Throughout much of the history of political thought in the West, the Bible was at once a constitutional document and a kind of case book, putatively setting limits to speculation as well as to conduct. Theologians and political theorists were forced to be judges interpreting a text or, more often, lawyers defending a particular interpretation before the constituted powers in church and state or before the less authoritative court of opinion. The Bible became, like other such texts, a dissociated collection of precedents, examples and citations, each of which meant what the lawyers and judges said it meant.

The object of this paper of itself demands to be unfolded in two considerations: one, reflecting on the meaning and the task of “political theology” (I), the other, investigating the relations between religion and society in the light of this “political theology” (II).

Several perplexing problems cluster around the interpretation of the Song of Heshbon (Num. 21:27b–30). The crux interpretum is vs. 30, a verse which in the course of the textual transmission has become severely corrupted. A failure to penetrate deeply enough into the textual history behind that verse, resulting in a misunderstanding of its original relation to the remaining verses of the Song, has misguided the two major lines of interpretation in past scholarship.

Love as a moral norm has a very prominent place within the discussions of contemporary Christian ethics. There are three definite trends especially evident in the most popular of these discussions of love. In the first instance, there is a tendency to make love serve as the sole norm in ethics. There is a second tendency to equate love with beneficence. This means, among other things, that love tends to be put into a utilitarian type of calculus and that specific norms such as the Ten Commandments are either played down or dropped entirely. Both of these views of love, by themselves or held in concert, collapse the traditional distinction between love and justice. There is yet a third ten-1 dency to drop any distinction between love for God and love for/the neighbor. Love for God is simply to be understood as love for the neighbor and, as such, it is not something to pursue or cultivate for its own sake. That all three of these tendencies are significantly related to one another should become evident from our further discussion of them.

The suggestion has often been made recently that the relationship between Judaism and Christianity can be adequately described in terms of a “schism.” This suggestion is worthy of serious consideration. It has much to commend it. It promises new possibilities (badly needed in view of past history), because “schism” can be healed. But its mere attractiveness and beneficial potential should not blind us to the problems involved. Because the term “schism” presupposes an underlying unity, its use to describe the relation between the two faiths preserves an emphasis which, in our given situation, where the dependence of the Church on the Synagogue is not sufficiently recognized, is too easily lost. And yet, without very careful definition, the term “schism” may be misleading. Who are to be called schismatics? Is it Christians for leaving Judaism or Jews for rejecting the Christian Messiah and his people? As will become apparent in the following pages, there are two extreme positions to be avoided. On the one hand, that which regards the relationship between Judaism and Christianity at the present time as so close that that relationship is merely schismatic, and, on the other hand, that which regards that relationship as one of unrelieved antithesis.

The textual problems involved in the parable of the two sons (Matt. 21:28–32) are well known and extraordinarily complex. The parable has been handed down in the manuscript tradition in three forms.

The relative peace enjoyed by the Christians under the rule of the Emperor Antoninus Pius was followed during the next regime by an era of extraordinarily violent and massive anti-Christian movements that probably surpassed in intensity all the persecutions that the Christians endured during the first and second centuries. It is therefore not uncommon to hear the charges that Marcus Aurelius was a persecutor of the Christians; that he deliberately issued anti-Christian edicts; that the persecution under this Emperor was the first that deserved the name of persecution; that the persecutions during his rule had his sanction at least. Subsequent attempts by historians to exculpate the philosopher-emperor for his alleged responsibility — whether direct or indirect — in the persecutions under his rule are only to be expected. In contrast to these latter-day charges the ancient Christian writers, led by Justin, a victim of his rule, Melito, Athenagoras, and other writers of the same period and with hardly any exceptions, put an almost infinite trust in him and simply do not show any belief that he was a persecutor. Tertullian, in fact, roundly declared him to be a protector of the Christians. In spite of their rhetorical tendencies, they must have known better than these later historians. The absence of a clear view and historical interpretation of what happened under this philosopher-ruler is the most regrettable feature of most of the modern commentaries on the Christian problem of this era.

Several years before his death the Irish novelist and playwright, George Moore, wrote his “one joyous book,” A Story Teller's Holiday Combining “oddments of folklore” and the “rich Anglo-Irish idiom,” Moore traced in Boccaccian fashion the ancient Christian practice of syneisactism in early Celtic Christianity. In his work Moore was admittedly stimulated by the great Celticist, Kuno Meyer, and by the then burgeoning translations of ancient Irish manuscripts describing syneisactism.

