bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Quod Vere Sit Deus: Why Anselm Thought that God Truly Exists
Authors: Davies Brian
Published: July 2007

‘Behold, one night during Matins, the grace of God shone in his heart and the matter became clear to his understanding, filling his whole heart with an immense joy and jubilation’.

What became clear to him? Almost all students of theology, and many students of philosophy, know that there is an argument for God’s existence called ‘the Ontological Argument’. Where is this argument to be found? The usual answer given is that it was first advanced by St Anselm (c. 1033—1109) in his Proslogion. Is the argument a good one? The usual answer is that it is not, and that Immanuel Kant (1724—1804) effectively showed why. In my opinion, however, these answers are wrong. In what follows I shall try to explain why this is so. The effort is worth while because it is important to know what Anselm did argue, and also because, as it seems to me, what he has to offer is much more cogent than what is normally attributed to him.

We can begin by noting the nature of the argument attributed to Anselm by those who see him as the father of the Ontological Argument. It runs like this:

(1) ‘God’ by definition is ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’.

(2) If God did not exist he would not be ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’, for it is greater to exist than not to exist.

(3) By definition, then, ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’ exists. It would be contradictory to say ‘That than which nothing greater can be thought does not exist’.

(4) God, therefore, exists.
Systemic Change of Real Socialism: A Point of No Return
Authors: Malfliet Katlijn
Published: July 2007

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.
The Christian Scene in the Mediterranean
Authors: Fisichella Rino
Published: July 2007

In his Apologia Newman writes

I think it would be a very serious evil, which Divine Mercy avert! that the Church should be contracted in Europe within the range of particular nationalities.

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.
The Christian Scene in Eastern Europe
Authors: Vass George
Published: July 2007

The fact that a Hungarian has been asked to contribute a paper on the theme of Christian hope in Europe’s future might suggest that a ray of hope for European Christianity is expected from the eastern edge of our continent: ex oriente lux. Can my message reassure the aging and, in many respects, decadent Christianity of the west?

Many outward signs have indeed been pointing in this direction. I do not believe, however, that we can judge simply from the recent papal visit to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Though spectacular crowds on our television screens have an eminent value for religious propaganda, we in the west expect something more behind these scenes. My real task should therefore be a foray into the background of the east European landscape.

My foray will be limited, since I do not trust myself outside the confines of my native Hungary. It will be uncertain, since I am going to speak of a situation reminding us of the very beginning: ‘...and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep’. At the same time we can feel that ‘the Spirit of God was brooding over the chaos’ which the last forty years of desert wandering ‘uncreated’ in a part of our common European homeland.
U.S. Women Religious and the Feminisation of Poverty
Authors: Maloney Susan Marie
Published: July 2007

One of the most important social realities today, one which holds theological importance is the well documented and yet chilling fact of the feminisation of poverty. With the increasing global and national polarisation of poor and rich, the majority of the newly poor continue to be women and children. Overwhelmingly, women with children spend the major portion of their lives in a downward spiral, struggling for economic survival for themselves and their children. Politically, these same women hold little or no social power.

This social reality of the feminisation of poverty in the USA finds its counterpart in the Catholic Church in the economic relationship between the institutional church and women, particularly women religious. In this articler I will first describe the social process of the feminisation of poverty. Second I will briefly demonstrate how and why U.S. congregations of women religious partake in this social process through their relationship with the institutional Church. Finally I will discuss what implications this has for the theology of religious life, for women and for the Church.
Columbus was not Eichmann
Authors: Navone John
Published: July 2007

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.
The Gulf War and the Just‐War Theory: View from the Vatican
Authors: Dodaro Robert
Published: July 2007

The Vatican’s case against military intervention by the US-led ‘coalition’ in the Persian Gulf was forcefully argued on the following grounds: 1) the destruction likely to be caused in the war would be entirely disproportionate to the not insignificant evil caused by Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, 2) there was every likelihood that noncombatant death and injury would be enormous, 3) there was from the start every likelihood that Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait could be secured through diplomatic activity and negotiations without resort to the application of military force. The ‘just war’ case for the Gulf War was therefore not met, as far as the Vatican was concerned, because the case for the war failed to meet the criteria of proportionate response, discrimination, and last resort. It is true that, in framing his own objections to the war, Pope John Paul II was chary of referring directly to the so-called ‘just-war theory’. But Peter Hebblethwaite’s comment that ‘John Paul is not much interested in the pros and cons of just-war theology’ fails to account for the extent to which the Pope’s arguments against the war fell within the traditional criteria.

