One of the most influential Christologies in the recent past was that based on the kenosis or divine self-emptying in Christ. Starting with Gottfried Thomasius in 1845 through P. T. Forsyth and H. R. Mackintosh in this century, men sought a key in the idea of kenosis for interpreting to the modern mind the traditional Christian affirmation that Christ is both human and divine. There are two questions about the kenotic Christologies and their place in the history of Christian thought that can provide a key to a fresh understanding of the kenotic theme and its function in modern christological thinking.

It is frequently alleged that Martin Luther's doctrine of justification by grace through faith posits absolute human passivity vis-à-vis God and, on account of the past completion of Christ's sacrifice, disconnects Christians from the cross. This article takes issue with this view. Specifically, it disputes the claim that, through his doctrine of justification, Luther became an unwitting advocate of the conceptual juxtaposition of gift and exchange and thus also an ideologue of the shift from an organic to a contractual view of society. Instead, I argue, Luther's eucharistic theology anticipates the concerns of Radical Orthodoxy's critique of gift and sacrifice. It does so, however, in a more forceful manner, in that for Luther gift and exchange are so bound together in his doctrine of justification that the eucharist, instead of being a mere paradigm for social relationships (as Radical Orthodoxy would have it), radically restructures those relationships in the all-embracing unfolding of its participatory gratuity. An additional merit of Luther's vision lies in its systematic description of the eucharist's gift-character in terms of socially and vocationally construed delay and non-identical repetition, actively involving both God and humans – a description not afforded by Radical Orthodoxy's critique.

The first assembly of the World Council of Churches recognised that the aspect of the Roman Catholic-Protestant division which constituted ‘our deepest difference’ was the question of justification. The appearance in 1957 of a work by a then unknown Roman Catholic scholar, claiming that ‘it is undeniable that there is a fundamental agreement between Karl Barth's position and that of the Catholic Church seen in its totality' was therefore the occasion as much for surprise as for pleasure. ‘How one would like to believe it!’ remarked Barth. Küng's study marks a major step toward ecumenical discussion on the issue of justification; however, that discussion must be continued. The present study is a small contribution toward that discussion.

This article examines a long-standing association of Martin Luther's christology with that of Cyril of Alexandria. However, for all its heuristic promise, the designation ‘Cyrillian’, must in Luther's case be understood either as an overly generalised statement of a well-established grammar of christology – in which case it simply is Luther's foundation and, as such, explains nothing specific about Luther's christology and, moreover, fails to do justice to the reformer's crucial argumentative moves. Alternatively, when taken for a set of material similarities, the designation is simply inaccurate, for Luther is decidedly not a Cyrillian, despite some fundamental convergences with the thought of the Alexandrian patriarch. Luther's context, as we demonstrate, leads him not only to go beyond Cyril, but also to argue in a manner contrary to Cyril, in order to secure what for both theologians is a realist eucharistic backdrop of their commitment to the Word's incarnation.

The story of the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida forms a pair with that of the deaf man recorded slightly earlier in the Markan narrative (Mark 7.31–37). In both cases the healings appear to have been accomplished only with difficulty and again in both cases physical means were used in the cure. Further, both stories were closely linked to miracles of feeding. This paper, however, does not address itself, in the first place, to the theological interpretation of the story, but sets out to consider the meaning of the odd response of the blind man to his first glimmerings of sight in the context of the healing as a whole.

This article examines two topics that emerge from N. T. Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of the Gospel: Paul the Shammaite-zealot and the ‘great narrative’ of an Israel in exile, waiting for something. The perspective adopted is that of a historian, for whom the fundamental question is whether Wright's accounts approximate plausible reality two thousand years ago. With respect to the first topic, analysis of source material on the Pharisees in the pre-70 period renders Wright's association of Paul with the rabbinic ‘House of Shammai’ and zealotry doubtful in every part. Similar issues arise in relation to the second topic, where Wright's proposal is supported by a kind of proof-texting, without methodical concern for the nature, context, coherence, themes, rhetoric or meaning of texts in situ.

In the early Christian treatise Peri tes anastaseos ton nekron, written in the last quarter of the second century, Athenagoras of Athens drew a distinction between two kinds of theological discourse or argument (logos), ‘on behalf of the truth’ (huper tes aletheias) and ‘concerning the truth’ (peri tes aletheias), in which he clearly had in mind St Paul's missionary address to the Athenians on Mars' Hill. Owing to its nature discourse concerning the truth is of primary importance for it provides necessary knowledge of the actual subject-matter, while discourse on behalf of the truth is of secondary importance for it does not establish the truth but is useful in opening the way for it by removing the undergrowth of false and hostile opinion. It is in this light that Athenagoras' two extant works are to be appreciated, Presbeia ton Christianon which is admittedly of an apologetic nature, and Peri tes anastaseos ton nekron in which he offered a reasoned account of the truth of the resurrection.

