Derek Johnston - A Brief History of Theology - From The New Testament To Feminist Theology-Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (2009)

A Brief History of Theology
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A Brief History of Theology
From the New Testament to
Feminist Theology
Derek Johnston
Continuum International Publishing Group
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writing from the publishers.
© Derek Johnston 2008
Derek Johnston has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.
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ISBN-10: HB: 1-8470-6090-0

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ISBN-13: HB: 978-1-8470-6090-7
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For
Penny, Caroline, Hugh and Keith
Contents
Introduction 1
1 The First Christian Theologians: St Paul 5
2 The First Christian Theologians: the Gospel Writers 20
3 St Augustine of Hippo: a Father of the Church 34
4 St Thomas Aquinas: Revelation and Reason 53
5 Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation 76
6 St Ignatius Loyola and John Calvin: the two sides dig in 94
7 John Wesley and Evangelical Revival 121
8 The Contexts of Modern Theology 139
9 Friedrich Schleiermacher and Religious Feeling 156
10 John Henry Newman and Catholic Renewal 171
11 Karl Barth and a Theology of the Word 188
12 Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Cost of Discipleship 204
13 Karl Rahner and Human Transcendence 216
14 Rosemary Radford Ruether and Women-Church 232
15 Walter Brueggemann and the Biblical Imagination 247
16 Don Cupitt and Being Adrift 270
Conclusion 281
Further Reading 284
Index 287
Introduction
Some people think that Theology is a body of knowledge given to some

and held back from others. It seems to me, however, that Theology is a
process; one never comes to a finished state of theological insight and one
can never say, ‘I know it all, now!’ Theology is a struggle between a sense
of summons and the world in which we live. That summons is the
uncomfortable, persistent nagging of a value that surpasses us.
The purpose of this book is not to write History and not to write
Theology. It is aimed at the first-time reader of Theology, the person who
wonders what it is all about. So, hopefully, you will be introduced here to
the sort of ideas that have occupied the attention of theologians, and
more importantly, to the sort of language that theologians use. This little
volume will not answer all your questions. My hope, however, is that it
will answer some and provide the foundations from which you may
continue to think theologically.
The fact that you have picked up this book is already an indication that
you are interested in ‘doing’ Theology. In fact we all ask the sort of
questions Theology struggles with. Here are a few of them: Does God
exist? How do we know? How can I come to know God? Where have we
come from? Who are we? What is our ultimate purpose? If you are asking
such questions (you do not have to be answering them), then you are
already ‘doing’ Theology. Most people do Theology and never realize it.
In a work of this size, one could never cover everything that theolo-
gians have wrestled with during the two millennia of Christian specu-
lation. So, inevitably, people will ask questions such as ‘why did you put
in so and so?’ and ‘why did you leave such and such a person out?’ The
second aim of the book is, therefore, to allow you to become familiar with
a broad range of theological styles, rather than with everything.
It has never been my purpose to confine myself to academic Theology.
It seems to me to be much more interesting to examine how a wide
variety of individuals, from a broad diversity of backgrounds, have
allowed that mysterious sense of summons to rub up against the contexts
in which they found themselves. What most of them do is illustrate a
2 A Brief History of Theology
style of doing Theology that has been influential over generations; the
more recent ones offer possibilities which people may, or may not, run
with. I have thought it important to devote about half the work to
twentieth century figures: Theology is actuality!
Thirdly, I thought it better not to deal too much with abstractions.
This may seem a strange idea for a subject as rarefied as Theology, but
people may be interested in ideas while finding abstract discourse diffi-
cult. Consequently I have tried to tie different ways of doing Theology to
a person, hoping that the concreteness of the person will carry along the
abstractness of the thinking.
Finally, I am convinced that Theology is not something that belongs
exclusively within ivory towers and ivy-covered walls but is something
that a great many people do in the concreteness of their daily lives and are
frequently surprised to find that they are doing it.
But what do we mean by Theology? We may have to look at a wide
variety of examples of theological thought, but let us see if we can get
some basic notion of what is meant when we talk about both Philosophy
and Theology.
Theology is an effort to organize the doctrines of religion in a system-
atic fashion. Religion is the expression of how we see the ultimate nature
of Reality: some of its elements are rational; some of its elements are not.
(This is not the same as saying they are irrational.)
The non-rational elements involve intuitions, emotions and the sur-
render of self to God in worship. Such elements depend on the content
of the ‘revelation’ of religion. This ‘revelation’ includes information or
knowledge considered to have come from a divine source.
The rational elements of religion are how people think about that rev-
elation, work out values, give balanced importance to the teaching of
holy books and holy teachers, judge questions of right and wrong, and
plan and develop liturgy and worship in the light of what they have
pondered.
Theology assumes that religion is a convincing and authentic human
activity; its basic premises are those of faith (non-rational). Theology
organizes the ideas involved in religion into a reasonable, logical and
coherent system. Theology enquires into the implications of faith and
sifts out what is not consistent with its truth and values.
Introduction 3
Philosophy assumes only that all experience can be examined in a

rational manner. It tries to give a coherent, consistent, comprehensive
account of human experience and of our environment. This is done by
means of reason, without revelation. There is a very clear tension between
the two ways of thinking. While religion finds its most important expres-
sion in surrender to God, philosophy does not surrender itself to theory
that cannot be proved.
The theologian argues that Spirit is the true source of all existence and
that Spirit maintains a true fellowship with all who depend on it. The
theologian must therefore distinguish carefully between all elements that
have real spiritual importance and those elements which have merely tra-
ditional and emotional value. The philosopher accepts the methods of
Science and notes that Science does not concern itself with values. A Phi-
losophy of Religion is only possible when we accept the fact that intuition
and a sense of values are part of the reality in which we live and which we
are investigating.
Christian Theology is thinking about Christian faith. This suggests two
things: our activity will use the tools of reason and our activity will be
critical. That is to say, it will make judgements. But what about faith? Is
that a critical and rational activity? Probably not, though it does not
despise reason! Let us say simply that it has to do with belief concerning
something of great value and that what is glimpsed here commits us to
seeing everything – the world, our lives and those around us – under a
certain light.
When theologians came to write their theology they were giving, in
terms appropriate for their day, what they considered to be an appropri-
ate way of stating the Christian Gospel.
Why then are there so many different ways of expressing that gospel?
It all depends on what one’s concerns are and what is considered to be
most important. The early Christian writers were worried about death.
The writers of the Middle Ages were concerned with guilt. By the time
of the Reformation this had become an obsession. The Reformation writ-
ers may well have cleared the intellectual way for the modern world, but
they were in many ways still medieval in their mindset. Is the dynamic of
grace which they expressed so powerfully one of the obsessions of the
modern age?
Post-Enlightenment thinkers are more worried about progress and

scientific discovery. But does this allow them to escape from considera-
tions about values? Has not the abuse of scientific and technological
power (e.g. Holocaust, Gulag and industrial pollution) thrown us back in
confusion to seek a sure base for ethical outlook and moral action?
And what preoccupies those who inhabit the world in the opening
years of the twenty-first century? Would it be a sense of alienation? We
experience alienation from our best selves by the demands of a market
economy and alienation from community by the economic imperatives
of affordable housing and long hours commuting. We are aware of alien-
ation from family in the experience of the latchkey child with parents
away from the home all day and in the practice of weekend marriage
where marital partners must live the working week hundreds of miles
apart and may only meet two days out of seven. We are coming to know
alienation from the earth as we inhabit an increasingly polluted environ-
ment, which we have little time to repair or control. We feel alienated
from power as unscrupulous operators manipulate the levers of power
for their own ends or as faceless multinational companies manoeuvre,
often clandestinely, to shape the economic climate to their best
advantage.
That was a very negative list. What does talk of creation and redemp-
tion, of right and wrong, of ultimate concern or of God with us, mean in
such contexts? This book will not necessarily answer all or any of these
questions. But it seeks to give an insight as to what have been the ques-
tions of ultimate concern in a number of historical and social contexts of
the past. It hopes to raise questions about these topics in the minds of its
readers and to set them off on their own theological quest.
1 The First Christian Theologians: St Paul
We do not think of writers of the New Testament as theologians. We tend

to think of them as the authors of the raw materials out of which later
thinkers developed Theology.
The writings which we read in the New Testament are all about Jesus
of Nazareth who was a popular and, at times, exasperating religious
teacher in early first-century Palestine. His impact upon his followers
was so great that they came to see him as the messenger of God, seeking
out those who were in need of the comfort of God. This mission infuri-
ated both the religious and civil powers and as a result they had him
executed.
However, his followers were so convinced of the God-given quality of
his message that they experienced it in renewed fashion, found it impos-
sible to ignore and were conscious of the presence of Jesus with them as
one raised by God from the dead. They conferred on Jesus a title: the
Christ. This meant the ‘Anointed One’ or the ‘One Sent by God’.
As you can see from the paragraph above, this is more than the telling
of a story, this is thinking about a life and a message in a certain way and
moulding that story to be significant for living. The early writers were not
just telling a story, they were interpreting a life and a message, beginning
to think systematically and critically.
The world of the first Christians
The first Christians appeared in a tiny province of the Roman Empire.

That huge empire stretched down from Northern Britain, covered much
of western continental Europe, went around the eastern side of the
Mediterranean and included the northern fertile lands of the African
continent out as far as the Atlantic Ocean. Augustus had put an end to
the long series of civil wars which had brought the proud Roman Repub-
lic to a whimpering end, and he had replaced it with a strong, central
imperial government and competent administration. It was like a ring of
well-governed territories around the Mediterranean Sea: ‘Our Sea’ as the

Romans called it.
The Roman Empire was in transition and central authority was at its
strongest, but traditional values were crumbling. There was a new inter-
est in ethical philosophies, particularly ones claiming to have universal
application. These were expected to provide comfort and reassurance for
the deepest human longings.
The tiny province where Christianity emerged was Judea in the eastern
part of the empire. It covered roughly the modern Israeli and Palestinian
lands. This was ruled, on behalf of Rome, by puppet kings, sons of Herod
the Great. There was a Roman governor in Jerusalem. Through this land
ran the main land routes connecting the northern part of the empire
(Europe and Asia Minor) and the southern part (Mediterranean Africa).
The Jewish religious situation was complex but might be stated very sim-
ply as follows. The Sadducees were religious conservatives who co-operated
with the Romans and generally had control of the Temple. The Pharisees
were religious modernists and rigorous upholders of the ritual law who
taught a new doctrine of resurrection. This was the notion that, after
death, God would raise up individuals for judgement. They would then be
rejected or accepted as worthy of being, for ever, in the presence of God.
The third current involved religious ascetics, anxious to leave the cor-
ruption of civilization and to lead harsh and simple lives in religious
communities in the desert, where they awaited the Day of the Lord. The
Essenes are examples of this tendency. There were also political purists,
physical-force nationalists, called Zealots, who brooded over the possibil-
ity of armed rebellion, the overthrow of Rome and the return to a pure
Jewish lifestyle and government.
What we know about the writers
What writings exist about Jesus? In the New Testament, the writings
which Christians accept as having authority, there are four types. First,
there are the gospels. ‘Gospel’ means good news, and is the name given to
four texts telling the story of the life and ministry of Jesus. Then there is
the Acts of the Apostles which is the story of the very early Christian
church, later concentrating on the life, travels and witness of Paul. Thirdly,
First Christian Theologians: St Paul 7
there are letters to churches in various parts of the eastern Roman Empire,
all about living life as Jesus would have wished. Finally, there is a book of
visions, called Revelation or the Apocalypse. We are just going to look at
five writers or documents.
We really know very little about these writers. We can say with a high
degree of probability that the first to write about Jesus Christ was Paul;
later texts are named after Matthew, Luke and John. All are mentioned in
the gospel writings as disciples of Jesus. Finally, there was Mark; is he the
Mark mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles? We cannot be sure that these
people all actually wrote the texts that are attributed to them. Some of the
texts may have come from early church communities who particularly
venerated the memory of one apostle or another. This rapid overview by
no means covers all the texts of the New Testament nor does it do full
justice to the complexities they reveal.
Timeline
44 BCE Death of Julius Caesar

19 BCE Death of Virgil; the Aeneid published posthumously
5 BCE approx. Birth of Jesus
4 BCE Death of Herod the Great
26 CE Pontius Pilate becomes governor of Judea
27 CE approx. Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist
30 CE approx. Crucifixion of Jesus
38 CE approx. Conversion of Paul
64 CE Nero becomes Emperor: first persecution of Christians
65 CE approx. Martyrdom of Peter and Paul
70 CE Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus
70–90 CE Writing of the gospel accounts named Matthew, Mark and Luke
70–82 CE Building of the Coliseum
85–100 CE Writing of the gospel account named John
Life (died 65 CE)
This chapter will deal with just one of the New Testament writers: St Paul.
Paul was a Jew who was born in Tarsus in modern Turkey. He was a
cultivated man who had received both a Jewish and a Greek education.
He had also acquired Roman citizenship. It was thanks to him that Chris-
tianity was first expressed in a way that could be understood by non-Jews.
Jesus had used stories and images drawn from the countryside: the farmer
sowing seed, the fig tree and the shepherd. Paul used the language of the
cosmopolitan city: athletic contests, military service, slave-owning, the
theatre and trade.
Though he was born in Tarsus, he appears to have grown up in
Jerusalem and to have received an orthodox Jewish education. He himself
names his principal teacher as Gamaliel, a well-known Pharisee of the
early first century AD. He followed one of the strictest disciplines known
in the Jewish world of his time. He was a Pharisee. Like the Pharisees,
Jesus had been a believer in, and a teacher of, the doctrine of the resurrec-
tion. There is, however, no suggestion that Paul and Jesus ever met.
Paul was present, as a young man, on the occasion of the stoning of
Stephen (Acts 7). He was active in persecuting the early Christian church,
until he had a vision of the Risen Christ and experienced dramatic and
sudden conversion while travelling to Damascus.
From now on he would be one of the most energetic supporters of the
new faith, travelling far and wide to preach and gain converts to Christi-
anity. He also became a prolific writer of early Christian texts. Much of
the New Testament is attributed to him, although it is possible that not all
the documents so described were actually written by Paul; they may be
the work of pupils.
Paul did not, of course, receive a ready-made theology on his conver-
sion; neither did those who had known Jesus personally. They were to
spend the rest of their lives struggling to apply their insights about Jesus
to the lives they now lived, following his departure from them.
After his conversion, Paul spent some years teaching in Arabia, followed
by a further three years teaching in Damascus, but we know nothing of
his life there. He returned to Jerusalem and met church leaders there. We
have been given, in the Acts of the Apostles, an account of three mission-
ary journeys undertaken by Paul. The first was to Antioch, Cyprus and
Galatia (in modern Turkey).
Paul returned from this trip with gifts for the relief of hardship in the
Jerusalem church. When in Jerusalem he was involved in controversy
over whether non-Jewish converts to Christianity should be forced to

accept Jewish ritual customs: circumcision, certain banned foods
and so on. He was against such a restriction.
On the second missionary journey he revisited Galatia and then crossed
to Greece, visiting Philippi, Thessalonica and Athens. He spent some time
in Corinth, then via Ephesus and Antioch he returned for a short visit to
Jerusalem.
The third journey was to Galatia and to Ephesus. Here he irritated
the silversmiths of the city who made statuettes of the goddess Artemis.
His preaching must have been bad for business because they rioted
against him and he had to leave, moving on to Macedonia and eventually
to the Peloponnesus in southern Greece.
After his return to Jerusalem he was praying in the Temple when he
was accused of introducing Gentiles (non-Jews) into that part of the
Temple reserved for Jews alone. This provoked a riot and he was rescued
by being arrested and brought for trial before the Roman governor, Felix.
Felix delayed pronouncing judgement, as he hoped Paul would bribe
him. He was still in jail two years later when the new governor, Festus,
heard his case. Paul appealed his case to the Emperor in Rome. This was
his right as a Roman citizen and Festus had no option but to send him
to Rome.
During the journey he was shipwrecked off Malta but eventually
arrived at his destination. He was placed under house arrest but was free
to preach and write. We know little of his death. He was probably exe-
cuted under Nero.
Resurrection is the theological teaching that God would raise up each

individual after death to stand in the divine presence and be judged fit for the
company of heaven (or not). The early Christians believed that the experi-
ences they had of the presence of Jesus after death were proof of resurrection
teaching and a promise of such a hope and destiny for all committed to
Jesus.
Ascetics are individuals who seek spiritual enlightenment by severely disci-
plining the body. They tend to shun comfort, luxury, fine clothes, good food
and live very simply, even imposing harsh conditions upon themselves.
Thought
The first Christian theologian
At the beginning of Paul’s mission, the fledgling Christian church was

composed entirely of Jews who continued to worship in the traditional
Jewish fashion, even though they were now followers of Jesus. By the time
of Paul’s death, those conditions had started to change and within one
further generation the situation was totally reversed and the young Chris-
tian church was now almost entirely composed of Gentile (non-Jewish)
converts. Between Christianity and Judaism a huge gulf had opened up.
Paul seems to have had a gift for abstract thought, even though some
of his philosophical or theological concerns seem strange to the twenty-
first century mindset. We must also remember that he started elaborating
his Christian thought in a context of expectation and suspense; he was
expecting Jesus to return soon!
Paul thought long and hard about his situation as a believer in
Jesus Christ, about the religious tradition he had come from, what he
had been seeking, his failure to find it and how his new faith supplied
his need. What is more, he was not content to allow old habits to impose
a straightjacket upon the way he thought but argued and fought for
a new vision, stressing how different things were, now that he was a
follower of Jesus. His thought is strongly marked by his struggle to under-
stand the novelty of the gospel but also by the difficulty to integrate the
former (Jewish) awareness of God into the new (Christian) theological
vision.
We are now going to have a brief look at a small number of Paul’s
theological concerns.
The mystery of Christ
Paul felt himself called to a special work in co-operation with God. Paul
was convinced that he had a part to play in the mission that had started
with the Creation and would eventually end when humanity at large
would know the ‘fullness of Christ’. Other stages on the road involve the
calling, the election, of a holy people by God, the deliverance of the
human family from the attachment to sin, their tendency to turn away
from God and finally the adoption of the human race as children of God
and inheritors of the eternal Son of God. All this is expressed in what we
might think of as very fuzzy language.
Election is the idea that God in every age chooses a people, or an individual,
in preference to others, to carry out some task. It often refers to those who do
God’s will and remain steadfast in times of trial.
Sin is a deliberate missing of the mark; the intentional disobedience to God’s
known desire; it is the state of humanity which, in its weakness, cannot attain
divine perfection.
A further difficulty is that, with Paul, we are not dealing with normal
speech. Paul is not setting out a reasoned exposé of new thinking about
the human condition. Paul is trying to express, in systematic form, his
thoughts about a personal experience and he must now make it under-
standable by all. He had had a vision of the Risen Christ; the mystery of
Christ had been revealed to him by Christ himself in a devastating and
earth-shattering experience. His rational mind and systematic education
might allow him to dress and present it in a certain way, but the content
is like being struck by lightning! Paul is convinced that he is not passing
on his own ideas but the thought of Christ himself.
Creation and resurrection
Paul saw the world as made in and through the Word of God. In Chris-
tian thought the Word is identified with the second person of the Trinity,
the Son, present in the world and present to human persons in the person
of Jesus of Nazareth. Christ is the very seed and fullness of all creation –
alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.
Twenty-first century people know much about this long, creative pro-
cess: the genesis of matter, the constitution of a cosmos, the emergence of
life – plants, animal and finally reflective (human) life. What is more,
human life is reflexive, the only form of creation capable of stepping aside
from itself and considering itself at a reflective distance.
But this was not the end of creation; we pass from the stage of creation
by God to the stage of co-creation of a universe by created beings, in co-
operation with God. What is more, we are invited to become capable of
participating in the life of God. Yet human creatures are not complete;
they are radically unfinished creatures and also, at a very fundamental
level, resist the destiny to which they are called.
Human persons are called, as created beings, to participate in creator–
being, in Christ, through the Holy Spirit, the union of creature and
creator, the reign of Love. We may not be able to measure the gap, but we
may have a sense of its enormity. The death and resurrection of Christ do
not create a new creature but they make a new creature possible.
This creation will only be finished, complete and perfected at the final
resurrection. Paul starts with the resurrection of Jesus, which he sees as
an actual and historical fact. But what does ‘resurrection’ mean? It origi-
nally meant that after death each individual would be raised to be in the
presence of God and to be in the same mode as the being of God. It seems
to have involved a notion of judgement.
The resurrection of Christ is a model for our resurrection – a ‘glorious
body’ which is just impossible to conceptualize. This is nevertheless the
fullness of our destiny. The old flaws are wiped away; what we are, have
been and have done are all now made into a truly fulfilled mode, when
Christ will ‘transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glori-
ous body’. (Phil. 3.20)
Servitude and freedom
One of the great stories of the Jewish tradition is the experience of

slavery, oppression and abandonment in Egypt, followed by the Exodus,
or great escape, led by Moses, the Lawgiver. From it grew the notions of
deliverance, redemption and salvation, which were seen as being con-
stant throughout Jewish history and also in personal experience. In Paul’s
day a slave could ‘buy back’ (redeem) freedom. Paul used this notion as a
theological term. The Jewish tradition often thought in terms of a hero,
one who had the mind of God, coming to deliver God’s people. From this
we get the notion of a ‘Saviour’. But note that the Deliverer in the old
story was the Lawgiver; the price of being freed from oppression was the
call to live as God demands. One could live in slavery to sin or one could
live in freedom in accordance with the will of God.
Those who, during the course of Jewish history, were called to act as the
leaders or deliverers of the people were seen as having the hand of God
upon them. Later this position became formalized and both kings and
priests were anointed. This anointing was seen as the sign of the mission
conferred on them by God. ‘Messiah’ meant one who was anointed; the
Greek term for anointed is ‘Christ’.
As a devout Pharisee, Paul had believed that he must devote strenuous
efforts to observing even the most trivial rules of the Law of Moses.
In this way he would be justified by the Law; that is to say, he would
receive the justice of God eternally because he had been a faithful observer
of the Law.
But following his encounter with the Risen Christ he came to see a jus-
tification of this sort as impossible. He could never perfectly obey the
Law; all such attempts were a type of unconscious slavery. He now saw
that Jesus, in his sacrificial living and dying, had swept aside such petty
concerns and that all believers were, from now on, justified, relieved of
the burden of the Law, because they had turned to Christ. When we are
justified by faith we have peace with God (Rom. 5.1); from now on death
and sin in the believer are submerged by grace.
The Incarnation
‘When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman . . .
that we might receive the full rights of sons’ (Gal. 4.4). The notion that
the earth has been visited by God, so that humanity might be persuaded
of the sheer enormity of the love of God for human beings, is called the
‘Incarnation’. This implies both the action of God and the concrete physi-
cal presence of a human being who helps us to become aware of the
power of God’s love for us. The extremes to which God is prepared to go
are exemplified by the crucifixion of Jesus.
What are the limits of the love of God? There are no limits! To what
extremes is God prepared to go to bring about the salvation of the world?
To every extreme! Paul saw the resurrection of Christ as showing the
victory of Jesus; it demonstrated the failure of Jesus’ execution. What
appeared to be failure, in terms of human judgement and career consid-

erations, was, in fact, the victory of the love of God.
The Body of Christ
Christianity is not a set of principles for private consumption. The Jewish

tradition had seen the work of God as being demonstrated in a holy
nation. In the same way, Christianity saw the fruit of the work of Christ,
and the continuation of the work of Christ, being demonstrated in a
special community of the resurrection. This community is participation
in the life of Christ. Paul referred to it over and over again as ‘the Body of
Christ’.
When Paul used the word ‘church’, he could, depending on context,
mean the local worshipping assembly or the totality of the members of
those who believed in the Risen Christ. This Body of Christ is the Temple
of the Holy Spirit. Paul often used images of the body and of building to
emphasise that notion of community. He is thinking of something, cre-
ated out of individual elements, which is, for him, the crucial place of
God’s action on earth. This Body of Christ offers itself to God as a living
sacrifice. The individuals accept their own mortality, they have no hold
on, or mastery over, their lives; this allows them to live by grace, through
the mercy of God.
Eucharist The great Thanksgiving Liturgy of the Church as it celebrates the

death and resurrection of Jesus in which believers eat a ritual meal in com-
munion with the sacrifice of Christ; it is also called the Lord’s Supper, the
Holy Communion, The Mass or The Liturgy.
Eschatological Concerned with the last things: death, judgement, heaven and
hell. It is concerned with the final destiny and hope, both of the individual
and of humanity.
Covenant originally an agreement between two parties; it came to be seen as
the faithfulness of God towards Israel in return for the inner righteousness of
the people before God. Jesus restated it as humanity receiving a gracious gift
from God by which their desire to serve God was made perfect. It has its
highest expression in the example of the life and death of Jesus.
Sacrifice The offering of something costly (often an animal) to God in thanks-

giving or to request a favour. Jesus appears to reinterpret the notion of sacrifice
as a disposition of the heart in terms of mercy and justice, particularly a dis-
position to help and be of service to others. Jesus’ own death was seen as a
self-offering on behalf of all. Christian theology often sees the believer’s con-
scious obedience to God as a sacrifice offered in union with the self-offering
of Jesus.
Apostle is a title given to the original twelve disciples of Jesus, minus Judas
Iscariot, plus Matthias, elected to replace him. An apostle was to be a witness
to the resurrection and a member of the group who travelled with Jesus dur-
ing his time on earth (Acts 1.21–22). Paul and Barnabas also claimed to be
apostles. The word originally meant ‘somebody sent (by God)’.
The Holy Spirit
Paul constantly refers to the Holy Spirit as dwelling in us. The Spirit in us
is the mark of our becoming children of God; it is also the transforming
agent that will make us new individuals, spiritual beings. We know we are
called to this state of adopted children of God by the witness of the Holy
Spirit in us. It is by the power of the Spirit, and through the Spirit, that we
pray to God.
This is the source from which we receive that perfected love that allows
us to live lives of offering and sacrifice on behalf of others. This is God
dwelling in a holy people, creating and strengthening the Body of Christ,
through which God is an operative, active, inspiring and transforming
presence in the world.
Human action is thus grafted onto divine action. This force does not
take away our freedom; on the contrary it allows us to match our freedom
with the will of God. The spirit sustains, encourages, cures and strength-
ens us. It is not a freedom that can either accept or refuse God. It is a
freedom that allows us to appreciate where our greatest good lies and
agree to it joyfully.
This freedom is a manner of living as Christians in the world. We do
not automatically refuse everything the world proposes to us. Rather we
are empowered to resist any other reality than God; any other thing which
is suggested to us as capable of fulfilling our deepest desires can be

refused.
Baptism
For Paul, the event that makes any individual Christian is Baptism. He
considers being baptised into Christ Jesus as a dying to sin and a rising
with Christ to new life, deeply drawn in to the death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ. He asks all Christians to look back to the event of their bap-
tism, to live out the implications and duties of being Christians here in
the present and to look forward in hope to being involved in the risen
glory of Christ.
The action of asking for and accepting baptism represents and accom-
plishes a vital union with Christ in the saving events of Jesus’ personal
history. It is concerned with creating and developing a relationship with
Christ and with becoming Christ’s disciple. It is always set in the context
of radical change (conversion), passing from the dominance of sin to the
dominance of life and grace.
However, Christians still living on this earth have not yet come to the
stage where God is ‘all in all’. Therefore they are in a state of tension
between this passing, temporary, at-risk state and the conclusiveness of
the resurrection.
The resurrection of Jesus could not take place without his first passing
through death so Jesus had to become like us – to empty, to humble
himself, to take on the role of slave and to accept death. The believer
who is ‘in Christ’ has also to follow this route; believers must also accept
for themselves a ‘theology of the cross’ to come to a ‘theology of
resurrection’.
The Lord’s Supper
We have four sources for the institution of the Lord’s Supper: Paul, Luke,
Mark and Matthew. Paul’s account (1 Cor. 11.23–25) is probably the
earliest. Paul was not present at the institution of the Eucharist. He
claimed that he received his information ‘from the Lord’. It is often
remarked that Paul’s emphasis is eschatological, directed to the end of all

time, rather than sacrificial. In Paul’s understanding, we call the original
last meal to memory, and, at the same time, look forward to the great
feasting–rejoicing at the end of time.
In Paul’s version the bread ritual and the cup ritual appear to be sepa-
rated by the meal itself. Each is seen as a sign of the Lord’s death, but the
ritual over the cup is more developed – we come to a new covenant, we
are now looking forward and beyond. Other early Eucharistic rituals are
seen as beginning to suggest the notion of sacrifice; such a view may be a
later development and it is absent from Paul.
Later outlooks would develop the ideas of covenant and sacrifice. ‘Cov-
enant’ is a very powerful Jewish concept. As Christianity moved out
beyond its original Jewish setting, it would find that the idea of ‘sacrifice’
already had very rich associations. For many, it was already making
amends for wrong-doing – a ‘getting the accounts straight’. For Judaism,
it involved the deep sense of a personal relationship between God and a
special people. So the Lord’s Supper grew out of an experience of cove-
nant and sacrifice which stretched beyond dependence but was
experienced as a giving of self to God in deep communion.
Paul’s account mentions first the idea of an offering on behalf of
others, ‘for you’. Secondly, we find the notion of covenant, but ‘the new
covenant’, presumably arising out of the imminent offering. Thirdly, it
states that it is ‘in remembrance of me’. What ‘remembrance’ means
would be much debated. It might mean a simple memorial, which is
a statement of loss. Or it might mean a ‘making present’, which is a re-
possession beyond what appears to be failure.
Paul’s letters
Paul did not write a gospel, in the sense of a life of Jesus. His letters are his
writings about the Christian faith and his passionate attachment to the
Risen Jesus. They constitute his gospel, and we repeat that this word origi-
nally meant ‘good news’.
Paul’s letters were attempts to work out what the good news of Jesus
meant to the people he had met, in their concrete situations, as they
went about their daily lives. Here also we have problems, not everybody
is convinced that all the texts we possess, and which claim to be by

Paul, were actually written by him. In those days it was not unusual for
the disciple of a great teacher to write about how the teacher would have
approached certain subjects and to write in his name.
In Paul’s letters we can see his thought undergoing gradual changes
and refinements. In early writings Paul expects the immediate return of
Jesus. In other writings Paul is teasing out what it means to be considered
‘just’ in the eyes of God. In some writings Paul meditates on the role of
Christ in creation and in history; in further writings he meditates on the
work of Christ in his Church.
More writings are about the organization of the Church and how to
keep the faith pure from the corruption of false teachers. These are called
the Pastoral Epistles; many believe they are not by Paul but are the work
of a follower.
Paul’s concern in his letters is to urge believers to practise discernment
in their daily Christian lives. His theology was concerned with ethical
practice as well as metaphysics. He urged them to develop sharp Chris-
tian insights in order to know what is good, what is agreeable and what is
perfect.
The Christ event had not just been a historic event but was also an
eschatological event (turned towards the end and the fulfilment of time);
it involved a new relationship with reality. Christians have a responsibil-
ity to show concretely in their lives that human existence can be freed
from the fear of death; they must live joyfully and practise justice.
Metaphysics is the study of being as being; speculation about the meaning of

what is; the study of first principles and first causes; the rational knowledge of
those realities that go beyond us; the rational study of things in themselves.
Appraisal
We talked of Paul trying to put the experience of being ‘struck by

lightning’ into words. It is probably true that only Paul could have
expressed a Christian experience in this way. He was, after all, the only
highly educated, extremely literate apostle. But is it possible to separate
away the content of thought from the way it is expressed? Is it not true
that only a person who had had this sort of life experience and training
could have expressed Christian faith in this way? Can a Christian theolo-
gian operate apart from a context? And when the context changes must
the thought be expressed differently?
Paul’s texts seem to express Christian teaching in the context of the life
of Paul. Does this suggest that there must be, in Christian witness, a
transfer of value from the context of the life of Jesus to the context of the
life of the believer?
Is Paul the only person who could write in that way? Or are his writings
normative for everybody?
2 The First Christian Theologians: the
Gospel Writers
The New Testament is the collection of writings in Greek which form the
second part of the Christian Bible. These texts give special witness to
Jesus Christ and the early story of his Church. This collection of texts has
four accounts of the life of Jesus which are called gospels. Gospel means
‘good news’.
The texts are named after four people: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
We do not know if any of these individuals had any hand in writing the
texts named after them. Some of the texts are considered to be the prod-
uct of early Christian communities which gathered around the memory
of a particular disciple of Jesus. These texts show signs of later editing.
Timeline
44 BCE Death of Julius Caesar

4 BCE Death of Herod the Great
11 CE Death of Caesar Augustus
26 CE Pontius Pilate becomes governor of Judea
27 CE approx. Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist
30 CE approx. Crucifixion of Jesus
64 CE Nero becomes Emperor: first persecution of Christians
65 CE approx. Martyrdom of Peter and Paul
70 CE Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus
70–90 CE Writing of the gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark and Luke
70–82 CE Building of the Coliseum
85–100 CE Writing of the gospel account of John
Before turning to the four New Testament gospels, we must take brief
note of the similarities and dissimilarities of three of them and of the
problems they pose.
First Christian Theologians: the Gospel Writers 21
The synoptic problem
Three of the four gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) are known as
Synoptic Gospels. Their purpose was to give an outline of the life, teach-
ing and work of Jesus. These three gospels have very obvious differences,
but they also have major points of agreement. If one writes an outline of
each gospel and lays them side by side so that they can be viewed together
(synopsis), then we can see that they have more or less the same
structure.
Here both the differences and the likenesses are interesting; every
witness to an incident will later tell the story differently. There is by no
means total agreement in the scholarly community, but a widely accepted
theory of how they came to be written is sketched here.
Mark was the first Gospel to be written. The author was unaware of any
stories about the birth of Jesus and did not include any in his story. He
told the story of Jesus’ public ministry, concentrating first, but by no
means exclusively, on the works of Jesus – his miracles. He then told the
story of Peter’s confession of faith at Caesarea Philippi (8.27–30), this is
followed by Jesus’ speech about his future suffering and death (8.31–9.1)
and this is followed by the story of the transfiguration (9.2–13).
The story of Jesus’ ministry continued, this time with greater emphasis
on the teaching of Jesus – his parables. Finally, we read Mark’s version
of the Passion: the arrest, trial, suffering and death of Jesus, which is
followed by the resurrection and after-death appearances.
Matthew and Luke have exactly the same structure as Mark. The text is
frequently the same or similar with only minor word changes. Matthew
and Luke have in common another set of stories about Jesus, which do
not appear in Mark. Finally, both Matthew and Luke have stories about
Jesus which are unique to that one writer and found nowhere else.
This has led to speculation that the texts came into being something
like this. Mark was the earliest writer and both Matthew and Luke had
access to his manuscript while composing their own texts. There was
another set of writings about Jesus which is now lost, but both Matthew
and Luke had access to that also. This hypothetical source is known as Q
(from the German word Quelle, meaning source). Both Matthew and
Luke copied large chunks of both Mark and Q. Finally, both Matthew and
Luke individually had access to different sets of stories about Jesus which
nobody else has written down.
This, of course, throws doubt on the notion that any of these three
gospels was written by an individual who was an actual eyewitness to the
life and teaching of Jesus, though they may have, on occasion, met some-
body who had known Jesus. Even though tradition and, sometimes, text
suggest an author, this must be taken with reserve. Each writer probably
received his information at second or third hand and all received and
pondered it through the prism of the resurrection.
Each gospel is frequently approached as a tradition (something handed
on from one generation to the next) about Jesus preserved, meditated
on and prayed about over long years in a believing community. In those
days communities were much more isolated from each other than they
are today.
Matthew
It was believed that this text was written by Matthew the tax gatherer.
This is now thought unlikely. The text has a unique set of teachings by
Jesus called the ‘Sermon on the Mount’. It is thought to be a collection of
teachings gathered from different sources, rather than the report of an
actual occasion. The writer may have been an early Christian teacher;
perhaps this individual was a rabbi or a scribe.
This text is anxious to preserve the notion that the old Jewish Law has
value and it suggests how observance of the law might be pleasing to God
in the light of the resurrection of Jesus. It is thought to come from a com-
munity of people who were originally Jews but who had converted to
Christianity. However, some students feel that by the time the end of the
text was being written the link with Jewish religious practice had been
broken. The writing is often dated to between 80 and 90 CE.
Matthew urges us to distinguish in the whole body of traditional teach-
ing those tendencies which have greatest weight. Love of neighbour is
more important than remembering to carry out some minor duty in
fussy detail. It constantly reminds us also that the original will of the
creator is more important than later legally detailed regulations. Finally,
in a series of contraries, ‘you have heard it said . . . but I say unto you . . .’
Matthew asks us to consider the Law in its deepest sense, rather than in
its surface meaning.
At the very beginning of Christian history all believers were converts

from Judaism, and while they adopted new forms of worship, prayers and
breaking of bread, they also worshipped as Jews in both synagogue and
Temple. Following the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple by
the Roman Emperor Titus in 70 CE, Judaism was reformed and reorgan-
ized, possibly by the Pharisees. This new version of a fragile and brittle
Judaism may not have been sympathetic to anyone lukewarm about the
new party line.
There seems little doubt that, at some stage, there was a dramatic
rupture and Christians may have been expelled from the synagogue. This
may well be represented in the harsh judgements concerning the Phari-
sees placed in the mouth of Jesus. The community suggested by Matthew
appears to have been open to Gentiles. What is more, the Gospel of
Matthew is one of the two to include a birth narrative. Here, the visitors
who were summoned by a miracle to visit the newborn child were out-
siders: Gentile men of learning.
On the other hand, this is the most Jewish of the four gospels. It is a
document concerned to proclaim Jesus as the Christ, that is the promised
Messiah. Jesus is portrayed as the great healer and teacher – Wisdom
herself. Another focus of the gospel is the nearness of the Kingdom of
God which Jesus came to announce.
Matthew does not see the Kingdom of God as being embodied by the
Church, but the Church is where the Kingdom can be most easily dis-
cerned. It is the great theme of hope in this gospel. It is both at hand and
imperfectly realized. It involves a vision of a redeemed humanity, not just
as individuals, but in social and political terms as well. Redemption is to
be announced on earth as in heaven, here in time as well as in eternity.
It has a strong moral content because of its concern with the law. There is
an emphasis on justice which is the believer’s response, in obedience, to
the will of God.
Matthew has a constant desire to tell how, in Jesus Christ, the ancient
prophecies of Israel have been fulfilled. Nevertheless Christian communi-
ties, as portrayed here, are a mixture of saint and sinner; Matthew is very
realistic! Matthew stresses that Jesus ‘came not to destroy, but to fulfil’.
Matthew was probably written in an early Christian community that
had its own tensions about doctrine and discipleship, not at all the
idealized vision of the Church many see in the Acts of the Apostles. Many
consider this gospel to be an account of the Jesus of history, living

beside the Galilean Sea in 30 CE, seen through the prism of the author’s
experience of the Lord, as he worked in a Church community in 85 CE.
Moreover, many guess that this young Christian community may not
have been in Palestine but possibly in Antioch.
The text of Matthew is riddled with turbulence, and the Church in
Matthew will accordingly be battered throughout its existence.
Mark
No claim is made here that the author was the Mark mentioned in
Acts. That identification was added later. Some see this person as Paul’s
companion, John Mark; others claim he was a later collaborator of
Peter’s.
The text of Mark may well have been written in Rome shortly after 65
CE, the traditional date for the executions of both Peter and Paul in that
city. A threat of persecution seems to hang over the text. Early preachers
had used the word ‘gospel’ as an announcement of good news. Mark
invented ‘gospel’ as a literary form – an account of the ministry of Jesus.
Mark has no birth narrative. It starts with a prophetic announcement
from Isaiah, followed by one from John the Baptist. After a mere eight
verses, Jesus comes to be baptized by John and his public ministry has
begun. The order of the text follows some movement around Galilee and
then becomes a steady progression to Jerusalem.
It may be that the text was written for a community dominated by
Gentile converts to Christianity, rather than Jewish ones. This document
takes trouble to translate and explain Jewish words and customs. In the
early first century, Galilee was a place where members of many nations
had settled. The religious authorities in Jerusalem considered it to be a
place of outsiders. As against this, Jerusalem was the centre of rigid
orthodoxy and religious certainty. From Galilee came a challenge to the
religious establishment; from Jerusalem came the most virulent opposi-
tion to Jesus.
Mark declares without any doubt who Jesus is. Jesus is the Christ (the
expected Messiah), the Son of God. The text focuses on the Kingdom of
God and it opens with the declaration that the Kingdom of God is at
hand and calls on hearers to repent and believe. It constantly emphasizes

the paradox of how the crucified Jesus could be the son of God. The
baptism, transfiguration and resurrection of Jesus all move in this way
from the ordinary to the heavenly voice, to the ‘letting see’ of the mystery.
The people of Jesus’ time understood the Kingdom of God to be a
display of power. Jesus’ preaching is not an attempt to underplay the
power of God but to get people to understand that God does not use
power in a forceful, dictatorial manner. The way of God is persuasion, an
appeal to the heart. Thus the signs of the Kingdom are displays of power
used to heal.
Jesus’ life was, in itself, the illustration of how God sees the work of the
Kingdom – the healer–teacher justified by God. The cross is the climax of
this life of healing and teaching. The preacher of the Kingdom has now
become the model for the Kingdom.
When Peter confesses that Jesus is the Messiah, the three Synoptic
Gospels all portray Jesus as immediately speaking about his suffering and
death. Only when this double aspect of Suffering Messiah is understood
can the texts talk of transfiguration.
The gospel of Mark has a thread running through it whereby Jesus
heals but then warns the healed person not to tell anybody. This is often
referred to as the ‘messianic secret’. It is difficult to know what was meant
by this. It may be that the author of Mark did not understand Jesus’
messianic role as a statement of wonder-working power but as some-
thing that could only be appreciated in terms of the crucifixion–
resurrection event.
Mark is trying to draw out a very radical response to the story of Jesus,
and that response is discipleship. The disciples of Jesus were called to
share his preaching and healing, and they often misunderstood his
mission. It has been suggested that the first half of the gospel portrays
the disciples as role models, while the second half recommends that
their behaviour be avoided. No doubt Mark is laying out not only the
duties but also the failures and distortions of discipleship.
Christians in Mark have a double responsibility: they must persevere,
no matter what temptations arise (4.16–19) and they must be of service
to others (10.44). In the working out of Christian duty in daily life,
Christians must fight against despair, fatalism and blindness, making
obvious God’s secret, but real, struggle among us.
Mark’s Jesus is very much a human being, not the all-knowing Son
of God: he makes mistakes; he does not know when the world will end
and he is afraid of death. The most frequent title used for Jesus in Mark
is Son of Man. At one level it simply means human being; in the Old
Testament book of Daniel it means the one to whom God has given
power to judge. It is a confusing title.
Redemption This is the act of freeing humanity from the power of sin and
restoring the world and its inhabitants to communion with God. In Christi-
anity, redemption became effective with the dwelling of Jesus on earth and his
death on behalf of others.
Messiah, Christ A person given great power and special functions by God.
The Jews expected such a figure, apparently to restore some form of national
autonomy. Jesus was seen by early Christians as Messiah. The word means
‘anointed’ – a sign of special mission: kings and priests were anointed.
‘Messiah’ is a Hebrew word; the Greek equivalent is ‘Christ’.
Disciples, Discipleship Disciples were and are the followers of Jesus; those
who believe in and seek to follow his teaching. Discipleship is the willed
attempt to be a disciple of Jesus in one’s own historical and geographical
setting.
Transfiguration A moment in the Synoptic Gospels when, at the top of a moun-
tain, Jesus was seen by chosen disciples in the company of Moses (the great
lawgiver) and Elijah (the great prophet) in the appearance of heavenly glory.
Luke
Once again this gospel does not claim to be written by Luke, but there are
reasonable grounds for accepting that a physician named Luke, who was
a companion of Paul, wrote both it and the Acts of the Apostles. The two
are frequently considered as a single literary unit – one work written in
two volumes. This suggests that the author saw the work of Jesus contin-
uing in the work of the Church. This writer was probably from Antioch.
Luke is written in stylish Greek and has elegant literary devices to stress
its theme; the three Gospel Canticles, the Songs of Zechariah, Mary and
Simeon, are all found in Luke alone.
Scholars believe that the text shows little knowledge of Paul’s later
theology, or of his letters, so they believe that Luke’s collaboration with
Paul was early in the latter’s ministry. There seems to be internal evidence
that Luke knew of the destruction of Jerusalem (21.5–6); therefore it was
written after 70 CE. It does not seem to reflect the tensions between young
church and synagogue and therefore probably written before 85 CE.
This text was probably written for Gentile believers, away from Pales-
tine. Luke tends to use the word ‘Lord’, a Greek title, rather than ‘Messiah’,
a Jewish one. This community sees the gifts of God as offered to all. This
text seems to be addressed to a Gentile audience, aware that Christianity
was living in a hostile environment. The Temple has been thrown down,
the city destroyed and a totally pagan one is being built on the site.
The author of Luke seems to have a threefold vision of time. There was
the time of Promise, when Moses and the prophets announced God’s
concern for the chosen people. There was the time of Presence, when Jesus
was present on earth: ‘he went about doing good’. There is the time of the
Spirit; as the full impact of the message dawns: the message is announced
beyond the confines of Israel and spreads out from Jerusalem.
The writer of Luke appears to have had three authoritative sources of
inspiration: the Old Testament writings, Jesus himself and the early com-
munity of the founding apostles.
The purpose of Luke is to show that God is trustworthy, often in a way
people did not expect. You might think that God has not been faithful to
the promises made to the chosen people, but this is a misunderstanding
and the new Christian people of God can rely on God’s providence.
This new people is composed of the old elect who repented, but also of
people who were frequently despised: Gentiles, the poor, lepers, tax col-
lectors, women, Samaritans and other outcasts. Luke also tells stories
about the birth of Jesus. In his account the baby is visited by Jewish shep-
herds. These people are outsiders also, because their work prevented
them from being at all times ritually pure.
The vision of the early Church given in the Act of the Apostles is prob-
ably hopelessly idealistic, but the document urges believers to persevere
in the teaching of the apostles, in brotherly love, in the breaking of bread
(the Lord’s Supper/Eucharist) and in prayer. These practices preserve the
identity, unity and cohesiveness of the believing community. The mes-
sage of Luke is not given in a series of exhortations, but the stories set
examples before us.
The moral teaching in Luke stresses how important it is that Christians
remain linked to each other, that they should be moved by each others’
distress, that they undertake concrete and sensible actions to help each
other, and that they should not place others under an obligation by mak-
ing them indebted to generous givers: the Roman political system of
gaining power by building up a grateful client base was out!
Luke’s Jesus often lays aside the detail of the old Jewish Law, but he is
nevertheless an upholder of the general thrust of the law and other
Jewish traditions. There are many good things in the Pharisaic tradition
of prayer; the Church is founded on the twelve disciples, as Israel is
founded on the twelve tribes. The gospel begins in the Temple and the
promise arises out of the Temple; after the final departure of Jesus the
disciples return to the Temple. However, there are theological battles.
In Luke, the Pharisees are opposed over strict dietary habits, over who
has the right to be considered a child of Abraham and over notions of
self-righteousness.
Jesus’ mission is to all but particularly to the marginalized. Jesus him-
self is marginalized; his mission as a prophet is rejected by the religious
establishment. The ideal in Luke’s Christian community is the wounded
and abandoned traveller in need of the other. Luke preaches a concrete
ethic of perseverance. This is no longer an ideal of the seeker who leaves
all to follow the truth; the Christian model has been transferred to an
urban community where one cannot escape from the other.
The boyhood incident of learning and enquiring in the Temple
(2.41–52) stresses that Jesus had much to learn from his native tradition
and that his ministry was a lost opportunity for Judaism. However Luke
portrays the ordinary people as having more shrewd insight than their
leaders. The rejection of a prophet does not finally shut off the gift of
God’s mercy.
John
The author of John was traditionally held to be the author of the three
letters which bear his name and of the book of Revelation too. This com-
mon authorship is disputed.
This gospel was finally accepted into the approved list of writings
which go to form the New Testament (the canon). But that approval was
delayed. The text is very different from the other three gospels and it also
appears that this gospel was popular with early heretical groups. Both
these factors may have aroused suspicion about the orthodoxy of the
teaching contained in it.
The literary style is quite characteristic; it involves repetition, antithesis
and chiasmus. The author often interrupts the flow of the narrative to
give explanations or to prevent misunderstandings. In fact, John’s expla-
natory technique often involves structuring the text to allow Jesus’
opponents to misunderstand him; that misunderstanding is then high-
lighted and corrected. It is often referred to as the spiritual gospel, being
the result of long, prayerful meditation on the Christ-event, rather than
a straightforward relating of it.
Peter plays a prominent role in this gospel; he is obviously considered
to be the leader among the Twelve, although his faith and commitment
are often portrayed as inferior to that of the Beloved Disciple who gets
special mention in the text. This Beloved Disciple is often identified with
John the son of Zebedee. The Beloved Disciple is identified as the author
of the gospel.
Once again, many scholars feel that the final version of this text is the
work of a community, possibly one founded by John. It may have been
written at Ephesus in modern Turkey, where there was a Christian
community claiming to be founded by a preacher named John.
Heresy Teachings which cast doubt on or deny the official doctrines of the
Church.
Incarnation The Christian teaching that the Son of God became a human
being as the historical Jesus, both fully God and fully man, without the
integrity of the manhood or of the godhead being compromised.
Gnostic Gnosticism was a loose set of tendencies, seeing the world in terms of
a conflict between two great powers of good and evil and seeking to develop a
special relationship with God by means of one’s favoured insight, study and
knowledge.
Transcendence Above, independent of, surpassing the material universe.
Scholars now appreciate that first-century Judaism was more complex,

rich and diverse than had previously been thought. Many attempts have
been made to find the sources of John’s gospel in this hotchpotch of
slightly off-centre religious traditions. This gospel is very concerned

about the expulsion of Christians from the synagogue. Three times in the
text of John we find a word found nowhere else in the New Testament
meaning ‘a person expelled from the synagogue’.
John’s text suggests that the community from which this document
came needed to establish a separate identity from three other groups.
Those were the followers of John the Baptist, the Jews who by now
have probably expelled Christians from the synagogue and other
Christians who have disagreed with this community, possibly over the
divinity of Jesus.
This suggests that the document dates from after 85 CE. Since it appears
to have been in circulation on papyrus, suggesting copies made in Egypt,
by the very early second century, the latest date for composition is held to
be 100 CE. The document also appears to reject Gnostic tendencies. This
is a tradition which denied the Incarnation. Gnostics tended to believe that
the soul alone was good while the body was evil. In addition, the Gnostics
believed that salvation came to those with special knowledge, which they
have acquired by discipline or by being found worthy. Christianity has
always maintained that saving faith is within the reach of all, rich and
poor, Jew and Gentile, male and female, clever and less gifted.
John’s manner of presenting Jesus is quite different from that of the
other three. Jesus frequently utters long figurative speeches; the miracles
related here often provide an occasion to allow symbolic insights into
Jesus’ identity. He frequently refers to his relationship to the Father. Of
course many of the incidents and sayings in John are also reported in the
Synoptic Gospels.
The text refers to three journeys to Jerusalem to keep the Passover.
Consequently people assume that Jesus taught and healed over a three-
year period.
In the gospel of John there are no birth narratives and there is no nar-
rative of the institution of the Lord’s Supper. Instead it begins with an
abstract and poetic theological prologue concerning the Word. ‘Word’ is
a term which had been used in some pagan philosophy to denote the
inherent divine, creative spirit and wisdom which orders the universe.
The theme of the victim also runs throughout John: somebody sacri-
ficed on behalf of others. There is the ritual victim; an animal dies in the
place of the sinner: John the Baptist early designates Jesus as the Lamb of
God (1.29–30). There is the victim of community, one holding divergent

views from the group and expelled from the group; Jesus was at constant
variance with the Jews over contrasting ideas of piety, the Sabbath, the
spiritual food of his body, his daring to teach as one without formal
education and his claiming identity with the Father. Instances abound in
chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 17 and 19. Finally, there is the notion of
triumphant victim – the one who has suffered and around whom a new
community of salvation is gathered. There is even the notion of the new
community of salvation as victim.
The gospel makes frequent reference to Jesus’ ‘hour’ or his ‘time’, when
he will be revealed for what he is. This appears to be the moment of leav-
ing the world and passing to the Father. Nevertheless the gospel keeps
giving us hints that the time is now. In one famous story, Jesus’ mother
tells him the wine has run out at a wedding feast. He protests, ‘my time
has not yet come’; nevertheless he changes water into wine.
This gospel proclaims that Jesus speaks for God and should be received
as God, for a rich merchant’s agent has the authority to make decisions as
though he were the superior himself. This gospel points to faith in Jesus
Christ as Son of God. It frequently calls on disciples to believe in Jesus.
This is a definite qualification for salvation: ‘no-one comes to the Father
except through me’ (14.6). The text seems to separate Jesus, as one from
above, from those who are of this world. The second part of the gospel is
concerned with the return of Jesus to the Father.
The writer of John often uses terms and images for Jesus which, up to
now, had been considered suitable only for the transcendent reality of
God. At first this must have appeared quite startling in a narrative devoted
to the earthly career of a human being. On the other hand, what appears
more startling to the Christian outlook today is those synoptic texts
which describe Jesus’ human flaws.
The preface to the text, the passage dealing with the Logos or Word
(1.1–18), implies that Jesus had a pre-existence with the Father before
his human birth. There are later references to his imminent return to
that glory. These are found in the priestly prayer of the Word made flesh
(ch. 17). John’s Jesus has not come to allow us to make sense of human
experience; he has come to reveal the Father.
The text seems to assume that the reader knows many of the facts con-
cerning Jesus’ life and work and does not speak about the Baptism, the
Transfiguration or the Institution of the Lord’s Supper. The climax of

the gospel is the crucifixion. Once crucified, Jesus knows that his hour
has now come. The last prayer of Jesus is the call to God to glorify the Son
by his death. His lifting up on the cross is his lifting up in glory. It is from
that point that the Spirit, the comforter, is poured out upon the world as
water pours from his side.
In John, Jesus is the revealer. By themselves, human beings are unable
to come to God; they need new birth. The revelation of God in Jesus
Christ shows a radical contrast between the world and the Kingdom of
God, the earthly and the heavenly, the glory of mortals and the glory of
God, above and below. Jesus reveals that the world is under the judge-
ment of God and that the Word dwells among us, but only faith can see
it clearly.
The teaching of Jesus is framed and summarized not by the institution
of the Lord’s Supper but by the washing of the disciples’ feet and the
delivery of a New Commandment – to love one another as Jesus had
loved them. John’s ethical approach seems to be the insistence on broth-
erly love within the believing community. This is so that the unbelieving
world may know the greatness of the power of God. The text gives no
indication of how this might work out in practice, and it lays down no
further guidelines for social responsibility within the community.
In the epistles named after John, the emphasis is on the general ruling
to walk in the light, to practise brotherly love and to fight heresy. This may
of course have been very practical in a context which was threatened by
the Gnostic heresy, a tendency which promoted knowledge at the expense
of love. Even faithful believers may be tempted to neglect the practical
workings of love and feel, in their pride, that their religious knowledge
places them above the requirements of sacrificial self-offering.
Appraisal
Each author writes about Jesus out of a slightly different context and
for a slightly different audience. Each has a somewhat different way of
looking at Jesus and of expressing, indeed assessing, the importance of
what he achieved.
Mark gives us no birth narratives; Matthew and Luke do. Does this
mean that for the later writers Jesus has assumed a greater cosmic signifi-
cance which had not dawned on Mark?
John teaches the pre-existence of Jesus as the Divine Word quite
explicitly. Luke does not. But what are we to make of the three songs
accompanying the birth narratives? The Gospel Canticles (as they are
called) appear to be human responses to a human event yet their
grouping together suggests they are being used as markers to express
something which goes beyond what is plainly stated.
If one is not involved in the problems of the world, there is a tempta-
tion to cultivate the internal, spiritual life, to the detriment of the
practical. Could the Johannine tradition (the tradition of the gospel of
John) sometimes give comfort to those who are tempted to reject the link
between the spiritual and the material, the body and the soul, time and
eternity, seeking to undervalue the material at the expense of the
spiritual, rather than hold the two in tension?
The gospel texts all express their teaching as they describe the life of
Jesus. Yet each has its own setting and concerns.
3 St Augustine of Hippo: a Father of the Church
St Paul, on one occasion at Ephesus, was presented as just one more

philosophy teacher among so many others. Christianity would come to
have much in common with philosophical thinking in the early years of
the Christian era. Christianity grew out of the Jewish world and beyond
the squabbling of Jewish sects. It was of course more than philosophy, for
it presented more than ideas; it presented the Lord of the universe as the
redeemer of the human race. God’s commitment to human beings was
such that they were given a saviour.
The young Church declared to the world a saviour who was the Lord
of the world, the Logos, rational principle of the Universe. They saw
this deliverance as linked to an event: Jesus Christ had ‘suffered under
Pontius Pilate’, been ‘crucified, died and was buried’; ‘on the third day
he rose again from the dead’. Those who believed in him grew together
into a close society and companionship which called for a life of purity,
self-sacrifice and solidarity with others.
Christianity seems to have first taken hold among the poorer classes of
cities; it was only later that it moved out into the countryside. The word
‘pagan’ originally meant a rural dweller. Christians soon got the reputa-
tion of being naïve, ignorant and superstitious. Christians also called
into question the values of Roman thought and civilization; they refused
to participate in state or civic cults (worship of the Emperor or honour
given to a city’s protecting god). What is more they ate a community
meal in which they appeared to be eating the flesh of their great teacher.
Such rumours about them caused them to be outcast, despised and
eventually persecuted.
Meanwhile the work of the Church continued and grew a little at a
time. Gradually Christian worship moved from private houses to specially
built buildings. Slowly Christian ministries also developed, particularly
those of bishop, priest and deacon. Little by little public liturgies became
established; creeds, rules and regulations were drawn up.
Christian doctrine became standardized. In particular, the doctrine
of the two natures of Christ (fully human and fully God) was developed,
as was the doctrine of the Trinity. These were given their standard
St Augustine of Hippo: a Father of the Church 35
definitions by the pronouncements of councils of the Church. Much of

this work of definition arose because of heresy. Heresy is a teaching con-
cerning Christianity which the church authorities judged to be wrong.
Liturgy The words, rites, texts of Christian services.

