According to chapter 4 of “Pastor Aetemus” (the text on papal infallibility promulgated by Vatican I on July 18th, 1870), it is “that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals” that may, in certain circumstances, enable the bishop of Rome, in his capacity as successor of St Peter, to define a doctrine as to be held by the universal Church. What the Church has as a permanent endowment, built in structurally so to speak (instructam in the original Latin), the successor of St Peter may on occasion have available to him, enabling or “powering” him (pollere). The problem of interpretation here lies not only in discerning in what sort of circumstances the bishop of Rome may thus be “enabled”, but in discovering the sense in which the Church herself is endowed with infallibility at all. Problematic as discerning a papal decision that enjoys infallibility may be, it is nothing to exploring the mystery of the Church’s infallibility.

It is a negative term, like so many others in theology. To be infallible is to be undeceiving and undeceivable, to possess immunity from either leading or being led into error. Christ and the Holy Spirit can neither deceive nor be deceived, and since the Church is, mystically and sacramentally, the body of Christ and the continuation of Pentecost, the Church is infallible. This is the faith shared by all Christians, Catholic and Orthodox.

I would like to enter a debate which is centuries old and seems, for the most part, to admit of no satisfactory conclusion. The debate is between what is nowadays sometimes called ‘theological relativism’ and ‘(minimal) orthodoxy’. I am not at all happy about these terms (which, in this instance, are John J. Shepherd’s) because the issue being debated is, in some degree, to determine what ‘orthodoxy’ is; and hence, calling oneself ‘minimally orthodox’ seems to be a method of scoring points before the contest has started (that is, if orthodoxy is thought to be desirable). On the other hand, ‘theological relativism’ seems, if one looks at the work of exponents of this school, to admit of degrees of relativity. So we have a relative relativism. All this means that just who is being denominated by such labels might prove elusive of description or, at least, amenable to misrepresentation. For these reasons I shall not use these terms henceforth.

The debate centres on the issue of what (if anything) is essential to the Christian faith. Shepherd argues that ‘behind the bewildering diversity of forms of faith there is an essential continuing substance of Christian teaching which can, by and large, be traced back to Jesus’. This ‘enduring gospel’ consists of propositions about God’s nature and his actions, and about Jesus’ words and deeds. Professor Wiles, on the other hand, argues ‘that there is nothing intrinsically more secure in a knowledge of God which claims to rest on ‘certain historical events’ whose historicity is regarded as essential [than in] a knowledge of God which claims to rest on a more general historical experience (including that to which Scripture bears witness) but which does not treat any particular events within that broad spectrum as essential.’ (CHR, p. 12).

At the end of their frank and comradely talks, the Presidents issued an agreed statement. . . . Not only politicians, it would seem, should concern themselves with such things. Official custodians of doctrine in Churches which claim to teach truth on an important range of issues are showing marked enthusiasm for talks — le dialogue even, in some places — and for issuing agreed statements. Precisely what, however, is being agreed on in an agreed statement? Or, what is it that political negotiators or separated brethren are to be understood as really doing when issuing an agreed statement? That question will not quite be answered in the present inquiry, but enough hazards risked by the well-intentioned when they make such statements will be exposed, to make it easier for someone with enough real knowledge of a wide enough and fair enough sample of agreed statements in doctrine and in politics alike to work out a good answer. My direct interest is in theological doctrines here, and in hazards arising from inadequate analysis. It may well be, however, that in producing agreed statements in doctrine that are of real worth, the crucial issues are neither theological nor analytical, but rather political. I conclude therefore by discussing some of the significant points raised by a jurist only a few years ago in a paper which should be taken into account by those concerned before a new wave of agreed statements comes out.

Agreed statements, it should be acknowledged, have played no inconsiderable part in Christian doctrine and in Christian theologies: ‘It seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us ...’, ‘This sacred synod decrees . . .’ ‘We believe in God . . .’, and so on. They have played their part in Heilsgeschichte too: There came false witnesses, but their witness did not agree. . . . Then came two false witnesses, who said . . . Simply by agreement false witness does not become true, nor false doctrine trustworthy.

I am writing this in a rural area of the Rivers State, Nigeria. This is relevant to the rest of what I have to say, because it means that I have very few reference books available, and so I must ask the reader’s patience for my failure to give accurate references. However, as I do not expect to be within reach of appropriate library facilities for quite some time, I feel I should write what I have to say without the appropriate backing of footnotes.

