‘Looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.’ (Heb. 12.2–3.)

What is meant by the finality of Jesus Christ for men? This is raised by consideration of a Study Pamphlet, ‘The Finality of Jesus Christ in the Age of Universal History’, issued by the Division of Studies, World Council of Churches. On page I of this Study Pamphlet we are told that ‘Jesus is at the end of the human journey’, and also that ‘He has revealed the ultimate truth to men, has shown in full, final and sufficient measure to them the nature of God and the truth concerning life’. The emphasis is on what we would normally call ‘the final coming’, and on what is shown of God in Jesus. ‘Because He has already appeared we know our final destination’, i.e. we know whom to expect to meet. The stress will then lie on what the Church, who knows Him, does until the end, serving men for Him. The New Testament emphasis does not lie on what we do, but on what He did. The New Testament emphasis does not lie on the end, but on an act of redemption and reconciliation effected by God in Jesus Christ, a thing done once and for all. ‘Through Him God was pleased to reconcile all things to himself, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of the cross’ (Col. 1.20). Because He has done this Christ reigns over all and the end is assured. ‘Nothing can separate us from His love‘ (Rom. 8.39).

‘In general, theological ethics has handled this command of God [the fourth Mosaic commandment] … with a casualness and feebleness which certainly do not match its importance in Holy Scripture or its decisive material significance’ (Church Dogmatics, 111.4, P. 50). Thus Karl Barth in the English translation of his Kirchliche Dogmatik (hereafter referred to as CD.). His own treatment is neither fragmentary nor perfunctory. There are references to ‘Sabbath’ in the indexes of six of twelve volumes of the Dogmatics so far published. The particular discussion of the Fourth Commandment occurs in his treatment of Special Ethics in CD. 111.4, where ‘the one command of God’ the Creator is set forth ‘in this particular application’ of ‘The Holy Day’ (p. 50). But for Barth the scriptural references to Sabbath rest have relevance to the doctrines of God, and Revelation; to the relation of God's Eternity to man's temporal being; to the biblical conception of Creation as the setting for the Covenant history of the Old Testament and the New Testament fulfilment of the divine purpose in redemption in Christ, to be completed and perfected in the ‘rest that remaineth to the people of God’ (Heb. 4.9). The treatment of the topic throughout the Dogmatics constitutes a corpus of exegesis and doctrine of which even a summary statement such as is here attempted might well be a useful contribution towards modern efforts at rethinking the Christian use of the Lord's Day.

The question of the Sabbath is still a living issue. Unfortunately it is also one that all too often becomes bogged down either in a legalism which prescribes a list of do's and don't's (mainly don't's), or in a humanism which leaves us to please ourselves. In between, there are many who are frankly puzzled. On the one hand they are not enthusiastic about the Scottish Sabbath of the past (though in actual fact our forefathers do not seem to have found it as grim and irksome in practice as we feel it must have been), while on the other hand they are apprehensive of what is commonly known as the ‘continental Sunday’. But there seems to be equally little promise in the nondescript hybrid which is fast emerging among us, and which has no definite character at all but is merely a part of the ‘weekend’. Obviously new thinking is urgently needed here. This article attempts a few steps in that direction. It takes its cue not from the fourth commandment, but from a Gospel passage (Mark 2.2–28) which in a sense points behind and before it and sets the whole question of the Christian Sabbath in a new light.

The concept of a discernment situation has assumed a key J. position in much recent philosophical theology. To take examples: Professor I. T. Ramsey's account of religious language is determined throughout by it; Professor P. van Buren's attempt to state the secular meaning of the Gospel hinges upon the claim that such a situation occurred on Easter; and Dr A. Richardson's oft-repeated asseveration that Christian theology is a matter of the interpretation of history resolves itself into the claim that there have been such situations. The basic argument is that members of our race at certain moments in the past have discerned, and we and our contemporaries at certain moments of present existence may discern, the activity or purpose of God. Connected with this discernment, it is further contended, there is—or ought to be—a response of commitment. Israel, for instance, at the Exodus discerned that they were God's chosen people and responded in the Sinai covenant. The disciples, at the Resurrection, discerned that Christ was, in some sense, victor and committed themselves to him. The important point for philosophical theology is the claim that the occurrence of discernment-commitment situations constitutes an empirical grounding for religious belief and thus provides good reason for an affirmative answer to the troublesome question: how do we know that religious language refers to objective reality? We must look more closely into this.

The rapidly deepening river of Indian christological thought is fed by a number of streams. The main current is of necessity the biblical witness, which has to be expounded afresh in every country and age. To this are added the various ecclesiastical channels by which theological thought has reached India; the Syrian in the South, and the many types of Western theology which have always been influential, and still continue to be so. From the other bank there comes the stream of Indian culture, in particular the philosophical systems of Sankara and Ramanuja, and the bhakti tradition of devotion to a personal God. To all these is added, like the rain, the continual influence of the Holy Spirit, who, in India as elsewhere, is ever drawing from what is Christ's and making it known to men (John 16.14). There has therefore been in India, as one might expect, a departure from some of the traditional christological formulations of the West.

With notable exceptions the churches have been more faithful in the Christian education of children than of adults but the pressures of this secular age are raising the question of adult Christian education in different branches of the Church. It is the purpose of this article to provide the context for a reappraisal.