This article presents a theory about a distinctive, but still neglected, approach to trinitarianism in the early church which was founded explicitly in demanding practices of prayer and personal transformation. The central thesis of the article is that this approach (with its characteristic appeal to Romans 8, and its Spirit-initiated prayer of an elevated or ascetic sort) was set on a course of almost inevitable tension with certain kinds of episcopal authority, and particularly with post-Nicene renditions of ‘orthodoxy’ as propositional assent. The theory is not to be confused, however, with a rather tired sociological disjunction between institution and ‘charisma’; the matter is spiritually more subtle than that, and implies vying perceptions of theological power, ‘orthodoxy’, and the nature of the ecclesial body. In this article I opt for a focus on the relation between Origen's De oratione (one of the finest discussions of the implications of Romans 8 for Christian contemplation), the suggested influence of Origen on early Antonite monasticism, and the still-mysterious motivations for Theophilus’ first attack on Origenism and the monks of Nitria in 399. The picture that emerges, once this distinctive prayer-based approach to the Trinity is clarified, is one of a late fourth-century crisis of simultaneous rejection, domestication and attempted assimilation of this elite spirituality of intra-divine incorporation.

Various critics of the New Perspective on Paul (NPP) often highlight the lack of church tradition as one deficiency of the various interpretations of Paul. To some, the lack of church history automatically renders such newer interpretations suspect. In turn critics of the NPP often turn to the reformers such as Calvin and Luther to defend the traditional reading of Paul and trace this traditional reading back to Augustine. For the critics, church tradition stands on the side of the traditional reading.

This article seeks to highlight an often neglected early church view on one aspect of the NPP, that of Paul and the Law. This article highlights one of the fiercest exchanges between two church fathers. Through a series of letters, Jerome and Augustine corresponded on Jerome's interpretation of Galatians 2 and the Antioch incident. For Augustine the pastor, nothing less than the veracity of scripture was at stake and Augustine mounts a defence of Paul's actions in Galatians 2 in response to Jerome's insistence of an agreed-upon lie between Peter and Paul. In the process of Augustine's rebuttal of Jerome, he notes that Paul followed the law without ‘pretence’ and that there was a period in early Christianity where Jewish Christians practised law observance. Augustine highlights the divine origin of the Mosaic law, which renders a positive role for the law in early Christianity, and notes that the negative critique of the law comes within the context of a Gentile audience, but did not have implications for Jewish Christians. Augustine rightly notices and raises the important context of Paul's negative statements on the law and offers a nuanced discussion of Paul's treatment of the law.

Augustine notes some of the important conclusions drawn by the NPP, namely a positive view of the law and its practice by Paul and other Jewish Christians. He also notes the various ways the law functions in Jewish and Gentile contexts. Such a positive view of Paul and the law may appear striking to many, but must be considered by those who are otherwise critical of the NPP. This article shows that there was at least one voice, among others, within the early church which advocated for a positive reading of Paul and the law. The history of interpretation of Galatians 2 offers many insights for contemporary Pauline scholars which ought to be heeded in future discussions. This article, by highlighting the exchange between Jerome and Augustine, seeks to give the NPP a historical ‘rootedness’ and placement within the history of interpretation.

The King James Bible was widely celebrated in 2011 for its literary, religious and cultural significance over the past 400 years, yet its staunch critics are important to note as well. This article draws attention to Catholic critics of the King James Bible (KJB) during its first 300 years in print. By far the most systematic and long-lived Catholic attack on the KJB is found in the argument and afterlife of a curious counter-Reformation text, Thomas Ward's Errata of the Protestant Bible. This book is not completely unknown, yet many scholars have been puzzled over exactly what to make of it and all its successor editions in the nineteenth century – at least a dozen, often in connection with an edition of the Catholic Douai-Rheims Bible (DRB). Ward's Errata, first published in 1688, was based on a 1582 book by Catholic translator and biblical scholar Gregory Martin. The book and its accompanying argument, that all Protestant English Bibles were ‘heretical’ translations, then experienced a prosperous career in nineteenth-century Ireland, employed to battle the British and Foreign Bible Society's campaign to disseminate the Protestant King James Bible as widely as possible. On the American career of the Counter-Reformation text, the article discusses early editions in Philadelphia, when the school Bible question entered the American scene. In the mid-nineteenth century, led by Bishop John Purcell in Cincinnati, Bishop Francis Patrick Kenrick in Philadelphia and Bishop John Hughes in New York City, many Catholics began opposing the use of the KJB as a school textbook and demanding use of the Douai Rheims Bible instead. With reference to Ward's Errata, they argued that the KJB was a sectarian version, reflecting Protestant theology at the expense of Catholic teachings. These protests culminated in the then world-famous Bible-burning trial of Russian Redemptorist priest, Fr Vladimir Pecherin in Dublin, in late 1855. The Catholic criticisms of the KJB contained in Ward's Errata, which was reprinted for the last time in 1903, reminded the English-speaking public that this famous and influential Protestant version was not the most perfect of versions, and that it was not and never had been THE BIBLE for everyone.

