1972 is the centennial of the death of Frederick Denison Maurice, most famous for his leadership in the short-lived, though influential, Christian Socialist Movement of 1848–1854. Maurice's theological works have always been widely respected, but even among professional theologians and historians of thought there is little really precise knowledge of his views, because his writings — prodigious both as to number and length — are often discouragingly chaotic and, taken separately, fragmentary and inconclusive. Several short books on Maurice have given helpful, though usually somewhat impressionistic, expositions of his thought, but as yet no one has published in English a full-dress analysis of his theology and its philosophical foundations.

The question of how different gnostic Christians interpreted and practiced sacraments — so long limited to the sparse references in the anti-gnostic writers — is being reexamined in the light of recently available gnostic documents. Yet one source long available — the fragments of Heracleon that Origen cites in his own Commentary on John — yields evidence that Heracleon not only interprets the sacraments in terms of Valentinian theology, but also criticized, from this theological standpoint, the sacramental theology and practice of the “great church.” Heracleon's sacramental theology, however, has escaped the notice of those researchers that have limited their investigation to the quoted fragments themselves. Analysis of Origen's commentary as a whole reveals that other statements of Heracleon's doctrine frequently appear apart from the direct quotations. Such statements, recognizable by their concurrence of terminology and doctrine with the quoted fragments, Origen introduces as the opinion of “the heterodox,” 3 or “those who introduce the doctrine of natures,” or in the voice of the imaginary interlocutor. As Heracleon is his principal protagonist, these often set forth his views. Extending our methodology to include investigation of Origen's arguments — which are characteristically structured, in the John commentary, to refute Heracleon's allegations — we discover in the extant debate evidence for a Valentinian theology of baptism and the eucharist.

“Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching or practice, then whether it comes to men by nature or in what other way?” These questions were once put to Socrates by Meno. How did Socrates, the patron saint of moral philosophy, reply? Leaving aside his ironic profession of ignorance, he proposed that the answer would only come once the nature of virtue was understood and defined.

How can we decide if in fact Judah Halevi, Pascal, and Martin Buber were right when they asserted that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not the God of the Philosophers? First we must clarify what they were asserting. What they meant was that the purported entity which the Biblical-Judaic-Christian-Moslem tradition identifies as “God” is not the same entity as the purported entity which the Jewish-Moslem-Christian traditions of philosophy identify as “God.” Presupposed in this assertion is that it is possible to say some things about each entity and on the basis of what is said about each it can be determined that they are not the same entity. It should be noted that if we claim that either entity is in every respect unknowable, there would be no way to make the assertion in question. Also it should be noted that the assertion in question does not entail that either or both entities exist. “A unicorn is not a centaur” entails some knowledge of both but it does not entail that either exists. The same is the case with the claim that Zeus is not Marduk.

The Libri Carolini, the official Frankish protest against the worship of images decreed by the Seventh Ecumenical Council of II Nicaea in 787, accuses the synodal assembly of having falsified a statement by Ambrose of Milan in such a manner that it favored their own error of image-worship, “ut illorum errori faveret.” On the surface, the author of the Libri Carolini (LC) offers in II, 15 a nearly perfect specimen of textual criticism by comparing the original Ambrose text with the allegedly falsified version to be found in the First Latin translation of the Greek acta of II Nicaea. He cites the genuine Ambrose passage in LC II,15 (p. 75.2–4):

A.

a. “Numquid, cum et divinitatem eius adoramus et carnem, Christum dividimus?

b. Numquid, cum in eo imaginem Dei crucemque veneramur, dividimus eum ?”

The growing general awareness that the order of nature within which man lives is a delicate ecological balance — a balance which cannot be indiscriminately exploited by men much longer without destroying the continuing possibility of human life — has not been without repercussions among theologians. There is an increasing attentiveness to nature as a theological problem and an interest in developing theologies of ecology and conservation. In addition there appears to be a growing belief that the theological focus on “history” in recent years has been extravagant or even entirely misplaced: it has turned attention in theology away from the natural world, which is “our real home”; it has led to a theological ignoring of the natural sciences and has thus helped to isolate theology from some of the most important and influential streams of human learning in modern culture; and it has contributed to and mightily re-enforced man's sense of self-importance and insularity, for history is preeminently the human story, and the “God of history” seems principally involved in transactions with men (although of course he is said to be the creator and father of all). What we need, we are told, is a “theology of nature” that will enable us to understand the orders of life and being within which we live and of which we are part, and even a “natural theology” that will illuminate for us, and teach us properly to worship, the God implicit in nature.

