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Section 1      Introduction

Many people who are interested in understanding the religious viewpoint, including many lifelong committed Christians, find the language and concepts of traditional theology, as preached in churches and used in worship, impenetrable.

This is not surprising: they are based on texts and doctrinal statements arrived at by theologians over the last 2,000 years or more, expressed originally in Hebrew, Aramaic, New Testament Greek, Hellenistic and mediaeval Greek, and forms of Latin used at different times since the 2nd century CE, and other languages, and each text and statement is couched in the experience and ways of thinking of the people who formulated it. Modern bible scholars and theologians need therefore to adopt the world-view and mind-set in turn of (for example) ancient Jews, 1st century Palestinian and diaspora Jews, Christian scholars throughout the Eastern and Western Roman Empires in the 3rd, 4th and 5th centuries from Origen to Augustine, 12th century scholastics including Thomas Aquinas, and 16th century churchmen from Martin Luther to the Council of Trent, in order to understand what the authors of key theological statements meant by them. Then, in theological schools and seminaries, would-be preachers and priests must learn to turn that understanding into practical application in the lives of their congregations who have a totally different (and evolving) world-view and mind-set. In my (and others’) experience, few preachers and priests succeed in this. As a consequence, many ordinary Christians without a thorough theological formation mouth formulae which they half understand, misunderstand or do not understand at all.

In addition, many non-Christians, attempting to make sense of this unfamiliar language and finding some of the pious misconceptions of practising Christians intolerable, reject the Christian religion as a whole when in fact they might already share many of its values and key teachings, properly understood. The opening sentence of Bernard Lonergan’s book Method in Theology is: ‘A theology mediates between a cultural matrix and the significance and role of a religion in that matrix.’ [1] A theology that explains Christianity in terms of the cultural matrix of the Middle Ages, or even of the 17th century, is of little use to someone living in the 21st century.

This essay is in two parts (plus a short concluding section and some appendices). Part 1 is the first step in a project to set out an account of the Christian religion without using the traditional language of theological discourse. One of the terms which everyone claims to understand, but to which different people attach quite different meanings, is the word “God”. That is why the subtitle of this essay is Theology without “God”. It is not, of course, theology without God: that would be a meaningless contradiction. Everything in Part 1 is about God, but it approaches the subject from a fresh starting point, without using the word “God”.

As well as avoiding technical terms of theology, I have tried, as far as possible, to avoid the metaphorical, analogical, visionary or poetic language in which Christians try to describe religious experiences and their deep emotional responses to them. I am not suggesting that this language (or, indeed, traditional theology) is meaningless or unnecessary for a full insight into and practice of religion, only that the fundamentals of Christianity can and should (I believe) be grasped in prosaic and factual terms before learning the richer and more colourful language that speaks to the hearts of many Christians. Questions about the language in which we express religious truths are fundamental to this essay and are touched on at several points in it (and discussed further in one of the appendices).

The account set out here is my personal understanding of how to reframe the essential features of Christianity in more accessible language and in the context of our other common knowledge today. Many Christians may not recognize aspects of their religion in my account, or may reject this whole project as dangerously undermining the faith that gives meaning to their lives.

In Western societies of the 21^st century we share an enormous range of knowledge and experience about the physical universe and about human beings, which we broadly accept as true. Since (as I believe) all truth is a single consistent whole, our theological and religious beliefs must be wholly consistent with and integrated into that existing knowledge and experience. If there seem to be inconsistencies or gaps in this seamless web, it means that there are aspects which we do not properly understand.

If this essay consisted merely of one person’s idiosyncratic views about life, the universe and everything, it would be of little interest to anyone else. My belief that the views expressed here are a wholly orthodox interpretation of authoritative teachings of the Christian tradition (in particular of the Roman Catholic Church) may make it of some use to other Christians or people interested in religion. It is therefore an essential part of this project that I demonstrate how my interpretation relates to traditional doctrines and practices. This is the purpose of Part 2, titled A theological commentary on Part 1.  To do this, it must use traditional theological and philosophical language (including, of course, the term “God”). As will be seen, there are some widespread doctrinal interpretations and practices which I find inconsistent with the core teachings of Christianity as they must be understood in the context of what we now know about the world and ourselves: there will be other Christians who would disagree with me on these points.

I believe this project is worthwhile and of potential use to others, but I recognise my own limitations in carrying it out. I am not an academic nor a professional theologian, and there are many aspects of traditional theology that still leave me perplexed. My hope is that other more qualified people, sympathetic to the aims of the project, may take it forward by correcting, amplifying and completing this preliminary essay. The attached Blog is intended to enable dialogue to this end.

The essay itself is in 19 sections, as outlined in the Contents above. After this Introduction, the eight sections in Part 1 are mirrored by Sections 11 to 18 of Part 2. (Section 10 acts as a short introduction to Part 2.) They relate details of the account given in Part 1 to their treatment in traditional Roman Catholic theology, necessarily using theological language including, of course, the word “God”. Section 19 draws together some general reflections. The Notes are largely confined to citing published sources of statements in the essay.  Appendices A (1 to 6), B, D, and E are short papers I wrote some years previously for various purposes unconnected with this essay but which seem to me to contain material which might further elucidate arguments in it, or at least explain why I hold some of the views I do. [Appendix C – A Note on Personification and Metaphor] discusses at greater length some points made in sections 6 (Forms of expression) and 14 (Prayer). Since my views on some issues diverge from current beliefs and practices of many members of the Christian Church and in particular many Roman Catholics, I have gathered some of my criticisms and suggestions for improvement into [Appendix F].

(In the following, all biblical quotations are from the Jerusalem Bible, unless otherwise stated. However, following the practice of many other translations and the liturgical use of the Jerusalem Bible in the Roman Catholic Church – which respects Jewish sensitivity on pronouncing the name of God – I have replaced ‘Yahweh’ by ‘the Lord’.)

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Goodness Gracious: Theology without “God”

Part 1 – A plain language guide to Christianity

Section 2      Goodness

There are different paths towards finding a meaning or purpose in life. For me the starting point is the observation (or belief – I cannot prove it rigorously) that there is good and bad in the world. Some things (or events, people, actions, behaviours) are good and better than others. By this I do not mean ‘I like some things more than others’ – I like quite a lot of things that I accept as objectively bad. Nor do I mean ‘The society I live in values them more than others’ – I believe that many things my society values are bad. I mean that there are values that are real and objective and can be applied to things (events, people, actions, etc.), whatever my or other people’s (subjective) opinions of them.

I do not, of course, mean that I or others always know whether something is good or bad – it can be extremely difficult or even impossible to ascertain its quality. That does not mean that it does not have a quality, only that we are limited in our knowledge or discernment. In the case of an object made by someone for a specific purpose, the criteria by which we judge it as good or bad may be fairly clear: I can judge a knife to be good or valuable because it is sharp and cuts well, or is of a convenient size or shape to peel fruit or vegetables, or is in some other way efficient at achieving the purpose I want to put it to; or I can value it as a good antique (rather than as a good knife) because of its age, rarity and beauty or the skill with which it was made. Other items, such as natural phenomena, historical events, and human actions or behaviours, have more complex or controversial criteria of goodness, yet we do try to attach objective values to them, and we try to persuade others to agree that those values are more than just our personal preferences or prejudices. Part of the meaning of ‘good’ and ‘goodness’, which I have implied by calling them ‘values’, is some sort of imperative or obligation on us to seek out, to praise or commend to others, and (in the case of good actions and behaviours) to adopt for ourselves, those things that are good.

There has been much philosophical discussion about the nature or meaning of ‘goodness’ or ‘the good’. Despite analyses of the different varieties of good (instrumental, technical, aesthetic, moral, etc.) it seems clear that there is something that links them, and at least part of that something is a built-in choice, approval or commendation on the part of the user of the word. When applied to human decisions or behaviour, that approval implies a moral obligation to act in a ‘good’ rather than a ‘bad’ manner [2].

Natural phenomena and landscapes, as well as some human artefacts, may be valued for their innate beauty. Human actions and behaviours are usually judged for their moral worth. The aesthetic and moral criteria used have been the subject of philosophical debate for millennia, because they are difficult but recognised as important. Events, both natural (for example, earthquakes) and man-made (such as wars) are generally judged by their consequences, on moral and other criteria.

Underlying all our judgements and discussions about them, is a value accorded to truth and integrity: false statements and opinions, whether caused by mistakes or deliberate lying, cannot be good. Although we often have to weigh up one factor against another in determining the value of a thing, action, etc., all these different types of value form a single integrated value system in which moral goodness, beauty, truth and other varieties of goodness can and must ultimately be reconciled with one another. Without adopting the whole philosophical system of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, we may accept his conclusion that Goodness, Beauty and Truth form a single consistent ideal that cannot contain any internal contradictions or conflicts. I shall refer to this as the ‘ideal of goodness’.

In referring to an ‘ideal’ I use this word in its normal modern sense rather than as a technical term of Platonic philosophy. There is no contradiction, therefore in describing an ideal as ‘real’, that is, existing, though not of course a physical ‘thing’ in space and time. Indeed in the current philosophical debate between Realists and Anti-Realists, I am positing the reality of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, in some cases reducible to natural properties (e.g. instrumental goodness in the case of ‘a good knife’, or technical goodness in the case of ‘a good butcher’); in other cases non-reducible (or possibly reducible to a teleological explanation – e.g. that each person, or even the whole universe, has a ‘purpose’ in relation to which actions or events can be judged ‘good’ or ‘bad’). The fact that value, like the number one or infinity, is part of our conceptual framework does not mean that it exists only in the minds of human beings, who are limited in time or space.

This ideal of goodness is an ‘eternal’ truth or value – that is, one that is not changed by anything that happens in the physical universe or in human history. The application of this ideal of goodness to things (events, people, etc.) in this world can change as those things change through time: for example, a person can become better or worse. In addition, the ideal impinges on us directly as human beings: as we respond to the imperative that goodness communicates, we change the state of the world under its influence. Insofar as people are led in their actions and behaviour by the ideal of goodness, it can be seen as a motivating force within each individual, which (as I discuss in Section 4) inspires them and is propagated from one person to another.

Throughout this essay I use the word ‘eternal’ with this meaning of ‘timeless’. It is important to distinguish this from the meaning of ‘continuing on and on in time’. An eternal truth or state of being does not exist before or after (or contemporaneously with) a fact or state of being in our historical world. It does not itself change: there are no processes, events or actions in eternity. The relevance of goodness to the world of time and space – its applicability to objects, events, etc., in our world – is an integral aspect of the Ideal and is therefore also eternal. Similarly, the inherent capacity of goodness to motivate rational beings wherever and whenever they exist is also a timeless aspect of the ideal, not dependent on any specific occurrences in our world.

These three distinct aspects of goodness – the eternal ideal which is outside space and time, its application to and action upon our physical and historical world, and its role as a motivating spirit within human beings – are important strands in this account of Christianity.

Although I say that there is good and bad in the world, my overall evaluation of the world I live in is positive: it is better that the universe exists, that planet earth exists and that I have been born and have lived, than the opposite – non-existence. There may be some people who take the opposite view, perhaps while contemplating suicide. Like those who deny the existence of good and bad and moral imperatives, and those who treat their own pleasures as paramount whatever the cost to others, I can only feel sorry for them and wish them well, but do not expect to change their fundamental attitudes with this essay. I believe they are the exceptions; that this dialogue can continue with the great majority who share my enjoyment of what is good outweighing my grief at what is bad – the belief that good is greater (more important, more widespread, and ultimately more powerful) than bad.

My next observation (or belief) is that goodness as a motivating force within people is more powerful than its opposite, ‘badness’. By this I mean that, over the centuries and millennia, good actions and behaviours have made the world a better place and have made the human race generally better – we have generally ‘progressed’ over time in all or most of the aspects we value. In some of those aspects, this progress is fairly easily demonstrated: our collective knowledge and understanding of the world and of human beings have grown progressively from prehistoric times until today. There are, of course, still gaps in our knowledge, and we cannot foresee a day when our understanding of the universe will be complete.

Many scientists have located this human progress within a much longer cosmological development, from the very beginnings of the physical universe, through the formation of stars and planets, to the evolution of life on earth including the origins of the human race. Some have seen continuous common threads throughout these processes demonstrating a logical inevitability or determinism in this ‘progress’, and have even projected them to predict to some degree a hypothetical future. A full account of this development of the universe – of everything that has been, that is and that will be, including every action of every person that lives – if it could be made, would resemble the plan that a (very clever and thorough) human person might make, a plan which one would call intentional and rational, based on a complete knowledge of the starting conditions and a comprehensive calculation of their consequences. Now, I am not saying that a person made this plan, only that language suitable for a human plan might be very useful and appropriate in describing the development of the universe.

Some scholars have tried to provide evidence that there has been similar progress over time in moral and social aspects  – that violence and conflict have diminished; that respect for civil order, laws and human rights have increased; and that there is greater co-operation and fraternal love among modern human beings than among the apes from which we evolved. (For example, Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature [3] aims to show on the basis of extensive statistical evidence that humankind has become progressively less violent over millennia and decades.) This essay argues that it is a fundamental belief of Christianity that human beings can improve themselves individually and collectively, and that collectively they are making progress morally as well as intellectually towards perfection.

Such progress has not been smooth and continuous: great civilizations have been succeeded by ‘dark ages’; there are natural disasters (such as earthquakes, storms and plagues) that we cannot at present predict or control, and which cause great suffering; we are currently aware of how our collective behaviour has unwittingly damaged the ecology of our planet and the quality of life of future generations; terrible wars and human atrocities occur from time to time, and are often threatened. At the very least, we can say that, if we collectively really want to make the world a better place, and can agree on what such a better world would look like, we have enough knowledge and capability to make most of it happen. We can make progress.

