The response of the theological world to contemporary developments in empirical and language philosophy is beginning to take on a more definite and active form. Books and articles are now appearing which deal with everything from the semantics of the Old Testament1 and the Church Fathers2 to parallels between language analysis and Karl Barth's theology.3 In addition, anthologies in the philosophy of religion are now including a section on ‘The Nature of Religious Language’.4

As the quantity and quality of this response increase there arises a need for a survey and classification of the various approaches of which it is composed. It is the purpose of this article to provide such a survey, and to make some evaluational comments and suggestions. It should be mentioned at the out-set that it is impossible completely to classify approaches; and yet there are similarities and dissimilarities among these approaches which enable one to point out ‘family resemblances’.

Obviously, such a survey cannot come close to being exhaustive, but certain tendencies can be noted. Moreover, an effort will be made to classify the various approaches according to a continuum. Those that are dealt with first tend towards maintaining the autonomy of religious language, while those that are discussed further along in the article would prefer to relate religious language to empirical experience. In between there are those who would advocate something similar to an eclectic view.

Discussing in the Institutes the nature of God's image in man, Calvin refers to the dream of the Manichees, which Servetus has attempted in our own day to revive. Because it is said that God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life (Gen. 2.7), they thought that the soul was a transmission of the substance of God; as if some portion of the boundless divinity had passed into man. It cannot take long time to show how many gross and foul absurdities this devilish error carries in its train.1

In our own day this view, which Calvin takes to be so fatal an error, is very much alive. Occasionally it is expressed in terms not dissimilar from those described by Calvin.2 More often, however, it appears in a more generalised form, where man's possession of a spiritual consciousness is taken to prove that the Divine is latent within him. Spirit is regarded above all as the vehicle by means of which the eternal penetrates the temporal. God himself moves in man, so that human consciousness cannot be satisfied with anything belonging to time and space, our transient world; instead, it strives continually to attain to its proper supramundane dimension.

The Platonic inspiration of such a view is evident when it is advanced as a distinctive argument: for example, in Rufus M. Jones' West Lectures, Spirit in Man.3

Accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason.

It is a tribute to the perspicacity of Lessing and Kierkegaard that their way of investigating the problem of the role of historical investigation in the task of theological construction has set the tone of subsequent discussion. The centrality of their problem in our time is shown up by the way Diem depicts Lessing's question and Kierkegaard's answer as the starting-point of the contemporary theological debate.1 Diem's analysis here is penetrating, even if it only shows up the need for that starting-point to be critically examined.

In this article, after an examination of Kierkegaard's general position, what I wish to suggest is (1) that the problem as Lessing has posed it is insoluble, and thus Kierkegaard's paradoxical solution is no solution; (2) that nevertheless, despite his clear dependence on Lessing, Kierkegaard has restated the problem in the only way which shows any promise for a Christian theology; and (3) that the pursuit of this solution requires that faith be not sealed off from ‘natural inquiry’, and consequently, a serious grappling with ordinary historical problems is unavoidable in Christian theology—which is the opposite conclusion to that which Kierkegaard himself drew (and which is widely accepted at the present time).

There does seem some truth in saying that any large-scale endeavour to work through a comprehensive programme of thought produces the radical critic who proclaims, after the manner of a prophet, that the programme is wrong-headed and misconceived, and who himself works through the programme for just one reason—to show, once and for all, that the only thing to do is to abandon an impossible investigation. Søren Kierkegaard was such a critic.

In various parts of the Protestant world a re-examination of the question of Mariology has been entered upon. Now that we are in sincere dialogue with Rome, and Protestantism and Orthodoxy are united in fellowship in the World Council of Churches, it has become incumbent on Protestants to cease to be merely negative to the Mother of our Lord. Simply because our Roman Catholic brethren hold doctrines about her that Protestants do not appreciate does not mean that the Virgin Mary should have no theological significance for the Churches of the Reformation. Ten years ago an article from my pen, entitled ‘The Virgin and the Old Testament’, appeared in The Reformed Theological Review (of Australia), Vol. XII, No. 1. That article was occasioned by an uneasy reaction to a reading of the section entitled ‘Mariology’ in Ways of Worship, being the Report of a Theological Commission of Faith and Order in preparation for the Lund Conference of 1952. I acknowledge my indebtedness now to my former article, and thank the editor of the RTR for permitting me to expand it here.

The Protestant has to satisfy himself that any doctrine he holds is securely rooted in Scripture. For the early Church ‘Scripture’ meant only the Old Testament. And to it the Church undoubtedly turned as it sought to understand the place of the Virgin Mary in the Gospel it was preaching to Jews and Gentiles alike, and thus to understand her relationship to her Saviour Son.

Dr J. Jeremias has rightly observed that Jesus ‘was never tired of expressing the central ideas of his message in constantly changing images’,1 and that he ‘loved to speak of his mission in the various figures and symbols which depict his calling to be the deliverer’.2 Likewise Dr Riesenfeld in an essay on the ministry in the New Testament begins his inquiry from the premise: ‘We are … justified in beginning our investigation of the ministry with Christ Himself.’3 It remains true, however, that of the many images Jesus used to describe His mission to Israel, most are not used by the Early Church and only two metaphors receive any sustained development. These are the metaphors of the steward and shepherd. The purpose of this article is to trace the development of the former and to explore its associations, and its implications for the Early Church's understanding of its own ministry and leadership. We will, therefore, note the literal occurrences of the terms steward (oἰκoν⋯μoς) and stewardship (oἰκoνoμ⋯α) and then examine briefly their metaphorical uses and the associated ideas and terms.

These are the only occurrences of these two terms in the Synoptic Gospels and clearly they are literal though the settings call for comment.

Both Luke 12 and Matt. 24 reveal secondary features showing how the parable has been recast to suit the hortatory needs of the Church.