In Otto's mature philosophy of religion, as presented in Das Heilige, religions are viewed as consisting of both rational and non-rational elements. While religions have to do with theoretical and moral ideas, they are nonetheless not finally dependent on these. Rather, these rational components are ultimately referable to an object or ‘subject’ that can only be apprehended in a non-rational ‘unique original feeling-response’ that is the innermost core of all religions. The analysis of this non-rational numinous core of religion, and of its connection to religion's rational factors, is the overall aim of Das Heilige, indeed of Otto's work as a whole.

In much contemporary theology, pastoral/practical theology, and much of the more popular ‘Christian’ literature there is a concern for exploring and discovering various aspects of right relationship. These relationships might be political, marital, familial, sexual, economic, those within the church, or between the church and the greater society. What seems to be lacking in many of these discussions is an adequate theological foundation upon which to carry out the exploration. There are assumptions made about the nature of human relationships which seem to have no connection to theological underpinnings or are only loosely, or thematically related.

The Transfiguration narratives have received considerable attention from New Testament scholars, but so far very little has been written about them from the point of view of their reception-history. The purpose of this article is to examine the ways in which they have been interpreted in the Latin West from the time of Hilary of Poitiers in the fourth century to Peter of Blois in the early thirteenth. Among these writers, from the big names like Jerome to the lesser known figures like Peter of Celle, a varied tapestry emerges where light allegory plays an important part, whether in the symbolisms given to the choice of the three disciples, Peter, James and John, or to the dazzling clothes of Christ as baptismal – a particular insight of Bede, which keeps recurring in subsequent writers and preachers. Unlike the East, where the Transfiguration became a major festival on 6 August from the seventh century onwards, the Latin West was slow to absorb it; but it was given particular impetus by Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, in the twelfth century. Whether read as narrative in connection with Lent (‘glory before cross’), or as a festival in its own right, the Transfiguration emerges as an unusually rich source of biblical interpretation that poses real challenges to the use of the religious imagination today. And it provides a significant contribution to the development of a balanced view of reception-history in our own time.

One of the more promising recent developments in Christian ethics is the attempt to re-think its starting point and its basis in the light of the advances in biblical studies which are recovering for the church the specificity of the biblical perspective. It is true that this concern to take the biblical perspective seriously must go hand in hand with another of the central themes of current ethical thinking, namely, the concern to pay close attention to the data of the concrete situation. Unfortunately, ‘situation ethics’, while commendable in its refusal of legalism and its openness to the givenness of the situation, is frequently lacking in any specifically Christian content, that is, content to which the biblical perspective has made at least some formative contribution. In this regard, the difficult problem is this: how do we appropriate the biblical perspective in such a way that it may illumine the present concrete situation and give shape to ethical decision? Not much progress has been made on the solution of this problem. Although in this article we are only working at one end of the spectrum, namely, one aspect of the biblical basis of Christian ethics, nevertheless we see this as part of the total problem of bridging the gap, for in fact this cannot be accomplished without the re-conceptualisation of ‘biblical ethics’ now taking place.

It is the argument of this article that Dietrich Bonhoeffer's hermeneutical approach understands creaturely existence to be truly held by the Word made flesh as the risen Christ, who is still wholly human and therefore truly present in creation. Therefore, this article argues with Dietrich Bonhoeffer that, for a viable theological hermeneutics, it is critically necessary to consider the kenotic movement of the risen Christ, not only for a proper understanding of holy scripture in its genuine humanness, but also for an understanding of the new creation as taking place in reconciled creatures through the Word.

The anti-episcopal polemic of early Scottish presbyterian historians like Row and Calderwood has misled us to presume that most contemporary presbyterians saw bishops as enemies of the gospel. Instead, both episcopal writings and the manuscript records of kirk sessions, presbyteries, and synods show presbytery within prelacy working quite well in Scotland from the Reformation until the troubled 1630s. William Cowper, minister of Perth from 1595 to 1613 and thereafter bishop of Galloway, illustrates how and why the system worked. Calvinist, visionary, preacher, and vigorous reformer of manners, Cowper as minister joined with the Perth session to impose discipline, administered communion Geneva-style, and enforced the Reformation's abolition of traditional holidays. He was by any definition a puritan, and he remained one after his acceptance of a bishopric in 1612. As bishop of Galloway he declined to enforce kneeling or observance of Christmas despite royal mandate, cooperated with presbyteries and sessions, and continued active preaching and discipline. Charges against him of greed and ambition prove unfounded. His puritan episcopacy represents and explains the success of the kirk's hybrid polity in the post-Reformation period.

To these last ten verses of the chapter we may give the general title, Watch therefore! The section falls naturally into three parts (w. 28 f, 30–32, 33–37), marked off by ‘learn’, ‘Verily I say unto you’ and ‘Take ye heed’.

