The interpretation of Adam and Eve's sexual life was a matter of some concern for early Jewish and Christian exegetes. As Louis Ginzberg observed, several Jewish pseudepigraphical works as well as the writings of many of the early Church Fathers “presuppose that not only the birth of the children of Adam and Eve took place after the explusion from paradise (Gen 4:1ff), but that the first ‘human pair’ lived in paradise without sexual intercourse.” The reasons for such an exegesis are not difficult to discern. The Garden of Eden was not simply a story about the primeval world; it could also function as a metaphor for the world-to-come. Hence the Garden was a paradigm for the ideal world of the eschaton, a world one should attempt to actualize or bring into existence now. Because Christians believed that the next world was devoid of marriage (Luke 20:27–40), it followed that the Garden was as well. In addition to this reason, Christians were also exhorted to abstain from marriage as a concession to the apocalyptic ferment of the present world (1 Corinthians 7).

In a volume of speeches published in 1799 and addressed to those whom he called “the cultured among the despisers of religion,” Friedrich Schleiermacher offered a description of religious experience, doctrine, and practice designed to convince his readers that the conventional pieties they deplored in the churches and synagogues were not genuine religion. Instead, true religion was the sense and taste for the infinite that they themselves were cultivating in poetry, criticism, conversation, and other aesthetic pursuits of their romantic circle. He was especially concerned to allay their fears that religious beliefs might conflict with the growth of knowledge about the world of nature or the mind. “Religion,” he wrote, “leaves you, your physics and … also your psychology untouched.”

Because the title of this article is ambiguous, I will begin by sharpening the issue of the justification of prayer. The point, in the first place, is to see how Calvin and Barth, as Reformed theologians, answer the question, “Why pray?” A second interest emerges in the discussion: prayer provides a case for illustrating the significant differences in the reasoning of Calvin and Barth on matters of ethics. In particular, the case of prayer indicates the way that Calvin's ruledeontology allows an important (albeit circumscribed) role for teleological appeals in the justification of prayer. Barth's act-deonotological theory consistently eschews such appeals. And this fact leads to a third interest of the paper: what are the strengths and weaknesses of the Reformed tradition for discussions of “spirituality” and ethics? If “spirituality” entails, as some would argue, a notion of “spiritual exercises” aimed at the cultivation of certain dispositions/virtues requisite to the vision of God, can Reformed theology have a “spirituality”? I argue that it can, but only if it is possible to preserve the teleological dimensions of Calvin's justification for acts such as prayer, which (as he would have it) is the “chief exercise of faith.”

The April before he delivered his address at the Divinity School, Emerson had traveled into Cambridge to discuss “theism” with some of the Divinity School students. Although he was not usually reluctant to let his views be known, he went to this meeting “rather heavy-hearted,” fearing that what he had to say about theism would not be warmly received. “I always find,” he confessed, “that my views chill or shock people at the first opening.” But this conversation must have gone well. Emerson came away from it “cheered,” and remembered one point that seemed to impress the students favorably:

Norman Perrin died in November 1976. In 1984 a memorial issue of the Journal of Religion in his honor was published. Among the tributes to him in this issue was an especially searching article by his friend Erich Grässer of the University of Bonn entitled, “Norman Perrin's Contribution to the Question of the Historical Jesus” (pp. 484–500). The considerations raised in this paper about the relation of history to faith, not only in Perrin's work but in our modern period generally, lead me to the following reflections on this continuing problem.

History, theory, and practice are interwoven in most realms of human knowledge, yet students approaching a field often care little about its history; they are more concerned with its application and how the discipline is practiced. This may be illustrated from the physical and biological sciences, where it is common not only for novices but even experts to take an interest only very late—if at all—in the history of science, and more so among physicians, to whom the history of medicine is usually a curiosity at best. Students first grappling with NT textual criticism are not likely to be different—they want to know the “jargon,” the “rules,” and the basic methods that will permit them to practice the art and (as they are more likely to view it) the science of textual criticism. In this particular subfield of NT studies, however, the history and the practice of the discipline cannot easily be separated. After all, the canons of criticism—the so-called “rules” in textual criticism—are anything but objective standards that can be applied in a rigid, mechanical fashion.

Amalarius of Metz (ca. 780–850/851), the premier liturgical scholar of the Carolingian Renaissance, is often cited as a witness to the liturgical usages of the Frankish church in the ninth century. Amalarius's descriptions, critiques, and explanations of the various rites in works such as the Liber officialis appear to many scholars as contrived and visionary. Despite his value as a source for liturgical history, Amalarius's reliability has long been under question.