After the political revolutions of 1989, the former eastern bloc countries, although at differing speeds and in a different order, started a process leading to the abolition of the basic principles upon which real socialism was founded. The identity of their social, economic and political systems is being qualitatively changed

The post-revolutionary system, however, is taking a long time to establish itself. The rather open nature of the new legal framework makes it difficult to forecast the final outcome of post-communist societies. Meanwhile, one can remark on the constraints that exist in the postcommunist period. Instead of thinking in terms of final results, it would perhaps be more helpful to start from the remnants of communism and to ask ourselves how sociopolitical realities can be matched with the new principles of democracy, market economy and capitalism. It is important to have a clear insight into the means that will be used to obtain real owners. These real owners are, as a matter of fact, a prerequisite for a capitalist system. Finally, an assessment has to be mack of the ‘moral climate’ in which transformation has to proceed.

Jiirgen Moltmann became famous for his brilliantly perceptive studies on the tasks of theology, first: to answer a despairing world with a Theology of Hope, and second: to answer a world which could no longer believe in God’s existence in the midst of evil with The Crucified God.’ While the first book stressed the resurrection of the crucified one as the basis for our hope, the second stressed the reality of Christ’s death in concrete solidarity with our suffering.

As we might expect, the dominant question of theology then was in relation to the future of humanity, and the fashion in German theological discussions was a focus on history, rather than a concern with creation as such. However, even at this stage, Moltmann’s vision showed tendencies to look beyond that of a narrow understanding of our humanity, so that he aimed to include creation as a whole within the orbit of both the suffering and future hope in Christ. His novelty at this stage was to reject all ideas of a search for a return to an ideal paradisical state, the so-called ‘myth of eternal return’. Such views had become part of the traditional cosmological interpretation of our world which had been challenged by post-enlightenment science. Once humankind perceived its relationship with the world as one of mastery over nature, the ‘cosmological’ proof of God from creation was no longer convincing. Moltmann does not want us to regain our sense of security by returning to a facile cosmology, but insists that we put our hope in the God of the Future, who promises a new creation as witnessed by the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The church of San Miniato al Monte lies on a hill on the north side of the Arno, overlooking the city of Florence. It is dedicated to a deacon, reputedly the son of the king of Armenia, who was martyred in the city around 25 A.D. during one of the imperial persecutions. The church which presently stands on the site was begun in 1013. It is one of the oldest and certainly one of the most beautiful churches in Florence—a perfectly preserved Romanesque basilica with a striking facade of mosaics and green and white marble in geometric designs. The church is attached to a monastery of Olivetan monks and their services attract large congregations, both tourists and native Florentines.

At Mass opening the Octave of prayer for Christian unity this year, the abbot of San Miniato preached a sermon on the Christian vision of Europe. He spoke of the two great scourges which had afflicted Europe in this century, Nazism and Stalinism. He talked of the post-War division of Europe at Yalta by the agreement of the triumvirate of Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt. He presented this division as a rending of Europe in two, as the creation of a dualism in the world which was antithetical to the Christian vision. However, he saw a Christian response to this division, to this freezing of Europe in a state of war, in the work of three other men: De Gasperi of Italy, Schumann of France and Adenauer of Germany. These men were responsible for the formulation of the idea of a European Community.

Matthew Fox’s popular but over-simplified retelling of the history of Christian attitudes to creation makes St Augustine the prime enemy. In the table at the back of Original Blessing, Augustine is the first-named spokesperson in the enemy camp, so to speak, of ‘fall-redemption’ theologians. It might seem appropriate therefore to borrow the pages of a Dominican journal to ask whether Fox has somewhat missed the point. It seems important to correct the distorted account for two reasons, negatively because Fox’s sharp distinction into either ‘creation- centred’ or ‘fall-redemption’ theologians allows him to pretend that these two fundamental elements of Christian theology are conflicting rather than complementary; positively, because Augustine himself has a great deal to contribute to serious thought about creation.