The Nicodemus story can be read as a distillation of the Gospel of John and an example of many of its key features. John 3:1–21 poses a wide range of the problems raised by this most distinctive and mysterious of the four gospels. It shows characteristic practices of John as a reader, writer and teacher. In line with John's theology of the Spirit ‘leading into all the truth’, it also shows him as a daring theologian, opening up fresh interpretations and ways of doing theology beyond the Septuagint and the Synoptic Gospels and even beyond his own Prologue (itself a remarkably daring piece of theology). That same Spirit means that John also expects his readers to be led into further truth, and to improvise on his theology as he himself did on the Septuagint and on the Synoptic traditions. His ways of reading, writing and teaching encourage such a response in the Spirit by creating a work rich in intertextuality, imagery and conceptuality which has a ‘deep plain sense’, superabundant in meaning and always inviting the reader to reread, learn more and interpret afresh. So one challenge for readers now is whether they are open not only to thinking along with John but also to thinking beyond him, in ways appropriate to different people and contexts. But this transformation in thought and imagination is not all: it is inseparable from doing the truth ‘in God’. The mutual involvement of seeing, believing/trusting, knowing and living in love is above all communicated in the drama of John's Gospel, whose backbone is a series of meetings with Jesus and the injunction to follow Jesus. More embracing and fundamental than, for example, doctrinal theology or existential decision-making, is the dramatic reality of encountering other people and following Jesus in all the complexities of life in specific contexts. In John 3:1–21 the encounter of Jesus with Nicodemus is the dramatic heart of the passage, blending into a discourse which itself culminates in the ultimate drama of ‘deeds done in God’. But to stop interpretation there would be to refuse the Johannine invitation to enter into more truth with a view to ‘doing greater things’. So the article ends with two midrashic interpretations of Nicodemus for today.

The many conflicts around the reformation of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries drew the problem of political resistance to the forefront of European political thought. Thinkers in all of the various religious camps considered scripture to be politically normative. Consequently, both pro- and anti-resistance thinkers from a variety of traditions had to engage with Romans 13:1–7, Paul's apparently definitive pronouncement in favour of obedience and, therefore, against resistance. The opponents of resistance could cite Romans 13 with fairly little explanation, but the resisters and revolutionaries faced the challenge of working with the text to draw different political conclusions from it without violating the ‘literal’ sense that they almost universally held to be authoritative. Some even aimed to bring Paul forward as a staunch supporter of the sort of violent political resistance they advocated.

Lex, Rex, the political tract of seventeenth-century Scottish theologian Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661), represents a particularly comprehensive early modern justification for violent resistance against a political sovereign. Rutherford was a member of the party of the radical covenanters, who vehemently opposed the church reforms of Charles I and, when hostilities began, fervently supported the war against the king. This article explores the series of arguments, distinctions and theological moves that Rutherford employs to incorporate Romans 13 as a central supporting text for his pro-resistance argument. Among these are: the distinction between God's immediate institution of governmental power and the constitution of particular governments mediately through the people, the positing of a conditional covenant agreed upon at the constitution of any government, the scholastic distinction between voluntas beneplaciti and voluntas signi in the divine will, and the distinction between the royal office in abstracto and its concrete occupant. Using these and other arguments and distinctions, Rutherford constructs a conceptual apparatus that is able, to a great extent, to appropriate Paul's exhortation to obedience in the service of a justification of resistance. In so doing, Rutherford illustrates some of the array of theological and philosophical resources that early modern resistance theorists could marshal in support of their cause, while still maintaining their fundamental theological commitments.

