There has been a lesiurely, or perhaps we should say a spasmodic, debate on this topic, going on for the last thirty years, to which I would like to invite St. Augustine to make a contribution. I think he can provide resources which the other participants have rather neglected.

How far can we claim to know anything for what it actually is? Or, to put the question another way, how far is our so-called knowledge relative to the specifically human perspective? The problem was succinctly put by Fr Paul Verghese in an essay he contributed to the symposium on Technology and Social Justice:

Our present universe is constituted by our sense-equipment, and by the ancillary equipment which we have been able to make for ourselves by technology. Change our sense-equipment and brain-structure, and we will have a different universe. Look at the paranoid or the psychedelic. Is the universe of his experience the same as ours? And which is the true one? For our equipment ours is true, for his, his is true. And if all were paranoid or psychedelic, we would have a totally different universe. … The bee has its world, the spider and the bat have each its own, depending upon die particular perception system of each. Change our sense-equipment—this world disappears and another one takes its place.

After having listened to the scientists telling us about the phenomenon of biological evolution, the philosophers shared with us their views on evolution on the human level. Then the theologians have given their interpretation of the canonical scriptures of the Old and New Testaments on the basis of exegetical knowledge. Now, by way of conclusion, I have to attempt to give you a synthetic view of man's eschatological condition on the basis of the facts of science and Christian revelation.

As reported in the synoptic gospels, one of the most characteristic features of Jesus' activity was his campaign against the household of Satan, the demons. And yet Jesus' work as demon-exorcist has generally received little attention. Perhaps this is because for some time now the idea of demon-possession has been alien to the viewpoints of both liberal and conservative interpreters of his ministry. We do not believe in Satan and demons; surely Jesus could not have done so either!

It is comforting to one embroiled in the tantalising, and not infrequently exasperating prolegomena to Christian philosophy, to be able to make an assertion which is unlikely to be controverted by anyone familiar with recent theological writing. The assertion is to the effect that two concepts which have been much to the fore of late are ‘communication’ and ‘relevance’. Christians are urged from all sides to find ways of communicating with present-day, secularised, ‘post-Christian’ man, in such a way that he will see the relevance of their gospel. Indeed, the challenge has been put so often that one can readily see the point of Professor J. McIntyre's suspicion that relevance seems to be replacing truth as a criterion of permissible discourse; and one can echo his sigh, ‘Sometimes I think that I would appreciate an address that claimed unashamedly to be “irrelevant”.’ What concerns us is the possibility that certain efforts in the direction of communication and relevance merit the charge of reductionism, that is, the charge that in some way the distinctives of the Christian message are being watered down or undermined. No doubt reductionism may take many forms, but it is that variety of the phenomenon which might be termed ‘logical reductionism’, which more immediately concerns us.

Calvin is one with the other Christian communities in teaching a presence of Christ's body and blood in the Lord's Supper. To arrive at a conclusion other than this is to misread him, to misunderstand and misinterpret him. Certainly, the reformer cannot be numbered among the sacramentarians, as if he had taught that the partaking of Christ's flesh and the drinking of his blood were nothing more than merely believing in Christ. The sacraments are signs, it is true, but they are not merely signs, they are signs of a present reality.

Before we embark on this subject it will be well to review some preliminary considerations relating to the nature of the Book of Revelation.