Ethnography ought to be a means of doing theology. Following debates over John Milbank's influential work Theology and Social Theory, the paper responds to criticism that Milbank's church is too idealised, a critique that Milbank accepts, saying that his work requires ‘supplementation by judicious narratives’. The thesis of the paper proposes that ethnography provides the most robust corrective to the problem of too formal an ecclesiology, thus offering just the sort of ‘judicious narratives’ that can make such ecclesiology more recognisably real. Drawing on the author's research, such an approach is modelled by suggesting that a sense of ‘communal identity’ stands as a complex and crucial element in practical ecclesiology.The last chapter of Theology and Social Theory requires (infinite) supplementation by judicious narratives of ecclesial happenings which would alone indicate the shape of the Church we desire.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer delivered his lectures on Christology in the midst of his academic career but only shortly after becoming a Christian. They thus give us a window into the mind of a theologian wrestling with fundamental questions of faith and scholarship. In particular, the theme of contemporaneity with Christ in Bonhoeffer's Christology gives proper place to the ‘Who?’ question over the ‘How?’, reveals a nuanced account of the relation of historical inquiry to the rule of faith, and offers an amplification of the Reformers' emphasis on the God who is for us.

Salient features of Thomas F. Torrance's theological anthropology are presented in order to recommend that he be read as not only a scientific theologian, but also a theologian of culture. It will be shown that Torrance understands the imago Dei to imply a cluster of relations and dynamics that suggest the human person is essentially a socio-cultural being, created in a particular way in order to fulfil a particular task. An interpretative proposal is then made suggesting that this feature of his anthropological thought may be usefully applied in order to understand more fully the goals and objectives of his theological and scientific work.

This paper offers a reading of two representative texts – the 1917 lecture ‘Die neue Welt in der Bibel’ and the preface to the first Römerbrief – that seeks to highlight the theological basis of Barth's early characterisation of the task of biblical interpretation. It further suggests that by describing the engagement of the contemporary reader with scripture in terms drawn from the text itself, Barth makes a distinctive and still relevant contribution to church's attempt to account for its reading practices.

There has been a range of philosophical and linguistic responses to the phenomenon of indeterminacy and the place of authorial intention in the hermeneutical task. In the face of these responses, others have developed various theological responses to the problem, responses which this paper refers to collectively as ‘believing criticism’. A theological undergirding for all such approaches may be found in the application of the incarnation to an understanding not only of the nature of the Christian scriptures but also of the interpretative process itself. This application enhances our appreciation of the role both of divine intention in the divine discourse evident in the Bible and of the contextualised response to that discourse, and provides further impetus for those who would argue that both intention and indeterminacy must be recognised in the apprehension of meaning. This is in tune with an epistemology of ‘personal knowledge’ as espoused by Michael Polanyi.

The paper argues that Christian theological anthropology is best understood, in the contemporary world, in terms of relationships. Human persons are formed in and through sedimented interactions with other persons. In the paper these interactions are considered against the backdrop of the concept of naming. In being named we are invited into relationships of increasing intimacy in which we are challenged to reveal more of who we are and what our name genuinely means. In each interaction it is possible to be embraced or to be rejected. Embrace encourages greater openness to relational interaction; rejection encourages closure and an unwillingness to open ourselves to further hurt and pain. It is possible to reflect on the use and power of names in the Bible where narratives using names can be read as models of the creative and redemptive activity of God. Gen 2–3 is examined as a 'case study' of this theory and then linked to other significant instances of naming in the Bible to demonstrate that this reading is a legitimate one. There are quite profound implications of thinking about theological anthropology in this way: challenges to our understanding of personhood, styles of ministry, sin and atonement and perhaps most of all to our view of God – the divine person who in revealing the divine name in every age invites humanity to enter into the divine life.