The distinguishing trait of twentieth-century intellectual life is emergence and proliferation of the “meta-disciplines” (or “metasciences”): e.g., meta-mathematics, meta-logic, meta-ethics, meta-jurisprudence, meta-politics, meta-theater, meta-language (hermeneutics and linguistic analysis), meta-sociology (sociology of knowledge), etc. The emergence of these meta-disciplines signifies a fundamental change in human orientation. We may compare this contemporary movement with the development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of the special sciences as self-contained disciplines: chemistry, biology, botany, geology, history, psychology, etc. Whereas this earlier period proliferated special sciences through the application of rigorous techniques which critically reduced (and therefore multiplied) the objects of science per se, the characteristic of contemporary intellectual life is the proliferation of meta-disciplines through the critical analysis of the methods and the presuppositions of the special sciences themselves. I believe this peculiar intellectual activity, which underlies the emergence of all contemporary meta-disciplines, is the major clue to understanding the fundamental reorientation of personal and social consciousness which is going on today. Moreover, this change is rich with possibilities for new ways of dealing with the technological and institutional impasse which is the fruit of the development of the special sciences.

Immortality is one of the language symbols engendered by a class of experiences to which we refer as the varieties of religious experience. This term is perhaps no longer the technically best one but it has the advantage of a great precedent, especially here at Harvard. Hence, its use will be convenient to secure, I hope, a common and immediate understanding about the subject-matter of inquiry.

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 this paper I will attempt to describe the Jesus-image of Johann Christian Edelmann (1698–1767), primarily as he drew it in his Abgenöthigtes Jedoch Andern nicht wieder aufgenöthigtes Glaubens-Bekentniss, published at Neuwied in 1746. This description should also help to show Edelmann's place in the history of eighteenth-century German writings on the life of Jesus, and to demonstrate how English Deistic and Spinozistic ideas on Jesus were received in Germany during this period.

The positions of George Santayana and Paul Tillich disclose remarkable strands of congruent concern and approach. In spite of obvious differences in temperament and philosophical heritage, both thinkers see their philosophies as the culmination of traditional perspectives in Western thought and also as modern criticisms of them. Neither thinker is interested in a radical originality of thought severed from its roots in the past. Both rather want to formulate a general philosophy of culture that is eclectic in the best sense of that abused word.

Working independently of each other, both finally focus their attention on a similar concern that they see operating in the tradition and which is considered by them to have a continuing importance in the present. This is the problem of power and the appropriate human response to its manifestations. The intriguing features of agreement and disagreement in this common exploration are examined in the present essay.

The number of writings appearing on Teilhard de Chardin is increasing daily, with the great majority of them treating his philosophical, theological or humanistic ideas. Discussion of his evolutionary theory from a more scientific point of view is relatively rare. For one thing, he seems to have leaned heavily, though not exclusively, on a neo-Lamarckian explanatory viewpoint. The major problem, however, is that he espoused a theory of evolution, orthogenesis, which is rejected by the majority of scientists today on the ground that there is no evidence for it. Many writers force one to conclude that they are unaware of the ramifications of holding a theory that is considered unviable in the scientific community. In the same vein, too many authors do not seem to take seriously the critics of Teilhard who have made this point, e.g., George G. Simpson, Peter Medawar and Theodosius Dobzhansky. One gets the impression that there is a wider gulf between “the two cultures” than he might have imagined. Little concern for Teilhard's orthogenetic evolution leads us to suspect that writers do not know that it makes a difference what type of evolution Teilhard espoused. There may be a cultural lag between science and the other disciplines, but orthogenesis has been around for many years now, and has been rejected by biologists for at least fifteen years, which is a conservative estimate.

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.

“Free Will” is not a problem which can simply be answered. The long history surrounding this issue would seem to indicate that. It is not that an answer is impossible; on the contrary, the problem is that many answers may be given and no single one can be established to the exclusion of all others. Which answer is adopted depends upon one's metaphysics, upon one's basic assumptions about the first principles which govern and structure the world. Does all this leave us lost in a helpless pluralism where freedom of the will is concerned, an issue which might well be the crucial problem of our own era and which certainly has been important in every philosophical age? No, not unless we adopt an attitude of scepticism where metaphysics is concerned. Thus, our success in dealing with free will depends upon our metaphysical competence. If we can analyze previous metaphysical views and then construct and defend our own, we can still structure an answer to the issue of freedom of the will.

