Recent events in Sudan reiterate the fact that genocide is still a real threat in the modern age, despite important developments in international law. The aim of this article is to discuss ways in which churches can help to prevent genocide. The central theoretical argument is that military and legal preventative measures cannot address the underlying causes of genocide. Social factors that usually contribute to genocidal behaviour are difficult living conditions, nationalism, ethnocentrism, collectivism, authoritarianism, a culture of impunity and the distortion of morality. The most effective way to prevent genocide is to change the moral fabric of genocidal societies by fostering caring societies that emphasize individual moral responsibility, respect for life and the universal dignity of all human beings. As a moral institution the church can play an important role in changing the moral habits of societies. Churches must not compromise themselves by seeking political power or serving secular ideologies. The Bible must be interpreted in a responsible way that does justice to the message of the gospel. Churches must also foster individual moral responsibility; proclaim reconciliation, justice and peace; try to be active bystanders in conflict situations; address difficult life conditions and promote respect for life.

Theological discussions of perichoretic trinitarianism typically turn to John's Gospel for supporting evidence despite the fact that John nowhere describes the Spirit's so-called ‘interpenetration’ (A is in B and B is in A) of either the Father or the Son. In this article, all gospel references pertinent to questions of perichoretic union among Father, Son and Spirit are examined, demonstrating that the Johannine Spirit does not share in such mutual indwelling. Rather, the Spirit is inextricably linked to Johannine ecclesiology, performing the work of regeneration and illumination as Christ's earthly alter ego. John's pneumatology is thoroughly functional and salvation-historical, offering no insight into the Spirit's eternal or essential place within the Godhead. However, John's Gospel does describe a third member of a perichoretic trinity: the disciples. As surprising as it may initially appear, believers are said to mutually indwell the Son, and to indwell the Father through the Son, thereby occupying the very position never posited of the Holy Spirit. Although John does not describe a perichoretic trinity, he does depict a perichoretic soteriology reminiscent of the Orthodox doctrine of deification. Such divine union is at the heart of Johannine salvation. It remains a crowning achievement of Johannine theology that Jesus is portrayed as the one sent from the Father to lead his people into a provocative, new terrain where the language of perichoretic union with the divine is more apropos of the believer than of the Spirit.

The study of vernacular religion is often confined to the discussion of ‘folk religion’ in a rather derogatory and sterile manner. An attempt is made to correct this by describing seven ideal-typical ways in which vernacular religion can be studied and defined. The seven types or discussions are: 1) whether vernacular religion represents elitist or popular religious practices and the nature of New Religious Movements; 2) the study of cults and New Religious Movements; 3) vernacular religion as folklore; 4) Bellah's concept of ‘civil religion’ and its application to modern British culture particularly as it relates to public expressions of mourning; 5) ecclesiastical historians' use of the concept in historical studies; 6) Küng's use of paradigm as formulated by Kuhn, discussed in the context of two examples of modern usage of the term in vernacular religion; and 7) vernacular religion and modern hermeneutics as preachers attempt to relate local practices to their congregations. In order to use any combinations of these constructions in a positive manner, it is suggested that we develop a diagnostic technique which recognises that people have an inherent desire to discover ways of relating everyday experience to their religious expression. Such a method is developed using both Murphy and Tracy to show how attention may be paid to vernacular religion without succumbing to the trap of relativism.

Francis Watson has written a stunning book, bringing to us a remarkable confluence of wissenschaftlich control and interpretive imagination, a combination vigorously to be applauded. There are stretches of genuine exegesis in which ancient texts are read patiently and faithfully, whether drawn from Genesis or Ben Sira or 2 Corinthians. These carefully crafted exegetical probes are accompanied by theological analysis in which Watson listens with an imaginative ear, exploring, for example, the relations between scriptural interpretation and issues of divine and human agency. And, as though these two factors were not enough, far from being a shrinking violet, Watson has drawn from the exegesis and the imaginative listening an extraordinarily bold thesis, to which I will return. As detail is not here sacrificed to synthesis, so synthesis is not a substitute for analytical detail.

Paul's ‘view of the law’ is his reading of a text – the composite text comprising the five books from Genesis to Deuteronomy. His ‘theology of justification’ is a scriptural hermeneutic, antithetical in form and itself constructed from selected scriptural texts, which aims to show how the true meaning of scripture is its testimony to God's unconditional saving action, now realized in Christ. The dynamic of Pauline scriptural interpretation comes most clearly to light within the context of other contemporary readings of the same scriptural texts. Through their common concern with the interpretation of scripture, Pauline and non-Pauline writings constitute a single intertextual field, rather than indicating an immediate ‘parting of the ways’ between two monolithic entities labelled ‘Christianity’ and ‘Judaism’.

It is an honour and a pleasure to respond to the comments of J. Louis Martyn and Troels Engberg-Pedersen. Both of them have read my book with care, and have presented many of its central emphases with clarity and insight. The questions they raise are pertinent ones – as one would expect from the authors of two of the most interesting and innovative works of Pauline scholarship to have been published in recent years. I refer to Martyn's commentary on Galatians and Engberg-Pedersen's Paul and the Stoics – both, in their different ways, the kind of ground-breaking work that keeps the field of Pauline studies from succumbing entirely to an endless rehearsal of already familiar positions. I also note in passing that my two reviewers probably differ more sharply from each other than either of them does from me. It is not easy to harmonise Martyn's apocalyptic Paul with Engberg-Pedersen's Stoic one, and the difference tends to focus on issues of divine agency which recur in their responses to my own work.