Anyone who cares about getting rid of racism in Britain is accustomed to massive difficulties. The disastrous immigration policies of governments of both parties since 1962, the institutionalised racial discrimination built into public and private organisations, the tragedy of human potential lost and destroyed in our educational system, the insensitivity and ignorance of many people in the news industry, racism in entertainment and cartoons, public indifference and private malice, are all too bitterly familiar. But the anti-racist, as if he had not trouble enough with enemies, needs more and more protection from his friends. Government money for ‘community relations’ has recently become more plentiful, but practised hands are holding the purse-strings and know just how and when to draw them tight. Job opportunities brighten a little for specialised social workers, charged with containing the discontents of the young and black : their job opportunities are less than ever. Various groups on the Left are eager to help in the racial struggle, but usually on their own terms. And now we have Women’s Lib as well.

‘Women’s Lib’ is a vague and disputed term; it is more usual to hear of ‘the women’s movement’ now in this country. This includes some formal organisations, some informal groups and some individuals, all in some way or another concerned with women’s rights. These groups and individuals vary in beliefs and in action. Some are old-established reforming organisations, some new community action groups, and so on; their work often overlaps, but there is a marked difference, all the same, between the new ideology of liberation and the old ideology of equal rights for women. The difference is in mood and style rather than in a set programme; the new mood and style can conveniently be called ‘anti-sexism’.

One of the pastoral problems which loom very large in these days is that of the Catholics who, having entered upon a marriage which the Church cannot recognise as such, then find themselves tortured in mind by their consequent separation from the sacramental life of the Church, and long to return to it but see no way of doing so. What is to be done for them? How are they to be advised?

It is as useless as it is heartless to say simply that they have only themselves to blame: that they sinned in contracting a marriage which is no marriage at all, and that the Church will receive them back when, and only when, they renounce it. In practice this is harmful, since it may well drive them completely and finally away from the Church. In theory it is bad theology, because it simplifies what is in reality complex, and refuses to face all the facts of a human situation. Ethics is not an exact science, precisely because its business is with the complexities and untidiness of human action in the concrete; and indeed the ultimate ethical judgment, as to what A is to do here and now, is not a question of science merely but of art, the art of prudence. We might well recall here some wise words of M. Maritain: ‘Some people imagine that morality measures our actions, not in the light of the just human ends which they ought to be aiming at in the given circumstances, but by a forest of abstract formulae which life must copy like a book. ... In reality the principles of morals are not theorems or idols: they are the supreme rules governing a concrete activity the aim of which is something to be done in certain definite circumstances, and governing it through more proximate rules and above all through the rules, which are never set down in advance, of the virtue of prudence. . . . They do not seek to devour human life; they are there to build it up.

The article constructs the emergence of environmental ethics and eco-theology, referring to ecumenical discussions and influences. It then focuses on the difference between two types of eco-theology: one that may be called eco-centric, the other theo-centric. Following the second model and rooted in Karl Barth's approach to creation theology, the argument is put forward that a dogmatic approach today has to be based on the concept of ‘creatio ex nihilo’. Creation is not a commodity but utterly dependent on God's ongoing creative speech-act. A revision of the doctrine of election focuses on creation in a Trinitarian perspective. Creation is an eschatological and soteriological category that is grounded biblically in the post-exilic hope for a new creation. As a promise, it is a critique of all utopic and dystopic claims in human history. This has two consequences. First, the need to regain a realistic concept of the political that allows for conflicting aims and that challenges the concept of dominion. And second, to regain a realistic approach to ‘nature’ that defines the ethical concern as ‘habitability’. The fundamental challenge is to live in a disenchanted world while waiting for the world to come. This tension is enacted in the Eucharist.

Thomas Aquinas begins the Summa Theologiae with the question de sacra doctrina, qualis sit et ad quae se extendat. Readers of this question often assume that he is here asking about the nature of Christian theology. This assumption is open to question and in what follows I shall briefly explain why that is so and what Aquinas actually does mean by sacra doctrina.

