Athanasius of Alexandria (298?–373) was a key figure in the in the life and theology of the fourth-century Church. In most of the contemporary controversies and events his force of personality made an indelible mark on developments and influenced their direction and movement to a remarkable degree. Although known most widely for his defense of the communion of being of the Son incarnate in Jesus with the Father, he was no less important in the incipient controversies concerning the divinity of the Holy Spirit. At a decisive hour of the Church's life, Athanasius not only secured her faith in the one Godhead of Father and Son; he delineated the lines upon which her pneumatological doctrine was to develop. With his characteristic single-mindedness, and by constant reiteration of certain propositions, Athanasius laid down the general lines of the future development of the doctrine, thus making the question of the divinity of the Holy Spirit as fundamental a part of the Church's consciousness as the doctrine of the Son's full divinity had become through his disputes with the Arians.

I Suspect that at its close this article will be judged to have fallen between two stools, that of the theologian and that of the philosopher. Not being in a position to remedy the defects of either quarter makes me the keener to communicate to others something that has recently struck me and given me pause for thought, namely an apparent parallel between a certain aspect of contemporary philosophy and another of traditional theology. It is to these that the expressions ‘intersubjectivity’ and ‘indwelling’ in my title refer. It is my hope that an examination of the parallel between them will prove fruitful for the contemporary pursuit of the perennial occupation of fides quaerens intellectum.

The renaissance of virtue ethics in Christian moral discourse has led a handful of Reformed theologians to consider whether or not the Reformed tradition is compatible with classical and medieval concepts of virtue. Barthians, in particular, express doubt regarding the prospect of such a retrieval, arguing that classical notions of virtue compromise the Reformed hallmark of divine sovereignty and Luther's dictum simul justus et peccator. This essay counters that the Reformed tradition is broad enough to find more productive ways to engage virtue ethics. In particular, the Westminster Standards provide both the formal space for a significant theological exploration of human agency and the material content for the development of something like a classical virtue ethic. Barthian concerns regarding divine sovereignty and moral progress are satisfied by a demonstration that Westminster's attention to human agency is always within the context of a greater emphasis on divine agency.

In the ancient world, the concept of conversion was a motive for many great works. One might consider Plato's dialogue The Republic as an expression of hope and salvation for man, with the basic intention to guide man to a clearer vision of God. Later Philo, Clement of Alexandria and other early Christan writers were concerned with the question how man would be reunited with the divine. In his presentation of the text and translation of Plotinus' works, A. H. Armstrong states that the primary object of all of Plotinus' activity as a teacher and thinker was to bring his own soul and the souls of others by way of intellect to union with the One.

The theology of liberation poses social, hermeneutical, and theological issues when it asks, ‘Who is Jesus Christ for us today?’ The social question of human and political liberation is a matter in which theology cannot remain indifferent, though theology qua theology is not simply social analysis. The hermeneutical question of the influence of social context and ideology on biblical interpretation casts suspicion on methodological naïvety, though theology qua theology is not simply epistemology. Without ceasing to confront the social and hermeneutical aspects of theologizing, liberation theology unavoidably poses the Christological question, ‘Who is Jesus Christ?’

The Christian canon contains only two apocalypses: the Book of Daniel and the Apocalypse of John. Today no less than 19 apocalypses and closely related documents are gathered together in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 volumes; Garden City, New York, 1983–1985). In light of these apocalypses and apocalyptic writings new possibilities for interpreting the documents in the New Testament can be seen. Only one example can be chosen now; it is a significant one, revealing the indebtedness of the Apocalypse of John to the continuum of Jewish apocalyptic thought and clarifying the roots of Christology in Early Judaism.

Origen's Commentary on John provides us with a fruitful acquaintance with his christological thinking. The Commentary as a text is not well presented, and for this reason the work is not as well known as it might be, although Origen is the first great commentator of Scripture whose exegetical works have come down to us. It seems important to know what he has to say in those works which he was able to write according to his inclination, and not for the purposes of an argumentum ad hominem. The Commentary on John itself provides the reason why it should be studied as an important revelation of Origen's thought, since he describes the Fourth Gospel as the greatest of the Gospel writings because it contains , and plainly ‘declared ’ in a way the Synoptics did not, although no one can understand the meaning of the Gospel unless, like John, he has been shown ‘by Jesus Himself, Jesus as He is’ (Book I, 6). The writing of this Commentary was not a work taken up lightly or without a great deal of hardship on the part of the author. It is a carefully—indeed painfully—wrought out work, agonised over to the last logical detail according to his exegetical method, and must be considered as one of the most serious attempts at a systematic construction of a christological position in the history of Christian thought.

