Scholarship on Karl Barth's engagement with so-called ‘personalist philosophy’ has claimed that the following three sources exerted a significant influence on this aspect of Barth's thought: (1) the founders of an interdisciplinary society known as the ‘Patmos Circle’; (2) Barth's fellow dialectical theologians, Emil Brunner and Friedrich Gogarten; (3) Martin Buber, in particular his classic work, I and Thou. In spite of these assessments, however, I argue that Barth's initial stance towards personalism is actually best characterised as one of resistance and criticism. Specifically, I claim here that Barth undertakes a highly critical appropriation of personalism in which the categories of encounter (Begegnung), co-humanity (Mitmenschlichkeit) and the I–Thou relation (Ich–Du-Beziehung) are deeply criticised and recast in an explicitly theological – not philosophical – mould. When Barth does use personalist categories in his own theological anthropology – particularly in the Church Dogmatics, III/2 – he roots his notion of the human being as a ‘being in encounter’ in his christology and trinitarian theology, comprehensively restructuring personalist categories by placing them on a new foundation.

After many years of dormancy, the concept of kenosis has recently received widespread and lively attention from contemporary theologians. Yet, in the midst of this revival, there has emerged a steady stream of critique of the concept because of its apparently adverse doctrinal and ethical implications. Less remarked upon, but equally important, is an analogous and long-standing debate about the nature and pervasiveness that we should assign to humility in Christian teaching. Indeed, the interweaving of humility and kenosis in Philippians 2 arguably requires that the two rise or fall together; even if the concepts are not semantically equal, their meanings and their theological implications overlap in manifold and important ways. This article surveys the current state of the question, and argues that the works of Augustine yield valuable insights regarding the most knotty problems emerging from contemporary disputes about kenosis and humility. In the first part, I outline several recent perspectives on kenosis, aiming to bring clarity to the discussion. Along the way, I note the similarities between kenosis and humility as they function theologically, and I offer a summary of the qualities that a theologically sound account of those concepts would need to exhibit in order to address the valid concerns which have so far been raised. In the second part, I propose that closer attention to the theme of humility (both human and divine) may shed new and important light on kenosis debates, suggesting that Augustine is the ideal theologian on whom to test this theory. To this end, I explore Augustine's explanations of christology and language, suggesting that these are the loci through which Augustine's perspective on humility – both divine and human – is best expressed. In both cases, Augustinian humility strikes a noteworthy balance between restraint and empowerment and offers an instructive vantage point from which to address the complex and lively discussions about kenosis. While the African bishop may not offer a decisive resolution of these matters, his approach to them does hold significant promise for a depiction of humility and kenosis which incorporates the valid concerns of critics while simultaneously preserving an unavoidable and central aspect of Christian doctrine.

Calvin has been traditionally regarded as having consistently interpreted scripture according to its literal sense and having also consistently repudiated non-literal modes of interpretation. This view has been recently challenged, however, by Gary Hansen, who claims that ‘Calvin's theological rules or priorities of interpretation allow for and even require non-literal interpretation of biblical texts’. The issue turns, however, on what interpreting scripture according to the literal sense actually meant for Calvin. Hans Frei claimed Calvin as a champion of the literal sense because he affirmed the primacy of the literal sense with respect to scripture's witness to the identity of Jesus Christ – that is, following the longstanding consensus of the church, Calvin proceeded on the basis that what the scriptures are literally about is not a concept or timeless truth, but the suffering, obedience, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

The fact that other so-called ‘non-literal’ modes of interpretation such as allegory appear in Calvin's exegesis should not necessarily, however, be seen as a betrayal of Calvin's commitment to literal interpretation, but rather as evidence of the elasticity of the concept. For Calvin, metaphorical or allegorical interpretations may, to a limited degree, be ascribed to the literal sense, but they must not offend, subvert, or be given independent or equivalent status alongside the literal rendering of the basic story about Jesus depicted in the Gospel narratives.

This essay demonstrates that the literal sense in Calvin is a much more supple notion than many have assumed, especially when one considers his Harmony of the Gospels. Contrary to modernist assumptions and in contrast to a strict, direct identification between signa and res, a tight, irresidual, one-to-one correspondence between what is written and what is written about, Calvin's approach to literal interpretation allows for what Frei called ‘breathing space’.