Long-time readers of New Blackfriars will no doubt groan on finding that I want to revive in some measure the controversy over artificial methods of birth control which filled so many pages in the late sixties. My intention is not to go over the whole ground, Papal authority, rights of conscience, and so on, but to argue that the “conservative” position is intelligible, given a certain number of presuppositions, which, admittedly, are far from being generally made explicit by those who in this matter are conservatives; and, moreover, if these presuppositions, which are not tied to specifically Catholic dogmatic positions, are denied, then those who deny them seem to be faced with problems of ethical philosophy much wider than the single question of contraception. To put it rather differently, the dispute over contraception seems to be a’ a very close analogue of the process outlined by T. S. Kuhn in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn’s argument is that scientific research is advanced neither by great minds making great discoveries nor by a multitude of small discoveries opening the way for major innovations; rather, once a scientific discipline is established, it possesses a “paradigm”, a set of mutually consistent accepted ideas within which research is conducted and discoveries made.

That there are social, political and economic problems in India is a fact that needs no proof. The task of the believer in this situation can be spoken of in line with the general understanding of revelation which encourages the Christian to act like Christ, who gave himself unto death; to act like the apostles who spent themselves for their brethren, because our fellow men are members of Christ and in order that the peace willed by Christ may reign in this world. Yet such a description of the task of the Christian leaves his role as regards the structures of human society relatively undefined.

In India today, there is the effort to analyse the structures themselves and establish Christian positions in dealing with them, so as to re-construct a social order in which sin as a structuring element is less present.

The present article seeks to present the general lines of the approach followed by Indian theologians and then try to offer, for the information and comment of Western theologians, certain approaches by which the theology of liberation as formulated for and in India could have an impact in regard to other approaches to the theology of liberation.

Even the most systematic considerations in the matter of the theology of liberation are formulated as “hypotheses”. The present article seeks to present some of the present approaches to the theology of liberation in India. Admittedly, it is a difficult task to synthesize the perspectives of the analyses of Indian society already made and the “projects” suggested due to the “particularity” of the viewpoint of each author. But it is necessary to make some attempt in order to set our comments in perspective.

The semi-official working party of members of the General Synod’s ecumenical council made its initial visit to Zamind only a matter of months after the area became accessible for Western visitors following the Soviet relaxation of the restrictions which had applied to foreign travel in the Taghiz Republic. The ‘Beeson Report’ of the B.C.C. working party on religious conditions in the U.S.S.R had suggested the existence of hitherto unknown autonomous Christian Churches in remote forest and mountain regions, and it was one such report which led us to Taghiz. But what we found there exceeded our wildest expectations and poses a serious challenge to all our ecumenical thinking.

Let me first sketch in the physical context. We descended from the plateau of Qudukh at 9,400 feet through an area of bleak marshes and lava fields which one of the group imaginatively likened to a petrified sea in storm. In due course we reached a vast basalt plain bisected by a large fast-flowing river. This river was flanked by a large expanse of rich black alluvial soil dotted with many small trees and berried shrubs. Before us was a lake of the deepest blue edged by sands of an orange colour, and beyond, rising up mysteriously in the midst of the plain, a stark massif scored with many small tumultuous mountain streams. In the upper reaches of one of these we could see a vast triangular platform of rock standing out from the mountain-side surrounded on all sides by branches of the stream; and on that platform stood the Monastery of Zamind existing in happy symbiosis with a sizeable and prosperous-looking village. We began to ascend, and as we approached more closely we saw a wealth of luxuriant vegetation -terebinth, tamarisk and yew predominating with a sprinkling of willows at the edge of the stream. Daisies and poppies abounded.

The Religious Experience Research Unit in Oxford embodies a brave and ambitious project devised by Sir Alister Hardy, to turn theology into a science comparable with other modem sciences. As a biologist, Sir Alister is convinced that “religion” is a side of man’s experience which can no longer be neglected by empirical science. He believes that there are scientific, as well as philosophical, grounds for attacking materialistic monism (DF p. 23); and he considers such an attack necessary, for otherwise “civilization may yet cut its throat with Occam’s razor if it does not realize in time that materialism is ignoring a large part of the data of experience” (DF p. 228). In his Gifford Lectures of 1963-5, the second series of which make up The Divine Flame now happily made available to us again in the RERU re-issue, and in The Biology of God, he indicates what form this attack might take, and it is a powerful and many-fronted attack. Sir Alister’s own professional contribution, as a biologist, is essentially to be found in his evolutionary theory, in which he alleges that a purely mechanistic doctrine is untrue to the evidence. This means that the claim that religion and everything that might be meant by “spirituality” have been demolished by evolution is far from proven. The attack is furthered by evidence from a wide range of sciences, including psychology, neurology, social anthropology, and Sir Alister is particularly concerned to draw our attention to the claims of parapsychology. Obviously a lot of work remains to be done in all these fields, but a strong case can be made for saying that ideological scientism of the old school is not nearly as well grounded scientifically as some people would like to think.

