The French scholar P. Veyne has recently classified a number of phenomena, which clearly prove that the person of the Roman emperor occupied a predominant position in the minds of the average Roman and Greek. He shows that the imperial ideology both reflected certain sentiments current among the people, and contributed toward the shaping of those sentiments.

There has been much talk in religious circles about the condition of theology. It is frequently charged that its language is no longer viable; and thus, if for no other reason, the theologian must seek a more contemporary idiom. Furthermore, with the need expressed over and over again for new translations of everything old, we seem to reinforce our claim that all of theology must be continually re-translated too. But words are one thing and concepts perhaps another. With the great enthusiasm today for a certain kind of linguistic study on the part of students of the Bible and with what looks like a strong growing interest in linguistic philosophy, there are bound to be a few confusions generated. These notes are intended to head them off.

The field of Christian ethics has been the location of a debate over the past decades between roughly delineated parties representing an allegiance to the use of formal prescriptive principles on the one hand, and those representing the cause of the more existential response to a particular situation on the other hand. The debate has taken place in Europe and the United States, it has taken place in Catholicism and in Protestantism. In European Protestant literature Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics, particularly Volume II/2, Bonhoeffer's Ethics, and Niels Søe's Kristelig Etik, have represented what has been called a “contextual” approach. More traditional Lutheran theologians who stress the importance of ethics under the law have a larger place for traditional ethical principles. Werner Elert and Walter Künneth would be representative of this group. In Catholic literature there was a movement in the early years after World War II that came to be called “situational morality.” A critic has typified it in the following terms, “The ultimate differences between this new morality and traditional morality come down then to this: In an objective system of ethics the moral judgment is submitted to an extrinsic norm, an ontological norm founded on the principles of being. In situational ethics the moral judgment is measured only by the subjective, immanent light of the individual in question.” In contrast to the situational emphasis is the whole tradition of natural law ethics and moral theology as this developed in Roman Catholicism. It should be noted that some of the recent Catholic ethics continues to be influenced by a situational approach, though not in the extreme way of earlier materials.

If we speak here of contemporary literature, let us nevertheless recall that in all ages men have recorded certain common responses to death and mortality that vary little. The universal themes of dread and stupor, of grief and compunction, of transience and corruptibility — such poignancies of our finite condition underlie whatever special cultural or even religious influences come into play, or whatever particular hopes are projected. It is for this reason that elegies for fallen heroes and laments for toppled cities and broken hopes, in Job or Homer, are still moving, or the heartbreak in a papyrus letter, or the plangent grief of Catullus as he comes across many seas to his brother's grave,

ut te postremo donarem munere mortis

et mutam nequiquam adloquerer cinerem.

Indeed, we must say that it is only in total openness to such common experience of grief and trepidation that other more positive overtones of death can make themselves felt and justify themselves.

During the last two decades there has been a considerable revival of interest in the Chronicler's history. A number of articles, as well as the appearance of several commentaries on the books of Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, bear impressive testimony to this fact. In the light of these concerted efforts, one might be tempted to think that we are well on our way to a consensus of opinion in regard to the basic problems of this segment of O. T. literature. Unfortunately, this is not the case at all. There still exists a wide divergence of opinion on such basic questions as date, authorship, and intent. This lack of agreement is graphically illustrated by two recent German commentaries which appeared within a year of each other, namely those of Wilhelm Rudolph and Kurt Galling. Whereas the latter considers the Chronicler's history to be the work of two successive editions, one dating from ca. 300 B.C., the other from ca. 190 B.C., Rudolph views it as essentially the work of one man writing during the early decades of the 4th century B.C. More recently, D. N. Freedman has argued for an even earlier date, placing it around 515 B.C., i.e., during the time of Haggai and Zechariah. It goes without saying that such differences in authorship and date would, of course, also lead to considerable differences in one's views regarding the purpose and theology of the Chronicler's history.

