The Hebrews had an ineradicably “whole” view of life and the universe. We Westerners, whose educational system rests upon the assumption of the “Greeks” that matter and spirit are separate entities, find it hard to think as the Old Testament thinks. Plato was not the first of the philosophers to dissociate the realm of ideas from the realm of things, since some of the Ionian philosophers before him had already conceived that truth is the truth of propositions. One result of such a dichotomy was the conception that matter or things are not so important or even so real as are ideas; it is the study of the world of ideas, or of the world of spiritual values, which primarily leads mankind to a knowledge of God.

Not far below the surface of most modern theological dispute lies the question of the interrelationship of theology and culture. How shall those who take their intellectual orientation from the Christian Gospel understand their position in relation to the intellectual currents that represent the spirit of the age? Should the stance be that of Tertullian, Eusebius, or Augustine; Kierkegaard, Barth, or Tillich; or of some variation and combination of these and others? One of the many ramifications of this complex area of inquiry concerns the relationship of the Christian community to the institutions of the society and the world in which it carries on its life, as is well illustrated by recent controversy over the aims and methods of the W.C.C. Programme to Combat Racism. Here, of course, are obvious, if highly complex, moral and practical issues. But underlying them is a further theoretical and theological question: What is Christianity? In this paper, I should like to suggest that both the theological and the ethical problems can be illuminated by an examination of the interrelationship between conceptions of the person of Christ and the church's understanding of its relation to earthly rulers.

It is often enough averred that Calvin developed his doctrine of predestination in order to reassure believers of their status before God; it is even more often asserted that the overall effect of his teaching was eventually to subvert that assurance, or at any rate to turn it into a form of self-absorption that has an effect contrary to that for which the gospel frees us. Self-absorption is indeed among the besetting sins of Western Christianity, from Augustine onward. In each era, it takes characteristic form. In our day, it is among the prime dangers of the post-Constantinian Church, which, deprived, apparently, of once secure social and political status and role; diminished, apparendy, in numbers and influence, flounders variously in inaction, activism and political correctness in a sometimes desperate concern not to lose the attention of the—reprobate? In this paper, I propose to bring together the related themes of election and ecclesiology, with particular reference to the beleaguered situation of the Christian Church in a world which, as Robert Jenson has observed, is unique in being the first once apparently believing culture to have abandoned the Christian gospel. That throws into the limelight the problem of the, if not everywhere minority status, at least unique situation for the Church of rejection by the main streams of intellectual and cultural life.

When Jürgen Moltmann's Theology of Hope first appeared in 1965, it was seen as ushering in a new era of theological thinking. Karl Barth, however, sharply criticised the work as too heavily dominated by a ‘principle of hope’ that he believed Moltmann had inherited from the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch. This interpretation has largely been taken as fact among interpreters of Moltmann's theology of hope. This has caused most interpreters to see his turn to panentheism and ecotheology in God in Creation (1983) as being less of a shift of emphasis than a total change of trajectory or even break. There is evidence, however, that a different source contributed to the overall orientation of Moltmann's theology – an orientation that has remained throughout his life. This other source is the life and thought of the radical Schwäbean Pietists, Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805–80) and his son Christoph Blumhardt (1842–1919). In this article the authors flesh out the thesis that the Blumhardts are the prior, deeper and more long-lasting influence on Moltmann by focusing on three key theological motifs that permeate his theology: 1) Christianity as eschatology; 2) the ‘theology of the earth’; and 3) the ethics of hope. Furthermore, they argue that when the ‘hidden’ influence of the Blumhardts is acknowledged, Moltmann's later ‘shift’ can be understood as essentially in continuity, rather than discontinuity, with his earlier thought.

In 2003, the year he was consecrated bishop of Durham, Tom Wright published his magisterial work The Resurrection of the Son of God. This volume of more than 800 pages is a monumental defence of the reality of the resurrection. Immensely learned and circumspect, the book impresses the reader with its academic and theological passion. In my view, Bishop Wright has succeeded in building a theological cathedral of illuminating historical insights, convincing and surprising exegetical observations, and thoroughly argued systematic conclusions. No prophetic intuition is needed to predict that this book will remain a classic among the writings which stimulate further thinking and discourse about this most important and highly controversial topic of faith.

A Mong those elements of Christian doctrine which surged anew to the forefront of Christian thinking during the early sixteenth century was that biblical idea which, in more modern times, we have come to call the ‘priesthood of all believers’. Luther used the doctrine almost as a battle-axe, to hew away at the pretensions of the Roman hierarchy and sacramental system. Almost invariably, it is Luther's name which we find linked to this doctrine in studies of the Reformation period. However, any serious study of the idea of the priesthood of God's people would do well to include an examination of the way in which John Calvin dealt with it, and indeed, the way in which the idea found certain expressions within his system of ecclesiastical organisation. It is our purpose here to see what Calvin taught in relationship to this biblical idea, and what elements of the life of the Genevan church may be considered to be, at least in part, an expression of the idea.

