In Exodus 3, 14 a concept of the God of Israel is hinted at, and the hint is taken up by Moses Maimonides in his Guide of the Perplexed and developed in a way that should hold our metaphysical gaze. In particular, on the basis of the Great Tautology Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh contained in that verse, he presents an account of God in terms of a distinctive application of the categories of agent and act, and I shall follow Maimonides through the crucial moves he makes in his application of those categories to God. Yet the Maimonidean system presents us with reasons for being suspicious of the application of any categories at all to God, and my approach to Maimonides' discussion of the Great Tautology will be by way of a consideration of those reasons, all of which relate to the most famous feature of the Guide of the Perplexed, the unremitting application of the via negativa. There are large problems concerning the correct way to understand Maimonides' use of that via. But we cannot afford here to be deterred from attending to that aspect of his system, for he uses it in his discussion of the Great Tautology. Indeed he has barely started his journey along the Via Negativa when he is confronted by the concept of divine existence and has to decide on an appropriate response. Hence in our investigation of Maimonides' concept of divine existence, we must take into account the way in which his apophatic route determines his perspective.

Karl Barth exacts a heavy punishment on his critics. Reading his many volumes is toil as well as pleasure, as Barth himself observed, in the special irony he reserved for his own work. But it is not the length of the Church Dogmatics, the scripture commentaries, the sermons or the letters, however great, that weighs on the critic. Critics are bothered — for lack of a better term — by his style.

Presbyterianism has always tended to be a misleading name for the Reformed Church-order. It suggests the absence of any office superior to that which in Anglican and Roman terminology is called the priesthood; and as neither Roman nor Anglican priests possess power of ordination, it further suggests that Presbyterian clergy have never been able to ordain. Their orders are taken to be invalid from the start, and thus its mere name kills a Church. But the usual assumption, that the Scottish parish minister is equivalent (however imperfectly) to the English parish priest, is a distortion of both doctrine and practice in Scotland; and it is the chief purpose of this paper to maintain that when the ecclesiastical idioms of the two countries are translated, the minister must be called, not a parish priest, but a parish bishop.

How does one properly account for the rise of theological ferment in the Third World, when so much of the theological activity in that region is so closely related to what happens (or fails to happen) in the First World? To what extent can the decisions of the Second Vatican Council, or the programs of the World Council of Churches, or the initiatives of the Mission Boards in North America, be given credit for the emergence of Third World theologies? Or how do we explain the paradox that in spite of two decades in the growth and development of local theologies in the Third World, much of the way in which Third World churches conduct their business and their worship still fails to reflect such developments? Who sets the priorities for theology in the Third World? What is the procedure for its validation and official acceptance? When does the local church know that it is safe to shift from the received tradition to the new tradition? All these are questions of farreaching significance, for they bear on the very heart of authentic Christianity as it is proclaimed and practised in the Third World. Third World Christians must determine for themselves when and how they will theologize in their own language, in which they were born (Acts 2.8). Third World theologians have stepped out in front and have taken some initiatives for themselves, and among themselves.

The declaration that ‘Yahweh is a Man of Wars’page 1 poses a problem for the modern reader of the Old Testament. The direct connexion between God and war seems to be alien to the spirit of the New Testament. And today, when the horrors of war are so constantly in the news, this epithet for God seems to be all the more abhorrent. The epithet was quoted at the beginning of an article in an earlier volume of this Journal, A. Gelston's ‘The Wars of Israel’.page 2 The problem becomes most acute in the question of the wars of conquest, for there we can trace two aspects of Yahweh's activity. On the one hand, Yahweh uses war as a means of judgment on the sinful Canaanitespage 3; on the other hand, He uses war as a means to an end, namely the fulfilment of the patriarchal and Covenant promises.page 4 Although Gelston mentions this double aspect of the wars of conquest (p. 326), his conclusions only satisfy the former of the two aspects (p. 331). Of his five summary points, two are applicable to this particular case. The first is that ‘when Yahweh is identified with Israel's cause, the motive is usually the execution of judgment on Yahweh's enemies’, and secondly he declares that ‘Yahweh alone is ultimately sovereign in human history, and his cause is always just’.

It is often enough averred that Calvin developed his doctrine of predestination in order to reassure believers of their status before God; it is even more often asserted that the overall effect of his teaching was eventually to subvert that assurance, or at any rate to turn it into a form of self-absorption that has an effect contrary to that for which the gospel frees us. Self-absorption is indeed among the besetting sins of Western Christianity, from Augustine onward. In each era, it takes characteristic form. In our day, it is among the prime dangers of the post-Constantinian Church, which, deprived, apparently, of once secure social and political status and role; diminished, apparendy, in numbers and influence, flounders variously in inaction, activism and political correctness in a sometimes desperate concern not to lose the attention of the—reprobate? In this paper, I propose to bring together the related themes of election and ecclesiology, with particular reference to the beleaguered situation of the Christian Church in a world which, as Robert Jenson has observed, is unique in being the first once apparently believing culture to have abandoned the Christian gospel. That throws into the limelight the problem of the, if not everywhere minority status, at least unique situation for the Church of rejection by the main streams of intellectual and cultural life.

