houses on the south side of South Street, with its ‘lang rigg’, at the foot of which was an elegant garden room, with table and chair. Thither, daily, the septuagenarian repaired, garbed in his ecclesiastical frock coat, took off his shiny top-hat, and grasped a quill pen to set down his great thoughts on the virgin white folio quire, daily laid on the table. white folio quire, daily laid on the table. After several hours, he would tear it all up and go back to the house. After four years, they found him dead, aged eighty-one, and the garden house yielded a single written sheet with the sum of his wisdom: ‘Theology is everything, and everything is theology’.
Walter Miller and the Isawa: An Experiment in Christian-Muslim Relationships
Authors: Hulmes Edward
Published: February 2009

On 27th August 1952 the following lines appeared in an obituary notice in the London Times.
Interpreting the Resurrection
Authors: Fergusson David
Published: February 2009

The language of Christian prayer reflects two central components of christology. One is the exclusive importance attached to a brief portion of history centring upon the death of Jesus, while the other is the assertion of his continuing presence to the believer. The ways in which these twin themes are articulated is nowhere more apparent than in the theology of the resurrection. In this respect the resurrection provides the most important case-study in Christian interpretation. The sense in which the history of Jesus is theologically significant and the sense in which he can be spoken of as present — these are partly illustrated and partly constituted by the interpretation of the resurrection.
Meaning, Metaphor and Meta-Theology
Authors: Chryssides George D.
Published: February 2009

Why should metaphors pose a problem for the philosopher of religion? Most forms of discourse involve some use of metaphor: if I describe Fred as ‘a tower of strength’ most people know what I mean and there can be no objection to my doing it. Of course, metaphor in general generates certain philosophical problems which have been taken up in the philosophy of art and which continue to generate controversy. For example, how does one identify a metaphor, and how does it differ from a literal assertion? Is a metaphor a disguised comparison, logically reducible to simile? Can metaphors be true and false, or can one only describe them as ‘appropriate’ and ‘inappropriate’?
The Protestant Reformation and the Rise of Modern Science
Authors: Deason G. B.
Published: February 2009

The vast literature on the Reformation and the rise of science has produced what may be calledstrongandweakinterpretations of their relation. The strong interpretation holds that specific doctrines or attitudes affirmed by the Reformers and their followers contributed directly to the growth of science. On this view, the Reformation was among the causes of the Scientific Revolution. Without the changes in thought and values wrought by the Reformation, proponents of the strong interpretation argue, modern science would not have developed as it did. The weak interpretation, on the other hand, does not claim a direct influence of Protestantism on science. It acknowledges that modern science developed as a movement independent of the Reformation and it claims only that Protestantism offered relatively few obstacles to scientific expansion. On the weak interpretation, the absence of the Reformation would have had little, if any, effect on the Scientific Revolution. After brief discussion of each of these interpretations, I will argue that the strong interpretation is too strong and that the weak one can be strengthened. I will outline anindirectapproach, which falls between the above extremes, and offers advantages not offered by either of them.
Oil and Vinegar: Calvin on Church Discipline
Authors: White Robert
Published: February 2009

Despite the excessive claims sometimes made for the unity and consistency of Calvin's thought, there is no evidence to suggest that he ever varied his views on the distinctive marks of the church. From the first edition of the Institute to the last, the formula remains unchanged: ‘Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ's institution, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists.’ It has long been recognized that the notion of the two marks of the church is not original to Calvin, but derives from the Augsburg Confession of 1530, in which the faithful teaching of the gospel and the proper administration of the sacraments are said to designate the assembly of all believers (art. 7). Like Luther and Melanchthon, but unlike the framers of the Scots and Belgic Confessions, the French Reformer does not make discipline an explicit mark of the church. Nevertheless, so central an element is it in his ecclesiology that it is always found in the closest relationship with Word and sacraments. The Word is not only to be preached but ‘reverently heard’; it is a ‘royal sceptre’ to which all hearts and minds are to be brought in willing submission. Similarly the sacraments are, through the Spirit, manifest signs of God's work within us, ‘softening the stubbornness of our heart, and composing it to that obedience which it owes the Word of the Lord’.
The Kerygma and the Cuckoo's Nest
Authors: Slater Peter
Published: February 2009

