“No one has ever seen God; but the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, has interpreted him to us” (Jn 1:18). The early Christian theologians who develop the view that man cannot know God truly unless God reveals himself to him are conscious that they are not only following the teaching of scripture, but also echoing and confirming a belief which has deep roots in Greek tradition. Clement of Alexandria can quote several texts from the Greek poets expressing the difficulty or impossibility of any man on earth penetrating very far into the mind of God. An Orphic hymn is cited, which says that God is “utterable only by the immortals”; Pindar is shown echoing the sentiments of Isaiah 40:13: “Why hope for wisdom? One man is not much better than another. It is hard for a mortal mind to search out the counsels of the gods”. Hesiod too says, “There is no seer among men on earth who could know the mind of Zeus”. Solon similarly says, “The mind of the immortals is quite unclear to men”. Even more radically, Xenophanes is quoted by Sextus Empiricus as saying: “As far as anything clear goes, no man has seen anything nor will any man see anything concerning the gods and all the other things I am talking about; even if he should hit the mark with outstanding accuracy and say something quite perfect, he would not know it himself. Everything is subject to opinion”. In Sextus’ view, Xenophanes is one of the philosophers who have rejected outright the idea that there is some “criterion of truth” available to us; he interprets him as meaning: “at least in matters which are not apparent, no man knows what is true and knowable; even if he does happen to hit on it, he still does not know that he has hit on it, he is left simply With a suspicion and an opinion”. Xenophanes ridicules people for generating gods in their own image, and, in anticipation of Rupert Brooke’s delightful poem about fishes’ concept of heaven, says that if cows could draw, they would make their gods look like cows. For himself, he only claims to be saying what seems probable.

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.

Vatican Council II and the post-colonial period in Africa dovetailed chronologically very neatly and the resultant euphoria witnessed the growth of funding agencies (hereafter F.A.) established by various national hierarchies dedicated to playing a role in alleviating poverty and ignorance in the less developed countries. The F.A.’s range from the small but effective Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund and the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development of the hierarchies of England and Wales, to the large and wealthy “Misereor” of the German Bishops and the even wealthier Catholic Relief Services of the United States. Apart from these there are other funds of a more private, voluntary and ecumenical nature. It is mainly through missionaries that the first group channel their funds, but the latter group also to a large extent, make use of missionaries. As a result, the traditional image of the poor missionary bringing the Gospel and ministering to’ the world’s poorest is rapidly being challenged. In this article we would like to examine the effects that this is having on missionary activity, and some of the implications.

The operating procedure of the F.A.s is relatively simple, through advertising and appeals they collect funds from those Christians in the more developed countries interested in helping alleviate misery and encourage development in the Third World. This is mainly done through advertising and making appeals through the parish, school or other Christian groups in the hope that they will also be able to solicit not just a one-off donation, but a continuous commitment from interested parties. It should be stressed that the aim is not limited simply to collecting money but also to educate the Christian public of their responsibility to help the Third World more than just financially, and that their donations do not absolve them from cutting down on waste and attacking rampant consumerism in their own lives. Advertising is also used to assure the donors that their contributions are being correctly and wisely used.

While my cook is preparing chicken soup, to be followed by the actual chicken and some yam cakes, I ought to fill in the interval of anticipation by explaining my situation and my problem. I might perhaps equally well fill it in by drinking some sherry, but it might be better to keep that luxury for the guests who may come at the week-end.

My situation is this; I am a Catholic priest, with some training in anthropology, in charge of a mission in a rural area of the Rivers State of Nigeria. For the article I want to write, my library is extremely limited. I beg my readers not therefore to grumble at inadequate, nay minimal, footnoting, and the absence of exact quotations.

My problem is this; how correct is the claim that contemporary Christianity differs from all other manifestations of religion in being unconcerned with nature? It may be seen, in an approach which goes back, I think to German Idealism, as a historical religion, the moment of the Incarnation marking the beginning of the end for the nature religions; or it may be seen as a religion essentially concerned with relations between persons, having, with the progress of science, sloughed off the cosmological ideas on such absorbing questions as the exact date of the Creation, the topography of Hell, and the necessary function of mosquitoes in the designs of a benevolent Providence, which were found so fascinating in earlier centuries.