By his well-known method of correlation, Paul Tillich sought a formal pattern by which he could combine his philosophical interests and theological concerns in a joint effort to achieve a systematic theology. In formulating this correlation, Tillich is very careful to assign the substantive, constructive role to theology, leaving philosophy with the task of articulating those fundamental questions concerning the ground of our being arising out of our existential situation. In particular, Tillich argues that philosophy cannot say anything positive concerning the existence and nature of God.

In recent years there has been a great deal written about religious language, but very often the reader is left guessing as to what answer the writer he has been considering would have given to the question, Is there a God? Does God exist? Is there some reality for which the word ‘God’ is the accepted name? This may seem to many an unsatisfactory state of affairs, for at least the plain man is impatient of what he deems to be undue sophistication, especially on ultimate questions of this kind; and he would much prefer, as he might put it, to get down to brass tacks. Consequently, the plain man would probably be very unhappy about the question which I have posed regarding the possible logical placing of the name ‘God’, and he would greatly prefer to see it put in straightforward fashion as the question, Does God exist or not?

In the following discussion I wish to demonstrate the basic homogeneity of Barth's thinking on the relationship between Divine self-disclosure and Religion. In order to restrict the discussion, reference will be made to the second edition of the commentary on Romans, the first volume of the Church Dogmatics, the essays: ‘The Humanity of God’and ‘The Christian Understanding of Revelation’, and volume four of the Dogmatics— for if there has been a significant change in the structure of Barth's thinking, one must expect to find such evidence in these basic sources. While the primary aim is to explore the relationship between Revelation and Religion, the discussion must necessarily take into consideration a number of secondary relationships which impinge upon the central theme at certain places. These secondary relationships as it happens, vary in accordance with the dialogical situation in which Barth formulates his argument. In Romans for example, the resurrection of Jesus occupies a pivotal position, but in the first volume of the Dogmatics he has shifted his attention to the significance of the Incarnation. Again, however, at the closing stages of volume four attention has swung back to the importance and relevance of the resurrection for Christian faith.

In a series of studies for the E.A.C.C. writers from the Asian Churches applied themselves to the question ‘Confessing the Faith in Asia Today’. One feature common to their concern was the need to distinguish sharply between a confessing church and a confessional church. In their missionary situation the second term was treated with suspicion and mistrust as an expression which characterised a church that was inflexible in its attitudes and was therefore unable to enter into a living dialogue of faith with its indigenous situation so that the Gospel could be meaningfully expressed. This sharp contrast is understandable since the Asian churches have not been notable for the ways in which the Gospel has become indigenous to their cultural situation. It has, in the past, tended to be an imposition on a new situation, of a relevant Gospel couched in alien terms with more than a suggestion that the terms in which the Gospel was expressed was to be identified with the reality of the Good News. As a result a cultural hiatus has ensued which has vitiated a great deal of the cutting edge of the Gospel.

It was the observation of Princeton's James McCosh that ‘the reconciliation between the philosophy and the religion of Scotland was effected by Thomas Chalmers’. That Chalmers’ roots run deep in the soil prepared by the philosophy of Common Sense is indisputable. The Reid-Beattie-Stewart tradition in philosophy provided the backdrop against which the formation and development of Chalmers’ theology was framed. The important questions, however, are how Chalmers appropriated this philosophical tradition, for what ends he employed it, and to what extent it informed the content of his theology. It is certainly the case that Chalmers embraced Reid's repudiation of Locke's theory of ideas on both moral and religious grounds. The ‘constancy of nature’ whose rational and empirical demonstrability David Hume had called into question was crucial for Chalmers, and he attempted to reinstate it with the aid of every intellectual weapon the Scottish philosophers could provide. Furthermore, Chalmers accepted much of the programmatic work of the Common Sense philosophers in their efforts to ground morality and the ‘moral sense’ on a priori laws constitutive of the mind itself.

The doctrine of the ‘double Procession’ of the Holy Spirit, in spite of all the controversy it has caused in the past, is today probably regarded as one of the more trivial elements in our Western theological heritage—slightly more important perhaps than the conclusions reached in the medieval arguments over the number of angels who could stand on the point of a pin, but still of no great intrinsic significance. Yet this doctrine was a major factor in the schism between East and West, and it has since then remained an obstacle to all attempts to reconcile the Eastern and Western Churches. Western theologians have clearly felt that something of importance was being affirmed in the ‘Filioque’ clause in the Nicene Creed, while their Eastern counterparts have been equally convinced that what the ‘Filioque’ affirms is wrong, even blasphemous. The questions of what it is that the ‘Filioque’ is intended to affirm, and of whether what is affirmed should be affirmed, are therefore of some importance, particularly in an age of ecumenical dialogue. On these grounds alone, the doctrine demands to be seriously examined: we are not entitled simply to ignore it, or—what is worse—to cast around for superficial reasons for getting rid of it in the hope of thereby reaching an agreement with Eastern theologians.

