Gazing about himself at the theological landscape in 1967, Gordon Kaufman observed,

… the historical situation has changed and with it the theological task. The great critical questions posed by liberalism and humanism …—questions which could be more or less ignored or overlooked during the crises of recent decades — have come into view once again and are demanding attention. Most notable of all in this respect is the central conception on which the whole theological program rests, the problem of ‘God’, What do we mean by ‘God’? Is this notion intelligible at all to ‘modern man’ or does it depend on outgrown mythological patterns of thought?

Kaufman was not alone in the 1960's in sensing a change in the theological situation. Schubert Ogden saw it as symptomatic of an overall, cultural change. Langdon Gilkey pointed to the rise of the radical ‘God is dead’ theologies as indicative of the truly new element in the present situation: ‘This upheaval, this radical questioning of the foundations of religious affirmation and so of the theological language reflective of it, is now taking place within and not outside of the Church.’ In other words, the meaningfulness of religious language, so long taken for granted while neo-orthodoxy held sway, was now problematic, not just outside the Church, but within as well.

In Western culture, religion and the sciences often have found themselves to be more and more at odds since the period of the Enlightenment. The change which that era brought to the Christian community could be illustrated as follows. The analogy is perhaps a bit overdrawn, but it does indicate how important the historical shifts were. During the earliest phase of Christian belief, Christianity had to compete with other religions as one fruit-bearing tree within a varied orchard. When the Christian religion became established and dominant in the Middle Ages it tended to cause other trees to wither and die because of its enormous and on occasion darkening size. During the Reformation a radical pruning took place which gave life not only to the Protestant branch but also a new vitality to the Roman Catholic branch. What the Enlightenment represented was the first pervasive suggestion that most fruit trees — perhaps even the orchard — were unnecessary. One could find individual precursors of such attempts as well as a number of people during the Enlightenment who found various religions satisfying. But at no time in the history of Christianity had a large segment of the intellectual culture been so fascinated with the idea that religion in most all of its forms might be useless.

This article was sparked off by reading Gerald O'Collins' admirable book Interpreting Jesus (Chapman, London 1983), in which he sets out for the benefit of Roman Catholics an account of Jesus which should both measure up to what traditional christology says about him and take account of modern biblical criticism. Towards the end, following the lead of Karl Rahner, he opts for a doctrine of two consciousnesses in the incarnate Word, a divine and a human: ‘his real human consciousness (which he had individually as a man) was neither replaced nor interfered with by his divine consciousness (which as Logos he shared/shares with the Father). Since consciousness is on the side of nature and not of person, Chalcedon's doctrine supports this kind of distinction between Christ's human and divine consciousness’ (p. 190). A little later on the same page he adds: ‘through the incarnation the eternal Son became humanly conscious of himself in his relationship to his Father. He now perceived his divine “I” or self in a human way. Thus in this unique case a human consciousness was able to “seize” a divine Self, albeit in a human way.’

The leaders of the Protestant Reformation not only intended a revival of personal piety; they aimed as well to reshape the corporate forms of religion. They did not convert individuals to the Protestant faith only to abandon them to a state of religious detachment. Rather, the Protestant Reformers labored to rebuild the church and felt themselves called to be agents of its restoration. They steadfastly believed that the Holy Catholic Church had been instituted by God for the nurture and fellowship of souls and that outside of this body there exists ‘no ordinary possibility of salvation’. Accordingly, the founders of Protestantism laid great emphasis upon the nature and function of the church. Ecclesiology was a notable and principal part of their theology.

The institution of the office of elder in the Reformed Church in the sixteenth century was an innovation in the traditional structure of the western Catholic Church and the canonical pattern of its ministry. There were precedents for something like this in the Waldensian and Bohemian (later Moravian) Communities in the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, and there still are features corresponding to it in the leadership of congregational life in Greek Orthodox Churches arising out of the overlap between the worshipping congregation and the cultural community. In the Reformed Church itself the eldership came to be more closely associated with the ministry of Word and Sacrament which has had the effect of linking together ‘clerical’ and ‘lay’ service within the corporate priesthood of the Church and in the operation of its ‘sacral courts’ at synodal, presbyteral and consistorial levels. The eldership has certainly been a source of inner cohesion and stability in the life of Reformed Churches, leaving upon them characteristics of particular significance in the ecumenical fellowship of Churches.