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.

Anabaptist theologians who vie for the most convincing theory of divine non-violence in the contemporary ‘atonement debate’ quite often fail to appreciate the contributions of medieval scholars such as St Thomas Aquinas. Of course, that failure does have a rationale. Aquinas does, indeed, support various systematic expressions of a satisfaction theory of atonement. In doing so, he insists upon God's violent solution to the problem of sin and also employs language fraught with quid pro quo, mercantile and penal images. Aquinas does attempt to ‘correct’ Anselm and rearticulate the satisfaction theory of atonement; however, his expression of that motif still hinges upon the divine demand for remuneration, balanced accounts or an economic transaction in order to repair the damage done by sin. God's desire for this redemptive reparation results in the necessity of the violent death of an innocent man. Consequently, although Aquinas expresses the notion of necessity differently than Anselm, his theory also necessitates, at best, divine complicity with violence and, at worst, divine insistence on violence. Anabaptist theologians who remain true to the tradition's pacifist roots rightfully cry ‘foul’ in response to Aquinas’ theory. If Jesus of Nazareth fully reveals the character of God as indicated in John 14:7 with the words, ‘if you have seen me, you have seen the Father’, theories of atonement which depict God as condoning or requiring violence do not harmonise with the life and teachings of the man Christians call the Prince of Peace, especially if that violence pertains to the redemption of a loving God's good creation. As a result, those who oppose the implicit divine violence embedded in Aquinas’ satisfaction theory of atonement may opt to disengage with him, to expel him completely from the conversation. Yet I suggest that non-violent atonement theologians pause and rethink their indictment of the angelic doctor. Satisfaction remains the prevalent theme surrounding Aquinas’ atonement motif, but it is not by any means the only image he brings to bear on the topic. In fact, throughout his ruminations on the passion of Christ, St Thomas focuses explicitly on the unfathomable, extravagant and immeasurable divine love as the primary motivation for God's desire and subsequent actions to redeem and restore a sinful humanity. I suggest that, given Aquinas’ emphasis on divine love, Anabaptist theologians may well discover a satisfying interlocutor for further theological conversation which carries significant implications for the life of the church. Indeed, scholastic savants such as Thomas Aquinas still do warrant a place at the communal table.

The aim of this article is to provide an historical description of an important piece of Victorian theology, and subsequently to suggest a new context, or rather a new content for a familiar theme. Firstly, it will consider in what sense Newman may be called a ‘natural theologian’; secondly, it will give an account of the notion of the illative sense within the developing pattern of Newman's thought; finally, it will suggest that, by a unilateral concentration on moral experience — the ‘voice of conscience’ — Newman failed to do justice to the full significance of his own argumentation. The point of the illative sense is not that it helps us to identify any one experiential content, or area of reflection, which might lead us to theistic belief, but that it provides an overall context in which a variety of experiential strata and argumentative strategies may be displayed. Newman was, perhaps, too dominated by an autobiographical sense in the realm of fundamental belief in God to identify and correct the individualism which in dogmatic theology proper he would have avoided. Our theistic materials do not lie simply within our own breasts, but in an inter-rogation, Gadamer-like, of the entire theistic tradition as that is mediated to us by the classic texts of our predecessors.

Early in March 1617, King James followed what he himself described as a ‘salmon-like instinct’ and made his first (and last) return visit to his native Scotland since his departure fourteen years previously on the death of Queen Elizabeth. The occasion was the fiftieth anniversary of his coronation, at the age of fifteen months, as James VI of the northern kingdom. Among the events in Edinburgh to celebrate the visit was the Whitsun eucharist in the Chapel Royal at Holyrood Palace. The sermon was delivered by the King's favourite preacher, Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Ely.