Contemporary Christian construals of the Eucharist, both in doctrine and in practice, generally tend to subordinate, de-emphasise or omit theological reference to the Jewish Passover meal. And yet the key New Testament texts in which the Eucharist's institution is variously narrated – the very texts and institution allegedly ‘remembered’ in eucharistic rites – are virtually unintelligible apart from Passover. Thus, at the heart of Christian doctrine and practical life sits a particular theological problem: namely, precisely how to relate the distinctively Jewish character of the Eucharist's origins as narrated in the New Testament to the distinctively Christian character of eucharistic doctrine and liturgy. Drawing on two Jewish thinkers, Michael Fishbane and Yair Zakovitch, in this article I offer one model for understanding the Eucharist–Passover relationship in particular, and the Christian–Jewish relationship generally, as fundamentally typological, performative and ‘subsessionist’. That is, I propose a subsessionist (as opposed to supersessionist) typological understanding of the Eucharist as a Christian rendition of Passover, at once distinct from its Jewish counterparts today and utterly dependent on the ancient Israelite festival for its intelligibility and force. From Fishbane, I draw the idea that throughout the Hebrew Bible, the exodus narrative provides a crucial interpretative key applicable to both prior and anticipated redemptions. From Zakovitch, I draw the idea that the ubiquity of exodus typology in Hebrew scripture may function to create an impression of periodic repetition in salvation history, in effect reassuring Israel that future deliverance will conform to the essential patterns of the prestigious past. The typology at play here, then, so far from being a triumphalist ‘prophecy-fulfilment’ arrangement in which the ‘old’ is valuable only insofar as it serves as a signpost pointing to the ‘new’, is rather a ‘paradigm-rendition’ typology in which the new performance is clarified and authenticated precisely insofar as it corresponds to the old, exalted original. At stake here, I contend, is not only a more fruitful framework for conceiving the relationship between Eucharist and Passover (or indeed between Christianity and Judaism), but also a crucial theological strategy for resisting what amounts to a de facto Marcionism in contemporary Christian communities.

Can a biblical text be idolatrous? Ezekiel's God has always been theologically awkward and difficult to handle. For early Jewish and Christian readers of the book the most troublesome (and indeed dangerous) parts of the text were the prophet's initial vision of the divine glory and its subsequent reappearances. Voltaire was perplexed and revolted by God's command that Ezekiel eat bread cooked with dung.1 For some twentieth-century Protestant commentators, Ezekiel's God is altogether too concerned with ritual at the expense of ethics.2 But for contemporary readers it is the unrelenting harshness, violence and especially masculinity of Ezekiel's Yhwh which proves most problematic. My aim in this article is to examine some of the theological implications of this divine awkwardness. In what follows I will attempt three things. First, I will offer a brief examination of the problems Ezekiel's God poses and a few recent Christian responses. Second, I will outline Roland Boer's proposal that Ezekiel 20 (along with 16 and 23) tends towards a kind of ‘anti-Yahwism’ or ‘protest atheism’: a vision of God so appalling as to be impossible to accept. Finally, I will explore the value for theological interpretation of taking seriously such an apparently unpromising conclusion, and suggest that the apophatic tradition may provide resources for embracing such radical negativity within scripture.

Much theology presupposes a metaphysical spirit or soul, the existence of which has been questioned in contemporary neurobiological research. Green, Murphy and others argue for alternatives to metaphysical description. If the neuroscience is correct and the soul, if it exists, is not metaphysical then many theological descriptions will need serious revision or possibly even abandonment. One such theological description, directly affected and long considered to be an essential part of Christianity, is God's personal self-communication to humans. This has traditionally been understood to occur through the metaphysical human soul or spirit. The question explored in this article is whether the existence of a metaphysical soul is an all or nothing matter for Christian theology.

A rational and strong challenge to the existence of metaphysical soul is demonstrably not new. Nonetheless, from the beginnings of modernity it has been generally assumed, utilising Augustinian anthropology, that the soul was a metaphysical element of human anatomy. Huxley's work on sensation, including ‘Has the Frog a Soul’, determines the anatomical location of the soul by its supposed function. Huxley questions early modernity's assumptions regarding the nature of sensation and the presumed role of the metaphysical soul within the sensorium. Huxley deduces limits and conditions on the existence of the soul and arrives at a description which has similarities to Tertullian's corporeal description of the soul. Huxley, however, does not engage with Tertullian, whose relatively orthodox description of the soul answers a number of issues that Huxley raises. Tertullian's careful revision of the Aristotelian category of corporeality is not exactly the same as Huxley's nineteenth-century materialism or contemporary physicalism. Tertullian's description of the soul is remarkably similar to Augustine's, differing mainly on the issue of corporeality and metaphysicality. Tertullian's description ironically draws on and shares the same functions as Greek philosophy and medicine. This description of the soul seems to be based more on these sources than scripture, unusually for Tertullian. Some form of reappropriation of Tertullian's non-metaphysical soul may be useful in the contemporary debate, noting the limitations of his understandings of biology and physics. It seems possible to take note, in some form, of changed and better contemporary worldviews, in order to better describe theological anthropology and in particular that element related to the soul.