At the moment, and for some years now, there has been a great deal of discussion about the nature and function of the university. Such discussion naturally involves some consideration of the sorts of things which should be taught in universities, and of how they should be taught. What I particularly want to consider is the place, if any, of Theology in a university context; but I think one must begin with the more general topic of the nature of a university. Only in such a way can one arrive at some criterion of what sorts of disciplines one wants in such institutions. I am, of course, hardly in a position to come to definitive, much less adequate, conclusions, about this subject; but I can at least canvass a few opinions, and try to assess their relative merits, and see how they might provide for the study of theology in some form.

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.

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.

In this paper I would like to discuss what the Old Testament has to say about the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. I take it as agreed that this task is both important and necessary for a real understanding of the New Testament, which by itself, is neither complete, meaningful nor self-authenticating. I do not make any claims to completeness on this crucial topic, but wish only to suggest what I feel are some important points for consideration. I want to discuss the three persons of the Trinity separately, beginning with the Father, then proceeding to the Holy Spirit and then to the Son. My remarks about the Father will be brief. I only wish to make the point that the Old Testament as well as the new Testament is fully aware of God's Fatherhood and alive to the reality that God loves mankind. It is clear that Israel has a special place as indicated by such passages as Exod. 4.22 where God addresses Israel saying: ‘Israel is my first born son.’ Yet at the same time it is basic to an understanding of Old Testament thought that God is the Father of the other nations of the world, though they are not the ‘first born’. This is a cardinal position of Old Testament theology and is based on the belief, given expression in Genesis, that all belongs to and was created by God.

This article takes as its starting-point certain questions raised by Ernst Käsemann's recently-published essay ‘Das theologische Problem des Motivs vom Leibe Christi’; it is, however, principally concerned with Paul's earlier letters and, more specifically, with I Corinthians, but this is done in the conviction that these writings provide the key to the later ones, and not vice versa.

In 1642, there was published in London A Discourse concerning the True Notion of the Lord's Supper, by Ralph Cudworth (1617–88), the Cambridge Platonist. It was with Cudworth that the phrase ‘a feast upon a sacrifice’ originated. Moreover, through his distinction as a scholar, the concept which lay behind the phrase gained acceptance with other theologians, and the phrase itself is to be found in use not only in England, but also in Scotland long after Cudworth's demise.

Is there a sense in which ‘myth’ is an appropriate category of understanding of material within the Old Testament? In attempting to clear the way towards answering this question it may be useful to present some representative expressions of views about the propriety, or impropriety, of the use of the term ‘myth’ with regard to the Old Testament. There are some interpreters who hold that myth, properly so called, does not, even cannot, appear within the Old Testament; others, however, consider that there are significant features preserved and sufficient functions operative for the term ‘myth’ to be applied.

With the Reformation, its increasing preoccupation with the Bible and its insistence that it be made available to all, came a growing interest in how such literature was to be interpreted, which is to say, Christianity became vitally concerned with exegesis. In spite of the ‘democratisation’ of Bible and religion, the difficulties in making an ancient Semitic literature speak in contemporary accents were surely not underestimated by Luther and Calvin both of whom made solid contributions to biblical exegesis. In his ‘Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen’ (8th September 1530), Luther referred to the lone task of interpretation and the need for patience,1 a theme which he elaborated in his Vorreden zur Heiligen Schrift. To understand Vergil's Bucolics and Georgics, one should have a five-year experience as a shepherd or farmer; at least twenty years' occupation in politics is needed to fathom Cicero's letters and a fortiori, no one can claim to have digested the Scriptures unless he has led congregations with the prophets for a hundred years—in other words a lifetime of existential experience with the Bible is insufficient. These comments led in turn to his famous affirmation, in Saxon German within a Latin text: ‘Wir sein pettier—Hoc est verum!’2 Statements of this kind should preclude once for all the notion that the reformers underestimated the difficulty of exegesis in view of their promotion of the ‘priesthood of all believers’.