It must be obvious that no theme of traditional theology requires a new airing in the atmosphere of aggiornamento more than that of the papacy and its place in the Church. Ultimately this is a task for the professional theologian but one who could, in Karl Barth’s words ‘… take history seriously as a force outside himself and which spoke to him with authority’. For this to be so, the historian, through whom history speaks if it speaks at all, must do some spade work. It is natural for theologians to suppose that since the data of their study are eternal verities or eternal falsehoods, then the theses they present are absolutely, once and for all, true or false. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that however absolute the central concerns of theologians are, there are very important areas of their study in which a radical relativism is called for.

Let us take for example the theology of the eucharist. In an important sense, it is the study of the relationship between bread and wine, disposed within a certain ritual, and the flesh and blood of Christ. What could be more direct and simple, more suitable for questions answerable with a flat yes or no than this study? But these questions must be asked in terms of human language, that is they must be made intelligible in a human activity peculiarly prone to changes of meaning and peculiarly liable to quite remarkable expansion. For centuries it seemed that questions about the eucharist could only be asked in the language of Aristotle’s metaphysics.