T. F. Torrance has made a significant contribution to theological method with his model of the stratified structure of theological knowledge. According to this model, which is grounded in Torrance's realist epistemology, the knowledge of God takes place at three distinctive levels of increasing conceptual refinement. First, at the level of tacit theology, we intuitively grasp God's trinitarian reality through personal experience, without yet understanding that reality conceptually. Second, at the level of formalised theology, we develop an understanding of the economic trinitarian structure which underlies our personal experience. Finally, at the meta-theological level, we penetrate more deeply into the structure of God's self-revelation in order to develop a refined conceptualisation of the perichoretic relations immanent in God's eternal being. The conceptuality achieved at this meta-theological level constitutes the ultimate grammar and the unitary basis of all theological knowledge; and a concentration of thought at this level offers the promise both of thoroughgoing theological simplification and of a shared ecumenical vision of the essential content of theological knowledge. Central to Torrance's entire model is the homoousial union of Jesus Christ with God: the homoousion enables a movement from a personal encounter with Jesus Christ to a knowledge of the economic Trinity, just as it further enables a movement from the economic to the ontological Trinity. Although our theological thought thus moves towards increasingly refined concepts and relations, it remains always grounded in and coordinated with our personal knowledge of Jesus Christ.

‘Biblical theology’ has long influenced modern theological method, especially Protestant, as both boon and bane. Its role has been seen as either pivotal or problematic in the attempt to construe the Christian Bible as scripture with unified teaching for the contemporary church. The attempt to unfold biblical teaching as having organic unity, related to an internal structure of theological concepts, is frequently perceived as a failure, a has-been that leaves us only with fragmentation – between parts of the Bible, between academy and church, church and world, clergy and laity, and between various theological disciplines. Today a new movement is afoot, often labelled ‘theological interpretation of scripture’. Some of its adherents define this practice as distinct from, even opposed to, biblical theology. Others treat the two practices as virtually coterminous, while perhaps contesting what ‘biblical theology’ is typically taken to be in favour of new theological hermeneutics. Much of the difficulty in defining the relationship, then, stems from lingering debates about what biblical theology can or should be. The rest of the difficulty is perhaps rooted in the dilemma of any interdisciplinary efforts: how to breach unhelpful sections of disciplinary boundaries without redefining territory so nebulously that no one knows where they are.

This paper provides a reading of the late Augustine which supports the hypothesis that, while the early Augustine believed that pride is the basic sin, he changes his views during the Pelagian controversies, and advocates instead (contra Pelagius) the thesis that sin, post-fall, does not take on any one form. Augustine makes some key, though rarely discussed, statements about the nature of sin that, particularly when his views are put into perspective within his larger doctrine of sin, indicate that Augustine does not think all sin can be reduced to pride. Indeed, Augustine's controversial views about original sin incline him to believe that, far from being self-aggrandising, sin often takes the form of (and is often a sign and result of) ignorance and weakness. Thus, a careful reading of Augustine's doctrine of sin shows that he has significant commonalities with his feminist critics, precisely at one of the points on which he has been most criticised.

The relation of science to secularisation is discussed in relation to the sociological frameworks of rationalisation and social differentiation in the context of cross-national and cross-cultural comparison. It is argued that there is no consistent relation between the degree of scientific advance and a reduced profile of religious influence, belief and practice. The crucial factors are sociological and historical, in particular the relation of religion to power and to the role of the intelligentsia in promoting radical social change. It is also argued that mental space constitutes a manifold so that there is in principle no zero-sum relation between science and religion. That there is such a relation derives from the Enlightenment master narrative and it acquires much of its emotional power not from the logical consequences for religion of science as from a putative relation between religion and moral evil and the legitimation of oppressive regimes. However there are indirect consequences of science for religion through the social consequences of technological change. In practice the consequences of historical studies, for example biblical criticism, are probably greater than the consequences of science.

The practices, habits and convictions that once allowed the inhabitants of Christendom to determine what they could reasonably do and say together to foster a just and equitable common life have slowly been displaced over the past few centuries by new configurations which have sought to maintain an inherited faith in an underlying purpose to human life while disassociating themselves from the God who had been the beginning and end of that faith. In the end, however, these new configurations are incapable of sustained deliberations about the basic conditions of our humanity. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology provides important clues into what it takes to make and keep human life human in such a world. The first part of this essay examines Bonhoeffer's conception of the last things, the things before the last, and what binds them together. He argues that the things before the last do not possess a separate, autonomous existence, and that the positing of such a breach has had disastrous effects on human beings and the world they inhabit. The second part looks at Bonhoeffer's account of the divine mandates as the conceptual basis for coping with a world that has taken leave of God. Though this account of the mandates has much to commend it, it is hindered by problematic habits of interpretation that leave it vacillating between incommensurable positions. Bonhoeffer's incomplete insights are thus subsumed within Augustine's understanding of the two orders of human society set forth in City of God.

Despite the renaissance of trinitarian reflection during the last half-century of Christian theology, the doctrine of the immanent Trinity – God's triune being in se as distinct from God's acts or operations ad extra – has suffered significant neglect. Following Karl Rahner's now famous axiom that ‘the “economic” Trinity is the “immanent” Trinity and the “immanent” Trinity is the “economic” Trinity’, contemporary theologians have focused primarily on the economy of salvation as the means by which God's triune being is known. Speculation about the inner life of God, abstracted from God's own self-revelation, has been eschewed for its tendency to turn the immanent Trinity into a rarified, esoteric doctrine with little influence on practical piety. Thus for most contemporary theologians, the neglect of the doctrine of the immanent Trinity is quite benign.

Let me begin by thanking Jeff Hensley for taking the time and expending the effort to respond to my book on the Trinity. Naturally I appreciate his positive assessments offered in the opening pages of his paper. As any reader might expect, I was less enthusiastic about his Rahnerian proposals, together with his other two critical questions. As Hensley mentioned, it might very well be helpful to discuss these issues in greater depth so that we might come to a deeper appreciation of how and why a properly conceived doctrine of the immanent Trinity might help us recognise more clearly both divine and human freedom at a time when God's freedom for us so frequently takes the form of a purely economic trinitarianism which leaves no room for God really to act for us within history in his own distinctive way. And it is worth noting, of course, that the purpose of my book was not to discuss any and every possible implication of a properly conceived doctrine of the immanent Trinity; my purpose, rather, was to clear the ground of misconceptions of divine freedom, in order that any theology claiming to be based on sound trinitarian doctrine could be seen to be grounded in God rather than being the product of human projection. My book, then, was not a book about social justice, which certainly is a worthy topic of discussion in its own right, even though it seems Hensley would have preferred such a work.