The promulgation and reception of the late Dr Immanuel Velikovsky’s theories constitute one of the most fascinating episodes in the history of ideas. He made revolutionary proposals about the recent history of the solar system, celestial mechanics, and palaeontology, from 1950 onwards; the immoral and irrational response by leading members of the scientific establishment (whom David Stove described in this connection as a ‘despotic and irresponsible mafia’) has been well documented. But Velikovsky himself set most store by his historical reconstruction. Three volumes have appeared so far, Ages in Chaos, Ramses II and his Time, and Peoples of the Sea. Further material, on the Assyrian Empire and the so-called ‘Dark Age’ of Greece, is still to be published.

I would like in what follows to say something about Velikovsky’s historical reconstruction, and why, in my opinion, for all the firmly-established assumptions which it overturns, it ought to be taken seriously.

It was the difficulties about dating the Exodus, which are well-known to Old Testament scholars, which provided Velikovsky with his initial hint. It has been generally agreed that this event occurred at some time during the ‘New Kingdom’ of Egypt, dated from 1573 B.C.; the difficulty is in establishing precisely when. Not only is there no reference to the Exodus in any known Egyptian document, but the very state of Egypt, under strong Pharaohs, and with Palestine under its control, seems to render the course of events described by the Bible impossible. The result of all this is that a range of dates from the sixteenth century right down to the twelfth has been suggested for the Exodus by modern scholars.

It might seem that to be a Christian and at the same time a feminist involves few conflicts for the individual. In John 10:10 Christ said: “I came that they may have life and have it more abundantly”. Surely this is what feminism is about too — enabling women to live their lives “more abundantly”, by utilising all the potential which lies within them. One of the major achievements of the women’s movement has been to give women a growing consciousness of how great that potential is and the realisation that the peculiar gifts of women are not necessarily worthless because a male-orientated world sees little value in them. Women have discovered in themselves a capacity for assessing their own value and utilising their various potentialities as fully as possible. Christians, too, male and female, have a duty to be fully human and to realise their own worth. Offering ourselves unreservedly to God involves of necessity a developing awareness of what it is we are offering. It would seem, then, that the feminist Christian should see her feminism as enriching her Christianity and her Christianity as reinforcing her feminism.

Nevertheless, in practice, areas of conflict do arise. One such is the issue of abortion. Feminists have consistently campaigned for abortion on demand and the slogan “a woman’s right to choose” has become one of the most familiar of the women’s movement. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that one cannot be a true feminist while not supporting the notion that abortions should be freely available to all women who ask for them.

Abortion was a hot election issue in the US of 1984. The pro-family rhetoric of the Born-again Right predictably incurred the correspondingly doctrinaire derision of the women's movement and the Left. The National Organisation for Women (NOW) banned from its platform women who in any way opposed abortion. Both sides agree, it seems, that abortion is a primary and integral component of women's liberation and a crucial test of ‘reliability’ for or against.

All the more vital, then, is the search for ethical consistency and clarity which is being maintained in some wings of the peace and women's movements. This was given some force by the visit to Britain last autumn of the US Catholic pacifist Juli Loesch, who founded, in 1979, an organisation called Prolifers for Survival. She came to promote a parallel network here. This exploratory visit, (sponsored by Pax Christi, some members of London SPUC and Women for Life) provoked signs of increasing polarisation in UK. One reaction in Peace News-which in 1983 published a reflective consideration of the links between private and public violence-‘was to curl into a ball and puke’.

The concluding part of a paper presented at the International Symposium on Sociology and Theology, Oxford, January 1984. In the first part of this study of the relationship between the religious use of political images and concepts and their use in political rhetoric (published in January) the author focussed on the political and religious language of early seventeenth-century England.

With the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 a kind of stability returned to England; conflicts and controversies there, of course, were in the political sphere, and even a ‘glorious revolution’, but compared with the preceding decades a certain peace and order is evident. There was a strong desire for peace among various sections of the population, and the economic and social foundations were being established upon which was to rise the political stability of the following century. By 1688, writes J. Carswell, ‘Englishmen were becoming used to the idea of reading about their domestic politics rather than fighting about them’. Ideas of arbitrary power were assailed and the notion of a law depending not simply on the dictate of a sovereign once more became predominant. This is particularly evident in the deist and rationalist writers of the period. God is not ‘an arbitrary being’, insisted Matthew Tindal, but the reasonable governor of a regulated universe. The order, stability and rationality of ‘the spacious firmament on high’ provided a model for social and political relationships. It would be little less than horrid and dreadful blasphemy, declared the influential archbishop John Tillotson, ‘to say that God out of his sovereign will and pleasure can do anything that contradicts the nature of God, or the essential perfections of his deity’.

Given at Blackfriars, Oxford, on 16 February 1984.

Anselm, called doctor doctorum by those who came after him, died in 1109, 116 years before Thomas Aquinas was born. So the sort of distance in time between them was something like that of Byron, or Napoleon, or even Kant, from us. In the writings of Thomas his name seems only less weighty than that of Augustine. It was not Thomas’ way to express disagreement much with revered authorities; so he does this little or not at all with Anselm. Indeed, it looks as if he had found him very valuable and some things he certainly took from him.

Let me first give a brief sketch of the most significant early parts of Anselm’s dialogue On Truth. He proposes to his pupil that they look through the various things that are said to have truth in them. They will begin with propositions, where, he also tells us, most people stop too; in any case, we rather often call propositions true or false. It is clear that he does not mean ‘abstract propositions’, but vocal utterances; and he remarks that the nature of truth in these can be equally considered in any signs that come about to signify something’s being the case or not being the case, e.g. writings or speech with the fingers. .

The striking things about his discussion are two. First, the identification of truth with rightness of assertion. What is assertion for—i.e. what has it been created for? Answer: to signify as being the case what is the case.