The Secondary Modern School takes about 70 to 75 % of the children of England and Wales for their education from the age of eleven upwards. It is a type of school which is virtually the product of the 1944 Education Act: for what went before had a leaving age of fourteen instead of fifteen, and had a more limited objective: the addition of a year to the school life has brought with it both difficulties and opportunities.

Ubiquitous as the Secondary Modern school seems to be, a great many children do not have the choice of Secondary Modern or Grammar School. 141,000 children are educated in comprehensive schools; the number is growing: Anglesey is completely ‘comprehensive’: Coventry, London, Derbyshire, Birmingham are moving in that direction with varying degrees of conviction: Leicestershire has evolved a scheme different from any other, avoiding selection at eleven without embarking upon a scheme of comprehensive schools. The areas which have tried out some degree of ‘comprehension’ are not all controlled by the same political party. Southampton has avoided secondary modern schools altogether by giving every secondary school in the town some speciality of its own, leading up to some particular type of advanced course.

The Secondary Modern School is not the same thing in every area. Some areas have a very large grammar school entry; the secondary modern schools get on with a remnant, of which it could truly be said that there are not many gifted or talented among them; their more spectacular achievements are dependent upon the inefficiency of the selection process at eleven.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, the important Swiss theologian, will be celebrating his eightieth birthday on August 12th.

Pope John Paul’s singling out of Hans Urs von Balthasar for the Paul VI award, for his contribution to Catholic theology, almost certainly marks his emergence as the preferred Catholic theologian of the pontificate. Interest in his thought is bound to increase, especially with the English translation of his master-work Herrlichkeit, now proceeding. Our aim here is to present what can only be an introductory picture of the man and his work, still—amazingly—so little known in the English-speaking world in spite of the fact that his eightieth birthday is at hand and he has been writing for fifty years. We are not attempting to summarize everything (that would be an impossibility) but considering the central theme of his writing, his Christology.

Balthasar was born in Lucerne in 1905. It is probably significant that he was born in that particular Swiss city, whose name is virtually synonymous with Catholicism in Swiss history. The centre of resistance to the Reformation in the sixteenth century, in the nineteenth it led the Catholic cantons in what was virtually a civil war of religion, the War of the Sonderbund (which they lost). Even today it is very much a city of churches, of religious frescoes, of bells. Balthasar is a very self-consciously Catholic author. He was educated by both Benedictines and Jesuits, and then in 1923 began a university education divided between four Universities: Munich, Vienna, Berlin—where he heard Romano Guardini, for whom a Chair of Catholic Philosophy had been created in the heartland of Prussian Protestantism—and finally Zurich.

The world being what it is, a ‘peace movement’ is bound to be a haven for odd-balls, eccentrics, the awkward squad: people who go against the direction of the current and resist the conventional wisdom. On the other hand, a movement composed solely of such people will always lack effective organisation, and its protests will peter out into mere idiosyncrasy. I think that these two facts go far to explain why the English Dominicans have been somewhere near the centre of the Catholic peace movement in Britain ever since it began (if one can talk of a beginning) with the founding of PAX in the mid-thirties of this century. For the English Dominicans — at least as far as my experience goes — are themselves an awkward squad: a regiment of misfits and individualists. I don’t know much about the Dominican Order elsewhere in the world: I suspect that outside Britain they may be very different. Neither do I know much about their history in this country. So I speak ‘existentially’, as the jargon goes, from my own personal observation only.

My first experience goes back to the Oxford of the early nineteen-fifties: and to feel the difference then between, say, the atmosphere of Jesuit Campion Hall and the atmosphere of Dominican Blackfriars was to experience an almost tangible shock. As I remember it now, Campion Hall was like something out of Henry James: a rich tapestry of dark browns and reds, complex and subtle in its visual as well as its intellectual organisation. Its inhabitants wore their black suits and soutanes as a uniform: one had to dig quite deep to discover the person within. Dominican Blackfriars, by contrast, was light and airy; a set of variations upon the theme of whiteness and transparency.

