The theology of the Holy Spirit waited through the early Christian centuries until the main doctrines regarding the Trinity and the person of Christ had been forged. Even then pneumatology was introduced ‘by the back door’, in Theodore Campbell's phrase, that of how the Son was placed in the Father, Son and Spirit confession. While prayers to the Spirit were not lacking in the earliest liturgies, still, at Nicea the doctrine ‘had been disposed of in lapidary brevity’, as Jaroslav Pelikan has described the credal line, ‘and we believe in the Holy Spirit’. ‘Nor does there seem to have been a single treatise dealing specifically with the person of the Spirit composed before the second half of the fourth century’. After Nicea, however, controversy concerning the Spirit erupted ‘with a vengeance’, producing the same kind of energy that had accompanied the Christological debates. Pneumatomachi, Tropici, and Macedonians, though losers in the fight for orthodox doctrine on the Spirit's nature, had mounted formidable campaigns, as Arians had done over the relationship of Christ to the Father. But disagreement over the Spirit had an even greater impact than Arian opposition in that the filioque remains a principal difference between the Catholic and Orthodox, and now Catholic and Anglican, creeds.

In the Christian literature about spirit one of the decisive questions that influences the interpretation of spirit at many points is whether all spirit is conceived to be divine or whether there are basically two kinds of spirit, human and divine. In Buber's understanding the spirit of love exists in the sphere ‘between’ and is participated in by humans rather than being produced by human will alone. Buber would thus come into the class of persons advocating that there is basically One Spirit.1 Human spirit is seen to be in some way a response to or a sharing in the reality of the One Spirit. Paul Tillich, one of the greatest Christian students of Spirit, is somewhat unclear as to whether there are basically one or two kinds of spirit. On the one hand, he consistently uses two terms, ‘human spirit’ and ‘Spiritual Presence’, by which he means divine Spirit.2 The use of these two terms would seem to indicate two kinds of spirit. Tillich describes at length these two kinds of spirit and speaks of their relationship as that of ‘mutual immanence’.3 On the other hand, in his view of reality in the broadest perspective all spirit is an ontological reality that has its source in the trinitarian life of God.4 This suggests that there is only one Spirit after all.

Most of the standard treatments of Martin Luther's biblical exegesis move deductively: general propositions are enunciated (e.g., Holy Scripture as its own interpreter; all correct interpretation standing under the rule of the analogy of faith, construed Christocentrically) and are then supported with extracts from the Weimar Ausgabe or Luther's Works. Genuinely instructive as such a procedure can be, its total effect is often a rather ‘flat’ or undifferentiated presentation of Luther's biblical interpretation throughout his career. Perhaps some of the dimensions of the subject — the unity and diversity, the constancy and development — would become clearer were we to adopt a more inductive procedure: to examine, compare, and contrast three different specimens of Luther's exegesis of a single text.

With the publication in 1961 of Offenbarung als Geschichte, the first supplementary volume of the German periodical Kerygma und Dogma, it has become evident that a new theological movement is gaining momentum amongst some of the younger theologians of Germany. Each of those writing for this booklet supports, from the vantage point of his own particular specialty, the thesis that revelation is mediated only through historical events: Wolfhart Pannenberg as a systematic theologian, Rolf Rendtorff as an Old Testament exegete, Ulrich Wilckens as a New Testament scholar, and Trutz Rendtorff as a Church historian. Since 1951 these and others who were then doctoral students at Heidelberg have been meeting regularly to formulate the basic ideology found in this booklet. Wolfhart Pannenberg has become the chief spokesman for this new movement, not because he was originally responsible for the basic approach to revelation as history, but because as one whose specialty is dogmatics, he provides the over-all synthesis for the historical and exegetical work of the others.

The purpose of this paper will be to examine the encounters between Eastern Christendom and the Western Reformation of the Church. The study will include an analysis of the historical background, an introduction to the chief characters involved, and an evaluation of doctrinal issues that have represented the divergent paths of Orthodoxy and Protestantism.

This year's topic for the Dudleian Lecture is designated as ‘Roman Catholicism and Protestantism’, or, in the words of the statutes, this lecture is intended: ‘For the detecting and convicting and exposing the idolatry of the Romish church, their tyranny, usurpations, damnable heresies, fatal errors, abominable superstitions and other crying wickednesses in their high places; and finally, that the Church of Rome is that mystical Babylon, that man of sin, that apostate church, spoken of in the New Testament.’.

