Presumably it is not necessary here to offer a potted history of discussions of ‘cultural relativity’ and supposed ‘culture gaps’ … we can press the story back through Professor Dennis Nineham, (and other contributors to The Myth of God Incarnate,) to T. S. Kuhn and to suggestions from Alasdair Maclntyre, and others such as Peter Winch claiming the support of Ludwig Wittgenstein. We can go. back beyond them to Rudolph Bultmann, as does Professor Joseph Runzo in his ‘Relativism and Absolutism in Bultmann's demythologising Hermeneutic’ recently in this journal. We can go back even further to Albert Schweitzer (‘Jesus as a concrete historical personality remains a stranger to our time’) and then behind him to the Enlightenment — or at least to its immediate heirs' assessment of it.

In this paper the relationship between power and powerlessness in the Gospel of Mark is discussed — a theme which, though touched upon, has not been developed at any length nor traced throughout the Gospel. Yet to explore the dynamic that exists between power and powerlessness within the structure of the Gospel is essential for understanding Mark as a theologian and a story-teller. This is because in the first place, the notion of power is central to the image of ‘kingdom’ as it is generally understood — power, indeed, as a political conception, though this is often obscured by the tendency, even in modern exegesis, to interpret Mark in exclusively spiritual terms. Mark's Gospel is filled with the signs of this power and their impact on all aspects of human life cannot be underestimated. In the second place, the idea of powerlessness arises out of the recognition (now widely accepted) that at the centre of Mark's story lies a theologia cruets, a theology of Jesus' suffering and death which is not far from the Pauline kerygma of the crucified Christ (e.g. 1 Cor. 1.18ff.)

It is surprising that more British scholars have not investigated the theology of Q. Those scholars who have done so are mainly German, with a few other continentals and some Americans. The hypothesis I wish to maintain is that Q has a consistently futurist eschatology. Those verses which apparently uphold a realized eschatology are to be explained as compatible, without contradiction, with the overall futurist eschatology that pervades Q.

In his Cur Deus Homo Anselm of Canterbury immediately tells the reader the question he is seeking to answer. The first chapter of the first book is entitled: ‘The central problem governing the entire work’ [Questio de qua totum opuspendet 47.4 (49)]. In the first speech of this chapter, the problem is succinctly stated:

I mean the following problem: For what reason and on the basis of what necessity [qua scilicet ratione vel necessitate] did God become a man and by His death restore life to the world (as we believe and confess), seeing that He could have accomplished this restoration either by means of some other persons (whether angelic or human) or else by merely willing it? [48.2–5 (49)].

A common assumption about the 19th century is that it was a complacent age, and that by and large theologians, though not quite sure of the exact terms of adjustment, had an overall confidence in the compatibility of faith and culture. Yet that same century is also notable for producing two of the most significant theological treatments of human sinfulness; the treatise of Julius Müller which is marked by its systematic comprehensiveness, and the more occasional writings of Soren Kierkegaard with all their fecund suggestiveness for the future. It is perhaps remarkable that our own century which has witnessed far more overt human evil has produced hardly anything comparable, apart possibly from Vol. 1 of Reinhold Niebuhr's Nature & Destiny of Man.

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?’

Abstract

The essay explores the relationship between Christian faith, ethical thought and political action. It examines two views of the matter. First, the autonomy thesis, advanced by writers such as Edward Norman in his Reith Lectures and elsewhere, which claims that Christianity in general is independent of political concerns, and that Church leaders in particular have no business engaging in political debate, or using their teaching authority to commend or condemn the actions of governments. Second, the commitment thesis, here derived from writings of Kenneth Leech, which maintains that fidelity to the biblical revelation involves an explicit commitment to Christian humanism, and thereby to practical opposition to capitalism and support for radical socialism.