It would be difficult not to agree with the judgment of Barth himself concerning his Anselm book; that, although of all his books he had written it with the greatest love, in America and Europe it was of all his books the least read. This is somewhat surprising, considering what is thought by most commentators to be the decisive influence of this book on the formulation of Barth's dogmatic method from 1931 onward. That is after the critical turn which Barth made subsequent to the publication of his first systematic attempt, Die christliche Dogmatik im Entwurf. This paper attempts to assess how Barth understood Anselm's theological programme and in what respects this understanding evinces a characteristic systematic weakness in Barth's own theological project.

It is not my intention in this paper to attempt a fresh exegesis or interpretation of a passage which in recent years has been much studied by New Testament scholars, but rather to draw attention to two unavoidable limitations in human thinking, shared by Paul and ourselves, which, I believe, go some way to explain the commentators' difficulties in dealing with ‘the unmanageable dimensions of the Christian verities’ found here. Paul makes some attempt to overcome these limitations by the use of a series of metaphors, apparently not always consistent with one another in strict logic, and we shall consider these individually in the third part of our study.

Even the most careful and ingenious readers of this Journal will have found no hint of support for the suggestion that New Year is a festival in the Christian Calendar; nor is this thirtieth New Year in the Journal's life itself sufficient reason for extraordinary prefatory comment. This inadequate note is occasioned by events in the lives of the editors who began the Scottish Journal of Theology—began it with vigour and dynamism, speedily and shrewdly developing and establishing its position, and carrying it forward, now, into its thirtieth volume.

At first sight, revolution and quietism are political opposites. This appears to be true even when both terms are taken in optimam partem. Viewed in the most favourable light, revolution is the active overthrow—in the name of freedom and justice (by what means is a question which may initially be left open)—of an oppressive and unjust system. For its part, quietism, benevolently considered, is the temporary acquiescence in an oppressive and unjust state of affairs whose wrongs will, the quietist hopes, eventually disappear.

Critics of the right wing of twentieth-century Protestant theology, most notably Neo-orthodoxy and more specifically the theology of Karl Barth, tend to be troubled by the central role given to what Barth calls the ‘science of dogmatics’. Their problem is twofold. (1) Dogmatics, at least in the Barthian conception of that science, appears to be exclusivist, accessible only to those who are already among the initiate, obscurantist, arrogant and even irrational. (2) Dogmatics is represented as the sole means of entry into theology: Barth uncompromisingly and aggressively rejects any other avenues. He is disdainful of philosophy, of philosophical theology, and even of ‘natural theology’ (see his treatment of Brunner in the early book, Natural Theology and his critique of Tillich in his very last book, Evangelical Theology).