In his important book The Shape of Christology, John Mclntyre argues that revelation cannot provide an adequate foundation for the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ. He contests Karl Barth's derivation of this doctrine from revelation, and he concludes that Barth and other neo-orthodox theologians place far too much emphasis upon revelation, which is a ‘second-order model’ in early Christianity. As an alternative, Mclntyre contends that a viable doctrine of the divinity of Christ must be based upon redemption, not revelation.

Nor are we any longer able to be sure that the evidence of Scripture gives us direct guidance on how we should order our lives or organise our Church in the strange new world, so different from that of the New Testament and from that of Reformation Scotland, into which we have been thrown.’ (The Committee of Forty)

‘It may seem surprising that the question of the correct way to order the church has to be dealt with again and again. Is it really not possible to answer this question once and for all? Is it inconceivable that one could discover definite rules to order our lives at all times? Can the New Testament, the sole plumbline and norm for the church's life according to the unanimous conviction of the Reformers, not supply us with such rules which would be universally valid and permanent?’ (Eduard Lohse)

This surprise to which Lohse refers is perhaps the greater when one considers the confidence with which the Westminster divines felt themselves able to attach scriptural proof texts to their ordinances in their formulation of ‘The Form of Presbyterial Church-Government’, but both the Committee of Forty seeking to find a suitable form of church life for the Church of Scotland today and the Landesbischof of Hannover addressing the synod of his church in Braunschweig as they gathered to discuss a new church order felt that things had changed.

The purpose of the present paper is to determine the exact nature of Marx's atheism by delineating the extent to which he draws from Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach for his own quite distinctive critique of religion. This is an important question inasmuch as it sheds light on Marx's singular view of religion. For if Marx takes the content of his critique of religion from Bauer—not, as is commonly supposed, from Feuerbach1—then Marx's atheism is of an extremely militant sort. Such a conclusion would have far-reaching implications.

The parable of the Tares is introduced by Matthew into the third of the major discourses he attributes to Jesus, a discourse for which he relies heavily on both Mark 4 and Q (Matt. 13.16f = Luke 10.23f; Matt. 13.31f 33 = Luke 13.18f, 20f). While lacking any full parallel in either of these sources, the parable does recall in varying ways several other synoptic traditions, (i) The Markan parable of the Seed growing Secretly/Patient Husbandman (Mark 4.26–29) occupied in the Markan sequence the position now occupied in the Matthaean scheme by the parable of the Tares. Moreover, the occurrence of verbal reminiscences of the former in the latter has not infrequently impressed interpreters: anthrōpos, katheudein, sītos, blastanein, chortos, karpos, therismos, prōton. While some of these might be attributable to correspondences natural in the coverage of similar subject-matter, not all of them are necessary to such coverage (e.g. katheudein), not all of them are common words (e.g. blastanein), and the aggregate of all of them cannot easily be written off as coincidence, (ii) The parable of the Sower, with its appended interpretation (Mark 4.3–8, 14–20 = Matt. 13.3–8, 18–23), provides a precedent within this discourse for an explanation based on a series of 1:1 allegorical correspondences (see particularly, in the case of the Tares, vv. 37–39, which provide the basis for a summarising explanation in vv. 40–43: hōsper…).