Many people, and not only in 1984, the year specified by Orwell, have expressed thoughts somewhat along the following lines: that in modern society people are being dehumanised, depersonalised, mechanised; that relations among persons are too often impersonal, alienated, objective; that all this is to be deplored, and that institutions and ways of doing things must be so devised as to undo damage already done, or at least so devised as not to do more of this damage, by depersonalising people. Many particular instances have been given as examples of the dehumanisation which is complained of, but we are seldom given any more general account, let alone a definition of dehumanisation, depersonalisation, etc. I am not here assuming the fallacy attributed to Socrates that you do not know at all what a thing is, unless you have defined it adequately. After all many people know at least something of what a teaspoon is, what water is, what friendship is, without being able to offer acceptable definitions of these things. So my point is not that all previous discussions have been useless or hopelessly unclear, but I do say that if we can provide a somewhat general statement or statements about the concept of dehumanisation, that will greatly help us in practical discussion about ways of encouraging fully human relationships; or, more positively put, if we have before us some general account of what humanisation is, we can better see how it might come about.

Liberal theology since Harnack has failed to make much sense of the patristic axiom, ‘Not assumed is not healed’. Harnack is severe: ‘The mystical doctrine of salvation and its new formulas had not only no Scriptural authority in their favour, but conflicted also with the evangelical idea of Jesus Christ.’ More recently Maurice Wiles questioned the cogency of the axiom, negatively on the grounds of difficulties in the idea of ‘divinisation’ and of the corporate nature of salvation, but positively on the grounds of a quite different understanding of what salvation means. ‘If salvation be thought of in personal terms’, he argues, ‘then its effective outworking is through the experience of divine grace in the human soul. Whatever media may be involved, the locus of salvation is the sphere of ordinary personal existence in which God establishes fellowship with man.’

While the words ‘triumph’, ‘triumphal’ and ‘triumphant’ are words with a long history, the expression ‘triumphalism’ is a modern invention. It seems to have started its career when first Bishop de Smedt of Belgium and later other speakers used it in their speeches in the early sessions of the Second Vatican Council. Through the innumerable articles and books about the Council it became widely known and became a current expression in the terminology of writers on religious themes. The speed and extent of its success showed that it pointed to the existence of an acute problem in the life of the churches. This problem was clearly stated in a contribution to the council's debate on the nature of the Church by Bishop Laszlo of Eisenstadt.

Wide circulation has been given by H. W. Montefiore to a theory, first proposed by H. Appel and later taken up by F. Lo Bue, that the background of Hebrews is to be found in the involvement of Apollos in the cross currents of the Corinthian church. The argument, particularly as formulated by Montefiore, has been generally well-received by scholars and will undoubtedly continue to fascinate readers of his popular commentary. To the present, however, no attempt has been made to subject the hypothesis to any form of searching analysis. This neglect has been unfortunate, since, while prima facie attractive, the foundational assumptions of the theory are questionable. We shall therefore attempt a brief analysis of the argument in the interest of stimulating further discussion.

Whatever else Christianity may be, the agapeistic way of life, a personal relationship with Jesus, or whatever, it is also a matter of holding certain things to be true. Of recent times that has been denied by some whose job it is to think about these things. For there are theologians who, though apparently convinced by logical positivism that the traditional formulations of Christian belief do not express truths, wish nevertheless to retain the name of Christian. Positivism however in any case never had much more than fashion to recommend it; and it was already ceasing to be fashionable among philosophers as it started to be fashionable among theologians. To conjoin furthermore an acceptance of positivism with a wish to be called Christian strikes me at least as mere perversity.

The name of John McLeod Campbell (1800–1872) is well-known among historians of Scottish church history. A pastor who spent most of his life in Glasgow, Campbell is remembered best for his deposition from the Church of Scotland in 1831 because of the preaching of unlimited atonement and of assurance as belonging to the essence of faith. Among historians of doctrine, Campbell's notoriety stems from his later work, The Nature of the Atonement. The book aroused controversy from the moment of its publication. Among the highly original themes set forth by Campbell, one continues to stand out as the most perplexing and controversial: Campbell's teaching on Christ as providing a ‘perfect response’, a ‘perfect repentance’, a ‘perfect sorrow’ and a ‘perfect contrition’ before the judgment of the Father on the sins of humanity.

In 1799 a small book called Lucinde was published in Berlin. Written by the brilliant young literary critic Friedrich Schlegel it celebrated his (adulterous) affair with Dorothea Veit, daughter of the eminent Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Though not widely read and still less widely understood the book provoked a considerable, and largely hostile, reaction among the reading public. It became to its generation what Lady Chatterley's Lover was to a more recent age: the quintessential embodiment of an obscene book. The author's mother gave utterance to the popular consensus when she wrote that ‘through his novel Fritz has shown himself to me as one who has no religion and no good principles’.

At the heart of both feminist and Christian-Marxist liberation theology is a concern for community or personal relationship. ‘In the beginning is the relation’, claims Isabel Carter Heyward in her book The Redemption of God: A Theology of Mutual Relation. God and humanity, she argues, need to be understood in radically new categories, many of which arise out of women's experience of relation, as ‘relational and co-operative, rather than as monistic (synonymous) or dualistic (antithetical) … The experience of relation is fundamental and constitutive of human being.’

The year after Hiroshima the American theologian Henry Wieman wrote, ‘The bomb that fell on Hiroshima cut history in two like a knife. Before and after are two different worlds. That cut is more abrupt, decisive and revolutionary than the cut made by the star over Bethlehem. It may not be more creative of human good than the star, but it is more swiftly transformative of human existence than anything else that has ever happened.’ One might not expect many Christian theologians to agree too readily to such a statement of the significance of Hiroshima, but it illustrates the challenge which Hiroshima and its implications constitute for Christian theology. Hiroshima revealed a radically new possibility in human history: the possibility that human beings themselves might put an end to human history. Jonathan Schell, whose brilliant book The Fate of the Earth contains the most extensive attempt so far to think through the implications of the radical novelty of the human situation since the invention of nuclear weapons, wrote that by inventing the capacity for self-extinction as a species, ‘we have caused a basic change in the circumstances in which life was given us, which is to say that we have altered the human condition’.

Moral Philosophy begins with moral intuitions and then, by arguments, either confirms or refutes them. There was a time, not so very long ago, when it was not thought to be so. For, until recently it was the orthodoxy that philosophers qua philosophers ought not to concern themselves with actual moral problems, but should instead only analyse and produce theories of the language of ethics.2 Those bad days are gone, and a mark of their passing is the frequent involvement of philosophers in the public debate of social and moral issues.