I should like to trace three themes which Augustine explored in the light of both Biblical thought and ancient (particularly Neoplatonic) philosophy and which run through his reflections upon creation. I want to argue that far from being the pernicious influence that led the Western world to an uncritical anthropocentrism, Augustine in fact provides certain valuable insights for a balanced and properly theocentric theology of creation. The three themes I shall discuss are:

This year’s Dominican Peace Action summer school was held at Carlingford, a small coastal town just south of the border with Northern Ireland, a few miles from Newry. A useful vantage point from which to learn at first hand from those who have had to live with ‘The Troubles’ for more than two decades; and to hear from groups and participants engaged in conflict-resolution and the search for further, long-term ‘solutions’—bearing in mind the old adage that Northern Ireland has a problem for every solution’. On the principle that pilgrimages should be made to harassed as well as holy places, we made ours both to St Patrick’s grave at Downpatrick and to the R.U.C. training establishment in Belfast.

Families travelling from the U.K. were joined by Irish ‘residents’, Dominican sisters and others, who shared their experience and concentrated our minds. Hosts and guests may have come with differing agenda; but it may be fair to say that our reasons for coming together were three-fold. First, as workers for peace, it would be inconceivable to ignore or turn our backs on the unresolved conflict within our own jurisdiction: the denial of human rights which sparked off the first Civil Rights march in August, 1968,with the repercussions - military intervention, the suspension of Stormont, internment, the Anglo-Irish Agreement etc., with which we live today.

Second, considering the physical proximity of the two islands and their intimate historical association, much of that history must fill us with shame and compel us, the ex-colonial power, to metanoia. As Christians we must share in the responsibility for past crimes committed against the Irish people. And if, as the contributors to the Evangelical statement ‘For God and His Glory Alone’ recently declared, ‘the essential nature of repentance is losing face’, then we have, each in our own way, to confess that ‘we are not just victims of history—we have been wrong’.

No commemoration is without its controversy, as the burghers of Genoa and Columbus, Ohio, have been discovering this year. And there may be some, in Lorenzo, Nebraska, or Lorenzo, Texas, to murmur about the sack of Volterra in 1472, or the revenge taken on the Pazzi conspirators in 1478, but in Florence they are confidently celebrating the five hundredth anniversary of the death of II Magnifico. Perhaps Lorenzo de’ Medici was not quite as finely magnificent as his grandfather, Cosimo II Vecchio, but it does seem largely right to recall a man who put his extraordinary energies into the seeking-after peace between the Italian states, the encouragement of artists, and the education of his children, in especial the graceful direction of his second son, Giovanni.

Almost from his birth, on 11 December 1475, Giovanni had been dedicated to the cardinalate by his pious father. And from 1 June,1483, when he was confirmed and tonsured by the bishop of Arezzo in the Medici family chapel, Lorenzo insisted that the whole household, parents, brothers, sisters, address the youngster as ‘Messire’, even in those garden games at Careggi in which, as Machiavelli sneered, their father might roll with them on the grass. Tonsuring made Messire Giovanni capable of benefices and, ever forward-looking, Lorenzo had spent some time the previous year sounding out patrons of some conveniently vacant abbey or bishopric.

Christopher Columbus has been a target of revisionist debunking as the New World prepares for the 500th anniversary of the European discovery. Once praised as a superb seaman by Samuel Eliot Morison, Columbus has shrunk to an incompetent bumbler in Kirkpatrick Sale’s book, The Discovery of Paradise—a paradise, the author argues, that Europeans despoiled. Going further, other protesters hand up the equivalent of a Nuremberg indictment. What happened after 1492, thunders the National Council of Churches, was ‘an invasion and colonisation with legalised occupation, genocide, economic exploitation and a deep level of institutional racism and moral decadence.’ This is partly true, but by the same selective reckoning Jefferson was a Virginia elitist and a slave-owning plutocrat.In his New York Times editorial (June 26,1991), ‘Columbus Was Not Eichmann,’ Karl E. Meyer affirms that, despite their cruelties, Spanish colonisers were not simply war criminals; and, whatever his faults, Columbus was not Eichmann. That anyone would suggest otherwise tells more about our own self-righteous age than that of Columbus.

Nobody can deny that the conquistadores thirsted for gold and glory, slaughtered Indians and imported African slaves. What needs to be added is that their excesses were searingly indicted by Spanish churchmen, notably by the Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas. His Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, published in Seville in 1552, remains the prime source for the worst horror stories of the Spanish conquest. His searing narrative, Meyer affirms, was seized upon by English Protestants to justify their own conquests.