Influenged by Tillich's so-called method of correlation, theologians in recent decades have been inclined to approach existential situations as if they simply raised questions to which the dogmatic tradition provided answers. Accordingly, in my teaching for example, I have often read Camus'sThe Plaguetogether with Buber'sI and Thou, Tillich'sThe Courage To Bewith Brecht'sMother Courageand so on. However, the effect of such correlations has, as often as not, been to set the questions moving in the other direction. The traditional ‘answers’ of theologians have been challenged by the existential concerns of the secular writers. In particular the veryraison d'êtreof theology, the articulation of the transcendent presence of God in the world, has become problematical.Granted that Buber's I-You relationship correlates with Camus's portrayals of authenticity, for instance, why do we need to mention Buber's ‘Eternal You’? Can we even make sense of such talk? Granted that Tillich's types of anxiety correlate with his sense of faithful courage, must his affirmation of life in spite of the negativities of existence be ontologically rooted in some ‘Ground of Being’? As we ponder such questions the existential contexts discussed seem to have evaporated all content from the theological answers.
In the End, God
Authors: Mclean Murdith , King-Farlow John
Published: February 2009

It has been said that nonsense talked about God is still nonsense. To some, this may seem a simple reminder that it is easy to lapse into nonsense when discussing the sublimities of religion. Of late, however, there has been voiced a suspicion on the part of many philosophers that the situation is worse than this. There are those who claim that it is impossible to avoid incoherence when speaking of God. It would be a mistake to place Michael Durrant, one of Britain's more respected philosophers of religion, in the camp of those convinced that God-talk is necessarily a species of nonsense. For one thing, he identifies himself as one who continues to wrestle with the philosophical problems generated by theistic discourse, from within the Church.1 Nevertheless two recently published books by Durrant2 illustrate nicely the view that God-talk appears, at least, to be riddled with fatal, logical infirmities.
The Presence of God in the Community: The Eucharist in its Early Christian Cultic Context
Authors: Aune David E.
Published: February 2009

Every religion has an overall structure which both gives meaning to and derives it from each of its constituent parts. Ordinarily, this structure may be seen in its most essential form in cultic worship where religious experience both is determined by and itself determines the shape and meaning of religious traditions. In contemporary Roman Catholicism, for example, the Eucharist is understood in several ways due to the variety of possible contexts in which the Mass may be experienced; a religious community and a parish church are examples of widely diverging contexts. However, if we wish to understand the significance and place of the Eucharist in a period as remote and as different from our own as that of first century Christianity, we are faced with a radically different problem. One popular approach to such an inquiry would carefully examine the theme of the Lord's Supper throughout the New Testament and other early Christian literature so that the results of the study could be used to compare and contrast the Eucharist (s) of early Christianity with that of one or another modern Christian denomination. The all but unavoidable result of this approach would be the tendency of each theological tradition to retroject its own understanding of the Eucharist back into the early Church, whether it would find itself at home there or not.
Rabbinic Judaism and the Problem of Evil
Authors: Hayman A. P.
Published: February 2009

Then men said, ‘Let us make God in our image, after our likeness; and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air.’ So men created God in their own image, in the image of man they created him; with the attributes of justice and mercy they created him.
Science and Religion: Partners in Education?
Authors: Kibble David G.
Published: February 2009