There is no more prominent atheist today than Jean-Paul Sartre. Yet serious students of Sartre's philosophy are struck by his unabashed use of theological idiom. This use is so extensive that Professor Hazel Barnes in her translator's introduction to Being and Nothingness comments:

Many people who consider themselves religious could quite comfortably accept Sartre's philosophy if he did not embarrass them by making his pronouncement, “There is no God,” quite so specific.

The unsatisfactory quality of the witnesses to the text of the Didache, especially that of Bryennios' codex Hierosolymitanus 54 (a.D. 1056), has been emphasized in a well-known paper by Erik Peterson. This evaluation holds true for Did. 1.3D–2.1, the object of the present study, to an even greater extent than was indicated by Peterson.

The Judeo-Christian dialogue — be it conducted in the fashion of ordinary human contact or within the discipline of strict scholarly procedure — suffers often from a disturbing pattern: the two partners not only emphasize the elements and features common to both of them, but find themselves confronted in polarity. This emphasis of polarity may prove convenient for the colloquists. Each can assume a polite vantage ground overlooking the position of the opposite religion, yet feel quite content in the assured knowledge of one's own religion because it now bears none of the qualities which distinguish the polar opposite.

The Resurrection of Christ: Traditional Questions

The “Resurrection of Christ” is controversial. It does not fit into the modern world of things calculable and manipulable. Is it a historical event among other historical events that took place or that are still taking place? Is it a symbol of the language of times past?

It is urgent that the critical apparatus of the Greek NT be modernized and corrected. My review of Aland's Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum indicates that its apparatus could be improved. It repeats some errors of long standing; the present number of readings could be reduced by eliminating unimportant variants and substantially enlarged by adding others of greater significance. In this note I wish to demonstrate this my contention by an analysis and evaluation of Aland's citation of three sources — the Chester Beatty papyrus (P45), Codex Sinaiticus (ℵ)4, and Clement of Alexandria. The changes suggested are of three kinds: corrections, citation from these sources in support of readings given, and the addition of noteworthy readings.

1. The present state of the discussion.

Fifty years ago Bernhard Duhm, in the introduction of his book Israels Propheten, wrote: “Prophecy has its history. It is not a timeless revelation of a supernatural truth. Again, its task is not to ‘prophesy’ events of a distant future in order to allow a simple faith to enjoy the consistent agreement of promise and fulfillment. The prophets are God's messengers. They are charged to proclaim to their contemporaries firstly God's decisions and, furthermore, his demands. Whereas divination in various forms occurs among all nations, the prophets with whom we are dealing here are a distinct Israelite phenomenon.”

It will be the purpose of this paper to trace the doctrine of transubstantiation from the point at which the problem begins to come into focus down through the Council of Trent. It is widely supposed that the history of this doctrine is a fairly simple one. The assertion of the physical presence of Christ in the eucharist quite naturally and inevitably evolves into the doctrine of transubstantiation, given the context of Aristotelianism in which theology works from the early thirteenth century on.

Several important contributions to Bonhoeffer scholarship which have come out within the past year or so and some which have not yet been published have so decisively advanced our knowledge that a wholly new understanding of many questions is now possible. The unity, the comprehensiveness, and the range of Bonhoeffer's vision are beginning to emerge. One streak of faroff light in that vision was India.

Johann Georg Hamann, that great critic of the Enlightenment, once satirized the contemporary philosophical effort of his time by writing certain memoirs of Socrates “fuer die lange Weile des Publicums zusammengetragen von einem Liebhaber der langen Weile.” No doubt another article on Anselm also runs the risk of contributing to ennui. Still, in the history of philosophy his work is virtually unrivaled as a source for philosophical puzzlement. Nearly every anthology which introduces philosophy includes a section of his Proslogion, and recent analysis continues to demand attention to “the ontological argument” which is attributed to him. The present offering is, perhaps presumptuously, one more attempt to untangle some of the puzzlement and to do away with some of the misunderstanding that has accrued to the Anselmic tradition.

Confronted with the conventional genre of Hegelian interpretation, the following pages take on a rather unusual cast, for their concern is exclusively theological. Furthermore, I make the large assumption in this essay that the customary theological critique of Hegel, which flagellates him for the Aujhebung of theology into philosophy, is both inadequate and even crude, however much the principal motivation of such a critique may be quite justifiable.