Matthew’s gospel contains passages difficult for Jewish Christian relations for the final text, as we have it, seems to contain passages hostile to Jews which irritate Jewish Christian dialogue. History, however, may show these so called ‘anti Semitic’ passages of this gospel in a new, and quite different light.

The key text which today causes perhaps the greatest agony for those involved in Jewish Christian dialogue is the verse in the passion narrative of Matthew’s gospel: Mt. 27: 25 ‘His blood be upon us and upon our children’. For these commentators, the idiom ‘his blood be upon’ means ‘the responsibility of the death of Jesus is on our heads’. The action of Pilate washing his hands, seems to be drawing a contrast between Pilate and the people: Pilate seems to be declaring his innocence of the death of Jesus and says ‘My hands are clean of this man’s blood . . .’ By contrast the people seem to be accepting responsibility for the death of Jesus. Pilate is not guilty, but the ‘people’ are guilty. By this saying, they also incriminate their heirs in this guilt Some try to get round these ‘anti-semitisms’ (Matt. 23: 32-36, 7: 21-23, 8:11-12, 23: 33-46, 27: 25) by saying that ‘anti-semitic montages’ are only a secondary element introduced to the text added at a later, Greek, stage of the development of the gospels.

There is, of course, at present a fairly strong lobby, even among some Christians, who want to find ‘antisemitisms’ within the new Testament, for reasons which are sometimes distant from the academic interests of biblical criticism. It is necessary I think to examine these texts anew, both in the interest of the historical evidence available and in the interests of integrity within Jewish Christian relations.

Very few people in South Africa are satisfied with the present sociopolitical scene and its prevailing violence; most people agree that change is necessary. But that is the limit of their agreement There are great internal differences amongst both black and white people about the means to be used in bringing about change. These differences amongst people of the same race, national group and even political party complicate the problem, generate further conflict and could contribute to violence.

Alternatively, such differences could be an optimistic sign in that people often shape their political goals in terms of their own individual thought and interest, instead of just adhering to a racial or national block. Leaving aside the varieties of political aim and outlook, this article focuses on the models of ‘identity’ different groups are using or are prepared to use (consciously or unconsciously) to generate or provoke violence in South Africa. To make this analysis I have distinguished five categories: race and apartheid; fear and closedmindedness; clash of ideologies; fear and propaganda; and the international implications of conflict in South Africa. These categories should be discussed in the context of the present ‘dominating’ counteridentities existing in South Africa. These, in turn, centre around the idea of National Security, the maintenance of Afrikaner identity through racial separation, Black Consciousness, ‘ Liberalism’, Capitalism, Marxism in its various forms, the Liberation struggle and several forms of ethno-nationalism or tribal exclusiveness. It is through understanding each of these ‘counter-identities’ that we can grasp the complex forces forging South African ‘identities’.

The scientific and technological advances of the present century have brought about an unprecedented increase in the standard of living of millions of the world’s inhabitants. This has however created new problems that have recently come into prominence. We are acutely aware that the resources of the earth are finite, that we are using them up at an accelerating rate, and that many of our activities are polluting the earth to an unacceptable degree. If we persist along our present course we are heading for an irreversible disaster that will make our present worries pale into insignificance.

These problems are widely debated; books, articles and television programmes tell us about the threats to our fragile earth. Many organisations demand rapid action. It is recognised that the Church has a vital part to play in this debate, and indeed has already made important contributions. In many respects, however, it has failed to rise to the occasion, and does no more than repeat the errors and distortions of the media.

A basic requirement, generally not well understood, is that those who contribute to these debates should have a certain level of understanding of the basic scientific and technological facts. Without this it is almost impossible to say anything useful, and very easy to talk dangerous nonsense. It is thus necessary to begin by a brief summary of the present situation and, with this as a basis, to pass on to wider political and moral questions. It is convenient to begin with the energy crisis, a definite a clear-cut problem that faces us now. We all depend on energy in its various forms, and the amount available to us is directly related to our standard of living. Hundreds of millions of people are now living in the direst poverty because they do not have enough energy. Where are we going to get the energy to give them life, and to support us all in the next century?

