In the course of any discussion it is always important to remember or, if one does not know them, to try to find out the ultimate reasons that determine the particular viewpoints and different outlooks of the interlocutors. As a general rule those reasons do not come to the surface at the level on which the discussion takes place. This is not because they cannot be acknowledged—which might well be the case—but simply because it is seldom that anyone thinks of examining himself to discover the grounds upon which he bases his thought. By a sort of instinctive reaction, one is ‘for’ or ‘against’.

When Hans Küng published his first major work Rechtfertigung—die Lehre Karl Barths und eine katholische Besinnung1 in 1957 great interest was aroused among Roman Catholic as well as Protestant theologians. The book represents a theological orientation which may be regarded as a new phase in the Roman Catholic encounter with Protestantism. Küng, whose orthodoxy has not been questioned by any of his Roman Catholic reviewers, argues that the Barthian and Roman doctrines of justification are in fundamental agreement. The sola fide and the simul Justus et peccator of the Reformation are, according to Küng, also Roman doctrines. Grace, he avers, is not a habitus in man but is the graciousness and favour of God. Justification is therefore primarily a matter of God ‘declaring man righteous’ and only because of this, ‘making him so’. Forgiveness and imputation of righteousness are thus given the primacy denied to them by Roman theology from the Middle Ages to the present day. Küng's Christocentrism determines his interpretation of the biblical witness: the sinner is declared and made righteous in the death and resurrection of Christ so that the sola fide is sustained in and by the sola iustitia Christi. Whether Küng's claim that the Fathers of Trent actually taught the doctrine of justification, merely shifting the emphasis from the one-sided theocentrism of the Reformation to a more biblical anthropocentrism is historically defensible, is not the point at issue in this context.

One of the most interesting features of the progress of theology in our day is the fact that some of the best critics of significant Protestant theology are Roman Catholics. This, as is well known, is the case with the work of Karl Barth; and I shall try to show that it is also the case with the work of Paul Tillich. Indeed it needs no effort to show this. Not surprisingly Barth only spares him a reference in a footnote or an occasional sentence. However, for the rest of the Protestant world there has been too much glib quotation and praise of Tillich and too little analysis of his work. Even the volume devoted to him in the Library of Living Theology seems to be woefully inadequate when compared with the meticulous and valuable volumes that make up the series on which it is based, namely the Library of Living Philosophers. Then the Festschrift volume, Religion and Culture, only serves to illustrate my contention, since it is a book occasioned by Tillich rather than one on him. As against the occasional article in Protestant journals there are in Catholic journals nearly a dozen articles on Tillich, all of which are in some way or other critical studies, and more recently we have a monograph on Tillich's Christology by Father Tavard.

Martin Kähler lived at the turn of the century when the impact of the methods of historical criticism was being felt acutely by theologians. What can one say about the authority of the Bible for the believer in the light of critical historiography? What can one say about the relation of history and faith if that faith is living faith which is awakened in response to the testimony of Scripture, especially to the apostolic preaching of the Lord's resurrection? Can one say that there is a ground for such faith in results derived from the picture of the so-called ‘historical Jesus’ in the Gospels? It is in the area of questions like these that Kähler has been acknowledged by Tillich, Barth, and Bultmann as a pioneer. Whereas only a few theologians were directly influenced by Kähler's systematic theological work, many regarded his critical position as a harbinger of the future. Barth pays tribute to Kähler for insisting at a time when it cost something to say so that the real historical Christ is the biblical Christ attested by the New Testament as the risen and exalted One. In the course of our essay we shall have occasion to note the positive affinity which exists between Kähler's position and that of Barth. Cullmann has indicated the significance of Kähler for the rise of Form Criticism with its insistence that the Gospels are by nature the Church's witness to its faith as embodied in its preaching.

The New Testament interpretation of the Cross is the starting point for the doctrine of Incarnation and of Atonement. Their relationship is governed by the emergent elements, which are both central and permanent.