Towards the end of his many sided life Fr Vincent wrote “God knows how much I have striven and prayed to mend the shattered unity of Christendom”, words that may seem strange to those who only knew him in his later days, for he had developed other interests. But a study of his writing shows him to have been among the early Catholic ecumenists and to have kept up his interest throughout his life. His labours in this field span the formative years of the movement which is one of the glories of the Church in this century. Indeed it is plain that he not only laboured but suffered in the cause of Reunion -as it was known, and sometimes dreaded by many of his contemporaries.

In retrospect he traced his interest to lessons learnt at his mother’s knee, where he acquired “his first desire, never since quenched of seeking to love, even more than to convert, his separated brethren”. The uphill path he trod not only shows that ecumenism did not begin with Vatican II but how he dealt with problems that are still with us. While Prior at Woodchester, in the first years of the century, he was in correspondence with Anglicans on both sides of the Atlantic. He was host to his Cotswold neighbour, the Rev Spencer Jones, Rector of Moreton-in-Marsh, who became a leading Anglo-Catholic after the publication of his classic England and the Holy See. He was also writing in the early issues of The Lamp, a paper edited by Fr Paul Wattson, who after his reconciliation was to promote the Unity Octave through it for almost half a century.

If there is anything to be said for my suggestion (New Black-friars June 1978) that Jane Austen was unlikely to have been in sympathy with Fanny Price’s religious attitude, and in fact probably shared Mary Crawford’s cynical view of the Established Church and such overtly Christian institutions as matrimony, it may be wondered why she nevertheless gave Fanny Price and her clerical cousin, Edmund, such central roles in the novel. Obviously, there can be no definitive answer, but the problem becomes less intractable if we give sufficient weight to Jane Austen’s extremely lively sense of humour. There was nothing she enjoyed so much—especially of course in the affectionate intimacy of her correspondence with Cassandra—as laughing at her neighbours and the world, and it was above all this spirit of comedy that informed virtually all her writing prior to Persuasion. If Mansfield Park wears its humour with a difference then no doubt it was the more amusing to tease and confuse her admirers even when these also happened to be a favourite brother.

“Perhaps the definition will limit the Pope’s power”: thus Newman wrote, less than a fortnight after the Vatican Council issued its decrees on papal jurisdiction and infallibility, to one of the many anxious Catholics who turned to him for explanation and comfort (Letters, XXV, 170). A few weeks later, answering the wife of the founder-editor of the Liverpool Daily Post, he pursued the same idea a little further: “As to this particular doctrine (Papal infallibility) I am not at all sure it will increase the Pope’s power— it may restrict it. Hitherto he has done what he would, because its limits were not defined—now he must act by rule” (p. 204). But he goes on to say that he cannot prophesy how it will be. With a century behind us since 1870, during which many Catholics have accepted, and allowed other people to believe, that the pope is infallible and that he has the right to do what he likes with the Church, it is surely evident that, if we return to the decrees and read them in peace, Newman’s hunch is verified that they mark an end, rather than an aggrandizement, of papal power. The attempt to secure fat more (because many Catholics at the time plainly were seeking to commit the Church to a form of permanent papal dictatorship) finished by securing far less than the practice of papal authority had often assumed in the past. Now that we can read the decrees without being intimidated by the ultramontanist interpretation so frequently put on them, almost from the outset, it is possible to appreciate, as Newman did at the time, how drastically the texts limit the pope’s prerogatives. Indeed, as he suggests, the miasma of triumphalist propaganda with which the decrees have been so successfully obscured must itself derive its animus from the frustration, on the part of Manning and his publicists (such as Ward and Herbert Vaughan), at their at least half recognizing that so little had been secured.