In the second half of the twentieth century there was a renaissance of liberalism and a new interest in freedom in modern Western industrialised nations. Theologians responded to the intellectual discourse in various ways while treating the concept of freedom in theology. Here three different engagements with the understanding of freedom and liberalism at the end of the century are introduced. The first is a critique of liberalism and rejection of modern accounts of freedom as autonomy. This account draws upon historical and theological resources in the presentation of modern liberalism as a negative development in theology and in understandings of society. In the article here, this first approach is presented in the context of its social and political orientation and contemporary context in the later twentieth century. While some of the contours of this first approach are viewed critically, one aspect of its intentions is praised. The second example is an adoption of the discourse of modern liberalism and a justification of it with an account of the Reformation as its progenitor. This account draws upon a narrative of progressive liberation in modern human history. The second approach is addressed here in its particular context after the Second World War and in the specific cultural and theological framework of the latter part of the twentieth century. While the revival of modern liberal theology in the latter part of the twentieth century is presented here as a necessary development in the wake of radical early twentieth century anti-liberalism, some of the sweeping claims of this approach are viewed critically. Finally, a third mediatory approach is presented. This general group sought to advance a form of the liberal theological tradition while also theologically challenging Enlightenment conceptions of autonomy. Three brief examples are drawn upon to illustrate this approach. One is concerned with providing orientation for the basic doctrinal question of human freedom and sin. The second example deals with the systematic theological specification of human freedom in the postmodern context and its relation to an understanding of divine freedom. The third example deals with the ethical implications of a theologically grounded understanding of freedom.

Vladimir Lossky (1903–58) and Sergii Bulgakov (1871–1944) are normally taken as polar opposites in modern Orthodox theology. Lossky's theology is portrayed as being based on a close exegesis of the Greek Fathers with an emphasis on theosis, the Trinity and the apophatic way of mystical union with God. Bulgakov's ‘sophiology’, in contrast, if it is remembered at all, is said to be a theology which wished to ‘go beyond the Fathers’, was based on German Idealism and the quasi-pantheist and gnostic idea of ‘sophia’ which is a form of the ‘Eternal Feminine’ of Romanticism. In short, Lossky's theological approach is what people normally think of when they speak of Orthodox theology: a form of ‘neo-patristic synthesis’ (Georges Florovsky). Bulgakov's theological approach is said to be typical of the exotic dead end of the inter-war émigré ‘Paris School’ (Alexander Schmemann) or ‘Russian Religious Renaissance’ (Nicolas Zernov). Lossky, we are reminded, was instrumental in the 1935 condemnation, by Metropolitan Sergii Stragorodskii of the Moscow Patriarchate, of Bulgakov's theology as ‘alien’ to the Orthodox Christian faith. Counter to this widely held ‘standard narrative’ of contemporary Orthodox theology, the article argues that the origins of Vladimir Lossky's apophaticism, which he characterised as ‘antinomic theology’, are found within the theological methodology of the sophiology of Sergii Bulgakov: ‘antinomism’. By antinomism is understood that with any theological truth one has two equally necessary affirmations (thesis and antithesis) which are nevertheless logically contradictory. In the face of their conflict, we are forced to hold both thesis and antithesis together through faith. A detailed discussion of Lossky's apophaticism is followed by its comparison to Bulgakov's ‘sophiological antinomism’. Lossky at first appears to be masking the influence of Bulgakov and even goes so far as to read his own form of theological antinomism into the Fathers. Nevertheless, he may well have been consciously appropriating the ‘positive intuitions’ of Bulgakov's thought in order to ‘Orthodoxise’ a thinker he believed was in error but still regarded as the greatest Orthodox theologian of the twentieth century. Despite major differences between the two thinkers (e.g. differing understandings of reason, the use of philosophy and the uncreated/created distinction), it is suggested that Lossky and Bulgakov have more in common than normally is believed to be the case. A critical knowledge of Bulgakov's sophiology is said to be the ‘skeleton key’ for modern Orthodox theology which can help unlock its past, present and future.

