To echo Denys Turner, the debate in New Blackfriars has by now ranged over so many different issues and mobilised so many separate arguments that it is impossible to answer every objection that has been raised against my position, nor shall I be able to take all the incidental points not raised directly in relation to my own views but which nonetheless warrant answers from a revolutionary Marxist standpoint. Equally it would be tedious (for anyone can read the debate for themselves) if I were to spend much time simply restating my earlier remarks and taking issue with every instance of their misinterpretation by my opponents.

Therefore, I shall rehearse my argument only in very general form, and then attend to the issue which is central to the debate— the differential characteristics of science and ideology.

My initial strategy was not to offer a substantive contribution to this debate but to carry out a reading of it, as it exists in certain texts, in order to expose the silences, incoherences and contradictions enforced on a writing that engages in what is, for the whole thrust of my argument, a project which has already failed even before its inception. Because, as I contend, Christianity is an ideology (as well, of course, as an ensemble of rituals, practices and institutions) and Marxism a science, and because they suffer a high level of mutual unintelligibility deriving from their very different epistemological statuses (the one, potentially at least, an object of the other), Marxism has no ‘contribution’ to make to this ‘debate’ except to define its character as an irresolvable ideological encounter.

According to the Hebrew cosmology the earth was flat and the sky was like an upturned bowl studded with stars. The earth, and the creatures of the earth, were made to serve man and are under his domination. This view sufficed for many millennia. Careful studies of the regular motions of the stars and the irregular motions of the planets were made by the Babylonians and the Greeks, and Ptolemy devised a complicated system of cycles and epicycles to describe these motions with some accuracy. It was a cosy, man-centred world.

The development of modem science destroyed this picture with a series of shattering blows. Firstly Copernicus showed that it was much simpler to suppose that the sun, and not the earth, is the centre of the world. No longer do we think of the sun serving our needs by circling the earth, night and day. It is we who are ruled by the sun. This view of the sun and the planets was firmly established by the dynamics of Newton, which enabled the orbits of the planets to be calculated from his laws of motion, together with his theory of universal gravitation.

In the following centuries telescopes of increasing power probed further into space, and it became apparent that our resplendent sun is but a rather ordinary star situated in one of the spiral arms of a vast galaxy of some two hundred thousand million stars that we see on clear nights as the Milky Way.

Nothing is more important than that Catholics should continually ask themselves: how bad a state is the Church in? We are all aware of the possibility that the Church may appear to be corrupt, and of the actualization of this possibility at various times in the past. But we tend, I think, to assume that such corruption will always be glaringly obvious, a matter of simony at the papal court, or pluralist bishops, or priests with concubines and children : we therefore conclude that, to the extent that things seem all right, so they must be all right. Whereas in fact, I suspect, corruption is seldom easily recognized at the time. Perhaps even the examples I have just mentioned, which seem to us so scandalous, were not felt at the time as symptoms of deep-seated disease: after all, we know that the Church is composed, not of angels, but of men, and that we have no right to expect perfection from Christians, bishops included; so probably these things were usually put down as instances of the kind of human weakness that we know that we have to reckon with. Thus we must be prepared, at any time, to find that the Church can be deeply corrupted, a corruption for which we shall be sternly judged but to which we have long been blind.

When we have recognized that the Church can be corrupt, we have to enquire what could make it possible for this corruption to take place: and this is the most serious theological enquiry that can be made, for it concerns our understanding of the nature of the Church.

Early in December 1986, I was siting in Charlottesville, Virginia, minding my own business (which is to say that I was on sabbatical leave) when a letter arrived from John Coventry, asking me to address this year’s conference of the Association on the topic of ‘ministry of the word’.

I agreed, and almost at once began to regret having done so. The topic seemed so vast, so comprehensive, so obviously central to every aspect of Christian speech and action, that I did not know where to begin. So I turned to the dictionaries, and got a bit of a shock. The Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique has only one entry under ‘ministry’, and that is ‘ministre des sacrements’. Ah well, that was back in 1929, in the dark ages before Vatican II. Things would be better in the bright new postconciliar world, a world which had witnessed the proclamation of a dogmatic constitution entitled ‘Dei Verbum’. Well, perhaps, but not much better. Sacramentum Mundi (1969) has no entries under ‘ministry’, and the New Catholic Encyclopaedia, published in 1967, has one, which reads ‘ministry, Protestant’.

