There is a certain ‘Looking glass’ quality to the title of this study—by which I mean that Lewis Carroll's White Knight, whose analysis of the relationship between names and titles is the classic one, might well have insisted that this is only what it is called, whereas in fact it is about an interpretation (namely my own) of an interpretation (namely that of the writer of 2 Kings 20 and that of the writer of the parallel but not quite identical material of Isa. 38-39), which is there offered not apparently of the Babylonian Exile but of certain incidents of importance in the reign of king Hezekiah of Judah around the end of the eighth century b.c. The introduction of the Babylonian Exile into this is not my own, since it is already inherent in one moment in the two narratives; but the understanding of the section in terms of interpretation of the Exile is something which needs to be discussed. It is here that I believe we may see the distinctive character of the narratives in their present forms.

In Meaning and Method, Anders Nygren has returned to his earlier field of study, the philosophy of religion, and has attempted to formulate a legitimate method for the philosophical study of religion. He accomplishes this task by retaining many of his earlier concepts including ‘motif research’, ‘a repudiation of metaphysics’, ‘religion as expressive of the concept of the eternal’ and adds to these the programme of language analysis proposed by the later Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations. Philosophy of religion becomes the logical analysis of the presuppositions found in the religious context of meaning. Such an enterprise is a science (Wissenschaft) because it is capable of objective argumentation.

Calvin is one with the other Christian communities in teaching a presence of Christ's body and blood in the Lord's Supper. To arrive at a conclusion other than this is to misread him, to misunderstand and misinterpret him. Certainly, the reformer cannot be numbered among the sacramentarians, as if he had taught that the partaking of Christ's flesh and the drinking of his blood were nothing more than merely believing in Christ. The sacraments are signs, it is true, but they are not merely signs, they are signs of a present reality.

Before we embark on this subject it will be well to review some preliminary considerations relating to the nature of the Book of Revelation.