In this lecture I have three aims in view. First I shall review some of the main points of the theological theory of virtue in its classic medieval form, and consider how the same theme has been taken up in protestant ethics, sometimes in a constructive, sometimes in a negative tone. Second I wish to present my grounds for believing that arguments put forward in protestant ethics against any theory of virtue are insufficient, and to indicate why I hold that protestant ethics too needs an elaborated theory of virtue. Then finally I shall try, at least sketchily, to indicate the direction in which I feel such a theory could be developed.

According to a certain strand in the orthodox Christian theist tradition, God's impassibility is engendered by his immutable nature. For if God cannot change then he cannot experience pain or sorrow. This fundamental principle was appropriated from Plato, who maintained that a being who is perfect can experience neither sadness, pain, nor sorrow. Some modern Christian theists, however, concede that this is perhaps the most questionable aspect of certain forms of orthodox Christian theism.

As far as I am aware the topic of God's forgetting is unfamiliar philosophical terrain. It is a topic that has many ramifications and in seeking to plot some sort of map of the area, as I see it, I am conscious that I have by no means covered all aspects nor avoided all pitfalls and that my approach would not necessarily be that chosen by other would-be surveyors.

It would seem that the trend in modern theological works on Christology is to place a positive emphasis primarily on the humanity of Jesus Christ; if, it seems, Christ's divinity can also somehow be worked into the overall picture of the figure he represents in the historical Church, then, so much the better; if not, well, we still are left with an historical religious prophet par excellence. And certainly, such an advocate might argue, this is better than placing one's entire faith in an irresolvable antinomy such as this issue otherwise presents. After all, he might say, if, for example, ‘God, the Father’ is really nothing more than a religious metaphor, then there is no need to consider ‘Jesus, the Son’ as more than this either.

The most important intellectual problems facing modern Christianity stem from our awareness that Christianity is but one religion alongside many. John Hick's philosophy of world religions deserves attention because amongst English theologians he has been one of those most concerned to give a systematic answer to these problems.

The Book of Genesis' story of how Adam and Eve were created innocent and brought about their own Fall evokes at least this particular kind of puzzlement: How could the two originally created and perfectly innocent humans, living in the presence of God and his supreme goodness, be persuaded to defy God and his special commands?

To deal with NT eschatology in the time available to me, I should have either to be a vastly more competent NT scholar and theologian than I am or else to be prepared to state my own views dogmatically and treat differing views in a cavalier fashion, a procedure I regard as unscholarly and unacceptable. So what I amoffering is something much more modest —just some thoughts on the subject.

For some time scholars have recognised that Paul's exegesis of Scripture was influenced by rabbinic hermeneutics. As early as 1900 H. St. John Thackeray argued that Paul utilised rabbinic methods of interpretation to confute the Jews. In a number of cases, he wrote, particularly where the original sense of Scripture is not adhered to, ‘we may undoubtedly see the influence of his rabbinic training in the use to which the Old Testament is put and the inferences drawn from it.’ In 1911 H. Lietzmann described Paul's treatment of the desert sojourn in 1 Cor. 10.1–11 as ‘the Haggadic method’, implying a comparison with rabbinic method. Following this same line of argument A. F. Pukko in 1928 asserted that Paul utilised Hillel's seven principles of rabbinic exegesis. According to Pukko, ‘As an interpreter of the Old Testament Paul is above all a child of his time. The methods of interpretation and deduction which he learned in the Rabbinical school emerge frequently in his work.’

The theological situation today demands both a restatement and a reinstatement of the Christian doctrine of reconciliation. The essential prerequisite of any attempt to interpret, reinterpret or restate that doctrine is a due appreciation of the historical origins and subsequent development of the concept. It is clearly futile to develop or defend theories of reconciliation which originally rest upon some manifestly incorrect interpretation of a Hebrew root, or which represent a comparatively recent distortion of an older and more considered doctrine, or which represent a theological response to a particular Zeitgeist which no longer pertains today. Of the several concepts employed in the Christian articulation of the reconciliation effected between God and his world through Jesus Christ, the most important is that of justification.

