Perhaps I’d better make two preliminary remarks. One is that, inevitably, I am speaking out of tradition which is quite clearly marked in a confessional sense, that is to say quite definitely in the Roman Catholic tradition, and so some of the problems which vex me may be peculiarly Roman Catholic problems. I mention that because certainly I shall not only be looking at thought that has been located in our Roman Catholic continuum, yet at the same time there is no doubt that for various reasons (in the way I have been philosophically brought up, and so on) this particular tradition will be exerting pressures, even of an unconscious kind, on me.

The second preliminary remark is of a rather different kind. I understand that I am supposed to open this discussion — that is to say to talk for twenty minutes or half an hour, but not more than that, so I think I can allow myself a certain amount of freedom. I would like to raise questions, rather than get answers.

So, two preliminary remarks. One to protect myself against seeming over-confessionally characterised, on the other hand I want to protect myself against being thought too questioning altogether.

The title has been quite definitely chosen as “Thinking about Jesus Christ”. I mean that title fairly strictly, because I wouldn’t like the title to be “Jesus Christ”. Obviously, thinking about Jesus Christ can’t ignore the object of the thinking! But I would like to stand back a bit from actually thinking about Jesus Christ, and think about thinking about Jesus Christ, because at the moment it seems to be a most difficult area.

During the 1979 General Election campaign, industrial relations featured as a prominent issue. Indeed, it might correctly be claimed that the general public in confidently voting in Margaret Thatcher, were voting against the alleged misuse of trade union power. Rising prices, falling standards of living and increasing violence have been popularly attributed to “big unions” striking against each other, against the housewife and against the general public. In a speech only days before the last government fell, Mrs Thatcher outlined the Conservative package to restore stability to Britain’s economic and social order: the statutory inhibiting of trade union activity, the enforcement of law and order, the creation of wealth and the reward of individual success. Such opinion was supported in the press and on television by editorial comment, by criticism of union power from the judiciary, and a former chief of police comparing union power with the Nazi control of Germany in the 1930s. The general election result and subsequent cabinet appointments indicate an important change in British politics. The electorate have voted for a radical change and they have voted for the politics and economics of the right. Characteristically, a society in crisis has opted for regression, the reassertion of old hierarchies, values and judgements, with the hope, in particular, of turning back the menace of union power, which, it is claimed, is a threat to the social order. Such perspectives have become the commonplace explanation of the world and of industrial relations in particular, and they have been clothed in the habit of St Francis of Assisi, setting them in the context of the Christian struggle for peace.

In the preface to the thirteenth volume of his Schriften zur Theologie, which appeared in 1978, Karl Rahner speaks of a fourteenth volume as nearing readiness for the press and to be published in late 1979 (to the best of my knowledge it has not yet appeared), and, although he does not say so in so many words, his tone suggests that the fourteenth will be the last of the series which began in 1954. Since the appearance in 1961 of Cornelius Ernst’s translation of the first volume, and the inauguration of Rahner’s Theological Investigations (with an allusion to Wittgenstein in the title), the English version has kept pace very creditably, despite inexorably rising costs and perceptible decline in concern with systematic theology, not to mention the difficulty of finding competent translators. The publication of Theological Investigations XVI, admirably translated by David Morland of Ampleforth, giving us the first half of Schriften XII (1975), the volume which Rahner dedicated to his mother on her hundredth birthday, offers an opportunity to review the series so far, and perhaps to underline the author’s most characteristic perspectives and concerns, or at any rate to outline pathways in this forbiddingly massive corpus of some 7000 pages of text.

It should be noted at the outset that the first six volumes of the English translation correspond exactly to the first six volumes of the original. As Rahner’s productivity was released in the wake of the Vatican Council his collected essays became increasingly substantial. The densely printed German volumes proved too unwieldy for us, with the result that the next four volumes to appear were split in two and thus yielded eight volumes in the English edition. The eleventh volume of the Schriften is the only exception to the rule that the series is devoted to miscellanies of articles, lecture texts and so on, by being confined entirely to Rahner’s work on the history of the sacrament of penance.

Pope Paul VI elected in the summer of 1963, after the first session of the Vatican Council, presided over a Church that was to continue and extend the new policies of detente and co-operation with the Communist world that were begun under the previous pontificate. Diplomatic agreements were reached with many Communist countries, notably Hungary in 1964 and Yugoslavia a year later. Meetings between the two sides were frequent: when the Pope visited the United Nations in 1965 (and incidentally seemed to favour the admission of China to the Assembly) he had a long talk with Gromyko afterwards. Paul met the President of the Soviet Union, Podgomy, in 1967 and 1968, and both the Rumanian Prime Minister and Tito in 1968 and later in the early 70’s. In 1971 Casaroli became the first Vatican representative to visit Moscow since the Revolution, and the Vatican has had frequent contact with Polish government officials throughout the period. The Soviet authorities also allowed an increase in the contact between the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church which had previously been very limited.

The new Pope’s first encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam issued in November 1964 tentatively suggested that Paul was thinking on more reserved but similar lines to his predecessor. One section was completely devoted to dialogue with the modem world. “Speaking generally of the dialogue which the Church of today must take up with a great renewal of fervour, we would say that it must be readily conducted with all men of good will ...” (p. 93 CTS translation). Paul goes on to point out that although dialogue is difficult with communism “we have today no preconceived intentions of cutting ourselves off from the adherents of these systems and regimes” (p. 102). He even suggests that Communism could be a form of secularized Christianity and he holds out the hope that one day Communists may be led “back to the Christian sources” (p. 104), which lie behind many of their actions. Finally Paul, like John wanted a dialogue in order that the Vatican could fulfil its mission for peace in the world: “a disinterested, objective and sincere dialogue is a circumstance in favour of a free and honourable peace”(p. 106).