It is better that the theme of a Presidential Address should be too general than that it should be too specific. On this occasion I propose that together we traverse familiar ground. Beginning with the broad river of Christian doctrine as we have it in the Epistles of St. Paul, let us take our way up-stream, trying to trace afresh some of the channels by which it is linked with the living springs that come from Jesus.

In his commentary on John 1.1 Calvin distinguishes between the words sermo (word) and verbum (word). The Greek text runs: ɛv αρχη ηνoγos, and for the translation of “Latin theology wavered between verbum, sermo and ratio before accepting verbum, the least satisfactory, perhaps, of the three.” Verbum was used in the Vulgate. Erasmus, however, went back to sermo in his translation, and Calvin followed him. “In the beginning was the Word” (sermo). In a brief note he justifies the word: “I wonder what induced the Latins to render ⋯ λ⋯γο ς by verbum; for that would have been the translation of τo ρημα. But granting that they had some plausible reason, yet it cannot be denied that sermo would have been far more appropriate.” It would seem as if we have here the basis for a distinction universal in his writings and upon which a consistent doctrine could be constructed. In fact, we have nothing of the sort, for Calvin uses the two words indiscriminately, even to the extent of using verbum when he quotes John 1.1! The most that can be said is that he always seems to couple “eternal” (aeternus) and sermo together, and never “eternal” (aeternum) and verbum, and that, on the whole, he uses sermo rather than verbum as the synonym for the “wisdom of God” (sapientia Dei), though there are exceptions.

The theological climate to-day is markedly more genial than it was thirty-two years ago, when this our Society was founded. Then we were living in a theological ice-age. Theology had largely lost its appeal, alike for preachers and for scholars. The demand was for histories of religion, not for theology. The Bible commentator was considered to have done his duty if he explained what the sacred writer meant when he wrote what he did. In the Preface to his Commentary—dated May 1919—Peake wrote:

It (the present work) is not intended to be homiletical or devotional, but to convey with precision … the meaning of the original writers, and reconstruct the conditions in which they worked and of which they wrote. It will thus, while not explicitly devotional or practical, provide that accurate interpretation of the text through which alone the sound basis for devotional use and practical application can be laid.

Many Of Us Rejoice That Almost All The Churches Of The world have been able to unite and form a World Council of Churches. Many others—and also many of those who rejoice—are a little puzzled. To-day Baptists and Quakers and Salvation Army leaders unite in worship and discussion with old Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. A century ago they tended to look at one another as dangerous heretics or even as allies of anti-Christ. We find ourselves asking: Are we to rejoice because the ancient animosities have been laid aside or are we to hesitate in the fear that all this has happened through lack of insight into the great differences which divide us? Has the Holy Spirit so changed men's hearts that they can unite or has the spirit of the world so invaded the Church that she can no longer distinguish between light and darkness?

I regard it as a privilege to have been invited to write about the meeting of the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam in the Scottish Journal of Theology which already in its short life has gained a widespread reputation by the high standard of the articles in it. I went to Amsterdam as the only delegate of the Episcopal Church in Scotland and was fortunate in having with me as alternate Canon N. J. Cockburn whose experience in ecumenical affairs is far greater than my own and to whom I am indebted for useful suggestions on certain points in this essay.

The golden ripple on the wall came back again, and nothing else stirred in the room. The old, old fashion! The fashion that came in with our first garments, and will last unchanged until our race has run its course, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. The old, old fashion—Death!

In his endeavour to expound the Parables of Jesus, the preacher who turns for help to the work of modern New Testament scholars will not be disappointed. Certainly the present writer has put himself very much in their debt. At the same time there are rules and definitions by which some modern scholars restrict the understanding of the parables in a way that is often baffling to the preacher. As the parables, however, are peculiarly the domain of the preacher, it would appear that these elements require further discussion and clarification if he is to get full benefit from recent research and do justice to the kerygmatic setting in which we have received the parables.

In the first two numbers of the Scottish Journal of Theology the Rev. J. K. S. Reid contributed an interesting and enlightening treatment of The Office of Christ in Predestination. Taking as his main theme the classic doctrine of Predestination, he showed the “deplorable consequences”, particularly in the Calvinist tradition, that have followed a failure to realise the part played by Christ in Predestination. The limitation of Christ's function to the carrying out of “something already fixed and definitive”, or the idea of His giving effect to “a decree in whose formation He has apparently had no hand”, are shown to do dangerous injustice to His true office, in the suggestion that the divine decrees are somehow prior to the divine grace.