Until comparatively recently writers on religion were absorbed by questions concerning the origins of religious beliefs and practices. They endowed primitive man with a kind of rational logicality in his belief, or, like Frazer, they saw his religious practices as simply the application of erroneous reasoning. The modern trend is to try to view the religious or cultural institution as an essential part of society, existing because of the needs of that society. This is the theme, for instance, of Malinowski when he says that “religion is not born out of speculation or reflection, still less out of illusion or misapprehension, but rather out of the real tragedies of human life, out of the conflict between human plans and realities.”

The work of the School of Edessa was put under strictures of ever increasing severity, and led finally to its liquidation under Zeno in 489. The torch of higher learning was then transplanted to Nisibis, a center that had been the pride of Byzantium before it was annexed by the Persians in 361. In Narsai's person and those of his co-workers, the tradition returned to Nisibis from which stimuli once had gone out giving birth to the School of Edessa. The question of time of the founding of the School of Nisibis which has been the subject of disagreement, can now due to an important document be dated with greater precision namely — soon after the year 471. Narsai became the first director. Soon after its appearance upon the scene, the school was accorded an extraordinary élan. It took over the leadership among other radii of intellectual and spiritual life, the best that Christianity under the Sassanides had produced. The life that emanated from it constitutes the most beautiful page in the history of Christianity in this part of the world. Its statutes also occupy a place of honor in the tradition regarding the legislative sources.

It is certainly unusual for an Old Testament scholar to write on a New Testament subject. The reader may want to repeat the German proverb “Schuster, bleib bei deinen Leisten.” But if we agree that the two Testaments should not be separated — and this is the Church's accepted doctrine since the days of Marcion — then we have to give evidence for the character of the relation between the two. As an example of this question I want to trace the transition of the concept of the Temple from the Old Testament to the New.

I. The Crisis of the Historical and Theological Criteria.

Already Walter Bauer, well known as a lexicographer, but unfortunately little known as a historian of the Ancient Church, in his ingenious monograph Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum (1934), had demonstrated convincingly that such Christian groups which were later labelled “heretical,” actually dominated in the first two or three centuries, both geographically and theologically. Recent discoveries, especially those of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, have made it definitely clear that Walter Bauer was essentially right and that a thorough and extensive re-evaluation of early Christian history is called for.

It was Solomon Schechter who (in accordance also with the emendation of many Commentators) first (1887) suggested in his important edition that the third chapter of Version A of Ἀbot de-Rabbi Natan begins with the quotation of the second clause in the saying of the Ἀnshe Keneset ha-Gedolah, “and raise many disciples,” and the comments of the Shammaites and Hillelites which follow: “For the School of Shammai says: One ought to teach only him who is talented and meek and of distinguished ancestry and rich. But the School of Hillel says: One ought to teach every man, for there were many in Israel who had been sinners and were drawn to the study of Torah, and from them descended righteous (ṣaddiqim), pious (hasidim), and worthy folk.”

Lex orandi — lex credendi. The interdependence of cult and creed was a truth well known to Archbishop Cranmer and the English Reformers. If Christian belief was to be restored to its evangelical purity, then the mode and content of public worship must be reformed accordingly. So far as the Eucharist was concerned, any major change would have to be in the Canon of the Mass, which was its ritual and doctrinal center. Changes there were; and, as events were to prove, the Canon of 1549 was only a beginning. But those influences which affected the center were felt elsewhere in the service as well. Among other things they account for a number of changes in those much admired prayers which Cranmer derived from the Roman rite, the collects. In this study I would like to examine the influence of Reformed doctrine on the composition of these prayers in the first Book of Common Prayer of 1549. The hundred-odd collects in the first Prayer Book fall into two classes: some sixty-seven which are fairly close translations of Latin originals as they were found in the Sarum service books, and the rest which are either completely new with Cranmer or have only a slight connection with a Latin collect. I shall deal with the effects of Reformed doctrine first on the translated and then on the new — or nearly new — collects of the Prayer Book.

