Editorial

Even a theological journal begins a new volume with the beginning of the civil year, not with the beginning of the church year. Strictly and theologically speaking, the 6th of January is not so incisive a caesura in the rhythm of our life as is the first Sunday in Advent. But it is significant, this 6th of January. It reminds us that, though we taste the powers of the world to come, we taste them in this world. It reminds us that though the night is far spent and God\u27s day has drawn near, we walk as in the day, asserting and proclaiming God\u27s day amid the orders of the night, where men are still asleep or drunk and the powers that be still wield the sword to do the work of God\u27s left hand. The overlapping of the civil year and the church year is emblematic of that overlapping of the aeons which is the time of the church, the time in which God\u27s new creation lives to proclaim the cause and claim of a gracious God in the midst of a groaning and travailing creation. There is an inner fitness, therefore, in the fact that Volume XXXI, No. 1, appearing in January 1960, is so largely concerned with the church, the confessing and witnessing and divided church which mains toward that day of God when calendars and agonies and divisions shall end