The recognition that Isaiah's Servant of the Lord referred to the Messiah, and to himself as Son of man, goes back at least to the Founder of the Christian religion Himself. Does it go any further back, and has it any particular background in Hebrew thought and history? In other words, Is the New Testament doctrine of a Suffering Messiah unique to Christianity?

The problem of the relationship between Scripture and Tradition is in the first place a problem of the theological relationship between the apostolic period and the period of the Church. All the other questions depend on the solution that we give to this problem. The alternatives—co-ordination or subordination of Tradition to Scripture—derive from the question of knowing how we must understand the fact that the period of the Church is the continuation and unfolding of the apostolic period. For we must note right away that this fact is capable of divergent interpretations. That is why agreement on the mere fact that the Church continues the work of Christ on earth does not necessarily imply agreement on the relationship between Scripture and Tradition. Thus in my thesis developed in Christ and Time as well as in my studies on the sacraments in the New Testament I came considerably nearer to the ‘Catholic’ point of view. In fact I would affirm very strongly that through the Church the history of salvation is continued on earth. I believe that we find this idea throughout the New Testament, and I should even consider it the key for the understanding of the Johannine Gospel. I would maintain, moreover, that the sacraments, Baptism and Eucharist, take the place in the Church of the miracles performed by Jesus Christ in the period of the Incarnation. And yet I am going to show in the following pages that I subordinate Tradition to Scripture.

The ministry of Jesus is represented by the evangelists as itself an eschatological event. This presentation involved them (writing as they did from thirty to seventy years after the event) in paradox, but the paradox is of the essence of their faith.

It is a primary feature of the gospels that the story of Jesus is set forth as the fulfilment of OT prophecy. This is sometimes done in the crudest and most artificial manner, as for example when Jeremiah's picture of Rachel weeping for her children (Jer. 31.14 (38.15)) is applied to the massacre of the innocents (Matt. 2.17 f). Sometimes again the appeal to the OT is made in general terms without citation of a particular passage (e.g. Mark 14.21 ). The passion narratives in particular are marked by OT references and allusions, but the whole ministry is introduced by Mark (1.15) with the proclamation, πεπλ⋯ρωται ⋯ καιρóς, and the καιρóς in question is evidently the time foretold (or currently believed to have been foretold) by the prophets. That which in the past they had longed to see and hear, and had not seen and heard, was now before men, visible and audible: blessed indeed were those who could see and hear (Matt. 13.16 f; Luke 10.23 f).

The selection of hope as the central theme of the Evanston J. Assembly in 1954 has already prompted an intensive world-wide examination of the Church's mind and the Biblical witness. It has provoked the publication of many essays which bring the basic issues into sharper focus. Among these issues is the problem of grasping aright the connexions between the present activity of God in history and the eschatological future. As the Advisory Committee has expressed it, the question has to do with ‘the relative emphasis to be laid upon the witness to the coming Christ and upon the witness to the present Christ’. A few participants in the discussion argue for an exclusive stress on one or the other; in reaction, others call for maintaining a balance between these two accents. The flaw in both of these solutions is that they assume a dichotomy or even a contradiction between the two witnesses. They treat Christ as if He were divided, as if His present activity were not being empowered and directed by the same eternal purpose, the same Spirit, as His future activity. Others have seen a polarity in the Christian message at this point, that is productive of a necessary and fruitful tension. To illustrate this tension we might instance Paul's confession: ‘I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do … ’.