The description of the doctrine of universal salvation by Brunner in his recent Dogmatik (1, 363) as a “ menacing heresy, endangering the Biblical faith ”, raises acutely a problem that has divided theologians since the days of Origen. Though formally condemned as heresy by the fifth ecumenical council, the doctrine has frequently found advocates of disconcerting eminence in the ranks of theology. It is impossible to ignore, for instance, a concensus of contemporary names such as Nicolas Berdyaev, William Temple, John Baillie, C. H. Dodd, Charles Raven and Herbert Farmer, all of whom have come out more or less openly in its favour. Nor can they all be labelled, and dismissed, as liberals. Is Brunner right, therefore, in saying that a doctrine of universal restoration is wholly incompatible with a truly Biblical theology?

The Institutes is a long and detailed essay upon the know-ledge of God, not a well-constructed and comprehensive system of theology, a kind of Reformed Summa Theologica. It was this problem of the knowledge of God which constituted the real disagreement with Rome, and in the Institutes Calvin works out from the Scriptures the Reformed doctrine of the knowledge of God to stand in opposition to the contemporary and scholastic Roman doctrine based upon the synthesis of the Scriptures and Greek philosophy. When once this is understood, the different doctrines treated in the book fall easily into their places in relation to the central theme, the knowledge of God.

“Vocation” is a word of varied significance, both secular and religious. Religiously, it can mean God's calling of men into His kingdom through the proclamation of the Gospel, or His calling of particular persons to particular spheres of service such as the Ministry. Secularly, it can mean any trade, profession, or employment that a man may follow, including such occupations as the Ministry. The Latin original of the word, vocatio, and its German equivalent, Beruf, are used in all these senses by Luther, but with important differences. In the first place, the distinction between religious and secular is entirely foreign to his thinking. When he speaks of weltlicher Beruf, or “worldly vocation”, he never thinks of it as either irreligious or non-religious, but as a Divine appointment for our life in this world. In the second place, his conception of vocation includes a great deal more than ours normally does. In one of his sermons he raises the question, what it means to have a vocation. He answers it by saying: You are in a Stand, “station”, you are a married man or woman, a son or daughter, a man-servant or maid-servant; and he goes on to point out what duties such “stations” impose upon us, so that we had four heads and ten hands we should still have quite enough to do. Other lists bf “stations”—or “offices”, as he also calls them—include: the prince, the magistrate, the teacher, the scholar, the father, mother, children, master, servant, and many more.

The Universal Church in God's Design, and The Church's Witness to God's Design, the first two volumes written in preparation for the meeting of the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam, are an ecumenical event in themselves. They form the most significant attempt at combined thinking about the nature and mission of the Church that has yet taken place. The stage is now set for a fresh and exhaustive inquiry behind the present divisions among the Churches into a Biblical and Christological doctrine of the Church which may yet knit into a theological unity the agreement of the Churches reached at Amsterdam. After all “the only valid argument for the union of the Churches is theological, a belief that unity is the will of God for His Church, and that the Church as the Body of Christ ought to represent on earth the mysterious unity of the Godhead” (Vol. II, p. 202). The purpose of this essay is not so much to review the actual material presented in these volumes as to face the questions they raise and, if possible, to point the discussion further along the road to that theological unity.

In the second volume of his Church Dogmatics (1.2) Barth has a long and valuable note in which he gives us a concise summary of the views that have been held from the Fathers to the Reformers on this question of the nature of the inspiration of the Scriptures. He deals first with the Pauline passages 1 Cor. 2.6–16, and 2 Cor. 3.4–18, insisting in his exegesis on the fact that, whilst Paul no doubt knew the theories of the Talmud and the Alexandrian-Jewish school about the divine-human origin of the Torah, his assertion of a special inspiration of the Scripture is always and only in connexion with his view of the present confirmation of God of the Scripture through the work of the Holy Spirit. Barth continues:

According to 2 Cor. 3 everything depends for him (sc. Paul) on that; without this work of the Spirit the Scripture is and remains veiled, however great its glory and however it may have come about. This is the case in and through the veiling of the countenance of Moses (Ex. 34) which foreshadows the reading of Scripture to-day in the Synagogue: the divinely prescribed is there, the human beings reading it are there, but over their hearts is a veil; their thinking is hardened—the open book is for them in actual fact a closed book. Only their return to the Lord could remove the veil and open up to them the way into the Scripture (p. 571).

It may be useful first of all to summarise the argument under this heading in the Institutes, both to set limits to our subject, and also to furnish us with points of reference for our discussion. The preceding chapters deal with the operation of the Holy Spirit in those who are united with Christ, especially showing Him to be the author of faith and repentance. Our subject is placed in this setting at the beginning of chapter 6, where, in the opening sentence we read: “ We have said that the end of regeneration is, that the life of the faithful may exhibit a symmetry and agreement between the righteousness of God and their obedience.” The roots of the Christian life, then, are in regeneration. But since “ our tardiness needs much stimulation and assistance ” it is necessary for us to have a rule by which we may be guided in the regulation of our life. Such a rule is to be found in Scripture, not, of course, laid down in a methodical way, yet with sufficient emphasis and clarity. This treatment of the Christian life, therefore, confines itself to discovering, under the guidance of Scripture, how the new life born in us by God's Spirit, is to be developed and made perfect.