The New Testament's two pictures of divine intercession, that of the risen Christ interceding at the right hand of God (Rom 8:34; Heb 7:25) and that of the Holy Spirit interceding from within believers’ hearts (Rom 8:26–7), offer additional perspective on the difficult issue of how God comes in touch with human suffering. Romans 8:26–7 connects the Spirit's intercession with the experience of human suffering, and through its reference to groaning implies that the Spirit communicates something of the believer's felt experience of weakness to God. Hebrews links Christ's high priestly work, including his intercessory activity, with his experience of struggle, thereby implying that he brings the needs of weak and pressured believers to God with an empathy born of direct experience of suffering. These scriptural pictures open a fruitful path for theological reflection, suggesting that God comes to know human suffering not simply by unmediated divine knowledge, or even by the bare fact of the divine Son's incarnation, but also in a mediated fashion, through complementary actions of Christ and the Spirit best described as acts of intercession.

Applying a model of thought which emphasises the intercessory activities of Christ and the Spirit to the problem of divine passibility has a number of advantages. First, it coheres well with New Testament patterns for describing the roles of Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Christ's intercession is rooted in his incarnation and distinctive redemptive mission, while the Spirit's intercession emerges from his redemptive indwelling. Second, its picture of God knowing human suffering through the mediated process of intercession suggests that God maintains his freedom and holiness even as he gets in touch with human suffering. Third, the intercession model may shed additional light on how the sufferings of the incarnate Son touch or otherwise relate to the Father. Fourth, the Bible's pictures of divine intercession suggest that God is brought in touch with two dimensions of human suffering: the objective reality of human affliction (mediated through Christ's intercession) and the subjective experiences of afflicted people (mediated through the Spirit's intercession). Finally, these scriptural pictures of intercession orient our thoughts about the question of passibility in a pastoral direction.

This article argues that the Christian West's indebtedness to contractual logic in regard to marriage, as canonically depicted in 1 Corinthians 7, has resulted in a corresponding theological and pastoral myopia. The weakness of this reliance, as seen paradigmatically in Augustine's theology of marriage, consists in its articulation of marriage's constitution apart from any meaningful reference to the particular dynamics of any given marital common life. ‘Marriage’, in this sense, remains extrinsic to the living of marriage. Augustine doubly solidifies this separation by construing marriage as a contractually negotiated site for the sinful, though forgivable, expression of sexual desire, which he then roots in a christological account of sacrament whereby the sacramental bond of marriage can never be broken regardless of the lived particularities of marital life. A promising corrective can be found by way of a theological retrieval of a minor set of images suggestively employed in passages such as Ephesians 5:21–33 and Revelation 19:7–9 rooted in cultic themes such as sacrifice and consecration, which Augustine employs in describing marriage's preferred ecclesial alternative: the consecration of virginity. The constructive result is a theology of marriage in which every moment of marital life is marked by the ambivalence of vulnerably and ‘deathly’ surrendering to one another, which is pre-eminently embodied in the surrender of Christ himself upon the cross to the one he called Father. This ambivalence is characterised by the dual possibility, inherent in the posture of surrender itself, in which the result can either bear the healing fruits of love and reciprocal embrace or the tragic inhumanity of abuse, rejection and manipulation. Finally, the sacrificial and contractual elements of marriage might be ultimately reconciled in a refigured notion of ‘covenant’, which too often has been understood simply as a synonym for ‘contract’. Instead, a proper covenantal understanding of marriage emerges as a participatory analogy to the entire, complicated and contingent history of God, with God's people marked by seemingly endless cycles of sin, repentance, forgiveness and restoration. Intriguingly, this history was also founded within a temporal space outlined by a mix of contractual elements and cultic regulations. Likewise, the covenantal founding of a marriage mirrors a similar dynamic: the initial ‘contractual’ vows speak into existence a temporalised space within which a daily, mundane life of love might come to pass and bear its fruits, in due time, by God's grace and the daily improvisations of love and sacrifice.

