Karl Barth has often been compared to Thomas Aquinas. The principal reasons for the comparison have been the systematic power and massive structure of the Kirchliche Dogmatik, with its illuminating interior conversation of the Church with itself, and Barth's searching and vigorous attempt to displace the ontological fulcrum of the Summa Theologiae by a christocentric analysis of God's freedom in revelation to be God for man in the world.

Everyone interested in Arabic and Persian literature, in Islam and in comparative religion, regrets the death of Arthur J. Arberry, Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge. Arberry combined rare human qualities and exceptional professional attainment, and this enabled him to make a unique contribution both to learning and to mutual understanding between East and West. He had a deep sense of vocation, which he brought to his unremitting labours as a skilled editor of texts, especially in the field of Islamic mysticism, and as an imaginative translator of these texts of the Koran and of Arabic and Persian poetry, and as a sympathetic interpreter of Sūfism.

Not only are there many particular relationships among religions to be explored, but there are many types of relationships or categories of relationships to be considered. As examples of these types we might mention historical, metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, sociological, or theological relationships without in any way being exhaustive. The prominence of some of these concerns has limited the attention given to other actual or possible relationships. For example, there has been an understandable, even justifiable, prominence given to historical relationships for the sake of accurate fact, to theological relationships for the purpose of clarifying how to think of other religions from a received confessional norm, and to ethical relationships for the sake of judging practical accomplishments and superiorities.

There are certain primary religious beliefs which are basic to a whole religious Weltanschauung, for they are the cornerstone of the whole edifice. If these beliefs are unintelligible, incoherent, irrational or false the whole way-of-life, centering around them, is ‘a house of cards’. Certain segments of it may still be seen to have a value when viewed from some other perspective, but if these primary religious belief are faulted, the religious Weltanschauung itself has been undermined. If it has been undermined and if people recognise that it has been undermined and still go around believing in it, accepting and acting in accordance with its tenents, they are then being very irrational. And while in humility we should recognise that we all suffer from propensities to irrationality and perhaps in some spheres of our life can't help being irrational, it is a propensity we should resist, for to be irrational is to do something we ought not to do.

Theologies may be divided into two distinct types which, for the purpose of this essay, may be called ‘interactionist’ and ‘dualist’. By an interactionist theology I mean one in which God is thought of as interacting closely with the world of nature and history without being confused with it, and by a dualist theology I mean one in which God is thought of as separated from the world of nature and history by a measure of deistic distance. Obviously there are degrees of closeness and distance, while their extremes tend to pass over into each other. Thus a theology in which God is thought of as so transcendentally other that he cannot be the ‘object’ of our knowledge, as in the thought of Schleiermacher, can only acquire content through constructions out of our immanent religious consciousness. Nevertheless a working distinction between interactionist and dualist theologies may serve a useful purpose in helping us to get into the heart of the problem.

The attempt to study religion objectively (Religionswissenschaft) has been part of the academic scene in the West for a century. Such men as F. Max Mueller, Edward Tylor, W. Brede Kristenson, Raffaele Peettazzoni, and Joachim Wach worked to develop such a truly scientific study of religion. They held that a study of religious data could reveal what religious life means for people who participate in it if methods are used which prevent a superimposition of the investigator's personal value judgments. At the same time, there has been the recognition by some scholars, including some of the above, that there is something about religious life that cannot be investigated by normal empirical methods. This sense of the uniqueness of religion is symbolised in Rudolf Otto's book The Idea of the Holy, where he maintains that in order to understand religion in its innermost core, an investigator must recognise ‘a unique “numinous” category of value and of a definitely “numinous” state of mind’. Our concern here is to examine one problem arising from the claim that religious life must be studied in terms of its own intention, or category of value; and yet studied through an inductive method which allows for the distinctive character of different historical expressions of religion.

Professor MacKinnon, in an essay on Philosophy and Christology, remarks that Christology confronts theology with difficult but ‘inescapable problems’ because logically ‘it is unique; and yet it overlaps here, there and everywhere’. The complexity of the task, however, does not excuse the theologian from the need to determine the logical nature of the concept of ‘incarnation’ if he wishes to use it in his work—and, as I hope to show, any theology which attempts to describe the actual nature of God probably cannot avoid using this concept in some form or other. Only by appreciating the logic of this concept can the theologian be confident that he understands its proper content and implications and that he offers appropriate justification for his claims about it. In this paper I want to suggest one possible way of viewing the logic of incarnational talk in theology which is based upon the attempt to treat such talk in terms of the notion of ‘revelation’.

