Everywhere in Europe the translations of the Bible into the evernacular languages have been the strongest help towards Reformation. It would be a very attractive task to study in detail, to compare and to summarise the history of the Bible in the Reformation movement, from West to East and from South to North in Europe.2 John Knox tells us that, when the Act of Parliament of 1543 allowed the Scriptures to be read freely, this was ‘no small comfort to such as before were held in such bondage that they durst not have read the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, nor articles of their faith, in the English tongue, but they should have been accused of heresy. Then might have been seen the Bible lying almost upon every gentleman's table. The NT was borne about in many men's hand.3 By these words is given no doubt a true and striking picture of the general situation in Scotland in those days and this may be true also for the beginnings of the Reformation in other countries some decades earlier. The Scots reformer adds that, although for reasons of profit many acted in an inexcusable way with the new book, ‘yet thereby did the knowledge of God wondrously increase and God gave his Holy Spirit to simple men in great abundance’.

Now this is my first thesis: that the Bible in the early Reformation was passionately desired, not for the book as such, nor to have it as a weapon against the Church and its superfluous appendages, but as a help to find a better way to God.

The year 1958 marked the two-hundredth anniversary of the death of the celebrated Puritan divine, Jonathan Edwards. Edwards stands out as the one figure of real greatness in the intellectual life of colonial America. He was born, bred, and passed his whole life on the verge of civilisation; yet he has made his voice heard wherever men have concerned themselves with that great topic—God's sovereignty and the human will. We shall consider, in spite of twentieth-century philosophical prejudice, his most important piece of scholarship—Freedom of the Will.

The doctrine of Creation has occupied theologians very much in recent years and in this Paul Tillich has not been an exception.

Attempting to account to mýself how I actually came into the field of systematic theology requires reaching back to my sixteenth year, to the confirmation instruction I experienced at that time. It was extraordinary in its own way. I learned then, for example, that very dubious undertakings are involved in the five medieval proofs for the existence of God and in the later orthodox theory of the literal inspiration of the Bible. Much more important, however, I learned that it would be a fine and excellent thing not only to identify and to affirm the great articles of the Christian confession of faith but also to understand them from inside out. On the eve of my confirmaton day I boldly resolved to become a theologian, perhaps not so much with the thought of preaching, cure of souls and the like, but rather in the hope of realising in the course of this study some substantial understanding of a confession of faith of which I had only a vague apprehension. As yet I knew nothing of Anselm and his programme of fides quaerens intellectum and therefore also nothing of what I was undertaking as ‘theology’ in general or even of what ‘systematic’ theology was in particular. Upon entering the University, the theoretical and practical philosophy of Kant together with Schleiermacher's analysis of religion and faith became my guiding stars. To the prevailing tendency of about 1910 among the younger followers of Albrecht Ritschl I attached myself with passable conviction.

No more important question can be asked than the wellknown New Testament inquiry, ‘What think ye of Christ?’—unless it be the question, ‘What thinks Christ of Himself?’ In past decades this question has not, perhaps, been asked as often as it might. Is there a reason for this? Undoubtedly there is. This (it will be claimed) is so controversial a question, with reputable scholars taking widely divergent views, that there seems little point in giving it the importance which many of our forefathers gave to it.

The Christological approach to the doctrine of the Church. which is now seen as the most hopeful way forward fot the work of Faith and Order, could mislead us if it were to direct our attention away from the dependence of the Church on the historical Jesus, and to lead us to think instead only in the dogmatic terms of a Chalcedonian analogy. While there is much to be learned about the right way to formulate our doctrines from such theological machine-tools, our first business in thinking about the nature of the Church is to learn to bear witness to the acts of Christ Himself in founding the Church as the new People of God, and in keeping it throughout its history as the instrument of His present work. If the purpose of this paper is to think especially of the dependence of the Church, as a continuous society in history, on its origins in the historical actions of Jesus, in the Incarnation and Passion of Christ as concrete facts in space and time, there is no intention thereby to deny the equal importance of the corresponding dependence of the Church on the present action of its living and ascended Lord.