From the outset, the Vatican’s position was shaped by a few principles which, though broadly stated, remained constants in its attitude during the Gulf Crisis. A statement appearing in the Vatican’s official daily newspaper L'Osservatore Romano (9 August) along with the first papal statement on the crisis (26 August) contained the seeds of Vatican policy as it developed over the following months.
Mass Media and its Effects on Just War Criteria in the Gulf War
Authors: Tirimanna Vimal
Published: July 2007

It is often claimed that high technology won the Gulf War for the allies. However, a careful analysis of the ways in which the mass media was controlled after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait would clearly indicate that it was not just technology which gave the allies their victory, but also the skillful media manipulationmedia. At the very outset of this article I would like to make it clear that not only the allies but the Iraqis themselves were guilty of media manipulation. Saddam Hussein used the media first of all to convince the predominantly Islamic Iraqi people that they were waging a Holy War’ against the western infidel. He attempted to portray the war as a religious affair, a cause of Allah’, hoping both to tap the resources of religious feeling throughout the Islamic world and to draw on the political capital of Muslims in the Middle East. Throughout the crisis he did not hesitate to match the tone of his rhetoric with that of President Bush.

When the allies began their air attacks on Iraq on January 17, Saddam informed the nation that the enemy had declared war, by using the phrase: ‘the mother of all battles has begun !’ He assured his people, in graphic terms, that the enemy would be burned alive and buried in the desert sands. Throughout the war the Iraqi people were never given an accurate picture of events at the front.
Regionalisation and the Theology of Space
Authors: Mellor Philip A.
Published: July 2007

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.
Simplicity Itself: Milbank's Thesis
Authors: Kerr Fergus
Published: July 2007

John Milbank's work is familiar to the assiduous reader of New Blackfriars, who will recall his two-part study of William Warburton, as well as his more recent essays ‘On Baseless Suspicion: Christianity and the Crisis of Socialism’ and ‘Religion, Culture and Anarchy: the attack on the Amoldian vision’. Although not incorporated materially into Theology and Social Theory, these essays open up related lines of investigation, and, having read them, one might not find his massive book so intimidating. It may be said, at least, that one might have been prepared for this venture into a post-Nietzschean theology which is also profoundly (Anglican) Catholic—an unlikely conjunction, one might have thought.

The book’s dense scholarship and theoretical complexity are formidable, but, fortunately, in the title, the epigraph and the table of contents, we are offered three clues to the brilliantly simple thesis which it takes all the learning and argument in the rest of the book to expound and substantiate.

A book entitled Theology and Social Theory in a series containing titles such as Theology and Philosophy, Theology and Politics and the like, would naturally be expected to bring together in a mutually illuminating way what everyone is likely to think of as two radically different disciplines, each with its own autonomous method and distinctive discourse—‘naturally’, that is to say, in the cultural environment of carefully protected academic specialisms which we inhabit and which the author means to disrupt. Theologians, peering through the machicolations of faith-engaging scholarship, would learn from sociologists about the ways in which ideas are shaped by social processes.
John Milbank's Divina Commedia
Authors: Ward Graham
Published: July 2007

Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell of that wood, savage and harsh and dense, the thought of which renews my fear!

