Radio Replies Vol 5 - Catholic Apologetics Online

The words referring to the conception of Christ embody the teaching in the message of the angel to St. Joseph: "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit." Matt., 1:20.

The answer to that problem lies in the fact that the miraculous and mysterious origin of the humanity of Jesus could not be due to any act of paternity at all. Natural generation of a child gives rise to a new person. But in the conception of Jesus by the Virgin Mary no new "person" came into existence. The already-existing Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God eternally begotten by the Father in an eternal spiritual generation, merely entered into a new manner of existence as human also, taking possession of and making His own the created human body and the created human soul of Mary's child. So the Eternal Son of God was made flesh and dwelt among us, being known in His human existence as Jesus Christ. As we read in Lk., 1:34-35, in response to Mary's astonished exclamation "I know not man", the angel of the annunciation replied: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born of you will be called holy, the son of God." Without any act of paternal generation, Mary was miraculously given by the Holy Spirit the power of conceiving a child. The only fatherhood in the case of Jesus was that associated with His pre-existence as a Divine Person and the Eternal Son of God the Father in heaven. The miraculous conception of that Eternal Son within the Virgin Mary is attributed to the power of the Holy Spirit in order to stress that the human nature she provided enabled the Eternal Son as the human Jesus to become "Incarnate Holiness"; that is, the Holy or utterly sinless One among human beings for the redemption of sinful humanity.

The primary reference of Simeon's prediction was to Israel. He foresaw that the Jews would be divided into diametrically opposed camps either for or against Jesus, thus revealing the inner dispositions of their hearts. John 10:20 tells us how Simeon's prediction was later verified when he says of the Jews in regard to Jesus: "Many said he has a devil and is mad; but others said these are not the words of one that has a devil." Opposition to Jesus led eventually to His crucifixion, a fate in which Mary could not but be involved, the sword of suffering entering deeply into her own soul also. But while the immediate reference was to the Jews who had to decide during our Lord's own lifetime on earth what their attitude towards Him would be, the prediction contained a long term reference to all men in all later ages who came face to face with the problem of Christ. So He Himself said: "Do not think that I came to send peace upon the earth. I came, not to send peace but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father and the daughter against her mother . . . and a man's enemies shall be they of his own household." Matt., 10:34-35. On national levels in our own day we see strife between atheistic Communism and Christianity of any kind. On the level of individual families peace is destroyed when members adopt attitudes of devotion to or hostility towards Christ. The "New English Bible" translation of Simeon's words to Mary are helpful towards understanding the phrase that puzzles you. There we read: "This child is destined to be a sign which men reject; and you, too, will be pierced to the heart. Many in Israel will stand or fall because of Him, and thus the secret thoughts of many will be laid bare." That is, divisions over Christ reveal people's inner dispositions of soul towards Him and the provision God has made for their salvation.

What St. John wanted to explain was that the Person of Christ was not that of an ordinary child with a created human body and soul who began life by being born in Bethlehem, but a Person who had eternally pre-existed in heaven before the Incarnation took place at all. Now we express ourselves by words, and indicate our will by words. So the centurion said to Christ: "Say but the word and my servant shall be healed." Also, on our human level, we say that a father lives over again in his son and, seeing the likeness, say of a son that "he is his father over again." With such thoughts in mind, St. John used the term "word" by which we express ourselves as a description of the Eternal Son of God who was in Himself the Image and Likeness of the Eternal Father; also, as the expression of the Father's creative will since through Him all things had been created in the first place; but still more as God's expression of Himself in human history and in a human life to accomplish our salvation. In all these senses he describes the Eternal Son of God as the "Word of God" who had become Incarnate in Jesus Christ. So St. Paul said simply: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself." 2 Cor., 5:19.

St. John could not have meant that. He was using human language ,on our level, of which God certainly had no need on His level in heaven. Some confusion arises here from your speaking of Christ's spirit when He was in heaven. When our Lord was dying on the Cross He said: "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." There He was speaking of His created human soul, and that did not exist before the Incarnation. The Uncreated Personality of Christ was in heaven before the Incarnation, and in that sense He could speak in His prayer to the Father of "the glory I had with Thee before the world was made." Jn., 17:5. Keep in mind that, in the Incarnation, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity took as His own a created human body and soul in which He was born of the Virgin Mary to be our Saviour. In His Divine Nature He was equally God with the Father and the Holy Spirit; 'and God — as God — had no name by which He needed to call Himself either to Himself or to anybody else. Even when Moses asked God for His name to tell others, he was bidden: "Say that 'Jahweh' sent you" (which in the Hebrew language meant simply "Say that 'He who is', or the eternally 'Self-Existent One' sent you." Since the Second Divine Person of the Holy Trinity was equally God with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the description God gave of Himself to Moses as "Jahweh", the Supreme and Self-existent Being, would have been as applicable to the Person of Christ as to the other two Persons of the Holy Trinity. For it was to the Person of Christ as Divine that St. John referred when he described Him as the "Word" who in the beginning "was with God" and who "was God", and who "was made flesh and dwelt among us." But it remains that St. John's was a human way of speaking on our level, and no indication that the Eternal Son of God had as His name the "Word of God" in heaven. All that may seem very involved. But we are dealing with a profound mystery of divine revelation, of which we have to speak in some way; and St. John's way is full of deep meaning for us, if we devote time to reflecting upon it.

The admission of the New Testament term "Son of God" as applying to Christ, but with a denial that He had any existence prior to His birth of the Virgin Mary, and any nature other than the human nature common to all other human beings, does not do justice to the full teaching of the Gospels. That full teaching affirms nothing less ffian that Christ the Son of God was God the Son, by whom all things were made, and who pre-existed co-equally and co-eternally with the Father and the Holy Spirit, each of these three Divine Persons possessing one and the same Divine Nature, and each therefore being equally God. Genuine Christianity, then, holds that God the Son came into this world to live a human life on earth and give that human life as a sacrifice on the Cross for the redemption of mankind.

