On the 30 March 1992 Damian Byrne, the former Master of the Dominican Order, wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger:

If today the fundamental innocence and theological integrity of Meister Eckhart are generally acknowledged, both within and outside the Dominican Order, this is due in no small measure to the efforts of people like Ursula. Today, when we read Eckhart’s work it is not with an inquisitorial gaze or scrutiny—rather, we ourselves feel we are under his gaze, his quiet scrutiny. Eckhart comes towards us almost as if he were one of our own contemporaries and as a master among them. We do not put him to the test, rather his words—ancient words, yet eloquently new in their serenity and freshness—probe and test us.

Needless to say there are still many difficulties that remain. But our questions today—my own questions at any rate—are not those bom of suspicion or fear, rather they are the questions of one interested reader, even a sort of disciple, who finds himself gripped and fascinated by what Eckhart is saying, but also sometimes confused and even bewildered by the extraordinary depth and range and daring of the master’s teaching.

The Hillsborough football disaster in 1989 left Tony Bland in what doctors call a ‘persistent vegetative state’ (‘PVS’). His heart still pumped, he breathed, and most of his other vital organs worked, all unassisted. His eyes opened and shut; he yawned and moved reflexively; he reacted to loud noises with a start. But as far as doctors could tell he could not perceive, think or feel, and would never regain consciousness in this life. The English High Court, the Court of Appeal and (last month) the House of Lords all ruled that all food, water and antibiotics might be withdrawn from Tony Bland and sedatives administered so that he would die peacefully and soon.

The judges were keenly aware of the moral, legal and social dilemmas which the case occasioned. In general they took the view that the law should closely reflect what is ‘morally right’ in such areas, or at least ‘what society accepts as morally right’. They thought there were three principles to be balanced and applied in this case; the sanctity of life; the autonomy of the patient; and the duty of care. The principle of the sanctity of human life was said to be deeply embedded in our law and ethics, in Britain and throughout the world, included in international human rights documents, and strongly felt by people of all religions and none.

In our time, solidarity has become a term increasingly used by people in relatively affluent parts of the world to express their sense of pity for, of sympathy with, of reaching out to, some oppressed or disadvantaged section of fellow human beings, invariably so submerged that they are unable to speak for themselves: the starving masses of Africa, the exploited poor of South America, the new underclass who live, surplus to requirements, redundant ciphers, without hope or dignity, in the decaying ghettos of our great western cities. Some such sentiment is the driving- force behind liberation theology—the conviction, justified by that unforgettable passage in St. Matthew’s Gospel, that if we are to find Christ in our world, it can only be in the dispossessed and wretched of the earth (when you did this to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me); together with the chilling corollary that when we ignore the poor, we are slighting the Saviour himself, telling the Son of God that his sufferings are no concern of ours.

It is no purpose of mine to disparage or belittle liberation theology, to fault the modem Church for its wholly admirable decision to identify with the poor, to choose Lazarus above Dives—this is, after all simply a copying of the Master, the imitation of Christ. If he chose to be bom powerless, it would be foolish and idolatrous for his followers to worship power. If he spoke so trenchantly about the risks of wealth, his Church, far from admiring, should feel a special compassion for those poor rich people so at risk of suffering the same catastrophe as the wealthy fool in the parable.

That we live in a world of all manner of racial, cultural and ideological difference, of profound specificities and contingencies, is a trite fact of existence. Such awareness is nothing new. Indeed it was a containing feature of Aquinas’ intellectual perspective. The title of one of his major works—Summa Contra Gentiles—indicates as much. What is new in our time is a growing if still somewhat grudging appreciation of this fact of difference, and the realisation, still halting on the whole, that there is an important sense in which difference is creative and so must be celebrated. In the role of theologian and scholar of religion, and as a tribute to Aquinas’ comprehensive philosophical-theological vision, I propose in this article to inquire into this sign of our times (Mt. 16.3), to assess its significance, and to indicate, with special reference to the study of religion, how it might orient our lives.

Just over 25 years ago, on the last day of October 1967, John Hick, on assuming the H G Wood Chair in the University of Birmingham, gave his inaugural lecture, entitled ‘Theology’s Central Problem’. ‘Today. . . theology’s central problem,’ he declared, ‘is not so much one within theology as around theology, enfolding it entirely and calling into question its nature and status as a whole.’ ‘This issue,’ he continued, ‘at once central and all-embracing, presents itself... as a problem concerning religious language. In a sentence the issue is whether distinctively religious utterances are instances of the cognitive or of the noncognitive uses of language.’