The promulgation and reception of the late Dr Immanuel Velikovsky’s theories constitute one of the most fascinating episodes in the history of ideas. He made revolutionary proposals about the recent history of the solar system, celestial mechanics, and palaeontology, from 1950 onwards; the immoral and irrational response by leading members of the scientific establishment (whom David Stove described in this connection as a ‘despotic and irresponsible mafia’) has been well documented. But Velikovsky himself set most store by his historical reconstruction. Three volumes have appeared so far, Ages in Chaos, Ramses II and his Time, and Peoples of the Sea. Further material, on the Assyrian Empire and the so-called ‘Dark Age’ of Greece, is still to be published.

I would like in what follows to say something about Velikovsky’s historical reconstruction, and why, in my opinion, for all the firmly-established assumptions which it overturns, it ought to be taken seriously.

It was the difficulties about dating the Exodus, which are well-known to Old Testament scholars, which provided Velikovsky with his initial hint. It has been generally agreed that this event occurred at some time during the ‘New Kingdom’ of Egypt, dated from 1573 B.C.; the difficulty is in establishing precisely when. Not only is there no reference to the Exodus in any known Egyptian document, but the very state of Egypt, under strong Pharaohs, and with Palestine under its control, seems to render the course of events described by the Bible impossible. The result of all this is that a range of dates from the sixteenth century right down to the twelfth has been suggested for the Exodus by modern scholars.

It might seem that to be a Christian and at the same time a feminist involves few conflicts for the individual. In John 10:10 Christ said: “I came that they may have life and have it more abundantly”. Surely this is what feminism is about too — enabling women to live their lives “more abundantly”, by utilising all the potential which lies within them. One of the major achievements of the women’s movement has been to give women a growing consciousness of how great that potential is and the realisation that the peculiar gifts of women are not necessarily worthless because a male-orientated world sees little value in them. Women have discovered in themselves a capacity for assessing their own value and utilising their various potentialities as fully as possible. Christians, too, male and female, have a duty to be fully human and to realise their own worth. Offering ourselves unreservedly to God involves of necessity a developing awareness of what it is we are offering. It would seem, then, that the feminist Christian should see her feminism as enriching her Christianity and her Christianity as reinforcing her feminism.

Nevertheless, in practice, areas of conflict do arise. One such is the issue of abortion. Feminists have consistently campaigned for abortion on demand and the slogan “a woman’s right to choose” has become one of the most familiar of the women’s movement. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that one cannot be a true feminist while not supporting the notion that abortions should be freely available to all women who ask for them.

In a pace-setting paper recently published in New Blackfriars, Fergus Kerr argues that Cartesian assumptions and presuppositions have entered so deeply into the thinking of the West that even those who profess to follow other traditions of thought can often be found to be working within the Cartesian paradigm. Here I hope to develop just one of the many lines of inquiry to which Father Kerr has pointed, arguing that there is a convergence between Cartesian anthropology on the one hand and the productive relations of capitalism on the other. Beyond this, I shall try to suggest that this convergence can tentatively be documented so as to form a real part of the “history of ideas” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, rather than left as no more than an abstract, analytical congruence or aptness of fit.

The theoretical argument is straightforward and can be concisely stated. Thomist anthropology and psychology propose a unitary conception of man and of the relationship between soul and body. Kerr pertinently reminds us (p. 255) of Aquinas’s commentary on I Corinthians 15, and quotes his memorable reference to the soul as pars corporis humani. This unity is found in all living things, in vegetables, for example, and in “brutes”; the rational soul in man, moreover, is no exception to this unitary principle. A corollary of this is that, as Kenny puts it, “a human being is not something that has a body; it is a body, a living body of a particular kind”.

