When I was asked to read a paper to this Society on some aspect of the Eastern religions I was glad to accept, not because I have the kind of scholarship I think would be necessary to speak about so vast a field, but because I have been engaged in what may be called the border- problems, the problems connected with the approach of a Thomist to the truths expressed in, e.g. the Hindu or the Moslem traditions, for some considerable time, and am quite sure that it would be a benefit to myself to discuss these problems in such company as this Society affords.

The plan of this paper has therefore two ends in view: to ventilate the problems connected with our approach to Eastern religions, and to attempt that approach in the case of some essential aspect of an Eastern tradition so that the discussion of the approach problem should not be left floating in the air. That appears to be the requirement of the task and I beg you to be patient with me, for it is nothing if not difficult.

The choice of Hinduism and, in particular, of the approach in the Vedanta to God as the Self, was made because it seems to me that this represents a key difficulty without tackling which one gets nowhere. It has the advantage of being so well known that little or no time need be spent in searching out and imparting information. We can set to work straight away in trying to understand what is known to everybody. From my own point of view I must broach this problem if I am to defend at all die position I am just about to outline in the approach of a Christian to other traditions.

Few intellectual groups within the Church have deserved more gratitude from their fellow-Catholics than the Catechetical Society of Munich. It came into existence towards the end of the nineteenth century; a few kindred spirits among the clergy—Stieglitz, Weber, and others—gathered themselves round a periodical, Katechische Blätter, still happily flourishing, and from 1898 onwards had the conscious aim of improving the prevailing ways of teaching religion to the young. They were well aware of the educational psychology of those days, Herbart and suchlike, and they soon evolved the needed applications of it to the teaching of religion. Their Munich method, as it was called, made a point of properly organized lesson-units, instead of just ploughing steadily through a book of questions and answers. They may have seemed a shade pedantic perhaps in their insistence on the regular elements of each lesson—aim, presentation, explanation, questioning, application, expression-work and so forth. But the distinctive feature of Munich was to start from something concrete, some narrative or at least some picture, but preferably from some Scriptural story, and work up from that to the explanation of the doctrine concerned and if necessary to the relevant catechism- answer. Other methods had used Scripture for ‘examples’; Munich started from Scripture. As time went on, and the liturgical movement made itself felt especially in Germany, together with a deepening theology, the Munich catechists welcomed the new insights and incorporated them into their plans and material. Gradually the present generation of pioneers, in Germany and elsewhere, has come to see that catechetical renewal is not merely a matter of methods, of introducing a few more pictures or stories or activities, but involves reconsidering the content of the instruction itself.

In his collection of articles ‘on Englishing the Bible’ Mgr Knox has discussed the literary problems of translation with great thoroughness, shrewdness, and wit. But the translation of religious texts poses what might almost be called a special theological problem that he has not, I think, really considered. It is true he has devoted a whole article to the discussion of the theological contents of the words justice and scandal in the New Testament; and he remarks on the difficulty of dealing with words like grace and faith, which subsequent theological history has given a precision they lack in the Scriptures. But it is just here that he fails to locate the translator’s theological problem in quite the right place. He is concerned with investigating the precise meaning of the word just ice or grace in any given text, and then finding the best way of expressing it in English. That is the literary preoccupation of any translator of any work, sacred or profane. The peculiarity of words in religious contexts is that in the very originals they are translations, of divine realities into human terms. Revelation itself is a work of translation, culminating in the translation of the eternal Word into time-bound flesh.

MGR Knox considers all the various meanings that the word tsadiq-dikaios-justus has in the Bible, and concludes quite rightly that no one English word, be it just or righteous, really covers them. But if it comes to that, did the word tsadiq really cover them? The point is that the word’s various theological meanings are constructions by analogy on its social human meanings, and it is important that the analogy should not be lost in translation.

We, writes St Paul, are chosen in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspoiled in his sight in charity (Ephesians 1, 4). It is only in so far as man is chosen in Christ and one with Christ, that he belongs to God. Christ, raised from the dead, rules and is made ‘head over all the Church’ (Ephesians 1, 22). The Church is the body of Christ (Ephesians 1, 23); and to this body all those who at one time were afar off are joined, or in St Paul’s phrase ‘are made nigh’ (Ephesians 2, 13). All men are born under the condemnation of Adam and are therefore afar off from God, but ‘in the blood of Christ’ they are made near to God. Made near because Christ ‘is our peace’ (Ephesians 2, 23). It is Christ who ‘has made both one’ and who breaks down ‘the middle wall of partition, the enmities in his flesh... that he might make the two in himself into one new man, making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body by the cross, killing the enmities in his flesh’ (Ephesians 2, 14-16).

The cross of Christ, which is the presence in the world of God’s judgment and love, is creative of that peace or unity that overcomes all division and enmity. The divisions that arise from sin or pride, all conflict as between flesh and spirit, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, are transcended in Christ. The death of Christ created a new unity, that of those who are called apart to live in charity in the presence of God. No escape from the world, but a transformation of all that goes to make up the world. This holiness of life is the basic category of life—the only purpose of existence. By it not merely the middle wall of partition between men is destroyed but the division between man and God, opened by sin, is closed. ‘You are no more strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and domestics of God’ (Ephesians 2, 14).