Karl Barth's Christological formulation has taken with increasing seriousness the participation of Christ in the creaturely mode of existence. His effort to interpret the Chalcedonian dogma concerning reality of Jesus Christ as two natures, God and man, united without confusion, change, division, or separation, has contributed to his conception of the creature as existing with its own proper mode of being and activity. We are not concerned to trace in detail in this essay the developments in Barth's thought which have led to modification in his understanding of creation. Fundamentally, Barth recognises that the theology of Crisis characteristic of the second edition of his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans so emphasised the timeless and transcendental character of revelation that it had no place for a conception of creaturely being and time as constitutive of the incarnation.

Necessary being' is one of the terms by means of which Christian thought has sought to define the difference between God and man. The notion of necessary being, applied to God and withheld from man, indicates that God and man differ not merely in the characteristics which they possess but more fundamentally, in their modes of being, or in the fact that they exist in different senses of the word ‘exist’.

That such a distinction, however it may be best expressed, is essential to the Christian concept of God is agreed virtually on all hands. Paul Tillich in our own day emphasises the distinction to the extent of using different terms to refer to the reality of God and of man respectively. Human beings and other created things exist; God, on the other hand, does not exist, but is Being-itself. This is the most recent way of formulating a discrimination which has been classically expressed in the history of Christian thought by the idea of the necessary being of God in contrast to the contingent being of man and of the whole created order. There are, however, two importantly different concepts which may be, and which have been, expressed by the phrase ‘necessary being’. ‘Necessity’, in a philosophical context, usually means logical necessity, and gives rise in theology to the concept of a being such that it is logically impossible that this being should not exist. But this is not the only kind of necessity referred to in philosophical literature.

One of the greatest needs of our day and generation is for an approach to the question of the inspiration and authority of the Bible which will be sufficiently clear and embracing in its statement of the truth to be a means, both of assurance to all who seek to find God's Word for their daily spiritual food in the Bible, and of reconciliation to those who have approached the problem from varying angles in their search for a satisfying solution, and who, instead of welcoming one another's insights, treat one another with hostility and contempt. Fifty years ago Fundamentalists and Liberals looked at one another across a vast chasm of bitterness and difference: that chasm has persisted to the present day, but in many ways it is not so wide or so deep as it was—and neo-Calvinism has interposed a third approach. Is it too much to hope that the time should now have come when each of these groups will be ready to confess the defectiveness of its own understanding, and the extremes to which it has at times gone in overemphasising one side of the truth; and that each will seek that fuller understanding which an appreciation of the contributions of the others can bring? The barriers between the theologians of these three schools are in some ways more difficult to overcome than those between Christian denominations.

Christian Baptism is rooted in the Baptism of John. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the excavation of Qumran have clearly shown that the Baptism practised by the Primitive Church had little in common with the daily washings of the Jewish sects. Our Baptism is an eschatological event. The foundational significance of the Baptist's ceremony performed in the Jordan river is emphasised by the fact that in all the four Gospels it is described as the beginning of Jesus' messianic ministry. The Gospel of John also informs us that Jesus shared in the Baptist's mission (John 3.22), even though He obviously left the actual ministration to His Disciples (John 4.2). Thus the Baptism which Jesus Himself commanded (Matt. 28.19–20), was the continuation of the eschatological ceremony started by the Baptist, though enriched by the reference to the messianic work of Jesus. The unique character of John's Baptism lies in the Word of God by which he is commanded to call Israel to repentance, to baptise them and to proclaim to them that his work is to usher in the establishment of God's final rule (the ‘Kingdom’) in this world. By accepting Baptism the Jewish people will be able to escape the final Judgment of God. The connexion in which the Word of God here stands with the eschatological events makes particularly plain what it means when God reveals Himself.

