Great philosophers in dealing with a topic sometimes fasten on a single aspect and show their greatness by the thoroughness with which they carry out the interpretation in terms of this aspect of everything which falls within their topic. This is the case of Kant when dealing with the topic of religion. Kant in considering religion fastened on its ethical side and carried his absorption in this to a point at which religion was conceived as of value solely as a means to ethics. He admitted as valid no religious concepts or doctrines that did not either express symbolically truths about morality or help us to the attainment of a morally good life. Religious practices which had any purpose other than ethical he considered as a futile and immoral attempt to bribe or coax God into giving men what they are not prepared to earn in the only possible way, namely, by moral action.1 The dogmas of Christianity are systematically reinterpreted by Kant in a sense which the ordinary believer would certainly regard as Pickwickian and which made them pictures of the moral struggle in man rather than an account of the intervention of supernatural powers beyond us. In the Critique of Pure Reason he denied the possibility of any metaphysical proof of God or immortality and said that the only valid kind of argument must be ethical. Indeed it may not look as if he were placing himself in a very favourable position to have even an ethical argument for God.

Eleven years after the third World Conference on Faith and Order at Lund, the fourth in the series (and, some have suggested, the last) was held in July 1963, at McGill University, Montreal, by invitation of the Canadian Council of Churches and with the active and welcoming participation of a Montreal Arrangements Committee. 498 persons attended the conference. 240 of these were delegates of the churches, 18 youth delegates, and 46 advisers invited by the W.C.C. There were 15 observers from non-member churches, including 5 from Roman Catholic Church, 3 from the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod), and 1 from the Serbian Orthodox Church. There were 65 official guests, the great majority of whom had been invited through the good offices of the Canadian Council of Churches and the N.C.C.C.U.S.A. In all, 138 member and non-member churches of the W.C.C. were represented. Nor should we forget to mention in this list the 32 interpreters and translators who gave us their usual splendid service, and the 21 stewards who came at their own expense and who by their energetic work made the whole proceedings possible. It is well known that from the ranks of the youth delegates and stewards of one conference comes the chairman of the next conference but one, so that we should feel happy that the younger generation was so well represented at Montreal.

Honest to God has been the theological sensation of the decade, at least so far as the English-speaking world is concerned. The Honest to God Debate is the sequel and can appropriately be considered along with the former book. It consists of an introductory chapter by Rev. David Edwards, which is a sympathetic account of the contemporary radical movement in theology, of which the Bishop of Woolwich has become the most celebrated exponent, followed by a brief chapter by the Vicar of Leeds on reactions in the Church of England, the Church most immediately involved. Third, there is a series of readers' letters on Honest to God, edited by David Edwards, which is a striking indication of the contemporary state of confusion among laymen concerning the verities of the faith. The main body of the latter book consists of twenty-three reviews of Honest to God, by all sorts of men, Christian clergy and laity of all varieties and atheists, in many countries. Perhaps the most noteworthy of these are those by Rudolf Bultmann, the great German scholar and exegete to whom Dr Robinson is so conscious of his debt, and Father Herbert McCabe, O.P., the longest review to be printed. I must pay a tribute to the latter review, in spite of the apparent unfamiliarity of the categories in which it is expressed. Even though I am Protestant and Reformed, I found, on closer analysis, that Father McCabe had, with very few exceptions (notably his inevitably greater ethical rigorism), said exactly what should have been said about the book.

The phrase ‘a theology of nature’ is an abbreviation for ‘a theological account of natural happenings’—happenings which are properly investigated in the first instance by appropriate ‘natural sciences’. A Christian theology of nature seeks to provide a systematic appreciation of the physical universe, its items and occurrences, from a Christian theological point of view. If it is to rank as a serious contribution to human wisdom, it must be a disciplined effort to understand in appropriate terms the object of interest. One version of the discipline would be to produce an extension of the natural sciences, to cover topics—God, freedom, immortality—which fall outside their scope by a ‘metaphysical’ science which links these topics to the subject-matter of natural sciences in a theoretical account of ‘being as such’. This would have the effect of reintroducing ‘Natural Theology’, reshaped and revitalised, into the fabric of Christian systematic theology. This project is not being advocated in this article. It is mentioned solely in order to distinguish the present topic, a ‘theology of nature’, from what is traditionally known as ‘natural theology’. The purpose of this article is to explore afresh the structure of Christian intellectual response to the wonder of the world, as it is now being analysed by science, with particular attention to the ‘evolutionary’ aspect of things, appreciation of which has radically affected modern sensibility.

