The four gospels rightly stand at the head of the New Testament canon. They have, however, routinely been misread or misunderstood. They tell the story of the launch of theocracy – ‘the kingdom of God’ – in terms of the story of Jesus; but they tell that story as (a) the narrative climax of the story of Israel (presupposing the continuous story envisaged by many second-temple Jews in terms of Daniel 9's prophecy of an extended exile), (b) the story of Israel's God returning in glory as always promised, and (c) as the rival to the powerful first-century narrative of Rome, as told by e.g. Livy and Virgil in terms of Rome's history reaching its climax in Augustus, the ‘son of God’, and his empire. The stories meet on the cross, and the purpose of the gospels is then to awaken the readers’ imagination: suppose, they say, that ultimate power looks like this, not like that of Alexander the Great or Augustus. Ironically, much gospel scholarship since the rise of the critical movement has appeared eager to silence this kind of reflection; this has been due to (a) a desire to avoid continuity of narrative, (b) the implicit Epicureanism of modern western culture, with its eagerness to keep God and the world at arm's length, (c) the ‘two kingdoms’ theology implicit in much Lutheranism, and hence much New Testament scholarship, and (d) the triumph in modernism of what has been described by Ian McGilchrist as ‘left-brain’ over ‘right-brain’ thinking. Microscopic analysis has replaced the world of intuition, metaphor, narrative and imagination, leading to readings entirely against the grain of the gospels themselves (though understandable in an academic world where the doctoral process rewards left-brain work). If we are to take the gospels’ narratives seriously, however, we are projected forwards into a fresh vision of what the early church understood as its ‘mission’, focused on the εὐαγγέλιον which, for the first Christians, trumped that of Caesar. Because the early church was no longer marked by the cultural symbols of ethnic Judaism, it was the freshly imagined vision of the identity of the one God that sustained them in this mission, and the ecclesial life it demanded. This was the birth of ‘Christian theology’; and today's task must include the imaginative recapturing of that vision of God's kingdom, as a key element in a refreshed and gospel-grounded missiology.

This article is about John Cassian and Prosper of Aquitaine's understanding of grace and free will as put forward during the initial phase of the Western Church's struggle to define the doctrine of grace in the wake of the Pelagian controversy. Although both figured prominently in this struggle, both Cassian and Prosper's later understandings of grace and free will, which appreciated the diverse expressions of grace, failed to have any influence on the terms of the debate set forth in the Pelagian controversy. The history of the debate on grace and free will followed the mutually exclusive model in which salvation was the result of either grace or free will. Cassian and Prosper, who both offered an alternative to the mutually exclusive model, have not been fully recognised for their innovative views.

In A Recent publication, Professor Wladimir Weidlé of the Russian Academy in Paris has some things to say about early Christian Art which are of intense interest to the Church historian. Unlike the Christian artist of other ages, he declares, “the early Christian painter or sculptor made no attempt, even unconsciously, to let the form of his work answer in some degree to its specific religious and Christian content… The form in these paintings and carvings simply carries their content, and makes no attempt to express or embody it… What is most remarkable is to find this indifference not to be confined to form in the ordinary sense of the word, but to extend to the inward form—the dramatic or poetic rendering of the given subject… We find no attempt made to imagine how a thing must have looked at the time when it happened. The only peculiarity here to be seen is that the inward form is, in this art, simplified and condensed to the vanishing point; something there must be, but there is as little as possible.” (The Baptism of Art, pp. 8, 9.)

The late John Webster advocated both for a theological theology and a robust recovery of God's intrinsic perfection. This article examines how both occupations are related in Webster's thought by setting forth six statements summarising his doctrine of God and his theological approach to it. According to Webster, the doctrine of God is theological to the extent it upholds the principle of solus Deus in theology's formal and material consideration of God's perfection. Only thus does theology articulate the crucial distinction between and yet correspondence of God's antecedent perfection and God's intimate presence with us.

The interaction between God and creatures is central to biblical narratives. There are several possible models for understanding the relationship between divine and creaturely agency. This article argues that a ‘non-competitive’ model for the interaction of divine and creaturely agency allows for a coherent interpretation of various features of Genesis 1 where alternative models lead to confusion. Since this ‘non-competitive’ model is historically related to creatio ex nihilo, it raises once again the question of the suitability of creatio ex nihilo for biblical interpretation.

Over the last fifty years studies of Anselm of Canterbury's concept of divine justice have delivered different results. The aim of this article is to present the results of a new comprehensive inquiry, based on the interpretation of key passages about justice in Anselm's theological works. The article argues that Anselm works with three definitions of God's justice. The first is the most traditional: God's justice is his right dealing with good and bad. The second definition follows the Anselmian concept of God: God's justice is his acting according to his being that than which nothing greater can be conceived. The third definition is God's rightness of will, preserved for its own sake. The article concludes that the attempt to show how these three definitions are related to each other brings to light tensions and loose ends in Anselm's works.

St Paul and the tradition which follows in his wake have often fallen victim to the circumstances and ideologies of their interpreters: used as ambassadors for patriarchy by some and rejected as misogynistic by others. This article reviews some of the contentious passages in 1 and 2 Timothy and concludes that they both challenge the mores of their environment and resonate with other (deutero-)Pauline teachings. To ensure that such claims do not fall prey to circularity in their arguments, a methodology is developed and applied in which claims of resonance are not predicated on the content of other writings.