Believing as I do that the ‘problem’ of science and religion is not a problem at all, provided that each is seen in the correct way and that each does not try to encroach upon the other, it will be my purpose in this paper to point out some of the difficulties in educating secondary school pupils into this fact. In popular thought, and in the thought of the average pupil, science produces severe problems for the religious believer, and it is assumed that the scientist is the purveyor of truth, whilst the religious believer is one who clings to unscientific beliefs in the attempt to hold on to his faith. In popular thought a scientist could not believe in religion because science has supposedly disproved the foundations of religion piece by piece over the centuries. Such a view, however, of science and religion is totally wrong.
The Eastern Churches and the Reformation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Authors: Cooper David J. C.
Published: February 2009

The purpose of this paper will be to examine the encounters between Eastern Christendom and the Western Reformation of the Church. The study will include an analysis of the historical background, an introduction to the chief characters involved, and an evaluation of doctrinal issues that have represented the divergent paths of Orthodoxy and Protestantism.
Karl Barth and Anthropocentric Theology
Authors: Almond Philip C.
Published: February 2009

There is no doubt that the writings of Karl Barth give evidence of a critical attitude to the anthropocentric theology of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This critical attitude springs both from the failure of nineteenthcentury theology to make significant inroads into the twentieth century due to the traumatic experience of the first World War, and from Barth's own tlieology as it developed in the post-war years through to the early 1960s. Hence, to expound the relationship between Karl Barth and anthropocentric theology is a two-sided task. On the one hand, his attitude to nineteenthcentury theology may be assessed from his investigations of the theologians of that period. On the other hand, this critical attitude must of necessity be related to and contrasted with his own theological development. In this article, I shall be concerned to examine his attitude to anthropocentric theology in the light of his own developing theology.
Newman on Love as the Safeguard of Faith
Authors: Newman Jay
Published: February 2009

In one of the sermons that he preached at Oxford while still an Anglican, Newman argued that love is the safeguard of faith against superstition.1 This thesis strikes me as being false, for reasons which I shall indicate; but it merits consideration by students of the epistemology of religion, if only because it is a provocative ‘solution’ to some central problems of philosophy and theology which are disturbingly persistent in their relevance. Before we consider whether Newman's position is unsound, let us see how he arrived at it.
Faith and Faiths: The Significance of A. G. Hogg's Missionary Thought for a Theology of Dialogue
Authors: Cox James L.
Published: February 2009

A. G. Hogg, although still not well known outside of India, has become in recent years the centre of increasing interest, particularly as studies of major missionary thinkers have demonstrated his importance to Protestant thought during the first half of this century.1 Hogg, who was Principal of the Madras Christian College from 1928 to 1938, first arrived in India from Scotland in 1903 as Professor of Philosophy at the College. During his first years in Madras, he contributed several articles to the Madras Christian College Magazine, the most significant being a series entitled ‘Karma and Redemption’ (1904–5), published in book form in 1909.2 In it, he outlined his fundamental missionary approach, which was based on his distinction between faith and faiths.
Remarks on The Imitation of Christ
Authors: Jensen Alfred Dewey
Published: February 2009

The title of this paper is neither provocative nor immediately arresting but it is at least descriptively accurate. These are remarks. They are only remarks. Their aim is to notice certain elements and direct (or perhaps I should say re-direct) attention to a classic in Christian literature. Part of what is meant in calling something ‘classic’ is that it addresses what used to be called without embarrassment ‘the universally human’. In these fragmented times of the sociological-political-economic-psychological-and-what-have-you person that expression has all but lost meaning. We find it difficult to recognise anything as classic and thus all but impossible to learn anything of lasting importance. What follows is an attempt to indicate at least a few of the ways in which The Imitation of Christ applies to us. In order to do this I must also indicate certain confused and misleading tendencies in the way we take our faith, tendencies which Thomas à Kempis was well aware of and for which he provides a corrective. My presentation may cause offense, however, and that offense may cause one not to take the book seriously. That would be a shame. The last thing I want is to get in the way of the book. There are many reasons for not taking the book seriously—all of them bad. There is one reason to take it seriously, and that reason is as deep and as rich and as painful as human existence.
The Theological Appropriation of the Old Testament by the New Testament
Authors: Black Matthew
Published: February 2009