This is the second stage of an attempt to make a fresh assessment of the foundations of Christian morality, or of Catholic moral theology, in the light of the ideas of some of the thinkers who are concerned with the possibility of an alternative society. We who are committed to living and thinking eschatologically are bound to be interested in every serious endeavour to transcend the existing state of things. This paper will try to bring out the analogy between Marcuse and Heidegger.

1 —Repression and Liberation

Herbert Marcuse’s work stands well outside the ordinary Anglo- American framework of academic social and political philosophy. The reason for this is no doubt that he belongs to a tradition in which the impact of Hegel has been undergone and assimilated. What this amounts to, as we should see, is that he can take for grant ed, in his philosophizing, the intimations about the nature of man and of meaning which we associate with the Romantic movement. This has become part of our common consciousness too, but on the whole extra-philosophically. Indeed, the specifying difference between English and continental philosophies at the present time is not so much to do with technique and approach as with acceptance or rejection of the Romantic idea of man.

It is instructive to reflect on the divided response to Marcuse's work. He is the most widely discussed thinker among the opponents of our way of life in America today. On the Old Left (orthodox communist Marxists and such-like) he meets with unanimous hostility: he is condemned as a defeatist, a pessimist, who thinks not scientifically but poetically.

I came to know Gareth Moore’s work, initially, by being asked to be the publisher’s reader for what was later published as Believing in God (T.&T. Clark 1988). The book presents one of the most masterly analyses of “belief in God” in the philosophy of religion. The original title of the manuscript was “God as Nothing,” in which it was argued that we cannot understand belief in God without understanding what it means to become nothing before him. I suggested, foolishly perhaps, that the title should be changed. On the one hand, given a culture that emphasizes rights more than obligations, I feared that talk of human beings as “nothing” would be mistaken for a denigration of them. On the other hand, I feared that the denial of God as a “something” would be misunderstood as reductionism, or even atheism. The change of title, while it makes central the author’s concern with belief in God, does not indicate the distinctiveness of its discussions. In any event, the book has not had the attention it deserves.

I invited Gareth Moore to the annual philosophy of religion conference at Claremont Graduate University more often than any other speaker. He read the following papers: “Tradition, Authority and the Hiddenness of God” published in Philosophy and the Grammar of Religious Belief ed. Timothy Tessin and Mario von der Ruhr (Macmillan 1995); “Death and Transcendence,” published in Religion without Transcendence? ed. D.Z Phillips and Timothy Tessin (Macmillan 1997); and “Hearing the Voice of God” to be published in Biblical Concepts and Our World ed. D.Z Phillips and Mario von der Ruhr (Palgrave).

Thomas states in the Prologue to the Summa theologiae that he intends to teach beginners (incipientes). This description of the Summa’s intended audience might lead us to ask what qualities identify beginners (incipientes) as beginners. Alternatively stated, we might ask what deficiencies these beginners must overcome in order to become proficient.

The Prologue itself suggests one answer to these questions. Beginning students, or as Thomas describes them in the Prologue, “novices in this doctrine” (hujus doctrinae novitios) are impeded in their efforts to learn sacred doctrine by a multiplication of useless questions, articles, and arguments. In addition, things which are necessary to a sound grasp of sacred doctrine are presented according to the order required for the exposition of a text rather than according to the order of learning. Finally, frequent repetition of material bores and confuses the student.

In his reading of the Prologue, Marie-Dominique Chenu suggested that Thomas would have understood beginners as those who lack a sufficient grasp of the intelligible principle that pervades sacred doctrine. Chenu argued that with the influx in the West of the Aristotelian corpus in the 13th century, theologians were forced to ask anew the question, “Is sacred doctrine a science?” It was in part to show that sacred doctrine is truly a science that Thomas sought to construct his Summa theologiae according to an intelligible order. This effort to show the scientific nature of sacred doctrine was no mere academic exercise, though. Effective learning required that the material taught be presented in such a way that the student might grasp the unifying principle of the material itself.

