In debate with Roman Catholics and Lutherans about the physical presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements, Calvin argued that, since Christ had ascended into heaven (i.e. the spiritual realm or kingdom of God), we must not look for him on the table but ‘lift up our hearts’ to heaven and seek him there. The idea is well known to Calvin scholars, but it still raises many questions. Can Calvin mean that our souls are literally raised up to heaven? Are we supposed to experience some sort of heavenly elevation? And, if this notion is so strange to us, even those of us in Calvinist circles, how was it so readily available to Calvin and his readers? To answer these questions, we shall examine the texts more closely and inquire into their patristic background.

As in modernity appropriation has become more important than dedication and communication, the modern Narcissus, captured in self-relation, sees only his own projections. A change of the polarity of our attention is therefore necessary: from the human who appropriates to the God who communicates, who is himself a hermeneut. This means that neither Schleiermacher's nor Bultmann's hermeneutic of regression should be followed; both are shy of talking about the God who is not only already in us, but who comes to us – and this advent is mediated through creaturely means. God the creator is – in accordance with the Nicene Creed – the ‘Poet’, the one who does what he says, and says what he does. This communication needs a space of hearing and reading; its text vindicates the relative autonomy over the author as well as over the reader. The human being in its modern subjectivity ignores this and either transcends the text (Hegel and Barth) or goes behind the text (Schleiermacher and Bultmann). Instead, the aim should be to have a relationship, an engagement with the text, to have, quite frankly, ‘intercourse’ with it, as Luther translates ‘meditatio’. The crucial question is therefore not: ‘How do I understand the given biblical text?’, but ‘How does the given biblical text give itself to me to understand it – so that I am understood?’

Presbyterian spirituality in southern Africa has often been treated as non-existent, yet it is a vibrant reality which is at one and the same time catholic, evangelical and contextual. Founded in Christ alone, it holds the authority of scripture as normative and as the source of the unity of God's people, as can be seen in the way it derives from the marks of the church – the Word preached, the sacraments celebrated and discipline rightly exercised. It is relational and involves communing with God, others, oneself and the environment. While conscious of the early church tradition out of which it arises, it is continuous with that tradition and is open to the spiritual insights of other traditions. It demonstrates both catholic and evangelical emphases and is adaptable within the context of African spirituality. As a result, it has a broad church ethos marked by fluidity, tolerance and appreciation of those sources that enrich it.

The purpose of this essay is to broaden the way in which the exegetical necessity of trinitarian theology has frequently been understood in the post-Enlightenment period by offering an exegetical-theological interpretation of the birth–infancy narrative in the Gospel of Luke and exploring the implications for exegesis in the opening scene in the body of the gospel. The question of the identify of God is pursued by paying close attention to the movement of the Lukan narrative itself and the influence and presence of the OT within the narrative. The essay, as a form of ecclesial biblical theology, attempts to take seriously the dogmatic tradition of the church primarily from the side of exegesis and, hence, focuses on one aspect of continuity between the bible and the later formulations as generated by the dynamics of a particular biblical text.

We are accustomed to think of the natural law as being more or less equivalent to a universal morality, whether this is seen as grounded in nature in some general sense, or more specifically in the deliverances of practical reason. There is another way of approaching the natural law, however, according to which it is identified with a specific moral tradition which cannot be adequately understood apart from some account of its historical development and social location. This paper defends the latter approach. It proceeds by way of an examination of one phase in the development of the natural law tradition, namely, its formulation as a systematic moral theology in the early scholastic period. Scholastic reflection on the natural law follows the pattern of a tradition-based form of moral reasoning, and even though the scholastics did not understand their moral reflections specifically in those terms, their concept of the natural law is congruent with a modern understanding of it as a tradition of inquiry.

