bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
What Future for Liberation Theology?
Authors: Márkus Gilbert
Published: July 2007

When Gustavo Gutik published his Teologia de Liberation. Perspectivas in 1971, he can hardly have imagined the significance his work would take on in the following decades. The very title has become embedded in the language of a whole generation of theology students as a rough description of a school of thought, or a movement, that reaches from the Philippines and Korea, through Asia and Africa, to Latin America. For some people, the question of liberation theology has become the yardstick against which all other theological approaches are to be measured, and the movement to which one’s response is the indicator of the seriousness of one’s Christian commitment.

As a university chaplain, I have found that the appeal of liberation theology to students has contributed greatly to the formation of the community I save. Its prophetic voice appeals strongly to compassionate men and women who are trying to give a Christian expression to their own concerns about poverty, violence and exptaitation.In my own ten years of involvement with British solidarity organisations and human rights groups focussed on Central America, particularly Nicaragua and El Salvador, I have seen the flood of books by liberation theologians since 1971 eagerly read by colleagues, Christian and non-Christian alike.
How to Think About Hell
Authors: Flannery Kevin L.
Published: July 2007

Hans Urs von Balthasar is correctly perceived within the contemporary Catholic Church as an exponent of an orthodox, even conservative, understanding of the faith. His nomination to the rank of cardinal just before his death is evidence of this, as was his friendship with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Nonetheless, one aspect of his theology, that dealing with the possibility of the salvation of all souls, drew upon him ‘fire from the right.’ He was taken to task by, among others, Gerhard Hermes and Heribert Schauf. In reaction to such criticism, Balthasar wrote a book entitled Was dürfen wir hoffen? (‘What may we hope for?’), recently published in translation by Ignatius Press under the title, Dare we hope ‘That all men be saved’? One of the purposes of this article is to examine this answer by Balthasar to his critics. I believe that certain aspects of his argument are, indeed, inadequate and have been justly criticised. Nonetheless, the major question raised in the book (and, indeed, by the entire controversy) is a legitimate one—and precisely in the sense that Balthasar asks it. A second purpose of the present essay, therefore, is to suggest the parameters within which we might hope ‘that all men be saved.’

My First point is one of agreement with Balthasar. Balthasar rejects those criticisms of his own work that suggest that, in so far as we know that at least some souls are damned to eternal perdition, we may not in any sense hope for the salvation of all souls.
What is the Holocaust?
Authors: Grondelski John M
Published: July 2007

The controversy which arose in the summer of 1989 over the presence of a Carmelite convent adjacent to the former Nazi deathcamp at Auschwitz in Poland momentarily brought to world attention the entire field of Holocaust studies, including the theology of the Holocaust. In America, for example, various colleges and universities have established institutes for study of the Holocaust. These centres usually sponsor conferences and scholarly meetings, offer courses on various aspects of the Holocaust, and often do the important work of recording oral and video testimonies from the shrinking pool of concentration camp survivors, thereby documenting the brutality of those years. Some American states have introduced Holocaust studies components into the social studies curricula of their primary and secondary schools. In both Jewish and Christian theological circles, the Holocaust has raised anew such questions as the meaning of suffering and the existence of God, Providence and the vicissitudes of human history, and the entire Christian perspective on Jews and Judaism (including what role Christianity may have played in aiding and/or abetting anti-Semitism).

The Auschwitz convent controversy focused attention on the entire realm of Holocaust studies. But what the controversy did not do was to foster discussion about the central issue upon which the controversy turned: what is the Holocaust?

It is the ambiguity of the definition of “Holocaust” which provided fertile soil not just for the debate over the Carmelite cloister at Auschwitz but also for other disputes. During his June 1991 pilgrimage to Poland, Pope John Paul II was criticised by some Jewish organisations for speaking of abortion on demand as a “Holocaust” of the unborn.
Solidarity‐Beyond the Clichés A Theological Perspective
Authors: MacLaren Duncan
Published: July 2007

The term ‘solidarity’ is in danger of developing into a clich?. It has been employed so often as a kind of ‘compassion football’ between a guilt-ridden (for some) oppressor ‘First’ World and an indignant (for some) oppressed ‘Third’ that its significance has become opaque. That lack of precision undermines its value for clarifying the relevant Christian response to the divisions between North and South, powerful and powerless, in our world. Solidarity shows us a way which eschews both a patronising attitude and a sense of guilt on the part of the North, and a feeling of being alone in the struggle on the part of the South. Solidarity empowers both and leads to a deeper understanding of what Jon Sobrino, recalling St Paul’s injunction, calls ‘bearing with one another in faith’.