Kierkegaard was as clever as a professional criminal in leaving a confusing trail—albeit including some tantalizing clues—for those scholarly detectives who he predicted would come sleuthing after him. As a result of his method of operation “the real Kierkegaard” is exceptionally elusive. Hypotheses compete to explain his extravagant behavior. Opinions vary as to how Kierkegaard was related to his pseudonyms. Even the work published under his own name is not free from the charge of wily posturing. And often the entries in his own private diary appear contrived.

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.

The first historical record of the Men of the Great Synagogue (or Assembly) appears in Tannaitic lierature. In the list of the chain of tradition, they are placed between the prophets and the Zugot (that is, the Pharisaic leaders after the Maccabean victory). The Talmud ascribes to the Men of the Great Synagogue a threefold achievement. (1) They canonized certain Scriptural books, as Ezekiel, the Minor Prophets, Daniel, and, according to some versions, also Esther, Proverbs, Canticles and Ecclesiastes. (2) They instituted prayers and benedictions, including Kiddush and Habedallah (at the entrance and exit of Sabbaths and festivals, respectively). (3) They classified the Oral Law into Midrash, Halakah and Haggadah. These activities go a long way toward making the Men of the Great Synagogue the Fathers of Pharisaic Judaism.

There has been no lack of attention focused on the deity El in the Ugaritic texts. In addition to various articles that have dealt with the characteristics and functions of this deity two excellent monographs have appeared by Marvin Pope and Otto Eissfeldt. The thrust of most of the literature pertaining to this deity has been the assumption that while El is father of the gods and the “executive” deity of the pantheon at Ugarit, he is essentially an otiose deity, whose power seems rather limited when compared to that of other deities, whose fear of other gods is obvious, and whose gradual decline in the face of Baal's rise to prominence seems clear.

The first printed work of an English Protestant was Tyndale's translation of the New Testament (Cologne, 1525; Worms, 1526), and the second was his free translation of Luther's introduction to the Epistle to the Romans: “A compendious introduction / prologe or preface vn to the pistle off Paul to the Romayns” (Worms, 1526). The third came from the pen of William Roye, one of two apostate Friars from Greenwich, who, like Tyndale, left England for the Continent in the mid 1520's. Having served as Tyndale's assistant in the preparation of the New Testament for the press, Roye made his way to Strassburg, leaving Tyndale at Worms. There had apparently been some friction between them.

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.

Scholars have explained a series of supplements in Paraleipomena B′ (hereafter Par) containing material not in the Massoretic Text of Chronicles by one of the following alternatives: (a) the translator of Chronicles had a Hebrew text expanded with passages from 2 Kings; or (b) Greek passages related in some undefinable fashion to 4 Reigns were added to Par. The supplements in Par do, in fact, bear a tantalizing resemblance to Reigns, but they also differ considerably in vocabulary, grammatical forms, and length; and they presuppose independent contact with a Hebrew text distinct from the Massoretic Text of Kings. The debate still stands at this impasse.

The Milḥemet Ḥobah (Obligatory War), a collection of polemical treatises published at Constantinople in 1710, contains a tract entitled “Disputation of Rabbi David Kimhi” (Wikuaḥ ha-Ra-DaḲ). The ascription of this work to Kimhi has been a subject of some discussion. J. D. Eisenstein, who published the text in his anthology, Oẓar Wikuḥim, and Salo Baron have apparently accepted it as genuine without reservations. Suler in his article in the Encyclopedia Judaica considered it to be basically the work of Kimhi with interpolations. On the other hand, A. Geiger and L. Finkelstein have completely rejected the possibility of Kimhi's authorship. None of these authorities has brought support for his conclusions.

The student of IV Ezra is in the happy position of having a variety of versions at his disposal. The book exists in Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic, a number of complete and some fragmentary Arabic versions, Armenian, Georgian and even a fragmentary Coptic text. Yet, in spite of the number of versions, or perhaps because of it, the text of the book has remained the subject of considerable scholarly discussion. A critical review of the most recent theories has become necessary and in particular of observations made about the Armenian version.

The discovery of a rich corpus of biblical manuscripts among the documents from the caves of Qumrân, and subsequently from other sites in the wilderness surrounding the Dead Sea, has given a fresh impetus to the textual criticism of the Old Testament, and especially to the study of the Septuagint as a tool of criticism. To date, this corpus is only partially published, with much of the most significant material awaiting its editio princeps. But already it is clear that old problems and issues are open to investigation from new perspectives and with a degree of precision and evidential control hitherto not possible.