The first of these contains the parable of the Fig Tree and its application. Strictly speaking, the word (‘these things’) in v. 29 should refer to the coming of the Son of Man mentioned in the previous section; but, as the sense would then be,‘When you see the Son of Man coming, know that He is at hand’, which would be pointless, we take it rather to refer to the signs of the End described in vv. 5–23 It is unnecessary, however, to conclude that vv. 28 f or vv. 24–27 are out of their original context; for such looseness of structure as is involved, if we understand ‘these things’ to refer to thesigns of vv. 5–23 in spite of vv. 24–27 being in between, is natural enough, and we actually need something like v. 26 here to provide a subject for the verb ‘is’ in v. 29. We take vv. 28 f then to mean that, when the disciples see the various things coming to pass that have been described in vv. 5–23, they are to know that the Son of Man is at hand, His Parousia imminent.

Since Perry Millerpos;'s biography of Jonathan Edwards began a new cycle of study some forty years ago, research into Edwards' life and thought has advanced considerably. No longer is the intellectual giant of colonial America surrounded by the obscurity to which early generations had consigned him. Yale is republishing his works. New secondary studies on Edwards appear regularly. Academics from a range of disciplines - history, American studies, theology, philosophy, and literary criticism - have all made Edwards a focus for serious scholarly attention. As an index to the quickening tempo of research, the total number of dissertations on Edwards increased in geometrical proportion during the last half century, doubling during each of the successive decades since 1940.

In a well-known essay on ‘The Two Types of the Philosophy of Religion’, Paul Tillich distinguishes between the ontological and the cosmological approaches in our philosophical understanding of God, and aligns himself with the former. The ontological approach may be historically associated with Augustine and Anselm's ontological argument, as contrasted with Thomas Aquinas and the cosmological argument, but the decisive difference from Tillich's perspective is whether God is treated as a being, an instance of being exemplifying the fundamental metaphysical categories, or beyond being, a radical and necessary exception to these principles. Championing the ontological approach, Tillich declares: ‘The being of God cannot be understood as the existence of a being alongside others or above others. If God is a being, he is subject to the categories of finitude, especially to space and substance. Even if he is called the “highest being” in the sense of the “most perfect” and the “most powerful” being, this situation is not changed. When applied to God, superlatives become diminutives’ (ST I, 235). In response, proponents of the cosmological approach may agree with Alfred North Whitehead: ‘God is not to be treated as an exception to all metaphysical principles, invoked to save their collapse. He is their chief exemplification.’

For the ministerial fundamentalist the yardstick is the ministry. … There is no doubt that this is the crucial issue in reunion today. So Canon Fison wrote ten years ago and the same might be written in the same context today.

This yardstick is bound up with validity and so some attempt to consider its meaning may help; but first we shall define the word and then mention some relevant discussions. ‘That is valid which, by virtue of satisfying certain conditions laid down by competent authority, is actually entitled to everything to which it appears or claims to have a title.’ Much argument has centred on the exclusive claims made for episcopacy in The Apostolic Ministry, though, after the introduction, there is only one reference in the index of that work to validity. The late Bishop Rawlinson dealt with ‘validity’ in Problems of Reunion; he used certain arguments Canon Quick had outlined in his contribution to The Ministry and the Sacraments and also in The Christian Sacraments. Historical considerations on the topic have been ably summarised by Professor S. L. Greenslade in his Schism in the Early Church. Useful contributions have been made more recently by Dr A. L. Peck in Anglicanism and Episcopacy. All these writers are Anglicans.

Since Barth has not developed any systematic treatise on the doctrine of analogy, what I hope to say in this paper is rather implicit in his Church Dogmatics, especially the volumes I/1, II/1, III/1, III/2, IV/1 and IV/3.

With increasing contact and knowledge of non-Christian religions and in the light of colonialist missionary endeavours, a number of Christians have recently advocated what I shall call a pluralist approach to non-Christian religions. This pluralist paradigm may be characterised as one which maintains that non-Christian religions can be equally salvific paths to the one God, and that Christianity's claim to be the only way (exclusivism), or the fulfilment of all other religions (inclusivism), should be rejected for good theological, phenomenological, and philosophical reasons. This view is shared by Christians from different denominations, and is best expressed in the works of Professors John Hick, Paul Knitter, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, and Mr Alan Race.

The Göttingen New Testament Professor, Wilhelm Bousset observed that historical research was in ‘danger of placing Christianity in the flux of development’, of ‘failing to give due worth to its special character and unique meaning, and thereby neutralising and relativising everything’. ‘The halo of the supernatural which had clung around “sacred history” was destroyed,’ and history had become a ‘labyrinth for modern religious liberalism’, where it threatened ‘to betray itself’. In their attempts to avoid such a relativisation of the Christian faith, most of the members of the History of Religion School sought refuge in a primordial mystical experience expressive of non-rational feelings, of emotions, moods and fantasies.

In Contra Arianos 3 Athanasius considers two frightened cries of a man about to be crucified:

My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;

nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.

My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?

These he analyses in accordance with the general pattern of hisexplanation of the passions suffered by the Logos incarnate.

I Believe that the far-reaching significance of Karl Barth for the universal Church in the twentieth century may best be indicated by relating it to that of St Athanasius in the fourth century.