In the Holy Trinity the eternal relationships between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as Persons occur within one and the same Divine Nature which all three equally possess, and each of the three, therefore is equally God. But of that mysterious doctrine we'll see more later. Let us turn to the Gospels. John, 3:16 tells us that God "so loved the world as to give His only-begotten (not 'created') Sonf" When the Second Divine Person, coming from beyond this world into this world, assumed His manhood as Christ, there dwelt among us One who was both God and man. In Him there was but one Person, that of the eternally-existing Son of God, possessing two natures, the one He had ever possessed as Uncreated and Divine, the other created and born of the Virgin Mary within the time-sequence of this world. Speaking of His personal pre-existence Christ said: "Before Abraham was, I am," Jn., 8:56; and later, in Jn., 10:30, "I and the Father are one" (meaning "One Being"). On both occasions the Jews threatened to stone Him to death because, they said, "being a man, you make yourself God." They had not misunderstood Him. Nor did St. Thomas misunderstand Him when he addressed Him with the words: "My Lord and my God." Jn., 20:28.

Since in Christ there was but the one Person, He had to use the personal pronoun "I" whether referring to His Uncreated Divine Nature or and in that sense declared: "I and the Father are one". His created human nature, however, was less than the Father, and speaking in virtue of His humanity Christ said: "The Father is greater than I." All such difficulties are solved by a correct notion of Christ as "God-mademan", yet made man in such a way that He never ceased to be God. As man, in the name of all mankind He could offer reparation for the sins of men — a reparation which derived its infinite value for our salvation from the fact that by the Incarnation He was God Himself in the midst of the humanity He had come to redeem.

Jesus was the name given to the child born into this world of the Virgin Mary. But that child was the Eternal Son of God who, without relinquishing His Divinity, became man and dwelt among us. Jesus was, therefore, truly God and truly man. Both aspects must be kept in mind. St. Luke, in his Gospel, gives us a glimpse of both aspects when he shows, in 2:48, that Jesus was aware of His divine origin by recording His reply to Joseph and Mary: "Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business?"; and then, in verse 52, stresses His humanity by saying that Jesus "grew in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men." In other words, Jesus led a truly human life. When the Eternal Son of God became Incarnate, the created human nature which He made His own included an essentially finite or limited body and soul, together with a limited human intelligence and a limited human will. He was not an "omniscient" little boy, nor an "omnipotent" little boy. That is why He was able, in a human way, to learn, acquiring knowledge and growing "in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men."

Not in the light of the two-fold nature of Christ. We cannot hope, of course, to eliminate all elements of mystery in our efforts to understand Him. Ordinary psychology will not be of much help to us here, for our science in that field is based on the study of human beings who do not happen to be anything more than ordinary run-of-the-mill examples of created humanity. Christ was altogether unique, with no parallel in human history before or since. As a Divine Person, existing simultaneously both as God and as man, He had two sets of knowledge, that of His Uncreated Divine Intelligence and that which He acquired by His created and essentially limited human intelligence. The omniscience He had as God was an immediate comprehension of all things and not, as we might imagine, an accumulated store of human concepts and ideas; and His awareness as God of all truth did not automatically, as it were, overflow into His human intelligence with particular items of human knowledge. There is no reason for doubting that the Person of Christ could communicate His Divine knowledge as He willed to His human mind, but even such knowledge would have to be "broken down" to a created human mind's finite capacity of receiving it. There are immense problems here, for His human mind could not know by means of inadequate human ideas the higher kind of knowledge He possessed as God. But, as St. Cyril of Alexandria put it, the limitations normal to the created human nature He had assumed did not exclude His exercising of His divine prerogatives if and when He willed; although He did not normally use those in His day-to-day human activities.

Among the last words spoken by Christ to His disciples before His ascension, as translated in the "New English Bible", Acts, 1:7, were: "It is not for you to know about dates or times, which the Father has set within His own control." The whole created order of reality is subject to the will of its Creator, of whose mind and purposes created beings — even the angels — have a right only to such information as He chooses to reveal to them. The Son, in His Divine Nature and as co-equal with the Father, shared in the knowledge declared proper to the Father. But when we turn to the Son as Incarnate, that is, as made man and speaking there and then to His disciples, we have to ask how much of the Divine Knowledge had been communicated to His created human intelligence. Certainly all the revealed truth necessary for the fulfilment of His mission as Teacher and Saviour of mankind would have been transferred from the Divine Intelligence to His human mind for the purpose of instructing us on our own human level. But knowledge of the time when God intended to bring human history in the world as we know it to an end was not connected with the saving mission of the Son as Incarnate; and He could truly tell His disciples, speaking as man, that He did not know when the end would be.

Jesus was the name of one who was man as well as God, and there were many things He did which He could not have done were He not God as well as man. Both aspects must always be kept in mind. However, in the present case, Luke 8:47 indicates that He did know who had touched Him. A sick woman had pressed through the crowd and touched the hem of His garment, believing that if she did so she would be cured. But there was a good deal of superstition mixed up with her expectation, as though just by touching His garments she would be cured as if by magic. According to St. Luke, our Lord's question made her realise that she had been discovered. St. Matthew's account, 9:22, says simply: "Jesus turning and seeing her." St. Luke continues by saying that she came forward trembling and declaring "why she had touched him." Jesus took the occasion to correct her superstition by stressing that it was her faith and not any mere contact with His garments that had won the favour for her. This case came definitely within the scope of His mission, in which, John 2:25 tells us, He "needed no one to give testimony of any man, for He knew what was in man."