Finding myself at Le Saulchoir, the French Dominican study-house near Paris, towards the end of September 1962, was a daunting and exciting experience. My first meal, in the meticulous asceticism of that lofty gymnasium-like refectory, consisted of half an artichoke, a lump of cheese, and as much thin beer as one wanted. A month later, as complaining letters home would confirm, I felt hungry, cold, lonely, alien, and profoundly depressed by the oppressive weight of lectures. The liturgy, with its drilled schola, ran with praetorian precision. When my week came to preside at the conventual mass I was told that my performance was ‘détraqué’ and ‘relâché’—and these were not complimentary epithets. At the end of the academic year I was told that my dissertation was too ‘literary’—that I needed to be more ‘scientific’. With the two laid-back Brazilians and the three irrepressible Dutchmen, I constituted the handful, in this pagoda of exact ceremonial and dedicated cerebration, who knew that other Dominican ways were possible.

On the other hand, with sermons and lectures by Chenu, Congar, and so many others of that character, in the inaugural year of the Council, how could I not delight at being in a great theological power-station at such a time? The lectures were often dreary—but I remain grateful to have had that experience of good old-fashioned Thomist scholasticism. I shall not forget my excitement at Claude Geffré’s exposition of Thomas Aquinas on the Passion of Christ, or the recreation of his treatise on the Virtue of Charity by Jacques Pohier ...

There are concatenations of events that prompt reflexion: such as a television programme on the evidence for Jesus; a hand-out in criticism thereof, composed at Cardinal Hume’s request by some biblical and theological scholars; public expressions of disbelief, some episcopal, preceding the consecration of the new Bishop of Durham; the fulmination of York Minster, if you like; and, again if you like, the remarkable scarcity of public expressions, whether of belief or disbelief, from our own hierarchy. New Blackfriars, where in past years articles have appeared expressing a variety of views upon biblical veracity, seems a suitable place for some prompted reflexions. All references are to the bibliography.

There is one reflexion I get out of the way before offering my own—I found it in the Universe for June 29 of last year. There it was said that one proper reaction of Catholics to the dissent exhibited in the Church of England is a ‘a sense of humble gratitude for the guidance we have in the Church for our Faith, as well as a deepening fidelity’ (Burridge, col. 4). Whatever else the disagreements in New Blackfriars have done, they at least forbid us to lay to our souls any such flattering unction as that nonsense. There is in the Roman Church much dissent in these matters, dissent that goes very deep and shews no sign of going away. Some years ago, two writers in this journal expressed the dissent with force and clarity, and it is from what they wrote that I begin the reflexions I have to offer.

The aim of this study is to understand what Paul means by his statement about the resurrection in I Corinthians 15:44: ‘It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body’. We must examine Paul’s use of the terms body (soma), physical (psychikon and psyche) and spiritual (pneumatikon and pneuma). One of the fullest recent expositions of Pauline usage is Robert Jewett’s Paul’s Anthropological Terms (Brill 1971), which criticises idealistic treatments of the subject and seeks definitions in particular historical settings. This is a sensible approach to the subject, since it allows for both development and contradiction, but it meets with the difficulties that we do not know for certain which of the epistles attributed to Paul are really Pauline; and we know neither in what circumstances nor in which order they were written.

Most sholars agree with Jewett in judging Ephesians, Colossians and the Pastoral epistles to be Deutero-Pauline, and I shall not include references from them in my argument. I have not followed Jewett in attempting to define the development of Pauline thought in terms of an historical schema, but have noted related uses together, in order to show the range of particular kinds of usage more clearly.

The atheistic character of Marxism has often been regarded as an obstruction to dialogue and debate between Marxists and Christians. A recent contributor to this discussion suggests that if Marx has anything to offer Christians, it is ‘in spite of his atheism’, while others have pressed for a modus vivendi between science and faith; materialism and religion. Yet the atheism of the Marxist tradition is, I want to argue, an atheism which ‘transcends’. It is an atheism which translates the preoccupations of world religions into the language of a dialectical science and in this way offers a way out of the conceptual rigidities in which conventional materialists and believers alike find themselves increasingly trapped. It is an atheism which is far more positive and liberating than is commonly assumed.

