bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Surviving Wiles: From Dogmatic Theology to Doctrinal Criticism
Authors: Kerr Fergus 
Published: July 2007

Maurice Wiles, who is Regius Professor of Theology in the University of Oxford as well as Chairman of the Doctrinal Commission of the Church of England, is that rare species, a dogmatic theologian who is neither so deeply entrenched in doctrinal fundamentalism that he sees no need for the introduction of the critical-historical method nor so anxious about its initial effects on the orthodoxy of his own thinking that he prefers to remain almost silent. He obviously does not regard his tenure of weighty and perhaps rather exposed offices as barring him from pursuing a course of enquiry which he himself often refers to in such terms as ‘daunting’, ‘dangerous and disturbing’, and the like. One may well want to argue over the detail and the force of some of these critical-historical studies of various Christian doctrines at the most decisive stages of their formation. This the author would certainly welcome. Given that most of these papers have already appeared in learned journals (the earliest in 1957), it is surprising that their intention has not been better understood. Perhaps collecting them like this will help.In a nutshell, what Wiles proposes is that the kind of critical study of the formation of the Scriptures which began over a century ago should at last be extended systematically to the case of Christian doctrine. The model of biblical criticism suggests the necessity of an equivalent kind of doctrinal criticism (a phrase which Wiles ascribes to the late G. F. Woods). Partly because of his own background in patristic scholarship, but mainly in recognition of the decisive role the Fathers played in the formative period of Christian doctrine, it is the faith of Nicaea and of Chalcedon that Wiles is led to examine and question. There, of course, is where the dangers lie, that he foresees as clearly as anybody, and perhaps far more clearly than many of his critics.
A Modern Irenaean Theodicy — Professor Hick on Evil
Authors: Davies Brian A. 
Published: July 2007

In attempting to deal with the traditional problem of evil Christian theologians have had recourse to the presentation of theodicies. The two most influential kinds (though advocates of either can agree on some points) have been the Augustinian and the Irenaean and today the latter is the most popular largely as a result of its exposition by Professor John Hick. I have no distinctive theodicy to offer, nor am I sure either that one can be offered or that the Christian is bound to offer one. Perhaps, after all, what Alvin Plantinga calls a ‘defence’, coupled with an appeal to mystery is in order. I do, however, find the Irenaean theodicy in Hick’s form difficult to accept and am therefore disturbed to find it currently so influential. In what follows, and in the briefest possible manner, my aim is to indicate why others should feel the same.The problem of evil is a problem for the theist. According to theism the following propositions are true:
1. God exists.2. God is an all-powerful, all knowing and all-good agent.The problem is how to square acceptance of these propositions with the acceptance of the facts of evil. By ‘evil’ here is meant (a) moral evil [viz. morally undesirable actions of human agents who frequently inflict suffering and harm on each other], and (b) natural evil [viz. pain producing events in the world of nature and undesirable though not necessarily pain producing natural events and states of affairs].
On Death and Human Existence
Authors: Cameron James M 
Published: July 2007

The topic of death, now fashionable and much discussed, raises questions in almost every field of thought. Death has always been thought hateful, or almost always; hateful, and enigmatic. In the Christian and Jewish traditions death has always been terrible, something that reveals the distance between God and man and man’s dereliction; and it is therefore thought to be something that in some obscure sense ought not to happen. The primitive account of the passion in Mark and Matthew—characteristically and no doubt deliberately omitted by Luke—records the great cry of agony taken from Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” In the same psalm we find: “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax, it is melted within my breast . . . and my tongue cleaves to my jaws; thou dost lay me in the dust of death.” Here is no attempt to prettify death or to make the process of dying acceptable. Death is intolerable.Of course, there are other biblical ways of looking at death. In (and out of) the Bible we are given the picture of the just man full of years and honour who dies surrounded by his children and his children’s children. This is a fortunate death, and if to this we add the element contributed by Christianity, namely, the reception of the eucharist (viaticum, journey money, analogous to the placing of a coin in the dead man’s mouth to pay Charon’s ferry charges), and the anointing (formerly) of those parts of the body that have so often taken us away from God, and the sacramental remission of sin through confession and absolution, we understand how this can properly be called “a happy death.”
Christ and China II
Authors: O'Collins Gerald 
Published: July 2007