The first post-Apostolic3 Chiliast known to us is Papias of Hierapolis. From the oral tradition of presbyters who saw the disciple John he adduces a saying of Jesus referring to the miraculous fruitfulness of corn and wine during the millennium. There is an exact parallel to this tradition—perhaps its source— in Syr. Baruch 29.5: ‘The earth also will yield its fruit 10,000 fold, and on one vine there will be 1000 branches, and each branch will produce 1000 clusters, and each cluster will produce 1000 grapes, and each grape will produce a cor of wine.’ In this context we cannot discuss the priority and interdependence of the two traditions. We can only maintain that there existed in the Early Church a saying of Jesus which the presbyters and authorities cited by Papias referred at once to the millennium. We may also notice how closely the Christian and Judaistic traditions approximated and even merged into each other at this point. This is true even in the case of the Epistle of Barnabas, which is normally so anti-Jewish. Speaking of the Sabbath which was instituted at creation, Barn. 15.3–9 argues that the Genesis narrative points prophetically to the final consummation. God created the world in six days, and He will bring it to its consummation in 6000 years, for one day is with the Lord as a 1000 years (Ps. 90.4; Barn. 15.4)4 ‘And God rested the seventh day’ means for Barnabas that when His Son comes He will destroy the age (kaipóy) of the lawless one (i.e. the Antichrist, cf. Isa. 11.4; 2 Thess. 2.8), judge the ungodly, and refashion the sun and the moon and the stars.

The classical discussion of the doctrine of Predestination and the problem of Free-will is still to be found in Luther's book, the Bondage of the Will. In the course of four hundred pages he ranges through profound Biblical exegesis, trenchant theological statement, narrow scholastic argument, virulent vituperation—developing, through it all, the most powerful exposition of the doctrine ever made. The question naturally arises: How far can we, in our generation, go with him? The following paragraphs suggest the main points involved, and discuss the modifications of his position that would seem to be necessary.

The initial point where Luther joins issue with Erasmus is on the unlawfulness of human speculation before the final mysteries of the Faith, and the need to put the hand upon the mouth at that point, and simply confess. Erasmus has argued that certain Christian doctrines are ambiguous, and should therefore be rejected in the interests of a more rational theology. Luther quotes Erasmus as follows and replies:

In like manner, your examples which you subjoin, not without suspicion and bitterness, are nothing at all to the purpose. Such are those concerning the distinction of Persons, the union of the divine and human natures, the unpardonable sin, the ambiguity attached to which, you say has never been cleared up. If you mean the questions of Sophists that have been agitated upon these subjects, well. But what has the all-innocent Scripture done to you, that you impute the abuse of the most wicked of men to its purity?

In the terminology of classical Christian theology the word eschatology means ‘the doctrine of the last things’. A discussion of NT eschatology would, under such a definition, treat of the hope of life after physical death, personal immortality, the general resurrection, the last judgment, heaven and hell. This use of the word remains of course in current usage; but in modern biblical discussion ‘eschatology’ is commonly employed in a somewhat different way, which may be defined by the statement that in characteristically eschatological thinking the significance of a series of events in time is defined in terms of the last of their number. The last event is not merely one member of the series; it is the determinative member, which reveals the meaning of the whole. Such thinking inevitably assumes the reality of historical processes, and that they are meaningful; in this, of course, it is fully consistent with Biblical thought as a whole; indeed, it might be said that the Biblical view of history derives its characteristic pattern from the fact that the Bible is a predominantly eschatological book. This is not to say either that the whole of the Bible is written from an eschatological standpoint, or that eschatological writing is not to be found outside the Bible; but the Bible is undoubtedly the classical field of eschatology, dominated as it is by the belief that the Judge of all the earth will do right, but that the right which He does will not necessarily be seen to be right until it is brought to a full end.

Karl Heim has just completed two epochs in his theological biography. The first is a twenty-one year project entitled Der evangelische Glaube und das Denken der Gegenwart, a series of six volumes in which an impressive span of contemporary problems has been probed and illuminated by the Christian faith. The second is the golden anniversary of the literary effort which he initiated in 1902 with a volume entitled Psychologismus oder Anti-Psychologismus and which he has now rounded out with his Weltschöpfung und Weltende.

‘I Acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins’ ‘There is one body and one Spirit, … one Lord, one faith, one baptism’ (Eph. 4.4 f). What precisely is here the significance of the word ‘one’ ? It would clearly be inadequate to see this unity simply as a matter of Church order—though it may yet be more significant than we have allowed that, in spite of everything, divided Christendom still today recognises a single baptism. We should be nearer the heart of the matter to say that baptism is one because it makes one. Just as it is ‘because there is one bread’ that ‘we, who are many, are one body’ (I Cor. 10.17), so it is baptism which in the first place creates this unity: ‘In one Spirit were we all baptised into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free’ (I Cor. 12.13); ‘for as many of you as were baptised into Christ … are all one man in Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3.27 f).