Creed A statement of what one believes. In particular, the Apostles’, Nicene and
Athanasian Creeds which have high status among almost all Christian churches.
In time Christianity came to confront the pagan philosophical world and

eventually, by a variety of means, including the use of state power, to
overcome it.
The earliest Christian thinkers had no philosophical system of thought,
or means of expressing their concepts of knowledge, other than the pre-
vailing forms of their day. These tended to be mostly platonic with a little
influence from Stoicism. Pagan thinkers often attacked Christian thought
using the thought categories of their day. Many Christian thinkers bor-
rowed the weapons of their opponents and fought back.
Plotinus (204 –270 CE) taught a development of Plato’s thought some-
times referred to as Neoplatonism. He lived at a time when the Roman
Empire was breaking up. The world of practical affairs seemed to offer no
hope to men and women; only the Other World, a world of abstraction,
thought and ideas, appeared promising. For the Platonist that was the
real world, the material world was illusion. By and large, the philosophy
of Plotinus encourages us to look within rather than without; it encour-
ages us to promote introspection rather than engagement with the world.
There is a whiff of otherworldliness in Plotinus; salvation comes by intel-
lectual improvement, ascent to the higher form and absorption into
knowledge of God.
It was while reading Plotinus that St Augustine came to accept the
notion of immaterial reality and, by thinking of evil as a deficiency, freed
himself from a dualistic system of thought according to which the world
is the place where good and evil struggle.
The Fathers of the Church
‘Fathers of the Church’ is a name commonly given to a number of ancient

Christian writers. They were nearer to the sources of faith, to the times of
Jesus, than we are. When we turn to them, there is a sense of returning

to sources.
They tried to read all scripture in a Christ-centred way under the
guidance of the Holy Spirit. They were people who confronted and held
in dialogue a newly evolving religious faith and a rapidly developing
secular culture. They stood with one foot in Greek and Latin learning
and the other in the Christian message. They are revered for the power
of their teaching, the correctness of their thought and the holiness of
their lives.
The Fathers of the Church were usually converted to Christianity
when adults, they were usually highly educated and well-read. They often
were monks or had been monks. That is to say they had lived for a period
in monasteries, as hermits or as celibates to heighten their spiritual
awareness and sharpen their spiritual discipline. They often came,
eventually, to hold pastoral office, as parish priests, bishops or as leaders
of religious communities. They came to be our guide to what has been
taught as the Christian faith from the earliest times.
In the West, St Benedict wrote a rule for monasteries; it is still in use
today. St Augustine is one of the most influential of those early systematic
thinkers and is considered, with St Jerome, St Ambrose and St Gregory
the Great, to be one of the four great Fathers of the Latin Church.
Augustine engaged in a number of theological controversies and made
a major contribution to solving them all. What is more he left behind
him a body of theological writing which, for the first time, was beginning
to be systematic. After Augustine, as the so-called Dark Ages descended
on Western Christianity, there would be a body of work which had already
laid out the fundamentals of Christian faith in orderly and logical form.
His three major areas of contribution were the doctrine of the Church,
the doctrine of grace and the doctrine of the Trinity.
Metaphysics is the study of being as being, speculation about the meaning of

what is, the study of first principles and first causes, the rational knowledge of
those realities that go beyond us or the rational study of things in themselves.
Celibate Living chastely in an unmarried state: one of the three vows, together
with poverty and obedience, taken by those entering monastic orders.
Life (354 – 430)
Augustine lived from 354 to 430 CE. He was born in Africa, in modern
Algeria, though of a Romanized family. His father was an estate owner
and a pagan; his mother was a Christian. He pursued what we would
now call university studies in a variety of places in Africa, ending up in
Carthage. He returned home to support his family, which he did by
teaching. He confesses that in his early adulthood he had difficulty in
controlling his sex drives. After a number of posts in Africa, he taught
Rhetoric in Rome and then in Milan. It was here that he decided to
become a Christian. He had fallen under the influence of the great
preacher, St Ambrose of Milan.
The story is that when seated in the garden of his house he heard,
over the garden wall, the voice of a child saying, ‘Take it and read it!
Take it and read it!’ He happened to open his New Testament and read
the words of St Paul, ‘Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not
in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery,
not in dissension and jealousy. Rather clothe yourselves with the Lord
Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the
sinful nature’ (Rom. 13.13–14). His conversion to Christianity was now
complete.
He himself witnessed the sack of Rome in 410 by the barbarian invad-
ers from the north, led by Alaric the Visigoth. Rome, the conqueror and
ruler of the Mediterranean basin, the city that had lasted for a thousand
years, had fallen; all social and cultural certainties had now been shaken
to their very foundations.
Following the death of his mother, Augustine returned to Africa
with his son and some other friends. He lived a monastic life for a
while, apparently waiting for God to reveal what he should do. At Hippo,
he was chosen to be a priest of the Christian community and, in 395,
became the city’s bishop. He remained here until his death, which
happened as the city was under siege by the Vandals in 430.
Augustine dedicated his ministry in Hippo to the welfare of his
community; he gave much thought to the detail of living a Christian
life in the hurly-burly of the everyday world. He was well known and
revered as a preacher. These and many other activities occupied his time.
In addition, he thought long and hard about Christian education, in

particular educating his flock in Scripture.
We must remember that in those days a bishop performed many of
the functions which are now performed by priests. A bishop baptized,
heard confession, preached, gave private and public penances, pro-
nounced curses, lifted excommunication, visited the sick, attended the
dying, buried the dead, ransomed captives and fed the poor. Bishops
founded hospices and hospitals, administered the property of the clergy,
heard cases in the church courts, wrote books and letters, sat on councils
and engaged in controversy within and outside the church. They had
what we would now call philosophical, religious, political and adminis-
trative duties.
For Augustine, faith came first, faith was fundamental, but faith still
wants reasons. He himself was under the discipline of faith yet aware
of the demands of reason. He was conscious that they had to come to
co-operative agreement within himself. He constantly struggled to clarify
the relationship between the teaching of the man, Augustine, and the
eternal truths of the word of God. The mind and what it knows both
stand in a supernatural light; this is the only means by which knowledge
is possible. The mind is allowed to see truth through the illumination
given by God.
Augustine was a prolific writer; his main work was the Confessions, a
work of autobiography which ended at his conversion. On the Trinity is
a vast work in 15 volumes. There was also the City of God in which he
developed his theory of the proper spheres of action of both Church and
State. He also wrote on the Psalms and on the Gospel of John.
Augustine is particularly noted for the never-ending war he waged
against heresy, even to the extent of being an early advocate of the use of
force to compel conformity.
He was a notable controversialist, combating in particular three
heresies: Manichaeism, Donatism and Pelagianism. Nevertheless the
fight against heresy was not the be-all and end-all of his life and work.
He was one of the determining influences on the Western Church,
sometimes referred to as the ‘Glory of the West’ at other times as the
‘Doctor of Grace’. The word ‘doctor’ here retains its old Latin meaning
of ‘teacher’.
Timeline
303 Persecution of Christians

312 Constantine becomes Emperor and Christianity becomes the state
religion
325 Council of Nicea
354 Birth of Augustine
360 Julian ‘the Apostate’ declared Roman Emperor
374 St Ambrose becomes Bishop of Milan
384 St Jerome starts to translate the Vulgate, the Bible in Latin
386 Conversion of Augustine to Christianity
395 Augustine becomes Bishop of Hippo
396 Augustine starts writing On the Trinity
397 Augustine starts writing the Confessions
410 Sack of Rome by the barbarian Alaric
414 Augustine starts writing the City of God
429 Invasion of Roman Africa by the Vandals
430 Death of Augustine
437 Attila becomes king of the Huns
Thought
We shall first of all look at the three controversies that St Augustine

confronted. We shall then turn to the constructive features of his
thought.
Manichaeism
Augustine was at one time a follower of the Manichaean heresy. It was a

form of Gnosticism. Reality is a contrast between two opposing princi-
ples: between the good principle of light and the bad principle of darkness.
This explained the existence of evil. Good and evil were perpetually at
war one with each other; all matter was evil; only the spiritual was good.
Within every individual an evil principle is at war with the good, but
all humans contain within themselves sparks of the original light and
goodness imprisoned within matter. Salvation comes when these

sparks of light are delivered from the power of evil. This is a slow
disciplined process, helped by many messengers sent from heaven.
In simple terms, the soul had to struggle to escape from the prison of
the body. Manichaeism taught an ascetic and ordered morality: people
should keep away from meat, wine and sexual activity. But not everybody
is able to bear the weight of such a restraint. Consequently there are the
elect, who can cope with the high standards required. There are also the
hearers; a less difficult standard is established for them.
Augustine was drawn away from this viewpoint by his study of
Neoplatonism and with the help of his friend St Ambrose of Milan.
Gnostic Gnosticism was a loose set of tendencies, seeing the world in terms of
a conflict between two great powers of good and evil and seeking to develop a
special relationship with God by means of one’s favoured insight, study and
knowledge.
Augustine was unhappy with the Manichaean notion that an all-good,

all-powerful God could be in danger from, and at war with, Evil. Until the
twentieth century it was axiomatic Christian teaching that God is not
subject to change. If God is infinite, there cannot be an opposite principle
which is also infinite. If God is infinite, only God is infinite and the evil
principle must be finite. If God is finite, then God is not what we
normally mean by the word ‘God’.
Neoplatonism freed Augustine from the materialist metaphysics
of Manichaeism. He now saw evil as the absence of Good; it was a
deficiency. The very notion of Evil depends on the prior notion of
Good. Evil could not be conceived unless one first had the concept
of Good.
Mainstream catholic Christianity gave Augustine the notion of the
freedom of the human will as a gift from God. Individuals may
co-operate with God and use God-given gifts to fulfil the divine purpose
or they can do evil when they turn the gifts of God away from God.
We do not sin because we have a material component but because we
exercise God’s gift in a particular way.
Donatism
Donatism was a split in the Christian church which was particularly

widespread in Africa. At one time it was in a majority there. It arose
because a newly elected bishop was accused of having betrayed fellow
Christians, during the persecutions by the Roman Emperor Diocletian.
It is also suggested that he had handed over to the authorities sacred texts
and vessels used during Christian worship. Books were rare, hand-copied
and expensive, so this was a cause of scandal at the time. The Donatists
became very numerous; they rebaptized already baptized Christians who
converted to them. This was a scandal in the eyes of members of the
mainstream (catholic) church.
However Donatism was based on the assumption that only those who
led totally blameless lives could hold office in the church. They also taught
that, if ministers were sinners, the sacraments they celebrated could not
be valid: the effectiveness of the sacrament depended upon the moral
perfection of the celebrating minister.
Christian orthodoxy teaches that no person is morally pure. The sacra-
ments do not become ineffective because the minister has faults, be they
big or small. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are gifts of God and the
grace of God is not constrained or limited by the weaknesses of God’s
creature.
Augustine fought the Donatists because they shattered the unity of the
church. For him, the church was a worldwide fellowship and not a purely
local one. The part was not greater than the whole, and a purely local
decision could not be promoted in the face of the wider order.
The other question had to do with the purity of the church. Augustine
would, of course, have wished that all members of the church were as free
from sin as possible, but he did recognize that nobody is perfect and
that it can be a dreadful form of oppression to demand impossibly high
standards of others. For him the church was holy, because the grace of
God was at work within it, particularly through the sacraments.
This was more important than judging the perfection of any particular
individual at any particular moment. If it were not so, how could any
person know that they were being comforted by a valid sacrament, how
might any one know whether the celebrating minister is, at that moment,
in a state of sinlessness?
He thus approved the idea that the sacraments had validity, whether
celebrated by a Donatist minister or not. Nevertheless he decided some-
what casuistically that, during this crisis, the benefits of the sacraments
were delayed until either the minister or the recipient had returned to
the catholic fold. He tried to use persuasion on the Donatists, but eventu-
ally called on the State to use force against them.
Pelagianism
Pelagianism was the teaching of an Irish monk Pelagius. He was an

ascetic man who was disgusted by the lax lifestyle of many Christians,
even in Rome. At this time, the bishop of Rome was beginning to claim a
major voice in the affairs of the Christian Church, particularly the
Latin-speaking churches of Western Europe and Northwestern Africa.
Pelagius gave strong emphasis to human freedom and the efforts of the
will in leading a Christian life. This trend placed more emphasis on doing
good work and earning salvation. It set less store on grace, on salvation as
the gift of God and on the commitment of God to the human family.
Pelagius put forward his thinking in Africa and in Palestine. His basic
feeling was that Augustine was too negative when he claimed that, because
of corrupt human nature, individuals are not able to rebuff evil and look
for God, and that they must rely on grace alone. He denied original sin,
saying children are born innocent of the sin of Adam. Adam’s sin was an
example (a bad example) to all humanity and he rejected the Augustinian
doctrine of predestination. The value of Christ’s redemptive work was, he
said, limited to instruction and example.
He taught a doctrine of free will and the innate goodness of human
nature. Sin modified human nature, but he denied that the sin of Adam
was in some way inherited, causing human nature to be evil in itself.
Christ saves by example and the sacraments function as teaching not as
power.
He and his followers drew up a list of six doctrines, all of which have
been condemned:
Adam would have died anyway even if he had not sinned.

Adam’s sin injured Adam alone not the whole of later humanity.
Newly born children are in the same state as Adam was before
the Fall.
Humanity as a whole does not die because Adam sinned and died;
neither will humanity as a whole rise again as a result of the resurrec-
tion of Christ.
The Old Law, as well as the New Gospel, brings humanity to heaven.
There were individuals utterly without sin, even before Christ.

known desire; the state of humanity which, in its weakness, cannot attain
divine perfection.
Grace Supernatural gift freely bestowed by God.
Predestination The decision of God by which certain individuals will, no
matter what happens, be saved.
Salvation In negative terms, the saving of human beings from the influence of
sin and from damnation. In positive terms, the destiny of human beings to be
in the presence of God eternally.
Augustine’s theory of salvation
When he faced the problem of Pelagianism, Augustine came to express

one of the classical statements of the Western Church concerning
original sin and redemption. He saw sin as inescapable. Adam, before the
Fall, had free will. However, when he and Eve sinned, corruption became
part of their nature and was passed on to their descendents. Because all
receive their descent from Adam, all have inherited that inclination to sin.
It is as though it were part of their genetic programming, as we might say
today. Consequently all deserve damnation.
If we are not baptized we are lost. We cannot, by our own efforts,
remain free from sin. All humanity is now subject to sin, our resolve is
now caged and limited and we are weighed down by shame. We can only
be rescued from this condition by God’s command.
We can only be virtuous through the grace of God and it is by God’s
grace that certain people are chosen to go to heaven: they are known as
the elect. They are not saved because they are good but by the free gift of
God. No reason can be given why some are saved and some not.
But Augustine went further. This divine intervention must be over-

powering; we cannot supply anything from our side. But it is clear that
all people do not receive saving grace. The obvious conclusion, therefore,
is that God must choose who will be saved and who will not. All are
equally unworthy; therefore the only standard of choice is the absolute
decision of God.
This may seem unjust to us but that is of no account; we must believe
it is so, even though we cannot hope to understand why it might be so.
Punishment was seen as a necessary statement of God’s justice. Augustine
appears to have had a harsh sense of universal guilt and the offer of
salvation.
Pelagius wanted to preserve the notions of both freedom and responsi-
bility in our moral choice; Augustine wished to emphasize the claims and
privileges of grace.
However the Church finally came to a position which seems to be a
combination of both outlooks. It tried to express the notion of salvation
as co-operation between human freedom and the grace of God. It is a
common experience that we would wish to do good, but end up doing
something bad. The solution to the puzzle is probably that grace does not
take way our nature but perfects it. We frequently seek the best of both
worlds; it is only when we have submitted to grace that Good can take
over and we are finally free to choose for God unconditionally. We get to
the stage where we do not want to sin.
If we look at this in terms of lived experience, then Augustine’s experi-
ence ran against that of Pelagius. The ascetic Pelagius might have been
able to control his impulses by the exercise of self-regulating moral
restraint. But Augustine’s own personal struggle, particularly against his
sex drives, led him to think otherwise. No matter how he struggled, he
failed. He only succeeded when he surrendered all to the grace of God
which changed his whole outlook, radically and lastingly. The personal
experience of most people would probably agree on this point with
Augustine.
Nevertheless personal experience would also suggest that moral effort
has a role to play. We are not smug enough to assume that future blessed-
ness is inevitable. Nor do we despair that future damnation is unavoidable.
We are rarely so indifferent that we feel that, no matter what we do, the
future is already decided anyway.
There is no doubt that the struggle against the Pelagians was the
most important of all the tussles that Augustine was engaged in. It was
another one in which his solution became catholic orthodoxy.
‘Compel them to come in’
All branches of the Christian Church have, at some stage in their

history, exercised force on unmanageable elements in an effort to
make them toe the party line. They argue that true charity lies in
defending the flock against error. It is the duty of the powers that be to
protect ordinary mortals against crime and, in the eyes of many, there
was no greater crime than heresy. Regrettably the blame must be laid at
Augustine’s door.
Augustine said that we should be ‘more afraid of the butchery of their
(heretics’ and schismatics’) minds by the sword of spiritual evil, than of
their bodies by the sword of steel’. It was against the Donatists that he
made casuistic use of the text in St Luke’s gospel, ‘compel them to
come in’ in which the guests are forced to attend the wedding feast (Lk.
14.23). This text would come to be used as a justification for the coercion
and burning of heretics.
Church.
Schism Division into factions, a breaking of communion, within the
Christian family.
Casuistry The use of clever, misleading arguments in moral questions.
Augustine’s great writings
Human beings share existence, life and intelligence with other animals.
But in terms of reason, humans go beyond the animals. Sense experience
allows both humans and animals to cope with the world at any one
time and in a given instance. But human beings can do more; they
can grasp the universal features built into the many dissimilar instances
of experience.
While there are many philosophies, all grasp at truth and there they
perceive something greater than all the individual teachings which claim
universal allegiance. This notion of a spiritual realm which transcends us
is quite independent of us. We must acknowledge this spiritual realm. But
we have a duty to do more, we must give it reasoned and systematic expres-
sion. This is what Augustine was seeking to do in his great writings.
The Confessions
Augustine started writing his Confessions shortly after becoming a bishop

and while already engaged in other work, On the Trinity for example. In
this autobiographical work, he lays out the important stages of his life up
to his conversion to Christianity. There are those who consider the quest
for God to be the most passionate adventure that any individual could ever
embark on; Augustine agreed and he told his experiences in that light.
The Confessions is a book filled with God, but it is more. Augustine may
have been a saint, but he was above all a human being and that deep psy-
chological understanding gives his work its passion. He experienced all
the weaknesses that typical mortals feel. We are left in no doubt about his
erotic feelings, and how he considered them to be the last barriers to
grace. His erotic impulses never left him; he continued to feel their drag.
He knew all the joys of friendship; sorrow at the loss of friends brought
him close to despair. He knew what it was to weep. He loved poetry and
knowledge.
The Confessions is the book of a Christian who is trying to state his
faults with a penitent heart. He must humble himself before his brothers
so that he may sing the goodness of God. Those two movements echo
throughout the work: telling the uncomfortable truth and praising God.
Penitence Regret for wrong done and a wish to reform.

Speculation Resulting from meditation and reflection. Often referring to
conclusions based on conjecture rather than hard evidence.
On the Trinity
Augustine accepted and worshipped the Trinitarian God of orthodox

Christian teaching. In the West this was coming to be known as the
‘catholic faith’. The term ‘catholic’ was often used to distinguish Western
orthodoxy from heretical and schismatic forms of thought. This Trinitar-
ian teaching was known by faith; reason might seek to give it rational,
coherent and organized expression, but reason did not invent it. It is the
most complex and bewildering of all Christian teachings; some might
even say impenetrable.
It may be expressed as story: God, experienced as Father, is the
creator and ruler of all. Concerned about the waywardness of the human
family, this father sent his son, Jesus, as a special messenger, the Christ, to
rebellious humans in order to persuade them of the error of their ways.
This son was sustained by the messenger from heaven, the Spirit.
This God is not three gods, but one experienced in different manners
and working in different ways to sustain creation and redeem it. The
Father is shown through the activity and being of Christ, through the
witness and inspiration of the Spirit working on us. Furthermore this
threefold-single God always works in agreement, singleness of mind
and harmony of spirit. The work of one is at the same time the work of
the other two.
That was not of course good enough for the intellectual climate of
late classical antiquity. So the early theologians struggled to show that
God was Trinity: ‘three persons and one substance’. We owe the special-
ized vocabulary we use about the Trinity to the Christian philosopher,
Tertullian (160–225). ‘Trinity’ comes from the Latin Trinitas and is
designed to suggest three in a unity (unitas).
‘Person’ comes from the Latin persona, which was a mask worn by
an actor. When the actor appeared on stage you knew by the mask if
he was the villain, the hero, the assistant or other. When we think in
terms of ‘person’ we think in terms of the role God is playing at that time:
creator, redeemer or inspirer. But behind each mask there is always the
same God.
‘Substance’ comes from the Latin substantia. This is what the three
persons have in common. The notion already existed in Greek philo-
sophy to designate something fundamental, something capable of
having attributes. A substance is what we would now call a proper

name, not a class name. All three persons of the Trinity share the
substance of Godhead; it gives them their foundational unity. When we
contemplate their work we contemplate them under their ‘personal’
identity, but they only appear to have outer variety.
The early church was asking the question, ‘Who was Jesus?’ The whole
idea of the Trinity has to be seen relative to the way people were trying
to answer that question. The answers are part of the Christological
teaching of the Church. Christology is the area of theological speculation
and reasoning about the person of Christ.
The traditional theory is that Jesus was both fully God and fully man.
Jesus is ‘of one substance with the Father’. This made Jesus much more
important than a mere human being for Christians. But it also meant
that all thinking about God had to become much more subtle. Tradi-
tional Jewish thinking about God, for instance, no longer worked.
Various attempts have been made to express the idea of the Trinity in
simple words or images: ‘1+1+1=1’ is one effort; St Patrick famously used
the three leaves of a shamrock on a single stem. Augustine used the lan-
guage of psychology and personal relations to express the idea.
Augustine was aware of the developing thought concerning the
Trinity and made a contribution to it. His first contribution was to
reject any notion that the Son and the Spirit were in any way inferior
to the Father within the Godhead. The position of the Son and the Spirit
does not mean they were created after, or were subordinate to the
Father. It merely means their role in the story of salvation came into play
after that of the Father.
In the early Greek Church, the Son was thought of as ‘begotten of the
Father’; the Spirit as ‘proceeding from the Father’. This is the way the
Nicene Creed talks about Son and Spirit. The Father is the only origin
of Godhead (the quality of being God). Augustine noted that when Jesus
breathed on his disciples, telling them to receive the Holy Spirit (Jn 20.22),
the Spirit proceeded not only from the Father, but also from the Son.
This led theologians in the West to disagree with theologians in the
East and eventually, much later than Augustine’s time, an extra word,
filioque, was added to the Western, Latin-language version of the Nicene
Creed. In the West, the Holy Spirit was now described as ‘proceeding
from the Father and the Son’.
Augustine identified the Son as ‘wisdom’ and further identified the

Spirit as ‘love’, the love uniting ordinary mortals with God. The commu-
nity of Christians is therefore the work of the Spirit. This gift of tying us
in to God reflects the nature of the Trinity itself. God is a community of
‘persons’ bound together by the Spirit, forming a single entity.
When God created the world, traces of Godhead were, according
to Augustine, left in that creation. He felt that those traces are to be found
at the very height of God’s creation, the human mind. Augustine reserved
an important part for the human mind in all his theological speculation.
He thought he detected various triple sets of function in the mind. The
names and functions vary: ‘mind’, ‘ideas/concepts’ and ‘love’ is one
such triple set. On other occasions he put forward ‘memory’, ‘intelligence’
and ‘will’. Such sets of three reflect, in his mind, the structure of the
Trinitarian God.
City of God
Augustine’s great work, the City of God , was written to defend the
Christian Church from the subtle propaganda being whispered against it.
Christianity had been, it was suggested, responsible for the fall of Rome
to the barbarian leader Alaric in 410. So Augustine set out to make a
statement about the rights and duties of the Christian in the State, on the
role of the Christian State and on the responsibilities of the Church in
civil affairs. Augustine’s ideas had great influence during the Middle Ages
and he has been an influential thinker on the role, duties and rights of
civil government right up to modern times.
Augustine based his idea of a Christian State on his understanding
of human psychology and in particular on a Christian psychology.
Human beings have a twofold nature: body and spirit, they are citizens
both of this world and of a heavenly city. This means that they are con-
stantly involved in two spheres of interest and activity. There is conflict
between the two urges in all human beings and in all institutions.
The city of God is the goal of human development. In human history,
the heavenly and the earthly city struggle against each other. The earthly
city is the province of Satan; the heavenly city is the realm of God.
God will inevitably have final mastery; only when the heavenly city is
permanent will peace and salvation be secure. Christians, of course,

do not set their hopes on this world or on this life.
Augustine spends some time pondering the correct meaning of ‘love’.
He notes that all human beings desire happiness and that our stretching
out to God is part of that desire for the highest good. Augustine sees love
in two ways: as enjoyment and as use. We can love some object as an end
in itself, and we can love it as a means to something else. When love is
directed towards God, only love as an end in itself is appropriate. Created
things are only used correctly when they are used for God’s sake. This is
the meaning of his saying, ‘love and do as you please’. When we love in a
way that is directed towards God, then we are bound to be engaged in
doing what is good.
In the heavenly city the supreme good is God; in the earthly city the
good is peace. Peace is of course more than the absence of strife; it is the
earnest striving of all the parts of the population, the correct ordering
of civil society and the actuality of justice. We can now see that humans
living in a civil state experience both a will to power and the untiring
quest for peace, but the civil state is only Christian if that power is
co-ordinated, directed and dedicated to the achieving of peace.
At times it appears that the term ‘city of God’ is the Church and the
‘earthly city’ is paganism. On other occasions the ‘city of God’ is the
juridical church, the church as a corporate body with its officers, hierar-
chy, rules and property, while the ‘earthly city’ is all society outside the
confines of the church.
Eventually Augustine comes to see the ‘city of God’ as the whole of the
people of God, known only to God and intermingled with the whole of
society, including those not belonging to God. Such citizens of the ‘heav-
enly city’ are ‘partly known and partly unknown’. They will only be
distinguished on the Last Day. This distinction was obscured throughout
the long period of Church supremacy in the Middle Ages and was revived
at the Reformation.
Augustine proposes that, from now on, in the Christian era, the only
valid state possible is the Christian State, serving a community that is a
unit because of its Christian faith. Pre-Christian states are not in truth
proper states at all; the application of Christianity to civil power is what
gives validity to a State.
The role of the civil power, particularly the coercive civil power, is
confusing here. Augustine was willing that the Roman Emperor of the
day should play a role in stamping out heresy but did not allow the
same Emperor a say in the running of the Church.
The problem of sexual desire occasionally raises its head here also.
People asked if Christian virgins had lost their virtue when raped at
the sack of Rome. Augustine answered that another’s yearnings cannot
soil one. Chastity is a virtue of the mind and cannot be lost through
suffering rape. He agreed that sexual appetite was not wrong in
marriage, provided one intended to have children. The desire for privacy
in love-making shows that people are ashamed of sexual activity, it is
shameful because it is not ruled by will. The element of lust in inter-
course is the consequence of Adam’s sin. Virtue is achieved when the
will has control over the body.
Appraisal
Augustine had had a vigorous and dynamic life; he had lived sinfully,
and been a member of more philosophical schools of thought than
most. He did not come to Christianity through philosophical specula-
tion, but through an encounter with Christ occasioned by his reading of
Paul’s Letter to the Romans.
In writing his Confessions he invented a new literary form; many
would follow, Pascal and Newman among them. From this work would
also flow the great autobiographies of Western literature.
He had debated the problem of evil with the Manichaeans: he had
argued that God was the sole creator and sustainer of all things, while
evil was an absence of good, arising out of the human being’s misuse of
freedom.
Do people commit dreadful, brutal and evil acts out of the
simple absence of good; or do they make a positive choice to do these
actions?
He had debated the freedom of the will with the Pelagians: human
beings cannot help themselves, only God can put right what is wrong in
people’s lives and free them from the results of their own sin.
He had argued with the Donatists over what made sacraments valid,
maintaining a high view of the church and of the sacraments. The
weaknesses of the minister cannot invalidate the sacraments which are
an expression of the grace of God freely given.
From Augustine, the Christian Church got its teachings about the
sovereignty of God, the lost condition of human beings when left to their
own devices and the necessity for grace.
You will see that by the time of Augustine, the Christian Church
was wedded to the notions of correct and incorrect teaching; further-
more, because what was at stake was eternal life or eternal damnation,
the Church had now abandoned the exclusive use of gentle persuasion
and had sometimes adopted the means of compulsion, force and
penalties.
It has been said that inside the head of St Augustine took place one of
the great operations of the human spirit: the synthesis of ancient
and Christian thought, and that from this point, the course of Western
civilisation had started out on its long adventure. Through him the
culture of ancient Greece and Rome joined hands with the Bible; platonic
wisdom came to terms with the ‘scandal of the cross’.
4 St Thomas Aquinas: Revelation and Reason
Up to the twelfth century, philosophy was strongly influenced by Plato

(427–347 BCE). Plato believed that the world of spiritual Ideas or Forms
was the real world; the chief Form was the Form of the Good. The world
we experience was but a pale reflection of this world of the Forms. If a
ball is hard, green and round, there is (in another mode of being to which
we have no direct access) a ‘hardness’ of which our ball is an instance; the
same might be stated of ‘greenness’ and ‘roundness’. Aristotle (384–322
BCE) thought that ideas existed only in so far as they were realized in
actual objects and was more interested in the physical world. He was also
interested in change, in how we can describe it, in how something changes
yet retains its identity and in causes. Aristotle’s work was not widely
available in Europe until the twelfth century.
By and large, the Middle Ages were not very interested in the physical
world and was more interested in metaphysics, the reality that lay behind
the physical world and how we might get to grips with it – how the
natural and the supernatural are related. Scholastic philosophy and
theology tried to puzzle out, by deep and persistent thought, the relation-
ship between God and the world. Theirs was a mixture of Christian
dogma and pagan philosophy. Many minds were trying to bring about a
marriage of the two. Thomas Aquinas worked to achieve a union of
Christian teaching and the newly rediscovered Aristotelian philosophy.

Aquinas was a man of great intellectual capacity and competence; he

lived at a time when many new things were being discovered. In Thomas’
century, the new preaching orders of the Franciscans and the Domini-
cans were founded to engage with the world. They saw themselves as
having a special mission to address what we would now call poverty,
marginalization and social exclusion. Their main aim, however, was to

bring spiritual comfort, rather than effect economic and social reform.
Thomas was to be a teacher at several of the new universities now being
founded all over Western Europe.
What makes Aquinas so much a child of his times, and so unlike a
person of the twenty-first century, is his unshakeable belief that his two
loyalties (to the gospel and to the rational exploration of the natural
world) were not in contradiction; they could advance hand in hand.
In his rational theology he affirmed that God’s providence and intelli-
gence resulted in order and beauty in the created world. There was only
one valid truth, guaranteed by God, and nothing reason might uncover
could conflict with that truth of God.
His key achievements are his discussion of the role of reason in faith
and his rational clarification of elements of Christian teaching (the divin-
ity of Christ is an example). He also developed his principle of analogy
and his five arguments for the existence of God. Both of these help us
to reflect on the nature of God and on how we use human language to
illustrate it.
Life (1225–1274)
Thomas Aquinas was born in a castle near Naples in 1225; his father was
Count of Aquino. He was educated at the famous Benedictine Abbey of
Monte Cassino. He decided to enter the Dominican Order at the age of
twenty and upset his family so seriously that he was kidnapped by his
brothers and held prisoner in the family castle for about a year. Legend
recounts that his family introduced a young and beautiful girl into his
room in the hope that he might discover the delights of the flesh and turn
away from his priestly calling, but the future saint drove her angrily from
the room quoting psalms.
Thomas was determined to pursue his vocation and eventually
managed to resume his studies. This time he went to the University of
Paris. Here he was greatly influenced by St Albert the Great (1200–1280),
an erudite teacher of great intellectual curiosity. Albert was particularly
interested in the works of Aristotle. This was to have a profound effect on
the development of the thought of Aquinas.
St Thomas Aquinas: Revelation and Reason 55
Aquinas possessed an exceptional capacity for systematization. Thomas

was to express Christian thought in terms of Aristotelian philosophy.
Until the twentieth century his approach and Aristotle’s thought were to
be the vehicle by which Roman Catholic teaching was expressed and
handed on. The process was not without risks of abuse.
Thomas stayed in Paris until 1248, he then travelled to Cologne, where
a new Dominican house of studies (studium generale: an old term for
university) was being established. He returned to Paris in 1252 and con-
tinued his biblical studies. He subsequently completed his commentary
on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. This was a necessary step in acquiring
his Licentiate, the degree that allowed him to teach Theology. He took
his Master’s degree in the same year, 1256.
In 1259 Thomas went to teach Theology at a studium generale attached
to the papal court. He was back in Paris from 1268 until 1272. He was in
Naples between 1272 and 1274. He was then summoned to Lyon by the
Pope to take part in a Council, but died on the way, at the age of 49.
He devoted his life to study, to the defence of Roman Catholic ortho-
doxy, to the meticulous systematization of Catholic truth and to writing.
It is said that it was his custom to dictate to three or four different
secretaries simultaneously! He had been nicknamed ‘the dumb ox’ in
early life. It is claimed he was large and fat, very tall with blond hair,
though slightly bald; he had a dark complexion. However he was robust
enough to have covered, on foot, the 15,000 kilometres that took him
from Naples to Paris, to Cologne and back to Paris again, to Rome and
back and from there once more to Naples.
He was a man of piety and spirituality, with great devotion to the
Eucharist and the humanity of Christ. Those who pleaded the cause of
his canonization described him as being of smiling countenance, gentle
and affable, with rare humility and patience, never upsetting anyone with
harsh words. His feast has been observed in the Western Latin Church
since 1264.
His two great works are, first, Summa contra Gentiles (1258–1260),
which sets out to establish the truth of the Christian religion by argu-
ment and is addressed to a non-Christian thinker (probably a Muslim
Arab), and then Summa Theologica (1265–1274). He thought and wrote
at a time when Christianity was challenged by a vigorous Islam, from
which it had also much to learn, and Thomas’ own achievements
confirm this. ‘Summa’ means a compendium and, depending on format,

each work can run to about fifty volumes.
He is buried in Toulouse in France, within the astounding architecture
of the Eglise des Jacobins. After his death, the universities of both Oxford
and Paris condemned his writings. However this suspicion did not last
long and he was canonized (declared to be a saint in heaven) by Pope
John XXII in 1323.
The influence of Aristotle
Aquinas’ starting point was the existence of individual material objects;

they were the first source of knowledge. From them he inferred the exist-
ence of a spiritual reality; note how this process operates in the Five Ways.
Those Five Ways owe much to Aristotle, particularly the argument of the
Unmoved Mover and the argument from causality. Thomas also follows
Aristotle in seeing all beings (apart from God) as coming to be, through
the co-operation of the two elements of matter and form. He rejected any
notions that would combat the Christian teaching of personal immorta-
lity. Many thinkers have fought against his teaching of the materialistic
account of the human soul; others have been suspicious of his high regard
for human reason.
Matter and Form What something is made of is matter: wood, stone, play
dough. The form is the shape one gives it. Form gives matter its substance.
Matter without form is only potentiality.
Aquinas, together with all the scholastic philosophers, was fascinated

by logic and determined to apply it wherever they could. Aristotle’s
logical works were the first ones to reach the West and in the early
Middle Ages they were only known in incomplete form. We had to wait
until the nineteenth century for their influence to be seriously criticized
by scholars.
Aquinas’ contribution to the method of the medieval Christian
theologian–philosophers (the Schoolmen) was to use Aristotle’s teaching
as a framework on which to hang religious faith. This gave Theology the
status of systematic enquiry.
Timeline
1160–1170 Averroes’ Commentaries on Aristotle

1214 Genghis Khan conquers northern China
1215 Signing of Magna Carta
1225 Birth of Thomas Aquinas
1230 Education of Thomas at Monte Cassino
1239 Thomas at the University of Naples
1241 Building of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris
1245 Thomas enters the Dominican Order and is ‘kidnapped’ by his family
1246 Thomas a pupil of Albert the Great in Paris
1248 Thomas in Cologne
1256 Thomas takes his degrees
1257 Founding of the Sorbonne
1258–1260 Thomas writing the Summa contra Gentiles
1260 Birth of the German mystic Meister Eckhart
1265–1274 Thomas writing the Summa Theologica
1271 Marco Polo begins his travels in China
1274 Thomas summoned to a Council in Lyon, dies en route
Thought
Thomas’ work is so vast that we could not deal with it in detail here.
We shall take a very short look at each of his big works and then we
shall briefly look at four aspects of his thought. These are the created
order, God, theological language and, finally, the mysteries of faith.
Thomas’ work is divided into questions; each of these is divided into
articles. Every article has a statement of objections to the point Aquinas
is promoting. Aquinas next states the authority on which he bases his
case and then states the case proper. He usually ends with a number of
minor points designed to clear away any remaining objections. It is over-
all theological systematization and a fusion of all previous thinking on
each point. It works from the unshakeable conviction that all questions
can be authoritatively answered and that all such answers inevitably fit
together into a solid, coherent system of thought. So we can sum up his
aims as comprehensive vision and intellectual synthesis.
Synthesis The process of putting together individual parts to form a coherent

whole.
Summa contra Gentiles
This is Thomas’ first great work and its aim was to convert Jews
and Muslims to the truth of Christianity. It provides material for
preachers working among non-believers. All particular goals are
subordinate to the overriding goal of the universe which is the good
of the intellect, that is to say, truth. The pursuit of wisdom is the most
perfect, sublime, profitable of all pursuits. All this is proved by appeal
to Aristotle.
When Aquinas sets out to declare the truth which the Catholic Church
possesses he must have recourse to natural reason, since the Gentiles,
(non-Christians) do not accept scripture. Nothing in faith is contrary to
reason. Nevertheless it is important to separate what can be proved by
reason from what cannot. Natural reason lacks understanding in the
things of God. It is possible to use reason to prove the existence of God
and of the soul, but one cannot prove the existence of the Trinity, the
Incarnation or the Last Judgement in this manner.
We understand temporally, but God understands eternally. God knows
individuals as well as universals.
Trinity The Christian understanding of God: the unity of Father, Son and
Holy Spirit in a single Godhead.
being as the historical Jesus, both fully God and fully man, permanently,
without the integrity of the manhood or of the godhead being compromised.
Last Judgement The end of time when, according to Christian tradition, all
who have lived will be expected to give an account of themselves before God.
Essence What an item or event is by its nature. An essence can be an idea or
plan without realization.
Existence When an idea or essence has come into being, is realized in the
world, it has existence.
Sacrament Any one of seven ritual actions seen as being special channels to
God and that guarantees of God’s grace.
ences they had of the presence of Jesus after his death were proof of resurrection
teaching and a promise of such a hope and destiny for all committed to Jesus.
If one wants to understand first and last things, first cause and final
end, one must first of all consider the divine nature. The only cause
of God’s will is the divine wisdom, so God’s will is free having no cause
outside itself. God of necessity loves himself, but does not love other
things of necessity. Some think the existence of God is self-evident;
this would be true if we knew the essence of God, but we only know it
imperfectly.
God’s essence and existence are one; no creature knows God’s essence
sufficiently to be able to deduce God’s existence from God’s essence. God
has no potentiality: God is active power. God is essentially infinite; God’s
knowledge and understanding are infinite. The existence of God is proved
by the argument of the unmoved mover.
The second part is mainly concerned with the soul in human beings.
All intellectual substances are immaterial and incorruptible; in humans
the soul is united to the body, the intellect is part of the human soul and
created afresh with every individual.
Ethical problems are discussed in the third part. Evil is unintentional
and is not an essence. All things tend to be like God who is the end of all
things. Our ultimate happiness consists in neither the pleasures of the
senses nor in moral virtues; they are means to the contemplation of God.
The Divine Law orders us to love God and our neighbour. Fornication
and divorce are forbidden as children need the presence of a father.
The possession of many husbands or wives together with the practice of
incest are all forbidden on grounds of complications in family life and
the arguments are rational; Aquinas later introduces texts of Scripture to
support reason.
The fourth part deals with the Trinity, the Incarnation, the authority
of the popes, the sacraments and the resurrection of the body. The
identity of the post-resurrection body is not dependent upon the

persistence of the matter that composed it during life.
Religious truths which can be proved can also be known by faith;
faith is necessary for the ignorant, for the young and for those without
time to study philosophy. Since human beings are rational creatures,
their final happiness lies in the contemplation of God – an end which
cannot be achieved in this life.
Summa Theologica
The Summa Theologica is Aquinas’ second great compendium of Chris-

tian thought. Here much of the material appears, on the face of it, to be
similar, but the method is slightly different. In the first work, Thomas was
inclined to set out arguments without first of all assuming the truth of
Christianity. Here his thoughts are more likely to start from a convinced
Christian standpoint, and he lays out arguments in a systematic and
rational manner.
Human persons, he affirms, require more that philosophy in their
search for truth. Some truths are beyond human understanding and
only available to us because God has revealed them. Theology depends
on revealed knowledge and supplements natural knowledge.
Revelation Truths revealed to humans by supernatural means.

Genus a class of objects divided into several subordinate kinds: for example
quadrupeds can be dogs, cats, pigs and so on.
The five proofs of God’s existence (The Five Ways) are set out. By using
them we can prove the existence of God from the facts of motion, effi-
cient causes, possibility and necessity, gradations of perfection in the
world, the order and harmony of the world. God alone can account for
the facts of motion, efficient cause, necessity, perfection and order.
We describe God as being simple (non-corporeal and without genus),
actual, perfect, good, infinite, unchanging, one and present in the world.
It is by God’s grace alone that human persons, as created beings, can
know God. We can only grasp God; we cannot understand God (through
apprehension, not through comprehension).
The Created Order
Aquinas viewed everything that was created as having its own autonomy.
It could, insofar as it possessed reason, decide for itself what it should
do and how it should go about it. Nevertheless there is a delicate distinc-
tion. Created beings, and in particular humans, are not independent of
God, but totally dependent on the divine being. God does not set a limit
to our activity; rather it is because of God’s activity that we are capable of
acting. Free acts are permitted by God, unfree acts are when others inter-
fere and force patterns of behaviour on us.
We might pause here to note that we should not think of freedom
and lack of freedom in terms of the political freedoms which have since
been won in the West: freedom of thought, speech, action, political
association or religious practice. These have all been gradually accumu-
lated as controlling political and religious powers have been eroded. That
is a very bad way of looking at our freedom with regard to God.
Aquinas’ view of our relationship to God and to grace is totally differ-
ent. We stand in a relationship to divine omnipotence, which cannot
be at all resisted, manipulated or avoided as can political and social
pressures. God is the creator and sustainer of the universe, of everything
in the universe. God is not part of the universe. To put it in logical
language, God is not a member of any class of creatures in the universe.
Aquinas believed that the more we acknowledge nature’s order, the
more we come to understand God’s creativity and God’s creative plan.
God’s plan is seen in the continuing creation we observe around us. This
fulfils itself in an ordered pattern over which God remains in control.
God has decided that within this ordered scheme of things, each creature
moves according to its own nature and, within that pattern, human
beings have a higher degree of independence because they are endowed
with intelligence.
THE MATERIALITY OF THE CONTINGENT ORDER

When we come, after hard struggle, to recognize the transcendence of
God, we get some notion of the limits and restrictions of what it is to be
human. God is more than Necessary Being as opposed to contingent
beings; yet it is by such a distinction that we come to appreciate the being
of God and to know our contingent and finite status. Contingent
beings are perishable. The creation consists of both necessary and

contingent beings. Aquinas saw the angels, for instance, as both necessary
and created. The fact that we are composed of matter means that we are
liable to be destroyed: our materiality changes as its form is replaced by
another form.

Necessary What has to be. Without which some other thing cannot be or
some other event cannot take place.
Contingent What does not have to be, usually caused by, or dependent upon,
something else.
Nature is valuable to human beings because God gave it existence.

When one is a creature of the Creator, one is not separated from God;
rather one has a relationship with God. Divine grace perfects nature.
Human reason and freedom are valuable in themselves; when they
come into a state of actualization they glorify God. Human freedom of
will and mind are not limited by God’s omnipotence; they are reflections
of God’s own nature, for we are made in the image of God.
Aristotle’s idea of cause saw the highest form of causation as teleologi-
cal; that is so say, we understand change best when we see it as directed
towards a goal. Human nature is created by God in such a way that we
have the potential to move towards perfect communion with God. All
movement in the direction of perfection tends towards that goal.
When we actively promote human goals, striving to realize human val-
ues, we promote the will of God. We have to realize our humanity fully in
order to be as God intended us. We are an autonomous part of God’s
universe and only when we are really free can we freely turn to God in
worship and love, and only then accomplish our destiny.
But if the soul is the form of the body, to use Aristotelian terms, the
body is matter and totally necessary for our existence. In fact, it is only
when we come to learn through our physical sensations that we succeed
in understanding. We observe the visual and the particular; we come to
understand the universal. Aquinas asserted the essential value and sub-
stantiality of this world’s being. The forms are embedded in matter.
For Aquinas form was an active principle. It is not just the structure,
how something is; it had a dynamism, it is actually in the process of
being realized, it is changing, is being realized in relation to the ultimate
goal which is God.
THE VULNERABILITY OF THE HUMAN

Thomas held that that the substantial form of any material object,
including human beings, is the principle which makes it what it is, which
makes it act as it does, which gives it identity. Matter is the principle of
vulnerability, the possibility of not being and also the possibility of not
being what it is now. If something is alive, its life is its form; its living is
its being. In all living creatures, its vital acts are acts of the soul.
In the human being, however, some of these acts of thinking and decid-
ing are acts of the soul but not processes of the body, whereas in other
animals such acts are bodily acts of the soul. No doubt Thomas wished to
emphasize that for humans there are acts which transcend the body. So
humans have a unique relationship with God and are destined to be in
the divine presence.
Irrational beings press on towards their goals because of the natural
causes controlling them; rational beings (humans) act in terms of the
natural causes controlling them but also may have in mind the good
towards which they aim as political, social and rational beings; aims
which promote their well-being and help them towards fulfilment,
happiness and moral virtue.
Humans therefore have to acquire an intellectual sense of practical
virtue; Aquinas called it prudentia (practical knowledge and discretion).
It is nevertheless entering into one’s share of the human calling towards
grace and glory.
God
Let us now try to get an impression of how Aquinas reasoned about God.
We shall take a brief look at the five arguments he used to illustrate the
idea of God.
THE FIVE WAYS OF THOMAS AQUINAS

Way 1: The Unmoved Mover Everything is in movement, something
must have started that movement; to find this initial point we cannot
keep taking one step back for ever, a chain of moved movers must have
had a beginning in a mover who was not moved. We call this Unmoved
Mover God.
Way 2: The First Cause Everything has a cause. Cause does not just come
before, but actively produces its effect. But there must be a starting point
(terminus) that actively willed and produced all that exists. We call this
First Cause God.
Way 3: The Argument from Contingency Many things exist, although

nothing in their nature demands that they should exist. They come into
being and pass away: they are expendable. If that is so, there must have
been a time when nothing existed unless there was some necessary being
to account for them. We call this being, which must necessarily exist to
account for all contingent beings, God.
Way 4: The Argument from Degrees of Being Things either exist or they
do not. When we say metaphorically that some things are more real than
others, we mean they are richer in content and significance. This ascend-
ing scale of being, truth and goodness must have a limit, a Being who has
these qualities to the highest degree. We call this Being God.
Way 5: The Argument from Design When we look at the world we observe
signs of design and purpose. We call this overarching design and purpose,
which indicates a Designer, God.
In modern times these arguments have been sternly criticized by

Christian theologians and philosophers of Religion. In the first four
arguments – from movement, from efficient causality, from contingency
and from degrees of being – God is treated as one being among others
that exist. However each of the descriptions is essentially qualified. God
is unmoved mover, first cause, necessary being: the superlative which is
the source of qualities in all things. Thus God is each time removed from
the series of items or events from which deity is deduced. The arguments
show the divine being to be of a different order from the series of
entities from which the argument appears to arise.
The fifth (teleological) argument is of a different type: all things

are directed to a goal by an intelligent being. The final outcome is that
God is the efficient cause of the universe and its intelligent ruler. Even if
these arguments cannot logically establish the existence of God, they all
stress what we mean by the word ‘God’, rather than demonstrate that God
actually exists.
We might pause here to note a distinction between Natural Theology
and Theology of Revelation. There are certain truths which we can
grasp by the use of our own reasoning powers. They might include
the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. When we reason
in such a way we are engaging in Natural Theology. There are other
truths, the Incarnation and the Trinity to mention but two, which we
could not have discovered by the use of unaided reason; they had to have
been revealed. We remember that Aquinas was an Aristotelian and set out
from the starting point of sense-perception (what we can know through
our senses).
THE NOTION OF ‘EXISTENCE’ APPLIED TO ‘GOD’

God is not bound by any of the categories which we usually use to make
sense of experience. Aristotle for instance drew up a list of categories
where the most important were ‘substance’, ‘quality’, ‘quantity’ and
‘relation’. God is outside all such distinctions of understanding which
belong completely to the created world.
God cannot exist in any place or at any time. God’s existence is essen-
tially outside of time and place. Nevertheless God is present as creator
and sustainer to any and every object that does exist in space and time.
The sentence ‘God exists’ is true whenever and wherever it is pronounced.
This is God’s attribute of eternity, and God alone possesses it. This does
not mean that the actions of God can be arranged in order, they are
essentially outside any pattern or arrangement of priorities, nor can they
be timed or limited by duration.
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOD

The notion of God’s omnipotence means that God can bring about any
thing or situation that anybody might like to mention. Does this mean
that God can square the circle or change the past? The usual answer given
to such a question is that it is a contradiction in terms, a nonsense. It just
does not make sense and so we do not ask it; it has nothing to do with
the omnipotence of God. In the same way God cannot do, perform or
promote evil, for evil is not something that is; it is something that is a
deficiency or failure, the non-presence of what we might reasonably
expect.
THE TRANSCENDENCE AND UNINTELLIGIBILITY OF GOD

God is totally beyond our understanding. We cannot know what God
is or what God is like. However when we question the experience we
have of creation we come to ask questions about what is beyond or
behind it. Aquinas’ arguments for the existence of God try to lead us
from thought about the familiar world we know to thought about a form
of existence we cannot experience.
We can know that God is and that God is the cause of all that is.
After that we can only know what God cannot be. We are led to forms
of negative theology. God is not contingent. God is not a member of a
class of things. God is not created. God cannot cease to be.
God is, for Aquinas, the ultimate Form causing nature to be, but
God is also the ground and foundation of being. God is an active princi-
ple, a dynamism towards realization. God’s essence is existence. God
communicates existence to creatures, is more than a distant and unre-
sponsive unmoved mover. Creatures achieve reality through nature’s
constant process of becoming, its untiring dynamic from potentiality
to actuality. To be is to participate in existence, and existence is the gift
of God’s own being.
Theological Language
Since God is totally transcendent (but also immanent) how can the
language that we normally use apply to the Divine Being?
How can we say anything about God? If we say God is our Father
this suggests that God has a head, two arms and two feet, that God is
male. But God is held to be Spirit, not body. Therefore God has no sex, is
personal, but is neither male nor female. So people tend to say, ‘When
you say God is our Father, you don’t really mean that, so why do you say
it?’ The person who makes that objection is using language univocally
as if each word only had one fixed meaning. On the other hand, people
begin to think, ‘Oh, he says one thing but really means something differ-
ent!’ This is using language equivocally, using double meanings. To get
over such problems, Thomas Aquinas set out his theory of Analogy.
THE LANGUAGE OF ANALOGY

A tourist brochure will often say that a holiday destination is a lively
resort. What does that mean? It is easy to understand what is meant when
we say that a person is a lively person. When we say the resort is lively, we
do not mean that it is vivacious, likes telling jokes, laughs a lot, likes to go
dancing and so on. We mean that in this resort all the facilities exist for
lively people to enjoy themselves and that they do enjoy themselves when
they go there. The description of the resort is analogical. When we say
that a town is a lively resort or that a certain group is a lively group the
meanings come from a core meaning (prime analogate), in this case a
lively person. But we cannot use prime analogates with regard to God; for
nothing comes before God to which God may be compared.
Analogical language sets out to be ambiguous. If I say I love my wife,
my car and my job, the meanings may all be similar, but they are certainly
not identical. When we say God loves us or that God is good, we may not
say precisely what these sentences mean, but by consulting how we use
the important words in everyday life, we come to have a sense of how
they operate when applied to God.
Analogy for Aquinas is a technical use of language which warns us not
to use certain words in the same way as in other contexts.
All valid statements about God are analogical. When we say that God
is our Father, God is neither wholly like a human father nor wholly
unlike a human father.
We use the Analogy of Proportionality which states that properties
of created beings are related to their existence in the manner appropriate
to the existence of a created being. On the other hand properties of
uncreated being are related to its existence in the manner appropriate
to uncreated being.
We may use the Analogy of Attribution which describes a relation
which obtains between God and God’s creatures by using terms drawn
from the relationships that hold between creatures. When we say, ‘God is
Father’, we are not speaking as if God was a human. We are not speaking
symbolically. What we are really saying is that this manner of speaking

points up the relation of dependence between creature and Creator by
using the analogy of child and father.
There are two ways we can speak of God. One is to use positive
expressions and ideas. We say that God in some way possesses all
perfections. We can also use a negative way: we say that God cannot pos-
sess any imperfection; so our talk about God is in terms of what God
is not. Theologians often like to hold these two ways of speaking
in tension.
The Mysteries of Faith
THE TRINITY
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is a difficult idea. It is that there
is one and only one God, who has three identities, each of which is
equal to the others and all of which together form a unique and single
being.
Thomas saw the conception of the earthly body of Jesus as the work
of the Trinity together. Sending the Son is the work of the Father,
bringing the Incarnation about is the work of the Spirit, accepting
the mission is the work of the Son. The Incarnation is the supreme dem-
onstration of godly love, in which the Father, Son and Spirit are equally
involved.
THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST

The deep consciousness of every human person is how we experience
separation from God. However the eventual success of the work of
creation is the return of the human person to God. This ultimate
success is led by the person of Christ and is realized through the work of
Christ.
Thomas starts his thinking about Christ with the Incarnation and
goes on to consider the work of Christ. He analyses the hypostatic
union (the union of two natures, divine and human, in Jesus), the
perfection of Christ and his grace. He next thinks of the consequences
of this union, the unity of Christ’s being, his will and his actions.
Redemption This is the act of freeing humanity from the power of sin
and restoring the world and its inhabitants to communion with God.
In Christianity, redemption became effective with the dwelling of Jesus on
earth and his death on behalf of others.
Word (The) is a translation of the Greek word Logos, meaning word or
reason. It was seen in the Old Testament and in Greek thought as referring to
the universal reason which ordered everything in the cosmos. In Christianity
it refers to the second person of the Trinity. Jesus was identified as The Word.
Atonement The reconciliation of God and the human race brought about by
Jesus Christ.
Here Aquinas deals with the theology of redemption, the satisfaction

made by Christ, the merits of Christ and the redemption offered by
Christ. He gives due importance to the introduction of the incarnate
Word into historical reality.
Aquinas’ view takes account of all stages of Jesus’ ministry. His thoughts
are not limited to the suffering and death, but give importance to all
these phases of Jesus’ ministry. It is a theology of all the mysteries of
Christ, revealing God’s plan of salvation and how it was brought about
by Jesus. The life of Christ thus reveals the mystery of God which is
revealed in history and has effect in history.
SALVATION
For Aquinas, the human race is more than a random collection of indi-
viduals; it has an organic unity of being. Adam was born with an original
sense of justice which was to have been the inheritance of all. In this situ-
ation Adam acted not just as a private person but as representative of all
and lost what he held in trust for us. We are now without the power to
control the senses by reason. As time goes by each generation passes on to
the next this legacy of unjust desire and randomness. This is known as
original sin and declares that the whole human race is guilty in this
manner.
Salvation cannot come from any imperfect human; salvation must
come from God and did so in the person of Jesus Christ. Aquinas attaches
special importance to the Atonement.
God’s perfection and justice are so great that nothing sinful or impure
can approach it. The Atonement is the reconciliation brought about
between the human and the Divine as a result of the sacrificial death of
Jesus Christ.
Aquinas sees Christ as making satisfaction to God for all sin by offering
to God his perfect obedience. What is more, the Cross is the absolute call
of God’s love to human hearts, thus urging us to repentance. Aquinas
further sees the sacrifice as bearing the punishment due for sin.
Christian Lving
THE GRACE OF GOD

Grace belongs to human beings as part of their nature. This is part of the
political, social and moral nature we are given and this is how we partici-
pate in the divine nature. We acquire (by education) certain virtues which
enable us to live with other human beings and develop our social and
political potential. Similarly, because the grace of God develops our
natures, we are given certain virtues – faith, hope and charity – to allow
us to respond to God and fulfil our destiny. These include a willing
acceptance of God’s Word and a willingness to allow ourselves to be
moulded by the Holy Spirit into hope and practical love. Sin is always
present as a corruptor and we need the grace of God to take us beyond it
into a sharing in the divine life.
THE CHURCH AND THE SACRAMENTS

All of Aquinas’ thinking was governed by a very specific context: the fact
of the medieval Catholic Church. The church was a society, set on earth
to be the visible sign of the life and being of Christ and to continue his
work in time on earth. The church had important characteristics or
marks: it was one, holy, catholic and apostolic.
The church was a unity; it was a communion under the headship of
the Pope. This unity was a sign of perfection, as opposed to the broken
and fragmented quality of heresy. The church was more than a civil
society; it was devoted to the work of God and received its mission
from God and the power and grace to perform that mission; it was holy.
It was for the entire world; it was catholic. In Aquinas’ time its organiza-
tion did not stretch all over the world as it does today; so catholic meant
for all. The salvation of God was for all people; its teaching was what
had always been proclaimed by all. It was apostolic; it taught what the
apostles taught. Its doctrine was in an unbroken line with their witness
to the resurrection and their teaching about salvation.
What was important for Aquinas was that the church was the mystical
body of Christ performing the work of Christ on earth through the
varying actions of its many members. Aquinas saw this as an analogy
with the physical body: each member performing different functions on
behalf of the total body. In the church, the seven sacraments nourish the
spiritual life of every individual throughout life and in different circum-
stances and callings. They contribute to our ability to be open to grace.
THE MYSTERY OF THE EUCHARIST

