The purpose of this essay is to address one of those passages in the Bible, and in the annals of human spirit, which strike one as monumental. It is not only an exemplary piece of biblical literature, as well as a particularly fitting fragment in the context of a particular story. It stands out because of its relevance in places and times other than those set for it in the text. It transcends the setting of the story and of the epoch, whatever it may be, and becomes perennial. It is, of course, of primary significance to Judaism and an important contribution to what is best in Western Civilization.

The relation between faith and history has been troublesome for Christians and Jews for centuries. It is the problem of the relation of the Exodus, the cross and the empty tomb to us today. The seriousness of the matter is shown in the description of Christian faith as a ‘pious fraud’. Karl Barth has popularized the problem as ‘… Lessing's question concerning the relationship between the contingent truths of history and the necessary truths of reason (Der Beweis des Geistes und der Kraft, 1777). “This, this is the gaping and wide chasm which I cannot cross, however often and seriously I have attempted the leap. If anyone can help me over, let him do so: I implore and entreat him. He deserves from me a divine reward.”’ However, Barth also pinpoints the problem in the final analysis as a particular form of the problem of time.

What happens to systematic theology if it relies in the first instance on methods derived from the sociology of knowledge? This is the question that I will be trying to answer in this study. More specifically, I will be attempting to advance an understanding of theology as a social system and seeking ways it may be related to present-day Western society.

A Major watershed in the interpretation of Paul is generally acknowledged as having emerged with the publication of E. P. Sanders' Paul and Palestinian Judaism (SCM, 1977). His attack on the misrepresentation of Judaism contained in much of this century's scholarship (particularly the Lutheran) has received widespread support. Scholars are now beginning to produce Pauline studies in the post-Sanders mould. H. Räisänen is one such, and the present study by Francis Watson, Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach (CUP, 1986), follows in like vein. Sanders' thesis is essentially that Paul opposes Judaism not because of any inherent errors such as ‘self-righteousness’ or ‘legalism’, but simply because it is not Christianity. Watson's study attempts to give a historical and sociological grounding for this viewpoint (p. 67).

The task undertaken in this essay is to consider the significance for Christology of a relatively orthodox incarnational kind, of the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was a first century Jew. In other words the frame of reference taken here is the Christianity of the Christian creeds. The question asked is what the Jewishness of Jesus means for that. The task, no doubt, would have been much easier, though less interesting, had we followed the example of those who seek to demythologise the doctrine of the Incarnation, either in the interests of an eirenic global, pluralist, theology of religions, or in the interests of a purely expressivist, anti-realist, analysis of Christian faith. Even on such views as these, as represented by John Hick and Don Cupitt for example, there would be some interesting questions remaining: what still differentiates Christianity from Judaism? Why follow the Jewish prophet, Jesus, rather than some other? Does the Christian ideal necessarily retain its historical links with the Jewish ideal? But these are not the questions pursued here. It is not necessary to abandon the characteristic tenets of one's faith in order to make progress in inter-faith dialogue. Rather, what we bring to the dialogue and submit to mutual questioning are the distinctive and representative faith-stances, true to the patterns of belief and worship of the majority of our coreligionists.

It is a well-known fact that many a modern eucharistic prayer shows signs of handling the relationship between Supper and Calvary with due care, even with some creative ambiguity. For some, indeed, the very concept of offering is fraught with problems which can only be faced in liturgical formulae by having recourse to paradox. The bread and wine are on the table, but they are neither ‘offered’ sacrificially, nor are they ‘held back’ from the good purposes of God. The act of memorial is neither a re-enactment of Calvary nor is it an insignificant feature of the Church's life, as if all the eucharistic community did was to bask in the sunshine of Christ's single offering, and that is that. Yet many modern prayers are the direct result of creative movements such as liturgical research, patristic theology, and the rapprochment between the Churches that has been so much part of twentieth-century history.

