Investigates the proliferating texts and traditions about Jesus in the early church and the decision in favour of the canonical four. By examining the competing options, the decision in favour of a fourfold gospel is seen as a decision for plurality within limits: the limits sustaining the coherence of the apostolic testimony to Jesus, and the plurality allowing the richness and complexity of the truth about Jesus to be displayed.

Identifies some of the defining characteristics of the gospel genre by comparing them with other genres such as folk tales, memoirs, biographies, scriptural narratives and martyrologies. The analysis leads to the significant conclusion that the gospels are in some sense sui generis – written versions of early Christian teaching and preaching about Jesus.

Places the four gospels in the scriptural environment of Israel’s story. Taking each gospel in turn, Hays and Blumhofer show that the scriptures constitute the gospels’ ‘generative milieu’. The stories about Jesus gain their full intelligibility within the context of the textual tradition and the larger scriptural story of God’s dealings with Israel.

Quash draws Christian doctrine, the hermeneutics of gospels interpretation and the Christian iconic tradition into lively conversation. His central claim is that the Spirit of God mediates the life of Christ risen and ascended to the church and the world, and that this happens through the reading and hearing of the gospels and their ongoing representation in such works as Graham Sutherland’s Christ in Glory.

The role of Christian worship and devotional practices in making the gospels come alive in ever-changing historical circumstances and across ecclesial traditions is explored. Among the arts, attention is paid to the signal contribution of music (J. S. Bach, Black gospel music, and hymns) to the appreciation and appropriation of gospel texts.

While noting John’s several differences from the synoptics, Christopher Skinner shows how John is particularly interested in narrating the life of Jesus within the eternal life of God. It is Jesus’ unique relationship with God which shapes John’s distinctive portrayal of Jesus as the one through whom the hidden God is known.

This chapter describes Gadamer’s initial understanding of the nature and significance of Platonic philosophy in terms of dialogue and dialectic. It then provides a brief account of Gadamer’s own interpretive method as presented in Truth and Method. The chapter then shows how Gadamer changed his understanding of Plato, particularly in relation to Aristotle. The chapter shows how this new understanding of Plato provides the ontological foundation for Gadamer’s own “hermeneutics.” Finally, we see how Gadamer’s readings of ancient philosophers constitute a fundamental challenge and correction to the mode of interpretation still dominant in Anglo-American philosophy.

In 1960 Hans-Georg Gadamer, then a sixty-year-old German philosophy professor at Heidelberg, published Truth and Method ( Wahrheit und Methode). Although he had authored many essays, articles, and reviews, to this point Gadamer had published only one other book, his habilitation on Plato in 1931: Plato’s Dialectical Ethics. As a title for this work on a theory of interpretation, he first proposed to his publisher, Mohr Siebeck, “Philosophical Hermeneutics.” The publisher responded that “hermeneutics” was too obscure a term. Gadamer then proposed “Truth and Method” for a work that found, over time, great resonance and made “hermeneutics” and Gadamer’s name commonplace in intellectual circles worldwide. Truth and Method has been translated into many languages, including Chinese and Japanese. It found and still finds a receptive readership, in part, because, as the title suggests, it addresses large and central philosophical issues in an attempt to find a way between or beyond objectivism and relativism, and scientism and irrationalism. He accomplishes this by developing an account of what he takes to be the universal hermeneutic experience of understanding. Understanding, for Gadamer, is itself always a matter of interpretation. Understanding is also always a matter of language.

The origins, social function, and the legitimacy of law were life-long preoccupations for Judith Shklar. She was one of the first political philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition after World War II to devote intense attention to the role of law in liberal-democratic societies. In this respect, her work is more in line with European thinkers such as Max Weber, Franz Neumann and Harold Laski, and, of course, her adviser, Carl Friedrich, who was the first to recommend to her that she consider the topic of legalism.

Is there an “international rule of law movement”? Undoubtedly there exists a network of international bodies claiming to “work on” what are often called rule of law “issues,” many of whom use this term and do so self-referentially.2 These groups are not concerned with an “international rule of law,” whatever that might be, or indeed with international law more broadly. They are “international” in the sense that they comprise cross-border networks, and in that they approach the “rule of law” in a quasi-constitutional sense, abstracted from any specific (national) polity.

What is the rule of law, and under what conditions does it become a self-reinforcing, stable order? Missing from the various literatures that have attempted an answer is a coherent attempt to create a satisfying account of the microfoundations of the behaviors that generate and sustain a distinctively legal order. Whether philosophical or applied, existing approaches to the rule of law have neglected the question of what, exactly, is distinct about law’s rule. We do not yet know enough about what sets legal ordering apart from other strategies of ordering, be they economic, political, or violent.1 This chapter responds to this lacuna. In so doing it gives an account of the kinds of things required for a positive theory of the rule of law.

With the publication of his lectures on constitutional law in 1885, A. V. Dicey introduced an account of the rule of law that would have, for better or worse, a powerful influence. His book, Law of the Constitution, is an extended essay on how the law of the English or British constitution is the expression of two basic principles, the rule of law and parliamentary sovereignty. These ideas were not new to English legal writing, but Dicey succeeded with impressive literary flourish to elevate them to the status of the organizing principles of the constitution.