Contemporary Edwards scholars frequently use the threeness – oneness paradigm to interpret his trinitarianism. The threeness – oneness paradigm maintains that the trinitarian traditions and particular theologians within the traditions reduce to an emphasis on either divine unity/substance or plurality/persons. Eastern Cappadocian trinitarianism and Western theologian Richard of St Victor use the social analogy and represent the threeness trajectory. The Western Augustinian tradition uses the psychological analogy and represents the oneness trajectory. Amy Plantinga Pauw's writings are the most thorough interpretations of Edwards's trinitarianism in terms of the threeness – oneness paradigm. She concludes that Edwards employed both the psychological and social models of the trinity. She argues that Edwards's genius lies in his ability to draw on both the psychological and social models of the trinity. In contrast, I maintain that the threeness – oneness paradigm is an overgeneralized understanding of the trinitarian traditions and, as such, unsuitable as a template to interpret Edwards's trinitarianism. Moreover, Edwards did not employ two models of the trinity, but one – the Augustinian mutual love model. Edwards's use of the Augustinian mutual love model reflects his continuity with the dominant Western Augustinian trinitarian tradition and early Enlightenment apologetics for the traditional doctrine of the trinity.

This paper offers a reflection upon the current preaching crisis in those parts of the United States church where old assumptions about preaching authority have collapsed. While preachers may have models of great confrontational authority available, in fact such authority for confrontation through preaching has largely evaporated. This paper explores new developments in OT studies that are related to canonical formulation, namely, that the biblical text as we have it is an outcome of belated editorial work whereby the text was reshaped with theological intentionality by scribes, a generative force in Judaism that transposed powerful memories into texts. Consequently, the great texts of confrontation between prophet and king, between truth and power, no longer offer dramatic confrontations but rather offer textual reflections upon remembered and perhaps constructed confrontations. The practical implication for preaching from this insight is that the preacher is not and need not be a player in confrontation as a prophet, but rather may be a scribe who keeps old texts available whereby the baptismal community may imagine its life differently. Four texts are considered wherein remembered dramatic confrontations have become textual resources.

A concept of the church current in post-Enlightenment modernity, of a religious society founded for the voluntary association of like-minded individuals, continues to dominate among many Christians today, especially in North American and western European contexts. This idea of church is particularly threatened by difference and conflict. Differences in matters of faith and values in such an ecclesiology mean that someone must be wrong in their private religious opinions. And, even if these opinions are privately held, they may undo the weak bonds of association among members of a Christian fellowship. Conflict, thus, is to be dreaded, and avoided. Unity for many in such an ecclesiology is synonymous with uniformity. Tolerance is theoretically valued, but toleration may mean little more than enlightened forbearance with the errors (i.e. differences) of others. The irony is that the church that can be undone by difference is a church more closely related to the polis of antiquity and the religious society of John Locke than to the diverse, vibrant, lively, and often messy communities of faith that spring to life on the pages of the NT. This essay seeks to advance an alternative ecclesiology conversant with classical trinitarian theology, grounded in the historical experience of the church, and open to certain streams of cultural pluralism.

Retrieving Karl Barth's theological exegesis of 1 Corinthians is essential both for historical reasons (it sheds important light on the crucial period between the Römerbrief and the early Göttingen lectures on dogmatics) and for theological reasons: the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ was the starting point of Barth's theology. This paper addresses historical concerns about the development of Barth's thought by locating his work on 1 Corinthians in recent discussions by David Ford and Bruce McCormack. As to theological issues, it defends Barth's exegesis of 1 Corinthians against those NT scholars who claimed that Barth's reading of Paul was determined by his own theological concerns and could therefore tell us nothing about Pauline theology. In fact, the opposite is the case: Barth's reading of 1 Corinthians remains exegetically interesting today (while those of his contemporaries do not) because he took the historical Paul seriously as a pastor and understood the pastoral implications of Paul's theological argument for the resurrection of the dead. Barth's ‘theological exegesis’ enabled him to hear the theologian Paul and protected him against the historicizing tendencies of the NT scholars of his day.

The attempt to bring radical orthodoxy (and in particular, the work of John Milbank) into conversation with Barth is hampered by the movement's dismissal of him as ‘neo-orthodox’, a thinker who rejected liberalism only to embrace revelatory positivism. If Barth were a positivist, he might be guilty of alienating human history, language, and culture from their divine source: ‘the secular’ would then be autonomous. But he does nothing of the kind – certainly not in his mature theology, probably not even in his earlier work. Radical orthodoxy's reading of Barth may reflect the influence of D. M. MacKinnon, who tended to highlight the prophetic and crisis elements in Barth's thought. The radically orthodox are more accurate when they cite ecclesial mediation as the real source of contention. While the stress on mediation can have disastrous results, dissolving Christ's identity into that of the church, this need not happen; indeed, one can argue that Barth's Christology demands a stronger account of church and sacraments than he himself supplied. The deeper issue may be what radical orthodoxy means by its stress on human poesis. Is the movement really an ecclesial theology, taking its stand within the historic church? Or is it just another form of liberalism, seeking to re-invent the church in default of authentic performance? If the latter, then theology has indeed become ‘tragically too important’, occluding sheer celebration of the divine gift.

