Since Barth has not developed any systematic treatise on the doctrine of analogy, what I hope to say in this paper is rather implicit in his Church Dogmatics, especially the volumes I/1, II/1, III/1, III/2, IV/1 and IV/3.

Justin Martyr was one of the most important of the second-century Christian Apologists. He made an outstanding contribution to the intellectual tradition of Christian thought by his interpretation of the logos and was also the first thinker after St. Paul to grasp the universalistic element in Christianity and to sum up the history of civilisation as finding its consummation in Christ. Yet Justin was far more than a Christian intellectual for his approach is biblical, pastoral and evangelistic and firmly based on God's care and love for men revealed supremely in Jesus Christ. And, as has long been recognised, the information that he gives about Christian worship and sacraments is of high value as being the fullest account to have come down from the ante-Nicene period of the Church.

A Secure grasp of Thomas Altizer's theology is not an easy achievement. But if I have correctly understood it, I would argue that it turns on an axis of three themes. These themes will be examined and evaluated here. The critical point I will develop is that the manner in which Professor Altizer has set the stage for what he defends as ‘radical theology’ results in two major deficiences—an inability to confront and wrestle with the reality of evil, and a failure to account for freedom as the source of evil.

Some years ago I published an article on this topic where more details can be found on what I may call analytic aspects concerning validity.page 1 But in the intervening years the attitude of many has indicated a willingness to consider change on this matter. Amongst Anglicans there seem fewer ministerial fundamentalists. Also a Roman Catholic has pointed out that in 1896 when Anglican orders were declared invalid Roman Catholic theologians were divided amongst themselves and today a leading Roman Catholic has said that he would like to see the matter reviewed.page 2 Indeed Roman references to ‘ecclesial communities’ and to penitence for their share in the divisions of the Church may be a hopeful sign and ease the way for a review of their attitude to validity and claim to be the one and only true church.page 3

The declaration that ‘Yahweh is a Man of Wars’page 1 poses a problem for the modern reader of the Old Testament. The direct connexion between God and war seems to be alien to the spirit of the New Testament. And today, when the horrors of war are so constantly in the news, this epithet for God seems to be all the more abhorrent. The epithet was quoted at the beginning of an article in an earlier volume of this Journal, A. Gelston's ‘The Wars of Israel’.page 2 The problem becomes most acute in the question of the wars of conquest, for there we can trace two aspects of Yahweh's activity. On the one hand, Yahweh uses war as a means of judgment on the sinful Canaanitespage 3; on the other hand, He uses war as a means to an end, namely the fulfilment of the patriarchal and Covenant promises.page 4 Although Gelston mentions this double aspect of the wars of conquest (p. 326), his conclusions only satisfy the former of the two aspects (p. 331). Of his five summary points, two are applicable to this particular case. The first is that ‘when Yahweh is identified with Israel's cause, the motive is usually the execution of judgment on Yahweh's enemies’, and secondly he declares that ‘Yahweh alone is ultimately sovereign in human history, and his cause is always just’.

The term ‘Son of Man’ is one of the enigmas of the Gospels. G. Vermes has re-examined the Aramaic background of the phrase in Appendix E of the third edition of M. BlacK's Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts. Even if his argument that barnāsh (ā) is in some passages a mere circumlocution for ‘I’ is not wholly convincing,page 2 he has demonstrated beyond doubt that the phrase was not in New Testament times a title with a clear and recognised meaning, whether messianic or other. The phrase in itself merely signifies ‘man’, whether mankind in general, or a particular man. Only the context can determine its meaning more precisely. Apart from Act 7.56 it is used virtually exclusively in the New Testament by Jesus, and the question of the crowd in John 12.34—‘who is this Son of Man?’ —shows clearly that the expression was not immediately intelligible to the first century,page 3 and that we are not at liberty to dismiss it as no more than an elaborate way of saying ‘man’ or ‘I’. This is the justification of the immense activity that has gone into the exploration of the previous history of the expression, and to which this article is a small contribution.page 4

The S.G.M. Press has published within the past decade several important studies on the place of the Old Testament within the Christian Bible and on how it is to be interpreted. Now John Bright has produced a volume (The Authority of the Old Testament, S.C.M. Press, 1967, pp. 272, 40s.), containing his own review of the questions involved—the enduring authority possessed by the Old Testament, and the appropriate method of interpreting it. Any book to which the name of John Bright is attached is an 'important' one. He is the author of a standard History of Israel, and as such, as well as in his other works particularly his Commentaries, he has shown that he is a master of organising a mass of complex material, of being fair to scholarship with which he is in little sympathy, and of being in command of such adequate expression that it is difficult to better him. All this makes it the more important to evaluate critically his present volume. The book discloses a pleasing symmetry of construction, and, as expected, a persuasive and well-expressed argument. The doubt in my mind is whether it is, conceptually, broadly enough based.