The problems facing theology in the setting of secular. society have been widely discussed to the point, almost, of commercial exploitation, particularly by the now eclipsed radical theology of the late 1960s. The rather hollow sounding panegyrics which celebrated God's demise can hardly be said to have carried the task of theology very far forward. Indeed, they have rendered small service to Christian thought, and even less to the church of Jesus Christ, catholic and apostolic.

Some classics of pre-war British theology appeared in Nisbet's Library of Constructive Theology. The aim of writers in that series was, in the words of editors W. R. Matthews and H. Wheeler Robinson, ‘to lay stress on the value and validity of religious experience and to develop their theology on the basis of the religious consciousness’. Such an empirical approach ensures for the theological product a high content of the kind of material fundamental to modern Phenomenology of Religion; that is, the description and interpretation of experiences, behaviour, and other phenomena of life taken by the religious believer as manifestations of divine reality and activity. A re-reading from a phenomenological point of view, then, can discover new significance in those writings which, though less than a generation old, are all too easily felt to be obsolescent in the light of more recent theological fashions.

Athanasius of Alexandria (298?–373) was a key figure in the in the life and theology of the fourth-century Church. In most of the contemporary controversies and events his force of personality made an indelible mark on developments and influenced their direction and movement to a remarkable degree. Although known most widely for his defense of the communion of being of the Son incarnate in Jesus with the Father, he was no less important in the incipient controversies concerning the divinity of the Holy Spirit. At a decisive hour of the Church's life, Athanasius not only secured her faith in the one Godhead of Father and Son; he delineated the lines upon which her pneumatological doctrine was to develop. With his characteristic single-mindedness, and by constant reiteration of certain propositions, Athanasius laid down the general lines of the future development of the doctrine, thus making the question of the divinity of the Holy Spirit as fundamental a part of the Church's consciousness as the doctrine of the Son's full divinity had become through his disputes with the Arians.

In recent years, the phrase ‘political theology’ has become fairly common in theological discourse. Political theology has been used to describe not only the work of theologians who admit to having or seeking to develop a political theology but also to describe the work of some theologians who have not explicitly stated that they are engaged in doing political theology. It is in this context that descriptions of Karl Barth as a political theologian or one who does political theology are becoming common place. The purpose of this article is to test the appropriateness of ascribing a political theology to Karl Barth.

The Scriptures have served the believing community as guide for faith and conduct. Long after the prominent personalities such as Abraham, Moses, and David of the Old Testament and Jesus, Paul, and John of the New Testament had lived, spoken, and written, many people of later times and of different cultures have embraced these Scriptures with deep devotion and gratitude.