‘The doctrinal history of the English Reformation’, writes J. Brilioth, ‘is only of secondary interest; it contains little creative originality, much imitation and compromise. But the problem of the Eucharist took a prominent place from the very start.’ Indeed, he postulates a ‘special Anglican Eucharistic type’, stemming from the Reformation period. It is with the formulation of the doctrine of the Eucharist in the writings of Richard Hooker that this study is concerned. Hooker is regarded as ‘par excellence the apologist of the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559 and perhaps the most accomplished advocate that Anglicanism has ever had’. And since it is maintained that ‘the typical Anglican doctrine of the Eucharist was fashioned in the period between Hooker and Waterland’, Hooker's historical importance for the understanding of Anglican Eucharistic teaching is obvious. Not that Hooker's teaching was normative for his successors, for there were deviations both to the ‘left’ and, more notably, to the ‘right’, especially under the Caroline divines. But Hooker's influence was important for the evolution of the ‘central’ churchmanship that was to be most characteristic of the Anglican Church.

Together, Calvin's Geneva Catechism and the Heidelberg Catechism had an exceptional influence on Karl Barth's theology. Barth seems neither to have learned these catechisms as a child nor taught them in his own confirmation classes as a pastor. But as a theologian, he later developed a particular and persistent interest in both.1

Enlightenment optimism concerning man's ‘natural goodness’ is out of fashion. The many instances of monstrous evil on a mass scale (Nazi extermination camps; Gulags; Cambodia; Kosovo, etc.), the widespread reporting of the activities of sadistic torturers and killers, the great increase in violent crime and drug addiction in the most affluent and welleducated societies, expose to ridicule Condorcet's prediction that 'the time will come when the sun will shine only on free men who know no other master but their reason … the human race, emancipated from its shackles [will] advance with a firm and sure step along the path of truth, virtue, and happiness. Yet there have been few recent philosophical or theological attempts to consider afresh the nature of human evil, and most of them still tend, if mutedly, to cling to the notion of mankind's essential moral goodness. Thus the hesitant conclusion of Ricoeur's reconsideration of human moral responsibility is that ‘however radical evil may be, it cannot be as primordial as goodness’, and that we should think of an ‘existential superimposition of radical evil on primordial good’.2 In 1963, Hannah Arendt declared that ‘evil is never “radical”, that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension … Only the good has depth and can be radical.‘ Instead she wrote of the ‘banality of evil’, generalising from the case of Eichmann.

Recent study of the Gospels has concentrated on the contribution which the individual evangelists have made to the material they received. Here, and in such matters as their selection and arrangement of material, we can discern the particular point of view of each writer. Admittedly this is relatively easy when we see the way in which Matthew and Luke have varied the material they took from Mark, less easy when we examine the material they have in common from Q, and most difficult when they use material from their special sources. In the case of Mark it all, as we might say, comes from his special source and so it is extremely difficult to determine what he is trying to say to us. But, like going to the moon, the greater the difficulty, the greater the challenge. We take up this challenge in respect of one theme in Mark, viz. discipleship. This means we are not attempting to answer questions as ‘Was Jesus a Rabbi who instructed scholars with his own particular teaching?’; ‘Did Jesus attempt to weld his followers into a community to continue after his death?’ Indeed no attempt will be made to answer any of the questions about the historical relationship of Jesus to the actual disciples he had on earth; our concern lies with what Mark thinks a disciple ought to be.

‘We have thus arrived at the answer to our question, What is Darwinism?’ wrote Charles Hodge in 1874;‘It is Atheism.’ As is commonly the fate of great men, Hodge's conclusion has frequently been reduced to mere crusade slogan, more often reported than examined, more often repeated than explained. It is for this reason, then, together with Hodge's formative role in the construction of modern conservative evangelicalism, that I want to turn in the first part of this esssay to his response to Darwin's theory of evolution. Moreover, with the recent emergence of a vociferous and uncompromising ‘scientific creationist’ movement claiming the imprimatur of theological orthodoxy, a reassessment of the reaction to Darwin by the powerful ‘Old School’ Princetonians in its broader intellectual context is, I think, both timely and instructive. And Hodge's central position in that tradition makes reflection on his response to the question a logical place to begin.

