Hell is a doctrine that has always had its uses. The range of those uses can be conveniently traced by examining a passage from Cold Comfort Farm, the comic novel by Stella Gibbons, first published in 1932. The novel is set in rural England during the third decade of the twentieth century, a time when automobiles were not entirely unknown but not yet widely in use. The scene to be examined involves Flora Poste and Amos Starkadder. Flora is a young, sophisticated woman who has gone to visit her relatives in the country, and Amos is her gray-haired, grizzled cousin, a Scotsman who lives on the farm with other kinfolk and who serves as a lay preacher in town at the Church of the Quivering Brethren. Flora accompanies Amos to a preaching service one evening. They arrive by horse and buggy, enter the hall, and take their seats. Flora sits in the back near the exit, Amos by the platform up front.

The essay begins by noting some of the things Karl Barth might have said to defend himself against Stanley Hauerwas's criticisms, in the otherwise largely appreciative discussion in With the Grain of the Universe, of Barth's anthropology and pneumatology and the consequent problems in his ecclesiology. I then discuss some issues that Barth himself might have wanted to raise with regard to Hauerwas's own ecclesiology, especially in reference to its comparative lack of emphasis upon divine action and the difference that makes to an account of the church's witness. I argue that Barth and Hauerwas differ to some degree in their understanding of the gospel and of Christianity, with Hauerwas emphasizing rather more than Barth the necessity and centrality of the church's work in the economy of salvation. Barth, on the other hand, sees the need rather more than Hauerwas of situating the church's activity within a well-rounded account of the work of the Word and the Spirit. I offer some concluding remarks to suggest that this particular aspect of Barth's ecclesiology is worth preserving as an effective way of responding to modernity.

Contemporary theology exhibits a lively interest in using the traditional doctrine of the munus triplex (the threefold mediatorial office of Christ as prophet, priest and king) to unify our understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ and ground it in the Old Testament witness. This article explores Karl Barth's contribution to this trend and draws from it a set of reflections for the church today. Scholarly consensus suggests that Barth offers an exceptionally robust development of the munus triplex in shaping the formal structure and material content of his doctrine of reconciliation. In this article I contend that his use of this concept is actually quite superficial in nature. As scholars are wont to point out, Barth incorporates the munus triplex into eye-catching summary statements throughout CD IV – but these statements are more ambiguous than they might at first seem. A closer examination of the details of his account of the work of Christ, and particularly his hamartiology, demonstrates that the munus triplex does not substantially inform his treatment of these subjects, and that his own unique christological concerns provide the determining influence. While Barth was eager to align his position with that of Reformed orthodoxy, focusing on the munus triplex ultimately distracts the reader from his primary concerns. Much the same is true for the church today – when used as a sufficient interpretative device for offering an account of the person and work of Jesus Christ, the munus triplex suffers the fate of many an artificial schema for biblical interpretation, distracting us from the breadth and depth of the biblical witness by offering an overly tidy, artificially organised account of the material. Nevertheless, when modestly employed, it remains a significant though limited conceptual device for understanding Christ's person and work, which the church should employ in several ways so as to integrate the Old and New Testaments in its proclamation of the Gospel.

An investigation of the second story of creation and the Fall in the light of their exegesis by Phyllis Trible. The strengths and weaknesses of Trible's approach are considered and an evaluation of Genesis 2–3 as a paradigm of Ancient Israel's social and religious history is offered.

The word with which we are concerned is variously trans-lated in the E.VV. as ‘Parable’ (e.g. Ezek. 17.2), ‘Proverb’ (e.g. Ezek. 12.22, 23), ‘By-word’ (e.g. Ps. 44.15; so Ezek. 14.8 should be more appropriately translated). The last two groups are obviously related and it would be reasonable to suppose that ‘By-word’ would be a particularised meaning of ‘Proverb’, i.e. the use of a person (individual or group) in a proverbial way, as an example of disaster. The relation of this kind of meaning to that of ‘Parable’ is not so obvious, except in so far as there is a common idea of likeness. But this is less obvious when some of the instances of Māšāl—‘Parable’ are noted. Thus the term is used for Taunt song: Isa. 14.4; Hab. 2.6; Mic. 2.4; its use in the Balaam story seems at first to mean little more than an oracle and its use in Job 27.1, 29.1 appears to mean ‘Theme’.

As a faithful young Puritan minister John Owen used to visit his people in the parish of Fordham teaching both adults and children the basic doctrines of Protestantism from two catechisms which he himself composed. In the larger one it is asked: Do we know God as he is? The answer is: No; his glorious being is not of us, in this life, to be comprehended. The same concern is apparent at the end of the section on the Trinity. Question: Can we conceive these things as they are in themselves? Answer: Neither we nor yet the angels of heaven are able to dive into these secrets, as they are internally in God; but in respect of the outward dispensation of themselves to us by creation, redemption, and sanctification, a knowledge may be obtained of these things, saving and heavenly.

