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“Spirit” is a more universally available religious symbol than “Christ,” found in various forms in most of the religions of the world. It helps to open Christian theology to a genuine religious pluralism, and, in the framework of the doctrine of the Trinity, provides a Christian way of construing this pluralism, relating it to the purposes, activity, and being of God. The pneumatic Trinitarianism proposed in this essay contrasts with the christocentric Trinitarianism recommended by advocates of an inclusivist theology of religions. The concrete incarnation of God in Christ is not lost but placed in a larger context. The Spirit proceeds not just from Christ but from the interaction of God and the world, including a diversity of religious figures and practices. The idea that a theology of the Spirit might serve as the basis of a pluralist theology of religions is tested by looking at the modalities of Spirit that are present in Hinduism and Buddhism, and that enrich a Christian understanding of the Spirit.

God is the absolute truth and substance of all things, the universal in which everything subsists. As such God is also absolute subjectivity, or spirit. The concrete development of this idea of God yields the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. But Hegel first reflects on the concept of God in a more abstract philosophical sense, where he is at pains to distinguish an authentic panentheism (all things have their being in God) from a spurious pantheism (everything is God). The analysis then shifts from the being to the knowledge of God, of which, according to Hegel, there are four basic forms: immediate knowledge (faith), feeling, representation (Vorstellung), and thought. Each is valid, but each is also superseded by the next form. Thinking about God appears in the various religions as proofs of the existence of God (cosmological, teleological, ontological). If knowledge of God is the theoretical form of the religious relationship, the worship of God is the practical form—indeed the form in which the relationship is consummated by the participation of the believer in God through cultic acts such as devotion, sacrifice, and sacraments.

“The shape of the new paradigm is not yet clear … but we have intimations of what it will be like. The stress will fall more upon the public than the private, the social rather than the individual, liberation rather than liberty, equality rather than hierarchy, inquiry rather than authority, praxis rather then theory, the ecumenical rather than the provincial, the plural rather than the monolithic, the global rather than the national, the ecological rather than the anthropological.”

Hegel envisioned his philosophical enterprise as a "System of Science" that would encompass all finite realities in a systematic grasp of absolute reality. He also envisioned, initially at least, two ways of entry into this system. Part 1 would be "The Science of the Experience of Consciousness"the Phenomenology of Spirit of 1807, described as a "pathway to science" or as a "ladder" to the absolute standpoint. Part 2 would be the Science of Logic, published during the period 1812-16. These represent, respectively, the phenomenological and the logical (or speculative) entrees to the system. These two "sciences" were combined in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817) but in reverse order and with the addition of a second, middle part, the philosophy of nature. The third part of the Encyclopedia, the philosophy of spirit, encompassed not only materials found in the Phenomenology of Spirit but also those covered by the