Why should we? If we accept that goodness, as I have defined it, exists – that some things (including actions and behaviours) actually are better than others, and this means we are rationally obliged to choose or to adopt for ourselves those things in preference to worse alternatives – then, provided we can discover which those things are, we would be acting less than rationally in not choosing or adopting them. Of course, from time to time each of us does ignore the demands of reason. We are animals whose actions can be determined by instinctual drives and irrational emotions. But each time we freely choose what we know rationally to be worse, we are failing to behave in a fully human way, since our ability to reason is an important (perhaps the most important) characteristic distinguishing human beings from all other species of animal.

I have started from a rational analysis based on the meaning of the word ‘good’ or ‘goodness’. But a more convincing reason for many of us is the satisfaction, even joy, that we get by surrounding ourselves (or recognising that we are surrounded) by beauty, truth and goodness, and by making our world a better place than we found it. Even when the improvements we can make will benefit others than ourselves, including future generations, we find our efforts worthwhile and rewarding. If this is our attitude, our question will be ‘Why should we not make things better? What nobler goal for one’s life could one have?’

The more obvious ways in which we can try to change the world are through political power or collective action, including industrial or commercial activities, charitable or social projects, and artistic or literary products. These can have effects that are widely visible in the short or medium term. But I believe that, as individuals, we have effects on the world that may be much less visible but at least as long lasting. Everything that we do – even an apparently trivial action like smiling or frowning while we walk along the street – can (and, some say, does) change the world or other people a little, and may possibly have an unpredictable major effect in the future; if repeated, such small actions can become habits; even our inmost thoughts can dispose us to future decisions or actions that then impinge on the world.

This thesis, which has been explored in philosophy, in science fiction and in mathematics, is becoming more widely appreciated in the light of ecological science and campaigns against pollution of the oceans and climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions.

The most comprehensive philosophical analysis of how such changes occur is, I believe, the process philosophy of A N Whitehead, briefly outlined in my paper in [Appendix D]. If our action changes the world even marginally, that marginal change is likely to be an improvement or a deterioration: the consequences of our action can be good or bad. Hence, everything that we do, however trivial and apparently morally neutral, has in principle a positive or negative value. In practice, we can very rarely calculate such consequences with any degree of precision much less evaluate them, and to try to do so is not worth the effort, but we should always be aware that in every conscious moment we are moral agents.

The fundamental premise of process philosophy, even if one does not embrace the full Whiteheadian version of it (see [Appendix D]), seems to me to be compelling in itself and profoundly Christian: that everything in the universe, including each one of us, is connected to every other person and to the whole of our environment, and is continually affected by and affects in some degree everyone and everything else, though we are rarely aware of these connections. This complex ‘chain reaction’ or ‘ecosystem’ continues throughout time. Whilst we may not be responsible for the influences which have made each of us the person we are, we are responsible for our impact on others and on the planet, however dimly we can perceive it. To take a very simple example: when we throw a plastic bottle into the sea, we cannot know which fish (if any) it will kill, but we do know that we are contributing to a pollution that will in the long run do enormous damage to marine life globally and perhaps to future generations of human beings.

In an early science fiction story by Ray Bradbury set in 2055 [4], by stepping on a prehistoric butterfly, a time traveller changed the US President from liberal Keith to dictator Deutscher. In the branch of mathematics known as Chaos Theory, Edward N Lorenz contributed a theory known as ‘the Butterfly Effect’ (with no reference to Bradbury’s story), which shows that even a small perturbation in unstable dynamic systems such as global weather has unpredictable and sometimes enormous consequences.

All my comments so far have been based on the assumption that we can somehow (and sometimes) discern which things are good, or better than others. This is not easy or obvious. In the field of morality for example, what are good actions or good ways of living? Philosophers and religious teachers have proposed many approaches, from broad rules of thumb (such as ‘the golden rule’, or the ten commandments), or lists of virtues and vices, to methods of calculation (of the greatest benefit to the greatest number, or the expected value of each possible consequence of one’s action). Whilst recognising that each of these approaches can be useful, it is not my intention in this essay to provide a textbook or manual of ethics. At this stage I want simply to emphasise that being fully human demands a total commitment to choosing and doing what is best, so far as one can discern it in practice.

However, accepting the objective existence of a timeless ideal of goodness enables us to go a little further in deciding what things may or may not be good. For example, I do not believe that my personal desires, interests or happiness should outrank everything else in this world as good, nor of course should those of Bert Bloggs or Jane Johnson or any other individual, except to the extent that they are part of some other greater good. Each of us must make our own happiness or other personal objectives subservient to a higher and wider good.

Section 3      A Human Example – Jesus of Nazareth

About 4 BCE a man called Jesus was born. He lived most of his life in a town called Nazareth in the north of what is now Israel. A member of the Jewish race, he studied and practised Judaism, the Jewish religion.          When he was about 30 years old, he started teaching a radical interpretation of the Jewish scriptures to a small group of pupils and encouraged them to adopt a particular way of life. As he attracted more and more followers, the Jewish religious authorities began to see him as a threat to stable government; after about three years, they arrested him and had him executed.

Our principal sources for his life were not written with the objectives, nor to modern standards, of historical biography, and many details in them have been questioned by scholars. But there is enough documentary evidence to put the facts I have stated above beyond doubt, and to give us a good idea of his teachings. His teaching methods, using similes, metaphors and anecdotes to convey unfamiliar and difficult concepts, left many of his listeners perplexed. But his way of life, travelling continuously round the country with his band of close followers and few possessions, meeting people from many different backgrounds with an insight and empathy that often resulted in curing sick people of their ailments, and doing much of his teaching over the dinner table or at picnics, endeared him to many and won him the loyalty of those close to him. After his death, his followers (later known as ‘Christians’) publicised Jesus’ life, death and teachings, attracted more and more people to the way of life and beliefs that he had taught, formed them into a network of local communities, and saw Jesus as still in some sense living in themselves.

Christians saw Jesus as a uniquely good person, who throughout his life and in his acceptance of a terrible death unerringly chose the good, lived and advocated a way of life that was perfect, and so fully identified himself with the ideal of goodness that he was later seen by Christians as identical to that aspect of goodness itself that applies to and acts on this world. Just as the ideal of goodness is timeless (‘eternal’), so the other aspects of goodness, its ability to give value to and act upon the actual universe and its ability to motivate thinking beings, can be seen as also outside time even though their actual effects are always linked to particular historical contexts. In this way, Jesus’ identification with the eternal ideal of goodness was seen as giving him an eternal, timeless, significance. Many of the first Christians, especially those who had been closest to him in his lifetime or who had been strongly influenced by his teaching and example, underwent experiences which they understood as a personal encounter with Jesus soon after his death. (Even today, many Christians strive, through imaginative prayer and study of his life, to achieve such a personal encounter themselves.) As they saw his life in perspective, many began to understand his teachings better, including his injunction to give up worldly goals and selfish ambitions in order to achieve ‘eternal life’ for oneself.

Selflessness – the subordination of one’s own desires and enjoyments to the welfare of others – was at the heart of Jesus’ message. Jesus was an observant Jew, worshipping weekly in the synagogues and on great feasts in the temple at Jerusalem, with a deep knowledge of and faith in the Jewish scriptures and the ‘Law of Moses’ they contain. Although his interpretation of them differed radically from that of most religious authorities and leading teachers of his time (the ‘scribes’ and the ‘Pharisees’), he claimed that it was fully consistent with the original Law and scriptures. However, his own teaching emphasised certain strands of the Jewish religion above others, notably the commands to love what is good and to love one’s neighbour as oneself (where he interpreted ‘neighbour’ in a very wide sense).

Some Christians (in particular Catholics) have in the past been tempted to dismiss the Old Testament as of merely historical interest, since all we need to know about Jesus’ teachings, life and death are reported only in the New Testament. However, this is to overlook the extent to which Jesus’ education, outlook and faith were rooted in the Old Testament scriptures, although his own critical analysis of them led him to reject many contemporary interpretations. We cannot gain a full understanding of him without being familiar with his intellectual and religious sources. It is not a coincidence that the founder of Christianity was a Jew. I believe a strong case can be made that, in the history of the human race prior to his birth, no other civilization or culture could have produced a person who preached and lived the radical philosophy of love that he did, in a milieu in which those ideas would inspire a devoted and loyal following who would spread them wider and wider with such success.

As has already been mentioned, during his life he built up a small group of loyal followers (‘disciples’ – Latin ‘discipuli’, Greek ‘mathetai’, pupils of a man they called ‘Teacher’, in Aramaic ‘Rabbi’ or ‘Rabboni’ – or perhaps more accurately ‘trainees’, since what Jesus taught was not so much a set of facts as a way of life). They formed an initial community, growing into a network of communities (or ‘churches’), all following a broadly similar way of life and seeking to pass Jesus’ message on to others. Despite division (and occasionally bitter hostility) between different parts of this network, Christians worldwide see themselves as parts of the same family, united by their trying to live as Jesus taught. Despite many failings of the institutional church over the years, many of Jesus’ ideas and many concepts derived from Christian thinking (such as equality of all people, merciful justice and fair treatment, human dignity and human rights, freedom of conscience, speech, association and movement, duties of protection and care for others) have permeated nations and cultures, particularly in Europe, the Americas and other developed nations, and international institutions such as the United Nations.

One concept that recurred constantly in Jesus’ teachings was that his followers should work towards an ideal ordering of life on earth which he called ‘the Kingdom of Heaven’. Only through people motivated by goodness and committed to making our world better can that ideal state of the world be achieved. Put another way, we can and must be the channel by which goodness finally drives out all that is bad in our world (and even, ultimately, in the entire physical universe). Jesus gave us (and demonstrated in his own life and death) a way of life and a mind-set by which this process could gradually develop, but very little detail of what that ideal world would look like, much less a time frame in which it might reach completion.

Section 4      Gracious

How do we come to see and appreciate the good that surrounds us in this world with such conviction that we make it the supreme goal of our lives to increase it and to persuade others to do so themselves? Without doubt many of us marvel at and value the beauty of the scenery, flora and fauna of the natural world; our hearts are lifted and inspired by great art, music and literature; scientific and academic study is a source of much enjoyment to others; yet others find fulfilment working at their chosen occupations, which give meaning to their lives. In all these ways of engaging with goodness, truth and beauty, we can learn and benefit from the guidance of other people we trust. But there is one particular way that Christians value above all others.

As already mentioned, one of the strands of Judaism that Jesus emphasised was that human conduct should be based on love – not only as a whole-hearted commitment to the ideal of goodness, but also, very importantly, a similar commitment to all other people (and, as we are increasingly realizing today, to every aspect of the physical universe, particularly to everything on planet Earth). The love for other people that Jesus described and demonstrated is not (at least primarily) the erotic attraction that includes an element of selfishness or of a contract between individuals designed to benefit each other. Ideally, it is not even the bond of affection and loyalty within a family or a small group of friends, though that undoubtedly has value. The love that he advocated and attributed to the ideal of goodness is universal and unconditional, that is, indiscriminate (not showing favouritism to individuals, other perhaps than their need to be loved) and gratuitous (not dependent on nor seeking any benefit to the person giving it). He likened such love to natural phenomena such as sunshine and rain, falling on good and bad people alike. He urged his followers to love not just those who were well-disposed towards them, but also those who hated them. Early Christians identified such love with goodness itself.

Though this universal gratuitous love is the ideal, every type of love is good. The love of a mother for her child is not indiscriminate but it is gratuitous – a baby or young child is totally dependent on the mother’s love and can give nothing in return. Committed relationships between adults, companionship and friendship all provide mutual benefit, and so are neither indiscriminate nor gratuitous, but show love. They involve desire for the other person’s good, empathy to see things from the other’s viewpoint, and efforts to satisfy the other’s needs and wishes. They represent first steps at least towards the goal – if you cannot love one person unselfishly, you are unlikely to love truly the whole human race!

Knowing that one is loved has a profound formative effect on an individual. One does not need to be a child psychologist or a social worker dealing with dysfunctional families to know that absence of a mother’s love at an early stage in a child’s development can distort her or his emotional growth, can make that child less able to display love to others, and can stunt the development of healthy relationships in her or his own children. We all need to be loved; and the presence or absence of love in our own lives affects our relationships with other people, propagating through space and time. Freely given love can bring people together, whilst hostility or indifference may divide them.

Such unconditional love is daily exhibited by millions of people, both Christians and people who know little or nothing of Jesus of Nazareth. As I write, a global epidemic of a viral disease known as Covid-19 is ravaging many countries including the UK. Here it is eliciting behaviour on the part of medical staff, carers and other key workers which is widely praised as heroic, as they risk their own lives to help those stricken by the disease. Their selfless commitment to caring for people they do not know demonstrates the unconditional love Jesus spoke of. It is not based on affection (our liking for an individual we know well) so much as on a sense of duty and an attitude to other people, perhaps derived from the example and encouragement of others but then adopted deliberately and practised until it becomes a habit and a way of life. Such people are rightly valued and applauded.

Most of us recognize (sometimes with a little guidance) that we have at times in our lives received and benefited from the love of other people; if we are fortunate, we have spent our childhood being loved and being taught to love others. Many, imbued with the spirit of goodness and encouraged by the example of others and by the fellowship of like-minded people, then develop within ourselves a commitment to such selfless love. This spiritual commitment should express itself in practical actions to help others in need. People with this attitude and habit (including all who truly follow the Christian way of life) constitute a reservoir of benevolence towards all others, and especially towards those who feel unloved, even if they do not know them personally. It is exhibited, for example, in acts of kindness or words of friendship to the stranger, support for charitable organizations, or political and social activities on behalf of the poor or disadvantaged.

It is not only in early childhood that the receipt of gratuitous love is formative: throughout our lives, being treated with fairness, kindness and respect not only gives us pleasure and a feeling of security, but makes us better people in treating others well and genuinely wanting the best for them. For our part, we need to work at strengthening our own commitment to helping others and suppressing our innate selfishness – practising habits that will turn us into people of virtue rather than feeding our vices – if we are to make the world a better place.

