The debate concerning the apocalyptic Paul has been narrowly focused on the continuity/discontinuity of historical events in his writings, but if this question is to be considered theologically, it must be seen to concern a specific or localised part of God's relationship with creation, as classically understood in terms of ‘providence’. Because it informs all talk of God's involvement with the cosmos, providence establishes necessary linkages between otherwise separate concepts. Relocating the debate within the framework of providence allows the seemingly irreconcilable claims made on each side to be relativised, such that each may be seen as valid when understood to represent distinct areas within a bigger account of the relationship of God and cosmos. At the same time, this recognition necessarily constrains the language with which the claims ought to be made. All of this provides a safeguarded space within which the details of the Pauline texts can be considered without the risk of naïve naturalisation.

The moral pluralism that characterises contemporary living can largely be attributed to the education that differentiates modern life from previous generations. During the industrial revolution in Britain in the nineteenth century John Henry Newman (1801–1890) was very sensitive to the importance of a more educated society, especially with regard to the development of religious faith and morals in an increasingly secular and sceptical age. Although his dedication to the advancement of knowledge remained throughout his life, his career commitment to formal learning began as an Anglican when he became a tutor at Oriel College, Oxford in 1826. In a sense his academic calling reached its zenith in 1852 as rector of the Catholic university at Dublin when he had the opportunity to express his view of liberal education by writing his university discourses.

Jürgen Moltmann's first major work, Theology of Hope, first published in 1964, is arguably one of the truly great theological works of the last few decades, and indisputably one of the most influential. Though Moltmann's own theology has developed considerably in many subsequent works since Theology of Hope, it remains one of his greatest achievements, rivalled only by his second major work, The Crucified God. These two books, which constitute the core of Moltmann's early theology, have, it seems to me, a concentrated power of argument, focused on their central integrating ideas, which is lacking in the more diffuse structure and argument of the later works, significant though these are in their own way. The two early books also have a certain polemical extremeness, which, by contrast with the more balanced and rounded quality of the later works, gives them the sort of impact which one also finds in the passionate extremism of the early Luther or the dialectical rhetoric of the early Barth. The comparison is appropriate, not only because the influence of these two predecessors on Moltmann's work is very evident, but also because, in adopting something of their dialectical and prophetic style of theology, Moltmann had a parallel purpose: that of redirecting theological work. If, having accomplished this, Moltmann has subsequently become more and more like the older Barth of the Church Dogmatics, this is understandable and brings both advantages and disadvantages with it.

In this article I argue that the effects of sin for our cognition of God primarily consist in a lack of knowledge by acquaintance of God and the relevant ensuing propositional knowledge. In the course of my argument, I make several conceptual distinctions and offer analyses of 1 Cor 13:9–12 and Rom 1:18–23. As it turns out, we have ample reason to think that sin has had and still has profound consequences for our cognition of God, but there is no reason to think that sin has taken away all knowledge of God or that sin has resulted in a loss of specific cognitive faculties which are orientated towards knowledge of God.

Christianity is essentially a historical religion. It is not primarily a system of beliefs, nor is it just a perfect code of morality. Christianity is first of all a vigorous appeal to history, a witness of faith to certain particular events or facts of history. For these events were truly eventful, and these historical moments or “instants” were utterly momentous. For, by faith, we identify and acknowledge them as “mighty deeds” of God, as His intimate interventions into the course of human destiny. Already under the Old Dispensation the Living God has established His Covenant with the Chosen People, Israel, and has admitted her, the only nation of the earth, into a fellowship with Him. The God of the Old Testament did not communicate to men abstract metaphysical ideas about Himself, but He met man and challenged him in the midst of his daily existence, “amid toil and tribulation”. The Old Testament was truly a Covenant, a sacred fellowship, not primarily the Law and the doctrine. True, it was but a provisional fellowship, a shadow and a figure of the Good Things to come. It was a Covenant of hope and expectation, a Covenant of prophecy and promise. The consummation was ahead. Yet, it was a real Covenant indeed. And in due course it was fulfilled and thereby superseded; perfected and accomplished, and thereby abrogated.

In the foregoing number of this Journal Dr. J. A. T. Robinson has done us the service of raising once again the question of universalism in a way that both merits admiration and challenges discussion. Rarely has the case for universalism been stated so adroitly and so persuasively, but when even that statement rests upon deep inconsistencies one has less hesitation in turning away from the formidable authorities which he cites to the voice of the Catholic Church which throughout all ages has consistently judged universalism as a heresy for faith and a menace to the Gospel. Without doubt however there is a great truth here and that must be disentangled from the dangerous untruth.