In his Foreword to Edward Robinson’s The Original Vision, Sir Alister Hardy quotes a verse from Thomas Hood which expresses what is, I suppose, a fairly common feeling:

At least since the time of Wordsworth it has been possible for many people simply to take it for granted that it is this sense of the loss involved in growing up which provides the key to Christ’s saying, “Unless you turn and become like little children you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:3). Christ’s conditions for entry into the kingdom seem to fall easily into the same pattern as that which we accept readily enough, for instance, in Elizabeth Goudge’s delightful tale, The Valley of Song, in which a variety of respectable ladies and gentlemen shed their years and their cares to find new life in the enchanted Valley. No eyebrows are raised when Peter and Susan are informed that they can never return to Narnia because they are “getting too old” (Prince Caspian, p. 194).

Much recent theological writing has emphasised the changes in culture in different periods of history, and the way in which the expressions of the Christian faith which arose in different periods have been influenced by the surrounding culture. Particular emphasis has sometimes been laid on the changes in culture since the times when the books of the Bible were written and the Creeds and declarations of the ecumenical councils were drawn up. From this, different conclusions have been drawn.

One view would see the ancient formularies as needing to be repeated in different ages, and would stress the ecumenical nature of many of these formularies, particularly those drawn up before the final break between the Eastern and Western churches, though holders of this view would acknowledge with St Hilary that “We are compelled to attempt what is unattainable. ... to speak what we cannot utter. Instead of the bare adoration of faith, we are compelled to entrust the deep things of religion to the perils of human expression” (De Trim. II, 2.4). A second view would value and keep in use the ancient formularies, seeing them as having abiding significance (given a similar proviso) but would wish to lay alongside them other expressions of the faith which aim to express the same basic Christian gospel but in terms more easily understood in our own day. A third view would lay stress on the cultural relativity of all language expressing Christian beliefs and would see the earlier formularies (the Bible, Creeds and decisions of the ecumenical councils) as of historical interest but no longer suitable instruments with which to describe in the 20th century Cod and His relationship with the world and mankind. Writers taking this line emphasise the problems of using the past as a resource for contemporary life.

Five years ago, (February 1973) I wrote an article for this journal entitled ‘On Teaching Religion in School’ in which I argued for a style of teaching religion in Catholic schools which had greater respect for the child’s own understanding of his religious identity. The fact that the majority of children in Catholic schools enter them with a Catholic label tied, as it were, round their necks, does tend to make those professionally concerned with the future of the Catholic faith in this country forget that, while for some children this label may be a pathway to great joy, for others it may be an albatross.

In the same article I pointed to a dilemma which lies at the heart of religious education in schools. This analysis still seems valid. It runs as follows:

Scandalous news has a way of getting around the world at a speed which is truly mystifying. The news of what was described to me as Adrian Hastings’ latest eccentricity was no exception. “Fr. Hastings,” I was told some time in May right here in Ngara, “is this time proclaiming disobedience to his bishop as a virtue and trumpeting the announcement of his forthcoming wedding”.

In late September, I finally got hold of the offending piece (“On Celibacy”, New Blackfriars, March 1978. pp. 104-111). I soon felt less sorry for Fr. Hastings than for his detractors. In truth, I know of many priests who feel the way Fr Hastings says he does, with the difference that being better able to articulate the reasons for his feeling he can express it as a legitimate stand. Before I could quite make out the value of Fr Hastings’ arguments, I already felt sure that the most solid support for his position came from the saying of Jesus: “Go learn the meaning of the words: what I want is mercy, not sacrifice” (Mt. 9:13).

The fact, however, that so many members of the Church who cannot lightly be accused of hypocrisy still maintain that all priests must lead a celibate life prevents me from sharing Fr Hastings’ certainty in upholding the opposite view. Perhaps there are reasons beyond my understanding yet within theirs which make it wrong or at least inopportune to repeal the law of celibacy. Yet, one cannot be blamed for voicing an opinion and mine is that Fr Hastings, as a Catholic priest, is indeed free to marry, as are all Catholic priests who did not choose celibacy for its own sake but only agreed to it as to a conditio sine qua non to fulfil their vocation to the priesthood.

