The times seem to have passed when one could give without JL hesitation a positive answer to the question concerning the meaning of theology for church and society. The traditionally privileged status of theology in European culture had become problematical. In Eastern Europe this has occurred in a direct and frontal ideologically intensified way. However, in Western Europe it has been rather indirect and concealed, but of perhaps even greater consequence in light of the discrepancy between the still existing privileges of ecclesiastical institutions and the in reality largely secularised cultural climate. For many contemporaries theology has become a curious, if not dubious, matter. One is somewhat justified in speaking of the ‘end ofthe protected season for theologians’.

But is this ‘end of the protected season’ simply to be identified with the ‘end of theology’? Some tend to this conclusion—even among theologians. I would reject this conclusion, however, and not as the result of a dogmatic prejudice, but out of the personally felt and ecumenically reflected experience of an Eastern European theologian. The hour when the church and its theology lost some of their privileges has proved in no way to be the end, but rather the beginning of a new, certainly narrow, but more credible path, which in the long run might be perhaps even more efficient in view of our role in church and society. We should not overlook this experience—it is valid, mutatis mutandis, also for other situations. The end of the ‘protected season’ need not be only troublesome, but can at the same time be an opportunity: an opportunity for a new credibility.

The question of the relation of language to being in general, and of theological language to the divine being in particular, is no new question. It was one which confronted the early Church Fathers in a very pressing fashion when they came to deal with the theological formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity. Heretical teaching caused them to wrestle with the problems and to discuss what is involved in the use of human language to set forth divine realities. At a time when the problem of theological language is very much in the forefront in present day discussions, it is immensely helpful to turn to the Fathers and to see how they dealt with these questions and to endeavour to learn from them.

This paper1 is an attempt to sketch to sketch the role of language in man's relationship with God, especially as a means whereby God teaches men about himself. Serious doubts have been raised about the adequacy of human language for this purpose—even many of those who see no inadequacy within language itself would feel that, since the human mind is finite, no message communicated through it by an infinite God can be reliable. Some believe that a man may become genuinely aware of the reality of God, but that it is immaterial whether any linguistic propositions involved in this process (and in particular the propositions of the Bible) are true or false.

For or against the Old Testament? Such was one of the main issues that divided developing orthodoxy in the primitive Church from its Gnostic and Marcionite rivals during the second century A.D. Was the Old Testament the work of an inferior god of the Jews to be read perhaps for the sake of the Decalogue and a few striking passages, and the remainder rejected, or did it unfold the gradual story of human salvation, and in the prophetic books, by foretelling the life and death of Christ, assure the Christian of his right to consider himself the Third (and chosen) Race of mankind? Behind this issue lay another equally important, namely the relationship between the Christians as the new Israel and the Old Israel represented by orthodox Judaism, whose role as the light to lighten the Gentiles it was challenging and would eventually take over. If the Old Testament did indeed contain the word of God, to whom did its promises refer, to the Christians or the Jews? Could the Christians claim with success that the prophecies in the Old Testament spoke of Christ and none other? The debate which was to span the second century was carried out in the tradition of the synagogue. At times the Church's essential message of hope and salvation threatened to founder amidst the demands of a new haggadah and halakhah evolved from the ceaseless challenge of Jewry.

Since the time of Abelard's criticism of the Cur Deus Homo? in the name of the love of God, Anselm has been the continual object of attack. To his opponents he is the symbol of legalism and a divine justice so void of mercy that it borders on vengeance. In our time, even the charge of Pelagianism has been introduced, as Gustaf Aulén has attempted to draw a line of orthodoxy from Paul through Irenaeus to Luther, thereby excluding nearly everyone else from the so-called orthodox classical theory of atonement.1 In spite of this continuous attack, many have persistently upheld Anselm's position because they see in his approach to the atonement a point of view that is essential to the Christian faith.

Luther's theology rests upon a sure foundation—namely, his discovery of the grace of the sovereign God. Perhaps the most cogent evidence for this assertion is to be found in his vigorous refutation of Erasmus' Diatribe on the freedom of the will.

When the nineteenth-century historian R. W. Dixon called Peter Martyr Vermigli ‘a learned stranger’ he was reflecting what Martyr's own contemporaries had said. For example, Edmund Grindal, Bishop of London wrote to Sir William Cecil about Martyr's role at the Colloquy of Poissy:

Some years ago, the editor of the Scottish Journal of Theology asked me to review what was, to me, an interesting and important book which amounted to a systematic attack on the existence of God, at any rate on the validity of the traditional theistic proofs of classical and modern systematic theology. In addition, such other bases of belief in God as authority revelation, historical event, and religious experience were treated, with the aim of showing that they cannot substitute for a failed philosophical theism. However, some mental block prevented me from completing the review proper. The root of the matter was that, in my Bachelor of Arts degree at Sydney University, my philosophical course had involved a system of atheism which I have recognised ever since to be more rigorous and cogent than any others, and I am not alone in this feeling. In particular, I felt that Professor Flew was in a stronger position than most philosophers of the prevailing modern British schools, but that this was because he approximated more than most to what I had learnt at Sydney, and that a still further approximation would tighten his case still more. The professor in question, the late John Anderson, was a Clydesider whose family background was the familiar Leftwing agnosticism and whose training was Absolute Idealism; in his later development, he reacted against both these elements, but his agnosticism hardened into a positive atheism.

