Since Barth's attack on ‘religion’ and religious ‘experience’ as the point of focus for Christian theology, it has just not been the thing to do to turn to it as such for theological direction. In a similar vein, Dietrich Bonhoeffer has reminded us that to be a Christian is not to be ‘religious’ but to be only a man. Barth objected to an experiential focus for fear that the sovereignty of God would be compromised by confusing his word and works with their manifestations in experience. Bonhoeffer and, following him, modern secular, radical theology objects to this religious focus because it compromises the integrity of the secular self-understanding of the modern mündig man. Nevertheless, Barth recognised that theology has no beginning point other than the communal experience of faith—hence, ‘church’ dogmatics. The contention of this paper is that Michael Polanyi's analysis of scientific knowledge offers a model for understanding the experience and knowledge of faith that is faithful both to the experience of faith and to the modern secular, scientific experience.1 Therefore, following an exposition of Polanyi's epistemology, I will seek to demonstrate that it is a most helpful hermeneutic for the understanding of Christian experience as described by Paul, especially in the early chapters of 1 Corinthians.

One purpose of this article is to explicate what Karl Barth means by the man-to-man relationship, or, in his terms, ‘humanity’, and to discuss the variety of forms involved in this basic dynamic-form. Another purpose is to make the reader aware of the way dialectical-dialogical thought functions in describing the relationship between God and man, and man and man.

There is no doubt that John intended his record of the spear thrust which produced blood and water from our Lord's side to be taken as historical fact. The description of the incident is concise and matter of fact. The character of the gospel as a whole makes it ‘unlikely that John is simply manufacturing an event for the sake of its allegorical significance’.1 Finally, it is followed by what amounts to a legal affidavit attesting its truth, which has been called ‘the most solemn protestation of accuracy to be found in the whole work’.2 However, the record has not always been taken as historical fact. It has sometimes been interpreted as primarily symbolical of the sacraments, and occasionally as fiction, or as ‘ecclesiastical redaction’ as by Bultmann.3 This is partly because the incident has been difficult to explain medically. This difficulty arises from the lack of detail in the description of the event, and not from its impossibility. The purpose of this article is to show that the incident is medically possible even though the exact medical diagnosis must remain in doubt because of the lack of precise medical information.