Doctrines of the atonement in Christian theology, as Marlin E. Miller has pointed out, ‘usually limit their concern to reconciliation with God and, at most, consider reconciliation with others a secondary consequence of reconciliation with God’. Too often, in other words, the vertical aspect of reconciliation is allowed to overshadow its horizontal aspect. The vertical aspect of the atonement as it pertains directly to God is often treated in isolation as if its ethical implications were of no great importance. The reverse defect, however, would also appear to be widespread. Christian ethics as we know it today often seems to proceed as if the atoning work of Christ were of little or no relevance to its deliberations on human affairs. The social or horizontal aspect of reconciliation thereby eclipses its vertical aspect. Yet if the cross of Christ is indeed the very center of the center of the Christian gospel, as the church has historically believed, then how can it fail to determine the substance of Christian ethics as well as that of Christian theology? Moreover, how can the centrality of the cross fail to orient them both in any attempt to specify their inner unity, order and differentiation?

In the Babylonian Captivity, 1520, Luther launched an attack on the number of ordinances which the medieval Western Church labelled ‘sacraments’. According to Luther, only three were worthy of the title sacrament: baptism, the bread, and penance. Although critical of the prevailing penitential system, Luther not only defended the sacramental status of penance, but also the practice of auricular confession:

As to the current practice of private confession, I am heartily in favor of it, even though it cannot be proved from the Scriptures. It is useful, even necessary, and I would not have it abolished.

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’.

This essay explores the overlapping territory between the phenomenon known as ‘imaginative resistance’ in literary, psychological and philosophical circles and Karl Barth's theological hermeneutic. Imaginative resistance refers to the way readers are willing to give consent to all sorts of implausible things in the context of a fiction, but become uneasy when asked to imagine that something they consider morally or ethically reprehensible is good. The essay offers an overview of the current scholarly theories regarding the origins of the phenomenon of imaginative resistance, arguing that none of them provide an adequate account of imaginative resistance in relation to a text read as ‘Word of God’. The essay suggests that Karl Barth's theological hermeneutic does not offer a ‘solution’ to imaginative resistance in relation to scripture, but rather deepens and redescribes it in meaningful ways by acknowledging the appropriateness of the interpreter's resistance while encouraging continued engagement even with the claims of challenging biblical texts.

Recently, I attended a conference on the theme ‘theologies of the cross’. I gained much from it in various ways, but one feature concerned me: in reading the papers, and listening to discussions, it became rather clear that, whilst the various contributors might or might not agree, or even be sure about, what they did believe about the cross, they were all both united and certain on what they didn't believe in – the traditional Reformed and Evangelical idea of penal substitution. Now, I confess that I had no particular commitment to this idea. I knew of no exegetical or theological reason to demand that we hold on to it, or to suggest that our account of the atonement would necessarily be lacking something vital if we did not express it in this way. Penal substitution was a way of talking about the cross with which I was familiar, but to which I was not committed. Temperamentally, I had tended to avoid it: as far as I can judge, the dominant way of talking about the cross in my preaching has been in terms of combat with, and victory over, the evil powers of sin and death and hell; it is not a theme I have touched on much in my academic writing. Penal ideas are common, however, in the liturgy and (particularly) hymnody of my church tradition: ‘Bearing shame and scoffing rude/In my place condemned he stood’; ‘All our pride, all our greed, all our fallenness and shame, and the Lord has laid the punishment on him.’ I have never seen any reason to object to such songs. So, to be at a conference where there was near unanimity that, whatever else we were going to say about the cross, we would begin by dismissing this tradition, was of interest and concern to me.

It is now nine years since the death of Principal John Baillie of New College, Edinburgh, and as yet there has been no adequate study of his extremely fruitful life and thought. This essay is intended as a prologue to such a study, and in it I hope to show not only that this kind of inquiry would be of considerable historical interest, but that it would also be helpful as a means of getting our bearings in the midst of the current theological confusion. For John Baillie was no stranger to theological struggle, breakdown, and renewal in either his private life or his theological reflection, although the irenic spirit of much of his writing might tend to give the opposite impression. Indeed it was just that nineteenth-century bifurcation of life and thought which provided much of the impetus for his most creative and penetrating theological work, and which may provide some helpful insights into the nature of the theological problems confronting us today.

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