In reference to triadological and christological inaccuracies of a nevertheless very important regional synod of Antioch of 268 that definitively condemned and dispossessed Antioch's bishop, Paul of Samosata, St. Athanasius wrote: “Yes, surely every council has a sufficient reason for its own language” (De synodis 45). The Father of triadological orthodoxy indeed changed some of his own technical language in the course of many synods during the fourth century. The creed called liturgically that of Nicaea (325)—which, since the scholarship of the Lutheran Pietist Johann Benedickt Carpzov, Sr., has been called the Niceno-Contstantinopolitan Creed—was ascribed to Constantinople in 381, as a clarification of that at Nicaea, by two readers purportedly reciting the acts of these two councils at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. What is remarkable about Athanasius—referring in the middle third of the fourth century to a synod in the last third of the third century—and about the Fathers of 451—referring back to two earlier ecumenical councils—is that they purported to be expounding an unchanging truth revealed in the Septuagint and the New Testament, once for all delivered (Jude 3), that had simply been made clearer by generations of liturgical practice and theological scrutiny, privately and in synod.

It was near the end of the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161–80) ca. 178 that a well-read provincial, perhaps a Syrian, of Platonist inclinations set out to analyze the new Christian religion and to warn his fellow provincials of the danger of its spread. Celsus' work, entitled “The True Word,” has only survived in the considerable fragments that Origen cites in his attempted refutation some seventy years later. Celsus took the trouble to observe the practices of different Christian groups, to read a number of Jewish and Christian works, including the Gospels of Matthew and John and parts, at any rate, of the Book of Enoch, and he was well aware of the stark divergencies and dissensions within the church. His description of the profound hostility between the Great Church and its gnostic opponents, and towards the Marcionites, and the strong feminine element among these opponents qualify him as a perceptive observer, and invite what he has to say about the attitude of Christianity in the mid-second century towards pagan society to be taken seriously.

There is widespread disagreement as to exactly what Augustine might have meant by his theory of learning, in which Christ, the truth, teaches within. The precise interpretation of Augustine's doctrine of illumination has been the subject of centuries of debate. How is this kind of learning process which Augustine outlines—a process by which the word of God illumines the soul—to be understood? The major schools of thought on this subject have been: the ontologistic version, which regards the immediate presence of the divine light, the continuity between the mind of man and the mind of God, as primary in the act of learning; the ideogenetic version, which regards the activity of the word of God, mysteriously producing ideas in the human mind, as primary in the learning process; and, finally, what we might call the normative version, which understands the metaphor of illumination to refer to the way in which the divine light provides an ultimate standard of certainty by which knowledge is evaluated, rather than describing an inner, psychological process through which the act of learning occurs.

This essay concerns two closely related subjects: the religious philosophy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the need for a new vision in Christian theology today. Though it is the second, more ambitious and adventurous topic that deserves the more sensitive treatment, it is rather to Coleridge himself that I have given the greater part of my attention. The reasoning behind this procedure is based upon a fairly simple fact: Coleridge's religious thought is still largely unknown to most people in the philosophical and theological communities. During the past twenty years or so, as many of Coleridge's hitherto unpublished notebooks and other manuscripts have been brought to light, a number of scholars of English literature have begun to study his thought, including his theology, with greater care. But it is still rare to find a researcher outside literature per se who knows much of Coleridgean philosophy, beyond (perhaps) a few phrases from his theory of the imagination in the Biographia Literaria.

Historical studies of the American social gospel have concentrated on the social and economic viewpoint of the movement. Such a focus is understandable since the fundamental premise of the social gospel was the belief that social change should be controlled and directed through the rational application of religious ideals. Scholarly interest in the movement has thus naturally gravitated towards questions of practical import: how the social gospel galvanized the churches to social action; how it challenged dominant political assumptions; how it contributed to the success of the progressive movement; how it helped to promote cooperative social ideals and a limited type of Christian socialism; and how it struggled with the problem of finding a realistic political philosophy.