Aquinas’ crucial teaching about the Eucharist was transubstantiation.
He got from Aristotle the distinction between substance and accident. The
substance is what makes something what it is. A chair is for sitting on; a
spoon is for transferring food from plate to mouth. Accidents are how
one might describe them. A chair might be made of wood or stone; it
might be comfortable, adjusted to the height of the table or awkward to
get out of. A spoon might be big or small, metal or wooden. When we
think about it we can see there is a difference between the description of
a given chair and its core meaning.
In the Eucharist we start with bread and wine; by the power of God
working through the church, the substance of the bread and wine was
changed so that they became the substance of the body and blood of
Christ. The outward appearance of the elements remained unchanged.
Aquinas did not treat the Eucharist in one precise place in his Summa.
His treatment is scattered throughout it. He thought about it in the con-
text of spiritual sacrifice. If our attitude is one of love and surrender, then
the action we engage in must in some sense be sacrificial. Because a sacra-
ment brings into effect what it signifies, the Eucharist is the sacramental
sign of the sacrifice of the cross. It contains the sacrifice and brings its
effect into our reality when we celebrate it.
Aquinas talked of the Eucharist being the ‘immolation of Christ’. This
came to be seen as in some way repeating the sacrifice of Calvary every
time Mass was celebrated. Some even thought that the Mass in some
way added something on to the sacrifice of the Cross, thus giving the
celebrating priest power in the communication of salvation to the
faithful. This was not the intention of Thomas and the theory of
transubstantiation became one of the most bitter of battlefields at the
time of the sixteenth century Reformation.
Calvary is not repeated in the Eucharist; the Eucharist is not the suffer-
ing of Christ but the presence of the Christ who suffered. His death is
not present as historical fact but in its effects. In his account of the
Eucharist, Thomas was looking for a degree of reality that avoided total
literalness and utter materiality, and a degree of objectivity that made it
more than a woolly symbol. His treatment of the Eucharist has been
described as trying to move us out of imaginative categories and into
intellectual ones.
NATURAL LAW
Aquinas’ ethical thought has a two-tier structure. The cardinal virtues of
prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance are at the lower level. At the
upper level were the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. A basic
principle running through all of Aquinas’ work is that grace does not take
way our nature, but perfects it. The cardinal virtues in a Christian are not
just human achievements; they result from the submission of the human
will to God and are prompted and supported by grace.
Aquinas said moral action is based on reason. The fundamental rule of
reason is that good should be done and evil avoided. When we come to
appreciate our various inclinations to goodness in ordinary human and
social life, we understand how this basic principle functions. Our first
preference is to protect our own existence; we also want to reproduce and
to live together in community. He saw all these tendencies as being
expressions of one central and fundamental natural law – to do good and
avoid evil.
Let’s look a little more closely at his analysis. All creatures are inclined
towards good in a way that is natural to their capacities and being.
Humans incline towards good in a way that is specific to their being as
rational creatures; their tendency towards good has a rational factor.
We must not fulfil our inclinations willy-nilly but in a way that suits our
capacity to discern human good in a rational manner.
A practical working out of this principle is to be found in the Ten
Commandments. They are a working out of our basic principle – do
good and avoid evil. This therefore is, for Aquinas, a natural rule or law.
By acting in the approved manner our existence as individuals and in
community is enhanced.
Human reason comes about because we are capable of intelligent
thought, but it goes out beyond this capacity in speculation, while at the
same time respecting its essential structure. Nature may be a pre-rational
ground for human action, but nature does have significance for that
action, since our reason presupposes what is ordained by nature. The
order of right reason is within the human being, but it is consistent with
the order of nature which is from God. Reason opens out towards the
world and also opens upwards towards God.
The influence and weight of Aquinas
The Schoolmen were the teachers of Philosophy and Theology in

the Middle Ages. They based their approach on the writings of many
thinkers but particularly on those of Thomas and gradually elaborated a
way of dealing with intellectual questions. It was quite formal. During
a disputation (an academic exercise) the student would be asked to state
a thesis (an argument, a truth). The student would next supply a proof
of that thesis, using Scripture and Tradition, faith and magisterium
(the authoritative teaching of the Roman Catholic Church). St Thomas
himself became a favourite source of supporting quotations. Then the
student would be required to state a contrary argument but go on to
reject it, basing his arguments on Scripture, the Church Fathers and other
authoritative sources. Finally, the student would have to give a specula-
tive elaboration. It was accepted that if one could find a rational, coherent
answer the problem was solved; all was well.
Appraisal
Aquinas had an extraordinary impact on Western thought. He made

judicious use of the human capacity for empirical and rational intelli-
gence to serve the Christian cause. The human intellect can cognitively
penetrate the many created things and appreciate their order, their
dynamism, their finiteness and their dependence; intellect thus comes
to apprehend the infinite highest being, which is God, and play its part
in the spiritual quest. Faith may go beyond reason, but it does not contra-
dict it; rather it is enriched by it.
Aquinas did not believe that the mind’s unaided reason could come to
the deepest understanding of nature and the supernatural. Faith, but
above all Christian revelation, was necessary for that. If we want to move
towards the highest spiritual realities, we require the light of the incar-
nate Word, and that is only approached through love.
Aquinas’ expression of the five arguments for the existence of God have
been freely criticized in contemporary theology. Aquinas appears to be
building an argument on what may be talked about, our experience of
the world and moving in logical order to God, but God is shown to be
outside the range of what may be talked about. Therefore God cannot
be reasoned about in this manner. Aquinas appears to be building up a
picture view of a transcendent, monarchical God. The only human
reaction possible to such a God is on our knees. This is now frequently
found to be an unsatisfactory response; it does not address the sort of
question people ask in the twenty-first century, which is, after all, the
task of contemporary theology. It fails to address the anguish of people
asking questions such as ‘where was God in the 2004 tsunami?’
The modern technological world assumes that by being precise
and technical in the way we use language we can ‘squeeze and freeze’
language into set meanings and thus obtain mastery over language,
and thereby achieve technical control over nature. Does Aquinas’ use
of analogy deliver a degree of precision and control in technical theologi-
cal language? Or does it anticipate a twentieth century rediscovery
that there is a basic undecidability about language. We can never get to
final bedrock meaning; language always operates within that quality of
undecidability.
Forms of discourse are acceptable ways of discussing certain subjects.
Aquinas’ way of discussing Theology became, in time, acceptable; the
preferred way of doing Theology. Such acceptable forms of discourse
became, in time, methods of wielding power. Should Theology be a
means of wielding power, the preserve of a highly trained elite or should
it be a subversive activity? What might it be subversive of?
Thomas saw Evil, not as something that actually exists but as

the absence of God. Is this a credible response in the face of the
Holocaust, Russian Gulags, Cambodian Killing Fields or the Rwandan
massacres?
Do you find revelation and reason to be in agreement, or is there
tension between them?
5 Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation
With Martin Luther we are brutally thrown out of the familiar and
comforting set-up of the Western, all-European, medieval, Latin Church
and propelled into the modern world. It is both more nationalist and
individualist in feeling and outlook. Luther was not a systematic theolo-
gian. His writings were often produced in response to particular
circumstances, his Shorter and Longer Catechisms, possibly the nearest
things he wrote to systematic theology, were produced to meet a pastoral
need. His basic theological protest was that the church was no longer the
servant of the gospel, but sought to use its important role in society as
master, ruler and judge. Much of Luther’s protest was a protest against
the power of the popes.
Why the struggle?
Following the collapse of the Roman Empire in Western Europe the only
functioning institution capable of exercising control, and influencing
people and events, was the Church. Because the Church was developing,
particularly in the West, into a centralised institution, with the bishops of
Rome seeking a role of oversight and direction, the papacy came to fill
the power vacuum there.
By the sixteenth century, it regulated many matters now considered
purely secular and civic. It imposed treaties, admonished kings and regu-
lated their marital and dynastic disputes. There were parallel systems of
church and royal courts, often hearing cases with no religious overtones
or interest. Much of the history of the Middle Ages was the story of how
rulers sought to establish their own authority in the face of papal power.
The state of the Papacy
By the late Middle Ages, the absolute power of the papacy over the West-
ern Church was well established in practice, though not dogmatically
Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation 77
defined. This concerned much more than the moral weight and teaching
authority of the papal office; it concerned oversight and involvement in
every aspect of tight central government: appointments to a wide range
of positions, the payment of large sums of money into the papal coffers
and the inevitable venality of clientelism and hangers-on. The luxurious
lifestyle of all living at the papal court had become notorious and the
Great Schism (late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries) with two and,
on occasion, three popes caused great scandal. Reform of doctrine was
occasionally raised but was not the burning issue; reform of administra-
tive and financial matters was widely debated.
Pastoral Aspects of the clergy’s work in offering help, care, advice and
guidance.
Dogma A system of religious teaching authoritatively considered to be abso-
lute truth.
Earlier reform movements
The reform of the Church was debated from one end of Europe to
the other and had started in the early fourteenth century. The figures
of John Wycliffe (c.1330–1384) and Jan Hus (c.1372–1415) will briefly
serve as examples.
Wycliffe, an early English reformer, started his academic career as a
philosopher. He was opposed to the radical separation of natural and
supernatural knowledge which was fashionable in the Oxford of his day.
He hoped for a Church which would be ‘holy’ in the pursuit of spiritual
gifts, abandoning its external and worldly trappings. He opposed the
notion that human beings have a right to private property and rejected
any hierarchical organization of society. He taught that the Bible was the
only standard of doctrine and he is credited with the first translation of
parts of the Bible into English.
John Hus is still a national hero in the Czech Republic. He too was
a well-known preacher in Prague, where he attacked the notion of
pilgrimages and the lax morals of the clergy. He was a firm supporter of
the ideas of John Wycliffe, many of whose writings have been preserved
because they survived in Czech translations. Hus was eventually
condemned, tried and executed in circumstances that now appear

highly dishonourable.
Despite their differing settings and circumstances, both thinkers had
common concerns: the way the Church held and accumulated property
and the high levels of papal taxation. They opposed ritualistic religion,
seeking an inner religion of the heart; they both rejected claims of spirit-
ual authority made by hierarchical organization and the temporal power
of the Pope.
They both identified the church with the whole body of believers, not
with the clergy; believers had a spiritual bond with God which was more
important than their obedience to clerical control. But how, in order to
reform the Church, does one wrest power away from the clergy and the
Pope? They had absolutely no interest in giving it up.
The only natural ally that a church reformer was likely to have was
princely power! The gradual progress of political nationalism was
developing alongside calls for Church reform.
One other movement for church reform came from what is known
as the conciliar movement. This was a movement of intellectuals; it
did not arise from a popular base. Its fundamental idea was that govern-
ment of the Church should be based upon consent rather than a notion
of absolute authority and that the organism for expressing that consent
was a general council of the Church. The whole body of the Church,
the totality of the faithful, is the source of the Church’s authority, and
Pope and clergy are its servants.
Life (1483–1546)
Martin Luther was born in Saxony in 1483. He was first a student at the
University of Erfurt where he enrolled in the Faculty of Arts and studied
Philosophy. He then joined the Augustinian order and took up Biblical
studies. He was ordained priest in 1507. He made a business trip to Rome
on behalf of his order in 1510–1511. In 1512 he was appointed Professor
of Biblical Studies at the University of Wittenberg. He gave a series of lec-
tures on the Psalms and on Romans, Galatians and Hebrews.
He became uneasy about traditional teaching on salvation and
gradually developed his doctrine of justification. The fact that he came
to question traditional teaching is sometimes blamed on his zealous but

somewhat glum nature; he was over anxious about his own salvation.
It appears that the routine carrying out of his religious duties, daily
recitation of the Divine Office and daily celebration of Mass, failed to
reassure him.
The central event of his life, which is usually referred to as his
‘tower experience’, is variously dated between 1512 and 1515. He appears
to have had a sudden and revealing insight that the core teaching of the
Christian Gospel is that faith is the only thing which justifies a sinner
before God. This means that in order to have a right relationship with
God, to be in good standing before God, all one need do is trust that
God will put away one’s sin. One does not have to perform any duty
or act. Salvation cannot be earned; it is given as a free gift out of
the unimaginably generous love of God. Faith brings with it the certitude
of salvation because it is guaranteed by God and not earned by our
efforts.
This led him to abandon all belief in the mediation of the Church
and its priests in the pursuit of salvation. When John Tetzel arrived in
Wittenberg preaching indulgences (the forgiving of sins in return for
financial contributions to, on this occasion, the rebuilding of St Peter’s
Cathedral in Rome) Luther reacted.
This was when Luther first came to public attention and it happened
during 1517 when he published Ninety-five Theses on Indulgences
and invited scholars to debate publicly with him. His reputation as a
vigorous critic of traditional teachings grew quite quickly and he moved
into the camp of those calling openly for reform of the Church. His main
idea was that the medieval institution had drifted away from the early
New Testament ideas of what the Church should be like. He wrote in
German; this was a startling novelty as learned debate was, at that time,
normally conducted in Latin. His use of language was vigorous and
engaging.
Rome hoped at first that the matter could be dealt with within the
Augustinian order, but Luther’s energetic disputations won him support-
ers within his own order and indeed in other religious orders also. He
was tried in Rome for spreading heresy. He was summoned to appear
before Cardinal Cajetan at Augsburg, where he refused to abandon
his new doctrines. He then fled to Wittenberg, where he was protected
by the Elector Frederick III of Saxony. We must remember that

people were still burned at the stake for heresy well into the seventeenth
century and that both Catholics and Protestants alike practised this
brutality.
Mediator One who seeks to bring about a peaceful settlement between oppos-
ing parties. In Christian theology it refers to the work of Christ reconciling
God and the human race.
Church.
By 1520 Luther had quite definitely broken with the medieval church.
He was condemned in that year by the Papal Bull Exsurge Domine: 41 of
his theses were branded heretical. Luther responded by publicly burning
the Bull. He was summoned before the Diet of Worms in 1521. He again
refused to withdraw his teaching and was denied safe conduct for travel
within the Holy Roman Empire.
However his prince, the Elector of Saxony, continued to support him,
arranged for him to be ‘kidnapped’ and brought to a place of safety. Dur-
ing his eight months in isolation he wrote many pamphlets, but his finest
achievement was to begin work on his translation of the Bible into Ger-
man from the original tongues. It is an enduring monument to his genius
and was prized for the energy and warmth of its language.
While Luther was living quietly and safely, his ideas spread rapidly,
large areas of Germany abandoned traditional practices and popular
enthusiastic religious practices became common. Many monks left their
orders, priests married and popular religious demonstrations got out of
hand; there were also disturbances over economic issues. Luther returned
to Wittenberg to restore order, in this he was helped by the civil authori-
ties. He now abandoned his religious dress and married a former nun,
Catherine de Bora, in 1524.
At this time there was a popular Peasants’ revolt, which Luther
denounced severely, urging the German princes to go to war against
those who had rebelled. This cost him some popular support, but his
ideas continued to spread. He wrote many hymns which were a popular
way of spreading his ideas and which are still among the treasures of the
German language.
The Reform movement had by now spread to a number of other coun-
tries, but serious disagreements quickly appeared among the reformers
themselves. In a confrontation held at Marburg in 1529, Luther and
Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531) disagreed strongly over the nature of the
Eucharistic Presence. He was still unable to move freely around the
Empire, because of the sanctions imposed on him, but Luther agreed
the Augsburg Confession, a document drawn up by Philip Melanchthon
(1497–1560), a disciple who acted as leader of the reform movement
while Luther’s movements were restricted. The purpose of this document
was to try to make peace within the reform movement; but Luther refused
any moves in the direction of reconciliation with the Catholic Church.
Towards the end of his life, Luther was saddened by the frequent disa-
greements that broke out between Protestants of various types. Eventually
the task of making peace would fall to the civil authorities.
He was a deeply pessimistic man, but also one of strong feeling. He had
considerable powers of oratory which he did not always place under rea-
sonable control. We see the positive side to his mastery of language in his
lively translation of the Bible and in his confident, compelling hymns. We
see the negative side of this eloquence in his hatred of the Papacy. His
attacks on those who opposed him were often violent, abusive and
obscene. Martin Luther died in 1546.
Timeline
1483 Birth of Martin Luther near Mansfeld in Saxony

1492 Columbus discovers the New World
1501–1505 Luther studies Philosophy at the University of Erfurt
1503 Julius II elected Pope
1507 Luther ordained priest
1510–1511 Luther visits Rome
1512 Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Wittenberg
1512–1515 Luther’s ‘tower experience’
1514 Albert Dürer’s Melancolia

1517 Tetzel’s Indulgences campaign
Luther publishes his Ninety-five Theses on Indulgences
1520 Luther condemned by the Papal Bull Exsurge Domine
Suleiman the Magnificent becomes Ottoman Emperor
1521 Luther summoned before the Diet of Worms; refuses to withdraw
1523 Zwingli successfully upholds 67 Reformation Theses in Zürich
1524 Luther marries Catherine de Bora
1524–1525 The Peasants’ War
1525 The Reformation spreads to the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway
1529 Luther’s debate with Zwingli over the Real Presence of Christ in the
Eucharist
1530 Luther agrees the Augsburg Confession
1531 Henry VIII declares himself head of the Church of England
1536 Calvin publishes his Institutes of the Christian Religion
1546 Death of Martin Luther
Michelangelo takes charge of the building of St Peter’s in Rome
1555 Division of Germany into Catholic and Protestant principalities
Thought
Luther’s writings
While Luther was returning from the Diet of Worms (1521) he was
‘kidnapped’ and taken to the Castle of Wartburg. This was really a device
to ensure his safety, as he no longer enjoyed the protection normally
granted a citizen of the Holy Roman Empire. From now on he must rely
on the goodwill of the Elector of Saxony. He stayed at Wartburg castle as
a guest and was afforded every facility there. It was a period of intense
depression but also of much literary activity. He wrote several famous
pamphlets there and it was during this period that he started his famous
translation of the Bible into German.
In his Appeal to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Luther
argued for the reform of the church, hoping that the nobility would use
their social and political position to favour this aim. He proposed that
taxes no longer be paid to Rome, wanted to do away with the celibacy of
the clergy and close down religious orders. He also wished to discontinue
practices like pilgrimages and masses for the dead.
The Babylonian Captivity of the Christian Church was next issued; in it
Luther engaged in a powerful polemic against the Western, institutional
Church. He argued that Christ’s message was no longer permitted to
impact with all its force upon the world. The gospel had been kidnapped
by the institutional Church which had perverted its meaning, because it
used it as a means of holding power over people and populations. The
sacramental system of the Church, he argued, had become the property
of the clergy, which now controlled the gospel rather that acted as its
servants.
The third pamphlet of this set was The Liberty of a Christian. Luther
now thought about how the doctrine of justification by faith affected
Christian living, trying to work out its implications for the practical
activities of daily life. Can one just believe and do as one pleases?
These three works became known as fundamental Reformation texts.
They are not systematic works of theology; they are polemical works
written to persuade, and they arose from the immediate promptings of
circumstance.
He also wrote more devotional works including a commentary on
the Psalms and a meditation on the Magnificat, the Song of The Blessed
Virgin Mary in Lk. 1. Here he asks for the intercession of the mother of
Jesus; this is not often considered a ‘Protestant’ practice.
The great work of his creative genius must be his translation of
the Bible into German. He started the New Testament in December 1521;
it was on sale by September 1522. This timetable alone is staggering:
he could only write by hand, print setting was in its crudest infancy.
He used Erasmus’ Greek text. What is more there was no well-established
German language into which to translate the work. There was a form
of official, administrative German, spoken and understood by very
few. There were many local dialects. By the time Luther had finished, the
German language, as we understand the term today, had come into
being.
It was mentioned earlier that the Reformation was a time of develop-
ing nationalism. This trend was given further encouragement by
the insistence that the Bible be available to ordinary people in their
own language. The English translator and reformer William Tyndale
(c.1494–1536) once told a scholarly clergyman, ‘I shall cause a boy that

driveth the plough to know more of the scripture than thou dost’. The
translation of the Bible into the common language of the people often
promoted the use of that language. Luther’s translation was but the first
of many. But it also provided a people with a well-constructed, vigorous
language, well adapted to everyday life, and it became the focus of national
awareness. Many Bible translations incidentally served in this way to
‘establish’ the nation’s language.
THE NINETY-FIVE THESES ON INDULGENCES

When on 31 October 1517 Martin Luther nailed Ninety-Five Theses on
Indulgences to the door of the Wittenberg Church, he was acting, as he
was entitled to do, as a teacher of Theology. It was his right to put forward
new ideas and invite other scholars to debate publicly with him, so that
those ideas could be tested. Luther was not inciting the people to revolt;
he was requesting scholars to discuss with him. He had at this stage no
notion of breaking with Rome, or of founding a new church, but he did
want to reform abuses and the sale of indulgences was a glaring one: one
which, in fact, diminished the office of the Pope.
His constant theme in the Ninety-five Theses was that indulgences have
no effect, only the cross of Christ guarantees salvation. Penitence is not a
passing, momentary thing; it is a permanent attitude of the heart, mind
and soul.
THE CATECHISMS
Luther wrote two catechisms, which are the nearest things he wrote
to systematic theology. During the Diet of Worms (1521), held under
the patronage of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Martin Luther
defended his religious doctrines and refused to deny them. The various
princes of the many states making up the Holy Roman Empire were
divided in religious opinion and each applied the outcome of the discus-
sions at Worms in his own way.
The Elector of Saxony asked Luther to organize the evangelical church
in his territories and Luther set to work energetically. He found that the
educational level of the clergy, including their theological education, was
poor. So he wrote the Longer Catechism to instruct the clergy, and provide
them with a handy reference book. He also wrote the Shorter Catechism
for the instruction of the faithful. This is still very much the standard
reference book in the Lutheran communion in many lands.
This shorter work takes the form of a father instructing his children
in the Christian faith. It includes the Ten Commandments with a very
short explanation of the meaning of each. The explanation is always a
single sentence, never more than about six lines. This is followed by an
explanation of the Apostles’ Creed in three articles headed Creation,
Redemption and Sanctification. There follows an explanation of the
Lord’s Prayer in eight short sections, including a commentary on the
word Amen: it signifies that these requests are certainly pleasing to God
and that God hears them, for they were taught by Jesus Christ. Next come
two short sections on the sacrament of baptism and the sacrament of
the altar. It finishes with a short passage on how a father should every
morning teach the members of his family to ask for God’s blessing for
the day ahead.
Justification
Luther often meditated on how we come to salvation and on the problem

of Predestination. Are we predestined to be damned or to be saved?
One of his superiors is said to have remarked to him that he should not
meditate on the position of the sinful human before a holy God.
He would be far better off meditating on the wounds of Christ, placing
Jesus at the centre of his thought rather than himself. If we do this
our fears concerning predestination will disappear, for God has predes-
tined Jesus to suffer for sinners. Thus God has taken the steps required
for salvation; salvation is in God’s hands, not ours.
Thus Luther’s meditations, particularly his meditations on Scripture,
came to see the Bible as the great witness to a saving Christ and as the
only rule for faith.
God may be a merciful Lord, but God is also a just Lord. Luther could
not take God’s grace seriously if it in any way watered down the total
justice of God. The despair one experiences when confronted with God
is not a logical stalemate, but grace, for one is already placing one’s life
before God. The way one judges oneself in the sight of God can only
come from encounter with God; it is to admit that God is right! The
just person, in contrast to the sinner, is the one who accuses self and
admits God is right.
Luther said that he expected from God the exercise of ‘formal’ or ‘active’
justice: the justice of God compels God to punish sin and sinners. As
Luther meditated on Rom. 1.17, ‘the righteous will live by faith’, he came
to see the whole weight of the gospel in terms of the ‘passive’ justice of
God. Divine mercy judges sinners to be in fellowship with God because
that sinner believes. The negative impact of the sinful condition is abo-
lished because of faith. Salvation is the work which God accomplishes in
us, the power of God working in us.
Consequently the justice of God is not what God demands of human
beings, but what God gives to the sinner who comes seeking mercy in
humble repentance and in the obedience of faith. Someone other than
us has submitted humbly and willingly to the demands of justice and
suffered instead of us on the Cross. Jesus has undergone the judgement
of God. We need not climb to heaven, God comes down to earth. The
remaining question is to see if our lives can now show the love which
God has shown us.
Luther, in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans summed
up the human situation like this: simul peccator, et justus ac semper
paenitens. The Christian is ‘always a sinner and always just and always
repentant’.
So Christians must look at themselves in three ways:
z experience themselves as sinners when they confront the holiness of

the God who is Love;
z experience themselves as just when they accept through faith the
benefits that God has provided for them in the work of Jesus the Son;
z experience repentance, as they stand before God, knowing they have
nothing to offer the God they tirelessly offend and also thankful to the
one who gives all and repeatedly gives all.
If one wishes to misunderstand all this, one may do so. But Luther never
lapsed into a too easy, even cynical, attitude that everything necessary
had been done and one didn’t have to bother oneself. This attitude would
later come to be labelled ‘cheap grace’. It is the thoughtless acceptance of
a happy mediocrity in the face of an indulgent God. He remained haunted
by the idea of holiness, the desire to accept and obey the will of a God
whose justice saves but whose grace draws us into service.
Catechism A booklet of questions and answers about the Christian faith used
for teaching.
Repentance To regret the bad things one has done in the past and to resolve
to change one’s behaviour.
Sola fide, sola gratia, sola scriptura
This Latin phrase which means ‘by faith alone, by grace alone, by
scripture alone’ sums up the Reformation teaching of Justification by
Faith.
‘By faith alone’ is the answer given by Luther to the question, ‘how
can one become just, or innocent, before God?’ This emphasizes the
heart of the answer Luther took from St Paul. We are not made innocent
before God because we have obeyed the religious law, but because
we have accepted Christ and accepted Christ’s just, honest and innocent
standing before God which brings about our salvation. This faith is
more than a casual assent to a proposition; it involves a vibrant involve-
ment in a living reality, working itself out at every moment of life.
‘By grace alone’ is how we experience salvation, how it is realized, how
it becomes effective within us. It involves two views. God’s love gives us
strength to live as God wants, but in addition, and more importantly for
Luther, God turns towards us and accepts us as we are, even when still
estranged from God. The Christian is always dependent upon grace and
the sinner is always dependent upon the innocence of Christ. Faith per-
ceives the mercy of God and grows because nurtured by the gifts of God,
which we receive even though we do not deserve them.
‘By scripture alone’ is Luther’s understanding of the authority by which
we come to knowledge. Luther increasingly distrusted the authority of
the papal office and the sacramental system of the Church. He did
not abandon sacraments. He protested against their use as a lever of
clerical control. It means that no revelation is given to the Church

outside scripture. Scripture has weight because, in it, Christ is made
known.
Obviously with three principles standing ‘alone’, it means that each has
power in its own area. We are dealing with the means of salvation, the
dawning awareness of salvation and the authority by which we accept it.
The Freedom of the Christian
We are saved from damnation and despair by the grace of God which is
received by faith and taught in scripture. This is the certainty announced
by the gospel. Luther contrasted this basic idea with all the duties and
securities offered by the traditional church of his day.
Luther did not denounce works, nor say we were free to ignore them.
On the contrary, the Christian is not relieved of the performance of
duties. Luther just did not believe that works brought about or guaran-
teed salvation. Salvation is the gift of God. But once we come to an
understanding of that gift, then works spring from the joy of a believer’s
heart; we do not perform them in order to gain some advantage from
them. We perform them because, when we realize our new state, we
cannot avoid expressing our love for God through them.
Christian liberty is therefore a wonderful gift which, by faith, we receive
from God. From now on the only concern of that new insight is how best
to give thanks for the grace received. All the Christian can now do is live
a life of thanksgiving and that is expressed by seeking to please God.
Luther’s ‘Theology of the Cross’
This is a strand in Luther’s thought which he contrasted with the

‘Theology of Glory’ where God is revealed in the wonders of creation and
in good works. Through this particularly Lutheran insight, the revelation
of God comes in a veiled inner way through the experience of suffering.
Only faith can really understand this concealed communication which
reveals the hidden God (deus absconditus). Believers see the reality
of a God who loves us in the mystery of the Cross, in the sacrifice of
Christ crucified. This not only reveals the extent of human guilt but
also reveals how it can be taken away.
In the Old Testament, God has chosen a small, rather than a powerful,
people. In the Cross God is revealed and God’s saving work is successful
through an act of suffering. It is not achieved through a work of power.
The mystery of the kingdom of God is shown in good news to the poor,
the blind, the lame and the marginalized. All these things are hidden
from the wise. Christ crucified is, in the words of St Paul, ‘a stumbling-
block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles’ (1 Cor. 1. 23).
There is a stress on humiliation here. There is a paradox because
apparent failure achieves success.
So Luther sees the Theology of the Cross as central to all understanding
of the Biblical message. Individual Christians may often have to take the
Theology of the Cross on board at a personal level. When they do this,
they rediscover the meaning of the pain of God in the world. By the Theo-
logy of the Cross, many Christians come to a deeper understanding of
the divinity of Christ (they reflect on his humiliation) and to a finer
appreciation of the humanity of Christ (they meditate on his exaltation).
Luther on sacraments
Luther was powerfully disappointed and frustrated by the organization

of the Church of his day. He considered it to be a mockery of gospel
teaching. He was particularly angry with the supremacy and control of
the popes. He constantly taught that where bishops and pastors, includ-
ing popes, were not obedient to the word of God, then the ordinary
believer was not obliged to obey them.
In those days this was a revolutionary way of understanding Church.
Most people believed that the Church, like any other power structure,
had to rule and impose authority. To believe that the authority of the
Church was something to be accepted by individuals, because they were
impressed and attracted by the goodness they saw there, was startling.
These thoughts turned the received understanding of the doctrine of
the Church upside down. The Church was no longer a power structure, it
was not even a visible organization; it is, rather, the free association of
true believers.
In the traditional understanding, the agreed and accepted power

structure was the cast-iron guarantee of the authenticity of the Church
and, because of that, of the validity of her sacraments; everything
flowed in a seamless line of authority from the Pope, whose own author-
ity flowed in a seamless line from St Peter and the Apostles. In the new
understanding, the Church was an association of genuine belief and
holiness, partly visible, partly unseen. The authenticating spirit was
faithfulness to Christ.
This also had profound implications for the understanding of
Christian sacraments. They were no longer visible signs of authenticity
and supremacy; they were an expression of faithfulness before God.
Luther gave some importance to the traditional sacrament of penance.
But it was no longer the act of making reparation before God by good
works; it was now to be the renewal of the believer’s life of faith in a spirit
of repentance. For Luther however only the two New Testament ordi-
nances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper had compelling sacramental
power.
In Baptism, water makes remission of sins effective and grants eternal
life to all who believe in the promises of God. This happens because it is
laid down by commandment of God and because the community is
operating under the authority of God’s word.
Regarding the Lord’s Supper, Luther rejected the notion of transub-
stantiation where the substance of the bread and wine changes to become
the substance of the body and blood of Christ. He also rejected Zwingli’s
teaching that the Eucharist was no more than a memorial feast. He
emphasized bodily presence, but it does not come about because of the
actions of an authorized, ordained priest; it happens because God’s word
is made real and apparent as the believer participates in the sacramental
action.
Luther’s political thought
Luther was by no means a revolutionary in either a theological or a

political sense. He was not particularly interested in change. He was more
concerned to recapture a lost, fundamental and original spirit. He
believed he had no competence in political matters but believed that
the world in which the gospel was preached could not be ignored.
He constantly warned all Christians against revolt, sedition and even

minor occasions of public disorder. All Christians had a duty to obey
the authorities, which were instituted by God and had the duty of over-
seeing the public good. The role of the people was to urge the authorities
to do what was right. In this matter Luther believed that the duty of the
government was to oppose both Catholics and those who wished to
abolish all government.
He nevertheless was quite clear in his mind that there was a difference
between religious life and public life; there is a quite definite separation
of spiritual and political power. Each of us is a blend of worldly and
spiritual components. The worldly side of us is subject to authority,
government, princes and laws; the spiritual side is freed from authority,
government, princes and laws.
But he would never have wished to see himself as the father of moder-
nity, clearing the way by sweeping aside a collapsed medieval mindset or
rocking medieval institutions. His overriding passion was to convince all
that God is love and that they should hold that truth with unshakeable
certainty.
The Confession of Augsburg
Although Luther had been condemned at the Diet of Worms (1521),

the Holy Roman Emperor had many other problems on his hands
than religious commotion in Germany. By and large, the decisions of the
Diet of Worms were not followed through and the Lutheran Reformation
was allowed breathing space to consolidate and develop. However, things
did not always resolve themselves in a satisfactory manner and other
councils were held to arrange matters. Eventually, in 1530, another
assembly was held in Augsburg so that each side might be heard. John
Eck (1486–1543) was to speak for the Catholic side; Philip Melanchthon,
for the Protestant one.
Melanchthon drew up a statement of belief that was agreed by all
the Protestant delegates: the Confession of Augsburg. It contains articles
on God, Original Sin, the Son of God, Justification, the preaching
Ministry, Obedience in faith, the Church and many others. This docu-
ment nowadays has the status of a foundational document among
the churches of the Lutheran tradition.
The Emperor asked his theologians to draw up a refutation of this text,

which they did. He considered it now refuted, but there was no agree-
ment. A final decision was put off to a general council. So, at last, the
demands for a council were to be met. But that council was the Council
of Trent; it opened in 1545, and no Protestants were present.
In 1555 there was a gentleman’s agreement called the Religious Peace
of Augsburg. According to this, the prince of each state of the Empire was
free to settle whether the official religion in his lands was to be Catholic
or Protestant. It was the principle of cuius regio, eius religio and that
roughly means ‘if your prince is Protestant (or Catholic), so are you’.
Christian orthodoxy
Protestant Christian teaching continued to develop and refine its teach-

ing and awareness. Reformation teaching did not rely on new sources of
inspiration and authority. We have seen how Luther insisted that his
teaching be in agreement with the word of God as found in the Bible. He
was not a believer in the literal inspiration and infallible truth of the Holy
Scripture. His teaching often took its authority from simple traditional
texts. We have noted his use of the Ten Commandments and The Lord’s
Prayer. But he also was alive to the tradition of the Church outside
scripture and we have also seen how he used the Apostles’ Creed.
Appraisal
Luther had a pessimistic outlook. This may have led him to exaggerate
the sinfulness of the human person and to be suspicious of the role of
reason in coming to knowledge of God. On the other hand he was deeply
conscious of the need for salvation and came to see that only the merits
of Christ could guarantee this. His doctrine of Justification by Faith
understood that the merits of Jesus were accredited to sinners, without
their deserving them.
Human persons are totally under the sway of sin and cannot escape
from that situation. So God regards us as sinless because of the sacrificial
work of Christ, though in fact we remain as we were before.
Luther retained a most negative view of all human religious effort.

So he left all external religious behaviour in the control of the civic
authorities, his thought concentrated on the interior life.
Faith was absolutely central for Luther. This was not assent to certain
teachings, for the sake of appearance. It had to be an inner, vibrant, core
reality, out of which one comes to an understanding of life.
Luther increasingly distrusted the power structures of his day. He
particularly distrusted the remote functioning of the institutional
Church in Rome. His vibrancy and passion made him seek something
more immediate than that. Following the Reformation, Protestant power
structures would tend to be more national. It was a time of increasing
national awareness; the power of the medieval Papacy was, in some areas,
being whittled away. Power was now increasingly passing to the civil
authorities.
None of the three, the Reformation, Luther’s teaching or the slow and
thoughtful meditation on theological truths, can be expressed by slogans.
Theology’s insights are matters of careful, sober and calm reflection.
Luther’s work is less the calm reflection on a given body of theological
data; it is more the excited meditation on a real, profound and personal
experience.
What are Luther’s contradictions?
6 St Ignatius Loyola and John Calvin:
the two sides dig in
This chapter considers two of the most unlikely bedfellows. They are
Ignatius Loyola and John Calvin. They were rough contemporaries. They
were both highly influential figures in the religious turmoil of sixteenth-
century Europe. They both studied at the University of Paris. They both
had an experience of profound religious conversion. They were both
personally austere men. They both set up lasting religious organizations.
Loyola founded the Society of Jesus, and Calvin, the religious govern-
ment of Geneva and the Reformed/Presbyterian tradition of Western
Christianity. They both wrote an influential work: Loyola is the author
of the Spiritual Exercises, and Calvin wrote the Institutes of the Christian
Religion. They both have reputations for rigour in thought, action and
organization.
None of this should blind us to the enormous differences between the
two men. As the sixteenth-century Reformation took its course, these two
men are examples of how it went in two opposite directions.
At the end of the last chapter we left our survey of Western Theology
with a consideration of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.
We noted that the constant demand for a general council had at last
been answered with the calling of the Council of Trent. However
Western Christianity had now been splintered. There were no Protestants
present. The work of the council would be to bring about a Catholic
Reformation.
This movement is often called the Counter Reformation. One of its
purposes was to reform longstanding abuses and to reaffirm Catholic
traditions following the severe criticisms levelled against the late medi-
eval church. However it appeared to be doing so in the light of the
Protestant movement earlier in the sixteenth century and indeed in
resistance to it. There is no doubt that the Roman Catholic Church con-
fronted the Protestant reformation by reforming itself from within. It is
difficult to give due balance to the various movements of reform, reaffir-
mation and resistance following the calamity that had occurred.
St Ignatius Loyola and John Calvin: the two sides dig in 95
Three other points might briefly be mentioned. First this period of

history was a time of frequent criticism of the Church, but it was a
humanist rational criticism, chiefly aimed at widespread church abuses.
The unique contribution of the Protestant reformers was to mould that
criticism into a rediscovery of the fundamental function of Scripture as
the foundational authority of the Church. Secondly this was a time of
adventure, searching, exploration and discoveries of new lands. The
adventurous spirit was also active in the world of ideas. The third point is
that the Reformation came just after the inventing of printing. Books
were becoming cheaper. The word had acquired a new potency and
fascination; the new emphasis on Scripture was not a total accident! The
Reformation took place at a particular moment in European civilization
when new things were avidly grasped after and new tools were available
to channel new ideas in a particular way.
Ignatius Loyola
The Council of Trent
This council met, with disruptions and gaps, from 1545 to 1563. The
Roman Catholic tradition holds it to be the 19th General or Ecumenical
Council in the history of Christianity. However it was not attended
by Orthodox bishops (there had been few formal links between Ortho-
dox bishops and Rome since 1054) nor by Protestant Christians. Its
deliberations are considered to be the classical statement of the ideals of
the Catholic Reformation and it took place against the background of the
spread of Protestant ideas and the urgent necessity for moral and admin-
istrative reform, not to mention the need for discipline in many lax and
wildly varying local practices. There was widespread resistance to setting
it up, not least from the Pope, but there were other internal squabbles.
The council did not meet under ideal conditions; it was suspended
from 1547 to 1551 because of an epidemic and later because of a revolt
against the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. This led to a ten-year
suspension.
The Tridentine documents covered a wide range of subjects, both
doctrinal and administrative. It considered, among other subjects, the
equal validity of Scripture and tradition as a basis for doctrine, the sole
right of the Church to interpret Scripture, the authority of the Latin
Vulgate text, Original Sin, Justification, the Seven Sacraments, Transub-
stantiation (together with a repudiation of Lutheran, Calvinist and
Zwinglian Eucharistic teachings), Holy Orders and the reform of the
Index.
Tridentine Concerning the Council of Trent (1545–1563).

Doctrine A set of principles presented for belief by a religious group: the
teachings of a church.
Scripture The sacred writings of a religion. Here, the Bible.
Vulgate The Latin text of the Bible translated from Greek by St Jerome in the
fourth century. Later revised.
Transubstantiation The official Roman Catholic doctrine of Eucharistic
change. The substance of the bread and wine changes to become the substance
of the body and blood of Christ, even though there is no change in outward
appearance.
Index Here, an official list of books which Roman Catholics were forbidden to
read. Now abolished.
There were hopes in the early days that the council would, to some
extent, move to meet Protestant criticisms, but as the sessions dragged
on, were suspended, new popes elected and the balance of power and
persuasion shifted within the composition of the council, these anticipa-
tions failed. Protestant hopes were dashed; many Catholic wishes for
more radical reform were unsuccessful. The Roman Catholic Church
came out of the council, more authoritative, sure, clear-sighted and
disciplined.
Life (1491–1556)
Ignatius Loyola was born in 1491 to a noble family in one of the Basque
provinces of northern Spain. He was sent at an early age to court, where
he developed a taste for high society life, including courting young ladies,
gambling and sword play; all this led to the neglect of formal academic
education. He saw military service, particularly against the French.
He was wounded in 1521 when his leg was struck by a cannon ball.
He walked with a limp for the rest of his life.
During his convalescence he asked for frivolous novels to relieve
his boredom, but none was available and he was supplied with a life of
Christ and lives of the saints. In desperation he read them, discovering
that he might like to imitate the saints. At the same time he entertained
romantic thoughts concerning an unknown lady, but noticed that when
he thought of her he was restless, whereas when he contemplated Christ
and the saints he was at peace. This is held to be the beginning of the
long discipline, later known in the Spiritual Exercises as ‘the discernment
of spirits’, and to be a stage on the way to his religious conversion.
Having decided to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem he went to the
monastery of Montserrat near Barcelona where he spent the night in
vigil, left his sword at the altar, gave his clothes away and set out on
his journey. Before leaving Spain he had an experience near the town of
Manresa, then lived in a cave for ten months engaging in prayer, fasting
and good works. The Spiritual Exercises had started to take shape here,
and he also had a vision about which he never talked but which appears
to have involved a profound conversion experience. A core conviction of
this time was the experience of grace as the ability to see God in all things;
consequently all times and experiences were times of prayer.
He eventually arrived in Rome, received the pope’s permission to go
to the Holy Land but on arrival was told it was too dangerous and that
he must leave again.
He now decided to be a priest, returned to school to learn Latin
and, though he was 33, studied in the same class as young boys. He later
went to the University of Alcalá. Here his keenness to expound the
Scripture and to teach people to pray attracted the unwelcome attention
of the Inquisition and he was imprisoned. He had a similar experience
in Salamanca and decided to study at Paris. He enrolled at Montaigu
College in February 1528; four years after Calvin came to that same
college.
In the French capital he met Francis Xavier and Peter Faber, gathered
followers around him and taught them to pray using the method of
the Spiritual Exercises. He and his friends decided to form a group
who would go to the Holy Land but if that was not possible, to go to
Rome and offer to serve the pope; the pope received them favourably.
It was in Rome in the Church of St Mary Major that Ignatius said his
first Mass.
Ignatius summoned his companions to Rome where they discussed
their future and they decided to take the three traditional vows of pov-
erty, chastity and obedience; an additional vow placed them especially
at the disposal of the pope for whatever duties he might decide. The new
company, the Society of Jesus, was approved in 1540. Ignatius was unani-
mously elected Superior.
Loyola would spend the next 15 years directing the members of his
order, writing thousands of letters and overseeing their activities all over
the world. The Jesuits would found houses in every part of the planet.
They acquired a strong reputation for rigour and thoroughness and
three members of this very new order were influential theologians at
the Council of Trent.
The Society of Jesus was involved in education, a subject dear to
Ignatius himself. Schools, colleges and universities were soon founded
and the Jesuits became a major force in the educational world, a role
which continues to this day. Throughout the Middle Ages there had been
frequent movements of retreat from the ‘world’ in order to promote one’s
salvation. Loyola’s vision involved a reconciliation of the spirit and the
‘world’ and a definite ministry to it and in it. The Jesuits often became the
educators of a new Catholic elite in Europe and elsewhere.
Loyola was quietly loyal to the established church of his day, the Roman
Catholic Church. He had a special degree of loyalty to the pope and his
order was dedicated to furthering the pope’s wishes. He wished it to
defend the established institutions of his day from attack.
Ignatius Loyola’s health had never been robust, he often suffered
from stomach ailments, and his physical condition gradually deterio-
rated in Rome. He died in July 1557. He was beatified in 1609 and
canonized in 1622.
Thought
Loyola wrote few works. He wrote the Spiritual Exercises, he wrote many
letters and he wrote the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. It is
generally agreed that he wrote the Spiritual Exercises by himself, but it
is pointed out that he only became a prolific letter writer after Juan
Alfonso de Polanco became his secretary. The same may be said of the
Constitutions; so it is difficult to rule out the influence of Polanco from
these later texts.
The Spiritual Exercises are a method of spiritual retreat. The Constitu-
tions are a recipe for living in community. Other works include The
Pilgrim’s Story, which is a set of confidences which he hoped would be
helpful to others. The remaining fragments of his Diary tell of his
thoughts, deliberations and experiences as he struggled to deal with
the concrete problems he met day by day. His works are not an ordered
treatise, but all have the quality of encouraging the reader to action.
A considerable quantity of correspondence also remains.
Loyola’s academic studies were in the faculty of Arts at Paris: he gradu-
ated both Bachelor and Master it is known that he attended Theology
lectures there, but he never took a degree in that subject.
He is known to have disliked the Protestant Reformers and their
thought; he certainly encouraged some of his followers to combat
their ideas and influence. There is, however, no evidence that he ever
read them.
Even though the Jesuits were to achieve the reputation of being the
spearhead of the Catholic Reformation, Loyola was not himself a contro-
versialist and did not confront Protestant Reformation ideas head on; his
main interest was in how he could ‘help souls’, and he seems to have
decided that this could best be done through educational, pastoral work
and missionary work. Nevertheless he could not avoid being deeply
touched by the sixteenth century doctrinal turmoil.
The Jesuits were particularly active in the Far East and in South
America. Indeed Loyola is credited with inventing the word ‘mission’ in
the sense of the spread of Christianity to non-Christian lands. Yet he
never wrote a treatise on such subjects. He was a doer rather than a
thinker but a doer who wished to share his particular experience of
spiritual insight with others. ‘The world is our house’, one of his closest
assistants used to repeat. In this, there is an implicit, though rarely explicit,
element of pastoral theology to Loyola’s work.
Loyola’s concern was less with doctrine and more with a way of
praying. This way had two chief components: the gospels, particularly
the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke; and an attitude of interior
meditation which is particularly attentive to gospel narratives. Thus

the Spiritual Exercises played a role in the development of the spiritual
retreat.
Loyola, of course, was convinced that by spiritual meditation Chris-
tians have direct access to God and that God is actively at work within
them. This inner conviction and spiritual richness were the sources out
of which believers can best minister to the world.
In this, as in many other aspects of life, Loyola’s practical common
sense shows through. He did not insist on the daily observance of the
Divine Office in community; this would tie people to one place and get
in the way of efficient and effective ministry, but he also laid down
specific instructions for care of the body and concern for self so that
health and strength might be maintained for active mission.
Loyola had a strong and positive sense of the world. He did not try to
flee from it but appears to have been reconciled to it. He was strongly
aware that Divine Love was constantly operative within it: grace perfects
nature.
Humans have been created to praise, worship and serve God. Other
things on earth were created for human use. We should use these things
in so far as they help us to attaint the goal for which we were made and
distance ourselves from them in so far as they impede our progress to
that end. This rule of ‘in so far as’, known to Jesuits as the rule of tantum
quantum has two components: the correct use of this world’s gifts and a
rule of detachment or indifference. This was to help Jesuits to be more
open to the promptings of divine inspiration.
Inquisition A tribunal of the Roman Catholic Church operating between the

thirteenth and nineteenth centuries, with special responsibilities for rooting
out error, heresy and unbelief. Responsible for regrettable excesses.
Spiritual retreat A long or short period of quiet and mediation during which
people concentrate on their relationship with God.
Ascetics are individuals who seek spiritual enlightenment by severely disci-
plining the body. They tend to shun comfort, luxury, fine clothes, good food
and live very simply, even imposing harsh conditions upon themselves.
Spiritual director An individual, usually a priest, who offers advice, help,
counsel and confession to other individuals concerning their relationship
with God.
The Spiritual Exercises
Following his conversion Loyola entered upon a phase of extreme asceti-

cism: giving away his clothes, living in a cave on alms, eating a minimum
of food, tortured as to whether he had confessed all his sins, even con-
templating suicide. It was doubtless at this time that he first started
making the notes that would, in time, become the Spiritual Exercises. The
earliest text we still possess dates from 1541.
The text is a difficult work for the outsider. It is more a series of
notes which guides a priest helping those in his pastoral care towards
‘discernment’. Discernment is a word used by Christians when they have
a feeling that God has a plan for them, a mission for them to accomplish,
and they are trying to discover (discern) what that plan and mission
might be.
Obviously in business, industry, administration and so on one consults
a document or gets in touch with a superior when learning what one is
supposed to do. Getting in touch with God is more problematic; our
main models are the Scriptures, particularly the gospels, and the example
of Christ. So discernment is an activity of prayer.
The Spiritual Exercises were written as a sort of course in prayer; the
person following the course is known as an exercitant. The aim of the
Exercises is to help exercitants (both men and women) work out the will
of God for their lives, to provide them with the strength and open them
to the grace which will equip them to follow that path. The Exercises are
by no means restricted to members of the Society of Jesus, though they
are usually followed under the guidance of a Jesuit director.
Normally the exercises are completed in a four-week cycle. Loyola
did not intend the exercises to be some sort of substitute for a daily office;
it is probable that he only intended them to be completed in their entirety
once or twice in a lifetime. Shorter retreats of three or four days using
the exercises are now more usual but unlikely to be undertaken more
than once a year.
The first week usually concentrates on sin and its cost, the second week
deals with Christ’s life on earth, the third week deals with the passion and
the fourth week with the risen life of Christ.
This is a broad outline; there are additional features designed to help
the exercitant to pray, to avoid being over-conscientious and on how
to avoid self-consideration when choosing a vocation in life.
We shall just consider one element of Ignatian meditation: the compo-

sition of place, which is an integral part of the first week. It is a method of
praying the gospel narratives. Loyola talked of ‘seeing the place’. This
means that he wanted to get a mental image of the place where the story
took place, to see the landscape, feel the heat and smell the smells; he
wanted to get a vivid impression of the setting so that he could experi-
ence the events more clearly. Thus he would ask himself questions about
the road from Bethany to Jerusalem, for instance; he would wonder if it
is wide or narrow, flat or hilly.
Other more abstract efforts at composition of place involve trying to
see his soul imprisoned in a perishing body, exiled among wild beasts.
This element then became an introduction to more intense meditation.
The Exercises contain a rich store of spiritual insight; some people even
claim them to be inspired. The work has a lyrical quality where deep
religious feeling is often illustrated by military images, recalling Loyola’s
background and training.
The central idea in the Exercises is obedience. It was not a theoretical
virtue; rather it was one which promotes a practical truth and inspires
action. It flows from the respect and adoration which are due to the
majesty of the Creator and Saviour and promotes total submission to the
will of God. Loyola took the phrase, ‘thy will be done on earth as it is in
heaven’, quite literally.
The central principle of the Exercises is directed towards the possibility
of acting in accordance with the divine will. Thus he (and all Christian
people) must know what that will is and conform his own will to it. The
first step on the road is to acquire inspiration and counsel from on high.
This means meditation, searching, prayer and discernment.
The aim of the Society of Jesus has been stated as ‘contemplation in
action’. This is less a question of arriving at a mystical state of contempla-
tion through, or while involved in, action; rather it is a formula aimed at
contemplation but never separated from action.
This is an optimistic outlook. It does not renounce the world but accepts
it and acts within it. It seeks the contemplation of the divine but never
forgets that there is work on earth to be done. It balances love of God and
duty towards God with love of neighbour and duty towards the same.
At the same time it has a negative side. The emphasis on obedience
suggests a nagging pessimism concerning the resources human beings
possess in order to accomplish the will of God. Nevertheless that is

overcome by discipline and obedience – military virtues!
The Exercises have been widely studied and commented by theologians
and mystical writers. They have their critics as well as their admirers;
St Teresa of Ávila, for instance, said she was incapable of using such a
system. Others have seen in them an overweening confidence in the
human ability to raise oneself to God. However, prayer is always a work
and gift of grace.
For those who eventually decide they wish to enter the Jesuit order,
Ignatius Loyola has prepared another document, the Constitutions, to
help them live in a community. The desire here is to help individuals
together to discern the will of God.
The Constitutions
In the early days, there was great discussion among the companions as
to what their mode of life should be. They fell into the habit of meeting,
usually in the evenings, to discuss the drawing up of a rule.
The first draft was probably made by Loyola’s secretary, Polanco, and
the text then revised by Loyola himself in 1552. Papal approval was
sought and granted, and the rule put into effect throughout the society.
Loyola made some revisions up to the time he died. They were not printed
until after his death and remain largely untouched today, though Loyola
foresaw that modifications would be necessary.
According to the Constitutions Jesuits are not to accept ecclesiastical
dignities, they have no special religious habit, they are forbidden to keep
a choir and they were the first order whose constitutions directed them to
undertake active work in foreign missions, schools, hospitals, prisons and
so on.
Loyola’s diary, containing the record of his devotions at the time he
was working on the Constitutions, still exists and he appears to have
experienced visions and special insights at this time.
The Constitutions begin with a general outline of what is proposed to
all who seek membership of the Society of Jesus. There follows an account
of the rules of the order, starting at the point of entry into the society:
admission of candidates, sending away unsuitable entrants, training new
members. The Constitutions then outline how the order is organized.

The final sections deal with the relations a member should have with his
fellows and how he should get on with his superior. They detail the
qualities required in a superior, how the superior should run the order
and how to keep the society in good working order.
Jesuits claim that the Constitutions follow logically from the Spiritual
Exercises and that they are the temporal rules of those who, having
finished their second week of the Spiritual Exercises, have decided to join
the order. Here obedience to God, the basic principle at the heart of
Loyola’s own mystical life, has been transposed into a rule for community
living. But to do this Jesuits must sacrifice their own freedom and place it
in the hands of the society’s superior known as the General.
The Constitutions also contain regulations for the running of colleges
and the election of the General. However every element is inspired by the
spirit of obedience. All members are to see their formal obedience in all
things as eventually directed towards God. In this exercise of obedience
members should not be guided by either fear or anxiety but only by love.
However if a subordinate member of the order disapproves of a com-
mand or considers it unjust, inappropriate or wrong, then that subordinate
has the duty to make respectful representations to his superior.
Appraisal
It is often stated that Loyola was not much interested in entering into
controversy with the Reformers; his interests lay elsewhere. Nevertheless
it is interesting to note that his work lays out rules for spiritual discipline
which consciously or unconsciously contrast with the issues that the
Protestant Reformers had raised.
At the beginning of the Spiritual Exercises rules are laid out for the spir-
itual life. They include the necessity of obeying the ‘Church Hierarchical’;
frequent recourse to confession and attendance at Mass, the use of the
Divine Office. Ignatius values religious orders and the practice of conti-
nence and chastity; these are to be preferred to marriage.
In addition Loyola praises the ‘perfections of supererogation’ (the
merits gained by working over and above the call of duty), the adoration
of relics and the practice of indulgences, pilgrimages and penance.
Loyola sees value in the belief that people cannot be saved without
being predestined and without saving faith and grace; nevertheless he
advises caution in speaking of such things. He is also cautious about
speaking of saving faith as opposed to work, in case lazy people use it as
an excuse for doing no good work at all.
Loyola may not have engaged in controversy, but his outlook was firmly
in continuity with the Medieval Latin Church.
Timeline
1488 Bartholomew Diaz is the first European to round the Cape of Good
Hope
1491 Birth of Ignatius Loyola
1492 Christopher Columbus lands in the New World
1505 The Portuguese arrive in Ceylon
1508 Michelangelo starts painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
1509 Birth of John Calvin
1517 Martin Luther publishes his Ninety-five Theses on Indulgences
1519 Charles V becomes Holy Roman Emperor
1520 Suleiman the Magnificent becomes Ottoman Emperor
1522 Conversion of Ignatius Loyola
1523–1528 Calvin at Montaigu College in Paris
1528 Loyola at Montaigu College
1525 The Reformation spreads to the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway
1533 Calvin’s conversion experience
1534 Henry VIII declares himself supreme head of the Church of England
1536 John Calvin publishes the Institutes of the Christian Religion in Latin
and makes his first visit to Geneva
1540 Founding of the Society of Jesus
The final shape of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises
Calvin marries
1541 Calvin’s definitive return to Geneva
1545 Council of Trent called
1547–1551 Council of Trent fails to meet
1549 Francis Xavier begins his mission to Japan
1552 Suspension of the Council of Trent
1556 Death of Ignatius Loyola
1558 Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England

1560 Protestant Conspiracy of Amboise in France and its suppression
1562 Council of Trent back in session
1563 Council of Trent closes
1564 Death of John Calvin
1572 St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
John Calvin
Life (1509–1564)
John Calvin was born to a solid middle-class family in Noyon in northern

France. His family had always intended him for a career in the church
and he was tonsured (the first step in the process of ordination) when
only 12.
He studied Theology in Paris from 1523 to 1528. He was for a number
of years a member of Montaigu College, the college Ignatius Loyola
would join in 1528. While there, Calvin may have questioned his vocation
and indeed his faith. He left the very scholastic University of Paris, enroll-
ing in the more humanist University of Orleans, later studying law at
Bourges where he first came under the influence of Protestants. Some of
his teachers in Paris had been active in arguing against the thinking of
Wycliffe (c.1330–1384) and Hus (c.1372–1415).
In 1533 he underwent an experience of religious conversion and
believed he had received a command from God to restore the church to
its primitive purity.
It was probably in 1533 that Calvin first read Luther; he developed a
high regard for him at first, though he would later be critical of him. He
also appears to have broken with the Roman Catholic Church about this
time and resigned the church benefices he had already obtained; he may
also have suffered persecution and imprisonment. He settled in Basle for
a period, intending to devote his life to study. Here he worked on the first
version of his Institutes, published in 1536. This was in Latin; a French
translation was published in 1541. It was the first work of Theology ever
to be published in the French language.
At this time there was turmoil in the city of Geneva which had
recently become an independent entity and which had expelled its bishop.
Here the reformation movement had two sources; one was experimenta-
tion with a republican form of government, the second was humanist
reform in matters of morals and worship.
Calvin was invited to the city to stabilize the church and give it a sound
basis of reformed teaching. He drew up rigorous regulations concerning
who should be admitted to Holy Communion and the sort of profession
of faith that should be demanded of all citizens on pain of exile. He
started to work on regulations for the exercise of excommunication.
His attempts were deeply resisted and he was eventually expelled from
the city.
He took refuge in Strasbourg where he settled down to a period of
intense theological work, also ministering to the French-speaking con-
gregation of that city. It was at about this time that he married Idelette de
Bure and their marriage appears to have been tranquil and successful.
By 1541 his supporters had gained the upper hand in Geneva and
Calvin returned there, and, for the remainder of his life, devoted himself
to establishing and maintaining a Puritan theocratic regime which was
quite severe. Government of the reformed church was placed in the hands
of pastors, doctors (teachers), elders and deacons. There was a consistory,
or church council, which had far-reaching powers over the private lives of
citizens and functioned as a sort of moral police. Pleasures such as danc-
ing and games were forbidden, and tough penalties for religious offences
were in force.
Theocratic Government by God or by ministers representing God.
Calvin’s opponents were ruthlessly combated and on occasion tortured

and executed; the most shameful case is probably that of Michael
Servetus (1511–1553) who had been in correspondence with Calvin.
He had written a book in which he had abandoned the doctrine of the
Trinity and denied the divinity of Christ. He was denounced to the
Roman Catholic Inquisition, probably by somebody close to Calvin and
arrested. He escaped and fled to Geneva, where he was arrested and burnt
as a heretic.
By 1555 Calvin had overcome all opposition and he devoted the

remainder of his life to Bible study (he wrote a number of commentaries
on various books of the Bible), giving advice to religious reformers in
other parts of Europe and founding the Academy of Geneva to place the
training of ministers on a sound academic basis. He was, in effect, a dicta-
tor in Geneva, being known as ‘the Pope of Geneva’. However he made
that city the intellectual centre of the Reformation.
He was a man of great learning;, he was well grounded in Latin, Greek,
Hebrew, Theology and Law, and he was a formidable organizer. His
written work is precise and clear. The ideas are well expressed in logical
sequence, the style is firm and clear and there are passages demonstrating
all the eloquence of persuasive power, highlighted by well-known and
pleasing images.
Calvin himself was an austere and distant man; he had little interest in
personal gain, but his character is marred by cruelty and overbearing
claims to be the ultimate arbiter of matters of faith and biblical interpre-
tation. He died of overwork in 1564.
Thought
With John Calvin we are able to see more clearly the principles on which
the Protestant Reformation grew and flourished. They are as follows:
z the desire to reform the established religious tradition rather than to

found a new one;
z if a doctrine cannot be demonstrated by Scripture, it is to be discarded.
From now on Scripture was to have the dominant status in the church;
z Bible-based sermons, biblical commentaries and biblical Theology
were all given a leading role in worship and theological thought.
Calvin’s major work of Theology was the Institutes of the Christian

Religion. Its first edition was in 1536 and had eight short chapters. The
final edition published by Calvin (1559) had 80. It has four major
sections: the sovereignty of the creator God; the human need for salva-
tion satisfied in Jesus Christ; how human beings make this salvation
their own and, finally, the church and society.
His thought declares the following:
z In order to hold the true faith, human beings must take direct inspira-
tion from Scripture, rather than rely on the tradition of the Church.
z The human being is a fallen creature, corrupted by original sin and
destined to Hell without the saving aid of God.
z The elect are predestined to be saved; this salvation does not depend on
good works, but on the choice of God who has already decided who
will receive faith and the assistance of grace.
The reading of Scripture
The reading of Scripture by all was Calvin’s central aim. He felt that the
Medieval Latin Church had let the importance of Scripture slip out of
sight and that the centrality of the Bible must be restored, and restored
for all. He was not afraid of the unlearned reading it for themselves; this
clashed with a central principle of the post-Tridentine church, which
held that the teaching authority of the church alone had the ability to
interpret Scripture and was nervous of letting the Bible be read by all
without supervision.
Calvin’s method
Calvin liked the way other Reformers expounded Scripture. Melanch-

thon in particular impressed him. He dealt with topics in a clear, orderly
and simple manner. His method was to interpret Scripture but to do
so in a way that examined everything in context; he wanted the clear
intention of the biblical author to be brought out by this method. When
one had come to some sense of the authentic meaning of Scripture, then
one could use it to draw out general doctrine.
Ministers were encouraged to teach the doctrines found in Scripture
and only those doctrines. This basic general doctrine was to be drawn
up into catechisms and taught to all. Having established basic Christian
doctrine, the next step was to preach from Scripture and apply both
Scripture and doctrine to the lives of those who listened to them. When
they were well grounded in this method, the ordinary people in the pews
were to be encouraged to read the Bible for themselves.
Calvin’s doctrine of God
Calvin was watchful against trying to capture the essence of God through
human reasoning. God’s essence is as incomprehensible as the divine
majesty is hidden. Our task is to come to knowledge of God as we learn
to fear God, to reverence God, to love and praise God. To do this we must
school ourselves in the Holy Scriptures.
But in every page of the Bible we see the divine face of Jesus and it is in
that face that we see the reflection of God.
This operation is both clear and obscure and it requires the help of the
Holy Spirit, who must shine a light into human hearts. This contact from
the Holy Spirit gives us a supernatural feeling for the being of God which
inborn human sinfulness would otherwise prevent.
Calvin did not believe that, left to their own devices, human beings
were capable, by reason alone, to come to knowledge of God or to
construct a natural Theology. The original human condition is miserable.
Even though he personally found such a reality painful, Calvin’s severity
was unbending on this point.
Even though sinful humans are offensive in the sight of a just God,
Calvin realizes they are divinely created and that God has lavished much
care and attention on them. So the mystery of God’s love stretches out to
the created order and that love, which has always existed from the very
beginning, has already made provision for the human race to be recon-
ciled to God.
Justification
Human beings have fallen into sin and therefore cannot rightly see how
God is present in the universe. This inability is sometimes referred to as
‘depravity’. That means that every part of our being is faulty, and we are
consequently unable to come to God unaided. So we are subject to the
anger of God.
Because of our flawed nature, God has made special provision to

allow us to be attentive to the divine being and to be brought into a
relationship with that being. Our attention is turned, not merely to the
fact that God offers us gifts and benefits but to a source that removes the
fault and stain of sin. It is the duty of Christian preaching to set this
vision of God before us and it does so by announcing Christ crucified.
When we reflect on the cross of Christ we see how God has placed
all our guilt on Jesus. The curse of God, which should be ours, and the
eternal damnation, which is rightly ours, are the burden taken up by
Christ and taken away from us. In the resurrection we see that God has
accepted this atonement made for us. In the ascension we see Jesus dis-
play all the qualities missing in us and are encouraged to turn to Jesus
alone for our comfort, support and salvation. Instead of death, God now
offers us eternal life.
By means of faith we are now invited to become one with Christ;
through union with Jesus we are freed from our separation from God.
Calvin refers to this as the ‘double grace of Christ’ and involves repent-
ance and justification.
Damnation Endless punishment in Hell: endless existence shut off from the
presence of God.
Jesus Christ.
Repentance To regret the bad thinks one has done in the past and to resolve
to change one’s behaviour.
Justification Because of the sacrifice of Christ, God does not consider human
beings guilty of sin, but grants the sinlessness of Jesus to them as a gift.
Predestination
The Doctrine of Predestination, which is plainly taught by a number of

Christian teachers, is suggested in Mt. 20 and clear in Rom. 8. It was
developed by St Augustine and also taught by Luther. It received very
clear emphasis in Calvin and is considered a typical mark of Calvinism.
Calvin did not necessarily see it as the foundation on which his
theological work rested but considered it an important component
nevertheless. He held it to be a wonderful secret of the judgement of God.