This article examines Karl Barth's engagement with the philosophy of religion of Ludwig Feuerbach. In The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach proposes that religion is a function of human projection and that the Christian concept of God represents the crystallisation in one objectified subject of all the finite perfections of individual human beings. In Church Dogmatics, I/2, Barth seeks to respond to Feuerbach's critique of Christianity by affirming Feuerbach's critical account of the nature of religion but arguing that, since the original impetus of Christianity issues not from human projection but from God's act of self-revelation in Jesus Christ, Feuerbach's critique of religion does not apply to the Christian faith. Glasse notes that this response, whilst satisfactory to the Christian, would be ‘not intelligible’ to those who do not accept the Christian faith. Furthermore, Barth's apologetic manoeuvre, Vogel claims, entails that Barth is unable to defend the plausibility of the Christian faith on the terms set by secular culture, and that Christian theology is therefore required to abandon any attempt to participate constructively in general public discourse. Vogel recognises that this is a drastic recourse indeed, observing that it would be judicious for Christian theology to seek to elaborate a response to Feuerbach's critique which can stand without requiring the critic to assume the veracity of the Christian faith. This article argues that, by taking into account the role of Feuerbach's earlier work, Thoughts on Death and Immortality, for constituting the philosophical impetus of Feuerbach's critique of Christianity, the Christian theologian is able, using Barth's theological anthropology, to provide a response to Feuerbach's critique on Feuerbach's own terms. In Thoughts on Death and Immortality, Feuerbach argues that Protestant Christianity, as the paradigmatic expression of religion, conceives the individual as an absolute being, and that, due to the fact that everyday existence clearly counter-indicates this absolutisation of the human individual, Protestantism posits a second, eternal life, in which the limits bound up with individual existence are eradicated. Using Barth's theological anthropology in Church Dogmatics, III/2 and III/4, this article proposes that Barth concurs with Feuerbach's critique of the absolutisation of the individual, but that he is positioned to deny that this absolutised conception of the individual has anything to do with the Christian faith insofar as he accurately represents it.

The group of imperatives usually known as the Mission Charge to the Twelve Disciples deserves consideration for its own sake since it marks an important climax in our Lord's life and ministry, as well as in the experience of those whom he called to be his disciples. It deserves consideration also because in the process of time it became the justification for the medical missionary movement which arose within the Protestant Church in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Today this movement as part of the great worldwide expansion of the Christian Church appears to be coming to an end. It is appropriate, therefore, to look again at what was claimed to be its biblical basis. This article proposes to do this, and to consider medical missions in relation to the Mission Charge to the Twelve Disciples, and in relation to the modern healing ministry of the Church.

There is a renewed interest in the relations between the Eastern and Western parts of the Church; and some have been surprised at the affinities of thought between the two. In a study of the Atonement in Gregory of Nyssa, the following examination was made of the meanings of the word Grace in his writings. It may be of interest to others who are working towards a closer understanding of the thought of the Eastern Fathers.

I. From God's side

(a) Grace may be used to point to the general attitude of kindly favour that God displayed to all creation and to mankind in particular. Verb and noun are both employed to indicate the distinction between man and all other animals, over whom he was given a royal authority. The potentiality in man for both good and evil is greater than in any other part of the universe. (b) This Fatherly care did not cease at creation, but is visible throughout the Old Testament history. It was present at Sinai; and spoke freely and often through the prophets, as when, under Ahab and Jezebel, Elijah fought single-handed against the prophets of Baal; and we even have the phrase reminding us of the Pauline charisma. Gregory often speaks of the Grace of God, much more commonly in fact than of His love.

The Letter of the Synod of Antioch contained in a Syriac MS. of the eighth or ninth century (Codex Parisinus Syriacus 62), to which Edward Schwartz first drew attention in 1905, has thrown light on the period immediately preceding the Council of Nicaea and on the proceedings of the Council itself. After much initial controversy, mainly between Schwartz and von Harnack, this document is now generally accepted as authentic.

The Synod of Antioch, of which nothing was hitherto known, appears to have assembled in order to settle the difficulties which had arisen in the Church at Antioch after the death of Bishop Philogonius (ca. A.D. 322), one of three Bishops whom Arius described as ‘unlearned heretics’; Eustathius, Bishop of Beroea, was appointed to fill the vacancy. The Synod was attended by at least fifty-nine bishops from Syria and Palestine, forty-nine of whom also attended the Council of Nicaea a few months later.

