In his inquiries into the New Testament conception of the Church, Karl Ludwig Schmidt propounded the thesis: Ecclesiology is Christology—a thesis which is certainly not new, but which is by no means self-evident in the context of Protestant theology. At the outset I should like to say that I do not want my thesis to be understood in the sense of this equation, for the following reasons:

1. The terms in which the New Testament speaks of the Church are very manifold, and they are by no means merely Christological. Beside Christological designations of the Church—such as —there are also pneumatological designations such as ‘temple of the Holy Ghost’, and theological such as . Thus ecclesiology taken as a whole must be expounded and developed in a trinitarian way; and in this we should not forget that in the primitive Confessions the articles concerning the Church are directly connected with the articles on the Holy Ghost. This suggests that, within a trinitarian context, one should expound the doctrine of the Church as the opus proprium of the Holy Ghost.

Perhaps the most important advance in Old Testament studies in recent years has been the rediscovery of and the new emphasis on tradition. Older studies commonly implied that the biblical material, the sources, were essentially to be seen as literary products, that is as books or documents written at a certain date and edited and annotated through subsequent written additions. This did not explicitly deny that before they were written down the stories or laws had existed in a preliterary form; but such was the emphasis on study of the written material and the discernment of written sources that the pre-literary stage was considerably neglected. Biblical criticism was predominantly literary criticism. More modern studies have not for the most part abandoned such literary criticism, nor is it ever likely to be fully abandoned; but more and more emphasis has been laid, in Old Testament and in New Testament work alike, on the living tradition which preceded or accompanied the literary transmission.

The Church and science have often enough been or at least appeared to be in conflict with each other, though it might be truer to say that it is Churchmen and scientists who have found themselves in opposition. Who has been to blame? In such strife it is rare that the fault can be attributed to only one side, and it may be that a more accurate delineation of the nature and purpose of the Church on the one hand and of the scope and function of science on the other might resolve the causes of the conflict.

The term may have and convey a clear Greek concept from its derivation pros-elthein to come near. The Hebrew is not quite so simple, for though the term Gër is generally used, when it came to legislation it was found that there were different categories to be taken into consideration. There were the Ezraḥim, the natives, or free tribesmen, there were the Toshabhim, temporary residents, and there were the slaves, and all these were the concern of the community. The common word Gër, it should be noted, had a connotation for the Hebrew that meant very much more than a proselyte. It came very near the word ’ibhri, Hebrew, one from the other side, a foreigner. The Hebrew never forgot that he was himself a Gër, in Egypt, and afterwards in the various countries of his exile. Another Greek word, Diaspora, came to be used in this connexion, but in reality Gër was still the most suitable term.

Armitage Robinson said about Ephesians, ‘The truth of the corporate life which was revealed to [Paul] was never more needed than it is today. Our failure to understand his life and message has been largely due to our acquiescence in disunion.’ The Church ought to show people how to live together: it often teaches them how to quarrel.

IN the latest part-volume of the Church Dogmatics published in the autumn of 1955, Karl Barth has given us his second comprehensive survey of the doctrine of reconciliation. For the setting of this treatment within the whole, readers are referred to the synopsis of the first part-volume in a previous issue (Volume 8, Number 2, June 1955), or better still, to the English translation which is now available (cf. especially § 58, 4). Within this whole, the present part-volume deals with the common material under the general title of ‘Jesus Christ, the Servant as Lord’, and therefore from the standpoint of the kingly work of Christ. The volume consists of one long chapter (953 pages) within the Dogmatics, and is divided into five main sections. It is to be noted, incidentally, that in the rendering of Versöhnung in the main title of Volume IV the word ‘reconciliation’ has now been preferred to ‘atonement’, although the latter is often used where it agrees with the context.