I shall begin by presenting the Marxist case for atheism both in historical terms and as I believe it stands in logic. Once this is done, it will become clearer why Marxism has an essentially affirmative attitude to the religious heritage which it transcends.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, the important Swiss theologian, will be celebrating his eightieth birthday on August 12th.

Pope John Paul’s singling out of Hans Urs von Balthasar for the Paul VI award, for his contribution to Catholic theology, almost certainly marks his emergence as the preferred Catholic theologian of the pontificate. Interest in his thought is bound to increase, especially with the English translation of his master-work Herrlichkeit, now proceeding. Our aim here is to present what can only be an introductory picture of the man and his work, still—amazingly—so little known in the English-speaking world in spite of the fact that his eightieth birthday is at hand and he has been writing for fifty years. We are not attempting to summarize everything (that would be an impossibility) but considering the central theme of his writing, his Christology.

Balthasar was born in Lucerne in 1905. It is probably significant that he was born in that particular Swiss city, whose name is virtually synonymous with Catholicism in Swiss history. The centre of resistance to the Reformation in the sixteenth century, in the nineteenth it led the Catholic cantons in what was virtually a civil war of religion, the War of the Sonderbund (which they lost). Even today it is very much a city of churches, of religious frescoes, of bells. Balthasar is a very self-consciously Catholic author. He was educated by both Benedictines and Jesuits, and then in 1923 began a university education divided between four Universities: Munich, Vienna, Berlin—where he heard Romano Guardini, for whom a Chair of Catholic Philosophy had been created in the heartland of Prussian Protestantism—and finally Zurich.

The English Dominican Father Romuald Horn, who here, on the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination, reflects on what the priesthood means for him, spent many years of his life as a priest in the once famous parish of St Dominic’s, Newcastle upon Tyne (which in his early days contained some of the most deprived parts of Tyneside.) He is now a confessor at the Basilica of St Mary Major, Rome.

A golden jubilee is not an occasion for argument. If fifty years are not reason enough, it would seem useless to look further. For one can speak with the tongue, and one can say a word with one’s whole life. Even to change one’s mind after so long a time, impressive as it may be, doesn’t get rid of fifty years easily. In particular the golden jubilee of a priest contains a whole life, and a long one, because ordination comes at the beginning of maturity. Argument is still more out of place, because the priest is a minister, a servant. It is for his Lord to judge, not for himself. This is the true judgment, which the Lord will deliver at his own chosen time, a judgement which may not be anticipated. It remains for the minister to pass judgment on his ministry from his own point of view, as servants may compare one master with another, and one condition of service with alternative employment. This is what I am endeavouring to do now in this year of my golden jubilee, 1985.

To define precisely the boundaries of a book review, a review article, and an article which draws on a book for its themes would seem to propose nice, indeed over-nice, questions; and what is over-nice tends to become nasty. If we seek to contextualize the term “book review” by insisting on the prior causality of an editor who selects both book and reviewer, this is not a book review at all, which is as well, as it would suggest an outrageous delay if a book published in 1978 were reviewed now. Nor is this even a review article, since I am not so much considering Jan Vansina’s The Children of Woot for its own valuable content, namely a discussion of the evidence for the history of the Kuba of Zaire, but rather as a jumping-off ground for reflections on two quite separate topics, the validity of historical knowledge as such, and the possibilities for development available to African societies in the pre-colonial era. The flavour that New Blackfriars has developed over the years comes surely from the recognition by successive editors of the areas of interplay of the sacred, the scholarly, and (in a very wide sense) the political as a primary focus, perhaps the primary focus. This encourages me to claim that Vansina’s suggestion (p. 242) that “the Kuba past consisted of more than events concerning a few people in a corner of the tropical woods” can be given a wider range than even he might intend.

A revised version of a paper presented in 1983 at the third Oxford conference on the theology of Austin Farrer.