Perhaps we should not make too much of this. It is, after all, perfectly possible that, gathered under other heads and quite compatible descriptions, our Catholic self-understanding has still been permeated by a sense of all our discipleship, all our prayer and compassion, all our disciplined distinctiveness, being set at the service of the word, the diaconia tou logou. Possible, but I somehow doubt it, because it was not simply the ministry of the word which had largely ceased to figure in our Catholic vocabulary.

The Earl of Shaftesbury and the ‘Papal Aggression’ of 1850 is an interesting example of how a man of sense and humanity can be driven by prejudice into taking a posture that contradicts everything he has striven for. What he did was of less importance than why he did it, for even at the time intelligent men were aware that Shaftesbury was obsessively involved in a storm in a tea-cup.

The term ‘Papal Aggression’ indicates how Shaftesbury’s contemporaries saw the Papal Bull of 1850; this Bull abolished the administration of Roman Catholics in Great Britain by Vicars Apostolic, and appointed instead two Archbishops and twelve Bishops with territorial districts clearly marked out. Shaftesbury was in Scotland recovering from illness when he heard about this. It was, he considered, ‘an act of great annoyance and audacity’ but not contrary to law, and he was prepared to simmer awhile.

When Dr Wiseman was appointed the first Archbishop of Westminster and raised to the dignity of a Cardinal, then Shaftesbury felt that he had no other course but to act, and the publication of the pastoral ‘From out of the Flaminian Gate of Rome’ was interpreted by him as a direct threat towards the Church of England. ‘Catholic England’, wrote the Cardinal, ‘has been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament from which its light had long vanished’.

‘This phrase (the option for the poor) burst upon the ecclesiastical scene only a few years ago. Since then it has become the most controversial religious term since the Reformers’ cry, “salvation by faith alone’’.’

These are the opening words of Donal Dorr’s recent book on the option for the poor and Vatican social teaching. He is not exaggerating. I should say that the challenge to the church, to almost all our churches, represented by this term ‘option for the poor’ goes far beyond anything envisaged by the Reformers. It challenges both Catholic and Protestant, and it challenges us in a very fundamental way.

Here, I should like to do little more than open up the debate about the option for the poor in South Africa. The question has been raised here and there in a variety of forms, mostly without the term ‘option for the poor’; but in South Africa there has been no systematic Christian practice based upon it and not much research and reflection around this controversial phrase. My intention, then, is to open up the specific approach implied in this new theological term for further research, reflection, debate and practice.

There is a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding about the meaning of the phrase itself, and even a measure of deliberate distortion of its meaning. Hence, in the first place, it will be necessary to state quite clearly what we are talking about and even more importantly what we are not talking about.

Poverty is not the real problem of the modern world. For we have the knowledge and resources which could enable us to overcome poverty. The real problem—the thing which creates misery, wars and hatred among men—is the division of mankind into rich and poor.

We can see this division at two levels. Within nation states there are a few individuals who have great wealth and whose wealth gives them great power; but the vast majority of people suffer from varying degrees of poverty and deprivation. Even in a country like the United States, this division can be seen. In countries like India, Portugal or Brazil, the contrast between the wealth of a few privileged individuals and the dire poverty of the masses is a crying scandal.

And looking at the world as a collection of nation states, we see the same pattern repeated. There are a few wealthy nations which dominate the whole world economically, and therefore politically; and a mass of smaller and poor nations whose destiny, it appears, is to be dominated.

The significance of this division between the rich and the poor is not simply that one man has more food than he can eat, more clothes than he can wear and more houses than he can live in, while others are hungry, unclad and homeless. The significant thing about the division between rich and poor nations is not simply that one has the resources to provide comfort for all its citizens, and the other cannot provide basic services. The reality and depth of the problem arises because the man who is rich has power over the lives of those who are poor, and the rich nation has power over the policies of those which are not rich. And even more important is that our social and economic system, nationally and internationally, supports these divisions and constantly increases them, so that the rich get ever richer and more powerful, while the poor get relatively poorer and less able to control their own future.