I finished this breath-taking book lost in admiration for the breadth of intellectual culture that lies behind it; for its situating of different enquiries—theological, philosophical, sociological—in illuminating inter-relation; for the masterly way in which it weaves together negative analysis and positive proposal so as to commend Christian faith as the only world-view, and recipe for social living, truly worth having. That a British author, writing at the end of the twentieth century, could take on, in profoundly informed fashion, every major proponent of autonomous thought and religiously emancipated social action (‘secular reason’), from the Athenian enlightenment to the Parisian nouveaux philosophes, all with a view to showing the inadequacy—not simply de facto but de jure—of their projects, and, correlatively the sole adequacy of a religious, and more specifically a Christian, alternative in both theory and practice; this is, evidently, a publishing event of considerable magnitude. Moreover, the subtlety and sophistication of Milbank’s criticisms of a range of secular constructs for both thought and social action so broad as to include virtually the entire contemporary intelligentsia of Western Europe and North America, will require a response of equal incisiveness from the inhabitants of these systems, and, as such, makes his book an event in intellectual history as well. That his critique of secular rationality in its various guises is mounted in the name of Christian orthodoxy and Catholic tradition can, it seems, only gladden the heart of a Catholic believer, a priest, a Dominican.. . In the hour of Catholic Christianity’s desperate intellectual need (a glance at the pages of the Times Literary Supplement is enough to show the disappearance of Christian orthodoxy, as a source of meaning and truth, from high culture in Britain), God has, apparently, visited his people.

Theories of just war have been elaborated to reduce the incidence of war and to render more human/humane the conduct of war. They tend to group four principles or considerations: the requirement of a just cause which reduces reasons for going to war and which in our times has tended to be interpreted mainly in terms of the right of defence against an unjust aggressor; the judgment of proportion which hinges on the sensible question of whether the gains of war will balance its losses; the principle of discrimination that accepts the common humanity of those in war and for that reason distinguishes between combatants and noncombatants; and the practical elimination of other alternatives before having recourse to the scourge of war.

The principles of proportionality and discrimination move easily enough into one another since the harm done to noncombatants needs to figure in the calculations of the war’s foreseeable losses. Discrimination adds however something to proportionality: it seeks to employ military acts of war against those only who are committed to combat and to offer noncombatants the safeguard of immunity from attack. For such reasons discrimination deals with ius in bello rather than ius ad bellum There is however a conceivable case where discrimination might condition the ius ad bellum, namely, in the use of nuclear weapons where in counter city policies it seems impossible to differentiate noncombatants from combatants. Moreover, as conventional weapons, developed within the computer and electronic revolution, continue to grow more powerful, issues akin to those already raised by nuclear weapons will be posed.

If it is the case that ‘every age adopts an image of itself—a certain horizon, however blurred and imprecise, which somehow unifies its whole experience’, then we may enquire: in what does such a contemporary image consist? Perry Anderson suggests, with characteristic elan, the following: ‘The radical internationalization of the forces of production—not to speak of circulation—that defines the spearhead forms of capital in the final years of the 20th century promises to render all national correctors. . . increasingly tenuous in the future. In that sense no society ...will be immune to the unpredictable tides and tempests of an uneven development whose elements are acquiring a well-nigh meteorological velocity around the world.’ The intimation of apocalyptic in this image of tides and tempests hints at the possibility of epochal change; and indeed, it is a feeling that has grown into a conviction on the part of many theorists, as the world economy lurches towards the 21st century. ‘Post-industrial’, ‘informational’ or ‘hyperreal’: however the revolutionary force of capitalism is to be described at the close of this century, it is becoming increasingly clear that the sheer magnitude of these changes are installing, not only new patterns of economic production and exchange, but also, and more profoundly, new realms of human experience. The world is changing, a feeling uncannily and often disturbingly present to many, as they search to establish the lineaments of the human in this Promethean age.

In his Apologia Newman writes

The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent sweeping changes that have taken place in the political configuration of Europe force us to go beyond territorial concerns in our consideration of unity. More than simply a geographical reality, in fact, unity is something that encompasses history, culture and tradition, and which has in Christianity its first matrix.

