In examining the great themes of the Epistle to the Colossians we must ask both what they meant in that ancient world of Asia Minor, so cultured and so superstitious, for which the Epistle was written and what they mean for us today. We must sketch in the background of the Epistle in general terms; then we must turn to the text itself, and finally attempt to expound its meaning in terms comprehensible today. Sometimes it may be permissible to take a glance at the background and seek some lines along which to interpret it before we turn to the text itself. That is the object of this paper.

I Can remember the deep sense of mystery that possessed me when as a child I was told that only about one-eighth of an iceberg appears above water. It was perhaps one's first contact with the concept of the ‘assessable unknown’. In later years, in experiments in displacement and specific gravity in the physics laboratory, one learned how the conclusion had been arrived at—learned, indeed, how to assess the unknown for oneself. But increasingly one became aware that the process had its limitations: that while there were certain ‘unknowns’ which could be so thoroughly or so accurately assessed that they scarcely continued to merit the title ‘unknown’, there were others where the mystery remained. In some cases the assumption was justified that one's knowledge would increase as one grew older: or, on a more general world-view, it was warrantable to suppose that the sum total of human knowledge of any particular phenomenon would increase with the passing of time and the continuance of human research, until the day arrived when the phenomenon in question became, by general consensus, more ‘known’ than ‘unknown’.

One of the big questions which agitated the minds of theologians and laymen alike in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was whether or not the doctrine of the Trinity was scriptural. The controversy raged throughout the United Kingdom and extended to the shores of America where the eminent preacher William Ellery Channing embraced the Unitarian cause.

The Fourth World Conference on Faith and Order, meeting at Montreal in July 1963, recommended the renewal of the study of the Ministry, within a new programme of theological study to be initiated by the Faith and Order Commission. As was noted at Montreal, the Ministry had not been the subject of Faith and Order study for twenty-five years. There were good reasons for this. While the Ministry continued to be the thorniest of the practical problems facing union negotiators, it was widely agreed that theologically it had failed and would continue to fail to yield to a head-on treatment. Only in the light of the doctrine of the Church, considered in its christological and eschatological dimensions, would the Ministry appear in a form that could draw Christians together in church union. So, without altogether losing sight of the hope that something helpful could be said about the Ministry, Faith and Order turned, first to the doctrine of the Church, and then, in the period after Lund, to a study of Christ and the Church. Now the time has come to return to the Ministry, in the light of the work done at these deeper levels of Christian doctrine.

One of the most controversial issues dividing Calvin scholars has to do with Calvin's understanding of God as the author of Scripture. Specifically the issue is this: did Calvin believe that the Scriptures were verbally inspired in such a way that they can be identified without qualification with God's Word and therefore held to be infallible?

The events of the Exodus, in which the Passover occupied a central and dominant place, were one of the most deeply rooted of all Israel's traditions. The Passover itself lay at the very heart of the covenant concept and forms the basis of the Heilsgeschichte which records the redemptive acts of God for His people Israel. In later Judaism it became overlaid with eschatological ideas, especially those associated with a Messianic deliverance for the people of God, as God's saving act in the past became the prefigurement of an even greater saving act in the future. The Passover night was thus a night of joy for all Israel, the night on which Israel's future redemption, effected through the Messiah, would be revealed. The early Christians, however, believed that this Messianic deliverance had already appeared in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and consequently, in Preiss' expression,‘the totality of the events of the Exodus centering on the Passover’ together with its associated ideas occupied a dominant position in Christian soteriological thought in the New Testament period, especially as Jesus Himself had instituted the eucharist in a distinctly Paschal setting. We may trace, as has been done in recent years, the idea of the Exodus complex of events running as a constant theme through the New Testament writings, and Jesus is pictured both as a second Moses leading His people forth from a bondage far greater than the slavery of a human despot, from the thraldom of sin and death, and as the Antitype of the very Passover sacrifice itself, through which the redemption of the New Israel was effected.

In the course of his extremely valuable and stimulating study, ‘Diakonia: Today's Task’, Dr Hans Christoph von Hase draws attention to the explicit reference to the Church's diaconal responsibility contained in the 1948 Constitution of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, Article 15 of which declares:The Evangelische Kirche in Germany and member churches are called to proclaim Christ's love in word and deed. This love obliges all members of the Church to undertake service and takes form in a special way in the Diaconate of the Church. In accordance with this the Church's diaconalmissionary activities are part of its very being and life.