Baptizo and baptisma are words whose lexicographical history either originates in, or has been radically altered by, Christian usage. In the LXX the former, in addition to an instance of its common classical meaning, to overwhelm or to sink, occurs in a quite untechnical sense in a few religious contexts. It is employed to describe Naaman dipping in the Jordan (4 Reg. 5.14), Judith performing purificatory ablutions during her sojourn with the unclean Gentiles, and ritual washing after contact with a dead body (Judith 7.7; Sirach 31, 34.30). Here the word retains its original sense of dip. It is only with the Evangelists' account of John that it takes on a technical significance and denotes a particular religious rite.

Contrary to what might be expected from such a thinker, Jonathan Edwards was restrained in conversation with the Reformed debate about the order of the divine decrees, known as the infralapsarian/supralapsarian debate. I will address Edwards's caution regarding this particular debate: first, by tracing the contours of the broader Reformed debate on the divine decrees and its evolution from engagement of Arminian theology to that of theodicy; second, by noting where Edwards does not speak to this debate and exegeting the few passages where he does take it up; third, by analysing the particular questions that Edwards addresses when he does engage the debate; fourth, by pointing to constructive lessons gained by understanding why a careful thinker might be atypically silent. I will demonstrate that Edwards engaged the lapsarian debate insofar as was necessary to rebuke the Arminian denial of unconditional election, yet he refused to engage the debate as a means of articulating a theodicy. In both his engagement and disengagement, Edwards refused to answer the debate on its standard terms and offers an example of carefully crafting doctrine according to theological and contextual concerns.

Modern ecumenical discussions and liturgical reform have given new interest to the ceremonies of Christian initiation. The Reformed churches have traditionally held the view that baptism takes the place of circumcision in the economy of salvation. The interpretations of circumcision in early Christian and patristic literature would suggest a modification, or at least a nuance, to that view.

Contemporary Catholic and Protestant theology has transposed the scientific debate on time into an eschatological discussion about subjective time and objective time. This discussion can be made intelligible in the context of modern cosmology if we allow contemporary eschatology to be transformed by a pneumatological approach to time. In the self-giving of the Holy Spirit into time, the ‘wheel of history’ is identical with the eschatological arrow of history. This is exemplified in a theology of the cross which locates the eternal power of the cross not in the human act of anamnesis by recalling in the present Christ's sacrifice as an event of the past, but in the Holy Spirit who liberates Christ's historical sacrifice on the cross from its temporal coordinates and propels the redemptive act throughout time towards any person in history. A pneumatological approach to time suggests that eschatology is determined not only by the end and the consummation of the present in the future but also by the perpetuation of the present moment through the power of God unfolding in time in the operation of the Holy Spirit. If it can be shown that this is true not only for a theology of the cross, then it may be possible to say, in general, that the unique finality and collective character of God's work of salvation at any moment in history is made possible by the perpetuating work of the Holy Spirit as the eternal lord of time and history.

This paper offers a reading of two representative texts – the 1917 lecture ‘Die neue Welt in der Bibel’ and the preface to the first Römerbrief – that seeks to highlight the theological basis of Barth's early characterisation of the task of biblical interpretation. It further suggests that by describing the engagement of the contemporary reader with scripture in terms drawn from the text itself, Barth makes a distinctive and still relevant contribution to church's attempt to account for its reading practices.

… the reliability of the kerygmatic tradition must not be questioned, for otherwise the eschatological event to which the kerygma testifies would be implicated in the relativity of all historical knowledge.

I am grateful to John Perry for his deft and illuminating review, which nudges in productive ways at the unity and shape of the story I have told in Putting on Virtue. In brief, Perry reads my book as a defence of Christian eudaimonism against charges of hypocrisy. He judges the defence to be a success, but suggests that I am conflating two distinct issues, only one of which is helpfully construed as hypocrisy. As a result of this conflation, I end up including topics and thinkers which don't properly belong under the same umbrella, and failing to do justice to those that do. I overlook the significance of the journey metaphor for Augustine's construal of pagan virtue, and so miss some of his most valuable resources for coming to terms with the character of all virtue in via. Furthermore, while Luther might appear to be the villain of my narrative, Perry argues that in fact he hardly deserves a place in it. Luther's rejection of eudaimonism is so complete that he doesn't really contribute at all to an ongoing conversation about it; his real concern is justification, with an unfortunate spillover into the foreign territory of ethics. It is Hume, Perry proposes, who is the proper villain, undermining the eudaemonist tradition by unashamedly setting aside the task of differentiating objective goods from subjective goods.

Concluded from previous issue of the Journal5. Lutheranism and German Protestantism1The difference in spirit between Calvinism and Lutheranism is illustrated by Melanchthon's famous phrase: hoc est Christum cognoscere, beneficia eius cognoscere. There are of course evident dangers in the wholesale application of the principle, and later Lutheranism did not successfully avoid them. The religious egotism to which it gave rise was certainly too anthropocentric to convey an unobjectionable view of the relation between God and man. It is not by chance, as Brunner (Mediator p. 408) points out, that Ritschl is found repeatedly appealing to the principle in defence of a point of view which really regards God as the “guarantee of the value of human life”.Yet if there is any place where the principle can exert a salutary influence upon theological thought, it is in the doctrine of Predestination. Calvin avoided the pernicious consequences of the principle in virtue of his consistent emphasis on the sovereignty of God. But it would be difficult to defend Calvinism against the charge of scholasticism as it worked out the doctrine of Predestination in obedience to this emphasis, without the corrective influence of Melanchthon's principle. It can hardly be disputed that at this point faith begins to breathe more freely as it turns from the austere and highly rarefied atmosphere of Calvinism to the more robust air of Lutheranism.(i) Heppe is incontestably right in his judgment that the principle of Protestantism was to “ vindicate for the believer the certainty of the possessor of salvation in the promise and reality of God”.