(Inferno Canto 1, 3–6)

The journey towards Milbank’s representation of Augustine’s Civitas Dei calls for an epic heroism, as it passes through woods dense with philosophical thought and over chasms of vertiginous intellectual argument. Dante, then, provides a description of one’s experience of reading Theology and Social Theory. But more significantly, he provides us with a key to its method. Milbank’s polemic is aimed at modernity, the invention of the secular story and modem political theology’s collusion with it. This modernity or secularity arose following late-mediaeval/Renaissance self-awareness. Assisted by postmodern strategies of reading, Milbank allegorizes secular discourses, deconstructs their secularism and reveals their dependence upon metaphysical and theological assumptions. By doing this he therefore embraces secular discourse (whose inception and invention ‘began at least in the eleventh century’ [p.432]) within a theological metanarrative. And that is why Dante is significant; John Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory is a contemporary Commedia. This does not necessarily condemn it as a piece of late twentieth century nostalgia, a fin de siècle pre-Raphaelitism. But it means that the teleological goal of Theology and Social Theory is the recovery of a pre-modem (but not antique) theological perspective. Or, put in another (albeit Dantesque) way: this book provides a new allegorical depiction of the operation of charity [pp.425-6]. Such a reading of the book has several important corollaries, binding upon both John Milbank and his readers.
Saving Time: Thoughts on Practice, Patience and Vision
Authors: Williams + Rowan
Published: July 2007

Theology and Social Theory is a book that prompts conversation on almost every page - conversation of both the ‘yes, and..and the ‘yes, but . kind, as well as something like a ‘no, but. . .’ on occasion. An adequate review would have to be a kind of gloss, a talmudic margin. It is no small tribute to Milbank that this work is so hard to discuss briefly. What follows is not a review, but a few fragments of this reader’s side of the conversation, assembled round a focal area of unease within an overall admiration for the learning and boldness of the enterprise. My title will hint at something of my discomfort: is Milbank’s commitment to history and narrative, to time as the medium of benign creativity and non-competitive difference, fully realised in his exposition? Does he ‘save time’ in a theological sense or only in the colloquial one of getting more expeditiously to his goal than the circumstances might seem to warrant?

The project of reconstructing a Christian ontology by retelling the story of the Christian Church’s origins, so as to display it as the history that makes sense of all histories, is heralded as one of the indispensable moments in the rehabilitation of a properly theological critique of secular order (e.g. p.381). ‘The metanarrative. . . is the genesis of the Church’ (p.387). This is an intriguing and exhilarating prospect; I am not sure if it has been carried through. Christian universalism is opposed to the ‘orders’ of non-Christian antiquity—the Roman sacralisation of dominion, with its programmatic refusal of a properly common good, and the Jewish commitment to law as the defining structure of a common good, at least for one specific community.
Enclaves, or Where is the Church?
Authors: Milbank John
Published: July 2007

It was not the purpose of Theology and Social Theory (whose argument has been so accurately precised by Fergus Kerr) to imagine the Church as Utopia. Nor to discover in its ramified and fissiparous history some single ideal exemplar. For this would have been to envisage the Church in spatial terms—as another place, which we might arrive at, or as this identifiable site, which we can still inhabit. How could either characterize the Church which exists, finitely, not in time, but as time, taken in the mode of gift and promise? Not as a peace we must slowly construct, piecemeal, imbibing our hard-learned lessons, but as a peace already given, superabundantly, in the breaking of bread by the risen Lord, which assembles the harmony of peoples then and at every subsequent eucharist. But neither as a peace already realized, which might excuse our labour. For the body and blood of Christ only exist in the mode of gift, and they can be gift (like any gift) only as traces of the giver and promise of future provision from the same source. This is not an ideal presence real or imagined, but something more like an ‘ideal transmission’ through time, and despite its ravages. Fortunately the Church is first and foremost neither a programme, nor a ‘real’ society, but instead an enacted, serious fiction. Only in its eucharistic centring is it enabled to sustain a ritual distance from itself, to preserve itself, as the body of Christ under judgement by the body of Christ, which after all, it can only receive. In a sense, this ritual distance of the Church from itself defines the Church, or rather deflects it from any definition of what it is. In its truth it is not, but has been and will be. (Here I am much indebted to Kieran Flanagan for pointing out that my book omitted the ritual dimension).
The Problem of Evil
Authors: Davies Brian
Published: July 2007

We are often told that there is something called ‘the problem of evil’. What is this supposed to be? And how should we respond to it?

