Recent scholarly attention to Calvin's commentaries on scripture still limits our attention to the works Calvin produced for future pastors, and neglects his efforts to teach and train ordinary Christians. The commentaries have as their audience future pastors, with the goal of revealing the mind of the author with lucid brevity. The sermons have as their audience ordinary Christians, with the goal of expounding the intention of the author, and of applying it to their use, so that they might retain it in their minds and hearts, and put it into practice in their lives. There are three steps Calvin consistently followed in each of his sermons on Ephesians. First, he sought to show the meaning and intention of Paul contained in the words of the epistle. Next, he pointed out that the meaning revealed in his exposition should be kept in mind, retained in memory, and imprinted on the hearts of the congregation. Third, Calvin sought to apply the doctrine of Paul to the use, edification, and instruction of the congregation, so that they might profit from the doctrine by putting it in practice in their lives.

Paul Tillich did not contribute a detailed essay to the discussion of the programme of ‘Entmythologisierung’ (demythologising) as did Karl Barth or Karl Jaspers. However, it will not escape the reader of his works that Tillich has often expressed his views on this theme, though it be only by a brief reference. The question of the interpretation of myth has not only engaged him during the last decade; on the contrary, more than 30 years ago, Tillich had explained his position in systematic form in the article on myth in the 2nd edition of Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Tillich has not substantially departed from the essential points of this position. On the one hand, Tillich is concerned with the fundamental distinction between unbroken and broken myth, and on the other hand, with the equally characteristic relation which he draws between myth and symbol. These definitions and questions permit us in the following detailed interpretation to construct a form adequate to Tillich's thinking. First we will present Tillich's understanding of unbroken myth, and second, his definition of broken myth, which in its determining points is an interpretation having recourse to his definition of symbol.

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.

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.

William abraham criticizes the Yale school of theology for its ‘systematic cultivation of studied obscurantism.’ Abraham does not doubt the intellectual gifts of the Yale theologians, but he chides them for failing to tell us something definitive about God. ‘One hopes for such minimal things from a theologian. After all, that has always been a central element of any serious theology.’

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.

In 1961 H. Wendland delivered a lecture expressing the opinion that the lack of theological discussion has meant that we have had to go without a thorough inquiry into the problems of diakonia seen as a whole. Since then, four larger contributions have been made to the debate. The first to appear was a Roman Catholic collection of essays edited by K. Rahner and H. Vorgrimmler under the title Diakonia in Christo. The thirtynine contributions cover a wide range of material in three main sections: the deacon in history and at present; the theology of the diaconate with regard to its renewal; efforts, practical possibilities and stimuli towards renewal of the diaconate. The chapter of immediate interest is that by J. Colson, Der Diakonat im Neuen Testament. He looks at the subject from four angles:

Gregory illustrates the complex reception of Chalcedon in the West in the way he dealt with the Istrian Schism caused by the Fifth Ecumenical Council of 553. At issue was whether Chalcedon's decisions in their entirety or its doctrinal statements alone were inviolable. Gregory strongly urged the latter, influenced by initial papal support for the Fifth Council, his conviction that only those within the church would be saved and pastoral anxiety about the imminence of the eschaton. However, his literary legacy also demonstrates his commitment to the soteriological significance of the Chalcedonian definition of the two natures of Christ.

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.

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.

Here is the eleventh Kapitel of Barth' Dogmatik, and the entitles it The Creator and His creation. Its three great themes are: God's Fatherly Providence, the “Negation” (Chaos or Void) of which He rules and against whose opposition He safeguards His creatures, and the ministry of angels. Before he passes on from the first to the second article of the creed, Barth promises a further Kapitel dealing with the ethical doctrine which rests on our understanding of God as Creator. The doctrine which he has to expound and establish in this sector of the theological field is at once the most familiar and the least secure element in the Christian outlook of modern men. We all know the kind of thing we are expected to say about God's Fatherly care. Professor Farmer's book, The World and God, gave substantial help towards saying it in the modern climate of thought. But there are plenty of signs that Christians tremble in face of the obligation to relate the vast and complex range of experience to the action of God. It becomes increasingly difficult to speak as though the wealth and variety of cosmic reality can be intelligibly related to the God who reveals Himself in Jesus Christ and to the action which He takes at that focal point. And what one expected from Barth was a rethinking of the doctrine of Providence on a Christological basis. What he has to say is not excitingly novel.

This paper demonstrates the techniques used by five Syriac writers of the mid-fourth to early sixth centuries in interpreting the dominical injunction in Matt 18:3 to become like children in order to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Unlike modern critical approaches, early Syriac exegesis of this saying is shaped less by the surrounding context than by association with other scriptural texts, in a manner more reminiscent of Jewish midrashic technique. The writers are Aphrahat, Ephrem, the author of the Book of Steps, Narsai and Jacob of Serugh. This study notes the interaction in some of the sources with their interpretation of Gen 2–3 and demonstrates the influence of the writers' pre-existing protology and eschatology on their exegesis of the New Testament passage. Recurring themes include whether Adam and Eve were believed to be children before the fall; whether the goal of the believer should be a return to a state of prelapsarian innocence; the existence of sexuality before the fall; and how to imitate angels as well as children. Key terms used in the sources are ̆sabrutā ‘infancy’ or ‘naivety’, and gmirutā ‘perfection’ or ‘maturity’, and the rather different concepts they represent in the five writers.

One of the more promising recent developments in Christian ethics is the attempt to re-think its starting point and its basis in the light of the advances in biblical studies which are recovering for the church the specificity of the biblical perspective. It is true that this concern to take the biblical perspective seriously must go hand in hand with another of the central themes of current ethical thinking, namely, the concern to pay close attention to the data of the concrete situation. Unfortunately, ‘situation ethics’, while commendable in its refusal of legalism and its openness to the givenness of the situation, is frequently lacking in any specifically Christian content, that is, content to which the biblical perspective has made at least some formative contribution. In this regard, the difficult problem is this: how do we appropriate the biblical perspective in such a way that it may illumine the present concrete situation and give shape to ethical decision? Not much progress has been made on the solution of this problem. Although in this article we are only working at one end of the spectrum, namely, one aspect of the biblical basis of Christian ethics, nevertheless we see this as part of the total problem of bridging the gap, for in fact this cannot be accomplished without the re-conceptualisation of ‘biblical ethics’ now taking place.