Genre, parallelism and canonical shaping have long been important to Psalms studies. Scholarly advances on these fronts are easily observed. Instead of working the same ground once more, this article sets off on a different path. It aims to read Hebrew poetry, especially the Psalter, with poets. It intends to listen carefully to three influential voices: George Herbert (1593–1633), R. S. Thomas (1913–2000) and Malcolm Guite (1957–). These poets help shape our imagination and prepare us to read the Psalms as poetry. Specifically, this results in sounds, repetitions, the constraining and freeing possibilities of forms, and theological themes taking centre stage in experiencing the poetry of Psalms.

This article is a study of Pavel Florensky's philosophy of symbol in the context of his discovery of Palamism in the 1910s, when Florensky started to speak of symbol using Palamite language. It proposes a fundamental difference between Florensky's and Palamas’ teachings on symbol: Palamas views a natural symbol as the energy of an essence, while for Florensky symbol is the essence itself, the energy of which synergises with the energies of other essence. In this context the prehistory of the concept of synergy in Florensky is studied, leading to the identification of a further difference in the ontologies of Florensky and Palamas: while Florensky's ‘essence-energy’ has the property of necessary correlation with the ‘other’, following the tendencies of the philosophy of that epoch, in Palamas ‘energy’ does not presuppose any necessary correlation with the ‘other’. The author connects this difference in ontologies between the two thinkers with their respective teachings on symbol.

In recent years, the phrase ‘political theology’ has become fairly common in theological discourse. Political theology has been used to describe not only the work of theologians who admit to having or seeking to develop a political theology but also to describe the work of some theologians who have not explicitly stated that they are engaged in doing political theology. It is in this context that descriptions of Karl Barth as a political theologian or one who does political theology are becoming common place. The purpose of this article is to test the appropriateness of ascribing a political theology to Karl Barth.

Two questions dominate much of Reformation theology: ‘How can I find a gracious God?’ and ‘Where can I find the true church?’ For Luther, the answer to both questions was given very simply in the gospel of justification. In speaking of a gracious God the gospel brought the church into being. The gospel alone, when believed, constituted the church. Other Reformers attempted to develop a more comprehensive and coherent doctrine of the marks of a true church. In this article I attempt to trace the evolution of the doctrine of the notae ecclesiae to the point where it had become so unwieldly that Hooker and Field abandoned it, and, replacing an intensive ecclesiology by an extensive one, set reformed ecclesiology on a new footing.

The institution of the office of elder in the Reformed Church in the sixteenth century was an innovation in the traditional structure of the western Catholic Church and the canonical pattern of its ministry. There were precedents for something like this in the Waldensian and Bohemian (later Moravian) Communities in the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, and there still are features corresponding to it in the leadership of congregational life in Greek Orthodox Churches arising out of the overlap between the worshipping congregation and the cultural community. In the Reformed Church itself the eldership came to be more closely associated with the ministry of Word and Sacrament which has had the effect of linking together ‘clerical’ and ‘lay’ service within the corporate priesthood of the Church and in the operation of its ‘sacral courts’ at synodal, presbyteral and consistorial levels. The eldership has certainly been a source of inner cohesion and stability in the life of Reformed Churches, leaving upon them characteristics of particular significance in the ecumenical fellowship of Churches.

Our concern in this paper will be with the traditional Christian claim that Jesus of Nazareth was ‘tempted in all respects as we are, yet without sin.’ (Heb.4:15) In its dogmatic, as opposed to its biblical, version, this claim can be identified in two distinct forms. First there is what we may denote the weaker form, in which it is claimed simply that in actual fact Jesus committed no sin: and second there is the stronger form according to which he was actually and in principle quite incapable of committing sin. Put differently, in terms of the distinctions of scholastic theology, we may either confess of the Incarnate posse non peccare or non posse peccare.

The concept of the covenant is crucial to understanding the development of Reformed theology in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The origin of this aspect of theology during the initial decades of the Reformation, however, has received little attention. Kenneth Hagen's groundbreaking article on the advent of covenant theology and its distinctiveness from testamental theology was a pioneering outline, yet was not built upon by the succeeding generation of scholars. Attempts to explain the Reformed covenant as an outgrowth of late Medieval theology, in particular the Nominalist pactum concept, remain tentative and inconclusive. Efforts in the field of Anglo-American Puritanism have likewise yielded little in the way of detailed analysis.