Perhaps the most striking feature of 1 Jn. is the teaching which it contains on sin. On the one hand there is the attitude taken by the author in 1:8ff- the Christian ought not to sin, but in fact does. He cannot claim to be sinless without lying. Nevertheless, if they confess their sins, Christians are consistently being forgiven through Christ. On the other hand there is the teaching in chapter three that the Christian does not sin and indeed cannot sin. This teaching is recapitulated in chapter five. The purpose of this article is to show that, far from being inconsistent, the writer of 1 Jn. is perfectly orthodox in his doctrine of sin and is, in fact, writing in a way completely appropriate to the circumstances.

Students of the New Testament will be familiar with the influential hypothesis from the first half of this century usually known as the Gnostic redeemer myth. This was the thesis, associated particularly with the name of R. Bultmann, that already in the pre-Christian period there was a widely held belief in a divine figure who came down from heaven and assumed human form in order to redeem the souls of men trapped within human bodies. They will also be aware that while Bultmann's thesis has come under heavy attack and is not widely held today, there are those who still attempt to argue for it, though usually in a substantially modified form. My purpose in this paper is to draw attention to one of the side-effects of this whole debate, an important side-effect which has not been given the attention it deserves. For it is my belief that the quest of the Gnostic redeemer myth within pre-Christian traditions, and the debate thereby stirred up, have together confused the history of Christology' beginings, particularly in the key issue of Christ's relation with God. Although principally concerned with soteriology, the discussion roused by the hypothesis of the Gnostic redeemer myth has raised the question of Christianity's thelogy (in the narrower sense of that term). In other words, it forces students of Christian origins to ask whether Christianity began as a departure from Jewish monotheism, whether Christianity was in fact a monotheistic faith from the beginning.

Does a church in the Reformed tradition ever express its own essence and self-understanding more clearly than when, in the liturgy, with the subtlest blend of invitation and command, the minister bids the congregation: ‘Hear the Word of God!’? Here, in dramatic, personal (but corporate) encounter between the people and God's Word — delivered first as Scripture and then expounded as proclamation — the church becomes anew what it already and always is: a community of the Word. A people are summoned into being by living, creative, divine Speech, and from their own side come into being — or better, move toward their true being — through the only appropriate response to divine Speech, namely that faith which comes by hearing (Rom. 10: 17). Our concern here is not to offer a systematic account of this Reformed understanding of the church in all its major aspects, but simply to raise a few of the hermeneutical questions involved: what does it mean for a church tradition to understand itself in these predominantly verbal and auditory categories, indeed to think of the whole encounter between God and man as occurring primarily in the mode of speech and hearing?

Recent scholarly interest in the Fathers as exegetes of Scripture has tended to examine the reasons why a patristic author takes a particular exegetical position. Rowan Greer's fine study of the Greek patristic exegesis of Hebrews best exemplifies this current tendency. Greer refuses to judge the ‘correctness’ of the Fathers' exegesis, for they have as much right to their interpretations as sixteenth-century or modern exegetes. Rather, he attempts to see how their theological concerns determined the questions which they asked of the Scriptures. These questions, in turn, shaped the answers that were given. This dialectic does not necessarily mean that these Fathers consciously forced the Scriptures into pre-formed theological moulds. The Fathers were honest in their desire to remain faithful to the Scriptures. Nevertheless, the theological principles which they either inherited from traditional views of Scriptural texts or formed in response to what they considered heretical opinions definitely shaped the questions which they asked of the Scriptural text and consequently, the answers which they received from it. This is no less true today.

It is my impression that in Britain there is more awareness of the importance of John Calvin as a biblical expositor and theorist on the doctrine of Scripture than there is of the parallel significance of Martin Luther; but perhaps I am generalising from my own experience of realising the creativeness of Luther's work much later than I did that of Calvin's. Admittedly Calvin's doctrine of Scripture is more clearly formulated and his exegesis is tighter. But often the issues that are raised and not entirely solved in Luther are the ones that continue to trouble and fascinate biblical scholars and theologians. His new hermeneutic foreshadows many aspects of the problem of the status and interpretation of the Bible as these have since unfolded; indeed, he was a decisive stimulus to this development.