Alasdair Maclntyre has argued that, despite its ‘rhetoric of consensus’, modern society is irreducibly pluralist since it lacks the basic condition necessary for securing agreement on the truth of competing convictions — namely, some background consensus as to the nature and procedures of rationality. Even if the possibilities of affirming truth in the public sphere may not be quite as grim as Maclntyre makes out (and it seems to me to universalize an apt description of American public society), we are nonetheless still left with disconcerting questions as to the nature of public truth. Has public discourse been relativised into competing truth-claims? Is it possible to speak now of a common public world, of society, at all? Or of rationality? Indeed, if truth cannot be made the subject of public agreement, can we really speak any more of truth at all? How, in this situation, can Christianity claim to have an absolute and universal Truth? And how might it gain a public hearing for its truth?

The doctrine of predestination is commonly regarded as the normative dogma of Reformed or Calvinistic theology —but the contemporary demand for Christocentric theology is held to prove that this norm is not fully Christian. The impressive critical analysis of Karl Barth, for example, shows the Reformed doctrine of predestination, especially as it is worked out in the centuries following the Reformation, to be reduced to ‘double predestination’. This unscriptural teaching, Barth argues, derives from the misplacement of the doctrine in Reformed theology, since its proper position (Stellung) in dogmatics is in the context of Christology, and ‘not directly following the doctrine of God’.

Many traditional Protestants are rereading their heritages through the Church catholic. That includes reading them through Eastern Orthodoxy. To bring forward the best of any particular Christian heritage for the whole Church or to enrich such a heritage by drawing from the whole Church, we need to be keen students of church history, scripture and contemporary situations. Every effort to restate the gospel for the next century must recognize that people see through their participation in communities. All Christians worship together in some kinds of congregations. We may try to get distance from what we believe and how we act, but if we move outside the circle, we take up a stance within another community. As Christians we read and understand from within the Church.

The doctrine of the ‘double Procession’ of the Holy Spirit, in spite of all the controversy it has caused in the past, is today probably regarded as one of the more trivial elements in our Western theological heritage—slightly more important perhaps than the conclusions reached in the medieval arguments over the number of angels who could stand on the point of a pin, but still of no great intrinsic significance. Yet this doctrine was a major factor in the schism between East and West, and it has since then remained an obstacle to all attempts to reconcile the Eastern and Western Churches. Western theologians have clearly felt that something of importance was being affirmed in the ‘Filioque’ clause in the Nicene Creed, while their Eastern counterparts have been equally convinced that what the ‘Filioque’ affirms is wrong, even blasphemous. The questions of what it is that the ‘Filioque’ is intended to affirm, and of whether what is affirmed should be affirmed, are therefore of some importance, particularly in an age of ecumenical dialogue. On these grounds alone, the doctrine demands to be seriously examined: we are not entitled simply to ignore it, or—what is worse—to cast around for superficial reasons for getting rid of it in the hope of thereby reaching an agreement with Eastern theologians.

In his Cur Deus Homo Anselm of Canterbury immediately tells the reader the question he is seeking to answer. The first chapter of the first book is entitled: ‘The central problem governing the entire work’ [Questio de qua totum opuspendet 47.4 (49)]. In the first speech of this chapter, the problem is succinctly stated:

I mean the following problem: For what reason and on the basis of what necessity [qua scilicet ratione vel necessitate] did God become a man and by His death restore life to the world (as we believe and confess), seeing that He could have accomplished this restoration either by means of some other persons (whether angelic or human) or else by merely willing it? [48.2–5 (49)].

During his lifetime Kant offered a number of versions of his moral proof of the existence of God, but the classic statement of his argument is normally taken to be that found in the Dialectic of the Critique of Practical Reason. It is to this argument that the phrase ‘Kant's moral proof’ is normally taken to refer.

The Confession of 1967 in the United Presbyterian Church marks the official end of the four-century Presbyterian venture into covenant theology. Now past that milestone, perhaps we have reached a vantage point where we can turn dispassionately to survey that curious but historic route. Seen from its concept of responsible man, we here argue, that route has been a prolonged detour away from the insights of the Reformers.