Although it is evident to every student of the New Testament that Matthew has a special interest in the Church, the use of the term ‘body of Christ’ to describe the Church has been peculiarly associated with Paul. For this reason it seems well to begin by discussing briefly what Paul meant by the concept of body in order to have a working definition of it. We will then endeavour to ascertain whether this idea is also present in Matthew.

The leaders of the Protestant Reformation not only intended a revival of personal piety; they aimed as well to reshape the corporate forms of religion. They did not convert individuals to the Protestant faith only to abandon them to a state of religious detachment. Rather, the Protestant Reformers labored to rebuild the church and felt themselves called to be agents of its restoration. They steadfastly believed that the Holy Catholic Church had been instituted by God for the nurture and fellowship of souls and that outside of this body there exists ‘no ordinary possibility of salvation’. Accordingly, the founders of Protestantism laid great emphasis upon the nature and function of the church. Ecclesiology was a notable and principal part of their theology.

The sixth volume of the Basel theologian's monumental Dogmatics (Church Dogmatics, Vol. III, Part 2) is not only, like the earlier volumes, a significant work, but like the fifth, and even more than it a work full of surprises. I have no hesitation in associating myself with the judgment of my Danish colleague Prenter,2 who calls it “the culmination so far of the whole powerful work”. Barth devotes several pages of this volume to a notable discussion of my own anthropology, published fifteen years ago (Man in Revolt). In it he puts to me the question whether we mean the same thing or not (p. 155 ff.). There arises thus for me not merely the occasion but also the necessity of abandoning our mutual practice of not reviewing one another's works. The following pages are not intended to provide a survey of the whole work but only to bring out some specially important points. Naturally, then, they will be fully understood only by those who have some knowledge of both works. I have already given a brief affirmative reply to Barth's question in the second volume of my own Dogmatics (p. 95) after a hasty glance through his Doctrine of Man which came into my hands only after the completion of my own MS., but feel myself now obliged to state more precisely the reasons for this assent and to add some qualifications.

The picture of the hilltop city in Mt. 5.14b is an image within an image. It is one of those pictures employed by Jesus which is almost too familiar to us; its meaning appears on the surface to be perfectly simple and obvious, so that although frequently cited in support of various arguments, it is rarely subjected to scholarly scrutiny. It will be argued here that, far from being a casual illustration or simple cliché, it in fact constitutes a profoundly theological statement on the part of Jesus.

Abiblical scholar is sometimes asked, “What effect has the Bible had?” To my embarrassment, I have not been able to draw on solid results of research to answer this very reasonable question. It has been all but ignored by the exegetical guild.

Nowhere in the literary remains of antiquity is there another document quite comparable to Gregory of Nyssa's fourth homily on the book of Ecclesiastes: certainly no other ancient text still known to us—Christian, Jewish, or Pagan—contains so fierce, unequivocal, and indignant a condemnation of the institution of slavery. Not that it constitutes a particularly lengthy treatise: it is only a part of the sermon itself, a brief exegedeal excursus on Ecclesiastes 2:7 (‘I got me male and female slaves, and had my home-born slaves as well’), but it is a passage of remarkable rhetorical intensity. In it Gregory treats slavery not as a luxury that should be indulged in only temperately (as might an Epicurean), nor as a necessary domestic economy too often abused by arrogant or brutal slave-owners (as might a Stoic like Seneca or a Christian like John Chrysostom), but as intrinsically sinful, opposed to God's actions in creation, salvation, and the church, and essentially incompatible with the Gospel. Of course, in an age when an economy sustained otherwise than by chattel slavery was all but unimaginable, the question of abolition was simply never raised, and so the apparent uniqueness of Gregory's sermon is, in one sense, entirely unsurprising. Gregory lived at a time, after all, when the response of Christian theologians to slavery ranged from—at best—resigned acceptance to—at worst—vigorous advocacy. But, then, this makes all the more perplexing the question of how one is to account for Gregory's eccentricity. Various influences on his thinking could of course be cited— most notably, perhaps, that of his revered teacher and sister Macrina, who had prevailed upon Gregory's mother to live a common life with her servants—but this could at best help to explain only Gregory's general distaste for the institution; it would still not account for the sheer uncompromising vehemence of his denunciations.

The notion of a post-mortem disembodied existence of the soul followed by resurrection on the last day has been part of traditional Christian theology for centuries. Though some modern theologians are unhappy with this doctrine and have tried to re-interpret it or reject it altogether, it cannot be denied that traditional Christian theology has always taught this. This view was held by many of the Church Fathers and by the Reformers. Today it is still the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church and some Protestant Churches.

Necessary being' is one of the terms by means of which Christian thought has sought to define the difference between God and man. The notion of necessary being, applied to God and withheld from man, indicates that God and man differ not merely in the characteristics which they possess but more fundamentally, in their modes of being, or in the fact that they exist in different senses of the word ‘exist’.