The event, definitely historical, was, it is true, one of profound significance from a doctrinal point of view, But St. John certainly did not invent a non-historical episode in order to make the teachings of Christ more impressive. So many Jews came afterwards to see Lazarus out of curiosity that the chief priests, in order to prevent further possible conversions, thought to kill Lazarus as well as Jesus (Jn., 12:10). While St. John's intention was to stress the religious meaning of the miracle which brought Lazarus back from death, the symbolism of the event would have had no actual value had the event itself not been a reality

St. John himself gives the key to that when, at the end of his Gospel, he says that there were many other things that Jesus did, far more than could be put into writing by the evangelists. In other words, for their summary accounts, a selection of incidents had to be made; and the first three evangelists were mainly concerned with the ministry of Jesus in Galilee, not in Judea. As a matter of fact, they record two miracles of raising the dead which Jesus wrought there, that of the daughter of Jairus (Mk., 5:41) and that of the son of the widow of Nairn (Lk., 7:14). St. John, supplementing their accounts with details of the ministry in Judea, recorded the case of Lazarus which occurred there, and which was more in accord with the scope of his own Gospel.

Jesus, as the Son of the Eternal God made man, had come into this world from beyond it. He spoke of the glory He had with the Father "before the world was." Jn., 17:5. He, the Author of life, came that we might have life "and have it more abundantly" (Jn., 10:10); that is, more abundantly than our parents could give it, something over and above merely natural life — a supernatural, spiritual and eternal life. He Himself is the source of that kind of life. We derive it from Him. It is a fact now in those who belong to and are spiritually united with Him; and this will be manifest both physically and spiritually when our bodies are reunited with our souls in the resurrection on the Last Day. Physical death for a Christian, then, is not of any real importance. The spiritual life in the soul is independent of that and will continue as if physical death had not happened at all. Here we see the significance of the resurrection of Lazarus as associated with the teaching of Jesus on the occasion of it. For the miracle showed the power of Jesus over death, and that the physical death of the body will be no obstacle to its resurrection by divine power to the higher order of reality awaiting us in eternity— a promise the fulfilment of which we will owe to Christ who rightly said, both of Himself and for us: "I am the resurrection and the life."

To understand such teaching one must take into account the setting in which it was given and the actual sense intended. As regards the setting, the preceding verse (25) tells us that a great crowd had followed Jesus and were gathered about Him. Many were probably there out of curiosity, having seen or heard of miracles He had wrought, or because they admired Him for His love of the poor, or because they were fascinated by His remarkable teaching ability. But to be moved by curiosity, to be filled with admiration, to be spell-bound while hearing His words — these things were not enough; and, as He often did, He took this opportunity of telling them in a startling and challenging way that the condition of their becoming actually His disciples was that they must rise above all natural ties and all forms of self-interest that would stand in the way of their doing so. He left it to their common sense to grasp the meaning of His words. His reference to "hating" was not concerned with feelings or emotions or ill-will to be entertained towards others. The question was one of conflicting claims. Should anyone allow the love of his nearest and dearest relatives or even of his own life itself to prevail over the claims of Christ upon him, then he is not fit to be a disciple of Christ. That was a tremendous utterance and would, of course, have been outrageous in anyone not conscious of possessing rights over us which only God Himself can claim.

Firstly, Christ could not possibly have meant that God had really forsaken Him, for when actually dying He said: "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." Lk., 23:46. Secondly, the words He used could not refer to any experience in the Divine Nature which He shared with the Eternal Father as Second Person of the Holy Trinity; they could refer only to an experience proper to the created human nature in which He was redeeming mankind. What was that experience? It was the experience described in Psalm 21 (Ps. 22 of the Authorised Version), for the words He uttered were the opening words of that psalm. The sufferings and the dispositions of the psalmist himself were really a prediction or foreshadowing of His own. When we turn to Psalm 21, we find that it consists of two parts, in the first of which (verses 1-21) the psalmist addresses God in an extreme distress to which God has abandoned him, but in which God has not abandoned him. In the second half of the psalm (verses 22 to the end), the psalmist expresses his continued confidence in God, thanksgiving for his deliverance and happiness that through his sufferings all nations will be blessed and God Himself glorified. So there is no trace of despair in the psalm itself; and no trace of despair or of actual abandonment by God in the words taken from the psalm and used by Christ on Calvary. Seen in its proper context, therefore, the cry expresses a sense of dereliction as part of the sufferings of the passion of Christ, with no loss of confidence and trust in God's protection during affliction but rather with a certainty of eventual deliverance.

In the Apostles' Creed we say: "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth." He is our Maker, as well as of all else in this universe, although among material beings man alone can be articulate in proclaiming the fact. True, God is an invisible Spirit, not a visible material being like the created things around us. But in addition to such knowledge of Him as is possible to reason alone, God Himself has told us much of His nature and purposes by divine revelation in both the Old and the New Testaments. "God is a Spirit", Jesus told the Samaritan woman, "and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Jn., 4.24. Moreover, God is our Father, the very source of our existence by creation, who, although omnipresent or allpervasive throughout creation and full of love for us, is yet transcendent or distinct from the created universe by nature, infinitely exceeding in perfection all His creatures taken together, a fact stressed by declaring Him to be in heaven and not of earth. Finally, to Him we are answerable for the way we live in this world. Such is the God we are obliged to acknowledge in word and in deed, reverencing Him and manifesting our love for Him by trying to fulfil His will in all that we do.

There is but one Divine Being. Christians are monotheists, holding firmly to the doctrine that there is but one God. But the one Godhead or Divine Nature is threefold as regards personality. There are three Divine Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, equally possessing one and the same Divine Nature. This means trinitarian monotheism, admittedly a great mystery to us, for where human beings are concerned we experience in each case one human nature and one person, never three persons possessing one and the same human nature. But although the Christian doctrine involves a mystery, it does not involve a contradiction. We do not say that there is one God, yet three Gods; nor that there are three Divine Persons, yet only one Divine Person. The mystery of the Trinity means that God is a "Tri-unity", relatively three from a personal point of view, absolutely one as regards Divinity.

