The Middle Platonic concept of ‘participation’ in the Forms is important for understanding the connection that Athanasius finds between Christians and Christ. Yet, Athanasius adapts this concept to his Johannine view of the Word of God incarnate in Christ. He turns to the language of bodily creation and kinship rather than contemplation to express the relationship between Christ and Christians. For Athanasius, evil makes it impossible for humans to contemplate the divine Word by which they were created. Therefore, the Word embodied a new humanity in Christ. The Holy Spirit enables Christians to participate in Christ, becoming thereby part of a new humanity and children of God.

Hilary of Poitiers begins his treatise De Trinitate with what appears to be an autobiographical narration of his journey to the Christian faith. Scholars, though taking different approaches to explain this narration, have overlooked its significance for Hilary's treatise. In the following essay, I argue that Book I is a reflection on sources of knowledge about God, the role of faith and reason in theological inquiry, the proper approach to scripture, and the soteriological context of any discussion on the mystery of God. These methodological reflections guide the reader through Hilary's treatise and make Book I crucial to understanding his purpose in De Trinitate.

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.

The brief account of the hospitality offered by Martha and Mary to Jesus has been interpreted allegorically in at least three different ways. The majority tradition has identified the figure of Mary with contemplation, and considered this to be the ‘one thing necessary’ to Christian life. Meister Eckhart suggests, however, that Martha, representing action, has chosen the better part, and Aelred of Rievaulx that action and contemplation are both commended. Feminist and other recent interpretations continue, sometimes unconsciously, to draw on this allegorical tradition. The theological importance and significance of the passage has been due largely to its use as the gospel reading for the feast of the Assumption of Mary the mother of Jesus.

Recent ecumenical dialogues have focused on the question of ecclesiastical offices. At the heart of this debate lies the question of how to relate the Holy Spirit's guidance of the church to its structures. Two alternative visions frame the debate. The Roman Catholic Church insists on the authority of the church's teaching office, as the channel through which the Holy Spirit guides the church. In contrast, Protestant churches emphasize the self-sufficiency of scripture, the normative function of the Gospel vis-à-vis the church, and the freedom of the Holy Spirit in, with, and over against all ecclesiastical structures. My essay engages this ecumenical debate through fundamental ecclesiological reflections on the relation between the Holy Spirit on the one hand, and the scriptural witness and ecclesial authority on the other. I argue that no ecclesial structure must be identified undialectically with the voice of the Holy Spirit, but that the church must discern the guidance of the Spirit in the context of the Christian assembly, as it emerges ever anew from the “gaps” left open in the assembly's juxtapositions of texts, bath, and shared meal. In order to develop my thesis, I first retrieve Karl Barth's christological foundation of ecclesiology, his definition of divine freedom over against the church, and his introduction of scripture as the critical principle for the church's permanently needed self-reform. Second, I discuss Walter Kasper's insistence on the incarnational and sacramental nature of the church and his threefold understanding of the church's apostolicity in terms of succession, tradition, and communion. Finally, I develop Gordon Lathrop's reading of the Christian assembly of worship in terms of liturgical juxtapositions for my ecclesiastical purposes.

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.

Recent work on Calvin's theology has focused on the integral relationship between his Institutes and his biblical commentaries. Particularly significant have been the claims that we can understand the development of the structure of the Institutes only in relationship to Calvin's work on his commentaries and that we can understand the content of the Institutes best through a recognition of the traces of the commentaries that are found therein. This article will extend this work, arguing that we best understand the final form of the 1559 Institutes through its relationship to Calvin's recently completed commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament and the gospels. These commentaries, with their focus on the history of God's covenant with God's people, fulfilled in Christ's history, provide this covenant history as a framing device by which the first two books of the 1559 Institutes are shaped. This framing is evident in the new ordering of material in the text, in Calvin's provision of new chapters to fill out this narratively structured order, and in the traces of his scriptural work within the text. Once the structural role of the covenant history is recognised within Books I and II, then Calvin's exposition of Christ's redeeming work through his exegesis of Christ's gospel history II.xvi is seen as the culmination of the theological developments of the first half of the Institutes, completing Calvin's depiction of the broader covenant history as a thoroughly christological reality.

