The recognition that Isaiah's Servant of the Lord referred to the Messiah, and to himself as Son of man, goes back at least to the Founder of the Christian religion Himself. Does it go any further back, and has it any particular background in Hebrew thought and history? In other words, Is the New Testament doctrine of a Suffering Messiah unique to Christianity?

The first post-Apostolic3 Chiliast known to us is Papias of Hierapolis. From the oral tradition of presbyters who saw the disciple John he adduces a saying of Jesus referring to the miraculous fruitfulness of corn and wine during the millennium. There is an exact parallel to this tradition—perhaps its source— in Syr. Baruch 29.5: ‘The earth also will yield its fruit 10,000 fold, and on one vine there will be 1000 branches, and each branch will produce 1000 clusters, and each cluster will produce 1000 grapes, and each grape will produce a cor of wine.’ In this context we cannot discuss the priority and interdependence of the two traditions. We can only maintain that there existed in the Early Church a saying of Jesus which the presbyters and authorities cited by Papias referred at once to the millennium. We may also notice how closely the Christian and Judaistic traditions approximated and even merged into each other at this point. This is true even in the case of the Epistle of Barnabas, which is normally so anti-Jewish. Speaking of the Sabbath which was instituted at creation, Barn. 15.3–9 argues that the Genesis narrative points prophetically to the final consummation. God created the world in six days, and He will bring it to its consummation in 6000 years, for one day is with the Lord as a 1000 years (Ps. 90.4; Barn. 15.4)4 ‘And God rested the seventh day’ means for Barnabas that when His Son comes He will destroy the age (kaipóy) of the lawless one (i.e. the Antichrist, cf. Isa. 11.4; 2 Thess. 2.8), judge the ungodly, and refashion the sun and the moon and the stars.

In The Divine Imperative, Emil Brunner has recorded this conviction: ‘The crisis in marriage is a wholly new phenomenon.It presents the Christian ethic with the most serious and the most difficult problem with which a Christian ethic has to deal…. What an ethic has to say on this question shows whether it is any use or not.’ That the problem is a serious one is clear from the frequency with which various aspects of it make ‘news’; that it affects all the churches and perhaps most urgently the national churches of this country is equally evident that many, even within the ministry of the Church of Scotland, are theologically unprepared for its discussion has been demonstrated in many Presbyteries in recent years; and it is clear too that, while discussion has hinged upon remarriage of divorced persons, this is only one side of a large, complex subject, very close to the practical work of the ministry and, for the most part, as yet theologically unexplored. The lack of serious discussion of marriage is in striking contrast to the discussion of baptism, yet, as a matter of practical concern for ministers and people it surely ranks at least as high in urgency. At the moment one cannot hope to do more than introduce some aspects of marriage for discussion on a theological level.

At this time when the Church is passing into the centre of the missionary enterprise, the World Dominion Press have reissued a powerful book first published in 1927: The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church, and the Causes which Hinder It, by Roland Allen. The passionate argument of this book seems to have been little heeded by the ‘Missions’ which then dominated the scene. It deserves a better hearing now. Assuredly the Church must think and think again before it will be satisfied that it must simply take over and perpetuate the pattern of work hitherto familiar.

Although most of the early reports of the Conference of Faith and Order held at Lund expressed disappointment and sometimes even depreciation of the work undertaken there, it is becoming increasingly clear that quite another verdict must be given. Lund marks the end of an old era in ecumenica1 theology, and the beginning of a new era in which we have the promise of a development in modern times that may well correspond eventually to the development of ecumenical theology in the fourth and fifth centuries.

There are few doctrines which Christians handle with less assurance than the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The major causes of this embarrassment are a failure to think Biblically and a failure to think Trinitarianly. We confess a Trinitarian creed, but we think as Binitarians. One symptom of this error is the frequent interpretation of the Holy Spirit's work in terms of inspiration.

In their homiletical expositions of the Scriptures, the patristic writers freely employed symbolical methods. Origen, for instance, understood the two miracles with which we are concerned here to signify the giving of the Word of God to the Gentiles; whilst Augustine held that the feeding of the five thousand symbolised that salvation was for the Jews, and that of the four thousand its offering to the Gentiles. Many modern scholars say that Augustine's exegesis would, in this respect, have been Mark's view of these two miracles.