Section 5      Community

One should not underestimate the difference between a life with a single focus on goodness together with a clear path for pursuing it, and a life either dominated by some other goal (such as pleasure, power, wealth, public image) or spent drifting from one goal to another. Committing to the good life is an existential choice for the individual. Religions such as Judaism recognized this in their scriptures by inviting people to ‘repent’ of their former ways. In Jesus’ time, prophets like his cousin John and Jesus himself similarly called for repentance – that is, a radical change of attitude – before adopting the way of life he taught.

Although very many people respond appropriately to particular instances of goodness, and are fairly unselfish much of the time, very few maintain a high and constant level of commitment to it in their lives, even if they recognise that they should do so. And even the well-intentioned are sometimes unsure, or lose sight of, what is the right thing to do. Living a good life is hard, in a world where there are many temptations to pursue one’s own personal short-term goals, greed, pleasure, comfort, security, status or power, at the expense of others alive now or yet to be born; there are also many people who do not even try very hard to be unselfish. A few hermits may succeed in living good lives and making a positive contribution to improving the world, without much interaction with other people. The rest of us rely on contacts with other like-minded people to seek and give encouragement to one another in maintaining our commitment. We need to share our principles and our values, to develop together our understanding of what they imply in practice, to reinforce mutually our determination to live by them, and to work collaboratively in making the world a better place. We need to be part of a community based on our common values, united by bonds of friendship with one another and loyalty to the group. Jesus formed such an embryonic community of men and women around himself, and increasingly as he saw his own death approaching he prepared them to remain united, to be witnesses to what he had taught them and to grow in numbers and effectiveness, following his teachings and way of life (and, in particular, loving one another – and also people outside the community). It became the Christian Church.

However, as this community grew (initially as a network of small groups in different towns and cities scattered around the Mediterranean basin), it became apparent that some structures were needed to resolve differences within the community over how Jesus’ teachings should be understood and applied by people who had not known him personally and whose situations were different from any described in the gospels. Since the criterion of membership of the Church was to be a faithful follower of Jesus, someone had to arbitrate as to who was or was not such a follower and hence a member of the Church. We have evidence from the early Church of bitter disputes, of groups splitting or expelling members, and of apprenticeships followed by entrance examinations for those seeking membership [5].

In the first three centuries, these issues were mainly settled (after discussion) peacefully and lovingly by the wisdom and authority of senior (male and female) members of the local church who were widely respected by the other members, or occasionally by a letter or a visit from a charismatic missionary, again respected throughout the wider community as a true follower of Jesus. Gradually, however, as the Christian community grew, the systems for ensuring that all the local churches were following the ‘authentic’ teachings of Jesus became more formalized, and one of the elders of each church was elected by its members as the supervisor (‘episcopos’, ‘bishop’), responsible for the unity of his church and for appointing new elders) [6]. The bishops of neighbouring churches ratified (or, in the case of a dispute, influenced) the election of the bishop.

But a momentous event occurred in 312 CE, which led to a radical change in the institutions of Christianity, visible even today: the Roman Emperor Constantine was converted to Christianity and threw the weight of the Empire behind what had previously been a persecuted religion. He and his successors made senior church officials, including local bishops, political appointments by the Emperor or his civil servants, and Church structures began to mirror the complex imperial administration [7]. In particular, an elite of male full-time paid appointed officials (‘kleros’, ‘clergy’) were given power to govern the church and were seen as the true successors of Jesus’ closest companions. They were subsequently also seen as a ‘cultic priesthood’ like the Levitical priesthood of ancient Israel.

At a time of lively theological debate, Constantine convened, attended and personally influenced the first ‘world council’ of the Christian Church at Nicaea. It and successive councils identified and condemned ‘heresies’, and punished their authors, for example by exile, in order to impose doctrinal orthodoxy on Christians.

Throughout its subsequent history, major branches of the Christian Church (among many examples, the Roman Catholic Church, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Church of England) have been so closely associated at times with empires, kingdoms, national states, and secular political powers that the churches’ own leaders and administrators have been used (or have offered themselves) for purposes and practices that were irrelevant or totally opposed to basic Christian principles.

The question continually arises: ‘Who are the true followers of Jesus?’ A reading of the accounts of his life and teachings, and of the practices of the first Christians, suggests the answer ‘All those who have fully absorbed Jesus’ teachings and example and are putting them into effect’, including all who suppress their own selfishness to care for others, those who love unconditionally, and those who trust the goodness in other people and its power to succeed in improving the world. Of much less importance in defining a true follower might be an understanding of abstruse doctrines (such as ‘the Trinity’, ‘Original Sin’, ‘Redemption’, and ‘Justification’) – still less, formal acknowledgment of those doctrines without understanding them; attendance at rituals designed to unite and strengthen the community in following Jesus’ way of life (though they often fail in that objective); and obeying complex regulations laid down by the appointed leaders of a universal church. However, as the Church grew, these bureaucratic tests of membership became paramount and were enforced by expulsion from the community or, at times, by torture or capital punishment.

A related question, still relevant today, is ‘What is the role of the community leaders?’ Jesus was clear that their leadership was a service, not an opportunity for personal power or glory – they should be ministers not rulers. To whom, then, should they minister? The Roman Catholic Church as an institution has been almost wholly orientated towards serving the elite of people who accept all the official dogmas and obey all the rules laid down by the Church authorities – ‘practising Catholics’. The clergy of the Church of England seem to minister primarily to a wider group – all those who accept the broad principles of Christianity and wish to support others with the same outlook and aims. Additionally, as an established state church, its clergy try to carry out the much wider remit of ministering to the whole population within the boundaries of their parish. Both churches (and several other Christian denominations) have also a long-established missionary tradition, with a group of clergy dedicated to bringing Jesus’ message to populations who had little or no knowledge of it. Within the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis has emphasised the need for all members of the Church to minister to the wider population, and especially to the more needy or marginalized elements of it.

If you believe that the teachings and example of Jesus are the best way to find and practise goodness, and you are looking for a community of people who share those values, you may be bewildered by the variety of different groups and organizations claiming to be the true church and denouncing all other claimants as wrong. One test of authenticity is the records we have of Jesus’ life and sayings written by his contemporaries, together with the foundational books of his Jewish religion which we know he had studied closely and which influenced him greatly: these collectively are the Christian Scriptures, called ‘the New Testament’ and ‘the Old Testament‘ respectively. Even the process of identifying which of these books are reliable is not easy: there are small differences between Christian churches on the precise ‘canon’ of these books, and one criterion used has been whether those who wrote them were wholly inspired by goodness in doing so. The Roman Catholic Church values these scriptures primarily as the best evidence of Jesus’ views and intentions, to be supplemented by evidence of the views and practices of early Christians in the period following the deaths of those who knew Jesus personally as most likely to be close to his legacy. This evidence, from sources not accepted as Scripture, even if passed down orally through several generations before being written down, is called ‘Tradition’. Other Christian churches place more value on the content of all the books of scripture as guides to goodness, because their writers have passed the test of being wholly inspired by goodness.

As well as Scripture and Tradition, another feature of the Christian Church and its various branches is the formulation of ‘creeds’, which are accepted by the church authorities, after close examination by church scholars, as common understandings of Christian belief, and doctrinal statements (‘dogmas’) issued by those authorities; these together, therefore, officially define who are true Christians. Just as modern scholarship has shown that a correct understanding of scriptural passages often requires a good understanding of the historical and cultural context, the linguistic and literary forms used, and the intentions of the writers, so also a correct modern understanding of creeds and doctrinal statements may require a similar knowledge of the writers’ linguistic, cultural and conceptual background. The ‘face value’ of the words in an English translation of the text may be quite misleading (or just mystifying). As mentioned in the introduction to this essay, many ordinary Christians are required to mouth formulae they do not really understand to preserve the apparent unity of the faith community.

In the approximately 2,000 years since Jesus lived, the interpretation of Scripture, official teachings, organizational structures and methods of governance have developed in different ways in different branches and territories of the Christian Church, and sometimes taken wrong turns, as recognized in the saying ‘ecclesia semper reformanda’ (the church is always in need of reformation) attributed to St Augustine.

I have already referred (in Section 4 above) to the wide variety of ways in which we perceive and value goodness, including our awareness of being loved not just by our immediate family but even by people we have never met. I have also said that such goodness, once we perceive and recognize it, has a profound formative effect on us. This effect can be powerfully reinforced by belonging to a community of like-minded people – such as (at its best) the Christian Church. Such a community is capable of building and channelling to its members the universal, unconditional, gratuitous love that is the ideal of goodness applied to the realm of human conduct. The aim of sharing and reinforcing the common values and goals requires the members to gather together regularly to declare those values and goals in words and ritual actions known to them all. This is a characteristic aspect of a religious community like the Christian Church, which also evolves through time, though in some cases very slowly: ‘worship’.  It will be examined further in the next two sections.

Section 6                  Forms of Expression

The point was made at the start of the preceding section that the commitment to a life focused on goodness, and specifically to one based on Christian principles and values, is an existential choice requiring a radical change of attitudes, aspirations and goals, and way of life. This is clearest in the case of people who come to this choice after a period of seeking other goals or drifting between them, but it may also be true for those brought up within the Christian community whose understanding of this commitment develops as they mature. This change is, therefore, not just an intellectual shift of opinion but engages the deepest emotions. If seekers after goodness, including Christians, are trying to commit themselves wholeheartedly to that goal, to know more and more clearly what that goal consists in, to train themselves to lead a more virtuous and loving way of life, and to share their enthusiasm and insights with others in the community, then they need to find a way of expressing themselves that reflects the engagement of their whole selves – mind, heart and will – to that end. In particular, people who have suffered psychological trauma through broken relationships, bereavement or other disasters in their lives need access to absolute goodness or gratuitous love as a clear light by which to live or a firm rock on which to rebuild their lives – their religious experience evokes a strong and deep emotional response in them, which they need to express.

Such expression cannot be expressed adequately in the dispassionate analytic style in which I am trying to write this essay, but it requires a form of expression bordering on the poetic and drawing on the imagination. This is the characteristic form of communication between Christian believers about their religion, which enables them to declare their beliefs and desires, their emotions (whether joyful or sorrowful), and their intentions in a way that encourages and strengthens themselves and others in their commitment. Just as Jesus used anecdotes and metaphorical language in his teaching, so imagery and metaphor play a big part in religious language. (This aspect is examined further in [Appendix E], A Note on Religious Language.)

‘Prayer’ has been defined very generally as ‘the raising of the mind and heart to the Good’. It can therefore take many forms, from virtually wordless private contemplation (including, in extreme cases, ecstatic visions), to communal declarations of praise (seeking to share as widely as possible our joy in and appreciation of the good); thanksgiving (conveying our personal gratitude for the benefits we have experienced from goodness); contrition (expressing our sorrow and regret at not having responded fully to the imperative to do good ourselves); and petition (expressing our deepest wishes for ourselves or for other people – all generally couched in what I have called ‘religious language’.

Such prayers may be formally addressed to the ideal of goodness, to Jesus of Nazareth (felt to be still alive in the community of his followers), and to saints (other people now dead revered as role models for the living). There is no doubt that many Christians who pray (particularly if they are asking saints to support a plea for help) imagine that the person they are addressing (saint, Jesus, or the personification of Goodness) is listening at that moment and can intervene to respond to their prayer directly. Although there are considerable difficulties (discussed later in this essay) in a literal understanding of this belief, it is certainly the case that praying for something one wants increases the likelihood of its eventuating, though by a different mechanism. In communal prayer, one shares one’s hopes with other people of good will; if, in time, enough people express their common hope for a practical change in the world, then those with power to make it happen are likely to respond and to achieve it. In these circumstances one may say that a favourable outcome is a response to the prayer from the goodness in those who heard it (and possibly inspired by the lives of the saints). In private prayer, one gradually prepares oneself both to discern what changes will be genuinely beneficial and to build one’s own determination to participate in making them happen. The results are not instant; but clear vision, determination and perseverance can bring about major changes in the world. On the other hand, improvements are most unlikely to occur if they are not publicly supported by people trusted to be of good will and sound judgment.

When these prayers are made communally, that is in a gathering of other members of the religious community, their main effect is to reinforce the commitment of one another to the shared values of the community, and, for example, to communicate the wishes or intentions of one member to the others, so that they may be aware of and do what they can to support those wishes. Private prayer also has an effect: by verbalizing one’s attitudes, wishes and intentions, one increases one’s own awareness of them, so as to reinforce or modify them in the quest to become better and to make the world better [8]. As already explained, even quite small or imperceptible effects can have far-reaching consequences for good.

Communal prayer may be ‘liturgical’ – that is, may form part of defined ceremonies or rituals (‘liturgies’) – in which case it is likely to be spoken aloud and to use set forms of words known to all those participating. Alternatively, communal prayer in informal small groups or private prayer by individuals may take the form of meditation (active – using words and images; or contemplative – engaging feelings such as trust, gratitude, surrender, love), or many other variants.

If prayers are to have any effect, those praying must understand what they are saying, and, in the case of liturgical prayers, all those present should understand what they are praying for. Prayers for liturgical use tend in some branches of Christianity to be closely controlled from the centre (particularly in the Roman Catholic Church where a Vatican department called ‘the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments’ regulates liturgical prayer and ritual in great detail), and the liturgists who prescribe them tend to be very conservative. Disadvantages of this situation are discussed further below and in [Appendix F].

Section 7      Key Rituals

Most common or regular social interactions include relatively fixed patterns of behaviour known to and followed by the participants. They greatly facilitate communication and collaboration, and avoid unintentional misunderstanding or offence. Patterns which are extensive or elaborate may be called rituals. For example, O’Loughlin analyses the everyday ritual of two business associates meeting at a café for coffee [9].  Some rituals are specific to a particular group of people or community, and may include references, by word or symbol, to knowledge shared by its members. These will seem strange to outsiders, with the (intentional or unintentional) effect of making them feel excluded. In the rituals of religious communities the language and symbols naturally refer to the common knowledge or beliefs of the members.