Closely aligned with the theme of the passio Christi apud Sinenses is that of the emulation of heroes. Mao led his nation in an extraordinary struggle to reshape the values, attitudes and ideas of an entire people. James Reston, senior editor of the New York Times was astounded by the ‘staggering thing that modem China is trying to do. They’re not trying merely to revolutionize people, and establish a sense of social conscience, but they’re really trying to change the character of these people. The place is one vast school of moral philosophy.’ Many methods pour into this enormous programme of thought-reform: preaching, teaching, wide-ranging techniques of persuasion from the outside, and orgies of self-criticism in which people testify to their conversion away from selfishness and incorrect ideas towards an exalted service of the masses in the name of the party. In all this ideological struggle to practise good deeds, overcome selfishness and reach true equality in a new society, the emulation of heroes (and sometimes of heroines) has emerged as a major means used on a nation-wide scale.I would like to explore this imitation of heroes. It would be silly to speak of it constituting an imitatio Christi apud Sinenses (imitation of Christ among the Chinese). Nevertheless, certain interesting Christological implications may emerge.
Women, Theology and the Eucharist
Authors: Williams Chris 
Published: July 2007

Is Brian McNeil serious (new Blackfriars Oct 1976) or is he casting his bread upon the waters in the hope of seeding a good argument? When someone suggests that theological insight or clarification can be made through an examionation of symbols and their legitimation, the sociologist in me immediately pricks up his ears. Mr McNeil’s argument on the place (or rather the lack of place) of women in the eucharistic liturgy provokes the ambiguous reaction of mild sympathy followed by profound disagreement.I agree with him that the fact that there were no women included among the Apostles indicates little in the way of church structures and how the ministry should be organised. I agree with him that the symbolism of sacramental action should be ground grounded (or “earthed” as he puts it) in our own experience as human beings. I also agree, somewhat off the main subject, that the practice of concelebration adds little to, and indeed probably detracts from, the symbolic communication of the eucharist. It seems little more than a clerical pageant more designed to emphasise the separation of the ordained ministry from the ordinary faithful and to imply a minimisation of the priesthood of the people of God (one president of the eucharist is enough): the other ordained ministers should be identified with the assembled people. However, I profoundly disagree with his conclusions, be they never so tentative, and indeed with his overall argument.Mr McNeil concludes that women, though possibly eligible for other forms of ministry, have no place presiding over the eucharistic liturgy. He arrives at this position through the application of two principles of legitimation for the sacramental symbols employed in the eucharist.
Biblical Exegesis and the Resurrection
Authors: Dummett Michael 
Published: July 2007

The Second Vatican Council taught that, in interpreting Holy Scripture, we must search out the meanings intended by the sacred writers, and that, in doing so, we must have regard for literary forms. I write as a layman in such matters, and will probably make mistakes on important points of detail: but I venture to write on the subject because I doubt that my general assessment is wrong. This is that, in the style of Biblical criticism now apparently prevalent within the Catholic Church, the appeal to literary forms has become little more than a formal device, serving to conceal, possibly from themselves, what the exegetes really mean; and what they mean is usually something inconsistent with any belief, however qualified, in the inspiration of Scripture, and often with more fundamental articles of Christian faith.The general principle that we must take account of the literary form adopted is clear and evident. What is intended to be read as allegory must be read as allegory; what is written as fiction or as historical romance must be read as fiction or as historical romance. In reading historical accounts, we must try to assess what liberties the author was allowing himself, and not give a misplaced weight to details for which he was not meaning to vouch: we must distinguish reporting from reconstruction, must be aware of the use of devices such as compression and dramatisation. But, in applying this principle, we must, as much as in all other matters, submit to the evidence, not bend it to our will. Acceptance of the principle of literary forms is an acknowledgment of the more general principle that inspiration is not dictation. The inspired writers did not act as transcribing machines: it was not merely the hand that held the pen that was inspired, but the creative human mind itself.
Exegesis and Easter
Authors: Kerr Fergus 
Published: July 2007

The problems which biblical criticism creates for Catholics cannot be disposed of so summarily as Michael Dummet thinks. He dismisses “ most modern Catholic Biblical exegesis” on the grounds that it is “dishonest”, in the sense that exegetes arbitrarily postulate ancient literary forms among which they proceed to classify parts of the New Testament they cannot take literally, without their having to admit that such parts are thus either fiction or fraud. The dishonesty lies in claiming texts as divinely inspired while refusing to take them at face value. It seems to me, however, for a start, that Mr. Dummett goes wrong on two important matters of fact.First, as to pseudonymous writing, it is just not true that exegetes have invented the existence of such literature in order to place a document such as the Second Epistle of St. Peter within a well-known ancient literary convention, i.e. the convention of writing letters as if they were being written by some famous man already deceased. Not only was there an abundance of such pseudonymous writing in the ancient world at large but evidence for it exists in Judaism as well as in early Christianity. In spite of much research and speculation (see Kummel, page 362 for bibliography), many questions remain unanswered, particularly about the motives of such writing. The principle of pseudonymous writing was not generally questioned, though cases of forgery and fraud were certainly denounced. It should not be lightly assumed that New Testament writings are pseudonymous, but there are no grounds for asserting that pseudonymous writing was necessarily dishonest, less still for asserting that as a literary convention it never existed or was soon forgotten (think of the apocryphal Christian literature of the second century and later).
The Magic of Statistics: Sociology, Psychology and Women in the Church
Authors: Pickering W.S.F. 
Published: July 2007