The true Christian will maintain a degree of intellectual sobriety in
approaching it, will not seek to understand it deeply but will meditate on
it without fear.
Calvin held that it was God’s will that salvation should be offered
to some yet withheld from others. He admitted this posed difficult prob-
lems for many. He noted that salvation flows not from human judgement
but from God’s free mercy. The grace of God is illustrated by the fact that
God does not adopt everybody ‘promiscuously’ to the hope of salvation
but gives to some and refuses to others.
If we do not accept this principle then we lack humility. But if we do
not accept that all whom God wants to save are in fact saved, we suggest
that Christ’s sacrifice was in some way ineffectual. We then detract from
divine glory.
God saves those who have no claim to salvation and anyone who
tries to prevent people from experiencing this teaching does an injury to
both fellow human beings and to God. Predestination is, according to
Calvin, the only basis for solid confidence to deliver us all from fear
and through this teaching Christ promises to preserve in safety all those
the Father has committed to his care.
He warns that when we inquire into predestination, we try to penetrate
the deepest recesses of God’s mind. We must trust in Scripture as the
only way of discovering what ought to be believed concerning God. It is
foolish to seek any other source of knowledge of predestination and we
should avoid it.
On the other hand it should not be considered a banned subject. Holy
Scripture is the ‘school of the Holy Spirit’ and nothing necessary and
useful to know is left out of it, while nothing is taught there which it is
not beneficial to know. We should not examine what God has concealed
and we should not ignore what God has revealed.
God’s foreknowledge extends to the whole world and all in it. Predesti-
nation is an eternal decree and by it God has determined what is to
happen to every individual: eternal life is foreordained for some; damna-
tion, for others.
Sanctification is still required from the chosen, and love is the source
of their protection. We are to be content with the good pleasure of God.
Throughout sacred history, in particular Old Testament history, Calvin
sees the varying fortunes of the people of God as demonstrating

their election. Election remains unchallengeable; its tokens are not
always visible. When we come to consider the members of Christ we
see conspicuous evidence of the superior effectiveness of grace; those
individuals are united to their head and can never fail of salvation.
The trouble is that, out of the great multitude of those who hear
the call, the many fall away; only a small portion remains. Even if God
covenants with a people, God does not give everybody the spirit of
renewal which allows them to persevere to the end in the covenant. He
issues an eternal call without the internal efficacy of grace.
Sanctification The continuing work of the Holy Spirit renewing and

purifying sinners and enabling them to perform good works.
Election is the idea that God in every age chooses a people, or an individual,
in preference to others to carry out some task. It often refers to those who do
God’s will and remain steadfast in times of trial.
Covenant originally an agreement between two parties; it came to be seen
as the faithfulness of God towards Israel in return for the inner righteousness
of the people before God. Jesus restated it as humanity receiving a gracious
gift from God by which their desire to serve God was made perfect. It requires
a response. It has its highest expression in the example of the life and death
of Jesus.
God’s gathering together of a church was because of his covenant but the
covenant was dishonoured by the majority. So God has restricted this
covenant offer to a few, in order to prevent total failure.
So Calvin asserts that God has determined, ‘by eternal and immutable
counsel’, who would be admitted to salvation and who would be excluded.
God’s choice of the elect is founded on ‘gratuitous mercy’, irrespective of
human merit. When God condemns people to damnation it is by a ‘just,
irreprehensible, but incomprehensible, judgement’. It also implied that
once one was saved, salvation could not be lost. This was to be a major
cause of controversy, particularly involving the eighteenth century
preacher John Wesley.
Calvin’s theology makes a clear distinction between the ‘order of
nature’ and the ‘order of grace’. The dominant idea behind predestination
is the sovereign power, awe and majesty of God. If God offered salvation
and people refused the invitation, then the sacrifice of Christ would be in
vain. Since God has already decided whom to save and whom to damn,
the sacrifice will without doubt achieve what it set out to do.
This short summary is an attempt to state things simply without
distorting them:
z In the eternal covenant, the Father gave a number of people to the Son
and the Son came to redeem them.
z Human beings are sinful; they do not become sinful by wrongful
actions. They commit wrongful actions because their condition
is sinful.
z Because of that ‘depravity’, humans cannot understand God or come
to God.
z A sinful (apparently free) human being cannot in fact choose freely
but can only do so in a sinful manner.
z Therefore God must predestine.
z God alone is capable of all-powerful and sovereign rule.
z Predestination is the only way the loving mercy of God can be effective
and evident.
The right worship of God
All the Protestant Reformers were dismayed by the use of rituals and
images in worship; they felt that the current practices of the sixteenth
century did not raise the worshipper to the contemplation of heavenly
realities but kept worshippers’ attention anchored on earth. Calvin’s
goal was to encourage and enable ordinary people to read the Bible for
themselves; only when they were capable of doing this would they be
capable of offering proper worship.
Calvin saw the popular use of images, processions and the adoration of
the Eucharistic bread as encouraging defective forms of worship, rather
than offering authentic worship to God. People’s attention was being dis-
tracted towards the worship of representations of the mystery, persuading
themselves that what was in fact invisible could, and had, become visible.
Imposing ceremonies were condemned as fraudulent and counterfeit.

So Calvin set out to restore a true worship of God, rescuing it from the
objects of false devotion promoted by the medieval church.
The creation is able to give us an impression of the power, majesty
and awe of God. But because they are sinful, human beings are unable to
appreciate this. Therefore God has provided for us, in the Bible, a means
by which we can come to contemplate the truth of God. Calvin did not
want people to be distracted by illusions; so he simplified the order of
worship and stripped churches and ministers of their traditional
ornaments.
Calvin accomplished this by reducing services to bare necessities. There
was no impressive music; hymn singing was to be done by all. Church
buildings had no ornaments; crosses and images were removed, even
stained glass was replaced. The ministers wore a plain black gown and
there was little liturgical movement. The high pulpit, rather than the
altar, became the focal point of the church building. The church was the
faithful people; the building was only its meeting place.
Sacraments
Together with all Protestant Reformers, Calvin insisted on two sacramen-

tal ordinances only. He was not inclined, as Luther was, to see confession
as sacramental.
Since the thirteenth century the Latin Church had tried to separate the
validity of sacraments from the personal attitude of either the minister-
ing priest or the recipient. Sacraments were valid ex opere operato, that is
‘by virtue of being performed’. The purpose of this attitude was to under-
line that sacraments are instruments of grace and as long as they are done
within the rules laid down, God acts through them.
Calvin felt that the doctrine of ex opere operato, tied the value of
the sacraments too tightly into the ministry of the church, particularly
stressing a valid ministry. It did not allow enough scope for the free
grace of God operating through the sacraments and without human
constraint. He rejected the medieval understanding which placed the
stress on a human programme and on the legal structure of the church,
rather than on the initiative of God.
In Calvin’s view baptism showed how Christians have been grafted

into God’s people; in particular it demonstrated the ‘double grace of
Christ’ of repentance and justification. The Holy Supper demonstrates
how we are united with the flesh of Christ and how we draw sustenance
from him in order to be united with God in eternal life. We can see here
the comparison with bodily food leading us to appreciate the heavenly
and spiritual feeding which is the gift of God to us.
Calvin believed that the outwards signs of bread and wine really
bring to us, and set before us, the body and blood of Christ. But we feed
on Christ in our souls, not by means of our mouths. Calvin abandoned
Roman Catholic practice, but he equally rejected Zwingli’s argument
that the Lord’s Supper is no more than a memorial feast. He did not con-
sider the Eucharistic elements to be empty signs; they were essentially
linked to Christ’s self-giving.
Calvin reaffirmed energetically that the Body of Christ is really present
in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper but made a fine distinction between
reality and materiality. The bread and wine are visible signs which repre-
sent the body and blood of Christ to us. We give the title body and blood
to them because they are the instruments by means of which the Lord
Jesus gives them to us.
The body and blood of Christ are a spiritual mystery which the eye
cannot see and human understanding cannot comprehend. By this
means, it is figured for us in visible signs in a way our human weakness
can grapple with.
Christian living
Christian life arises out of the experience of repentance and justification.

Calvin sees that God has prepared a plan for us, which we find through
the study of Scripture and meditation on the life of Jesus. The Law of
God for all had already been revealed in the Law of Moses. Jesus has given
us the correct interpretation of it.
This Law of God, or Christian pattern of living, is something which
has its source in the gospel, the same source out of which justifying faith
and repentance arise. It is something which must swell up in the heart
and become concrete in the actions of our daily lives.
But Calvin went further; he was concerned that the whole of the city
of Geneva should be a model of virtuous living, according to the freshly
presented divine law. The whole city was to be transformed into a vast
uniform and religious community.
The city was to be improved, but without ostentation or luxury. Its
citizens were to live without any form of self-indulgence. There was to be
no dancing, no outrageous behaviour, no swearing or blasphemy and no
frivolous badinage. All works of superstition, witchcraft or heresy were to
be removed from libraries, as were anything suspected of doubtful,
obscene or erotic inspiration. They would go frequently to church so that
they might always remain, wherever they were, in a state of continual
silent prayer.
Calvin also had to face up to those who disagreed with him. As well
as fighting the Roman heresy (as he now considered it to be) he had to
confront extreme forms of religious sedition, including those who felt a
special personal illumination. During the sixteenth century there was no
shortage of small and secretive groups given to excessive scepticism and
libertinism, as well as, on the other hand, to unbalanced religious
enthusiasm.
Calvinism
During the period 1618–1619 the Council of Dort adopted an expression

of Calvin’s teaching that has received widespread and popular attention.
It is sometimes called ‘Five-Point Calvinism’ and (in English) the word
TULIP is used to help remember the five points taught. It is important to
remember that both this way of expressing the teaching, and the mne-
monic itself, date from after Calvin’s death:
T Total Depravity of sinful human nature: ‘Depravity’ here means

imperfect, flawed. ‘Total’ means every part of the human personality is
affected by the flaw.
U Unconditional Election: Individuals are not predetermined for
salvation because of some personal good point or accomplishment,
which God already knows they will possess. Election is granted with-
out conditions.
L Limited Atonement: Christ did not die for the whole human race but
only for the elect.
I Irresistible Grace: The elect are inevitably saved; they have no choice
or decision in the matter.
P Perseverance of the Saints: Those who are predestined cannot fall
away or opt out of that condition.
Appraisal
Was predestination Calvin’s major concern? Some see this teaching as

totally necessary. If we say that human beings are free to accept or reject
the gracious offer of God, we suggest that the sacrifice of Christ was in
vain. Only those whom God wants to save, will in fact be saved, in this
way we know that God has total power and is in full control. Others see
this as a minor concern of Calvin’s; his chief anxiety was to be faithful to
Scripture and to be utterly clear in his teaching.
His final arrangement of the Institutes had four parts:
God the Creator

God the Redeemer
The Holy Spirit
The means of grace and the church.
This arrangement has been influential and is still widely used.

Calvin’s teaching was powerful and respected. His followers prefer to
talk of the ‘Reformed Tradition’ rather than of Calvinism. This strand is
widespread in continental Europe and from there spread to America. In
Britain it played a decisive role in the development of Puritanism.
Christianity in the West since the Reformation
There was no great debate at the Reformation about a whole range of

theological subjects, such as the Doctrine of Creation, of Jesus Christ, or
of the Trinity. Everybody agreed about them. Controversy centred on
how Scripture related to tradition, who had authority to interpret the

Bible, the nature of justification and the role of the sacraments. There
was also controversy about non-theological issues such as church
corruption and abuse of power.
Both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations were followed by
periods in which theologians ‘bedded down’ and consolidated their
positions, defined new forms of orthodoxy, usually in the form of apolo-
getics for their own side and in opposition to the other.
Within Protestantism, both Lutheran and Calvinist (and both frequently
disagreed), there was a renewed concern for methodical exposition of
doctrine. Aristotle’s metaphysics was used as a central organizing tool for
the expression of teaching. Human reason played an important role in
drawing up ‘systems’ of Christian teaching. All sides thought that
Christian teaching was capable of being expressed in a clear, logical and
methodical way. Calvin and Luther had not been very interested in
method but, once they had passed away, Natural Theology became
fashionable again.
The Council of Trent ended much of the corruption people had been
complaining about for centuries. There was now clear and authoritative
teaching about matters of contemporary theological controversy and the
Roman Catholic Church was now in a position to critique the new theol-
ogies which had issued from the Reformation.
In England the Reformation was political rather than theoretical. The
difference between before and after the ‘Reformation’ was defined by the
form of public worship rather than by the struggles between schools of
theological teaching. There was theological debate but members of dif-
fering theological outlooks and schools could all belong to one church.
Sharp and bitter controversy did indeed break out and the struggle
between theological schools was to continue well into the seventeenth
century.
Puritanism was a variety of reformed theology in sharp distinction to
the Church of England. It was usually Calvinist and laid great importance
on a personal experience of salvation and developed intense pastoral
supervision of adherents. It often had connections with political radical-
ism and, following a significant instance of emigration to the New World,
would have a profound influence there.
Continental Protestantism was, in time, seen by many as dry, dull and

theoretical, capable of expressing formal belief statements but unable
to promote vibrant, life-changing faith. The Pietist movement wanted to
relate Christian thought to issues of day-to-day living and to revitalize
the church. Personal conversion, conviction and Bible study were its
methods. We shall meet such concerns in the person of John Wesley.
7 John Wesley and Evangelical Revival
John Wesley was one of the major figures of the great eighteenth century
Evangelical Revival. Many revivals gripped America, Britain and Ireland
during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; there were even one
or two examples in the very early years of the twentieth century. Indeed,
the Revival spirit lives on, the Pentecostal movement is a case in point.
Setting the scene
Before discussing Wesley, it may be useful to get a feeling for a number of

terms, ideas and situations and keep them at the back of our minds.
Evangelical
Evangelical is a general word which means anything to do with the gospel.

It comes from the Greek word ‘euangelion’ which means ‘good news’. It is widely
used with reference to the good news about Jesus Christ, to the four New
Testament texts and the way they tell the story of his earthly life, and moreover,
it refers to the message preached by the Christian Church about Jesus.
It also has a special, restricted and particular meaning, being used to refer
to ‘Scriptural Christianity’. Here Christian faith and witness is fed by almost
exclusive reference to the Bible, without the prop of time-honoured Church
structures, tradition or sacramental worship. Evangelical faith is firmly
Protestant and at least some of its drive has been found in strong feelings
against ‘Popery and Puseyism’ (disparaging terms denoting Roman Catholic
practice and Anglican ritualism).
Evangelicals tend to be orthodox in faith. What is quite distinctive about
evangelical thinking is that, first, it insists on personal conversion, a ‘new
birth’, that each individual should undergo a life-changing religious experi-
ence. Secondly, it emphasizes the Bible as the decisive religious authority,
often insisting on a literal interpretation of the text. Thirdly, all Evangelicals
are activists, energetically sharing the faith. Fourthly, they focus powerfully on
the redeeming work of the Cross.
Revival
Revival and ‘revivalism’ are aspects of the Evangelical outlook where emphasis
is placed on the building up of religious fervour and energy in order to renew
the life of the church community. Revival tends to be promoted at mass
rallies, by forceful preaching, in sustained (often emotional) prayer and in the
lively singing of hymns frequently set to invigorating tunes. Revival seeks to
convince individuals of their sinfulness, to encourage them to seek the
forgiveness of God in conversion and to stimulate them to engage in Christian
witness and service in the world.
The Great Awakening
Finally we should take a look at the eighteenth century Great Awakening in

the American colonies. This too was a revivalist movement. It was a mass
movement and its origins were varied, though mostly native to America.
It brought many thousands of people to a vital, active commitment to Chris-
tianity. It was not the transfer of masses of the population from one faith
system to another; rather it was a radical infusion of energies into a nominally
Christian population. The Great Awakening influences Christian life in
America to this day and strongly influenced John Wesley in his time.
The results of the Great Awakening were sometimes explosive and contro-
versies were bitter. It caused disruption within settled denominational life:
for, while fresh converts were fired with activist zeal, they aroused suspicion
among traditional and conservative members and led to the growth of sects.
On the positive side it led to a huge expansion in active church membership,
particularly among Americans of European origin but less so among African
and Native Americans.
The Great Awakening was thoroughly Protestant in both tone and theology.
It was not, however, confined to any one expression of Protestantism. It
involved Congregationalists, Dutch Reformed and Presbyterians. George
Whitefield, a well-known revivalist preacher in America, was a priest of
the Church of England. It gave great impetus to the spread of Baptists. It
touched all age groups.
Rallies of the Great Awakening often featured extreme varieties of behav-
iour, suggesting forms of possession: people roaring, trembling and falling
down. Wesley’s rallies were no exception, although it is not certain that he
encouraged such symptoms.
John Wesley and Evangelical Revival 123
The Great Awakening laid emphasis on Bible teaching; it bred strongly

independent individuals and promoted non-hierarchical church structures;
these were by and large democratically governed by the membership. The .
movement promoted puritan values and an austere life style. Education

was highly valued. The Great Awakening disapproved strongly of sexual
wrongdoing, profanity, the breaking of one’s word, drunkenness, quarrelling
and gambling. This outlook became the accepted norm of respectable
social behaviour, although it never stamped out the condemned practices.
Occasionally, this tendency expected the Kingdom of God to be realized on
earth and, at the other extreme, saw it as the perfection of the American way
of life.
Keeping these elements of religious culture in mind, we might now

turn to John Wesley.
Life (1703–1791)
John Wesley was the fifteenth child of a north of England clergyman

and his wife Susannah. His father, Rev. Samuel Wesley, was rector of
Epworth in Humberside. When John was 6 years old the rectory barn
caught fire and, since no one noticed, spread to the house. It was only
with great difficulty that little John escaped from the flames.
Wesley was educated at Charterhouse in London and later at Christ
Church, Oxford. He was ordained deacon in the Church of England
in 1725. He had read The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis
(1380–1471) in his early twenties and was attracted by the notion of a
religion of the heart. His early spiritual growth seems to have to have
had three pillars: reading the Bible, reading Holy Living and Holy Dying
by Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) and the search for a true spiritual friend
who would convince him that he was truly a Christian.
He was due to help his father with parish work but did not immediately
return to the north. Rather he visited the parishes of friends; apparently
he was already feeling the urge to preach in many places. He was known
to have an earnest manner and pious habits. He was silly about women
for most of his life, and it is doubtful if he ever matured emotionally in
this regard. He had several infatuations but did not yet marry.
In the early spring of 1726 he was elected to a fellowship at Lincoln

College, Oxford, and took up his duties. However his salary would not be
paid for a year so he had to scrimp and save. He returned to Epworth for
the summer, again to help his father. In order to save money, he walked
the entire journey; it took him a month. At that time it was normal for
college fellows to be in holy orders, and Wesley was ordained priest in
September 1727.
He plunged into college life and his college duties but felt they were
‘worldly’. He was tireless in his own study and reading, drawing up lists
and timetables of subjects to be covered. He gradually became associated
with a group of serious young men and they drew up plans for systematic
fasting, Bible study and prayer. This band of solemn youths were laugh-
ingly referred to in the university as ‘Methodists’; we shall meet the word
again!
At this time he came under the influence of William Law (1686–1761)
and other writers with a mystical tinge. One of the great formative
experiences of his life came when he set out with his brother Charles on
a missionary journey to Georgia, one of the English colonies in America.
During the sea voyage, his ship met a frighteningly violent storm and
Wesley feared for his life. He was impressed by the calm and fortitude of
fellow passengers who belonged to the Moravian Brotherhood and
ashamed of his own fear. Their trust in God was so complete, and so
contrasted with his own, that Wesley feared he was not a Christian.
When he arrived in Georgia the American colonies were experienceing
the Great Awakening and the conversions he witnessed there also left a
lasting impression. His own preaching was not successful as he tended to
be over-fussy in his interpretation of church law. He also preached
strongly against slavery and gin, which did not make him popular with
the colonists. The Georgian experience could be described as a chapter of
misfortunes, growing mostly from Wesley’s inexperience. But he did
learn.
He arrived back home in 1737 and struck up a friendship with Peter
Böhler of the Moravian Brotherhood. Böhler persuaded him to open
himself to ‘saving faith’; consequently Wesley experienced religious
conversion on 24 May 1738, having just read Luther’s Preface to the Epistle
to the Romans. From then on, he decided that his mission would be to
promote vital, practical and saving religion. By and large he was not
welcome in churches of the Church of England, so he took to preaching

in the open air. This was to be his mission for the rest of his life.
His preaching was soon successful and he made many converts.
In order to minister to these converts he set up a body of lay preachers to
be pastors to the newly converted. He also opened preaching houses to
accommodate his missions in the big centres of population. The most
famous was the Foundry at Moorfields in London. Wesley’s chapel still
stands there and contains his eighteenth-century pulpit. He was most
successful in London, Bristol and in the north of England.
Clergymen of the Church of England (and Wesley considered himself
one all his life) exercise their ministry by ‘incumbency’; they are respon-
sible for an area and live within it. Wesley exercised his ministry by
‘itinerancy’: he travelled. He would continue to travel and preach for the
rest of his life. He travelled on horseback, frequently 8,000 miles a year.
This is a stupendous achievement, for the roads were dreadful. He had a
special desk made to fit in front of him on the horse, so that he could read
and write while travelling. He was often greeted with enthusiasm; some
complained of the noisy hymn singing; there were occasional riots.
The Church of England was particularly suspicious of Wesley’s preach-
ing. Sober churchmen condemned his ‘enthusiasm’. Others feared they
were seeing another outbreak of the Puritanism that had so troubled
England during Cromwell’s time, less than a hundred years previously.
In 1749 or 1750 Wesley met Mary Vazeille, the widow of a London
merchant. She had been a recent convert and had come seeking spiritual
advice from him. Wesley never had much luck in his dealings with women
and this relationship was no exception. The association became more
personal and they married in February 1751.
He refused to lighten the load of his itinerancy and Mary did not like
travel, although she appears to have accompanied him for the first three
or four years of their marriage. However Wesley’s habit was to set out
at about four in the morning, ride till noon, change horses and continue
riding until midnight. The only reason he stopped was to preach sermons
on the way. His wife came to resent his frequent absences and the
relationship deteriorated.
In 1744 Wesley organized the first conference for Methodist lay
preachers. In time this became an annual event. These lay preachers were
beginning to form a ‘parallel’ ministry with the clergy of the Church of
England, but they did not work in co-operation. Wesley drew up a

constitution for the conference in 1784. There were continuous pressures
on Wesley from now on to ordain his own clergy, but he doggedly resisted
them. He never wished to enter into schism with the Church of
England.
His field of missionary work gradually extended to Ireland, where he
was moderately successful, and to Scotland, where he was less so. The
American mission field was also productive and it was there that
the break from the established church was most keenly felt. Wesley liked
the Book of Common Prayer, and he preferred it to the extempore prayer
of the Dissenters; he would have preferred it to be the service book for all,
but did allow some changes to be made in it for American Methodists.
America was now independent, and American Methodists were not
inclined to accept direction from England. Finally, in 1784, he appointed
two men, Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury, to act as superintendents in
America. This was practically the same as ordaining them bishops, and
the break with the Church of England was now a reality.
Wesley worked at a time when England was undergoing rapid change.
The new spirit of scientific enquiry had caused a new ‘industrial’ revolu-
tion; the same spirit was revolutionizing agriculture and the methods of
land holding were changing. As the village commons were gradually
fenced in, landless country folk could no longer grow their own food, and
machinery was reducing labour on farms. Canal and railroad building
was creating a wandering population of labourers; the factories were
demanding a steady supply of workers.
These trends were creating vast upheavals in the population, and the
traditional parish system of the Church of England could not minister to
the vastly different way the population was now structured. What is more,
it did not want to adjust to meet changed needs. Many of the people to
whom Wesley preached had no church background and felt no loyalty to
the established Church. This, coupled with the fact that Wesley was usu-
ally excluded from Church of England pulpits, and the fact that a new
organization was necessary if Wesley’s work was to continue, made the
break with the Church of England inevitable.
Wesley himself sat strangely between two extremes. He was, after all, a
traditionally trained, logical scholar and fellow of his college. Neverthe-
less he came to accept that religious conviction must be accompanied by
emotional involvement. His management of his organization was quite

autocratic, yet he appears to have tempered conviction with discipline,
individualism with community responsibility and personal inspiration
with sound organization and leadership. He was able both to take
initiatives and to rein in the exuberance of followers who wanted to go
too quickly.
Wesley was a brave, stubborn and persistent man. He appears to
have had a magnetic personality and much of what he earned from
his writings was put aside for charitable work. He founded a new
religious movement, which, by its promotion of hard work and the
values of sobriety, austerity and honesty, profoundly influenced the tone
of Victorian England. Wesley is considered by some to be one of the
architects of modern Britain. That, however, is to display a very parochial
view of the situation; the area of his influence extended far beyond
Britain. He died in 1791.
Timeline
1703 Birth of John Wesley

1707 Halley studies the movement of comets
1709 The Wesley family narrowly escapes death when the rectory caught fire
1712 St Petersburg becomes capital of Russia
1715 John Wesley enters Charterhouse
1719 Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe
1720 John Wesley elected exhibitioner and enters Christ Church, Oxford
1725 John Wesley ordained deacon
1726 John Wesley elected Fellow of Lincoln College
Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels
1727 John Wesley ordained priest
1729 Wesley joins the Holy Club or ‘Methodists’
1735 Wesley sails for Georgia to act as chaplain in the colony
1736 John Harrison’s marine clock
1738 Wesley returns to England
John Wesley’s conversion
1739 John Wesley takes up field preaching; his itinerancy has begun
1740 David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature
1744 Wesley organizes his first conference for Methodist Lay Preachers
1751–1772 Publication of the Encyclopaedia in France

1751 Wesley’s marriage to Mary Vazeille
1762 Rousseau’s Emile and Social Contract
1781 Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
1784 Wesley appoints two ‘Superintendents’ in America; break with the
Church of England
1789 Beginning of the French Revolution
1791 Death of John Wesley
Thought
Like other breakers of the theological mould, Wesley was not a systematic
thinker. His writings were for the instruction and strengthening of
the converted. His greatest work, one which is given almost canonical
status within Methodism, was his sermons. Editions of his works, includ-
ing Journals, Diaries, Letters and Sermons run to over thirty volumes.
His theology reaches us through sermons, hymns, pamphlets, letters
and journals.
Wesley did not invent a new creed which he then peddled to the inno-
cent. He was nothing like twentieth century promoters of new sects. He
did not set out to reform some perceived error. He wanted to make the
Christian gospel a deeply felt reality in the hearts and minds of every
individual, and he wanted to do this with special concern for the ordi-
nary people of the land.
Wesleyan foundations
ARMINIANISM
Jakob Arminius (1560–1609) reacted against the teaching that Christ
died just for a certain number of pre-chosen individuals. Arminius
held that God had decided to elect from fallen humanity all those
who believed in Jesus Christ and continued to obey his commandments.
Jesus the Saviour of the world died for all, and salvation, pardon and
reconciliation are offered to every individual, even though only the faith-
ful will enjoy them. Here the notion of predestination is maintained,
but it does not deliberately exclude anybody. God has predetermined

that a group will be saved. By believing, individual sinners freely opt in
to that predestined group. This view, known as Arminianism, is regula-
rly criticized by Calvinists. Wesley was Arminian in his teaching on
salvation.
Efforts have been made to distinguish a ‘Wesleyan quadrilateral’ for the
sources of his doctrine:
z The Scripture guided by the Holy Spirit

z His personal religious experience
z Reasonableness
z Tradition (as he received it through the Church of England).
Later Methodists have summarized the content of Wesley’s teaching as

the ‘four alls’. This outline dates from 1903:
z All need to be saved.

z All can be saved.
z All can know they are saved.
z All can be saved to the uttermost.
Wesley insisted on an active search for holiness. He accepted the

Biblical analysis that all people are sinners and fall short of the standards
expected by God. His own sense of his sinfulness gave sharpness to his
theology. He wanted to be holy and to have a living relationship with
God. He tried continually to lead a life of organized piety, but this
routine of religious study, meditation and prayer failed to satisfy him.
He felt constantly separated from God and insisted that it was the
common lot.
Wesley believed that individuals could not guarantee their own salva-
tion; so salvation must be a gift from God. But every gift has to be
appreciated and cared for; otherwise it will get broken and become use-
less. God’s gift of salvation must be accepted and responded to. Wesley
felt that each individual was free to accept this gift; it was not forced on
any person. This ‘Arminian’ outlook was to place him in prickly disagree-
ment with the Calvinists. For Wesley everybody can be saved because
God has made that salvation possible.
If people have been saved by God, then their relationship with God is a
close and comfortable one and not one governed by conflict. They now
have new life and possess new power. They are certain of this because of
the assurance of the Holy Spirit of God working in them. God’s Spirit
speaks to them directly in their hearts. Wesley referred to this as ‘inward
consciousness’ which leads to Christ-like attitudes and behaviour. These
are obvious and observable in the lives of all saved believers.
Wesley believed that individuals can be saved to the uttermost: can
experience Christian perfection within their own lives. He stressed this as
part of his conviction that there can be no limit to the grace of God. This
must inevitably result in a change of lifestyle and that change must
involve loving both God and neighbour. Conversion brings about renewal
of inner being in the image of God; one is cleansed from all stain of sin,
both of body and of soul, and one seeks to live as Christ lived. Converts
devote their whole being to God; they submit to whatever design God has
for their lives.
Works of Piety and Works of Mercy
Wesley upheld the traditional Christian teaching that Jesus Christ is the
means by which God’s grace is made available to sinful humans. Never-
theless it was important for individuals to engage in spiritual disciplines
backed up with good works. Wesley believed that all Christians should
practise the Works of Piety and the Works of Mercy.
The Works of Piety included such things as Bible reading, prayer,
regular attendance at Holy Communion, fasting, having a concern for
Christian community and living a healthy lifestyle.
For Wesley, prayer was an essential part of Christian living, and
Methodists were to pray without ceasing. All their lives were to be times
in which they spoke to God or thought about God, suffered for God or
acted for God. These continual acts of prayer were to be performed at
work, at mealtimes, even when preparing for sleep. This involved a life of
Christian simplicity.
Wesley was a passionate reader of the Bible and encouraged it in others.
But such reading of the Bible also involved seeking to know for oneself
what the message of Scripture was and acting upon it. It was attentiveness
to ‘word of God’. He was also an advocate of regular fasting, usually on
Wednesdays and Fridays. This was in order to advance holiness.
The Works of Mercy included visiting the sick and those in prison,
providing food and clothing for the poor, earning one’s living, saving as
much as one could and giving away everything one did not need for one-
self. Medicine was a feature of his missions. Wesley was also a fundamental
opponent of slavery and forbade Methodists to own any. Personal holi-
ness could not be promoted without social holiness.
Grace
Wesley taught that God offers to us three kinds of grace. They are preven-
ient grace, justifying grace and sanctifying grace.
Prevenient grace means ‘grace that comes before’. It is grace that
prepares us for our encounter with Jesus Christ. This prevenient grace
has accompanied us at every moment of our lives. All the gifts and accom-
plishments we have are the fruits of God’s prevenient grace. This means
that Wesley did not accept a Calvinist view of total depravity by which the
imperfections of human nature prevent us from contact with God.
Justifying grace was the experience of conversion, of being ‘born again’.
It is through justifying grace that we come to experience a totally new life
in Jesus Christ and to know that God has given us salvation. We are how-
ever, according to Wesley’s teaching about Free Will, capable of accepting
or of refusing this gift of justifying grace. The grace of God is ‘free in all’
it does not depend on any capacity or merit in any individual. The grace
of God is given; it is ‘free for all’.
But once believers have accepted the free grace of God in conversion,
they can then progress in a relationship with God, and God will keep and
support them in that relationship. This is sanctifying grace. Wesley
believed it was possible to fall from grace. One could not sit still and do
nothing. Conversion must issue into holiness of life, which itself is part of
the continuing quest for Christian perfection. One has to be pro-active in
sustaining the relationship, but God’s grace will be there to support and
encourage.
These three elements of prevenient grace, assurance of salvation and

Christian perfection are very distinctive features of Wesley’s theology.
Christian perfection
Wesley believed that individuals play a part in the quest for salvation
but not in the sense that they earn their salvation. He did not subscribe to
the Pelagian heresy. Individuals are free to accept God’s offer of salvation.
That offer is part of the grace of God freely given, but it is also freely
received, not forced or imposed.
More controversially, Wesley taught a doctrine of Christian perfection.
He did not intend to boast that certain people had acquired sinless per-
fection on earth. Rather he thought that once a person has made perfect
surrender to God, wilful sin can be stamped out.
On this point he entered into controversy with the Moravians, who
taught a form of quietism or passive illumination. Wesley promoted an
active spirituality. Works of charity were a crucial ingredient of holiness.
In controversy with the Calvinists he rejected predestination, limited
atonement, the perseverance of the elect and the reprobation of sinners.
He could not picture a God who had decided everything in advance, leav-
ing no room for human response or responsibility.
Nevertheless in all his teaching Wesley laid great emphasis on grace,
equally stressing how dependent human beings are upon it.
Pelagianism The heresy that human beings can, by their own efforts, and
without divine grace, ensure their salvation.
Quietism The suspect notion that human beings must reach a state of total
passivity and annihilation of the will; they must abandon themselves to God
in order to achieve salvation.
Jesus Christ.
Perseverance of the elect The steady continuance in faithful belief and action
following conversion. Some versions of the teaching hold that God will not
allow the converted Christian to fall away from salvation.
Reprobation of sinners God’s action of condemning sinners to eternal

punishment.
The Eucharist
Wesley saw the Eucharist as a memorial of the sufferings and death of

Jesus on the cross. But it was more than just a memorial. It had a vital,
life-giving aspect. It was a calling to mind of everything that the sacrifice
of Calvary can mean. It recalls all this before the human race but it also
recalls it before God. It is therefore a pleading before God of that benefi-
cial sacrifice and a prayer for its effects and benefits to be effective in the
lives of those who pray.
The Eucharist is a means of grace; it is a communion with the risen
Christ at a particular moment in a believer’s life: now! It is also a sign of
grace, an assurance that Christ has not left his people comfortless.
The Eucharist is promise and memorial of Christ, response of the
believing heart and active co-operation with the continuing work of the
Holy Spirit. Christ is present; the Eucharist stirs up faith and arouses
response to God.
The Eucharist is a preview of heaven, a promise of what is to come.
It anticipates by faith the great rejoicing when Christ and all his disciples
are finally one, when all sorrow, toil and difficulty are abolished and hap-
piness is complete.
The Eucharist is not a sacrifice; there is only one effectual sacrifice – that
of Christ at Calvary. But Holy Communion suggests sacrifice. It does so by
recalling the sacrifice of Jesus; but it also suggests sacrifice in the yielding
response we are asked for: the sacrifice believers offer in return to God.
Wesley thought of the sacrament as a ‘converting ordinance’, a sign of
how Christ offers himself for fallen humanity and how believers must
turn to God in self-offering.
Folk theology: the religion of the heart
Wesley was not a systematic thinker; nor did he set out to write theology.
Professional theologians, indeed, have often scoffed at his theological
ability as well as highlighting his tendency to lift ideas from many quar-
ters. One critic decried his work as ‘simply condensation’. In so far as a
theological system underpinned his thoughts he was Arminian and an
opponent of Calvinism. On this point he differed strongly with his con-
temporary George Whitefield (1714–1770), although their friendship
held firm.
In Wesley’s day there was strong opposition to forms of religious
expression that valued strong feeling. Such an attitude was referred to as
‘Enthusiasm’, often a term of contempt. Wesley valued religious ‘experi-
ence’ highly. His followers all valued religious experience and evangelical
witness. People witnessed, preached, persuaded and pleaded on the basis
of their own experience and feelings and not on the basis of religious,
metaphysical or theological systems. Self-fulfilment as experienced by
individuals for themselves was sought and valued.
But it was not the self-fulfilment of ‘anything goes’ as the thrill seekers
of postmodern disintegration and licence might envisage it. Wesley gave
very clear priority to Scripture and had a feeling for tradition as he had
received it through the Church of England. He called his followers to
disciplined, healthy living and a loving concern for others.
Another element of Wesley’s teaching was his notion of perfectibility,
being ‘saved to the uttermost’. This notion has attracted criticism as it
raises fears of spiritual pride and complacency. This danger is particu-
larly strong when faced with those who may not have reached the same
stage on the journey.
Wesley was and must always be seen as a folk theologian, seeking to
express plain truths for plain people. His theology, such as it was, was
forged literally ‘on the hoof ’, as he travelled on horseback from place to
place, with his specially designed writing desk fitted in front of him on
the saddle. With this he read, thought and wrote his letters and his pam-
phlets, working out his responses to the controversies which confronted
him. ‘He was not,’ said Ronald Knox, somewhat smugly, ‘a good adver-
tisement for reading on horseback.’
Wesley’s theology was best taught, indeed caught, in the hymns
written by his brother Charles, one of the great hymn writers of the
English language. Charles Wesley (1707–1788) is said to have written over
9,000 hymns, although not all are of first rate quality. Among the best
known are ‘O for a thousand tongues to sing’, ‘Hark, the Herald-angels
sing!’ and ‘Love divine, all loves excelling’. It is not unusual, to this day, to
consult Charles’ hymns if one wants to learn aspects of Wesleyan doc-
trine. The core of that teaching is found in the Collection of Hymns for the
Use of the People called Methodists, first published in 1780.
Wesley’s anthropology
How did Wesley view the human race? Wesley lived at the time of the
Enlightenment, though he was not a supporter. Nevertheless he was
known to be acquainted with early empiricism (Locke), psychology and
experimental methodology. He was a promoter of religious toleration,
supported the abolition of slavery and was concerned for public health.
The Enlightenment saw human beings as essentially good; they could
be made better by the sustained use of reason and provided they aban-
doned all superstition, including religion. This was very much the view of
the French Enlightenment, although English Enlightenment figures, par-
ticularly the Deists, were open to some expressions of religion, provided
they were carefully and rationally controlled.
The Calvinists saw the human race as essentially fallen. Calvinist theo-
logians were conscious of evil in the world and in the individual. They
believed that, by their own efforts, human beings could not overcome
such tendencies. Only God could do this for them. They were also gloomy
about human efforts to remain on a path of virtue and they considered
that only God could keep them holy, hence God chose some to be predes-
tined to virtue; the rest would be lost.
Wesley was conscious of evil and hopeful about grace. The world was
fallen, yet God could heal a human heart. Holiness and the transforma-
tion of society were both possible. Human beings were not predestined
puppets without choice. Wesley saw the human heart as free and capable
of responding to God’s offer of love. Nevertheless he did not preach a
religion of the unaided effort of the will. God’s grace was an ever-present
resource.
Wesley’s view of the human being might be summed up as follows:
z The human heart is sinful, but can be justified by faith

z A new birth is possible by responding to God’s call in Jesus Christ
z The Holy Spirit is a constant witness and protection to help believers

on their pilgrimage
z Human beings are dependent on grace but still free: perfect love is a
gift from God and can be demonstrated in human lives.
Wesley never abandoned the quest for perfection.

Before his conversion, Wesley had professed ‘the faith of a servant’,
where believers do all in their power for God. Following his conversion
he professed the ‘faith of a son’, where believers thank and praise God for
all God has done for them.
Political and social consequences
Wesley’s ‘itinerancy’, his campaign of revival preaching to large numbers

of the unchurched and displaced, had profound social consequence. All
over England, but particularly in the north and in the rapidly growing
cities, it created a large population of sober, hard working, reliable peo-
ple. Some historians have even claimed that it saved England from
revolution.
Wesleyanism was widely seen as a religion for the poor. It was a very
lively religious organization which eventually operated outside the
boundaries of the Established Church and outside the corridors of power.
It gave emotional outlet in hymn singing, yet tended to organize people
in small groups.
When, in the early twentieth century, the working classes began to
organize themselves politically, the Methodist Church was undoubtedly
an organization which provided a common culture for political allies.
The Labour Party, it was said, owed more to Methodism than to Marx. In
many ways, Methodism defined the robust, no nonsense, down-to-earth,
North of England Non-Conformist.
It is probably dangerously easy to overestimate the numbers of drunk-
ards and feckless individuals converted in Wesleyan rallies. But the
movement did contribute to a stable population of ‘little people’, shop-
keepers, artisans, farmers and factory workers who settled for simple
comforts and thrift. They were advised to make all the money they could,
save all they could and give away as much as they could to good causes.
However, as Methodism established itself, it tended to become socially

conservative. On the whole, Wesleyans supported the magistrates against
the radicals during the ‘Peterloo’ massacre of 1819. Some suggest that
because of Methodism, England acquired a working class that was
in large part compliant with government policy, narrow-minded and
repressed. On the other hand, many individuals were taught the workings
of democracy through church business meetings and learned the ele-
ments of political rhetoric as they sat beneath the pulpit.
Women played a wide role in early Methodism. In Wesley’s lifetime
there were probably more women than men acting as visitors, evange-
lists, leaders of classes and prayer groups. By the late eighteenth century
there were large numbers of women preachers. However, as respectability
grew, the role of women, regrettably, became less conspicuous. This prob-
ably came about because of notions about social correctness and feminine
reserve, together with strict adherence to the Apostle Paul’s injunction
that women should remain silent in church.
Appraisal
Wesley found his authority in the Scriptures, which was the most impor-
tant record of the continuing redemptive work of God in the world,
accomplished through the ministry of Jesus Christ.
Wesley valued the tradition of the Church, particularly as he had found
it in the Church of England, which, in fact, he claimed he had never left.
However he abandoned the divine right of episcopacy and denied the
apostolic succession.
He initiated and supported a ministry of evangelism to every human
being of every social status and condition. The Gospel was to be
proclaimed to all and had only to be accepted through faith.
He demanded that holiness be a visible result of conversion. The Gospel
made an offer to all, but it also made a claim on every individual.
He never toned down his quest for Christian perfection.
He encouraged social concern and social action, being concerned for
physical conditions and individual health and wellbeing.
He proclaimed the Lord’ Supper as a sacramental sign of the fellowship
of believers.
Like all before him in the Reformation tradition he was orthodox with
regard to the doctrines of God. He laid Protestant stress on the doctrines
of salvation and on how individuals can come to it.
Might any emphasis on conversion as a normative, once-for-all,
precise and definable moment be a weakness in a theological system?
Why might this be?
8 The Contexts of Modern Theology
Christianity makes much of the ‘faith once for all entrusted to the saints’
(Jude 3) or ‘Jesus Christ . . . the same yesterday and today and for ever’
(Heb. 13.8). Popular opinion sees it wallowing contentedly in a message
and a mindset that has never changed since 33 CE. However, if we look at
things a little more closely, we can see that this is an illusion, that the
priorities of Christians of different ages have been quite varied and that
the understanding of basic concepts like salvation or ministry or sacra-
ments has also subtly altered.
Christianity has never simply stated a bald fact; Christians have always
been obliged to offer a message adapted to the world in which they found
themselves: Christians in all their incalculable diversity, addressing set-
tings of wonderful variety. Consequently Christian ideas have had to be
presented in ways that were marked by the particular flavour of the times
and by the particular concerns within those different settings. In this
process Christianity has opposed many contemporary ideas but has also
taken on a colouring from the world in which it proclaimed its message.
In this chapter we are going to take a look at some of the ideas that have
shaped the contemporary world and so try to get a sense of the many
settings in which the Christian faith has been called upon to give an
account of itself and which have, of course, influenced how that account
was expressed.
The Scientific Revolution
The sixteen centuries before Newton all have an air that is unrecognizable
and can just about be understood by modern individuals. The cultural
foundation of every one of those centuries was theological. God was an
undisputed given, a force that was always present to be reckoned with.
It is likely that, in terms of deeply felt theological feeling, the sixteenth
century, the century of the Reformation in Western Europe, was the most
theological of all. It was certainly so in its negative, and violent, results.
I wish to outline in brief the work of three thinkers and to hint at how
they changed the geography of the human imagination. They did not
solve all scientific problems. Inventors and thinkers continue to do
important work.
After Newton (1642–1727) a theological account of the world was no
longer necessary. Such an account did not immediately drop out of sight,
but it has gradually faded from human concerns. Newton demonstrated
a system by which the universe continued to function, following mathe-
matical principles and laws, and we can understand it without any
reference to the idea of God.
The scientific outlook combines two stages of action. The first, the
stage of analysis, is when the scientist collects, little by little, observable
facts. The second part of the process, the stage of synthesis, is when that
same scientist makes a daring guess at what might be the laws governing
the way those facts pull together. That hypothesis is then tested against
observable fact.
Building on those who had gone before him, Newton’s triumph was
to state the three laws of motion which explained the motions of the
planets, the orbits of heavenly bodies, the tides and all movement. Before
Newton it was assumed that a lifeless body would quickly become still if
the influence of soul on matter ceased. It was now suggested that lifeless
matter would keep moving for ever if an outside material cause did not
stop it. God was no longer necessary to keep things working. All could be
explained using mathematical principles.
The second thinker is Sir Charles Lyell (1797–1875) who published his
Principles of Geology between 1830 and 1833. Earlier geologists thought
that our planet was only about 6,000 years old, and had suffered cata-
strophic geological transformations on a scale unknown today. There had
been many of them, and they had taken place over a comparatively short
period of time. On each occasion the flora and fauna had been destroyed,
and the world had then been repopulated by a fresh creative act.
Lyell’s work suggested that the Earth was, in fact, thousands of millions
of years old. The landscapes which we take for granted, mountain and
plain, had not been created as we see them today, but were in fact the
result of geological transformations which had gone on for thousands of
centuries. The natural forces controlling these changes had remained
constant and are still operating today.
Contexts of Modern Theology 141
Archbishop Ussher (1581–1656) had famously declared that the

creation, as described in Genesis, had occurred in 4004 BC. Lyell upset
this worldview. The suspicion that science contradicted the Bible, and
that science was therefore hostile to religion, was beginning to grow.
This suspicion burst into raging controversy with the publication of
Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859. Human beings had been around
for much longer than 6,000 years. Human beings were not created, but
had gradually developed, as had all life on earth, from earlier forms. Two
laws governed the change: first, all life forms adapt to the situation in
which they find themselves and, secondly, only the fittest survive. So when
a species adapts itself in order to supply all its needs more efficiently, it
then has a greater chance of surviving. All life is the story of that gradual
change over millions of years, a slow change that still continues. Here
Darwin (1809–1882) offered a view of human history that passionately
upset every person of delicate feeling.
These changes shocked, even enraged the sensibilities of the nineteenth
century. That probably explains why the ideas were so fiercely resisted
rather that calmly evaluated. The world and human history now stret-
ched back so far that it is difficult to get one’s head around it. They
overturned the assumptions that European history, supremacy and
standards were central to the development of human civilization. There
was nothing lasting or secure about Western civilization’s eminence or
values. Could human beings be seen, from now on, as possessing any
special relationship with God? Can one say any longer that there is a
God-breathed spirit within each human person? The modern outlook
was to be more individualistic, more sceptical and increasingly secular.
The Enlightenment
The term ‘Enlightenment’ is frequently applied to the intellectual

temper of the eighteenth century. This mindset grew out of the Scientific
Revolution of the seventeenth century. Thinkers increasingly felt that
everything could be explained by reason and were unwilling to entertain
old forms of thought or old forms of authority. Kings had claimed to
rule by divine right. However by the eighteenth century this was increas-
ingly contested.
In addition there was increasing conflict between thinkers of this out-

look and the Christian Church. Dogma was distrusted; clerical authority
was mocked. The church was inevitably seen as a selfish power structure.
It was not seen as performing any vital or necessary pastoral function.
There were several important intellectual developments here. One was
the conviction that a population is capable of developing reasonable laws
if it is given the freedom to do so. Note the insistence that laws can be
reasonable. When they are reasonable, it was assumed they command
respect and assent by that very fact.
Secondly, there was an assumption that what the mass of the people
think, feel and desire is more important that what the king thinks, feels
and desires. So people’s mental outlooks started to move in a democratic
direction. Aristocratic, authoritarian mindsets were being left behind.
Thirdly, there was a growing belief that by limiting the power of
government, by providing checks and balances on the way power oper-
ated, personal freedom, economic growth and religious toleration could
all be promoted, with a proportional increase in the happiness of popula-
tions. The success of the newly independent United States of America
was a forceful argument here.
The Enlightenment did not, of course, promote a definite and agreed
philosophical programme. There was widespread debate and fierce disa-
greement; religious and political intolerance were still found everywhere.
Views ranged from constructive criticism of both religious and political
power to total atheism and degenerate lifestyles.
Empiricism
Empiricism is the conviction that all knowledge comes from experience:

I know it is raining because I look out the window and see the rain.
Here sense experience is the starting point for knowledge. The senses
(touch, taste, hearing, smell and sight) give us our basic knowledge about
the world. They are the raw material which we process as we gather
knowledge. The empirical outlook insists that we test all our conclusions
to see if they are correct. But empiricism also insists that we can be
mistaken and that new evidence may arise which forces us to correct
and re-evaluate what we had believed before. Chief amongst those who
thought in this way were John Locke (1632–1704) and David Hume
(1711–1776).
However many thinkers have disputed that we are capable of getting
all our knowledge from sense experience alone. We do make logical
connections between ideas. They are just that: logical connections. Can
we observe logical connections or do we reason towards them? If we use
both raw facts and logical connections, then we use more than sense
experience.
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was interested in what our experience can

tell us about what lies beyond physical reality. Hume had really distrusted
the mind’s abilities, but Kant could not accept that degree of mistrust.
Our senses do, in fact, tell us a lot about how reality appears to us. Reality
points beyond experience to a unity of how the world seems, its appear-
ance, (what Kant called phenomena) and how the world is in itself (what
he called noumena).
Kant held that the mind organizes objects and experience by a series of
inbuilt concepts, which are part of the structure of our minds. He called
these the categories of understanding. They act as a built-in operating
system already installed within our minds and without them we could
not organize sense-data or realize we were having experiences.
But Kant went further. He also claimed that there are categories of
moral thought, which involved reasoning about what we ought to do.
Kant called these imperatives.
They are obligations which are valid for everybody. In particular he
stated what he called the categorical imperative, which is a universal moral
law. We know that any given action is correct if we can say that such an
action would be right for everybody.
This categorical imperative is an a priori concept. That is to say, we
know it comes into play before experience does; we know it because of
the structure of our mind and it is an objective moral duty.
Kant makes all morality quite independent of God. His notion of duty
has force whether one believes in God or not, and the notion of God is
not invoked to justify it.
Romanticism
The Romantic Movement may be characterized as a way of feeling.