It is usually understood as a problem for classical theism (sometimes just called theism), supporters of which are commonly called theists. According to classical theism, God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and allgood. In the world around us, however, we discover a great deal of pain and suffering. We also find a great deal of moral evil—morally culpable actions (or refusals to act) which diminish both those who are morally bad and those around them. The problem of evil is commonly seen as the problem of how the existence of God can be reconciled with the pain, suffering, and moral evil which we know to be facts of life. And it has often been said that they cannot be. Thus it has been urged that the problem of evil constitutes grounds for disbelief in God.

The argument here has taken two forms. First, it has been said that evil is evidence against there being a God—that evil shows the existence of God to be unlikely. Second, it has been held that evil is proof that there could not be a God. The idea here is that theists are caught in a contradiction. They cannot say both that there is evil and that God exists. Since they can hardly deny that there is evil, it follows that God does not exist.
Early Irish ‘Feminism’
Authors: Márkus Gilbert
Published: July 2007

There is a tendency among critics of ‘patriarchal’ culture or religion to point to the high status of women in early Irish or other Celtic societies as a model for change, suggesting that these societies displayed what one might call ‘actually existing feminism’. The assumption appears in otherwise scholarly works. Thus Dillon and Chadwick:

It is indeed impossible to have any true understanding of either Celtic history or Celtic literature without realizing the high status of Celtic women.

Elsewhere we are invited to ‘think of the superior place of women in early Celtic society’2. But what is the evidence for these claims?
Forces And Divisions that Contribute to Violence in South Africa
Authors: Dzimba John
Published: July 2007

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 Incarnation and the Fully Human Life
Authors: Fisher Anthony
Published: July 2007

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.
A Stumbling‐block for Jews and Folly for Gentiles
Authors: Gross Selwyn
Published: July 2007

The Cardinal-Archbishop of Paris, two Carmelite friars living on the top
of Mount Carmel in the Holy Land, a few Dominican friars, and some 200,000
other Christians, clerical and lay, share something special with me which
marks us out, in some respects, from our other brothers and sisters in
Christ. We are all bom and bred Jewish, and we share this characteristic
with all the apostles, with the Mother of our Lord, and with our Lord
himself. Some of us are more aware of our Jewish background than others, and
some of us are more deeply steeped in the traditions of Rabbinical Judaism
than others of our group. Are we ex- Jews, people who have abandoned their
Jewish identity by accepting Jesus as our Messiah, or do we remain Jewish in
Christ? I believe that we remain Jewish in Christ, and that Christ calls us
to strengthen, to nurture and to cherish our Jewish identity within his
body, the Church. There are many people who disagree with this proposition.
There have long been Christians who believe that Jews are called to
abandon their Jewish identity when they are
baptised into Christ, and who see the persistence of Jewish identity among
baptised Christians as an affront to our Lord. For such people, my belief in
the persistence of my Jewishness and in the importance of the Jewish
identity of people like me is folly at best and apostasy at worst. Many Jews
concur with this view, albeit from a different angle, viewing all Jews who
become Christians as apostates who have abandoned any identification with
the Jewish people and have joined hands with those who have persecuted them
and murdered them. The baptism of Jews, on their account, is a bar to
fellowship, a stumbling-block. I would like to essay a discussion of
Jewish-Christian identity and its dilemmas within the Church.
The Women of Muriel Spark Narrative and Faith
Authors: Sproxton Judy
Published: July 2007

Muriel Spark’s concept of faith is an essential feature of her work.lt
supplies perspective and balance. Without an appreciation of it, her novels
may only be valued for their wit, their irony, their unpredictability. These
are indeed attractive aspects of her writing. However, they do not function
merely to tease, surprise and entertain. They exist to illustrate a life
which is essentially fragmented.

In a world where nothing can be fully grasped, there are dangers; the
most threatening is a misplaced confidence in a single selfish viewpoint.
Such an error constitutes an essential sin in Christian terms: it is
philautia, love of self. St Augustine
described sin as a turning away from God towards the self. Sin in Christian
terms is negative: it is the opposite of all that comes from God. And so we
find certain characters in Spark’s work mistakenly asserting themselves as
the source of power and their own viewpoint as a criterion of truth. On the
other hand we find characters who have a profound need to acknowledge a
truth beyond themselves and who strive to come to terms with the essential
inadequacy of a human perspective. These characters have a determination to
identify what is true and honest in their existence; they have a sense of
irony and sometimes a great sense of joy. All these characters describe
themselves as Catholics. Although they are not portrayed as dependent on
church ritual or practice, the dimension of faith is of the utmost
importance to them.