In 1932 R. Grosche, editor of the newly founded magazine Catholica, attributed to Karl Barth the chief honour of ‘having made the Catholic-Protestant controversy again possible in the form of theological discussion’. For the Catholic critics of Barth the full possibilities of this discussion were first realised in 1951 in a brilliant work by Urs von Balthasar, whose central thesis was rated by Barth himself as ‘incomparably more powerful than that of most of the books which have clustered around me’ (C.D. IV. 1, 768). Now, in his latest part-volume, Barth expresses his gratitude to three other Catholic authors of excellent books on his theology, one each in German, French, and Italian, all showing a ‘thorough familiarity with the text’, and even more important, ‘an earnest wish to comprehend and a real comprehension’ (K.D. IV.3.1, viii). Hans Küng's Rechtfertigung reconciling the Catholic doctrine of justification with Barth's own, and raising a storm of interconfessional debate, has since become virtually a part of the continental theological vocabulary. Henri Bouillard's three-volume 900-page analysis, surpassing even von Balthasar's research in objectivity and breadth, and stimulating sheer envy for its French-reading public, appears to be the introduction to Barth's theology for the foreseeable future. And Emmanuele Riverso worthily represents even Italy's traditionally conservative Catholicism with a lengthy critique ranking with most Protestant attempts to date. Among the multitude of questions which this whole remarkable phenomenon raises for the Protestant spectator, several are basic: how does catholicism see Barth's dogmatics, what does it say to what it sees, and why should it to a greater extent than Protestantism be so obviously interested in seeing anything at all there?

A Very powerful case has been made out for the influence of the Platonism of Plotinus upon Saint Augustine. From the Manichaean simple solution of the problem of evil Augustine was delivered by reading the neo-Platonists and especially Plotinus. It was Plotinus who convinced him that God was a spirit, not a luminous body, and he always remained grateful for this deliverance from the crude fantasies of the Manichaeans. In the two years before his conversion when he was receiving a deeper penetration into Christianity through the sermons of St. Ambrose, he came to know of Plotinus in a very few treatises of the Enneads (certainly I, 6 ‘On the Beautiful’ and quite probably V, 1 ‘On the Three Chief Hypostases’) in the Latin translation of Marius Victorinus. St. Ambrose made a determined effort to apply the principles of Plotinus' philosophy to the clarification of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity as against the Arians. The results of such an attempt might not be theologically satisfying but they are interesting. This impact of the mind of Plotinus upon the mind of Augustine was a decisive one because Augustine found a very great area of agreement between the teaching of Plotinus and that of the Scriptures as expounded by St. Ambrose, above all the Gospel of St. John. It was their agreement that God is spirit and altogether immaterial, as Plotinus explains, which liberated him from the Manichaean materialism. Augustine thought that Plotinus' teaching about the Divine Mind was identical with that of St. John about the Divine Logos.

It is a matter of agreement among Christians that there shines throughout the New Testament writings the bright hope, the clear assurance that in the long run, however long the run, God will triumph. He will achieve the fulfilment of the purpose disclosed in Jesus Christ. In that consummation God Himself, in the phrase of Paul, will be ‘all in all’. But as soon as we affirm our belief in this final victory, an inevitable question raises itself in our minds. Will that triumph be complete? Will all who have been fashioned in the image of God be united with Him within the redeemed community? Or will some persist obstinately for ever in the repudiation of His grace, self-excluded from Heaven? If God wills that all men shall be saved, if He was truly in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, if it is His purpose to gather up all things in Christ, are we not driven towards the expectation, perhaps even the certainty, that at the last all shall have found their way, or been led, to God ‘who is our home’?

The following sketch on the role of the laity (a) in the Church (b) in the world is the result of study by a group of laymen. During the course of the study four questions arose: (1) what is the meaning of ‘laity’? (2) what is the place of the laity in the Church? (3) what is the meaning of Ministry? (4) what is the ministry of the laity? In seeking to formulate a lay self-consciousness, especially vis-à-vis the Ministry, we answered these questions as summarised here and came to the general conclusion that laity and ministry are correlative and polar forces in the life of the whole people of God. The laity is ministered to in the Church by the clergy, and then becomes the ministry to the world. Let us examine these four questions.

