Can God suffer? Can God feel real pain, anguish, or disappointment regarding the human situation? The answer of most classical Christian theists has been negative. Early in Christian history theologians began to develop the notion of divine impassibility, i.e. that God cannot suffer. This position was crystallised in the third century debates over patripassianism, a view proposed by Praxeas and Noetus that God the Father suffered and died in the crucifixion of Christ. Mainstream Christianity rejected this view because of its failure to maintain a clear distinction among the members of the trinity. In later Christological controversies, theopaschitism was also condemned for arguing that God suffered. In the twentieth century, however, numerous philosophers of religion, Biblical scholars, and theologians have criticised the doctrine of divine impassibility. Now it is not surprising to find a theologian arguing this way: ‘The concept of divine suffering is not only the core of our faith but the uniqueness of Christianity.’

One reason for the frequent debate over the impassibility of God is the kind of language used in the Bible to describe God. Many passages affirm the radical difference between divine and human natures (e.g. Isaiah 40.18, 25; Hosea 11.9). Other passages freely use anthropomorphic language to describe God, i.e. human form is attributed to God. God walks, talks, smells, hears, writes, and has a back side that Moses can see. Especially important for the impassibility discussion are the passages that use anthropopathic language for God, i.e. they attribute human moods, feelings, or emotions to God.

Until the recent discovery of a page of Isaac Newton's observations on John Locke's Paraphrase and Notes on St Paul's Epistle to the Romans, it was not known whether Newton had received or remarked upon Locke's work or, in turn, whether Locke had ever received Newton's comments. Since its discovery, however, it is possible to trace Locke's corrections and speculate on the extent and direction to which Newton may have influenced Locke. This article first establishes the theological relationship between Newton and Locke and, second, argues that Locke's revisions in light of Newton's suggestions reveal an anti-trinitarian spirit to his discussion. A previously unpublished transcription of Newton's manuscript fragment is also included.

The question ‘Who is the Servant?’ is one which remains a debated topic among many interpreters of Isaiah 40–55. This article seeks to address the same question with the aid and perspective of narrative identity. Narrative identity, as explicated by Ricoeur and Frei, is a means of understanding a character within a literary plot, or real life, as displayed in a narrated sequence of events. A person's identity, especially within literature, is the constancy of the self in the tortuous events of a narrated sequence over time. This article seeks to adjudicate the question of the Servant's identity by observing the character of the Servant within the plot of Isaiah 40–55. The conclusion drawn is that the Servant is the unique means of God's reconciliation of both Zion and the nations. Also, the divine action and description of YHWH and the Servant begin to bleed in such a way that the Servant can be described as a unique member of the divine identity.

Natural theology is enjoying something of a resurgence at present but this article seeks to question its place in Christian philosophy and theology. Antecedent natural theology accepts that it is necessary for Christian beliefs to be rationally warranted. Romans 1:18ff. is often cited in favour of natural theology. However, examination of this text shows that Paul argues here on the basis of a prior revelation. Not only does he not endorse natural theology but what he does say implies that arguments for a God's existence are not likely to lead to the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Such arguments are in any case tainted by the noetic effects of sin. It is therefore not clear that these arguments lead to the God of Christian belief who calls us to simple discipleship. Consequent natural theology holds that Christians are under an epistemological obligation to their surrounding culture to show that they are reflectively rational. But the arguments put up for this by Michael Sudduth ignore theological arguments which should bear on Christian epistemology. Apart from God's self-revelation we find ourselves sceptics, and natural theology is unable to overcome this. Historical research has shown the damaging effects that arguing from nature has had on Christian theology. So, for both theological and historical reasons, Christians need not accept the epistemological obligations imposed on them by unbelievers which lead them to do natural theology.

Feminist theology in America is largely a phenomenon of the 1970s that emerged from the larger parallel drive for women's liberation in the social-economic arena.

By widespread agreement the Didache is a riddle and an enigma, as to its chronological and geographical setting, its primitive character in matters of church order and theology, or its artificiality as a romantic contrivance or forgery. It is unlikely that the problem will be solved merely by reviewing the arguments yet again. But it may be possible to shed new light by concentrating on the tradition to which the Didache itself suggests that it belongs. An investigation of this tradition may also indicate a relationship between the Didache and St. Matthew's Gospel which is of mutual advantage in exegesis.

A church which is almost exclusively adult in its make-up and style may well be seen to be lacking in catholicity, and failing in its proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Perhaps a church may be bereft of children through no fault of its members, but more likely it will have been made clear to children and teenagers, perhaps in unspoken ways, that children are an inconvenience, a disturbance, destructive of concentration and peace of mind, their unseemly noises being not unlike the shouts of those infants in the Jerusalem Temple, whose praise to God the Pharisees sought to silence. Children, by their openness, by their spontaneity, by their freshness of thought, and by their emotions being near to the surface, can, if allowed to express themselves in church, be both a sign of hope and a threat to the ‘status quo’, a challenge to tram-like thinking and spiritual rigidity. ‘Let the children come to me, do not hinder them; for to such belongs the Kingdom of God’ (Mark 10.14).

The first assembly of the World Council of Churches recognised that the aspect of the Roman Catholic-Protestant division which constituted ‘our deepest difference’ was the question of justification. The appearance in 1957 of a work by a then unknown Roman Catholic scholar, claiming that ‘it is undeniable that there is a fundamental agreement between Karl Barth's position and that of the Catholic Church seen in its totality' was therefore the occasion as much for surprise as for pleasure. ‘How one would like to believe it!’ remarked Barth. Küng's study marks a major step toward ecumenical discussion on the issue of justification; however, that discussion must be continued. The present study is a small contribution toward that discussion.