The trinitarian theology of Gregory of Nazianzus is an important topic in patristic studies which is too often ignored by modern scholars. The aim of Beeley's book (like that of John McGuckin) is to deepen the study of this theologian who became very important for the later Orthodox tradition. Beeley wants to view Gregory not simply as one of the three Cappadocians or to make a short systematisation of the Theological Orations (or. 27–31), but rather to see his theology as a whole in its historical context. This makes the work an important contribution to historical studies in patristics, and I have learnt much from reading this book. The following remarks, even when critical, are intended to raise new topics for discussion, though controversial in some aspects.

Luther's conception of reason and revelation has not yet found the attention which it deserves. Though some new studies have tried to interpret his view of human reason, neither his conception of revelation as such nor his definition of the relation between reason and revelation has been the object of special research. This fact which at first sight seems rather surprising is not accidental. Rather it is the consequence of a very important development which had taken place already in the sixteenth century. It was primarily Melanchthon and not Luther whom Protestant theologians in the post-Reformation era followed. While Luther was the reformer of the Church, Melanchthon was the reformer of the German universities and the whole education system. With respect to their theology, Luther and Melanchchon differed considerably as is well known. The ideas by which Melanchthon reformed the German universities were, roughly speaking, a combination of Protestant theology as regards the doctrine of justification and a more or less unaltered Aristotelian system as regards the relation between theology and philosophy. The Melanchthonian reform gave the German universities their shape for centuries till the new ideas of rationalism and of modern science won the universities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and gave them a new form. But it seems that Melanchthon's conception of reason and revelation is even today of great significance and influence. It has at least determined most modern studies which have dealt with Luther's conception of reason and revelation.

The Letter of the Synod of Antioch contained in a Syriac MS. of the eighth or ninth century (Codex Parisinus Syriacus 62), to which Edward Schwartz first drew attention in 1905, has thrown light on the period immediately preceding the Council of Nicaea and on the proceedings of the Council itself. After much initial controversy, mainly between Schwartz and von Harnack, this document is now generally accepted as authentic.

The Synod of Antioch, of which nothing was hitherto known, appears to have assembled in order to settle the difficulties which had arisen in the Church at Antioch after the death of Bishop Philogonius (ca. A.D. 322), one of three Bishops whom Arius described as ‘unlearned heretics’; Eustathius, Bishop of Beroea, was appointed to fill the vacancy. The Synod was attended by at least fifty-nine bishops from Syria and Palestine, forty-nine of whom also attended the Council of Nicaea a few months later.

Several years before the mode of Christ's eucharistic presence became a controverted issue which would presently provoke a lasting schism among the Churches of the Reformation, Luther could unaffectedly propound the traditional dogma of the bodily presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar as a necessary consequence of the evangelical quest for the sensus grammaticus of the words of institution. The same exegetical method which led to his reappropriation of the doctrine of the justification of the sinner ‘by grace, for Christ's sake, through faith’ obliged him to confess that ‘the bread is the body of Christ’. Already here, in the mordantly anti-Roman treatise On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Luther has laid his finger on the model in terms of which he will understand the real presence to the end of his days: the consecrated host is the body of Christ, just as the assumed humanity of jesus Christ is the Son of God. The displacement of the scholastic theory of transubstantiation by the model of the incarnate person illustrates the Reformer's allegiance to the Chalcedonian Definition: ‘Luther is really replacing Aristotelian categories by those derived from Chalcedonian christology, to which he remained faithful: “unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably”.’ While the doctrine of the real presence moved from the periphery to the centre of Luther's theology and piety as the 1520s wore on, his conception of the modality of the eucharistic presence remained constant throughout.

In his book A Life of Jesus Shusaku Endo talks of Jesus' compassion for those who were suffering in terms of his ‘suffering with them, carrying their burdens with them, becoming an eternal companion for them’. In several of his novels this understanding of Christ as one who suffers alongside humanity is given extraordinary dramatic power. The image of eternal companion is not explicitly discussed but it seems to underlie many of the themes which Endo employs, providing a remarkably versatile vehicle for his creative exploration of how God's power in Christ can transfigure human lives, bringing the possibility of hope and re-creation.

Some years ago, the editor of the Scottish Journal of Theology asked me to review what was, to me, an interesting and important book which amounted to a systematic attack on the existence of God, at any rate on the validity of the traditional theistic proofs of classical and modern systematic theology. In addition, such other bases of belief in God as authority revelation, historical event, and religious experience were treated, with the aim of showing that they cannot substitute for a failed philosophical theism. However, some mental block prevented me from completing the review proper. The root of the matter was that, in my Bachelor of Arts degree at Sydney University, my philosophical course had involved a system of atheism which I have recognised ever since to be more rigorous and cogent than any others, and I am not alone in this feeling. In particular, I felt that Professor Flew was in a stronger position than most philosophers of the prevailing modern British schools, but that this was because he approximated more than most to what I had learnt at Sydney, and that a still further approximation would tighten his case still more. The professor in question, the late John Anderson, was a Clydesider whose family background was the familiar Leftwing agnosticism and whose training was Absolute Idealism; in his later development, he reacted against both these elements, but his agnosticism hardened into a positive atheism.

It is no small consolation to one rash enough to agree to lecture on this subject that the title of the lecture is a question rather than an assertion. The title is a question to which the lecturer must address himself rather than a summary of the information contained in the lecture.

What is the purpose of a doctrine of the immanent Trinity? Broadly speaking it aims to recognize, uphold and respect God's freedom. Without theoretical and practical awareness of this freedom all theological statements about the significance of created existence become ambiguous and constitute merely human attempts to give meaning to creation using theological categories.