The selection of hope as the central theme of the Evanston J. Assembly in 1954 has already prompted an intensive world-wide examination of the Church's mind and the Biblical witness. It has provoked the publication of many essays which bring the basic issues into sharper focus. Among these issues is the problem of grasping aright the connexions between the present activity of God in history and the eschatological future. As the Advisory Committee has expressed it, the question has to do with ‘the relative emphasis to be laid upon the witness to the coming Christ and upon the witness to the present Christ’. A few participants in the discussion argue for an exclusive stress on one or the other; in reaction, others call for maintaining a balance between these two accents. The flaw in both of these solutions is that they assume a dichotomy or even a contradiction between the two witnesses. They treat Christ as if He were divided, as if His present activity were not being empowered and directed by the same eternal purpose, the same Spirit, as His future activity. Others have seen a polarity in the Christian message at this point, that is productive of a necessary and fruitful tension. To illustrate this tension we might instance Paul's confession: ‘I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do … ’.

Karl Heim has just completed two epochs in his theological biography. The first is a twenty-one year project entitled Der evangelische Glaube und das Denken der Gegenwart, a series of six volumes in which an impressive span of contemporary problems has been probed and illuminated by the Christian faith. The second is the golden anniversary of the literary effort which he initiated in 1902 with a volume entitled Psychologismus oder Anti-Psychologismus and which he has now rounded out with his Weltschöpfung und Weltende.

It is usual to regard Kierkegaard as the father of the con-temporary existentialist movement and to say that he is the first of a long line of existentialists. Thus Ruggiero says of existentialism:

Its origins are very distant and very near, very distant in the solitary torment of one religious soul, the Danish writer, Søren Kierkegaard, in whom the passionate reaction against Hegelianism assumed, round about a century ago, contorted and passionate forms which were yet not without greatness and authentic power.

Our subject is one which concerns the personal aspect of theological education—that side of a student's preparation for the ministry which pertains to himself, to the secret of his individuality as distinguished from academic achievement. In particular, it has to do with his decision to enter the ministry, his problems of faith and life at each stage of his preparation, and finally the transition which he makes from student life to the full responsibility of his calling. If we take the position that theology is only properly understood as Church theology, then it follows that the teaching of theology must be regarded as a ministry of the Church with a responsibility to the student as a person, and, therefore, different from teaching considered as a secular function. And since the teacher in the New Testament has always had a close association with the pastor, if not often identified with him, we have further justification for the claim that theological education has a pastoral responsibility.

In the Gospel according to St. John it is written that ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have ever-lasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.’ In these familiar words is summed up the message of the Bible as a whole, and of the New Testament in particular. In spite of all that may be said of sin and depravity, of judgment and the wrath of God, the last word is one not of doom but of salvation. The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is a Gospel of salvation, of deliverance and redemption. The news that was carried into all the world by the early Church was the Good News of the grace and love of God, revealed and made known in Jesus Christ His Son. In the words of Paul, it is that ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself’.