In this article I argue that the essential relationship between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth stands in need of reassessment. This argument is based on a survey of literature dealing with Bonhoeffer and Barth in three basic areas between the critically important years of 1933 and 1935. These three areas come into sharp relief given the political background of the German Christian victory in the church elections of 1933. Their respective positions, both theological and political, on the Aryan clause differ greatly. For Bonhoeffer, the imposition of the Aryan clause on the German churches represented a clear status confessionis, and Bonhoeffer favoured a very public schism. For Barth, while the Aryan clause was certainly troublesome, it was deemed better to wait for a ‘more central’ point, namely, that of the question of natural theology. Barth's emphasis on the importance of the question of natural theology carries over in his position regarding the significance and role of both the Confessing Church and the ecumenical movement. We see that Bonhoeffer explicitly questions the validity of Barth's emphasis on natural theology with respect to the Confessing Church and to the ecumenical movement. While many scholars have argued for the basic agreement between Barth and Bonhoeffer, especially on the question of natural theology, a closer examination of the two in the period 1933–35 calls such conclusions into question.

The ways that Thomism has historically thought about knowledge and habit in Thomas Aquinas's ethics have become increasingly destabilised. This article briefly documents this destabilisation before considering three images that have emerged in recent engagements with the ethics of Aquinas on moral knowledge and action. The three images are brought to bear on a discussion of what Aquinas may have meant by calling synderesis a ‘natural habit’. The first image is John Milbank's and Catherine Pickstock's image of God as country bumpkin and it follows Aquinas's own description of the way God knows particulars out of divine simplicity. They argue that human knowledge of particulars comes from participation in the mind of God. This is participation in eternal law from which natural law is derived and so natural law cannot constitute a separate, sufficient system of moral knowledge. With the second image, the bricoleur, Jeffrey Stout argues that system-building was far from the kind of work that Aquinas was about, despite appearances that have disguised how freely Aquinas himself made use of the moral resources at his disposal. The third image, the forester, is deployed by Charles Pinches intentionally to improve on some of the problems with Stout's image. The Christian moral agent develops habits of mind that both aid in right perception, and hence right knowledge, and depend on right perception for right action. A discussion of this apparent paradox reveals something of the complexity of theoretical knowledge and practical skills that are involved in moral reasoning for Aquinas.

Seventeenth-century puritans had the habit of speaking visually, talking pictures. Sermons and tracts from the English-speaking Reformed tradition made lavish use of vivid verbal images drawn from the Bible. Yet zealous Protestants wanted to strip images out of churches and books – and, some would say, even from the mind – in an ‘inner iconoclasm’ to match the outer. So why fill the mind's eye with pictures?

It is often thought that Protestantism, particularly of the Reformed variety, saw a decisive shift from the visual to the verbal. However, the move was by no means a clean break. Visual elements survived aplenty, though often transposed into new forms. The complexity of these changes has been well recognised by recent scholars, but the focus has been more on outward and material aspects of Protestant culture than on words (or, more accurately, the Word) as image-makers for the mind.

To understand the drive for verbal imaging in puritanism with more precision, this paper considers the experience of readers in a culture where print was new; aspects of Reformed theology that paved the way, in particular the stress on the unity of scripture that promoted interest in typology; the boost that new printed aids to Bible study – specifically, concordances – gave to drawing ‘mental pictures’ from scripture; and the relation of all this to making the Bible both easy to handle and memorable, which was a key element in the strategy to drive the Protestant message into the hearts and minds of the people.

This essay puts the issue of spiritual fatigue – those times when emotional despondency prohibits our wholehearted participation in worship – in conversation with Jonathan Edwards's public and private writings. Following an outline of the parameters for the discussion, Part I examines Edwards's Treatise Concerning Religious Affections. Although this was a treatise intended to trouble individuals who were overly confident in their religious affections, I suggest that when read through an alternative lens, Edwards's work offers comfort to those who struggle with their inability to ‘be present’ in worship. Edwards reminds us that religious affections have as much to do with constancy and disciplined habit as with fervour and immediacy of feeling.

Part II takes a biographical turn, with particular interest in Edwards's Diary, Resolution, and Personal Narrative. Whereas Religious Affections stressed the necessity of self-discipline in religious practice, the twenty-year trajectory of Edwards's private writings reveals a subtle parallel emphasis: the need for patience and relinquishment in times of discouragement. Using insights from the public and private writings of Edwards, I conclude that times of spiritual fatigue call not only for constancy of practice but also for self-care and relaxation of heart.

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.