Caroline in The Comforters is most explicitly
bound up in her faith. She is a convert and finds herself patronized by
cradle Catholics such as Mrs Hogg. She is irritated by this for she has a
sense of her faith which lies beyond the smug platitudes of this woman.
Although Caroline goes into retreat, she does not encounter her faith by
turning her back on her life. On the contrary, the challenges, the
irritations and the mysteries which nurture her faith are in her
experience.
New Insights into Matthew 27: 24–25
Authors: Sullivan Desmond
Published: July 2007

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.
Renew our Days as of Old
Authors: Gross Selwyn
Published: July 2007

Npstra Aetate, the Declaration on the Relation of the church to NonChristian religions issued by Vatican II, notes that the Church regards God’s election of Israel and the dispensation brought by Christ as intimately connected with one another. It is indeed important for Christians to realise that the dispensation of Israel and the disposition represented by the Church are continuous, that each forms part of a continuous and integral history of salvation. The Church acknowledges the salvific character God’s covenant with Israel, and of divine revelation to Israel in the Torah of Judaism. Indeed, the Church cherishes the Hebrew scriptures, uses them extensively in its liturgy, and views them as fundamental to its Christian faith.

Some Christians argue that the new covenant in Christ supersedes and abrogates the older covenant with Israel, and that the coming of Christ marks the end of the covenantal and salvific value of the Torah. Such Christians also argue that post-Christie Jews are rejected by God, and that the Israel of the old covenant is eliminatively replaced in the economy of salvation by a new Israel comprising gentiles who have accepted Christ. On this account, part of Christ’s mission was the destruction of the Torah and the rejection of Israel in favour of the gentiles, and the good news of Christ’s coming is not good news for the Jewish people at all but rather a curse. This flies in the face of some of our Lord’s own sayings. Does our Lord not state that he has not come to abolish the Torah, but rather to bring it to perfection, and that not a jot and a tittle of the Torah will pass away until all things are brought to their eschatological perfection, presumably in the general resurrection and judgement? For that matter, our Lord acknowledges the magisterial authority of the Pharisaic forbears of the Rabbis, saying that they speak with the authority of Moses, and that their rulings in matters of observance must be obeyed. The burden of our Lord’s criticism of the Pharisees is not that their tradition and authority is false or invalid, but rather that they fail to live up to it. As for the claim that our Lord comes to disown and reject the Jewish people, it should be noted that he tells us that he has come to the lost sheep of Israel, that he commissioned the twelve apostles to go not to the gentiles ‘but... rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’, and states emphatically that salvation itself is of the Jews.
A Critique of Jürgen Moltmann's Green Theology.
Authors: Deane‐Drummond Celia
Published: July 2007

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.
Do Whales have Souls?
Authors: Jones David Albert
Published: July 2007

Do whales have souls and if so what follows ? How would Catholic theology have to change if it was discovered that whales were as rational as you or I ? If whales have souls can they become Catholics ?

For a traditional Catholic, to have a soul, in latin anima, is to be animate, to be alive. Having a soul is having a certain form, a certain organisation such that one can move oneself. One part moves another so that the whole moves itself. This self-moving quality, shown in the processes of nutrition, growth and reproduction, is common to all living things. To be alive is to have a soul. St. Thomas Aquinas would affirm that all living things from cabbages to whales, so long as they were alive, were so in virtue of a soul.

