During these last decades the problem of Christian disunity has imposed itself on the conscience of Christians as an immediate challenge and there have been many attempts to find a solution. All Christians, whatever their ecclesiastical allegiance, affirm belief in ‘one, holy, cathohc and apostolic Church', and although no mark of the Church could exist independently of the others, it is natural to seek the answer to the problem raised by Christian disunity first in terms of the note of uniqueness.

We could divide Christians into two groups: those who believe that the note of one-ness is already fully exemplified in their own Church, as is the case with Catholics and with Orthodox Christians; and those who represent various Protestafant traditions and who, while affirming belief in ‘one Church', also believe that the unity of the Church has to be re-asserted and made manifest because the visible unity has been destroyed by divisions among Christians which have come about since the first centuries A.D.

Some have claimed St John Chrysostom as the greatest Christian preacher of all time. Whether this is true or not is hard to say; and in any case it is doubtful if the discussion of such a claim would be of much value. What is certainly true however is that he had all the qualities needed to make a great preacher. He was a man of strong convictions, with the power to express them in vivid, forceful language; concrete and practical in his illustrations; able to evoke the whole range of human feelings, but always with complete sincerity. In himself he was affectionate, generous and open; lacking the tact that might have enabled him to steer more safely through his enemies’ intrigue, but quite without fear; ready with sympathy for all he met, so that he made and held many friends, and when preaching, could catch and hold the attention of his hearers. He did not have the speculative mind which enabled Athanasius, Basil and Cyril of Alexandria to contribute so much to theological development.

The term ‘desert’ (midbar) in the Bible will often mislead people in our western countries, for what is meant by the term is, as often as not, something like uncultivated pasture-land or steppe-land. The root debar in cognate languages means ‘to drive to pasture', and the midbar is the zone between cultivable land and absolute desert, a zone to which cattle could be and still are driven to gather what food they can. Such a ‘desert’ does in fact respond to beneficent rain, and sometimes appears, for a short time at least, quite green. The psalmist knew how the desert could be green, and sang of how ‘the stream of plenty flows; flows through the desert pastures, till all the hillsides are clad’ (Ps. lxv, 13). And Job tells of the almighty power of God who has ‘carved a channel for the tempestuous rain, a vent jor the echoing thunderstorm, that they should fall on some lonely desert where foot of man never trod, water those trackless Wastes, and make the green grass spring …’ (Job xxxviii, 26).

DOES the religious life have anything to say about how men should live in society? People tend to think that anyone entering chooses a life that is, in human terms, a-social. Even religious orders which exist to be of direct use to society only perform their function from outside society, without getting intimately involved with the lives of the people they serve. And today, more than ever, religious are being reproached with this, even by Catholics. Religious life is too ‘other', and religious poverty, in particular, bears slight resemblance to the real poverty in which so many people spend their lives. In fact the religious orders have abandoned the poor and grown indifferent to human misery; it has even been suggested that they aggravate it by their insistent appeals for the means to maintain themselves in their vast establishments. As it stands religious life is not only a-social but quite possibly anti-social as well.

MAX THURIAN is a member of a Protestant religious community, and his book Marriage and Celibacy is his second contribution to the series which the S.C.M. Press is publishing under the general title of Studies in Ministry and Worship. His first book in the series was entitled, Confession. The greater part of the book now under review is concerned with celibacy, and it is clear that the author is by no means the kind of Protestant who assumes that because something is found in the Catholic Church it is therefore bound to be wrong or even wicked. On the contrary, we find that most of what he says about marriage and celibacy agree with Catholic doctrine. The apparently small divergence from Catholic doctrine is, however, most significant; it is like a wedge which with the greatest ease opens up a wide chasm between his whole manner of thought and that of a Catholic theologian.