IT is not easy to know how best to deal with the two notable volumes named above. Some attempt ought certainly to be made to present their contents and message to readers of the Journal. But many of them must already themselves have studied the volumes; and no doubt the best thing to say to those who have not done so is to emphasise their importance and plead for their being read. The Archbishop of Canterbury in a closing address, we are told, remarked that the total number of words spoken at the Assembly must have attained to the fantastic region of the numbers used to represent distance between the earth and the farthest stars. All these words were recorded—but not, one hastens to add, in the four volumes of preparatory studies and the single volume of the Official Report. But even so the scope of the volumes is prodigious, and the weight of the contributions most imposing.

Comparison between the Simple Order of Service of the Reformed Church and that of the Lutheran with its richer content has led to the opinion that Luther merely purged the Mass of some objectionable elements; the Reformers on the contrary totally reconstructed the divine service according to the principle of their knowledge of God. Research into the history of the liturgy has proved that such is not the case. The Strasbourg order of public worship which was brought by Calvin to Geneva and thence passed on to a wider circle of Churches shows clearly its derivation from the medieval Mass, as with the majority of Lutheran orders. The sermon is inserted between two parts of the service which have their origin in the Mass, and the concluding portion of the service is so shaped that Communion may at any time be included in it.

The new and sustained interest in the doctrine of the Church, which is one of the outstanding characteristics of theological study in our day, has lately taken a turn which seems to hold the promise of fresh and fruitful developments. There has been any amount of discussion in the past about the Church's faith as worked out in controversy and expressed in creeds and confessions; about the Church's organisation and the functions and status of her ministers; about the Church's code of conduct or ethical ideals. In these discussions it has not always been remembered that the Church is a worshipping community. True, there was a branch of study called liturgiology; but few students were attracted to it. To most people it seemed to be at best a harmless kind of antiquarianism remote from the main business of theology and the real life of the Church. Its exponents tended to be looked upon—often, it must be confessed, not without justification—as diligent pickers-up of unconsidered trifles. All that is changing. It is realised that the corporate worship of the Christian community in all its aspects is an essential and distinctive part of its life; and that it is one of the main tasks of Christian theology to know and interpret Christian worship.

Volume III of the Dogmatik is concerned with creation, and the first part dealt with the act of creation, elucidating from a specifically Christian point of view the relation of creation and covenant. In this second part, it is the creature which is studied. For a theology bound to the Word of God, the questions at issue concern the nature of man, and the enquiry is controlled by the fact of God having become man. The material which is handled in this vast volume is a selection from man's varied attempts to speak about himself. The aim is to illuminate and to correct the speech of the contemporary Christian Church on this subject, and to do so by proper theological method and criteria. The resultant doctrine may not be very different from what is said in section I (A) of the Lambeth Report Part II, but one cannot help asking whether the statements made there have been reached by the searching discipline of dogmatic theology, practised with the seriousness found in Barth's work. His declared purpose is to seek “comprehensive clarifications in theology, and about theology itself”, which will give the Church strength to offer “clarifications in the broad field of politics”, a strength which is not strikingly obvious in the Lambeth conclusions about “The Church and the Modern World” and “The Christian Way of Life”.

Any study of the nature of the Christian Ministry must begin by affirming the necessity of the Church. The New Testament knows of no“Church-less”Christianity. Furthermore, it is not only the invisible Church that matters for the Gospel, i.e.“the whole number of the elect that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one under Christ the head ”. The visible Church is also vitally relevant to the Gospel, consisting of“all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, together with their children ”. To identify the visible Church more particularly, the Westminster Confession of Faith proceeds:“Unto this catholic visible Church, Christ hath given the ministry, oracles and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints in this life, to the end of the world; and doth by His own presence and Spirit, according to His promise, make them effectual thereunto.”

The words Presbyterian and Presbyterianism are so familiar as applied to our Scottish ecclesiastical system as to seem almost to belong to its essence or at least to indicate its essence. Nevertheless there is a certain diversity of view as to how Presbyterianism is to be defined. It is perhaps a not entirely insignificant fact that the term is familiar only in the English-speaking branches of the Reformed Church family. Among the sister Reformed Churches of the Continent it is not in common use. Continental theologians addressing ecumenical assemblies, whenever they use the word Presbyterian, seem instinctively to interpret it by the addition of the explanatory word “synodal”, evidently regarded as synonymous. The Presbyterian Alliance bridges this gulf in nomenclature by means of a rather cumbrous official title. It is officially The Alliance of Reformed Churches holding the Presbyterian form of Church Government. It would appear that our familiar denominational designation is due to some accident of Scottish or British history.