With the death of Whitehead and Berdyaev the field of philosophical theology has been left all but empty of first rate creative thinkers. Tillich stands nearly alone as undeniably a primary source of constructive philosophical theology. Such forefront leaders of modern Christian thought as Barth, Brunner Aulén and Nygren seem somewhat bound by traditional Christian formulations.

The controversy which has this forbidding name arose as a result of Bultmann's essay «New Testament and Mythology’. The essay appears to have evoked a very loud and fierce criticism in Germany and has become the bone of contention among its theologians. This controversy has spread to America where Bultmann's friend Professor Paul Tillich has put before the theological public not only the issue involved in the debate but also his own unhesitating support of Bultmann's programme. It has also come to us in Britain through the publication of Professor Henderson's Myth in the New Testament, and the ‘documents in the case’ in the volume Kerygma and Myth. First let us see what it is that Bultmann has to say.

Of all great theologians Karl Barth lends himself perhaps least of all to any attempt at reconciliation on a superficial level, to a reconciliation which would obscure the basic differences between his position and that of his opponents. And yet, his work exerts a compulsion on his readers to rethink their positions in its light. It does this even more by the echoes it seems so often to contain of the judgment under which all human thinking stands, than by the challenge of its clarity and its authentically Christocentric character. The ‘confessional conversation’ to which his work cannot but give rise must proceed piecemeal, by patient and painstaking discussion of Christian theology topic by topic. I want to examine one particular topic of theological discussion in this paper: that of the nature and structure of theological thinking itself. I shall try to outline and to compare two of the most highly developed and consciously thought-out accounts of what theological thinking consists in: the accounts given by Barth, and by St. Thomas Aquinas. Fundamental though this question is, it is well to remind ourselves at the outset of its restricted canvas. For whatever convergence we may discover in the two accounts of what theological thinking is, there may be endless scope for divergence concerning some of the topics relevant to these accounts. I may instance those of the Bible, faith, revelation—all of them concepts central to our inquiry, yet concepts on which agreement can scarcely be taken for granted.

‘Kerygma’ is probably the most popular catch-word of contemporary Anglo-Saxon biblical theology. It purports to sum up what the NT has to say in a single word; it is taken over gratefully by systematicians and preachers as the longawaited ‘conclusion’ of the NT critics; it is a point from which other elements can be judged and pronounced more or less Christian.

In a chapter of his book Glaube und Verstehen, recently translated into English under the title Essays Philosophical and Theological, Professor Rudolf Bultmann has discussed, by no means favourably, the Christological Confession of the World Council of Churches. The words of the Confession are: ‘The World Council of Churches is composed of Churches which acknowledge Jesus Christ as God and Saviour.’ Bultmann directs his attention chiefly to the confession that Jesus is God. In the New Testament he finds only one verse in which Jesus is un-doubtedly called God. That is John 20.28, in which Thomas addresses Jesus as ‘My Lord and my God!’ In contrast with this single example, there is in Bultmaann's opinion a great amount of evidence that the writers of the New Testament believed that Jesus was subordinate to His Father.