All passages in the New Testament where it is emphasised that there is but one God, yet where references are made separately to the Father, or to the Son existing before the creation of the world and forming a unity with the Father, or to the Holy Spirit as equally personal, all three equally possessing the atrributes proper to the one God. For instance, in announcing the birth of Christ, the angel said to the Virgin Mary: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and the Holy (one) which shall be born of you will be called the Son of God." Lk., 1:35. The association of the Father-Son reference and also of the Holy Spirit with the power of the Most High is indication enough of a Trinity of Persons in God. Again, at the baptism of Jesus by John, the Spirit of God is manifested as descending upon Jesus and the voice of the Father is heard, saying: "This is my beloved Son." Still later, at the Last Supper, Jesus said: "I am in the Father and the Father in me . . . and He will give you another Comforter that He may abide with you forever, the Spirit of truth." Jn., 14:11, 16. These and many other references culminated in the final commission to the apostles, bidding them go and teach all nations, "baptising them in the name" (the one name, not "names") "of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Matt., 28:19. All three Divine Persons are equally God as regards possession of one and the same Divine Nature — a truth expressed by the term "Trinity".

The doctrine is contained in the New Testament. We could know of it only by divine revelation, since God alone could tell of His own inner nature and life. Of necessity, the formulation of the truth in theological terms came later, as thinking men pondered over the doctrine, trying to understand its significance more deeply. The early Christian writer Tertullian (160-220 A.D.) was the first to use the actual word "Trinity" to express the tri-unity of three Divine Persons possessing one and the same Divine Nature or as equally being the one God.

From the very beginning, although later attempts to formulate and explain it were accepted by the Church as correct or rejected as false when they came along. St. Paul, in 2 Cor., 13-13, written at least ten years before the Gospels, embodied the doctrine in his formula of blessing: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all". One of the earliest Christian writings, the "Didache", about 90 A.D., recorded as the baptismal formula to be used the words given in Matt., 28:19. When the Arian heretics in 320 A.D. denied the Divinity of Christ, the Council of Nicea, 325 A.D., defined as an Article of Faith that the Person of Christ is truly God, consubstantial with the Father and equally possessing the Godhead with Him. In 381 A.D., the Council of Constantinople defined a similar doctrine about the Holy Spirit, to exclude other errors that had arisen. So the doctrine of the Holy Trinity was formulated and accepted throughout the whole Church, a doctrine of the Living God constituted as the First Person of an Eternal Father expressing Himself in a Second Person of the Eternal Son, the Infinite Love between them forming a Third Eternal Person as the Holy Spirit. There is no question here, of course, of a chronological succession of one Person after another. The relationships are eternally simultaneous even as it is of the very Nature of God Himself to be eternal.

The context of his article on prophecy shows that he means "exclusively" prediction. He holds that the whole pattern of Old Testament history was prophetic of a Saviour to come. He was aware, however, of passages some interpreters mistakenly thought to be predictive through reading back into them meanings they did not actually contain. But in spite of such instances it would be too much to say that Old Testament prophecy did not mean prediction. In the non-Catholic "Peake's (Revised) Commentary on the Bible" (1962), Dr. Muilenburg, in his article "Old Testament Prophecy", p.476, writes: "The prophet, be it noted, speaks of the future as well as of the present. The notion commonly held in the past that the prophets did not predict or foretell events is contradicted by every prophet whose words have been preserved."

In the general sense of his article, yes. An outstanding non- Catholic, Dr. H. H. Rowley, Professor of Hebrew at Manchester University, says in his book "The Re-Discovery of the Old Testament", p.95: "In modern times the predictive element in their work" (i.e., of the Old Testament prophets) "has been denied or minimised, and they have been hailed as preachers of righteousness, social reformers, or statesmen. That may in some measure be true, but these functions were only incidental to their true mission. Prediction seems to have been rather more fundamental to their mission. Deuteronomy declares that he whose prediction is fulfilled can alone be accepted" (for) "the prophet is one who predicts. Similarly, Deutero-Isaiah points to the fulfilment of prophecy as the basis of trust in the message he brings." St. Augustine pointed out centuries ago, in his commentary "On Exodus", n.17, that a prophet was but "an announcer of God's word to men." But, as should be clear, all depended on what God's word was about. Admittedly, it was about contemporary problems, consisting of denunciations of current abuses and exhortations urging Israel to return to genuine religion and morality. But it would be wrong to make that the only interpretation of prophecy, to the exclusion of prediction. Isaiah, 42:9, records God's word to him: "New things do I declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them."

It rightly does so. For Israel, as God's chosen people, was intended to be a preparation for the coming of a promised Messiah, which we know to have occurred in the Incarnation. In the messages of the prophets of old, therefore, God included, either explicitly or implicitly, and whether the prophets themselves were fully aware of their significance or not — which is of no great importance — many references to the future life and redemptive work of Christ, and to our own future destinies in the light of that life and work. Jesus Himself, in the synagogue at Nazareth, quoting to the Jews the words of Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; wherefore He has anointed me to preach the gospel" (Is., 61:1), declared them to be a prediction of Himself, saying: "This day is fulfilled this scripture in your ears." Lk., 4:21. It remains, then, that the Christian appeal to the Old Testament prophecies is valid, and indeed very impressive, granted a serious and impartial study of them and of their subsequent fulfilment.

Not all Jews rejected Him. St. Mark, 12:37, tells us that "the people heard him gladly." He made an immense impression upon them. They were His people. He was born among them and in a special way for them, fulfilling the promises of their religion about the Messiah to come. He restricted to them His own public ministry while on earth, saying that He was not sent except to the house of Israel (Matt., 15:24). The twelve apostles He chose were all Jews, as were His thousands of converts. To speak of thousands is not an exaggeration. St. Paul could write that after His resurrection Jesus appeared on one occasion in Galilee to more than five hundred of His disciples at once (I Cor., 15:6). It was only after the Sanhedrin, the highest governing body of the Jews, consisting of 71 members drawn from the high priests, the scribes or lawyers (most of them Pharisees) and the elders or educated laity, had officially rejected Him, that full effect was given to His universal mission by the Descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday, and by the commanding of the apostles to preach the gospel to all nations (Matt., 28:19).

