Martin Marty and Dean Peerman in their New Theology series attempt to present the most significant recent theological trends. Volume 5, published in 1968, was devoted to the theology of hope. In the period from about 1967 to 1973 the word ‘hope’ appeared in the titles of numerous books to be found in theological bookstores and hope was the subject of various conferences at seminaries and universities. These books and symposia addressed themselves to an array of themes including a concern for the future, a call to political activism, a dialogue with Marxism inspired by the work on hope by the Marxist Ernst Bloch, exegetical studies of eschatology, Old and New Testament theological studies emphasising eschatology, and hope as the cognitive basis and starting-point for doing theology. The work that came closest to encompassing all these divergent strands and did much to stimulate thinking on these issues was Jürgen Moltmann's Theology of Hope published in 1967, in which he attempts ‘to show how theology can set out from hope’.

In some unpublished lectures on communication written in 1847, Kierkegaard contends that Christian communication requires some direct discourse. This did not mean that he had abandoned his long-standing insistence that Christianity is a project for existence. The information conveyed in that discourse is not intended to assuage intellectual curiosity and to supplement our general desire for knowledge. Rather, it intends a change in people's lives. Thus, he further asserts that this direct discourse is preliminary and must be followed by indirect discourse. Nevertheless, Kierkegaard is saying that some truth claims about matters of fact are indispensable; some propositions that convey information, which might from a logical standpoint be either objectively true or false, are necessary in genuine Christian communication.

Cabler's inaugural address De justo discrimine theologiae biblicae et dogmaticae regundisque racte utriusque finibus was written in a very complex, classically-based Latin, but the ideas he expressed were those of eighteenth-century Enlightenment theology. The responsibility for this translation was shared in that Dr Eldredge dealt with the philological and idiomatic sense of the Latin, and Dr Sandys-Wunsch filled in the theological background to Gabler's thought. Dr Sandys-Wunsch alone is responsible for the commentary and discussion.

For many people the period of junior and secondary schooling establishes a pattern of attitudes which persists well into adult life, and, for some, throughout the whole of life. Attitudes are important. Attitudes function as a determinant both of overt behaviour and of personal self-development. It is not surprising, therefore, that educationalists have begun to take the training of attitudes seriously.