Theological discussions of perichoretic trinitarianism typically turn to John's Gospel for supporting evidence despite the fact that John nowhere describes the Spirit's so-called ‘interpenetration’ (A is in B and B is in A) of either the Father or the Son. In this article, all gospel references pertinent to questions of perichoretic union among Father, Son and Spirit are examined, demonstrating that the Johannine Spirit does not share in such mutual indwelling. Rather, the Spirit is inextricably linked to Johannine ecclesiology, performing the work of regeneration and illumination as Christ's earthly alter ego. John's pneumatology is thoroughly functional and salvation-historical, offering no insight into the Spirit's eternal or essential place within the Godhead. However, John's Gospel does describe a third member of a perichoretic trinity: the disciples. As surprising as it may initially appear, believers are said to mutually indwell the Son, and to indwell the Father through the Son, thereby occupying the very position never posited of the Holy Spirit. Although John does not describe a perichoretic trinity, he does depict a perichoretic soteriology reminiscent of the Orthodox doctrine of deification. Such divine union is at the heart of Johannine salvation. It remains a crowning achievement of Johannine theology that Jesus is portrayed as the one sent from the Father to lead his people into a provocative, new terrain where the language of perichoretic union with the divine is more apropos of the believer than of the Spirit.

This exploration focuses on Moses ben Maimon's attempt to give philosophical voice to the revelation of the Torah to offer a window into the comparative (though not actually collaborative) efforts of Jewish, Christian and Muslim medieval thinkers to adapt the metaphysical strategies available to them to the hitherto inconceivable task of articulating a creation utterly free, with nothing presupposed to it. Short of a divine revelation, nothing could have suggested such an affirmation, so crafting the adaptations demanded of familiar philosophical categories would require exploiting the illumination inherent in those distinct revelations. Far from being a merely historical exercise, these efforts are presented as object lessons for philosophical theologians today, as we move to show how Aquinas and Ghazali complement Maimonides' way of negotiating recondite regions where reason and faith interact. In that sense, this exercise inspired by medieval thinkers may be dubbed ‘postmodern’, since the deliverances of faith can be seen to be interwoven with rational inquiry and indispensable to its execution. Moreover, their witness can also challenge current ‘philosophers of religion’ who may all too easily presume their categories to be adequate to the task of probing the reaches of religious faith. In this way, the call to transform philosophical strategies in ways not unlike that undertaken by our medieval thinkers can suggest a benign reading of the ‘postmodern’ situation in which we admittedly live.

Was Cyril of Alexandria a theopaschite? In order to resolve this controversial issue, this paper will look at Cyril's Christology with Nestorius's eyes. The charge of theopatheia appears from the very beginning in Nestorius's correspondence with Cyril and retains its central place in Nestorius's work Liber Heraclidis. The paper discusses Nestorian arguments against Cyril's position and Cyril's counter-charges. The conclusion is reached that Nestorius asserted unqualified divine impassibility. Cyril, in contrast, held a qualified view of the divine impassibility and maintained that neither divinity suffered alone, apart from humanity (in which case the assumption of humanity would be superfluous), nor humanity suffered alone, apart from and in sharp contrast to the impassible divinity (in which case the reality of divine involvement in the incarnation would be put at risk).

The essay suggests that three main approaches have been taken toward Christ's resurrection in recent theology. One view focuses on the question of existential meaningfulness. While it may or may not affirm the resurrection as a statement about Jesus' particular eternal destiny, it takes his resurrection primarily as a symbol of spiritual regeneration. A second view affirms precisely what the first rejects, namely, that Christ's resurrection is grounded in an actual historical occurrence. Knowledge of his resurrection is mediated by modern critical research and confirmed by it. Whether this mediation is necessary under the conditions of modernity or merely a matter of apologetic ground-clearing remains various within the type. Finally, there are those who argue that questions of meaningfulness and historicity, though important, are secondary, because determined by the nature of the resurrection event – which is necessarily unique in kind. Its meaningfulness and historicity are themselves correspondingly unique. Whereas the first type is seen as emphasizing transcendence at the expense of historicity, the second does the reverse by elevating historicity at the expense of transcendence. The mysterious conjunction of historicity and transcendence is what the third type regards as essential to understanding other relevant questions. The first type is represented by Schleiermacher, Bultmann and Tillich; the second by Pannenberg and Wright; the third by Moltmann, Frei and Barth.

Albert Camus (1913–60), novelist, essayist, journalist and member of the French Resistance, reflected in his work the turbulent period through which he lived. His powerful portrayal of a world dominated by violence and suffering resonates with us today. An atheist, Camus had been, as a young man, drawn to the Christian faith: his postgraduate thesis was on the development of early Christianity. The thesis reveals the nature of the attraction which the faith held for Camus, and the unresolved problems which prevented him from embracing it. In maturity, Camus sought rather to convince fellow human beings of the need to work together to reduce suffering, without relying on belief in a transcendent being. He respected Christians, however, and welcomed dialogue with them. This article examines the possible basis for such dialogue revealed by the thesis. It goes on to consider the possibilities opened up by contemporary theology for dialogue between Christians and those unbelievers who share the perspective, the doubts and concerns of Albert Camus.