The aim of this article is to examine the relation that the New Testament posits between ethics and eschatology. The first part will deal with the ethical implications of eschatology as a whole; the second part will be devoted to an examination of one topic only—the Second Coming (Parousia) of Christ; the third part will take the form of a few remarks on the applicability of Christian ethics to the life of the world.

The basis of apostolic eschatology is stated in the earliest Christian ‘sermon’ for which we have evidence—Peter's speech on the day of Pentecost. The speech ends with the assertion that the promised Spirit has been given and that the ‘new age’ has dawned. This ‘realised’ eschatology of the Petrine kerygma has parallels in both the gospels and epistles.

Modern conversations between the natural sciences and theology on the human soul have not so far engaged extensively with relevant debates in the early church. Contemporary neuroscience tends to operate within a monistic paradigm, often referred to as ‘physicalism’, that understands human mental activity entirely in naturalistic terms. While there is ongoing scientific debate about the degree to which human consciousness can be reduced entirely to biology, physicalism is often cited as making traditional religious belief in the soul obsolete, or at least modifying it significantly. The Apollinarian question of whether Jesus has a soul therefore reappears. This article considers the contemporary relevance of the Apollinarian controversy, suggesting that fourth-century insights possess key points of contact with the modern non-reductive physicalist position and thus raising important considerations for the science–theology conversation on the soul.

Bonhoeffer gave surprisingly little systematic attention to questions of providence and history despite the fact that his lifelong theological concern was to explore the way in which revelation was given form in his world. It was only in the experiences in the Second World War when working in the Abwehr with members of the resistance and subsequently in prison, when he had to face the possibility of a major shift in human consciousness, that he looked at the problem of history and the development of culture and had to relate it to an understanding of providence. Even so circumstances did not allow him to work this out in detail; both the Ethics and Letters and Papers from Prison are evidence of a direction in his thinking, though the way seems to be fairly clearly delineated.

Healing is a neglected aspect of Christian Theology, but it has an important and essential place in the gospels. The four gospels, however, differ in the proportion of space they allow to the record of healing, and in the number of healing acts they record. The difference is most marked in the case of the Gospel according to John as can be seen from the following figures.

A colleague commented that it is difficult to give a clear brief summary of Eccentric Existence because it has so many moving parts. That's fair, and for that reason Tom Greggs offers not a précis but, as he says, a ‘tour’ of EE. I am grateful to him for this perceptive, perspicuous and generous tour of the book's premises and conclusions. I want to address as best I can here Greggs's several ‘unsystematic probes’. The probes seem to me to fall into two broad groups, one raising formal or methodological concerns and the other substantive concerns. I shall begin with the first group, taking them up in more or less the order in which they were made.

Exhaustive studies of Martin Luther's preaching are few, and for good reason. The persistence of his scribes has resulted in a corpus of more than 2,000 sermons — and a tangle of questions concerning their authenticity and integrity. His theological program was such that in matters of content he did not maintain a rigid distinction between treatise and sermon. Everything we have from Luther ‘preaches’. Complicating the picture are the various postils, which are usually identified as ‘sermons’. The postils were not intended to do more than set a standard for others; yet they probably were delivered verbatim from some pulpits, and in The German Mass Luther says they should be!

In what follows I offer a dyptich on the assurance of salvation and its relation to good works in three Christian traditions, Reformed, Lutheran, and Catholic. The Orthodox Reformed (or the Reformed scholastics in the generations after Calvin) consider the assurance of salvation in terms of the practical syllogism: crudely put, my salvation depends on God's election, but I can tell whether I am among the elect by examining my good works. The Orthodox Lutherans (Lutheran scholastics in the generations after Luther) consider die assurance of salvation in terms of fides praevisa, or (crudely) faith that God foresees, in abstraction from the further question of whether or not God also causes it. Thomas Aquinas, comparable in method and influence, considers the sort of knowledge that observation of one's merits bestows: not certainty but conjecture.y

This essay examines the popular claim that the apostle Paul deploys an apocalyptic ‘two-age’ scheme in his eschatology, adapted from Jewish apocalyptic thought but reworked in an ‘inaugurated’ configuration in his theology as ‘now and not yet’. This reading is challenged as representing an oversimplified and anachronistic reading of the Jewish apocalyptic literature, and in respect of its claim to be a Pauline innovation. Furthermore, it is a reading not adequately sensitive to the fact that Paul rarely (if ever) uses the phrase ‘age to come’. The second section of the essay examines this Pauline evidence, and some of the language Paul uses instead of this phrase. Finally, the essay closes with a theological proposal for why Paul might do this, and makes some suggestions regarding Paul's view of time, the relationship between time and eternity, and possible ways this might be articulated once dogmatically located within his christology.