Richard Swinburne’s new book “is concerned solely with the central core of theistic belief, that God exists, that there is a God. It is not concerned primarily with whether this belief is true or with whether \ye can know it to be true, but with the prior question of what it means and whether it is coherent.” (p. 1) The discussion begins with a general analysis (Chapters 4-6) of the way in which talk of God is to be understood, whether it is analogical, propositional and so forth. There then follows (Chapters 7-15) a consideration of what Swinburne takes to be involved in the claim that there is a God. Swinburne concludes that theism may be coherent, but that a certain understanding of divine attributes is necessary to sustain this conclusion. In particular, God’s eternity cannot be equated with timelessness, and both ‘omnipotent’ and ‘omniscient’ need to be understood in more narrow a fashion than is sometimes the case. Swinburne also maintains that the coherence of theism may only be properly affirmed where there is good, inductive evidence for the truth of theism. There is no direct proof of coherence. Consequently, “those theists who claim to believe that there is a God ‘by faith’, in a sense of the latter expression which entails that they do not have good inductive grounds for this belief, will, if I am right, have to face the consequence that they do not have good grounds for believing that the claim which they make is a coherent or logicallly possible one.” (p. 296)

So much for the overall argument of the book. What about the cogency of its details? It seems to me that Swinburne’s whole discussion is spoiled by a fundamental error of approach, a pervasive wrong move. On this I shall comment presently.

One of the most intractable questions involved in the whole programme of research undertaken by the Religious Experience Research Unit is: “What kind of experience counts as religious?” Very wisely, RERU have not, as yet, given themselves any definite answer to this question. But at least some of them realise that an answer will have to be found eventually (This Time-Bound Ladder, 1977, p. 48). Sir Alister Hardy seems to envisage an answer emerging from the actual empirical research itself, but, as I pointed out in my last article, (New Blackfriars, February, 1979), he can be convicted of being more dependent on certain dogmatic presuppositions himself than he seems prepared to admit. I find it difficult to see how any collection of reports of experiences, backed up by any number of observations and investigations, could yield a definition of religion, independently of any kind of doctrinal principle. At some stage I strongly suspect that RERU will find them selves faced with the need to make a serious study of religious and metaphysical doctrines propounded by different individuals and schools of thought. This Time-Bound Ladder is a lightweight, but interesting, beginning. Obviously no one is going to regard a series of after-dinner conversations as a substitute for careful theological and philosophical enquiry; but it may well be the case that this kind of informal airing of issues picked more or less at random was, in fact, the most appropriate mode of encounter, at this stage of the investigation, between RERU and the theorists. The results, at any rate, make rewarding reading. But they make awkward reviewing material.

‘This book is a critical introduction to political theology, not an enthusiastic initiation into it’ (p 37). Such was the intention of Alfredo Fierro in making his own sizeable contribution to the subject. Drawing together a great variety of sources he tries to sketch the development of ‘political theology’, and suggests some directions for the future. This not without a sense of his own relative position: from the outset he states that ‘this book was written in Madrid, Spain, and finished in the summer of 1974 (xii). (The Militant Gospel, SCM Press 1977 xv + pp. 453 £4.50).

The book divides into three parts, Situation, Programme and Theory, eight chapters in all. In the first part, changes in the climate of thinking are described which have brought political theology into being; the second goes through the formulation of the new theology; while the third reflects on the significance of it and challenges the presuppositions of several authors.

First, though, some general comments about method. The term ‘political theology’ is used rather too frequently—I’ve already used it twice—and moreover as if one was always clear what is meant by it. Then, related to this, is Fierro’s tendency to put together several ideas about a concept without contrasting them very accurately or stating a clear view of his own. Often this makes no difference, and one appreciates the breadth of reference; but there are times when some distinctions have to be made (notably the discussion of ideology, pp 243-7), and a failure to do so is unhelpful.

Among the many questions raised by the Gospel stories of Jesus’ miracles, half a dozen are perhaps particularly pressing. How do the miracles differ from magic (if they do; Morton Smith’s recent book Jesus the Magician argues that they do not)? What criteria is one to invoke to distinguish authentic from inauthentic miracles in the Gospels? What have Form and Redaction Criticism to say about the miracle narratives? Do the Gospels see the miracles of Jesus in a different light from the oral tradition and from the historical Jesus? Are the ways that Jesus, the oral tradition and the evangelists saw the miracles valid and/or mandatory for Christians today? I hope to say something by way of answer to each of these questions, but my method will not be to examine the questions in the abstract, but to look at three specific miracle stories and to attempt to cope with the problems that each throws up.

First, though, one general point. Namely, that the New Testament evidence makes it very difficult to subscribe to the view that Jesus did not work any miracles at all. In the Gospel of Mark, 209 out of 666 verses (the figures come from Richardson) deal directly or indirectly with miracles. Press back into the Gospel sources, if you will, and look in turn at Q, Mark, special Matthew, special Luke, and John and in each (probably independent) source Jesus is seen as a miracle worker.