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Rex Gentium: History, Nationalism and Christ
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
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The Church’s liturgy calls on Christ as Rex gentium, ‘King of the nations’, the One whom they all ‘desire’, the Corner-stone that unites them. It appeals to him, therefore, to ‘come and save man whom you made from clay’. In this celebrated Advent antiphon, the Church affirms the relevance of Christ to world history and, more specifically, to the fate of the many peoples of the world whose histories contribute to the single history which is that of the world as a whole. The text intimates that this history constitutes an implicit call for his Coming, and it states quite explicitly that only Christ can unify their different and (presumably) divergent histories, and make them one.
My concern here is a vast subject which, it is probably fair to say, historians and philosophers in England, even when believers, would by and large regard as taboo ... and in this they would doubtless be joined by the majority of theologians. The relevance of Christ to world history, and, in particular, to the fact of its multiple national differentiations, is, they would say, simply too large a subject to talk sense about. English historians, with occasional exceptions like Arnold Toynbee, do not think it a proper part of the historian’s task to identify the structure of the historical process as a whole. The philosophy of history is not, in England, the study of the wider meaning of that process but, rather, the justification of any limited statement about the past. English philosophers of history avert their gaze in horror from their Continental counterparts, whose vaulting metaphysical ambition has produced schemes like Hegel’s (history as the coming of Reason to selfconsciousness) or Marx’s (history as the formation of a socialist society where the specific essence of humanity will be realised in uncoerced labour).
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- Copyright © 1989 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Antiphon at the Magnificat for 22 December in the Liturgy of the Hours of the Roman rite.
2 Toynbee, A.J., A Study of History (London 1934–1954)Google Scholar. 1 ought also to mention here the work of Toynbee's contemporary, Christopher Dawson. See Scott, C., A Historian and his World. A life of Christopher Dawson 1889–1970 (London 1984)Google Scholar, with full bibliography, and Cervantes, F.: ‘A Vision to Regain? Reconsidering Christopher Dawson (1889–1970)’, New Blackfriars Vol. 70 No. 831, October 1989, pp. 437–449CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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8 Cf. Mark 7: 24–30; Matthew 15: 21–28 (the Syro‐Phoenician woman); John 4:4–42 (the woman of Samaria); Matthew 8:5–13, Luke 7:1–10 (the Roman centurion); John 12:20–21 (the ‘Greeks’). See Jeremias, J., Jesus’ Promise to the Nations (ET London 1958)Google Scholar; Hahn, F., Mission in the New Testament (ET London 1965)Google Scholar for full discussion of the significance of these references.
9 For an illuminating account of the Church as communion, by an Orthodox open to the notion of a (Roman) universal ‘centre d'accord’, see Clement, O., ‘L'Ecclesiologie orthodoxe comme ecclesiologie de communion’, Contacts 61 (1968), pp. 10–36.Google Scholar
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14 Born in 1887, became Emperor of Austria 1916, abdicated 1918, died of tuberculosis in poverty in exile in 1922. His short reign was dedicated to expediting the end of the First World War, improving the living conditions of his peoples (he instituted the first Health Ministry in the modern state) and, above all, to reducing inter‐ethnic tensions by the promulgation of a new vision of multiple local self‐expression (including republican forms) within an over‐arching imperial polity. During his last years he prayed constantly for the cause of harmony in Central and Eastern Europe. See E. Feigl ed. Kaiser Karl. Personliche Aufzeichnungen, Zeugnisse und Dokumente (Vienna 1984); E.J. Gorliche, Der letzte Kaiser–ein Heitiger? (Stein am Rhein 1986 3rd edn.); also Feigl, E., Kaiserin Zita von Oesterreich, nach Oesterreich (Vienna 1986, 4th edn.), pp. 383–390Google Scholar.
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