At the time of the full moon at the Spring Equinox the people of the Messiani extinguish all their hearth-fires and every lamp and lantern and source of light from amongst them. They gather then on the hillside at midnight and in the darkness a Holy Man strikes the new fire from the rock of flint and with this a great sacred fire is made to blaze. This new fire from darkness represents, for the Messiani, the rebirth of Messia, their dying god, and also the rebirth of the year and the coming of new life out of darkness and winter.

An image of the risen god in the form of a tall candle is then lighted from the fire to symbolise his return to life from the dead, and adorned with certain sacred signs by which past and future and all time is made to centre on this time and this place. Led by the flame of the image the whole throng then moves in procession from the fire to the place of assembly. As they go they take new flame from the image for their own torches and lanterns and they dance and shout the praises of Messia ‘the new light of the world’.

When the crowd is once more assembled Messia is erected amongst green boughs and flowers and other signs of fertility and a Holy Man addresses it in song, bringing this Holy Night to coincide with the mythic nights of creation and of the birth of the Messiani people,

The Eddington Memorial Lectures were founded to foster interest in the relationship of the natural sciences to religion or ethics, with the hope of finding some common basis between different methods of seeking truth. In particular, as Professor Polanyi says at the beginning of this year’s lecture, the founders were preoccupied with the tardiness of moral improvement as compared with the swift advances of science; this aspect, neglected by his predecessors, he proposes to examine. But in the first place he doubts the assumptions which lie behind the ‘problem’, for, he writes:

Never in the history of mankind has the hunger for brotherhood and righteousness exercised so much power over the minds of men as today. The past two centuries have not been an age of moral weakness; but have, on the contrary, seen an outbreak of moral fervour which has achieved numberless humanitarian reforms and improved modern society beyond the boldest thought of earlier centuries.

He is not, in fact, here saying that moral improvement does or does not lag behind the advances of science, but that the problem with which we should concern ourselves is something quite different.

With the subject to be discussed, and the first stage in Polanyi’s answer laid before us, we can already see some of the difficulties which lurk within the lecture, although others, scarcely less important, will arise as the arguments develop. Leaving aside for the moment Polanyi’s criticism of the problem, we may doubt its validity for more fundamental reasons.

In a previous article, (New Black friars Jan 1981) I argued that the eschatological interpretation of biblical theology is, ultimately, the only possible site for the creation of a feminist discourse. To put it in more assimilable terms: the contradiction of being a woman and a feminist is only finally resolvable in the context of Christian eschatology. This is rather a large claim, so I shall try to substantiate it.

Most theology hitherto has been based on an essentially androcentric perspective as a result of the fact that it is founded on an essentially androcentric anthropology. In recent years, attempts have been made by some anthropologists to bring an alternative perspective to bear on the material of their discipline: thus, Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, the editors of a recently published collection of essays by a number of female anthropologists state in their introduction that the aim of the book is to ‘demonstrate the importance of women’s lives for our understanding of the human record’. I think it is important to consider what implications their conclusions, and those of other feminist scholars, have for non-androcentric theology, for a feminist hermeneutics.

At first sight, their conclusions wouldn’t seem to be very comforting to feminists. ‘The current anthropological view draws on the observation that most and probably all contemporary societies, whatever their kinship organisation or mode of subsistence, are characterised by some degree of male dominance’. And further on they say ‘. . . although the degree and expression of female subordination vary greatly, sexual asymmetry is presently a universal fact of life’.

There had been a derailment ahead of us at Dover, so I was late arriving in Brussels. More delay getting a taxi, because I couldn’t quite bring myself to use my elbows like everybody else; the hotel room booked for me, I calculated, would cost about £5 10s. a night, so unless I stopped eating or found another hotel I should have to return home well before the Congress ended. At last the Congress hall itself: the Palais de Congrés, past the illuminated fountains of the Mont des Arts and a small knot of cameramen, timidly into the Salle Albert 1 er—and it really hit one then: the long, high swooping hall, with what must have been a thousand people in it, the brilliant glare of the television lights reflected from the huge black and white poster at the back of the stage, bearing the words in English—

Schillebeeckx was speaking in French from the rostrum; his voice resonated effortlessly from the splendid amplification system, though soon one became aware of a counterpoint of high-pitched chirp and chatter from the badly adjusted earphones of theologians unaccustomed to the use of simultaneous-translation equipment; this was to form an accompaniment throughout the Congress. Photographers crawled and flashed unceasingly over the stage; from time to time the television cameras swivelled and turned their black snouts on the audience. I would return to England the next day, I decided; no, no, not this, not this.

