Great philosophers in dealing with a topic sometimes fasten on a single aspect and show their greatness by the thoroughness with which they carry out the interpretation in terms of this aspect of everything which falls within their topic. This is the case of Kant when dealing with the topic of religion. Kant in considering religion fastened on its ethical side and carried his absorption in this to a point at which religion was conceived as of value solely as a means to ethics. He admitted as valid no religious concepts or doctrines that did not either express symbolically truths about morality or help us to the attainment of a morally good life. Religious practices which had any purpose other than ethical he considered as a futile and immoral attempt to bribe or coax God into giving men what they are not prepared to earn in the only possible way, namely, by moral action.1 The dogmas of Christianity are systematically reinterpreted by Kant in a sense which the ordinary believer would certainly regard as Pickwickian and which made them pictures of the moral struggle in man rather than an account of the intervention of supernatural powers beyond us. In the Critique of Pure Reason he denied the possibility of any metaphysical proof of God or immortality and said that the only valid kind of argument must be ethical. Indeed it may not look as if he were placing himself in a very favourable position to have even an ethical argument for God.

What concept of time is required to make sense of statements like ‘Jesus is the Eternal Contemporary’ or ‘There is a real presence of Christ in the sacramental action’?

The problem before us has about it features that are fashionable, if not familiar. When we sing,

Saviour, take the power and glory:

Claim the kingdom for thine own,

precisely what do we expect to happen? Dr Robinson, the present Bishop of Woolwich, insists that we must not only suspect the dominical origin of this part of New Testament eschatology (Jesus and His Coming, 1957, chapters 2 and 3), but also re-focus the total concept of ‘coming’ itself. In his broadcast addresses, Christ Comes In (1960), Dr Robinson has drawn our attention away from a consideration of the Advent message as related to ‘a single moment at the end of time’ (p. 25), towards a theology in which every moment is surrounded ‘with all the seriousness of the Last Day’ (p. 26).

It is almost a truism to assert that religious language is symbolic,' declares Paul Tillich in an article entitled ‘Existential Analysis and Religious Symbols’.1 His whole theology is from first to last dominated by the ideas both of existential analysis and religious symbol. Tillich rejects out of hand the notion of God as literally a personal and spiritual Being who literally enters into personal and spiritual relationships with human beings. He seeks, therefore, to transform the content of historical Christian dogmatics into an array of symbols and contends that the whole theological enterprise is to seek and set forth the meaning of these symbols. ‘Theology as such’, states Tillich, ‘has neither the task nor the power to confirm or to negate religious symbols. Its task is to interpret them according to theological principles and methods.’2

At the outset of this essay it should be understood that its author does not claim to have derived any special pleasure from writing it. In fact, he would not have written it at all if in the time since publication one single voice had come to his ears, theologically challenging the title Honest to God given to his book by the Bishop of Woolwich. In time past the author of this essay was a lecturer in Roman Law, and he is now endeavouring to be a Church historian. He thus takes a much greater pleasure in resolving the problems which are set by ‘The first two years of the reign of the emperor Theodosius I'1 or in outlining The Framework of the New Testament Stories2, than in indulging in the rabies theologorum, the fury of the theologians, which was bitterly denounced already by Philip Melanchthon, the German reformer. The author of this essay would, therefore, willingly have left the task of expounding the Church's doctrine to those to whom it by right belongs, the bishops and the doctors of the Church.

The subject which I have been asked to consider is the concept of Ktisis in the New Testament, with special reference to those decisively important texts, Romans 8.18ff, and Colossians 1.15ff. At the cost of repeating what others may have said, or may be going to say, here, I must preface my remarks with some observations about the attitude to creation which seems to be characteristic of the Old Testament, because to a large extent it is presupposed by the New Testament writers. The following points seem to be relevant for our purpose. First, the views of the Hebrew writers about creation are, in a sense, wholly anthropocentric. Man stands at the centre of the whole picture, and the rest of the animate and inanimate world is seen as a kind of backcloth for the drama of human history. What we ourselves would call ‘nature’ derives its significance from the activity within it of mankind and, in particular, of the chosen people of God. In this sense, what we call the ‘natural order’ revolves around man as the central point and focus which gives meaning to the whole. The creation of the world is not extra-historical. It is itself a part of history; for the creation narratives are part of a story which continues straight on to the great redemptive events which formed the basis of Israel's faith in God and the ground of her existence as his people. In the pentateuch, as in the prophets and psalms, creation and redemption are inseparably linked together.

The book of the prophet Isaiah opens with a superscription in the manner of other prophetic collections. The modern reader may be pardoned if he makes a mental note of the information and passes on quickly to the oracles that follow. The superscription associates the book with the name of the prophet Isaiah whose father Amoz, though the subject of later and probably unreliable Talmudic tradition, is otherwise unknown. The oracles are firmly dated in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. Chapter 6 shows that the opening date must be the year of Uzziah's death, variously determined by scholars between 748 and 734 B.C. The last date may be that of the death of Hezekiah, say 697 B.C. On any reckoning, the prophetic ministry of Isaiah was a long one, and it covered a series of vivid and pivotal events—the crisis created by the aggression of Syria and Ephraim in 734–732 B.C. (see chapters 7–9.6), the fall of Samaria and of the northern kingdom of Israel in 721 B.C., Hezekiah's attempt at reform, the dangerous crises of 705–701 B.C. when the southern kingdom all but shared the fate of the north at the hands of Assyria, and a number of other events and situations, either allusive and hidden from us, or patiently to be inferred from such oracles as have been transmitted. The eighth century was also a period of economic transition with all the consequences of change in conflict, insecurity and moral and spiritual turmoil.