My subject is the Christian scene in the Mediterranean area, the ‘south’ of Europe. Our first task, therefore, must be to rid ourselves of those all too common prejudices which equate the ‘south’ with regress and cultural backwardness. After all, depending on one’s perspective, every country is always to the ‘south’ of another. To deal comprehensively with the situation of Christianity in the Mediterranean area in the short space allocated to me is practically impossible, and would require a knowledge of social and cultural phenomena which do not easily lend themselves to synthesis. Given my background, therefore, the analysis which follows has to be restricted to the Italian situation.

The situation in Italy, however, is also one which does not easily lend itself to brief description. A great deal of space would be required even to sketch the background against which the current situation of Christianity has come to be created. I have decided, therefore, to concentrate on two areas: firstly, the general situation of the life of believers in Italy and, secondly, the situation of Italian theology. Taken together, these two perspectives should give some indication of the global condition of the country with regard to Christianity.

Many people have thought you could have the immortality of the soul without the resurrection through not seeing that the body and soul belong to one another by nature. Now, however, we are getting the opposite view: the resurrection without the immortality of the soul. Although it may be vain to hope for immortality without the resurrection, it is not apparent that the same person is raised up without something of us continuing in existence after death. But there is no immortality of the soul anyway unless we have souls.

To More, however, writing in 1515, and perhaps giving his own answer to those who, like Pomponazzo, denied the immortality of the soul, as well as showing an awareness of the view of those who, like Cajetan, did not think it could be demonstrated by reason, it seemed that a people practising a natural religion would hold that the soul is immortal. In the Second Book of Utopia, he tells us that whenever the Utopians discuss felicity or blessedness they add to the reasons of philosophy certain principles taken from religion, for the inquiry of which they think reason of itself weak and imperfect, and one of these principles is: That the soul is immortal. The Utopians themselves seem to have regarded not believing in the immortality of the soul as something inimical to society, for further on we read that, though their founder, king Utopus, wanted there to be liberty of religion among them, on this one point he laid it down that ‘no one should conceive so vile and base an opinion of the dignity of man’s nature as to think that the souls do die and perish with the body’. We find a similar connection between human dignity and the soul being made a little later, in 1512, by the Dominican, Fr Antonio de Montesinos, who, in his famous sermon pointing out to the Spanish conquerors of the New World that the native Indians possessed human dignity, appealed to the argument that they too had souls. ‘Are they not men?’, he asked, ‘Do they not have rational souls?’

By indulging in a cold war Europe managed to disguise from itself for over forty years the true nature of its malaise. Perhaps that was why it lasted so long. Unconsciously, we hid our plight from ourselves partly by exporting our conflicts (and the armaments to go with them) and partly by suppressing them through coercion and obfuscation at home. By August 1991 the results of these self-deceptions had become crystal clear. The Gulf War and civil strife in Yugoslavia throw up horrible but revealing images of what we have been up to in these last few decades. Conversely, the failure of the coup in the USSR points to a more hopeful future. I want to discuss some of the implications for the Church of these various events.

Our self-deceptions were compounded by the absence of any really searching parliamentary debate about the principles which should govern European security. Those on both sides of the cold war who tried to put forward alternative military strategies or, more radically, new approaches to the concept of security itself were marginalised by the political elites. Creative thinking was undervalued, even suppressed, and parliaments confined themselves to technical minutiae on weapons procurement and the like. The absence of a discussion of fundamentals is the more remarkable when contrasted with the full and wide-ranging parliamentary scrutiny on other issues of principle, for example political union, the limits of national sovereignty or the possible benefits of a western European federation.

