The concept of the sensus literalis is a continuing theme in the history of biblical exegesis. This paper attempts to trace the development of this theme, its changing nature and definition, in the work of selected major theologians and exegetes from the ancient through the Reformation periods.2 The survey demonstrates that the sensus literalis provides a hermeneutical key for describing and evaluating exegetical method and biblical interpretation in the Christian tradition.

Few people in our time have been more deeply concerned with thinking into each other again the inner substance of the evangelical and catholic emphases in the Church of Jesus Christ, than Oscar Cullmann. This has been especially evident in the way in which he has consistently sought to penetrate into the essential harmony of the Gospel that not only underlies the whole history of the Church but underpins the divisions between the Evangelical Churches and the Roman Catholic Church, bringing his unusually fresh understanding of the NT and the Early Church to bear constructively upon the areas of discord and friction, not least in respect of the concept of the Papacy. His many writings reveal unparalleled sensitivity and appreciation for the centrality of the biblical message, the sanctity of tradition and the continuity of worship in the redeemed life of the people of God, which have allowed him to bring together, without compromise, the concentration upon the core of the Gospel which has characterised the Evangelical Churches and the universal task and unifying order which have characterised the Catholic Churches.

When Jürgen Moltmann's Theology of Hope first appeared in 1965, it was seen as ushering in a new era of theological thinking. Karl Barth, however, sharply criticised the work as too heavily dominated by a ‘principle of hope’ that he believed Moltmann had inherited from the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch. This interpretation has largely been taken as fact among interpreters of Moltmann's theology of hope. This has caused most interpreters to see his turn to panentheism and ecotheology in God in Creation (1983) as being less of a shift of emphasis than a total change of trajectory or even break. There is evidence, however, that a different source contributed to the overall orientation of Moltmann's theology – an orientation that has remained throughout his life. This other source is the life and thought of the radical Schwäbean Pietists, Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805–80) and his son Christoph Blumhardt (1842–1919). In this article the authors flesh out the thesis that the Blumhardts are the prior, deeper and more long-lasting influence on Moltmann by focusing on three key theological motifs that permeate his theology: 1) Christianity as eschatology; 2) the ‘theology of the earth’; and 3) the ethics of hope. Furthermore, they argue that when the ‘hidden’ influence of the Blumhardts is acknowledged, Moltmann's later ‘shift’ can be understood as essentially in continuity, rather than discontinuity, with his earlier thought.

It is often enough averred that Calvin developed his doctrine of predestination in order to reassure believers of their status before God; it is even more often asserted that the overall effect of his teaching was eventually to subvert that assurance, or at any rate to turn it into a form of self-absorption that has an effect contrary to that for which the gospel frees us. Self-absorption is indeed among the besetting sins of Western Christianity, from Augustine onward. In each era, it takes characteristic form. In our day, it is among the prime dangers of the post-Constantinian Church, which, deprived, apparently, of once secure social and political status and role; diminished, apparendy, in numbers and influence, flounders variously in inaction, activism and political correctness in a sometimes desperate concern not to lose the attention of the—reprobate? In this paper, I propose to bring together the related themes of election and ecclesiology, with particular reference to the beleaguered situation of the Christian Church in a world which, as Robert Jenson has observed, is unique in being the first once apparently believing culture to have abandoned the Christian gospel. That throws into the limelight the problem of the, if not everywhere minority status, at least unique situation for the Church of rejection by the main streams of intellectual and cultural life.

St Anselm of Canterbury is famous on two counts: he is the originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God and he is the source of the satisfaction theory of the atonement. These positions do not exhaust his theological contribution; he also wrote works defending and defining Western Trinitarian doctrine, against Sabellianism and tritheism, and arguing for the filioque; he wrote on the Incarnation; and was influential in modifying Augustine's account of the transmission of original sin. There is also a collection of meditations and prayers, traditionally attributed to St Anselm, which at their best rank alongside almost any devotional literature of the medieval period. His memory, however, is firmly attached today to just the two points with which I began. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that on both he has been fundamentally misunderstood by the popular accounts of his thought given in theological and philosophical introductions and histories; these misreadings have been pointed out often enough, but are still regularly repeated.