In this article I wish to explore the theological roots of solidarity in an attempt to recapture the flavour of its deeper meaning in a belief that solidarity is a key concept for those who ‘hunger and thirst for what is right’ (Mt 5:6). I follow Albert Nolan’s argument that its roots are found in the Old Testament, but that it broadens its scope when Jesus begins his mission. The new theology of neighbour then becomes the model of solidarity for later thinkers, theologians and activists (‘militantes’ to the Latin Americans) in both the Third World and the West, in their struggle to live an authentically human, and therefore authentically Christian life. Lying at the core of solidarity is co-responsibility for the planet, and the humanisation of life for every being on it, by ridding the world of the structures of widespread injustice and deep-seated division which disfigure the created oneness of humanity.
The Greatest Christian Hero, Philosopher, and Poet: Christopher Dawson's Italian Trinity
Authors: Navone John
Published: July 2007

Christopher Dawson (born 1889), a Catholic scholar and renowned philosophical historian, spent his academic life exploring the relationship of religion, sociology and culture. He believed that without an understanding of religion it is impossible to comprehend the culture of humanity or peoples. His magisterial work, Religion and Culture, established him as an historian’s historian. He ended his days as Professor of Roman Catholic Studies at Harvard Divinity School, the first Catholic to occupy a chair there.

To follow the history of Italy through the centuries is to penetrate to the very heart of western civilization. The artists, thinkers and statesmen of this small, but complex and vital country are part of our own past and have helped to make the present world what it is. What was achieved by the legions of Rome more than two thousand years ago has remained a powerful influence on history ever since. The cultures of ancient Greece and Israel took their dominant position in our western heritage through the medium of an Italian translation. Christianity was propagated from Rome, the fifteenth century Renaissance from Florence, and the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in great part from Padua. European history would have been very different without the work of Columbus and Galileo in discovery, Raphael and Michelangelo in art, Aquinas and Vico in philosophy, St Francis and a long list of Popes from Gregory the Great to John XXIII in religion. Italian museums and churches contain what must seem a disproportionate number of the greatest masterpieces of human creativity.
Wittgenstein, World and Wonder
Authors: Tsang Lap‐Chuen
Published: July 2007

This paper offers an account of Wittgenstein’s treatment of ‘the world’. As will be seen, this requires explanation of his view of religious attitudes in general, and of wonder at the world in particular. His religious position may appear to be unsystematic, or even inconsistent. Contrary to this impression, this paper will show that the same view of the world underlies his religious position, which manifests itself in different forms at different stages of his philosophy. For the world, as the logical limit to the expression of the human will, is a unifying idea in his philosophy. We shall be concerned with his early endeavour to express himself to the limit of the world and then with his later analysis of religious thought and action which construe as real that which lies beyond the world.

The world has always been a limiting concept in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. According to him, the world as reality presents itself to us as an unquestioned and necessary experiential fact. All of us believe in the world that has been handed down to us. It is the condition that makes possible every questioning and doubting. It is the background against which we judge in general between true and false. Its existence is so selfevident that it is even unnoticed, and its nonexistence is inconceivable. Language means only the world and can mean only it. In his endeavour to understand the world and man in it, Wittgenstein always holds on to the view that we should be concerned with things and events and situations in the world, and investigate it from within, taking the world as unquestioned and necessary.
Greenness in the New Testament
Authors: Echlin Edward P.
Published: July 2007

The Jewish thought-world which influenced Christ and the first Christians was holistic. The Bible and extra-biblical literature picture God as rejoicing in His creation. If we are properly to understand Jesus and his first followers it is necessary to understand that thought-world, including ancient mythologies which predate the Exile and were still current.

It is now commonly accepted that during Jesus’s lifetime there was, even in Palestine, a varied spectrum of Jewishness, including different degrees of adherence to the Jerusalem establishment. Not everybody acclaimed Jesus’s execution, and the conduct of persons like Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea and Jesus’s own Galilean disciples (the women particularly) suggests pluralism. It has been suggested that it may have been not the gentiles but disaffected Galileans who first accused Jews of deicide or Christicide.'

