Preachers often find it difficult to make themselves heard. Humbert of Romans emphasised the need for a measured delivery in a strong voice, but getting a hearing has always been more than a matter of mere audibility. The first Dominican chapels were small, built on the cheap in the expectation that the friars would find a welcome and a pulpit in others’ churches. They had not reckoned on the hostility of parochial clergy. It was soon discovered that they would have to build large churches of their own. From its earliest years the Order of Preachers had to adopt new ways of communicating the Gospel, or go unheard. A certain ingenuity and willingness to copy a good idea is traditional for us, where we do not decline. In Florence not only the church but also the piazza outside Santa Maria Novella would have to be enlarged after 1245 to accommodate the crowds who attended the open air sermons. And now the Dominican Family has its presence on the Internet.

All Christians have put themselves under obedience to God. They acknowledge God’s authority—his right to the obedience of every sentient being. They also acknowledge God’s power, since disobedience to God can only exist so long as God permits it.

God’s authority is promulgated to the human race in specific descriptions of certain rewards and punishments that are attached to specified kinds of behaviour. These laws are said to be made known by authoritative messengers, the prophets. God is held to be three persons in the one Godhead. The second person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God, is said to have been incarnate, to have been crucified under Pontius Pilate, to have been raised from the dead and to have ascended to heaven. It is promised that he will come to earth again at the general resurrection of all the dead, and that those who merit eternal exclusion from the presence of God will be excluded and those who are judged worthy to enjoy God’s presence will live in bliss for ever. God the Holy Spirit has been sent, and will continue to be sent, to those who submit to the Father and the Son. Among other gifts, this Spirit has given and will give wisdom to discern what is true, good and beautiful.

It would appear that there are few things in human life that have the power to override all other concerns. There are few things, that is, that seem to command our unconditional attention. Amongst such things we might include ‘matters of life and death’. Perhaps the most admirable aspects of the human spirit are often found in the setting of life and death situations. Self-sacrifice, life-threatening risks on behalf of others’ lives, self-denying and courage etc. What is it that motivates people to behave in these ways? A common response comes to mind in their defence: ‘it was a matter of life and death’. We all understand the priority of that appeal. At the scene of an accident, an observer runs to an occupied telephone kiosk - ‘please let me use the phone, it’s a matter of life and death...’ A businessman arrives an hour late for a meeting, ‘Excuse me for being late, I was caught up in an accident, I had to stop - it was a matter of life and death...’ Despite the potential rudeness of interrupting another’s telephone call, or the tardiness of the businessman’s entry, we are willing to excuse such behaviour on the grounds that ‘it was a matter of life and death’. Like a verbal skeleton key, it is a plea that demands (and usually obtains) the unconditional unlocking of doors or removal of obstacles.

The purpose of this brief preamble concerning the effect life and death situations’ seem to have upon our attitudes and actions, or more particularly, our perceptions of appropriate attitudes and action, is to focus our attention upon an assumption that will be forming part of this paper - that religion itself is a ‘matter of life and death’.

John Macquarrie in his Jesus Christ in Modem Thought well formulates a criticism which is often raised about Schillebeeckx’s discussion of the resurrection of Christ. Macquarrie suggests that Schillebeeckx is arguing that the resurrection is better thought of as a powerful, but subjective, experience in the minds of the disciples. Macquarrie’s criticism echoes the point made by another of Schillebeeckx’s Anglican critics, David Brown, who is uncompromising in his characterisation of Schillebeeckx as a ‘deist’. Brown is certainly correct in identifying Schillebeeckx’s attempt at a more subtle account of God’s relationship to creation than a classic interventionist account might hazard, but I think the attribution of a deist position is wide of the mark. This is not the place to develop the general point other than to suggest that Professor Brown over-simplifies the issue in arguing that Christian discourse about God is inevitably either deist or theist in so far as it asserts the propriety of an interventionist or a non-interventionist account of God’s dealings with creation.

It is important to address the specific point which these critics raise in suggesting that Schillebeeckx is unable to maintain the objectivity of the resurrection. This can be better explored by considering the extended discussion in Peter Carnley’s important study of the resurrection, The Structure of Resurrection Belief (Oxford, 1987). Carnley goes rather further than either Macquarrie or Brown in acknowledging that, for Schillebeeckx, ‘the Easter faith certainly involves a post-mortem experience of encounter with the risen Christ’ (p 200). In spite of this Carnley is ultimately sceptical of Schillebeeckx’s account of the risen Jesus as fulfilling claims to objectivity.