Theological revision is taking place all the time. Theology is revision, in the sense that the faith which was once delivered to the saints (Jude 3) is constantly re-appropriated by a new generation, and in new circumstances, so that every fresh appropriation is inevitably a revision. There is no way of telling in advance whether you arc seeing things in a new perspective seeing (and saying) things differently, but still seeing (and saying) the same things; or whether you are simply saying something completely different from what previous generations have believed. In this respect the problem of interpreting the decrees of Vatican I is no different from the problem of interpreting the Christological affirmations of the Council of Chaleedon. Some reinterpretations will prove sooner or later to be distortions: illusory or even dishonest attempts to say substantially the same thing but in necessarily different language; but often it will take time for this to become clear, and in the meantime we must not fear to look again at what we have inherited.

To re-examine the decrees of Vatican 1 on papal jurisdiction and infallibility may seem peculiarly difficult because the papacy as an institution has clearly done as much harm as good, and the dark history may suggest that the Vatican I decrees should simply be rejected and that nothing can be salvaged. While Catholics should certainly seek to recover some of the highly critical attitude to the papacy which their forefathers displayed, and be ready to admit that much of the doctrine and the exercise of the papal prerogatives requires to be condemned and corrected, none can remain in communion with the church of Rome without having some vision of the Petrine ministry and that must include some interpretation of the Vatican 1 decrees.

Much recent theological writing has emphasised the changes in culture in different periods of history, and the way in which the expressions of the Christian faith which arose in different periods have been influenced by the surrounding culture. Particular emphasis has sometimes been laid on the changes in culture since the times when the books of the Bible were written and the Creeds and declarations of the ecumenical councils were drawn up. From this, different conclusions have been drawn.

One view would see the ancient formularies as needing to be repeated in different ages, and would stress the ecumenical nature of many of these formularies, particularly those drawn up before the final break between the Eastern and Western churches, though holders of this view would acknowledge with St Hilary that “We are compelled to attempt what is unattainable. ... to speak what we cannot utter. Instead of the bare adoration of faith, we are compelled to entrust the deep things of religion to the perils of human expression” (De Trim. II, 2.4). A second view would value and keep in use the ancient formularies, seeing them as having abiding significance (given a similar proviso) but would wish to lay alongside them other expressions of the faith which aim to express the same basic Christian gospel but in terms more easily understood in our own day. A third view would lay stress on the cultural relativity of all language expressing Christian beliefs and would see the earlier formularies (the Bible, Creeds and decisions of the ecumenical councils) as of historical interest but no longer suitable instruments with which to describe in the 20th century Cod and His relationship with the world and mankind. Writers taking this line emphasise the problems of using the past as a resource for contemporary life.

This article is based on Trotsky’s article Their Morals and Ours (New International, February 1938) which I will refer to as TMO. Taken together with his second article The Moralists and Sycophants against Marxism (New International, 9 June 1939) which reiterates many of the same arguments TMO is important because it represents a clear and consistent account of the moral philosophy of Revolutionary Marxism. In passing I should point out that even talking about the moral philosophy of Marxism is a little contradictory since for Marxism political philosophy and moral philosophy are the same thing. In classical times no distinction was made between the political and the moral obligations of man. In the Greek city state a good member of the polis was quite simply a good man. Only with the rise of capitalism did it become necessary to posit the Kantian moral imperative as something external to the social and political life of man. In his essay on Kant Herbert Marcuse argues that Capitalist ideology was faced with two conflicting needs. On the one hand it was necessary to foster individualism as an essential component of the growth of capitalist economy but on the other hand it was necessary to subordinate the individual to the needs of the bourgeois state. If the individual were subordinated by crude repression this would expose the mythological character of capitalist freedom of the individual. By positing the moral a priori, a call to duty above class, Kant provided bourgeois ideology with the solution to this problem. Like Marx but unlike Marcuse TMO is polemical rather than speculative in tone, written in a specific historical situation to meet specific charges against Marxism.

Traditional Christian theology draws on a remarkable number of terms to express its conviction that God is beyond reach of human concepts and language. More than forty different words have been noticed in the works of Gregory of Nyssa, for instance, referring to the incomprehensibility of God in one way or another. Some of them derive from scripture, others from Philo, others from Greek philosophers; some of them find their way into the liturgical texts of eastern Christendom. They leave us in no doubt that it is radically impossible for the mind of man, or of any other creature, to fathom God. “The being of God is incomprehensible to the whole creation”, as Chrysostom concludes.

Not surprisingly, the theological tradition of divine incomprehensibility overlaps to a considerable extent with the kind of philosophical speculation we have been considering in the previous articles. But the theologians have their own slant on the matter, and it is with this that we shall be concerned in this article.

In the first place, the theologians are convinced that it is an essential part of Christian doctrine to assert that God is unfathomable; it is part of revealed truth.

This comes out in the orthodox response to the claim made by the Anomocans in the fourth century. Apparently they were saying, “I know God just as he knows himself’ Eunomius is quoted as saying, “God knows nothing more of his own essence than we do”. This provoked St John Chrysostom to preach a series of sermons in Antioch on the incomprehensibility of God's nature, as being an article of Christian faith. Though he does sometimes use simple arguments of a more philosophical kind, he concentrates chiefly on scriptural and doctrinal evidence.