Torrance's book is remarkable for its aggressive, full- blooded thought and style. Such an approach is typical of this theologian, but the centrality of the issues with which he deals and the importance of the stance he assumes makes his boldness a veritable confrontation. Utilising the basic theological beginning points of the Reform tradition (and writing in a style remarkably similar to that of Karl Barth), Torrance critically appraises the present task of theology.

The theological literature has been greatly enriched in recent decades by detailed studies of the nature of religious ‘discernment’ or ‘divination’. The works of Rudolf Otto, Mircea Eliade, and Ian Ramsey, in particular, and from various perspectives, have contributed much to our understanding of characteristic situations in which men may intuit or apprehend the immediate presence of deity. This ‘empirical-phenomenological’ approach (to characterise it as broadly as possible) represents a significant departure from the more traditional ‘proofs’ of deity based on logical argument or citations of scripture in that (a) it requires an empirical ‘grounding’ in concrete, historically conditioned situations, and (b) it necessarily leaves the question of truth value open to review and re-evaluation by its appeal to specific acts of personal intuition or discernment. Therefore, in comparison with the traditional ‘proofs’, there is a certain loss of cogency, but, on the other hand, a distinct gain in concreteness and accessibility to the religious imagination of the individual.

The late Professor H. R. Mackintosh wrote: ‘All religious knowledge of God, wherever existing, comes by revelation; otherwise we should be committed to the incredible position that man can know God without His willing to be known.’1 This statement brings to light the obvious point that revelation and knowledge of God are of the same piece. Revelation and knowledge of God necessarily belong to one another. It would be as ‘incredible’ for a work on ‘knowledge of God’ to fail to discuss revelation at some point or in some way as it would be for a work on ‘atonement’ to fail to discuss reconciliation. It is not incredible, however, to find an absence of a discussion of atonement or reconciliation, soteriology or union with Christ in works on ‘knowledge of God’. Revelation and ‘knowledge of God’ are for the most part separated from works on atonement and reconciliation. The outstanding characteristic of Professor T. F. Torrance's doctrine of the knowledge of God is that it does not separate revelation and reconciliation. These two are held together in God's work in Israel and in the Person and work of Christ and consequently in our knowing God. As a result, soteriology and epistemology, salvation and knowledge of God are inseparable in Torrance's theology. As our Lord himself said,‘… this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.’2 Among other things this means that Torrance's doctrine of the knowledge of God does not stand as an isolated doctrine at the beginning of his thought cut off from the rest of his theology.

The purpose of this essay is to broaden the way in which the exegetical necessity of trinitarian theology has frequently been understood in the post-Enlightenment period by offering an exegetical-theological interpretation of the birth–infancy narrative in the Gospel of Luke and exploring the implications for exegesis in the opening scene in the body of the gospel. The question of the identify of God is pursued by paying close attention to the movement of the Lukan narrative itself and the influence and presence of the OT within the narrative. The essay, as a form of ecclesial biblical theology, attempts to take seriously the dogmatic tradition of the church primarily from the side of exegesis and, hence, focuses on one aspect of continuity between the bible and the later formulations as generated by the dynamics of a particular biblical text.

Usually one does not include Karl Barth in contemporary Jewish-Christian dialogue. Unlike his Protestant theological contemporaries, Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr, there in no evidence that during his long theological career Barth had any real contact with Jewish thinkers. The only contemporary Jewish thinker whom he engages, to my knowledge, is Martin Buber, but in his magnum opus, Church Dogmatics, Buber is discussed almost en passent and with a rather hurried dismissal. Barth's relations with Judaism are seriously complicated, but one gets the impression from reading what he says about Judaism that he is doing typology, engaging a type already created in his mind largely by Paul and those who followed in his path. He does not seem to be dealing with Judaism as a living tradition, indeed a current rival religious option to Christianity. After all, how can one engage Judaism as a living tradition, let alone as a current rival, if one has no serious contact with living Jews during the most productive years of one's thought? For that reason it would seem an engagement of Barth's thought by a contemporary Jewish theologian could only be, at most, an arcane academic exercise having no real Jewish significance.