During the recently celebrated women’s liberation year, the cry—and indeed a just cry—was for equal rights with men in those social and economic areas where male dominance reigns. For the same work, the same wages, no matter the sex; in marriage, equality of status and the same rights, for both husband and wife; in general social benefits, no difference between men and women. The Church for countless centuries, despite the relative franchise it gave to women in its very early days based on a universalistic ethic, has been an impregnable bastion of male power. No wonder the call for female liberation has penetrated into the traditional churches, especially the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches. The result so far is not very encouraging. Admittedly women are allowed to do more than in former years and are often strongly represented in local Church councils, but to become a priest, and therefore eventually a bishop remains a strictly tabooed function for women. In the Free churches, the interdict has been removed in modem times but few women have in fact been ordained and even fewer have reached positions of prominence as Church leaders.But if women’s cards are poor in bidding for equality in function and leadership, they have a very good hand in their general support of the church. Their attendance and devotion are out of all proportion to the position they occupy in the hierarchical structure. At Mass on Sundays, on weekdays, coming out of a Baptist or Anglican Church, who predominates? Always the answer is females. This phenomenon which appears so widespread invites curiosity and enquiry. The parish priest wonders about it and seeks schemes to restore the balance, for example by providing, as was the custom, men’s clubs and boys’ clubs, and getting men to do masculine things in and around the parish.
A Hundred Years of Wagner's Ring
Authors: Blackadder David 
Published: July 2007

When a stage work of exceptional length and complexity not only survives for 100 years, but grows in popularity despite virtually insoluble problems of presentation, it is appropriate to mark the centenary by asking why this should be. Wagner’s cycle of music dramas, The Ring of the Nibelung, is spread over four evenings and the uncut music requires between 14 and 16 hours for performance. To say that the appeal of the work reflects a general hankering after the larger than life merely touches the surface of the matter and it is necessary to grasp the extraordinary richness of The Ring. Apart from its musical grandeur it has a notable intellectual content, a wide emotional range, a potent symbolism and a capacity to involve the spectator in ways which he may hardly realise during or after the performance.The literature concerning Wagner in general and The Ring in particular is very extensive and different commentators have sought and found different kinds of evidence for pronouncing the cycle a work of genius and a landmark in Western cultural achievement. English speaking commentators have been prominent beginning with Bernard Shaw who published his handbook to The Ring, The Perfect Wagnerite, in 1898. This is now felt to be a curious mixture of good sense and nonsense, the latter arising from Shaw’s own attitudes and limitations. He was a social crusader and a dramatist who felt that stage works must have a serious underlying purpose even when dressed up as comedies, and the message of the piece should be perfectly clear. It is hardly surprising that he saw the first three parts of The Ring as an intricate but perfectly comprehensible allegory concerning the evils of capitalism, the exploitation of the poor and the mechanism of revolutionary change. His detailed analysis, though ingenious, now seems over-tidy and glib.
A Lesson Half‐Learned
Authors: Smith Stan 
Published: July 2007

“Yeats said to me that if they knew what we thought, they’d do away with us. They want their poets dead.” Ezra Pound took no pains to conceal what he thought and, sure enough, found himself at the age of sixty in the death-cells at Pisa—open-air cages, exposed to the elements, with only a pup-tent for shelter—facing the possibility of execution for treason as a result of his war-time broadcasts on Italian radio in support of Mussolini, Hitler and fascism. Heymann’s study’attempts to chart the precise evolution which led him there, and thence to thirteen years in St Elizabeth’s Mental Asylum, medically diagnosed at his trial as a man “afflicted with a paranoid state of psychotic proportions,” and judged “of unsound mind” by a jury which took three minutes to reach its verdict.Perhaps this is the significant phrase. Yeat’s remark was romantic braggadocio: for “do away” we should substitute “put away”. Pound’s treatment, after the initial atrocities of the Pisan cage, which induced an arguably long-imminent nervous breakdown, was “lenient” enough, in conventional terms—as if the authorities had almost conspired to avoid the embarrassment of a political trial for a man with such an international reputation and such influential friends. And to see Pound’s beliefs as a logical development from his starting-point was too risky an option in the war-ravaged Europe of 1945, where already former fascists were being rehabilitated to prop up the administration of the occupied zones, and fend off the risk of communist takeovers.
Many Gifts: One Form of Service
Authors: Sutherland K. , Allen P 
Published: July 2007