What concept of time is required to make sense of statements like ‘Jesus is the Eternal Contemporary’ or ‘There is a real presence of Christ in the sacramental action’?

The faith of the Old Testament has its origin in the fundamental fact that God encountered Israel in the midst of history. The preamble of the decalogue mentions it: ‘I am Yahweh thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.’ From this beginning Israel knows that her God encountered her not in a reaction but in a free divine action in history. Through this action He laid hold upon Israel, called her and made her His people. At a later time this previous deed of God came to be designated by the term ‘election of Israel’. The powerful word-event of Old Testament Prophecy made plain once more this structure of God's action: Yahweh, the God who addresses Israel in and through history by the word of His messengers and who is not only reacting against Israel's sin but acting by His free grace, proves to be the God who stands by the independence of His election.

In the continuing discussion between Christian theology and linguistic philosophy there is a fundamental division of the theological responses which has weighty implications for the whole encounter between the two disciplines. This basic distinction into two types of Christian response is one of those simple categorisations which by their very obviousness are often overlooked. I refer to two kinds of Christian thinkers who deal with linguistic analysis: the ‘non-metaphysical’ and the ‘metaphysical’. In this article I have chosen to discuss certain types of the ‘non-metaphysical’ response.

Whether a Christian theologian deals with Oxford philosophy from a metaphysical or a non-metaphysical perspective is vital to the whole discussion. It is vital to the theologian because linguistic analysis is the latest in a series of philosophical movements beginning with Hume which claim to have undermined metaphysics finally and forever. If the theologian responds in a metaphysical way to the questions asked by the Oxford philosophers, he must justify his appeal to metaphysics over against the critique of metaphysics which lies behind language analysis. If, on the other hand, the theologian replies in a non-metaphysical way, he must demonstrate the epistemological significance of Christian doctrine apart from metaphysical support.

The major contemporary criticisms of theological language come not from language analysis considered independently but from a revitalised logical positivism aided by analytical methods. I call this ‘new’ positivism ‘linguistic empiricism’ or ‘analytical positivism’. Linguistic analysis is fundamentally a method, while positivism is a theory of knowledge.

Karl barth's emphasis on the Analogia Fidei, and the revival of interest in the Analogia Entis, both point up our contemporary concern about the place of analogical thinking in theology. A number of developments outside the field of theology proper also contribute to this concern about analogical thinking. A brief consideration of some of these developments may help to clarify one aspect of the significance of the Analogia Fidei.

In the nineteen-thirties, when Søren Kierkegaard was beginning to become internationally known and his ideas were being eagerly discussed, Theodor Haecker noted that of all those who had reason to take up the task of interpretation the theologians were the least active. Today, in spite of the wealth of Kierkegaardian studies available, the situation is not so very different. The great Christian writer is still more commonly thought of as the pioneer of existentialism than as a skilled exponent of Christianity, and the bearing of his teaching upon doctrinal issues is seldom mentioned. It is true that he said that Christianity was not a doctrine, and that he wrote no formal theology. Insisting that his role was that of a layman, the most he claimed was that some of his writings were specifically ‘for edification’. At the same time, he strenuously opposed the opinion that Christian belief could stand without a very definite content, pointing out that the inwardness demanded of the individual presupposed knowledge of the ‘objectively dogmatic’: in faith the how could not be separated from the what.

The problem before us has about it features that are fashionable, if not familiar. When we sing,

Saviour, take the power and glory:

Claim the kingdom for thine own,

precisely what do we expect to happen? Dr Robinson, the present Bishop of Woolwich, insists that we must not only suspect the dominical origin of this part of New Testament eschatology (Jesus and His Coming, 1957, chapters 2 and 3), but also re-focus the total concept of ‘coming’ itself. In his broadcast addresses, Christ Comes In (1960), Dr Robinson has drawn our attention away from a consideration of the Advent message as related to ‘a single moment at the end of time’ (p. 25), towards a theology in which every moment is surrounded ‘with all the seriousness of the Last Day’ (p. 26).

