Influenged by Tillich's so-called method of correlation, theologians in recent decades have been inclined to approach existential situations as if they simply raised questions to which the dogmatic tradition provided answers. Accordingly, in my teaching for example, I have often read Camus's The Plague together with Buber's I and Thou, Tillich's The Courage To Be with Brecht's Mother Courage and so on. However, the effect of such correlations has, as often as not, been to set the questions moving in the other direction. The traditional ‘answers’ of theologians have been challenged by the existential concerns of the secular writers. In particular the very raison d'être of theology, the articulation of the transcendent presence of God in the world, has become problematical.Granted that Buber's I-You relationship correlates with Camus's portrayals of authenticity, for instance, why do we need to mention Buber's ‘Eternal You’? Can we even make sense of such talk? Granted that Tillich's types of anxiety correlate with his sense of faithful courage, must his affirmation of life in spite of the negativities of existence be ontologically rooted in some ‘Ground of Being’? As we ponder such questions the existential contexts discussed seem to have evaporated all content from the theological answers.

Indian Christian theology has developed in a number of different directions. As we analyse those directions we can detect two main patterns of advance. On the one hand, there is the concern with inwardness and spirituality, the interiority of the Gospel; on the other hand, there is a concern for the outward world and its future as the venue of the new creation brought into being by Christ. Both these concerns have been mirrored in modern Hinduism as it has sought to transmit to modern India the deep spirituality of classical Indian religion and also to reinterpret Hindu doctrines in the light of the context of modern India. Śri Rāmakrishna represents the first concern within modern Hinduism, and Gāndhi represents the other. Indian Christian theology has developed within a culture wherein a concern for the inwardness of one's own spiritual life and a concern for the outward development of the nation were both living issues. In ‘contextualising’ the Gospel in India, Indian Christians have naturally been influenced by both these concerns. Indian Christians have made a contribution to total Christian theology in the areas of inwardness and spirituality. Our particular concern now is to see what they have to say to us on the subject of the humanity of Christ and the new humanity that he has made possible.

The picture of the hilltop city in Mt. 5.14b is an image within an image. It is one of those pictures employed by Jesus which is almost too familiar to us; its meaning appears on the surface to be perfectly simple and obvious, so that although frequently cited in support of various arguments, it is rarely subjected to scholarly scrutiny. It will be argued here that, far from being a casual illustration or simple cliché, it in fact constitutes a profoundly theological statement on the part of Jesus.