The aim of this essay is to come to an understanding of how Paul relates ethics to justification; but to begin with Paul's epistles themselves often lead one into categories of thought, especially in relation to ethics, that are used rather unconsciously and which presuppose at least certain types of answers. Any theologian who deludes himself into believing that he may begin studying a topic purely on the basis of the Greek text is almost surely doomed to repetition of past theological mistakes. Rather than ignore the influences and prejudices which operate in his thought patterns, the serious theologian must take cognisance of them as cornerstones for constructive thinking or reject them as too confining for fruitful thought. It is for this very reason that we must begin by looking at two representative thinkers of Catholic and Protestant theology in the field of ethics so that we may be aware of the traditional categories of thought that pervade the language and much of modern thought in ethics.

The caricature of John Calvin as an iron theo-logician, sans cæur et sans entrailles, is endlessly repeated. According to Will Durant, Calvin's ‘genius lay not in conceiving new ideas but in developing the thought of his predecessors to ruinously logical conclusions’. Calvin's Institutes therefore are ‘the most eloquent, fervent, lucid, logical, influential, and terrible work in all the literature of religious revolution’. Calvin did not have the tolerance of those who can conceive the possibility that they might be wrong because ‘Calvin, with lethal precosity, had been certain almost from his twentieth year’ Likewise Stefan Zweig saw in Calvin an inexorable logic, a mathematically precise nature, a monomania, and a terrific and sinister self-assurance. H. Jackson Forstmann writes that ‘one of the most impressive facts about Calvin's writings is the absolute certainty reflected by the author at every point’. Again, ‘the most striking impression which comes with reading the work of Calvin is the unfailing certainty which pervades the whole corpus”. Forstmann also quotes Doumergue to the effect that Calvin ‘was tormented by an incomparable need for certainty’. However, Doumergue was talking about something more than logical certainty. Calvin was indeed ‘logical, going to the bottom of questions, practical, completely preoccupied with piety, tormented by an incomparable need of certainty; unifying in rare mixture the reasons and sentiments; preceding Pascal, by invoking the reasons that reason does not know, and preceding also the modern theologians of Christian experience.’

For a long time it has been widely believed that both in doctrinal content and intellectual method the thought of Saint Anselm closely follows that of Saint Augustine. The major thesis of this paper is that this widespread belief is not entirely accurate. It is not entirely inaccurate either, for, as I shall try to show, Anselm's intellectual career falls into two distinct periods, in the first of which his thought does greatly resemble that of Augustine. But the first period does not last long; in fact it encompasses only the writing of the Monologion, the Proslogion, and the Reply to Gaunilo—a period of about five years. In contrast to many of the works in Anselm's later period, which are virtually unknown in theological and philosophical circles today, these writings are much more generally known—a fact which helps to explain the widespread misunderstanding concerning the degree of similarity between Anselm's thought and Augustine's. Anselm's later period covers a much longer span of time, and it includes a greater number and variety of writings. These writings show a marked shift both in general philosophical perspective and in intellectual method, and this shift represents a significant departure from the pervasive Augustinianism of the earlier period.

John Mcleod Campbell died one hundred years ago in J February 1872, and hence it is fitting that at this time we consider the contribution and insight of one of the greatest (if not the greatest) of our Scottish theologians—whose voice we need to hear again today.

The purpose of this argument is to demonstrate the relevance of at least one aspect of the philosophy of Kant to the contemporary form of the theological task. While the term ‘world come of age‘ originates in Bonhoeffer, and the problem it represents is styled by Professor Gregor Smith ‘the Great Revolution‘, it will be shown that this problem was first recognised by Kant, and that these contemporary discussions implicitly depend upon the position achieved by the Critical Philosophy.

Unless it is to resemble a voice without a speaker, Christology must pre-suppose a backing in Theism; and any talk of Revelation must assume some conviction, to be more or less rationally defended, of the existence of the God who speaks. Such a Theism, admittedly, can by no means be erected from the bricks of the discursive reason alone; for reason is often, if not always, simply the finding of reasons for what one cannot help but believe by a sort of insight, intuition–or even inspiration. Yet reason, together with the language in which it is bound up, is the common factor which we all share with each other; so that if Theism is to be given a hearing, it must be able publicly to commend itself by the displaying of some reasons, even if (as is the case) those reasons fall short of proof. Such at any rate is my excuse for what follows.