The fact of the Incarnation is one of the central affirmations of the Christian Faith. To deny that ‘the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us’ is to deny what is essential to Christianity. The mode of the Incarnation, however, has been held to be less essential to our Christian Faith than the fact. Nevertheless in the creeds and confessions of the Christian Church the fact of the Incarnation is almost invariably set forth in terms of the mode. For example, the clause qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria Virgine is the first intimation of the fact of the Incarnation in the Apostles' Creed.

‘The Uniting Church’ has been chosen as the name for the proposed united church which is to be composed of the Gongregationalist, Methodist and Presbyterian Churches in Australia, which is described in the Final Report of the Joint Commission of the three Churches which was published in Australia in April of this year.1 The Report includes a Basis of Union which is now submitted to the responsible authorities of the three Churches for full discussion and for final decision.

It is impossible in a brief article to do more than summarise what is set out carefully and in detail in the Report itself. It is however a document of great importance, since it recommends union on an episcopal basis; and this is the first time that such a proposal has been made in a Joint Commission set up by non-episcopal churches.

Some three years ago we had Part I of their Report, entitled The Faith of the Church—not, be it noted, ‘The doctrinal beliefs of the three churches concerned’, but rather ‘the faith which the Church has held from the beginning’. This is completed by the final Report now published, setting out the doctrine of the Church, the Sacraments and the Ministry, and not envisaging any mere amalgamation of the three church orders, but having in view the structure of the Church as it has been from the beginning and as it was reconsidered at the Reformation.

The Church of South India in fifteen years published separate J. forms for ten services. They are flimsy booklets, difficult for booksellers to handle and easy for owners to tear or mislay. They were used, some of them widely, in and beyond C.S.I., and were then reconsidered and revised: and now they have been made into a book, The Book of Common Worship, by Oxford University Press. It is a time to look back and to look forward.

How does the Church of South India worship ? At the sixth biennial Synod, Nagercoil, 1958, after more than ten years of union, the Moderator or presiding bishop, Bishop Sumitra, said that in six of the fourteen dioceses union so far had made no perceptible difference. That is disappointing, for any step towards the reunion of the Church ought to renew and broaden the worship of the various denominations. But is it surprising ? For many bad reasons, and for some good ones, we all cling to the familiar, hoping blindly that it will prove to be safe. We say that we know what we like, meaning that we like what we know. Indeed, it may look as if we went to church, not in order to worship God, but in order to say, hear, and sing, as nearly as possible, what we said, heard, and sang, last Sunday. There may be many mansions in the Father's house, but we are comfortable enough in the room we were born in.

It is almost a truism to assert that religious language is symbolic,' declares Paul Tillich in an article entitled ‘Existential Analysis and Religious Symbols’.1 His whole theology is from first to last dominated by the ideas both of existential analysis and religious symbol. Tillich rejects out of hand the notion of God as literally a personal and spiritual Being who literally enters into personal and spiritual relationships with human beings. He seeks, therefore, to transform the content of historical Christian dogmatics into an array of symbols and contends that the whole theological enterprise is to seek and set forth the meaning of these symbols. ‘Theology as such’, states Tillich, ‘has neither the task nor the power to confirm or to negate religious symbols. Its task is to interpret them according to theological principles and methods.’2

D. M. Baillie's God was in Christ is now published as a paperback, and this is a pointer to the widespread nature of its appeal. No modern book in English on Christology has been more readable or given a greater sense of honesty of thought or ecumenicity of spirit. It has appeared to many to throw new light on the wonder of the Incarnation, and on the human and Divine in the life of our Lord. Its Christology, however, has also been already the subject of criticism in this journal where Professor J. H. Hick, of Princeton, in March 1958 suggested that Baillie's solution is really a form of adoptionism, the Man Christ Jesus being the Man in whom the most perfect presence of God to Man and the most perfect response of Man to God is manifested. I agree with Professor Hick that much of what Donald Baillie says does appear to point to a form of adoptionism, but I would maintain that there is another strain in Baillie's writings which is not simply a form of predestinarian compulsion as Hick suggests, but is an attempt to say what the traditional orthodoxy said when it spoke about a Divine nature in Christ. The aim of this article is to show that this real tension is to be found in Baillie's writing, and that for this reason his solution of the paradox of grace does not turn out to be nearly so complete a solution as he thinks.

