In this discussion I have taken up only one of Kierkegaard's writings, Philosophical Fragments (1844). I have not gone very far into the problems of Kierkegaard's intentions in the pseudonymous literature. I have assumed that he meant pretty much what he said in the Fragments; but even if he did not, the issues there pursued are what they are, i.e., are worth someone's efforts.

In the main stream of contemporary Luther scholarship, there is broad agreement that the emergence of “reformation theology” is organically related to, if not constituted by, a new biblical hermeneutic.

Furthermore, in the search for the “sources of Luther's theology,” historians have to be, and are, frequently reminded that Luther may have gotten some of his key ideas from the Bible — however important Augustine, Bernard, Occam, Biel or Staupitz may have been for his theological formation.

Accepting these two assertions, I wish to question the adequacy of the current interpretation of Luther's hermeneutical development, and to indicate the direction in which I believe the hermeneutical changes evident in Luther's earliest exegetical writing (the Dictata super psalterium, 1513–15) can help make better sense of the well-known theological innovations which appear in his writings of the 1520's.

Whereas traditionally the nature of God and his actions have been counted as decisive for man's morality, it has been argued by some contemporary moral philosophers that man's moral autonomy is such that reference to deity in any decisive way is either irrelevant or at best an optional addendum to the moral life. Thus P. H. Nowell-Smith asserts that even if God commands a certain course of action, “it still makes sense … to ask whether or not I ought to do it.” But even the sense of obligation is weakened from its Kantian austerity by this author who insists that “morality is a set of habits of choice determined by the question ‘what life is most satisfactory to me as a whole?’” Outside this teleological reference he professes ignorance as to what the term “ought” means. A similar view is explicitly stated by Kai Nielsen, “The moral agent must independently decide that whatever God wills or commands is good.” Our own moral awareness and sensitivity are used “to decide that God is good and that God ought to be obeyed. We have not derived our moral convictions just from discerning what are the commands of God.” A slightly different position is taken by W. G. MacLagan. It is argued at length that the sense of the moral ought, moral law or moral values is arrived at independently of the theistic hypothesis, although he is willing to employ the notion of moral law as an index to the meaning of the term God. God is not completely shut out of moral calculations, but any independent recourse to deity infringes upon the prior and sui generis character of duty which man directly feels.

During the period of his greatest poetic achievement Coleridge was deeply concerned with two fundamental religious questions: the origin of evil and the relation of faith and reason. To his quest for solutions which would satisfy both “head” and “heart,” the poet brought a wide knowledge of patristic writings. As Aids to Reflection shows, the most permanent and profound theological influence upon Coleridge was that of the great Platonist Church Father, St. Augustine. Evidence in Coleridge's early theological lectures, notebooks, and letters, as well as his retrospective account in the Biographia Literaria of his religious conflict at Stowey, indicates that the foundations for this later Augustinian influence were laid in the years 1795–1798.