There are many examples of rituals in the Christian Church, especially for regular meetings of its members. Two which are recognized as of key importance in all branches of the Church are the rite of acceptance of a new member into the Church (originally, and in some cases still, in two parts – ‘Baptism’ and ‘Confirmation’) and the regular (every Sunday at least) meeting of all the members of a branch in a particular place (variously known as ‘Eucharist’, ‘Mass’, ‘Holy Communion’, ‘Supper of the Lord’, and other terms).

The first such ritual, Baptism, was seen from the earliest days as the once-only formal initiation of a person into the Christian community: one was not recognized as a member until one had been baptized. Initially, any member of the community could sponsor, teach and baptize a new member; by the third century, the person performing the initiation (which included both baptism and confirmation) was a bishop [10]. Then, when bishops had much larger groups to supervise, an elder would baptize and the second stage (confirmation) was delayed until the bishop was available. As the practice grew of baptizing children and infants, the confirmation stage began to be delayed (at least in the western part of the Roman Catholic Church) until the children were thought to be mature enough to choose for themselves whether to enter the community. Since then, confirmation has morphed into a rite of passage from childhood to adolescence like the Jewish Bar Mitzvah. Baptism and (in its original significance as a part of the Baptismal ritual) Confirmation are the gateway by which a person is recognized as a full member of the Christian community, and they can only be performed once in that person’s life – even if the person no longer wishes to remain a member or is expelled from participating in the life of the community, the Church considers that the membership can never be revoked.

These key rituals are seen by the Church as providing uniquely important opportunities to channel goodness to the Church members. However, the words and symbolic gesture of these rituals are not (as some Catholics and even clergy seem to believe) magic spells automatically and instantly changing those who participate in them. For example, at Baptism, the person baptized (who may be an infant) is not at that moment made a better person: she is merely made a member of a community which, if she subsequently participates in it fully and accepts the love and guidance of its other (true) members, can give her opportunities to find goodness and grow in virtue which are not equally available to non-members.

The most important ritual is the Eucharist. This recalls primarily the communal Sunday meals of the early church communities, which were based on Jewish families’ special meal on the holy day of each week, including  a prayer of thanksgiving for the food, and on Jesus’ last supper with his disciples the night before he was killed. Its form (in the Roman Catholic Church, and, with small variations, in several other branches of the Christian Church) is: (a) some introductory prayers; (b) two or three readings from the Christian scriptures, of which one is from the accounts of Jesus’ life, followed (particularly on Sundays and important festivals) by a reflection by an ordained clergyman on the readings; (c) a long central prayer which includes formally setting aside (‘consecrating’) some bread and wine for use in the next part of the ritual; (d) the consumption of the consecrated bread and (usually, but not always) wine by all those present who wish to do so {‘communion’); (e) brief closing prayers. There may be music and singing of some of the prayers and of other relevant songs at various points in the service. (Typically, the whole service takes between 30 minutes and an hour.)

The Eucharist is the unifying ritual par excellence, whereby existing members reaffirm their active membership of the community; they can participate in it as often as they like, and are strongly encouraged to take part in it every Sunday and on all the most important church festivals, as a duty to the rest of the community. As mentioned in the previous section, the wording of almost all the prayers is prescribed by the central authority, and most are recited by the minister presiding over the ritual, with responses of assent by all present; the active participation of the ordinary people occurs most clearly in part (d), the communion. Although the presiding minister is usually an ordained priest or bishop, a (suitably trained and commissioned) lay person can lead a service consisting of parts (a), (b), (d) and (e) – for many years the Catholic Church has required that the consecration be presided over by an ordained priest.

If, as I suggested at the start of [Section 5] above, the main objective of Christians in joining a church community is to seek encouragement from (and give it to) other like-minded people in maintaining their commitment to the pursuit of the good through the way of life and values preached and demonstrated by Jesus, then the most important church ritual to achieve this would seem to be the Eucharist. Though the prayers, the reading of the scriptures and the reflection on them, and the remembrance of Jesus’ last supper, which forms part of the prayers said when consecrating the bread and wine, all help those present prepare for the communion, it is in the actual consumption of the consecrated bread and wine that the people make their affirmation of common commitment. It might seem that the setting aside of the bread and wine for this purpose is of less relevance in achieving the main objective of the ritual, yet the Church gives this action higher reverence and priority than the other parts of the Mass, and reserves its performance to ordained priests.

Other rituals recognized as of major importance in the Roman Catholic Church (though they are not given the same status in the Anglican and Reformed protestant churches) are two marking life-changing decisions by individuals intended to be irrevocable, and two (usually private) rituals designed for specific situations.

In Matrimony, two people of (at least for the present) different sexes commit themselves before witnesses to spend the rest of their lives together. In Ordination (or ‘Holy Orders’), an individual is appointed to the permanent clergy of the Church (as a Deacon, Priest or Bishop) and enters into certain commitments binding on him for the rest of his life.

Anointing of the Sick is a ritual designed for a person at real risk of imminent death, to help him or her face the prospect of dying. Confession (known by a number of other names, including ‘Reconciliation’) is intended for those who repent of serious failures to be true followers of Jesus; it is a ritual with a chequered history, which has come in for much criticism in recent years and has been abandoned by many otherwise loyal Catholics.

There are undoubtedly many members of the Church who derive great spiritual benefit and strength from these rituals, enjoying the beauty of their language and symbolism. However, there is evidence that fewer baptized Christians today than in the past feel these rituals are of benefit to them. In [Appendix F], I examine some problems with their present format that reduce their effectiveness for many other people, and possible ways to improve them.

Section 8                    Role models

There have been many people throughout history who have lived good and exemplary lives, including in the last 2,000 years many who have done so by following the way laid down by Jesus. From its earliest days the Christian community has revered such people, particularly those who were tortured and executed for acknowledging their membership of the community when it was proscribed and persecuted by the authorities of the Roman Empire. The Christian Church continues to encourage its members to study and emulate the lives of outstandingly good Christians as role models.

The word ‘saint’ means in common parlance ‘a very good person’, but it is used within the Christian Church in a more restricted sense as a person who has been formally recognized by the Church to be a role model for others. In the Roman Catholic Church the formal process of recognition is called ‘canonization’; it occurs only after (in some cases, long after) the person’s death, and an important criterion applied by the Vatican is whether that person already has a sufficiently large and enthusiastic group of supporters requesting the canonization.

There are a large number of such canonized saints (many having been recognized before the current formal procedure was adopted), to each of which the Roman Catholic Church has allocated an annual feast day (normally the calendar day on which the saint is believed to have died), when liturgical celebrations (such as the ritual of the Eucharist) may be dedicated to them. Biographical details of some of the earliest such saints may be scant or non-existent beyond their names, which limits their value as role models, though some have legendary associations (not always very edifying). For Catholics, the most important of these saints is Mary, the mother of Jesus, who has been highly venerated throughout the history of Christianity. Although the accounts of Jesus’ life give little information about her, particularly of her life after Jesus’ death, it is assumed that she must have been a woman of great virtue to have brought up Jesus to be the man he was. This assumption extends to some extent to her husband Joseph, and even to her own parents, of whom there is no reliable documentary evidence, but who are named in a mid-second century book which has never been accepted by the Church, and who are nevertheless venerated under the names of St Anne and St Joachim. There is a risk that what is being put forward for veneration as a Christian role model is an idealized story-book character rather than facts about the historical person it is based on, and that it subsequently becomes treated as part of the Church’s revealed Tradition.

Section 9                    Death and after

Many Christians (and members of other religions) have a concept of eternal life (such as that offered by Jesus) that is a life very similar to the one we lead now, in a delightful place called heaven, where we shall meet and converse with all the people (and possibly pet animals) we have known and loved who have already died; this life will start as soon as each of us dies, provided that we have been good enough to deserve it, and will go on and on, without pain or suffering, for ever. This is a very comforting thought, especially for those who fear change and for those who feel they have missed out on their fair share of happiness or comfort in their life on earth. On close analysis, however, this picture presents insuperable problems both as a logically coherent idea and as a practical possibility. Some are discussed in [Appendix D].

In this connection it is necessary to recall a point made in Section 2 above. The word ‘eternal’ in this account of the Christian religion does not mean ‘continuing on and on in time’. An eternal truth or state of being does not exist before or after (or contemporaneously with) a fact or state or being in our historical world. It does not itself change: there are no processes, events or actions in eternity.

More importantly, the picture of eternal life described above lacks some essential Christian characteristics. It is fundamentally selfish – it is a bribe to be good not for its own sake but for a reward of future happiness for ourselves, while our brothers and sisters who fail the test are condemned to eternal suffering. The ‘eternal life’ promised by Jesus, a life lived according to the eternal unchanging values he taught, begins while we live on earth, as it did for him, not after we are dead. It is not free from suffering, but, embraced fully, brings its own sense of satisfaction. Its value lies not in our individual happiness but in the benefits it brings to other people, the whole world, even the whole universe in future ages. The imaginary life of heavenly bliss does little or nothing to bring about Jesus’ ‘kingdom of heaven’ for the people left alive and suffering on earth. It is part of Jesus’ teachings that not only should we act unselfishly, but also that in our lives we should seek increasingly to submerge our own personalities in the communal project (the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’) which unites all those involved throughout history with him and with the ideal of goodness.

It was argued in Section 2 above that everything that happens, and specifically everything that each of us does, has an effect on everything and everyone around us, because each of us is connected to other people and to our environment in myriad ways of which we are mostly unaware; this effect ripples out and changes (even to a minuscule degree which we cannot hope to detect) everything in the universe – in principle, changes it for the better or for the worse. Thus, the life of each of us leaves a unique immortal imprint on the universe that lasts to the end of time, which has a value (positive or negative), though no human being, including ourselves, could fully uncover and evaluate it.

We are therefore forced to conclude that, once we have died, we can no longer continue, or start again, as conscious agents: the opportunity which had existed throughout our lives to initiate actions that would have an effect on the world closes when we die. However, if in our lives we contributed, even in minor ways, to make the world better and refrained from making it worse, we will have helped, in ways that will last after our death, to bring the world closer to the ultimate ideal of perfection, and to have united ourselves with all other good people in Jesus’ project – to ‘build the Kingdom of Heaven’. Indeed, through all our interactions with the world before we died, we shall continue for all time until the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ is reached to work on the world to perfect it (or to continue wreaking damage until others nullify our input).

A number of religions, from that of the ancient Egyptians to Zoroastrianism and Christianity, have had a concept of final judgement of the lives of individuals, often using the image of weighing scales. Whilst we can never be sure of the total effect of any individual on the world after his or her death, each of us must hope that our legacy will be positive on balance rather than negative. This is ultimately the measure of whether our life has been valuable or wasted, of achievement versus futility – in Christian terms whether we are saved or condemned.

Part 2   A theological commentary on Part 1

Section 10                  Orthodoxy

As stated in the introduction to this essay (Section 1 above), the aim of part 2 is to demonstrate how the account given in Part 1 is an orthodox interpretation of authoritative Christian (and specifically Roman Catholic) teachings.

Jesus’ closest disciples had watched Jesus and listened to his teachings and tried to follow his way of life for about three years before it became clear that his death was imminent. In that time they had absorbed and internalized what they had seen and heard and felt, without fully understanding it. The night before he died he promised them that the spirit of goodness within each of them – ‘the spirit of truth’ (Jn 14: 17), or the ‘Holy Spirit’ – would be a trustworthy guide for them in continuing to follow his way and pursue the mission he had given to them, without his physical leadership. This promise, together with the promise ‘I am with you always, yes, to the end of time’ (Mt 28: 20), has been see by Christians as guaranteeing that the Christian Church (that is, Jesus’ true followers) would, by and large and in the most important respects, never stray or be misled from the path he had mapped out.

This principle of inerrancy through the Holy Spirit raises, of course, the question touched on in Section 5 above, ‘Who are the true followers of Jesus?’ Not everyone who claims to be a Christian, nor even everyone who believes himself to be a Christian, qualifies (cf. Mt 7: 21-23). Even some true followers may make mistakes without breaching the principle that the Church as a whole cannot err. Good leadership and sound teaching require people who are both faithful to the gospel and equipped with the relevant gifts and skills to be a leader or a scholar. Throughout the history of the Church, such people (typically bishops and theologians) have met in councils to decide issues of theology or good practice, and their conclusions have generally been accepted by most or all of those who do qualify as Christians. So one source of authoritative teachings is the doctrinal definitions of the great General Councils of the Church. Slightly less authoritative are rulings given by church leaders (popes and bishops) – the degree of authority (or ‘magisterium’ discussed in Section 14 below) in particular circumstances has been much debated in the last century or so. The views of widely respected theologians must be given due weight, and of course the lives of saints provide examples of how to follow Jesus’ way of life in many different situations.

One problem, alluded to in the Introduction (Section 1 above), is to understand the essential significance today of a statement made by a person (or people) in the past with a quite different cultural background and understanding of the world from ours, expressed in the idiom of a language we may not be familiar with. We need to understand what they intended to say, and then strip away any assumptions or implications that we now know to be incorrect, to reveal the enduring core of their intended meaning.

To take a simple example: when Pope Pius XII ‘proclaimed, declared and defined as a dogma revealed by God’ that Mary ‘when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven’ [11], many people may have pictured this event as the rising of a cadaver into the sky and disappearance in the clouds as the first stage in its transfer through space to another ‘place’, based on the account of Jesus’ Ascension in Acts 1: 9-11. It is even possible that Eugenio Pacelli (who did not have a scientific education) entertained this picture also (though he would probably have been familiar with the early Dormition texts [12] which favour the ‘empty tomb’ image, similar to the stories of Christ’s Resurrection). In any case, the dogma he defined cannot have been about the physical circumstances of an historical event but about some aspect of the role model we are given by Mary’s life and her implicit relationship to God.

In seeking to show the essential and enduring truths of the fundamental teachings of the Church and to relate them to modern understandings of the world, I refer in what follows to the interpretations and explanations of modern theologians. Of course their interpretations, and even more my own based on them, may be disputed by others, without the necessary implication of heterodoxy or heresy by either party.

