The word “Church” has in our day again become more J. significant and more powerful. In 1926 Otto Dibelius, then General Superintendent and now Bishop of Berlin, published a book under the title The Church's Century. By that was meant our twentieth century. The author was surely right in maintaining that the Church has been more talked about during the three decades since the First World War, which we have behind us, than in the whole of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries put together. Who would have dreamt about 1910, when the writings of Hermann Kutter were at their height, that this could happen? Perhaps this has something to do with the almost complete collapse of the political, economic and cultural shape of the old Europe, which began with the First World War and with which the question is closely related: whether it may not once again be given to the Church to save this old Europe, perhaps in a new form, as she helped to found it? In this respect the Roman Catholic Church seems to be in very good spirits and to raise many open and secret expectations. Her greatly improved position and her vigorous pushing forward in certain places is also a sign that the word “Church”, even outside of her particular folds, has again come to the forefront of Christian consciousness and theological discussion. For it is undoubtedly part of her strength that she knows much better than anyone else how to give the impression that one is dealing with the Real Church when dealing with her. During the great crisis 1933–45, however, it was nevertheless true that there was in the Evangelical Churches, first in Germany, then in Holland and Norway, as well as in other countries, “demonstration of the Spirit and of power”. This was neither to be overestimated nor underestimated, but was really rather unexpected everywhere. From it more than one inside and outside of this Church could see that the dissolution of the Evangelical Church was not as far advanced as one might on occasion have previously supposed. From a totally different side the idea is thus once again forced upon us that for nearly a quarter of a century we have had an ecumenical movement in which the weak Churches are encouraged to have more confidence in their own affairs through contact with really, or allegedly stronger, and in any case more self-conscious Churches. And finally it may well be that the abandonment by evangelical theology, at least in certain quarters, of the traditional liberalism and individualism of the eighteenth and nineteenth century fathers has helped to bring about a new understanding for the communio sanctorum and to turn the thoughts of many in this direction, in spite of the diverse way in which it brought about this change.

The duty of the Church to evangelise is now a commonplace of all ecumenical discussion. The moment, however, that we go beyond vague generalisation, it becomes apparent that there are within the Church widely divergent ideas as to what evangelism is, and as to how it ought to be carried out. This has proved in many places an insuperable obstacle to common planning and action.

In my book The Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah I gave some account of current Scandinavian discussions on the problem. My treatment of them had to be sketchy, otherwise the work as a whole would have been out of focus. Besides, I had not then access to all the literature. It now seems opportune to deal with these latest discussions in more detail.

Nicholas Berdyaev was born in 1874 in Kiev, the cradle of Russian Christian culture. He was a scion of an aristocratic family, but while studying in Kiev, came under the influence of the writings of Kant and Hegel. While Hegel himself drew conservative conclusions from his own system, Karl Marx drew revolutionary conclusions, and the young Berdyaev followed Marx and the early Communists. Expelled from the University for these Marxist leanings, he found himself in exile in the north in company with some of the founders of Russian Communism. Yet all through his life he remained an independent and a rebel. Although he accepted the economic and political conclusions of Marxism, he rejected the dialectical materialism on which they were supposedly based, and as a result he was again exiled in 1922, this time by the Communists, after he had served as professor of philosophy in Moscow University. Most of the rest of his life was spent in exile in Paris, with the little group of Russian emigrés, but as he remained true to the Marxian analysis and critique of capitalism to the end of his days, and loathed the bourgeois order of society as cordially as any disciple of Lenin, he was naturally in little favour with them. He died there on 24th March 1948 at his writing table.

Psychology offers a particularly subtle and dangerous challenge to religious belief. The theologian and the psychologist are both interested in the facts of man's spiritual nature, but the difference in their approach to these facts inevitably arouses tension between them. The psychologist's approach is purely empirical and he uses descriptive terms which ignore the cosmic significance of the experiences which he describes. But the experiences of the Christian believer are vitally affected by his beliefs about them. Christian doctrine is not the result of later reflection on experiences which had no intrinsic meaning. Doctrine is an inseparable part of the total Christian experience.

The Divines of the Westminster Assembly, conscious of the J. difficulty of the doctrine of Predestination and aware of its power to provoke interminable argument that may be a substitute for the obedience of faith, uttered a warning about its use: “The Doctrine of this high mystery of Predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care, that men attending the will of God revealed in his Word, and yielding obedience thereunto, may from the certainty of their effectual vocation, be assured of their eternal Election. So shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence and admiration of God, and of humility, diligence and abundant consolation to all that sincerely obey the Gospel.”

The thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians loses some of its force through our familiarity with it. It is one of the bestknown passages of the Bible, and many a man who has little interest in the Church, and less patience with Pauline theology, will accept it as a literary classic and warmly express his admiration of it. No one who is responsive to elevated thought or sensitive to beauty of language will deny it its right to a place in an anthology of literary excellence, whether it be regarded as eloquent prose or as lyrical poetry, whether it be read in the original Greek or in the mellifluous music of our English version. But the custom of abstracting it from its setting and treating it as a poem or hymn, self-complete and selfilluminating, brings great disadvantages.