A study of the origins, acts and efficacy, aims and ends of worship according to Friedrich Schleiermacher. Worship originates in inexpressible feeling, is ‘incarnate’ within a particular community, and functions dialectically. Worship consists of singing, preaching, prayer, baptism, the Lord's Supper and the ‘Power of the Keys’ (forgiveness). The efficacy of these acts derives from the mission and ministry of Christ, supported by the power of the Holy Spirit, and made effective through human action, insofar as it is conformed to the divine governance of the world. The chief aim of worship is to communicate the ‘religious moments in life’. Viewed negatively, worship can have no real or intended impact on God. Viewed positively, worship ends in the perfection of the common consciousness of the church. At its best, worship assists the human community in its proper development by ‘tuning us in’ to those feelings and dispositions that will best help us to act in accord with God's design. When this is true, worship can be said to truly continue and reflect the mission and ministry of Christ.

Traditional Reformation scholarship argued that conceiving faith as a habit is one of the differences between Reformed orthodoxy on the one hand, and Reformation thought on the other. Two theses have been defended in this respect. First, it has been argued that conceptualising faith as a habit was a typical example of introducing Thomistic and Aristotelian concepts into the Reformed faith. Secondly, several scholars have argued that the conceptualisation of faith as a habit overrules the role of the act of faith in salvation. The function of faith as a response to God's offer of salvation becomes secondary to the doctrine of predestination. By unravelling the transformation process which the concept of habit underwent through the history of Christian theology, the author shows that the first thesis is seriously flawed. As to the second thesis, he proposes an alternative interpretation of the sources by arguing that the nature of faith as a habit implies that it can only be known from its acts. At the end of the article, he provides some remarks about the value of the concept of habitus fidei for contemporary theology.

Jonathan Edwards's doctrine of imputation has long been misunderstood. This essay sets out to redress the balance on this aspect of Edwards's hamartiology, drawing on both nineteenth- and twentieth-century analyses of Edwards's theory. I argue that what previous commentators have failed to see is that Edwards's doctrine was not an aberrant version of either Augustinian realism or Calvinistic federalism. Instead, it was an attempt to forge a via media between the two, utilising the notion of a real union in Adam from Augustinianism and the representational aspect of federalism to form a new theory of imputation which, though indebted to the traditional alternatives, is independent of both.

A theological commentary on 1 Corinthians, Barth's Resurrection of the Dead (1924) is written in a complex genre, embracing the discourses of preaching, doctrine, ethics and historical criticism. Based on lectures delivered in 1923, it reveals the dialectical emphases of his early theology, though one may detect some development of his doctrine of the church and its apostolic authority. Barth's claim that the hermeneutical key to 1 Corinthians lies in its penultimate chapter on the resurrection was contested by Bultmann in an important article review. Already in the 1920s significant differences between two of the leading dialectical theologians can be detected. Bultmann's stress on the character of faith is apparent in the claim that 1 Cor 13 is the centre of the text, whereas Barth's stronger objectivism can be discerned in his appeal to Paul's foundational attesting of the resurrection. While Barth is arguably on stronger exegetical ground at this point, his reticence on the general resurrection of the dead remains puzzling. Despite its centrality for Paul and the later credal traditions of the church, this article of faith is handled with a restraint requiring some explanatory comment.

Was Cyril of Alexandria a theopaschite? In order to resolve this controversial issue, this paper will look at Cyril's Christology with Nestorius's eyes. The charge of theopatheia appears from the very beginning in Nestorius's correspondence with Cyril and retains its central place in Nestorius's work Liber Heraclidis. The paper discusses Nestorian arguments against Cyril's position and Cyril's counter-charges. The conclusion is reached that Nestorius asserted unqualified divine impassibility. Cyril, in contrast, held a qualified view of the divine impassibility and maintained that neither divinity suffered alone, apart from humanity (in which case the assumption of humanity would be superfluous), nor humanity suffered alone, apart from and in sharp contrast to the impassible divinity (in which case the reality of divine involvement in the incarnation would be put at risk).