To speak, in general terms, of trends in modern biblical study is often to over-simplify; and certainly to claim that there has been, in recent years, a trend away from the traditional classicist or ‘hellenist’ approach to New Testament problems towards a more Hebraic or semitic-centred approach would be to be guilty of the same exaggeration as E. C. Hoskyns in 1930: ‘(There are) grounds for supposing no further progress in the understanding of … Christianity to be possible unless the ark of New Testament exegesis be recovered from its wanderings in the land of the Philistines (sic) and be led back not merely to Jerusalem, for that might mean contemporary Judaism, but to its home in the midst of the classical Old Testament Scriptures — to the Law and the Prophets.’ There is, nevertheless, some truth in A. M. Hunter's later statement: ‘After ransacking all sorts of sources, Jewish and Greek (and, we may add, starting all sorts of “hares”, some of which have not run very well), (scholars) are discovering the truth of Augustine's dictum, “The New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old is made plain in the New”’ (Novum Testamentum in vetere latet, vetus in novo patet).
The Jewish Roots of Christology: The Discovery of the Hypostatic Voice
Authors: Charlesworth J. H.
Published: February 2009

The Christian canon contains only two apocalypses: the Book of Daniel and the Apocalypse of John. Today no less than 19 apocalypses and closely related documents are gathered together inThe Old Testament Pseudepigrapha(2 volumes; Garden City, New York, 1983–1985). In light of these apocalypses and apocalyptic writings new possibilities for interpreting the documents in the New Testament can be seen. Only one example can be chosen now; it is a significant one, revealing the indebtedness of the Apocalypse of John to the continuum of Jewish apocalyptic thought and clarifying the roots of Christology in Early Judaism.
The Trinity and Time
Authors: Williams Arthur H.
Published: February 2009

Précis: Here is a call for an investigation of the linguistic formulation of the term ‘Trinity’. Can it be that the phrase ‘kingdom of God/heaven’ is a functional equivalent in the New Testament of the later term ‘Trinity’? As a political term, kingdom (or monarchy) provides a framework for collegiality in the exercise of an undivided power. As a philosophical term, however, monarchy (or monotheism) entails subordinationism. Recent theological works recall that time is an essential category in theology. The description of time is compared to the description of light in physics, and the principle of complementarity is used to hold together spatialized time (Parmenides) and dynamized space (Heraclitus). The first use of the term ‘Trinity’ (by Theophilus of Antioch, ca. 170 C.E.) referred to the first three days of creation, which are called types of the Trinity. Thus, God was not described as beyond time and history, as Origen assumed, but rather we are summoned to a quest for the historical God, who takes our individual stories up into the total story of God and the world.
Theology and Function — The Ministry of the Word in the Uniting Church in Australia
Authors: Dutney Andrew F.
Published: February 2009

Recent ecumenical discussion on ministry has tended to emphasise the sign-value of the ordained ministry. This is particularly so in statements concerning episcopacy, but also with respect to presbyteral and diaconal ministry. Close attention is being paid to ‘sacramental’ aspects of ordination and ordained ministry in both ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ circles. And certainly there is good reason to examine the subject of ministry in terms of sign-value, if not in terms of ‘sacramentality’. But the question is being asked, shyly by some and more stridently by others: We can see what ministers represent, we can even see the sign-value of bishops, but what are they supposed to do?
Divinity in use and Practice
Authors: Forrester Duncan B.
Published: February 2009