Yet there are other elements in the NT doctrine of baptism which suggest that even this does not exhaust the meaning of the phrase. To be baptised ‘into Christ’ is not merely to find a new and given unity among ourselves. It is to be ‘baptised into his death’ (Rom. 6.3), to be ‘circumcised … in the circumcision of Christ’ (Col. 2.11).

In The Divine Imperative, Emil Brunner has recorded this conviction: ‘The crisis in marriage is a wholly new phenomenon.It presents the Christian ethic with the most serious and the most difficult problem with which a Christian ethic has to deal…. What an ethic has to say on this question shows whether it is any use or not.’ That the problem is a serious one is clear from the frequency with which various aspects of it make ‘news’; that it affects all the churches and perhaps most urgently the national churches of this country is equally evident that many, even within the ministry of the Church of Scotland, are theologically unprepared for its discussion has been demonstrated in many Presbyteries in recent years; and it is clear too that, while discussion has hinged upon remarriage of divorced persons, this is only one side of a large, complex subject, very close to the practical work of the ministry and, for the most part, as yet theologically unexplored. The lack of serious discussion of marriage is in striking contrast to the discussion of baptism, yet, as a matter of practical concern for ministers and people it surely ranks at least as high in urgency. At the moment one cannot hope to do more than introduce some aspects of marriage for discussion on a theological level.

Two main views of the relation of the Church to Time are being propagated at the present time. The first I shall designate the Ontological, the second the Eschatological; the first is characteristic of Catholic thought, the second of Reformed: the first dwells upon the ideas of timelessness and eternity, the second upon the ideas of time's arrow and the End. There is, as we shall see later, the possibility of recognising that each view has a certain validity and of attempting to work out a fruitful relationship between them. But for the moment we shall concentrate our attention upon each in turn.

It is usual to regard Kierkegaard as the father of the con-temporary existentialist movement and to say that he is the first of a long line of existentialists. Thus Ruggiero says of existentialism:

Its origins are very distant and very near, very distant in the solitary torment of one religious soul, the Danish writer, Søren Kierkegaard, in whom the passionate reaction against Hegelianism assumed, round about a century ago, contorted and passionate forms which were yet not without greatness and authentic power.

Our subject is one which concerns the personal aspect of theological education—that side of a student's preparation for the ministry which pertains to himself, to the secret of his individuality as distinguished from academic achievement. In particular, it has to do with his decision to enter the ministry, his problems of faith and life at each stage of his preparation, and finally the transition which he makes from student life to the full responsibility of his calling. If we take the position that theology is only properly understood as Church theology, then it follows that the teaching of theology must be regarded as a ministry of the Church with a responsibility to the student as a person, and, therefore, different from teaching considered as a secular function. And since the teacher in the New Testament has always had a close association with the pastor, if not often identified with him, we have further justification for the claim that theological education has a pastoral responsibility.

At this time when the Church is passing into the centre of the missionary enterprise, the World Dominion Press have reissued a powerful book first published in 1927: The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church, and the Causes which Hinder It, by Roland Allen. The passionate argument of this book seems to have been little heeded by the ‘Missions’ which then dominated the scene. It deserves a better hearing now. Assuredly the Church must think and think again before it will be satisfied that it must simply take over and perpetuate the pattern of work hitherto familiar.

Barth, in his Dogmatik (III/2), enters upon a close and detailed scrutiny of certain passages in the Old Testament generally considered to have some sort of reference to a future life. After quoting from Ps. 118 (p. 752), he goes on to say that we come here upon a definite borderline, beyond which the Old Testament does not venture. God is and remains the Israelite's hope in death and in deliverance from death. Of any renewal or continuance of life beyond the grave, however, the Old Testament has nothing precise to say. Even the few passages cited as proof to the contrary do not, in fact, speak of any such future existence. Barth examines these passages: Pss. 16.10, 17.15, 27.13, 49.15, 73.23 f; Job 19.25 f; Isa. 26.19; Ezek. 37; Dan. 12.2. He comes to the conclusion that, even in the last-quoted passage, the most explicit of all, we can only perceive the exception which, as such, confirms the general rule. Thereafter he reviews the ends of the lives of Enoch, Moses and Elijah, and describes them also as exceptional. In every case the text speaks of an extraordinary interposition of God which nevertheless leaves its precise nature wholly obscured. So, too, in every other instance where a man is recorded as having died gladly or full of days, we are to understand this as the direct result of divine intervention.

