Karl Barth's deeply rooted theological convictions directly shaped his pedagogical practice. These convictions continue to merit reflection today. Barth's theological pedagogy is dedicated to his convictions pertaining to: 1) the particularity of theology's subject matter; 2) the necessary embodiment of theology's practice in an ecclesial and confessional tradition; 3) an open and charitable reading of the church's past; and 4) a principled rejection of ideology. These four convictions are explored in this essay with an eye to their relevance and importance for the teaching of theology and contemporary challenges. The essay concludes with a brief account of the dispositions that should accompany these convictions.

Maximus the Confessor says that the Word of God wills to be embodied always and in all things. Against many who wish to render this ‘universal incarnation’ metaphorical, I attempt a literal reading. When Maximus speaks of the Word's universal incarnation, he refers to the deification of human beings, which constitutes a single reality with the Word's incarnation. For Maximus, deification perfectly realises and completes the very logic of the Word's incarnational descent: just as God became whole man while remaining whole God, human beings will become whole God while remaining wholly human. Herein all things become enhypostasised into the Word – rendered one by grace with Christ himself, through his humanity – and so the Word becomes embodied in all things.

In this paper, I seek to articulate a positive role for the body in our eschatological joy in God. I draw on Augustine's thought to argue that the body makes a positive contribution to our joy in God by being a pedagogy for our imaginations, training us to imagine the beautiful character of God in Christ through embodiment. While Augustine might seem like a surprising choice for this task, I argue that his concepts of ubique totus and the totus Christus provide fertile soil for the growth of an eschatological theology of the body.

Genre, parallelism and canonical shaping have long been important to Psalms studies. Scholarly advances on these fronts are easily observed. Instead of working the same ground once more, this article sets off on a different path. It aims to read Hebrew poetry, especially the Psalter, with poets. It intends to listen carefully to three influential voices: George Herbert (1593–1633), R. S. Thomas (1913–2000) and Malcolm Guite (1957–). These poets help shape our imagination and prepare us to read the Psalms as poetry. Specifically, this results in sounds, repetitions, the constraining and freeing possibilities of forms, and theological themes taking centre stage in experiencing the poetry of Psalms.

This article probes into Karl Barth's theology of nationhood set forth in Gottes Gnadenwahl, a volume on the doctrine of election published in November 1936. I will attend to his use of Hegelian terms and concepts to demonstrate his refutation of secularist and immanentist reinterpretations of the Christian doctrines of election and providence under the Enlightenment principle of historical progress by modern German thinkers, most notably Hegel. As Barth sees it, Hegel was largely at fault for having provided theological and philosophical justifications for the rise of Germany's mystical nationalism in the name of German Christianity. Using Hegelian language, Barth insists against Hegel that election is God's predetermination of human existence in Christo. Rather than negating nationhood altogether, Barth's repudiation of nationalism is intended to stress that nationhood is an external basis of the communion of the elect, and that the election of the community is the internal basis of nationhood.

Reformed accounts of infant baptism are usually covenantal and promissory in nature. They are about bringing the child into the ambit of the visible church in the hope the infant will own the faith upon reaching the age of reason. This paper sets out an alternative Reformed account of baptism, drawing on the Scottish confessional tradition. On this account, infants have a disposition to faith conveyed to them in baptism that will in due course become dispositional faith exercised in saving faith. Thus, baptism involves regeneration – or something close to it.