One of the most influential Christologies in the recent past was that based on the kenosis or divine self-emptying in Christ. Starting with Gottfried Thomasius in 1845 through P. T. Forsyth and H. R. Mackintosh in this century, men sought a key in the idea of kenosis for interpreting to the modern mind the traditional Christian affirmation that Christ is both human and divine. There are two questions about the kenotic Christologies and their place in the history of Christian thought that can provide a key to a fresh understanding of the kenotic theme and its function in modern christological thinking.

The subject ‘Papacy and Scripture‘ is of great importance today for two main reasons:

1. Reformed Theology itself requires that we must not be satisfied with the theological standpoint reached at the time of the Reformation but should submit ourselves to continual questioning by the Truth, and so move on to a position more in accordance with the dictates of the self-same Truth which is Jesus Christ. The very fact that we are ‘Reformed’ theologians itself raises the question of whether the anti-Roman arguments legitimately used by the Reformers still hold good; which means that, as a matter of urgency, we must reappraise our relationship with the Church of Rome.

Between 1947 and 1957 the question of Holy Communion was discussed by theologians belonging to the Lutheran, Reformed and ‘Union’ churches. They had been appointed to undertake the task by the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). Their findings were published in the form of the following theses in November 1957, now known as The Arnoldshain Theses.

It is traditional in large sectors of the christian church to separate the word of god into law and gospel. The law is that part of the word which tells man what god wishes him to do. The gospel is that part of the word which tells man what god has done for him. The lutheran confessions insist, and i believe correctly, that one of the chief requisites of a theologian is the ability rightly to divide the word into its components of law and gospel and rightly to use them. one of the problems which arises in this connexion is which should take chronological order in the proclaiming of the word. it is usual to say that the law should be proclaimed first in order to convince man that he is a sinner and that then the gospel is to be proclaimed so that he may not despair of his sin but, on the contrary, be comforted by the message that the lord is gracious to repentant sinners and saves them. The purpose of this paper is to question the efficacy of this procedure.

For the ministerial fundamentalist the yardstick is the ministry. … There is no doubt that this is the crucial issue in reunion today. So Canon Fison wrote ten years ago and the same might be written in the same context today.

This yardstick is bound up with validity and so some attempt to consider its meaning may help; but first we shall define the word and then mention some relevant discussions. ‘That is valid which, by virtue of satisfying certain conditions laid down by competent authority, is actually entitled to everything to which it appears or claims to have a title.’ Much argument has centred on the exclusive claims made for episcopacy in The Apostolic Ministry, though, after the introduction, there is only one reference in the index of that work to validity. The late Bishop Rawlinson dealt with ‘validity’ in Problems of Reunion; he used certain arguments Canon Quick had outlined in his contribution to The Ministry and the Sacraments and also in The Christian Sacraments. Historical considerations on the topic have been ably summarised by Professor S. L. Greenslade in his Schism in the Early Church. Useful contributions have been made more recently by Dr A. L. Peck in Anglicanism and Episcopacy. All these writers are Anglicans.

I am pleased to have an opportunity to make a provisional reply to my Catholic critics. For the objections formulated by Father G. Bavaud on the subject of my Christology of the New Testament are representative of those which I have encountered in other Catholic writers. I respond all the more willingly to his article since I discern in it a sincere desire to understand me and to converse with me in a spirit of complete honesty. Despite this, I do not feel that he has understood me at a very important point; and this is because I expressed myself too briefly in certain parts of my book. But, on the other hand, since only Catholic theologians (and not all of them) have attributed ideas to me which I do not recognise as my own, I wonder whether, besides a difference of method of which I will speak at the end of this article, there is not something else equally important.

Throughout his mature life Martin Luther was actively concerned with the problems of interpreting the Scriptures. His biblical commentaries, which bulk large in his collected works, and which, one suspects, have never been adequately evaluated in determining the content of his theology, deal over and again with this subject, which clearly had a certain centrality in his thought. His earliest commentaries show his indebtedness to the traditions of medieval exegesis, but they give indication also of his independence in the use of older methods. In his first commentaries on Galatians, for example, we find him expressing radical dissatisfaction with the medieval fourfold method of interpretation: ‘Verum quicquid sit de illis sensibus, certum est hoc neque apostolos neque antiquos doctores observare, qui tropologiam, allegoriam, misticam seu misteria et spiritualem sensus prorsus indiscrete accipiunt.… Nam ista quadriga (etsi non reprobem) non scripturae autoritate nee patrum usu nee grammatica satis ratione juvatur.’ He did, especially in the early commentaries, use elements of this fourfold interpretation, though not in a mechanical way, but he was insistent, as early as 1516, on the primacy of the historical meaning: ‘Rectius igitur … primus historicus dicendus est.’ He contended, furthermore, that earlier glosses and commentaries were to be used only in a sensible way, to illuminate rather than obscure the reading of the texts.