James Cone is without question the leading proponent of Black theology in America. His books, articles, and lectures have exercised great influence inside and outside the black community. Thus far, however, Cone has not explicitly stated his theological ethic, although much of significance for ethics is embedded in his works. It will be our purpose in this short essay to stimulate him and others to articulate the ethical aspects of his theology. Our aim, then, is to set forth what we believe to be the ethic implicit in his first two books, Black Theology and Black Power and Liberation: A Black Theology of Liberation. Our essay will be critical in nature and will attempt to deal with theoretical questions.

The phrase “religious unification” in its title does not mean that this paper is about ecumenism or that it is a plea for religious unity. It is not intended as a contribution to piety or to religious education, but to theological clarification. That is, I use the word “unification” in its intellectual sense, not in a practical or political sense.

Every decision, from trivial considerations of where to have lunch to the momentous conclusion that it is right to risk life for the realization of some ideal, is made by a man who has personal interests, group loyalties, and his own preferences and aversions. In many practical decisions, such as choosing an investment portfolio or inviting guests to a party, we expect these particular interests to play a role in guiding the choices. By contrast, we are suspicious of a moral decision if personal preferences or limited loyalties may have played a role in the choice. We tend to discount a man's analysis of the demands of justice if it corresponds too closely to his own interests, and someone who urges us to value precisely those things which will bring him personal profit is apt to receive a short hearing.

Very little is known for certain about John Pupper of Goch. He appears to have been a priest of the archdiocese of Utrecht, who founded a convent in Malines in 1459 and who had previously been a rector in Sluis. He may have studied in Cologne, though that is subject to some doubt, or even in Paris, though that remains to be proven. His importance for history lies not in his founding of the Augustinian convent of Thabor but in his composition of four theological treatises, which attacked scholastic theology and monastic theory in the name of the doctrine of Christian liberty.

In his search for the key to Hebrew metrics, George Buchanan Gray devoted considerable attention to the acrostic poems of the Old Testament. Since they are by no means typical of Hebrew poetry generally, it may be doubted whether they provide a suitable base on which to formulate principles governing the nature of the metrical systems employed by the biblical poets. Furthermore, the fact that acrostic poems have a rather rigid structure may have encouraged greater independence on the part of the poet in working out internal configurations so that a wider range of variation results, partly from the desire to avoid monotony, than would otherwise be the case. The great virtue of acrostic poems is that lines or stanzas are regularly marked off by words beginning with successive letters of the alphabet. Thus in the Book of Lamentations, the first four chapters are regular acrostics, while the fifth chapter follows the same pattern but without making use of the alphabetic device itself. In the first three chapters, three-line stanzas are the rule; in chapters one and two each stanza begins with a successive letter of the alphabet, whereas in chapter three, each of the three lines of the stanza begins with the same letter of the alphabet. Thus the first word of the first stanza of each of the poems begins with the letter 'ālef; in the case of chapter three, the second and third lines of the stanza also begin with 'ālef. The first word of the second stanza begins with bēt; again in chapter three, the second and third lines also begin with bēt. Chapter four follows the same pattern as chapters one and two, except that the stanzas have two lines instead of three.

The new morality like every other new thing in this fast-moving time seems to have declined in notoriety and disciples with age. But there are still good reasons for recognizing and exploring a new morality in contemporary Christian ethics. These reasons will only become clear later, but they can be set down now by way of introducing the analysis that follows.

A question which historical critical scholarship can no longer evade is whether it still contributes fundamentally to the strengthening of faith, or whether it is effecting its dissolution. Where biblical research continues to be done within the framework of Christian convictions, a crisis of identity threatens, since the historical critical approach with its related methodologies tends to dissolve the most fundamental assumptions of the New Testament Christian faith, namely, that salvation is possible only in relation to Jesus Christ. William Mallard focused sharply on this problem when he pointed out that even “when critical research supports a historical religious claim, the character and function of that claim is thereby undermined, and the past event in question loses the force of revelation.” In the same context J. Maxwell Miller argued that there could be no resolution of the conflict between critical inquiry and the biblical view of history because a historical critical understanding can have no place for God's repeated “intrusions” into the course of the Old Testament history. To use Mallard's formulation, a critical explanation for these divine intrusions into the Old Testament history effectively abandons the Old Testament understanding itself. According to Miller: “If the Jewish historian does not offer a natural explanation for the origin of the Exodus traditions, he is untrue to the critical method of historical research. If he does offer a natural explanation, he destroys the basis of his Jewish faith — i.e., that God intruded upon human history at the time of the Exodus and made a covenant with the fathers which applies even today. The same would seem to be true of the Christian historian who attempts to deal with the incarnation or the resurrection.”