The Old Testament is, from one point of view, primarily the X record of the growth of religious ideas among the Hebrews. Yet, despite the variety of the religious ideas of the Old Testament at different stages in Hebrew history, it is possible to speak of the theology of the Old Testament without the word ‘theology’ being just another name for religious development. This is because there are certain beliefs about God and man and their relationship one to the other as saviour and saved which characterise the Old Testament as a finished and complete whole, as an entity. From another point of view the Old Testament is the record of the divine revelation in salvation vouchsafed to Israel by her God. If God speaks now through Moses, now through Isaiah of Jerusalem, now through the nameless exilic prophet, at different times ‘by divers portions and in divers manners’, yet His revelation is basically ever the same. The essential unity of outlook and faith in the Old Testament, transcending its diversities, is a pointer to the genuineness of the revelation and a guarantee of its substantially correct though inevitably imperfect apprehension by those to whom it was granted.

The differences within the Old Testament are, nevertheless, often more obvious than this basic theological unity. The opposite might be said of the New Testament. This is just what we should expect, because while the Old Testament spans many centuries, the New was completed within a matter of decades.

In the Gospel according to St. John it is written that ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have ever-lasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.’ In these familiar words is summed up the message of the Bible as a whole, and of the New Testament in particular. In spite of all that may be said of sin and depravity, of judgment and the wrath of God, the last word is one not of doom but of salvation. The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is a Gospel of salvation, of deliverance and redemption. The news that was carried into all the world by the early Church was the Good News of the grace and love of God, revealed and made known in Jesus Christ His Son. In the words of Paul, it is that ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself’.

Although most of the early reports of the Conference of Faith and Order held at Lund expressed disappointment and sometimes even depreciation of the work undertaken there, it is becoming increasingly clear that quite another verdict must be given. Lund marks the end of an old era in ecumenica1 theology, and the beginning of a new era in which we have the promise of a development in modern times that may well correspond eventually to the development of ecumenical theology in the fourth and fifth centuries.

At the beginning of the twentieth century two theological influences could be traced in the provision made within the Protestant churches for the Christian nurture of youth.1 The first was the Calvinist emphasis on saving knowledge. For the Reformers themselves such saving knowledge was the fruit of faith. But the perils of controversy led later Protestant theologians to regard faith as orthodox doctrine about God rather than personal response to Him. This Calvinist emphasis on knowledge was reinforced by contemporary educational theory. The influence of Herbert was strong and intellectual instruction was regarded as the main concern of the day school. It was natural, therefore, that a sound factual knowledge of the Bible and of Christian doctrine should be accepted as the prime objective of Christian education.

Jesus' answer, which takes up the rest of the chapter, falls quite naturally into three divisions: vv. 5–23, 24–27, and 28–37.

It is very hard to find an altogether satisfactory single title for this section. We might call it The End is not yet; for Jesus is certainly warning His disciples that much has still to happen before the consummation of all things. They were, apparently, like people who ‘wish to reap the harvest before the season arrives’, inclined to ‘confound the perfection of Christ's reign with the commencement of it’. So they needed to be warned that ‘the end is not yet’ (v. 7) and that they must resist the deceivers who would be only too ready to play on their impatience. Or we might with equal fairness entitle this section The Characteristics of the Last Times, i.e., of the time between the Incarnation and the Parousia; for that is what we have here. Jesus warns His disciples what they are to expect during the time before the End. Or again, we might call it, as Roux does, The Signs of the End; for these characteristic marks of the time before the End are also signs which point to the End. Though not to be mistaken for the End, they are nevertheless eloquent of it.

The first of these signs of the End is the presence of deceivers and the possibility of the disciples of Jesus being led astray. Throughout the last times they will be liable to seduction.