There is a renewed interest in the relations between the Eastern and Western parts of the Church; and some have been surprised at the affinities of thought between the two. In a study of the Atonement in Gregory of Nyssa, the following examination was made of the meanings of the word Grace in his writings. It may be of interest to others who are working towards a closer understanding of the thought of the Eastern Fathers.

I. From God's side

(a) Grace may be used to point to the general attitude of kindly favour that God displayed to all creation and to mankind in particular. Verb and noun are both employed to indicate the distinction between man and all other animals, over whom he was given a royal authority. The potentiality in man for both good and evil is greater than in any other part of the universe. (b) This Fatherly care did not cease at creation, but is visible throughout the Old Testament history. It was present at Sinai; and spoke freely and often through the prophets, as when, under Ahab and Jezebel, Elijah fought single-handed against the prophets of Baal; and we even have the phrase reminding us of the Pauline charisma. Gregory often speaks of the Grace of God, much more commonly in fact than of His love.

It is generally assumed that the two words ‘revelation’ (apocalypsis) and ‘manifestation’ (phanerosis) should be considered as synonymous and used as such in the exegesis of the New Testament. Nevertheless a closer examination of their peculiarities and use in the early Church would probably bring forward new material for the theological discussion of our time. Our study purposes to survey the matter and to relate its findings to the question of a revelation to the heathen and to the reason of their being without excuse before God's judgment.2

This article is concerned with the relation of ‘religion A’ to ‘religion B’ in the thought of Søren Kierkegaard. The point of departure for my study is a disagreement with the views of Walter Lowrie, one of the most prolific translators of SK into English and the author of the extensive and competent biography, Kierkegaard (Princeton, 1938). Lowrie's main discussion of the question at hand occurs in his introduction to the Postscript. If my alternative thesis has any merit, it is indeed unfortunate that English readers are confronted with Lowrie's understanding of the matter before they have had a chance to form a judgment of their own.

The aim of this article is to examine the relation that the New Testament posits between ethics and eschatology. The first part will deal with the ethical implications of eschatology as a whole; the second part will be devoted to an examination of one topic only—the Second Coming (Parousia) of Christ; the third part will take the form of a few remarks on the applicability of Christian ethics to the life of the world.

The basis of apostolic eschatology is stated in the earliest Christian ‘sermon’ for which we have evidence—Peter's speech on the day of Pentecost. The speech ends with the assertion that the promised Spirit has been given and that the ‘new age’ has dawned. This ‘realised’ eschatology of the Petrine kerygma has parallels in both the gospels and epistles.

Contemporary concern with the problems, exegetical and theological, relating to the nature and significance of the historical Jesus, is receiving widespread attention. Paul Althaus in his book The So-Called Kerygma and the Historical Jesus puts the matter thus: ‘… Certain though it may be that dogmatic theology is forbidden to try to get behind the Kerygma and the Christ proclaimed by it, the question still arises whether in another sense theology must not go behind the Kerygma; i.e. whether it must not inquire what is the relation of the Kerygma to the history, about which it informs us, and to which it bears witness.’ Althaus' book is useful in reminding us that we cannot properly emphasise the fact of Jesus' historical life without concern for the actual content of this life and the concrete character of the converse of Jesus with men. Althaus points to preservation of the Synoptic records in the canon as the reflection of the significance attached to the teaching and healing ministry of the historical Jesus.

At the beginning of 1917, there was published The Jesus of History by T. R. Glover, and it would be difficult to overestimate the influence that this book had on students and others of my generation. It seemed to bring Jesus down from the stained-glass existence in which our youthful piety had pictured Him, to make of Him a person real, vibrant and responsive to our twentieth-century needs—‘a man living upon victuals’ as Carlyle said of Richard Cœur de Lion. Glover too dispensed with all the theological jargon that seemed to us to stand as a barrier between the Jesus of the Gospels and the common man, and we heard Him speaking to us in a language that we could understand. Besides, this Jesus of History was a Jesus that could be preached, and the Gospel that was proclaimed by many younger men from their pulpits in the years following the 1914–18 War was the Gospel according to T. R. Glover. Glover has gone very much out of fashion today, and there were indeed limitations in his portrait of Jesus as there are bound to be in every such portrait made by man. Yet when I read this book again a few months ago, it seemed to me that almost everything that Glover said—and how well he said it!—was true in the sense that it fitted into the picture that any honest historian would make of the Jesus of the Gospels.