The Christian practice of meeting for worship and receiving token pieces of bread and token sips of wine seems unlikely to have had Jewish precedents. You don't eat in a synagogue; you eat at home. To be sure, specific acts of eating bread and drinking wine are given religious significance in the setting of the Passover meal, but that is not quite the same, although perhaps we might suppose the Christian practice to have evolved from the Jewish meal.

In their 1920s expatriate theologies, Paul Althaus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer claim to be bound by a conflictual international ‘law’, which mandates violent competition while authorising the strong to displace weaker peoples. We argue that acknowledging such correspondence helps to reveal a surprising turn in their diverging ecclesiological judgements over the 1933 Aryan Paragraph. Ironically, although Althaus holds to the productivity of conflict between peoples, he supports the exclusion of Jewish pastors in Germany as a concession to fragile völkisch identity. In contrast, Bonhoeffer's new pacifist leanings coincide with his incitement to conflict on behalf of Jewish colleagues, overriding the use of Pauline admonition to defer to the ‘weak’ conscience.

The market for historical Jesuses has never been hotter. A mob of Jesus books have hit the bookstore shelves recently, whose authors star on videotapes, chat on radio talk shows, and appear on transcontinental live video programs. While interest in Jesus flourishes, however, there is no consensus about what Jesus was really like. The scholars who have landed mass-market publishers are not necessarily the most widely-respected representatives of their fields of inquiry; indeed, there is considerable scholarly resistance to the recent spate of Jesuses.

Both Thomas F. Torrance and Karl Barth speak of the obedience of the Son as a condescension of the Son to become incarnate for our sakes. Thus there is wide agreement between them with regard to both the doctrines of atonement and the Trinity. Yet, despite the fact that Barth never wavered in his rejection of subordinationism and modalism and always affirmed the freedom of God's love, he also claimed that there ‘is in God Himself an above and a below, a prius and a posterius, a superiority and a subordination’,1 while Torrance unequivocally refused to read elements of the economy, such as the ideas of super and subordination and a before or after, back into the immanent Trinity. By comparing the thinking of Barth and Torrance on this issue, I hope to show why I think Barth illegitimately read back elements of the economy into the immanent Trinity, thus creating confusion where clarity would help us see that what God does for us in the economy is and remains an act of free grace which becomes obscured when any sort of hierarchy is introduced into the Trinity.

Both theologians thoroughly agree that what God is towards us in the economy, he is eternally in himself and what he is eternally in himself, he is towards us in the economy. But, there is a difference between them over how to interpret this insight, since Barth thinks super and subordination should be ascribed to the immanent Trinity. While Torrance, like Barth, will argue that the incarnation and Christ's mediatorial activity fall ‘within the life of God’, he also insists that the incarnation cannot in any way be confused with the generation of the Son from the Father in eternity. Barth would agree; yet this important distinction becomes fuzzy when he ascribes subordination and obedience to the eternal Son as a basis for his actions ad extra.

This article will develop in four sections. First, I will discuss the obedience of the Son as condescension for Torrance and Barth. Second, I will consider the implications of the Extra Calvinisticum for each theologian's view of the obedience of the Son and of the Trinity. Third, I will explore how each theologian attempts to avoid subordinationism and modalism indicating the problems which arise in Barth's thinking in connection with these views. Fourth, I will compare Torrance and Barth, showing that Torrance more consistently maintains God's freedom and love by not reading back elements of the economy into the life of the immanent Trinity.

Presbyterian spirituality in southern Africa has often been treated as non-existent, yet it is a vibrant reality which is at one and the same time catholic, evangelical and contextual. Founded in Christ alone, it holds the authority of scripture as normative and as the source of the unity of God's people, as can be seen in the way it derives from the marks of the church – the Word preached, the sacraments celebrated and discipline rightly exercised. It is relational and involves communing with God, others, oneself and the environment. While conscious of the early church tradition out of which it arises, it is continuous with that tradition and is open to the spiritual insights of other traditions. It demonstrates both catholic and evangelical emphases and is adaptable within the context of African spirituality. As a result, it has a broad church ethos marked by fluidity, tolerance and appreciation of those sources that enrich it.