In 1971 John Rawls remarked that ‘During much of modern moral philosophy the predominant systematic theory has been some form of utilitarianism.’ Although utilitarianism is no longer the dominant school of moral philosophy, it continues to flourish, generating new defenses and reformulations. Yet with the notable exception of Joseph Fletcher, there have been very few Christian ethicistswho have been prepared to declare themselves to be utilitarians or consequentialists.

This final part of the third volume of Church Dogmatics contains Barth's theological ethics in so far as this subject belongs to the doctrine of God as the Creator and as it applies to man in his responsibility as the covenant-partner of God. Here we turn to the consideration of what God wills from man in choosing him for fellowship with Himself.

The main theme of this paper is that, whereas in general, Greek thought sharply distinguishes and indeed opposes the notion of ‘word’ and the notion of ‘act’, the thought of the Old Testament so closely associates the two that it can use one term for both; and further that while traces of the Greek attitude are certainly to be found in the New Testament, yet it is the OT attitude which is dominant. It will be maintained that recognition of this fact is of the utmost importance for the understanding of NT thought in general, and in particular is relevant to an understanding of the NT view of (I) God and History, (2) The Incarnation.

Our discussion must start from Hegel, because Hegel set the terms of the debate and his shade has haunted the whole controversy we are to consider. His definitions of Christianity and of philosophy were at the heart of the ensuing encounter. Not that Hegel's analysis was accepted: some, like Feuerbach and Marx, modified Hegel more or less drastically while all the time assuming that in essentials, and sometimes in spite of himself, Hegel was right; others, like Kierkegaard, rejected Hegel's whole conception of what Christianity was about and yet still saw the question of what was to be done with the legacy of Hegel as a central issue of the age. And so it is impossible for us to grasp the structure of a still continuing discussion without seeing the pervasive influence of its starting-point.

In determining the meaning of the expression ‘the substance of the Faith’, it seems right to go back to the act of the Scottish Parliament in 1690 which ratified the Westminster Confession of Faith ‘as the publick and avowed Confession of this Church, containing the summe and substance of the doctrine of the Reformed Churches.’ There the WCF was regarded as containing the sum and substance of some thirty Reformed Confessions, including the Scots Confession, the First and Second Helvetic Confessions. These confessions expressly acknowledged the ancient Catholic Creeds and Conciliar Statements of the Church, the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Formulations of Ephesus and Chalcedon, and the so-called ‘Athanasian Creed’, and embodied all their main statements as essential articles of belief. This was true of the WCF which, as James Denney once pointed out, ‘contains everything that is in the Nicene Creed’ (Jesus and the Gospel, p. 39If). That is to say, there was no move away from what the Athanasian Creed and the Second Helvetic Confession called ‘the Catholic Faith’, although the basic articles of faith handed down through the Creeds were set within a confessional frame of distinctively Reformed character. It was inevitable, therefore, that a distinction was made between what Samuel Rutherford called (Due Right Presbyteries, p. 13) ‘a confession dejure, what everyman ought to believe, as the Nicene Creed, and the Creed of Athanasius’, and a wider summation of teaching common to ‘true Reformed Protestant religion’.

Accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason.

It is a tribute to the perspicacity of Lessing and Kierkegaard that their way of investigating the problem of the role of historical investigation in the task of theological construction has set the tone of subsequent discussion. The centrality of their problem in our time is shown up by the way Diem depicts Lessing's question and Kierkegaard's answer as the starting-point of the contemporary theological debate.1 Diem's analysis here is penetrating, even if it only shows up the need for that starting-point to be critically examined.

In this article, after an examination of Kierkegaard's general position, what I wish to suggest is (1) that the problem as Lessing has posed it is insoluble, and thus Kierkegaard's paradoxical solution is no solution; (2) that nevertheless, despite his clear dependence on Lessing, Kierkegaard has restated the problem in the only way which shows any promise for a Christian theology; and (3) that the pursuit of this solution requires that faith be not sealed off from ‘natural inquiry’, and consequently, a serious grappling with ordinary historical problems is unavoidable in Christian theology—which is the opposite conclusion to that which Kierkegaard himself drew (and which is widely accepted at the present time).

There does seem some truth in saying that any large-scale endeavour to work through a comprehensive programme of thought produces the radical critic who proclaims, after the manner of a prophet, that the programme is wrong-headed and misconceived, and who himself works through the programme for just one reason—to show, once and for all, that the only thing to do is to abandon an impossible investigation. Søren Kierkegaard was such a critic.