Rousseau (1712–1778) was a founding figure and its fundamental notion
centres round the French word la sensibilité, which means being sensitive.
Romantics were prone to strong emotions, which they thought were of
greater value than any sort of well thought out plan. Feelings had to be
strong to have value.
Nature was prized above civilization, the lonely being above the clubb-
able individual; the savage was noble and society was corrupt. The dark
and brooding poet was the ideal person, the wild forest or the thundering
ocean the superlative setting; living as a poor peasant was the perfect
situation to be in. But did any Romantic ever end up life as a peasant?
Obviously it was another movement of revolt – against the social order,
against the mass organization of the industrial revolution, against the
transformation of the huge industrial cities and the debasement of their
slums. It did not, however, provide a basis on which to reform society,
since society was corrupt. Feeling was more important than reason,
therefore any reform programme (a product of reason) was bound to be
suspect. The individual acting alone was more important than cohesive
political or moral action.
The Romantic Movement had its most important and enduring effect
in the appreciation of landscape, the desire to preserve the wilderness
and the protection of wildlife. In the field of education, following
Rousseau’s Emile, children were perceived as possessing their own indi-
viduality and their own needs and requiring the freedom to develop in
accordance with their own nature: play was in fact a learning activity. In
theological terms, the Romantic influence gave thrust to the demand for
strong and sincere feeling in religious practice; there was a new stress on
individual action, conversion and responsibility.
Liberalism
Liberalism is the political and intellectual opinion that individuals

should be free to make all important personal decisions, particularly
involving political and religious belief. It stands for the freedom of
individual conscience. Its theoretical underpinning comes from the

work of Locke (1632–1704) and Montesquieu (1689–1755).
Their theories of the liberal state proposed that government should
be shared between three ‘powers’: the legislative power to make laws; the
executive power to carry out the day-to-day running of government
and the judicial power to deliver judgement when disputes arise. These
powers are all constrained by each other as each power acts as a watchdog
against the excessive rule of the other two, thus providing checks and
balances for each one.
Liberalism was originally intended to act as a check against the abso-
lute power of kings; it later came to mean the defence of individual rights
against the powers of the State. In economic terms it originally meant
free enterprise: the State should not use its power to interfere with the
free play between business competitors. In some areas it has sometimes
come to mean the duty of the State to manage the economy and to
improve the position of all minorities which may suffer discrimination.
Where liberalism suggests the notion that ‘you can’t buck the market’,
economic effectiveness and the successful creation of wealth have become
determining standards for moral choices. In others it has led to the notion
that what is good for an individual always takes precedence over what
might be good for a social grouping.
Marx
Marx accepted Hegel’s view that all change takes place by means of a
constant process where an idea (thesis) is produced, an idea develops in
opposition to it (antithesis) and the conflict between the two is resolved
by a synthesis including both thesis and antithesis. Marx believed that
this dialectical process was an unchangeable process of history involving
economic factors. Modern capitalism was born out of a continuous
interplay of economic opposites, involving struggles over who controls
the means of creating wealth.
This notion of opposites reveals itself in differing classes, particularly
those who control the means of production and those who work to create
the wealth for them. The organization of classes and the mindsets that
spring from those economic roles create what Marx called the class
system. Each of us belongs to an economic class and is blinkered by

the outlook typical of that class; so our ideological outlook is ultimately
controlled by the role we play in the means of production.
Technological advances increased wealth for those owning the means
of production, but inevitably the conditions of the working class wors-
ened. Marx’s solution was to impose, through revolution, a classless
society where the proletariat, those who created the wealth, would also
own the means of production. Indeed he saw this as an inevitable part of
the capital – labour clash: the working out of the economic dialectic in
history.
Ordinary workers have no capital and are therefore forced to sell
their labour as a commodity. In a way, according to Marx, when they
do this, they sell themselves. In this process the workers never get the
full value for the wealth their efforts have created. Capitalists, on the
other hand, seek to get the highest possible amount of money for their
investment. This is a source of conflict between capital and labour which
can only be resolved through revolution and the dictatorship of the
proletariat.
Marx also held that industrial and technological innovation was always
going to be so rapid that it would outstrip the speed at which methods
for controlling them were devised. So in the modern industrial world,
human beings are cut off from true, creative fellowship with others and
suffer from self-alienation; they become isolated, insecure and fearful in
the world which they inhabit. Things are given value; little value is placed
on the people who create them.
Marx’s thought is classified as dialectical materialism and materialism
holds that all thought and values arise from material sources. Marx’s
thought also stresses ethical obligation; though it is difficult to see how
notions of obligation and duty can arise from a purely materialistic dis-
course. Materialism evidently involves a rejection of all ‘spiritual’ concepts
and, thus, a rejection of God.
In addition Marx saw the Church as the tool of the ruling class and
therefore as an agent of capitalism. The wide acceptance of this view-
point has contributed to the de-Christianization of the working class
populations of Europe.
With regard to capitalism itself, there is no doubt that many of Marx’s
criticisms were taken on board, and capitalist systems showed enough
flexibility to adapt and improve the economic conditions of many

working-class populations.
The fall of communism in the late 1980s was, however, seen as a
vindication of capitalism and as a permanent indictment of Marxism.
Yet, since that fall, and the subsequent exaltation of the free market, many
of the tendencies Marx criticized, appear once again to be on the rise.
Increasingly one finds that the Welfare State is under-funded; the
provisions made for health, social welfare and pensions are considered to
impede economic progress and economic effectiveness is seen as the only
thing justifying action. Possessions and the creation of wealth are again
more highly regarded than the people who operate the economy.
Trends are not yet clear, but will capitalism return to something like the
value system it paraded when Marx first penned his critique of it? Obvi-
ously much has changed; heavy industry no longer creates the mass of
wealth, but other agents of the capitalistic system do. Will a new Marx be
needed to evaluate the new Capitalism? And what is the role of Christian
Theology as a critique of contemporary society?
Freud
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was a young Viennese doctor who set out
to treat nervous ailments. He experimented with hypnosis and found it
produced some striking results. He concluded that mental processes
are essentially unconscious and that sexual impulses play a large and
unappreciated role in causing nervous and mental disorder. Freud used
his study of patients’ dreams to further develop his ‘sexual hypothesis’.
He considered that the unconscious is revealed in everyday life, in slips
of the tongue, in mishearing and failing to remember correctly. He is
credited with inventing psychoanalysis which he considered to be an
exacting and universal application of the principles of determinism to
mental life. He also considered that psychoanalysis can reveal much about
the process of artistic and literary creation and that sexual impulses have
made a huge contribution to all spheres of cultural, artistic and social
endeavour.
Christian puritanism had largely ignored sex. It was obviously
necessary for the survival of the human species. But, in personal terms,
it was an unfortunate necessity for men, which women had to tolerate,

but not to enjoy. Freud’s thought was regarded with deep suspicion in
Christian circles. It was considered to be ‘filthy’ and degenerate, insisting
on discussing an aspect of human behaviour which had to do with human
sinfulness rather than the Christian’s redeemed state.
A new attitude to human erotic feeling was emerging. People were
becoming more open and more understanding about sex. Christian
puritanism and repressiveness in matters of sexual practice were being
rejected. Maintaining traditional religious attitudes in this field was
increasingly seen as unhealthy and limiting.
So, by delving into the darker recesses of the mind, Freud demonstrated
the importance of dreams, fantasy and psychopathological signs. He
showed sex to be at the heart of neurosis, stressed the importance of
childhood experiences, showed how mythology and symbolism were
relevant to living and revealed many of the mind’s dynamics.
Yet even as he brought the mind under rational investigation, he
demonstrated that beneath the rational veil there is, in our being, a vast
reservoir of non-rational forces. In this way Freud’s thought undermined
the image of the human being as the pinnacle of creation, a view which
the Enlightenment had inherited from medieval Christianity. But he also
undermined the notion that we are purely rational beings.
Feminism
The central belief of feminism is that, throughout history, women have

been discriminated against.
Feminism has many different forms of expression and different
feminists emphasize a wide variety of concerns. There are various
theoretical forms of feminism, concentrating on abstract issues and the
timeless truths about reality. Social forms of feminism concentrate on
seeking to have all women treated equally with men in society. There are
important political agendas labelled feminist.
Feminist ideas came to greater prominence in the 1960s and 1970s.
At this time there were more women in the workforce, more women in
secondary and third-level education, and greater access for all to the mass
media. It was a time when old restraints and cultural assumptions were
being cast off and when there was greater availability of inexpensive
methods of birth control.
Why are we the way we are? Is it because we are biologically pro-
grammed? Or is it the result of a long conditioning by powerful social
influences? Are women the way they are because of biological factors or
have they been conditioned by a powerful male establishment which is
both social and political?
Some say that the difference between men and women is not innate,
but is constructed; others say that the experience of motherhood
has a deep significance in shaping how women understand themselves
and relate to the world around them. According to this model, male
thinking emphasizes the separateness of individuals; female thinking
emphasises connectedness because, in pregnancy, women experience the
sharing of their bodies with another human being.
Yet other feminists react violently against any attempt to reduce
women to their motherhood role. Another group of feminists contends
that women’s freedom will only come about when all dependency upon
men, including a dependency on them for sexual fulfilment, is broken.
Mary Daly (1928– ), a radical feminist theologian, has scorned the
idea of referring to God as ‘Father’. She has refused to admit men to some
of her lectures on the grounds that it would inhibit free discussion.
Feminism has been a powerful factor in undermining the assumptions
of authority and power which have been widely imposed and accepted
since the beginnings of the Western European cultural model.
Liberation Theology
Liberation Theology is criticism from within. The Christian command-

ment to love one another, the Christian insistence that the message of
Christ was for all people, was a powerful critique of the way power was
actually exercised within Christendom, the industrialized West and its
colonies. The scandal is that nobody noticed for nearly 2,000 years.
Europe had been obsessed with itself. Christianity wore very European
blinkers. As the nineteenth century progressed, there was an increasing
awareness of the much wider canvas of human history and cultures,
together with a growth in social awareness and social conscience.
People started to realize that such a conscience stood in sharp contrast

to historical Christian attitudes. They were coming to see that Christian
practice had, for many centuries, been shaped by class and racial
prejudice.
Without any theological justification the Christian Church had ruth-
lessly put into practice an implied doctrine of the superiority of the white
man. Liberation Theology struggled to place the ‘preferential option for
the poor’ at the top of the social, political and theological agenda.
Mysticism
Together with the secularizing tendencies of the last few centuries,

there have been two opposing constants which I propose to call
mysticism and ‘fundamentalism’. The mystical contribution to modern
life has been almost totally confined to the sphere of religious faith. The
tendency which I call fundamentalism has found expression within
the community of faith but it has also had interesting and, at times
alarming, political parallels.
Mysticism makes a very particular claim. It is that certain individuals
come, on occasion, to a direct awareness of God without any intermedi-
ary. At times this awareness of God is so close that we may talk of direct
union with God. Mysticism is not confined to Christianity; it exists in
other religious traditions.
Mysticism is very definitely an individual experience; yet the claims
made by mystics have a degree of consistency which allows us to suppose
that mysticism takes similar forms and that those who experience
the mystical state pass through similar stages. What is more, the individu-
als concerned appear to have a special receptiveness and to make
special preparation for the experience. Nevertheless the evidence is per-
suasive: one cannot induce the state; the mystical experience seizes the
individual.
The mystical experience is a form of prayer and the individual being
taken into mystical union passes through many stages, although the
stages have continuity. While there is no cast-iron agreement as to what
they are, there is enough accord for them to be briefly listed here as
vocal prayer, discursive prayer, affective prayer, the prayer of simplicity,
the prayer of quiet, the prayer of union, ecstasy and, finally, spiritual
marriage.
It is difficult to discuss mysticism because the states described by
mystics are outside the experience of most people. There is no way
ordinary believers can confirm what is thus described, no way of repeat-
ing the experiment for themselves or even of understanding what is being
described. The mystical experience may be given a systematic descrip-
tion, but it cannot be rationally critiqued.
Nevertheless many people look to the mystics as the very best evidence
we may have for the claims of religious faith. Furthermore, mystics are
not necessarily dreamy, impractical people. Some of the best known
mystics have been people of vast, realistic and effective energy. The
evidence of such people reminds us that the claims of mystery and
transcendence have their place in modern living.
Fundamentalism
Let us turn to ‘fundamentalism’. This is not at all the same as mysticism

and has nothing to do with the gradations of the mystical experience
towards union with God. Rather it has to do with the conscious or
partially conscious adoption of a form of belief from which one is either
unwilling or unable to move.
‘Fundamentalism’ arises when individuals or communities experience
the need for a firm foundation for identity, values or action. ‘Fundamen-
talism’ is ‘adopted’; it arises out of an inner need for some form of
guaranteed security. The individual is not, as in mysticism, ‘grasped’
by the holy. ‘Fundamentalism’ can undergo rational critique. But it
refuses, rather than is unable, to submit itself to such judgement. At its
most ruthless, fundamentalism has affected whole institutions; it has
persecuted and burned heretics. It has its most acute and disturbing
expression today when individuals, or whole communities, commit some
awful deed in the name of a core value. The best example one might give
is the suicide pacts that have been discovered in some enclosed religious
communes.
Such examples are not confined to the religious sphere. Unlike
mysticism, ‘fundamentalism’ has entered the political sphere and there
have been dreadful results: the Nazi extermination camps, the Gulag
in Russia, the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge.
Modernism
Modernism is a particular way of organizing the contemporary world.

It arises from a number of influences and expresses a variety of
convictions.
It has been influenced by the Industrial Revolution and by the develop-
ment of technology. The labour that used to be done by human beings is
now done by machines. Contrary to early fears, this did not mean that
human workers became redundant; rather it meant that they had to be
organized in vast numbers, in a comparatively small space, to oversee and
connect the work done by a series of machines.
Humans no longer worked outdoors, aware of the rhythms of nature,
but indoors, in artificial light; they did not follow the rhythms of their
bodies but the rhythms of the machines they operated. They did not
work in small isolated communities but on assembly lines. They did not
produce a complete product but were only involved in a part of the
process. Their lives were not varied; their work was boringly repetitive.
Modernity was, in part, an attempt to organize human beings as if they
were machines.
The second influence has been that time had become absolute. In an
agricultural economy, workers followed the rhythm of the sun; they got
up early in summer, later in winter. They worked and went to bed late in
summer; they socialized more in winter. They stopped to eat when the
sun was high. They rested in winter; they worked hard in summer. They
worked at home or near home and family.
With the coming of modernity, they got up at 7 o’clock, summer
and winter; they went to bed at 11 o’clock, summer and winter. They
stopped for lunch at 1 o’clock. What is more, those hours of the day
had nothing to do with when the sun rose or set. Time had become
harmonized and standardized. Midday could be varied, as in Daylight
Saving Acts, to suit economic need. Work was pre-planned; it no longer
depended on the weather. One worked the same length of time every day,
summer or winter. Summer, rather than winter, became the time for
leisure. The place of work became a built and controlled environment,
divorced from home and family. Time was absolute and the needs of
the workplace determined how it was organized and used. A worker’s
needs or a worker’s family were no longer determining factors.
The third influence is the means of mass communication, first
newspapers, then radio and television, now the internet. Culture is now
handed down from central authoritative sources; it is no longer in the
hands of the local story teller, local woodcarver or local artist who plaited
dried grasses; culture is no longer a local product. Where culture had
once been the expression of local needs and longings, it is now a form of
influence and control by a centralized source. Out went the king; in came
the television magnate!
Modernism was not without its benefits. Houses were better built,
drier and better heated. People were better clothed and had a greater
variety of household goods. Standards of living rose. Engineering brought
better roads, bridges, clean water and efficient and safe waste disposal.
Modern forms of transport meant a greater variety of foods. Schools
raised the awareness of the population; hospitals looked after their health
and hygiene improved.
The way the great majority of the population viewed the world also
changed. Reality was reduced to be what could be observed. The scientific
method became the only method for deciding truth and, through it,
humans could at last achieve certainty. People believed in progress; it
would inevitably overcome all the problems facing the human race. Nature
was no longer something fixed and static, but dynamic and developing.
What happened in the universe arose from fixed causes; therefore all
life was in some way determined. The lone individual pondering reality,
observing and carefully weighing evidence was the ideal of the inventor,
the thinker or the scholar. Individualism took on greater value. The
human being was capable of arriving at truth and was therefore the final
authority in all matters. All external or imposed authority was suspect.
Postmodernism
Most people living in the early twenty-first century hold many, if not
all, of the views outlined in the paragraph above. Yet, at the same time,
doubts as to their validity or value are beginning to arise. What is more,
many people increasingly hold both a given view and its apparent
contradiction at the same time. This outlook has been characterized

as postmodern.
The postmodern person denies the objectivity of human knowledge.
Individuals are often aware that they are conditioned by the special
circumstances of their situation which do not hold good for all time or
for every place. Postmodern individuals increasingly doubt that there are
absolutely basic and indubitable first principles on which systems of
knowledge can be erected. All-inclusive systems of explanation, holding
good for all time and every place, are distrusted.
People no longer believe that knowledge is a good thing in itself. The
destructive uses found for many of the most exciting discoveries of
science have stirred up profound distrust, if not despair. The inevitability
of progress is increasingly denied. Individuals are no longer seen as the
ideal persons to discern objective truth and, increasingly, teams of work-
ers, community-based knowledge and working on projects for restricted
groups are valued. Truth is not necessarily known by reason but often by
intuition. My meaning and your meaning now have an equal claim on
the respect of all.
Appraisal
The paragraphs above describe some of the influences and outline

some of the results that accompanied the shift from a God-centred to a
human-centred worldview. The transition was not sudden. It had been
evident from the late Middle Ages. It gathered pace at the Renaissance
and went into overdrive during the nineteenth century.
The changes may be seen as coming from the contradictions between
scientific discovery and biblical revelation and the decline of the meta-
physical outlook following the criticism of empiricism. Political and social
criticisms have been levelled against religion and in particular against the
way the Church has wielded or influenced political power. Finally, people
have acquired growing psychological awareness and insight, and the
notion of pleasure has become an acceptable and desirable value.
None of these values is fatal to religious belief, but it is evident that
once they were accommodated, religious belief could no longer continue
as before. Many believers have come to terms with many, if not all, of
these trends. Yet they have also functioned as an excuse to avoid commit-
ment to religious faith, which was now inevitably more difficult and
more challenging than it had once been.
It is no longer possible to state a religious proposition and expect
to have it accepted because it is just that: an element of the dominant
culture of the society in which one lives. It is no longer possible to be a
religious believer and belong to a dominant grouping; religious commu-
nities are increasingly thinly scattered among an indifferent population.
It is no longer possible to be a religious believer on a basis of unthinking
custom; religious adherence is increasingly a question of carefully con-
sidered, critical responses, often at some cost.
Nevertheless beneath all the appearances to the contrary there is a
bedrock of concealed continuity. The secular outlook of Western Europe
still values many principles which derive from its Christian foundations.
Christian ethical terms and values, the value of the individual human
being, the belief in the human as a rational being, the conviction that
reason is a fundamental tool for discovering knowledge, concern for
the less well-off, the intelligibility of the empirical universe, the necessity
of and responsibility for exercising dominion over the natural world,
the moral responsibility of each individual and a belief in the inevitable
progression of human beings towards self-fulfilment have all got Chris-
tian roots. In every one of the features listed above, secular terms may
have replaced specific religious language; but the religious language can
still be heard quite clearly by those who know what it is.
Indeed, the Western world would not be what it is today without
the Christian theological enterprise. How does that theological enterprise
continue its mission in the context of the world that it has shaped?
In the pre-modern period Theology had expressed the dominant cul-
tural values of the day. The modern shift in cultural expression has meant
that Christian Theology is now counter-cultural, as it was in its earliest
days. Theology now functions as a critique of dominant values. It does so
in a number of ways. For instance, where Theology expresses conserva-
tive feeling, it criticizes moral outlooks which promote personal freedom
and hedonism at the expense of community responsibility. Where Theol-
ogy promotes radical, social and political activism, it criticizes the
self-interest, sectionalism and greed of contemporary economic activity.
In other contexts it criticizes the dehumanizing treatment which human
beings mete out to fellow humans, made in the image of God. You might
care to note other examples and instances.
9 Friedrich Schleiermacher and Religious Feeling
Schleiermacher is considered to be the first modern theologian. He

influenced all the great theological thinkers of the twentieth century. All
those who followed him were either in dispute or in dialogue with him.
He had close contacts with the Romantic Movement, indeed, was a
product of it. He was the first Calvinist to teach at the University of Halle.
He was the first Professor of Theology at the new University of Berlin. As
a preacher at the Charity Hospital in Berlin he set out to win the educated
middle classes back to religious practice.
He defined religion as a ‘sense and taste for the infinite’. He held
religion to be a matter of intuition and feeling and played down the
notion of religious dogma. His scholarly work covered a wide range of
theological subjects.
When he placed a very strong emphasis on the role of feeling as the
basis for religious thought and practice, he was reacting strongly against
the rationalism of the eighteenth century. In time there would be a
reaction against him, led by Karl Barth (1886–1968) and Emil Brunner
(1889–1966), who stressed once more the authority of Scripture, the
dependable standard promoted by the sixteenth century reformers.
Life (1768–1834)
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher was born in 1768 in Breslau in

Prussia. His father was a Calvinist minister and a court chaplain; his
mother also came from a clerical family. He was born during the Enlight-
enment and was thus taught to believe in the power of human reason, to
be confident that natural, rational methods can discover truth in all fields
of enquiry and to see if he could discover the natural religion of all
humanity. So two rather contradictory tendencies – pietism and natural
reason – contributed to his thought and development.
He started his theological education in 1785 under the influence of
the Moravian Brethren but he soon had difficulties with their teachings.
Friedrich Schleiermacher and Religious Feeling 157
He objected in particular to their teachings about Christ’s atoning

sacrifice. He went to study Philosophy at the University of Halle in 1787.
Here he came into contact with Enlightenment thought, with the
Romantic Movement and with the philosophy of Kant. He also had
moods of religious scepticism.
Romanticism A literary and artistic movement of the late eighteenth and

early nineteenth centuries. It promoted subjective feeling, strong emotions
and escape from established classical forms.
Enlightenment The critical mindset of the eighteenth century: the rational
examination of previously accepted ideas and institutions.
Pietism A seventeenth and eighteenth century reform movement within
German Lutheranism seeking to reform and intensify devotional life.
Jesus Christ.
Scepticism Doubting, questioning or disbelieving: particularly the teachings
of religion.
Dogmatics Dogma is the system of religious teaching authoritatively consid-
ered to be absolute truth. Dogmatics is the study of dogma.
Schleiermacher became a clerical student and did well in his early

theological examinations, except for dogmatics. He spent 1790 to 1793 as
tutor to an aristocratic family. Here he was introduced to the notion of a
faith which unites people of different doctrinal outlooks. He undertook
his first post as an assistant pastor, also becoming a chaplain at the
Charity Hospital in 1796.
He now became friendly with thinkers involved in the Romantic Move-
ment; he started to translate Plato and in 1799 published his first book
On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. The central idea was that
feeling was more important to religion than the fashionable Enlighten-
ment rationalism of his day.
Schleiermacher became a university teacher and preacher at the
University of Halle in 1804. In 1806, following the defeat of Prussia by
Napoleon, Halle was no longer a Prussian city. Schleiermacher was a
passionate patriot, so needed little persuading to come to Berlin where
Friedrich Wilhelm III was founding the new University of Berlin, seeking
to make the city a centre of intellectual excellence. In 1809 he took up
the post of pastor to the Trinity Church. That was the year he married
Henriette von Mühlenfels. They had a son who died in infancy.
The next year he also became Professor of Theology and Dean of the
Theological Faculty at the University. His Brief Outline of the Study of
Theology was the programme of theological studies he designed for his
students; it was published in 1810. His book The Christian Faith, pre-
sented systematically according to the Principles of the Evangelical Church
was published in 1821. It is highly regarded as a great work of Protestant
dogmatics.
During the course of his life he was to lecture extensively on language,
translation, psychology and hermeneutics, as well as on theology.
In his latter years he was active in the movement to merge the
Evangelical (Lutheran) and Reformed (Calvinist) churches, thus creating
the United Church of Prussia. He died in 1834 following a brief illness.
Timeline
1765 Watt improves the steam engine

1768 Birth of Schleiermacher
1770–1775 The Sturm und Drang movement in Germany
1775 American War of Independence
1781 Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
1785 Schleiermacher studies Moravian Theology
1786 Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro
1787 Schleiermacher studies at the University of Halle
1789 The French Revolution
1796 Schleiermacher at the Charity Hospital
1799 Schleiermacher’s On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers
1804 Napoleon is crowned Emperor
Schleiermacher lecturing at Halle
1809 Schleiermacher pastor at the Trinity Church
1810 Schleiermacher Professor and Dean of Theology at Berlin University
Schleiermacher’s Brief Outline of the Study of Theology
1815 Napoleon defeated at Waterloo
1821 Schleiermacher’s The Christian Faith
1823 The Munroe doctrine is published: The United States has special
authority over the American continent
1832 von Clausewitz’s On War

1834 Death of Schleiermacher
1837 Queen Victoria comes to the throne in Britain
Thought
Schleiermacher addressed two audiences; on the one hand the educated

and self-confident classes who felt that humanity had developed to the
point where it no longer needed religion; on the other hand questioning
believers who sought a new way of understanding faith in the light of
new Enlightenment thinking. On Religion addressed the first audience: it
set out to persuade. The Christian Faith was addressed to the second
group; it set out to be systematic and coherent and was written for the
Church. Schleiermacher insisted that some things are covered in mystery
and cannot be known.
Influences upon Schleiermacher
Schleiermacher admired the thought of Immanuel Kant and studied him

closely at university. He did not, however, agree with Kant that religion is
the same as morality. This view is particularly strong in Kant’s Critique of
Practical Reason. Schleiermacher was more impressed with Kant’s study
of aesthetics in the Critique of Judgement. So he stressed aesthetic feeling
as the underpinning of religion.
Schleiermacher was also influenced by the Romantic Movement, par-
ticularly the importance of the individual. Traditional thought held that
individuals related to the world through the power of reason. The new
movement stressed that individuals relate to the world through the power
of feeling and the intensity of their awareness. Romanticism was also
aware of the weight of history. Religion, for Schleiermacher, is a historical
occurrence; to be alive and active, religion must become living history.
God existed in a relationship with humans throughout the flow of his-
tory. Romanticism was not content with the conformity to social
standards which society imposed. It stressed the rebellious and original
quality of individual being and striving: the artist as brooding outcast.
Schleiermacher and religious feeling
Schleiermacher tried to rethink the meaning of religion. He disagreed

with Kant; religion was more than morality. He also disagreed with Hegel;
religion, he claimed, was more than knowledge or reason. The important
element in religion is urgent self-consciousness – absolute dependence
upon God. The roots of this religious awareness come before impressions
of right and wrong and before our ability to experience and process
thought. All peoples possess this religious awareness.
For Schleiermacher, God is a powerful force, a relationship which
grasps our whole being. Schleiermacher is not against morality or
thought. He just finds the primary urge to faith elsewhere: in the experi-
ence of absolute dependence.
This experience is transmitted to individuals through faith communi-
ties. Christianity is one such community. Here our awareness of God is
shaped through Jesus Christ. Christian life is worked out as we lead
lives of ethical responsibility and love. The validity of such a faith had
its roots in feeling, yet was reflected upon in theology and experienced
in thoughtful and faithful practical living.
Aesthetics Theory concerning what is beautiful; principles of artistic

expression.
Ethics Concerning the principles of right and wrong.
Anthropology The study of human beings, particularly their social
characteristics.
Rationalism The belief that human reason is the main source of all human
knowledge and action.
Orthodox Adhering to accepted, established religious faith.
Deism A form of belief in God based only on reason, rejecting all supernatu-
ral revelation. God does not intervene in the universe, but created it and then
left it to function according to its own laws.
How Schleiermacher saw the role of theology
Schleiermacher wanted to draw out and reflect upon this foundational

feeling of absolute dependence. He did so using three disciplines:
philosophy, history and pastoral practice. His theology, therefore,

had three subsections: philosophical theology, historical theology and
practical theology. This model of the university teaching of theology was
to be widely copied all over the world.
Philosophy of religion was to replace Natural Theology and act as
an introduction to Systematic Theology. Schleiermacher was criticized
for having Catholic tendencies but never intended to replace theological
truth with philosophical categories and thought processes. It was a change
that would, in time, allow the application of traditional theological
thinking to the study of world religions.
Historical–critical study was new, important and exciting in the early
nineteenth century. Schleiermacher wanted it to be the intellectual tool
for theological studies, allowing us to interpret theological thought
with greater insight. Theology, for him, was the life of the community of
faith developing throughout history. He stressed the importance of
studying the Bible, the history of Christianity and the dogmatic outlook
of the present-day Church. He wanted to be able to pick out the defining
essence of Christianity and apply it in theological studies and practical
living. Pastors could not minister to the present if they did not under-
stand the past. This historical awareness was necessary in order to preach,
to teach and to act as shepherds to the flock.
Schleiermacher’s theological method
Schleiermacher wanted his book, The Christian Faith, to be a statement

of dogmatic theology for both the Calvinist (Reformed) and Lutheran
(Evangelical) traditions. His originality was to start with religious experi-
ence, the feeling of absolute dependence, and gradually think his way
towards God. This is why, in On Religion, he started with anthropology:
the study of what it is to be human. He tried to show his cultured and
cynical friends that without religion, and in particular without Christi-
anity, there is no human fulfilment.
The problem of Schleiermacher’s day was the gulf between rationalism
and orthodoxy. Orthodox religion promoted a ‘religion from above’; the
fashionable Deism of the eighteenth century advocated a ‘religion from
below’. Schleiermacher believed that it was right to reject an authoritative
theological outlook which suppressed human creativity. However the

natural religion of reason promoted by the Deists was insipid and barren.
So Schleiermacher set out to describe a new vision of God which was a
vision of humanity’s experience of God – the human contemplation of
human experience.
Given the audience he was addressing, cultured and cynical sophisti-
cates, there was little point in starting with dogmatic and authoritative
pronouncements about God; one had to start with something more
immediate, something that had a better chance of being accepted as a
given: religious feeling.
On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers
Schleiermacher suggests that religion is neither knowing (rational doctri-

nal orthodoxy) nor doing (morality); religion arises out of feeling. It is an
inner experience. It is unfathomable and beyond understanding. Feeling,
knowing and doing belong together, but we come to awareness of God
through feeling our absolute dependence upon God.
Schleiermacher argued in his first speech that nobody could be fully
human without being religious. Schleiermacher agreed with the cultured
despisers to the extent that blind following of religious orthodoxy had
been a cause of suffering. But religion did not begin with doctrine; it
began as an internal feeling of ‘the infinite’ and ‘the eternal’. If one did not
recognize this there could be no self-improvement. Society had to recover
the ability to listen to God speaking to the heart.
In the second speech, Schleiermacher suggests that knowledge which is
based on memories and assumptions damages religious feeling. God is
not to be found in right actions, right thinking or in science. Religion
is sparked when finite creatures become aware of the infinite which is so
different from them. Only when there is harmony between knowledge,
action and piety can human potential be realized.

Proselytizing Seeking to convert a person from one belief to another.
Mediator One who seeks to bring about a peaceful settlement between

opposing parties. In Christian theology it refers to the work of Christ reconcil-
ing God and the human race.
Schleiermacher asks his readers to consider a given moment in their

lives. Feeling comes from sensations of the world. These feelings are the
domain of religion. Knowledge comes when we think about them.
Morality arises when we try to act on those feelings.
Science may investigate religion. There are many religions, each an
expression of the one religion. Schleiermacher tended to regard Scripture
as sacred legend rather than literal truth.
In the third speech Schleiermacher explored how we might receive a
hint of religion in the material world. Children coming face to face with
the marvels of the world experience joy. Such a feeling is religious; if the
child were allowed to cultivate this feeling, religion would blossom.
But such beginnings are often crushed and individuals are separated
from the infinite. This is the fault of hard-nosed middle-class common
sense and caution. Such an outlook reduces our horizons and makes
us imaginatively barren and less than human. Religion can only be
cultivated by quiet reflection.
In the fourth speech Schleiermacher tells us that religion must be
social. We are finite beings and must communicate our experiences to
others and be open to their experiences. Schleiermacher rejected the idea
of proselytizing or the notion that salvation is only offered to insiders.
There must be no limits placed on religious self-expression; people
should not be forced to subscribe to creeds.
In the fifth speech Schleiermacher suggests that the religion people
need is Christianity. Up to now he had suggested a wide range of religious
expression and had denounced the practice of enforcing belief in certain
doctrines.
He denounces natural religion. It denies people’s true individuality.
It is easily corrupted by the State. True religion is historical religion and
religious culture will always be greater than the possibilities of any one
individual. Individuals, even pious individuals, cannot have a full picture
of the infinite.
Finite creatures need a mediator and for Christians that is Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is the last mediator; not the only mediator.
The Christian Faith
In his Introduction to The Christian Faith Schleiermacher explains

his religious methodology. In Part I he suggests theological themes
common to all religions; the awareness of God through ‘absolute
dependence’.
Piety is at the heart of all church life. It is neither a question of knowing
nor of doing. It concerns how our feelings are changed when we become
aware of our absolute dependence, of how we stand in a relationship with
God. It is not something which happens by chance. It is not something
which is different in each individual. It is a universal experience. When
we recognize that fact, this feeling takes the place of all the so-called
proofs of the existence of God.
In Part II Schleiermacher develops his understanding of revealed
Christian Theology. This reflects the ‘antithesis of sin and grace’ and
moves from a very general and abstract relationship between God and
the world to a clear and open relationship in Jesus Christ.
Antithesis Direct contrast; exact opposite.

Speculative Resulting from meditation and reflection. Often referring to con-
clusions based on conjecture rather than hard evidence.
Christology The study of the Person of Christ, particularly the union of the
divine and human natures in Christ.
Monotheism The belief that there is only one God.
Teleological Relating to ends and goals.
At a first level, faith is a lived experience in the world. At a second level,

Theology is the activity of reflecting on that faith. Theology started with
practical matters, not with God. It was ‘empirical’ not ‘speculative’.
Feeling allowed Schleiermacher to restate Christian faith at a period when
thinking people influenced by the Enlightenment thought they had done
away with it. He also wanted to unite the practical and the theoretical.
The Christian Faith was Schleiermacher’s attempt to express human

religious feeling and affections in words. For him all the traditional
Christian doctrines correspond to human ways of experiencing God.
So Christology was very important; but he held the doctrine of the Trin-
ity in low esteem.
He taught that Christianity is a monotheistic religion of the teleologi-
cal kind. Everything in it is related to the redemption brought about by
Jesus Christ. It is this single fact that sets it apart from all other religions.
Faith in Jesus Christ as redeemer is the only way to share in Christian
communion.
In a controversial contribution to modern theology Schleiermacher
rewrote the doctrine of God. The starting point is how Christian
people are aware of God in feelings of absolute dependence. If we try
to describe God, we end up, in fact, by limiting God. We no longer
pay due attention to the all-powerfulness of God and instead make God
dependent upon the world: dependent upon us and upon our analytical
insights.
So Schleiermacher taught that all the attributes we ascribe to God do
not describe something special about God; rather they indicate the ways
in which we experience our feelings of absolute dependence upon God.
When we talk about God we are really talking about the way we experi-
ence God. By emphasizing the notion of total dependence upon God,
Schleiermacher concluded that God is the reality that determines
everything, including good and evil.
Schleiermacher’s dogmatic theology
Schleiermacher believed that Christian doctrines are how we express

Christian religious feelings through language. Dogmatic theology, then,
is the way we organize the prevailing way of expressing doctrine at any
given time.
The role of Schleiermacher’s dogmatic theology was to demonstrate
the Christian faith using the ‘dialectics of language’. Dogmatics arise out
of Church. Theology cannot begin with natural reason because Christian
religious feelings only arise when Christianity is experienced. The first
point must be the experience of Christian redemption in Jesus Christ.
We cannot know God as God really is. We can only know God in
relation to ourselves. On the one hand we know we are absolutely depen-
dent upon God. In our experience of nature, we become aware of the fact
that we are creatures. On the other hand we become aware of God when
we experience the contradiction between sin and grace.
This opposition of sin and grace is of vital importance in building
up our religious self-awareness. Sin is the present state of human beings.
It is a conflict dividing our sensuous nature from our spiritual nature.
It separates us from God.
On the other hand we experience some form of communication
from God, some sort of fellowship with God. That is grace. We can only
know sin because we experience grace. This explains our religious self-
awareness. Human blessedness is a matter of reinforcing our awareness
of God. Sin is a matter of covering over our awareness of God.
Dialectic Working out contradictions through the interplay of opposing ideas.

known desire; the state of humanity which, in its weakness, cannot attain
divine perfection.
Trinity The Christian understanding of God: the unity of Father, Son and
Holy Spirit in a single Godhead.
Schleiermacher’s Christology
When Schleiermacher comes to consider Jesus Christ he starts from the

human angle. We see in Jesus Christ the perfect awareness of God. This
allows us to see how we have allowed sin to block out our awareness of
God. Traditional theology held that sin came from Adam. Schleierma-
cher tells us that the power to recognize sin comes from Jesus. In this way
grace comes from the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Jesus was sinless because he came to a perfect awareness of God while
on earth. He demonstrates to us what ideal humanity is like. In Jesus we
see our true reflection. Jesus brought something new to humanity and to
the world. Jesus is our great example.
Of course we cannot perfect our own humanity by ourselves. Our

religious awareness has become corrupted through sin. We need a media-
tor who communicates God’s redemptive power to us. Jesus is our great
redeemer.
The redeemer draws us into the power of his awareness of God and
reconciles us with God. Jesus shared the same humanity as all human
beings but was exceptional because his awareness of God was so power-
ful. His redeeming work is a question of bestowing that awareness of God
upon all believers.
This means that the event where the redeeming and reconciling work
of Christ is done is not the crucifixion but the incarnation. It was at the
incarnation that something new entered human history and that a new
humanity was formed and a new world announced.
The Trinity
In Schleiermacher’s thought the Trinity is not something which can

be derived from his foundational experience of God as a feeling of
absolute dependence. It seems to arise when we place two doctrines
side by side: the doctrine of Christ and the doctrine of the Holy Spirit
working in the Church. It demonstrates the union of the divine being
with human nature. This is visible in the personality of Christ and also
in the way the members of the Church become a common believing and
worshiping body.
Schleiermacher examines the Holy Spirit in the setting of the worship-
ping community. Through the Holy Spirit, believers have communion
with Christ. The Holy Spirit energizes the corporate life of believers.
Schleiermacher’s view of language
Schleiermacher declared that when we think we rely upon language,

and our thinking is limited by language. Meaning depends upon the way
we use words. In addition, there are profound differences between indi-
viduals in the way they use language and consequently in the way they
form concepts.
Not only are there differences between the way individuals use words,
but there are differences between the way words are used between one
historical period and another. We use the word ‘presently’ to mean ‘soon’.
A few hundred years ago it was used to mean ‘immediately’. These
thoughts are particularly important for translation, and Schleiermacher,
as a translator of Plato, spoke from experience. This point is, of course,
most important for the interpretation of Scripture.
Schleiermacher’s notion of ‘semantic holism’ suggests that the various
senses of any word are kept together by a wider unity of meaning. In
ancient times people wrote by cutting letters onto wax tablets with a sty-
lus. The word was later used to refer to a gramophone needle; it can now
refer to a handheld pointer for use with electronic organizers like a per-
sonal digital assistant. These different meanings are held together by the
notion of a pencil-shaped object which allows us to convey and organize
different sorts of information. We might refer to the different forms of
stylus as lower-order concepts and the overall idea suggesting similarity
as a higher-order concept.
Higher-order concepts help explain lower-order concepts and new
lower-order concepts enrich higher-order concepts. In addition, the
grammatical structure of the language has a bearing on the way the words
of the language communicate ideas.
Concept A thought, an idea, a notion; a way of understanding a situation or

occurrence.
Hermeneutics The criticism and interpretation of symbols and texts.
Schleiermacher’s views on hermeneutics
Hermeneutics is the art of understanding communication by means of

language. Schleiermacher understood it to apply to all areas of verbal
communication: oral and written, ancient texts and modern texts –
Scripture, law, literature and all other forms of text.
Interpreters of the Bible are dependent upon this discipline in exactly
the same way as the interpreter of any other type of text. They may
not call upon any exceptional circumstances, such as the notion of divine
inspiration.
We assume that we understand a text automatically because we

speak the language of the text. (‘Text’ is used here to refer to any unit of
language conveying meaning, be it written or oral.) In fact, because every
individual uses language and forms concepts differently, misunder-
standing is more likely to occur automatically. So understanding must be
‘willed and sought’ constantly.
The interpreter must seek an understanding of the text’s historical
background. The interpreter must consult rules for the use of words,
indications of meaning. This has to do with how language is shared. The
interpreter must pay special attention to how individual authors specifi-
cally use words. Not only must one understand the words used and the
way they are used but one must also be aware of the intention of the text:
a text that sets out to convince you to adopt a certain course of action
must not be treated in the same manner as a text giving dispassionate
information.
Translation is often a problem because there is a wide gap between the
source language, the language of the text to be translated and the target
language – the new language one wants the text to be understood in.
Because of these difficulties translators often try to express an idea in a
way that is understood not in the source culture but in the target culture.
Schleiermacher rejects such a practice, saying it distorts the author’s
thoughts. He wants the translator to find a means of bringing the reader
of the target language text closer to, indeed into, the culture of the source
text.
Because of the many problems involved in trying to ‘bend’ the target
language in the direction of the source language, Schleiermacher felt that
reading a translation was always second best.
Appraisal
Schleiermacher wanted to give expression to Christian dogma in such a

way that there would be room for independence, diversity and change.
He is sometimes thought to value feeling over knowing, so he has been
accused of being anti-intellectual. He is not averse to ‘knowing’; he
thought religious feeling more important. Human knowing is limited
and does not allow access to the full scope of being human. When think-
ing about the human sense of dependence upon God, he emphasizes
the notion of relationship. Schleiermacher did not want religion to be

reduced to a set of facts.
He is the essence of modernity in that he constantly holds opposites
in tension: knowing/doing, feeling/reason, dependence/freedom, experi-
ence/tradition. In this, his view of Theology was dynamic rather than
static. He tried to lay out the task of Theology as the servant of the Church,
where it is now. He tried to place religious belief in the cultural, social and
economic setting of his day. He promoted contextual theology.
In this way Schleiermacher felt Theology should reflect the belief of
a specific community of faith. In spite of his emphasis on religion as a
feeling of absolute dependence, Schleiermacher was quite definitely not
promoting Theology as the feelings of isolated individuals. What dog-
matic theology does is to state, in systematic form, the doctrines prevalent
in the Church at any one time.
The problem of Schleiermacher’s day was the gulf between rationalism
and orthodoxy. What is the problem of today?
Critics accuse Schleiermacher of trying to take religion out of the range
of any criticism. It is a matter of an individual’s private feeling therefore
others have no right to criticize it. Did Schleiermacher cause Theology to
focus on human potential and distract it from the contemplation of the
reality, awesomeness and majesty of God?
Is religious feeling a reliable guide to truth?
10 John Henry Newman and Catholic Renewal
Continental Catholicism came out of the revolutionary period, in the

late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries, very changed. Wealth had
now passed into the hands of the middle class laity. Freedom of worship,
including the freedom to stay away from church, was now guaranteed.
The Church had lost control of teaching.
Many people were upset by these attacks on the Church. They consid-
ered that a return to a strong papacy was the only way to protect the
Church against the government. This policy of a strong papacy and
centralized Vatican rule was known as ‘ultramontanism’. It contrasted
with ‘erastianism’, the pre-eminence of the State in church government.
In Britain the nineteenth century began with the Church of England
as the state church in England, Ireland and Wales and the Church of
Scotland established in Scotland. The century ended with the Church
of Scotland divided, the Church of Ireland disestablished and the
Church in Wales about to be. These changes were not introduced as an
effort to diminish the Church. State interference had no hostile agenda
here. Politicians did, however, see the need to place all citizens on an
equal footing, in the religious sphere at least.
When introducing these changes in Britain, Parliament was respond-
ing to the need for change rather than being destructive. What is more,
it was responding to the need for change which a self-satisfied, estab-
lished Church should have realized and introduced without outside
prompting; it did not. As the century progressed, British religious life
and feeling became extremely energetic. The various existing church
bodies exhibited astonishing internal dynamism, not to mention rivalry.
In addition, because of Britain’s colonial spread, that energy was felt
almost everywhere in the world.
But this State interference with the structures of the Church caused
a crisis of conscience among conservative churchmen. In this crisis
of conscience, one of the more powerful religious movements of the
nineteenth century found its initial thrust.
The Evangelical Movement had without any doubt been the most
vital religious force in British religious life in the early part of the century.
This theological tone was about to change. John Henry Newman would
play a significant role in this shift of emphasis.
Life (1801–1890)
John Henry Newman was born in London in 1801 and brought up in the
Evangelical wing of the Church of England. While still an adolescent, he
had a conversion experience, an accepted part of the Evangelical tradi-
tion. He began his studies at Oxford in 1817, where he was a member of
Trinity College. He became a Fellow of Oriel College in 1822 and was
ordained deacon in 1824.
Newman encountered quite different religious influences at Oxford.
He was strongly influenced by Richard Whately (later Archbishop of
Dublin) who was a colleague of his at Oriel, vigorously opposed to state
control in church matters and also strongly anti-Evangelical. Hurrell
Froude was a young and influential friend who admired the Roman
Catholic Church; he also venerated the saints, believed in the Real
Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and was fascinated by the medieval
Church.
Newman was, in time, appointed Vicar of the University Church of
St Mary the Virgin in Oxford. He therefore occupied a high-status posi-
tion within Oxford church circles. He possessed a direct awareness of
God and a deep conviction of divine guidance. To these he allied a strong,
yet subtle, intellect.
Newman travelled quite extensively in the south of Europe in 1832–
1833 during which he appears to have undergone some crisis, possibly
involving both health and spirituality. He returned to Oxford, was imme-
diately associated with what would become the Oxford Movement, and
soon became one of its leaders. He was a master of flowing prose and
widely considered to be a great literary stylist. His preaching strongly
influenced many generations of undergraduates: ‘He had,’ said one, ‘the
sweetest voice I ever heard’.
Newman and his friends published the Tracts for the Times between
1834 and 1842. There were 90 in all and Newman wrote 24 of them. They
John Henry Newman and Catholic Renewal 173
were popular statements of the religious position adopted by the

thinkers of the Oxford Movement, a Catholic party within the Church
of England.
Tract 90, which interpreted the 39 Articles of the Church of England
in such a way as to make them agree with the decrees of the (Roman
Catholic) Council of Trent, caused uproar and Newman was silenced
by the Bishop of Oxford. He was now beginning to have doubts about
the claims of the Church of England to stand in complete continuity
with the undivided, pre-Reformation, Western Latin Church. From
1841 he gradually withdrew from his position in Oxford. He resigned
his living at St Mary’s in September 1843 and preached, a few days
later at Littlemore, his sermon on ‘The parting of Friends’. He chose as
his text, Psalm 104. 23, ‘Man goeth forth unto his work and to his
labour until the evening.’ It was his last sermon as a clergyman of the
Church of England. He had preached his very first sermon on that
very same text. Newman was received into the Roman Catholic Church
in October 1845.
Newman later published his Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine in defence of his change of allegiance. This work was to puzzle
those who were responsible for preparing him for ordination in Rome.
He set up the order of the Oratorians of St Philip Neri in Birmingham in
1849 and between 1854 and 1858 lived in Dublin, Ireland.
University education had long been a problem in that country. The
only third-level institution had been Dublin University, which was
restricted to Anglicans. The government had, in 1845, set up three other
third-level institutions, in Belfast, Galway and Cork, but had insisted they
have no religious affiliation, following the model of the University of
London. The Irish Roman Catholic bishops had objected strongly to
these ‘godless colleges’ and had invited Newman to set up a Catholic
University in Dublin. His thoughts on Christian education were detailed
in his The Idea of a University published in 1852.
The Rambler was a Roman Catholic review set up to give voice to
liberal Roman Catholic opinion in Britain. Newman was editor for a
while, but an article he wrote setting out his views of the place of the laity
in the Church was viewed with suspicion in Rome and Newman resigned.
Newman was also held responsible for the critical review of a book by
Cardinal Manning and the two fell out. Manning had been a friend and
clerical colleague of Newman’s in the Church of England; he too had

converted to Catholicism, but his career there was more spectacular
than Newman’s. Finally, a dispute with Charles Kingsley led to Newman’s
writing Apologia pro vita sua, his spiritual autobiography, one of the
religious classics of the nineteenth century.
For much of Newman’s career as a Roman Catholic priest, he was
regarded with suspicion by his own church authorities, and this must
have been a great disappointment to him. Some authorities have sug-
gested that the reason for this was that the Roman Catholic theological
tradition was strongly dependent upon the Latin tradition of the church
and the medieval schoolmen, Thomas Aquinas in particular. Newman,
on the other hand had been steeped in the Church Fathers, who were
mainly Greek and who had a subtly different temper of mind. However
Newman was finally made a cardinal in 1879.
Since Newman’s death there has been a gradual but positive apprecia-
tion of the power and subtlety of his mind, and of the authority of his
spiritual insight. He played a role in the restoration of Roman Catholicism
in England but also particularly in the growth of the Catholic tradition
within the Church of England.
He was a highly disciplined, well-read and learned scholar, yet Newman’s
outlook was firmly based on the idea of Christianity as a religion of
the heart and of the mind. He chose cor ad cor loquitur (heart speaks to
heart) for his motto as a cardinal. He was always realistic and his preach-
ing related to the practical lives of ordinary people. Prayer was not for
him a duty but a privilege.
Even though his religion stressed the importance of personal
commitment, Newman’s discipline of prayer and meditation centred on
the communal worship of the church within the framework of the litur-
gical year.
He was well read not only in the early Greek Fathers but also in the
Anglican Caroline Divines (High Church theologians of the seventeenth
century). From both of these sources he was acquainted with the spiritu-
ality of the Eastern Church. He had a deep sense of the presence of God
with Christians as they learned to pray, to intercede for others and to
become aware of the needs of others and are attentive to their moral
responsibilities.
Timeline
1791 Death of Charles Wesley

1793 Execution of Louis XVI of France
1800 Union of Ireland with Great Britain
1801 Birth of John Henry Newman
1807 Wordsworth’s Ode on Intimations of Immortality
1815 Defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo
1819 Singapore comes under British administration
1829 Stephenson’s steam engine
1833 Newman’s The Arians of the Fourth Century
1834–1842 Newman’s Parochial and Plain Sermons
1837 Queen Victoria comes to the throne in England
Chopin’s Preludes
1841 Newman publishes Tract 90
1842 Hong Kong under British administration
1845 First edition of Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine
1848 Insurrections in many European countries
1851 First Universal Exhibition in the Crystal Palace in London
1852 Newman’s The Idea of a University
1854–1855 Crimean War
1857–1858 India comes under British administration
1859 Darwin’s The Origin of Species
1861–1865 Civil War in the United States
1864 First Workers’ International in London
Newman’s Apologia pro vita sua
1867 First book of Marx’s Das Kapital
1870 Vatican Council proclaims the doctrine of Papal Infallibility
Newman’s A Grammar of Assent
1890 London’s first underground tube line opened
Death of Newman
1896 Discovery of uranium
Thought
Newman’s major academic work, The Arians of the Fourth Century, was
published in 1833. This work was a systematic study of the Church
Fathers. Newman’s sermons in St Mary’s Church were published under
the title Parochial and Plain Sermons, in 1834. This book was widely
known beyond Oxford and is said to have had a profound influence on
the religious life of England. Once again the influence of the Church
Fathers is evident.
The Oxford Movement
The Church of England was an established, that is to say it was a state

church. While governed by bishops it was subject to Parliament. The
government of the day could regulate it. The Oxford Movement arose out
of a feeling that the mission of the Church was divine; all churchmen
owed a duty to a higher authority than government, parliament or even
the king. The immediate cause of the protest was a proposal to restrict
the number of Irish bishops and, given the situation of the Irish Church,
the proposal was not unreasonable.
John Keble (1792–1866), in an Assize sermon, denounced this move as
National Apostasy, for the Church was not the creation of the State but of
a higher authority. It was a condemnation that caught the mood of the
times and soon Anglican clergymen everywhere were being called upon
to ‘magnify their office’; they were, after all, the successors of the Apostles,
not civil servants.
The vehicle Keble, Pusey, Williams and Newman used to spread their
views was a series of tracts – articles which were distributed all over the
land, often by volunteers. The tracts were scholarly, but were nevertheless
easily understood.
The services of the Church of England, which had, on the whole, been
dull, bald and pedestrian, gradually became more formal, more solemn
and stately. There was more colour and more movement; there was
greater emphasis upon symbol and upon sacramental worship. There
was also bitterness and small-minded backbiting. The Anglo-Catholic
school scorned people of Evangelical outlook. Relations with the Free
Churches, which many Evangelical clergy had been encouraging, were

severely damaged.
However, at the same time as the Oxford Movement was developing,
another movement of quite different temper was making its presence
felt. This was the ‘Broad Church’, a tendency to interpret the church’s
formularies in a liberal, rather than a literal fashion. Thus many of
this Broad Church school rejected the Virgin Birth, denied eternal pun-
ishment, welcomed Biblical criticism, and some went as far as proclai-
ming that the state church should welcome all Dissenters, nation and
church becoming virtually synonymous. Evangelicals, Broad Church and
Anglo-Catholics all tended to dislike each other with equal energy.
Tracts for the Times
Many controversial subjects were supported in the Tracts for the Times.
The Holy Catholic Church was promoted as the only way to eternal life.
They opposed any alteration in the Book of Common Prayer, seeing the
Prayer Book liturgy as in continuity with traditional, pre-Reformation,
Catholic worship. The Prayer Book urged Fridays as days of fasting and
this practice was encouraged by the Tracts. The apostolic succession was
taught and the bishop of Rome was described as having a primacy of
dignity in the Church. He was not however entitled to interfere in the
dioceses of other bishops. The Tracts energetically promoted what they
believed were the practices and beliefs of the Apostles and the early
church.
The Tracts declared the Church of England to be a true branch of the
One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by Christ. Non-con-
formists were described as teaching only part of the apostolic truth, and
the Roman Catholic Church, as teaching more than the sum of catholic
truth. The Tracts wished to reintroduce to the Church of England prac-
tices which were required by the rubrics but which had been neglected as
a consequence of both the Puritan revolution and the laxity of the eight-
eenth century.
The Tracts encouraged the daily recitation of Morning and Evening
Prayer and the frequent celebration of the Eucharist. They taught Baptis-
mal regeneration: both baptism and faith were necessary for salvation.
They supported the Apostles’, Nicene and Athanasian Creeds as compel-

ling statements of Catholic truth. They admitted that some of the
doctrines taught in them were not to be found in Scripture, but instead
were indirectly present in the Bible.
Fathers A restricted group of early church writers whose influence on doc-

trine was vital.
Rubrics Instructions concerning the conduct of church services, usually
printed in red.
Creed A statement of what one believes. In particular the Apostles’, Nicene
and Athanasian Creeds which have high status amongst almost all Christian
churches.
The Tracts caused much excitement and comment. They gradually

became more scholarly. They promoted a vision of the Church of England
directed by studious and learned men, living simply and working hard.
The views promoted in the Tracts were complemented by Newman’s
preaching in St Mary’s, where he attracted large congregations from all
over the university.
The Tracts, however, promoted an elitist, ‘Oxbridge’ view of the Church.
The outlook of the Tractarians has been criticized as appealing to a small
intellectual class but largely ignoring contemporary reality – the growing
horror of the huge industrial cities, their slums, the Irish famine and
other social problems. If this criticism could be directed at the first gen-
eration of Tractarians, it was one to which a second generation responded
with energy and verve.
The Tracts for the Times had an influence beyond the time of their
writers and the Anglo-Catholic Movement gradually took off. A theolog-
ical college was soon opened to train clergy in Tractarian principles. But
not everybody supported them. Many people throughout ‘Protestant’
England were offended by calls to fasting, frequent communion, a high
view of the priesthood and other ‘Romish’ tendencies.
Nevertheless the Anglo-Catholic movement was to result in practices
now considered normal: candles on the altar, choirs wearing surplices,
intoned services, crucifixes in church, the use of Eucharistic vestments
and preaching in a surplice rather than in a black gown. In addition
there was a rapid increase in the number of monastic communities.

In time, attention also focused on ministry to the underprivileged and
in the slums of the industrialized cities.
The Via Media
The early Tracts held out a view of the Church of England as both
Catholic and Reformed. This was a middle way (via media) between what
they saw as the abuses which had grown up in Rome and the errors of
the extreme pruning which had been forced by seventeenth century
Puritanism. This minimalism had continued to be a feature of the Dis-
senters’ outlook and worship and was reinforced by Methodism.
The via media was a view which was particularly promoted by the early
Newman but had been suggested by earlier theological thinkers. It has
undertones of the well-read clergyman, temperate in habit and speech,
living a simple life and devoted to his parishioners. It was the essence
of ‘moderation in all things’.
Tract 90
This tract, the last of the Tracts for the Times, was written in 1841 by John
Henry Newman. It caused a major controversy and was responsible for
bringing the publication of the Tracts to an end. The Thirty-nine Articles
of the Church of England were an attempt by the Church of England to
regulate its doctrinal position with respect to the theological controver-
sies of the sixteenth century. They were concerned to counter both
Roman Catholic and Calvinist viewpoints. In Tract 90 Newman declared
that the Articles did not contradict the Catholic faith – that they could be
read in a Catholic manner.
The articles did not condemn Catholic faith and doctrine; they con-
demned their abuse by Rome. But the tract raised a storm as it appeared
to make possible the invocation of saints, purgatory, the use of images
and other practices traditionally rejected by moderate, undemonstrative,
English churchgoers.
Newman stated that his aim was to show that while the Book of
Common Prayer was readily admitted to be of Catholic origin the
Thirty-nine Articles were the product of an un-Catholic age but were not
un-Catholic. They could be accepted by those who aim at being Catholic
in heart and doctrine. Let us look at some of the ideas in this tract.
The section do not declare that Scripture is the sole rule of faith. It
had always been the case that Scripture, along with the decisions of
the first four General Councils and the tradition of the Church together
form the Rule of Faith.
With regard to purgatory, pardons, images, relics and invocation of
the saints, only the ‘Romish’ doctrine is condemned; the practice of
the early church is not condemned. Furthermore the doctrines con-
demned are those widely in vogue before the reforms of the Council
of Trent. Newman was at pains to stress that he was not recommending
doctrines not condemned under this article. His aim was to make
clear what the article did not condemn and that such practices could
be held as matters of private belief. In addition he wished to support
the Christian liberty of the believer where the Church had not
restricted it.
Similarly with the doctrine of transubstantiation, Newman held that
the Articles did not oppose every kind of change, nor did it seek to tie
down the meaning of the word ‘substance’. What the Articles opposed
were certain exaggerated claims of material change common at the time
the Articles were written.

