If a strong working concept of the Spirit–Word relationship and the means of grace is lacking in many contemporary churches, part of the solution may be a fresh analysis and articulation of those themes. An adequate doctrine of the means of grace will reflect the complexity of the Holy Spirit's partnership with the Word, highlight the Word of God as the one essential means of grace, and throw as much light as possible on why the Word is the Spirit's necessary and perfectly suited instrument for applying redemptive grace in human lives.

One of the most puzzling features of Barth's ethics is the insistence that God's divine command encounters us so definitely and concretely that it simply requires immediate and unquestioning obedience. This article offers an interpretation of these comments by reading them through the framework of Barth's description of the secularity, one-sidedness and spirituality of God's Word in Church Dogmatics I/1. Such a reading suggests that Barth's comments are not promoting a foolproof and immediate way of adjudicating ethical quandaries but orient us to the commanding Lord who goes before us.

This essay explores the overlapping territory between the phenomenon known as ‘imaginative resistance’ in literary, psychological and philosophical circles and Karl Barth's theological hermeneutic. Imaginative resistance refers to the way readers are willing to give consent to all sorts of implausible things in the context of a fiction, but become uneasy when asked to imagine that something they consider morally or ethically reprehensible is good. The essay offers an overview of the current scholarly theories regarding the origins of the phenomenon of imaginative resistance, arguing that none of them provide an adequate account of imaginative resistance in relation to a text read as ‘Word of God’. The essay suggests that Karl Barth's theological hermeneutic does not offer a ‘solution’ to imaginative resistance in relation to scripture, but rather deepens and redescribes it in meaningful ways by acknowledging the appropriateness of the interpreter's resistance while encouraging continued engagement even with the claims of challenging biblical texts.

Like many Western churches, the Church of Scotland has been divided in recent years over the ordination of gay clergy in committed relationships, and, more generally, over the status of homosexuality for Christian ethics. Yet there has been no academic research undertaken which situates the debate within the wider context of Scottish theology. This failure has resulted in theological and ecclesial impasse, which this paper seeks to remedy through a diagnostic analysis of division over homosexuality, drawing upon the analytic tools developed by R. G. Collingwood. While this article has as its focus the Church of Scotland, its method and conclusions will be relevant to other Protestant denominations, especially Reformed churches such as the Presbyterian Church (USA).