The difficulty of this chapter is notorious. ‘No one will deny’, writes Dr V. Taylor, ‘that Mark 13 presents one of the unsolved problems of New Testament exegesis.’ Professor A. M. Hunter goes further and says: ‘Mark 13 is the biggest problem in the Gospel.’ In Part I of this study we shall attempt to expound the chapter as it stands, as far as possible reserving the discussion of the main critical questions for Part II. This procedure is, of course, not altogether satisfactory; for it means that our exposition will be provisional and may need subsequent correction from the insights gained from the critical approach. Nevertheless it has certain advantages. For one thing, it may serve to remind us that a saying of Jesus, the authenticity of which has been questioned by critical research, has not thereby ceased to be part of Scripture but may still be the vehicle of the exalted Christ's conversation with His Church.

In the Bible we find Baptism suddenly appearing for the first time in that action of John the Baptist which, according to one way of reading Mark I.I, was ‘the beginning of the Gospel’. The Evangelists speak of Baptism not as a strange rite invented by John, but as something so familiar that it requires neither detailed description nor careful explanation.

To readers of the present day, however, the sudden appearance of Baptism at the beginning of the New Testament is a source of bewilderment which can easily lead to the kind of false interpretation of Scripture that underlies the Baptist movement et hoc genus omne.

It is therefore necessary to try to discover all we can as to the origin and significance of this strange rite.

The New Testament uses two cognate nouns: βάπτισμα and βαπτισμóς. βάπτισμα is found only in the New Testament and in Christian writers, and in the New Testament is used only of Baptism, whether it be John's Baptism or Christian Baptism. βαπτισμóς is used in the New Testament meaning a special form of ‘washing’. It occurs only at Mark 7.4, Heb. 6.2 and 9.10. In all these cases the reference is to ritual washings either of persons or of things. It is never used of Baptism in the New Testament, though Josephus, the only profane author to use the word, applies it to John's Baptism (Ant. xvii.v.2).

Writers belonging to various Christian denominations have recently had much to say about the Laity and their privileges and responsibilities within the Church. It is plain that the Church is unthinkable apart from membership, and this membership consists largely of laymen. We are, however, painfully conscious that for the majority connexion with the Church is vague, and it seems natural to speculate whether deeper sympathy might not be roused if membership more clearly carried with it a real share in a life of obvious activity. The Calvinistic Reformers made serious efforts in this direction, with reference both to Worship and to Government, and corresponding strategy is everywhere needed today, for nothing will occupy a prominent place in a man's heart that does not make an appreciable demand upon his attention and supply him with agreeable outlets for his energy. Experience teaches the observant minister that he must offer church-people something definite to do, something that will bring out their capabilities and promote the exercise of their gifts, stir their pride and stimulate loyal sentiments and render fellowship interesting and action rewarding. Being busy about a church is not being religious; but religion will have a better chance with the ordinary person as the Church forces itself to a higher place on the list of his priorities. Both rights and obligations ought to be underlined.

In the Babylonian Captivity, 1520, Luther launched an attack on the number of ordinances which the medieval Western Church labelled ‘sacraments’. According to Luther, only three were worthy of the title sacrament: baptism, the bread, and penance. Although critical of the prevailing penitential system, Luther not only defended the sacramental status of penance, but also the practice of auricular confession:

As to the current practice of private confession, I am heartily in favor of it, even though it cannot be proved from the Scriptures. It is useful, even necessary, and I would not have it abolished.

Friedrich Schleiermacher stood consciously in the tradition of John Calvin, both institutionally and theologically. He preached as a Reformed minister, and he did his theology with the intention of describing the religious consciousness of a branch of the Reformed Church. His conscious relationship to Calvin is especially evident throughout the essay ‘Concerning the Doctrine of Election’, and is explicit in The Christian Faith as well.

Tillich claimed often and vehemently that the risk of faith in Jesus as the Christ ‘lies in quite a different dimension from the risk of accepting uncertain historical facts’.1 The ultimate concern expressed in and through Christology is free from the contingencies of history and the consequent possibility of falsification. Yet many critics have accused Tillich of making covert historical assumptions in an inconsistent manner, thus failing in practice to make good his claims. I wish to defend Tillich on his own systematic grounds from such criticism, but also finally to raise the question whether his grounds are tenable.