Invocation of saints is the practice of requesting saints to pray to God for the
living. The saints are holy and therefore close to God but also understand
humans because they are human.
Purgatory A state of purification, following death, before being admitted to
heaven.
Pardons Here a form of Indulgence by which sins are forgiven following the
payment of money to a church cause.
Relics Can refer to both the bodily remains of saintly individuals as well as
their remaining possessions. They were honoured as having served as temples
of the Holy Spirit.
Transubstantiation The official Roman Catholic doctrine of Eucharistic

change. The substance of the bread and wine changes to become the
substance of the body and blood of Christ, even though there is no change in
outward appearance.
Mass Word commonly used in the Roman Catholic and High Church
Anglican traditions for the celebration of the Eucharist.
Limbo The opinion, now largely abandoned, that the unbaptized, particularly
children who died before they could be baptized, are excluded from heaven,
but not kept in a place of torment.
The section on masses was not written to condemn the mass. Rather it
condemned exaggerated errors about it. In particular the article con-
demned false teaching about the benefits of multiplying masses. This
referred to a common superstition that the more masses were said for an
intention, the greater the hope of that prayer being answered. Moreover,
the article condemned any attempt to see the mass as independent of the
sacrifice of the Cross. Thirdly, the article condemned using the mass as a
means of increasing a priest’s earnings.
At that time, the common view was that since the Articles were drawn
up by Protestants, and were done so to establish Protestant teaching, the
Articles should only be interpreted in a Protestant manner. Newman,
however, held that it was his duty to take reformed confessions of faith in
the most Catholic sense they allowed. When he did this he brought them
into harmony with the Prayer Book. He reminded his readers that, as
clergymen, they had given assent to both.
He was interpreting the Articles in a literal and grammatical sense and
this was the recommendation of the Declaration prefixed to the Articles.
Finally, the Articles were framed in such a way as to include moderate
reformers and, at the time, that included Catholics; so Newman rejected
the attempts then being made to use the Articles to exclude Catholics.
Tract 90 created a storm of controversy. Its apparent logical hair-
splitting drew accusations of ‘jesuitry’. The Heads of Oxford colleges
condemned it, questions were asked in Parliament. Finally, the Bishop of
Oxford intervened and requested that no more Tracts be published.
Newman and his friends had long preached the Apostolic Succession
and the authority of the Church; they were now caught by the logic
of their own position and had to submit to ecclesiastical authority.
Newman’s An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
The development of Christian doctrine is a term used by Newman to

give an idea of the way statements of Christian doctrine inevitably
become more detailed and precise over time. The central principle is
that later statements of doctrine must remain consistent with earlier
statements. The later statement must be contained in germ in the earlier,
must be a development of it and not a contradiction of it. The idea was
put forward in Newman’s book An Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine and was particularly used by him to defend Roman Catholic
teachings from attack by thinkers influenced by the Reformation.
Protestant theologians had often denounced Roman Catholic doctrines
as developments or corruptions of pure, original, scriptural, Christian
teaching. Among such teachings, Newman’s opponents numbered devo-
tion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the invocation and intercession of the
saints, and teachings on purgatory and limbo.
Newman objected that Protestants also held doctrines which, while
they were classical, orthodox theology, were in fact developments. He
cited teachings about the Trinity and the divine and human natures of
Christ. He argued that they arose because of the slow, careful and mature
reflection of reason on Christian belief, drawing out consequences which
had not been obvious at first.
Newman wrote his Essay on Development to express three convictions
about the Roman Catholic Church: first, that Rome was the legitimate
inheritor of the church of the Apostles and of the early Fathers; secondly,
that Rome stood in a direct and valid line of descent from the primitive
church and, thirdly, that Anglican and Protestant objections to that claim
had no basis.
Newman viewed the Essay on Development as a negative book, standing
against an earlier position, written to confront a contrary viewpoint. It is
the work of Newman the controversialist as opposed to Newman the
creative theologian. He revised it massively. It was first published in 1845,
and he did not produce a final version until 1878.
Newman’s Grammar of Assent
This work contains Newman’s most mature reflections and is especially

known for the way Newman makes a distinction between notional
and real assent. Notional assent comes when we apprehend propositions
as notions or abstractions. The mind contemplates its own creations
instead of things. Real assent comes when the mind is directed to
things, represented by the impressions they have made upon the imagi-
nation. Real assent has power and conviction in a way that notional assent
cannot produce.
The book analyses the role of conscience in our knowledge of God
and how we use the ‘illative’ sense. The illative sense is our ability to
judge from given facts as we move towards religious certainty. When
we use the illative sense, however, we use processes outside the limits of
strict logic. Assent to religious truth comes about through the prompt-
ings of grace. The will allows the intellect to agree to faith and allows
the whole person to submit to God.
Knowledge in the religious sphere comes through personal participa-
tion, involvement and input. The truths of religion will become obvious
to those who commit their whole existence to it but will always be
difficult for those who continue to judge it neutrally from the outside.
In his Grammar of Assent Newman wants to show how reasonable it is
to profess Christian faith. He wants to explain how, in all spheres of
knowledge, the human mind moves from an act of inference to an act
of assent. The conditional acceptance of a proposition is an act of infer-
ence; the unconditional acceptance of a proposition is an act of assent.
Newman lived at a period when philosophers were coming to believe
that propositions concerning knowledge and the operation of logical
operations upon them could be seen in terms of a ‘calculation’ and that
logicians would soon be able to construct a ‘universal language’.
Newman believed that such a position was far too reductionist. It tried
to limit what could be said and to invalidate a whole range of subjects
which are subjects of normal human communication. He held that the
human spirit was capable of, and should give itself to, great and wide
sweeps of thought.
All human beings acquire and develop knowledge by means of
inference and assent, and Newman believed that, if developed, such
operations could, and should, lead to spiritual growth and advantage.

He did not wish to abolish the use of rules and logic. He believed that
knowledge and human communication should not be reduced to the
mere application of logical rules upon given propositions in restricted
circumstances. He thought the human mind capable of great nuance and
that its mental capacity and subtlety were both given by God.
The rules of logic are the tools which God has given to human beings in
order that they may come to a clear understanding of reality. But
Newman saw that the movement of the human mind from inference to
assent is not a simple process. It involves two steps. In the first phase it
operates logically and mechanically. But in the second phase, it introduces
a subjective element which gives to each individual’s thought process a
personal flavour.
This intimate core cannot be tied down by linguistic description. Here
the mind seeks to reach out, to grasp, in its own way, the truth being
suggested by the ‘accumulation of probabilities’ which had been offered
by the first, more mechanistic, phase.
Proof is thus defined as the point where converging probabilities meet
and where adverse explanations and difficulties are cleared away. The
experienced mind becomes convinced that certain conclusions are
inevitable, although it has not yet come to the stage of proof. Newman
referred to this spontaneous way of reasoning as the ‘illative sense’.
Individuals move from inference to assent using a logical process
that is nourished by a personal ability to discover truth. In describing
how this illative sense works, Newman saw it as operating in a manner
parallel to the way conscience works as we seek to discover good. It is only
because we possess this illative sense that we are capable of coming to an
apprehension of truth in matters of religious faith.
Newman himself saw that the weakness of his work was the lack of
any test for a ‘false certitude’.
Newman’s The Idea of a University
Shortly after arriving in Dublin to set up the Catholic University in that

city, Newman gave a series of public lectures, later published as a book,
The Idea of a University. This book expressed his thoughts on what the
university was and what it should set out to achieve. It was a statement
of what the defining principles and general aims of the university should
be; it was not a statement of its courses and curriculum.
A university is a place where all may meet and exchange ideas. It is
there that many different people, from different backgrounds and
countries, meet to discuss, share and exchange many forms of knowledge
and discipline. Knowledge may be mined from books, but the tone, the
spirit, the life and the colour can only be experienced, caught and
in-breathed where people interrelate and co-operate. To learn, one needs
interaction and debate.
The Church founds a university for the spiritual welfare of its mem-
bers, to enhance their usefulness and their religious influence. It wants
them to be better able to live their lives and do their work, turning them
into better, and more intelligent, more capable, more active members of
society. Its aim is the intellectual education of the whole personality. The
university seeks to develop intellect, to give it superior power and versa-
tility, to equip it with greater command over its own strength and to
enhance its judgement.
The purpose of a university, then, is to prepare good members of soci-
ety. This is to be achieved by schooling in the art of social life. Genius and
heroism are not produced by narrowly focussed training. The function of
the university is not to train for any particular profession, be it scientist,
economist or engineer.
The purpose of university education is to raise the intellectual tone
of society, to improve the national taste and to cultivate the public
mind generally. It is to raise intellectual and moral standards. It allows
individuals to have a certain and well prepared view of their opinions
and judgements. These should be developed in deep concern for
truth. University education also gives the skills to assert and defend them
publicly.
The university naturally sets out to teach universal knowledge, of
which Theology is as important as any other. This is, of course, a
reference to the polemics of the day, since the government wished to
set up non-religious universities. Newman disagreed. He considered that
a university without history, ethics or reason would involve a shrinking
of universal knowledge and offer a deficient discipline. Therefore the
considerations of Theology, which were handed down by testimony,
inferred by reason and which convince us by metaphysical necessity,

would be as necessary as any other discipline.
If God is more than nature, Theology claims a place among the
sciences. Truth, Newman held, was the result of mental processes bearing
upon the same subject matter viewed under different aspects. The mind
must do more than just concentrate on an extremely reduced set of data.
It must seek a wider understanding, which is the result of the interaction
of many forms of discipline upon each other.
Appraisal
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Roman Catholic

Church encountered conditions, particularly in Europe, which did not
make for a great deal of calm theological reflection. The Protestant
Churches, particularly those in Northern Europe, did not always meet
the same degree of violent opposition, yet they were placed on the
defensive by the challenges of the intellectual and political climates of the
day. The consequence was that polemical theology, rather than construc-
tive theology, was often the flavour of the day. That flavour certainly may
be found in Newman, and he was a dogged and subtle controversialist
but it would be unfair to limit him with such an assessment.
The Roman Catholic tradition had persistently emphasized the con-
stancy of the Catholic position, had promoted authoritative pronoun-
cements and tightly supervised all theological work. Theologians had
been nudged towards a habit of repetition rather than of originality. This
trend was strong during the conservative First Vatican Council. In addi-
tion Pope Leo XIII gave the works of Thomas Aquinas special status,
making his thought normative for all orthodox Catholic thinkers. This
tendency was defensive and unadventurous.
Nevertheless signs of renewal can be discerned at this time, and a
thinker such as Newman, who saw the tradition as the living, vibrant,
renewing voice of the Church, is a herald of future development. Here
two ideas of Newman’s have been richly productive – his ideas on the
development of doctrine coupled with his doctrine of ‘reserve’ – whatever
we can come to know of God, there is always more to be known.
Newman may not have been a versatile and inventive theologian,

but he was a sensitive psychological analyst and a sharply aware moral
thinker. He had telling insights into the nature of religious faith and the
drives that produced it.
Newman thought and wrote under the influence of many of the
pressures that we have described as creating the contexts of modern
theology. Yet his approach was still a cautious one; his search was still for
authentic, authoritative, divinely guaranteed pronouncements. He had a
foot in the old world and a foot in the new.
As can be seen, Newman was not a doctrinal innovator. His romantic
sensibility gave him also a certain path to follow. His call was to embrace
a certain type of church community and church practice. But the temper
of his mind was conservative rather than liberal. He promoted a certain
type of discourse against the trends of his time. He was concerned with
making his theological stand among the controversies of his day, in mid-
to-late nineteenth-century Britain. Newman did his theology contextually.
Where others had embraced modernity, Newman demurred, but with
nuance.
To what extent is theological fashion the form of discourse that is most
capable of being heard in its setting?
11 Karl Barth and a Theology of the Word
Barth was born into the era of Liberal Theology, which is judged to have
started with the publication in 1799 of Schleiermacher’s On Religion:
Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. It ended when Barth’s Commentary on
Romans, an interpretation of St Paul’s great letter, was published in 1919.
Barth lived through some of the most distressing years of European
history, experiencing both World Wars.
Life (1886–1968)
Karl Barth was born in Basel in Switzerland, the son of a teacher of New
Testament Theology. When he was two, his father moved to a prestigious
post at the University of Berne. The home background was theologically
conservative and strict. Barth studied at the Universities of Berne, Berlin,
Tübingen and Marbourg. He had decided to become a theologian at an
early age, in order to clarify his thoughts on religious matters. In his early
years he adopted a liberal position, served for a brief time as a pastor in
the Jura region and worked for a short period in publishing. At the age of
25 he took up a pastoral post at Geneva, where he met his wife, Nelly.
Two years later he started a ten-year stint of pastoral work in the bor-
der region between Switzerland and Germany. He stayed here during the
period of the First World War. He quickly came to the conclusion that
Liberal Theology was of little use in his weekly task of preaching to the
working-class people of his village. He decided to undertake a painstak-
ing study of the Bible. Here he discovered not Theology but ‘Word of
God’. He was to continue to be a fervent supporter of the verbal inspira-
tion of Scripture.

Word (The) is a translation of the Greek word Logos, meaning word or reason.
It was seen in the Old Testament and in Greek thought as referring to the
universal reason which ordered everything in the cosmos. In Christianity it
refers to the second person of the Trinity. Jesus was identified as The Word.
Karl Barth and a Theology of the Word 189
It was during that village pastorate that he wrote his famous Commen-
tary on Romans which attracted a wide readership, particularly in
German-speaking Protestant circles. Barth was conscious of the pro-
found shadow of pessimism which continued to hang over Europe
following the Great War. His aim was to write in full awareness of that
cultural pessimism and furthermore to take complete account of the
pastoral needs he encountered. These led him to a fundamental ques-
tioning of the established trends of academic theology. His readers
felt that his message had creativity, power and authenticity.
In 1921 Barth took up a professorship in Göttingen, later moving
to Münster, arriving in Bonn in 1930. He soon came into conflict with
the supporters of Liberal Theology. Barth always maintained that God’s
Word was in greatest danger when it was made accepted and harmless
as just another expression of human culture. He was soon to throw in his
lot with the ‘Confessing Church’. He was a Swiss citizen, so he had
freedoms denied Germans.
Hitler had come to power in 1933 and there was immediate confronta-
tion between the Nazi regime and the Lutheran Church. The ‘German
Christian Church’ was a movement sponsored by the Nazis. It tried to
promote a blend of Nazi ideology and Christian doctrine.
This movement of Nazi sympathizers soon won majorities at church
elections. They were opposed by the ‘Confessing Church’ movement.
This opposition movement set up its own authorities and resisted all
attempts to make the Evangelical Church a tool of Nazi rule. Both clergy
and laity were persecuted and open opposition ceased on the outbreak of
the Second World War. They called themselves the ‘Confessing Church’
to express their sense of being a church of confessors for the faith.
Barth was actively involved in drawing up many of the doctrinal
statements of the Confessing Church. During the early stages of the
struggle he held that Nazi thought was a purely political matter, of no
concern to the Christian as long as the Christian’s freedom to proclaim
the gospel was maintained. He later hardened his position to outright
condemnation of Nazism. He refused to take an oath of allegiance
to Hitler and was deprived of his chair. He returned to Switzerland in
1935, taking up a chair of Theology at Basle, where he remained until he
retired in 1962.
His central thought was the transcendence and supremacy of God.
During the course of Christian history, every time theologians had
shifted their attention from that vital and demanding fact, they had
fallen into error. They had trusted human reason in all its worthlessness.
Barth held the sixteenth-century Reformers to be the most genuine
exponents of the prophetic teaching of the Bible. He placed a special
emphasis on the notion of confrontation between God and humanity.
His thought was sometimes referred to as ‘theology of crisis’ or ‘dialecti-
cal theology’.
He condemned all religion founded on experience, distrusted mysti-
cism and had little sympathy with positive attitudes to science, art and
contemporary culture. All human cultural attainments are established in
sin. He condemned all thought that issued from the Scholastics, Schleier-
macher (1768–1834) or Hegel (1770–1831) but was deeply influenced
by both Kierkegaard (1813–1855) and Dostoevsky (1821–1881). God’s
only revelation of divine being was in Jesus Christ. The only authentic
witness to that core fact was the Word of God.
In 1927 he started writing a vast systematic work of Theology and after
several false starts the first volume of his Church Dogmatics was pub-
lished in 1932. He would continue to work on this for the remainder of
his life. The thirteenth volume was published in 1967, the year before he
died. The work was never finished. It is a vast and ambitious piece of
dogmatic teaching.
After the war his attitude to Communism was roughly similar to his
early attitude towards Nazism: the Church must be detached from poli-
tics and cannot in advance adopt the view that Communism is necessarily
evil. He attended the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) as an observer.
For the remainder of his life he would be a sharply critical figure in Prot-
estant Church circles, often adopting confrontational and surprising
viewpoints. Towards the end of his life his health deteriorated, and he was
the butt of increasingly harsh criticism from all points of the theological
spectrum.
Timeline
1884 Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Berlin international conference on Africa: the ‘Scramble for Africa’
1886 Birth of Karl Barth
1889 The Second Workers’ International

1896 Marconi’s wireless telegraphy
1914–1918 First World War
1917 The Russian Revolution
1919 Bertrand Russell’s Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy
Barth’s Commentary on Romans
1921 Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico Philosophicus
1931 Economic crisis reaches Europe
First volume of Barth’s Church Dogmatics
1933 Hitler becomes German Chancellor; Roosevelt becomes President of
the United States
1934 Mao Zedong leads the Long March
1937 Stalinist purges in the Soviet Union
1939–1945 Second World War
1945 Atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Founding of the United Nations
1947 Marshall Plan
1948 Berlin blockade
First Arab–Israeli War
1949 Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex
1950–1953 Korean War
1953 Death of Stalin; discovery of the structure of DNA
1958 Election of Pope John XXIII
1960s Decolonization in Africa and Asia
1962–1965 Second Vatican Council
1967 Last volume of Barth’s unfinished Church Dogmatics
1968 Death of Karl Barth
Thought
Liberal Theology
The term ‘Liberal’ usually means freedom from bias or intolerance

and readiness to adopt new ideas. It suggests openness to reform. Within
Protestant circles it developed into an anti-dogmatic way of holding
the Christian faith; it had a strong humanitarian emphasis. Liberals
felt that theology needed to be restated in the light of up-to-date

scientific knowledge; so theological liberalism was dedicated to bridging
the gap between Christian faith and contemporary culture.
Some doctrines were abandoned; original sin is a case in point. Others
were reinterpreted in the light of current understanding. Liberalism
found it difficult to base faith solely on Scripture and sought to secure it
more solidly in common human experience. Liberalism was an expres-
sion of optimism in the human future.
Liberals had a particular interest in ethical thought. Outstanding
Liberal theologians were Schleiermacher, Ritschl and Paul Tillich. Critics
like Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr believed their optimism to have been
permanently shattered by the carnage of the First World War.
Neo-Orthodoxy
The horrors of The First World War produced deep disillusion in

many individuals who believed in progress. Schleiermacher and Liberal
Theology, in general, were accused of making religion human-
centred rather than God-centred. Karl Barth and writers following
him emphasized the ‘otherness’ of God, believing that Theology could
thus escape from the dead end where Liberal Theology seemed to be
stuck.
The clarion call that issued from Barth’s works stresses the self-
revelation of God in Jesus Christ through the Bible.
Barth’s repetition of themes, which had already been given clear voice
by writers of the Protestant Reformation, was given a ‘dialectical’ struc-
ture. Barth talked of a ‘dialectic between time and eternity’ and of a
‘dialectic between God and humanity’. He was here stressing the discon-
tinuity between us and God. Barth appeared to be entering into dialogue
with the writers of reformed orthodoxy (Luther and Calvin), so his out-
look was termed ‘Neo-Orthodox’.
Barth’s central point was that Christian Theology must be a ‘Theology
of the Word of God’. Theology was not a response to a human predica-
ment or situation. The believer’s eyes must be constantly fixed on Jesus
Christ as the foundation of the Church.
Dogma A system of religious teaching authoritatively considered to be

absolute truth.
Humanitarian The belief that all humans have a moral duty to work for the
continued improvement and well-being of humanity.
Dialectic Working out contradictions through the interplay of opposing ideas.
Doctrinaire Obstinately attached to Church doctrines.
The Commentary on Romans
Barth had grown up in a religious and intellectual tradition where

the theme of the Bible was human religion, religious morality and, per-
haps, the hidden hope that humans might in some way become immortal,
possessing a share of divinity. He came to see the theme of the Bible as the
divine nature of God, the totally unique quality of the power, initiative
and being of God.
He first boldly expressed such an outlook in his Commentary on
Romans. His readers were shocked by his doctrinaire tone and by his total
indifference to the questions posed by Biblical criticism.
The great theme of St Paul’s Letter to the Romans is the righteousness
of God. We, through faith, as a gift of grace, are given a share in that
righteousness. We do not, however, in any way merit such treatment.
Barth wanted to turn Theology on its head. Up to now it had moved
from the human to the divine. He wanted it to move from the divine to
the human. Human religious thought, feeling and outlook cannot bring
us to knowledge of God. Barth wanted to speak of God as totally distinct
from everything that had been created.
What Barth saw was not the humanity of God, but the deity of God, the
distance of God and the mystery of God. He referred to this as the ‘pathos
of distance’. It included the gap between revelation and culture, between
time and eternity: God beyond reason and spirituality. All Theology must
start with the reality of God.
‘Righteousness’ was not human righteousness but the righteousness of
God. ‘Faith’ was not the human response of faith but God’s faithfulness
to his intentions and undertakings. If humans find it at all possible to

know God, it has nothing to do with their capabilities; it is, in fact, the
miracle of grace. All human possibilities, history, religion, ethics, ideas
and relations must be made subordinate to the sovereignty of God. That
is the only sure and certain reality. The communication between the two
depends upon, and only upon, the divine decision.
Barth appears to have grounded his thoughts on revelation in what he
called the ‘infinite qualitative distinction’. God and humans are not in a
relationship, either naturally or through religion. God is wholly other.
God can only be known through God, if indeed God is knowable at all.
The only knowledge of God open to us is God’s knowledge of us. We can
merely accept that divine knowledge. God remains hidden in divine rev-
elation. God does not become the object of human knowledge in a way
that can be expressed in propositions.
Revelation can only be the self-disclosure of God and that revelation is
located in the person and works of Jesus Christ. Since the death and res-
urrection of Jesus, that revelation is located in a past event, but its
importance persists as time continues and events unfold. The Christ
Barth is thinking about is not the Jesus who walked and talked on earth.
The Christ Barth is referring to is a Christ reachable only by faith and
expressed in the confessions of faith and in Christian proclamation.
The Word of God
The only source for Christian Theology that Barth would allow was
God’s Word. This Word comes in three ways. In the first place, it comes
through Jesus Christ. The history of God’s people up to and including
the death and resurrection of Jesus are the core of the gospel. Secondly,
God’s Word comes in Scripture. Scripture is the most important witness
to God’s revelation to humanity.
Thirdly, God’s Word comes in the proclamation of the gospel. By this
Barth understood the Church’s proclamation. It may be the act of an
individual in any one place; but if it is in accordance with the Church’s
mission, it is part of the whole Church’s proclamation of the gospel. Jesus
Christ is the essence of God’s Word. Bible and communication of the
message are Word in so far as God uses them to reveal Jesus Christ.
God’s Word is not a hidden message waiting to be revealed. God’s Word

has the status of event or happening. The Bible is God’s Word. This is not
so because believers believe it to be so or because scholarly examination
has declared it to be genuine. The Bible is God’s Word because God
repeatedly uses it to bring faith in Jesus Christ into being.
The Church is under the authority of the Bible and must be obedient
to it because the only greater authority is Jesus himself.
In his writings Barth seems to have treated the Bible as divinely
inspired.

ences they had of the presence of Jesus after his death were proof of resurrec-
tion teaching and a promise of such a hope and destiny for all committed to
Jesus.
Proclamation The ‘telling out’, the publicizing of the Christian Good News.
Natural Theology The notion that genuine knowledge of God can be
achieved by rational thought, without appeal to Christian revelation.
The Barth–Brunner controversy
Barth violently rejected the idea that it is possible to construct a Natural

Theology. In 1934, Barth’s friend, Emil Brunner, published a book called
Nature and Grace in which he maintained that the task for the theolo-
gians of their time was to find a way back to ‘a legitimate Natural
Theology’. His starting point was that humans are created in the image of
God. We may be sinful, but we still have the capacity to discern God. We
find God in nature and in the events of history; we are capable of recog-
nizing that we are guilty before God. This allows divine revelation and
human nature to make contact with each other.
Barth’s stinging reply, which ended their friendship, was entitled Nein!
(No!). Brunner, he claimed, seemed to suggest that God needed human
help to become known, that we co-operate with God in the act of revela-
tion. The only point of contact between the human and the divine was
the result of divine action, not an inbuilt feature of human nature.
A recurring thorny problem in Protestant thought is the position

of the state in the divine order. St Paul had instructed us to pray for rulers
because ‘the authorities that exist have been established by God’
(Rom. 13.1). This was frequently understood as meaning that the State
was part of the divine ordering of affairs, and the State often played a role
in the governance of the Church. Barth was, obviously, rejecting the idea
that, in Germany, Hitler was part of the divine ordering of affairs. There
is no doubt, however, that there was more at stake than that.
Barth was starting from the Word of God. Brunner was starting from
anthropology, a view of what it means to be human. Barth gave much
more importance to God, the object of faith, than he did to the act of
faith, the believer’s acceptance and assent. Brunner wished to understand
how believers in their act of faith may come into a relationship with God.
Barth seemed to keep the two at a distance.
Barth’s theological method
Barth’s theological outlook was shaped by a negative thrust and a positive

thrust. The negative drive centred on his rejection of Natural Theology.
Reason had undermined the gospel in all its guises throughout history:
Roman Catholic Natural Theology, Liberal Protestant Theology, even the
contemporary German Lutheran dalliance with Nazism.
The positive drive came from God’s Word. It was only possible to know
God’s Word because of God’s Word and there was no other way. Human
beings are unable to know God through nature, reason or history. But
God, in an act of sovereign freedom and grace, has revealed himself in
history. It has come about through a single event: the event of Jesus
Christ. Faith in Jesus Christ, as the authentic revelation of God, is
self-authenticating. Faith is a gift; there is no further discussion.
Barth wrote a study of the medieval thinker Anselm of Canterbury
(1033–1109). Published in 1931, its title, Fides quaerens intellectum
(faith seeking understanding), was of course a quotation of Anselm’s
own famous saying, and many see this text as a useful insight into
Barth’s theological method. Barth interpreted Anselm as a devout
man trying to bring understanding to the gift of faith: faith first, under-
standing later.
Anselm’s lesson to us is that all theology must be done in the context of

prayer and obedience. Therefore theology cannot be neutral, detached
analysis; it must be the surrender of the intellect to God’s self-revelation.
There must be a life of faith before there can be truthful Theology. Human
reason must never be set against the written testimony of the Bible,
against the revealed object of faith who is Jesus Christ.
A Christocentric and Trinitarian Theology
The starting point for all of Barth’s theological thought is the Jesus
Christ event. No matter what the theological issue, he appears to be
saying, ‘How can I understand this matter in the light of God’s act in
Jesus Christ?’ We have stressed over and over again that, for Barth, Jesus
Christ is the one and only self-revelation of God. Jesus is the Word of
God. If Jesus is the one whom faith says he is, then he must, in some way,
be identical with God himself, and not merely an agent or messenger.
Behind the truth of this revelation in Christ there lies the prospect of
God as Trinity.
So when he was asked, ‘Who is this self-revealing God?’ Barth could
only answer, ‘God as Trinity’. That is to say, God is as follows:
z the God who reveals

z the revelatory event itself
z the effect it has on human beings.
God’s revelation has taken place so Barth then asks, ‘What must be true
for this to have been possible?’ ‘What does the fact of God tell us about
the nature of God?’ Humanity, separated from God by sin, cannot hear
the Word of God unaided. So God must work to allow humanity to hear
it. God is the one who reveals. What does God reveal? God reveals God.
How does God reveal God? God reveals God through the work of God.
The doctrine of the Trinity is what distinguishes Christian teaching
about God and revelation from all other theories about God and all
other possibilities of revelation. God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit are
the divine ways of being God that eternally subsist within God in total
unity. Yet it is only because of God as Trinity that we can come to
awareness of God’s revelation in and through Jesus and of God’s

presence within the life of the Church and of believers.
Barth’s thoughts on the Trinity are the launching pad from which he
starts his Church Dogmatics. Before Barth’s work, the doctrine of the
Trinity had been neglected for some centuries.
Barth’s thoughts on election
In Theology the term ‘election’ indicates an act of God’s will: God chooses
some in preference to others. In the New Testament the elect are the small
number chosen by God to do the divine will and to remain faithful
to God. It is often used as another word for predestination.
Barth saw the cross of Jesus as the supreme event of history. There
Jesus, the Son of God, opens himself to carry the burden of the divine
wrath which sinful humanity deserves. Jesus is at once the only elect and
damned human being. All other human beings are represented by him
and included in him. All human beings should be rejected by God, have
brought upon themselves the anger of God and must die the death which
God has decreed. But because God loves humanity, that death has been
transferred for ever to the one whom God loves and chooses (elects) at
their head and in their place.
Barth’s sense of predestination is that from eternity God has decided
that all members of the human race would be acquitted of the charges
of sin laid against them and that this acquittal would be at great cost to
God.
The doctrine of universalism means that, no matter what we do, we
shall all be saved. Barth’s writings are not clear that this is what he means
exactly. But he appears to be suggesting that grace is the final and only
reality.
Barth insists on God’s commitment to a fallen humanity in spite of
sin. God has chosen to demonstrate this commitment clearly in the event
of Jesus Christ. God bears the pain and cost of this redemption and
accepts the human condition, particularly human suffering and death.
God has removed the negative consequences of sin from us and directed
them towards Jesus Christ.
This is how Barth gets rid of the notion of predestination to damna-

tion. Jesus is the one predestined to condemnation. Barth’s emphasis
is on the final triumph of grace: predestination to salvation.
Does this mean that all people, Christians and Jews, Muslims and
Hindus, Buddhists and animist, saints and sinners will come to salvation?
In which case does it matter what we do, think or believe? Barth was
adamant that there is no knowledge of God apart from Jesus Christ:
salvation is only possible through Christ. However he underscores the
final and vital eschatological victory of grace over unbelief.
The Church Dogmatics
The Church Dogmatics is a vast work. It is estimated to stand at six

million words. The volumes are subdivided. There are 12 such subdivi-
sions. The fifth volume will never appear. The work has four major
sections. They are The Word of God, God, Creation and Reconciliation.
Barth died before he could write the volume on Redemption.
The language is direct and strong. The central principle is that every-
thing is dependent upon the action of God. God is sovereign with
regard to both divine freedom and divine love. This applies to both
God’s own being and to God’s relationship with humanity. We are not
considering set states of being or relationship, Barth allows room for the
acting out of the sovereign will of God upon creation. The ‘proclamation’
of the Church takes place, or is looked for, in a space between the text
under consideration and the actuality of the experience being lived by
preacher and hearers at that particular time.
God reveals the divine self to Creation. With regard to humanity this
is an objective reality, and it allows Theology to be called knowledge. But
this knowledge is only available through faith.
Barth does not concentrate on humanity or the Church. He wants
to establish what turns speech into proclamation; he seeks to set up
a connectedness with God. Word carries past revelation into the future,
calling and regulating the Church through empowering Word of God.
The Bible is the place where, through the actions of God, the Word
is shown.
The Bible demonstrates the fullness of God’s Lordship as Revealer,

Revelation and the consequences Revelation has on humanity. The
Trinity is at the very forefront of Barth’s theology. God is Lord of our
existence (Father), God is Lord of our estranged condition before God
and also of the process which reunites us with God (Son), and God is
Lord of how we are freed to respond to God (Holy Spirit).
God moves freely towards humanity, the supreme moment being the
event in which the Word becomes human in Jesus Christ. This is the
objective side of Revelation.
Barth brings out the true meaning of the life of God’s people as he
ponders the Holy Spirit. This is the subjective side of Revelation. But
Holy Spirit leads to consideration of the authority of Holy Scripture and
to how there can be valid proclamation. The Church is directed to speak
of God and when it does so authentically, in a way that commands
obedience; then God speaks in Word of God.
Barth thought long and hard about how God can be ‘God for us’. God
is known by self-revelation, but this can only happen in the reality of the
response and obedience of faith. God is the one who seeks us out and
builds up fellowship with us in love. That love is gracious and holy and
also unvarying, eternal and free.
The grace of God is a saving grace, seeking and holding us, claiming
our obedience and declaring us righteous and free for eternal life
with God.
In Barth’s thought, Creation was the setting up of a distinct reality
where God shares divine life and glory with the created order. On the
human side it is being in grace as we await the final completion of God’s
work. We know God is creator and that the world exists. That is the
reality in which we are set. But the important thing about it is not our
analysis of it, nor our technical control over it.
Important knowledge comes through faith which grows within us
through our knowledge of Jesus. The meaning of creation finds its expres-
sion in God’s purpose. And that is worked out in the new covenant
expressed by Jesus Christ and also in the fellowship with God which
humanity now gains.
Barth’s teaching about the Christian doctrine of Reconciliation
centres on the dynamic of the Word of God, focusing on the historic
work and office of Jesus. Jesus shows his divinity in the humility of his
incarnation and his humanity in the exalted Jesus. The unity of the two
is seen in his self-manifestation as mediator between God and humanity:
the Lord as servant and the servant as Lord.
Barth is engaged in a constant battle to clear the ground so that Word
of God becomes apparent. In this ‘allowing-to-be-heard’ (my phrase, not
Barth’s) the Bible is of prime importance. But past theologians and the
great Confessions of Faith also have their place. Barth is responsive to
what other theologians might call the tradition. Though he rejects all
Natural Theology, he affirms that since the Word became flesh there is
an objective standard against which all Theology can be measured.
Covenant Originally an agreement between two parties, it came to be seen as

the faithfulness of God towards Israel in return for the inner righteousness
of the people before God. Jesus restated it as humanity receiving a gracious
gift from God by which their desire to serve God was made perfect. It requires
a response. It has its highest expression in the example of the life and death of
Jesus.
Mediator One who seeks to bring about a peaceful settlement between oppos-
ing parties. In Christian Theology it refers to the work of Christ reconciling
God and the human race.
Barth and analogy
Barth was concerned about emphasizing the reasonable quality of faith,

and in order to do so, he made use of analogy. What do we mean by
analogy?
When I talk of God I use words from ordinary speech, but do not
always use them to mean exactly the same thing. If my meaning is the
same every time, then I am using a word ‘univocally’. If I intend a differ-
ent meaning each time, then my meaning is ‘equivocal’. I am seeking
to confuse. ‘Equivocal’ is sometimes used as a polite term for lying. So am
I seeking to confuse, or am I even lying, when I speak of God and use an
everyday word in a slightly different sense?
In theological language, we use a word about an everyday object in a
way appropriate to that object. But when we use the same word about
God we use it in a way that is appropriate to God. This is what is meant

by using a word ‘analogically’.
When other theologians had said that God is our Father, they had
started from the notion of a human father and appropriately applied the
notion to God. But Barth used what he called a ‘vertical analogy’. God is
our real Father. We only understand the meaning of human fatherhood
when we understand the Fatherhood of God as revealed in the coming of
Jesus. Human fathers are only fathers by analogy with God’s Fatherhood.
Barth called this the ‘analogy of faith’.
We understand the human condition in the light of God. Barth under-
stood everything in the created order through his understanding of the
meaning of Christ. If we really want to understand what it is to be human,
we must first understand the Revelation of Christ. This tendency has
been referred to as ‘Christological concentration’.
Appraisal
Barth has been attacked from both the liberal left and the conservative
right.
On the liberal side he was particularly criticized over his view of
Scripture. He was accused of raising the Bible to a position where it was
above criticism and ignoring the scholarly and critical work done on the
text over the preceding century.
He has also been condemned on the grounds that his Theology is an
uncritical expression of faith, that it denies any role for reason in the
expression of belief, for Barth refuses to consider any sort of rational
justification for Theology. Theology is totally autonomous with regard to
other disciplines. Some have seen this as stepping beyond communica-
tion of the truths of Theology and into isolation.
Barth’s theological outlook emphasizes the otherness of God. It is
based on revelation in such a way that it can only be checked against
itself and will not allow an outside reference. Some have seen it as a vast
belief system that is resistant to criticism.
Conservatives have attacked his definition of revelation as a non-verbal
event, a happening rather than a text. They argue that he has undermined
the status of the Bible as a document which cannot be in error.
However other conservatives have acclaimed him as the best answer

to the Enlightenment’s programme which stresses the dominance of
unquestionable reason. They welcome the fact that Barth’s starting
point is revelation and praise its emphasis on proclamation. Barthian
Theology is thus a great tool for preaching. Theology is not tied into
current philosophical or hermeneutical fashions.
Barth was widely influential, particularly in Protestant circles. Many
people from different church traditions were interested in his thought
and thus he is credited with fostering ecumenical discussion. The renewal
of interest in the idea of ‘Church’ has much to do with Barth’s ideas on
the links between Theology and Church. The notion of ‘Church’ had
been neglected in the heyday of Protestant liberal thought.
Some Roman Catholic scholars have viewed Barth’s theology as the
nearest thing to Catholicism ever to come from the Protestant wing of
Christianity, in spite of his rejection of Natural Theology and philosophy.
Barth did, however, consider Theology to be a rational quest.
Jesus Christ is the centre of Barth’s theology, but other theologians
have criticized it as having Jesus Christ only as its subject. Thought con-
cerning God is restricted to thought concerning Jesus Christ. Nevertheless
he is also credited with rescuing the doctrine of the Trinity from neglect.
Barth has had an enormous influence on all the theologians of the
twentieth century, whether they followed in his footsteps, expanded the
scope of his enquiry using his methods to delve into areas he had not
touched or broadly agreed with him but pursued other methodologies of
enquiry. Even those who disagree with him seem bound to continue the
debate in the areas he made his own: Christology, revelation, the Trinity,
creation, evil and redemption.
However Barthian Theology has no basis on which to approach
other religions which, following its principles, must be condemned as
corruptions of faith.
12 Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Cost of Discipleship
Bonhoeffer was one of the most influential theologians of the later

twentieth century. This reputation was, in large part, forged because of
the radical political stances he adopted towards the end of his life. He was
a controversial and original thinker. He was an early enemy of Nazism
and as a result took the staggering decision to oppose it, if necessary, by
violent means. He was executed in 1945 at the early age of 39.
Life (1906–1945)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 in Silesia; the area is now in Poland.
His father was a Professor of Psychology at Berlin.
Bonhoeffer studied at both Tübingen and at Berlin. At Berlin he
attended lectures by the liberal theologian van Harnack (1851–1930) for
whom he had a great regard. He came to reject van Harnack’s theological
method but continued to admire the liberal tradition. While at Berlin he
also came under the influence of Karl Barth (1886–1968).
Bonhoeffer’s later thought shows influences from both traditions. The
liberal side influenced the sort of question he would ask in his project
concerning ‘religionless Christianity’. The Barthian side influenced his
unwavering conviction that Theology must always keep its focus on the
self-disclosure of God in Jesus Christ; it must never become a form of
social science. Bonhoeffer graduated in 1927.
He lived and worked for a short time in Barcelona. He then spent a year
studying at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. He returned to
Berlin in 1931 and was ordained a Lutheran pastor. He worked as an
assistant pastor and as a university lecturer in Theology. It was at this
time that he began his involvement with the ecumenical movement. He
was friendly with members of the Anglican Community of the Resurrec-
tion at Mirfield in Yorkshire. He spent some time working in London as
chaplain to the Lutheran congregation there.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Cost of Discipleship 205
He opposed Nazism from the very first and was an early member of the
Confessing Church – Lutherans who resisted the state church controlled
by the Nazis. He was a signatory of the Barmen Declaration in 1934. He
returned to Germany in 1935 as head of one of the seminaries of the
Confessing Church in Pomerania. It was a more or less underground or
secret college. Here he instituted a regime of life and study which was
startlingly unusual for Lutherans of the time: community life, common
prayer, study, confession to a companion and acceptance of spiritual advice
from that companion, and regular Sunday Eucharistic celebrations.
In 1936 he was forbidden to teach by the Nazis, he was banned from
Berlin and dismissed from his university post. His seminary was closed
by government order in the following year.
He was lecturing in America when the Second World War broke out,
but he felt it was his duty to return to Germany. He had friends and
family members who were highly placed in the Resistance movement and
he was recruited to work with them. With the help of English friends he
tried to mediate between Germans opposed to Hitler and the British gov-
ernment. He became engaged to Maria von Wedermeyer early in 1943.
She supported him and remained in close contact with him during all the
troubles that were to come.
Bonhoeffer was also involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. He had
come to the conclusion that the extreme circumstances of the day
demanded an extreme ethical response. He was arrested by the Gestapo in
1943, was imprisoned in Berlin, later at Buchenwald, and killed by the SS
in Flossenbürg in 1945 together with General Oster, Admiral Canaris and
others. These killings may have been ordered by Hitler, yet they also have
all the hallmarks of murder, since they appear to have taken place without
judicial process and as a panic reaction to the advance of US troops.
Liberal The desire to be free from traditional church teaching and

creeds and to be allowed to handle texts and sources in a modern,
critical and scientific manner.
Ecumenical A movement seeking the unity of all Christian churches.
Subjectivity Relating to the person defined as a thinking being; what
is personal and individual.
He wrote Sanctorum Communio (Communion of Saints), his first

theological work on the structure of the Church in 1930. His second work,
Act and Being, was published the following year. He also wrote The Cost of
Discipleship in 1937 and Ethics, which was not published until 1949.
In addition to the concerns which prompted his actions Bonhoeffer
had a deep interest in Martin Luther whom he read closely. He main-
tained that any concentration on Luther’s religious subjectivity was a
bad reading; it missed the psychological point. Luther’s thought may
have contained deep introspection, but it was prompted by a very objec-
tive starting point – the foundational revelation of God in Jesus Christ as
it was declared in the Scriptures. An ethical being must be consequently
grounded in the Word of God in Christ and not in one’s own
subjectivity.
He is best known for Letters and Papers from Prison, which was pub-
lished in 1951 after his death. His books were gradually translated into
English between the late 1940s and very early 1960s.
He was concerned with the growing secularization of the world and
wondered how the Church might speak to the world in a secular way.
Timeline
1900 Publication of Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams

1903 First motorized flight by the Wright brothers
1906 Birth of Bonhoeffer
1908 Mahler’s Song of the Earth
1915 Wegener’s Theory of Tectonic Drift
1916 Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity
1917 The Russian Revolution
1922 Mussolini’s Blackshirts march on Rome
1928 Fleming discovers penicillin
1929 The New York Stock Exchange Crash
1930 Bonhoeffer’s Sanctorum Communio
1931 Bonhoeffer’s Act and Being
1933 Hitler becomes German Chancellor
1934–1935 Mao Zedong leads the Long March
1937 Purges in the Soviet Union
Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship

1942 First atomic pile
1945 Execution of Bonhoeffer
1949 Bonhoeffer’s Ethics
1951 Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison
Thought
Bonhoeffer’s thought is concerned with a search for the beyond which

is present with us now and with thorough reform of the Church. His
constant question was how Jesus Christ could become Lord for the non-
religious in a world come of age, a world where the hypothesis of God
was superfluous.
He did not see how the Church, in its present form, could have any
message for the modern world. Biblical faith could only be promoted if
traditional religion was dispensed with. His notion of ‘religionless chris-
tianity’ has excited interest, but Bonhoeffer did not live long enough to
pursue the quest.
A world come of age
A person who has not yet come of age lives under the guidance and pro-
tection of somebody older and more experienced. To have come of age is
to have lost or broken away from that support, to be autonomous. What
might it mean for the world to have come of age?
Bonhoeffer’s thought here is rooted in the Enlightenment, when indi-
viduals demanded the right to follow their own thoughts without having
to answer for them to some authority: each human being is autonomous
and must be granted freedom of thought and conscience. In the Middle
Ages ‘heteronomy’ was exercised by clerical control, and Bonhoeffer did
not want it to return. Any such loss of autonomy would be an act of
despair, obtained by the sacrifice of intellectual honesty.
Bonhoeffer realized that people had become self-sufficient in many
areas of their lives, and he felt that this trend was irreversible. People
were now tackling many important questions for living without any
thought of God. This was almost totally true in science, the arts and
ethics. They were also forcefully realizing that the world worked just
as well, if not better, without making any reference to the God question.
God was gradually, imperceptibly, being pushed back from the forefront
of awareness.
So Bonhoeffer set out to analyse this new atheism. It was not so much
a question of denying God as ignoring God. The question of whether
God exists was now felt to be a pointless one – a waste of energy. It was
just not relevant. When the world had not yet come of age, the God
question was useful; once they have come of age, individuals can do with-
out God.
This was the world that Bonhoeffer experienced in prison: a context of
practical atheism. People were now conscious of themselves, of the world
in which they lived, of the laws that governed their existence and of how
those laws came to be. The world they lived in was a human construct
and not a divine creation.
People speak of God when human knowledge has come up against
its limits, when human strength fails. They are looking for deus ex
machina: the expectation that God will miraculously appear and make
things come all right. Such a religious faith is exploitative. It takes advan-
tage of human weakness and ignorance. Bonhoeffer denied that we had,
in our human weakness, the right to use God as a stopgap.
We must therefore find God in what we know; God wishes to be under-
stood by us, not found in questions that cannot be answered. In this way
God can be related to scientific knowledge and the continuing unveiling
of scientific discovery, but also related to the everyday circumstances of
life as we confront death, suffering and our imperfections. So Bonhoeffer
preferred to speak of God, not in our weakness, but in our strength, not
in the face of death and failings, but in the face of human goodness.
Bonhoeffer sets out to make room for God in the centre of reality, in
positive circumstances. God has made the world; that creative act is still
in progress. The world is held in God’s hand, which is the very centre of
all reality. Nevertheless Bonhoeffer does not wish the theologian to
set out to prove such a theory, for that would be trying to prove to a
world come of age that it had not in fact come of age. He would rather
understand this world come of age positively and, taking his stand on
the gospel and on Christ, make no attempt to hide the atheism of the
world but to reveal it.
Enlightenment The critical mindset of the eighteenth century: the rational

examination of previously accepted ideas and institutions.
Heteronomy Being governed by a source outside oneself.
Autonomy Self-governing; freedom from outside influence.
Deus ex machina Any unexpected or unlikely device used to untangle a
situation.
Personalism One of a wide spectrum of philosophical outlooks which stresses
the pre-eminence of persons, both human and divine, in the universe.
I–Thou The refusal to regard another as a thing, an instrument, a means to an
end; granting others the fullest recognition of their personhood and value.
Sanctorum Communio
Bonhoeffer was influenced by the personalist thought fashionable in the

1920s. He saw the ‘I–Thou relationship’ as central to all philosophical and
theological construction. But the object of Theology is God and in par-
ticular the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer wanted to
hold these two tendencies (relationship and revelation) together and
sought to do so in his doctoral dissertation, Sanctorum Communio, which
he successfully defended in 1927.
He argues for a personalism that is fundamentally linked with revela-
tion. Persons only draw their being from a relationship to the divine
person which surpasses them. The limit of personhood is where the per-
son (created being) is distinguished from the Creator. This imposes an
inescapable ethical duty on all. Transcendence should be seen in ethical
rather than in metaphysical terms.
Bonhoeffer’s thesis is an attempt to describe the essence of the Church
or as the subtitle calls it ‘dogmatic research into the sociology of the
Church’. He is trying to give expression to a doctrine of Jesus Christ,
within the framework of the Church: Christology within ecclesiology.
The Church is a communion because it is a community. But this particu-

lar community is a community of the baptized into Jesus Christ, a work
of God in Christ: Christ existing as community.
So the Church is, on the one hand, a concrete, visible, social reality and
has, on the other hand, a Christological dimension which defies socio-
logical investigation. The Church exists in history as a collective person.
Bonhoeffer is close here to the idea of the irruption of God into the world
as self-revelation. One cannot understand the Church without the light
of faith in the revelation of God.
Like Jesus Christ, Christians take on a representative and substi-
tutionary role. They do so as they build up the capacity to make the
suffering of others their own. They do so in the course of concrete living
and in the responsibility of prayer for others. Church is a community, a
holy gathering, made up of sinners. What makes it different is the pres-
ence of Christ where inner conviction and spirituality meet liberal
concern for others.
Act and Being
In 1930 Bonhoeffer successfully defended another thesis; this thesis,

entitled Act and Being, was to qualify him as a university teacher. Here his
concern is not to make clear the foundations of the Church but to see if
he can make clear the very being of God. God intervenes from above
and so has freedom of action. God dwells with us and so has faithfulness
of being. How could God exercise total freedom of action and faithful-
ness of being at the same time? If God is totally free, God can intervene
in the world on God’s terms and when God wishes. But in such a case
God could go away and forget about the world. Then God would not be
faithful.
Bonhoeffer identifies Christ as the one in whom act and being are rec-
onciled. Through Christ, God comes and God dwells. Being is the
foundational reality without which there is no act. Act is the irruption of
God in the Christ-event: ‘Jesus, the man for others’. God reveals himself.
But revelation takes place in history. Church and Christianity are not
invisible or abstract. Christianity cannot be reduced to religion.
Cheap grace
The phrase ‘cheap grace’ is a critical and disapproving expression. Luther

had famously defined the Church as simul justa et peccatrix (at the same
time both justified and sinful) and the individual Christian as simul
justus et peccator (both justified and sinful). Bonhoeffer was afraid that
the Church, particularly in Lutheran preaching, had taken an undemand-
ing view of this description. It had ended up preaching grace as something
easy to come by, with little cost to self. But Bonhoeffer held that grace was
costly; discipleship involves a commitment: grace demands obedience,
and we are being asked to do more than give comfortable assent to a
doctrine.
The Cost of Discipleship
This book arose out of Bonhoeffer’s experiences while training future

pastors of the Confessing Church. He was, in a sense, training pastors ‘on
the run’. This is not an academic book. The style is closer to preaching.
Here Bonhoeffer’s essential thought is that the essence of being Church
is following Christ. It is to struggle with the questions: Who is Jesus
Christ? What does he command? How do I witness to that? It tries to state
a theology of grace, a theology of Christ, a theology of the Church and
how they relate to society and to the world.
Luther had taught that we are saved by the grace of God alone and
not by works. But if one ignores and despises good works, we could be led
to hold grace in contempt. The free grace of Jesus Christ is a call to con-
version of life and a call to obedience: to work on behalf of others. The
life of the Christian is in the world but not according to the norms of the
world.
Bonhoeffer’s Christology
Barth had taught that revelation is the result of God’s infinite freedom
and is a totally contingent act (God was not compelled to make any such
revelation). This revelation creates its own response and God is free to
withdraw that revelation at any time. God is always outside our knowl-
edge. Any other way of regarding God’s revelation was considered by
Barth as a human attempt to construct a tame God who satisfies our
demands, rather than make demands of us.
Bonhoeffer disapproved of this teaching: it made God appear so utterly
free as to be an abstraction. It did not take into account what God had
really done in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was not an event in God’s free-
dom; Jesus was God being offered on behalf of all humans.
Christology for Bonhoeffer was not a debate about how the transcend-
ent God related to finite mortals; rather it was the puzzle of the identity
of the person Jesus who addresses himself to both God and people.
Bonhoeffer looked for the answer in the living, breathing conscious man
whose story is told in the gospels.
This man is Christ in so far as he lived for others and that was the
essence of his being. It was not something which just happened to occur.
He cannot be thought of in terms of his being in himself but only in
terms of his being for others, in terms of his relationship to me. Thus
Christ can only be thought of in community.
Religionless Christianity
It appears that Bonhoeffer intended to write a book on the subject of

religionless Christianity but was executed before he could do so. This is a
late development of his thought and the outlines of his thinking on the
subject are contained in his Letters and Papers from Prison.
First, what did Bonhoeffer mean by religion? He considered it to be
reliance on God at the margins of life. It involved both individualism
and a metaphysical system. There are problems with both. Individualism
involves a retreat from the world, an obsession with self; this is unchris-
tian and any attempt to define a metaphysical definition of salvation
invariably allows people to escape the challenge of the gospel. Bonhoeffer
saw the gospel in strongly ethical terms.
In a world ‘come of age’ both ideas are challenged: individualism is
impossible. First, we inevitably live in a community, which respects our
individual uniqueness but demands involvement from us: we cannot
remain in an isolated cocoon. Secondly, a world suspicious of metaphys-

ics demands verification of all systems: it looks for reasons for holding
any set of ideas, for constructing any value system. If religion is com-
posed of those two elements, then Bonhoeffer saw religion as a barrier to
true faith in Jesus Christ.
Bonhoeffer is most famous for his attempts to give a non-religious
interpretation to basic Christian ideas and to express them in a way
that will impress people who have learned to be in this world without
God. He is struggling to come to terms with Christianity’s identity in
the modern world: ‘what Christianity really is, or who Christ really is, for
us today’.
This, as we have seen, has now become a problem because the world
has ‘come of age’. The time when people could be told things by means of
word is over. People no longer lived in a world of consciousness or
inwardness. This meant they no longer had a religious outlook. It was
impossible to be religious anymore.
Is there, Bonhoeffer wondered, a place for Christ in such a world? He
wanted to accept the modern world and accept also that Jesus is the Lord
of that world. This was a particular theme of reflection while he was in
prison. There he met people who never turned to God, yet remained
deeply and authentically human, right to the end. His question was, ‘How
can Christ also become the Lord of religionless people?’
The Church has failed to separate Christianity’s message from religious
frills, urging people to cultivate an inner life. This is a retreat into subjec-
tivism, into ideas about personal sin, guilt, despair and anxiety. The
Church has therefore failed in its duty to the modern world. It has failed
to proclaim, has no language in which it is possible to proclaim, the
objective work achieved by God in Jesus Christ. As the personal and met-
aphysical God of the gaps is pushed further and further from the central
concerns of people living in the modern world, God is portrayed as a
form of weakness rather than as a form of strength.
The task of religionless Christianity is to speak to people at the centre
of their lives, both in joy and in suffering. Christianity does not have to
presuppose that people are wicked. God must be seen where we are, at
every stage of life, not just when we have come to the end of our tether.
This is where Jesus met people in the gospels. This, for Bonhoeffer, is
what is meant by the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

Contingent That which can happen or can exist, yet need not.
Eschatological Concerned with the last things: death, judgement, heaven and
hell. It is concerned with the final destiny and hope both of the individual and
of humanity.
Ethics
The Nazi-dominated German church had talked of a divided or two-tier

reality, an inner world of awareness where the gospel operates and an
outer world of reality: the State, the law where the demands of the gospel
had no place. This division allowed them to justify ideas concerning the
purity of the race and the primacy of devotion to the Fatherland.
Bonhoeffer had a Christological understanding of reality. That is to say
he understood everything in terms of the importance and work of Christ.
God in Christ had brought everything under divine control. There is no
more division into sacred and secular. So the starting point for ethics is
not self or the world or how to agree on sets of values. It is God as revealed
by Jesus Christ, how Jesus Christ takes form in the world we live in. Ethics
is not abstract speculation; it is the need to make concrete judgements
and to obey the demands of God.
Bonhoeffer saw the danger in the two-tiered reality argument. It could
be used to justify any set of actions in the outer world, which was not
subject to Christ’s demands. Furthermore he maintained that no sphere
of life could be removed from God’s healing in Christ. Everything in real-
ity derives its being from Christ’s new creation. He referred to this as the
‘order of preservation’. But things are only thus defined if they are open
to God’s revelation in Christ. If they are not open in that way, they may
be dissolved. The Hitler regime had closed itself to revelation.
As the Nazi enterprise developed, Bonhoeffer came to adopt a new
eschatological ethic – deep-seated obedience to the concrete demands of
the crucified Jesus – adopting the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount
(Mt. 5, 6 and 7) in a quite literal fashion.
Bonhoeffer made a distinction between ultimate ethics and penulti-
mate ethics. Ultimate ethics, or ethics of the last things, concerns the final
completion of God’s work. Penultimate ethics, ethics concerning the

second last things, has to do with the nitty-gritty of living in the world
here and now. Penultimate ethics are vitally important, because they
prepare for the reception of the ultimate message: God’s work in Christ.
Christianity must preach the Good News but this cannot be separated
from the need to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the sick:
the difficult, demanding and often unrewarding task of doing good in
difficult circumstances.
Appraisal
Can the inner, spiritual life be separated from the outer necessity of
doing good in the world?
Can the religionless person, with no time for God, who continues to
do good, for and on behalf of others, be considered a Christian?
Does being baptized and confessing faith in Christ make any difference
at all?
Is religion dead? What is one to say about the explosion of religious
feeling in the modern world? Why might Bonhoeffer consider much of
it to be unauthentic?
Is religious feeling the most important source of inspiration and
guidance for living in the modern world? Can religion be trusted to guide
us in our lives or is a moral regulator necessary? Would such a moral
regulator be set above religious feeling or be obedient to it?
Is the cost of discipleship an indicator of the soundness of that disci-
pleship? How can faith and ethical behaviour be offered to those who live
and act from within a secular mindset?
What do you think of Bonhoeffer’s belief that the task of Theology is
to point to the revelation of God which expresses itself most powerfully
in the resurrection of Jesus, demonstrating that the logic of God will
inevitably surprise us?
Bonhoeffer presented many faces to the world: visionary, anti-Nazi
conspirator, double agent, herald of the Death of God movement, accused
of being an atheist and secularizer. The brutal cutting-short of his life
has, of course, added to the mystique. The enigma is where later thought
might have led.
13 Karl Rahner and Human Transcendence
Having considered some of the defining radical and disturbing theolo-

gical voices of the twentieth century, we now turn to a man who was, in
his own way, an innovator, but who was also a faithful and loyal member
of the Roman Catholic Church. In his younger days, the Roman Catholic
Church was going through one of its more inward looking and ultra-
montane phases; nevertheless it was a period leading up to the renewal of
the Second Vatican Council, at which Rahner was, behind the scenes, one
of the most important voices.
Life (1904–1984)
Karl Rahner was born in 1804 in Freiburg in the Black Forest region
of southwestern Germany. He was the fourth child in a family of seven.
His father was a secondary school teacher. Rahner describes his family
background as normal, hardworking and Christian. As a schoolboy he
liked wandering in the countryside and disliked sitting down to do his
homework!
In 1919 his elder brother, Hugo Rahner, entered the Jesuit Order and
Karl followed 3 years later, at the age of 18. He then began the long period
of preparation demanded of trainee Jesuits. Both brothers would be
theologians. Hugo specialized in Patristics, the study of the early (mostly
Greek) Fathers and Ignatian spirituality. It is said that Hugo once offered
to translate his brother’s works into German: a reference to Karl’s notori-
ously dense style of writing.
Karl studied Philosophy at Feldkirch then at Pullach. He read Kant
(1724–1804) attentively and also discovered the philosophy of Joseph
Maréchal (1878–1944). Maréchal was a Belgian Jesuit who held that
certain ideas, latent in the thought of Aquinas, could, if given proper
attention, be developed to answer some of Kant’s critical philosophy.
Maréchal started the movement that became known as transcendental
Karl Rahner and Human Transcendence 217
Thomism and contributed to renewed twentieth-century interest in the

work of Aquinas (1225–1274).
From 1927 to 1929 Rahner taught Latin to his juniors in the Jesuit
novitiate. Between 1929 and 1933 he was pursuing his early theological
training in Valkenburg in Holland. One of his teachers here was the future
Cardinal Bea, later one of the Vatican’s tireless workers for Christian
unity. Rahner was ordained priest in Munich in 1932. Between 1933 and
1934 he finished his novitiate in Austria. His superiors wished him to
teach philosophy, so he started to prepare a doctoral thesis in his home
town of Freiburg, where he also attended the lectures of Martin Heidegger
(1889–1976). Rahner denied that the content of his thought he had been
influenced by Heidegger but freely recognized a debt when it came to a
style of thinking.
His philosophical thesis was on the metaphysics of knowledge in the
work of St Thomas Aquinas. He wished to discern the a priori conditions
of the human mind in the thought of St Thomas. He had difficulties with
his supervisor who felt that this study depended too heavily on modern
philosophy. He finished his thesis in 1936 and published it in 1939 as
Spirit in the World.
However, by this time, circumstances required a theology teacher and
Rahner was sent off to Innsbruck to prepare a doctoral thesis in Theo-
logy. This study would concentrate on how Patristic thought viewed the
pierced heart of the Saviour as the source of the Church. Rahner’s philo-
sophical training had given him deep insights into Scholastic philosophy;
he would now acquire deep insights into another fundamental source
of church tradition – the early Fathers.
Rahner began to teach in Innsbruck in 1937 and, in theory, remained
there until 1964. There were, of course, interruptions following the
annexation of Austria by Hitler and the Second World War. Rahner con-
tinued his study of Patristics and also of Anthropology. A course of
lectures he delivered at Salzburg concerned the human spirit, which he
saw as being both transcendent and historical. That course became his
second published work, Hearers of the Word.
After 1938 there was a Nazi regime in Austria and the Innsbruck
Theology Faculty was shut down. A Church theological institute contin-
ued to function, but their premises were commandeered and they
transferred to Vienna, where teaching continued at the very limit of

legal tolerance. Rahner now worked for a while in a pastoral setting but
in 1944 was forced to leave Vienna and live in Bavaria. This was his first
experience of country living and he had pastoral responsibilities for
refugees there. He returned to Innsbruck in 1949 and resumed teaching
Theology.
In 1950 he wrote a colossal study of the Doctrine of the Assumption of
the Blessed Virgin Mary but encountered problems with the internal
censors of the Society of Jesus. The matter was even referred to Rome.
In 1954 he started publishing his Theological Investigations, which even-
tually grew to 23 volumes.
When, in 1959, Pope John XXIII announced he was going to call the
Second Vatican Council, Rahner was consulted about certain prepara-
tions for it. However he was still having censorship difficulties in the
Vatican and the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had to protest
personally to the Pope who cleared the way for Rahner’s full participa-
tion. After he had been named peritus, expert witness, to the Theological
Commission, he co-operated with Henri de Lubac (1896–1990), Yves
Congar (1904–1995), Hans Küng (b.1928) and Joseph Ratzinger (b.1927),
later to become Pope Benedict XVI. It was about this time that he devel-
oped the idea of a fundamental course in the Christian faith which would
be taught in the early years of seminary training. This became, in time,
Foundations of Christian Faith.
Ultramontane The view that the Pope should have total authority in matters
of doctrine.
A priori An a priori argument, statement, concept or judgement is not based
on experience, on the five senses, but one which, following rigorous thought,
is seen to be necessarily true or necessarily false. The term valid might be
arrived at by a priori reasoning.
Fathers A restricted group of early church writers whose influence on doctrine
was vital.
Rahner was now widely hailed as the greatest theologian of the twentieth
century. In 1964 he was named to a professorial chair in Munich to teach
Christian world vision and philosophy of religion. It was a chair which
allowed him total freedom to lecture as he wanted and aimed at a wide
audience, not just university undergraduates. He also, from 1967 on,
lectured in dogmatics in Münster.
In 1969 Rahner was nominated by Pope Paul VI to the Roman Catholic
Church’s International Theological Commission, which had been set up
to maintain the fertile co-operation between theologians and the Roman
magisterium (the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church).
However he did not feel comfortable there; the Curia (the government of
the Church) was beginning to claw back influence it had lost in the after-
math of the council, and Rahner soon resigned.
In 1973 he retired, lived in a Jesuit philosophical institute in Munich
and worked on his Foundations of Christian Faith. He was involved in
controversy at this time. He criticized Hans Küng for certain views and
was himself the subject of severe disparagement from his former friend,
Hans Urs von Balthasar, particularly over his notion of the ‘anonymous
Christian’. In 1982 he returned to Innsbruck, where he died in 1984.
Timeline
1904 Birth of Karl Rahner