Hans Urs von Balthasar claimed that Barth's Church Dogmatics demonstrates a weakening of his distinctive actualism in order to make space for ‘the concept of authentic objective form’, a point illustrated by the discourse on divine beauty in CD II/1. There Barth treats the divine being as an objective form to be contemplated, a seeming departure from Barth's privileged conceptualisation of God as personal subject whose free action humbles our theoretical gaze and graciously provides the material content for proper speech about God. Bruce McCormack has challenged von Balthasar's general thesis, arguing that no weakening has in fact taken place in the Church Dogmatics. If this is the case, what then of Barth's discourse on divine beauty? Is it consistent with his actualistic doctrine of God? Is it possible to speak of God both as a free, dynamic event and an object of beauty? Can theological aesthetics find a home within Barth's actualism? This article answers in the affirmative by demonstrating the systematic integrity between Barth's claims about divine beauty and the actualism permeating CD II/1. First, the article examines the ambiguity of Barth's specific claims about divine beauty. Barth is both enthusiastic and hesitant in speaking about divine beauty, affirming the concept yet placing careful qualifications on its use. Next, the article illustrates how the nature of these claims is anticipated by the actualism of CD II/1, specifically by (1) Barth's clear rejection of divine formlessness, (2) his argument that God's act of self-revelation in Jesus Christ implies an objective triune form for God's being and, lastly, (3) how he grounds discourse on divine beauty in the event of God's dynamic, free love. The article finally contends that the key to Barth's puzzling position on divine beauty is in understanding the precise reason why he registers beauty as a necessary but insufficient theological concept. This qualification is rooted in an important content–form, spirit–nature distinction which frames all discussion about God's being-in-act. Throughout CD II/1, objective form is a necessary condition for divine self-expression, but objectivity is always grounded in the freedom of the Spirit. Thus, the freedom-to-love at the heart of God's triune existence is the ground of our experience of God as beautiful, not any continuity with our contemplation of created forms. As such, the creative freedom animating God's triune life provides the space for, but also the limit to, theological aesthetics by imbuing divine beauty in mystery.

The past twenty-five years have seen a widespread turn to the concrete in theology, and an increased awareness of the importance of practices, believing communities and material culture for both Christian faith itself, and theological engagement with it. In ecclesiology, this turn to the concrete has manifested itself in the rise of concrete approaches to ecclesiology. These have developed over the past fifteen years or so, as ecclesiologists have integrated theological and social-scientific perspectives on the church, to create both general methodological studies, and smaller scale ‘ecclesiological ethnographies’ of particular church communities.

This article critically explores some of the key methodological moves of the emerging discipline of concrete ecclesiology. In the first part of the article, I argue that concrete ecclesiologies display two characteristic methodological tendencies. First, they exhibit a tendency to define their approach as concrete and realistic in contrast to twentieth-century doctrinal approaches to ecclesiology, which they perceive as unhelpfully idealising and abstract. Second, they tend to express the task of ecclesiological ethnography as one of balancing the claims of two descriptive languages, theology and social science, with regard to a single object, the church. The underlying metaphor here is borrowed from christology: just as theological language about Christ's divine and human nature must be kept in balance, so doctrinal and social perspectives on the church must be kept in balance to avoid ‘ecclesiological Nestorianism’.

In the second part of the article, I argue that these two methodological tendencies result in caricatured understandings of theology and ethnography as functional opposites. Theology tends to be regarded as an inherently abstracting and idealising influence in ecclesiology, while ethnography tends to be regarded as a means of straightforwardly accessing the ‘real’ church. This in turn creates a problematically thermostatic understanding of the relationship between theological and ethnographic insights in ecclesiology, casting them as mutually regulating and opposite influences. The article closes by proposing a potentially more fruitful alternative model for integrating theology and ethnography, by exploring the similarities between the ways in which the two disciplines understand and relate to their respective objects of study.

In his 1923–4 lectures on the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Karl Barth offered a strikingly negative verdict on Schleiermacher's doctrine of justification, lamenting that it was radically discontinuous with the theology of the Reformation. The core purpose of this article is to assess this verdict in detail. The introduction presents in outline Barth's criticism of Schleiermacher's doctrine of justification from these lectures. The first section of the article provides a summary of the doctrine of justification as it is found in Schleiermacher's mature work, The Christian Faith, together with a brief consideration of the related doctrines of conversion and sanctification, and an exposition of the dogmatic location and inter-relation of the three loci. In the second section, the article proceeds to investigate closely whether three of the central criticisms of Barth pertaining to Schleiermacher's doctrine of justification reflect an accurate reading and adjudication of the underlying material. The criticisms explored are: that for Schleiermacher there is no justification as a free act of God but only a justification which takes place according to the law of nature; that in the event of justification Schleiermacher considers both God and the human being to be active; and that the doctrine of Schleiermacher repeats the heresy of essential righteousness after the fashion of Andreas Osiander. The common theme underlying each charge is that Schleiermacher has departed significantly (and lamentably) from the tradition of the Reformation. The third section of the article proceeds to explore these charges carefully in light of a close reading of Schleiermacher's dogmatic work on justification and related doctrines. In the case of each of the criticisms directed at his doctrine of justification, it is argued that there are strong grounds for asserting that Barth's concerns may be rather misplaced and that – true to his word – Schleiermacher indeed remains in broad dogmatic continuity with the Reformation tradition. In the conclusion, two further theological possibilities are noted. First, it is suggested that, far from leaving the Reformation tradition behind, Schleiermacher's work on justification resonates strongly with one particular reading of Calvin's work which has much currency in contemporary theology. And second, it is suggested that, far from Schleiermacher being the one to depart from the Reformation tradition on justification, it might actually – ironically – be Barth who is more guilty of that charge in view of his own doctrine of justification in the Church Dogmatics.

