Ethnography ought to be a means of doing theology. Following debates over John Milbank's influential work Theology and Social Theory, the paper responds to criticism that Milbank's church is too idealised, a critique that Milbank accepts, saying that his work requires ‘supplementation by judicious narratives’. The thesis of the paper proposes that ethnography provides the most robust corrective to the problem of too formal an ecclesiology, thus offering just the sort of ‘judicious narratives’ that can make such ecclesiology more recognisably real. Drawing on the author's research, such an approach is modelled by suggesting that a sense of ‘communal identity’ stands as a complex and crucial element in practical ecclesiology.The last chapter of Theology and Social Theory requires (infinite) supplementation by judicious narratives of ecclesial happenings which would alone indicate the shape of the Church we desire.

This essay seeks to explore speech-act theory in its relation to biblical interpretation. Its initial focus falls on the application of N. Wolterstorff whose book Divine Discourse provided the decisive catalyst for the recent debates. Building on the different kinds of action involved when speaking (locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary) Wolterstorff draws two important hermeneutical implications. First, the theory affords a way of understanding the unity of scripture in its entirety as God's book; second, it enables the reader to acknowledge the infallibility of God's Word as divine discourse without ascribing infallibility to the human words of scripture.

The second part attempts to offer a critical assessment of Wolterstorff's application of his theory, especially in its failure to deal adequately with the function of the Christian canon which shaped the church's traditions in such a way as to provide a rule-of-faith for the theological guidance of subsequent generations of readers. By abandoning the hermeneutical understanding of scripture developed by Irenaeus and Calvin, Wolterstorff flounders in his inability to overcome the threat of scripture's becoming a ‘wax nose’ in which the noematic content of what God now says in divine discourse is not identical with the meaning of the biblical sentence itself.

The final section examines the exegesis of the well-known scholar A. Thiselton, whose work has done much in developing a speech-act theory. The conclusion reached is that Thiselton's application of the theory is far different from that of Wolterstorff's and avoids many of the problems which plague Wolterstorff's exegesis. The implication of this analysis is to argue that speech-act theory cannot be indiscriminately lumped together, because various forms of the theory often reflect different hermeneutical theories of biblical interpretation.

Bulgakov's comprehensive kenotic theory is a largely neglected aspect of his theology. The article situates Bulgakov's kenoticism in the context of nineteenth–twentieth century European and Russian theology. For Bulgakov kenosis was a feature not only of the divine incarnation, but also of creation and of the inner life of the Trinity. Bulgakov distinguishes between different aspects of the divine kenosis: the suffering of compassionate and sacrificial love; the restraint of omnipotence, omniscience and other perfections; the descent into the world of temporality and becoming; the acceptance of human emotions and suffering; the identification with sinful humanity; and ultimately the experience of Godforsakenness in the incarnation. God freely limits his actions in the world by time and space. According to Bulgakov, God always acts by persuasion and never by compulsion. Incarnation for Bulgakov is a kenotic act par excellence. Critically appropriating the ideas of Thomasius and Hegel, Bulgakov argues that in the incarnation the Word retains his divine nature, but divests himself of his glory. This entails that the Son empties himself of his foreknowledge, and becomes temporarily subordinate to the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Son's kenosis is matched by that of the Holy Spirit, who restricts his power in communicating his gifts to the world.

In a recent article, Carl Mosser argues that deification is present in the theology of John Calvin. While his thesis may have ecumenical promise, there is little evidence to support it. Rather than understanding salvation as a communication of properties from Christ's divine nature to his human nature so that through Christ's human nature we may come to share in the divine nature, Calvin's position is that believers share in what is Christ's according to his human nature. The righteousness of Christ with which we are clothed is the righteousness of his human obedience as Mediator. Far from emphasizing a communication of properties from Christ's divinity to his humanity, Calvin's concern is to guard the full integrity of both natures.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer delivered his lectures on Christology in the midst of his academic career but only shortly after becoming a Christian. They thus give us a window into the mind of a theologian wrestling with fundamental questions of faith and scholarship. In particular, the theme of contemporaneity with Christ in Bonhoeffer's Christology gives proper place to the ‘Who?’ question over the ‘How?’, reveals a nuanced account of the relation of historical inquiry to the rule of faith, and offers an amplification of the Reformers' emphasis on the God who is for us.

Great strides have been made in the study of John Cassian over the last half-century, and yet persistent concerns are still expressed in regard to his theological competence. Invariably, the standard against which Cassian is found wanting is Augustinian orthodoxy. And there is nothing new in this: these concerns were first expressed by Cassian's contemporary, Prosper of Aquitaine, especially in his polemic Contra collatorem. Prosper is the harbinger of medieval Augustinianism and this makes his claims seem almost inevitable in retrospect – but as this analysis will demonstrate, his evaluation and denunciation of Cassian is systematically flawed. Close attention to Prosper's work reveals not only that his criticism of Cassian was ill-considered; it also shows that Prosper's own theological insight is less penetrating than one might have hoped to find in the ‘first Augustinian’. The consequences for the study of Cassian, I suggest, are that Prosper's threadbare accusations no longer need to be entertained. But there is further significance in this finding: it is Prosper's polemic against Cassian that provides the categories that have regularly been used to evaluate the early reception of Augustinianism. If, as is shown in this paper, Prosper was an opportunistic controversialist who can be seen to have distorted, embellished and in some cases even fabricated his opponent's arguments, then we should be extremely reserved in using his polemic as the point of departure, not just for studying Cassian, but for studying the development of Augustinianism as a whole.

