One of the most general trends in the modern academic world has been a turning away from the static categories of the past towards new thought-forms that are more dynamic. In philosophy and theology this has involved a revulsion against the category of‘being’ (in spite of such important exceptions as Paul Tillich's emphasis on the nature of God as ‘Being Itself’), and against belief in the sufficiency of the ‘static’ traditional logic which has usually been used in conjunction with it. Thus we find today that (apart from Existentialism, the inadequacies of which I have criticised elsewhere) there are three dynamic alternatives competing for the allegiance of philosophical thinkers in the Western world.

Torrance's book is remarkable for its aggressive, full- blooded thought and style. Such an approach is typical of this theologian, but the centrality of the issues with which he deals and the importance of the stance he assumes makes his boldness a veritable confrontation. Utilising the basic theological beginning points of the Reform tradition (and writing in a style remarkably similar to that of Karl Barth), Torrance critically appraises the present task of theology.

It seems impossible to conceive of theology without some notion of progress. The Christian theologian is related to at least some of those who have preceded him, and his justification for writing at all must be a belief that he can say something better than they, whether this is conceived as saying the same things more intelligibly and authoritatively, or saying something that has not been said before. Interest must then centre not only in whether a theologian believes development to be possible, but also and chiefly in his conception of the character of that development. There may be a model of some kind in mind, or possibly a number of models, more or less successfully integrated. Whatever they are, they will be aids to a thinker's understanding of his place in history, of his relation to those events that he takes to be significant for this place, and of the reasons for the significance of those events.

Our discussion must start from Hegel, because Hegel set the terms of the debate and his shade has haunted the whole controversy we are to consider. His definitions of Christianity and of philosophy were at the heart of the ensuing encounter. Not that Hegel's analysis was accepted: some, like Feuerbach and Marx, modified Hegel more or less drastically while all the time assuming that in essentials, and sometimes in spite of himself, Hegel was right; others, like Kierkegaard, rejected Hegel's whole conception of what Christianity was about and yet still saw the question of what was to be done with the legacy of Hegel as a central issue of the age. And so it is impossible for us to grasp the structure of a still continuing discussion without seeing the pervasive influence of its starting-point.

The time of which Paul speaks in this passage which ‘had fully come’ was not the time of the culmination of some natural process of evolution and development. Rather the time was ‘full’ because it had been ordained to be so by the appointment of God.2 It was in God's good and own time that the Son was sent. This concept of a time that is God's has been analysed at length by Karl Barth, particularly in the section ‘Man in His Time’ in Church Dogmatics, III/11.3 For Barth all time is God's time, for time is not some absolute standing outside and against God. There is no god called Chronos rivalling God and imposing conditions upon him.4 Nor is the relationship between God and time merely an extrinsic one; rather there is given an essential relationship, for ‘even the eternal God does not live without time.

Some academic subject matters have a quaintly old-fashioned ring-‘moral sciences’ for example, or ‘natural philosophy’. ‘Practical theology’ has a similar odd sound today. To the theological outsider is must sound remarkably like a contradiction in terms, whilst to the professional theologian it may carry undertones of an unscholarly pragmatism or a tendency towards liberal theology. Yet perhaps the juxtaposition of these two terms is an important one. It may, by its oddity, encourage us to ask the question, ‘Is practical theology possible?’ This would be a question similar to the familiar one about the possibility of metaphysics. It is asking for a formal definition of the subject matter which will meet adequate criteria of meaning, consistency and relationship to other disciplines whose status is not in doubt. In this paper I shall attempt some answers to this question of possibility.