According to the gospels Jesus understood his mission in terms of a cosmic conflict with fallen angels who tormented human beings. There is a remnant of this ancient mythology in Genesis 6:2 ‘The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took to wife such of them as they chose.’ Christ and his contemporaries still lived in a world peopled by angels—good as well as bad. This mythology also included memories of ancient Jewish kingship. The good king moved between heaven and earth, maintained cosmic order, and was in conflict with the fallen angels and their monstrous offspring. The king, God’s holy one, preserved the integrity of creation: humans, animals, plants, their habitats and the elements. Our best account of this mythology, so important for understanding Christ and his ecology, is almost certainly in 1 Enoch.
Religion and Secularism in Britain today
Authors: Roberts Colin
Published: July 2007

A Newman Association day conference at Warwick University on the 9th March brought together nearly seventy delegates from different parts of the country to debate the rights of religious minorities in our society and to examine the potential for conflict between religious fundamentalism and secularism. Three specialists working in the field of inter-faith and intercommunity relations addressed the complex nature of these issues. They were the Reverend Dr. Clinton Bennett, the Reverend Dr. Christopher Lamb and Professor Edward Hulmes. Dr. Bennett is Executive Secretary for Inter-Faith Relations at the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland, Dr. Lamb is Community Relations Advisor for the Diocese of Coventry and Professor Hulmes is Spalding Professorial Fellow in World Religions in the Department of Theology at the University of Durham and Fellow of the Centre of Theological Enquiry at Princeton in the USA.

Against the background of the Rushdie affair and the community tensions generated by the Gulf War the conference focussed on the contrasting attitudes of Islam and Christianity towards secularism. It also examined the different ways in which Christians respond to religious pluralism. Does the decade of evangelisation which all the churches have endorsed conflict with inter-faith dialogue? Should evangelism be directed at those in our society who have no religious belief rather than at theists like Muslims and Jews? What lessons has the Church learned from the gradual process of secularisation of British society and how should Catholics communicate those insights to their fellow citizens of other faiths whose culture and background make it difficult for them to engage positively with secular culture?
Pirates or Superpowers Reading Augustine in a Hall of Mirrors
Authors: Dodaro Robert
Published: July 2007

Recent just-war discussion over the Gulf Crisis has focused attention once again on what are, by now, the familiar mysteries of that particular rosary: just cause, last resort, proportionality, legitimate authority, right intention. Bishops and theologians who cite the theory in order to justify military actions consistently fail to recognise that the cultural vantage points from which they conduct their calculus cannot be guaranteed free of distortions which render their solemn judgments as erroneous on a moral plane as calculations of the position of the stars taken from within the earth’s atmosphere are on a physical plane. In both cases observations vital for a correct analysis are ‘refracted’ through a medium which distorts the information without telling prima fade that it is doing so. The assumption that the just-war theory can always be adjusted to accommodate ‘advances’ such as in the technology of modem weapons systems or the status of the U.N. fails to take any notice of the complexities of modem communications and their impact on the set of perceptions and judgments crudal to the conditions of classical just-war theory.

There are numerous problems involved in trying to describe this dilemma: ‘mass media’ are by no means a trifling difficulty for just-war thinking, nor do they lend themselves to simple, hasty analysis. But even if only the contour of some of the issues can be described it may still become clear that what is required now is the application of a more critical hermeneutic to just-war theory.
The Sense of Audience in Luke: a Literary Examination
Authors: Cook Cornelia
Published: July 2007

‘Sir, is it to us that you are addressing this parable, or to all men also?’ Peter asks this question of Jesus at almost exactly the mid-point of Luke’s gospel. The question alerts us to the importance of audiences in this gospel. A reading of the received text as a literary whole discovers that a ubiquitous and significant sense of audience distinguishes Luke’s gospel. Jesus’s mission defines itself in Luke’s gospel through a dynamic relationship with his audiences, and the evangelist’s project of witness, of instruction of conversion, too, accomplishes itself through the creation and manipulation of audiences.

From its outset Luke’s gospel acknowledges a sense of audience as well as asserting a care for purposeful narrative structure. The gospel is introduced by a formal prologue to ‘most excellent Theophilus’, who was apparently undergoing or had recently undergone instruction in the faith.