In 1960 a unique encounter between East and West took place. Paul Tillich visited Japan for a lecture visit of three months. In a recent article appearing in The Christian Century in the series ‘How My Mind Has Changed’, Tillich declares that this encounter was perhaps the most significant experience of the past ten years of his life. His discussions with Japanese religious leaders, especially those of Buddhism, ‘served to bring to full awareness elements of thought which had been present for a long time’ (‘On the Boundary Line’, Christian Century, 6th Dec. 1960, p. 1435). While not becoming a convert to Zen Buddhism (as he puts it), he was impressed with the ultimate concern he found in forms of religious life uninfluenced by Christianity. He declares that his observations strengthened his theological conviction that the concept of religion in its larger sense ‘transcends the concrete existence of any religion, as God transcends each of his manifestations’ (ibid.).

The Reformation gave back the Bible to the people, that is to say the Bible in the vulgar tongue. We may enter now into some of the theological problems implied in this important historical event, by revealing the well-known circumstances of the first religious disputation held at Zürich on 29th January 1523. Zwingli's first thesis was that those who do not recognise the Gospel but by the authority of the Church, err and insult God. The same conviction is repeated in quite the same words and with still greater completeness in the Scots Confession, art. 19. Some months before the disputation, Zwingli had sent his treatise Von Klarheit und Gewissheit des Wortes Gottes, to the Black Friars of Oetenbach. For three years already he had himself been preaching daily in Our Lady's Münster in the capital. In his correspondence with the vicar of Constanz, who seriously disapproved of Zwingli's activity, he published his Apologeticus Archeteles, 1522, in which he said: ‘to this treasure, I mean the certitude of God's Word, our heart should be directed’, and in his second answer to the objections of the vicar he ventured to give the assurance that ‘the people will always surrender themselves with the simplicity of a dove to the sole Gospel, and in proportion as it is the less stained by the dust of human traditions, the people will be the more susceptible to the celestial doctrine in which they take their refuge with all confidence as to a holy anchor’.

For some years a Committee of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Australia has been at work preparing a statement on ‘The Nature and Functions of the Ministry’. Those portions of its statement which deal with the New Testament and Reformation bases for the Presbyterian conception of the Ministry were given general approval by the 1959 Assembly (Min. 131.2), and are being considered by Presbyteries. The Assembly has instructed the Committee meanwhile to prepare statements on certain other aspects of the subject, including ‘the non-theological factors that are influencing the conception of the Ministry in the changed place of the Church in the modern community’ (Min. 131.3). This paper (which owes something to work already done on behalf of this Committee) is intended as a contribution to thought concerning these ‘non-theological factors’.

The object of this paper is to argue that in St. Paul we find indeed a concept of man, but one which is inseparable from his whole theology, inseparable from his doctrine of God and his dealing with the world.

This paper is written as an exegesis of Mark 16. 1–8. It could 1 be called a midrash on R. H. Lightfoot's treatment of the subject in his Gospel Message of Saint Mark. I accept his argument that this was the concluding paragraph of the gospel. The exegesis which I shall give assumes that the account is written with great care and exactness, and that its theological meaning is conveyed, after this evangelist's manner, by subtle allusions, and that the theological meaning is integral to the narrative; no bare chronicle could express the ‘truth’ of such an event.

‘On every hand one encounters a new interest in worship. The liturgical renewal has led to a fresh examination of our Reformation heritage both on the Continent and in America.’

Although Calvin's own views regarding a fixed form of worship are of prime importance for the understanding of our tradition, critical scholarship is not in agreement here. On the one hand, W. D. Maxwell and others stress Calvin's attachment to fixed forms. On the other hand, Wilhelm Niesel insists that ‘The form of divine service is obviously not of fundamental importance for the Reformed Churches. The service can be ordered in this way or in that’—although of course Niesel goes on to recognise that the service must be ordered and not arbitrary. This point of view finds recent agreement in T. Watson Street.

There are almost as many problems connected with the study of the Dialogue as of the Synoptic Gospels. This is hardly surprising when one considers how comparatively little attention the Dialogue has received, and that in size it is comparable to the four Gospels. Among the main issues to be considered are, the aim and authenticity of the Dialogue, the mutilation of its text, the OT text which is used, and the interpretation of the OT, which is the chief interest of the present writer.