The word ‘theology’ can be and is used in a number of different ways. It has developed a variety of meanings, such that the use of this same word to allude to different concepts sometimes leads to confusion. In this paper I intend to look at the development of the word ‘theology’ without necessarily resolving the question of what theology is by reference to any one of the past meanings as a determining norm for a new quest. However, in the course of this analysis, certain suggestions will be made that may help to indicate directions for theology in our time.

In 1950 a fine article appeared in SJT concerning hope in the NT. In it Allan Barr drew attention to several key aspects of hope, one of which was headed ‘The Patience of Hope’. I should like to develop this theme which was touched upon only briefly. As Barr indicated, the two terms are associated at times in the NT. In fact, in the Pauline epistles they occur in the same verse on six occasions, while in one further case they appear in consecutive verses (Rom. 5:4; 8:25; 12:12; 15:4; 1 Cor. 13:7; 1 Thess. 1:3; 2 Cor. 1:6,7). These form the basis of this investigation. Nowhere else in the NT are they associated so closely.

The facet of his thought commonly referred to as the doctrine of the two kingdoms has provoked some of the most intractable confusion and bitter controversy in post-war continental Luther scholarship, and the ripples of this debate which reached these shores have all too often amounted to a litany of sweeping statements which have done nothing to enhance the Reformer's reputation in England. Yet even before Hitler's war Luther had endured a century of disfavour among the leading academic and ecclesiastical circles on this side of the Channel. So marked was British — more particularly, English — distaste for Luther in the opening years of this century that the American church historian Preserved Smith devoted an article to the subject in 1917, listing Anglo-Catholicism, rationalism, socialism and — since 1914 — visceral hostility to all things German as four factors which had conspired to tarnish the Reformer's image in the minds of the English of that time. Fifteen years later the celebrated Modernist H. D. A. Major was to lament that, ‘Today Martin Luther, the greatest protagonist of the Reformation, is viewed as a vulgar, violent and mistaken man as hostile to humanist culture as he was to social democracy.’ The European conflict of the next decade provided the cue for the most damaging slur of all on the Reformer's memory, so that when in 1945 a third-rate pamphleteer denigrated Luther as ‘Hitler's spiritual ancestor’ his thesis had already been expressed by Archbishop William Temple, who had died the previous year.

Theological attitudes to Hegel have undergone considerable fluctuation in the 150 years that have elapsed since his death. If they were traced on a graph, the line would show a sequence of highs and lows. Hegel has been pronounced dead several times in these years, but he has shown a remarkable capacity for revival. And the occurrence of a revival near the 150th anniversary of his death may furnish an appropriate occasion for an examination of the ups and downs of Hegel in the theological stock-market.