Freedom has a central place in Christian anthropology. We may begin our consideration of the notion, somewhat idealistically, by focusing attention on the most exalted sense of freedom, which, according to Christian tradition, is that of man’s true freedom in relation to the God who made him. This true freedom may be defined as the spontaneity of unrestricted and undistorted love, as man realises his true nature as a creature made in the image of God. In the end, in the consummation of all things in the life of heaven, the creature will for ever exercise this true freedom, in both thought and action, as the love of God, now unambiguously manifest, elicits the free, the spontaneous response of love in the communion of saints.

Such a conception of man’s true freedom raises many theological and philosophical problems. The most important theological problem is that of the relation between grace and free will. Indeed, the free will spoken of by contrast with grace appears to have little in common with the true freedom which is the fruit of grace. According to the dominant stands of Christian anthropology, man is not free to realise his true freedom. On the contrary, he is in bondage and can only be freed by grace. On this view man’s free will is very limited indeed. The main philosophical problem with this conception of man’s true freedom is whether such freedom of spontaneity presupposes a more basic liberty of indifference whereby man is able to opt for any one of a range of genuine alternatives, not only equally good alternatives,

Abortion was a hot election issue in the US of 1984. The pro-family rhetoric of the Born-again Right predictably incurred the correspondingly doctrinaire derision of the women's movement and the Left. The National Organisation for Women (NOW) banned from its platform women who in any way opposed abortion. Both sides agree, it seems, that abortion is a primary and integral component of women's liberation and a crucial test of ‘reliability’ for or against.

All the more vital, then, is the search for ethical consistency and clarity which is being maintained in some wings of the peace and women's movements. This was given some force by the visit to Britain last autumn of the US Catholic pacifist Juli Loesch, who founded, in 1979, an organisation called Prolifers for Survival. She came to promote a parallel network here. This exploratory visit, (sponsored by Pax Christi, some members of London SPUC and Women for Life) provoked signs of increasing polarisation in UK. One reaction in Peace News-which in 1983 published a reflective consideration of the links between private and public violence-‘was to curl into a ball and puke’.

The doctrine of Christ should be the most comprehensive way that Christians express their belief in redemption from all sin and evil in human life, the doctrine that embraces the authentic humanity and fulfilled hopes of all persons. The theological categories adopted by early Christianity to define the doctrine of Christ—early Christology, in other words—would seem to be inclusive of women. And yet, of all Christian doctrine, it has been the doctrine of Christ that has been most frequently used to exclude women from full participation in the Christian Church. How is this possible?

Early Christianity used the word ‘logos’ to define that presence of God which has become incarnate in Jesus Christ. This term drew on a long tradition of religious philosophy. In Greek and Hellenistic Jewish philosophy, the divine Logos was the means by which the transcendent God came forth in the beginning to create the world. The Logos was simultaneously the immanence of God and the ground of creation. Through the Logos God created the world, guided it, was revealed to it and reconciled the world to God.

The Logos was particularly related to the rational principle in each human soul. By linking the term Christ, the Messiah, through which God redeemed the world, to the Logos, early Christianity prevented a split between creation and redemption threatened by early gnosticism. The God revealed in Christ was the same God who created the world in the beginning, the authentic ground of creation manifest in fulfilled form over against the alienation of creation from its true being.

Now in his 77th year, the author was editor of “New Blackfriars” 1940—1950, and founder-editor of “Life of the Spirit” 1946—55, was Warden of Spode House 1952—81, and has written many books and articles on the spiritual life.

The elderly must often be sad when they look back. There is no escape. In those long-gone days they were fresher and more alive. Today energies are failing and powers of perception lack the briskness and sharpness that were theirs when the experiences they remember first occurred. It is possible to catch the excitement of those earlier times—so exciting, compared with the present—but it is a difficult task. As soon as comparison finds its way into present consciousness sadness tends to make its entry. Yet views of the past change as variously as do the views as one climbs up a hill, some thrilling, some depressing, according to light and angle of vision. Now, for example, the picture of the world of 1908 (the year in which I was born) and onwards looks like a picture of increasing physical violence, of death and hideous human slaughter. And yet, on the other side of the page, we can find another picture, in which intellectual violence seems to be decreasing just as much.