It is good in this centenary year of his death to remember that the Chair of Christian Ethics and Practical Theology in the University of Edinburgh is successor to the Chair of Evangelistic Theology first occupied by Alexander Duff. Duff was a missionary strategist and statesman who saw the Christian mission in world-wide terms, yet found in his Scottish Reformed heritage treasures of immense value and relevance to the India of his day. Within a few short months of his arrival in Calcutta in 1830, Duff produced an assessment of the situation in Bengal of quite extraordinary shrewdness and insight, discerning the signs of the times and pinpointing the opportunities and dangers to the Christian witness. He looked, as any good practical theologian must, for the working of God in the context in which he found himself; he embraced not just the immediate opportunity but the long-term process, imbuing his converts—remarkable men that they were—with a vision of India as she might be, and of their own role as reformers, renewers and leaders of Indian society and culture in their ministerial and educational work. Duff saw himself not as handing on a closed and unexamined package of accumulated wisdom and orthodoxy, but as equipping a new generation to think for themselves and live creatively always looking, like the heroes of faith of Hebrews xi, to the future, to the city whose builder and maker is God.
The Propriety of the Doctrine of the Incarnation as a Way of Interpreting Christ
Authors: Hebblethwaite Brian
Published: February 2009

For the larger part of their history, the Christian Churches have taught the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity as central and essential to their faith. Their creeds, councils, and confessions, whatever their differences and whatever range of different interpretations they have permitted, have agreed in affirming that the central figure of the Gospels is to be understood, not only as the revealer of God, but as himself the content of that revelation, God the Son made man for our salvation, and that the doctrine of God implied by that revelation is to be expressed in trinitarian terms. These are still, to a very large extent, the characteristic and peculiar beliefs of Christianity, in its Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant forms. Nevertheless, since the Enlightenment and the rise of modern critical approaches both to scripture and to tradition, the propriety of these doctrines has been questioned. This questioning has been overwhelmingly a Protestant phenomenon, though there have been and are some indications of similar questioning in Roman Catholic theology at the turn of the century and today. Disregarding external critics of Christianity, we can point within the Christian Churches themselves, to rationalist versions of the faith, in which the eternal truths of reason (metaphysical or moral) have been held to constitute the essence of Christianity, deistic versions, which have sought to eliminate the notions of special revelation and divine action in the world, idealist versions, in which the concept of Incarnation has been held to symbolise some universal identity of God and man, liberal Protestant versions, which have singled out either the God-consciousness of Jesus or his teaching as the crucial element in Christianity, and modernist versions, in which the life of the Church itself has been embraced as experientially self-authenticating, irrespective of its origins.
Towards Better Ways of Reading the Bible
Authors: Gray Bryan J.
Published: February 2009

The growing rift between biblical scholarship and the dogmatic and moral theologies of the Churches is a challenge to us all. But not only is it necessary to examine the presuppositions of the biblical scholars; it is also necessary to investigate the questions raised by their critics. Is there a uniform pattern in the questions raised? Do the critics provide any suggestions as to how the Scripture scholar should operate? Is there a common core which can be detected in the midst of the disquiet?
Pannenberg on the Resurrection and Historical Method
Authors: Michalson G. E.
Published: February 2009

Even the most casual observer of the contemporary theological scene knows that Wolfhart Pannenberg's theology relies heavily on the resurrection of Jesus as a genuinely historical event. The peculiarity of this is that a theologian who has accurately been called a ‘rationalist’ should so forthrightly embrace a claim that the entire thrust of post-Enlightenment theology has seemingly undermined. But Pannenberg himself contends that his reliance on the resurrection is not legitimated by the subterfuge of an existential ‘moment’ or ‘leap of faith’; instead, he argues for the acceptance of the resurrection on purely historical grounds. This argument implicitly rests on Pannenberg's conviction that ‘the truth is one’ and that the theologian's worst mistake is to cut the ties between theology and secular disciplines and modes of inquiry, a conviction that has recently received its most forceful statement in Pannenberg's Theology and the Philosophy of Science. This means that, insofar as belief in the resurrection of Jesus entails a claim about a past event, the standard methods by which we normally adjudicate claims about the past must be brought into play. Accordingly, the resurrection of Jesus is for Pannenberg not a ‘faith claim’, for ‘faith cannot ascertain anything certain about events of the past that would perhaps be inaccessible to the historian’. Instead, the resurrection of Jesus must be understood as the best historical explanation accounting for the New Testament witness and the rise of Christianity.
Christology and The New Testament
Authors: Tuckett Christopher
Published: February 2009