(a) I Peter 2.9 (‘But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people …’) affords the most pregnant description of the term laity. Admittedly there is a note of lyricism in the turn of phrase, yet the sense of what the laos is gains rather than loses thereby. The meaning is enriched if one approaches the sentence liturgically rather than homiletically. No doubt the laos is a ‘chosen race’ by election and covenant, a ‘royal priesthood’ through its mediatorial position, a ‘holy nation’ set among the nations of this sinful world (a meaty text indeed for any preacher!).

The date, nature and significance of the Last Supper has long been a living issue in biblical scholarship, but the issues have taken on a new importance in recent years, due mainly to some of the writings of Mile A. Jaubert,1 who has been working on the Dead Sea Scrolls and whose discoveries go further towards the solution of this problem than anything previously discovered. It is unfortunate, however, that her writings have not been translated into English and have therefore not been widely noticed in this country.2 What we propose to do in this paper is first, to outline again the problem, drawing attention to the main contributions that have been made in recent years; second, to estimate the significance of the problem; and third, to summarise the contribution made by Mlle Jaubert.

In 1 Cor. 15, his fullest doctrinal statement on the resurrection of the dead, Paul teaches that Christians will receive their spiritual body at the Parousia, those who are dead by resurrection and those who are still alive by transformation. The term applied to the dead, , suggests provisional and intermediate state from which they will ‘awake’ at the Lord's coming. Paul does not, however, discuss the nature of this state.

The Fourth Gospel, like Mark and Luke, makes no mention of the word ecclesia; but does John, nevertheless, have a doctrine of the Church which he develops with other terms; and if so, how does he conceive it + Schlatter held that John had no parallel to the richly developed Pauline teaching on the Church. E. F. Scott, however, has shown that one of the important purposes of the Fourth Gospel was to seek for the true nature of the Church instituted by Jesus. According to Scott John thought of the Church as both a spiritual, mystical community and an outward institution. John's interest in the Church has been confirmed by more recent interpreters such as R. Newton Flew and R. H. Strachan, and C. K. Barrett believes that John more clearly than any other Gospel shows an awareness of the existence of the Church. Bultmann also recognises this concern of the Fourth Gospel but stresses that it has no designation at all for ‘Church’ in the singular number. The Church is a collection of gathered individuals whose unity is primarily the unity of each individual with Christ. The purpose of this paper will be to show from an interpretation of relevant passages that John conceives of the Church as a unity in a more organic sense than a collection of individuals, and the attempt will also be made to show that John's analysis of man's existential predicament implies the need for an organic community.

Top-Level conversations between Churches are a requisite of improved relationships. For separated Churches they are a focus of responsible thought, an occasion for humility before God and one another, producing new insight, an opportunity for severe and charitable intellectual honesty. But they do not carry the main colours of the movement towards reunion.

The word liturgy in the New Testament seems to express a thing already complete in itself, not requiring association with architecture. The minister, the people, the bread and the wine, are the essential association of living souls and earthly elements. The Christian temple built in three days is an edifice not made with hands. The Christian worshipping, fulfilling the duty of liturgy, is a person not of this world and only in this world for a time. He treads this earth lightly, looking for the appearing of His Lord to build a new earth, and introduce a state of things where human dimensions of length, breadth and height become something else and infinitely greater, associated with the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. The New Testament uses the word liturgy in the context of expectation of this development which can only be described in language seeming to exclude the thought that a building fit to house this Christian worship can be made with hands. The word church never means the house itself. It means the people, the living stones out of which the temple not made with hands is built. Thus what we call the apostolic age would not have thought it an affectation, when recently an Anglican presbyter, introducing from his church on Saturday evening television a programme for the next day to consist of the liturgy for that day, said, ‘This building is not the church, but the Church meets here.’