I

The most obvious reason for refusing to equate sacra doctrina in Aquinas with ‘theology’, as that word is commonly used, is that much that would now pass for theology would not be recognised by Aquinas as sacra doctrina. In most modern discsssions, ‘theology’ does not mean ‘teaching we agree with’. It means what people who earn their living as theologians say or write. On that basis, editors and librarians, whether Christian or not, will class as theology the views of people as different as Augustine and Troeltsch, Luther and Cajetan, Schillebeeckx and Ratzinger. These pairs of authors, and others one could mention, have wildly divergent things to say, but all of it counts as theology. For Aquinas, however, not all of it would constitute sacra doctrina. That, for him, is nothing but true teaching. For him, sacra doctrina is indeed ‘teaching we agree with’. Or, more precisely, it is teaching we ought to agree with. As we read in la, 1,1, it is something revealed by God.

In the second place, ‘theology’ does not translate sacra doctrina. The proper translation is ‘holy teaching’ or ‘sacred doctrine’.

In the western world, at least, socialism is in crisis as a political force. But it is also in crisis as an intellectual creed, and it is this crisis that concerns the present article. Nevertheless, the practical and the theoretical crises are very closely allied; the real political problem for contemporary socialism may be that, increasingly, people no longer know, or have forgotten, why one should be a socialist.

One might want to re-express this as ‘people no longer see any reasons to be a socialist’. And the practical response might be to urge us, once again, to convince people that socialism is the truly reasonable path. And yet, I am going to argue that in certain crucial senses there simply are no ‘reasons’ for being socialist in the way that we have tended to imagine in the past. If, I shall suggest, we can overcome the lingering suggestion that socialism is a matter of science, of historical diagnosis, or of universally valid reason, then we shall actually be able to recover the most authentic core of the socialist tradition, and the Christian socialist tradition in particular. In the course of this argument I shall first of all establish a contrast between old-style Christian socialism and new-style Christian Marxism, and then go on to show that Christian socialism is in certain ways more in tune with a ‘post Marxist’ or ‘post modernist’ radicalism. Finally, I shall suggest how Christian socialism nonetheless moves beyond the ambiguity of the post-modern critique of capitalist society.

The present writer had already sent to the printer his reflections on Psychotherapy and Ethics) before the opportunity came to him of reading Dr. J. C. Flugel’s recent book on the same subject. Dr. Flugel’s approach is, naturally enough, very different from our own. He writes as a psychologist pure and simple, and with a minimum (at least in intention) of extra-psychological presuppositions. He is moreover a convinced and orthodox—though also a “progressive” and by no means uncritical—Freudian; but he is unusually open to interests and considerations outside his own professional province and writes with an ease and urbanity uncommon to his kind. Last but not least, he is gifted with a quality which, as has often been remarked, seems to be singularly rare (but, one might have thought, singularly necessary) among psychologists—a keen sense of humour.

The great value and importance of Dr. Flugel’s book lies in the fact that it presents us with a remarkably candid, thorough and comprehensive treatment, from a psychoanalyst’s own viewpoint, of the subject which has recently engaged our own attention. In certain important matters his conclusions strikingly anticipate and confirm our own. In particular we would draw attention to the frankness with which he dismisses the contention that psychotherapy, as a “pure science”, can confine its attention to the means of human conduct and disregard consideration of the ends and values which are the province of ethics (pp. 12 ff., 30 ff.) Indeed it is precisely because he believes that the analytical exploration of psychological means modifies our apprehension of these ends and values that he has written and published the book at all; in the belief, that is to say, that from psychoanalysis (notwithstanding its many candidly recognised insufficiencies) many lessons may be learned “concerning the general nature of human morality and the general lines of moral progress” (p. 240, cf. Preface).

How should one respond to the death of realism, the death of the idea that thoughts in our minds can represent to us the way things actually are in the world? For such a death seems to be widely proclaimed by contemporary philosophers.

In summary, they argue that since we only have access to the world via knowledge, it is impossible to check knowledge against the world in order to see if it corresponds with it. This is a powerful and some might say unanswerable contention, and yet if we accept it, it seems to follow that there can be no such thing as truth at all. But how can Christians accept such a state of affairs, or accommodate themselves to it, since truth has always been held to be a predicate of God himself, and of Jesus Christ, the truth incarnate?

There probably has never been a generation since the year 1329, when the Holy See in Avignon condemned fifteen propositions extracted from Eckhart’s writings as heretical, when the justice of the condemnation has not been questioned. The object of this paper is to take account of some recent publications which seem to support the decision of the Dominican General Chapter at Walberberg in 1980 to initiate proceedings for a reexamination of Eckhart’s case.