Though his example is warmly commended in the Epistle of James (5.11), Christian piety has never been altogether comfortable with the Job whose sterling patience in adversity is set forth in the book's first two chapters. The man who is there shown suffering bravely the loss of property and family and the onset of disease of a kind that in these distant days had the sentence of death written over it, yet steadfastly refuses to blame God for such disasters, is certainly admired. But his dauntless sentiments of 1.21, The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord, and of 2.10, What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? — the latter in response to his wife who, unable to put up with his agonies any longer, calls on him to curse God and be done with it all — are just too hard to take. A hymn made out of a similarly passive sounding Old Testament text like My times are in thy hand (Ps. 31.15) is one thing. But Job's insistence on implicating God directly in the tragedies that may befall a good man is quite another thing. I doubt, therefore, whether these texts from Job chapters 1 and 2 figure much in the pastoral care of the sick and the bereaved in the modern Church, though in sturdier ages it seems that they did.

Calvin is often seen as ‘larger than life’ by his disciples and his enemies. This contention animates a recent article by William Bouwsma, whose forthcoming Oxford monograph is titled, John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait. One must be cautious in obtruding the historical Calvin over against the theologian, thereby contending that for the Genevan Reformer theological questions were primarily a way of life. For Calvin his Institute was also a response to contemporary theological questions. One such question elicited Calvin's response in 1555 to Laelius Socinus on the merits of Christ. Calvin warns against ‘certain perversely subtle men’ who obscure God's mercy in Christ. Socinus asked whether the death of Christ which won merit for all persons was also meritorious for Christ himself. To set Christ's merit against God's mercy ‘is no less stupid curiosity than their temerity in making such a definition’. Calvin inserted that letter into the 1559 Institute. Concurrent with Bouwsma's article, Alister McGrath points to Calvin's response to precise questions raised by the via moderna school of theology at Paris under the Scot John Major in which human merit and that of Christ rest on divine good pleasure alone. Calvin's solution is continuous with the voluntarism which he encountered while in Paris.

In the Babylonian Captivity, 1520, Luther launched an attack on the number of ordinances which the medieval Western Church labelled ‘sacraments’. According to Luther, only three were worthy of the title sacrament: baptism, the bread, and penance. Although critical of the prevailing penitential system, Luther not only defended the sacramental status of penance, but also the practice of auricular confession:

As to the current practice of private confession, I am heartily in favor of it, even though it cannot be proved from the Scriptures. It is useful, even necessary, and I would not have it abolished.

Recent discussion of St Anselm's theology of reconciliation has again raised the question of freedom in respect to the relationship presupposed between God and man in this encounter. It has been asked whether in fact St Anselm's account excludes God's ability to act freely, ‘within the dynamics and development of the narrative’, and suggested that such exclusion derives from an understanding of God's ‘unchanging nature beyond the influence of persons and events within the narrative’.

Those scholars who have assiduously ignored the quest for the historical Jesus because it was unintelligible, incoherent or just uninteresting must now take notice. With the publication of Jesus and Judaism [SCM, 1985] E. P. Sanders has taken a bold (though not unprecedented) and programmatic step towards making historical Jesus study intelligible, coherent and interesting. My aim here is to explore the program represented by Sanders' work and then to show how this work may actually lead to the demise of the quest of the historical Jesus.

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.

The act of God in bringing salvation to the human race and summoning individuals into a community to serve him is due solely to the mercy and grace of God, mediated and manifested through Jesus Christ in his ministry, atoning death and rising again.1 This statement of belief, taken from the recently published ARCIC II document Salvation and the Church, is one to which Christians of most denominations could probably subscribe. Yet the very existence of the document is testimony to the fact that within the Christian Church there have been widely differing interpretations of the precise nature of salvation and its implications for humankind. At the time of the Reformation disagreement as to the theological import of terms such as ‘grace’, ‘justification’ and ‘sanctification’ was a major cause of division between Rome and the Protestant churches. Were they primarily to be given an objective or subjective, an extrinsic or intrinsic reference in relation to the believer? ARCIC II demonstrates that these are still live issues at the interface of ecumenical dialogue today, and must be resolved if real moves are to be made in the direction of Christian unity.

Jesus' discourse at the Last Supper at least in its Johannine form is a thorough-going preparation of the eleven for their imminent bereavement. A preparation not in the sense that they are expected at once to understand all that is to happen to Jesus and to themselves because of him, but in the sense of a frame of reference to clarify their minds and sustain their hearts in the coming crisis. He communicates a perspective which will spring to life for them in the light of subsequent events, the assumption being that it is only through future happenings that the truth of his words at the Supper will come home.

