Theological Action Research (TAR) is a way of doing and teaching theology and forming students that surmounts the problems associated with both formal theologies and theological ethnographies. Drawing from models of action research developed in other fields, this paper outlines an approach to teaching practical ministry grounded in a collaborative mode of inquiry capable of generating new insights into humanity's relation to God while also engendering the ethical-political powers that give shape to collective life. As a process of what anthropologist Lia Haro calls eth-o-graphy, Christian formation and knowledge production cannot be disconnected from cooperative participation in communities of practice dedicated to this kind of social, ecclesial activity. The paper goes on to describe how the author has begun to implement this TAR model at a Catholic, Jesuit institution, offering some promising preliminary findings on the potential it holds for training ministry students.

In both Theo-Drama IV and Mysterium Paschale, Balthasar suggests that the descensus existentially separates the divine hypostases of Father and Son. He also repeatedly argues that his position is faithful to the Great Tradition. While there has been much debate about Balthasar's view of the descensus, this debate has focused mostly on the issues of universalism and penal substitution, leaving the issue of trinitarian relations either to the side or without an analysis of its historical precedent. This article attempts to address this lacuna by asking whether Balthasar's view of the descensus is in fact supported by the Great Tradition, with a specific focus on second-century texts. After surveying the apostolic fathers, second-century Jewish and Christian traditions (e.g. the New Testament apocrypha), second-century apologists and Melito's Peri Pascha, the article concludes that Balthasar's position does not find historical support in the second century. His view may be in line with the Great Tradition elsewhere, but it is not grounded in this seminal century of Christian doctrinal reflection.

Since Barth has not developed any systematic treatise on the doctrine of analogy, what I hope to say in this paper is rather implicit in his Church Dogmatics, especially the volumes I/1, II/1, III/1, III/2, IV/1 and IV/3.

Eleven years after the third World Conference on Faith and Order at Lund, the fourth in the series (and, some have suggested, the last) was held in July 1963, at McGill University, Montreal, by invitation of the Canadian Council of Churches and with the active and welcoming participation of a Montreal Arrangements Committee. 498 persons attended the conference. 240 of these were delegates of the churches, 18 youth delegates, and 46 advisers invited by the W.C.C. There were 15 observers from non-member churches, including 5 from Roman Catholic Church, 3 from the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod), and 1 from the Serbian Orthodox Church. There were 65 official guests, the great majority of whom had been invited through the good offices of the Canadian Council of Churches and the N.C.C.C.U.S.A. In all, 138 member and non-member churches of the W.C.C. were represented. Nor should we forget to mention in this list the 32 interpreters and translators who gave us their usual splendid service, and the 21 stewards who came at their own expense and who by their energetic work made the whole proceedings possible. It is well known that from the ranks of the youth delegates and stewards of one conference comes the chairman of the next conference but one, so that we should feel happy that the younger generation was so well represented at Montreal.

This article addresses the so-called ‘apocalyptic reading of Paul’, taking the representative work of J. Louis Martyn and Martinus C. de Boer as its primary focus. The chief contention is that the ‘apocalyptic reading’ does not resemble the historical phenomenon of Jewish apocalyptic literature, although the scope of this article has been intentionally limited to Galatians. The present study is composed of two halves. The first half offers a critique of what it means for Paul to be an apocalyptic thinker according to Martyn and de Boer. Their emphasis is on discontinuity, duality and dichotomy, which coheres neither with first-century apocalyptic literature and its antecedents, nor with the letter to the Galatians. Their nuanced notion of apocalyptic has led to an unnecessary bifurcation between apocalyptic and covenant (not to mention Heilsgeschichte) in the interpretation of Paul. However, this article suggests that the dichotomy has been misplaced, both in relation to the discontinuity that Paul does articulate (i.e. with the law), and the dichotomy reflected in apocalyptic literature, namely, the division between the present evil age and the glorious age to come. Thus, it is argued that Martyn and de Boer's focus on discontinuity hardly constitutes apocalyptic in a first-century historical sense. Rather, their specific emphasis owes its articulation to the theology of Karl Barth. After arguing that the ‘apocalyptic reading’ lacks historical precision (and possibly theological forthrightness), the second half of the study argues that some neglected features of Galatians, such as suffering and persecution, cohere with the apocalyptic character of the letter, and are common features of apocalyptic broadly. In fact, the division between apocalyptic and covenant in scholarship on Galatians is bridged by the themes of conflict and crisis. This is because apocalyptic hope often arises in the absence of the realisation of covenantal promises and expectations; a covenantal disconnect is created and aggravated by crises and hardships of various sorts, hence the need for apocalyptic hope. Suffering therefore ties together the strands of apocalyptic and covenant in Galatians. If Martyn and de Boer's ‘apocalyptic reading’ was truly apocalyptic in a first-century historical sense, it would have integrated the imagery of suffering and persecution found in the letter.

Since Perry Millerpos;'s biography of Jonathan Edwards began a new cycle of study some forty years ago, research into Edwards' life and thought has advanced considerably. No longer is the intellectual giant of colonial America surrounded by the obscurity to which early generations had consigned him. Yale is republishing his works. New secondary studies on Edwards appear regularly. Academics from a range of disciplines - history, American studies, theology, philosophy, and literary criticism - have all made Edwards a focus for serious scholarly attention. As an index to the quickening tempo of research, the total number of dissertations on Edwards increased in geometrical proportion during the last half century, doubling during each of the successive decades since 1940.