The current debate about the nature and parameters of pastoral theology emphasises practice as both the source and the end of theological reflection: pastoral theology as reflection on practice with a view to transforming practice. This raises issues for pastoral theologians from the Reformed tradition, which prioritises word and prizes scripture and preaching as fundamental ways in which the word is mediated to us. Current philosophical, cultural and ecclesiological developments emphasise the constructed nature of our worlds, the crucial place of language in world construction, and the ‘textured’ nature of the community of faith. Thus theologians associated with the term ‘post-liberal’ emphasise that in a time of displacement, marginalisation and identity crisis the church, like the Jewish community in exile, returns to its texts as its home and the source of its identity and its practice. Taking the theology of Walter Brueggemann as a starting point, this paper explores the relationship between proclamation and practice in the church's life, and seeks, through a Reformed paradigm of word and sacrament, a ‘post-liberal’ redefinition of pastoral theology that gives a higher profile to the church's ‘peculiar speech’.

The sixteenth-century English Reformer John Hooper's views on the biblical idea of magisterial office and the application of God's law to the whole of the Christian community had a profound influence in England and Scotland. It is also clear that Hooper assimilated much of the German Reformer Heinrich Bullinger's theologico-political federalism, and played an important role in the reception of Bullinger's thought in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britain. Bullinger, via Hooper, also influenced English and Scottish theories of political resistance in diverse ways.

The view that the divine substance is some item common to the three persons is frequently rejected in modern trinitarian thought in favour of the view that the divine substance is properly identical with the Father in a way that it is not identical with the Son or Spirit. I argue that these views cannot safeguard the monarchy of the Father, and that in order to safeguard this latter doctrine, it is necessary to hold that the divine substance is some item common to the three persons. I show how this view does not require that there is any sense in which the divine substance is prior to the divine persons.

In order to answer this question and for other purposes I intend principally to describe, comment on and include some of the thought of Hans Frei and Paul Ricoeur. I include Frei because he, while unable to ‘prove’ Jesus' presence, can ‘make sense of the gospel story’ in his own way, especially with his idea of the ‘history-like’ quality of the story which he believes prevents its acceptance as myth. I too cannot hope to ‘prove’ Jesus’ presence, nor would I account him as mythic. Frei does not, however, account for rhetorical persuasion. While he explains how we can accept the story as true by cutting between history and myth, it still remains to understand why and how the story is offered. But Ricoeur can help to answer the how and the why through his analysis of the coincidence of divine will and human contingency in biblical story, with Jesus as destined and God the Father as Destinator. I take this idea further by showing how in John's gospel Peter, through his own contingent acts of denial, his human fallibility, is rescued by love, the final contingency. Ricoeur also makes a case for ‘manifestation’ rather than ‘verification’ of the gospels, the one through poetic discourse superseding the other by scientific description. Hence, there is a rhetorical – literary argument for reader identity with Jesus, based in part on Aristotle's tragic emotions and in part on our human inconstancy and inconsistency as understood by Ricoeur and Montaigne to show how these qualities work out in Peter. Both Frei and Ricoeur find their way to the Jesus of faith past the Jesus of reason and myth to the Jesus of story. The goal of this article is to show how we are persuaded by John to identify with Jesus with the rhetoric of love.

The skilfully arranged pieces collected in Rowan Williams's On Christian Theology are regarded by Geoffrey Wainwright as an informal dogmatics, an instance of ‘open system’. A subtle thinker and writer, Williams starts from the heartlands of the Christian faith and explores its boundaries. His work is evaluated in this article according to what he himself establishes as the celebratory, communicative, and critical styles of theology. Williams's kenotic trinitarianism is matched with his Abelardian view of the atonement, which seems to neglect some scriptural and traditional elements that a more Anselmian understanding would take into account. Freedom is a key notion for Williams but needs more definition in relation to ‘choice’; and his location of the church remains institutionally imprecise. Wainwright particularly appreciates Williams's exposition of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo and the aesthetic, doxological, and eschatological dimensions of his ethical thought. The book under discussion is disarmingly modest in tone, and the author himself declares that repentance is always in order for a theologian.