It is individuals and their particular characteristics that form the pattern of any country's theology; but it is neither the qualifications nor the scholarship of these individuals alone by which the distinctive theological outlook of the country is determined. A great deal too depends on the way in which the Universities are organised, the extent of ground covered by the professorships, the nature of theological examinations, and things of that kind. It is factors such as these which determine the course of study to be followed by theological scholars before they reach a chair in the University, and for those of them who are appointed as lecturers it is the organisation of the study which prescribes, for example, what they are required to teach. A few words, then, may be appropriate at this point on the composition of the Swedish theological faculties.

This article was written originally as a draft for private study, consequently all my indebtedness to other scholars, such as Dr J. L. Ainslie, Dr T. W. Manson, Dr T. F. Torrance, etc., is not noted as it ought to be. That it owes much to such men is freely admitted, so I hope that this acknowledgment will be accepted as adequate. Further, it was prepared for a group of theologians, with the result that a considerable background-knowledge is taken for granted. Its purpose was simply to form a brief historical survey as a basis for further study.

The Church Militant, living and working in history as an organic and visible society, must have a structure and organs which express its nature and enable it to be what it is and to fulfil its function or mission. Whatever might be argued a priori about this structure and these organs, and whatever might be learned from the experiences of history through the centuries, it is plain from the New Testament that the apostolic church possessed institutions which were part of its structure and which existed in order to further its mission. Among these was a ministry of men distinguishable qua ministers from the other members of the body, a special organ of, and therefore within, the one body.

The verb ordinare and its cognates have been used for the setting apart of church officers ever since Latin began to be an ecclesiastical language. It is significant that the names of the offices were transliterated; cheirotonia, the laying-on-of-hands, was not. This no doubt may be very simply explained. Actions with the hands were used in healing, in the reconciliation of penitents, in the ceremonies in and after baptism. A distinction of terms was needed; the choice of a term points forward to the whole history of Latin Christendom.

The first half-volume of Barth's Church Dogmatics, in English, has been available since 1936. The corresponding half-volume, which completes the Prolegomena, is now in print. Decency demands that any fanfare which seems appropriate to an enthusiastic reviewer should be sounded on muted trumpets, and Barth himself has made it clear in this volume that no teacher of the Church should become for us an angelic power to whose weak and beggarly influence we are glad to enslave ourselves. Nevertheless the Church has been given a teacher in this generation whose stature has not been obviously exceeded by any of the great servants whom God raised up for the same task in earlier days, and it is time that his voice was properly heard in Britain. Experts on theological fashion assure us, with all the confidence of Athenian spermologoi, that the time, mercifully, has passed; other voices, more interesting and less exacting, are carrying the discussion forward to a post-Barthian stage. Only the years will show whether what these experts say is true. And each of the next five or six years will bring two part-volumes of substantial dogmatics, as distinct from prolegomena. Those are the volumes which contain the work which most obviously effects the transition from Bible to sermon. The first volume serves principally to diagnose and to heal our ‘permanent or passing, but always radical, incompetence with regard to the whole business’. It does so, of course, in the most non-arrogant and robustly human way.