Luther's conception of reason and revelation has not yet found the attention which it deserves. Though some new studies have tried to interpret his view of human reason, neither his conception of revelation as such nor his definition of the relation between reason and revelation has been the object of special research. This fact which at first sight seems rather surprising is not accidental. Rather it is the consequence of a very important development which had taken place already in the sixteenth century. It was primarily Melanchthon and not Luther whom Protestant theologians in the post-Reformation era followed. While Luther was the reformer of the Church, Melanchthon was the reformer of the German universities and the whole education system. With respect to their theology, Luther and Melanchchon differed considerably as is well known. The ideas by which Melanchthon reformed the German universities were, roughly speaking, a combination of Protestant theology as regards the doctrine of justification and a more or less unaltered Aristotelian system as regards the relation between theology and philosophy. The Melanchthonian reform gave the German universities their shape for centuries till the new ideas of rationalism and of modern science won the universities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and gave them a new form. But it seems that Melanchthon's conception of reason and revelation is even today of great significance and influence. It has at least determined most modern studies which have dealt with Luther's conception of reason and revelation.

In 1938 and 1939 Karl Barth delivered the Gifford Lectures in the University of Aberdeen. According to the will of the founder, these lectures were established for the ‘promoting, advancing, teaching and diffusing’ of the study of natural theology. But Barth was, as he made plain on receiving the invitation, ‘an avowed opponent of all natural theology’. Three years earlier he had fiercely attacked his former theological associate, Emil Brunner, on this same question. He had then said of natural theology: ‘It has to be rejected a limine—right at the outset. Only the theology and the church of the antichrist can profit from it. The Evangelical Church and Evangelical theology would only sicken and die of it.’ When therefore he was asked to give the Gifford Lectures he was in a quandary. The way in which he resolved the problem has usually been treated, half-humorously, as an ingenious piece of theological juggling. In fact, however, when we consider it in relation to his attitude to natural theology in his controversy with Brunner and to his treatment of it in Church Dogmatics II.I, on the knowledge of God, and indeed against the background of the whole of his life's work, we can see that in his solution of this difficulty there is simply the same attitude sharpened to a clear-cut issue. What he did was to jettison natural theology completely and give an exposition of its opposite, the theology of revelation.

It is necessary at the outset to notice the passages in the Scots Confession which refer to the Atonement of Christ.

On the long journey towards a clear understanding of the historical Jesus it is desirable from time to time to halt and survey the scene, take our bearings and choose the direction for further advance. In this article I do not profess to cover the recent relevant literature, which is vast in extent. The aim rather has been to select a few works representative of different approaches and methods, and to present in this way both the lines of progress and the questions which still await an answer.

In a few brief months some of you will be going out into the active ministry, exchanging the life of classroom, library and common room for the very different life of parishes or service in the Church in other lands.