Because they brought such worldly ambitions and vested selfinterests to the reading of those prophecies that they were really looking for someone else altogether, an imaginary Messiah to whom Jesus bore no resemblance. They were expecting another David, another earthly king, another ruler of a restored Israel in this world. For them, the predicted "Day of Judgment" meant doom for the surrounding heathen nations and their own triumphant prosperity in a kind of Utopia on earth. But God had never promised such a Utopia; and in view of the false hopes they had built up, the gospel Christ preached of a kingdom of God based on supernatural faith, heavenly hopes, and an all-consuming love of God issuing in the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount as one's rule of life, was quite alien to their way of thinking. In view of the growing popular enthusiasm, the Sanhedrin had the choice either of accepting Him or of getting rid of Him. Jesus knew the choice they would make, quoting to His disciples the telling expressions of Isaiah 6:9 that they see, yet see not; hear, yet hear not, for their hearts are hardened. Otherwise they might see and hear and be converted, and I would heal them (Matt., 13:13-15). St. Paul, however, tells us in Romans, chapter eleven, that God has not irrevocably cast off the Jews and that their failure to live up to His original choice of them will not be permanent. The day will come when all of them will accept Christ as did the apostles and the first disciples, forming with Christians the true "Israel" or "People of God".

From verses 18 to 30 of the chapter you mention Jesus was speaking of the kingdom of God as the messianic kingdom He had come to establish on earth as a means of salvation for all who would become faithful members of it. In v. 19 He gave a parable likening it to a tiny mustard seed, growing into a great tree. In v.21 He compared it with leaven affecting the whole loaf of bread by its penetrating influence. In vv.23-30 He gave a parable about the relationship of the Jews to the messianic kingdom He was putting before them. In it He predicted the refusal of the Jews as a people through their official leaders to comply with His invitation, and spoke of their shock on seeing many "from the east and the west, from the north and the south", that is, the Gentiles, enjoying the inheritance of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the messianic kingdom predicted in the Old Testament, with themselves excluded from it. This recalls John the Baptist's warning to the Jews: "Say not, we have Abraham for our father. I tell you God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham." Matt., 3:9. Quite likely, when the man put the question in v.23: "Lord, are they few that are saved?" the sense was: "Will Israel as a whole or only a remnant find entrance into the kingdom you preach?" And we have seen our Lord's answer to that. If the man's question be interpreted as referring to ultimate salvation in the kingdom of heaven's final and eternal fulfilment, then Jesus by-passed it, refusing to say what proportion of humanity will attain to final salvavation, merely bidding His listeners to make sure that they at least chose the way leading to it.

He was offering them the development of the Jewish religion into what God intended it to become. Of its very nature the Jewish religion was one which looked forward to a future fulfilment in the advent of the Messiah. From Abraham came a special people chosen by God to prepare for a special event, the coming of the Saviour of mankind. In Christ, God Himself came into our history as a dramatic fulfilment of His promises of old. So our Lord said He had come, not to destroy, but to fulfil the law and the prophets (Matt., 5:17). What He established was really the continued community of God's chosen people. It is true that He gave new teachings, prescribed new ways of worship, and instituted a new authority. But this meant not so much a new religion as the predicted development of the Jewish religion, of which only particular, imperfect and preparatory elements were abolished. Our Christian history, therefore, goes right back to Abraham. It includes the liberation of God's people from slavery in Egypt by Moses, and all else which paved the way for Christ, the real liberator from the slavery of sin. It was for us that God called our father Abraham. To us He sent the prophets of old and finally John the Baptist who was the immediate fore-runner of Christ whom we accept as our Saviour, into whose life we are incorporated by baptism, and in, with and through whom we should try to live as the "People of God".

That is true as regards particular observances proper to the Law of Moses, which had been binding upon the Jews. So St. Paul wrote to the Romans, in 10:4, that "the law came to an end with Christ, and everyone who has faith (in Him) may be justified." Earlier, in 6:15, he wrote: "We are not under the law but under grace." In 2 Cor., 3:7-14, expressly referring to the law of Moses, he said this law had been made "void" or "done away". Christ fulfilled the prediction of Jeremiah 31:31, that God would give Israel "a new Covenant not according to the Covenant He made with their fathers." Israel of old consisted of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The new Covenant given in Christ extended "Israel" or the "People of God" to all believers in the Gospel, to whatever nation they might belong, even though they were not actual descendants of Abraham. In place of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, Christ founded His new covenanted people on His own chosen Twelve Apostles and said to them: "You shall sit on twelve seats, judging the tribes of Israel" (Matt., 19:28), a symbolical way of saying that Israel of old would yield place to the New Israel which God had intended it to become. This really fulfilled God's promise to Abraham that in him "shall all nations be blessed" (Gen., 18:18).

They accept both the Old and the New Testaments as the inspired Word of God. The Old Testament contains a history of God's religious dealings with mankind prior to the coming of Christ. There we have accounts of God's promises to and Covenants with Adam, Abraham, Jacob whose twelve sons gave rise to the Twelve Tribes of Israel, and above all with Moses. In these Covenants there were laws adapted to different periods, being particularly detailed in the Mosaic Code of legal and ritual obligations. These are no longer in force under the New Law of the Gospel of Christ. But there is much else in the Old Testament, such as the messages of the prophets, religious teachings of the highest importance, many inspired hymns and prayers which Christians find a great aid to piety. Above all, however, we find the history of God's plan for our salvation and of His activities during its different preparatory stages — a plan ever developing yet ever the same which Christ came "not to destroy but to fulfil". We Christians should remember that the New Testament speaks of Abraham as our father. His history and the history of the inheritance promised to him and in which we share is our history also. So we see in the Old Testament an account of what in times past God has done for us. That cannot be nullified like the various incidental and provisionary laws adapted to prevailing circumstances; and we treasure the Old Testament together with the New Testament which fulfils and completes it.