That such a distinction, however it may be best expressed, is essential to the Christian concept of God is agreed virtually on all hands. Paul Tillich in our own day emphasises the distinction to the extent of using different terms to refer to the reality of God and of man respectively. Human beings and other created things exist; God, on the other hand, does not exist, but is Being-itself. This is the most recent way of formulating a discrimination which has been classically expressed in the history of Christian thought by the idea of the necessary being of God in contrast to the contingent being of man and of the whole created order. There are, however, two importantly different concepts which may be, and which have been, expressed by the phrase ‘necessary being’. ‘Necessity’, in a philosophical context, usually means logical necessity, and gives rise in theology to the concept of a being such that it is logically impossible that this being should not exist. But this is not the only kind of necessity referred to in philosophical literature.

In this article, I look at the possible impact of John Chrysostom's exegetical approach upon John Calvin's biblical interpretation. I detect the traces of Chrysostom's hermeneutical approach to Paul's Letter to the Romans in John Calvin's reading of the same epistle. Why Paul's literature? Because both Chrysostom and Calvin are very fond of Paul and his thinking and consider him the major voice in the Bible. Why the Epistle to the Romans specifically? Because they both believe that this epistle is valuable for the church at all times. According to them, it is the first door to the understanding of the Good News of God's salvation as proclaimed in the Bible. I make this comparison on the basis of the following foundational thesis. If the first Protestant reformers were reliant on the church's exegetical tradition, and if they believed in the affinity of their biblical reading to a long tradition of reading conducted before them, the impact of the church fathers' exegetical methodology on the reformers' biblical interpretation should be part and parcel of any scholarship we do on the Reformation's hermeneutics.

‘Whatever became of sin?’ – the title of American psychiatrist Kark Menninger's book – encapsulates the problem with which I begin. That there is appalling suffering today, organized crime on a scale which almost defies analysis – and certainly detection! – moral evil in a variety of repugnant forms and so-called ‘natural’ catastrophes which threaten the very continuation of human life on our planet, is beyond dispute. But ‘sin’? Is sinfulness still an accepted category in our society for eidier religious believer or nonbeliever? It is hard to accept that when Professor Kerkhofs (from the University of Leuven, Belgium), surveyed the attitudes on sin and guilt of European Christians in 1985, 40% of those interviewed admitted that they had never experienced any feelings of regret about their actions! There is a double tendency prevailing with regard to responsibility for acknowledged wrongdoing: increasing sense of diminished responsibility for crime seeks either to scapegoat a certain sector of the populace as blameworthy, or attempts are made to cope with criminal damage – for example, injuries sustained by drink-driving – by assessing it in exclusively (reductive) monetary terms.

Early in the year 1968 Karl Barth invited me to a discussion that touched upon, among other topics, my second [habilitation] thesis Zukunft und Verheifiung [Future and Promise], which had appeared three years earlier. In it I had attempted to trace the ground of theology eschatologically in God's word of promise, yet without putting the cart before the horse. Barth dressed his inquiry in a comment accented with self-irony. As I recall, it went as follows: ‘Even I began with eschatology and ascribed to it a decisive role for theology. I gave the future priority—but over the years I was forced to realize that I could not maintain this. The more time passed on, the more I became aware that I could not remain standing where I was. Present and past are equally important for theology if theology allows itself to be oriented by God's time. And theology must not confuse this time with one of the dimensions of the human experience of time’. Itsounded as if beginning with eschatology was something like a sin of youthfulness, possibly even like a theological childhood illness which every more or less normal theologian would grow out of in time.

In his recent important book, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, Professor W. D. Davies, discussing St. Paul's doctrine of the Second Adam, writes: ‘Probably … this conception played a far more important part in his thought than the scanty references to the Second Adam in I Corinthians and Romans would lead us to suppose.’2 A similar importance has been attached to the idea by Dr A. J. Rawlinson in his New Testament Doctrine of the Christ; it has provided Paul with some of his most characteristic Christology. It has also been claimed more than once that the Second Adam is St. Paul's substitute for the Gospel Son of Man, while both have been traced to a widely spread myth of the Urmensch, or primeval Man, the origins of which are obscure, but which was revived in the Gnostic Anthropos.

Why is theology good for the church? One authoritative contemporary answer runs like this: theology is good for the church to the extent that it aims at a description of the linguistic and conceptual world of Christian faith normatively set forth in Holy Scripture. Theology, on this model, is ‘intratextual’ or ‘intrasemiotic’, offering a ‘thick description’, a kind of ethnography of the public, intersubjective meaning routines of Christianity, most of all as they are instantiated in Scripture which is the encoding of the ‘semiotic universe’ of Christian faith. Viewed as such, theology is a close cousin to what Clifford Geertz calls ‘interpretive explanation’: it is a discipline which ‘trains its attention on what institutions, actions, images, utterances, events, customs … mean to those whose institutions, actions, customs, and so on they are’; as such, it furnishes‘systematic unpackings of the conceptual world’ of Christian faith.