The relationship between biblical exegesis and modern theology is complex. The two are rarely, if ever, independent of one another. No Christian theology is done in a vacuum, and all Christian theologising is, in a sense, an interpretation of the Christian tradition.1Any new theological synthesis is formulated in part as a dialogue with past theologies. In this dialogue, one may be critical of the past; one may wish to preserve the past to a greater or lesser degree. What is determinative is the theologian's current apprehension of what Christianity is, but this in turn will have been created and shaped by the interplay between the theologian and the tradition in the past.2Christian theologising thus involves a continuous dialogue between the theologian and the tradition.
Pastoral Counselling and Traditional Theology
Authors: Evans Donald D.
Published: February 2009

Is there a conflict between the principles of pastoral counselling and traditional Christian theology?

In discussing this question, I shall consider Carroll A. Wise' Pastoral Counselling as a representative statement of counselling principles. What I mean by ‘traditional’ theology will, I hope, become reasonably clear in the course of the essay.
The Epistle of Barnabas and the Dead Sea Scrolls: some observations
Authors: Barnard L. W.
Published: February 2009

The discovery of the Qumran texts, as is well known, has produced a whole spate of books and articles many of which deal inter alia with affinities between the doctrinal formularies of the sect and the NT and between its organisation and practice and that of the Apostolic Church in Jerusalem. However, in all this literature, which has now reached unmanageable proportions, it would seem that insufficient attention has been paid to affinities between the texts and Christian post- Apostolic literature. The purpose of this article is to examine the theology of the epistolary tract known as the Epistle of Barnabas in the light of the Qumran scrolls.
The Creeds of A.D. 325 Antioch, Caesarea, Nicaea
Authors: Pollard T. Evan
Published: February 2009

The Letter of the Synod of Antioch contained in a Syriac MS. of the eighth or ninth century (Codex Parisinus Syriacus 62), to which Edward Schwartz first drew attention in 1905, has thrown light on the period immediately preceding the Council of Nicaea and on the proceedings of the Council itself. After much initial controversy, mainly between Schwartz and von Harnack, this document is now generally accepted as authentic.

The Synod of Antioch, of which nothing was hitherto known, appears to have assembled in order to settle the difficulties which had arisen in the Church at Antioch after the death of Bishop Philogonius (ca. A.D. 322), one of three Bishops whom Arius described as ‘unlearned heretics’; Eustathius, Bishop of Beroea, was appointed to fill the vacancy. The Synod was attended by at least fifty-nine bishops from Syria and Palestine, forty-nine of whom also attended the Council of Nicaea a few months later.
Laymanship
Authors: Mole John
Published: February 2009

The following sketch on the role of the laity (a) in the Church (b) in the world is the result of study by a group of laymen. During the course of the study four questions arose: (1) what is the meaning of ‘laity’? (2) what is the place of the laity in the Church? (3) what is the meaning of Ministry? (4) what is the ministry of the laity? In seeking to formulate a lay self-consciousness, especially vis-à-vis the Ministry, we answered these questions as summarised here and came to the general conclusion that laity and ministry are correlative and polar forces in the life of the whole people of God. The laity is ministered to in the Church by the clergy, and then becomes the ministry to the world. Let us examine these four questions.

