Janet Martin Soskice's book Metaphor and Religious Language may reasonably be described as ‘state of the art’ in respect of studies on metaphor and theology. Dr Soskice recognises the need for metaphor to retain its traditional designation as a figure of speech, but at the same time wants to establish its use as credible in a Christian realist perspective. To this end, she undertakes a rigorous examination of the nature and function of metaphor in order to build a solid base from which to establish its pertinence to theology. It is metaphor's ability to achieve an increment of meaning in language in general (and science in particular) which is able to provide the springboard for its role in religious language. Dr Soskice thus sees language as the framework within which to conduct her argument. The first part of this paper analyses her argument.

There is a long tradition recognizing the evangelist as a theologian of stature. In recent times C.K. Barrett referred to him as a theologian second only to Paul and Martin Hengel described John as “a towering theologian”. In this paper it is argued that the evangelist was a profoundly theological writer and that a complex eschatology formed an essential dimension of his theology which was shaped in the dialogue and debate with the synagogue resulting in the development of distinctive christological, theological and eschatological views that have significantly influenced subsequent Christian history.

The Göttingen New Testament Professor, Wilhelm Bousset observed that historical research was in ‘danger of placing Christianity in the flux of development’, of ‘failing to give due worth to its special character and unique meaning, and thereby neutralising and relativising everything’. ‘The halo of the supernatural which had clung around “sacred history” was destroyed,’ and history had become a ‘labyrinth for modern religious liberalism’, where it threatened ‘to betray itself’. In their attempts to avoid such a relativisation of the Christian faith, most of the members of the History of Religion School sought refuge in a primordial mystical experience expressive of non-rational feelings, of emotions, moods and fantasies.

In recent articles on Karl Barth and St. Anselm, Gordon Watson has drawn attention to what he regards as a ‘characteristic systematic weakness’ or ‘systemic problem in Barth's methodology’. This has its origins in Barth's failure to ‘take into account St. Anselm's assumption of the importance of a common rational structure in thought and language existent between believer and unbeliever as the basis for speech about God’ and has consequences not only for Barth's exposition of Anselm's ‘theological scheme’ but also for the subsequent development of Barth's soteriology in that he ‘undervalues the importance of the historical humanity of Jesus in the action of the atonement’.