Although Étienne Gilson did not change his position on Christian philosophy as defined in his 1931 Gifford Lectures, interesting modifications occur in his later formulations. Whereas Gilson's earlier formulations emphasized philosophy searching within the faith for what can become rational, his later formulations during the 1960s placed more emphasis on its Christian aspect, i.e., faith guiding reason. In the 1960s, Gilson emphasized faith and the Church as the guardians of Christian philosophy, expressed a relative indifference to the validity of rational proofs for the existence of God, and empathized with those accepting questionable philosophical approaches to understand the faith. Post-modernism with its rejection of a “pure” or “scientific” methodology in philosophy serves as an appropriate context in which to situate Gilson's later formulation of Christian philosophy.

In a previous article, (New Black friars Jan 1981) I argued that the eschatological interpretation of biblical theology is, ultimately, the only possible site for the creation of a feminist discourse. To put it in more assimilable terms: the contradiction of being a woman and a feminist is only finally resolvable in the context of Christian eschatology. This is rather a large claim, so I shall try to substantiate it.

Most theology hitherto has been based on an essentially androcentric perspective as a result of the fact that it is founded on an essentially androcentric anthropology. In recent years, attempts have been made by some anthropologists to bring an alternative perspective to bear on the material of their discipline: thus, Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, the editors of a recently published collection of essays by a number of female anthropologists state in their introduction that the aim of the book is to ‘demonstrate the importance of women’s lives for our understanding of the human record’. I think it is important to consider what implications their conclusions, and those of other feminist scholars, have for non-androcentric theology, for a feminist hermeneutics.

At first sight, their conclusions wouldn’t seem to be very comforting to feminists. ‘The current anthropological view draws on the observation that most and probably all contemporary societies, whatever their kinship organisation or mode of subsistence, are characterised by some degree of male dominance’. And further on they say ‘. . . although the degree and expression of female subordination vary greatly, sexual asymmetry is presently a universal fact of life’.

Fundamentalism clearly is some kind of literalism, especially in biblical interpretation, a literalism sustained (for what are taken to be religious reasons) in the face of liberal amd critical reconstructions and reinterpretations of the text. In fact, of course, the critical reconstructions are often undertaken for equally religious motives. Fundamentalism expresses and exploits the worries of believers; the residually Christian popular audience takes the passion-play literalism of Zefirelli’s television film with the same uncommitted tolerance as the modernist musicals “Godspell” and “Jesus Christ Superstar”. Fundamentalism is widely influential among some theologians too. From the time of the Modernist crisis to the run-up to Vatican II, the Biblical Commission and the Holy Office imposed something very like fundamentalism on Catholic biblical studies. Professor Barr’s book does not study such phenomena in detail, he is concerned with a Protestant fundamentalism of a more systematic kind, self-designated as conservative evangelicalism. But there is enough of a family likeness between the fundamentalisms for Barr’s critique to be serviceable in coming to terms with the recent past of Catholic biblical work, dead but not yet entirely prone.

There are three marks of the fundamentalism Barr has between his sights: the inerrancy of Scripture as an article of faith and necessary test of the orthodoxy of otherwise acceptable Protestantisms; sharp hostility to modern theology and biblical criticism; and exclusion of those who fail the inerrancy test from the ranks of true Christians, (p 1) Rightly, one begins to suspect that Barr has little sympathy for his subject, regarding it as a mistake in theology and a resistance to known critical truths. Barr has no hope of persuading fundamentalists to change their minds, though he does hope to help students make theirs up in more intelligent and deliberate fashion.

Jean-Luc Marion is one of the first theologians to take seriously the force of Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics as a whole, which means he takes seriously Heidegger’s claims about the “overcoming” (Überwindung) of metaphysics. In other words, when in the work of Martin Heidegger the whole of metaphysics is thrown into question, any and all of its determinations become “questionable”, that is, worthy of being questioned. Marion concedes the impact this may have for theology.