(a) I Peter 2.9 (‘But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people …’) affords the most pregnant description of the term laity. Admittedly there is a note of lyricism in the turn of phrase, yet the sense of what the laos is gains rather than loses thereby. The meaning is enriched if one approaches the sentence liturgically rather than homiletically. No doubt the laos is a ‘chosen race’ by election and covenant, a ‘royal priesthood’ through its mediatorial position, a ‘holy nation’ set among the nations of this sinful world (a meaty text indeed for any preacher!).
Three Philosophers Analyse Christianity
Authors: Evans Donald D.
Published: February 2009

‘What sort of meaning does Christian discourse have?’ The question seems misleading, for within Christian discourse there are many different kinds of meaning—moral, historical, symbolic, exclamatory, etc. Modern philosophers recognise this, but they are mainly interested in the sort of meaning which is characteristic or distinctive of a realm of discourse, comparing and contrasting this with other uses of language. In this essay, we shall consider the varied analyses given by three contemporary philosophers. Each philosopher, in his analysis of Christian discourse, suggests a different nonreligious use of language as the illuminating logical model. Naturally, there is more in each book than the outline and application of the logical model, but I shall concentrate on this.
The Mystery of God and Revelation
Authors: Boyd W. J. Peter
Published: February 2009

In his lecture on ‘Eschatology in the New Testament’, delivered to the Society for the Study of Theology, at its inaugural meeting in Cambridge, in July 1952, the late Professor William Manson put forward an ingenious theory. He claimed that there is a specific Old Testament eschatology, which arose in the life of Israel from a primarily religious interest which viewed all human affairs in the light of an ‘ultimate transcendent Event, an End, towards which under the judgment and mercy of God, the world is hastening’. This conception which links history with eschatology, can be traced as far back as the events which gave rise to the traditions, embodied in the Yahwist narrative, about the revelations given to Moses.
The Church Service and Music
Authors: Kappner Gerhard
Published: February 2009

Reflection on Divine Service from the ecumenical point of view has brought us to the realisation that the question of reform of the Order of Service is not a matter of what is effective, or beautiful or reverend within that Service. These traditional standards originating from psychology, aesthetics and history may be considered as outdated. It is rather a question of what is right and fitting as to the details pertaining to the Service. The standard for the ritual ordering of Church Service is the testimony in the Holy Scriptures to the truth of Christ and to His reality. Hence we shall examine, firstly, the essence of the Service as we find it in the Scriptures, and above all in the New Testament. Then, secondly, we shall inquire into the nature of music as we encounter it in the performance of its own special function. And finally, in a third section, we shall clarify the task which faces music in its performance in the Services of the Church. By these means we shall attempt to define the contents of the Lutheran liturgy, and the responsibilities which present themselves to the choir, the organ and the ensemble of brass instruments.
Inter-Church Relations: A Retrospect
Authors: Cheyne A. C.
Published: February 2009

The subject of relations between the Anglican and Presbyterian Churches exercises a peculiarly urgent claim upon the attention of contemporary students of theology. Nevertheless many may be reluctant to allow that the task of dealing with it can profitably be undertaken by a historian–even if he be a church historian; and I suspect that some will read the words ‘a Retrospect’ with depression or alarm. Is this not a time for looking forward rather than back? Did we not read with approval the signatories' declaration in the Joint Report on Relations between Anglican and Presbyterian Churches: ‘We have renounced, and believe that the Churches concerned should renounce, the method of selecting and measuring such faults and errors in the past history of the Churches now conferring as might be judged to be responsible for our present divisions. These matters have been investigated frequently, and complete agreement on them is not to be expected at this stage in history… The time has come when the voice of mutual recrimination should be silent'? And has Bishop How not reminded us that ‘Scotland needs a purged memory’?
Myth and Fact in Christianity
Authors: Ward Keith
Published: February 2009

