It is a curious fact that while the problem of free will has been long and widely discussed by both philosophers and theologians in the modern world, it has been largely in two separate compartments, the one set seldom conferring with the other, or even overhearing what the other has to say. Sometimes they seem almost to be talking of two different things.

The sixth volume of the Basel theologian's monumental Dogmatics (Church Dogmatics, Vol. III, Part 2) is not only, like the earlier volumes, a significant work, but like the fifth, and even more than it a work full of surprises. I have no hesitation in associating myself with the judgment of my Danish colleague Prenter,2 who calls it “the culmination so far of the whole powerful work”. Barth devotes several pages of this volume to a notable discussion of my own anthropology, published fifteen years ago (Man in Revolt). In it he puts to me the question whether we mean the same thing or not (p. 155 ff.). There arises thus for me not merely the occasion but also the necessity of abandoning our mutual practice of not reviewing one another's works. The following pages are not intended to provide a survey of the whole work but only to bring out some specially important points. Naturally, then, they will be fully understood only by those who have some knowledge of both works. I have already given a brief affirmative reply to Barth's question in the second volume of my own Dogmatics (p. 95) after a hasty glance through his Doctrine of Man which came into my hands only after the completion of my own MS., but feel myself now obliged to state more precisely the reasons for this assent and to add some qualifications.

That the Judgment of God is a Biblical notion of profound significance cannot be denied. But it has never been popular with man, and in some ages of the Church's history—apart from the Liturgy—it has been entirely dormant. In a recent article in The Congregational Quarterly Dr Lovell Cocks describes the Edwardian Nonconformist minister as one “who endeared himself to his congregation as a big, brotherly fellow by having ‘no use for theology’”—a very true description of more than Nonconformist ministers in that age of prosperity—and then says that the same man to-day would “merely write himself down as a charlatan or an ass”. I wonder how true this is! Have we really so completely left behind that Edwardian optimism? I doubt it. The heritage of the second half of the nineteenth century, the age of progress and expansion, is perhaps not so easily got rid of as that. Whilst it is true that amongst theologians in the past thirty years there has been a revival of the notions of the Holiness of God, the Judgment of God, and of eschatological matters in general; and whilst Barth and Brunner and Niebuhr are names to conjure with, I am inclined to think that the general run of men and women, including many preachers, are still prone to cling to the comfortable and somewhat sentimental doctrines of the Love of God which were fashionable amongst theologians a generation ago.

In the recent revival of interest in the teaching of Dr P. T. Forsyth as “The Theologian of the Cross”, due attention has scarcely been given to the many implications of his message among which his doctrine of Judgment occupies so prominent a place. Indeed, one can say that it is impossible to grasp his doctrine of Redemption apart from the persistent stress he lays, in practically all his works, on Judgment. It was his contention, against the Liberal Christian theology of his day, with its emphasis on the latent divinity of man and the benevolence to the neglect of the severity of God, that it tended to produce pulpiteers rather than preachers and a soft rather than a stalwart faith. He drew a hard and fast line between the orator and the preacher. “Preaching”, he declares, “is the most distinctive institution in Christianity. It is quite different from oratory. The pulpit is another place, and another kind of place, from the platform. Many succeed in the one and yet are failures in the other. The Christian preacher is not the successor of the Greek orator, but of the Hebrew prophet.rdquo; 1 The Hebrew prophet with his “Thus saith the Lord” was invariably the prophet of judgment. When God speaks He speaks as Judge, and the prophet, speaking in His name, claims the right to pronounce judgment. So with Jeremiah, Amos and Hosea. John the Baptist was the herald of judgment, and our Lord, while he cautioned people against judging one another, considering their own faults, exercised the right equally with his heavenly Father to determine the merit and demerit of men.

The Amsterdam literature has pointed out afresh the well-known fact that one of the points at issue between the Catholic and Protestant traditions is the number of the Sacraments, and it may well be that a discussion of this question would bring to light some of the other differences between these two traditions. An attempt is made in this paper to outline a Protestant view of the question. It is clear that “Catholic” is used here in a sense different from that which it bears in the historic creeds. Moreover, the contrast made between Catholic (chiefly Anglo-Catholic) and Protestant (chiefly non-Anglican) views is not intended to deny that the Church of England is in a sense Protestant, or to raise the question how far in loyalty to its formularies it can be other than Protestant.

I have chosen to speak of Existentialism in France for two reasons. First because it is in France that Existential thinking has won its most distinguished success, both as a fashionable craze among laymen, and in the region of philosophical research. Amongst contemporary Existential thinkers, Jean-Paul Sartre and Gabriel Marcel stand out as leaders, and it is to their contrasting types of thinking that we shall pay most attention. But the second reason for confining attention mainly to French Existentialism is that there are so many other types of Existential thinking to be found in various countries. Not only France, but Denmark, Germany, Russia, Italy, Spain, and to a lesser degree America and Britain, have thinkers whose basis of thought is existentialist. And as Foulquié says: “There are as many Existentialisms as there are Existentialist philosophers”. Moreover the claim is made that Existentialist modes of thought are to be found even in Classical Philosophy. Mounier in his book Existentialist Philosophies has an interesting illustration which throws light on this history of Existentialism. He calls it “the Existential Tree”. Below the ground the several roots of this tree are labelled “Socrates”, “Stoics”, “St. Augustine” and “St. Bernard”. Where the stem emerges from the ground we find “Pascal”. The long trunk bears the name of “Kierkegaard”. At the top of the trunk, before the branches spread out, “Phenomenology” indicates that this type of philosophy is a basis of most modern Existentialist thinking. The branches are labelled with fourteen names, representing authors from various countries.

It has often been remarked that the last verse of this passage is an epitome of the teaching of the three great eighth century prophets: the appeal of Amos for justice; Hosea's unfolding of the meaning of hesedh; Isaiah's summons to the life of humble faith and obedience, which was the outcome of his vision of the holy and living God of Israel. Nowhere is the prophetic message more concisely and powerfully expressed. There are about these words a dignity and comprehensiveness which may easilytempt the modern reader to isolate them from what precedes, and so to miss the ground and the significance of the prophetic appeal. As George Adam Smith wrote many years ago: “Usually it is only the last of the verses upon which the admiration of the reader is bestowed: What doth the Lord require of thee, O man, but to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with thy God? But in truth the rest of the passage differeth not in glory; the wonder of it lies no more in its peroration than in its argument as a whole.”1 The observation is salutary. We have not adequately interpreted these words (v. 8) when we see in them simply an ethical counterblast to a religion whose requirements were exclusively cultic and formal, or when we think of them as merely enunciating an austere but unattainable moral standard, as law without gospel. Nor ought they to be dismissed as an impressive testimony to a faith which we have outgrown.