When, after their decade of studies in Athens, Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus returned to Cappadocia, one of the first things they did was to compile a collection of the exegetical works of Origen and publish them under the title Philokalia. This fact might lead the historian to conclude that Basil and Gregory subscribed to, or at least were in sympathy with, the allegorical method of exegesis. But such is hardly the case, for in their later writings (and this holds true for the third member of the Cappadocians, the younger Gregory of Nyssa) there can be discovered no one prevailing approach to the interpretation of scripture. Allegory is indeed used, and often, but so too we find typological and anagogical exegesis, as well as frequent examples of naive literalism. That the Bible formed the basis of theological reflection for the Cappadocians can in no way be denied, but that they held to any particular style or styles of exegesis cannot be demonstrated.

“It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.” Whatever relevance this gnomic saying of Jorge Luis Borges may have to universal history, it can serve as the motto for the following investigation of the relationship between mysticism and the Free Spirit heresy in the later Middle Ages. Scholars are accustomed to regard the socalled heresy of the Free Spirit as sui generis, an aberrant and scandalous religious deviation preached by nihilists, lechers, and megalomaniacs, but this interpretation is not borne out by the sources, as we will see in the story of a simile.

Perhaps the most succinct introduction to the life of Anthony Gilby is found in the famous decree of the University of Oxford in 1683 which denounced “pernicious books and damnable doctrines, destructive to the sacred persons of princes, their state and government, and of all human society.” Among the collection are Gilby's writings.

Current attitudes of religious organizations toward the civil rights movement prompt the raising of various historical questions. These concern, among others, the attitude of the churches toward the slave trade and the use of slave labor in the American colonies. Did the churches ignore slavery or did they object to it but were unable to change it because of vested economic interests? Were there any individual clergymen who raised particularly loud voices of protest against the use of slave labor and the buying and selling of human beings? Did the churches make any effort to convert the Negroes to Christianity? The examination of such questions with reference to a specific religious denomination, the Dutch Reformed Church, sheds light on this subject.

The volume of literature on the Kirchenkampf is expanding at an accelerating rate. Several bibliographical articles have already appeared, the most recent of which is by the Canadian scholar, John S. Conway. Of the 63 titles of books, articles, and collections discussed by Conway, 47 were published in the 1960s. Nearly all studies of the Kirchenkampf either defend or criticize the church in varying degrees. Most of the older accounts, as Conway points out in the introduction to his own comprehensive study, were written by clergymen and historians who actually participated in the Kirchenkampf. These scholars selected those facts which demonstrated that the church steadfastly, if not always effectually, opposed National Socialist tyranny in word and deed. The larger volume of Protestant works emphasized the activity of the Confessing Church, while the unaccountably smaller number of Roman Catholic accounts focused upon particular bishops and priests who protested courageously and suffered imprisonment or martyrdom. During the past ten years, however, a small group of mostly younger historians have published works sharply critical of the Roman Catholic Church in particular. These historians, the most prominent of whom are Gordon Zahn, Hans Müller, and Guenter Lewy, assert that the Roman Catholic Church failed to exert the kind of moral and political leadership which might have mitigated the horrors of National Socialism.

To begin missionary activity in India was not a simple matter. The missionaries there had to face a great deal of opposition not encountered by the missionaries to the South Seas and Africa. In the latter areas the really serious difficulties did not arise until the mission fields had actually been entered. In the case of the Indian missions the missionaries found the first line of osbtruction in England itself, in the London offices of the East India Company. The Company was resolutely opposed to the introduction of missionaries into its own territories, or into any part of India.