In this paper, I argue that the influence of John's Gospel on R. L. Stevenson's novel The Master of Ballantrae is significant on several levels. On the level of narrative, I show that both texts are narrated from a perspective which shifts uneasily from omniscience to uncertainty. John's Gospel, particularly its closing chapters, offers a powerful model for the telling of the story of The Master of Ballantrae. The reliability both of Mr MacKellar, the novel's narrator, and of the mysterious editor of the material which makes up John's Gospel, is open to question. On the level of plot, the death, burial and ‘resurrection’ of James Durie, the ‘Master’, at least on one reading of the novel's title, mirrors the death, burial and resurrection of the Johannine Christ. This is no straightforward importation of one set of ideas onto another, rather an imaginative and sophisticated retelling of the climax of the Gospel story. Finally, on the level of characterisation, several of the characters in The Master of Ballantrae share features with players in the Gospel narrative, particularly those who appear in the Passion and resurrection scenes. Pilate's vacillations and Thomas's doubts flesh out our understanding of the characters who witness the death throes of the warring Durie brothers.

Robert Louis Stevenson had grown up hearing the Bible read at home and in church. Despite rejecting the faith of his parents in his twenties, he nevertheless continued to be drawn to the images and cadences of the Bible, and particularly of the Gospels. The relationship between The Master of Ballantrae and John's Gospel is not one of simple dependence: but the influence of the Gospel on the novel, I argue, is clear and distinctive.

This paper elucidates the connections in Gregory of Nyssa's thought between the rite of baptism, the doctrine of God as Trinity, and practices of ecclesial pedagogy. These components formed a dynamic and differentiated whole for Gregory. To consider one element in isolation from the others runs the risk of interpretive distortion of Gregory's work. This means that the current tendency to harvest Gregory's trinitarian ideas abstracted or disembodied from the rite of baptism and practices of ecclesial pedagogy perpetuates the false notion that the doctrine of the Trinity can be adequately treated apart from liturgical and pedagogical concerns.

It is often said that α, β, χ, δ, Δ, ε, ε, η:, γ, Γ, ϝ, Ϝ, ι, κ, ϰ, λ, Λ, μ, ν, ω, Ω, ϕ, Φ, φ, π, Π, ϖ, ψ, Ψ, ρ, ϱ, σ, Σ, ς, τ, θ, Θ, ϑ, υ, ϒ, ξ, Ξ, ζ, biblical exegesis by or on behalf of the Church is understandable – since the Church is concerned with Scripture and its interpretation – but suffers from a problem of ‘dual loyalty’:

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’.

This paper demonstrates the techniques used by five Syriac writers of the mid-fourth to early sixth centuries in interpreting the dominical injunction in Matt 18:3 to become like children in order to enter the kingdom of Heaven. Unlike modern critical approaches, early Syriac exegesis of this saying is shaped less by the surrounding context than by association with other scriptural texts, in a manner more reminiscent of Jewish midrashic technique. The writers are Aphrahat, Ephrem, the author of the Book of Steps, Narsai and Jacob of Serugh. This study notes the interaction in some of the sources with their interpretation of Gen 2–3 and demonstrates the influence of the writers' pre-existing protology and eschatology on their exegesis of the New Testament passage. Recurring themes include whether Adam and Eve were believed to be children before the fall; whether the goal of the believer should be a return to a state of prelapsarian innocence; the existence of sexuality before the fall; and how to imitate angels as well as children. Key terms used in the sources are ̆sabrutā ‘infancy’ or ‘naivety’, and gmirutā ‘perfection’ or ‘maturity’, and the rather different concepts they represent in the five writers.

Jeffrey Stout's latest book is likely to command even wider attention amongst theologians than Ethics after Babel (1988). Written in three parts and comprising material some of which has already appeared in other contexts, the book argues several theses. The modern democratic tradition is richer and more complex than exponents and critics of Rawlsian liberalism tend to recognise. This tradition should continue to accommodate religious voices, although these need to be more patient of democratic politics than recent theologies of ‘resentment’. A moral pragmatism provides the best philosophical framework for promoting the discourse and practices of democracy. Each of these claims merits further elaboration before some critical remarks are ventured.

Samuel Rutherford (1600–61) has long been assumed to be an advocate of a harsh supralapsarian predestinarianism. Such an assumption, however, cannot be substantiated by the claims that he makes in his writings. New evidence from his writings suggests that while Rutherford was supralapsarian, he expressed his supralapsarianism only in the most moderate of terms. In fact, he consistently employed infralapsarian language to express his thinking in regard to predestination. This essay will seek to demonstrate this in Rutherford and then to explore whether such an expression of supralapsarian predestinarianism can help us in determining the lapsarian position of the Westminster Confession of Faith. While some scholars have claimed that the Confession is an infralapsarian document, this essay will show that, by using Rutherford's supralapsarianism as a hermeneutic, it is perhaps better understood as a supralapsarian document that is phrased in such a way so as to facilitate consensus on the lapsarian issue.