It is already possible to consider Barth's work as another turning point in the historical background of the present theological situation. But it is also still necessary for contemporary theology to come to terms with Barth. This is especially true of his treatment of the doctrine of universal salvation—apokatastasis. Modern Protestant theology has defined three basic answers to the question of the particularity of election: double predestination, Arminianism, and universalism. The question is whether Barth simply presents a strong and moving case for universalism, or whether he actually breaks out of these options and offers a new possibility for understanding the problem and therefore new possibilities for its resolution.

I'm grateful for your open letter, your generous comments and the critical questions you raise. Two general concerns seem to emerge, and it is to these that I shall respond here. The first is that I am too dismissive of the real value of the historical-critical method. Rightly objecting to its ‘hegemony’ in modern biblical studies, I'm in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The second is that the theological orientation that I bring to biblical interpretation is too ‘cerebral’: this makes me insufficiently attentive to the provisionality of our knowledge of God and to the particularities of a place called ‘the real world’.

I was asked to write a review of your book but have decided to make this into an open letter. I have done so for two reasons. Firstly, there is something rather artificial in writing a review of a book by a person I feel is more than a mere acquaintance and whose work I have read and company I have enjoyed over the years. It is rather deceitful to give the readers of this piece the impression that it is an entirely dispassionate account from someone who is in no way involved with the writer of the book and is thereby unconstrained by the demands of friendship. That will not mean diat I will draw back from reflecting on the things on which I find myself parting company with you but does make clear the context in which I do so. Secondly, in a way, which I hope is consistent with a theme of your book, I want to engage in dialogue rather than the monologue which is the typical genre of the review and hope that you will respond in that precise, systematic way in which you respond so carefully to questions and comments in discussion.

The subject of this paper abounds in historical problems of an extremely intricate nature—some of which arise through the theologically close association of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity; but others of which are rooted in a number of more particular controversies in which the Greek Fathers were involved concerning the Holy Spirit. Among the latter are to be found such questions as the precise identification of the persons against whom many of the Greek writings were directed, for example, who the ‘Tropici’ were, with whom Athanasius deals in the Letters to Serapion, whether ‘Pneumatomachi’ was a generic term used to describe a variety of different heretics, or a proper name referring to an identifiable group existing in one particular place, whether Macedonius was a Macedonian, and so on. Included in the intricate historical problems raised in our period, there is that of accounting for the revival towards the middle of the fourth century of an interest in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit— whether it was due to the developing influence of asceticism, or simply a reaction to a latter-day Arianism working itself out belatedly in heresy concerning the Holy Spirit, or more subtly, whether it was due to a necessity felt by the Church to give substance to the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit, now that the doctrine of the Trinity had replaced the doctrine of the Logos as her central and dominant doctrine.

In this lecture I have three aims in view. First I shall review some of the main points of the theological theory of virtue in its classic medieval form, and consider how the same theme has been taken up in protestant ethics, sometimes in a constructive, sometimes in a negative tone. Second I wish to present my grounds for believing that arguments put forward in protestant ethics against any theory of virtue are insufficient, and to indicate why I hold that protestant ethics too needs an elaborated theory of virtue. Then finally I shall try, at least sketchily, to indicate the direction in which I feel such a theory could be developed.

Formation constitutes the key link between reception theory, Jauss and scripture. The Bible shapes readers by showing them what lies beyond the self. Hans Robert Jauss (1921–97) remains the effective founder of reception theory or reception history. He was a literary theorist, who specialised in romance literature. Following Hans-Georg Gadamer, he insisted that texts carry ‘a still unfinished meaning’, and focused on their historical influence. The exposition of how communities or thinkers have received texts includes de-familiarisation; sometimes the ‘completion’ of meaning, as in much reader-response theory; and instances of when a text ‘satisfies, surpasses, disappoints, or refutes the expectations’ of readers. Reception theory can often trace continuity in the reception of texts, as well as disjunctions, reversals and surprises. It offers a more disciplined approach to scripture than most reader-response theories. Clearly horizons of expectation play a major role in the interpretation of biblical texts. I suggest six direct parallels with biblical interpretation. (1) Like Francis Watson and others, Jauss rejects any value-neutral objectivism in interpretation. (2) The readers’ horizon of expectation derives partly from earlier readings of the text. (3) Horizons can move and change, and thus transform readers as these change. (4) Biblical genres display all of Jauss’ accounts of the responses of readers. For example, parables of reversal may surpass what the Christian believer expects, or disappoint the unbeliever. (5) Like Gadamer, Jauss emphasises the importance of formulating constructive questions in approaching texts. (6) Jauss’ ‘levels of reading’ correspond closely with Bakhtin's notion of polyphony. I compare Ormond Rush's work on reception and otherness, and Luther's insistence that the Bible often confronts us as our adversary to judge and to transform us. Finally, we illustrate the history of reception from Ulrich Luz on Matthew, from Childs on Exodus, and from my commentaries on 1 Corinthians and 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

