I have chosen this title for two reasons: first, to indicate that this essay will focus primarily on issues of religious epistemology; and, second, to acknowledge with gratitude my indebtedness to the work of that brilliant but frequently neglected Scottish theologian and churchman of the first half of this century, the late Principal John Baillie of New College, Edinburgh.

John Calvin was a prolific writer of letters. He carried on an increasingly large correspondence from his early life as an obscure student of law in Orleans (1528), to his last days of international renown as master theologian, patriarch and oracle of Protestantism (d. 1564). With the incessant demands on his time as preacher, professor, author, statesman, and pastor—not to mention his poor health and personal trials—one is amazed at the sheer amount of letters he wrote.

If the charismatic movement has its avid proponents, it also has its ardent opponents. These two tend to form polar extremes. In the conflict that emerges on various issues often the truth seems to lie not so much at either pole as where the Greek philosopher Aristotle sought it, in the golden mean between two extremes.

J. C. O'Neill is already well known for his strikingly original studies of various books of the New Testament, and his latest work, a commentary on Romans, is no exception. It is immediately obvious that this is a commentary with a difference, a commentary which argues a thesis, viz., ‘that the words of the epistle handed down to us were not written by one man, were not written at one time, were not written to one audience’. On the contrary, he suggests, Paul's original letter has been subjected to two sorts of corruption, each of which has added new material to the text. First, glosses have been copied into the text by mistake in later years. Second, interpolations have been added by later editors, usually from old traditions, in order to supplement the epistle and make it more suitable for general use (p. 14). Some of the interpolations which O'Neill claims to identify are of considerable length. For example, 10.16–11.32 is attributed in its entirety to a theologian of the second century. Indeed, out of chapters 9–14, containing 148 verses in the form of the letter that we know, O'Neill assigns only twenty-one verses to Paul.