As introduction to the topic may serve two remarks, one about the meaning and importance of the expression ‘Deuteropauline Letters’, and one about the historical and theological background of the question of the relationship between church and Israel.

In examining the great themes of the Epistle to the Colossians we must ask both what they meant in that ancient world of Asia Minor, so cultured and so superstitious, for which the Epistle was written and what they mean for us today. We must sketch in the background of the Epistle in general terms; then we must turn to the text itself, and finally attempt to expound its meaning in terms comprehensible today. Sometimes it may be permissible to take a glance at the background and seek some lines along which to interpret it before we turn to the text itself. That is the object of this paper.

The problem with which we have to deal now, is whether or whether not in the initial part of Paul's epistle to the Romans (1.18–3.20) a gospel of everybody's unrighteousness explicitly precedes, prepares and finally supports that gospel of righteousness by faith which is announced in 1.16 f and which is developed in 3.21 ff. Many commentaries on Romans agree in the analysis that Paul speaks of the work of God's left hand (the opus alienwn) in 1.18–3.20 and that he describes the work of God's right hand (the opus proprium) only in 3.21 ff.

Bishop Stephen Neill, in his Survey of the Training of the Ministry in Africa, writes as follows: ‘I could not but feel profound sympathy with the African student who remarked: “It seems to me that missionaries are much too hard in their judgments on the African Churches. Did you never have a period of struggle in your own Churches? ” Indeed we did. In that moment I suddenly saw that, for the African Churches in their contemporary struggle, the most important period is the one that ordinarily we never teach them in detail, the Dark Ages.… They wrestle with precisely the same difficulties and are called to find anew the way out of the twilight of the coexistence of the old and new into a more genuinely Christian life and social order. ’

Recent scholarly interest in the Fathers as exegetes of Scripture has tended to examine the reasons why a patristic author takes a particular exegetical position. Rowan Greer's fine study of the Greek patristic exegesis of Hebrews best exemplifies this current tendency. Greer refuses to judge the ‘correctness’ of the Fathers' exegesis, for they have as much right to their interpretations as sixteenth-century or modern exegetes. Rather, he attempts to see how their theological concerns determined the questions which they asked of the Scriptures. These questions, in turn, shaped the answers that were given. This dialectic does not necessarily mean that these Fathers consciously forced the Scriptures into pre-formed theological moulds. The Fathers were honest in their desire to remain faithful to the Scriptures. Nevertheless, the theological principles which they either inherited from traditional views of Scriptural texts or formed in response to what they considered heretical opinions definitely shaped the questions which they asked of the Scriptural text and consequently, the answers which they received from it. This is no less true today.

This article presents a theory about a distinctive, but still neglected, approach to trinitarianism in the early church which was founded explicitly in demanding practices of prayer and personal transformation. The central thesis of the article is that this approach (with its characteristic appeal to Romans 8, and its Spirit-initiated prayer of an elevated or ascetic sort) was set on a course of almost inevitable tension with certain kinds of episcopal authority, and particularly with post-Nicene renditions of ‘orthodoxy’ as propositional assent. The theory is not to be confused, however, with a rather tired sociological disjunction between institution and ‘charisma’; the matter is spiritually more subtle than that, and implies vying perceptions of theological power, ‘orthodoxy’, and the nature of the ecclesial body. In this article I opt for a focus on the relation between Origen's De oratione (one of the finest discussions of the implications of Romans 8 for Christian contemplation), the suggested influence of Origen on early Antonite monasticism, and the still-mysterious motivations for Theophilus’ first attack on Origenism and the monks of Nitria in 399. The picture that emerges, once this distinctive prayer-based approach to the Trinity is clarified, is one of a late fourth-century crisis of simultaneous rejection, domestication and attempted assimilation of this elite spirituality of intra-divine incorporation.

Despite the strong interest of Eastern Orthodox theologians in the area of anthropology, their reflection has almost never included intellectual disability. The article aims to take the discussion further by providing the contours of an inclusive anthropological ethics. In this sense, it will develop constructively the three main principles of Dumitru Stăniloae's dialogical anthropology: (1) that each human being is a person because she is called to dialogue with God from the womb of her mother; (2) that this dialogue with God is mediated by one's neighbour; (3) that the materiality of creation is meant to be transformed into a gift of communion with other humans and God.

The result of the Arian controversy was the affirmation of the total equality of the trinitarian persons. This led to the realisation that all three persons of the Trinity are involved in every external action of God. Despite this, the role of the Holy Spirit in creation has not been clear, partly due to few specific references in the creation narratives. However, it may be suggested that the Spirit does not act in the creation of matter, which is the role of the second person, but in the provision of the underlying form and order necessary for very existence, and specifically for the dynamic interaction which is of the essence of life, as in the second account of the creation of the man (Gen 2). This reflects the fact that the action of the Spirit is also essential in salvation to link Christ's work on the cross to the believer. While separation is a feature of the Genesis creation narrative, this is balanced by the interrelating of what had been created.

So, although Christian theology has commonly seen the world as ‘spirit’-less, restricting the action of the Holy Spirit to the church, this would be understood as referring to the limitation of his direct action. His immanent presence is nevertheless essential in all for very existence. The Spirit is not in the world, but underlies it.

Creation may be seen as a theistic act, by transcendent intervention to give matter, and giving interaction in immanent presence. The nature of the world therefore reflects the theistic nature of God, involving both distinction and relating. Indeed it then reflects the trinitarian nature of the creator, in which the persons maintain their absolute distinction at the same time as their total equality through the interaction of perichōrēsis, specifically enabled by the action of the Spirit as generating and undergirding relationship. The parallel between the created and the creator is seen especially insofar as the discrete elements of matter interrelate to give form and interaction.

It is in their interaction that the elements of creation fulfil their purpose, and so specifically that humanity reflects its nature as created in imago Dei.