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you might know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed. (RSV)

Things that have been accomplished among us are the marvellous events of the life, death and resurrection of Christ which have led to the rise of the new Christian church of which Luke’s Theophilus is, or aspires to be, a member.
Cross‐cultural Ministry in Crisis
Authors: Hillman Eugene
Published: July 2007

How fruitful is this Decade of Evangelization going to be? The analyses and proposals offered in this essay refer specifically to the missionary enterprise in Africa south of the Sahara. But the implications are much wider, touching even the raison d‘être of each one of Christianity’s multiple ecclesial manifestations.

Because the world‘s irreducible cultural pluralism cannot be ignored with impunity, much less scorned and replaced with alien cultures, the declining esteem for what missionaries have done may be seen as an inevitable consequence of the European and American cultural monomania that produced a network of dependent Western spiritual colonies through sub-Saharan Africa.

Much lip-service was, of course, given in official ecclesiastical documents to the goal of establishing culturally integrated, self-sustaining, indigenous Christian churches with their own vibrant missionary outreach and original cultural contributions to the universal family of Christians. Far from ignoring the local cultures of the people being evangelized, much less destroying them with foreign ways of being human and religious, missionaries were supposed to accept and evangelize the cultures themselves. This has been the official position of the Catholic Church, in theory, ever since St Paul, on this very issue of cultural pluralism, ‘withstood Cephas to his face ... in front of everyone’ (cf. Gal.2; Acts 15).
Dynamics of Prayer and Anger
Authors: Cleary Hugh
Published: July 2007

It was a late afternoon when frantic parishioners were clamouring at the front door of the rectory. There had been an automobile accident just three blocks from the church. By the time I approached the location, a large crowd of people had already encircled the scene of the accident. Still a half block away, I couldn’t help but sense an eerie silence pervading the air. The scene had none of the usual circus atmosphere that characterizes spectator curiosity in face of such circumstances, with the din and shoving movements of people positioning themselves for a better look.

Upon arriving at the site I could see that although two demolished cars dominated the centre of the circled crowd at the intersection, all attention was riveted upon a woman holding a limp child tightly in her arms. She was moving about the inner circle of people stooping quickly here and there to pick up what looked like pieces of debris resulting from the fierce impact of the two cars. No one had the courage to intrude upon her business. A holy awe and respectful reverence pervaded the scene.

As it turned out, the woman was grasping the body of her dead son close to her bosom. She was stooping to pick up pieces of his head that had been scattered in the street from the furious impact of his body upon the pavement. In a desperate attempt to restore his life she was trying to put pieces of his head back together again. What else could a mother do? She had no time to think. The reactive panic of losing her only son compelled her to do this act of madness. Who could interfere?
Where Does the Wild Goose Fly To? Seeking a New Theology of Spirit for Feminist Theology
Authors: Grey Mary
Published: July 2007

Every day in the farm where I live the shrill scream of the wild geese flying overhead is heard. The cry is so strident as to make us stop our activities and ask, ‘To where does the wild goose fly?’ The well-known line from John’s Gospel comes to mind: ‘The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes...’ (3.8) For the wild goose is an ancient Celtic symbol of the Holy Spirit—made popular in contemporary spirituality by the Iona Community in Scotland. The cry of the wild goose—and the sheer power of its wings—evokes a sense of the unknown, that wild transcendence and yearning for freedom which lifts us from our daily frustrations. And that is why faith in the Spirit seems to offer hope and renewed possibilities to a ‘tired’ tradition: it is certainly why Feminist Theology attempts to develop a Theology of Spirit as a means of redeeming the oppressive structures of patriarchal theology and Church.
Oppression Then and Now: a reflection on Fr. Bartolomé de las Casas OP (1484–1566)
Authors: Smith Austin
Published: July 2007

The Las Casas Memorial Lecture given in London and Glasgow in November 1990.

It is difficult if not impossible to live hopefully the fulness of human life without men and women of vision. But the term ‘vision’ is, perhaps, too often carelessly used.

Vision is concerned with a better possible future. And it depends upon both imagination and creativity. Yet those who possess it, or are considered to possess it, must be inhabitants not only of what is possible, but also, and more importantly, reflective upon, sensitive to, critical and understanding of, their past and present. Indeed, it is their very rootedness in and conversation with both past and present which essentially ratifies any claim to vision. A paradox rests, therefore, in the fact that men and women of vision, though about a future, are only about that future because of their critical understanding of a past and a radical belongingness to and immersion in a present.