St. Paul, after admitting that the Jews had indeed been privileged as God's Chosen People and the recipients of His messages through the prophets, was stressing that as regards the basic need of redemption there was no distinction between Jews and Gentiles because all were equally members of a fallen human race; that is, fallen into a state of sinful estrangement from God and at variance with His purposes. From this disaster human beings could not redeem themselves, their only hope of salvation being found in Christ. St. Paul saw Adam as the constituted head of the human race, so that there is a real moral unity or solidarity of all mankind in him; and with Adam all human beings fell from a state of grace into a state of sin. So, in Rom., 5:12, he writes: "As by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death, so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned." In 1 Cor., 15:22 he writes: "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive." St. Paul had in mind a corporate racial sinfulness affecting all humanity. Cardinal Newman, in his clear and masterly style, wrote in his "Apologia" (1864) that the history of humanity through all the centuries forced him to conclude that "either there is no Creator, or this living society of men is in a true sense discarded from His presence. Did I see a boy of good make and mind, with the tokens on him of a refined nature, cast upon the world without provision, unable to say whence he came, his birthplace or his family connections, I should conclude that there was some mystery connected with his history, and that he was one of whom, for one cause or another, his parents were ashamed. Thus only should I be able to account for the contrast between the promise and the contrast of his being. And so I argue about the world; — if there be a God, since there is a God, the human race is implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity. It is out of joint with the purposes of its Creator. This is a fact, a fact as true as the fact of its existence; and thus the doctrine of what is theologically called original sin becomes to me almost as certain as that the world exists."

All do, except a few widely-publicised theorists who do not like the idea of a primitive calamity affecting the whole human race. These theorists agree that there is no Christianity which does not acknowledge a universal sinfulness requiring as a remedy the Incarnation and a Redemption wrought by Christ on Calvary. But they suggest that we do not know how sin began. They accept the theory of man's origin by evolution, not in a single couple, but in an emerging group of many human beings. Perhaps, they say, owing to the limitations of human nature, a sinful misuse of freewill was inevitable, God tolerating this in view of a greater eventual good. Everyone, as a consequence, has always been born into a perverted environment, with a tendency to sin by imitating others or by their contagious influence, but not inheriting any sinful state from an individual parent of the human race. In this sense, there would have been no "Fall" as commonly understood, and no transmission of sin from an "Adam" to his posterity. It would be better, according to these theorists, to speak, not of being born in "original sin", but rather of being born "into the sin of the world". They interpret St. Paul as having wanted only to preach Christ as our Saviour, merely using the Genesis story as an illustration of Him as the Head of the redeemed human race, without intending to affirm any actual truth historically in the Old Testament account of the "symbolical" Adam. Such, briefly, is the general theory of these new theologians. But in July, 1966, a Convention of Theologians met in Rome to discuss the whole subject, Pope Paul VI himself giving them an initial address. He encouraged them to study the problem of original sin more deeply, trying to get the best theological explanation possible, but not at the expense of religious truths known by divine revelation and guaranteed by Scripture, by Christian tradition, by the definitions of the Councils of Carthage (418 A.D.), Orange (529 A.D.), and Trent (1546 A.D.), and by the declarations of both Pius XII in his Encyclical "Humani Generis" (1950) and of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). According to these sources mentioned by the Pope there was a fall from God's grace at the beginning of man's history, with a privation of it affecting all human beings and inherited by way of propagation, not merely lost by later individuals through imitation of others or by contagion from a perverted environment; and no new theories which do not fit in with this can be regarded as acceptable. It scarcely needs saying that Catholics do not look to tentative opinions of speculative theologians instead of to the authoritative teachings of the Church in order to find out what the authentic Catholic doctrine really is. Father A. M. Dubarle's comment (Q.33 above) is relevant here. Personally, priests when vesting for Mass need make no reservations in saying the appointed liturgical prayer: "Restore to me, 0 Lord, the raiment of immortality forfeited by the sin of my first parent; and although unworthy to approach your sacred mystery, may 1 be found worthy of eternal happiness."

The redemptive work of Christ, considered in itself, cannot be exclusively restricted to the sufferings of His passion and eventual death on the Cross. Every single action of His whole life from the moment of His conception right through until His resurrection and ascension into heaven contributed towards our redemption. St. Paul, speaking of the ascension in Eph., 4:8, says that "ascending on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men." All taken collectively came within the scope of God's great gift of His only-begotten Son, as St. John puts it, "that the world might be saved through him." Jn., 3:17. But while redemption cannot be exclusively restricted to the passion and death of Christ, it can be in a special way attributed to that passion and death since, in God's plan, they constituted the principal element in the redemptive work, all else having value as centred in them and taken together with them. So Christ Himself stressed as the main feature of His life on earth: "The Son of Man is come to give His life, a ransom for many." Matt., 20:28.

God, as God, cannot die. But when God the Son became incarnate, so that under the name of Jesus Christ He not only possessed as God the uncreated Divine Nature but also possessed as man a created human nature born of the Virgin Mary, He could allow that human nature to be put to death on the Cross. Since, in Christ, one and the same Divine Person possessed two natures, the Divine and human, it can be said that the Second Divine Person, or God the Son, gave, not His Divine Life, but His human life on the Cross for the salvation of mankind. And as only God the Son, not God the Father and not God the Holy Spirit, became man in the incarnation, the death in His human nature which is true of God the Son cannot be equally ascribed to God the Father and to God the Holy Spirit. We must keep in mind that God the Son, after the incarnation — and only God the Son — was both true God and true man. As God, He could not die; as man, He could.

Here we can only ask unbelievers to try at least to see the Christian position in the light of Christian principles and agree that it makes some kind of sense in view of those even if to unbelievers themselves, not accepting those principles, the doctrine seems absurd or even a travesty of justice. St. Paul knew that the doctrine would appear to be nonsense to those not having faith in the divinely-revealed truth on which it is based. "We preach Christ crucified," he wrote, "to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Gentiles folly; but (to us) the power of God and the wisdom of God." I Cor., 1:23.