Applying the legal metaphor integral to the book of Job, this article re-evaluates the evidence for Job's innocence (Job 42:7). After examining the conflicted testimony of the book itself, the article focuses on exemplars of Christian interpretation throughout history (the author of James, Ambrose, Gregory the Great, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Kierkegaard, and Barth) to discuss the various attempts made to come to terms with the final form of the book of Job, including its testimony to Job's complaints. Though some interpreters simply ignore the complaints in their attempts to hold up Job as an exemplar of patience, following, it is often argued, the example of James 5:11, for those who wrestle with Job's apparent blasphemy, three general approaches emerge. The first, denial, refuses to acknowledge Job's accusations of divine injustice. The second, mitigation, attempts to minimise the force of Job's arguments against God. The third, absolution, acknowledges Job's defiance of God but claims that this wrong is not beyond God's grace, and that it may in fact highlight it. However, none is able to satisfactorily reconcile Job's accusations with the innocent verdict God delivers at the end of the book (42:7) and affirm that Job has indeed said what is right about God. Even so, the broader biblical testimony offers evidence to exonerate Job by testifying to divine favourable response to and even initiation of complaint in a tradition of ‘faithful revolt’. Job joins the heroes of Israelite faith, Abraham (Gen 18:17–33), Jacob (Gen 32:6–12, 22–31), and Moses (Exod 32:1–14), the psalmists who dare to cry ‘Why?’ and ‘How long?’ and prophets such as Amos (e.g. 7:1–9), Jeremiah (e.g. 20:7–18), and Habakkuk (e.g. 1:2–4, 12–17) in confronting God and demanding that the deity make things right. Jesus endorses this tradition through both his parables of the importunate friend (Luke 11:5–9) and the importunate widow (Luke 18:1–8) and his cry of dereliction from the cross. Instead of reading Job's complaints in line with this tradition, when these Christian interpreters grapple with Job's accusations against God, Job's ‘friends’ once again become his accusers due to their application of a limited view of God and God's relationship to humanity.

Most maps of theology in the twentieth century, particularly theology in North America, would include the delineation of revisionist theology and postliberal theology as mutually exclusive, opposed options in theological method. This article begins to challenge the contours of this received map through a comparison of David Tracy and Hans Frei, pre-eminent figures in revisionist and postliberal theology, respectively. I show that, for all their differences, both Tracy and Frei posit the reader–text relationship as the site and even in some sense the source of revelation. Their turn to reading is motivated by the perception of a certain loss or estrangement characterising contemporary religiosity. Though the scope and details of their description of the problem differ, there is a similarity in the vision of Christian life which stands in contrast to the contemporary situation. For both, their visions of Christian life can be articulated through the notion of orthodoxy, understood in its full sense as referring to a coherent, vibrant and all-encompassing immersion in Christian doctrine and practice. Engagement in proper reading practice becomes for each the entrance into and sign of full participation in religious life, analogous to the role of belief in traditional notions of orthodoxy. I suggest that Tracy and Frei represent two forms of ‘theology of ortholexis’ or ‘right reading’. The turn to reading is most obvious in Frei, who explicitly links the modern difficulty in attaining a sense of the coherence of Christian history, doctrine and lived life to a misconstrual of the nature of the biblical text which leads to a misguided reading practice. Yet Tracy also places the model of reading as conversation at the centre of his revisionist account of the possibility of a contemporary experience of the authority of the Bible and the power of the Christian tradition more generally. In these ‘theologies of ortholexis’, a constellation of modern anxieties concerning the limits and possibilities of our knowledge and experience of the divine are addressed through positing the reader–text relationship forged through proper reading practice as the place of and way to authentic revelation.

