In recent years Biblical criticism has been assuming a new shape, or perhaps rather an old shape encompassing new contents. The contents are the data revealed by researches undertaken according to scientific method, and the shape is formed according to a desire to regain unity in place of diversity, theological understanding in place of a disconnected series of critical facts. It is felt, and felt rightly, that while our ancestors were led through ignorance into arbitrary, and even incorrect ways of regarding the Bible as a whole, at least it must be laid to their credit that they did set out to see it as a whole; moreover that we after their example should attempt to move from analysis to synthesis, from piecemeal examination of detail to a synoptic view of that structure into which the details will be seen to fit. Such a movement is in full flow, being assisted by many an able hand.

The Hebrews had an ineradicably “whole” view of life and the universe. We Westerners, whose educational system rests upon the assumption of the “Greeks” that matter and spirit are separate entities, find it hard to think as the Old Testament thinks. Plato was not the first of the philosophers to dissociate the realm of ideas from the realm of things, since some of the Ionian philosophers before him had already conceived that truth is the truth of propositions. One result of such a dichotomy was the conception that matter or things are not so important or even so real as are ideas; it is the study of the world of ideas, or of the world of spiritual values, which primarily leads mankind to a knowledge of God.

When we encounter a discussion concerning Christ and the forces of destruction, our thoughts go immediately to Luther and to his explanation of the second article of the Apostle's Creed in his catechism: “I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord, who has released, redeemed and won me from all sin, from death and the power of the devil.” Sin, death and the devil—these are the powers, which have subjected human life to their control and lead it to destruction. But now Christ has come and redeemed me and the whole human family to which I belong. He has deprived these other masters of their power and Himself become “My Lord”, so that I am no longer a slave unto death, but may live under His dominion: “So that I shall be His own, remain and live with Him in His Kingdom and serve Him.”

Modern exponents of the doctrine of creation skate as lightly as possible over the thesis that God is Maker of heaven as well as of earth. And St. Matthew's habit of referring to the Kingdom of Heaven does not commend itself as important to most scholars in their elucidation of the Kingdom of God. For Barth, whose doctrine of Providence was outlined in the last issue of this Journal, “God's Kingdom which comes to us on earth is the Kingdom of Heaven; and when God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven, that is not only a divine event, i.e. one established, governed, and consummated by God, but also a heavenly event, i.e. one worked out in the presence, power, co-operation, and co-revelation of heaven on earth” (p. 558). Though this is a secondary aspect of the event, a theology which ignores it is gravely impoverished. And a proper recognition of this aspect entails a further recognition that man's encounter with God in His saving act is also an encounter with the angels of God, the creatures who inhabit heaven. Schleiermacher wrote a notable appendix Of the Angels (§§42–43 in the Second Edition of The Christian Faith) which dismissed the topic from Protestant theology for 150 years, but now it has come back in a treatise which will surely rank with the other two great monuments of angelology, the Celestial Hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius, and the Summa Theologica of Aquinas (1.50–64, 106–114), both of which are sympathetically evaluated.

In our time the Church appears constantly as a subject of theological reflection alike in the Evangelical and the Catholic world. Indeed hardly any other question has occupied the minds of theologians so much. At the turn of the century it was still possible to deliver a course of lectures on “the Nature of Christianity” without entering into serious discussion of the Church at all, for it was not considered a real problem. It is different to-day. Robert Grosche says in the Pilgernde Kirche (1938, p. 23): “The religious problem of Christianity to-day lies in the nature and reality of the Church.… He who inquires about Christianity inquires about the Church.”

Mark 4.1–34 is a stretch of the Gospel where it is specially important for the English-speaking student working under the guidance of Rawlinson's great commentary to be aware that much water has flowed under the bridge since 1925; for during the last quarter of a century much has been published that bears directly on the exegesis of this section. The problem of the parables of Jesus is so fascinating, so tantalisingly difficult, and of such obvious importance, that we are forced to return to it again and again. In the first part of this article we shall look at vv. 3–9 and 13–20; in the second part we hope to look at the structure of the whole section and then to concentrate our attention on the notorious crux interpretum, vv. 11 and 12.