With the stage set for a Catholic-Orthodox dialogue one is inclined to welcome any book which might have a bearing on this matter, since the lack of material available in Western languages is a serious difficulty in preparing for such a dialogue. Fr Schmemann, Dean of the Russian Orthodox Seminary in New York, has a long record of ecumenical activity and any book by him is bound to raise hopes among the friends of the Orthodox in the west. It is therefore all the more disappointing that The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy makes such an equivocal contribution to this dialogue.

In fairness to the author it must be said that the book, which originally appeared in Russian, was intended for the non-specialist Russian Orthodox of the diaspora. But, as has been shown by the Second Vatican Council, the internal affairs of any Christian communion have ecumenical relevance, and thus what the Orthodox say to each other in these days is also of concern to those outside their communion.

The book is a history of the Orthodox Church, starting with the Book of Acts and ending with the Russian Church before the Communist Revolution. This, too, is disappointing, since the last fifty years have raised issues which vitally affect Orthodoxy today, particularly the question of jurisdiction, which will continue to complicate inter-Orthodox relations for many years to come. As an exposition of Orthodoxy Fr Schmemann’s book is unconvincing. His point of view, expressed in the concluding paragraph, that ‘the true Orthodox way of thought has always been historical’ is a very personal one and suggests Western influence which also shows itself in other ways throughout the book.

‘… the trend of this thought in political action is well shown by recent events in Rhodesia. To sum up the story briefly, first, deliberate war was forced on the Matabele in 1893 by Dr Starr Jameson, who promised to each of the six hundred filibusters who rode against the natives, 6,000 acres of native land conditionally redeemable at £9,000. Secondly, in 1896, the Mashona, oppressed and subject to Forced Labour, heard of the collapse of the Jameson raid and rose against their oppressors.

The other day the members of a Youth Club asked if something could be done to prevent people who came to address them from talking about sex. They said, with considerable feeling, that nearly every speaker seemed to think that youth was interested in very little else; which is, of course, not true. It is not teenagers who are so much concerned with sex as their elders, who continue to produce and read a stream of books and articles. Reaction against secrecy has led to an over-anxious campaign to assert the importance of sex, which in turn is in danger of producing the reaction that sex does not matter much anyway. A good many people have become bored by sexual experience itself, and the last thing they want is to be further bored by reading about it.

A balance has to be struck somehow, and the four books listed below illustrate awareness of this in very different quarters. On the whole they illustrate the growing recognition that the fundamental question to be tackled has to do with the nature of human beings; what is being human ? For the Christian this is a theological question, answered in terms of our creation by God in his own image and likeness. Our life, even on the simplest level and at any time or place, must be somehow like God’s own life if it is to be truly human.

We are told something of what God’s life is in the doctrine of the Trinity.

The philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), Professor at the Collège de France as from 1952, radically influenced the course of phenomenology, turning it from Germany towards France. With Merleau-Ponty philosophy is sincere and searchingly intelligent, it begins to try as never before, it really exerts its strength towards a genuine human breakthrough at all levels of our experience. With Merleau-Ponty we find a respite from those traditions of mechanism and intellectualism which, starting from Descartes and Kant, have never ceased to plague the course of the philosophy of perception. With Merleau-Ponty, philosophy speaks simply, simply because things are so very difficult.

What interests Merleau-Ponty most perhaps is the classical philosophical problem of the Other, and our possible means of knowing him and communicating with him. In Merleau-Ponty we have a guide who is awake to every level of consciousness in the Other. He sees that communication with the Other is a matter of understanding that area where thoughts and actions are conceived, of moving, that is to say, behind the figure of the Other as he expresses himself in acts and words, in a search for meaning. We need to destroy in psychology and in philosophy the mindless collecting of facts and the refusal of synthesis together with all artificial dichotomising. We need to seek for the reality of the Other in a private or ‘inter-subjective’ space.

The attempt of the Church’s Council to renew its life and to enter into a dialogue with the non-Catholic world has led in fact to the attempt to find ways of communicating with, or of understanding, at different levels, elements within itself and the world in which it finds itself. If the first discovery of the Council was the need for the bishops to communicate with each other, to form a collective mind, and to learn to regulate the processes of civilised discussion, the second was that ancient defensive positions should not prejudice the necessity for intelligibility in a world increasingly literate. The first led to a restatement of the primitive teaching about the bishop’s role, both as representative of the local church, and as a member of that group, or college, that succeeds to the apostles, and shares with the successor of Peter in the direction of the Catholic Church. The implications of this, both in the traditional ecclesiastical sphere, and in relation to the sharing of the presbyterium, or priestly group, in the affairs of the local church, and in the necessarily growing part the holy people of God will take in areas, till recently confined to clerics, is in principle outlined in the Decree on the Church, though the carrying out of the implications of the decree may take long enough.

In 1825, while still at Oriel, Newman brought out his Life of Apollonius of Tyana which he had first written as an article in the now forgotten Encyclopaedia Metropolitana. In it he examined the claims made on behalf of a remarkable first-century contemporary of Jesus whose birth was accompanied by portents of various kinds, who quickly achieved great fame as an ascetic and philosopher, to whom many miracles and exorcisms were attributed and who, after a holy death at an advanced age, ascended, so it was claimed, bodily into heaven and was afterwards seen by certain persons who had entertained doubts about the future life. The first full account of this extraordinary person was written by a certain Philostratos, one of the smart literary set which foregathered in the salon of the Empress Julia Domna whose husband, one recalls, had trouble with the Scots and died at York. This accomplished woman had got hold somehow of the Memoirs of a disciple of Apollonius called Damis. She handed them over to Philostratos inviting him to write up a biography, making use as occasion demanded of any other sources available. This he did and his work is still extant. Newman’s study, as also his Essay on Miracles which appeared in the same year, was given over to a large extent to refuting the claims made on behalf of Apollonius. This was a perfectly legitimate undertaking but it raises the question: here you have two contemporary figures of whose existence we can have no reasonable doubt and about whom certain writings have come down to us (Justin also calls the Gospels Memoirs).

Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, Third Marquis of Salisbury and three times Prime Minister of Great Britain, was a man of many principles. One of these was that the more public houses you had in a place the fewer people were likely to get drunk; another was that in the town of Bishops Hatfield, over which he ruled with a benevolent and unquestioned authority, the Roman Catholics must be kept on the other side of the railway. The ‘other side’ is all that most people now see of Hatfield, as they rush northwards along the double lanes of the A. i; but in the days when I lived there the Great North Road passed through the middle of the town, and I can remember at least three public houses – one of them the Eight Bells where Bill Sykes ordered his pint after the murder of Nancy – which the eye of an alert traveller might have caught within the space of sixty seconds. To catch sight of the Roman Catholics you would have had to go a mile or two up the St Albans Road where the Oblates of St Charles maintained their unobtrusive Oratory. The old part of the town was dominated by the spire of St Ethelreda’s church, with the Old Palace of the Bishops of Ely, and the great house and park beyond, and the statue of the third Marquis meeting you as you came out of the station. If ‘Establishment’ means anything, it meant everything at Bishops Hatfield.