1913 Henry Ford creates the first production line for mass-produced cars
1916 Einstein’s Theory of Relativity
1920 Foundation of the League of Nations
1922 Creation of the Soviet Union
1923 Rahner enters the Society of Jesus
1928 Discovery of penicillin
1929 Wall Street Crash
1932 Rahner ordained priest
1933 Hitler in power in Germany
1934 Rahner prepares a doctoral thesis in Philosophy
1934–1935 Mao Zedong leads the Long March
1935 Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess
1937 Rahner prepares a doctoral thesis in Theology

1938 Rahner starts teaching at Innsbruck
Anschluss of Austria
1939 Rahner’s Spirit in the World
1938–1949 Teaching at Innsbruck interrupted; Rahner engaged in pastoral
activity
Rahner’s Hearers of the Word
1945 Founding of the United Nations
1947 The Marshall Plan
1948 Beginning of the Cold War; Berlin blockade
1949 Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex
1950 Rahner in trouble with the Roman censors
1954 Rahner starts his Theological Investigations
1960s Many former African colonies become independent states
1969 First man on the moon
1973 Rahner ‘retires’
1976 Rahner’s Foundations of Christian Faith
1978 Election of Pope John Paul II
First test tube baby
1984 Death of Karl Rahner
1985 Gorbachev First Secretary of the Communist party in the Soviet Union
Thought
Rahner tried to discover and lay out the general principles underlying the
doctrines of Roman Catholic faith. Aquinas was an early influence: the
human capacity to know is rooted in the senses. But Rahner’s vision of
being human also involved being open to the infinite; human beings can
think metaphysically because they can transcend particular being.
Rahner began with a phenomenology of being human. Although
we are open to the infinite we only reach fulfilment in union with God
(as revealed by Christian revelation). We will not be able to understand
the world unless we understand this core relationship between the world
and God. Rahner calls this key fact the ‘supernatural existential’. We
cannot proceed to any exploration of sin, grace or salvation unless we are
aware of this principal reality.
Phenomenology A sustained and insightful description of how things appear.
The supernatural existential
The word ‘existential’, as used by Rahner, is a term describing definite

qualities of human existence. If something is a permanent, ever-present
quality of human existence, and allows us to see that this feature makes
humans different from all other forms of life, then that feature is a ‘human
existential’.
The word ‘supernatural’ describes whatever transcends nature. God’s
gracious self-communication to humans cannot be purely natural.
It must come from beyond nature; it is therefore supernatural.
However Rahner wished to overcome or avoid a seeming contradiction
in theological thought. He did not wish to give the idea that God’s self-
communication contradicts human nature. He did not wish to give the
idea that God’s self-communication is captive to human nature.
Consequently Rahner laid stress on the ‘supernatural existential’. He
held that humans are naturally open to God but that, in addition, they are
supernaturally raised up by God, by means of that transcendental open-
ness, so that they come to an actual experience of God in everyday life.
If every human is lit by the light that lights everyone in the world, as
St John’s Gospel states, then that light is not part of their natural compo-
sition but a divine gift. It is ‘existential’ but not natural; it is ‘supernatural
existential’.
‘Supernatural existential’ is what soaks into our entire existence because
of God’s free self-communication and, what is more, it is present even
before we respond as free individuals to God’s gracious self-offer. Humans
are not only open to God’s revelation; they actually receive God’s
self-communication.
Spirit in the World
Human beings are, at one and the same time, both intelligence and
body. We are in the world, which we know by means of our senses.
How then can we come to know the truth absolutely? Rahner sought
a description of how ‘spirit’, a faculty transcending the world (the reality
immediately accessible to our experience), could be at work within the
world.
Rahner starts by working with the problem as posed by St Thomas.
There are two levels of knowledge. There is intellectual knowledge, deal-
ing with ideas, and there is sensible knowledge, dealing with what we see,
smell, hear and so on. Traditionally it was said that the first was superior
and had no need of the second.
Aquinas did not agree. Intellectual knowledge arrives by means of
abstraction from the message of the senses. Even when we are dealing
with realities which have no material existence (God, eternity), we create
images so that we can deal with them more effectively. So our knowledge
is in the mind; it works by abstraction, but it is spirit in the world and
cannot cope without using images.
In the second part of his book Rahner analyses how we develop meta-
physical questions even though our starting point is our experience of
the world. Rahner describes how we use the a priori structures of the
senses (space and time) to trigger abstractions from the knowing subject
and eventually work out concepts and ideas.
This is how our intellect moves into action and creates thought. It has
its own structure; it does not invent itself afresh with every individual. It
seeks to comprehend what is universal and what is necessary. Even though
its supports are the gifts of finite being, intellect uses those senses in a
movement of imagination to contemplate being itself.
The third part of the book defends the human capacity to arrive
at what is true, even though it had started out from the promptings of
the senses. Metaphysics is possible because it is the work of the creative
imagination. This opens the way for a philosophy of religion. Because
it is structured in this way, the human intellect allows us to be open
to God’s revelation. This in time would lead to the ideas of Hearers of
the Word.
Abstraction The act of sorting out the intrinsic worth of something from its
physical qualities.
Word (The) is a translation of the Greek word Logos, meaning word or
reason. It was seen in the Old Testament and in Greek thought as referring
to the universal reason which ordered everything in the cosmos. In Christian-
ity it refers to the second person of the Trinity. Jesus was identified as
The Word.
Hearers of the Word
In Hearers of the Word Rahner is still in philosophical mode, but the core
theological trend is becoming more obvious.
Rahner’s central point is that human beings have the capacity to listen
to the revelation of self that God makes to them. A human being is both
spirit and a historic being. God’s revelation is a Word event which human
beings are capable of hearing. Rahner maintains a central link between
the transcendental dimension and the historic dimension of human
experience.
Rahner wants to describe what is meant by the human capacity to
make a response in obedience to the free initiatives of God. The problem
is how can the human spirit be open to God? The answer is that the
human spirit is open to the totality of being (including God) and this
clarifies our ability to identify what is an event of revelation.
Rahner goes on to explain the relationship between being and aware-
ness. It is contradictory to talk of a being which is essentially incompre-
hensible in its being. The essence of every being is the capacity to know
and be known. Ultimately knowledge is the lucidity of love. Human
beings are thus in-dwelt by a transcendence that operates at every level of
their being.
Human beings are therefore capable of opening themselves to God,
even though God is still unknown. God is the ‘free Unknown’; free to give
a revelation of self or to withhold it. Human beings, who are also spirit
and willpower, may freely decide to open themselves to God and to listen
to what God says to them in love.
But what is the concrete instance where the free act of God’s revelation
can touch the free human awareness? If we can analyse what it is to
be human in transcendental terms, we can prove a priori that divine
revelation is neither pointless nor unthinkable. Being is lucidity; there-
fore, by definition, it is capable of being revealed. But it also remains
unknown, waiting to be shown. The human spirit awaits and desires this
revelation.
God is ‘provisionally unknown’ to human beings but is revealed by an
act of God’s personal freedom. To receive that truth, human beings need
to do two things. First, they must position themselves so as to take full
account, in freedom, of their being as humans. Secondly, they must take
full account, in freedom, of their being before God. So the concrete
instance of God’s self-revelation can only be that of history.
Foundations of Christian Faith
This quite difficult book was written as an introduction to Christian

faith; it was not written as an introduction to Theology. Its aim is to help
Christians, and those who want to be Christians, to understand how
Christianity relates to the whole of existence.
The methodology used is to unite philosophy and theology in faith.
Neither discipline was to be subordinated to the other. Philosophy asks
questions about being human, about the goal and meaning of life. Theo-
logy is a measured, rational, reflective response, detailing how Christianity
might answer such questions. The central argument and answer is that
God wants to share divine life with all human beings and so offers divine
life to them.
Rahner is concerned about how we can know ourselves and how we
can know God. He talks about such subjects as the knowing person and
Christian faith. He discusses how, as human beings, we are open to real-
ity. He knows how limited our knowledge of reality is. He talks of what
we know and how we organize it internally.
Spiritual knowledge is true knowledge leading to transcendence, yet
rooted in history. Rahner never doubts the reliability of the bases of
Christian faith.
Human transcendence
Rahner considers human beings to be capable of hearing God’s self-

communication. When human beings hear this message they do not
gather information about God, as one might accumulate facts. They hear
the message in every experience of living. We are human because we have
been created with the faculty of listening to God and listening for God.
We have been created with an ability to meet the transcendent God. Thus
the human being is defined as a being capable of a relationship with God;
any question about what it is to be human is ultimately a theological
question.
How does Rahner go about defining a ‘person’? Hearing subjects, he
says, cannot be reduced to a product of the forces that fashioned them.
Subjects not only listen, but are capable of freely responding, what is
more they stand back and reflect about themselves. This implies that they
ask questions such as what is my true self.
Hearers know they are limited, but they also seek ways of going beyond
and overcoming their limits. Human beings have a natural inclination
towards surpassing limitations.
Transcendence presents limited human beings with choices. When
they make ‘better’ choices they are acting freely and responsibly, and are
thus agents of salvation. They are coming to be what God has called them
to be.
Human beings make decisions; they choose freely. They then take
responsibility for those choices. Human beings are responsible and free.
Nevertheless we exercise our freedom and responsibility as dependent
beings. Our possibilities are those which history has placed at our dis-
posal. We have a spiritual freedom; we can hear the message and respond
to God’s invitation to be what God wants us to be.
The Trinity
Rahner makes use of two terms when discussing the Trinity: the
‘essential’ Trinity and the ‘economic’ Trinity. The essential Trinity tries
to give expression to a notion of the Trinity outside of time and space.
The economic Trinity is how the Trinity comes to be known within the
scheme of salvation.
The God shown to us in the scheme of salvation is the way God actu-
ally is. God’s self-revelation corresponds to the way God essentially is.
We experience God in a certain way. Nevertheless that experience and
reflection on salvation is a revelation of God’s crucial and most intimate
being.
This distinction concerns the way God is known to us (revelation and
human history) and the way God actually has being.
The correct starting point for discussion of the Trinity is human expe-
rience of salvation. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not just human ways
of dividing up and making clear the experience of salvation.
Our creation, preservation and salvation are not three different func-
tions carried out by three different persons. Rather they are all part of a
single, united, shared work of love towards the human race. This is a very
important idea to grasp, no matter how helpful it might be, on occasions,
to give the most important role in one of those functions to one person
of the godhead as opposed to another. However beneath that idea is the
intermingling of each of the persons into the being of the other two, in
order to be a community of being.
Christology
Rahner wanted to demonstrate the identity between the historical Jesus

and the eternal Word, the Logos, and to defend the unity between them.
The Word demonstrates how God, from the very beginning, intended to
reconcile humanity and divinity.
Rahner places himself within the evolutionary worldview of contem-
porary culture. But he lays down this refinement: human beings evolve
and surpass themselves transcendentally in response to God’s Word.
Rahner asserts a ‘transcendental’ Christology: God’s offer of salvation is
absolute; God does not save from a distance; but does so by offering to
human beings participation in the divine being.
Transcendental Christology presents Jesus Christ as the one who ena-
bles us to transcend ourselves. Jesus and the heavenly Father were
completely and ultimately one. God affirmed Jesus’ transcendence and

offers that transcendence to us also.
In Jesus, the incarnate Logos caused human reality to be the reality of
God. When the Word became flesh, human nature reached the goal
towards which it had always reached out. Jesus is, and knew that he was,
the incarnation of God’s offer of salvation. The death of Jesus cannot be
seen as propitiation for divine anger; it is the sacrament of God’s saving
will for us. It achieved what it revealed.
The death and resurrection of Jesus are an event in which all human
beings may hope to participate. Here God gave total approval to the
earthly life of Jesus. God always intended to reconcile all people through
Jesus Christ. Through Jesus, the offer to share the very life of God is
extended to all people. When people accept that offer, they show their
hope that they will be validated by God in the same way as Jesus was.
Creation The belief that everything that is was made by God. In some
contexts the term is restricted to the notion that everything was made exactly
as described in Genesis chapters 1 and 2.
Preservation The belief that everything that was created continues to be
through the ongoing attention of God.
being as the historical Jesus, both fully God and fully man, permanently, with-
out the integrity of the manhood or of the godhead being compromised.
Propitiation The belief that God is angry with human beings because of
human sin and that Jesus Christ died on our behalf to take on himself the
punishment that should rightfully be ours.
Sacrament A ritual action seen as being a special channel to God and a
guarantee of God’s grace.
Expiation When one puts things right, having committed a wrong.
The sacraments
Christian life is not just one way of living life among others, but is life as
it really is, open to the totality of reality, which includes the reality of
God. This is not to say that death can be avoided, but that Christians can
encounter death secure in the knowledge that they will have a share in
God’s future.
Rahner outlines his teaching on the Christian sacraments in the light
of the basic sacrament of Christ which is the Church. It is in the sacra-
ments that we see God’s saving will operating in a concrete way through-
out the process of history. Christians receive the sacraments so as to
respond in a tangible way to God’s offer of self and of life in God.
The Church is the sign of God’s powerful and effective word. Here we
see God’s gracious self-communication become real. The Church is the
salvation history of human life visible to all. It is the basic sacrament on
which all others depend.
The sacraments can only be understood in terms of the relationship of
transcendence established between humanity and God. The human
essence has been divinized because of God’s self-communication.
Just as Jesus Christ instituted the Church, so he instituted the sacra-
ments, in order that God’s grace might be perceptibly and evidently
sacramental. The Church’s sacramental action becomes effective when it
meets humanity’s openness and freedom.
Through Jesus Christ, the dialogue between God and humanity has
entered into a phase which implies God’s irreversible triumph. Whenever the
finality and invincibility of God’s self-offering becomes apparent both thro-
ugh the Church and in the concrete life of an individual, then that event
is a sacrament. The Church is a sign of salvation; it is not salvation itself.
Every sacrament is a real word from God and a substantial response to
God. Sacraments come both from God and from believing humanity;
they are dialogue and partnership between God and humanity.
The ‘anonymous Christian’
When proposing this idea, Rahner was struggling with the traditional
Catholic saying, extra ecclesiam, nulla salus (there is no salvation outside
the Church). Rahner had to make sense of it in the contemporary world.
Salvation had traditionally been associated with belief in Christ and

involvement in the Church. Nevertheless Rahner laid emphasis on God’s
will that all should be saved. This involved God’s free giving of self and
our free response to that gift. We are all oriented towards God.
Nevertheless we cannot forget that there are nominal Christians –
Christians in name but not in outlook or behaviour. Rahner had little
sympathy with such an attitude. He considered that there were individu-
als whose outward, explicit conviction was not Christian but who
obviously had an inner commitment to living a life of love and service.
He called these ‘anonymous Christians’. Rahner did not hold the view
that any type of belief or any standard of moral action could qualify for
salvation under the notion of anonymous Christianity.
This did not involve delivering a judgement on which individuals will
benefit from God’s salvation. It is not our function to deliver such judge-
ments; it was rather an attempt to understand.
Rahner develops his ideas of the ‘anonymous Christian’ by first main-
taining that Christianity is the only valid religion founded on a unique
event, which is the self-revelation of God in Jesus. Yet this event had a
universal purpose: the desire that all should be saved. It took place at a
specific point in time and place (Palestine, between 5 BC and 29 AD
approximately). It had to take place in particular circumstances. We can-
not avoid the specific place and time. Yet the fact that the event took place
at a specific time and in a specific place did not exclude those who lived
before the event or who were unable to receive the message.
Consequently Rahner recognizes that non-Christian religions can
communicate the grace of God, until the Gospel is preached to their pop-
ulations. So the faithful believer or practitioner of a non-Christian
religion is recognized as an ‘anonymous Christian’.
The quarrel with Hans Urs von Balthasar
When stating their fundamental theological assumptions, Balthasar

used a form of aesthetic reason; Rahner used a form of transcendental
reason. When spelling out the relationship between God and human
beings, Balthasar emphasized discontinuity; Rahner stressed continuity.
Balthasar saw salvation in terms of deliverance; Rahner saw it in terms of
divinization.
Balthasar feared that the style of thought used by Rahner and others
would lead to an ‘anthropological reductionism’. He was afraid the tran-
scendental significance of revelation would be weakened and it would be
reduced to human terms, rather than stated in divine terms.
Balthasar was sternly critical of Rahner’s notion of the ‘anonymous
Christian’. He protested that it made the human being the decisive test for
salvation rather than the cross of Christ. There is no such thing as an
anonymous Christian. Only belief in Christ, openly confessed following
personal decision, can turn somebody into a Christian.
Rahner had usually considered Christology in the framework of his
discussion of what it is to be human (his anthropology). Balthasar
objected to a notion of salvation depending on the incarnation and
ignoring the decisive moment of the Cross. Rahner, he protested, lacked
a theology of the Cross.
Throughout Christian history theologians have affirmed that we are
saved through Jesus Christ. But there has never been a dogmatic state-
ment of how redemption actually comes about. How can the work of
Christ be applied to us in such a way that results in our salvation?
Several theories have been proposed, and the version of penal substitu-
tion has been popular. According to this theory, human beings deserve to
die because of sin. But God, in love, sent Jesus into the world and Jesus
died instead of us. We can now claim salvation through the sacrifice of
Jesus in our place. However, no church body, with the possible exception
of Bible fundamentalists, has ever declared one theory to be the correct
one and that all others are to be excluded.
Balthasar held to the theory of substitutionary expiation. Rahner did
not see the Cross as transforming an angry Father into a forgiving Father.
He saw God as never changing; the Cross arose from the unchanging
attitude of a forgiving God who kept bumping up against the sinful
resistance of the human race. He saw the death of Jesus in terms of
solidarity with us rather than as a substitution for us.
Appraisal
Rahner’s work is notoriously difficult to read; he seems to have delighted

in dense and abstruse turns of phrase. Nevertheless he has become
one of the inescapable presences in contemporary Roman Catholic

theology.
He worked hard to prevent the Church taking refuge in Catholic
fundamentalism, cocooning itself against the advance of contemporary
modern culture, pretending that contemporary culture either does not
exist or is of no consequence.
On the other hand, he tried to prevent any reduction of Christian
thought which might come about when Theology adapts itself to mod-
ern thought because the thinker has been unduly influenced by a secular
mindset.
Rahner wished his theology to be a dialogue: what was best in the long
tradition of the Church in conversation with modern forms of thought
and with the modern world.
In Rahner’s thought, the self-communication of God has graced
humanity, without raising humans to the status of God, without uniting
them with God. In this theology, humanity still strives and yearns for
more. That striving for more is the transcendent nature of the human
which is capable of recognizing and receiving the gift.
Does this vision of God suggest that humanity and God are mutually
interdependent?
Critics of Rahner ask if his distinction between openness to God and
the ‘supernatural existential’ actually stands up. It is not a feature of Bibli-
cal revelation. How might it arise from Natural Theology? Does it really
overcome the apparent contradiction in theological thought that Rahner
wished to avoid?
Rahner’s theological method reveals his belief that ordinary, everyday
experience cannot be understood without transcendent holy mystery
and that is what we call God. The holy mystery of God can only be
experienced and known in the historical setting which is everyday life.
14 Rosemary Radford Ruether and Women-Church
Feminism is a key feature of contemporary, Western, technological

culture. Christian feminist theology tries to express the Christian
witness to Jesus Christ and to God from the viewpoint of women. Its
distinctive feature is that believing women are expressing an evaluation
of faith and of Church which is motivated by their awareness of being
an oppressed group.
Feminist theologians complain that all Christian theology, up to now,
has been done by men and for men. Consequently it has ignored wom-
en’s experience or else has distorted it. This ‘male’ writing of Theology
has had damaging consequences for women, who must now turn around
and play a major role in reshaping theological expression. Many women
now insist that women’s experience, as they define it, must be the model
for any future Christian Theology.
Rosemary Ruether has been a leading Christian feminist theologian,
one of the most widely read in North America. In her writings she has
undertaken a systematic feminist treatment of Christian symbols. But
that is not the sum total of her achievements; she has an enormous range
of interests and concerns. She is widely read in Patristics, the history and
theology of anti-Semitism, the Israeli–Palestinian dilemma, the history
of women in religion, Liberation Theology and Ecology.
Life (1936– )
Ruether’s mother was a Roman Catholic and her father an Episcopalian/

Anglican. She was brought up in broadly ecumenical, open, Christian
surroundings. Her father died when she was 12; she and her mother then
moved to California. She attended Scripps College where she studied
classics, being fascinated by the philosophy and history of classical
antiquity. She was interested by the notion of an afterlife and wrote a
thesis on how notions of a future life transformed into ideas of apoca-
lypse in the Jewish literature of the inter-testamentary period.
Rosemary Radford Ruether and Women-Church 233
She married Herman Ruether in 1958. This was a marriage of

equals, and they continued their studies together. He was a political sci-
entist, she a historian in the field of Christian thought. They had three
children. She was awarded an MA in Roman history. She then proceeded
to a doctorate in Classics and Patristics at the School of Theology
at Claremont. The subject of her thesis was St Gregory of Nazianzus
(329–389). Ruether used her knowledge of the classical world to under-
stand Christianity. She was a supporter of the historical–critical method
of Biblical interpretation.
Gradually Ruether became involved in the growing civil rights move-
ment of the 1960s. She was particularly conscious of the injustices
and racism suffered by the African American population in the United
States. She then spent a number of years working in an African American
theological college in Washington, DC, where she was exposed to the
developing currents of thought expressed by Liberation Theology. She
later taught at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary at Evanston in Illinois.
She was becoming politically radicalized, often taking part in protest
movements and spending periods of time in jail.
Ruether remained an active Roman Catholic, unlike some feminist
theologians who abandoned the practice of Christianity altogether. She
was friendly with Catholic campaigners and thinkers who were active
during the heady and exciting Vatican II period. She was, however,
critical and her first published book, The Church against Itself (1967), was
a critique of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Church. Catholic
Theology was now being written by women; it was no longer an all-male
preserve and these women frequently drew upon their experiences of
motherhood to bring new ideas to bear on traditional church teachings
on sexuality and the family.
Historical–critical method A way of understanding texts by trying

to find out what they would have meant in their earliest forms and contexts.
Anti-Semitism Intolerance against Jews, often leading to aggression and
persecution.
Apocalyptic writings Books claiming to reveal things normally hidden, often
concerned with the end of the world and with human destiny.
From now on the rigorous scholar, well read in the Classics, Jewish
Apocalyptic literature and historical–critical methodology was coming
to grips with contemporary problems of race, political engagement,
gender and ecology.
Ruether has had a consistent interest in Christian anti-Semitism. She
recognizes that anti-Semitism is above all a Christian dilemma, rather
than a national one. She has been equally critical of Israeli conduct
towards the Palestinians and has intervened in many quarters in America
and the Near East to seek greater justice for them.
Timeline
1936 Birth of Rosemary Radford Ruether

1937 Japan invades northeastern China
1947 The Marshall Plan and the rebuilding of Europe
1948 The Berlin Blockade
First Arab–Israeli War
1950–1953 The Korean War
1952 The first H Bomb
1956 Second Arab–Israeli War
1957 The Treaty of Rome, gradual development of the European Union
1958 Election of Pope John XXIII
1959 Castro in power in Cuba
1960s African countries win independence
1964 Increasing American involvement in Vietnam
1967 Third Arab–Israeli War
Ruether’s The Church against Itself
1969 First human on the moon
1973 Fourth Arab–Israeli War, the Yom Kippur War
1976 Reunification of Vietnam
Death of Mao Zedong
1977 First in vitro fertilization and embryonic transfer
1978 Election of Pope John Paul II
1981 Ruether’s To Change the World

1982–1983 Fifth Arab–Israeli War, invasion of southern Lebanon
1983 Ruether’s Sexism and God-talk: Towards a Feminist Theology
1985 Gorbachev elected First Secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet
Union
1985 Ruether’s Women-Church: Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical
Communities
1987 First Intifada in Israel
1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall
1992 Ruether’s Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing
1997 Birth of Dolly, the cloned sheep
1998 Ruether’s Women and Redemption: A Theological History
2000 Second Intifada in Israel
2003 Europe experiences the hottest summer on record
Thought
Before taking a look at the work of Rosemary Radford Ruether in

particular, it might be a good idea to cast a broad, general glance at how
feminists have viewed traditional, orthodox Christian Theology and
how they have felt it to be problematic.
Is God masculine or even male?
With very few exceptions (Isaiah 66.13 is one) the language used in the
Bible to talk of God has a masculine focus. Grammatically speaking, the
word used for God in most languages is masculine. The pictures used to
give us a feel of what God might be like are pictures we normally associ-
ate with men: king, shepherd, father.
In addition we often use ‘he’, ‘his’ and ‘him’ for God. The linguistic
problem is of course a result of the particular structures of English, where
objects are referred to as ‘it’ and people as ‘him’ and ‘her’.
These analogies never intended to say that God was actually male. The
intention has always been to declare that the proper approach to God is
made in terms of personal relationship rather than in terms of lifeless
objects, and, moreover, that God’s loving concern for the creation is
something we can understand better if we look to the loving care and
anxiety that parents bring to the nurturing of their children.
Classical orthodox Christian Theology has always stressed that God is
neither male nor female, and that sexual differentiation on the basis of
the analogies used was an error. The error, however, has taken root; the
image has become skewed. The question now is how we correct it without
falling into the opposite trap of appearing to suggest that God is not a
person or that God is a female or has the sexual characteristics of both.
Feminism
Feminism is now a worldwide movement promoting the emancipation

of women. It is a liberation movement. It wants women to be the equals
of men in society, in the workplace and in politics, so it is concerned to
remove all barriers to their advancement. Many of the obstacles are, of
course, quite hard to pin down and involve mindsets, values and beliefs –
matters of ideology. These are often resistant to change, subtle in their
expression and at times misleading.
Feminism has clashed with many religious traditions and Christianity
is no exception. One is not born a woman, said Simone de Beauvoir; one
becomes one. In other words, being a woman is not a natural state, it is a
cultural construct; it is more than biology, it is mindset.
St Paul notoriously forbade women to open their mouths in church
(1Cor.14.34, 35). Women feel treated as second-class persons where
they are not allowed to become priests or ministers, and Christianity is
accused of inbuilt bias against women. A number of feminist thinkers
have decided that Christianity cannot overcome these objections and
have left the Church.
Other Christian (mostly women) writers have set out to rediscover
the huge role played by women within Christian history, to bring their
leadership and skills to the fore and to revitalize awareness in this area
of hidden history.
During the discussion there has been, and will continue to be, mention
of women’s experience. Women, it is said, experience their bodies
differently from men; men’s experience is distanced from the cycles
of nature: men’s involvement in the reproductive cycles is less intense.

Women’s experiences of socialization are different; they are culturally
programmed to defer to men and to seek, by subtle measures, to be sexu-
ally attractive to them. Women are now teaching themselves, in a way that
men are not, to be conscious of gender oppression and of subtle forms
of injustice towards them in society. Men have never had to recover a
‘lost history’; therefore their reading of the past is different. Women
are, as a result of these forms of consciousness, more open to social
and personal transformation. Women set greater store than men on
relationships, intuitiveness and community bonding. All are agreed that
every woman experiences oppression because of the patriarchal struc-
tures of society.
Patriarchy Social organization of families and communities where the

organizing role is played by men. Within feminism it is seen as a form of
oppression of women by men.
The feminist agenda within theology
The feminist agenda within theology has been concerned with language –
the use of masculine pronouns for God and that God is frequently
imaged or thought of as male. Then there is the figure of Jesus. Jesus
was a man, so Christology is often expressed in masculine terms. This is
often the reason given, in some traditions, why women are not allowed to
become priests: only a male, it is claimed, may figure Christ.
More subtly, the notion has grown that the norm for humanity is to be
male; to be female is to be second best. Aquinas (1225–1274) notoriously
argued that men are more rational than women. Feminist thinkers have
argued that the maleness of Christ is not the essential part of his identity
or role. The essential part of Jesus’ role is to announce God’s loving con-
cern for humanity and God’s presence with them in the world. Above all,
the role of such a person within the Christian tradition could not, in any
case, be an excuse for the domination of one sex by another.
Feminist theologians agree that women’s experience must be at the
centre of theological reflection. They disagree about the role that other
norms of Christian experience and other Christian sources must play in

this project. Some see this programme as correlating Christian tradition
with the questioning experience of women in the Church. The questions
asked by contemporary culture, women’s issues in particular, must be
laid alongside the normal answers of the tradition and allowed to gener-
ate new, pioneering reflection.
It has been suggested that neither gender experience should be norma-
tive for the rewriting of theology and that the task of theology from now
on is to construct a universalist and gender-neutral theology. Ruether, in
particular, has rejected this on the grounds that theology has been too
skewed in a male direction from the beginning. Men’s experience has
determined the forms and content of all theology. The role of feminist
theology is to make that distortion visible.
Women-Church
Some feminist thinkers consider classical theology to be so patriarchal

that it is incapable of being sympathetic to women. Consequently
they reject every aspect of traditional theology. Even Jesus is considered
to be part of the anti-women power structures of his day and must be
rejected.
Some such thinkers suggest that the answer to their dilemma is Women-
Church. Women-Church supplies the normative community out of
which God-talk can grow. Word of God has become, in that context,
women who identify with other women to build community and together
decide what is liberating for women.
Ruether’s theological method
We now turn to take a more particular look at the theology of Rosemary

Radford Ruether. Ruether is not a systematic theologian; her investiga-
tions tend towards an analysis of the meaning and scope of symbols.
Theological symbols are, for her, metaphors of human existence, and like
all aspects of human living, they can be warped and impose distortions
upon us by twisting our thinking out of shape.
Ruether talks of reading human contradictions as one might read

archaeological layers of consciousness. In these layers of consciousness
there is the evidence of evil at work. Human beings must therefore take
responsibility for it and move to act against it.
So Ruether’s theological method is a sustained social, cultural and
ideological critique. She is trying to bring to light a lost layer of the
Western consciousness. This lost, hidden layer and the dominant, visible
layer are in serious tension, just as the world of classical antiquity, the
original area of her academic training, is in tension with Biblical faith.
But Ruether also wants to move beyond this dualism to a new accommo-
dation of opposites.
Proclamation The ‘telling out’, the publicizing of the Christian Good News.
Church.
Paradigm A model or pattern or conceptual support within which theories
are constructed.
Ruether sees the prophetic tradition within Biblical faith as the critical
strand of the dualism. She includes Jesus in this prophetic tradition; he
stands in opposition to the dominant forms of power. She has a simple
test for discerning authentic proclamation: whatever fully defends and
asserts women’s humanity is authentic; anything else in bogus.
Ruether’s method is to draw out elements of ‘usable tradition’ and she
looks for it in five sources of Western culture. They are the Bible, the
rejected heretical traditions, classical Christian theology, the pagan tradi-
tions of Antiquity and critical post-Christian liberalism.
All of these sources are contaminated by the very powerplay she
condemns; so is contemporary feminism, as Ruether freely admits.
But she is trying to recognize the shape of authentic feminist humanity.
Ruether has found in what she calls the ‘prophetic-liberating tradition’ of
the Bible, the source and inspiration of a ‘feminist critical principle’.
Anything that promotes the full humanity of women counts as word of
God. Jesus, for her, remains the historical paradigm of that liberating
tradition – the pointer to what, within that tradition, might count as
word of God.
Christology
Ruether’s critique of Christology begins with what the Jews meant by

‘Messiah’ (in Greek, ‘Christ’). She found quite a gap between the Jewish
understanding and the Christian understanding of the term.
Her view is that Christians grant an old Jewish title to Jesus, but do not
apply the same meaning to the term. Christians understand the title to
mean ‘saviour’ and consider that the messianic hope has been fulfilled in
Jesus. This was the foundation on which Christian dogmatic thought was
built. Ruether sees it as a form of thought imperialism.
Because there was disagreement over the concept of Messiah, Christi-
anity developed its Christological thinking in a way that was anti-Jewish.
Christianity had to insist on its meaning of ‘Messiah’ as the correct one,
in opposition to Jewish thought, which must be suppressed. In time, this
turned into anti-Semitism.
Ruether went on to insist that the only way to cleanse Christian thought
of this flaw was to reconstruct Christology in a radically different form.
The Christian’s faith in Jesus as the Christ must be re-expressed as
something to look forward to, rather than as something fulfilled,
and Christology must be understood as a pattern rather than as some-
thing exclusive.
Ruether’s preliminary reflections concentrated on ideas of ‘Messiah’, but
her thought soon moved to include feminist and ecological issues within
this Christological critique. In her thought the three strands fused.
We shall first look at the distortions of Logos and Christology. We
shall look at Ecology later.
Historically Christology had developed during the same period as
the Church was establishing itself as the state religion of the Roman
Empire. As this development took place, Theology took a new vocabulary
on board. The Logos was seen as governing the universe in the same
way as the Emperor governed the Empire, masters governed slaves, men
governed women.
The church and Christology were becoming patriarchal. Theology in
general and Christology in particular had become forms of powertalk.
Ruether rejected this. She wished to peel all masculine imagery and all
ruler imagery away from Christology. She saw such distortions arising
out of pictures of Jesus as Messiah and as Logos.
When these distortions have been removed, the Jesus of the Synoptic
Gospels emerges as a figure well-suited to feminism. Jesus is a revolution-
ary figure, breaking down social moulds and inaugurating a new reality
in which notions of rule and dominance have no place. The word of
Jesus is a liberating word which disturbs the traditional assumptions
of the social order. She referred to Jesus as the ‘kenosis of patriarchy’.
Jesus was the liberator. He did not come to proclaim himself but to
preach something beyond himself, while rejecting all notions of power,
status and privilege. He preached a new humanity freed of all dualisms
and hierarchies.
Kenosis A Greek word meaning ‘self-emptying’. Often refers to the idea that
Christ gave up divine characteristics during the period of his life on earth.
Hierarchy Any arrangement of elements where some are seen as more
important than others. For example, bishops are considered more important
than priests.
Immanence What is inherent in something’s nature; what does not exceed the
natural limits of that object.
Dynamic The physical and moral forces that produce change and interaction;
the varying forces at work in interpersonal relationships.
What is God?
Ruether saw that we tend to structure the way we look at the world into
dualisms: good/bad, right/wrong, cooked/raw, male/female and so on.
Things that should be together are set over against each other; there is a
sense of hierarchy, one is better than the other. Men, she maintains, tend
towards dualisms in a way women do not. As a result of this, female is
identified with matter, creation, immanence, evil; male, on the other
hand is identified with spirit, reason, transcendence, good.
Ruether is dissatisfied with the traditional way people picture
God because it is conditioned by dualistic imagery. She is searching for
a non-dualistic way of portraying God. The Father image of God is

patriarchal; even the use of a word like ‘parent’ with a non-sexist load-
ing is not enough and, what is more, it prolongs a sense of ‘spiritual
infantilism’.
She turns to the idea of God as the ‘ground of our being’ which had
been promoted by Paul Tillich (1886–1965). God is not to be associated
with spirit, transcendence, maleness or indeed body, immanence or
femaleness. God embraces all dualistic divisions in a dynamic unity.
Ruether rejects all images of God which affirm the power of God, the
sovereignty of God or the freedom of God.
Ecology and feminism
‘Ecofeminism’ is the union of the ecology movement and feminism.

Basically ecology looks at how natural communities function to maintain
a healthy network of life, for example the way plants and animals on the
earth depend upon each other. Human interference is one of the chief
disruptive forces to all community systems. The ecology movement often
draws attention to the destruction which human activity causes to the
natural environment.
THE PROBLEM
Feminism is particularly worried about how male domination is at
the heart of all society structures. It is also concerned with destructive
tendencies in communities and blames it upon the ascendancy of one
dominant class within those communities. Ecofeminism draws a parallel
between the domination and destruction of nature by humans and
the domination of human society, with destructive consequences,
by men.
Ecofeminism asserts that all life, human and non-human, has intrinsic
value. Richness and diversity are to be encouraged as valuable in them-
selves. Humans have no right to destroy any of this diversity, though
they may satisfy basic needs.
However human beings interfere too much at present and the results
are destructive and catastrophic. Human civilization would not be
diminished by a reduction of the human population and the world

now needs policies to reduce its population. There is a difference between
maintaining a high quality of life and a high standard of living.
Ruether believes that the symbolic connection between domination
of nature and domination of women stems from Mediterranean and
Western culture where women are associated with nature and men with
culture. This was originally because of women’s childbearing role. All
tasks involving food preparation and the work of the household belonged
in the feminine sphere.
Men, on the other hand, concentrated on work demanding sudden
bursts of energy: field-clearing, hunting, war. All of this allowed them more
time for leisure; so culture became a male domain. Gradually all life and
culture was defined by males and from a viewpoint of male advantage.
At the Reformation, particularly the Calvinist Reformation, the medi-
eval sacramental sense of nature was abolished. Saving knowledge of
God comes from God and is not found within nature. Only the Word
was divine; everything human was fallen and women were the chief
victims of this collapse. At the scientific revolution, nature was secular-
ized; it was no longer where Christ and the Devil struggled. It was mere
matter, subject to the laws discoverable by (male) intellect.
Scientific and technological control went hand in hand with colonial
expansion. This involved huge new resources of land and labour out of
which masses of wealth could be won by the application of technology.
Over the course of the last three centuries this dream of an unlimited
future and a technological, scientific answer to all human problems has
begun to reveal itself as a nightmare.
Human progress, control over disease and longer life expectancy have
not been matched by population control. The food supply has not kept
pace with the population explosion. There is an increasing gap between
rich and poor. The Western scientific enterprise has been built on the
back of massively unjust work practices and, as this injustice grows more
evident, the world has become more militarized to protect the advan-
tages of privilege.
The problem is how to draw back from this disaster and remake the
relationship between ourselves and the earth. This demand has to be
made both on grounds of justice and of survival. Ruether calls for conver-
sion to new sets of values, involving new ways of living on the earth.
THE TASK
Ruether suggests we reshape our dualistic concept of reality, which is
currently split between soulless matter and transcendent male conscious-
ness. Nature runs itself better without interference from human beings.
We need to refocus our gifts so that we can harmonize our needs with
those of the whole planet. This inevitably involves reshaping our concept
of God.
The model for God must no longer be ‘alienated male consciousness’,
which is apart from and dominates nature. God, in ecofeminist spiritual-
ity, must be seen as the immanent source of life sustaining the whole
planet, the matrix that sustains the interdependent nature of all plants
and animals.
Matrix The setting or mould in which anything is allowed to develop.

Hierarchies of domination must be replaced by relationships between

men and women, between human groups, between humans and other
beings, which overcome all divisions of race, class, gender and species.
There must be equitable sharing in work and in the fruits of labour. All
patterns of interdependency have to be reshaped. There can no longer be
a dominant side and a subjected side in any relationship.
There must be conversion of men to the work of women along
with conversion of male consciousness to the earth. Such conversions
will provide a new symbolic vision of salvation. Salvation will no
longer be an escape to heaven but a continued conversion to the source
out of which we build our relation to nature and our relation to each
other.
Ruether calls on us to abandon the idea that we become free as
we come to immortality. We are also asked to abandon a view of life
which concentrates on disintegration in the processes of living. This is
the notion that our death is the most important moment of our exist-
ence, because it is when we enter upon eternal life. Instead, we should be
concentrating on the re-creative processes of living. These also involve

seeing how we disintegrate back into the life process and arise again to
new forms.
Appraisal
Not all feminist theology is Christian. There is certainly Jewish feminist

theology and there is no reason why critiques of other world faiths may
not be written from feminist perspectives. Some forms of feminist theol-
ogy have either abandoned Christianity or were never Christian in the
first place.
Feminist theology in general, and Ruether’s feminist theology in
particular, is not necessarily content with restating Christian orthodoxy
in words that are freed from sexist overtones, from the nuances of patri-
archy. It frequently involves sweeping away much of the content of
Christian theology and practice. Many people will have difficulty apply-
ing the label ‘Christian’ to this element of her thought.
This begs the question, what is Christian? Are there a few basic, funda-
mental characteristics that must be applied to all Christians to be worthy
of the name? Can everybody agree on what they are?
A critical issue arising out of Ruether’s discussion of the patriarchy of
traditional Christology is the twin problem of ideology and revelation.
Christianity is a faith of revelation and that revelation is expressed, first
and foremost, in the person of Jesus Christ, in the witness given to him in
the canonical scriptures and in the sacramental practice of believing
communities. Those same canonical scriptures speak repeatedly of Jesus
as Messiah and of Jesus as Logos.
How, on the basis of feminist ideology, can one declare what may or
may not be accepted as revelation? How, on the basis of ideology, is it
possible to revise the canon? How was the canon established in the first
place, and what were the ideological issues that underpinned the deci-
sions made at that juncture?
If the canon was established on the basis of ideology, can traditional
teaching not be changed on the basis of ideologies which have arisen out
of problems that only come to the forefront of awareness much later?
Does Ruether use the feminist critical principle to interpret Scripture

and the tradition of the Church, or does that feminist critical principle
over-ride them?
Many women now insist that women’s experience, as defined by
feminists, must be the standard for any future Christian theology. Is this
is a demand to include women’s experience, or a demand to exclude
everything except women’s experience?
If the prime task of feminist theology is to make the patriarchal
distortion visible, does feminist theology only have a critical role? Where
does its constructive focus lie? Is feminist theology open to the possibility
of having its own critique of classical theology turned against it in the
future?
Liberation movements of every sort often lead to new modes of oppres-
sion, also subtle in their functioning, as people rush uncritically to
adopt the new dominant outlook. Is dominant discourse a good or a bad
thing? What are its merits? What are its failures?
Feminist Theology is a Liberation movement. It also stresses the loving
and pastoral concern of God. As such is it programmed to emphasize
the immanence of God at the expense of divine transcendence?
15 Walter Brueggemann and the
Biblical Imagination
Walter Brueggemann’s specialized field of study is the Old Testament.

In particular, he hopes that his writings may be of help to preachers, who
must approach the Old Testament out of the experience of modern living
and confront contemporary culture with the message of the Hebrew
Scriptures.
Walter Brueggemann is an American Christian in whom Bible-based
faith meets careful intellectual discipline. He is a scholar who reads the
Old Testament in order to challenge the society in which he lives with
Word of God. One of his constant themes is the way the chosen people in
the Old Testament had to contend with the power of empire; an idea he
likes to apply to contemporary America.
He confronts a confident, wealthy, industrial–military superpower
with the destabilizing message of the Bible. He promotes new readings of
Scripture; he considers postmodern culture to be a time of opportunity
for faith and mission. He suggests different, creative, playful readings of
the sacred text. He forces his readers to ask awkward questions. He
presents a biblically informed engagement with the modern world.
Life (1933–)
Walter Brueggemann was born in 1933 in Nebraska, in the United States

of America, where the great central plain starts to rise towards the Rock-
ies. His father was a German Evangelical pastor. He graduated from
Elmhurst College in 1951 with a degree in Sociology. He continued his
studies in Eden Theological Seminary in Missouri. He was awarded the
Bachelor of Divinity in 1958, with a special interest in Old Testament. He
was awarded a doctorate by the prestigious Union Theological Seminary
in New York, where he studied from 1958 to 1961. Between 1971 and
1974, he worked for a further doctorate, this time in Education, from
St Louis University.
He lectured at Eden Theological Seminary between 1961 and 1986.

He then moved to take up a post teaching Old Testament at Columbia
Theological Seminary at Decatur, Georgia.
He is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, a union
between two church traditions in the United States. On the one hand
there was the Evangelical and Reformed Church: descendents of immi-
grants from Germany, the Palatinate, Switzerland and Holland. The
second strand of the union was from the Congregational tradition, which
recognizes no hierarchy in church government but maintains that each
local congregation is free to govern its own affairs under the headship of
Christ. The union was negotiated between 1942 and 1957. Its members
represent a variety of styles of worship and practice. They come from a
wide variety of national and social backgrounds.
Walter Brueggemann has been honoured by many of the principal
theological schools and been a guest lecturer at many of the leading
universities of America. He retired in 2003. He is married and his wife
is also an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ. They are
parents and grandparents.
Timeline
1931 Empire State Building opens in New York

1932 Huxley’s Brave New World
1933 Birth of Walter Brueggemann
Adolph Hitler comes to power in Germany
1934 The ‘Dust Bowl’ disaster in the United States
1941 Attack on Pearl Harbour
Manhattan project to build an atomic weapon
1942 Camus’ Outsider
1945 Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Founding of the United Nations
1954 McCarthyism at its height in the United States
1955 Supreme Court orders end to racial segregation in American public
schools
1957 Soviet Union launches first Sputnik
1958–1961 Brueggemann at Union Theological Seminary
Walter Brueggemann and the Biblical Imagination 249
1961 Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbits the earth

Brueggemann teaching at Eden Theological Seminary
1963 Martin Luther King leads Civil Rights march to Washington, DC
President Kennedy assassinated
1972 Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange
1977 Brueggemann’s The Land
1978 Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination
1981 AIDS identified
1983 The ‘Star Wars’ project
1986 Brueggemann teaching at Columbia Theological Seminary
1990 Hubble space telescope
1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Talks limit US and USSR nuclear
arsenals
1992 Soviet Union dissolved
1993 First genetically engineered vegetable
Brueggemann’s Texts under Negotiation
1997 Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal
Brueggemann’s Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute,
Advocacy
Brueggemann’s Cadences of Home: Preaching among Exiles
1999 Serb atrocities in Kosovo
2001 Terrorists pilot aircraft in the 9/11 attack on the United States
2003 America and its allies invade Iraq
Brueggemann retires
Thought
The Old Testament and the contemporary world
Brueggemann looks back to the way life was lived in Old Testament times
and at the same time criticizes vestiges of that model still remaining in
contemporary culture. He reflects on the Jerusalem establishment (tem-
ple and monarchy) at the centre of the way of life portrayed in some of
the Hebrew Scriptures. He then wonders how models like this dominate
our thinking in the modern world. He uses the Old Testament as a means
of reading contemporary culture.
That convergence of State and Church represented by the Jerusalem

establishment occupies only a small period of the Old Testament history.
But we think of it as the norm. He points out that such a model really
only promotes the interests of an ‘established, culturally legitimated
church’. These institutions were established and well financed. The king
provided civil and military leadership. King and priesthood tended to
agree. What was good for one was good for the other. There was both
cross-fertilization and cross-criticism.
The people of those Jewish kingdoms were served by a church intelli-
gentsia; their role was to act as both civil service and higher education
service. All assumed the rule of the Lord God, Lord of the universe. They
believed there was a single moral rule for all: good and evil were not
matters of cultural relativism. Nevertheless Brueggemann sees this
intelligentsia as having self-sufficient, secularizing tendencies and as
being advocates of state ideology.
At the same time, but outside the circles of self-satisfaction and power,
were the ardent, critical voices of the prophets; that criticism was harsh,
troubling and far reaching. This critical, prophetic tradition seems only
to have existed during the period of centralized monarchy.
This fourfold package of stable temple institution, acceptable civil
leadership, secularizing intellectuals and passionate prophecy were not
unlike models of state and church institutions in the contemporary
United States and they work well in times of political, cultural and
economic stability. Brueggemann points out that historically, in the
Old Testament context, they were swept away in a ‘geo-political upheaval’
in 587 BC, the period of the Exile when the nation had to seek new
models of life and faith. He further points out that we live today in
an unsettling period of upheaval where we wonder if the models we
have received at both personal and institutional level can really serve our
needs.
Brueggemann turns to the time before the monarchy was established,
when Israel operated with a different model of ‘church’ and government.
Here the central figure was the memory of Moses. Self-awareness and
identity were expressed in what he calls the ‘the exodus liturgy’, where the
people retold the story of deliverance from slavery in Egypt, where God
is seen as calling for moral separation from the power structures of Egypt
and, later, of the Canaanite states.
Here the voice of God did not operate out of a culturally dominant
structure, but came from a marginalized people. The community can
only be its true self if it has operated a costly break from its comfort zone
represented by the ‘flesh pots of Egypt’ (Exod. 16.3).
This break is also an experience of freedom and, once they had
received the Law at Sinai, the people are constantly challenged to express
and live that faith in the light of that ethical call. This situation demanded
constant arbitration and negotiation between conflicting opinions. It was
not stable but in constant flux.
There was a continuous attempt to discern the mind of God. This is a
community aware of a covenant relationship between itself and God, a
community freed by God for God’s service, and refusing the comfortable
temptation of conformity to dominant culture. In such a situation
nothing is permanent; nothing is settled.
Brueggemann paints a picture of a people called to unsettling insecu-
rity, to constant improvization, to daring decisions. Its only central
institution was a remembered story of unsettlement, freedom and risk.
Out of this, it built its story which was new and fresh every day. It was a
community of the socially and economically marginalized. But its speci-
ality was concern for the neighbour and out of those circumstances it
moulded different forms of community, vision and power.
In the earlier period, the believing community lived in a setting where
it had little influence. It did not belong to the power structures which
surrounded it. In later days there may have been conflicts between faith
and power, but they tended to be short-lived and minor. Once the believ-
ing community had got its hands on power, it became indifferent to faith
and grew so apathetic that it was innocuous.
There was always a temptation to abandon identity, to become indif-
ferent to faith. Both the religious and civil institutions were at one time
so much in concord that, while they supported the identity of the nation,
apathy was widespread.
But in the Greek period after the Exile (late fourth to early second
centuries BCE), Jewish political identity had been lost, was now almost
irrelevant; it needed an upheaval to awaken the people to concern.
That identity survived because, in the first place, the faithful worked to
recover memory. It survived secondly because they worked to promote
hope. They are dependent, not on themselves, but on the promise of God.
Thirdly, and most importantly, that identity survived because the people
became a community of the book, the text where the histories, the laws
and the promises were written.
Brueggemann reminds us that the period after the Exile was the period
of canon formation: when it was decided what was authoritative text of
the Old Testament and what was not. But more importantly, it was also
the period of the ‘imaginative construal of the text’, when they allowed
the old story to work on their imagination with positive results for living
in the present. He believes that faith calls us, in our generation, to a simi-
lar task. This was not, he points out, a controlled activity; such an act, in
a context of marginal existence, did not, and does not, need a controlled
outcome. Here, we note a distinctly Protestant voice.
Brueggemann makes the point again and again that the purpose of
sustained textual study is not erudition or knowledge; it is the task of
entering into a tradition of speech, reflection, discernment and imagina-
tion that empowers individuals and communities in the face of superior
social, economic and political power.
The story offered by dominant habits of speech, dominant power,
dominant ways of viewing the world, is no story at all; it is powerless to
engage, to empower, to enthuse or to involve. Passionate involvement
with one’s own story, with renewed memory and with renewed hope,
allows one to dare to imagine one’s own story as the voice of God and to
develop a new and vibrant confidence. We need a shift from a culture of
cohering, dominant institutions to a text culture which promotes the
imagination to engage with more creative models of reality and often in
a thoroughly subversive mode.
Brueggemann sees the collapse of modernity as calling us to reconsider
a vision of church which was built for modernity; conventional ‘theologi-
cal speech’ is not understood by a contemporary audience. Finally, he
asks us to consider what we intend when we embark upon the journey of
faith. Why do it?
He wants us to move from being a temple community to being a text
community. He suggests that wilderness and exile models of community
are demanded. Does God, he asks, ‘cringe at the prospect of this commu-
nity being one of wilderness and exile’? God, he points out, actually
resisted the temple (2 Sam. 7.6–7). The text calls us to an alternative
imagination and new strategies in an out-of-the-ordinary community.
The Old Testament Story: A Timeline
1900 BCE approx. Ur of the Chaldees: stories of Abraham, Isaac

and Jacob
1700 BCE approx. Egypt: stories of Joseph
1300 BCE approx. Stories of Moses, the Exodus from Egypt
The desert wandering: the people receive the Law
1200 BCE approx. Stories of Joshua and settlement in Canaan
1200–1000 BCE approx. The period of the Judges
1000 BCE approx. David establishes a united kingdom
950 BCE approx. The two Israelite kingdoms; the time of the
prophets
722 BCE The Northern Kingdom destroyed by the
Assyrians
605–586 BCE The Southern Kingdom defeated and finally
abolished by the Babylonians; a series of
deportations when Jewish citizens are exiled to
Babylon
538 BCE Collapse of the Babylonian Empire, rise of the
Persian Empire; first exiles return to Jerusalem
from captivity
333 BCE Alexander the Great defeats Darius III; end of
the Persian Empire; beginning of Greek period
167 BCE Jews revolt, led by the Maccabees
63 BCE Romans take Jerusalem
Note: The ‘traditional’ story is outlined above; it raises critical problems. Its
historicity has been questioned. Its dramatic, teaching power has always been
valued.
The radical consequences of praise
In his book Israel’s Praise: Doxology against Idolatry and Ideology, Bruegge-
mann declares praise to be the duty and delight of the human being
and, indeed, of all creation. Every one of us has the urge to move beyond
self and return our energy to its source, the creator God. This is a study
of the Psalms as the vehicle of praise, but it is also an attempt to move

the study of these texts in the direction of social interaction and function.
He suggests that the function of a psalm is never focused along a purely
transcendent axis. That is to say in a vertical direction, one aimed at God.
A psalm also expresses, establishes and legitimates social power; it feels
out along a horizontal axis.
Brueggemann, of course, never looses sight of the pastoral aspect of Bible
study. The duty of pastors is to encourage a communal, intentional and
alternative vision in their flock. The Psalms play a vital role in the ‘doing’ of
liturgy, which is the recitation and repetition and the re-organizing of
symbols in order to present an alternative vision of the world; an outlook
to which ordinary men and women can aspire in the contemporary, post-
industrial, post-Christian world.
Each of us acts out of a life world, a framework for understanding life,
created by self and by community. We participate in other life worlds
through the power of advertising, propaganda, education, nurture. These
are frameworks created for us, and we create more of them for ourselves.
As it worships, the worshipping community is engaged in an act of world
creation: the building of an alternative, an ideal world against the grain of
modern living. Praise sings songs to create this world and against all other
false worlds.
In the ‘doing’ of liturgy, Christian ministers define reality as they offer
a new way of looking at the world they have been given and of ordering
that given world in the direction of ethical values, along the transcenden-
tal, vertical axis.
As Israel worships God, it celebrates a world over which God rules and,
in so doing, Israel accepts and legitimates God’s justice, revealing the
demands that sovereign justice addresses to each of us. Worship expresses,
calls into being, the claims of the social, horizontal axis.
Doxology Expressing praise for God.

