The violent interruption has subsided and Western imperialism has collapsed against the tenacious pliability of cultures that do not defend themselves by opposing, but by returning to their own perpetual shape, slowly but inevitably, absorbing any marks that have been left and cannot be forgotten.

Christians, too, are having to readjust themselves now that colonialism is officially dead. They are shaking off feelings of disillusion and embarrassment with their own role in this drama, and are finding a new courage and enthusiasm in a willingness to serve rather than to rule, to develop and display a sympathetic understanding of other ways of thinking.

But the basic question still remains: Why did they go out to invade these other minds in the first place? What really inspired the white man to leave his proper abode and to travel out to the four corners of the earth ? What gave to his soul that restless urge to preach his belief to all the nations? Was it only a burning love which no man can enjoy without sharing it with others, a fullness of grace that knows no rest so long as there are others who have no share in it?

This paper assumes that there is a Bible and not just biblia, that there is a more or less recognizable corpus of revelation. It assumes the soundness of the Christian instinct which eventually said that ‘all these books and no others, all these books with all their parts’ constitute a book. Precisely which books and which parts of which books are to be included is not so important. None of the deutero-canonical (‘apocryphal’) books represents a genre of literature that is not represented in the universally accepted Bible. The whole Christian tradition has a book with an agreed beginning and an agreed end, a book that plays itself out between the Pentateuch and the Apocalypse. Exactly where the canon is fixed between those bounds is not a matter of great moment, exactly what weight Christians give to the decisions of the Synod of Jamnia.

But assuming that there is a book and not simply a collection of books, all the various literary items which go to make it up have to be read within the context of the whole book whose terms are the Pentateuch and the Apocalypse. That is, they all have their context in the overall Christian myth, of the movement from creation to re-creation (Genesis to Apocalypse) or within the myth that stretches from Exodus to Apocalypse, the myth of redemption, which is situated by and also situates the creation-recreation myth. All the individual books with all their parts are misread if they are not read as held in tension by this myth. Of course they have a right to be studied as though they had not been finally included in the Book, and that is so for each part of each book even down to each saying ascribed to Jesus by a gospel-writer.

In a recent lecture, Fr Edward Yarnold discussed the place of the theologian in the university. He mentioned the salutary effect of contact with other disciplines on the university theologian, the value of the ecumenical setting which a university provides for theology, and, in particular, the view, proposed by the 1952 Faith and Order Conference at Lund, that theologians should make for the centre of the Christian faith where they are united, and, working from that centre, justify their divisions. On this last point, however, Fr Yarnold registered misgivings, for, he asserted, ‘Theology is not a study which can be pursued with detachment: it requires faith’. He argued the issue with care on the principle that a living theology can only arise from a living tradition, and he went on to discuss the consequences of this viewpoint and draw out its advantages.

At the same time, Fr Yarnold was aware that some theologians, while sympathetic to what he had to say about a living tradition in theology, would want to question the role he ascribed to faith: ‘Some theologians—I speak of my own country, but the cap may fit other heads—have thought that this need for commitment is incompatible with scholarly objectivity and freedom of conscience’. For them, in other words, commitment, or faith, threatens the integrity which academic theology requires. They feel that faith would prejudice the detached course which this theology has to take if it is to be true to itself as academic. They would make a distinction between academic and commitment theology.

Ever since the Second Vatican Council it is being increasingly realized that experiment and adaptation are continuing conditions of the life of the Church. But what precisely is an experiment in this context ? Karl Rahner has recently tried to answer this question and he concludes that since history as such is not really open to experimentation in the scientific sense, experiment must have a different meaning in the two contexts, and so the Church can learn nothing useful from a study of scientific experiments. In support of this view Rahner points out that an experiment in the Church is an event in the Church itself and so changes the Church, while no scientific experiment changes the physical world. Thus the meaning of experiment is quite different in the two cases.

In this he compares the subject of one activity with the object of another so the result is naturally misleading and unfruitful. The logical comparison shows a close similarity that deserves further study: just as a scientific experiment does not change nature, neither does an experiment in the Church change human nature; but just as a successful experiment in science is a stage in the growth of the understanding of the natural world by the scientific community, so a successful experiment in the Church is likewise an irrevocable stage in its onward spiritual pilgrimage.

In view of this close similarity it is not surprising that Rahner’s account of the place of experiment in the life of the Church is much closer to scientific experience than he recognizes and thus a further exploration of the analogy may prove useful.

It is likely enough that if some Catholic controversialist of the early seventeenth century had been discussing the merits of various contemporary poets, he would have extolled Crashaw and Southwell, deplored Donne, and vacillated in his opinion of Alabaster according to whether the gentleman was imprisoned in England for the Faith or had returned to the Anglican Church and a wife after differences with the Inquisition. Blame or approval would have been a matter of ‘party’ loyalty; not of poetry. The position was honourable enough in time of adversity but one we should attempt to outgrow. Such a simplistic attitude to religious belief is almost certainly an important factor in accounting for the intellectual and emotional poverty of religious art. One has heard the remark that dismisses Sutherland because he has lapsed, as if integrity as an artist depended on Easter Communion. It is tempting to inquire how many of the great figures of the Renaissance were certifiably in a state of grace.

Thus it comes about that in March 1971 we lost one of the very few religious poets of our time and it is doubtful whether anyone noticed. She herself would not have been surprised:

I cannot imagine anything nicer
Than to be struck by lightning and killed suddenly
crossing a field As if somebody cared.

The name of John Donne is not immediately associated with the idea of moderation and the golden mean, but that of one of his earliest and most ardent admirers, and his first biographer, most certainly is. In the description of his equable self as Piscator in The Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton offers to posterity a moral ideal which reconciles the turbulent egoism of the age of the English Renaissance with the quietist values of the more mature religious sects.

The nub of Walton’s argument lies in the discussion between Venator and Piscator on the First Day of The Compleat Angler. ‘And for that I shall tell you, that in ancient times a debate hath arisen, and it remains yet unresolved, whether the happiness of man in this world doth consist more in contemplation or in action?’ The battle lines are already drawn up between non-utilitarian and utilitarian points of view. On the one hand, ‘the nearer we mortals come to God by way of imitation the more happy we are. And they say, that God enjoys himself only, by a contemplation of his own infiniteness, eternity, power, and goodness, and the like.’ ‘And on the contrary, there want not men of equal authority and credit, that prefer action to be the more excellent; as namely, experiments in physick, and the application of it, both for the ease and prolongation of man’s life; by which each man is enabled to act and do good to others, either to serve his country, or do good to particular persons; and they say also, that action is doctrinal, and teaches both art and virtue, and is a maintainer of human society.’