Section 11    God

Commentary on Section 2

‘Goodness’.  It should be clear that I am using the term ‘goodness’ in Part 1 where the Christian would speak of ‘God’. The identification of God with Goodness or the Supreme Good (summum bonum) is well established in Christian theology, as expressed most clearly by St Augustine of Hippo in chapter 1 of his De Natura Boni (‘On the Nature of Good’) and by St Anselm of Canterbury in chapter 1 of his Monologium. Adopting this axiological starting point does not challenge the validity of alternative descriptions of God, such as Aquinas’ ‘first cause’ [13], Paul Tillich’s ‘ground of being’ [14], Karl Rahner’s ‘incomprehensible term of human transcendence’ [15], and many others.

‘three distinct aspects of goodness’. This is an account of the ‘economic Trinity’, that is, God as revealed to human beings through his action in the universe. I do not attempt to explain any statements about the ‘immanent Trinity’, that is, the inner nature of the Godhead, about which St Thomas Aquinas tells us ‘In this life we cannot know God in himself … we know him only through creatures’ [16]. Traditional theology used the term ‘prosōpon’ in Greek which became ‘persona’ in Latin, from which we get the English word ‘person’. These terms originally meant a face, then the mask that an actor wore to represent the character he was playing. I believe the word ‘aspect’ most accurately translates its meaning at the time when this theology was first developed. It is of course totally incorrect to say that ‘there are three people in one God’, and the technical term ‘person’ in the phrase ‘three persons in one God’ can be highly misleading, with ‘the danger of a popular, unverbalized, but at bottom quite massive thitheism’, as explained by Karl Rahner SJ [17] – also discussed in my introduction to Karl Rahner in [Appendix A3].

My axiological interpretation which sees the eternal unchanging first person of the Trinity as the source of value of everything created during the period of its existence does not directly explain the creedal claim that ‘the Father Almighty’ is ‘maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible’. However, it is now clearer than it was at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople that God’s creative action is a continuing process rather than a single event (see, e.g., my paper ‘Humans in an Evolving Universe’, in [Appendix B]). The other creedal claim that ‘through [the one Lord Jesus Christ] all things were made’ calls for a clearer distinction between the respective roles of Father and Son in creation. (I discuss this claim in my introduction to Origen, [Appendix A4].) It also makes Teilhard de Chardin’s thesis attractive, that the second person of the Trinity, as the ‘Cosmic Christ’, is the radial energy driving cosmogenesis, evolution and unification towards the Parousia (or perhaps more accurately the attraction pulling them forward towards himself as Omega Point) – see my introduction to Teilhard de Chardin in [Appendix A5].

‘more powerful than its opposite, ‘badness’     In the earliest Christian creeds (which are in Greek) God is always described as ‘pantokrator’, translated in English as ‘almighty’, that is, sovereign, ruler of all, with power and authority over everything. (The word kratos from which it is derived meant, in Homeric Greek, ‘bodily strength or military might; in classical Greek, force, power, sovereignty, rule, authority.) The Latin translation, which came later, ‘omnipotens’ was more easily interpreted as ‘able to do anything he pleases’, including the ability at any moment to suspend or reverse the laws of nature in order to work a ‘miracle’. (See [Section 17] below on miracles.) This interpretation led directly to ‘The Problem of Evil’: why does an omnipotent God not prevent bad things happening? If we accept the thesis that the divine plan is to create the universe through laws of nature which are consistent and intelligible to rational beings like ourselves, which include continuous creation and destruction of entities and apparent (or actual) random events, without continually (or, perhaps, ever) directly intervening to override those laws, then our belief in God’s omnipotence must be seen as the expectation that the end of the creative process is to achieve a perfect universe. Within this divine plan of creation, the actions of human beings play an important part – perhaps as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin outlined in The Phenomenon of Man. (See [Appendix A5])

‘to predict … a hypothetical future’.   My paper ‘Humans in an Evolving Universe’ in [Appendix B] includes a fairly general account of how some Christian understandings of God can (and other interpretations cannot) be reconciled with the accepted scientific explanation of our world today; and in particular it outlines the theories of Teilhard de Chardin (considered further in my [Appendix A5]), and those of Whiteheadian process theology (discussed more fully in [Appendix C]).

‘a plan which one would call intentional and rational’.  As the theologian Richard McBrien says, ‘Christian faith in the reality of Providence is not in doubt. Christian understanding of Providence is another matter entirely.’ [18] The idea of divine providence as what we might call ‘strategic planning’ derives largely from Thomas Aquinas: ‘nothing needs planning in God himself, the ultimate goal of all, but his planning of the universe is called his providence. This planning or providence is eternal, though its implementation and management takes place in time. Providence is an act of mind, but one which presupposes willing of a goal, for no one decides how to achieve a goal unless they want it’ [19] So, despite his via negativa, Aquinas gives God a mind, a will, intentions and desires, modelled on human beings. I suggest that this is a metaphorical or analogical account of Providence. In [Appendix E] I discuss briefly the philosopher Daniel C Dennett’s theory of ‘the intentional stance’, the idea that describing impersonal processes that have a certain internal logic as if they were designed by people, can be a useful way of conveying their complexity. Without, of course, implying that Aquinas was familiar with Dennett’s theory, I think he may have been adopting this quite common narrative form.

‘I am not saying that a person made this plan’.   Throughout the history of Judaism and Christianity, people have tried to understand God in the image of man, and have been repeatedly warned against this attempt. For instance, in the Old Testament:  the commandment against making carved images (Ex 20: 4; Dt 4: 16, 25; 5: 8; cf Ac 17: 29); God’s refusal to give his name when asked (Gen 33: 30; Ex 3: 14; Jg 13: 19); ‘my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways not your ways’ (Is. 55: 8). In the New Testament: ‘No one has ever seen God’ (Jn 1: 18); ‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father, so how can you say “Let us see the Father”?’ (Jn 14: 9); ‘He is the image of the unseen God’ (Col 1: 15). In Christian doctrine: ‘I believe in God, the Father almighty, invisible and impassible’ [20]; ‘If anyone says that in the passion of the cross it is God Himself who felt the pain and not the flesh and the soul  which Christ, the Son of God, had taken to Himself … he is mistaken’ [21];  ‘As [the one God] is one unique and spiritual substance, entirely simple and unchangeable, we must proclaim Him distinct from the world in existence and essence’ [22].  Nevertheless, in the Old Testament God is frequently addressed or referred to as having human attributes, some of which we would hesitate to attribute to the God of Christian belief (‘jealous’, ‘vengeful’, to be feared, nationalistic, commanding racial purity and ethnic cleansing, as well as ‘just’, ‘merciful’, ‘forgiving’, ‘loving’); and in Christianity (as mentioned in Section 6 and discussed in [Appendix E] many traditional or liturgical prayers address God as if he were a person like us, and some forms of prayer involve imagined conversations with him.

Quite separately from the discussion (under ‘three aspects of goodness’ above) of the meaning of ‘person’ in relation to the three ‘persons’ of the Trinity, the question arises whether we should think of the triune God as a ‘person’ in any way in which we use the word today. Treating the eternal God (as opposed, of course, to his incarnation as the historical human being, Jesus of Nazareth) as a man is a serious error which is likely to distort our understanding of God; it is an error into which the Jews often fell, as is clear from their scriptures, though there were also clear warnings (as listed above) in the scriptures against this error. Despite Jesus’ own habit of addressing the God of the Old Testament as ‘Abba’ (‘Father’),  I suggest that speaking of God as ‘a person’ risks falling into the error by predicating of God’s nature many human attributes in too literal a sense.

Richard McBrien summarizes the issue by saying, if the question “Is God a person?” asks “Is God a Being among other beings?”, then ‘the answer is “Of course not. God is not a person because God is not any one thing or being.”  But if the noun person is taken analogically, the answer has to be different. Does the reality we name “God” have qualities which we also attribute to persons? Yes, insofar as we understand persons as centers of intelligence, love, compassion, graciousness, fidelity, and especially the capacity for relationship. What we mean by the noun God certainly must comprehend such qualities as these. In other words, it is better to attribute “personality” to God than to look upon God as some impersonal, unconscious cosmic force. That is not the God of the Old and New Testaments, nor of Christian tradition, nor of ordinary Christian experience. Nevertheless, we must always remember that the attribution of personality to God is always analogical, i.e., God is like a person, but God is also very much unlike a person.’ [23]  

Rahner puts it slightly differently: ‘The ground of our spiritual personhood, which in the transcendental structure of our spiritual self always discloses itself as the ground of our person and at the same time remains concealed, has thereby revealed itself as person. The notion that the absolute ground of all reality is something like an unconscious and impersonal cosmic law, an unconscious and impersonal structure of things, a source which empties itself out without possessing itself, which gives rise to spirit and freedom without itself being spirit and freedom, the notion of a blind primordial ground of the world which cannot look at us even if it wants to, all of this is a notion whose model is taken from the context of the impersonal world of things’ [24].

This line of argument overlooks our ability to have a personal relationship, calling for a total commitment of our mind, our emotions, our will, etc., with God in people (and perhaps some other creatures), in whom he inspires or infuses intelligence, love, compassion, graciousness, fidelity and capacity for relationship: God’s self-revelation in his creation is not a notion modelled on the impersonal world of things, but nor is it what we naturally think of as ‘a person’.

One of the attributes of God in traditional theology is his ‘omniscience’, though I am not aware of its being defined in any formal dogmatic statements. ‘The nature and the attributes of God are completely identical by virtue of the absolute simplicity of God. The distinction between the attributes is only virtual. As God is ultimately absolute mystery, all the assertions which theology can make concerning his attributes are much more disproportionate than proportionate. This incomprehensibility of God is itself, according to Lateran IV, one of the attributes of God. “We firmly believe and profess with sincere hearts that there is only one, true, eternal, incommensurable and unchangeable, incomprehensible, omnipotent, and ineffable God”’ [25].  If, however, we consider omniscience as revealed in God’s interaction with his creation, its definition becomes an aspect of the divine Providence, discussed above under ‘a plan which one would call intentional and rational’.

‘this complex “chain reaction” or “ecosystem”’. For a Christian interpretation of this approach, see Pope Francis’ encyclical letter Laudato Si’ [26].

Section 12    Christ

Commentary on Section 3

The identification of Jesus of Nazareth with the Jewish Messiah (anointed king descended from David foretold by the prophets as a future saviour of Israel) was of great importance for Jesus himself and for the first Christians, raised in the Jewish religion. This fact was not mentioned in Part 1, as a complication of much less relevance to Christianity today. However, the title ‘Christ’ (from ‘christos’ used to translate ‘messiah’ in the Greek Septuagint bible) continues to be applied to Jesus and of course is the reason why ‘Christians’ are so called. In most Christian contexts (including Part 2 of this essay) the names ‘Jesus’ and ‘Christ’ are used interchangeably.

‘fully identified himself with the ideal of goodness’   This way of putting Christ’s divinity follows the logic of Karl Rahner’s ‘Christology from below’, outlined in [Appendix A3]. An aspect of this Christology is that Jesus Christ, ‘being as all men are’ (Ph 2: 7), was born and lived with no special access to divine omniscience or omnipotence. Hence, during his life on earth the man Jesus, following the path of salvation open to human beings, responded so fully to God’s grace that, by the time of his death, he had become divine [27]. This does not (as Rahner explains) contradict the alternative account, the traditional ‘Christology from above’, that it was an eternal truth that God’s plan of creation included the redemption of the human race through a particular individual, living in a particular place and time in history, in whom the two natures of God and man were united, that is, that God became man.

‘giving him an eternal, timeless, significance’   The identification of Jesus Christ with the eternal ‘Word of God’, the second person of the Trinity, ‘through whom all things were made’, stems principally from the prologue to the Fourth Gospel (Jn 1: 1-3), with further support from the letters of Paul (e.g., Col 1: 15-16). The association of the Creation of the universe with Jesus of Nazareth (sometimes called, in this connection, ‘the Cosmic Christ’) is examined in my introduction to Origen in [Appendix A4] (where, incidentally, I take issue with the translation ‘Word of God’). In most of the Christian epoch, when the creation was seen as a single event at the very beginning of time, Christ’s role in it was probably seen as similarly short-lived. Since the 19^th century, greater scientific understanding of cosmology and evolution has given rise to new theologies of Christ’s role in an act of Creation that continues through time, of which one of the more interesting is that of Teilhard de Chardin ([Appendix A5]).

Section 13                  Grace

Commentary on Section 4

‘Gracious’   This section is, of course, all about the theology of grace, God’s self-giving to all people, some of whom accept it and some reject it. By the word ‘gracious’ I want also to emphasize the gratuitousness of that grace, both in the way it is showered on all creation and in particular in the highest form of human love.

‘not only as a whole-hearted commitment to the ideal of goodness, but also … to all other people’    ‘Which is the first of all the commandments?’ Jesus replied, ‘This is the first: “Listen, Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength”. The second is this: “You must love your neighbour as yourself”’ (Mk 12: 28-30, quoting Dt 6: 4-5 and Lv 19: 18).

‘identified love with goodness itself’   ‘Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love’ (1 Jn 4: 8). ‘God is love, and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him’ (1 Jn 4: 16).

‘not based on affection so much as on a sense of duty and an attitude to other people’   William Barclay in his book New Testament Words [28] devotes the first chapter to ‘Agapē and [the related verb] Agapan – The Greatest of the Virtues’, distinguishing it from other Greek words for ‘love’ (erōs, sexual love; storgē, the love between parents and their children; philia, affection and friendship). ‘Agapē is the spirit which says: “No matter what any man does to me, I will never seek to do harm to him; I will never set out for revenge; I will always seek nothing but his highest good.” That is to say, Christian love, agapē, is unconquerable benevolence, invincible good will. It is not simply a wave of emotion; it is a deliberate conviction of the mind issuing in a deliberate policy of the life; it is a deliberate achievement and conquest and victory of the will. It takes all of a man to achieve Christian love; it takes not only his heart; it takes his mind and his will as well’ [29].