Is the existence of God a question of fact? Surprisingly, the answer many theologians have given in recent years is, ‘No’. Some of them actually mean that the word ‘God’ refers to nothing at all, so that sentences about God are not fact-stating utterances; but others confine themselves to the more moderate claim that, though there is something to which the word ‘God’ properly refers, this is certainly not an empirical matter of fact, and nor does it imply any empirical facts whatsoever about the world. This more moderate claim is, I think, that of Rudolf Bultmann; and the process of freeing the concept of ‘God’ from all the empirical entailments which have been customarily attributed to it is the programme of demythologising, for the advocacy of which he is well known. In this paper I wish to attack this moderate view, which implies that Christianity could be true, whatever the empirical facts about the nature and destiny of the world; that is, that questions of empirical fact are, not just undecidable, but are actually irrelevant, to the question of God's existence. And I shall refer, in particular, to Bultmann's essay, ‘New Testament and Mythology’ and to the work of the British philosopher, Bishop I. T. Ramsey, who propounds a substantially similar view, though in different philosophical garb.
God's Purpose for the Church
Authors: Strawson William
Published: February 2009

It is impossible for any man to give a satisfactory answer to the question ‘What is God's purpose for the Church?’ We can only turn with expectation to Holy Scripture and to the other vehicles of divine revelation. The letter to the Ephesians declares the purpose of God as follows: ‘He destined us in love to be His sons through Jesus Christ, as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth. … To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places’ (Eph 1.5, 9; 3.8–10).
Is Karl Barth a Universalist?
Authors: Bettis Joseph D.
Published: February 2009

It is already possible to consider Barth's work as another turning point in the historical background of the present theological situation. But it is also still necessary for contemporary theology to come to terms with Barth. This is especially true of his treatment of the doctrine of universal salvation—apokatastasis. Modern Protestant theology has defined three basic answers to the question of the particularity of election: double predestination, Arminianism, and universalism. The question is whether Barth simply presents a strong and moving case for universalism, or whether he actually breaks out of these options and offers a new possibility for understanding the problem and therefore new possibilities for its resolution.
A Study of Healing in the Gospel According to John
Authors: Wilkinson John
Published: February 2009

Healing is a neglected aspect of Christian Theology, but it has an important and essential place in the gospels. The four gospels, however, differ in the proportion of space they allow to the record of healing, and in the number of healing acts they record. The difference is most marked in the case of the Gospel according to John as can be seen from the following figures.
Indian Christian Thinking in Relation to Christ
Authors: Boyd R. H. S.
Published: February 2009

The rapidly deepening river of Indian christological thought is fed by a number of streams. The main current is of necessity the biblical witness, which has to be expounded afresh in every country and age. To this are added the various ecclesiastical channels by which theological thought has reached India; the Syrian in the South, and the many types of Western theology which have always been influential, and still continue to be so. From the other bank there comes the stream of Indian culture, in particular the philosophical systems of Sankara and Ramanuja, and the bhakti tradition of devotion to a personal God. To all these is added, like the rain, the continual influence of the Holy Spirit, who, in India as elsewhere, is ever drawing from what is Christ's and making it known to men (John 16.14). There has therefore been in India, as one might expect, a departure from some of the traditional christological formulations of the West.
Virtue: A Neglected Concept in Protestant Ethics
Authors: Herms Eilert
Published: February 2009

In this lecture I have three aims in view. First I shall review some of the main points of the theological theory of virtue in its classic medieval form, and consider how the same theme has been taken up in protestant ethics, sometimes in a constructive, sometimes in a negative tone. Second I wish to present my grounds for believing that arguments put forward in protestant ethics against any theory of virtue are insufficient, and to indicate why I hold that protestant ethics too needs an elaborated theory of virtue. Then finally I shall try, at least sketchily, to indicate the direction in which I feel such a theory could be developed.
Thoughts on New Testament Eschatology
Authors: Cranfield C. E. B.
Published: February 2009

To deal with NT eschatology in the time available to me, I should have either to be a vastly more competent NT scholar and theologian than I am or else to be prepared to state my own views dogmatically and treat differing views in a cavalier fashion, a procedure I regard as unscholarly and unacceptable. So what I amoffering is something much more modest —just some thoughts on the subject.