The debate beween the defenders of free will and of free grace in Christian theology is an age-old one. Those who have argued that human salvation is by God's grace alone seem quite opposed to those who argue that God's grace requires the unaided cooperation of the human will if it is to be successful.

In such a situation the prospect of establishing a mediating position becomes attractive. This is what J. R. Lucas has recently attempted.2 Moreover, his proposal has the added interest and attraction of insisting that mistakes on both sides have been philosophical, mistakes about the nature of causality. According to Mr Lucas the Augustinian has mistaken causal importance for causal sufficiency. Pelagius was correct about the part played by free will in salvation, but wrong in attaching as much importance to that fact as he does, while Augustine is correct in the importance to be attached to God's grace, but wrong in thinking that emphasis on God's grace logically excludes human free will.

Mystical Theology aims to be a ‘wisdom of experience’, not a ‘wisdom of doctrine’.1 It is not as theology that it is mystical, but in the fact that it brings mystical experience to expression in words. Mystical experience, however, cannot be communicated in doctrinal propositions. So the ‘theology of mystical experience’ always tells only of the way, the journey, the transition to that unutterable and incommunicable experience of God. So far as its doctrinal content is concerned, the theology of the mystics has up to the present seldom appeared particularly impressive. By tracing the history of ideas, one can easily enough recognise the augustinian, the neoplatonic and the gnostic motifs, and track them back to their roots. With this approach, however, one is not on the same path as the mystical theologians. It is therefore more appropriate to ask what experiences they were seeking to express with the help of those images and ideas. In order to share in their experience, it makes sense to join with them on the same journey, whether with Bernard of Clairvaux on the ‘ladder of love’, with Bonaventura on the ‘pilgrimage of the soul to God’, with Thomas à Kempis on the road of the Imitatio Christi or with Thomas Merton on the ‘seven-storey mountain’.

For some years I have been interested in exploring the use made of legal language by Paul and other New Testament writers. Recently, however, I have been reading a fair amount of Covenant Theology, and have become increasingly aware of the problems that arise from the application of ‘covenant’ terminology and related metaphors. Accordingly, in this article I want first to consider the general nature and function of metaphors and analogies as I see their role in the transmission of the truths of Christianity, and then to apply these generalities to the field of Covenant Theology. It seems to me that much discussion in that field comes down to argument about the content of the metaphoric language involved, and that some of the argument arises from an improper approach to metaphor. However, as I am aware that my reading has been limited and patchy, and that, as a lawyer, I am intruding into another discipline, I will refrain from attempting the scholarly citation of precise examples from theological writing, in the hope that ideas from my discipline will not be dismissed merely on grounds of error of example.

I Suspect that at its close this article will be judged to have fallen between two stools, that of the theologian and that of the philosopher. Not being in a position to remedy the defects of either quarter makes me the keener to communicate to others something that has recently struck me and given me pause for thought, namely an apparent parallel between a certain aspect of contemporary philosophy and another of traditional theology. It is to these that the expressions ‘intersubjectivity’ and ‘indwelling’ in my title refer. It is my hope that an examination of the parallel between them will prove fruitful for the contemporary pursuit of the perennial occupation of fides quaerens intellectum.

… the reliability of the kerygmatic tradition must not be questioned, for otherwise the eschatological event to which the kerygma testifies would be implicated in the relativity of all historical knowledge.

With the death of Cameron Dinwoodie in April of this year the Scottish Journal of Theology has lost one of its oldest and most devoted friends. From the very beginning he threw himself into the enterprise that set it going and gave it his assiduous support. In particular he contributed to every number from its start in 1948 the compilation of its index.

The title of this paper is neither provocative nor immediately arresting but it is at least descriptively accurate. These are remarks. They are only remarks. Their aim is to notice certain elements and direct (or perhaps I should say re-direct) attention to a classic in Christian literature. Part of what is meant in calling something ‘classic’ is that it addresses what used to be called without embarrassment ‘the universally human’. In these fragmented times of the sociological-political-economic-psychological-and-what-have-you person that expression has all but lost meaning. We find it difficult to recognise anything as classic and thus all but impossible to learn anything of lasting importance. What follows is an attempt to indicate at least a few of the ways in which The Imitation of Christ applies to us. In order to do this I must also indicate certain confused and misleading tendencies in the way we take our faith, tendencies which Thomas à Kempis was well aware of and for which he provides a corrective. My presentation may cause offense, however, and that offense may cause one not to take the book seriously. That would be a shame. The last thing I want is to get in the way of the book. There are many reasons for not taking the book seriously—all of them bad. There is one reason to take it seriously, and that reason is as deep and as rich and as painful as human existence.

The problem of establishing theology as a rigorously objective intellectual discipline or science whilst at the same time recognising that we cannot speak of God, theology's transcendent and infinite object, directly or univocally has given rise to various attempts to guarantee theological integrity. As the first to acknowledge and attempt to grapple with the problem of theological procedure in the modern world of thought, Friedrich Schleiermacher has a more than merely historical importance: together with some half a dozen other titanic figures of Christain history he continues to overshadow our theological endeavours today.1

In the ancient world, the concept of conversion was a motive for many great works. One might consider Plato's dialogue The Republic as an expression of hope and salvation for man, with the basic intention to guide man to a clearer vision of God. Later Philo, Clement of Alexandria and other early Christan writers were concerned with the question how man would be reunited with the divine. In his presentation of the text and translation of Plotinus' works, A. H. Armstrong states that the primary object of all of Plotinus' activity as a teacher and thinker was to bring his own soul and the souls of others by way of intellect to union with the One.

