THEOLOGICAL STUDY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20456, 8 November 1934, Page 13

THEOLOGICAL STUDY.

Suffered as Result of World War. (Special to the " Star/’) DUNEDIN, November 7. The effect of the world war of 1914-18 on religious thought was touched on this evening by the Rev Dr John Dickie, Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly. He said that the war brought practically all study and research to a standstill. It robbed the civilised world of a whole generation of potential scholars and leaders alike in thought and action. It brought into being or awakened to fresh vigour, as times of distress and upheaval had always done, a rank crop of crude and unbalanced fancies in biblical interpretation, as well as elsewhere. “ Otherwise,” he said, “so far as 1 can judge, it had no direct effects on biblical scholarship pr the study of church history. The situation is altogether different as regards the other great department of theology—the systematic. Here the post-war years have witnessed what is virtually a revolution, especially so far as the European Continent is concerned. I cannot attempt to sum up all that is going on in Europe in the theological world. Nor can I attempt to determine how far present-day systematic theology arises out of and takes colour from post-w r ar conditions. Suffice it to say that there has been a remarkable rejuvenescence both of Lutheranism and of Calvinism. “ I do not think it will be seriously questioned that the whole world has suffered, irretrievably so far as our limited vision can see, from the war. Still, that does not mean that it would have been better had Great Britain stayed out of it or that it would have been as well for the world now had the issue been different from what it was.”