The mockery of justice and the distortion of love or charity was on the part of men. But God's allowing the event that shocks you to happen was, in fact, the supreme vindication of justice and manifestation of charity. For on the Cross the supremely innocent Christ was voluntarily undertaking to repair all mockeries of justice and distortions of charity of which men have at any time been guilty — including those involved in putting Him to death. There was nothing vindictive in God's permission of this. His motive was solely the objective ideal of justice which demands that violated moral order should be repaired. As only one of infinite dignity could make adequate reparation for offences against an Infinite Majesty, God "so loved the world as to give His onlybegotten Son." Jn., 3:16. So justice and love blended. Christ, being God, could make that adequate reparation. Being man, He could make it as representative of men on whom, as the ones guilty of sin, the obligation of expiating moral evil necessarily fell. On Calvary, God did not punish Christ instead of guilty men. He accepted Christ's voluntary sacrifice on behalf of guilty men with whom, as man, He had identified Himself. In Christ "humanity" repaired "humanity's" evil work; and those saved will find themselves in heaven by a supreme act of God's mercy with all obligations of justice fulfilled, not with eternally unpaid debts. One must see the problem, not partially and superficially, but completely, taking all aspects of it into consideration.

You imply that here is a fact — if it be a fact — which is not within our reach; but that is only a half-truth. In general, however, before dealing with particular difficulties, it is worth noting that it is far easier to admit the resurrection of Christ than to explain the historical fact of Christianity without such a resurrection. Christ was put to death, and the hopes of His disciples died with Him. Had He stayed dead, His religion would have remained dead also. A new experience of Him as having risen from the tomb was necessary to compensate for the apparently disastrous ending of His earthly career. That experience was granted to His apostles and as new men with incredible courage and energy they set about establishing the religion of Christ which is with us to this day.

Any who would do so would not be conforming to the rules of scientific history as we understand that expression. The scientific historian deals only with observable events naturally verifiable by the average man not possessing special and supernatural means of knowledge. At most, where the resurrection of Christ is concerned, historians interested in the subject can record that the apostles proclaimed as a fact that they had met and conversed with the living risen Christ, after the tomb in which He had been buried had been found empty. What we must realise is that, although the time and place of Christ's death and burial, and the finding of the empty tomb three days later, belong to history, there was a non-historical element in the actual resurrection itself which was strangely in the world's history, yet not of the world's history. Although linked with this world as we know it, the resurrection confronts us with a kind of "fourth dimension" transcending it.

Because of the non-historical element I have mentioned. The resurrection of Christ was not like that of Lazarus in the presence of witnesses, and who was restored to life in this world under the same conditions as before, his crowds of visitors being duly reported to the Sanhedrin (Jn., 21:9). No human being in this world saw the resurrection of Christ actually occur. As for what did occur, St. Paul gives us a clue in I Cor., 15:44 where, speaking of the mystery of our own bodily death and future resurrection, he says: "It is sown a natural body: it shall rise a spiritual body." As our bodily resurrection will be like that of Christ, His was as ours will be. Had we been in the sepulchre at the moment of the resurrection, we would not have seen Him begin living again as He had been in this world before His death, rise to His feet from the place where His body had been laid, and walk out of the tomb. His body suddenly underwent a mysterious change, its material substance becoming "spiritualised" and receiving a new and supernatural mode of being. Having become reunited with the soul He had commended into His Father's keeping, His body made a transition from this world to higher invisible realms of existence. Had we been present and were we historians, what would we be able to record of our experience? Only that, as we stood and watched, the grave clothes had suddenly subsided but had remained otherwise undisturbed, showing that the body which had unaccountably disappeared had not been removed by other people entering the tomb to take it away.

There are many departments of history. Historians who, whether Christian or non-Christian, are sufficiently versed in biblical critical studies, agree that the resurrection of Christ can be neither affirmed nor denied in the name of strictly scientific history. All admit that the apostles confidently proclaimed the resurrection of Christ, demanding faith in it on the basis of the fulfilment of biblical prophecies and on their own experiences as first-hand witnesses to whom He had appeared. But the historical admission that the apostles did this cannot take one so far that he does not have to make an act of faith with the help of God's grace in the actual and mysterious event of Christ's resurrection. Unbelieving historians would say — and rightly from their point of view — that if the resurrection actually occurred, it would be so outside the course of natural events that it would be beyond the scope of scientific historical investigation; and that, lacking faith, they have no choice but to leave it as an unsolved problem. Historians who are believing Christians agree that, as a mystery of faith, the resurrection cannot be proved by merely scientific research. A profound study of history may make a good historian, but it will not necessarily make a Christian. It cannot give faith. But this does not mean, at the other extreme, that the resurrection was non-historical. It involved the intervention of God in the natural and historical order of this world with which we are familiar, but with results in another order of reality beyond our comprehension. We follow such historical evidence as does exist as far as we can, only to find ourselves on the borderland between what we can discover for ourselves and what we must accept by faith. If men reject faith in the resurrection of Christ, not historical reasons, but other factors altogether account for their doing so.

That is true; and the reasons why those who lack faith in Christ as God, lack faith also in His resurrection. If unbelievers could prove that the resurrection did not occur, then, St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians "our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain;" and we are "false witnesses" (I Cor., 15:14). But there is no historical evidence that it did not occur, as there would have been had the Jewish rulers been able to produce the dead body of the supposedly risen Christ. But that they could not do. Meantime, there are sound reasons which, while they do not compel faith, do prove that believers are not victims of credulity. Firstly, the apostles unanimously proclaimed the truth of the resurrection and of Christ's repeated appearances to them. It is to be noted that these appearances were to men whose hopes had been shattered and who were not expecting them; that they spoke of them in the language of absolute conviction; and that they were so changed by them from their previous timidity that all were prepared to die as martyrs for the truth of them. Secondly, all four evangelists record the fact that Christ's tomb was found empty on the third day after His death. Had it not been empty the apostles could, of course, easily have been refuted. Jewish leaders had recourse to spreading the story that the disciples had removed and hidden the body. But in that case the apostles would have themselves known that Christ had not risen and would not have been so foolish as to die for a useless lie. Thirdly, if all had ended with Christ's death there would be no two-thousand-years'-old Christian Church with us to this day, owing its origin, expansion and persistence to the faith preached by the apostles. The resurrection of Christ was, therefore, a reality, not created by faith but providing for our faith as reasonable a foundation as one could rightly expect.

