In two recent issues of the Scottish Journal of Theology Professor D. L. Deegan wrote papers dealing with Ritschl, the first being ‘Albrecht Ritschl on the Historical Jesus’, and the second ‘The Ritschlian School, the Essence of Christianity and Karl Barth’ Much of the second paper was devoted to a discussion of the relationship between Albrecht Ritschl and Friedrich Schleiermacher. In addition, the first paper contained much material which invites comparison of these two men. But while Dr Deegan is correct in assuming that an investigation of this relationship will contribute to an understanding of Ritschl, his remarks on the subject, it seems to me, are not completely accurate. It is the purpose of this paper, therefore, to make another investigation of that relationship.

For the Christian faith, the Old Testament is no longer revelation as it had been, and still is, for the Jews. For everyone who stands in the Church, the history is no longer a live issue … the history of Israel is not the history of revelation for us.

So Bultmann writes in an article on the significance of the Old Testament for Christian faith, and on the basis of this we might be inclined to dismiss the whole discussion of Bultmann and the Old Testament, and to add ‘Marcionism’ to the list of heresies already attributed to him. But this would be too hasty, for over against the above quotation we can cite another:For anyone who has done even a minimum of historical reflection, it is senseless to try to hold on to Christianity and at the same time to discard the Old Testament. One should realise then that the Christianity he hopes to preserve is no longer Christianity. Either–or; both, or none at all.

The notion of doctrinal development has become increasingly popular with Roman Catholic theologians in recent years, and has received official recognition in the decree of the second Vatican Council on Revelation. ‘There is’, the document maintains, a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. … As the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves forward toward the fulness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfilment in her. But, if dogma develops, how can revelation be constant? This, starkly put, is the dilemma to which many Roman Catholic theologians have directed their attention in recent years. If there has been a growth in dogma, must we not say that the contemporary Church is in a better position than the early Church? How can we deny that the Church today, in which dogmas have been better understood and more fully expressed, has an advantage over the primitive Christian community? As one nineteenth-century theologian observed, If there be a difference of any sort between Augustine and Liguori (and if there be not, what becomes of Mr Newman's theory?) it must manifestly be incalculably to the advantage of the latter … to compare the catachetical schools of Alexandria, Antioch, Gaesarea, with our Irish Maynooth, would palpably be an insult to the latter, too gross even for the licensed bitterness of religious controversy.

The Church in all it forms and divisions has always had to live in the world; this is its necessary and dangerous situation; it has been placed in the world to witness to the world and to win the world; in so doing, it has often had to face the opposition of the world, but even more often the world has found it more effective to infiltrate into the Church and to percolate the Church by its own standards, and the result has been particularly corrosive, for the Church not only becomes infected by the world and its ways, but it also seeks to cast the mantle of piety and rectitude over its defections.

Every attempted statement of Christian doctrine is inevitably coloured by the circumstances in which it was drawn up, and by the motives which prompted its preparation.It is evident from the New Testament documents that even in the earliest period of Christian history, some kind of statement of belief was essential for the instruction of catechumens. ‘Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed; and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost’ (i Cor. 12.3). ‘For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures’ (ibid., 15.3).

The commentaries make heavy weather of this section. The reader who comes upon the usual translation with delight, as he recognises a vivid statement of God's forgiveness, is correspondingly mortified by scholarly disagreement about its interpretation.

Of the many efforts of the socio-religious school to describe and direct the course of American Protestantism, Professor Harvey Cox's The Secular City1 is by far the most impressive. The title itself with the explanatory sub-title: ‘A celebration of its liberties and an invitation to its discipline’, announces the end of the self-flagellation period we have been enjoying for far too long. Had he performed no other service we should still be most grateful to Professor Cox for his affirmation of our generation, his willing walk into the twentieth century, and his insistence that the Church of Jesus Christ join the present human race. At last a theologian has defended the (telephone) ‘switchboard’ and the (motorway) ‘cloverleaf’ and has exposed the unhealthy and hypocritical business of attacking the only kind of life any of us really intends to live.

The contribution of J. N. Farquhar to Protestant missionary thought is the central theme of a recent important book. Not to Destroy but to Fulfil is, however, much more than a study of one of the most distinguished apologists and students of comparative religion in the early twentieth century. It is a vigorous and thorough investigation of the missionary encounter of Protestant Christianity with Hinduism from 1858 to 1914, in which the theological dialogue in its various phases is set before the reader. The book will have a further special appeal to Scotsmen, for whom many of the names cited will evoke personal memories from the past.