This article considers Thomas B. Dozeman's ecumenically orientated and biblically situated theology of ministry (Holiness and Ministry, 2008) by assessing his utilisation of Rudolf Otto's ‘idea of the holy’. Despite significant promise, basic obstacles to appreciating Dozeman's theology of ministry appear to a Catholic perspective. In order to understand the reason for this tension, Dozeman's methodology is analysed. Because of the particular way in which he incorporates the work of Rudolf Otto on the nature of holiness, Dozeman is unable to present a model of ministry wherein ‘word’ and ‘sacrament’ exist in harmony, or a model of ministry which looks to Jesus Christ for its formal type – two issues which any Christian theology of ministry must find problematic. In general, ecumenical and ministerial theologies are ill served by methodologies which are based in a transcendental anthropology of holy experience.

Contemporary Christian construals of the Eucharist, both in doctrine and in practice, generally tend to subordinate, de-emphasise or omit theological reference to the Jewish Passover meal. And yet the key New Testament texts in which the Eucharist's institution is variously narrated – the very texts and institution allegedly ‘remembered’ in eucharistic rites – are virtually unintelligible apart from Passover. Thus, at the heart of Christian doctrine and practical life sits a particular theological problem: namely, precisely how to relate the distinctively Jewish character of the Eucharist's origins as narrated in the New Testament to the distinctively Christian character of eucharistic doctrine and liturgy. Drawing on two Jewish thinkers, Michael Fishbane and Yair Zakovitch, in this article I offer one model for understanding the Eucharist–Passover relationship in particular, and the Christian–Jewish relationship generally, as fundamentally typological, performative and ‘subsessionist’. That is, I propose a subsessionist (as opposed to supersessionist) typological understanding of the Eucharist as a Christian rendition of Passover, at once distinct from its Jewish counterparts today and utterly dependent on the ancient Israelite festival for its intelligibility and force. From Fishbane, I draw the idea that throughout the Hebrew Bible, the exodus narrative provides a crucial interpretative key applicable to both prior and anticipated redemptions. From Zakovitch, I draw the idea that the ubiquity of exodus typology in Hebrew scripture may function to create an impression of periodic repetition in salvation history, in effect reassuring Israel that future deliverance will conform to the essential patterns of the prestigious past. The typology at play here, then, so far from being a triumphalist ‘prophecy-fulfilment’ arrangement in which the ‘old’ is valuable only insofar as it serves as a signpost pointing to the ‘new’, is rather a ‘paradigm-rendition’ typology in which the new performance is clarified and authenticated precisely insofar as it corresponds to the old, exalted original. At stake here, I contend, is not only a more fruitful framework for conceiving the relationship between Eucharist and Passover (or indeed between Christianity and Judaism), but also a crucial theological strategy for resisting what amounts to a de facto Marcionism in contemporary Christian communities.

According to a tradition in the Greek Life of Adam and Eve (GLAE), Seth and his mother Eve were confronted by a wild beast that attacked Seth. This article asserts that Seth's battle with the beast should be understood as a struggle between the ‘image of God’ and Satan, and viewed in a Christian context. The claim is based on three aspects of the story: how the beast is described, why it attacked Seth and only he could control it, and why the beast was confined to its dwelling place until the Day of Judgement. The struggle between Seth and the beast/Satan should be seen as a link in the chain of struggle between the image of God and Satan. It begins in Paradise between Adam, the image of God, and Satan, as recounted in the story of Satan's fall from heaven, continues on earth between Seth, Adam's descendant, and Satan, and will culminate with the final victory of Jesus, the ultimate image of God, over Satan at the end of times.

The modern scene in Christian theology is characterized by a number of very diverse movements from feminism and liberation theology to radical views on christology and the charismatic movement. For many to speak or write about the Trinity is neither realistic nor helpful. In more recent writings, however, there has been renewed interest in the doctrine of the Trinity and in its application to the spheres of the church and also of social and political concerns. Further, a variety of groups as well as individuals have been turning their attention to this central Christian doctrine which is basically attempting to say what we believe about God: Barth, Moltmann, Jungel, the Torrances, on the Protestant side and the Roman Catholics, Von Balthasar, Rahner, and Congar, as well as the Orthodox Lossky, Zraoulas and Meyendorff. Groups like C.E.C. the Conference of European Churches (The Reconciling Trinity), and the British Council of Churches B.C.C. (The Forgotten Trinity) and the Irish Theological Association (The Trinity and the Enlightenment)have all dealt in varied ways with this subject.

