In The New Testament the word ‘Law’ is largely equivalent to what we today call the Old Testament. But there are exceptions to this use of the term. The Law sometimes designates the Pentateuch. This is the case in the liturgy of the Synagogue. But for the Jews the term ‘Law’ also could include their entire religious tradition. It governed the daily life of the people—not only in matters of what we call worship, morality, ethics or religion but also in matters legal, social and political. Additions to the commandments found in the Pentateuch and the commentaries that had been added and still were being added, were not thought to be something foreign to the law. It was thought that they simply applied what the Scriptures said. The phrase ‘it has been said to them of old times’ is often understood as being merely a formula of disapproval, since in the Gospels Jesus criticised these rules. But their original purpose was to continue the tradition of which the Scriptures were the core. Their contemporary significance was manifest in the constantly renewed discussion of how they were to be interpreted and applied. For this purpose casuistic rules were needed, that took into account all the concrete situations of life. Thus a lawabiding Jew could always know how he had to act.

In his debate with the Jesuit, James Tyrie, John Knox claimed that the controversy of the Reformers with the Roman Church was the same as that of St. Paul with the Judaisers of Galatia, in which the Gospel of Grace was at stake, ‘for it concerneth the chief head of justification’, as Knox expressed it. 2 On the other hand, when we examine the writings of Knox we do not find that ‘justification’, as a term at any rate, plays a prominent part, while the expression ‘justification by faith’ is hardly ever found—for when he did speak of justification he preferred to be more concrete and to use an expression like ‘justification through the blood of Christ’.

The problems of Christian origins are many and varied. Even an incomplete bibliography of works devoted to the beginnings of Christianity, as M. Goguel remarked, would fill a volume of over five hundred pages. But the central and crucial problem, and certainly one of the liveliest issues in theology in our time, is the question of the relation of the historical Jesus to the Christ of the Church's faith. The twentieth century has been marked by a great shift away from the historical Jesus as the centre of theological interest to the Kerygma, the Church's proclamation, the Christ of faith, to Gemeindetheologie and existentialistische Exegese.

Luther's conception of reason and revelation has not yet found the attention which it deserves. Though some new studies have tried to interpret his view of human reason, neither his conception of revelation as such nor his definition of the relation between reason and revelation has been the object of special research. This fact which at first sight seems rather surprising is not accidental. Rather it is the consequence of a very important development which had taken place already in the sixteenth century. It was primarily Melanchthon and not Luther whom Protestant theologians in the post-Reformation era followed. While Luther was the reformer of the Church, Melanchthon was the reformer of the German universities and the whole education system. With respect to their theology, Luther and Melanchchon differed considerably as is well known. The ideas by which Melanchthon reformed the German universities were, roughly speaking, a combination of Protestant theology as regards the doctrine of justification and a more or less unaltered Aristotelian system as regards the relation between theology and philosophy. The Melanchthonian reform gave the German universities their shape for centuries till the new ideas of rationalism and of modern science won the universities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and gave them a new form. But it seems that Melanchthon's conception of reason and revelation is even today of great significance and influence. It has at least determined most modern studies which have dealt with Luther's conception of reason and revelation.

The ‘philosophical theology’ of Paul Tillich is one of the most remarkable features of today's theological landscape, and obviously impressive on any estimate. Yet it has given rise to a great deal of puzzlement. This is not simply because the tightly systematised nature of Tillich's thought has led him to wrap up his ideas in a special terminology. Although the volume of his work in English is now reasonably large, so that his technical vocabulary is no longer unfamiliar, there still seems to be considerable uncertainty about just what is involved in the synthesis between philosophy and religion upon which his theology is based.

‘What sort of meaning does Christian discourse have?’ The question seems misleading, for within Christian discourse there are many different kinds of meaning—moral, historical, symbolic, exclamatory, etc. Modern philosophers recognise this, but they are mainly interested in the sort of meaning which is characteristic or distinctive of a realm of discourse, comparing and contrasting this with other uses of language. In this essay, we shall consider the varied analyses given by three contemporary philosophers. Each philosopher, in his analysis of Christian discourse, suggests a different nonreligious use of language as the illuminating logical model. Naturally, there is more in each book than the outline and application of the logical model, but I shall concentrate on this.

In 1938 and 1939 Karl Barth delivered the Gifford Lectures in the University of Aberdeen. According to the will of the founder, these lectures were established for the ‘promoting, advancing, teaching and diffusing’ of the study of natural theology. But Barth was, as he made plain on receiving the invitation, ‘an avowed opponent of all natural theology’. Three years earlier he had fiercely attacked his former theological associate, Emil Brunner, on this same question. He had then said of natural theology: ‘It has to be rejected a limine—right at the outset. Only the theology and the church of the antichrist can profit from it. The Evangelical Church and Evangelical theology would only sicken and die of it.’ When therefore he was asked to give the Gifford Lectures he was in a quandary. The way in which he resolved the problem has usually been treated, half-humorously, as an ingenious piece of theological juggling. In fact, however, when we consider it in relation to his attitude to natural theology in his controversy with Brunner and to his treatment of it in Church Dogmatics II.I, on the knowledge of God, and indeed against the background of the whole of his life's work, we can see that in his solution of this difficulty there is simply the same attitude sharpened to a clear-cut issue. What he did was to jettison natural theology completely and give an exposition of its opposite, the theology of revelation.

Though at first it seems quite simple and straightforward and though he devotes hundreds of pages to its exposition, Calvin's idea of law is subtle and elusive. He, like Luther, stresses the Protestant principle of justification by grace alone, but not a few interpreters have seen him as the severest of legalists who finally relegates grace to the position of being merely a means to works righteousness. It is undoubtedly pretentious to try to put law in its ‘true’ meaning and context in Calvin's schema. This paper must therefore be regarded as simply an exploratory effort in that direction.