Many philosophers and philosophically oriented theologians hold that it is unreasonable to treat the statement ‘There is a God’ as analytic or logically true. As an existential statement, they argue, it is no different from any statement of its kind. Existential statements cannot be analytic, because contra-existential statements cannot be contradictory. (Notice, however, that existential statements can be contradictory, and contra-existential statements can be analytic.) To say, for example, that unicorns do not exist is simply to say that no entity satisfies the description ‘unicorn’. But this cannot be complex in the sense of entailing two contradictory statements. If so, then the existential statement corresponding to it cannot be analytic. In general, since no contra-existential statement can be contradictory, no existential statement can be analytic.

Genuine religion always involves the worship of what is genuinely ultimate. Religion, worship, and ultimate reality are thus indissolubly related. The task of reflective thought in this domain is to distinguish what is sound from what is spurious in religion; to characterise the meaning of religious devotion; and to attempt to articulate the nature of the ultimate reality to which men's worship is directed.

In this paper on Karl Barth's conception of truth I shall try to state his position regarding the nature of truth and the criterion of truth, and secondly I shall draw from his position some propositions which I believe exhibit a pattern in his theology which brings it into close relationship to a philosophical tradition.

Recent defenders of the cognitive significance of religious language have had to face opponents from two directions; from those who demand that religious language be capable of some form of empirical verification (or falsification) and from those who demand that for religious language to be meaningful it must be capable of being understood in ordinary language. Apologists who have taken the first challenge seriously have strained to show that religious statements can be verified by ‘religious experience’, or by an ‘odd discernment’ or by an ‘eschatological verification’. Each of these responses raises further problems for the defender of religion, but in general they all are subject to their failure to provide an adequate criterion or standard by which they could be inter-subjectively tested. Facing in the other direction, theological apologists have attempted to justify religious expressions by showing that they could be subsumed under special categories of ordinary language; namely those of ‘convictional language’ and ‘performative language’. Although these defenders have shown that religious language has an ‘ordinary usage’, they have not shown that the cognitive elements of this usage can be reduced to the ‘use of ordinary language’.

Three basic attitudes toward human destiny have precipitated out of the modern theological mentality: double predestination, Arminianism, and universalism. Of the three, Arminianism and double predestination have been unacceptable to a large segment of modern protestantism. The result is that universalism, in one form or another, has assumed wide popularity in recent years. The doctrine has become what might be called an article in the popular creed. But since the influence of universalism has come about largely through default, its explicit formulation has remained incommensurate with its popularity and importance.

In the opening sections of his Brahma-sutra-bhasya, Ramanuja makes a very forceful assault on Sankara's Advaita theory. This assault anticipates in a striking way modern western attacks on metaphysical religious positions, attacks which stem from Hume and are associated today with names like A. J. Ayer and Antony Flew. In this paper I wish to argue that certain aspects of Sankara's position, as enunciated in his Brahma-sutra-bhasya, suggest that Ramanunja's assault, and therefore by implication a modern western attack on Sankara also, depends for its success on a misinterpretation of Sankara's views. I wish then to suggest a possible alternative interpretation of Sankara's Advaita in terms viable for today, drawing, though indirectly, on such writers as R. B. Braithwaite and R. M. Hare. An incidental implication of this paper is that these two philosophers of religion would meet less opposition from the religious if they were Hindu rather than Christian! A more important implication is that light could be thrown on the present religious controversy in the west by a study of Indian philosophy of religion, if only we were more disposed to treat it as a living tradition which might teach us something, rather than as an antique.

Sometimes the scholar can safely take hints for the direction of his scholarship from popular concerns. They may be deeper than they appear. As Erik H. Erikson has remarked in reference to the yearnings of young Americans for the teaching of the Eastern mystics: ‘The need to search for total and final values can often be met only under the condition that these values be foreign to everything one has been taught’.