One is by Richard Woods OP, and it may be commended for its concise and factual account of the troubled times in which Eckhart lived and suffered. Sagely he observes that some of the Church’s grievous problems, which she may be thought to have visited upon the German friar, are still afflicting her, so that the Order of Preachers, in seeking to restore to him his good name, is not merely indulging in Dantesque brooding over the parish pump.

The second is by a Dutch Jesuit, Paul Verdeyen, who has with Romana Guarnieri’s permission reprinted, in 1986, as volume 69 of the Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis her text of the French Mirror of Simple Souls, parallel to his own critical edition of the manuscripts of the Mirror’s Latin translation. Though Verdeyen’s work is flawed (particularly by one strange misapprehension—that the translation was produced by the Inquisition in Paris before the author of the Mirror, Margaret Porette, was tried, condemned and put to death for heresy), nonetheless Verdeyen has made valuable contributions to our further knowledge of Margaret’s perplexing and engrossing case. Very soon I shall attempt to support my belief that it is relevant to that of Eckhart.

My concern is with the phenomenon of self-definition, and particularly with the self-definition of one group over against another group. I shall consider two test-cases, one ancient and the other modem, the selfdefinition of Ancient Israel in relation to the Canaanites as evidenced in the Hebrew Bible, and the self-definition of Christians in relation to Jews in the Christian experience of reading the Hebrew Bible as Old Testament.’

Self and Other in Ancient Israel

I begin with the distinction between Israel and Canaan as presented in the Bible. This case illustrates how complex can be the mixture of reality and fantasy in the self-definition of a nation. Some words from the book of Deuteronomy:

Israel presented herself as being distinctive, a people set apart. This emphasis marks the biblical story from Genesis 12 onwards; in the call of Abram, Israel is effectively called to be a people, T will make of you a great nation’ (Gen. 12.2). The story of Jacob and Esau is all about Israelite identity over against others. Jacob represents Israel; through his craftiness, he triumphs over Esau, who represents the enemy Edom (See especially Genesis 27).

This article assumes that there is a profound crisis of credibility in the Catholic Church today. This is distinct from the issue of the credibility of Christian faith or the credibility of theism, for many who believe, indeed many Catholics, are affected by this sense that the Church, as a public actor, lacks credibility. Moreover, while it would be a mistake to seek the roots of this lack of credibility within general appeals to “modern unbelief,” so it would also be a mistake to imagine that it is purely a matter of “image” or as a direct result of the revelations about clerical child-abuse and its cover-up. It argues that modern society has evolved, through painful experience, a healthy scepticism about large organisations and with this has developed a set of social values (e.g. mutual responsibility and transparency) that are at odds with many of the values (e.g. hierarchy) that the Church has inherited from its past. Far from seeing these developments as part of a pathology of modernity, they can be seen as the work of the Spirit and a challenge to the Church to embrace new ways of being a witness to the truth and new ways of embodying the Christ in its living.

Scientists have been the poets of modern society. The myths of our age have been the creation, through popular repetition, of the genuine oracles of scientific discoverers, misunderstood, misinterpreted and misapplied by lesser men. The facts behind Darwin’s theory have been of less importance than the altered view of humanity they came to imply, the higher beast rather than the lesser angel. The clinical work of Freud is a small affair beside the wholesale change in sex-conventions that he fathered. Einstein’s few pages on Relativity revolutionized not only Physics but the concept of Truth itself in other disciplines and in popular understanding.

Not least important of the myths we have grown up with has been the notion of Race. Already in the nineteenth century, some evolutionists applied the idea of competing and differing species to the apparently different groups of mankind, defined by general differences of physical appearance. The survival of the fittest came to be seen, in terms of Race, as the story of Nordic man’s superiority. The science of anthropology dealt in terms of ‘backward’ and ‘advanced’ peoples, with the assumption of European man’s advancement implicit. Now, modern biology and anthropology no longer deal in these terms. Race, as the term is popularly used, is not a biologically valid or respectable concept. The anthropologist has discovered and learnt to respect the sophisticated culture and technology of the rest of the world’s history. But the myth of Race remains solidly embedded in the intellectual apparatus of all educated people in Europe and North America.

