A distinction was proposed in old Protestantism, by Johannes Musaeus among others, but not then generally adopted: that the authority of Scripture is a ‘double capacity: one to judge other writings and teachings…, another to bring about the assent of faith…’. Recognition of this distinction and separate discussion of these capacities is, in my judgement, necessary to resolve many modern perplexities about Scripture. The present essay is concerned for the second sort of scriptural authority, precisely in its difference from the first. We will begin with the simple fact that the church reads Scripture, in expectation of faith.

In June 1272, a General Chapter of the Order of Preachers met in Florence. Among other things, it decided that a new theological study house, open to the general public (a studium generale) should be established in Italy, under the auspices of the Roman Province. That Province, accordingly, entrusted the project to brother Thomas d'Aquino. The choice of site was left, with, perhaps, a certain disregard for administrative propriety, entirely to him. For various reasons, not least among them the support of the Neapolitan crown, he selected Naples. Development was sufficiently fast for him to begin lecturing there that same September. Forty-six years old (probably), he had somewhat over a year left to live. He was ending his career as he had begun it: entrusted with the formation of young theologians. What better opportunity to finish his great unfinished work, the Summa Theologiae, described in what has been called Thomas' only recorded joke (but the remark was seriously meant) as an introduction to the subject for beginners. Having dealt already with man's sovereign Good, and with the general pattern of his return to God, as suggested by the dynamic structures of human nature, it remained for Thomas to consider how, in the concrete, this return to God might come about. As he wrote in the prologue to the Tertia Pars:

Wilhelm Herrmann remains of importance in present theological debates, particularly those between Bultmann and Barth, two of his most distinguished pupils. Barth's own break with liberal theology was to an extent a break with his teacher Herrmann, a rejection of revelation as essentially the mode of inward appropriation within the religious subject and a rejection of the psychological pragmatism which determines the soteriological significance of Jesus in terms of the moral need of the individual. Barth sees Bultmann as setting forth in existentialist categories the transformation of the inner life of the believer and reminds us of all that Bultmann learned from Herrmann long before he had ever heard of Heidegger. When we consider the distinction drawn by Herrmann between historico-critical research and the certitude of faith, his conception of revelation as event in the life of the individual, his sharp rejection of dogmatics as a normative discipline, we discern motifs which continue to be determinants of Bultmann's theology.

The language of Christian prayer reflects two central components of christology. One is the exclusive importance attached to a brief portion of history centring upon the death of Jesus, while the other is the assertion of his continuing presence to the believer. The ways in which these twin themes are articulated is nowhere more apparent than in the theology of the resurrection. In this respect the resurrection provides the most important case-study in Christian interpretation. The sense in which the history of Jesus is theologically significant and the sense in which he can be spoken of as present — these are partly illustrated and partly constituted by the interpretation of the resurrection.

In October 1862, John William Colenso, bishop of Natal, published a book entitled The Pentateuch and book of Joshua critically examined. Although this volume proved to be only the first of seven parts, and the bishop's life was eventful in other ways, the controversy surrounding this volume did more than any other single factor to determine Colenso's enduring reputation. To his critics, the publication of such a book was an outrageous and heretical act. When the book was discussed in the Lower House of Convocation, C. E. Kennaway was convinced that it should be labelled ‘Poison!’ and Archdeacon Denison declared that ‘No book can ever be brought under our consideration of a worse character than this’ and that ‘if a man asserts such things as are in this book — anathema esto — let him be put away’. In the end, both houses of Convocation resolved that ‘the main propositions’ of the book ‘involve errors of the gravest and most dangerous character’.

I have no doubt that the discomfort of sitting on one horn of a dilemma may awaken lively hopes of the cushioned ease its alternative horn affords; but the hopes are delusive. Sit there, and the horn will presently enter your soul. (FS8, p. 119)

The theological situation today demands both a restatement and a reinstatement of the Christian doctrine of reconciliation. The essential prerequisite of any attempt to interpret, reinterpret or restate that doctrine is a due appreciation of the historical origins and subsequent development of the concept. It is clearly futile to develop or defend theories of reconciliation which originally rest upon some manifestly incorrect interpretation of a Hebrew root, or which represent a comparatively recent distortion of an older and more considered doctrine, or which represent a theological response to a particular Zeitgeist which no longer pertains today. Of the several concepts employed in the Christian articulation of the reconciliation effected between God and his world through Jesus Christ, the most important is that of justification.