In discussing the intricate and somewhat complex relationship between Shiʻism and Sufism, both in principle and essence or in their metahistorical reality as well as in time and history, we need hardly concern ourselves with the too often repeated criticism made by certain orientalists who would doubt the Islamic and Quranic character of both Shiʻism and Sufism. Basing themselves on an a priori assumption that Islam is not a revelation and, even if a religion, is only a simple ‘religion of the sword’ for a simple desert people, such would-be critics brush aside as un-Islamic all that speaks of gnosis (ʻirfân) and esotericism, pointing to the lack of historical texts in the early period as proof of their thesis, as if the non-existent in itself could disprove the existence of something which may have existed without leaving a written trace for us to dissect and analyse today. The reality of Shiʻism and Sufism as integral aspects of the Islamic revelation is too blinding to be neglected or brushed aside by any would-be historical argument. The fruit is there to prove that the tree has its roots in a soil that nourishes it. And the spiritual fruit can only be borne by a tree whose roots are sunk in a revealed truth. To deny this most evident of truths would be as if we were to doubt the Christian sanctity of a St Francis of Assisi because the historical records of the first years of the Apostolic succession are not clear. What the presence of St Francis proves is in reality the opposite fact, namely, that the Apostolic succession must be real even if no historical records are at hand. The same holds true mutatis mutandis for Shiʻism and Sufism. In this paper in any case we will begin by taking for granted the Islamic character of Shiʻism and Sufism and upon this basis delve into their relationship. In fact Shiʻism and Sufism are both, in different ways and on different levels, intrinsic aspects of Islamic orthodoxy, this term being taken not only in its theological sense but in its universal sense as tradition and universal truth contained within a revealed form.

I wish to examine certain aspects of Barth's development of special ethics which are puzzling to me, and which I believe pose difficulties that mitigate considerably the possibility of a successfully completed programme in theological ethics. Whether these aspects are puzzling to others remains to be seen. At any rate, an important part of theological ethics, as I see it, lies in seeing what sorts of responses are engendered by taking up a position and attempting to elaborate it.

Of all the distinctive features of the Buddhist religion, one of the most neglected is the sangha. Scholars give much attention to the study of texts and commentaries, the analysis of doctrines and the classification of schools. But the core of the Buddhist religion is the sangha, the community of bhikkhus around whose corporate life the religion is moulded. It is the existence and structure of the sangha which has shaped the history of Buddhism, enabled it to take root in new countries, and given it the customs and rituals which have made it a religion rather than a small sect.

In a recent issue of Religious Studies, G. G. O'Collins concludes his essay with a question which in his view states ‘the classic problem of Christology’: ‘What is the ontological connection between the Logos and the human existence of Jesus of Nazareth?’ In another recent issue C. J. F. Williams poses the question, ‘What sort of union is a hypostatic union?’ In the literature grown up around Kierkegaard's pronouncements on the notion of the God-man, the following question is discussed: Did Kierkegaard mean to say that the very notion of the God-man is incoherent? Some hold that he did, some that he did not. Yet, however important it is to establish what Kierkegaard himself held concerning this question, there is the far more important question for Christian doctrine of whether the notion of the God-man is incoherent.

When Christians worship God, their cultic activities display, in widely varying combinations, attitudes of fear, respect, love, trust, awe, deference and obedience. They worship the Lord with all their heart, soul and strength, confessing their own insignificance in comparison to God, yet expressing confidence in the divine mercy which they believe will assist them through the trials of this life, toward a joyful existence beyond the grave. In the liturgical churches, the dominating mood varies according to the tables of feasts and fasts: Christmas and Easter are times for joyful song, brightly coloured vestments and festive activities. Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of penitence, sorrow and sombre hymnody. (‘Remember, Oh Man, that dust thou art…’) Throughout the year, the houses of worship are places of bowed heads and lowered voices, of respect and sobriety, and sometimes of veneration for icons and the objects used in worship. The inventory of revered objects varies considerably, as do the activities thought to be appropriate in this connection, ranging from the Low Protestant's respectful handling of the Bible to the High Churchman's prostration before the Monstrance, in the Benediction of the Holy Sacrament. But it is clear that divine worship normally involves reverence and awe and that it usually involves some form of self-abasement (bending the knee before).

So presumptuous a title calls for some justification. Christology has never ceased to puzzle and to perplex the minds of Christians from earliest times. It would be outrageous to assert that because something in the realm of theology remains mysterious it must for that reason alone be being misunderstood. Nevertheless modern historical thought has posed the problem of the intelligibility of traditional Christology in a particularly acute way and this fact places an obligation upon Christians to ask once again whether it is unmistakably clear that their Christological beliefs do represent the faithful response to a mystery and are not the outcome of some mistake.