In the theology of Karl Barth the fact of the life, death and J. resurrection of Jesus Christ is not merely the central point in our knowledge of God and His ways, a central point which might, however, be merely one, the greatest one, in a series of ways whereby we might know God and learn to speak about God. The Incarnation is for Barth the one and only revelation of God to men. In page after page he stresses that man by his unaided efforts can never know God. It is not only that man's reason is inadequate to read of God in the works of His hands, but by the fact of the Fall man has, ‘made himself quite impossible in relation to the redemptive Grace of God; and in so doing has made himself quite impossible in his created being as man, who has cut the ground from under his feet, who has lost his whole raison d'être‘ (p. 10). For such a man the knowledge of God has become quite out of the question, an utter impossibility, which can only again become possible in the quite incomprehensible ‘yet and never the less’ of the Grace of God in Jesus Christ, in Jesus Christ alone.

There is a greater amount of evidence than is generally realised that in old Israel there was a cult of the dead. The archaeological evidence is less than one would expect. There is a certain amount of evidence from the second millennium B.C.—ornaments and jars, small cups and suchlike, found for instance at Gezer—but we have very little material from the time of the Israelite occupation. It is true that according to I Samuel 28.3 Saul is said to have ‘put away all those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land’, and that there is a law against them in Exodus 22.18 (‘thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live’). It is not, however, until Deuteronomy 18.11 that we get the stern prohibition of the cult of the dead in every form, and there is every reason to believe that it was on the basis of this prohibition that King Josiah acted when he put away ‘them that had familiar spirits, and the wizards’, 2 Kings 23.24. This was not an isolated action of his, but was part of a general reform in which he got rid also of the teraphim (which may have been connected with the cult of ancestors) and idols generally. There is no record of any king of Judah dealing with necromancers before King Josiah.

The spurious word Confessionalism is employed to describe a church's adherence to a particular tradition of doctrine and order, and the elements in that tradition which hold a group or family of churches together in a common sharing of life, worship and fellowship. The confession of faith as such is very much a Reformation phenomenon and the various particular Confessions of Faith in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries played a large part in creating the families of churches to which we are now accustomed within Protestantism. It is by the Augsburg Confession (1530) that Lutheran church tradition is denned; the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) stamped the Continental Reformed Churches with their own particular character; the Thirty-Nine Articles (1563) were for many long years and are still officially the defining document for the Anglican Communion; and it is largely the existence of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) which has made it possible to identify Presbyterianism as a family of churches at least within the Anglo-Saxon world. It is true that the relation of even the English-speaking Presbyterian churches to this Confession of Faith has been greatly modified over the years, but it still provides the essential criteria for recognising one of our churches as Reformed and Presbyterian.

At the outset of this essay it should be understood that its author does not claim to have derived any special pleasure from writing it. In fact, he would not have written it at all if in the time since publication one single voice had come to his ears, theologically challenging the title Honest to God given to his book by the Bishop of Woolwich. In time past the author of this essay was a lecturer in Roman Law, and he is now endeavouring to be a Church historian. He thus takes a much greater pleasure in resolving the problems which are set by ‘The first two years of the reign of the emperor Theodosius I'1 or in outlining The Framework of the New Testament Stories2, than in indulging in the rabies theologorum, the fury of the theologians, which was bitterly denounced already by Philip Melanchthon, the German reformer. The author of this essay would, therefore, willingly have left the task of expounding the Church's doctrine to those to whom it by right belongs, the bishops and the doctors of the Church.

When the Archbishop of Canterbury writes:

it is insufficient to pick things from the teaching of Jesus and the New Testament interpretation of his morality, without a thorough examination of the whole evidence about the morality of Jesus. We need to see the place which law had in the mission of Jesus; the way in which he did not abolish the law but fulfil it; the meaning of fulfilment, the interpretation of it in St. Paul and others; the nature of the gifts of the Holy Spirit; the significance of divine institutions within the natural order, such as marriage, the family, the state.