The purpose of this essay is to address one of those passages in the Bible, and in the annals of human spirit, which strike one as monumental. It is not only an exemplary piece of biblical literature, as well as a particularly fitting fragment in the context of a particular story. It stands out because of its relevance in places and times other than those set for it in the text. It transcends the setting of the story and of the epoch, whatever it may be, and becomes perennial. It is, of course, of primary significance to Judaism and an important contribution to what is best in Western Civilization.

Calvin is often seen as ‘larger than life’ by his disciples and his enemies. This contention animates a recent article by William Bouwsma, whose forthcoming Oxford monograph is titled, John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait. One must be cautious in obtruding the historical Calvin over against the theologian, thereby contending that for the Genevan Reformer theological questions were primarily a way of life. For Calvin his Institute was also a response to contemporary theological questions. One such question elicited Calvin's response in 1555 to Laelius Socinus on the merits of Christ. Calvin warns against ‘certain perversely subtle men’ who obscure God's mercy in Christ. Socinus asked whether the death of Christ which won merit for all persons was also meritorious for Christ himself. To set Christ's merit against God's mercy ‘is no less stupid curiosity than their temerity in making such a definition’. Calvin inserted that letter into the 1559 Institute. Concurrent with Bouwsma's article, Alister McGrath points to Calvin's response to precise questions raised by the via moderna school of theology at Paris under the Scot John Major in which human merit and that of Christ rest on divine good pleasure alone. Calvin's solution is continuous with the voluntarism which he encountered while in Paris.

In the Babylonian Captivity, 1520, Luther launched an attack on the number of ordinances which the medieval Western Church labelled ‘sacraments’. According to Luther, only three were worthy of the title sacrament: baptism, the bread, and penance. Although critical of the prevailing penitential system, Luther not only defended the sacramental status of penance, but also the practice of auricular confession:

As to the current practice of private confession, I am heartily in favor of it, even though it cannot be proved from the Scriptures. It is useful, even necessary, and I would not have it abolished.

Jürgen Moltmann's first major work, Theology of Hope, first published in 1964, is arguably one of the truly great theological works of the last few decades, and indisputably one of the most influential. Though Moltmann's own theology has developed considerably in many subsequent works since Theology of Hope, it remains one of his greatest achievements, rivalled only by his second major work, The Crucified God. These two books, which constitute the core of Moltmann's early theology, have, it seems to me, a concentrated power of argument, focused on their central integrating ideas, which is lacking in the more diffuse structure and argument of the later works, significant though these are in their own way. The two early books also have a certain polemical extremeness, which, by contrast with the more balanced and rounded quality of the later works, gives them the sort of impact which one also finds in the passionate extremism of the early Luther or the dialectical rhetoric of the early Barth. The comparison is appropriate, not only because the influence of these two predecessors on Moltmann's work is very evident, but also because, in adopting something of their dialectical and prophetic style of theology, Moltmann had a parallel purpose: that of redirecting theological work. If, having accomplished this, Moltmann has subsequently become more and more like the older Barth of the Church Dogmatics, this is understandable and brings both advantages and disadvantages with it.

How far are contextual theologies emerging in Asia today? How far are they similar to or different from Liberation Theologies in Latin America, Southern Africa and the U.S.A.?