The subtitle of my lecture suggests a theological sport called ‘Long Jump across Lessing's Gulf’ —jumping across the yawning gulf of historical criticism. However, it is a strange sport; no one has ever won. No one has ever succeeded in jumping across the gulf. Despite several run-ups I, too, have always failed. I've always ended up in the ditch. There, I discovered something important; the ditch is filled with water and it's fun to swim in it. Today, I would like to invite you to do just this; to jump into the ditch, into Lessing's gulf, to plunge into the cold water with me. It may not be as long jumpers but as swimmers that we arrive at the other side — even though we will then need a helping hand to reach dry land.

In 1799 a small book called Lucinde was published in Berlin. Written by the brilliant young literary critic Friedrich Schlegel it celebrated his (adulterous) affair with Dorothea Veit, daughter of the eminent Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Though not widely read and still less widely understood the book provoked a considerable, and largely hostile, reaction among the reading public. It became to its generation what Lady Chatterley's Lover was to a more recent age: the quintessential embodiment of an obscene book. The author's mother gave utterance to the popular consensus when she wrote that ‘through his novel Fritz has shown himself to me as one who has no religion and no good principles’.

This article tries to show that metaphorical God-talk can be descriptive and true. First, it is established that true metaphorical descriptions of reality are possible. No special theory of ‘metaphorical truth’ is required for metaphorical descriptions. Next, it is argued that a realistic metaphorical description of God is possible because we can know the transcendent creator in the experience of being addressed by him in Jesus Christ. God-talk is an extension of our response to God's address. The truth-condition of metaphorical God-talk is God's self-revelation; its truth-criterion is biblical God-talk.

It is widely known that early on in his teaching career Karl Barth advanced a concept of the ‘orders of creation’, but that he retracted that concept in his later work in reaction to the tragic use that had been made of it by the National Socialist movement in Germany. However, two aspects of this movement remain relatively unexplored: first, the underlying material continuity between Barth's early ethics and his later ethics that this movement occludes; and second, the significant methodological shift in Barth's theology which this movement attests. This article explores both these aspects of Barth's theological development through his treatment of the ‘orders of creation’.

The study examines the radicalisation experienced by one group of religious exiles in the middle of the sixteenth century. The English-speaking congregation in Geneva formed in 1555 produced a Bible, metrical psalter and order of worship that shaped the Anglophone Reformed tradition. Study of the congregation's output shows how watching the martyrdoms in England generated a dynamic anger and fresh interpretations of persecution, tyranny and resistance. Conveyed by the worship texts, this radical legacy passed into the identities of Reformed Protestants in the British Isles, the Atlantic world and subsequently across the globe.

In section I the author of this inaugural lecture (of the new Chair of World Religions for Peace at the University of Glasgow) seeks to clarify the meaning of ‘tolerance’ and argues in favour of its traditional understanding as tolerating what is disapproved. The necessity of practising tolerance in this sense is defended in section II. However – as is explained in section III – given this understanding of tolerance, the concept is no longer adequate to characterise the Christian attitude towards other religions, which has frequently started to move ‘beyond tolerance’ towards appreciation. Section IV closes with a brief discussion of those theological and christological presuppositions that are required in order to complete this move.

The first post-Apostolic3 Chiliast known to us is Papias of Hierapolis. From the oral tradition of presbyters who saw the disciple John he adduces a saying of Jesus referring to the miraculous fruitfulness of corn and wine during the millennium. There is an exact parallel to this tradition—perhaps its source— in Syr. Baruch 29.5: ‘The earth also will yield its fruit 10,000 fold, and on one vine there will be 1000 branches, and each branch will produce 1000 clusters, and each cluster will produce 1000 grapes, and each grape will produce a cor of wine.’ In this context we cannot discuss the priority and interdependence of the two traditions. We can only maintain that there existed in the Early Church a saying of Jesus which the presbyters and authorities cited by Papias referred at once to the millennium. We may also notice how closely the Christian and Judaistic traditions approximated and even merged into each other at this point. This is true even in the case of the Epistle of Barnabas, which is normally so anti-Jewish. Speaking of the Sabbath which was instituted at creation, Barn. 15.3–9 argues that the Genesis narrative points prophetically to the final consummation. God created the world in six days, and He will bring it to its consummation in 6000 years, for one day is with the Lord as a 1000 years (Ps. 90.4; Barn. 15.4)4 ‘And God rested the seventh day’ means for Barnabas that when His Son comes He will destroy the age (kaipóy) of the lawless one (i.e. the Antichrist, cf. Isa. 11.4; 2 Thess. 2.8), judge the ungodly, and refashion the sun and the moon and the stars.