This broadly speaking, is the scriptural view, though it is often obscured by translation. In Genesis 1:20 God says,‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures’. In Genesis 2:7 God breathes into the nostrils of the man so that he becomes a ‘living being’. In both cases the word nephesh is used which in other places we would translate soul. So the waters brought forth swarms of living souls, and Adam became a living soul. Plants are a bit of a borderline case, for though clearly alive they are not very lively. However, with this small qualification, hebrew Old Testament, greek New Testament, and latin scholastic theology would agree.
Twenty‐five Years On: A Catholic Commemoration of Karl Barth
Authors: Nichols Aidan
Published: July 2007

Karl Barth was bom in Basle in 1886, the descendant of a long line of Swiss Protestant pastors and burghers, who included in their ranks Jacob Burckhardt, the historian of the Italian Renaissance. His family were patricians and devotees of music and the arts, but they also had a simple devotion to Jesus. In the biography of Barth written, on the basis of his autobiographical essays and letters, by his last academic assistant, Eberhard Busch, we hear that Barth’s earliest theological formation came from religious nursery-rhymes in the Basle dialect. His subsequent theological pilgrimage can be seen as a flight from, and then return to, the religious assurance of these children’s songs - albeit in an infinitely more sophisticated manner. As he himself wrote, these songs

were the textbook from which I received my first theological instruction in a form which was appropriate for my immature years. What made an indelible impression on me was the homely self-assurance with which these unpretentious verses spoke of the events of Christmas, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, as though they could have taken place that very morning in Basle or nearby, like any other exciting event. History? Doctrine? Dogma? Myth? No. It was all things actually taking place. You could see everything for yourself, listen to it, and take it to heart by hearing one of these songs sung in the language you were hearing elsewhere and beginning to speak. Holding your mother's hand, you went to the stable in Bethlehem, along the streets of Jerusalem into which the Saviour was making his entry. hailed by children of your own age. You climbed the grim hill of Golgotha and walked in Joseph’s garden at daybreak … Was it all rather naive? Indeed, it was very naive, but perhaps the deepest wisdom, with its fullest force, lies in naivety, and this kind of wisdom, once gained, can cany a man over whole oceans of historicism and anti-historicism, mysticism and rationalism, orthodoxy, liberalism, and existentialism. He certainly will not be spared trial and temptation, but in the end he will be brought back relatively unscathed to firm ground.
Barth and Postmodernism
Authors: Ward Graham
Published: July 2007

There has been a resurgence of interest in Karl Barth’s work over the last decade in both this country and the States. It has been an interest paralleling a growing recognition that ‘postmodemity’ best characterizes (if such an chameleon noun can characterize anything) our cultural situation. It is no surprise, then, to find studies of Karl Barth’s work which interpret him as a deconstructionist avant la lettre and interpret his Weimar culture as “a first postmodemity”. But, in the main, what is understood by ‘postmodernism’ and ‘postmodemity’ in these studies is left inadequately defined. Therefore, there is a certain lack of clarity about why it is that Karl Barth’s theology resonates with contemporary culture. Furthermore, the majority of studies comparing Barth’s work with postmodern thinking concentrate upon his early, dialectical theology, in particular his metaphor of ‘crisis’ in the second edition of his Epistle to the Romans. In this essay, then, I wish to attempt two things. First, to try and provide a clarity concerning Barth’s relatedness to postmodernism and establish the rationale for the interest in Barth’s work today. Secondly, to show that the profundity of the parallels between Barth’s work and postmodernism lies not in the similar use of the ‘crisis’ metaphor, but in respective approaches to the nature of discourse itself.

Read positively, postmodernism is concerned with liberation; a liberation from self-legitimating structures. Postmodern thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard problematize this legitimation. They ask, what or who authorizes the power certain discourses have to explain the world ?
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Authors: Duffy Eamon
Published: July 2007

Universities are curious, contrary institutions, and Oxford and Cambridge more curious and contrary than most. At one level they are centres of intellectual innovation and advance, places where the atom is split, new wonder-drugs developed, old orthodoxies overturned. And yet they are also the most conservative of institutions, wedded, with a fidelity which our society hardly grants to any ordinary marriage, to extraordinary rituals and ways of doing things whose sole commendation seems to be, that it has always been so.