The category of ‘gift’ has become one of the central constellating themes for discussion in recent post-modern theology. This paper (originally given as an address at the AAR meeting in Atlanta, November 2003) first sets out to explain how and why the theme has come to exercise such fascination since the original appearance of Marcel Mauss's anthropological monograph, The Gift, in 1924. It goes on to provide a critical comparison of the recent treatments of ‘gift’ in the systematic work of John Milbank and Kathryn Tanner. Arguing that questions of economic justice, inner-trinitarian relations and human gender hang together in Milbank's and Tanner's rather different approaches to ‘gift’, a critique of both authors is then essayed from this systematic perspective. Whilst Milbank's attempt to ‘ground’ the gender binary in the Trinity causes question-begging claims about gendered ‘difference’ in God, and a texture of seeming assent to economic inequalities, Tanner's obliteration of any sense of reciprocity or exchange within the divine economy veers in the opposite direction, seeking merely the suppression of difference. Returning finally to the New Testament, to the Cappadocian insistence on radical donation to the poor, and to Augustine's insistence that donum applies specifically to the Spirit, it is concluded that the patristic heritage presents a more demanding and subtle account of divine ‘gift’ and human response than is found in either of these contemporary authors, for all their insight and flair.

We are accustomed to think of the natural law as being more or less equivalent to a universal morality, whether this is seen as grounded in nature in some general sense, or more specifically in the deliverances of practical reason. There is another way of approaching the natural law, however, according to which it is identified with a specific moral tradition which cannot be adequately understood apart from some account of its historical development and social location. This paper defends the latter approach. It proceeds by way of an examination of one phase in the development of the natural law tradition, namely, its formulation as a systematic moral theology in the early scholastic period. Scholastic reflection on the natural law follows the pattern of a tradition-based form of moral reasoning, and even though the scholastics did not understand their moral reflections specifically in those terms, their concept of the natural law is congruent with a modern understanding of it as a tradition of inquiry.

In remarks offered in 2006 at a conference at Princeton Theological Seminary, inaugurating a National Religious Campaign against Torture, the legal philosopher Jeremy Waldron observed that Christian leaders have contributed relatively little to the recent debate over the use of torture. This is regrettable, in his view, because secular morality does not have resources sufficient to address the question of torture, and a Christian perspective emphasising the absoluteness and divine character of the relevant moral norms would represent an important contribution to our reflections on this question. This article offers a response to Waldron's timely and important challenge, setting forth a Christian theological argument that the practice of torture is categorically prohibited. The basis for this prohibition does not rest, however, on the absoluteness of moral norms as such – rather, it rests on the distinctive character of torture as an egregious assault on the human person regarded as image of God.

Karl Barth's interpreters often characterize him as a ‘christocentric’ theologian. This term, however, is subject to a variety of interpretations, ranging from the totalitarian and isolationist critiques of the ‘christomonist’ objection to the indeterminate and decentred approaches offered by various postmodern readings. The disparity between these two approaches suggests a level of ambiguity in the term that hinders its usefulness unless carefully qualified. Indeed, ‘centric’ terminology itself remains rather ambiguous until the substantive formal and material considerations that lie behind any given form of centricity are addressed. This article proposes to alleviate the ambiguity that has thus clouded the use of ‘christocentric’ as a description of Barth's theology by offering five formal and material qualifications; Barth's christocentricity must be understood in terms of (1) a veiling and unveiling of knowledge in Christ, (2) a methodological orientation, (3) a particular christology, (4) a trinitarian focus and (5) an affirmation of creaturely reality. Using these criteria, the article also argues that both the christomonistic and postmodern interpretations break down at certain points because they fail to appreciate fully these qualifications and thus the particular nature of Barth's christocentrism.