‘a reservoir of benevolence towards all others’   If we accept Richard  McBrien’s statement (quoted in Section 11 above under ‘I am not saying that a person made this plan’) that ‘we must always remember that the attribution of personality to God is always analogical’, we can say that God is the source of love and in certain contexts is love itself; but when we say to someone who feels unloved that ‘God loves you’, adding sotto voce ‘in an analogical sense’, this may be less comforting than saying ‘there are countless living people who earnestly want the best for you and for people like you, even though they don’t know you personally’ – and that statement is equivalent to saying that ‘God, living in those people, loves you’.

Section 14                  Church

Commentary on Section 5

‘a cultic priesthood like the Levitical priesthood of ancient Israel’   The Doctrine on the Sacrament of Order, published in 1563 by the Council of Trent in its 23^rd session, states: ‘Sacrifice and priesthood are by the ordinance of God so united that both have existed under every law. Since, therefore, in the New Testament the Catholic Church has received from the institution of Christ the holy, visible sacrifice of the Eucharist, it must also be acknowledged that there exists in the Church a new, visible and external priesthood into which the old one was changed (cf. Heb 7: 12 ff). Moreover, the Sacred Scriptures make it clear and the Tradition of the Catholic Church has always taught that this priesthood was instituted by the same Lord our Saviour, and that the power of consecrating, offering and administering His body and blood, and likewise of remitting and retaining sins, was given to the apostles and to their successors in the priesthood.’ [30]

The Letter to the Hebrews takes a line from the Book of Psalms, ‘Yahweh has sworn an oath which he will never retract: “You are a priest of the order of Melchizedech, and for ever”’ (Ps 110: 4), previously understood by the Jews as referring to King David, and interprets it as a prophecy referring to Jesus, implying that a new priesthood has been created with Jesus Christ as its High Priest ‘for ever’, in a new covenant with God (‘Yahweh has sworn an oath’), offering just one sacrifice – that of his own life. This new priesthood replaces the Levitical priesthood of Judaism which controlled worship in the Temple of Jerusalem, including sacrifices by the High Priest of animals burnt on its altar (‘holocausts’). In the Roman Catholic Church it is an exclusively male priesthood: see Note 22 (below) on ‘Tradition’ for the reasoning behind this requirement.

The relationship between the Christian priesthood and the Old Testament Levitical priesthood is emphasized by the term ‘clergy’, meaning ‘those appointed to be priests’, from the Greek word ‘klēros’, meaning ‘an allotment of land’ or ‘an appointment to office’ (originally, by drawing lots). It is used in the Greek version of the Jewish Bible to describe God’s allotment of land to all the tribes of Israel except Levi and of the right to be priests instead of holding land to the tribe of Levi (LXX, Nm 18: 20; Dt 18: 2).

The Doctrine of the Council of Trent seems to imply that the apostles and their successors, the hierarchy of bishops and priests (described in the Doctrine as ‘an army set in array’ [31] were somehow appointed Deputy High Priests (since the Letter to the Hebrews is clear that Christ is the unique, unchanging and eternal High Priest in the new covenant), with the power to offer the same sacrifice, that of Jesus Christ’s life. This might seem to be implied in the prayers of the mass and in the Rite of Ordination of a Priest: ‘For by your anointing of the Holy Spirit you made your Only Begotten Son High Priest of the new and eternal covenant, and by your wondrous design were pleased to decree that his one Priesthood should continue in the Church. For Christ not only adorns with a royal priesthood the people he has made his own, but with a brother’s kindness he has also chosen men to become sharers in his sacred ministry through the laying on of hands. They are to renew in his name the sacrifice of human redemption …’

This Doctrine and its anathemas against all who dispute it were directed against the Protestant Reformers, who saw the hierarchy as an army of mediators between people and God.

‘Tradition’   The passing of knowledge and information from one person to another orally and by example generally precedes its being written down – for example, most of the Christian scriptures, including the four gospels, are subsequent collations of oral traditions. ‘The Church, in her teaching, life and worship, perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes’ [32]. The Church’s Tradition, as opposed to merely traditional practices and beliefs growing up from time to time among groups of pious Christians, is the faith in action of the whole Church: as such it is part of divine Revelation (see the comment below under ‘wholly inspired by goodness’), flowing directly from the teachings of Jesus required for salvation, even if not evident in Scripture. It is therefore ‘normative’, that is, requiring acceptance by all Christians. A problem is to distinguish the divinely revealed Tradition from traditional practices and beliefs of purely human origin. Evidence of their ‘provenance’ back to apostolic times is highly relevant, and the requirement always exists that they be necessary for salvation.  Sometimes, the fact that a practice has existed in the Church for a long time without significant counter-examples is taken as evidence that it was there in the beginning, and so derived from those who knew Jesus personally. However, this ‘fact’ is not, of course, a revealed truth but simply a human assessment based on fallible historical research.

For example, The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its Declaration Inter Insigniores on the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood (1976), gave a number of reasons, including the fact that Jesus did not include any women in the twelve apostles, and they did not include any women in the apostolic group, and that the priest must have a ‘natural resemblance to Christ’ and the male sex constitutes this resemblance, but the argument the Sacred Congregation found most decisive was the dogmatic value derived from the Church’s constant tradition, based on the practice of Jesus and the apostles: ‘This practice of the Church therefore has a normative character: in the fact of conferring priestly ordination only on men, it is a question of an unbroken tradition throughout the history of the Church, universal in the East and in the West, and alert to repress abuses immediately. This norm, based on Christ’s example, has been and is still observed because it is considered to conform to God’s plan for his Church.’ [33] They therefore ruled that the exclusion of women from priestly ordination belonged to the substance of the sacrament of Order which the Church had no power to change. (It is interesting to speculate whether the assembling since 1976 of evidence that, at a time in the early Church before the appointment of elders or presbyters had been fully formalized, women were appointed to roles equivalent to those of presbyters might undermine the validity of the 1976 ruling.)

It is important also to note that the passing on of beliefs formulated in one age to people living in a later age, whether orally or in writing, involves a ‘translation’ since the meaning of the words and the cultural presuppositions underlying their formulation change through time. [34]

Guidance on whether particular beliefs or practices (derived from either Scripture or Tradition) are normative, is given by the teaching authority, or Magisterium, given to the Church by Christ, when he instructed Peter and the apostles to: ‘make disciples of all nations … and teach them to obey all the commands I gave you. And know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.’ (Mt 28: 19-20) The Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul are full of references to their teaching and preaching the gospel (though Paul does point out that not everyone has the gift of teaching – 1 Cor 12: 29). Every Christian through Baptism shares in Christ’s office as prophet, priest and king [35] and is called to evangelize, using whatever gifts he or she has. The Catholic Church has, however, seen that instruction to Peter and the apostles as giving them and their successors a particular authority to teach with some level of guarantee that their teaching truly reflects that of Christ himself. This is based on the promise (implicit in Mt 28: 20 and in ‘when the Spirit of truth comes he will lead you to the complete truth’, Jn 16: 13) that Christ’s followers – the Church as the People of God – will never be seriously misled as to the gospel message.

Although ‘ordinary magisterium’ belongs to all Christians collectively, in a particular sense it applies to particular groups of teachers whose authority is grounded in their office (bishops) or their scholarly competence (theologians) – Aquinas distinguished the magisterium of a bishop from that of a theologian. [36]

Most theological debate has centred on ‘hierarchical magisterium’, the teaching authority of the pope and bishops which is particularly authoritative, to be accepted by all Christians as one would accept the opinion of an expert, and which in certain closely defined circumstances is seen as ‘infallible’– divinely guaranteed not to be false, and therefore obligatory for all Christians to believe, and ‘irreformable’ – not subject to review by a higher authority in the Church. A teaching which the Church explicitly propounds as revealed by God (a ‘dogma’) must meet a number of criteria, set out by the First Vatican Council [37] and by Canon Law [38] to be ‘infallible’ or ‘irreformable’.

In addition, as Richard McBrien writes, ‘In the final accounting, the dogmatic teaching must be received by the Church at large and accepted as an accurate, appropriate, and unerring expression of its faith. (This last criterion, “reception”, has only recently been recovered as part of authentic Catholic tradition.)’ [39]. It is not quite clear what ‘the Church at large’ consists of: although Lumen Gentium n.8 states that the sole Church of Christ, professed in the Creed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, ‘constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in’ the [Roman] Catholic Church, it acknowledges that gifts belonging to the Church of Christ are found outside its confines; and there are, of course, many baptized Christians not in full communion with Rome, and also many ‘anonymous Christians’ in Rahner’s phrase (see [Appendix A3]) who have received the Holy Spirit and are in some sense part of the People of  God – Is their reception or non-reception of a dogma relevant?

Rahner points out also that, ‘The various dogmatic expressions must be constantly related to each other in new ways, which is one way by which marvellous insight may be gained into them and their knowledge renewed. In this sense a dogma is always “reformable” in the forward direction, though “eodem sensu eademque sententia” [in the same sense and with the same content], and indeed it can be a real duty for the Church not simply to repeat monotonously its ancient dogma but to rephrase it in such a way that earlier and possibly misleading overtones or outdated forms of thought may be excluded’ [40]. He sees it as the duty of the magisterium not to ‘aim simply at material accuracy but also at the greatest possible efficacy in its declarations. Hence in the face of the ecclesia discens [learning church], the Church to which instruction and enlightenment is due, the magisterium cannot just appeal to its formal authority. The faithful must also be able to see clearly in any given step taken by the magisterium that the magisterium sees itself as organ and function of the Church as a whole, that is, not merely offers men doctrine true in itself but tries to bring them into contact with the very reality of salvation and its salutary force. And since the magisterium receives no new revelation when making its pronouncements, it must make every effort to explain intelligibly to the educated faithful how it arrived at its decision in the light of the totality of the one revelation which is the life of the Church’ [41].

‘wholly inspired by goodness’  It is not easy to define ‘divine inspiration’, much less to recognise which books were divinely inspired. As described under ‘Tradition’ above, many books of the Bible were compiled in their final form from previous oral traditions – in the case of the Torah, hundreds of years of oral tradition preceded its being written down in the reign of King David. Were those hundreds of people who were involved in handing on orally God’s word all divinely inspired, or only the final editor? I take it to mean that all those involved in the production of an inspired writing were motivated by the spirit of truth and goodness (the Holy Spirit) to convey what they understood and honestly believed to be an account of God’s work or God’s message, as best they could, even if sometimes they got the details wrong.  It is not surprising that throughout history there have been (and still are) disagreements within Judaism and within Christianity as to which books are accepted within the biblical canon as authentic revelations of God’s word.

A fundamentalist theory that each inspired writer wrote down each word as God dictated it to him is disproved by the variety of literary styles and genres, and by small factual discrepancies between the books. The Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation states that, ‘In determining the intention of the sacred writers … the exegete must look for that meaning which the sacred writer, in a determined situation and given the circumstances of his time and culture, intended to express and did in fact express, through the medium of a contemporary literary form. Rightly to understand what the sacred writer wanted to affirm in his work, due attention must be paid both to the customary and characteristic patterns of perception, speech and narrative which prevailed at the age of the sacred writer, and to the conventions which the people of his time followed in their dealings with one another.’ [42], and also that ‘the books of the Old Testament …, even though they contain matters imperfect and provisional, nevertheless show us authentic divine teaching’ [43].

In his book Models of Revelation [44], the Jesuit theologian Fr (later Cardinal) Avery Dulles tried to reconcile the apparently wide range of conflicting views of divine revelation held by contemporary Christian (Protestant and Catholic) theologians, by grouping them into five broad types or ‘models’, based on their central vision of how and where revelation occurs.

The reason for setting out Dulles’ models of Christian revelation at such length is to emphasize firstly that the Bible (particularly the Old Testament) is not the only, nor an indispensable, source of God’s self-revelation, and secondly that some forms of this self-revelation give access to God and to salvation without going through the Christian community, at least as defined by its institutions.

Although in Section 3 above I have emphasized the importance of the Jewish Scriptures for a true understanding of Jesus, who ‘perfected revelation by fulfilling it through his whole work of making Himself present and manifesting Himself: through His words and deeds, His signs and wonders, but especially through His death and glorious resurrection from the dead and final sending of the Spirit of truth.’ [51], and although I accept fully that the history of the Jewish race and religion in the Old Testament contains many examples of divine revelation, it would seem quite possible that the histories of other peoples and civilizations, and the life experiences of individuals who are neither Jews nor Christians, could contain divine revelations illustrating salvation history sufficient to enable them to ‘come to share in the divine nature’ [52] since ‘His promise of redemption aroused in them the hope of being saved and from that time on He ceaselessly kept the human race in His care, to give eternal life to those who perseveringly do good in search of salvation’ [53]. (Compare Karl Rahner’s ‘anonymous Christians’ referred to towards the end of [Appendix A3].) Those examples of divine revelation, besides the examples in the Bible, could be of help to Christians also in their journey to God.

Section 15                  Prayer

Commentary on Section 6

‘prayers may be addressed to the ideal of goodness, to Jesus … and to saints’   That is, to God the Father, to Christ, and to Our Lady and other saints – I have not mentioned prayers to the Holy Spirit or to angels, though my general remarks would apply (with even greater force) to them. See [Appendix E] on Religious Language, and the comment in Section 17 below under ‘intercessionary prayer’.

‘there are considerable difficulties … in a literal understanding of this belief’ It is argued Section 9 that human beings who have died cannot thereafter continue as individual conscious beings to interact with the physical world in historical time; this applies equally to Jesus in his human nature. The eternal God, including the second person of the Trinity, does not frequently (or, more probably, ever) intervene by suspending or violating the laws of nature (though of course, we do not, and probably never will, have a complete and unchangeable knowledge of those laws).  ‘Can anything we say or do in prayer change God’s mind? In one sense, the answer is “No”. If God already knows our needs before we express them, our prayers cannot represent for God an unforeseen request. In another sense, however, the answer is “Yes”. Our prayers are already, from the beginning, an integral component of God’s providential care for human history and our own personal history. If God sees everything in an eternal “instant”, then God has already “factored in” our prayer in determining and guiding the course of our human and personal histories’ [54]. I would simply add the advice from the Letter of James: ‘Why you don’t have what you want is because you don’t pray for it; when you do pray and don’t get it, it is because you have not prayed properly, you have prayed for something to indulge your own desires’ (Jm 4: 2-3). If you pray only for things in God’s providential plan (Section 11 under ‘a plan which one would call intentional and rational’ above), your prayers are likely to be answered.

