One of the most influential Christologies in the recent past was that based on the kenosis or divine self-emptying in Christ. Starting with Gottfried Thomasius in 1845 through P. T. Forsyth and H. R. Mackintosh in this century, men sought a key in the idea of kenosis for interpreting to the modern mind the traditional Christian affirmation that Christ is both human and divine. There are two questions about the kenotic Christologies and their place in the history of Christian thought that can provide a key to a fresh understanding of the kenotic theme and its function in modern christological thinking.

Throughout his mature life Martin Luther was actively concerned with the problems of interpreting the Scriptures. His biblical commentaries, which bulk large in his collected works, and which, one suspects, have never been adequately evaluated in determining the content of his theology, deal over and again with this subject, which clearly had a certain centrality in his thought. His earliest commentaries show his indebtedness to the traditions of medieval exegesis, but they give indication also of his independence in the use of older methods. In his first commentaries on Galatians, for example, we find him expressing radical dissatisfaction with the medieval fourfold method of interpretation: ‘Verum quicquid sit de illis sensibus, certum est hoc neque apostolos neque antiquos doctores observare, qui tropologiam, allegoriam, misticam seu misteria et spiritualem sensus prorsus indiscrete accipiunt.… Nam ista quadriga (etsi non reprobem) non scripturae autoritate nee patrum usu nee grammatica satis ratione juvatur.’ He did, especially in the early commentaries, use elements of this fourfold interpretation, though not in a mechanical way, but he was insistent, as early as 1516, on the primacy of the historical meaning: ‘Rectius igitur … primus historicus dicendus est.’ He contended, furthermore, that earlier glosses and commentaries were to be used only in a sensible way, to illuminate rather than obscure the reading of the texts.

The aim of this article is to examine the relation that the New Testament posits between ethics and eschatology. The first part will deal with the ethical implications of eschatology as a whole; the second part will be devoted to an examination of one topic only—the Second Coming (Parousia) of Christ; the third part will take the form of a few remarks on the applicability of Christian ethics to the life of the world.

The basis of apostolic eschatology is stated in the earliest Christian ‘sermon’ for which we have evidence—Peter's speech on the day of Pentecost. The speech ends with the assertion that the promised Spirit has been given and that the ‘new age’ has dawned. This ‘realised’ eschatology of the Petrine kerygma has parallels in both the gospels and epistles.

For some years a Committee of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Australia has been at work preparing a statement on ‘The Nature and Functions of the Ministry’. Those portions of its statement which deal with the New Testament and Reformation bases for the Presbyterian conception of the Ministry were given general approval by the 1959 Assembly (Min. 131.2), and are being considered by Presbyteries. The Assembly has instructed the Committee meanwhile to prepare statements on certain other aspects of the subject, including ‘the non-theological factors that are influencing the conception of the Ministry in the changed place of the Church in the modern community’ (Min. 131.3). This paper (which owes something to work already done on behalf of this Committee) is intended as a contribution to thought concerning these ‘non-theological factors’.

The object of this paper is to argue that in St. Paul we find indeed a concept of man, but one which is inseparable from his whole theology, inseparable from his doctrine of God and his dealing with the world.

This final part of the third volume of Church Dogmatics contains Barth's theological ethics in so far as this subject belongs to the doctrine of God as the Creator and as it applies to man in his responsibility as the covenant-partner of God. Here we turn to the consideration of what God wills from man in choosing him for fellowship with Himself.