Lord Of History Research Articles

Book Review: The Lord of History. By Jean Daniélou. Translated by Nigel Abercrombie. Longmans. 30s; Heaven in the Christian Tradition. By Ulrich Simon. Rockliff. 42s; Providence. By Roger Hazelton. S.C.M. Press. 15s

Book Review: <scp>The Lord of History</scp>. By Jean Daniélou. Translated by Nigel Abercrombie. Longmans. 30s; <scp>Heaven in the Christian Tradition</scp>. By Ulrich Simon. Rockliff. 42s; <scp>Providence</scp>. By Roger Hazelton. S.C.M. Press. 15s

Review of Book: The Lord of History

Review of Book: The Lord of History

The Norm of the Christian Life in the Synoptic Gospels

In the New Testament there is only one principle or standard of Christian knowledge, character and life—Jesus Christ Himself. All other norms of religious insight, belief and practice are superseded in Him, or if they continue to be valid, it is because they have been taken up into Him, amended, reenacted and completed. In this sense the New Testament on what is really its first page asserts: “No one has at any time seen God; the divine One, the only Son, who is on the Father's breast, has made known the mystery.” All eyes in the New Testament are turned, therefore, towards the Christ who as the Living Word stands above the written word, as Head of the Church stands above the Church, and as Lord of history stands above history. Written word and Church are there, and exist in a relation of mutuality or interdependence; both of them are in subordination to Him who is their informing principle of authority. But this general recognition that Christ is the norm of life, character and thought for His people hardly prepares us for the singular fulness and diversity of the schematic formulations by the aid of which, in the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament, the dependence of Christian life on Jesus is expressed and enforced. Some of these formulations are so sharply defined and featured that a brief reference may be made to them before we pass further on.

The Significance of Mediaeval Intellectual Culture

Nicholas Berdyaev, the noted religious philosopher and sociologist, wrote a book more than a decade ago entitled, in the French, The New Middle Ages. In this work he naturally did not imply that history is repeating itself. Nor did he imply diat, by reason of a cyclical recurrence of identical periods in history, following our age of enlightenment, there would dawn a new age of predominantly religious authority concurrently with which State authority would almost disappear—a new age wherein philosophy and science would exercise a far greater general influence upon life than they do today. History, indeed, does not repeat itself. If it did, its story would be a poor carmen universitatis, a poor drama of world progress, unworthy of the Lord of history and of human freedom.