Since Calvin was himself a competent student of the secular law, a fruitful method for investigating this problem would be to inquire into the character of the legal studies that formed such an important part of his background. How did he regard the Roman Law which had been shaping European civilisation for several centuries? To what extent was he influenced by Greek versions of the Natural Law which had been so important to Thomas Aquinas? In the English language we make the word ‘law’ (like ‘love’) carry, somewhat promiscuously, nuances of meaning that the more analytical languages of Latin and Greek distinguish. The tools of Philology and History may be necessary for a definitive examination of Calvin's concept of law.

It is necessary at the outset to notice the passages in the Scots Confession which refer to the Atonement of Christ.

The Samaritan doctrine of Moses is the second tenet of the Samaritan Creed. Before realising the centrality of this tenet, it is necessary to relate it to the others. Then it will become clear that the second tenet is the one which, as it were, binds all the tenets of the Creed together.

The Creed is a statement of fundamental belief, consisting of five tenets with the addition of a sixth which may be regarded as later or merely supplementary. The first is belief in the Oneness of God; this belief the Samaritans hold no less strictly than Jews, Christians or Muslims, but the emphasis is on the Oneness, not the Unity of God. The unpartnered, unassisted, un-seconded God is sole Creator, ruler of men's spirits in a royal sense, king of rulers in an historical sense, and, as the Muslims too put it, ‘Lord of this world and the next’. The One God chose to express His relationship to His creatures preeminently through Moses, and it is solely in terms of Moses that God's will and purposes for mankind are to be interpreted.

The discovery of the Qumran texts, as is well known, has produced a whole spate of books and articles many of which deal inter alia with affinities between the doctrinal formularies of the sect and the NT and between its organisation and practice and that of the Apostolic Church in Jerusalem. However, in all this literature, which has now reached unmanageable proportions, it would seem that insufficient attention has been paid to affinities between the texts and Christian post- Apostolic literature. The purpose of this article is to examine the theology of the epistolary tract known as the Epistle of Barnabas in the light of the Qumran scrolls.

During the history of the Lutheran Church the doctrine ofjustification has been spoken of commonly and rather loosely as the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae. This was certainly the conviction of Luther, as many of his statements testify.The purpose of this study is to examine the teaching of JohnAndrew Quenstedt, the most prominent and able representative of the later seventeenth-century Lutheran orthodoxy, on this doctrine and to learn how closely the dogmatics of his time approximates the emphasis and terminology of Luther. Quenstedt is the ‘book-keeper’—one might say the Aquinas—of Lutheran scholasticism, and he quite accurately sums up the theology of the entire century. It might be said by way of introduction that modern Lutheranism owes much to the dogmaticiansof the age of orthodoxy for the manner in which it deals with this doctrine; and for this reason I feel justified inpresenting an article of this nature.1 I propose merely to summarise Quenstedt's treatment of the doctrine of justification, and to offer comments when I deem them necessary.2 I believe that the reader will find that Quenstedt's presentation is quite well balanced and that it gives the impression of being consistently drawn from Scripture. At least it is obvious that this is Quenstedt's persuasion as he develops the doctrine.

From 1857, when Dr Robert Lee introduced his ‘innovations’ in public worship at Greyfriars' Church, Edinburgh, until the reunion of the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church of Scotland in 1929, there was a relationship, sometimes direct and conscious, sometimes indirect and unconscious, between the revival of public worship in the Church of Scotland and the problems of Christian reunion.

What does the Church expect of her historians? What kind of person does one imagine when one speaks of a teacher of Church History? Is it too much of a caricature to say that one expects him to be a venerable scholar, steeped in learning, meticulous and perhaps a trifle pedantic, inclined to be sceptical about the motives of men in the ecclesiastical crises of the past, and above all characterised by an academic detachment which can clearly do more good in a library writing books than in a parish in the cure of souls?

On the long journey towards a clear understanding of the historical Jesus it is desirable from time to time to halt and survey the scene, take our bearings and choose the direction for further advance. In this article I do not profess to cover the recent relevant literature, which is vast in extent. The aim rather has been to select a few works representative of different approaches and methods, and to present in this way both the lines of progress and the questions which still await an answer.

The Letter of the Synod of Antioch contained in a Syriac MS. of the eighth or ninth century (Codex Parisinus Syriacus 62), to which Edward Schwartz first drew attention in 1905, has thrown light on the period immediately preceding the Council of Nicaea and on the proceedings of the Council itself. After much initial controversy, mainly between Schwartz and von Harnack, this document is now generally accepted as authentic.

The Synod of Antioch, of which nothing was hitherto known, appears to have assembled in order to settle the difficulties which had arisen in the Church at Antioch after the death of Bishop Philogonius (ca. A.D. 322), one of three Bishops whom Arius described as ‘unlearned heretics’; Eustathius, Bishop of Beroea, was appointed to fill the vacancy. The Synod was attended by at least fifty-nine bishops from Syria and Palestine, forty-nine of whom also attended the Council of Nicaea a few months later.

In his lecture on ‘Eschatology in the New Testament’, delivered to the Society for the Study of Theology, at its inaugural meeting in Cambridge, in July 1952, the late Professor William Manson put forward an ingenious theory. He claimed that there is a specific Old Testament eschatology, which arose in the life of Israel from a primarily religious interest which viewed all human affairs in the light of an ‘ultimate transcendent Event, an End, towards which under the judgment and mercy of God, the world is hastening’. This conception which links history with eschatology, can be traced as far back as the events which gave rise to the traditions, embodied in the Yahwist narrative, about the revelations given to Moses.

In a few brief months some of you will be going out into the active ministry, exchanging the life of classroom, library and common room for the very different life of parishes or service in the Church in other lands.