When I received a letter from The Summoner of Preachers inviting me to preach this Sermon before the University, I felt deeply honoured. But this turned to alarm when I discovered that there was no set text or topic. I was invited to talk about anything I wished. And this disturbed me because, within my tradition at least, what differentiates a sermon from a mere expression of opinion is that it starts from a text, a text that you have not chosen, may not like, and may well not understand.

Anyone who attends the Eucharist will have to listen to some extraordinary texts, which celebrate the squashing of the Amelekites, Moab becoming one’s footstool, the cleansing of houses suffering from leprosy, and the torments of the damned. And after we have listened, we say: ‘Thanks be to God’. The purpose of the sermon is to help us to be thankful, to discover some apparently bizarre or alarming text as a gift. The preacher should be the perfect host who shows us how to welcome the strange text, an exercise in hospitality of the heart and the mind.

But there was no text. And then I spotted a text at the top of the letter, Dominus Illuminatio Mea, ‘The Lord is my light’, the motto of the University. It is a quotation from the beginning of Psalm 27 in the Vulgate, Dominus illuminatio mea et salus mea. Quem timebo? The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear?’

The Transfiguration of Christ—both the narrative (Matt 17:1—8, par.) and the feast we celebrate on 6 August—has such an importance in the Eastern Church today that we do not always realize that it emerged relatively late in the theological thought of the first centuries of the Church. However, if it took the Church several centuries to realize the central importance of the Transfiguration to Christian life, modern western Christianity seems to have forgotten it. In a world where men are tempted to seek the goal of human destiny in systems worked out by the human mind alone—be these systems philosophical or technological—we are tempted to focus on what can be accomplished here and now and tend to ignore the reality of death, which frustrates the plans of so many individuals. Christians, to say nothing of the world as a whole, must be reminded that, however laudable activity to better the human lot here and now may be, the ultimate goal of the human race is bound up with what God has wrought in Christ Jesus. The interpretation of the Transfiguration, as the Church’s awareness of its importance grew, makes a fascinating chapter in the history of theology. A re-examination of the past role of the Transfiguration in Christian thought may help Western Christians to recapture in our own lives the fascination which this event from the life of Christ once had for the whole Church. God’s revelation at this unnamed mountain is as important for understanding human destiny in Christ today as it was to Peter, James and John.

In Act One of ‘A Man for all Seasons’, Robert Bolt’s play about Thomas More’s pilgrimage to martyrdom, More’s impetuous son-in-law, William Roper, argues that the Devil does not deserve benefit of law. In the course of the discussion More pushes Roper into the stark claim that obstacle to the conviction of the Devil must be overcome, even if it meant failing to follow due process of law. Roper, in his hunger and thirst for justice, declares that he is prepared to tear down every law in England in so worthy a cause. More, with his finely-tuned jurisprudential mind, answers him:

In this passage from Bolt’s play More focusses some of the issues raised by the recent War Crimes Act, which obtained the Royal Assent on 9 May 1991.’ The Act’s long title states that its purpose is ‘to confer jurisdiction on United Kingdom courts in respect of certain grave violations of the laws and customs of war in German-held territory during the Second World War.’

I wish to argue against the widespread view that divine revelation does not consist in a set of propositions. I think that I can show conclusively that a non-propositional view of revelation cannot be reconciled with Christianity.

What are propositions? I cannot do better than quote from Natham Salmon and Scott Soames: