Paul and Acts suggest that after Easter Peter lived in Jerusalem and had special responsibility for the mission to Palestine. 1 Clement mentions his two-plus labours (cf. Acts 3–4, 5, 12), but not Rome and not martyrdom. It places him second of seven chronologically ordered victims of jealousy between AD 40 and 70. Asc. Is. 4:2–3 is about Nero redivivus, not the historical Nero, and has nothing to do with Peter. By AD 100 legends were forming about his sojourn in Rome (1 Peter) and his martyrdom (John 21). He probably died in his bed in Jerusalem about AD 55.

The thinker who approaches the problem of evil theoretically will conceive of the issue differently from one who approaches it practically. He will also differ on what would constitute a satisfactory ‘solution’. One looks for a logical coherence in theism, the other for consolation and the elimination of evil. The theoretical approach, it is argued, actually subverts the thinker morally and religiously. In the face of intractable evil, a theological suggestion that evil is a dark mystery is also rejected in favour of a more practical and constructive approach. It requires an active resistance to evil and then finds consolation in the consequent unity with the Holy Will that opposes all evil.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, no. 11

Although the death of Jesus has been much written about by biblical scholars and theologians, most discussions have focused on its redemptive efficacy. In this essay, however, the focus is on NT references to Jesus' death as inspiring, exemplary, and descriptive of, and criterion for, Christian life. The basic thesis advanced is that the NT refers to Jesus' death as ‘paradigmatic’ impressively widely and with far-reaching applications. Insofar as Christian theological reflection involves taking seriously the scriptural testimony, this widely shared emphasis on Jesus' death as paradigmatic should be reckoned with in the content and perhaps also the practice of theology.

Karl Barth saw himself as a ‘Randfigur’, a boundary figure, in ecumenical theology, while important members of the ecumenical movement regarded him as a ‘Wegbereiter de Okumene des 20. Jahrhunderts’, a pioneer of the ecumene in the twentieth century. Which characterisation is correct?

The article sheds light on Karl Barth as an ‘ecumenical theologian’ in eight different phases of his life: his wrestling with Roman Catholicism in Göttingen and Munster, particularly with the help of the Munich Jesuit Erich Przywara; his encounter and interaction with ecumenical leaders such as Visser't Hooft and Pierre Maury at the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship and his disappointment about the failing resistance of the ecumenical institutions against Hitler; his search for a clear ecumenical course during the Second World War and the Cold War thereafter; his contribution to the meeting of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam in 1948 and in the preparation of this meeting; his complex and complicated dealing with the ‘fundamental ecumenical question’ of church and Israel; the reception of his theology in Roman Catholicism in the 1950s and 1960s through von Balthasar, Kung and other young theologians and Barth's interaction with them; Barth's engagement with Vatican II and his trip to Rome; finally, his personal ‘ecumenical existence’ in the last years of his life.

The contribution explores continuities and discontinuities in his stance towards ‘ecumenical theology’ – ecumenical theology in its various meanings. It depicts Barth in his journey from a fighter against the ‘Roman heresy’ to a critical pioneer of ecumenical theology in general and the institutionalised ecumene in particular.

This article aims to set out a modest, ’pre-theoretical’ or common sense account of metaphysical realism in Christian theology. The essay defends and explores the claim that Christian theology does not rest on definitions or world views when it speaks about ’realism’. Christian realism is not a method, especially not a method spinning free of its proper content, nor a theory about schools of realism. Christian theology is ordered to God's own ways and works: it is a realism in which the God of Israel is both agent and sovereign, both object and subject in the world we inhabit. Christian realism is reflection upon the reality created and blessed by the Creator.

The issue of the ethical status of future generations is significant in debates about research in human genetics, but key (non-theological) statements on the subject, such as the UNESCO Declaration on Human Rights and the Human Genome, reflect a failure to think of future persons as located within communities of ethical reflection and interpretation. I draw on recent work in the philosophy of conservation biology to explore this failure, and argue that a major contribution of theology to ethical reflection on genetic research would be through discussion of ways of reading, transmitting and interpreting texts.

Amy Plantinga Pauw's ‘Supreme Harmony of All’ is the first book-length treatment of Jonathan Edwards's trinitarian theology. She argues that his trinitarian thought embodies the emphases and polarities of the Western psychological model and the Eastern social model of the trinity. Throughout the book she details his doctrines of the immanent and the economic trinity in the contrasting categories of the psychological and the social models of the trinity. She recommends his ‘cobbled’ approach as the only effective way to construct a contemporary trinitarian theology. In contrast, I argue that Edwards consistently used the Augustinian mutual love model. Furthermore, he developed social themes within the mutual love model. His usefulness for contemporary trinitarianism is not to suggest an eclectic method of appropriating conflicting conceptualities, but to challenge the common assumption that Western Augustinian trinitarianism is inherently monistic and must be transcended by recourse to the Eastern trinitarian tradition.

In his review of my book, Steven Studebaker asserts that Jonathan Edwards's trinitarianism is useful in challenging ‘the common assumption that Western Augustinian trinitarianism is inherently monistic and must be transcended by recourse to the Eastern trinitarian tradition’. While I find Edwards to be theologically useful for a wide variety of reasons, I am in basic agreement with Studebaker's assertion, and certainly do not share in the ‘common assumption’ about Augustinianism that he deplores.