The woman and man of vision are, to be sure, creative and imaginative. But they are, more often than not, wholly unconscious of being people of vision. Dominic and Francis, for example, turned out to be men of vision not because they saw a new future, but heard the cry of a present demand and measured it against a past. For us, then, the men and women of history whom we perceive or name people of vision become ‘classical symbols’ in our understanding of and quest into the complicated and demanding questions of our own times.
The Faith and Dr Gilbert Murray
Authors: Crozier John
Published: July 2007

Dr Gilbert Murray (1866—1957), one of the most distinguished academics of his time, was well known for his incisive criticisms of Christianity. His reconciliation to the Catholic Church shortly before his death stirred up quite a lot of controversy and the truth of it was even questioned. Canon John Crozier, who ministered to Murray during those weeks, feels he can now write a full account of how it happened.

The Aquinas Lecture at Blackfriars, Oxford, on ‘Worship and Theology’, was delivered by the Revd. Dr Maurice Wiles, the Regius Professor of Divinity in the University. In the course of it he touched on the agnostic’s prayer, so movingly described by Dr Anthony Kenny in his book The God of the Philosophers. Dr Kenny had written:

There is no reason why someone who is in doubt about the existence of God should not pray for help and guidance on this topic as on other matters. Some find something comic in the idea of an agnostic praying to a God whose existence he doubts. It is no more unreasonable than the act of a man adrift on the ocean, trapped in a cave, or stranded on a mountainside, who cries for help though he may never be heard or fires a signal which may never be seen. Such prayer seems rational whether or not there is a God: whether, if there is a God, it is pleasing to him or conducive to salvation is quite another question.
Fra Angelico Paints the Crucifixion
Authors: Prendergast Michael
Published: July 2007

Calvary may not have been Fra Angelico’s favourite theme; Vasari records the pious tradition that ‘whenever he painted a Crucifixion the tears would stream down his face’. John Pope-Hennessy would not have us disregard the story simply because it has no contemporary sanction for, quoting William James, he reminds us that ‘many saints ... have possessed what the Church traditionally reveres as a special grace, the gift of tears.’

In the mid-1430s Fra Angelico painted a Crucifixion with Mary and Saints John and Dominic on the refectory wall at St. Dominic’s Priory, Fiesole, but from quite early in its life the fresco suffered from damp and was frequently restored. In 1879 it was photographed, detached from its wall, mounted on canvas and sold, ultimately to the Louvre. The taushaped cross stands some twelve feet high on its conventional mound and the inscription panel is attached to the top with a lath.

Angelico was to use this design more than once. The composition is built on an upright rectangle whose top is the horizontal beam of the cross, ABCD in Figure 1. Diagonals AC and BD intersect axes IG and EF at point H in the diagram, coinciding with the Saviour’s feet and linking the bystanders with the cross. Geometry, however, is only the basis of the plan, which is developed as a symmetrical rhythm in Figure 2.
Christian Hope in Europe's Future
Authors: FitzGerald Garret
Published: July 2007

Europe’s recovery from the destruction of World War II was slow, and achieved only with massive U.S. aid. Europe was shattered psychologically as well as physically. Since the late 19th century the major European powers had lost their economic lead to the U.S.A., and probably also to the dynamic Russian Empire. But Russia’s isolation after 1918 and American isolationism had obscured this reality until the end of the war, when these two countries emerged, to many it seemed overnight, as nuclear superpowers, glowering at each other across a prostrate Europe. It seemed as if Europe had been definitively side-lined as a major player on the world stage.

The post-war attempt to unite western Europe economically and politically was designed to challenge what seemed to many to have been an inexorable shift in the global power balance. But even if European unity were ultimately to be achieved through this process—and at first the most that seemed attainable was a limited measure of economic integration between six of Europe’s thirty-odd states—it appeared unlikely that this could ever produce much more than a slowing down of the process of Europe’s relative decline vis-ik-vis the new super-powers.

Yet forty years later the Europe thus launched is being called in aid by a collapsing Soviet Union to save it from disaster and possible famine. Moreover within Europe itself the attractive power of the European Community is proving embarrassingly strong, with applications for membership currently threatening to overwhelm it. And it is towards the much more open economy of western Europe rather than towards the U.S. that many countries in the rest of the world now look when seeking to improve their trading opportunities.
The Church and European Security
Authors: Wicker Brian
Published: July 2007

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.
Gerard Manley Hopkins—A Stranger Still?
Authors: Lynch Maureen
Published: July 2007

Biography is enjoying one of its periodic resurgences in popularity. Literary biography seems to be particularly in vogue. But the purpose of telling the story of some great author’s life is no longer simply historical or even hagiographical. In this post-structuralist age, the intention of such a pursuit as biography has to be expository —to get behind the public face and reveal the real man or woman; to deconstruct the myth and reconstruct the person and their ‘emotional, intellectual and psychological makeup’.’ It is precisely this which Professor Martin tries to do in his most recent biography ‘Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Very Private Life’.

