The earlier theology of Karl Barth (particularly as represented in the second edition of his Commentary on Romans) had as one of its most significant characteristics a great emphasis on the ‘Godness’ of God, on God as ‘Wholly Other’ than man and (following Kierkegaard), on the ‘infinite, qualitative distinction’ between God and man. This was clearly an attempt to interpret the theme of the Bible and was also in strong reaction against the prevailing theology of the nineteenth century, liberal and, to some extent, orthodox as well. Among the many commentators on the early period Barth himself is the best interpreter of the necessity and meaning of this emphasis as well as of its limitations. He writes ‘What began forcibly to press itself upon us about forty years ago was not so much the humanity of God as his deity—a God absolutely unique in his relation to man and his world, over-poweringly lofty and distant, strange, yes even wholly other.’

Every religion has an overall structure which both gives meaning to and derives it from each of its constituent parts. Ordinarily, this structure may be seen in its most essential form in cultic worship where religious experience both is determined by and itself determines the shape and meaning of religious traditions. In contemporary Roman Catholicism, for example, the Eucharist is understood in several ways due to the variety of possible contexts in which the Mass may be experienced; a religious community and a parish church are examples of widely diverging contexts. However, if we wish to understand the significance and place of the Eucharist in a period as remote and as different from our own as that of first century Christianity, we are faced with a radically different problem. One popular approach to such an inquiry would carefully examine the theme of the Lord's Supper throughout the New Testament and other early Christian literature so that the results of the study could be used to compare and contrast the Eucharist (s) of early Christianity with that of one or another modern Christian denomination. The all but unavoidable result of this approach would be the tendency of each theological tradition to retroject its own understanding of the Eucharist back into the early Church, whether it would find itself at home there or not.

In 1965, Prof. Bolaji Idowu, President of the Methodist Church of Nigeria, castigated African Christians for being content with imported western theologies which were imperfectly understood and meaningless in the African context. He also lamented the fact that after almost two hundred years of Christian experience in Africa, African Christians have neglected the fundamental task of relating the Gospel message to political, social, and cultural milieux of African peoples. Africans must, Idowu claimed, produce indigenous theologies which will satisfy the deepest, emotional and spiritual needs of Africans.1 When Idowu wrote in 1965, expressions like ‘African Theology’, ‘African Christian Theology’, ‘Theologia Africana’, were hardly, if ever used, though some attempts were made to relate the Gospel message to the diverse social, political, and cultural situations in Africa. In the political sphere, violent winds of change were blowing throughout the continent; the rapid growth of Independent churches was an indication that some African Christians were, at least, dissatisfied with the imported theologies, Church structures, patterns of ministry and liturgical forms, which had been introduced by western Christian missionaries into Africa.

Then men said, ‘Let us make God in our image, after our likeness; and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air.’ So men created God in their own image, in the image of man they created him; with the attributes of justice and mercy they created him.

In recent essays Professor John Hick has argued that serious theological consideration of the relationship of Christianity and other world faiths has become in the present generation for the first time unavoidable; that this must lead to a revolution in theological thought so radical that it can be spoken of as ‘Copernican’; and that the consequent reshaping of Christian doctrine, for which he has made a number of suggestions, cannot but change in deeply significant and quite unprecedented ways the traditional teaching of the Church. In this paper I wish to raise some questions about this ‘Copernican Revolution’, the exact nature of which is not made as clear as we might expect, as a theological response to the present situation, asking whether it is helpful in inter-religious dialogue and acceptable as an account of Christianity, of other living faiths, and of the relation between them.