Without doubt, David Kelsey's Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology (henceforth, EE) is one of the most significant and important contributions to the field of theology from this generation of theologians. The two-volume work of over a thousand pages (really one volume bound into two books because of its size) is Kelsey's magnum opus, and arises from more than three decades of study and thought. It addresses directly and (properly) theologically central issues relating to humanity in relation to God and to creation (‘all that is not God’). This book has arisen within a theological setting of conversations with other members of the ‘Yale school’ (Hans Frei and George Lindbeck). Yet, there is a sense in which this book surpasses what that school of thought has offered thus far, not by beginning on an altogether different theological path, but by journeying further, and bringing what that theological approach has to offer to bear on one doctrinal locus in a way which the other key proponents of post-liberal theology have not yet done: Kelsey moves from discussing a theological method to using that theological method more fully and directly than has previously been the case in relation to the theological content of a single theological issue.

The Letter of the Synod of Antioch contained in a Syriac MS. of the eighth or ninth century (Codex Parisinus Syriacus 62), to which Edward Schwartz first drew attention in 1905, has thrown light on the period immediately preceding the Council of Nicaea and on the proceedings of the Council itself. After much initial controversy, mainly between Schwartz and von Harnack, this document is now generally accepted as authentic.

The Synod of Antioch, of which nothing was hitherto known, appears to have assembled in order to settle the difficulties which had arisen in the Church at Antioch after the death of Bishop Philogonius (ca. A.D. 322), one of three Bishops whom Arius described as ‘unlearned heretics’; Eustathius, Bishop of Beroea, was appointed to fill the vacancy. The Synod was attended by at least fifty-nine bishops from Syria and Palestine, forty-nine of whom also attended the Council of Nicaea a few months later.

There is a renewed interest in the relations between the Eastern and Western parts of the Church; and some have been surprised at the affinities of thought between the two. In a study of the Atonement in Gregory of Nyssa, the following examination was made of the meanings of the word Grace in his writings. It may be of interest to others who are working towards a closer understanding of the thought of the Eastern Fathers.

I. From God's side

(a) Grace may be used to point to the general attitude of kindly favour that God displayed to all creation and to mankind in particular. Verb and noun are both employed to indicate the distinction between man and all other animals, over whom he was given a royal authority. The potentiality in man for both good and evil is greater than in any other part of the universe. (b) This Fatherly care did not cease at creation, but is visible throughout the Old Testament history. It was present at Sinai; and spoke freely and often through the prophets, as when, under Ahab and Jezebel, Elijah fought single-handed against the prophets of Baal; and we even have the phrase reminding us of the Pauline charisma. Gregory often speaks of the Grace of God, much more commonly in fact than of His love.

Several years before the mode of Christ's eucharistic presence became a controverted issue which would presently provoke a lasting schism among the Churches of the Reformation, Luther could unaffectedly propound the traditional dogma of the bodily presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar as a necessary consequence of the evangelical quest for the sensus grammaticus of the words of institution. The same exegetical method which led to his reappropriation of the doctrine of the justification of the sinner ‘by grace, for Christ's sake, through faith’ obliged him to confess that ‘the bread is the body of Christ’. Already here, in the mordantly anti-Roman treatise On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Luther has laid his finger on the model in terms of which he will understand the real presence to the end of his days: the consecrated host is the body of Christ, just as the assumed humanity of jesus Christ is the Son of God. The displacement of the scholastic theory of transubstantiation by the model of the incarnate person illustrates the Reformer's allegiance to the Chalcedonian Definition: ‘Luther is really replacing Aristotelian categories by those derived from Chalcedonian christology, to which he remained faithful: “unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably”.’ While the doctrine of the real presence moved from the periphery to the centre of Luther's theology and piety as the 1520s wore on, his conception of the modality of the eucharistic presence remained constant throughout.