There was a day when you could have heard it said that theologians knew nothing about the liturgy, and conversely, that liturgists knew very little theology. That misinformed attitude has disappeared, and it is now recognized that theological and liturgical studies enrich and complement one another. There cannot be two Gods—one for theologians, another for liturgists. The Church simultaneously instructs our minds through dogma and our hearts through symbol. The liturgy would be no more than exaggerated drama without roots deep in the truths theology defends and explains; and were it not for the living contact with Truth found in the liturgy, theology would be only an elaborate system of religious mathematics.

One consequence of this necessary and dynamic interaction between theology and the liturgy is that many of the problems encountered in the worship of God find their solution in theological principles.

The documents that represent Catholic Social Teaching are primarily papal and clerical. Following the approach of Herbert McCabe that CST is not a body of doctrine but is a response to concrete social circumstances, this paper notes the absence of serious engagement with the Bible in CST and particularly the teaching of Jesus. Using two parables as paradigms, we can see that Jesus was using the social and economic circumstances of his day to provoke debate and an imaginative response that might lead his listeners towards the kingdom of God. In developing the current state of CST, the Church must draw on the practical wisdom of already existing Church groups and must collaborate with groups outside the Church.

In a recent work M. Denis Saurat claims that reality is rendered comprehensible only by the “complete life of Christ”. Christ, Logos and Man, is the centre from which all life flows, unfolding “into the past and into the future". No doubt M. Saurat’s thesis is expressed in pantheistic thought forms, but this does not detract from the value of the imaginatively expressed intuition by which he has discovered that it is Christ alone who gives meaning and reality to the time process, and that it is the Incarnation that makes history intelligible.

Whatever reservations a Catholic is called upon to make regarding the details of M. Saurat’s vision, we are able to recognise that he is attempting to bring home to us a darkly seen variant of St Irenaeus’s doctrine of the recapitulation of all things in Christ. For by recapitulation St Irenaeus meant a recommencement in the opposite direction by which God, reversing as it were the process whereby sin infected the earth, gathers together and reunites all creation, including matter, but specially man, in a new economy of salvation. He gathers up his entire work from the beginning to purify and sanctify it in his Incarnate Son, who in turn becomes for us a second Adam.” (E. Mersch, S.J.: The Whole Christ: p. 230).

Creation points to the Incarnation, and this Christocentric preoccupation of St Irenaeus has important repercussions on his doctrine of man. M. Saurat, arguing from the same premise, has also described man in terms of Christ.

The inclusion of a monograph on St. Thomas in the ‘Leaders of Philosophy’ series is significant of the growing strength of the Thomist revival. Even in England, later than in the rest of Europe, St. Thomas is now coming to be considered as taking rank among the philosophers who have mainly influenced western thought; with Leibniz, Spinoza, Berkeley, Kant. Father Knox’s Lady Denham, with her ‘Sir Thomas who?’ after the game of ghosts, is a type already growing uncommon.

Perhaps there is no one in this country better qualified than Father D’Arcy to give an acceptable statement of St. Thomas’s thought. A high and dry Thomist can cut an awkward figure in modern philosophical society. Father D’Arcy is never that; his manner is always tactful, indeed at times even deprecatory. He is inclined to present a Thomist certitude almost hat in hand, as when he says that the problem of the One and the Many receives ‘an attempted explanation in the metaphysics of St. Thomas. By an employment of his fundamental distinctions and what he calls analogy he tries to find a via media’ (p. 109). Still, a wedge cannot be driven in thick end first, and it is possible that Thomists in the past have not been sufficiently ingratiating. And there cart be little doubt that Father D’Arcy has also entered well into the spirit of his subject, and has written a book profitable even to the practised Thomist; something better than a list of theses strung together and described from outside; a synthesis showing a real insight into St. Thomas’s thought and the meaning of the principles of act and potency, of analogy, and of knowledge.