This study concerns itself with how Jean Luc-Marion attempts in the work God Without Being to speak of God after Martin Heidegger’s claims for the overcoming of metaphysics. This arises as a question about the extent to which Jean-Luc Marion has been attentive to what Heidegger says. Marion appeals to an accepted philosophical reading of Heidegger in order to inaugurate a fresh theological reading of Heidegger. Underlying this study is the view that Marion is insufficiently attentive to the complexity of Heidegger’s thinking.

In order to show how this is so in the limited space available here, I propose to undertake a re-reading of two of the key texts upon which Marion rests for his case against Heidegger in God Without Being, with, I hope, surprising results for Marion’s project. Finally, I wish to conclude with some more general remarks about the Icon, which may at least point us in the direction of a more constructive reading of Heidegger’s work.

In these days of widespread anxieties with little trust, owing to small belief, anything, any influence which may bring assurance, in whatever degree, should be welcomed. It is fortitude based on confidence that we need, as we face the issues of life seeking how they may emerge, whether to our welfare or our undoing, before all things asking—do we see guidance or is it chaos that confronts us?

It is to the great towns and cities, particularly the industrial and manufacturing, that we would draw attention here, and to London imprimis, the World City; our quest —how these influence their indwellers especially their outlook visual and mental; for the business of the thronging multitudes is wont to obscure the sight by interposing a pall of smoke and dust betwixt them and the skies. Nor is this all of obscurity that results from the activities of men, for strange to say their very efforts to illumine the darkness of their thoroughfares by night, do but hide the more effectively the lights of heaven: —in the glare of the street lamp even thy glories, Orion, are extinguished; and thus it comes about that the more brilliant the near light, the more are our eyes blinded for far-vision, to our incalculable loss.

Guido di Pietro, known to posterity as Fra Angelico, was born of peasant stock in Mugello, probably around 1400. He and his brother trained as illuminators and miniaturists and, when Angelico was about 21, they joined the Observant Dominican community of San Domenico in Fiesole above Florence. Professed as Brother John, Angelico’s ‘pastoral work’ while studying for the priesthood was to paint for San Domenico, Sta Maria Novella, and elsewhere. These early commissions made him famous and funded his workshop. If he was still learning priestcraft he was also still learning to paint: for his skills as an illuminator were little preparation for altarpiece design, a duty laid on his shoulders along with his Dominican scapular. So he became acquainted with the works of his contemporaries such as Masaccio, Masolino, Gentile and Sassetta.

His most important contact, however, was Cosimo De Medici, a patron not only of the arts but of the religious orders, especially the more radical mendicants. On return to power in 1434, he set about installing the Observant Dominicans in Florence, renovating an abandoned monastery for them which was to represent “the best in Christian humanism”.

Early in December 1986, I was siting in Charlottesville, Virginia, minding my own business (which is to say that I was on sabbatical leave) when a letter arrived from John Coventry, asking me to address this year’s conference of the Association on the topic of ‘ministry of the word’.

I agreed, and almost at once began to regret having done so. The topic seemed so vast, so comprehensive, so obviously central to every aspect of Christian speech and action, that I did not know where to begin. So I turned to the dictionaries, and got a bit of a shock. The Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique has only one entry under ‘ministry’, and that is ‘ministre des sacrements’. Ah well, that was back in 1929, in the dark ages before Vatican II. Things would be better in the bright new postconciliar world, a world which had witnessed the proclamation of a dogmatic constitution entitled ‘Dei Verbum’. Well, perhaps, but not much better. Sacramentum Mundi (1969) has no entries under ‘ministry’, and the New Catholic Encyclopaedia, published in 1967, has one, which reads ‘ministry, Protestant’.

Perhaps we should not make too much of this. It is, after all, perfectly possible that, gathered under other heads and quite compatible descriptions, our Catholic self-understanding has still been permeated by a sense of all our discipleship, all our prayer and compassion, all our disciplined distinctiveness, being set at the service of the word, the diaconia tou logou. Possible, but I somehow doubt it, because it was not simply the ministry of the word which had largely ceased to figure in our Catholic vocabulary.