It has been commonplace for over a century to argue that the distinctively Lutheran form of the communicatio idiomatum leads naturally to kenotic christology, divine passibility, or both. Although this argument has been generally accepted as a historical claim, has also been advanced repeatedly as a criticism of ‘classical theism’ and has featured significantly in almost all recent defences of divine passibility, I argue that it does not work: the Lutheran scholastics had ample resources drawn from nothing more than ecumenical trinitarian and christological dogma to defend their denial of the genus tapeinoticum. I argue further that this defence, if right, undermines a remarkably wide series of proposals in contemporary systematic theology.

In the American moral governmental theory of the atonement, the idea of equivalence is best understood in terms of a countervailing, or the achieving of a moral equilibrium. According to Jonathan Edwards’ disciples, Christ's atonement was not quantifiably equivalent to the penalty of the law, but morally and meaningfully equivalent. In other words, Christ's physical and psychological sufferings were not equal in amount or degree to a sinner's damnation. Rather, Christ's substitution for divine punishment exhibited sufficient displeasure against sin to effectively communicate his character and to offset the evil effects of sin. At stake was not the moral quantity of his crucifixion, but the moral quality. In this moral governmental scheme, Christ's was not a commutative atonement, but a countervailing atonement.

Against the backdrop of the debate about theological reading of scripture, this essay asks whether there ought to be theological interpretation of non-biblical texts. The claim is that there should be, since theology can serve as an encompassing framework that structures all of one's beliefs. On this view, non-biblical literary texts function as a set of non-privileged signs pointing toward the Christian God. These texts should therefore be read using a reading strategy that relates them to God. This raises some complexities in the argument, however, because if these texts not only do not form part of the biblical canon, but also are different in content from those that do, then it is not straightforward how they can be read with reference to the Christian God. The essay wrestles with this issue as well as the objection that the proposal advocates a version of natural theology.

Modern anti-ecumenism in Orthodoxy is grounded in a sacramental or eucharistic ecclesiology which identifies Christianity and the church exclusively with the Orthodox Church and stands in opposition to universal baptismal ecclesiology. This neo-traditionalist ecclesiology stresses the unity of the sacraments of baptism, chrismation and eucharist as equally necessary for membership in the church, identified exclusively with the Orthodox Church. It exploits a weakness in Orthodox eucharistic ecclesiology, according to which the church, identified with the Orthodox eucharistic community, can be interpreted as excluding non-Orthodox Christians from the church. The article demonstrates that this anti-ecumenical, exclusivist ecclesiology is contrary to several major aspects of the Orthodox tradition.

Karl Barth's understanding of Luther and Calvin is not best illumined by an examination of his direct citation of their work, but by a consideration of his description of their vocation as church fathers as outlined in Church Dogmatics, I/2, a position held with remarkable consistency over the course of his career. Barth's discussion of Luther and Calvin there not only sets forth his understanding of the Reformers in a historical genealogy of revelation and its witnesses, but places them in an ordering of church authorities. Moreover, his description of their unique vocation sheds important light upon his understanding of the modern discipline of church history itself. His treatment of the Reformers thus both exemplifies and follows from his conviction that church history is not an independent theological discipline but can only accompany the central disciplines of exegetical, dogmatic and practical theology.