Hopkins, the enigmatic priest-poet of the nineteenth century, seems in one way a particularly suitable candidate for such a treatment. On the surface there seems to exist such a very great divergence between his public persona, a Jesuit priest dedicated to the discipline of the Ignatian ‘Spiritual Exercises’, and the private man, a poet of great imagination and originality. Whether this dichotomy is seen as responsible for the psychological imbalances which intermittently afflicted him, or as the dynamic which is at the centre of his creativity hardly matters. On the other hand, the facts of Hopkins’ life, both public and to a large extent private, are very well established. His poems were published in their first collected edition in 1918; the personal journals were published in 1937 and the letters between 1935 and 1938. Professor Martin did, it seems, have access to the originals of the journals and to Jesuit sources especially with relation to the final period of Hopkins life in Dublin.
Miracles
Authors: Davies Brian
Published: July 2007

One word that often creeps into the active vocabulary of religious people is ‘miracle’. Many would say that miracles occur, or that they have occurred. It is also sometimes suggested that they provide evidence for various things, notably the existence of God, or the truth of some particular religion, or die teaching of certain religious leaders. The topic of miracle has occasioned much philosophical and theological debate. But what should we say about it?

Perhaps the obvious question to turn to at the outset is that of the nature of miracles. What are we discussing when we talk about miracles? The answer is not all that obvious, for those who refer to miracles have offered various understandings of what it is that they are talking about
Were We Deceived about the Dead Sea Scrolls?
Authors: Murphy‐O'Connor Jerome
Published: July 2007

The delay in publishing the Dead Sea scrolls, long a quiet academic scandal, was recently thrust into the forefront of the news by The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception?. Its authors, M.Baigent and R. Leigh, two qualified experts in discerning arcane conspiracies, manifestly Find the world a threatening place. They give reality to their nightmare of Vatican world domination by claiming that the moment the scrolls were discovered a prescient Vatican, foreseeing the damage that first-century documents (then still unread!) must inevitably cause the faith, inserted its inquisitorial minions, the Dominicans of the École Biblique in Jerusalem, at the beginning of a process which to date they have consistently subverted. An hilarious thesis to those who know the facts, but disturbing to those forced to rely on titillating innuendo.

A major archaeological discovery is usually a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Time and time again chance, not planning, is the decisive factor. Had Heinrich Schliemann dug another sector of Troy, he would never have found the spectacular gold objects he identified as Priam’s treasure. If Kathleen Kenyon had placed her main trench 15 metres further north she would never have brought to light the 8000 BC tower which is the earliest evidence of urban organisation.
The Monastic Ethic and the Spirit of Greenery
Authors: Walters Hugh
Published: July 2007

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.
The Gulf War and Just War Theory: Right Intention
Authors: Hollis Rosemary
Published: July 2007

Right intention is but one of the requirements that must be met for a war to be just, according to the Just War tradition. To treat it in isolation, as a basis for analysing the motives of the multi-national coalition which confronted Iraq in the Gulf war, requires isolating and dissecting certain elements of a complex whole, which may distort more than it reveals. That said, the exercise does provide a way of exploring one aspect of the war which was, and remains, the subject of speculation in the Middle East, if not elsewhere.

Both before and during the Gulf war there was much discussion, some of it covered in the Western media, on the war aims of the coalition. Speculation focused on the possibility that the members of the coalition had certain objectives in addition to those publicly professed by the various governments concerned. Any evaluation of the intentions of the coalition members must thus take into account not only what they said their aims were, but also the objectives implied by the strategy they adopted and the terms on which they were prepared to end hostilities. Actions, presumably, reveal as much as words.

