Volume 7, Issue 2, June 1994

The article addresses three issues which it judges central to the encounter between Chinese culture and Christianity now.  The first is the need for Christianity to address the full truth of its past in China and to decide whether it wishes to remain a minority culture or to engage Chinese culture more comprehensively.  The second is the need to understand the growing acceptance of Christianity and in particular of the biblical narrative in contemporary China.  And the third is the need to explore the universal significance of elements of Chinese culture and to ask whether it might contribute anything to Western culture in general and Christianity in particular.

This article offers a critical assessment of Kähler's maxim that the Gospels are "passion narratives with extensive introductions."  After sketching the maxim's historical context and its influence on later biblical study, the conclusion is drawn that, in the light of recent developments such as narrative criticism, Kähler was at best only partly right.

The article begins and ends with an examination of the 1992 Act of the Australian Parliament which accepted the principle of conscientious objection to particular wars, noting both the strengths and weaknesses of the legislation.  The body of  the article considers the notion of conscientious objection and the more complex moral implications of selective conscientious objection.

Hans Frei’s description of Karl Barth’s theological method  as one of ‘ad hoc correlation’ invites a new assessment of the relationship between §17 of the Church Dogmatics (‘Revelation as the Abolition of Religion’) and the wider argument in which it is set.  On the basis of such an assessment, the claim is made in this article that §17 is an intrusion into an otherwise integrated theological argument and is occasioned only by Barth’s attempt to correlate this wider argument to a then prevailing theory regarding Christianity’s relationship to other religions.

The article first outlines the argument of the papal encyclical letter and treats in particular its understanding of the relationship between critical thought and ecclesiastical authority. It proceeds to examine the letter’s use of natural law theory and Thomas Aquinas, concluding that the letter rests on an uncertain philosophical base.

The encounter between Christianity and cosmic religions in eastern Indonesia is both destructive and creative. I use an emicetic paradigm in order to draw out the dynamics of both the spontaneous and the more formal encounters. Any formal encounter has to take cognisance of the ambiguous, spontaneous encounter of the people which is well expressed in their folk beliefs.