CHAPTER VIII
1. What is the connection between the Kingdom of Heaven and the Cross in the teaching of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels?
2. How does Jesus conceive of salvation? Illustrate from the Gospels. Do you agree with the writer's exposition?
3. Why should the salvation of the lost (i.e. redemption) mean the Cross for Jesus?
4. "In choosing the Cross, Christians have always felt, Jesus revealed God: and that is the centre of the great act of Redemption." In what way?
5. Do you think the paragraph on p. 179 beginning: "In the third place . . ." does justice to the apocalyptic passages in the Gospels (Mark 13ff, Matt. 24, etc.), or to the interpretation of this teaching by scholars of the apocalyptic school? (It is no use discussing this question unless members of the circle have made some study of apocalyptic thought.)
CHAPTER IX
1. "Into this world came the Church!" With what aspects of the religion and life of the early Roman Empire, as outlined in the chapter, would the Church find itself in conflict?
2. How would you introduce the Christian faith to one who believed and took part in the Eleusinian cult of Demeter? (Cf. 1 Corinthians and St Paul's method of dealing with a similar situation, and notice the things he stresses—e.g. elementary morality.)
3. "Christ has conquered and all the gods are gone." Why did they go?