THE title, "Son of Man," occurs some sixty-eight times in the Synoptic Gospels, invariably on the lips of Jesus. It is precisely this fact which constitutes the baffling interpretive problems with respect to the "Son of Man" and which makes this title, or the use of it, so important for understanding Jesus' self-consciousness. For no other character in the Synoptic narratives refers to the Son of Man, nor do the several Gospel writers themselves, nor for that matter do the authors of the Epistles. It is a term used exclusively-according to the tradition-by Jesus, who, moreover, employs no other title to characterize the messianic redeemer of God, to whom he is somehow mysteriously related. As John Knox puts it, in The Death of Christ:' "This striking fact creates a very strong presumption that Jesus was actually remembered to have used the phrase and that he used it with some seriousness and impressiveness. The early Church can hardly be thought of as originating the phrase and then confining it so narrowly to Jesus' own usage." This puts the dilemma about as sharply as possible, and, of the scholars investigated for this study, only Hans Lietzmann argues that none of the Son of Man sayings are authentic. All others have attempted to show that at least some of the sayings are authentic, which accounts for the fact that Jesus was actually remembered to have used the phrase. It can also be used as a device to explain why the community was led to attribute further usage of the term to Jesus in contexts of which the authenticity may now be questioned. Invariably, the argument for unauthenticity of one group of sayings rests upon a prior judgment that another group, or groups, are authentic. On the other hand, no modern critical scholar claims that all the sayings are authentic. It is already apparent that the Son of Man sayings can be grouped fairly unambiguously into three categories, which must become the basis for any analytical investigation.2 Among scholars, there are discrepancies in detail, but on the whole this schema is accepted in one form or another. We have said that the title occurs sixty-eight times in the Synoptics. When parallels are eliminated, the number of different occurrences is reduced to forty. Of this number, the Son of Man is referred to in the general context of apocalypticism nineteen times, according to Knox,3 and sixteen times, according to Eduard Schweizer.4 Following the suggestion of Knox, we shall call this Group A; here the exaltation of the Son of Man at God's right hand is being affirmed, or his coming on the clouds of heaven is being predicted. A second category, Group B, has to do with the suffering which Jesus has to undergo, specifical* Peter C. Hodgson has an A.B. degree from Princeton and B.D. and M.A. degrees from Yale. He is presently working for a Ph.D. in contemporary theology in the Department of Religion at Yale University.

The appearance of the first two volumes of a reprint edition of some of Ferdinand Christian Baur's most important writings marks an important event in contemporary historical theology: the rediscovery of a man whom Emanuel Hirsch has called “the greatest and at the same time the most controversial theologian to be produced by German evangelical Christianity since Schleiermacher.” Baur's greatness consists in his recognition of the radically historical quality of the Christian Church and Christian faith, and in his concomitant development of an historical method appropriate to a critical and theological study of the Church and its founding events, a study which he understood to be an intrinsically proper and necessary theological discipline. The controversy over Baur has been generated partially with respect to the extent of his alleged “Hegelianism,” and partially with respect to the validity of his attempt to discover the “truth” of Christianity by means of historical-critical theology. Criticism of him has arisen more often out of misunderstanding, but sometimes precisely out of recognition of what he was trying to achieve theologically. This new edition of some of his major works will help to base both acclaim and criticism on the latter rather than the former ground; and it surely will enhance our appreciation of the greatness and originality of this strangely neglected man, who stands as such an essential link between Schleiermacher at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the Ritschlians at the end, but who belongs to neither.

The fundamental problem facing contemporary theology--one radicalized by the death of God theologies-concerns a proper understanding of the relation between God and the world. Traditional "religious" conceptions of this relation have collapsed as a result of the process of secularization in its various aspects. This is the essence of the cultural revolution of our time as it bears upon theology and the Christian faith. We know clearly enough that the world can no longer be confused with divinity as in primitive religion and in modern idolatries. But neither is it to be subordinated to a supramundane deity, who stands above the world in dualistic antithesis, as in traditional Christian theism (or, as Bonhoeffer put it, in "religious" Christianity). Secularization on the one hand has meant freeing the world from confusion with the divine, permitting, indeed demanding, the recognition of its finitude, contingency, temporality, historicity. This was the secularization accomplished in the first instance by biblical faith vis-a-vis the nature religions of ancient man, and by literary iconoclasm against modern forms of idolatry. Secularization on the other hand has meant freeing the world from subservience to a putative religious, supernatural realm, evoking recognition of its genuine autonomy and creativity and of the capacities of man within certain inexorable limits to constitute and humanize his world. This is the secularization accomplished by the rise of historicalscientific-technological consciousness against the otherworldliness of Christianity, and mirrored in various configurations of the death of God theme. We are left, then, with the question of a proper understanding of the relation between God and the world-one in which God is neither confused with the world nor separated from it, one that transcends the alternative of monism versus dualism. If this question cannot be intelligently answered, the possibility of belief in God will tend to evaporate for contemporary man, whose experience no longer allows him to fit the world into either of these religious models.