In order to understand the NT teaching about consecration and ordination we have to examine the rites and language of the OT tradition. The rites were not carried over as such into the Christian Church, for they were fulfilled in Christ and abrogated, but the NT does use the language of the rites to speak both of Christ and His Church, and it does adapt some of the OT rites for its own use, but with entire freedom and new significance. The basic line we have to consider is the consecration of the priest, and king, and prophet in the OT, and see how they are fulfilled in Christ, and then see how in this Christ the NT thinks of the ministry as consecrated and ordained.

When the Swedish theologian George Hammar in his study of Reinhold Niebuhr tried to formulate concisely the standpoint of this religious thinker, he did so in the very words he used in the title ‘Christian Realism’.1 He thus employed a term which is used elsewhere to characterise Niebuhr's theological thinking and which is a favourite with Niebuhr himself. This term, of course, is used so often in current theological discussions and with so many different associations, as to have become rather ambiguous and vague. The use of it here does not aspire to anything more than to indicate roughly the theology which tries to show its disagreement with ethical idealism in ‘Christian practice’ and with idealistic religious philosophy in ‘Christian theory’;. Both ethical and metaphysical idealism belong as a rule to the outfit of the modernistic, liberal philosophy of religion (where in some form or other it is proclaimed as a fitting and saving interpretation of Christianity for the modern man), but so-called Christian realism is opposed to a substantial part of the heritage of liberal theology. It is from this perspective then that the work of Reinhold Niebuhr is to be judged, as is agreed by the majority of his biographers and as follows from his own formulations of his programme.

It was naturally very much interested by Professor Hick's generous appreciation and lucidly, argued criticism, in the March number, of my brother's views; but since I have been inclined to accept these latter very fully, I am most anxious to understand the exact point of their divergence from those now advanced by Professor Hick.

Although it is evident to every student of the New Testament that Matthew has a special interest in the Church, the use of the term ‘body of Christ’ to describe the Church has been peculiarly associated with Paul. For this reason it seems well to begin by discussing briefly what Paul meant by the concept of body in order to have a working definition of it. We will then endeavour to ascertain whether this idea is also present in Matthew.

The last fifty years have seen revolutionary progress in the work of the interpretation of the parables of Jesus. This progress has been made possible primarily by the final discarding of the allegorical method and the repudiation of ‘the centuries of distortion and ill-usage that the parables have suffered through allegorical interpretation’.1 Exegesis of the parables in centuries before the present might seem therefore to be of purely antiquarian interest. Nevertheless it seems worth while attempting to discover whether there may not be some light to be gained from the way in which the parables were understood by those who stood nearest to them in point of history. This study is therefore devoted to the interpretation of parables in the ante-Nicene fathers.

The way in which anybody interprets the parables will largely be controlled by the answer which he gives to two prior questions—namely: What constitutes a parable? and Why did Jesus use the parabolic method? There is not much direct discussion of these issues. Origen defines a parable as ‘an account of an event which did not literally take place, but which, could have done so. It is a figurative representation of certain things by virtue of their correspondence to the things spoken of in the parable.’ He distinguishes it from a fable (αἴνιγμα) where the event spoken of is something which could not conceivably have happened in real life.2