Study of Barth's doctrine of angels has languished, and the time is ripe for a thorough reassessment. While any full account will centre on the magisterial theology of angels in the Church Dogmatics, much can be gained from a close, contextually informed reading of the earlier treatment of angels in the Göttingen dogmatics lectures. These lectures are shaped by a twofold procedural commitment: Barth's presentation is ordered, on one hand, to a recognisably modern conception of the logical content of Christian preaching; and it conforms, on the other hand, to a doctrinal sequence recommended by the dogmatic textbooks of the classical Reformed tradition. A tension between these two aspects becomes visible in Barth's handling of the doctrine of angels – a tract of teaching by which he is visibly unsettled. Barth accordingly attends with particular care to two fundamental modern objections to the doctrine – namely that it involves a superfluous reduplication of anthropological themes and that it has no independent doctrinal standing. The first objection exploits the observation that the doctrine of angels traditionally stands in close proximity to the doctrine of the human creature; the second follows from the claim that Christian preaching, and the dogmatic theology which serves it, attends strictly to the relationship between God and humanity, realised and revealed in the gospel. Barth's attempts to respond to these criticisms, and so to draw out the necessity and the proper dogmatic status of the doctrine of angels, are traced in detail. Angels and demons, conceived as real spiritual forces, are ineluctable features of the situation within which human moral agency is exercised. And angels are ingredients in, though not central to, the scriptural depiction of the relationship between God and humanity. Barth's elaboration of the positive features of Protestant scholastic angelology is summarised, and the motivating impulses and constructive potential of his theology of angels are briefly noted: Barth's exposition may be read as a complex exercise in theological self-differentiation; a recommendation of a distinctive style of biblical reasoning; and a creative contribution to the revitalisation of a culture of Christian witness.

Scholarly attention to the popular style of contemporary worship has so far been infrequent, and generally dismissive. Dismissive attitudes have generally been based on claims that individual contemporary worship songs are lacking in theological development, and that contemporary worship merely apes the mores of pop culture, replacing a proper liturgical event with something akin to a rock concert. In this paper I suggest that both these criticisms are false. The first is a misunderstanding of the nature of the liturgical tradition of contemporary worship, in which the crucial liturgical event is the ‘time of worship’, constructed out of a number of songs and other liturgical elements, which together construct a liturgical narrative with theological and pastoral depth; criticising individual songs is therefore largely irrelevant. The second fails to pay attention to the nuanced negotiation with popular culture that is evident in the tradition of contemporary worship, when observed carefully; dominant cultural practices are not unreflectively adopted, but modified and, if embraced, embraced critically and put to use. I demonstrate these two points by offering readings of two (video recordings of) contemporary worship events, Matt Redman's Facedown DVD and Tim Hughes's Happy Day DVD; in each case I explore the ways in which cultural practices are modified and effectively subverted in pursuit of a liturgical goal, and offer a theological reading of the narrative of the time of worship. I propose that, whilst there are significant differences, both can be seen to be liturgically responsible and theologically deep experiences of worship.

Social scientists in disparate fields are now employing the construct of honour to ameliorate various social problems, such as immorality, failed states, international discord, poverty and mental illness. Moreover, historians of global religion cite Christianity's shift towards cultures shaped by the values of honour and shame. Despite this growing prominence of honour in social theories and the emergence of Christianity in honour–shame cultures, the notion of honour remains absent from theological discourse. In light of these global realities, we explore how God's active transformation of humanity from shame to honour can interpret both salvation-history and Christian theology. To this end I first explore the nature of humanity's problem of shame before God, using anthropological and biblical insights. Throughout the Old Testament, God's covenant initiatives with Abram, Moses and David, along with the common socio-literary pattern of God exalting a servant from unjust shame, reveals the dignified status God intends for humanity. God's programme to restore people from shame to honour climaxes in Jesus, who embodies honour in the incarnation, mediates dignity to the marginalised by healings and public fellowship, elaborates God's new code of honour which reinterprets social stigmas, and procures an exalted status for all peoples by atoning for shame and resurrecting to exaltation. Romans and 1 Peter are interpreted in their socio-historic contexts as apostolic instruments which expound the social implications of God's honour code. To unify the fractured Romans for the upcoming Spanish mission, Paul confronts social imperialism by replacing false honour claims with God's status now available by faith through grace in Christ. Meanwhile, 1 Peter assures maligned Christians of their exalted status and outlines honourable social relations. Then, in closing, we examine a soteriology of honour diachronically and systematically. In particular, how: biblical metaphors symbolise believers’ status transposition, group incorporation is key to New Testament soteriology, Eastern Orthodoxy's doctrine of theosis articulates the infusion of divine status, and other theological categories could be interpreted through honour-shame social values. These reflections towards an exegetical soteriology of divine honour are offered as an initial theological platform for addressing social issues where honour values prevail.