The contradiction is more apparent than real; a strong sense of tradition is often a help, not a hindrance, to intellectual openness. But is not always easy to see how that works in practice, and much that we do and value in the ritual side of our common life has, to an unsympathetic eye, a faint air of the ridiculous about it. Today’s service is a case in point. Just what is all this about? Some of you may know the spoof commemoration-day address given by a lunatic clergyman at the beginning of W H Auden’s The Orators:

Commemoration: Commemoration. What does it mean? What does it mean? Not, what did it mean to them, there, then, but what does it mean to us, here, now? It’s a facer, isn’t it boys? But we’ve all got to answer it. What were the dead like? What sort of people are we living with now? Why are we here What are we going to do?
An Antidote to Violence?
Authors: Lascaris Andrew
Published: July 2007

The cruelties committed in the war in former Yugoslavia profoundly shock us. Villages are completely destroyed, children, women and men, even their cattle, are killed. Women are raped and forced to give birth to the children of their rapists. The perpetrators are ordinary citizens, pleasant people, good neighbours. We do not have to look for violence that far away. Bombs go off in the city of London, children are killed in Warrington, and in revenge innocent young men are massacred in Belfast. Violence exists outside war situations as well. Domestic violence is probably the most common form of violence: incest, beating, or simply bullying. It is often hidden; in spite of everything, loyalty to parents and other members of the family overrules the urge to confide in someone, to complain and to accuse in public. Though violent novels and films may be very popular, articles and books on violence are generally not. The Bible is full of violent events, but there is relatively little literature on violence in Scripture.

Why do we accept violence relatively easily as a part of life? Why do peaceful people resort to violence in certain situations? It seems to me that violence is closely linked with justice. Violence is used to redress wrongs or to prevent injuries. The source of much violence is the thirst for justice. People always try to justify their use of violence by appealing to their right to restore injustices done to them in the past or in the present.
The Earth as a Gift
Authors: Willey Petroc , Willey Eldred
Published: July 2007

It is often said that the earth and its creatures are God’s gifts to humankind. Animals and plants are understood to have been ‘sent’ for us, so that we may, by and large, do with them as we will. What we must do in return is express our thanks to the Creator for His generosity. We must say Grace over our meals. So John Locke wrote:

The earth and all that is therein is given to men for the support and comfort of their being. . .all the fruits it produces, the beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of nature.

In the Christian tradition, discussions on the rights of ownership typically propose definite limitations on the private use of the earth: we may not supply ourselves with luxuries while other persons still lack basic necessities. But no limits are explicitly set on the common human use of the earth. The gazelle, then, would seem to have no right to the land on which she grazes; the lion no right to her prey. Only humans have rights of ownership, even over their own bodies. That anything non-human enjoys food, habitat or life itself is only by the mercy of homo sapiens.

A popular belief drawn from this is that certain animals are simply ‘made to be eaten’. A sheep is walking mutton. Within the Christian tradition this belief tends to be justified by an appeal to revelation.
The Way of the Void
Authors: Murray Paul
Published: July 2007

On the 30 March 1992 Damian Byrne, the former Master of the Dominican Order, wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger:

The Order of St. Dominic has obviously a very direct interest in Meister Eckhart’s life, works and reputation. This is why the General Chapter of 1980 welcomed one petition concerning the great theologian and mystic. It originated in Great Britain from a group of Dominican laity and friends of the Order in that country headed by the late Mrs. Ursula Fleming who founded the association, Friends of Meister Eckhart.

If today the fundamental innocence and theological integrity of Meister Eckhart are generally acknowledged, both within and outside the Dominican Order, this is due in no small measure to the efforts of people like Ursula. Today, when we read Eckhart’s work it is not with an inquisitorial gaze or scrutiny—rather, we ourselves feel we are under his gaze, his quiet scrutiny. Eckhart comes towards us almost as if he were one of our own contemporaries and as a master among them. We do not put him to the test, rather his words—ancient words, yet eloquently new in their serenity and freshness—probe and test us.

Needless to say there are still many difficulties that remain. But our questions today—my own questions at any rate—are not those bom of suspicion or fear, rather they are the questions of one interested reader, even a sort of disciple, who finds himself gripped and fascinated by what Eckhart is saying, but also sometimes confused and even bewildered by the extraordinary depth and range and daring of the master’s teaching.