Here the emphasis will be on defining the war aims of the coalition, both implicit and explicit, short and long term, so that they may be examined in the light of the requirement, of the Just War tradition, that the intentions of the combatants be just. As a reference point, some assumptions about the meaning of ‘right intention’ will be offered at the outset.
The Gulf War and the Criterion of Last Resort
Authors: Wicker Brian
Published: July 2007

The last resort criterion was employed by many critics of the war who believed that sanctions ought to have been given more time. Because sanctions were not given the chance to work fully, but were in effect preempted by the November 8th decision to double the American forces in the Gulf in preparation for a military solution, many people—including myself—held and still hold that claims for the overall justice of the war were seriously compromised. But we must consider a counter-argument to this, powerfully put by Oliver O’Donovan among others, which says that comprehensive sanctions such as were approved against Iraq are themselves a form of war: indeed of indiscriminate warfare, particularly aimed at the weakest and most defenceless members of the opposing nation. According to this view, morally speaking, there was little to choose between on the one hand bombing Iraqi civilians and destroying their essential life-support systems (water, electricity etc.), not to mention the wretched conscripted victims of Saddam’s military machine; and on the other hand starving them to death by sanctions. This case has force and we must not suppose that sanctions are anything other than ferocious and indiscriminate. The Ahtisaari report to the UN in March makes this perfectly clear. Nevertheless, distinctions do have to be drawn. Comprehensive economic sanctions first of all are clearly a legal means of pressure: the UN Charter says so in Article 41. Use of them is a case of upholding, not undermining, the rule of law. Furthermore the UN charter makes it plain in Article 42 that sanctions are clearly to be used first, before the use of force is permitted. To this extent, international law gives an obvious priority to sanctions over military operations.
The Principle of Discrimination in the Gulf War: a common humanity and the tensions of competing rights
Authors: O'Connell James
Published: July 2007

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.
The Idea of Salvation Through Science
Authors: Midgley Mary
Published: July 2007

What does it mean to say that we live in a ‘scientific age’ when that is contrasted with ‘a religious age’? Or again, to say that ‘Because we live in a scientific age we don’t need religion’?

What sort of competition is this, in which two apparently very different kinds of concern are seen as embattled? In particular, what does ‘scientific’ mean when one talks of a scientific age, and just what are the needs that science is now held to satisfy? (The spotlight is usually turned on religion, but I think we should sometimes turn it the other way). These are not just disinterested, sociological questions. We have all been hearing the voice that expresses this rather mysterious faith in science all our lives. The force with which it comes home to us must, I think, show that some of the things it is saying are important. Yet in a dozen obvious ways what it says is muddled and wildly wrong.

I must talk here somewhat crudely, because I am talking about something crude. The voice is part of the imagery out of which our conscious thought arises, merging into a dark background of which we are hardly aware. It is full of crude notions. But they can be very influential. Let’s have a closer look at this one.
Visions of Europe
Authors: O'Neill Aidan
Published: July 2007

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.
On Becoming a Cardinal
Authors: Swanston Hamish F.G.
Published: July 2007

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.
‘Non tali auxilio’: John Milbank's Suasion to Orthodoxy
Authors: Nichols Aidan
Published: July 2007

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.
‘The Truth Looks Different From Here’ or On seeking the unity of truth from a diversity of perspectives
Authors: Soskice Janet Martin
Published: July 2007

Gustavo Gutierrez, in a recent visit to Cambridge, told this story about the Medellin conference of 1968. (This is my recollection of his story and not an exact quotation.) Following that important gathering, the South American bishops received a letter from Rome. ‘We can see’, it read, ‘that your circumstances are very different from those we experience here in Europe. To enable us to help you, please send experts on South American economics, politics, sociology and anthropology to Rome. . . But don’t send any theologians because we have our own theologians here.’

Despite the fashionable sound to the phrase, theology has always been done ‘in context’. Augustine was no less contextual a theologian than Bonhoeffer, with each page attesting to the writer’s particular education, formation as a Christian, pastoral concerns and so on. Does this alarm us? Should this alarm us? If we admit to, and even delight in, the diverse contexts for the doing of theology are we ‘going soft’ on any claim to a universally valid Christian message? How do we speak of the truth and yet speak from our particularity? These are the questions I wish to consider here, questions whose significance for contemporary theology, now a global and ecumenical enterprise, need not be underlined.

I would like to begin, however, at a place seemingly remote from our own—Europe in the sixteenth century. I should like to look at one of those Reformation debates which, while distant in time and sensibility from those of our century, have repercussions which all Christians to a greater or lesser degree must still feel. For reasons which I hope will become clear, I should like to begin this discussion of ‘truth’ with a look at an exchange of letters in 1539 between Cardinal Sadoleto and John Calvin.