Glossolalia is a phenomenon that has perplexed biblical scholars for generations. This paper challenges the majority view that glossolalia in the New Testament refers to ecstatic utterances and argues that the only independent New Testament testimony of the phenomenon is found in 1 Corinthians.

In much contemporary theology, pastoral/practical theology, and much of the more popular ‘Christian’ literature there is a concern for exploring and discovering various aspects of right relationship. These relationships might be political, marital, familial, sexual, economic, those within the church, or between the church and the greater society. What seems to be lacking in many of these discussions is an adequate theological foundation upon which to carry out the exploration. There are assumptions made about the nature of human relationships which seem to have no connection to theological underpinnings or are only loosely, or thematically related.

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

Abstract

The essay explores the relationship between Christian faith, ethical thought and political action. It examines two views of the matter. First, the autonomy thesis, advanced by writers such as Edward Norman in his Reith Lectures and elsewhere, which claims that Christianity in general is independent of political concerns, and that Church leaders in particular have no business engaging in political debate, or using their teaching authority to commend or condemn the actions of governments. Second, the commitment thesis, here derived from writings of Kenneth Leech, which maintains that fidelity to the biblical revelation involves an explicit commitment to Christian humanism, and thereby to practical opposition to capitalism and support for radical socialism.

The contentions of this essay are three. Our first thesis is that both contemporary philosophical and theological thought stand at an impasse. In philosophy the empiricists emphasise the significance of factual meaning to the exclusion of valuational meaning, while the existentialists stress the importance of valuational meaning to the exclusion of the factual. In theology the conservatives and liberals are united in stressing the historical (Historie) significance of Jesus so as almost to ignore his existential (Geschichte) significance, while the Bultmannians focus on the existential significance of Jesus and minimise the need for factual knowledge.

In July 1930 Bonhoeffer wrote in the preface to the published version of his doctoral dissertation: ‘The more theologians have considered the significance of the sociological category for theology, the more clearly the social intention of all the basic Christian concepts has emerged. Ideas such as “person”, “primal state”, “sin” and “revelation” are fully understandable only in relation to sociality.’ Two recently published works, a translation of Bonhoeffer's 1933 Christology lectures and John A. Phillips' study of Bonhoeffer's theology, give occasion for examining the meaning of this statement and its importance in understanding Bonhoeffer's thought.

The Göttingen New Testament Professor, Wilhelm Bousset observed that historical research was in ‘danger of placing Christianity in the flux of development’, of ‘failing to give due worth to its special character and unique meaning, and thereby neutralising and relativising everything’. ‘The halo of the supernatural which had clung around “sacred history” was destroyed,’ and history had become a ‘labyrinth for modern religious liberalism’, where it threatened ‘to betray itself’. In their attempts to avoid such a relativisation of the Christian faith, most of the members of the History of Religion School sought refuge in a primordial mystical experience expressive of non-rational feelings, of emotions, moods and fantasies.

In a well-known essay on ‘The Two Types of the Philosophy of Religion’, Paul Tillich distinguishes between the ontological and the cosmological approaches in our philosophical understanding of God, and aligns himself with the former. The ontological approach may be historically associated with Augustine and Anselm's ontological argument, as contrasted with Thomas Aquinas and the cosmological argument, but the decisive difference from Tillich's perspective is whether God is treated as a being, an instance of being exemplifying the fundamental metaphysical categories, or beyond being, a radical and necessary exception to these principles. Championing the ontological approach, Tillich declares: ‘The being of God cannot be understood as the existence of a being alongside others or above others. If God is a being, he is subject to the categories of finitude, especially to space and substance. Even if he is called the “highest being” in the sense of the “most perfect” and the “most powerful” being, this situation is not changed. When applied to God, superlatives become diminutives’ (ST I, 235). In response, proponents of the cosmological approach may agree with Alfred North Whitehead: ‘God is not to be treated as an exception to all metaphysical principles, invoked to save their collapse. He is their chief exemplification.’

There is seldom a lack of new studies of Isaiah. In this article I want to mention some aspects of a few recently published studies which direct our attention in different ways to the book of Isaiah, rather than to Isaiah of Jerusalem (or the so-called ‘second Isaiah’) as an individual with an historical role. Not that I am not concerned with the historical Isaiah of Jerusalem: in fact the concern is greater than the following reviews might suggest. Positively I am insisting that our quest for him must start from the book of Isaiah in all its variety and complexity, and not from its few familiar and congenially informative prose sections. Then the more negative suggestion that Isaiah may not have been a ‘prophet’ (at least in the sense that tradition came to regard him) is an attempt to clear the ground for a better point of view.

Although there is considerable documentation of women preachers during the English Civil War period and the Interregnum, it is clear that such activities were not encouraged among English Calvinistic Baptists, and most especially among Particular Baptists. Yet there was a tension in even the most restrictive Baptist teaching on this subject. For since Baptists had opened the door to congregational participation in the public ministry of the church, they were faced with the problem of partially closing that door in order to restrict the ministry of women to that of diakonia, and good works. Nevertheless, a small number of women have been identified as both prophets and Particular Baptists, and the nature and context of their ministry illustrates the role of women in early Baptist communities.