This paper has been the result of teaching and comparing two very different Old Testament texts, both of which are concerned with the relationship between God and the created order. One is Genesis 1, with its priestly concerns for harmony within the created order; the other is the book of Amos, where one encounters a profoundly pessimistic view of the coming disorder throughout the natural world. In making associations between these two texts, one cannot help but ask why the earlier reflections in Amos offer such aradical and developed understandingof God's relationship with creation — quite distinct from the view of God evidenced in the first chapter of Genesis.

For many, that might well be the motto of Scottish Religious Education. It is what older people remember of it—Bible stories and the learning of the Scottish psalms. For a great many children, it is still its basis—except that by the time they reach Primary 7 they most certainly have heard it before and have no desire to hear it again. Scottish Religious Education, like much outside Scotland, has been Bible-centred.

Romans 8.26f. has no parallel in the NT. A. J. M. Wedderburn writes,

Today it is still puzzling, troublesome, divisive; for some it is the essence of the Christian faith, to others it is incomprehensible and repellent.

This statement sums up adequately the position of most NT scholars on Rom. 8.26f. Its strangeness derives from three basic ideas. First, this is the only passage in which it is asserted that the Christian does not know how to pray as he ought. This is an exception to what is otherwise said of prayer in the NT. Second, this is the only passage in biblical writings where the Holy Spirit is described explicitly as an intercessor. Third, the passage appears disjointed from its context. The guiding thought in vv. 18–25 is suffering but in v. 26, Paul talks about prayer. Can these themes be related in a single unit?

There are almost as many problems connected with the study of the Dialogue as of the Synoptic Gospels. This is hardly surprising when one considers how comparatively little attention the Dialogue has received, and that in size it is comparable to the four Gospels. Among the main issues to be considered are, the aim and authenticity of the Dialogue, the mutilation of its text, the OT text which is used, and the interpretation of the OT, which is the chief interest of the present writer.

In both world wars, Lutherans of German origin in Australia were used as scapegoats by the government, as that church and its people were regarded as German and therefore a safely bounded object for spite. South Australia, the heartland of Lutheranism, was especially attacked, some pastors and long-settled citizens being interned, restricted and otherwise rejected: actual worship was also affected. The traumatic effects have lasted until now in rural communities such as ‘Hope’, the subject of long-term anthropological research by the writer. These effects are not merely personal, which are grim enough, but inevitably, in deeply religious communities with limited sacred–secular split, also theological. However, given the understandable yet unacceptable unwillingness of the church to face the past, the consequences are ignored. This article argues that crises, whether natural, the result of war, or of wrong behaviour by church officers, are present in every church context through the past to the contemporary world, as is the tendency to ignore the impact in favour of maintaining the institution. The lasting theological effects on laity and clergy should be acknowledged and acted upon in training and ministry for many years after the events, whether they resulted from the behaviour of one person in a parish or an entire government or empire. This may mean accepting the implications of locality for lived theology.

Early in 1632 we find Samuel Rutherford writing in these words to his friend Lady Kenmure:

It is the crooked love of some harlots, that they love bracelets earrings and rings better than the lover that sendeth them; God will not be so loved; for that were to behave as harlots and not as the chaste spouse, to abate from our love when these things are pulled away. Our love to Him should begin on earth as it shall be in heaven; for the bride taketh not by a thousand degrees so much delight in her wedding garment, as she doth in her bridegroom; so we in the life to come, howbeit clothed with glory as with a robe, shall not be so much affected with the glory that goeth about us, as with the bridegroom's joyful face and presence.

The paradigm for Christians' descriptions of their liturgy occurs at 1 Cor. 11:

The Lord Jesus on the night that he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said. ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’

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).