Why our interest in natural law still today? We can always criticize obligations and found human rights on the basis of natural law and we cannot accept a large gap between inclinations and desires on one hand and norms on the other. Natural law is not the lowest common denominator among men and is not always immediately apparent. We can find out it by a resolutio, going back from every day moral experience, from virtues and vices, from civil laws to the first principles. Natural law is the work of practical rationality, that makes order, looking with attention to reality and requires harmony between reason and inclinations towards perfect goods. Human desire is informed by reason and practical reason is always also speculative reason, because it knows reality. Desire “has eyes”, recognizing good. What goodness consists in is perfection. Since human being is open to infinity, the main and inclusive desire is desire for happiness and for God. Inclinations towards good are known, valued, interpreted by practical reason and they become moral norms thanks to the same practical reason.The normative dimension of law is also finalistic. The idea of conveniens is different from both Kantian and Utilitarian points of view. Ethical virtues are the flourishment of the seeds of natural law and there is no necessary opposition between freedom and natural law.

The religious thought of Nikos Kazantzakis, particularly as contained within ‘The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises’, is still demanding attention. Although there have been recent welcoming attempts to elucidate his religious position in relation to Christian thought and process theism, these attempts still remain largely theoretically speculative. What the present paper hopes to contribute is a combination of both speculation and fact. Through an examination of Kazantzakis’ personal library housed in the Historical Museum of Iraklion, Crete, one can become affiliated with the literature that was occupying Kazantzakis immediately prior to and during the composition of the ‘Spiritual Exercises’. The speculative part naturally comes when one tries to ascertain the influence of such literature upon his subsequent thought.

It is clear that during the years 1922-23, when he was based in Vienna and Berlin, Kazantzakis was engaged with works of Freud, Rank, Spengler, Luxemborg as well as certain commentaries on Buddhist thought. These sources are generally recognised as shaping Kazantzakis’ thought during this time. However, one source that has not received any attention is the Bhagavad Gita, literally ‘The Song of God’. Kazantzakis had his own German translation of this Sanskrit poetic work and inside this copy may be found a ticket advertising an evening of readings dated ‘Berlin, Mittwoch 2 Oktober, 1922”. It thus appears fair to assume that this was a work that Kazantzakis was engaged with to a degree during his sojourn in Berlin.

During this time, Kazantzakis witnessed the crumbling German economic system, had first hand experience of profound poverty and became associated with an active group of communists.

Like the Messianic Banquet, the Messianic Torah is a concept frequently encountered among New Testament scholars. It seems to be presupposed as a category well known to first century Judaism and, therefore, to be a yardstick against which Jesus’ ‘legislative’ activity could and can be measured. An examination of this concept begins with the tension in Jewish thought between the eternity of the Mosaic Law and the various strategies designed to supplement its inadequacy to deal with contemporary situations. Given that the unique circumstances of the Messianic Age involve a further complication, the relevant texts are reviewed for their contributions to the problem. The Old Testament writers look to a deepening of observance of the Mosaic Law in the eschatological times. The Pseudepigrapha offer little more apart from a hint of Messianic legislation in Psalms of Solomon 17. Even the gospels do not show us a Jesus who fits readily into the model of a Messianic legislator. In fact St John probably pictures him as the embodiment of the Torah, the Word made flesh. The conclusion is that, whatever the later rabbinic teaching on the subject, the idea of the Messianic Torah is a scholarly construct as far as the New Testament is concerned.

This paper argues that being there, actually existing, is a notion that cannot be explicated by formal logicians, cannot be defined in terms of conscious perception, and cannot be satisfactorily explained using the theories of mathematics or natural science. So, must we turn to theology to make up for the deficiencies of the methods so far canvassed? The paper concludes by considering the Thomistic identification of God with existence itself, but argues that it would be a mistake to suppose that the mystery of actual existence is thereby dispelled.

This article develops the fruitful metaphor of musical performance to think about church-dividing conflicts over doctrine. In particular, I show that just as there is more than one way for a score of music to be faithfully performed, so there can be more than one way for shared fundamental dogma to be faithfully articulated in different confessional or doctrinal traditions. When the disagreements between the Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian churches over christological doctrine are reframed as contrasting but not contradictory “performances” of one shared scriptural and Nicene dogma, possibilities for ecumenical reconciliation are strenghthened. Indeed, while not articulating its practice by means of the metaphor of a musical performance, the Roman Catholic magisterium is already approaching doctrinal reconciliation in just this way.