Anglicans and Roman Catholics are exploring the Uniate analogy as a model for reunion of their Churches. In this paper we propose to discuss briefly the development of the Uniate analogy and, thereafter, to suggest a way for Roman recognition of Anglican ministry.

Proponents of the Uniate model point to an impressive precedent in Gregory the Great’s commission to Augustine in 597. They argue that Gregory favoured a distinctive patrimony for the Church of the Angles. Obviously this precedent should not be pressed too far. Subsequent Popes, such as Vitalian and Gregory VII, were less favourable to pluralism and more inclined to uniformity than was the first Gregory. Nevertheless, Gregory’s commission to Augustine of Canterbury does provide a useful precedent that might well be endorsed today.

The pallium given to Augustine by Gregory connoted recognition of a Roman primacy, a recognition that continued for nearly a millenium. Since the Reformation the Archbishop of Canterbury has served as a pastoral centre of unity for the Church of England and, later, for the world-wide Anglican communion.

Perhaps it would be as well to start with the reminder that it is impossible to analyse South African politics in terms of political Right and Left, and quite misleading to try. Neither the United Party nor even the Progressive Party are really to the left of the Nationalist Party in any meaningful way. A case of sorts could be made out for saying that in some respects it is well to the left of the opposition parties, and certainly its policies are far less shy of radical solutions. But as I say, these terms do not really apply in South Africa, where we are living in a different set of dimensions from Europe or America.

The two basic drives that power the Nationalist Party are intense Afrikaner nationalism and White colour prejudice. The two are distinct in principle, and there are Afrikaner nationalists of sensibility who take pride in the nationalism and genuinely abjure and deplore the prejudice. But they are few, and in the soul of the average nationalist the two drives are almost identical, or at least serve to boost and intensify each other. One might say, rather academically, that the basic drives of the United Party used to be a kind of Smutsian imperialism and White colour prejudice, but that the imperialism has vanished with the course of events, and so only the colour prejudice is left. It is true, up to a point; U.P. candidates, some of them, have not hesitated to appeal to colour prejudice in their electorates, or in their attacks on some government actions. The Progressive Party bases itself more on reason and the more humane sentiments of the heart, which is why it lacks any potent appeal among the dominant racial group in this country.

Even in our present state of enlightenment it is relatively uncommon to find a novelist who can treat the physical climax of a love affair so brusquely—‘A few moments later he lay still. Precisely ninety seconds had passed since he had left her to look into the bedroom.’ It is the more remarkable if the girl stretched on the bed has not only engineered the loss of her virginity and purchased a small Toby jug —now in the author’s possession—but is actually a divine enigma. Place such a episode in the shadow of a West Country cathedral in the middle years of Victoria’s reign and it becomes as ironic as it is pleasing.

It has been my recent experience on belatedly reading The Collector and The French Lieutenant’s Woman to realize that there is something to be said for not reading books when they first appear. There is the chance that one may more easily recognize the development of a coherent attitude, and it is the essence of my discovery that John Fowles is writing a more unambiguously religious novel than has been generally appreciated. Primarily, his treatment of his material differs in a marked degree from the methods of such writers as Graham Greene, Salinger or Mauriac, in that he creates in his characters a dimension of allegorical potential which cannot be precisely distinguished from their ordinary humanity. It appears to be a new approach, and one that stands—if at some remove—in the line of Bunyan and the medieval Morality. Throughout The Collector, Fowles’ first book, the allegory is implicit and muted; and this, I think, is an attitude one would expect in a writer who had still to establish his narrative powers and was perhaps less than fully aware of the ultimate direction of his abilities. In his preface to the new edition of The Aristos Fowles tells us that his purpose in The Collector was to ‘attempt to analyse through a parable some of the results’ of what he sees as a ‘confrontation’ between ‘the Few and the Many’.

The Church is both called and sent by God: called to sanctity and to salvation, and sent to preach the gospel to the whole creation (Mark 16, 15), healing the sick and driving out demons (Matt. 10, 8). It is only where action and contemplation have become secularized (or, for that matter, sacralized—it comes to the same thing), that any contradiction appears; that is to say, it is only because we try to apprehend and to practise prayer or good works without seeing how they proceed from the mission of Jesus Christ, that the hoary problem of reconciling and balancing the two arises.

‘You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.’ ‘As the Father has sent me, even so I send you . . . Receive the Holy Spirit’ (Acts 1,8; John 20, 2If). In their different ways, each of the evangelists (even the unexpanded Mark) concludes with some kind of experience of the risen, exalted Lord, coupled with a command to go and tell people, to bear witness, whether by word or by example. Luke’s Pentecost story is but the most dramatic version of this.

Now, as I have suggested, for those who did not live with Jesus on earth, baptism is the appointed way into the whole event of Calvary to Pentecost. In baptism we die with Christ and rise with him, receiving the Spirit that we may live no longer for sin and self, but for God. Of itself, this obviously does not entail any formally apostolic mission; but it certainly includes some kind of obligation to bear witness. ‘To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit ... for just as the body is one and has many members, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body’ (I Cor. 12, 7ff). Tertullian is quite in line with this when he exhorts the newly-baptized, as they emerge from the font, to pray for an ‘apportioning of charisms’.

There has been a remarkable convergence in recent years between Catholic and Protestant theology in the field of christology. The old pattern was that Catholic theologians offered scholastic interpretations of the incarnation, centring on such conciliar and scholastic concepts as person, nature, subsistence and existence, while Protestants followed some form of kenoticism. Kenotic theories of the incarnation, ostensibly based on the ancient hymn in Philippians 2, 5-11, affirmed some sort of change of the Logos or Word of God into human form, and ran into insuperable difficulties concerning the immutability of God as taught by the Bible (cf. Wisdom 7, 27, James 1, 17, and especially Psalm 102, 25-27 and Ecclesiasticus 42, 20-21).

Instead of this dichotomy, there is now emerging a new type of christology, which I classify as ‘translation christology’. Among its supporters I would list J.-J. Latour, Christian Duquoc, Edouard Schillebeeckx, Christopher Butler and Charles Davis among the Catholics, and John McIntyre and Wolfhart Pannenberg among the Protestants. Many other modern authors can be quoted in support of the view, although few if any have explicitly made the concept of translation the heart and centre of their christology.

But pride of place must go to Eustace of Antioch, that staunch supporter of St Athanasius who was deposed from his bishopric by the Arians. ‘As God the Son, he says, is the image of the Father, so is the man whom He wore the image of the divine Son, though in a different material.’ A modern Catholic theologian would want to phrase this differently, and to speak of the manhood which Jesus assumed rather than of the man whom Jesus wore.

‘Speak that I may see thee’—a line from one of Ben Jonson’s plays serves to remind us that in language we reveal ourselves in a quite distinctive way. And perhaps nowhere is language more sharply revelatory than in those phrases which fall almost automatically from our lips, routine verbal gestures scarcely attended to.

I suppose, for the average layman, the most sustained theological discourse that he hears exists in the weekly sermon. Even with that general kind of context in mind, there would seem to have grown up in the last few years two kinds of vocabularies which stand in an interesting relationship to each other. As we look at the lists vertically we can see two quite distinct theological profiles—some features of more consequence than others, but taken together, an interesting whole.