The subject is the Bible, and its relation to the Church. Hence I shall not attempt to deal with the so-called Bible Difficulties, or with the Higher Criticism, or to develop a theory of Inspiration. I must try to give a line about the general interpretation of the Bible, as being God's Book and truly inspired, written in the Church and for the Church's use; and as written by men, because it has been God's method to reveal Himself through men. It was written by men, and tells a story which is real history; therefore we must have thorough critical investigation of the Bible. It is God's Book because it tells the story of God's saving Purpose, worked out in the history of the believing and worshipping People of God, Israel, His chosen nation. Because this story is true, we have nothing to fear from the Higher Criticism. If that Criticism has been at fault, as it often has been, it is because it has often failed to see the record, as it needs to be seen, from the point of view of believing and worshipping Israel.

For the Church is the People of God, God's Israel. As such, it has existed not for some 1900 years only, but for more than 3000 years, since the day when the Lord God redeemed it out of Egypt and made His Covenant with it.

In its classical expression Christianity means a new life which God makes available for all who become apprentices of His Son Jesus Christ. Now sinful men cannot unaided appropriate the blessings of that life. Besides the message of the Prodigal who “ came to himself” the Gospel exhibits in the Cross divine love that has entered the far country and suffers the ordeal inevitably imposed there by human sin. Really to hear the Gospel is to respond in penitent love to the God who was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. But how shall men hear unless there be preachers? The Gospel by God's gracious provision is brought to each new generation by those who enter into the apostolic tradition; apostolic, because in history we depend upon those who were the first eye-witnesses of Jesus and His resurrection. Nevertheless the apostles preached under the authority of the Holy Spirit who testifies to Christ and proceeds from the eternal life of the Father and the Son (see John 14.26; 15.26 f.). Paul the apostle preached in the power of the Spirit (Rom. 15.19; 1 Cor. 2.4); it was God who had given apostles to the Church, inspiring them with wisdom and knowledge (1 Cor. 12.8, 28). We find similar testimony in Eph. 3.5 (a revelation disclosed to the apostles and prophets by the Spirit); 1 Pet. 1.12, which links preaching and inspiration; and Acts where we read of men filled with the Spirit, like Stephen and Philip, going out as evangelists.

What has the missionary to communicate? It is primarily “the given Word, the essential and unvarying Gospel”, the kerygma, “ the kind of speech which is likely to draw men into the Christian community” as contrasted with “ the kind which is required for the further instruction of those already within it”. Professor John Baillie in his Whitby paper gives from the New Testament accounts of our Lord's own kerygma, and those of St. Peter and St. Paul. From these it is evident that the Christian kerygma has two parts; on the one hand, there is a statement of events that have happened or are about to happen, events that we may call “ the mighty acts of God ”; on the other hand, there is a call to repentance and faith; part is in the indicative and part is in the imperative mood. The only adequate way of stating facts and of giving commands is for human beings the spoken or written word, and the emphasis at Whitby on the Gospel being proclaimed by life does not alter the fact that it is “ by the foolishness of preaching ” as a general rule that it has pleased God “ to save them that believe ”. Dr. Van Dusen has most clearly expressed what may be called the Whitby view: “ The Word is principally to be communicated —not through ideas, or even speech but through life … Preaching, theology, the Word spoken, the Word formulated, are not to be undervalued.

We understand that if Theology in general means the systematised interpretation of Divine truth, Christian Theology means the systematised interpretation of the redemptive revelation of God in Christ. That is its subject, and its method is the exposition of Holy Scripture. Natural Theology differs from Christian Theology both in subject-matter and in method. Its subject is the revelation of God in Nature and in the world of man, and its method is the exposition of that revelation in the light of human reason and conscience. Of course this is not to say that there cannot be a Christian Natural Theology. That would be to prejudge an issue which is sharply dividing Protestant theological thought on the Continent at the present time and which is the occasion of this paper. But I think that, without prejudging that issue, it can be said that if the exposition of Nature and man's world be made in the light and under the authority of the Christian revelation, then, in a not unimportant sense, Natural Theology loses its distinctive character. For though, in that case, it continue to interrogate Nature and Man, it derives its decisive answers from the revelation in Christ, and thus becomes distinctively Christian and Scriptural.

A Danish friend remarked to me recently that he wished that preachers would stop attacking materialism. I found myself in complete agreement with his thesis that the current pulpit fashion of denouncing the materialism of the age is both muddleheaded and ill-timed. In the first place, it is highly questionable whether the present generation is more “materialist” (using the word in its worst sense) than, let us say, the Victorian era. What is more important, the phrase “materialism of the modern man ” o n the lips of Churchmen begs more than one question. In what sense is the Christian abstracted from the human material situation? And what is the remedy for materialism supposed to be? An abstract “ spiritualism ”? A flight from the concrete situation in which we all have to earn a living? If the answer is that by “ materialism ” the Church to-day means an obsession with things with a consequent neglect of spiritual values, we do well to ask whether that is indeed the problem of the modern world, or whether it is not more true that the real battlefield is the sphere of these spiritual values, the ideologies in whose name things are controlled.

Walter Ltithi's recent booklet,Die Soziale Frage im Lichte der Bibel, is a realistic effort to bring an informed and Reformed insight to bear on the sociological questions of to-day.

“I Believe that we have to learn anew what the Holy Scriptures say and mean by substitution of Jesus Christ and satisfaction.” These words, spoken by Karl Barth in the course of a discussion on “The Christian as Witness”, provide much food for reflection. For if there is one conclusion which had come almost to be taken for granted in enlightened Christian quarters, it is that the idea of substitution has led theology on a wrong track; and that the word “substitution” must now be dropped from the doctrine of the Atonement as too heavily laden with misleading and even false connotations. By “liberal” or “modernist” theology the idea of substitution is of course rejected out of hand. And even the theology which prides itself on being “positive” and “evangelical” and which seeks to maintain lines of communication with the great traditional doctrines of atonement is on the whole disposed to reject it. And this, not merely on the ground that it holds implications which are irrational and morally offensive, but even and specifically on the ground that it is unscriptural. Thus Dr. Vincent Taylor as a result of an exhaustive examination of the “Idea of Atonement in the New Testament” gives it as his conclusion that the idea of substitution has no place in the New Testament writings; that in fact it is opposed to the fundamental teaching of the New Testament; that even St.

As a theologian, Emil Brunner has always had two main concerns: firstly the exposition of the special revelation of God, which culminated in Christ, and its maintenance as something distinct from the general revelation of God in nature, conscience and history; and, secondly, the evaluation of this general revelation from the standpoint of faith in the special revelation. Like Barth and most of his contemporaries in theological study, Brunner started in the liberal camp, and his first important book, Mysticism and the Word (1927), was a critical discussion of the whole trend of Protestant theology since the collapse of verbal inspirationism. In it, a short study of the wide and difficult field of mysticism is followed by a detailed examination of the theology of Schleiermacher, who is taken as the chief representative of Protestant theology since the days of the Enlightenment. Although Mysticism and the Word has not been translated into English, the loss to the English-reading public is lessened by the fact that much of the argument is recapitulated with less detailed reference to Schleiermacher in Brunner's next book, The Mediator. This is divided into three parts; the first is entitled “Presuppositions”, and the second and third deal respectively with the person and work of the Mediator. In the first part Brunner argues that the usual evaluation of Schleiermacher's theological work is false. It has been customary to contrast him with Kant and Hegel. Kant found that faith in God was one of the postulates of the practical reason, or the will.