Although ʼašrê occurs rather frequently in the Old Testament and shows a fairly consistent formal pattern, the literature on this subject is small and offers no comprehensive analysis. The pertinent statements — usually brief discussions within the context of a wider or different subject — hinge upon three basic insights: 1. that the ʼašrê-formula is a statement made to or about someone which somehow magnifies or extols that person's condition as a desirable one; 2. that ʼašrê is found in a fair number of passages that belong to the Wisdom movement; 3. that there exists some kind of relationship between ʼašrê and forms of blessing. To these undoubtedly correct though seldom precisely formulated observations is added a persistent conviction that ʼašrê stands in an antipodal relationship to hôi/ʼôi, analogous to that of blessing and curse. After a brief survey of lexicographical data and formal characteristics we shall examine the usage of ʼašrê with the aim of defining its relationship to hôi and to the brk-word-group and, finally, draw certain conclusions regarding its meaning.

When, in the fifth book of Paradise Lost, Eve reveals her unsettling dream, in which she saw herself eating the forbidden fruit at the prompting of a mysterious stranger, Adam dismisses it as an experience of no importance. Since her will was not involved, he believes, she incurred no guilt. His argument that the dream is without significance persuades her but not us, who have beheld Satan, during the couple's sleep, causing the dream in Eve in order to taint her faculties and perhaps to probe her weaknesses:

Squat like a Toad, close at the ear of Eve;

Assaying by his Devilish art to reach

The Organs of her Fancy, and with them forge

Illusions as he list, Phantasms and Dreams.

(IV, 800–03)

Monopolar and dipolar are terms brought but comparatively recently into vogue in theological discussions by Charles Hartshorne, the American philosopher. The distinction intended by the two concepts has been made the basis for contrasting views of theism consequent upon man's rational reflection upon the divine Object in whom he finds satisfaction for his more fundamental emotional and practical needs and his primary worship of Him. According to certain modern philosophers of religion man has rightly interpreted the idea of God suggested by this satisfaction and this worship in theistic terms. The issue, however, concerns the correct statement of this implied theism. According to Hartshorne, historical theism has been altogether conditioned by Greek philosophy, and has become, as a result, definable exclusively according to its concepts. Classical theism, as it is called, has therefore its origin in the notions of Plato and Aristotle rather than in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. “Not the Gospels and the Old Testament,” declares Hartshorne, “but Greek philosophy was the decisive source for the Classical idea of divine perfection.”

The texts of Matthew 15:5 and Mark 8:12 have both been difficult passages to understand, translate, and interpret. Mt. 15:5 seems to be a minced oath or vow taken by the sacred object, קךבז; whereas Mk. 8:12 resembles an oath administered by another and accepted by the oath-taker. Mt. 15:5 is the more difficult of the two and will here be examined first in comparison with Rabbinic and Old Testament literary forms. The insights gained from this study will then be transferred to Mk. 8:12.

In 1936 Teilhard de Chardin summarized in the short space of a few paragraphs the broad lines of his whole life's work. The passage deserves to be quoted in its entirety, since it is perhaps the clearest statement of the triple direction taken by his thought in its search for unity in the Christian life.

For over thirty years, Gilson and others have defended the thesis that “Christian philosophy” is not only a possibility, but also an actuality. This position has had many critics and the debate continues to this day. It appears, however, that Gilson has never been challenged on a subsidiary, but more radical, thesis. It is startling to find that, while the phrase “Christian philosophy” has been debated for decades, Gilson's peculiar and strained usage of the much more common phrase, “the Christian God,” has gone unchallenged, apparently even unnoticed. As the term is generally understood, the Christian God is the Triune, the Incarnate God, the Redeemer of mankind as well as the Creator of all things. Gilson, of course, would readily admit all of this. But it is his contention, perhaps a unique one, that we can speak of the Christian God of philosophy as well as of revealed theology. The former, the Christian God of metaphysics, is born of a recognition of the existential import of God's proper name as He revealed it to Moses.