This article reflects on Rowan Williams' postmodern approach to sacramentalism and ecclesiology, tracing it through various books and articles. Partly under the influence of the Roman Catholic reception of Wittgenstein, he expounds the centrality of the Eucharist in cultural-linguistic and semiotic terms. Through this central ritual the church signifies the Kingdom of God in a uniquely strong sense of ‘signifies’. He foregrounds a dramatic model: the worshipping community performs the new humanity, it is remade through this unique form of ‘community theatre’. Its guardianship of the ultimate form of Christian sign-making is what authorises the church, Williams teaches, and necessitates hierarchical control. The postmodern idiom therefore serves a very conservative ecclesiology. Williams balances this high ecclesiology with a recurrent apophatic theme: the church must remember that its performance of the Kingdom of God is provisional, ironic. Yet the article questions whether this is sufficient: Williams does not fully confront the danger of such an ecclesiology becoming the ideological justification of a form of social power. This danger is raised with especial pertinence by the issue of homosexuality: it shows that the ecclesial policing of sacramentalism is potentially erroneous. This issue therefore threatens to unravel his ecclesiology, or at least to expose its innate violence. The article concludes that Williams is only half-willing to confront the negative dimension to his sacramental ecclesiology: its ideological character, its potentially violent policing of all Christian culture.

This article questions the value of the categories ‘the school of Antioch’ and ‘Antiochene christology’ on the basis of the significant theological differences between the two central figures in the school: John Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia, both of whom studied together at the school of Diodore of Tarsus in the late fourth century. Drawing on scholarship which has pointed to the coherence of Theodore's exegesis and christology, I show that Chrysostom's exegesis and christology are also coherent, but in a way which is at odds with those of Theodore. As opposed to Theodore's distinctions between the two testaments and between the human and the divine in Christ, Chrysostom has a strongly unitive reading of scripture's two testaments and of the person of Christ. In my argument I especially employ Theodore's and Chrysostom's respective exegetical works on the Gospel of John.

The Protestant church, for Reinhard Hütter, relinquished its ecclesial public character when it turned from ‘binding doctrine’ as the means for establishing and maintaining its concrete ‘time-space’. Christendom disguised this basic theological flaw, but with its collapse the public basis of the Protestant church fell away. This reduced the church's witness and destroyed its communal structure. His positive proposal re-establishes the church as a public by reference to the communion nature of God, and to church practices as mediate forms of the Spirit's acting. Hütter's account shadows an argument made fifty years before by Johannes C. Hoekendijk, observing an intensified focus on word and sacrament and the promotion of a culture as a solution to the problem of the church's witness. Yet, for Hoekendijk, this logic exemplifies the problem. The institutions of the church come to bear the full evangelistic load. Mission replicates the basic structures of a particular way of life as a necessary precursor to the gospel. The act of witness becomes propaganda because of an insufficient doctrine of the church. This insufficiency is a failing in the doctrine of the Trinity: God's own life is defined without sufficient attention to his act of reconciliation and redemption as itself material to understanding the nature of his in se life.

Although it was never completed and has had only slight impact, T. F. Torrance's work on the nature and interpretation of scripture is a primary element in his theology, though largely unstudied. For Torrance, a theology of scripture and its interpretation derive from a theology of revelation; revelation takes creaturely form in the incarnate Word, out of which is generated the apostolic community and its witness, which in turn generates scripture, the human word which ministers the divine Word. Scripture is the divine Word accommodated to human form, and so a sacrament or sign which refers to revelation; its social location is the life of the apostolic community. Interpretation of scripture is properly ‘depth-interpretation’, following the semantics of scripture by which reference to divine reality is made, rather than terminating on scripture's syntactical surface. Fitting interpretative practice follows the text's reference, penetrates to the thing signified, indwells its subject matters and listens to the divine Word. The interpreter is summoned to mortification of prejudice and constantly renewed attentiveness. Torrance's most impressive contribution to bibliology and hermeneutics was his insistence that both are ingredients within a theology of God's economic presence. There are some historical limitations to his work, along with a lack of interest in the Christian literary culture and lack of extended exegesis. However, his writings in the field constitute one of the most impressive Protestant accounts of the field in the last half-century.

This paper is concerned with how we should understand the distinctive contribution of music to Christian worship. It considers two contrasting views that have powerfully influenced contemporary church music – the pursuit of musical excellence by highly competent performers on the one hand, and the adoption of simpler, popular and more inclusive musical forms on the other. This contrast is explored against the background of a biblical understanding of prayer and sacrifice, and in the light of some philosophical issues surrounding both the idea of divine service and the nature of music.

While Karl Barth balances the reliability of revelation with divine counterfactual freedom through the analogia temporalis, Robert Jenson rejects this form of analogy, arguing that it posits an unknowable reality of God behind revelation. He instead transposes metaphysics into narratological terms, arguing that this secures the reliability of revelation and divine freedom, since it means God is future to (and so undetermined by) events in time. This metric for divine freedom cannot, however, replace counterfactual possibility; hence, the analogia temporalis (presupposed in counterfactuals) re-emerges in Jenson's theology. This form of analogy is essential in balancing the reliability of revelation with divine freedom.