‘liturgists … tend to be very conservative’    For example, despite major improvements in the accessibility of the Eucharist shortly after Vatican II (notably in allowing it to be said publicly in the language of the congregation rather than in Latin, with the priest facing the people, and by encouraging daily communion in the forms of both bread and wine), most of the prayers of the mass have a long history and may not be changed by those celebrating it. In particular, the First Eucharistic Prayer is almost identical with the Roman Canon, virtually unchanged in the last 1,400 years, including parts of the Liturgy of St James used in the 4^th century CE; the Second Eucharistic Prayer is based on the Anaphora of the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, also used in the 4^th century; and the 3^rd Eucharistic Prayer uses the structure of the 4^th century Antiochene Anaphora filled with ancient Alexandrine and Roman themes. Almost all public masses in England and Wales use one or another of these three Eucharistic Prayers occupying most of the mass, though there are other more modern prayers (often containing ancient elements) used on special occasions. Other conservative tendencies are mentioned in comments below, and in [Appendix F], on parts of the prescribed liturgy.

Section 16                  Sacraments

Commentary on Section 7

‘Key Church Rituals’      By this phrase I mean the Sacraments of the Church, of which seven are recognized by the Roman Catholic Church.

‘opportunities to find goodness and grow in virtue’    ‘Celebrated worthily in faith, the sacraments confer the grace that they signify. They are efficacious because in them Christ himself is at work: it is he who baptizes, he who acts in his sacraments in order to communicate the grace that each sacrament signifies. … This is the meaning of the Church’s affirmation that the sacraments act ex opera operato (literally: “by the very fact of the sacrament’s being performed”), i.e., by the saving work of Christ, accomplished once for all.’ [56] It is certainly true that the sacraments of initiation, at least, are efficacious in the sense that they achieve the change of status in the people participating in them that they signify: baptism-confirmation (seen as the single sacrament it was originally) does make a person a member of the Church; full participation in the Eucharist (including taking communion) is a public expression of that membership and thereby contributes to the unity of the Church community; the sacrament of Holy Orders does indeed make the recipient a deacon, priest or bishop of the visible Catholic Church; arguably, the sacrament of Matrimony changes those celebrating it from two single people into a married couple (though the Church recognizes that people can be validly married without receiving the sacrament). It is much harder to specify the changes wrought in people by the healing sacraments of Reconciliation and Anointing of the Sick that will lead to their salvation. However, the significant graces contributing to salvation that follow from the ‘sacraments of initiation’ (Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist) and from the ‘sacraments at the service of communion’ (Holy Orders, Matrimony) would seem to arise from interactions with other people in the years that follow, thanks to the new status conferred by the sacrament. If a person who takes part in the sacramental ritual fully believing in it and intending to do everything promised in it, but who later loses that commitment, it would seem to stretch language to say that therefore he did not ‘celebrate it worthily in faith’. That would seem to imply that a lapsed Catholic must not have been validly baptized, or that a laicized priest was never validly ordained, which cannot be right.

‘consecrating’    As Christ’s death drew nearer, he kept reminding his disciples that after his death they could make him present again, not just as a fond memory but in a real way, so that through his spirit active within them he could continue to do his work on the earth. This is one (and in my view the principal) meaning of his ‘resurrection’, as well as the basis for St Paul’s idea of the Church as the mystical body of Christ. ‘Where two or three meet in my name, I shall be there with them’ (Mt 18: 20). It is important that we recognize this as a real presence, not just a mental image or a symbol, because it is Christ acting through his followers, the community of the Church he founded. This is the basis of all Christian liturgical events including the mass. He emphasized this by his words at the last supper where, after following the Jewish Passover meal ritual of thanking God for their food, breaking a loaf of bread and distributing it to all at table, ‘he said “This is my body which will be given for you; do this as a memorial of me”. He did the same with the cup after supper, and said “This cup is the new covenant in my blood which will be poured out for you”.’ (Lk 22: 19-20)

His disciples were by then used to his oblique or analogical style of speaking (see [Appendix A4] on analogy); they were fully aware, of course, that the bread they were eating and the wine they were drinking were not identical to the body of Jesus they could see in front of them and the blood coursing through his veins. However, his followers remembered that reproducing that last supper and eating the bread and drinking the wine as a memorial of Jesus were a particularly effective way of making him present to all those participating. So, in the Eucharist, today a very stylised representation of the last supper (with a lot of complex symbolism added – see [Appendix F]), Christ is really present to those who participate fully.

An essential element of full participation is the eating of the bread and drinking of the wine that have been consecrated (that is, set aside from their normal uses of food for the body, and irrevocably dedicated instead) to this sacred purpose. Because Christ is really present in the mass, he can with some justification be said to be present in the defining action of it (the communion) and in the key elements of that action (the consecrated bread and wine). His presence is no more ‘real’ or ‘true’ in one component or element than another (since that might imply that his presence when two or three are gathered in his name, his presence in his Church, or his presence in the whole of creation are somehow ‘unreal’ or ‘untrue’), though particular parts of the ritual may be more effective than others in making him present to some of the participants. The statements that ‘Christ is always present in His Church, especially in her liturgical celebrations. He is present in the sacrifice of the Mass, not only in the person of His minister, … but especially under the Eucharistic species’ [57] may be understood if ‘especially’ means ‘in a particular way’, not as indicating degrees of reality or truth.

The term ‘body of Christ’ is used in different (linked) ways in Christian theology: St Paul of course used it of the Christian community, and Cardinal Basil Hume once recalled that, after many years of repeating the formula when giving the consecrated host to communicants at mass, one day he looked up and saw that the line of people waiting for the communion and the whole congregation were truly ‘the body of Christ’; the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Williams of Oystermouth, (in a slightly different context) said ‘In the Christian tradition, revelation begins precisely with a body – an active and speaking body; then a helpless and suffering body; then a dead body; then a body that is both significantly absent and at the same time believed to be present in very diverse modes, present as the community itself, present as the food the community ritually shares, present as the proclaimed narrative and instruction derived from the record of the literal flesh-and-blood body’ [58].

The Council of Trent used the term ‘transubstantiation’ to describe the consecration, following Aquinas [59], who was strongly influenced by Aristotelian philosophy where the purpose or end of a thing (its ‘final cause’) is part of the definition of substance (ousia) [60]. However, Legion of Christ Father Edward McNamara pointed out [61] that the ‘change of substance’ terminology occurs, before Aquinas and before Aristotelian philosophy entered Christian theology, in the ‘Oath of Berengar of Tours’ of 1079 CE [62], and that the word ‘substance’ must then have been used in ‘the common or ordinary sense’ of that time. Whichever meaning of ‘substance’ (and hence of ‘transubstantiation’) was intended by The Council of Trent, the technical term of Aristotle or ‘the common or ordinary sense’ in 11th century Latin parlance, it is quite clear that it has nothing to do with the meaning of ‘substance’ today, normally defined by the chemical composition of the bread and wine, which does not change. Following Vatican II, some theologians proposed ‘transfinalization’ or ‘transignification’ as more meaningful alternatives to ‘transubstantiation’ [63]. A clearer alternative for the English layman might be ‘transdestination’, but I believe that ‘consecration’ in the sense I have given it above is quite sufficient.

‘Confession’ The sacrament of Reconciliation (variously known as ‘Confession’, ‘Penance’, ‘Forgiveness’ or ‘Conversion’) has a complicated and conflicted history. Kenan Osborne, in his Sacramental Theology 50 Years After Vatican II [64] reviews its key documents and concludes: ‘This historical material on the forgiveness of sin in the Catholic Church clearly indicates that there is no ritual of forgiveness that can be traced back to Jesus and the apostles. Rather, the issue of sin, especially the three major sins [idolatry, murder and adultery], left the Catholic community with no means of forgiveness for those who committed such sins. Therefore we have to say that the ritualized sacrament of reconciliation did not appear until the third century and even then it did not cover all sins. In time a ritual of reconciliation of major sins did become a standard in the Western Catholic Church, but it was a form of reconciliation which was open only once in a person’s lifetime’ [65]. Since ‘for the first 900 years of Christian existence most Christians never received this sacrament at all’, Osborne asks ‘Does this non-reception of the sacrament have any ramifications for a theology of reconciliation today? Is the present form of the sacrament of penance of pastoral value?’ [66]

Monika K Hellwig gives more detail on the next stage of its history. ‘The medieval history of penance and reconciliation in the Western Church seems to have developed from two sources, a gradual refusal of the Christian people to participate in the increasingly onerous public penance system, and the emergence of alternative traditions. … More widespread and more enduring in the tradition was the private penance tradition which came from the British Church, having been adopted and adapted from Celtic monastic traditions, possibly to be traced to the desert hermits of Egypt. It is noteworthy that this tradition, which involved specific confession of personal sins, was not in the first place a jurisdictional matter, but a matter of spirituality in the quest for continuing conversion. Nor was it in the earlier phases linked to the ministry of the ordained priesthood. People simply sought guidance in the conversion of life from a wise and holy person. What happened at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 is that the two traditions of Roman or public penance, and of British or private penance, which had been the subject of fierce debate and rivalry, were blended into a hybrid form, later re-endorsed by the Council of Trent. This form combined the individual and specific confession of personal sin from the northern tradition with the element of official jurisdiction exercised on behalf of hierarchical church authority, and represented as a kind of tribunal. It is essentially still this hybrid form which is represented in the first and second rites in use since 1973, and the understanding of the rite as a tribunal where a judgement is pronounced is still found in canon law.’ [67] The canon she refers to reads: ‘Can.978 §1   In hearing confessions a priest is to remember he is at once both judge and healer, and that he is constituted by God as a minister of both divine justice and divine mercy, so that he may contribute to the honour of God and the salvation of souls’ [68].

The practice of the British Church which she describes as ‘a matter of spirituality in the quest for continuing conversion’ continues today as a form of counselling usually known as ‘spiritual direction’, much valued when the counsellor (‘spiritual director’) has the necessary gifts and experience, which are as likely to found in a lay person as in an ordained priest.

‘fewer baptized Christians … feel these rituals are of benefit to them’       Observers have reported declines in weekly attendance at church services and participation in the sacraments in many countries over the past 50 years or so, but statistics are notoriously hard to find, and of course there may be many reasons for these changes apart from dissatisfaction with the forms of the rituals. Reasonably reliable statistics of changes in Catholic mass attendance are available for Great Britain and the USA. They show, for instance, that weekly mass attendance in Great Britain dropped from 2,506,900 in 1980 to 812,000 in 2015, a decline of 68% [69], and in the United States from 75% of those self-identifying as Catholics in 1955 to 54% in 1975 and 39% average over the period 2014-2017 [70].

A subjective impression from conversations and anecdotes is that young people even at Catholic schools do not feel much spiritual benefit from mass and the other sacraments, and that many older people at Sunday mass attend because of the Sunday obligation and the ‘grave sin’ of neglecting it rather than for the spiritual benefits they experience. It is of course possible that they benefit (receive grace) without knowing it – a priest in my parish a few years ago claimed that we benefitted from his homilies even if we had totally forgotten them by the end of mass – but it is clearly better if those benefits are felt or otherwise recognized by those receiving them.

There are further comments on the consequences of this perceived or actual loss of relevance of the sacraments in [Appendix F].

Section 17                  Saints and Miracles

Commentary on Section 8

‘The word “saint” means in common parlance’   In addition, ‘the saints’ is the normal translation of hoi hagioi (literally “the holy ones”) in the New Testament, used in the letters of Paul and the Book of Revelation to refer to all the members of the Christian community, ‘[called to be] his dedicated people, … i.e., separated from the profane aspects of life for an encounter with the awesome presence of God’ (Joseph A Fitzmyer, commenting on Rom 1:7, [71]), recalling the word used in Leviticus of the people of Israel: ‘For it is I Yahweh who am your God. You have been sanctified and have become holy because I am holy’ (Lv 11: 44; cf 19: 2 and 20: 26).

‘miracle’   (Latin miraculum) means something wonderful, to be wondered at, either because it is simply abnormal or inexplicable, or, especially, if it is also good or a sign of God’s favour. In modern times, in the face of claims that all phenomena can be explained in scientific terms, it is often understood to mean something that science cannot explain because it is contrary to the ‘laws of nature’ which inform all scientific explanation. There are many ‘miracles’ in the Bible, some of which can now be explained as natural phenomena which were distorted in the telling by witnesses who were baffled by what they saw or in the retelling by people who were not there – for example, the escape of the Israelites across the ‘Sea of Reeds’ (Ex 14: 22-30) may well have been over a marshy area at the North of the Red Sea which in particular climatic conditions becomes passable on foot, but not by horses and chariots and heavily armed Egyptian soldiers; the ‘walls of water to the right and left of them’ were embellishments during a long oral tradition.

The miracles required by the Vatican for canonization of a saint are generally cures of illnesses previously declared incurable by medical experts, cures which therefore are inexplicable in terms of our current medical knowledge, and which are claimed by the person cured to follow prayers of intercession (see comment on ‘intercessionary prayer’ below) to the candidate for canonization. These miracles are presumably seen by the Congregation of the Causes of Saints as evidence that the candidate has attained the beatific vision – ultimate union with God in heaven – and has persuaded God to suspend the laws of nature as a sign to people still alive that the candidate is worthy of the honour due to a saint – see my comment in Section 15 above under ‘there are considerable difficulties … in a literal understanding of this belief’.

