The biblical narrative describes the progressive course of creation ending with man. Man appears as its culmination, as a centre on which all the planes of the world converge, a ‘microcosm’. But, ‘created in the image of God’ he is also, according to the Fathers, a ‘microtheos’. This central position of man explains the normative subjection of nature to man as to its cosmic logos, as to one of its multiple hypostases. Man ‘cultivates’ nature, gives a name to creatures and things, ‘humanises’ them. His direct relation with the Creator is constitutive of his being.

The thesis of the present essay is that the Westminster Confession represents a synthesis, unique among documents of confessional status and authority, of two intellectual and spiritual motifs which, at first look, might appear to represent almost opposite extremes: thoroughgoing philosophical rigor and radical biblicism. I shall undertake to explicate this thesis by an analysis of three areas of doctrine: those concerning God (including Christology), the so-called ‘natural man’, and revelation and authority. Under each of these three headings I shall present certain relevant material from the XXXIX Articles as a background ‘foil’ against which the contrasts as well as the similarities of the Westminster Confession may perhaps stand out more clearly.

In his own time and thereafter Albrecht Ritschl's criticism of metaphysics was much debated. He insisted that his basic criticism was directed against those varieties of metaphysics which adopted a priori and deductive methods as a basis for our inquiry concerning God and His relationship to the world. Yet he recognised the significance of philosophy in his effort to vindicate an appropriate theological method. In this essay we shall show that his method of attempting to elucidate the characteristic features of theological discourse is primarily that of a critical empiricism which recognises the reality and activities of the Christian community as the proper locus for identifying the area within which theological discourse is meaningfully carried on.

This paper seeks only to attempt a clarification of Bultmann's thought and to suggest several criticisms in the interests of clarification. A recent commentator on Bultmann says, ‘Although Bultmann's thought is more widely understood now than it was prior to the debate, misunderstandings of it still abound even in substantial analyses of his work.’

The Psalter is in some sense a microcosm of the whole Old Testament. On many topics the ideas found in the whole are expressed in condensed fashion in the part. So it is with the topic of divine forgiveness. Much, though not all, of what other Old Testament writers have to say on this subject is said also by the psalmists.

The appropriateness of an article of this kind in a theological journal, even in a journal which recognises the importance of good religious education and sees it as a sphere of theological concern, may be open to question. For methods may seem to be of limited interest and importance to the educator himself, and certainly to be excluded by their very nature from any dialogue into which the theologian might wish to enter with him. A division has, in fact, been made between ‘method’ and ‘content’, as if these two existed in complete detachment from each other. ‘Content’ is regarded as the more important and of proper theological interest, inasmuch as the framing of catechisms or the drawing up of catechetical programmes or church curricula involves right understanding and right statement of the Bible witness. ‘Method’, if thought of at all, is regarded as neutral and unworthy of serious theological consideration. Such positions at least deserve re-examining, and their re-examination may help to justify this theme in this journal.