Contemporary Catholic and Protestant theology has transposed the scientific debate on time into an eschatological discussion about subjective time and objective time. This discussion can be made intelligible in the context of modern cosmology if we allow contemporary eschatology to be transformed by a pneumatological approach to time. In the self-giving of the Holy Spirit into time, the ‘wheel of history’ is identical with the eschatological arrow of history. This is exemplified in a theology of the cross which locates the eternal power of the cross not in the human act of anamnesis by recalling in the present Christ's sacrifice as an event of the past, but in the Holy Spirit who liberates Christ's historical sacrifice on the cross from its temporal coordinates and propels the redemptive act throughout time towards any person in history. A pneumatological approach to time suggests that eschatology is determined not only by the end and the consummation of the present in the future but also by the perpetuation of the present moment through the power of God unfolding in time in the operation of the Holy Spirit. If it can be shown that this is true not only for a theology of the cross, then it may be possible to say, in general, that the unique finality and collective character of God's work of salvation at any moment in history is made possible by the perpetuating work of the Holy Spirit as the eternal lord of time and history.

This article is an examination of the theological conception of the ‘kerygma’ and its relation to the Synoptics presentation of the preaching and deeds of Jesus, as posited by New Testament theologian Rudolf Bultmann. At issue is a query into whether, according to Bultmann, the historical words or sayings of Jesus of Nazareth occupy a place in the theological formulation of the kerygma by the early Church. As Bultmannian interpretation continues to figure in New Testament studies, the purpose of the paper is to weigh the full implications of Bultmann's theological category of ‘kerygma’ and the consequence of the person of Jesus to this category, and the question of theological warrant.

Although Maximus' and Augustine's theologies of the will were shaped by very different polemical contexts, it is arguable that the two thinkers were interested in securing the same theological ground. In response to positions that treated the will as a reserve of human autonomy over against God, both thinkers sought to see the freedom of the will as a function of its integration into the natural order through grace. Maximus' concept of the natural will in particular functions as a means of challenging both divine determinism and human libertarianism as adequate accounts of the relationship between divine and human activity.

Recently, I attended a conference on the theme ‘theologies of the cross’. I gained much from it in various ways, but one feature concerned me: in reading the papers, and listening to discussions, it became rather clear that, whilst the various contributors might or might not agree, or even be sure about, what they did believe about the cross, they were all both united and certain on what they didn't believe in – the traditional Reformed and Evangelical idea of penal substitution. Now, I confess that I had no particular commitment to this idea. I knew of no exegetical or theological reason to demand that we hold on to it, or to suggest that our account of the atonement would necessarily be lacking something vital if we did not express it in this way. Penal substitution was a way of talking about the cross with which I was familiar, but to which I was not committed. Temperamentally, I had tended to avoid it: as far as I can judge, the dominant way of talking about the cross in my preaching has been in terms of combat with, and victory over, the evil powers of sin and death and hell; it is not a theme I have touched on much in my academic writing. Penal ideas are common, however, in the liturgy and (particularly) hymnody of my church tradition: ‘Bearing shame and scoffing rude/In my place condemned he stood’; ‘All our pride, all our greed, all our fallenness and shame, and the Lord has laid the punishment on him.’ I have never seen any reason to object to such songs. So, to be at a conference where there was near unanimity that, whatever else we were going to say about the cross, we would begin by dismissing this tradition, was of interest and concern to me.

Salient features of Thomas F. Torrance's theological anthropology are presented in order to recommend that he be read as not only a scientific theologian, but also a theologian of culture. It will be shown that Torrance understands the imago Dei to imply a cluster of relations and dynamics that suggest the human person is essentially a socio-cultural being, created in a particular way in order to fulfil a particular task. An interpretative proposal is then made suggesting that this feature of his anthropological thought may be usefully applied in order to understand more fully the goals and objectives of his theological and scientific work.

Aquinas's analysis of chastity as a part of temperance points the way towards a positive virtue ethic of sexuality, even though he himself did not develop his analysis in this direction. This alternative illustrates that ‘the tradition’, that is to say, the moral heritage in terms of which Christians define themselves through affirmation or rejection, is more complex than we sometimes assume, including diverse approaches to difficult topics even within one author. Even more importantly, considered on its own merits a broadly Thomistic, virtue-oriented approach offers an attractive sexual ethic which implies that ideals of restraint and consideration for others have substantive content, without tying these ideals to specific norms in a reductive or overly inflexible way.