Jorgen Moltmann has remarked that Reading the Bible with the eyes of the poor is a different thing from reading it with a full belly. If it is read in the light of the experience and hopes of the oppressed, the Bible's revolutionary themes — promise, exodus, resurrection and spirit — come alive.

These words go to the very heart of the matter of our concern in this essay — the hermeneutics of Liberation Theology. It is a subject of vital importance for the Church today. For Liberation Theology is developing creative and challenging insights, principles and procedures in the field of Biblical interpretation. There are several reasons for this.

John Hick begins his essay on verification by agreeing that ‘there are many different concepts of God’. Thus, at the outset of considering the problem of verifying any one concept, we are faced with a plurality. This complicates the question, since some concepts of God relate more easily to verification than do others. But Hick opts at the outset for a strong meaning for ‘verification’: the removal of ignorance or uncertainty concerning the truth of some proposition. Of course, we are faced with the question of whether ‘dealing with God’ really means dealing with propositions. All this aside, it is clear that some classical notions of God defy verification while others fit more easily.

Where does one look for theological thinking in the Ecumenical Movement today? The first answer is obvious. From virtually its beginning, the Movement comprised two wings, whose respective functions are clearly enough indicated by the names under which they began to operate. The Life and Work element promotes the greatest possible degree of cooperation; the Faith and Order component works for theological and ecclesial understanding and consensus. For many reasons, among which is certainly to be reckoned the powerful presence of so-called Third World Churches as members, chief attention has swerved perceptibly to the Life and Work aspect: social justice evokes more interest than justification by faith, and the tendency is to be more concerned with bread than with God. Despite this, the theological work of Faith and Order continues.

Over the past few decades philosophers have gathered quite a few logical and linguistic insights from a close study of traditional religious claims and arguments: But on the whole, theologians have not benefited reciprocally from those philosophical explorations into their territory. I believe this has been due in part to the philosophers' unhelpful approach. Their procedure, all too often, has been to lay out a claim or argument in its traditional form, and then go ‘fallacy hunting’, finally to reject it as hopelessly ridden with logical error and based on some outmoded metaphysical notions which are entirely unsalvageable. In all this there is seldom evinced any sensitivity to that religious perception the communication of which was intended by the particular formulation of doctrine they have examined. Thus the philosophical enterprise has time and again come across as inimical to the theologian's interest. In this paper I hope to show that this is not a necessary course of affairs. I intend to examine some traditional Christian claims about the person of Christ as presented by St. Thomas, primarily in the third part of his Summa Theologiae. I shall reject the bulk of his particular formulations but at the same time concur with some of the insights which found expression in those formulae. The particular topic I shall address is the question of the identity and unity of the person of Christ.

I have no doubt that the discomfort of sitting on one horn of a dilemma may awaken lively hopes of the cushioned ease its alternative horn affords; but the hopes are delusive. Sit there, and the horn will presently enter your soul. (FS8, p. 119)

At the end of his celebrated wager argument, Pascal advises the sceptic to whom it is addressed to take up a religious way of life in hope of thereby cultivating religious beliefs he does not presently hold, and this because of the immense advantage to him of believing. Many who have shown some sympathy with the wager argument or the understanding of religious belief on which it is based have found this advice, if not silly and dangerous, at least uninstructive. William James, for example, whose philosophy of religion has striking similarities to Pascal's, objected that the advice is unsound because the sceptic has no reason to believe that religious practice will have its promised result. The tone of James's discussion and the fact that he misrepresents Pascal's advice as a simple belief in the efficacy of ‘masses and holy water’, however, suggest that his rejection of it ran deeper than the force of this objection. In fact, the context of his remarks indicates that he regarded this part of Pascal's wager as a particularly clear example of the cases in which to base belief on volition is ‘simply silly’. Even one as sympathetic to Pascal's thought as Donald Baillie seems troubled by the advice. On the one hand, Baillie does not rule out the possibility that some cases of doubt or disbelief may be adequately treated by a measured dose of religious practice.