In the late 1920s, when studying first philosophy and then theology in preparation for the priesthood, we used to agonize about those passages in the Bible when the Lord seemed to interfere with the workings of the entire material universe in order to procure some victory for a rather unimportant leader of the Israelites.

Within the framework of the “empiricist” philosophy widely assumed in English theology, there is a serious problem about how to represent God’s action in the world. This applies equally to God’s action in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and to God’s action today through the Holy Spirit. Here I will argue that the problem can be eased by a change of philosophical framework. I will do so in dialogue with Maurice Wiles’ The Remaking of Christian Doctrine which reveals with outstanding honesty and clarity the difficulties that the empiricist framework throws up.

By the “empiricist” framework I mean a general set of philosophical presuppositions that are deeply entrenched within our culture in general, and widespread within our university departments of science, philosophy and theology in particular. Of these (often only implicit) presuppositions I am interested in just two: firstly, that the chief function of language is to represent or “picture” reality; secondly, that “action” must take place via some causal mechanism, the model for which is given by the causal mechanisms of the natural sciences. Thus the only relation that language can have to action is to “picture” it.

This pair of assumptions is peculiarly deadly for theology, because it pushes back our possibilities for conceptualizing God’s action to only two. Either we think of God’s action as the communication of knowledge about a state of affairs—a picture of reality—or else we must see it as an intervention in the causal nexus so as to rearrange the course of events in the physical world.

A contemporary of Dante’s, opening the Divine Comedy for the first time, would probably have expected to find St. Francis among le beate genti, or at least to hear his praises sung by them, and that independently of any particular interest in the Franciscan Order, such was the esteem in which ‘il santo d‘Assisi’ was held. St. Dominic, on the other hand, an incomparably less popular figure, is unlikely even to have crossed the mind of such a reader except, perhaps, in connection with the well-known confraternity he founded. For the average Catholic of those times, Dominic had already become what he has remained, one of those holy ‘founders’ about whom one knows or cares little, well-nigh obscured as they are by the universally accepted and venerated institutes which they founded. Even the Dominicans themselves seem, on the whole, not to have fully appreciated the extraordinary character of the man to whom they owed so much. Apart from the biographical sketch in the Libellus of Jordan of Saxony (d. 1237), Dominic’s immediate successor in the government of the Order—a sketch which was historical rather than hagiographical, written that is to describe ‘the origin of the Order of Preachers’—and from the depositions by the witnesses at the two Processes, at Bologna and Toulouse, prior to his canonization in 1234, biographical material concerning Dominic is sparse, or, rather, scattered piecemeal among conventional legendary accretions.

No one will deny that in the last twenty years since the Second Vatican Council there has been a wonderful growth in the ecumenical movement among Christians. Not only has the whole climate changed in the relation of the Christian churches to one another, but formal agreement has been reached with Anglicans, Lutherans and reformed churches on such formerly controversial subjects as the Eucharist and the Ministry. But there still remains one insuperable obstacle to Christian unity, which no amount of discussion has so far been able to overcome, and that is the claim of the Roman Church to the ‘universal jurisdiction’ and the ‘infallibility’ of the Pope. Is there no way out of this dilemma or is the Ecumenical movement doomed finally to break down at this point?

An answer to this problem has been offered in a recent book published in India, which proposes a solution from the Roman point of view on strictly orthodox lines. Its author is a Spanish Jesuit, Luis Bermejo, who is a professor of theology, formerly dean of the faculty of theology, at the Papal Seminary at Poona. His book consists of a series of articles contributed to theological reviews, which make a careful, scholarly survey of the historical grounds for these doctrines. His contention is that only a strictly historical method can answer the question of the validity of these doctrines. In the past it has been only too easy to read into the evidence of the New Testament and the Fathers the developed doctrine of a later age.