Before I begin I have a confession to make: it was not I who chose the subject of this address. It was understood, at first, that I was to speak about Faith, a task quite beyond my power. Then, without asking me, the organiser of this gathering changed from this high theological theme to the simple question: ‘Is the Christian of this earth'?’ At first I was disconcerted by the apparent simplicity of this question which demands the obvious answer: ‘Of course the Christian is of this earth. We have only to look at ourselves’. But, this first reaction over, it occurred to me that those who chose the question had not mistaken its importance, and the urgency of an adequate answer which it requires of us. It brings us, in point of fact, into the very heart of our own personal history, and the history of the Church. To have to give my answer to this question in the presence of your Eminence is an honour of which I am well aware, an honour which would certainly alarm me if I did not know that here we are all of one family and that I stand beside the most indulgent and most understanding of fathers.

If I begin by considering myself, and start with my own case, as one always should, then it is only too true that I am of this earth, as also the Académie Française ‘is of this earth, the Légion d’Hon-neur is of this earth, the theatres, the big newspapers, the editors are of this earth, my house, my lands and my loves are of this earth.

‘I have some longstanding debts: to Donald MacKinnon, who introduced me to philosophy at Aberdeen between 1950 and 1952; to Cornelius Ernst, who got me to read Wittgenstein, together with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, at Hawkesyard in 1957-60; and to Adolf Darlap, who helped me to understand Heidegger (much easier than understanding Wittgenstein), in Munich between 1964 and 1965’.

Serendipitously, a few days before being invited to contribute to these celebrations some remarks on that ‘longstanding debt’ to Donald MacKinnon, while sorting out some papers I came across three yellowing pages of typescript. On the top of the final page was written, in that inimitably energetic and near-illegible hand: ‘Done for Theology in July 1977, but rejected by the editors as unsuitable on the inflexible recommendation of Dr James Mark (reviews editor). DMM’. (This was by by no means the only occasion on which Donald had noted the inflexibility of one to whom he usually referred as ‘the brother of the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police’.) The spurned offering was a review of Christopher Stead’s Divine Substance, which had been published earlier that year.

It is with a certain circumspection that a Marxist enters the kind of debate represented by the articles of Denys Turner, Brian Wicker and Terry Eagleton on the problems of morality, Marxism and Christianity. This is not because he any longer fears that guilt by association which was once so characteristic a feature of (Stalinist) ultra-leftism by which anyone who even passed the time of day with a ‘petit-bourgeois idealist’ was automatically suspect and probably a class traitor, but rather because, in entering such a discussion, the Marxist simultaneously acknowledges that there is a discussion to be had—something real is at stake—and also his relative inadequacy to participate in it. This sounds like conceding defeat immediately but is intended to echo Terry Eagleton’s schematic but accurate map of the Marxist tradition—on the one hand a neo-Hegelian idealism stemming from the work of Lukács, fully equipped with a humanist ideology, and on the other the structural-scientific work of Althusser, programmatically anti-humanist—and thus to indicate right from the start that the English Marxist at least is bound to be caught wrongfooted. He is bound to look back and see that a Christian-Marxist dialogue was easier all round under the old socialist humanist regimé, but equally the Marxist is newly aware of the inadequacies of that theoretical past, the errors which led to irrationality in theory and defeat in practice and the correction of which are, for him, the primary theoretical concern. Marxism is now establishing for itself a new rigour the central thrust of which is towards the purging of eclecticism from itself and the preclusion of united fronts with other discourses at the level of theory.

This article seeks to reappraise the scholarly work of Bede Jarrett OP by drawing out his debt to Sir Ernest Barker. A shared interest in medieval political and social institutions, and in the constitution of the Dominican Order as a model of voluntary association, infused Jarrett's thinking with the tenets of English political pluralism and enabled him to produce a body of work that paid as much attention to concrete political form as to social ethics. As such his work establishes links with nineteenth and early twentieth-century Christian Socialism, as well as echoing certain current preoccupations within political theology.