This book, the latest in Wright's series on ‘Christian Origins and the Question of God’, is a daunting phenomenon: over 1500 pages, packaged in two volumes, containing (I reckon) more than 800,000 words. Building on his earlier publications, and referring across to companion volumes – not even this gigantic text is self-sufficient – Wright here advances in full the synthetic vision of Paul's theology which he has developed and promoted over more than thirty years. The scale reflects his ambition: to integrate all the motifs in Pauline theology within a single large-scale schema; to elucidate its Jewish roots and its points of interaction with Graeco-Roman philosophy, religion and politics; to engage in most of the recent debates on Pauline theology; and to defend and advance his own distinctive theories on justification, covenant and the Messiahship of Jesus, against critics who have lined up against him on several sides. The structure and size of the project create considerable repetition. Many topics are opened, postponed for several hundred pages, then discussed and then later reprised, while the reader is liable to be wearied by a prose style which often seems excessively baggy. Wright strives to keep our attention with arresting metaphors, engaging illustrations and a knock-about lecture-hall style, but the latter is often tetchy in its criticism of others, and descends too often to caricature. Indeed, the standard of intellectual engagement with contrary opinions is often disappointing, and hardly improved by grand generalisations about ‘Enlightenment frameworks’ and ‘postmodern moralism’. It is only rarely that this large work engages in detailed exegesis (close engagement with texts, in debate with a range of exegetical options): the opening discussion of Philemon, the focused study of Galatians 6:16 and the close analysis of Romans 9–11 (the highlight of this work) are among the exceptions. Of course one cannot advance a thesis of such breadth without sacrificing some depth in textual debate, but the effect is to lessen considerably the persuasiveness of the whole.

The object of this essay is to offer for consideration a new way of translating the fragment of Papias' Preface quoted by Eusebius, in the belief that it may show that Papias was indeed ‘a man of the primitive age’ (⋯ρχαîos), who flourished about A.D. 80, and whose ‘Interpretation’ did not deal with Matthew's Gospel, still less with Luke's, because the First and Third Evangelists had not published their works when he wrote.

The Samaritan doctrine of Moses is the second tenet of the Samaritan Creed. Before realising the centrality of this tenet, it is necessary to relate it to the others. Then it will become clear that the second tenet is the one which, as it were, binds all the tenets of the Creed together.

The Creed is a statement of fundamental belief, consisting of five tenets with the addition of a sixth which may be regarded as later or merely supplementary. The first is belief in the Oneness of God; this belief the Samaritans hold no less strictly than Jews, Christians or Muslims, but the emphasis is on the Oneness, not the Unity of God. The unpartnered, unassisted, un-seconded God is sole Creator, ruler of men's spirits in a royal sense, king of rulers in an historical sense, and, as the Muslims too put it, ‘Lord of this world and the next’. The One God chose to express His relationship to His creatures preeminently through Moses, and it is solely in terms of Moses that God's will and purposes for mankind are to be interpreted.

This essay is written out of a sense of urgency. Christians have emerged from two centuries of vigorous battles with scientists, philosophers, and historians who attempted to reduce the Bible to their own disciplines. Under these battle conditions, Christians have fashioned the weapon of an unassailable supernaturalism which attested to the divine origins of the Sacred Scriptures and to the divine assistance necessary for infallibly interpreting them. Supernaturalism has been tried in conflict and has not been found wanting. The successes of supernaturalism, however, have so blocked our access to (and distorted our sense of) the natural origins of the Scriptures and the natural skills necessary to interpret them, that the Christian's best weapon is rapidly working for his own self-destruction. In swinging it so mightily, he has lost his balance. And, while he has saved his own life, his unbalanced position is unwittingly calculated to injure his own children—those who were to be the future generation of Christians.

In the terminology of classical Christian theology the word eschatology means ‘the doctrine of the last things’. A discussion of NT eschatology would, under such a definition, treat of the hope of life after physical death, personal immortality, the general resurrection, the last judgment, heaven and hell. This use of the word remains of course in current usage; but in modern biblical discussion ‘eschatology’ is commonly employed in a somewhat different way, which may be defined by the statement that in characteristically eschatological thinking the significance of a series of events in time is defined in terms of the last of their number. The last event is not merely one member of the series; it is the determinative member, which reveals the meaning of the whole. Such thinking inevitably assumes the reality of historical processes, and that they are meaningful; in this, of course, it is fully consistent with Biblical thought as a whole; indeed, it might be said that the Biblical view of history derives its characteristic pattern from the fact that the Bible is a predominantly eschatological book. This is not to say either that the whole of the Bible is written from an eschatological standpoint, or that eschatological writing is not to be found outside the Bible; but the Bible is undoubtedly the classical field of eschatology, dominated as it is by the belief that the Judge of all the earth will do right, but that the right which He does will not necessarily be seen to be right until it is brought to a full end.