The many recent discussions in the churches on the “ministry of women” have only served to reveal the sterility of the topic when considered as an end in itself, apart from the wider context in which it belongs, a context which itself needs to be re-examined: the responsibility of every member of God’s church to minister.The arguments on women and the priesthood face a particular danger in the Roman church, where there is an unhealthy focus on priesthood, to the exclusion of every other aspect of Christian ministry. This has produced a church in which rigid conformity to the three estates—the priesthood, the “religious life”, the lay state—has blinded its members to Christ’s exhortation to every soul to seek out freedom and wholeness. The result has been a misuse of the concept of vocation. Any member of the church who gives exceptional evidence of a spiritual dimension to his life, or exhibits an interest in the workings of the institutional church is expected and channelled to go on to something higher, and this means to take a step up the hierarchical ladder which has been devised. In this way his universal Christian vocation is subsumed into a specialist vocation which the church regards as superior. Such a system fails to profit by and encourage the growth of those of its members who are permanently committed to the lay state. Most especially is this anachronistic in the modem world where education and the tools of civilisation are no longer the special charge of the church but within the grasp and gift of everybody. Such a development in the Christian world should be joyfully accepted as heralding the replacement of institutionalised and elitist knowledge by equality of opportunity and, therefore, of contribution.
The Romantic Critic
Authors: Savage D.S. 
Published: July 2007

Since the nineteen-thirties and forties, when the late Sir Herbert Read, author of Reason and Romanticism, was an influential figure in literary England, Romanticism as an avowed literary attitude has suffered an eclipse, even if vulgarized forms of Romanticism are more prevalent in society at large than ever before. Less prominent than Read was the equally Romantic critic and moralist, J. Middleton Murry. Among Murry’s younger associates was F. A.Lea, the author of several studies of Romantic writers including Shelley, Carlyle and Nietzsche. Now Mr Lea has come forward with a book of literary studies which again raises the Romantic banner. Voices in the Wilderness, studies of six “prophetic” writers of the modem age, Blake, Wordsworth, Carlyle, D H Lawrence, Middleton Murry and Arthur Koestler, is the second volume of a dual work the first volume of which, The Ethics of Reason, is a philosophical examination of attempts from Socrates onwards to define “the good man”. Voices in the Wilderness, however, is complete in itself, and constitutes a very revealing exposition of the Romantic viewpoint.Like most people whose thoughts and feelings are not limited to their own immediate circumstances, Mr Lea is appalled by the joyless collectivism towards which human societies seem inevitably to be progressing. He diagnoses the root of our trouble to lie in the Utilitarian philosophy born, he believes, out of eighteenth-century materialism with its seductive creed of “happiness here”, confused pragmatically and illogically with an abstract Christian altruism based on contradictory expectations of “happiness hereafter”. One of the consequences of this pervasive Utilitarianism is a widespread present inability to achieve originality, i.e. to penetrate beyond general concepts fixed by language into the truth of particular perceptions: to see things as they miraculously are.
On What Ideology Is
Authors: Meynell Hugo 
Published: July 2007

We cannot believe just what we please just when we please; however, there is no doubt that it is sometimes the desires, fears and convenience of persons and groups, rather than the relevant evidence, which determines what they believe about things. I want to say something on this topic, before directly discussing ideology.Anthony Trollope’ novel The Warden is a story about an elderly and inconspicuous Anglican clergyman named Harding, who has for many years enjoyed a comfortable stipend as warden of a hospice for paupers. During the time when the hospice and the wardenship have existed, the sum allotted to the paupers has remained the same; but the overall income has considerably increased, and this has been entirely for the benefit of the warden. A young reformer named Bold has drawn attention to the anomaly, and intends to go to law about the matter. The archdeacon of the diocese, a domineering and self-opinionated man who is the very antithesis of the warden in character, regards Bold’s interference as an affront to the Church, and an attack on the very fabric of society. In fact legal advice is taken, and a skilful lawyer is hired by the ecclesiastical establishment, who makes it clear that Bold cannot win his case. But Mr. Harding is unable, now the injustice of his position has been pointed out, to retain the wardenship; there now seems to him to be a kind of intrinsic inequity about his station in life, which no assurances about his legal position can allay.