Sometimes exegetes differ from one another not so much because they have seen different data but because they are in fact looking for different types of ‘meaning’. For this reason, it is useful to classify different types of analysis of a text, and different types of ‘meaning’ resulting from such analysis.

The need for such classification has increased with the progress of biblical scholarship. Biblical exegetes and theologians have long had to deal with questions like ‘What is the meaning of this word of Scripture?’ and ‘What is the meaning of this verse, paragraph, section, or book?’ The intrinsic difficulties of recovering meaning from dead languages and sometimes unfamiliar cultural settings are often challenge enough. But, as increasing refinement and exactitude are sought, another kind of difficulty can arise, namely a difficulty with kinds of ‘meaning’. Is it indeed true that there is always only one meaning which is the meaning of a text? Is this the case even in poetic passages that may suggest or allude to new perspectives and comparisons without explicitly teaching them?1 Moreover, supposing that someone has arrived at ‘the meaning’ of a text, how is he to communicate this to someone else? In a commentary? In a sermon? In a form like Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament? Or perhaps even in the form of a painting or a new social and political organisation?

Not far below the surface of most modern theological dispute lies the question of the interrelationship of theology and culture. How shall those who take their intellectual orientation from the Christian Gospel understand their position in relation to the intellectual currents that represent the spirit of the age? Should the stance be that of Tertullian, Eusebius, or Augustine; Kierkegaard, Barth, or Tillich; or of some variation and combination of these and others? One of the many ramifications of this complex area of inquiry concerns the relationship of the Christian community to the institutions of the society and the world in which it carries on its life, as is well illustrated by recent controversy over the aims and methods of the W.C.C. Programme to Combat Racism. Here, of course, are obvious, if highly complex, moral and practical issues. But underlying them is a further theoretical and theological question: What is Christianity? In this paper, I should like to suggest that both the theological and the ethical problems can be illuminated by an examination of the interrelationship between conceptions of the person of Christ and the church's understanding of its relation to earthly rulers.

In The Bible in the Modern World Professor Barr points out that recent discussion has largely lost interest in the description of the Bible as the ‘Word of God’. He suggests three reasons for this:

When an exegete approaches a biblical text, he wants to find out ‘what it means’. But which meaning is he after? Is he interested only in what the speaker (or author) intended? Or is he interested also in the speech product (which may not fully succeed in embodying the speaker's intention)? Is he interested in what the audience thought of the discourse? And which of these meanings (if any) is the appropriate starting point for a modern sermon?

There cannot be many philosophical theologians whose work has been interpreted in such radically contrary ways as has Anselm's. He is seen as an arch-rationalist who did not baulk at trying to prove the necessity of the Incarnation and the Trinity (which is Gilson's basic interpretation); and he is seen as a certain kind of fideist for whom reason always moves within the circle of faith, a proof of faith by faith (which is how Barth's interpretation is commonly understood, or misunderstood).

In one of the sermons that he preached at Oxford while still an Anglican, Newman argued that love is the safeguard of faith against superstition.1 This thesis strikes me as being false, for reasons which I shall indicate; but it merits consideration by students of the epistemology of religion, if only because it is a provocative ‘solution’ to some central problems of philosophy and theology which are disturbingly persistent in their relevance. Before we consider whether Newman's position is unsound, let us see how he arrived at it.

A. G. Hogg, although still not well known outside of India, has become in recent years the centre of increasing interest, particularly as studies of major missionary thinkers have demonstrated his importance to Protestant thought during the first half of this century.1 Hogg, who was Principal of the Madras Christian College from 1928 to 1938, first arrived in India from Scotland in 1903 as Professor of Philosophy at the College. During his first years in Madras, he contributed several articles to the Madras Christian College Magazine, the most significant being a series entitled ‘Karma and Redemption’ (1904–5), published in book form in 1909.2 In it, he outlined his fundamental missionary approach, which was based on his distinction between faith and faiths.

The doctrine of justification, for Luther the articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae, was for the authors of the report Doctrine in the Church of England (1938) not worth mentioning. Here, however, the members of the Archbishops' Commission on Christian Doctrine were not representative of the Anglican tradition as a whole which has not been remiss in attending to the matter of justification. The doctrine presents a challenge to the Anglican attempt to find a via media and there are pronounced oscillations of emphasis in the Anglican tradition on this question, represented by Bishop Bull and J. H. Newman on the right and Hooker and F. D. Maurice on the left. Newman's Lectures on Justification provoked further efforts to find a synthesis and led, by the end of the nineteenth century, to a restatement of the doctrine of justification within Anglican theology, which though in certain respects catholic in form, was definitely evangelical in spirit.

If we are attempting to set out an ideal of society which is deserving of the name of Christian we must have some idea of what is meant by Christianity. I propose that Christianity is to be identified with Jesus Christ.

The aim of this paper is to outline the thinking of the Canaanite peoples on the subject of death and to compare it with their near neighbour Israel's in the Old Testament. My chief source for the former is the mythological tablets from Ras Shamra (anciently Ugarit), the quoted extracts being taken from the translation in the second edition (for which I was responsible) of Sir Godfrey Driver's Canaanite Myths and Legends. For the Old Testament side of the equation I have mainly followed the survey in the opening chapters of Professor Martin-Achard's book From Death to Life, though I do not necessarily agree with all his interpretations. I have also profited, particularly in my concluding remarks, from rereading after a gap of many years Gustaf Aulén's well-known work of historical theology Christus Victor. Other studies which I found helpful are listed in the select bibliography at the end of the paper.

Historically the churches have played a major role in the area of education. This role has received expression both in theoretical and in practical terms. The theologian has taken an important part both in the determining of perspectives in educational philosophy and in the actual provision of schools and the training of teachers.