Pastoral Aspects of the clergy’s work in offering help, care, advice and
guidance.
Ideology The characteristic convictions, preferences, prejudices and ways of
reasoning of a group.
That praise, then, offers a world of promise, compassion, mercy, justice

and truth. The world of praise is consequently a threat to all vested
interests and all forms of self-sufficiency, all advertising, big conglo-
merates, financial institutions and development corporations, which are
the realizations of idolatry and ideology.
The creation is as it is. How do we act upon it? And as we act upon it,
what sort of world do we make of it? This is where the ethical demand
comes in. This is where we are asked to re-examine our values, the ones
that have shaped the world. We are invited to substitute new values and
re-shape the world.
This time we are asked to shape the world, not in order to favour
self, but in a way that carries truth and justice to all. Doxology, praise of
God, invokes power, but a power that will not be contained in sectional
aims. It will refuse to be domesticated by aims which favour me, or my
company, or my political party or any system of government. It is power
that insists on being heard afresh.
This is not a reasoned or calculating stance; there is ‘nothing in it for
me’. It is an outlook driven by amazement and gratitude. It dares to
recognize great power in the holiness of God; it is not content to submit to
a dull conventionality of ‘the way things are’ or ‘reasonable’ assumptions.
This faith is revolutionary in its possibilities. It announces a God who
does not respect persons, institutions or conventions. Brueggemann talks
of a move from reason to summons. We are moved away from the calm
assumption of practicality and reason, and not rocking the boat, and
confidence that we can manage all of creation. Even while admitting
that the world does need managers, we are called to abandon our self-
sufficient view of a world where amazing transformations cannot happen
and enter a world of God’s reign, not ours.
The dominant ideology of the world is an ideology which does not
recognize this new, raw and unregulated energy of possibility. We tend
to prefer a world where we expect nothing from God; we live in a system
which cannot be changed. But that is a system where individuals are
not allowed a voice and where hurts cannot be given expression; it is a
world without passion or hope.
Against the dominant ideology, Brueggemann asserts that liturgy does
make a world, that there is a dramatic, dynamic reality in the ‘doing’ of
worship. Everything in worship is subversive of dominant idolatry and
ideology. It is subversive because it proclaims the possibility of justice in

the face of injustice and of hope in the face of the present order. Bruegge-
mann refers to it as pain-informed, subversive praise.
It allows us to glimpse a living God; it holds out the possibility of
a world of truth and justice. It calls us to be authentic, committed persons
rather than self-sufficient, uncritical followers. It urges the creation of
a compassionate community towards the voiceless and despairing.
Gift, temptation and task
Walter Brueggemann’s study, The Land is a study in gift, in temptation

and in task. It proposes how a sense of place can be recognized as gift, as
promise and as challenge in Biblical faith. He views Israel’s story as a his-
tory of promise into the land, followed by a history of management into
exile followed by a new history of promise into kingdom. That pattern
grew out of his growing awareness of how Israel’s story was remembered
and told.
Brueggemann’s aim has been to tell the stories and let them impact on
the consciousness of community. He has grown tired of the superficial
dichotomies of culture such as scientific/mythological or technology/
mysticism; the story allows us to understand more easily a vision of a
human future which is historical but also involves covenant and
promise.
Dichotomy Division or separation into two groups which are sharply opposed
and contrasted.
Mythology Old stories which are often used to explain some natural occur-
rence or cultural understanding.
Mysticism Having direct communication with God through prayer and
meditation.
Covenant Originally an agreement between two parties; it came to be seen
as the faithfulness of God towards Israel in return for the inner righteousness of
the people before God. Jesus restated it as humanity receiving a gracious gift
from God by which their desire to serve God was made perfect. It requires a
response. It has its highest expression in the example of the life and death
of Jesus.
The sense of place in the story is where one is with God. Biblical faith is
about the life of a people with God. Even when Israel is without a place,
it survives and marks its special identity as a people being led to a place.
An important idea here is the ‘sojourner’ or resident alien, to be where
one is, but to be an outsider. Even though marked by a promise, this is a
people marked by precariousness. Even in exile, although not abused or
enslaved, their existence was marked by a sense of discontinuity; their
trust in their traditions and institutions was no longer well founded.
In periods of its story when it had land, both in Egypt and later in
Palestine, Israel’s story is one of problem and temptation. That posses-
sion could be marked by slavery, oppression and exploitation. When they
had returned from exile the sense of land was the experience of living in
a place controlled by another, to continue to live a problematic existence.
The story is of being in, and belonging to, a land which was never fully
given. The faith of Israel focuses around a journeying in and out of land.
Nevertheless the hold the people had on the land came as a gift from
God. To be a people under gift is to be rare and new, and Israel had to face
the demands of that newness: the land was demand.
If one keeps the consciousness of gift as gift, one is addressed by the
giver: addressed by God. The first temptation is to be satisfied by the land
and enjoy it without covenant, without demand and without mystery.
Therefore Israel was asked to remember, to reflect on the difference
between what was then and what is now. The second temptation is to
pretend that things are as they are because Israel, not God, made them so;
this is the temptation to be seduced by other gods.
Land with God brings responsibility; to be in a free society is to have
responsibility. To live in a coercive society is to see that those in control,
those who have made the situation what it is, need not obey. So Israel
must both manage and obey. Israel’s appreciation of land is first to live
under Torah, under divine demand. It is secondly to keep Sabbath.
Brueggemann points out that Sabbath was originally a radical ethical
demand. It was for freeing slaves, for resting land and for cancelling debt.
Sabbath is itself the challenging voice of gift in a coercive world. That
challenge asks if I can give as freely and as boldly as the way the gift was
given to me.
But Brueggemann also points out that in order to enter into the land
one must live daringly, live up to mighty expectation when it might be
more comfortable to settle for far less than the promise. It is to be like
grasshoppers challenging giants (Num. 12.32–34).
Finally, we are led to consider that the movement which gathered
around Jesus was, in a similar way, a people grasping for courage and
waiting for gift, expecting a breaking of patterns. This situation throws
up at least two responses which are in tension with each other: that of
daring waiting which allows the great Giver to work, and that of overcon-
fidence in one’s ability to manage history oneself.
In Christian awareness the theme of land as promise, gift, demand, task
and challenge has been replaced by the same themes around the person
of Jesus Christ. The new image is that of the kingdom of God. It is
an image which is both present and awaiting realization. It contrasts
what is with what might be. It proclaims a daring break with the unim-
portance of our expectations. It calls us to value once more a world of
gifts and to work for the rehabilitation of the rejected who are the bearers
of promise.
Being a prophet today
The Prophetic Imagination is a study in the meaning of prophecy in the

late twentieth century, an attempt to understand what prophets are doing.
Brueggemann is persuaded that prophets understand best how change
works in society, how change is related to the emotional fringes of experi-
ence and how public certainty and private longing often clash. They
recognize the power of language to call newness into being. This book is
particularly directed towards the new prophetic vision and ministry
which women bring to the Church.
The ‘task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke
a consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us’. This
does not mean that the task of prophecy is to understand dominant
culture; Brueggemann takes it as given that Christianity is an alternative
culture, a counter-culture. The task of prophecy is to understand how
dominant culture tries to domesticate, tame and use for its own pur-
poses any prophetic voice.
Alternative voices and awareness criticize dominant power, even as
that power attempts to dismantle and disarm them. How does one
construct any alternative voice that will resist being domesticated by
dominant power? Alternative voices go one step further; they also func-
tion in order to energize, to promote action.
Brueggemann studies several versions of dominant power and several
versions of the alternative voice in the Old Testament, before turning to
the example of Jesus of Nazareth.
The first voice studied is that of Moses in opposition to Pharaoh. Moses
gives expression to a radical break from triumphalism, oppression and
exploitation but the vision of Moses was more than mere protest. It was
the mission to counter empire with the politics of justice and the social
reality of compassion.
Real criticism, says Brueggemann, begins with the capacity to grieve.
This grief is more than resignation, for it institutes the first energizing
step which allows a new theological and social reality to emerge. The last
energizing step is doxology: praise which redefines the way we see social
reality and asserts the reality of God – a reality which empire cannot
tolerate if it is to survive.
Historically however few revolutions have ever survived long and old
habits of domination and empire return, often in new forms. Bruegge-
mann uses the example of Solomon. Here the radical quality of Moses’
vision is undermined by new social developments. Brueggemann uses
the term ‘temple’ to symbolize all these changes in the direction of
what we now call modernity.
What were those new, ‘modern’ social developments? First there
was a harem which is a sign of concern for the self-securing of power.
There were tax districts which indicate the eradication of tribal identity
in the interests of mass identity. Then there was a standing bureaucracy
and army who could often act as if they were above all notions of justice
and compassion. The writings of the day stress wisdom, where global
reality is managed, indeed conveniently packaged.
Solomon’s temple successfully undermined the radical quality of Moses’
revolution because now Solomon could seduce by affluence, he could
pressurize by high-handed policy and he could appear to domesticate
God within the confines of a controlled state religion.
Brueggemann allows us to see the contemporary management menta-
lity functioning in the ancient story. All policy must, after all, be expressed
in language and Brueggemann maintains that managed prose cannot
invent new ways and does not wish to permit them. Radical alternatives
can only be envisioned by lyrical, poetic utterance.
He is further concerned that managed, apathetic everydayness is not

just created when we are confronted by the great affairs of state. It is
deeply rooted in the everyday conditions of every home, family and
marriage where people unthinkingly and numbly accept the bland and
controlled choices offered to them by bank, supermarket, High Street
fashion gurus or social convention.
The task of prophetic imagination is as follows:
z to penetrate self-deception;
z to offer symbols adequate to the horror of experiences which evoke
numbness;
z to reactivate symbols that have been means of redemptive honesty;
z to bring fears that have long been denied to public expression;
z to speak concretely about the alienation and loss of heritage involved
in mass-packaged living.
If one denies this pain and grief there can be no new movement from
God or towards God. Grief permits newness, because it acknow-
ledges loss.
Brueggemann says that the ‘royal consciousness leads people to despair
about power to new life. It is the task of prophetic imagination and
ministry to engage the promise of newness that is at work in our history
with God’. The task is to cut through despair and penetrate the dissatis-
fied coping involved in the everydayness of living: to offer symbols that
none can think imaginable.
This involves penetrating the memory of people to allow them to use
the tools of hope and to offer them language that reshapes consciousness,
redefines hope and contradicts the ‘world of kings’ – to bring to con-
sciousness hopes that have long been denied.
Finally, Brueggemann sees, in Jesus, decisive criticism of dominant
consciousness. Luke’s account talks of solidarity with the poor, while
Matthew’s depicts the murderous reaction that his birth drew from the
power of Herod.
Jesus spoke to the oppressed, but there are no oppressed people
without oppressors. He forgave sin and he healed on the Sabbath; he
threatened the priestly forms of social control. He ate with outcasts,
challenging accepted norms of morality. He was highly critical of the
morality of the traditional Jewish ritual law.
Jesus expressed compassion which is a radical form of criticism. The

crucifixion of Jesus is the decisive criticism of royal awareness. Jesus
announces the end of the world of death by taking death into his own
person. The Cross signals the end of the king’s freedom, justice and
power. It expresses a religion of God’s freedom, a just society with an
economics of sharing and power to engage in the politics of justice.
In all these events in the life of Jesus, Jesus himself announced an
energizing word and the possibility of praise arising out of amazement.
This prophetic word of energy is addressed to a minority community of
marginal people. The criticism is addressed to a dominant community,
where it may not be heard.
The opportunities of the postmodern imagination
Modernism refuses to accept any assertion that cannot be empirically

tested. That is the core ‘truth’, the foundational story on which it rests.
Postmodernism is the experience of living according to a foundational
story which is in the course of disintegrating.
In the postmodern universe, the autonomy of the individual is
doubted and scientific objectivity is questioned. Moreover, the promo-
tion of social well-being is treated with suspicion. This is the case of
the ‘nanny-state’ in which ignorance still flourishes, poverty has not
be eradicated, disease increases and war has not been made obsolete.
A culture of confidence is in decline; the white, male, Western, colonial
mindset is collapsing.
It is being replaced with a pluralistic, multilayered outlook; viewpoints
are provisional in character. There is little coherence between the various
components of this outlook, which easily fracture and pass away. This is
a condition described as a suspicion of metanarratives, of all founda-
tional, explanatory stories.
Modernism has long been seen as a main stumbling block to
Christian belief. Postmodern thinking is suspicious of metanarratives,
and Christianity is a metanarrative. But postmodernism does not rule
metanarratives out; it can at one and the same time accept several contra-
dictory ones. However, the features of modernity have not gone away;
it is possible for institutions and individuals to show characteristics
of both.
Brueggemann develops his ideas in Texts under Negotiation. He considers

the old interpretation formed by historical criticism as no longer ade-
quate. The intellectual, cultural and political promise of the Enlightenment
has led to tyranny supported by ideology. Salvation history is not now
understood; after all, the Enlightenment project took shape in opposition
to the Hebrew and Christian stories. Most people now have some expo-
sure to other world religions; Christianity’s claims of monopoly do not
convince. This situation, says Brueggemann, establishes a new interpre-
tive situation.
Brueggemann’s view is that this shift creates new and creative opportu-
nities for Christian ministry. The desire to achieve mastery of the text and
the quest for objective, standard readings had been important concerns
up to now. But they had eliminated daring, testing speech and subversive
text. Speech was used only to describe reality. This was dull and conven-
tional. But in a new interpretive context, imagination has been freed up
to picture, perceive, portray and practise the world in ways that are differ-
ent from what might seem possible at first glace.
The task of the new Christian imagination is how to fund the new situ-
ation. Where and how can we find materials and resources out of which
to imagine a new world? We are looking for materials that authorize a
counter-imagination of the world: a dogged imagining against the grain.
In a world riddled with the fruits of modernism, consumerism and
positivism, we must construct an evangelical counter-culture that makes
a different communal life possible. Where modernism makes the present
absolute, Biblical faith is ordered into past – present – future, with a life
created by God and also consummated by God.
First, Brueggemann reminds us that this new evangelical outlook oper-
ates with a memory that we originate in a past created for us and kept for
us by a faithful, sovereign God. Creation explains nothing; creation is an
attitude of praise, a praise-filled response to the world and all its wonder.
Here we note the total lopsidedness between God’s generosity and our
fragility. Modernism and the individual seduced by it have worked hard
to hide that fragility from themselves.
Secondly, Brueggemann is not trying to accommodate scientific
learning. The good news is that God has ordered the world as a
‘life-giving, joy-producing system of generativity’. The world does not
depend on us and is not available for us.
Lastly, we are asked to ponder the origin of the believing community.

The Church is an alternative community within the world, not an accident
of human preference. Church is an ‘odd community’ grounded in God’s
love; it raises questions of justice and enacts answers of love and care.
Turning from past to future, an evangelical infrastructure invites to an
act of ‘futuring’: a notion of newness, discontinuous with the present.
The hope, the conviction that God will bring things to a full, glorious
completion is, once again, not an explanation of anything. Modernism
expects nothing of God; evangelical hope hands over our existence to
God. An evangelical proclamation must require the regular proclamation
of ‘the most extravagant and outrageous promises of God’.
These promises concern self which is not a fixed identity. The believing
self turns to God, asking God to do what we cannot do for ourselves.
We give voice to this pastoral eschatology in our prayerful petitions.
All we can say is that we are deformed and hope to be reformed. The
hoped-for self will thus seek to live in full communion with God, safe, at
peace, at home in God’s presence. Modernism has almost talked us out
of this hope.
Metanarrative An important story that both establishes and explains a

particular worldview and mindset.
Eschatology Concerned with the last things: death, judgement, heaven and
hell. It is concerned with the final destiny and hope both of the individual
and of humanity.
These promises concern the world as a life-giving, food-producing

system of interrelations which is as yet unfinished. What we actually see
is ‘the political–economic–military capacity to brutalize humanity and
to terrorize the earth . . . the dysfunction of the ecosystem, dominated by
greed and fear . . . the world as we know it is not the one called “good,” not
the one that God intended.’
It is not easy to say such things in a technological society. An evange-
lical proclamation will announce that the world has the potential to be
harmonious, productive and at peace, as God intended. It cannot tell
us how or when but it does tell us who. This is the ‘Holy Who’ whom
modernism tries to eliminate from all its calculations.
These promises concern a finished church. The Church is not the goal
of God’s creation but God’s chosen means – that portion of humanity
committed to, and participating in, God’s resolve for a new world. The
gospel claims are imprecise; they are acts of hope and trust affirming that
what God intended is possible.
We are being shown a community that, first, yields its past to a memory
of generous origins in God’s power and, secondly, hands its future over
to the intentionality of God’s promises. Brueggemann asserts that such a
community must live differently in the present.
In the first place, we are called upon to imagine a self which is free of
consumer advertising and the unending efforts of self-security. We are
to be open only to the proclamation of presence. We are to imagine a
reframed, reshaped self, where obedience to the Law of God is joy rather
than burden.
In the second place, we are asked to imagine a world where creatures,
under God’s presence, no longer hurt or destroy. Here anxious fears are
unnecessary and brutal selfishness is inappropriate.
In the third place, we imagine a community of faith where the exile of
loss and abandonment is renovated by act of God. The present, still in
exile, is transformed.
Brueggemann’s call to live differently in the present is a call to live by
an act of creative imagination. He demands that Christians free them-
selves from consumerism and the rat race. The enemy remains amnesia,
forgetting our origins as people of God and the values which that point
of generation installs in the world. Modernism talks us out of this hope,
replacing it with a protective shell of our own self-constructed safety.
Brueggemann’s suggestion is that Christians should climb out of the
protective shell of self-constructed safety and live faith as a doxological
response to God which arises out of the self ’s fragilities.
The pastoral task of theology post 9/11
In a text written the day after the 9/11 outrage and published on the
internet, Brueggemann considers the pastoral role of theology and
theologians in the wake of the shock. The first point to take from his
reflections is that doing theology is not the reserve of professional
theologians; Brueggemann suggests it is the work of all Christian pastors,

something they do for and with their communities. In fact it is the work
of all the people of God, helped by their pastors and theologians.
The first task of the Church concerns grief and comfort over loss of
life. Meaningless violence drives the Church to texts of sadness it has not
‘needed’ for a long time. The lament psalms provide a powerful resource.
He notes the loss as a systemic shattering, a new public sense of vulnera-
bility. The shared sense that the United States were immune from the
rage of the world has now been sabotaged.
He draws attention to ‘communal laments’ (such as Psalms 74 and 79)
that communicate the shattering of the most basic public symbol of
meaning in the Old Testament: the Jerusalem temple. This public
dimension of grief is deep underneath personal loss and not easily
spoken. But grief, he feels, will not be articulated adequately until atten-
tion goes underneath the personal to the public and communal.
The full voice of grief is to be matched by the enactment of comfort
that seeks to meet grief. That begins in bodily contact; but eventually
we must speak about the God of all comfort beyond feeble personal
offers of comfort. The Easter claim has been ignored and undermined
in late twentieth century self-confidence and self-sufficiency. Now
the Church is driven back to and must rediscover Easter seriousness.
This is the claim that ‘the last enemy’ (death) has been rendered ineffec-
tive by the God of the gospel. That ‘last enemy’ can no longer rob us of
life with God.
If the sense of the tragedy is a coming face to face with evil, theologians
must sense that the term ‘evil’ involves more than particular sins enacted
by human individuals. ‘Evil’ draws us beyond ‘bad deeds’ to cosmic
questions. In the Hebrew Bible, ‘evil’ is a cosmic force but is not con-
tained in or reduced to visible acts. Evil persists in a powerful way in
defiance of the will of the creator.
Americans are a protected and privileged nation which may need to
be delivered from innocence. They are forced to recognize that they
live in a profoundly contested world, between God’s goodwill and
the deathliness of evil. In Christian commitment, individuals join the
contest as followers of the Vulnerable One. They are called to assume
a vulnerable vocation. Being vulnerable is the God-willed future of
the world.
Brueggemann has long seen that the temptation for ‘Christian

America’ is to imagine that the United States is a righteous empire
doing good around the world. It often refuses to think systemically
about how the United States embodies the ‘Christian West’ against non-
Christian societies. When doing this it is often seen to act as an inter-
national bully with its huge economic leverage and immense military
power.
The old texts claim that God does criticize and move against God’s
own chosen people. That simple prophetic statement by itself is too raw.
It must be accompanied by patient education in systemic analysis of
power – an analysis known in the prophetic texts but seldom made
explicit.
That is a raw, pressing task for Theology. All Christian thinkers who
face such questions will be engaged in deep questions of their own
faith. As they engage in that raw questioning, they will suffer, because a
triumphant society does not relish truth-telling.
Biblical authority
Brueggemann has always revealed a deep desire for Christian unity and
not just amongst Evangelicals; he has an intense sense of compassion and
justice for the underprivileged and marginalized and a thoughtful love
for the divine character of Holy Scripture. He talks of the Bible as an
imaginative narrative of God’s care for the world – an account that
encourages obedience, builds community and respects the freedom of
individual Christians.
He reads the Bible aware of two realities. The first is that all of us do so
out of our own unique backgrounds which are compounded of family,
friends and personal culture: our socialization process. The second is the
fact of our development in faith. The interpretation and the authority of
the Bible are not matters of intellectual argument but well up within us
from sources that are deep, unrecognized and often embedded in distress,
rage and worry. The way we read the Bible is the fruit of habit and convic-
tion, and these often take shape long before we may be conscious of them.
When he writes, a number of aspects of recognition and interpreta-
tion, both positive and negative, always appear to be at work:
z God’s word is not fixed, it is live and it comes to life in the text of
Scripture, speaking through authors who speak their faith out of
given backgrounds and circumstances. They transmit but also warp the
voice of God. The divine voice is within the text but may not be easy
to locate.
z God’s spirit blows through the text, allowing it to suggest a resonance
of something which is not ourselves. We identify it using the discipline
of prayer and meditation in concert with scholarship.
z The Bible needs to be interpreted, but that explanation will be
subjective; so there will be disagreement. All such interpretation must
be tentative.
z We need a degree of imagination to convert ancient voices into word
for the present time. We use subjective freedom here; it cannot claim
the seal of certainty.
z Our unique experiences and histories cause us to read all texts with a
degree of bias. This refers to both individual and group experiences.
These act as filters determining how we read the text. There is no such
thing as an interpretation without ‘vested interest’.
z We do not interpret the Bible in order to control the Church, but to
bring the world into contact with Word of God. We cannot reduce that
Word to polished technique or slick formula. We cannot allow any
form of trivialization.
Appraisal
Brueggemann’s theology is contextualized. It is ripped from ancient texts

and forced into cotemporary settings.
In Brueggemann’s view, with the capture of Jerusalem, the destruction
of the temple and the end of the house of King David, the nation’s long
tradition of theological confidence was crushed. However this ruin pro-
duced new ways of looking at the nation’s relationship with God and the
community was re-invigorated.
Out of the diverse elements of Old Testament theology, Brueggemann
has forged a Christian response to the experience of the secular, managed
society. Spiritual health is the awareness of being loved and receiving
the Creator’s gifts as surprise. Dominant culture, perpetually forgetful
of God, seeks denial and despair. God’s alternative must be grasped in

faith and made one’s own.
Brueggemann repeatedly emphasizes the duty of Theology to address
the contemporary world. He also emphasizes the duty of Theology to
work with imagination – to test new ways of envisioning faith. And the
responses he suggests are never definitive but always provisional. He
challenges us to live both with and without certainties.
Other theologians, particularly Liberal ones, have talked of how neces-
sary it is to restate the Christian message in order to make it understood
by the contemporary imagination. Brueggemann seems to regard con-
temporary culture as a sort of filter through which the message must
pass. He does not talk about ‘restating’ the message; he talks of daring,
subversive speech and text by means of which the message can either
grasp the hearers or be grasped by them.
Brueggemann’s theology is about (counterfeit) worlds that are created
for us by vested interests such as banks, big business, governments and
mass media. It is also about the power of liberating imagination which
denies any limitation on divine power. This theology is how ordinary
human beings may come to see what is being kept from them by a tamed,
domesticated imagination and receive power to break those limitations
and have access to the infinite possibilities of God.
Brueggemann’s vision of false living is composed of two pictures. On
the one hand we see free and responsible individuals who make up their
own world, investigate their own problems, fashion their own responses
and are self-sufficient. On the other we see mass-produced individuals
who live in a pre-packaged world, with limited control over their own
conditions of living: residing in residences that all look alike, their income
regulated, their tax deducted at source. Both are inauthentic. What are
they both lacking?
Brueggemann’s work is a revalidation of the capacity of the Bible, in
particular of the Old Testament, to fund, to provide raw material for, the
task of constructing an alternative Evangelical imagination.
But Evangelical faith is often held with great certainty and lived with
great intensity. So there is a danger of an uncritical response to his
proposition.
The proposal of an evangelical counter-imagination resonates differ-
ently in post-Christian Europe where God is largely absent from any
self-understanding which individuals and communities articulate. It may

be necessary to proclaim an evangelical counter-imagination, but procla-
mation is not enough. Absoluteness of conviction and intensity of
religious emotion are not good decision-making tools. The teasing, prob-
ing, playful, imaginative building of an alternative mindset based on
Scripture is necessary, but it must be a reasoned proclamation.
Brueggemann does not outline how the task of holding together
the free, imaginative play of renewal and the equally creative criticism of
discipline might be accomplished. He does not explicitly acknowledge
the problem.
If the dominant discourse of modernism is portrayed as an imagina-
tive construal in need of subversion, any evangelical counter-drama
which in turn becomes dominant must obviously be undermined in the
same way. Brueggemann maintains his project as a dogged imaging
against the grain as he warns against Christians relying on a dominant
consumerism.
So we are not faced with an ‘either-or’, rather with a dialectical ‘both-
and’: with the tensions of daring and caution, of imagination and
criticism, the tension of an innovative openness and the brake of reason
and generosity. Maybe this discipline is already inherent in Bruegge-
mann’s proposal that we hold a de-absolutized present between a past
tied to the faithfulness of God and a future liberated to the extravagant,
outrageous promises of God. The search for an Evangelical counter-
imagination is to be a ‘faithful practice of imagination’.
Brueggemann’s work is a powerful social criticism, yet it never relies on
purely human remedies; it constantly remembers the incisive intervening
possibilities of the power of God.
What is wrong with bourgeois self-sufficiency? What is right with it?
Can one only respond to God’s gracious call if living in economic
precariousness? Is this really what Brueggemann means?
What hopes are denied in the dissatisfied coping with twenty-first
century everyday life? What might one grieve for? How might one be
amazed and what would be expressed in praise?
16 Don Cupitt and Being Adrift
Don Cupitt’s theological thought has gone through a number of devel-

opments. He first tried to defend orthodox theology and to restate and
reinterpret central ideas in new ways. At this early stage he discussed the
possibility of objectivity in faith. The notion of transcendence was still
for him an important idea. He thought it was necessary in order to
advance in theological and ethical thinking.
He wished to avoid saying that the believer creates the religious meaning
he believes in. He was particularly critical of projection theory in religion.
This is the idea that religious belief is merely an expression of our deepest
desires rather than a coming to terms with something actually there.
Nevertheless he did develop objections to certain accepted dogmas and
he came to believe that much of church life and outlook had a repressive
quality. This stage marks a shift in his search. Formerly he was looking for
religious meaning from above; now he looks for religious meaning from
within.
If human beings are to come to genuine moral choices, then they
cannot be adopted in obedience to a God who imposes them (heterono-
mous faith); they must be freely accepted. Cupitt now thinks that religious
language is losing its objective quality and becoming more symbolic.
The aim of Cupitt’s religious–ethical thought is to allow human beings
to become fully independent, self-regulating individuals. An objective
God who imposes divine will cannot allow fully autonomous human
beings. Cupitt’s thought is now turning to what can or cannot be mean-
ingfully said about God.
Objective Having actual existence, independent of a person’s thoughts,

feelings or prejudices.
Transcendence Above, independent of, surpassing, the material universe.
Dogma A system of religious teaching authoritatively considered to be
absolute truth.
Autonomy Self-governing; freedom from outside influence.
Don Cupitt and Being Adrift 271
Life (1934– )
Don Cupitt was born in Lancashire in the north of England in 1934.

He was educated at Charterhouse and later at Trinity Hall in Cambridge.
He studied Natural Sciences, Theology and the Philosophy of Religion.
He prepared for ordination at Westcott House, Cambridge, a college for
training clergy of the Church of England.
He was ordained priest in 1960 and had a brief spell as a curate in the
north of England. He then quickly became vice principal of Westcott
House and was later made a member of the academic staff at Emmanuel
College, Cambridge. He remained at Emmanuel College. He was
appointed a university teacher in the Philosophy of Religion in 1968. He
retired from that post for health reasons in 1996.
Don Cupitt is widely known for his many writings and because he is
a controversial religious thinker. He has made gifted use of television
to reach a wide audience. His programmes, some of which have been
published as books, have included The Great Debate, Who was Jesus? and
The Sea of Faith.
Cupitt has tried to state a philosophical system which reconciles a
scientific view of the world with the artistic-mythological view of the
world expressed by religious thought. To this end he has tried to make
metaphysics meaningful again. He does not believe in seeking to escape
this world in order to achieve salvation. For him the religious ideal
consists of trying to add joy and value to life. Cupitt also challenges
traditional views of the ‘afterlife’. He maintains that true Christianity is
about living productively and rewardingly in this life.
His hobbies include art, walking and the study of butterflies. His wife
is a potter. They have three children and are grandparents.
He ceased to officiate at services of public worship in the 1990s.
His writings are valued by ‘liberals’ in the church.
Timeline
1933 Hitler becomes German Chancellor

1934 Birth of Don Cupitt
1948 Beginning of the Cold War

1952 Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
1953 The structure of DNA
1956 The contraceptive pill
1957 Jack Kerouac’s On the Road
The Soviet Union launches the first artificial satellite
1960 Don Cupitt ordained priest
1966 The Cultural Revolution in China
1969 First man on the moon
1971 Cupitt’s Christ and the Hiddenness of God
1973 Cupitt’s television programme The Great Debate
1976 Cupitt’s The Leap of Reason; Cupitt’s television programme Who was
Jesus?
1978 First test tube baby
1980 Cupitt’s Taking Leave of God
1984 Cupitt’s television programme The Sea of Faith
1988 Cupitt’s The New Christian Ethics
1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall
1990 Cupitt’s Creation out of Nothing
1991 Abolition of apartheid in South Africa
1994 Cupitt’s After All: Religion without Alienation
1999 Cupitt’s The New Religion of Life in Everyday Speech
2001 9/11 attack on America
2003 American and British troops invade Iraq
2005 Cupitt’s Way to Happiness: A Theory of Religion
Thought
Cupitt developed his early theological thought around the idea of via
negativa: we can only say what God is not; we cannot say what God is. He
quickly came to the conclusion that all language about God is anthro-
pocentric, always related to an understanding of what humans are. We
create this language, we use it to talk about God; so then God must be,
through language, a human creation. Nothing exists outside language.
If you try to think of something outside language, you will be using lan-
guage to think of it.
The Sea of Faith (1984)
Cupitt’s television programme grabbed headlines when it seemed that

a religious programme was being introduced by a Church of England
clergyman who did not believe in God. In fact Cupitt believes passion-
ately that we need a new way of understanding what it means to believe
in God.
Faith, for Cupitt, is a cultural event. It takes different forms at different
times. God is the sum of our values, their unity, the demands they make
of us and their creative power. We cannot hold the same type of faith as
early, or even medieval, Christians. The way we view the world changed
with Galileo and the sixteenth-century scientific revolution. How we
view ourselves changed once we adopted the insights of Darwin and
Freud. Theology could never be the same again following Kierkegaard,
Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. The Sea of Faith is an interesting, but polem-
ical, view of the evolution of Western Christianity.
Polemic Controversial, one-sided attack upon, or defence of, a given opinion

or doctrine.
The Last Philosophy (1995)
Cupitt argues that God does not exist independently, ‘out there’. God
is the personification of our religious values. He seeks a new form
of Christianity, often called a Christian Buddhism, which allows us to
investigate this new idea of God. His aim is personal development and
social change.
He wants to present his thinking in ordinary, easily understood terms
without jargon – in what he calls ‘democratic terms’.
If we try to sit quietly and observe our consciousness, what we become
aware of is that we have to express it in language: what is deepest inside
us generates language. Life is fundamentally a constant flow of energy.
Cupitt’s good news, or gospel, is that this is all that there is. We become
enlightened when we realize that there was never a time when we were
not enlightened.
What Cupitt fails to explain satisfactorily is where the notion that we
are not enlightened came from. It is a cultural construct? Is it a power
game a priestly class has played upon the entire human race, in every
culture, since time began? Is such a notion credible? Does the original
impulse towards religious feeling flow from lack, from imperfection or
from an urge to go beyond, to stretch out towards what cannot be said?
The experience of being adrift
Cupitt was once critical about the language we use about God. He has
since changed his stance. What we say about God is not really what we
mean. Language is an inadequate tool for talking about God. He now
argues that there is no objective God. When we talk about God we are
really talking about ourselves.
Cupitt’s thinks of humanity as adrift from any tie to realism; by this he
means God as an objective entity. We have now become the Creator. From
that position Cupitt sets out to explore the fundamental nature of
humanity and the world and wonders what that involves in practical or
ethical terms.
Traditional religions state that humans are imperfect, sinful and in need
of salvation. This can only be offered by God. But what if there is no God,
no heaven and no mind or language apart from what we, the human race,
has created? In that case our earthly lives cannot be a preparation for eter-
nity. Cupitt consequently rejects all such notions. There is no ‘outside’.
We must turn attention away from the invisible to the visible. Morality
has developed within the bounds of our needs and experience. It is not
a ‘given’ from outside. We have our most immediate access to what exists
through language. Language provides the concepts, ideas and notions
which allow us to analyse the world, to use and control it.
Here we are approaching the notion of ‘projection theory’. We see the
world the way we do because we project our desires and needs onto it. We
‘construct’ the world because of our needs and desires.
Traditional projection theory talks of the mind projecting our desires
onto what is there and, by this means, giving it a shape in accordance
with that interpretation. Cupitt wants to discard the notion of mind

or ‘inner space’. Kant had claimed that time and space were essential
categories of the mind. We could not think or speak or operate without
them because our minds are pre-programmed in such a way that we
cannot understand anything without them.
Cupitt abandons such notions; the world is being played out in front
of us. The only thing that gives form to such experience is language.
If there is no invisible realm of the mind there can be no orthodoxy
and the only thing that can concern us is praxis: what we do. The world
of quietness, stillness, reflection, meditation, prayer and praise does
not exist.
The world and language are relative and impermanent. Meaning is
simply what is agreed among members of the human community. We are
in a world of constant rootless change; it is not even a process. Process
would suggest purpose.
The old system was just a form of slavery. Whoever had power imposed
meaning on those who had no power and did so for their own purposes. We
now enter a world of free choice and free values. We are totally free, there is
no pre-determined truth. We are whatever it is that we are becoming.
Solar Ethics (1995)
How should we live with this situation? Cupitt uses the image of the sun
to explain his point. The sun integrates both living and dying perfectly.
It is giving itself to our world and to other planets of the solar system,
thus allowing them to live. At the same time, it is dying. The sun is not
essence; it is just act.
We also are performance. There is no chance to practise, to repeat or to
correct. We are not limited by any ideal to which we should correspond.
We are free and in the course of becoming.
There is no fixed moral law. The only demand is to express ourselves
fully. The only sin is not to do so. Nobody is bound in any way. All that
exists is language and time. The only mechanism to avoid anarchy is the
fact of language. If pure anarchy were the only principle of order, there
could be no language.
Cupitt’s philosophy is an attempt to free people from the belief that
there is something wrong with us and the way we live. The function of
philosophy is to help us to understand what we already know; its role is

to be descriptive, not prescriptive.
We should, however, be cautious of freely accepting the reductionism in
Cupitt’s description of the human condition. If there is no ‘outside’, notions
such as continuity, meaning and personality are all meaningless. Language
cannot be reduced to a mere set of agreed mechanisms which came from
nowhere. There are problems in understanding how language functions.
But it does function, in spite of the appearance of having no deep mean-
ing. The correspondence between an idea intended and the sound used
may be arbitrary, but it is there, it is necessary and is very subtle.
Personification When inanimate objects or ideas are represented as having

human form or human qualities.
Anarchy Disorder, confusion, absence of any form of authority.
The Religion of Being (1998)
Cupitt argues that once we abandon belief in a Supreme Being we need a

new theory of Being and for that he turns to the philosopher Martin
Heidegger (1889–1976). Cupitt argues that we should turn our attention
to human beings in time and how they relate to Being. Being is both
‘letting be’ and ‘letting go’. Nothing physical underpins us in time. We are
the products of a transient contingency.
Being is not another word for God. Being is not substance or form
or nature or force or power or any of the standard words of traditional
metaphysics. Being is finite, contingent and limited in time.
For Cupitt, God was, at times, an idea with violent overtones. We have
abandoned it and must wait before we can accept a more gentle and mild
notion such as Being. Everything is contingent; it just happens to be as it
is. Nothing is necessary. Being is near and evident; it energizes us and
comes to expression in language. To come to some realization of this
truth, our reflection should attend to the here-and-now quality of the
world. Even if dreadful events occur, we cannot blame some all-powerful
being, we can only say ‘yes’ to what is. This contingency can only be
innocent, not evil.
Cupitt turns to a number of contemporary philosophers to find a

vocabulary to replace the Super-Male controlling power of the tradi-
tional, transcendent God who rules by decree. Being has feminine
qualities – is ‘inturning’, womb, matrix of possibilities, self-giving.
Throughout Western intellectual history the ‘wise’ have believed in the
possibility of order, and when order failed, they have fallen into pessi-
mism. The common people have seen reality as ‘trickster’, breaking the
rules, upsetting the applecart, getting away with it, and they have loved
that chancy, fickle disorder. Cupitt believes we should set out to redis-
cover that lightness of meaning.
As we delve down into language, all we find at each level is another veil
of language; decisive meaning always dodges away from us. Meaning
presupposes being; being presupposes meaning. We must learn to see a
void, a chaotic world rather than an intelligible one filled with order.
Meaningful views of the world are short-lived creations of language.
Religious experience is possible when we allow Being to creep forth
into individuals. Human beings are not naturally and fundamentally
rational creatures. We are creatures of desire and need; reason and reflec-
tion were late developments.
As we became more technologically skilled, and gradually possessed
enough wealth to realize dreams, we forgot the fundamental qualities of
Being which were limited, contingent and ephemeral. We deceived our-
selves into thinking we could realize theological hopes. Cupitt thinks of
such theological hopes in terms of knowledge, control, power, pleasure
and the sublime.
So we need to turn the values we have received upside down. We ought
to imitate the trickster and the fool, to take our example from the
mad prophet Ezekiel or the cynic Diogenes and concentrate on what
‘rationality’ ignores. We should turn to the uncertainty of life; should
seek the elusiveness we shall never master, the slipperiness and contin-
gency of Being. We must abandon our desire for meaning in the face of
meaninglessness. When we come to understand that point, when we
realize the emptiness of Being and the death of the Self, then we are on
the road to a new awareness of salvation. Religion is not about belief; it
is about practice. It is not a question of accepting a set of propositions
with our minds and our reason; it is an affirmation of being. In cultural
terms, at the present moment, we are in transition from God to Being.
Transient Passing away with time, not permanent.

Contingent That which can happen or can exist, yet need not.
Substance Nowadays the word means a form of material, like earth or lead. In
metaphysics it means the essence or form that makes something what it is. The
substance of the stool makes the wood a stool rather than a walking stick.
Necessary What has to be. Without which some other thing cannot be or
some other event cannot take place.
Ephemeral Lasting for a brief time, short-lived.
Hierarchy Any arrangement of elements where some are seen as more impor-
tant than others. For example, bishops are considered more important than
priests.
Absolute Perfect in quality, complete, not limited by restrictions or condi-
tions, something considered to be the ultimate basis for all thought and
being.
Ineffable Unable to be described in words, either because it is beyond our
understanding or too sacred.
Thought in transition
Early in his career, Cupitt took the view that theological statements are
regulative: they guide our actions. He tried to state theological insights in
new ways. He later came to criticize what he called ‘realism’, the view that
God existed ‘out there’. He moved to the view that God was the embodi-
ment of our religious values. He has since moved to seeing religion
as rather like artistic activity, we express ourselves by creative action.
Religion is the affirmation of Being, a cultural activity.
So is Cupitt a Christian or an atheist, a prophet or a heretic? He has
certainly argued that the Church must get rid of its supernatural beliefs.
They were being gradually eroded anyway. We no longer blame God if a
hurricane blows; we no longer assume we have sinned if we fall ill. We live
in a world governed by rational, discoverable scientific laws and are able
to control and predict many events. It is, however, a long leap to infer
from this that God is a human creation.
We have always created ethics; we must now redefine our metaphysical

vocabulary and our mental outlook. There can be no final definition of
Christianity. The strange thing is that, in fact, there never was; but the
obsession with orthodoxy often blinded us to that fact.
In addition, the idea that we can no longer talk about an objective God
or ethical absolutes is not new. It has been at the heart of debate, since the
theological adventure began.
The history of Theology has been a constant redefining of concepts, a
sorting out of nasty ideas. Nevertheless, if human beings have notions of
transcendence and wish to find ways of expressing the ineffable, the
theological enterprise will continue to be valid.
Appraisal
Is Cupitt’s ‘solar ethics’ really religious?

Christian theologies had largely underpinned the ‘modern’ mindset.
On the other hand they had also been obliged to turn around and criti-
cize the drift towards secularism which was one of the outcomes of
modernity.
All knowing, says Cupitt, is done by a subject. All the stimuli received
by the knower are taken, categorized and interpreted by the same know-
ing subject. There is no objective knowledge, only knowledge as it appears
to us. All knowing is relative to the knowing subject and created by the
same knowing subject. We therefore cannot find absolutes outside of
ourselves. We make, rather than discover, the world. Religion is com-
pletely human – a product of history, of culture and the stories and values
they create.
If we use language to refer to something outside language, then does
that really mean that language has created it? In what way might it be said
that language has created it? Would that something still exist if there were
nobody there to talk about it?
In Cupitt’s view, Christianity did not allow for human creativity, since
God was considered to be in control. Christian morality was just an effort
to please this dominant, frightening God.
Cupitt’s new ethics are an effort to affirm the self and the self ’s
creativity, to accept them joyfully. Religion becomes ethics. The task is
not to give metaphysical explanations of how things are but to shape and
direct the way we live.
Does an objective God who is unlimited and supreme have to be a
tyrannical God who imposes his will? Can such a God be gentle or loving,
where necessary chiding, but nurturing rather than compelling?
How might some one who thinks like Don Cupitt view the Bible?
Would such a person need the idea of revelation? How would he use
sacraments? What might they mean? Why might this form of thinking do
without them? What use are they? Is Theology nothing more than meta-
physical speculation?
In Cupitt’s view, is salvation the work of God or the work of human
beings? Can Christianity be Christian without ‘resurrection faith’?
Why has the Christian view of Trinity become such a stumbling block
to acceptance of Christian faith in the late twentieth and early twenty-
first centuries? Has the Christian Church been so obsessed with ‘correct
dogma’ that it has become repressive rather than pastoral?
Are we pure act without values? Are we content that all should live in
this fashion? Are the rules of language the only restriction on us? Do we,
and ought we, demand that others should conform to a standard of life?
And are they right to make similar demands on us?
If others rob or kill me, should I accept it as part of their expression of
who they really are? Or have I the right to demand a brake on that self-
expression? And where do the agreed communal values, that together we
accept and impose, come from?
Do ethics depend on the values (positive and negative) we give
to certain words? ‘Murder’, ‘rape’, ‘cheat’ all have negative values. ‘Help’,
‘gentleness’, ‘solidarity’ all have positive values. Are these purely
linguistic?
What is linguistic meaning? Words have always subtly created their
meanings, suggestions and connotations in relation to other words, in a
sophisticated complex that is always shifting. Does this mean they have
no external reference?
Conclusion
I hope you have found our short meander along the course of Western
Christian Theology interesting.
We have emphasized here that Theology is something that is done by
everybody. The theological questions we all ask are reflected in the con-
cerns of these and many other thinkers.
We started with writers who are not often thought of as theologians.
Revelation was in Christ and these authors were among the first to record
their reaction to that self-disclosure of God. We then took a jump of a few
hundred years and looked at St Augustine, one of the most influential
thinkers of the Western Latin tradition.
He was followed by St Thomas Aquinas, whose systematized thought
would, in time, become the standard expression of Western Christian
orthodoxy.
The sixteenth century saw a major upheaval in the Latin Church and
one which eventually resulted in the personal freedoms of Western liberal
civilization. The notion of ‘authority’ has become a much less forensic
concept; it has become a word which one must now approach more
tentatively, more humbly.
The sixteenth century reformations are represented here by Luther,
Calvin and Loyola. Ultimately arguments between Christians were not
played out along the faultline of that cataclysm which divided ‘Protestants’
from ‘Catholics’. They were increasingly played out along lines of objective
and subject authority, as standards such as Bible, Church, ‘magisterium’,
reason, Natural Theology, dogma, individual experience and feeling came
into play. These divergences frequently appeared on both sides of the more
visible, historical and institutional divide. Wesley played an obvious role in
the drama of religious feeling. So did Schleiermacher, more urbanely. So
too, quite subtly, did Newman.
The liberal tradition wished Theology to speak directly to the specific
thought patterns and concerns of contemporary culture. Here God
becomes less personal and more of an abstraction. With Cupitt, however,
God fades from consciousness and appears to dissolve into ethics.
Liberation theologies are also theologies of Immanence. The term had

not been invented in Bonhoeffer’s time, yet he occupied a unique posi-
tion, crushed between creeping secularization and rampant, political
aggression. The feminist thought of Rosemary Radford Ruether repre-
sents a different form of Liberation Theology. Other varieties have
flourished in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
In case you thought that Theology had become a new form of human-
ism, there have been powerful influences stressing the otherness, the
awesomeness, the majesty and transcendence of God. Barth’s has proba-
bly been the fiercest and most passionate voice. Rahner, with his emphasis
on the transcendence of the human, occupies an interesting and nuanced
position. Brueggemann’s finely crafted Biblical imagination brings yet
another form of fine shading to these theologies of Transcendence.
Over half of the theological thinkers outlined in this book belong to
the modern period: from Schleiermacher onwards.
Religion is a bit like aviation: wonderful when saving lives and deadly
when bombing cities. As in every sphere of human experience, religious
activists can do and have done great good; they have also sinned griev-
ously. The writer to the First Epistle of John wants us to ‘test the spirits to
see whether they are from God . . . Every spirit that acknowledges that
Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God’ (1 Jn 4.1–2). Obviously
this writer does not wish us to accept everything at face value. Ideas must
be probed and examined; reason and experience must be brought into
play. Particular elements of understanding, familiarity and memory must
be reconciled within a cohering whole. One can leave things at the level
of wonderful but nice story or one can move to the level of deeper and
more universal significance. That is the task of Theology.
Theology is a form of deliberation which takes place within each
one of us and it is simultaneously a thoughtfulness which marks a wider
community of faith and interchange, as we all develop the ability to
create a space where faith and reason may dialogue.
Thankfully, we no longer live in a society where we must swallow eve-
rything dished up by the ‘elders of the tribe’. Within Theology, as within
all forms of social order and tradition, there are elements which are
agents of alienation, outdated custom and convention which have been
raised to mythical status. Religion and politics often become confused;
hostility and violence are visited upon the weak and vulnerable in the
Conclusion 283
name of truth. This is as obvious within the Christian tradition as it is

elsewhere. And it is actual; it is with us today.
As we ponder theologically, our rational side is always conscious of
problems, questions and arguments; our prayerful side dwells on the
deep and silent unity of the universe. That awareness of Being, the Holy,
God, the profound necessity to sit and contemplate, can only be eradi-
cated by stunting our growth.
We are more than flesh, blood and electrical impulses. The human
beings who make machines and tools also invent stories and create works
of art, construct the great scaffolding of the human imagination, search-
ing for meaning and creating value, ever expanding the bounds of human
possibility. These too are the tasks of Theology. We subsist by economic
activity and material gain; we live by poetry, love, enthusiasm, commun-
ion and the search for truth.
Theology is the intellectual, rational, disciplined approach to revelation,
to a summons, in Jesus Christ. Therefore Theology must move between
three poles of influence, hold three forms of abstraction in tension. They
are the rational and speculative, the mystical and imaginative and the
Biblical Gospel revealed in Scripture and in the tradition of the Church
of God. How this threefold pondering has been accomplished in the
past is the subject of this short book.
Further Reading
We start with two general single-volume histories of Theology which you

may find helpful. Alister McGrath’s Christian Theology: An Introduction
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2001) is a sober survey of both the histo-
rical development and the subject matter of (mostly) Western Christian
Theology. S.J. Grenz and R.E. Olson’s 20th Century Theology: God and the
World in a Transitional Age (Downer’s Grove, IL: IVP, 1992) is written
from an American, Evangelical perspective. A more weighty series is
entitled The Great Theologians. It is being published by Blackwell
Publishing. Volumes dealing with The First Christian Theologians, The
Medieval Theologians, The Reformation Theologians, The Pietist Theolo-
gians and The Modern Theologians have all been published. At the time
of writing we await a volume on nineteenth century theologians. Each
theologian is presented by a world renowned scholar.
On the subject of Western civilization, one might try R. Osborne’s
Civilization: A New History of the Western World (London: Pimlico, 2007)
and R. Tarnas’s The Passion of the Western Mind (London: Pimlico,
1991).
The following is a list covering each of the individual chapters men-
tioned in this work:
Armstrong, K., The First Christian: St Paul’s Impact on Christianity
(London: Macmillan, 1983).
Brueggemann, W., A Theological Handbook of Old Testament Themes
(Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 2002).
Dauphinais, M. and Levering, M., Knowing the Love of Christ: An
Introduction to the Theology of St Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2002).
Dramm, S., Dietrich Bonhoeffer: An Introduction to His Thought
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007).
Dulles, A., John Henry Newman (Outstanding Christian Thinkers)
(London: Continuum, 2005).
Kilby, K., The SPCK Introduction to Karl Rahner: A Brief Introduction
(London: SPCK, 2007).
Further Reading 285
Leaves, N., Surfing on the Sea of Faith: The Ethics and Religion of Don
Cupitt (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 2005).
O’Donnell, J.J., St Augustine: Sinner and Saint (London: Profile Books,
2006).
Parker, T.H.L., John Calvin (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2006).
Rack, H.D. Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism
(London: Epworth, 2002).
Ruether, R.R., Sexism and God-Talk (SCM Classics) (London: SCM,
2002).
Sklar, P.A., St Ignatius of Loyola: In God’s Service (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist
Press International, 2001).
Stanton, G., The Gospels and Jesus (Oxford: OUP, 2002).
Tice, T.N., Schleiermacher (Abingdon Pillars of Theology) (Nashville,
TN: Abingdon Press, 2006).
Walker, J., Karl Barth (Outstanding Christian Thinkers) (London:
Continuum, 2000).
Wilson, D., Out of the Storm: The Life and Legacy of Martin Luther
(London: Hutchinson, 2007).
Index
accidents 71 165, 167, 176, 179, 182, 192, 194,

Acts of the Apostles 6, 8, 23, 26 195, 199, 200, 203, 228, 229, 233,
analogy 54, 67–8, 201–2 258, 263, 264, 280
anonymous Christian 219, 228–30 composition of place 102
Anselm (St) 196 Confessing Church 189, 205
anthropology, anthropological 135, contingency 61, 276
160, 196, 217, 230 conversion 16, 94, 97, 101, 105,
apostle 15 106, 120, 124, 127, 130, 138, 172,
Aquinas (St Thomas) 53–75, 186, 243, 244
217, 220, 222, 237 Council of Trent 92, 94, 95–6, 98, 119,
Arminianism 128–9 173
ascetic 9 counter-imagination,
atonement 69–70, 111, 132, 157 counter-culture 258, 262, 268
Augustine (St) 34–52, 111 Counter-Reformation 94, 95, 99, 119
covenant 14, 17, 113, 256, 257
baptism 16, 90, 116, 177 creation 85, 200, 203, 225, 227
Barth, Karl 188–203, 204, 211, 212 creed 34, 35, 85, 163, 178
Being 276–7 crucifixion 167
Body of Christ 14, 15, 71 cuius regio, eius religio 92
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 204–15 Cupitt, Don 270–80
Broad Church 177
Brueggemann, Walter 247–69 depravity 110
Brunner, Emil 195 discernment 18, 97, 101, 252
disciple, discipleship 25, 26, 206,
Calvin, John 82, 97, 106–20 211, 215
Calvinism 117, 129, 135, 156 dogma, dogmatics 156, 157, 158,
canon, canon formation 28, 245 161, 165, 193
Catholic Reformation, see dominant class/culture/ discourse/
Counter-Reformation power 239, 242, 244, 246, 252,
cheap grace 85, 211 258, 259, 267
Christ/Messiah 5, 10, 13, 24, 25, 26, Donatism 38, 41–2
68–9, 240, 243 doxology 253–6, 264
christological concentration 202
christology 48, 164, 166–7, 197, 203, ecology 232, 234, 240, 242–5
211, 225, 227, 237, 240, 241 election 11, 113, 132, 198–9
Church 14, 23, 34, 36, 38, 41, 43, 44, Enlightenment, the 141–2,
49, 52, 70, 76, 78, 83, 90, 113, 121, 156, 157
288 Index
enthusiasm 117, 125, 134 166, 193, 194, 199, 200, 211, 214,
eschatology, eschatological 14, 17, 18, 221, 229
199, 214, 263
essence of God 59, 110 heretic, heretical, heresy 29, 35, 38,
Essenes 6 45, 80
ethics, ethical 18, 32, 59, 160, 205, hermeneutics 158, 168–9, 203
208, 209, 212, 214–15, 254, Holy Spirit 15, 110, 129, 136, 167, 200
255, 257, 270, 274, 275–6, Holy Supper, see Eucharist
279, 280 Hus, Jan 77, 106
Eucharist (Lord’s Supper, Holy
Supper) 14, 30, 55, 71, 81, illative sense 183–4
90, 116, 130, 133, 137 incarnation 13, 29, 30, 58, 167,
Evangelical 121, 239, 266, 268 227, 230
evangelical 262, 263 infinite qualitative distinction 194
evil 35, 39, 40, 42, 45, 51, 59, 66, 75,
135, 165, 203, 265 John 7, 20, 28–32
ex opere operato 115 justification by faith 13, 79, 83, 85–8,
experience of God 162, 167 92, 110–11, 116
Fathers of the Church 35–6, 73, 174, Kant, Immanuel 143, 157, 216
175, 178, 182, 216, 217, Kingdom of God 23, 24, 32, 89, 258
218, 232
feminism 148–9, 232, 236–8, language 66–8, 167–8, 274
242–5 Liberal Theology 188, 189, 191–2,
Five Ways of Aquinas 54, 56, 60, 204
64–5 liberalism 144–5
freedom of the will 42, 43, 61 Liberation Theology 232, 233
Freud, Sigmund 147–8 liturgy 34, 35, 254
fundamentalism, fundamentalist 151, Logos 30, 31, 34, 69, 223, 227, 240, 243
230, 231 Lord’s Supper, see Eucharist
Loyola, (St Ignatius) 95–105
Galilee 2–33 passim Luke 7, 16, 20, 21, 26–8
gentiles 10, 23, 24, 27 Luther, Martin 76–93, 106, 111,
gnostic 29, 30, 32, 39, 40 124, 206
gospel 6, 17, 20, 24, 76, 79, 83, 274
grace (justifying, prevenient, Manichaeism 38, 39–40
sanctifying) 16, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, Mark 7, 16, 20, 21, 24–6
52, 61, 70, 85, 87, 88, 97, 111, 112, Marx, Karl 145–7
113, 116, 130, 131–2, 135, 164, Matthew 7, 16, 20, 21, 22–4
Index 289
Messiah, see Christ Rahner, Karl 216–31

metanarratives 261, 263 realism 278
modernism 152–3 reconciliation 199, 200
Moravian (Brotherhood) 124, 156 Redeemer, redemption 12, 26, 34, 43,
mysticism 150–1, 256 46, 69, 85, 164, 165, 167, 198, 203
Reformation 83, 87, 91, 92, 93,
natural law 72–3 138, 243
Natural Theology 65, 195, 196 religionless christianity 207, 212–13
natures of Christ 34, 48 religious experience 161
negative theology 66, 68, 272 resurrection 9, 12, 16, 21, 59, 111,
Neo-Orthodoxy 192 194, 195, 227
Neoplatonism 35, 40 revelation 60, 65, 75, 194, 195,
New Testament 20, 28 196, 198, 202, 203, 206, 210,
Newman, John Henry 51, 171–87 213, 222, 245
Ninety-five Theses 82, 84 revival 122
righteousness 193
omnipotence of God 65–6 Romanticism, Romantic
Oxford Movement 175–6 Movement 144, 156, 157–9
Ruether, Rosemary Radford 232–46
patriarchy, patriarchal 237, 238, 240,
241, 245 sacrament 59, 70, 83, 87, 89–90,
Patristics, see Fathers of the 115–16, 227, 228
Church sacrifice 15, 17, 71
Paul (St) 5–19, 87, 89, 137 Sadducees 6
Pelagianism 38, 42–3 salvation 12, 43, 69–70, 79, 80, 88, 92,
penal substitution 230 112, 221, 225, 227, 244, 277
perfection 132 sanctification 85, 112, 113
perseverance 28, 132 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 156–70,
Pharisees 6, 8, 23, 28 188, 190, 192
pietism 120, 156, 157 Scholastics, Schoolmen 53, 56,
postmodernism 153–4, 73, 190
261–4 Scientific Revolution 139–41
praise, see doxology self-communication of God 221, 225,
predestination 43, 85, 87, 109, 228, 231
111–14, 128, 132, 198, 199 self-revelation of God 197, 200, 209,
proclamation 194, 195, 199, 203 210, 224, 226, 229
projection theory 270, 274 sin 11, 16, 40, 41, 42, 43, 70, 92, 164,
prophecy, prophet 250, 258–61 166, 198, 213, 221
providence 54 substance 47, 71, 180
290 Index
subversive speech/text 252, 255, 256, Trinity 34, 47–9, 58, 68, 165, 166, 167,
262, 268 197, 203, 225
supernatural existential 221
symbol, symbolic 72, 254 via media 179
synoptic gospels 21, 30 via negativa, see negative theology
victim 30
theological method 56, 60, 109, 161,
193, 196, 238 Wesley, John 113, 120, 121–38
theology of the cross 16, 88 will 40, 42, 49, 50, 51, 135, 136
transcendence, transcend, Women-Church 238
transcendental 29, 31, 61, 62, 66, Word, see Logos
188, 218, 220, 221, 223, 225, 231, Word of God 188, 190, 192, 199,
241, 244, 254, 270, 277, 279 200, 247
transfiguration 25, 26 world come of age 207, 213
transubstantiation 71, 90, 96, Wycliffe, John 77, 106
180, 181
Trent, Council of, see Council of Trent Zealots 6

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A Brief History of Theology

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1 The First Christian Theologians: St Paul 5

2 The First Christian Theologians: the Gospel Writers 20

3 St Augustine of Hippo: a Father of the Church 34

4 St Thomas Aquinas: Revelation and Reason 53

5 Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation 76

6 St Ignatius Loyola and John Calvin: the two sides dig in 94

7 John Wesley and Evangelical Revival 121

8 The Contexts of Modern Theology 139

9 Friedrich Schleiermacher and Religious Feeling 156

10 John Henry Newman and Catholic Renewal 171

11 Karl Barth and a Theology of the Word 188

12 Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Cost of Discipleship 204

13 Karl Rahner and Human Transcendence 216

14 Rosemary Radford Ruether and Women-Church 232

15 Walter Brueggemann and the Biblical Imagination 247

16 Don Cupitt and Being Adrift 270

Further Reading 284

Some people think that Theology is a body of knowledge given to some

Philosophy assumes only that all experience can be examined in a

Post-Enlightenment thinkers are more worried about progress and

We do not think of writers of the New Testament as theologians. We tend

The world of the ﬁrst Christians

The ﬁrst Christians appeared in a tiny province of the Roman Empire.

well-governed territories around the Mediterranean Sea: ‘Our Sea’ as the

What we know about the writers

44 BCE Death of Julius Caesar

Life (died 65 CE)

over whether non-Jewish converts to Christianity should be forced to

Resurrection is the theological teaching that God would raise up each

The ﬁrst Christian theologian

At the beginning of Paul’s mission, the ﬂedgling Christian church was

The mystery of Christ

Creation and resurrection

Servitude and freedom

One of the great stories of the Jewish tradition is the experience of

appeared to be failure, in terms of human judgement and career consid-

The Body of Christ

Christianity is not a set of principles for private consumption. The Jewish

Eucharist The great Thanksgiving Liturgy of the Church as it celebrates the

Sacriﬁce The offering of something costly (often an animal) to God in thanks-

The Holy Spirit

is suggested to us as capable of fulﬁlling our deepest desires can be

The Lord’s Supper

remarked that Paul’s emphasis is eschatological, directed to the end of all

is convinced that all the texts we possess, and which claim to be by

Metaphysics is the study of being as being; speculation about the meaning of

We talked of Paul trying to put the experience of being ‘struck by

44 BCE Death of Julius Caesar

The synoptic problem

At the very beginning of Christian history all believers were converts