Once upon a time all theatrical performances in Western Europe were religious in impetus and expression. Professional directors and stage managers of the Middle Ages traveled to such towns as Mons and Valenciennes to stage elaborate productions upon specially constructed platforms equipped with trapdoors and other devices to achieve the most spectacular effects. An English king journeyed to York and posted himself and his retinue on a street in order to witness a segment of that city's famous cycle of plays—from Creation to Christ s passion —performed upon a wagon.

Lu Hsui-lien, thirty six, holds advanced law degrees from the University of Illinois and Harvard. She not only practiced law but was also, until recently, a writer and editor, a dedicated campaigner for human rights in general and women's rights in particular, and a candidate for the Yuan,'Taiwan's national legislative assembly. Lu now spends her days in a cramped and musty cell, her spirit broken by sixty days of grueling interro gation during which not even her family knew of her whereabouts. Threatened with the murder of family and friends as well as her own execution, she ultimately signed a prefabricated confession of sedition.

The threat to murder members of her family was not one that Lu could afford to dismiss lightly. One of her co-defendants, Lin Yi hsuing, thirty nine, a provincial assemblyman who had studied law at Berkeley, had lost his mother and his seven-year-old twin daughters, all three stabbed to death by a nameless nighttime intruder while his interrogation was under way. When Lin continued uncooperative, his interrogators reminded him that he had still another daughter and a wife.

To my knowledge I've met only one true spy. He didn't disappoint me.

Some years ago I was visiting a writer friend in Washington who lived in a large luxury apartment complex a mile or so northwest of the Watergate. Because it was close enough to evening to justify our consuming something stronger than tea, and because we felt that it would be more enjoyable to do so with company, we decided to visit a friend of the writer’s who lived in the same complex. The friend had been one of the CIA’s top people in Vietnam, but when I met him he was retired from the Agency—or so he said.

He was a tall fellow, about fifty years old, fit, goodlooking, with a graying, aristrocratic mane of hair and a well-tanned face—the kind of man advertisers like to place at the helm of a sixty-foot sloop. And he was as witty, charming, and intelligent as he was good-looking. In fact, he was much fun to talk to—no simple cold war party line from him, you bet. Whatever line he followed was way beyond that.

In the years surrounding the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) questions concerning the Church dominated theological literature. Then came Wolfhart Panncrr berg s seminal Jesus—God and Man, which served as a timely reminder that more fundamental christological issues could not be even temporarily forgotten. More recently theologians recognizing the need for serious reexamination of the very foundations of Christianity, have increasingly directed their attention to the center of Christian faith Jesus Christ himself. Such prominent figures as Walter Rasper, Hans Rung, Jiirgen Moltmann, Karl Rahner, and Edward Schillebeeckx have published major works devoted largely if not entirely to christology; and numerous less renowned authors have also made significant contributions to an intense discussion that shows no signs of abating.

Despite important differences among themselves, these recent christologies generally exhibit certain basic traits that distinguish them from most christologies of the immediate past. First contemporary authors usuallv envision their christologv as part of an overall effort to provide an integrated account of the whole of Christianity; christology is one element of an attempt to express anew the meaning of the gospel in the modern world.