At a first glance the title of this paper may seem presumpituous. For only God knows the last thoughts of anyone who has passed away. The title, however, should be understood in the more restricted sense of the last published thoughts of Karl Barth. We are greatly indebted to Eberhard Busch, Barth's faithful assistant during the last years of Barth's life, for having made available to us these last thoughts in a small volume, entitled Letzte Zeugnisse. According to the Editor they were intended for publication and had been produced after the last grave crisis in Barth's health in August 1968 and before his death on the 10th December of the same year. Hence they had been produced within the last few months of Barth's life, whereas the writings and talks of Barth collected in Fragments Grave and Gay had taken place during the years 1962 to 1967. Letzte Zeugnisse also includes a most helpful Epilogue by the Editor in which he explains the circumstances in which those last testimonies had come into existence and reflects on the latter. Eberhard Busch, described by Barth as ‘truly an ideal assistant!’, had contributed the essay ‘Der Weg der Theologie in Anfechtung und Hoffnung’ to ΠAPPHΣIA (pp. 50ff), the Festschrift edited by him together with the Professors Jürgen Fangmeier and Max Geiger on the occasion of Barth's eightieth birthday (10th May 1966), and had also compiled the Bibliography in that volume (pp. 709–23), comprising Barth's writings from 1956 till January 1966 as well as other bibliographical material and thereby continuing Charlotte von Kirschbaum's initial Bibliography which rendered nearly all of Barth's writings up to the end of 1955.

Through more than forty years of his career, Paul Tillich painstakingly developed a vision of an ontological conflict between space and time. In developing this vision, Tillich proceeds from an existential and phenomenological perspective. An entire doctrine of reality is presupposed and time is conceived of as temporality and is ontologically identified with the primordial ‘depth’ or inner infinity of all being and reality. Such time is in some sense subjective, intuitively known, and immediately given.

The philosopher John Macmurray's specifically theological intent, contribution, and method stand strangely neglected. In the past decade theologians have argued that his philosophic work might suggest a new natural theology. Such is the case in appreciative comments by John A. T. Robinson and Thomas A. Langford. Both focus on the primacy that Macmurray accords the ‘personal’, and the bearing that this might have on an apologetic for the ‘religious dimension of life’. That Macmurray, however, might be more adequately interpreted as theologian than as philosopher only, that his philosophy itself might legitimately be considered the development of a theological position, and that finally his work might point the way toward reorientation of the relationship between theology and other human sciences will be argued in this article.

Some writers express extreme confidence about the meaning of 1 Cor. 5.5: . Ernst Käsemann, for example, asserts that it ‘obviously entails the death of the guilty’, and he is not alone in using such words as ‘obviously’ or ‘only’ in putting forward this interpretation. Probably the majority of modern writers, with a little more caution, regard an allusion to death as the most likely explanation of a notoriously difficult verse. Almost all the remainder believe that Paul is referring, if not to death, then to suffering which is necessarily physical.

It is now some seventy-five years since the problem of myth in the Old Testament tradition was first formulated in any detail by Gunkel. He drew attention to mythological elements in the tradition of Israel which could not be explained merely in terms of fortuitous parallelism with other myths of the ancient orient. He saw that much of this mythology could be traced to Babylonian and Assyrian sources; but he set out to examine how the myth had come into the Old Testament and how it had been made to conform to the thought and understanding of Israel. He dealt with such various themes as the Creation, the Flood, Rahab and Leviathan and tehōm He noted how mythological figures, such as the Dragon in the Sea were linked to historical persons and events, e.g. the hubris of the sea-dragon is the hubris of Pharaoh and Egypt in Ezekiel 29 and 32.

In the current turmoil over the reality and identity of God, process theology has offered itself as having the most acceptable alternative to ‘classical theism’ and ‘substance philosophy’ with which, it is said, traditional Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, has aligned itself. As an indirect child of Bergsonian philosophy, though, process theology is not new. And when it is recalled that Bergson not only influenced Whitehead, before the latter exchanged Cambridge for Harvard, but also the leaders of avant-garde Catholicism at the turn of the century, it will be seen that contemporary process theologians have some interesting relatives. Those of Bergson's progeny who have been born through Whitehead and Hartshorne tend to be North American and Protestant; but his other children are European and largely Catholic. The purpose of this essay, then, is to examine the ideas of one of these, George Tyrrell, with the intention of tracing out the similarities that exist between his theology and that advanced by contemporary process theologians. To look for precise coincidence between the positions would be foolish, but to find close parallels would be instructive. It would confirm the view that currently a convergence is taking place between the Protestant avant-garde and its Catholic counterpart, for very frequently the latter is merely reiterating ideas which George Tyrrell had already articulated and for which he was excommunicated in 1908.