Any attempt to examine the main trends of contemporary theology may well open with the salutary reflection that history always has its own way of defying our efforts at exact analysis. The events which seem to have the quality of new departures are inexplicably linked with the past out of which they have grown and to which, in some sense and degree, they are related as effect to cause. This is especially true when we find ourselves in the realm of ideas, and Christian theology must not be supposed, even by those who are convinced that it takes its rise from a “revelatum”, to be of such a nature as to provide, or allow, an exception to the general rule. Only when we compare the broad features of periods sufficiently separate in point of time and temper can we recognise differences so sharp as to be unmistakable.

What difference can there be between Anglicanism and the rest of Christendom on the doctrine of the Incarnation? None fundamentally. But each body within Christendom has its own approach and emphasis, arising out of its own ethos and attitude. My purpose is to discuss, not so much the Incarnation in itself (though inevitably I must do that also to some extent) but the presentation given to that doctrine by the Anglican Church. And this I think I can best do by assembling and presenting my subject against the background of the Bible, the Creeds, and Anglican worship. Bible and Creeds (together with the teaching of the undivided Catholic Church of the first four centuries) form the backbone of the Anglican position; though of course that position has tried to be alive to more modern trends of thought also. And worship is the living expression of belief. I think therefore that these three lines of approach will help me to cover the ground as thoroughly as possible

I fear I may have little new light to throw on this difficult subject; but I love Ignatius, and should like to think that others may be drawn into the same affection. I propose, (I) to consider the meaning of the question; (2) (my main purpose) to say something of the Episcopate in Ignatius; (3) to venture a few remarks on later history.

For some time past there has been a great need that theology should become more biblical, and that biblical studies should become more theological. To-day there are welcome signs that this is coming about, which is in effect a reviving sense of the authority of the Bible. There is a feeling that if criticism has not finished its task—which can hardly be the case—it is time that it was supplemented by something else; that it has too long dominated biblical studies as though it were the very building, whereas it is in fact a means of securing the foundations on which the main structure can be raised; that its necessary method of analysis, increasingly elaborated, has tended to destroy the recognition of the majestic structure of the biblical revelation and its unity. Thus Dr Vincent Taylor in the introduction to his Jesus and His Sacrifice confessed that after twenty-five years devoted to the minutiae of synoptic criticism, he had a great desire to consider what the Gospels really have to say for themselves. In the realm of Old Testament studies there has emerged a sense that, Israel's history being so remarkable, it is useless to brush aside all the later developments of, let us say, the Priestly Code as regrettable and retrograde; it is wiser and more helpful to ask what their significance really is, and whether they do not rather witness to the rich fulness of religion under the old covenant. The point to be driven home is just this: when the sources have been analysed and dated as far as may be, then begins the real task of considering what is the significance of the contents. That can and will only be found in our Lord Jesus Christ. But that in effect means allowing the Bible to be its own interpreter, explaining one part by another. Especially when seeking for the significance of the Old Testament must the search be carried over into the New Testament. It seems worth while to try and work this method out on the theme of the temple.

“When I see you setting off down the road on Monday morning,” the village schoolmaster once said to me, “I sometimes wonder if you are regarding human life as radically as you did when you were preaching in the kirk the day before. You seem, somehow, easier-minded about it. You come into the school. What, honestly, do you see there? A fine bunch of children, going on their pleasant way to become decent men and women—or are they really heading for a life which is rooted in the world's evil, a life out of which you'll tell them in a few years they must be saved by the grace of God?

“And then on the Tuesday morning,” he went on, “you're off to the Presbytery. Now, tell me honestly, don't you meet together pretty much as any other body of people would do—to transact your business, to express your opinions, and to come to the judgment which your own experience has led you to hold? And yet your distinctive characteristic is supposed to be that you believe that human experience and human judgment are shot through with a deadly evil. You say that you distrust yourselves, that ‘of yourselves you can do nothing aright”—but I can't say that you look or sound particularly like people who are distrusting themselves. You say in your opening prayer that you want to be over-ruled and corrected—but you'll forgive me for saying that you don't seem very often to go through the process during the meeting that follows.

It is often claimed that the problem of communicating the Gospel is the major practical problem facing the Church to-day, as it may also be the major theological problem. This concern is a very healthy sign, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that we are apt to be so concerned with devising new methods of evangelism as to forget the one factor of supreme importance: the burden of the Gospel itself, that is, to forget that the Gospel is not simply the message of divine love, but the actual way in which God communicates Himself to us in history. No technique that forgets that the Gospel has already been made supremely relevant to sinful humanity in the Incarnation and death of Jesus Christ will ever avail for the communication of the Gospel. This is therefore an attempt to probe into what the New Testament has to say to us about this, and into the way in which, as a matter of fact, the New Testament actually communicates the Gospel to us.