Lucio: Why, how now Claudio! whence comes this restraint?
Claudio: From too much liberty my Lucio; liberty,
As surfeit, is the father of much fast;
So every scope by the immoderate use Turns to restraint..
(Shakespeare, Measure for Measure Act 1 Scene 2 )

What we can call ‘greenery’ is all about ordering one’s life. It is about how to live in our common home; to be green it is not necessary to be a Christian. An eclectic mix of cosmology and apocalyptic speculation, politics and sheer commonsense, make up what Germaine Greer has called the ‘Tyranny of the Green Religion’. This embodies both criticism and hope and, more immediately, a call to change the minutiae of one’s life in the face of a perceived threat to that life. In the face of massive pollution outside the private sphere of influence we are trying, rather desperately perhaps, to rediscover personal ways of becoming clean. Ironically, this might be achieved by romantically rediscovering the organic, the soil, dirt, clay itself, the natural, the given in the face of the man made; an attempt to place the moral and political orders once more in the context of the natural order.

Søren Kierkegaard told a story about a powerful king who truly loved a humble maiden. The king’s problem was: how was he to elicit from her a true love not based on mere homage or less genuine motives? He could make her a princess—but that would be an artificial and external act, testifying more to his power than his love. He could, as in the fairytales, disguise himself as a beggar and win her love as such—but true love cannot be based on deception. After much thought he realized that if the union could not be brought about by the elevation of the maiden or by his own pretence, there was only one possibility: he must resign his kingdom, and humbling himself to her station, become a slave. And this he did. God became man. No mere jest. No mere outer garment humanity. God must suffer all things, endure all things, experience all things—because God’s love is genuine.

We do not know much about Jesus’ particular temperament. We can glean from the Gospels that he liked periods of solitude, was prayerful, and had a strong sense of mission. He hated hypocrisy and had a special affection for the down-and-outs. One aspect of his personality that has not received much attention in traditional spiritual writing is that Jesus was a great party-goer.

Sociology is a necessary evil on the academic landscape. It is the discipline we all like to hate. Somehow, sociology fits everywhere and yet belongs nowhere in particular. It does not have the finesse of philosophy, the vision of theology or the grace of classics, but as a mongrel child of the Enlightenment it plays about with their deepest insights. Sociology reflects modernity, but in a way that confirms an instinctive dislike of its basis. In the academic game of musical chairs, sociology is left standing, when the waltz ceases, and other disciplines sit awaiting the next score. Yet behind this facade of dislike, an odder and deeper crisis confronts sociology.

In the past two decades, philosophy, literary studies, history and classics have all become entwined in sociology which stands at the analytical crossroads directing a busy traffic in concepts up the high road of modernity. But as its rhetoric becomes woven into the humanities, the distinctive voice of sociology has become muted. Critical theory, embracing linguistics, post-structuralism, phenomenology and post-modernism, to name a few, now have squatter’s rights within sociological theory. Textual exegesis forms the basis of much critical philosophy which sociology has to recognise, but is uncertain how to use. Whereas Dilthey laid the philosophical basis for the autonomy of the cultural sciences against the clutches of the natural sciences, an equivalent exercise has yet to be undertaken for sociology in relation to the competing demands of other disciplines also to speak of culture. Despite their sophistication, modern philosophers such as Rorty, MacIntyre, Derrida and Levinas yield slight sociological insights. There are two sides to the analytical coins to be spent in the cultural marketplace. Sociology makes its own purchases, and these are not the debased offerings of the ‘thick’, incapable of reading the classical texts of philosophy in all their nuances. Too often one gets thick philosophical works with a very thin amount of sociology sandwiched in the centre. Anyhow, sociology has its own problems in dealing with culture.

Concepts of space have been the subject of a great deal of debate in a number of areas of contemporary social theory. The work of the sociologists Erving Goffman and, more recently, Anthony Giddens have been particularly important and influential components of many of these debates. In theological discussions of space, however, many of the insights offered by the social sciences have yet to be assimilated. In the following discussion I shall suggest that there are a number of valuable elements in Goffman’s theories which might fruitfully be incorporated into theological reflection. Initially, however, I shall consider the approaches to the religious significance of space by Mathew Fox and Robin Green which are, I believe, indicative of major flaws in much contemporary Christian discussion of the subject. After discussing some limitations in these approaches, I shall briefly sketch out the basic lines of Goffman’s and Giddens’ arguments, and offer a few suggestions relating to how these theories might be of relevance to theology. Specifically, I shall draw attention to the importance of what Giddens refers to as the regionalisation of social life which is, I suggest, particularly relevant to the study of religious activity.