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The special excitement that a layman like myself, untrained in the disciplines of theology, may find in the proposed seminar is inseparable from special difficulties and dangers. It is not merely that the task of thinking about such a course presses uncomfortably upon one's own equipment, but that there is here so little experience to draw on for nourishment or correction.
1 Theology and the University, ed. John Coulson, ch. II. The present paper is the fifth of those read at the Leicester Conference about this book, and described in the June issue.
2 op. cit., p. 208.
3 ibid., p. 217.
4 ibid., pp. 213-214.
5 Charles Davis, op. cit., p. 110.
6 Ibid., p. 114.
7 Cf. Fr Herbert McCabe's account of the U.C.S. discussion booklet, University Life: ‘Our method… is the exact opposite of the conventional “Gospel Enquiry”. This commonly begins with a reading from scripture, which is then analysed and applied to our ordinary experience, the final result being some practical conclusion. We have reversed this procedure. We begin with an examination of some aspect of university life—not at all with a view to “judging” it, or seeing how we can apply Christian standards to it, but with a view simply to understanding it so that we can more fully enter into it. The second movement is to see the Christian revelation as a depth within this human experience.’ (Op. cit., p. 44.)
The analogy with the suggested approach to literary studies is close; though, if I am right, ‘understanding', ‘entering into’ and ‘judging’ are inherently complementary aspects of literary experience—so that Fr McCabe's ‘second movement’ of seeing ‘the Christian revelation as a depth within this human experience’ is here not additional to the original experience and response but simply the Christian's specific mode of dialectical engagement.
8 Cf. Ian Gregor's re-directing analysis, ‘The Fox, A Caveat’ (Essays in Criticism, January 1959); also Bernard Bergonzi's ‘Literary Criticism and Humanist Morality’ (Blackfriars, January 1962), which, very tellingly, indicates the significance of Lawrence's ‘moral cripples’.
9 I have sought to formulate these in ‘After the Cocktails’, Essays in Criticism, January 1953.
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