Anglicanism's relationship with its Reformation heritage represents a tension. It looks to the Reformation as the movement from which an English Church, independent of papal authority, was inaugurated. At the same time, it refuses to be labelled as a “church of the Reformation”, pointing to its continuity with a much longer history of Christian practice in Britain. The growth of the Anglican Communion and current controversies over church order, the interpretation of scripture and the exercise of authority make Anglican identity difficult to define. Identity would once have been sought in liturgy, but the view that liturgy completely enshrines Anglican doctrine has been convincingly put to rest by scholarship since the 1970s. This paper argues that the liturgical legacy of the Reformation (especially use of the vernacular, concern for the orderly reading and interpretation of scripture, and attention given to the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist) offers categories that can help to form possible approaches to the current crisis of Anglican identity.

Victor White’s life and work are a fine demonstration of the combination of the Dominican commitment to truth and to contemplation and the handing on of the fruits of contemplation. They are also a demonstration of the very considerable cost which commitment can entail, especially when operating for twenty years on .the frontiers of theology and Jungian psychology. That Jung and White had the highest regard for one another’s work and that they disagreed strongly on the nature of evil, especially concerning Jung’s Answer to Job, is well known. The publication of the greater part of Jung’s side of their correspondence makes available to those who were not personally involved the real extent of their disagreement over a number of years and the estrangement between them which resulted. More than once White wondered what exactly it was they were arguing about, since at different times they each seemed to agree to some particular item of the argument. Their inability to synchronise such agreements between them is not to be explained by personal factors, though this plays an important part in any discussion involving psychoanalysis. The breaking point was the Catholic philosophical view of evil as a privation of good and parasitic upon it (privatio boni) and not as autonomous element opposed to it, and I shall return to this later.

Examination of the relationship between them casts light on the difficulties of making this philosophical position experientially convincing and indicates that the disagreement focussed upon this point drew upon wider areas of contention between theology and psychology.

This paper addresses two questions concerning the attribution of mystery to God. First, if Christianity is neither rationalistic nor agnostic concerning the knowledge of God, then what is the proper understanding of mystery when it is attributed to God? Second, if mystery conditions all theological thinking, how can the proper understanding of mystery be applied systematically across the full range of theological reflection? The response to the first question has three parts. First, God is incomprehensible not because we do not have access to God. God communicates God's self and we can know God's essence but we cannot comprehend God. Second, Thomas Aquinas shows us how we can know God yet God remains incomprehensible. Third, I elucidate the analogy of proper proportionality in arguing that although we do not fully know what we are talking about when we speak of God our concepts are not meaningless. In responding to the second question, I argue, in response to Karl Rahner's use of mystery in his treatment of the problem of suffering, that God's power cannot be absolute but must be related to God's goodness if one is to preserve the mystery of God across the full range of theological reflection.

This article is based on a number of texts written by Michel de Certeau between around 1969 and 1974. These texts all explore the ways in which a lucid Christian belief may endure as a resource in contemporary societies. They also indicate a form of transition. In comparison to the probing but orthodoxly circumscribed analyses of L’Etranger, ou Bunion dans la différence (1969), we see the emergence of a more open (more exposed but also freer) mode of reflection. Although Certeau would rarely return in his writings after the mid-1970’s to the question of contemporary Christian belief as such, the analytic and figurative frameworks generated by this reflection continue to inform his thought. They help us to make sense of the apparently disparate heterogeneity of his subsequent publications, taking us as they do in a series of significant zigzags between, say, The Writing of History, The Mystic Fable and The Practice of Everyday Life.

Christianity was, in Certeau’s view, in the process of ‘shattering’. While this may have seemed a provocative diagnosis in 1974, it appears today as a basic premiss for a scrupulous sociological analysis. Moreover, Certeau suggests that there is nothing intrinsically new about this process. He recalls elsewhere the major scissions already at work in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as Christendom broke ‘into pieces’, producing here and there new generations of believers ‘without a church’. What is unprecedented, he argues, is now the sheer extent and scale of this shattering. This development is not necessarily synonymous with an imminent extinction of Christian belief, but does modify radically the conditions in which such belief must find a voice and a horizon for action.