‘a mid-second century book’   The ‘Protoevangelium of James’, a ‘prequel’ to the gospel stories of Jesus’ birth, was written about 150 CE by someone who was not very familiar with Jewish religious practice though claiming to be James, the brother of the Lord, head of the Jerusalem church just after Jesus’ death. It was apparently a popular book, but rejected as inauthentic by scholars such as Origen (about 200-250 CE – see [Appendix A4]), Pope Innocent I (in 405), and Aquinas (c 1270) and was never accepted into the Christian Bible as divinely inspired.

‘intercessionary prayer’     If our prayers to God cannot change his mind (see the comment under ‘there are considerable difficulties … in a literal understanding of this belief’ in Section 15 above), then it is clear that our prayers to a dead saint (or angel) can have no effect in encouraging him to change his mind. The image of a celestial call-centre constantly manned by saints (in greater or less demand, from St Anthony of Padua to St Zosimus the Hermit) who assess the petitions addressed to them (and the merits of the petitioners?) before deciding whether or not to pass on to God their own endorsements of them, besides being a dismal picture of the afterlife for those saints, is a theological nonsense.

Section 18    Eschatology

Commentary on Section 9

‘a delightful place called heaven’ Jesus gives many images of the Kingdom of Heaven, including a wedding feast (Mt 22: 1-14, cf the banquet at Is 25: 4), but nothing like the Paradise or garden with which many artists have depicted heaven.

‘condemned to eternal suffering’  A too literal reading of some passages in the Old Testament and several parables of Jesus have contributed to the picture of hell fire awaiting those who fail God’s test, for example,

• ‘and on their way out they will see the corpses of men who have rebelled against me. Their worm will not die nor their fire go out; they will be loathsome to all mankind’ (Is 66: 24, quoted as an image of hell by Jesus at Mk 9: 48);
• ‘just as the darnel is gathered up and burnt in the fire, so it will be at the end of time. The Son of Man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all things that provoke offences and all who do evil, and throw them into the blazing furnace where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth’ (Mt 13: 40-42);
• ‘next [the king] will say to those on his left hand, “Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you never gave me food …’ (Mt 25: 41-42);
• ‘in his torment in Hades … [the rich man] cried out, “Father Abraham, pity me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames”’ (Lk 16: 23-24).

Unlike human justice, which punishes the guilty for reasons of retribution (or revenge), divine justice does not, either in this imperfect world or in the Kingdom of Heaven, exact revenge (despite Old Testament texts like ‘Vengeance is mine – I will pay them back’, Dt 32: 35, quoted by Paul at Rm 12: 19). The Old Testament teaching that the Lord ‘lets nothing go unchecked, punishing the father’s fault in the sons and in the grandsons to the third and fourth generation’ (Ex 34: 7) is contradicted by Jesus’ comments on the fall of the tower of Siloam (Lk 13: 4) and on the blind man who washed himself in the Pool of Siloam (Jn 9: 3).

‘submerge our own personalities in the communal project … which unites all those involved … with him and with the ideal of goodness’ The early fathers of the Church were much more forthright about the goal we should be seeking after death: the divinization of humanity (theopoēsis). For example, ‘For [Christ] became man so that we might be made God’ [72];  ‘And now the Word himself speaks to thee, shaming thy unbelief; yea, I say, the Word of God became man, that thou mayest learn from man how man may become God’ [73]; ‘The Word became flesh to make us partakers of the divine nature’ [74]. This goal of perfect communion with God requires us to empty ourselves of all individuality (kenosis – cf Ph 2:6-8), since the gifts we were given and our experiences in this life are no longer relevant once we are dead and partaking of the divine nature.

‘a unique immortal imprint … which has a value’   Section 2 outlines the thesis that everything we do in our lives has an impact (positive or negative, however imperceptible) on other things and people that endures permanently (and one theory of how this might work is introduced in [Appendix C]).

‘we shall continue for all time … to work on the world to perfect it (or to continue wreaking damage until others nullify our input)’ Compare Jn 5: 29: ‘those who did good will rise again to life; and those who did evil, to condemnation’. Just as Christ’s Resurrection was (at least in one important respect) to his mystical body on earth, the Church, so those who have died in Christ will acquire a capacity to act upon the world, no longer as individual decision-makers but in Christ’s collective ‘project’ of building the Kingdom (guided by the Holy Spirit to ‘renew the face of the world’) until the legacy of the good in their lives purges the evil from the world, and they achieve their goal of a universe in total harmony with the good, that is, in full union with God.

Section 19 Conclusions

At points in this essay I have questioned or disagreed with beliefs and practices supported by many Christians and particularly Roman Catholics. I should like therefore to list a few statements that I am not making or implying.

Firstly, I am not (like the fool in the psalm [75] saying “There is no God”, though I am saying that we must be careful about the implications of a statement like “God is an all-knowing and all-powerful person”.

Secondly, and I hope very obviously, I am not wanting to imply that “theological knowledge and understanding are more important prerequisites for following Jesus’ way towards self-identification with goodness and towards building the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ than the capacity to love gratuitously and indiscriminately, which is found in millions of human beings who have neither education nor real acquaintance with Christianity”. The strengths, weaknesses and role of the Christian Church (or churches) must be seen in this context.

Thirdly, I am not saying that “addressing God, Jesus, saints and angels directly and using metaphorical language in a religious context are wrong”. The poets who addressed ‘fair daffodils’, ‘envious Time’, Death, Duty or a Grecian urn (see the first part of [Appendix C]) were conveying valuable ideas which could not,in their view, be adequately expressed in everyday language. Nevertheless, they did not expect the objects expressed to respond to them, and they knew that their poems were not making everyday factual statements.

Fourthly, I am not saying that “the prayers, rituals, beliefs or institutional structures of the Roman Catholic Church are so deeply flawed that they should be abolished and something completely new put in their place”. Indeed in Part 2 and the Notes explaining my views I frequently refer back to authoritative dogmatic statements and earlier practices of the same Church to highlight inconsistencies requiring resolution.

My primary objective in this essay has been to show that the main elements of the Christian faith can be explained and understood without the specialized theological language or jargon in which it is usually presented and without the metaphorical or poetical language in which most Christian worship is expressed. The basic Christian message is very simple, but very different from the expectations of many people, including some Christians who have not grasped this difference. It requires us to ‘think outside the box’ of our everyday lives. The story which I find explains this best is that of the walk to the village of Emmaus in the gospel of Luke (Lk 24: 13-32): two loyal disciples were walking home from Jerusalem just after the execution of Jesus, devastated because their hopes that he would liberate the Jewish people by ending the Roman occupation of Palestine seemed for ever dashed by his death; then a stranger (whom they later recognized as Jesus himself) explained the scriptures to show that by dying as he had he had actually brought a much greater liberation of the whole human race for all time. Effectively, he taught them to ‘think outside the box’ of current local politics which dominated Jewish thinking at that time, and the presumption that a person can change the world only during his lifetime.

My secondary objective has been to show that, perhaps contrary to some people’s opinion, my account of Christianity is totally consistent with the great bulk of orthodox teaching accepted by the Roman Catholic Church (and by most other Christian churches).

How far I have succeeded in these objectives will, I hope, become clearer in the light of readers’ comments in the Blog section of the website.

Jonathan Holden, October 2021

Notes

The abbreviation ‘DH’ below refers to the Enchiridion symbolorum, definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum / Compendiun of Creeds, Definitions and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals (Latin-English) 43^rd edition, by H Denzinger edited by P Hünermann, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2012.

[1] B J F Lonergan, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan Vol 14 Method in Theology, edd. R M Doran and J D Dadosky, Univ of Toronto Press 2017, p 3.

[2] See, for example, R M Hare, The Language of Morals, OUP, Oxford, 1952

[3] S Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Allen Lane, London, 2011

[4] Ray Bradbury, A Sound of Thunder, 1952, published in The Golden Apples of the Sun, Doubleday & Co, 1953

[5] For ‘apprenticeships’ see Thomas O’Loughlin, The Didache – A Window on the Earliest Christians, SPCK, London, 2010, pp.10-13 and passim; for ‘examinations’ see The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, XX, 1

[6] Richard McBrien, Catholicism, 3^rd edition, Geoffrey Chapman, London, 1994, pp. 349-50

[7] Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1967, pp.165-6, 174-5

[8] cf Richard McBrien, Catholicism, 3^rd edition, Geoffrey Chapman, London, 1994, pp. 348-9

[9] T O’Loughlin, The Rites and Wrongs of Liturgy, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minn, 2018, pp 1-5

[10] For practice in the first century CE, see Didache 7.1-4, which implies that there was no one in the community with a special role of ‘baptizer’, but that whoever had introduced and catechized the new disciple would perform the baptism (see T. O’Loughlin, The Didache – A Window on the Earliest Christians, SPCK, London, 2010, pp. 59-60). The practice in the third century is illustrated in The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, XXI, 6-11, usually dated between 210 and 235.

[11] Munificentissimus Deus n.44  (1950), DH 3903

[12] cf On the Dormition of Mary – Early Patristic Homilies, tr. B E Daley SJ, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood NY, 1998

[13] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia q2 a3; trans. T McDermott, A Concise Translation, Methuen, London, 1991

[14] Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, SCM Press, London, 1978, Vol I, p. 238

[15] K Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, Crossroad, New York, 1998, p. 454

[16] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia qq 12-13

[17] K Rahner, The Trinity, Burns & Oates, Tunbridge Wells, 1986, p. 42

[18] Richard McBrien, Catholicism, 3^rd edition, Geoffrey Chapman, London, 1994, p. 336

[19] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.22, a.1

[20] The Symbol of Rufinus c 404 CE, DH 16

[21] The Tome of Damasus, Council of Rome 382 CE, DH 166

[22] Dei Filius c.1, 1870 CE, DH 3001

[23] Richard McBrien, Catholicism, 3^rd edition, Geoffrey Chapman, London, 1994 pp. 349-50

[24] K Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, Crossroad, New York, 1988, p.75

[25] Edward Sillem, s.v. ‘God, Attributes of’, Encyclopedia of Theology – A Concise Sacramentum Mundi, ed. K Rahner, Burns & Oates, Tunbridge Wells, 1993, p. 573; the quotation is from the Definition against the Albigensians and the Cathars, DS 800

[26] Catholic Truth Society, London, 2015, or http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa- francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html

[27] see K Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, Crossroad, New York, 1998, pp 212-302, esp. 217-220; also the earlier book by K Rahner and W Thüsing, A New Christology, Burns & Oates, London, 1980, pp 1-17 and 73-74

[28] William Barclay, New Testament Words, SCM Press, London, 1964

[29] ibid., pp. 21-22

[30] DH 1764

[31] DH 1767

[32] Verbum Dei, n.8

[33] AAS 69 (1977) 98-116

[34] See Karl-Heinz Weger, s.v. ‘Tradition’, Encyclopedia of Theology – A Concise Sacramentum Mundi, ed. K Rahner, Burns & Oates, Tunbridge Wells, 1993, p. 1732.

[35] Lumen Gentium, n.31

[36] See Richard McBrien, Catholicism, 3^rd edition, Geoffrey Chapman, London, 1994, pp. 65-66.

[37] DH 3065-3074

[38] canons 747-751, The Code of Canon Law, Collins, London, 1983, p. 138

[39] Richard McBrien, Catholicism, p. 65

[40] K Rahner, s.v. ‘Magisterium’, Encyclopedia of Theology – A Concise Sacramentum Mundi, p. 877

[41] ibid., p.879

[42] Dei Verbum n.12 – see following note

[43] Dei Verbum n.15 – both passages translated by Wilfrid Harrington O.P., Vatican Council II Vol 1, the Conciliar and Postconciliar Documents, ed. Austin Flannery O.P., Costello Publishing, Northport NY, 1992, pp.757, 759, since the official Vatican translation is in very unidiomatic English at this point

[44] Avery Dulles SJ, Models of Revelation, Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1983

[45] Gaudium et Spes  n.5

[46] Gaudium et Spes  n.7

[47] Gaudium et Spes  n.11

[48] Dei Verbum, n.3

[49] Dei Verbum, n.2

[50] Dei Verbum, n.6

[51] Dei Verbum, n.4

[52] Dei Verbum, n.2

[53] Dei Verbum, n.3

[54] Richard McBrien, Catholicism, p. 349

[56] Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 1127, 1128

[57] Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 7

[58] Lord Williams of Oystermouth, The Gifford Lectures 2016: ‘Making representations: religious faith and the habits of language’, Lecture 6 ‘Can truth be spoken?’, about minute 50

[59] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q75, a4

[60] e.g. Aristotle, Metaphysics Z ch 17, 1041a, 25-32

[61] https://zenit.org/2016/04/19/liturgy-q-a-on-transubstantiation

[62] DH 700

[63] see Engelbert Gutwenger, s.v. ‘transubstantiation’, Encyclopedia of Theology – A Concise Sacramentum Mundi, ed. K Rahner, Burns & Oates, 1975, p. 1754

[64] Kenan B Osborne OFM, Sacramental Theology 50 Years After Vatican II, Lectio, Hobe Sound Fla., 2015

[65] ibid., p. 42

[66] ibid., p. 43

[67] Monika K Hellwig, Penance and Reconciliation, in Commentary on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, ed. Michael J Walsh, Geoffrey Chapman, London, 1994, pp. 274-5

[68] The Code of Canon Law, Collins, London, 1983, p. 177

[69] British Religion in Numbers, www.brin.ac.uk/figures/church-attendance-1980-2017

[70] https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/vpdodr0ueop2sktt4a9lg.png

[71] Joseph A Fitzmyer SJ, The Anchor Bible Vol 33: Romans, Doubleday, New York, 1993, p.239

[72] Athanasius, De Incarnatione Verbi, 54, 3; cf Contra Arianos, I, 39; III, 34

[73] Clement, Exhortation to the Heathen, ch 1;  cf Exhortation to the Greeks, 1; Stromata, 716, 101, 4; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IaIIae, q112, a1 response

[74] Catechism of the Catholic Church, n 460, quoting 2Pt 1: 4

[75] ‘The fool says in his heart “There is no God”’, Ps 14: 1 (also Ps 53: 1). See also Anselm, Proslogion, ch 4.