The title is suggested by Saint Paul's phrase (Ephesians 1.4) “according as he hath chosen us in him,” that is in Christ. The object of this essay is to point out the meagre use made of the phrase and of the idea it conveys by the classic doctrine of Predestination, and to show the deplorable consequences that follow.

I. Calvin

It would of course be absurd to suggest that Calvin totally neglects the thought that Predestination is in Christ. Rather this is a presupposition in all he has to say about it, at least in this sense, that, challenged whether he held Predestination to be in Christ, he would unhesitatingly have affirmed that it was. But it is the fate of many presuppositions to fall into the background, if not into forgetfulness, and to exercise less influence than they should do. It is the view of the present writer that the Calvinist theology failed to draw fully upon the implications of the presupposition that Predestination is in Christ.

Two questions are well asked at this point: What is the relation of those elected to Christ? and: What is Christ's part in their election?

(i) Here the text which has already been quoted is cited by Calvin: We are in Christo electi, and we are in Christo adoptati (Inst.3.22.1). And in 3.22.2, the elect are said to be again “chosen in Christ.”

In our programme of missionary training at the Selly Oak Colleges it is our custom to introduce the students at an early stage to something of the wide variety of ways in which Christ is pictured in different cultures. On a wall covered with vivid posters one can see together the Orthodox Pantocrator serenely ruling all the worlds, the Latin American freedom fighter with rifle over his shoulder, the black Christ, the tortured and defeated Victim of the medieval crucifix, and the blue-eyed golden haired boy from the neighbourhood of Dallas, Texas. Beyond these visual reproductions one thinks of the pen-portraits sketched in the innumerable lives of Jesus in the era of liberal protestantism, each reflecting the writer's ideal self-image, all sharing one feature in common—that the Christ portrayed might be a likely candidate for redundancy but an improbable one for crucifixion.

The article investigates the encounter between Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Jürgen Habermas in Munich 2004. The event was widely regarded as a conversation about the topic ‘The Pre-Political Moral Foundations of a Liberal State’. It was praised as a dialogue between the ‘personification of the Catholic faith’ and ‘the personification of liberal, individual and secular thought’ with far-reaching consequences. A close analysis of the texts, however, shows that Ratzinger and Habermas think in quite incompatible frameworks with very different concerns. They both share a sceptical attitude towards scientific ideology and they both show a remarkable lack of cultural and political realism. Habermas assumes that civil-societal elites will transform moral concerns into political and legal power. Ratzinger hopes for a revival of natural law tradition which would overcome the ‘pathologies of reason’ and political and religious fanaticism.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer delivered his lectures on Christology in the midst of his academic career but only shortly after becoming a Christian. They thus give us a window into the mind of a theologian wrestling with fundamental questions of faith and scholarship. In particular, the theme of contemporaneity with Christ in Bonhoeffer's Christology gives proper place to the ‘Who?’ question over the ‘How?’, reveals a nuanced account of the relation of historical inquiry to the rule of faith, and offers an amplification of the Reformers' emphasis on the God who is for us.

In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard, writing as Johannes Climacus, famously distinguishes two kinds of religiousness, kind A and kind B. He claims that, even though kind A is basic to kind B, including as represented in Christian religious commitment, kind A both has God ‘in its ground’ and ‘can be present in paganism’ that is atheist or agnostic. This apparent conflict calls for a resolution, if kind A is to be coherent. This article offers a new resolution with a familiar distinction between God de re and God de dicto, even though interpreters have overlooked the importance of this distinction for understanding Kierkegaard. In addition, the article contends that this distinction is supportable from Kierkegaard's own writings, even though he himself did not draw it explicitly. The article also explains the importance of the distinction for understanding Kierkegaard on religious diversity in intellectual content. It proposes that it enables Kierkegaard to offer a compelling position on such diversity, given his understanding of God's perfectly good character and activity.

Despite the theological controversy surrounding ‘Russian sophiology' amongst Orthodox theologians, John Milbank has claimed that it has proven to be one of the most daring theological breakthroughs within twentieth-century theology. He further considers it to be a fecund avenue of theological and philosophical reflection that has the potential to effectively communicate his central theological arguments in a new idiom. However, many of the positions which Milbank adopts within his sophiology prove to be controversial. This article offers a critical appraisal of Milbank's sophiology, drawing particular attention to several theological aporias it appears to generate and leave unresolved.