For some time the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches has been concerned with the problem of the relation between creation and redemption. To that important problem this article speaks by submitting an introductory outline of the history of interpretations of the relation between creation and redemption.

The logical consequences of divine sovereignty for human freedom have been disputed for so long that one might doubt whether anything new remains to be said on the matter. Recent debate on the related topic of ‘Brain and Will’ has however brought up a logical point which would seem to apply equally in the theological context and which throws fresh doubt on the coherence of the traditional antithesis between predestination and human freedom. My object in this paper is to outline the argument and bring home some of its implications.

I would like to draw attention to certain influential misrepresentations of the views of Martin Buber and others relating to the notion of an encounter between God and man.

The purpose of this study is firstly to examine the principles behind Calvin's exegesis of the messianic elements in the Psalms, and then to consider briefly how far in the light of recent studies in Israelite sacral kingship we can apply them to our own understanding today. At the outset, however, it is necessary to defend the adjective ‘messianic’ in regard to Calvin's exegesis of the Psalms. It has been objected, particularly by Mowinckel at the beginning of his He that Cometh, that the term ‘Messiah’ can only rightly be used for a royal eschatological figure in the literature of later Judaism. As, according to Mowinckel, the royal figure in the Psalms is in no strict sense an eschatological one, the adjective ‘messianic’ cannot be strictly applied to it. It is not our intention here to combat this judgment of Mowinckel on exegetical grounds, but to point out that his criticism is not valid for what Calvin was seeking to do in his commentary.

There is a hackneyed story which tells how a man who was offered a drink replied thus: ‘No, thank you. I won't have a drink, for three reasons. First, because I am a teetotaller. Second, because I've given it up for Lent. Third, because I've already had two.’ Such forms of argument are familiar in courts of law, even outside Ireland. The defendant pleads that he wasn't there when the blow was struck, but at home watching television; or alternatively that it was actually Jones, and not he himself, who did it, as he saw with his own eyes; or alternatively that the fellow deserved it anyway.

The problem which is pursued in this essay can be expressed in the following question: to what extent and in what form is the idea of the promise of land and progeny to be traced to the patriarchs? This is a problem of the History of Religion, and stems directly from the post-Wellhausen estimate of Hebrew history and religion which was facilitated by external archaeological data and internal biblical research inspired and informed by the principles of Formgeschichte.