This article examines the strong Creator–creature divide that Irenaeus held against gnostic monism as an essential building block for his doctrine of participation in God. By deepening the distinction between God and humanity, Irenaeus could then relate the two non-competitively, even allowing the creature ‘promotion into God’. By building participation into his definition of what it means to be creaturely, Irenaeus develops a dynamic anthropology of growth and grace in which the creature participates in Christ to fulfil its true humanity.

The history of Western society is marked by the migration of monism. Christendom's concept of God was that of an Absolute Individual that enslaves: God is everything and humanity is nothing. It was replaced by its opposite – the Enlightenment's hero, man come of age – the absolute individual. Here humanity is viewed as everything and God as nothing, or at least off on holiday. Today, in keeping with the easternisation of the West, many are willing to sacrifice their autonomy for a view of reality wherein everything is God. Each outlook betrays the same fundamental weakness: a failure to provide space for otherness. What is required then is a concept of being that provides space for otherness within itself. The doctrine of the Trinity offers such a matrix of mediation. God is a sovereign community of persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – who exists freely in mutual love, and who therefore creates out of an overflow of gracious love rather than from need for communion or a drive towards consumption. There is relational space for otherness and freedom within the Godhead as Father, Son and Spirit mutually constitute one another. By extension, there is freedom to be other outside the Godhead, demonstrated in Christ's self-giving through the Spirit in the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection. In closing, it will be argued that such a model safeguards appropriate space for otherness while at the same time fostering a more profound dynamic of mystical union, which so many today seek in the easternised West.

This paper offers a reading of two representative texts – the 1917 lecture ‘Die neue Welt in der Bibel’ and the preface to the first Römerbrief – that seeks to highlight the theological basis of Barth's early characterisation of the task of biblical interpretation. It further suggests that by describing the engagement of the contemporary reader with scripture in terms drawn from the text itself, Barth makes a distinctive and still relevant contribution to church's attempt to account for its reading practices.

It has been said that Calvin's preaching demonstrates a doctrine of a ‘kerygmatic real presence’. So in preaching, and in the reading of, the word, Christ is present to the believer. This might also be spoken of in terms of an encounter with God through his word, or as a personal confrontation with God and eventual justification, or as the experience of the grace of God, or perhaps as the practice and experience of faith trusting in the word. In these many ways Calvin's theology has been identified as being, to some extent, both didactic and affective. Gerrish helpfully speaks of Calvin's theology as ‘gift and response’ or ‘grace and gratitude’. It is in Calvin's preaching that this dynamic of affective and didactic, grace and gratitude is enacted.

Assertions of John the Baptist's identity as the returned Elijah are commonplace in New Testament scholarship. Attention has then tended to focus on whether the returned Elijah was regarded as the forerunner of the Messiah or of God himself. Surprisingly, the logically prior question of how someone could be regarded as Elijah returned has received scant investigation. This article explores what it might mean to describe John the Baptist as the returned Elijah, suggesting that we need clearly to distinguish this concept from Elijah typology. If, as is argued here, the expectation of Elijah's return in Mark's Gospel points to John the Baptist's angelic identity, this has interesting ramifications for other NT issues such as Christology and eschatology.

There has been a range of philosophical and linguistic responses to the phenomenon of indeterminacy and the place of authorial intention in the hermeneutical task. In the face of these responses, others have developed various theological responses to the problem, responses which this paper refers to collectively as ‘believing criticism’. A theological undergirding for all such approaches may be found in the application of the incarnation to an understanding not only of the nature of the Christian scriptures but also of the interpretative process itself. This application enhances our appreciation of the role both of divine intention in the divine discourse evident in the Bible and of the contextualised response to that discourse, and provides further impetus for those who would argue that both intention and indeterminacy must be recognised in the apprehension of meaning. This is in tune with an epistemology of ‘personal knowledge’ as espoused by Michael Polanyi.

Several historians and theologians have concluded that John Bunyan was a high-Calvinist. However, this conclusion has been challenged with the assertion that Bunyan held to a more mediate view of the atonement, often called Amyraldianism. This study seeks to evaluate Bunyan's place on the theological spectrum by evaluating his writings during his pre-prison ministry (1656–59). It sets forth the argument that, during this period, Bunyan demonstrated the Amyraldian penchant for combining real particularism with hypothetical universalism.

The paper argues that Christian theological anthropology is best understood, in the contemporary world, in terms of relationships. Human persons are formed in and through sedimented interactions with other persons. In the paper these interactions are considered against the backdrop of the concept of naming. In being named we are invited into relationships of increasing intimacy in which we are challenged to reveal more of who we are and what our name genuinely means. In each interaction it is possible to be embraced or to be rejected. Embrace encourages greater openness to relational interaction; rejection encourages closure and an unwillingness to open ourselves to further hurt and pain. It is possible to reflect on the use and power of names in the Bible where narratives using names can be read as models of the creative and redemptive activity of God. Gen 2–3 is examined as a 'case study' of this theory and then linked to other significant instances of naming in the Bible to demonstrate that this reading is a legitimate one. There are quite profound implications of thinking about theological anthropology in this way: challenges to our understanding of personhood, styles of ministry, sin and atonement and perhaps most of all to our view of God – the divine person who in revealing the divine name in every age invites humanity to enter into the divine life.