CONCLUSION: ASSAULTS AND ACCOMMODATIONS

Summary

‘It is only in so far as he succeeds, through hermeneutics, in transmuting his materials into spiritual messages that the historian of religion will fulfil his role in contemporary culture.’

Mircea Eliade The Quest 1969 p. 36.

‘The question concerning the essence of truth touches a profound crisis not only of theology but also of the Christian churches and Christian faith generally in the present age. Since the Enlightenment, the question of the truth of their faith has been put to Christians with constantly increasing poignancy … The question … is not about … a particular truth of one kind or another but with truth itself … with whether Christianity can still disclose to us today the unity of the reality in which we live, as it once did in the ancient world.’

Wolfhart Pannenberg What is Truth (1962) in Basic Questions in Theology 1971 edn vol. ii p. 1.

‘And after all what is a lie? 'Tis but

The truth in masquerade, and I defy

Historians, heroes, lawyers, priests to put

A fact without some leaven of a lie.

The very shadow of true truth would shut

Up annals, revelations, poesy,

And prophecy, except it should be dated

Some years before the incidents related.’

Byron, Don Juan, Canto XI 1823.

The discussion in which we are engaged began with the destruction of the confessional state and the ancien régime and has surveyed the most coherent attempts to provide arguments in favour of a successor-régime. It has been concerned with arguments rather than with actions – with the fears and hopes entertained by the thinkers with whom it has dealt, not with the successes and failures which have followed.