Language for God is not equivalent to the kinds of naming we use in ordinary speech. We say that what ‘we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet,’ and we recognize that ordinary names for creatures are subject to human custom, choice, and change. According to biblical religion, on the other hand, only God can name God. Distinctive Christian experiences and beliefs are expressed through distinctive language about God, and the changes in that language proposed by feminist theologians do not merely add a few unfamiliar words for God, as some would like to think, but in fact introduce beliefs about God that differ radically from those inherent in Christian faith, understanding, and Scripture. Briefly stated, that is the argument this essay will systematically expand.

It would be dishonest not to begin with Austin Farrer, for what follows has grown out of a long-held admiration for that sadly neglected writer. Throughout his life, Farrer was concerned with the role played in our lives by imagination, inspiration and creativity. He saw that creation was shot through with the imprint of its Maker, and in the classical Christian tradition understood the shaping of all life in the material world to be the work of the Holy Spirit. At all levels of creation, inspiration, creativity and spiritual indwelling are the hallmarks of God's activity. For Farrer, natural religion and divine revelation are but two sides of the same coin. The key to all is the point at which they coincide most clearly, namely Jesus. Of Farrer's Christology I have written elsewhere. Such technical discussions are not our present business. Our task is to take the supreme Christian claim about the nature of God, namely the scandalous doctrine of the Trinity, and through the words of St John (whose influence on Farrer's understanding of Jesus was central) try to describe a practical understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit which employs the doctrine of the Trinity as the key-stone of Christian theology and experience.

Modern ecumenical discussions and liturgical reform have given new interest to the ceremonies of Christian initiation. The Reformed churches have traditionally held the view that baptism takes the place of circumcision in the economy of salvation. The interpretations of circumcision in early Christian and patristic literature would suggest a modification, or at least a nuance, to that view.

(1) The term ‘eschatology’ stems from Abraham Calov who entitled the twelfth and last section of his masterpiece of dogmatics, Systema locorum Theologicorum (1677), ‘EΣXATOΛOΓIA Sacra’. This final section, which concludes the Dogmatics of a leading representative of Lutheran Orthodoxy, deals with the ‘last things’ (de novissimis), specifically death and the state after death, the resurrection of the dead, the last Judgment, the consummation of the world, hell and everlasting death, and, finally, life everlasting. Calov does not define the artificial term ‘eschatologia’ which he himself had probably coined; he hardly even explains it in the course of his presentation, so that it remains a mere heading. Clearly it applies to the eschaton, namely ‘the end’, which, according to I Cor. 15.24, comes about when Christ, after subjugating all powers and authorities, delivers over the dominion to God the Father (quaestio 2). In the preceding section Calov had cited NT texts which explicitly or implicitly speak of the eschata, the last things, or of the last day/days as the conclusion of human history.

Hugh Ross Mackintosh (1870–1936) was Professor of Systematic Theology at New College, Edinburgh, for 32 years until his sudden death on 8th June 1936. Regarded as one of the foremost theologians of his day, he was awarded honorary degrees from Oxford and Marburg, and left profound impressions on the countless students from Scotland and around the world who came to hear his lectures. Mackintosh was a formidable scholar; it was said that he had read every important theological book published in Britain and Germany, and he skilfully translated Ritschl's Justification and Reconciliation and Schleiermacher's The Christian Faith. He possessed a discerning eye and a gift for lucid exposition which made him an authoritative interpreter and commentator. A keen student of philosophy, Mackintosh studied its relationship to theology closely; much of his early work dealt with the neo-Kantian epistemology of Herman Lotze that formed the philosophical basis for Ritschlian theology.