In 1630 Thomas Hooker left England to avoid further prosecution by Archbishop Laud. Before him lay an uncertain future, first in Holland, and then, after 1633, in America; behind him, years of increasing recognition as one of the most effective Puritan preachers, especially while he was a lecturer at Chelmsford in Essex. Yet by 1630 only two of Hooker's works had been published: The Poore Doubting Christian Drawne Unto Christ, and the “Epistle to the Reader” in John Rogers' The Doctrine of Faith. Both appeared in 1629.

Among the surviving books of the Sibylline Oracles, Book 7 has aroused particular interest because of its allegedly Jewish-Christian and Gnostic character. A. Rzach has described the author of Book 7 as “ein durch die Gnosis beeinflusster, vielleicht aus dem Judentume … hervorgegangener Christ.” J. Geffcken regards the book as a product of Jewish Christianity with traces of Gnostic influence. And A. Kurfess, in an article which bids fair to become the standard introduction for English-speaking students of the Sibyllines, calls it “purely Christian,” while also indicating the presence of “gnosticizing views.”. Given the lack of sustained interest in these writings during recent years, I think it not unimportant to examine the adequacy of these labels and to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to support them.

Several philosophers have observed an affinity between a role that an understanding of God has in Christian ethics and a role of an ideal observer in their own ethical theory. R. M. Hare has even gone so far as to assert that, “Since for many Christians God occupies the role of ‘ideal observer,’ the moral judgments which they make may be expected to coincide with those arrived at by the method of reasoning which I am advocating.” Now, Hare is correct in observing that God and an ideal observer have certain characteristics in common. But God is not simply an ideal observer. And some of the differences between God and an ideal observer may be as important as the similarities for the way in which Christians make moral judgments. It is therefore somewhat hasty of Hare to assume that his method of reasoning is identical to the method of reasoning appropriate in Christian ethics.

That King James I of England was ardently interested in religious ideas is well-known to students of the seventeenth century. Less well-known is the fact that he was specifically interested in the cause of religious reunion and played a leading part in a movement to find a way to reconcile the different national churches of his day and thus significantly to reduce international tensions. His plans did not exclude the possibility of a rapprochement between the Churches of the Reformation and Rome — even though James's own religious and political writings involved him in a series of bitter exchanges with leading Roman Catholic controversialists. From the beginning of his reign in England James had wanted to approach the problem of religious disunity through an international assembly of divines — or an ecumenical council, and he took care to make his intentions clear through diplomatic channels. During the years 1610–1614 he made use of the celebrated classical scholar Isaac Casaubon, then resident in England, in stimulating support for his ideas, especially in learned circles on the continent. Casaubon's death in England in the summer of 1614 deprived James of a zealous ally in the cause of Christian reunion, but it did not bring the campaign to which they had committed themselves to an end. By this time James was involved in the most ambitious reunion plan of his career, the result of his collaboration with Pierre Du Moulin, pastor of the Reformed Church in Paris and one of the leading theologians in France

From the first, professional ethics has been a hybrid. The Hippocratic Oath exudes that ambiguity. The scientific enterprise, which basically has universalistic tendencies, created a group with special knowledge and interests; eventually it took on a separate identity as a profession. Concern for the ethical point of view, which has the universalizability of normative statements as its foundation, is particularized by focusing on a specialized body of knowledge of a restricted professional group.

The papal condemnation of Americanism in 1899 and the allegation that Americanism was a practical preface to Modernism has given rise to a considerable amount of literature attempting to determine just what Americanism was. This literature has been unsuccessful, however, in detecting any unity in the apparently isolated and unconnected liberal actions and opinions of the Americanists. These studies give the impression that the Americanists never defined what they were promoting, and that their only program was a series of unconnected actions and opinions which signified a certain “liberalism.” Opinions and actions relative to the Church's relation to social questions, to the problem of Catholic schools, German nationalism within American Catholicism, the founding of the Catholic University of America, and participation in the interdenominational World Parliament of Religions would appear to have little in common. In this light it has been concluded that Americanism was primarily a matter concerning a troublesome French Church.

Augustine's attack on skepticism in the Contra Academicos is, it seems to me, both interesting and important. Its interest lies in the fact that the argument developed by Augustine is rather more sophisticated than most commentators seem willing to admit. It is important because it places the moral and epistemological features of skepticism in a new and revealing light, and in so doing offers, I think, a plausible refutation of skeptical doctrine. If I am correct, then the study of Augustine's reasoning is of more than purely historical interest: it is worth studying for its own timeless philosophical content.