The extensive use of typology and allegory by the early Church is usually and rightly regarded as the Church's effective answer to Marcion's rejection of the Old Testament. It was also a part of her answer to the Jewish acceptance of the Old Testament. Controversy has a stimulating effect upon the development of new ideas, but it has in most cases also the disadvantage of fostering special pleading and unbalanced exaggerations. It seems worth trying to discover in what ways anti-Jewish controversy and the mere fact of the Jews' use and possession of the Old Testament affected the Church's understanding of it in the formative ante-Nicene period.

Bishop Stephen Neill, in his Survey of the Training of the Ministry in Africa, writes as follows: ‘I could not but feel profound sympathy with the African student who remarked: “It seems to me that missionaries are much too hard in their judgments on the African Churches. Did you never have a period of struggle in your own Churches? ” Indeed we did. In that moment I suddenly saw that, for the African Churches in their contemporary struggle, the most important period is the one that ordinarily we never teach them in detail, the Dark Ages.… They wrestle with precisely the same difficulties and are called to find anew the way out of the twilight of the coexistence of the old and new into a more genuinely Christian life and social order. ’

‘I swear by Apollo the healer, by Aesculapius, by Health 1 and all the powers of healing, and call to witness all the gods and goddesses that I may keep this Oath and Promise to the best of my ability and judgment.’ These words form the opening sentence of the Hippocratic Oath and they bear eloquent testimony to the theological basis of medicine in Ancient Greece. This close association of theology and medicine characterised the thought and practice of all peoples until the Renaissance, and it still appears most natural to the inhabitants of Africa and Asia who have not been influenced by Western thought. But with Western thought the Renaissance marked the dividing point between theology and medicine so that today medicine is suspicious of theology and jealously resists any approach from the side of theology. The result is that medicine has come more and more to deal with concrete situations and particular problems, and the doctor by his training is unfitted to discuss general principles for he is given no guidance during his training since, in most cases, his teachers have little guidance to give.

Dr Cullmann, in his recent discussion of NT origins has again drawn attention to the hypothesis that the Lordship of Christ is the key to the understanding of the primitive Gospel. The task of this paper is to examine the meaning of the word κύριος in Acts. We must first discover whether or not the very use of the word ‘lord’ tells us about its origin, date and meaning.