Liberation Theology provides a framework of principles through which we can understand God's action in the world. To say that God liberates humanity from enslavement is a way of highlighting one aspect of what it means to say that he loves and cares for us. We, for our part, have to bridge the gap between the theological framework and action. We do this through ethical and political reflection. We recognize God at work liberating humanity, and we respond to that recognition by wanting to share in the work. But, we still have to decide what this particular liberation means, and what are the best, or least evil, ways of attaining it within a particular historical set of circumstances.

Jürgen Moltmann's first major work, Theology of Hope, first published in 1964, is arguably one of the truly great theological works of the last few decades, and indisputably one of the most influential. Though Moltmann's own theology has developed considerably in many subsequent works since Theology of Hope, it remains one of his greatest achievements, rivalled only by his second major work, The Crucified God. These two books, which constitute the core of Moltmann's early theology, have, it seems to me, a concentrated power of argument, focused on their central integrating ideas, which is lacking in the more diffuse structure and argument of the later works, significant though these are in their own way. The two early books also have a certain polemical extremeness, which, by contrast with the more balanced and rounded quality of the later works, gives them the sort of impact which one also finds in the passionate extremism of the early Luther or the dialectical rhetoric of the early Barth. The comparison is appropriate, not only because the influence of these two predecessors on Moltmann's work is very evident, but also because, in adopting something of their dialectical and prophetic style of theology, Moltmann had a parallel purpose: that of redirecting theological work. If, having accomplished this, Moltmann has subsequently become more and more like the older Barth of the Church Dogmatics, this is understandable and brings both advantages and disadvantages with it.

How far are contextual theologies emerging in Asia today? How far are they similar to or different from Liberation Theologies in Latin America, Southern Africa and the U.S.A.?

September 1988 saw the twentieth anniversary of the untimely death of Ronald Gregor Smith, one of the most creative and most neglected theologians of the post-war years in Britain. Although associated with the ‘secular theology’ of the sixties, Smith transcended the faddishness of much of this trend with his quest for a theology which could do justice to the existential reality of faith as a mode of being, an orientation of life operative within a secular context. This article seeks to indicate the value of Smith's work to contemporary debates about the nature of Christian believing, and in particular to the possibility of faith taking on a critical and reflective form within the congregation.

In 1988 the Reformed Church in Bavaria commemorated the life and work of August Ebrard (1818–1888), the first Professor Ordinarius of Reformed Theology in the University of Erlangen. Ebrard is today almost completely forgotten; Karl Barth is reported to have opined that his theology was ‘deader than dead’. Yet he was a remarkable man, successively Professor in Erlangen, Konsistorialrat in Speyer, independent author and lecturer, finally minister of the French Reformed congregation in Erlangen (as his father had been long before). He contributed considerably to the maintenance and strengthening of the Reformed witness in Germany in the nineteenth century, took up the cudgels to defend the faith against D. F. Strauss on the one hand and Haeckel's Darwinism on the other, and published voluminous theological works, from biblical exegesis through church history to dogmatics, apologetics and practical theology, including liturgies, hymnology and sacramentalia. His interests were wider still; he was a kind of nineteenth century ‘renaissance man’, his studies extending inter alia to geology, mineralogy, musical theory and linguistics; learned, cultivated, busily writing up to the day of his death. Alongside his specifically theological works stand historical novels (written under the pen-name Gottfried Flammberg), poems, travel reports, an autobiography of Herculean proportions and such special gems as a System of Musical Acoustics and a Handbook of Middle Gaelic. Ground enough there alone for a Scot occupying Ebrard's chair a century after his death to look more closely at the man and his writings! Ebrard's papers are preserved in the Erlangen City Archives.

In III, 2 of the Church Dogmatics, Barth develops the analogy of relations revealed in Jesus Christ to obtain between three levels or ‘planes’ of persons in relationship. These are (i) within the Triune God as the eternal relation between the Father and the Son; (ii) between God and man as the free election by God that man should be his covenant partner; (iii) between human persons as the basic form of humanity. The single factor which constitutes this analogy, the one thing which is similar in spite of all the great dissimilarity between God and man, the indestructible imago Dei, is the concept of personal relationship, the dyad, the I-Thou encounter. This theme of personal relationship is central not only in its location within the Church Dogmatics but perhaps throughout Barth's theology.