Because historians, as historians, are not engaged in writing an account of their personal religious convictions. What can be said is that the historian who is personally a Christian and who believes in the actual resurrection of Christ has a key which enables him to bridge the apparent gap in history during the fifty days between the death of Christ and the proclamation of the resurrection-gospel by the apostles on the first Pentecost Sunday of the Christian era. But the historian who lacks that faith has to resign himself to not being able to bridge that gap, saying that he does not know what happened as an alternative to the account of the various appearances of Christ given by the apostles themselves.

It occurred in Judea, not in Galilee. In Acts, 1:3, St. Luke tells us that to His apostles our Lord "showed himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God." The many appearances during forty days clearly left room for their occurrence now in Judea, now in Galilee, both of which localities are mentioned in the Gospels. But in Acts, 1:12, St. Luke makes it clear that the final appearance occurred in Judea, concluding with the ascension of our Lord into heaven from Mt. Olivet, the apostles returning from there to Jerusalem, a walk "within a sabbath day's journey"; that is, about six furlongs or three-quarters of a mile, the distance permissible on a Jewish sabbath.

His body certainly did not continue going up and up in any geographical or astronomical sense! What did happen? In the resurrection, His body had undergone a transformation elevating it to a state of existence transcending our earth-bound conditions of space and time (See n.140 above). When the cloud received Him out of the sight of the apostles, He simply dissociated His body from our visible material world, resuming the conditions of the invisible realms of reality then normal to Him. To understand this we have to think, not in terms of measurable distance, but in terms of difference between modes or ways of existing. The risen body of Christ was free from its former earthly limitations, conforming to natural physical laws only to the degree in which He willed it to do so. For example, before the resurrection, it would have been abnormal for Jesus to render His body invisible and intangible; after the resurrection, the abnormal thing was to render it visible and tangible. John, 8:59 tells us that when the Jews took up stones to stone Him, He "hid himself and passed through their midst." If, as some commentators hold, He then rendered Himself invisible, that would be the miracle. On the other hand, it was a miracle in the opposite direction when He suddenly appeared after His resurrection, rendering Himself visible and standing among the disciples when they were gathered together in a room for fear of the Jews, the doors being shut (Jn., 20:19).

In each of His intermittent appearances to them, He returned from the spiritual and heavenly realms to which He belonged even bodily from the moment of the resurrection, rendering Himself visible once more on their own level. He thus kept His promise made to them during His last discourse to them immediately before His passion and death: "I go away, but I will return to you." Jnv 14:28. Each manifestation of Himself to them during the forty days between the resurrection and the ascension was such a return. The various appearances were not merely subjective impressions caused by the disciples' own imaginations. The manifestations were objective and supernaturally caused actualisations of Himself as they had known Him. On the occasion of the last of these, He ascended visibly above the levels of earth before their eyes, until a cloud formed beneath Him, removing Him from their sight. This ascent symbolised His final transition to the different, higher and invisible sphere of existence that was already His by virtue of His resurrection- transformation; and they understood that it was the last of His appearances to them. But before departing from them, He gave them two vitally important instructions. Firstly, the messianic kingdom as understood by the Jews was not about to be realised according to the wrong ideas they had about it. The disciples were to return to Jerusalem and await further enlightenment from the coming of the Holy Spirit. Secondly, the mission they would receive would not be restricted to Israel, but extended to the whole world. Conscious of a mission they had to accomplish and of the promised gift of the Holy Spirit awaiting them, fortified also by the parting blessing Jesus had bestowed upon them, the disciples "returned to Jerusalem with great joy" (Lk., 24:52), an enthusiasm and gladness quite inexplicable had they not been returning there from a very real experience indeed.

The late Father Teilhard de Chardin S.J. would have been pleased to hear of your interest, but not so much of its impact upon you. Having devoted a lifetime to a scientific study of palaeontology and kindred subjects, he believed he had found a way towards reconciling science but the "whole of creation" (Rom., 8:19) is tending towards a final perfection in Christ. Scientists, Teilhard argued, being firmly convinced that all visible things are the result of evolution, should find no difficulty in the idea of an evolutionary process of the whole material universe towards an eternal destiny in Christ and under the guidance of Christ. And this would mean that science and religion, far from being opposed to each other, should be accepted as completing each other. In the first and main section of his book, therefore, he dealt with man as a "phenomenon"; that is, simply as an observable object in this world, adapted to the scrutiny of scientists and philosophers. In doing so, in order to express what he believed to be his own new insights into man's evolutionary development, he invented many new terms and expressions which you find so fascinating. But you should not overlook the "Epilogue" in the last few pages of the book containing his religious reflections and which he entitled "The Christian Phenomenon."

Father de Chardin held that this material universe began at what he called "Point Alpha" as a result of a creative act by God. Only after evolving for millions of years did it produce and fit this earth to be a biosphere of plant and animal life, and, with the emergence of man, to be the source of conscious thought and of human personalisation. As a Christian, he believed that the Christ who was born in Bethlehem was indeed the Word Incarnate, God-made-man. But he also spoke of Christ — not of the "noosphere" — as the "Point Omega" of the whole evolutionary process, and of His origin among mankind as a "Christogenesis", not as a coming into this world from beyond it, but as an anticipated consummation of cosmic evolution operating from within it in order to help it towards its eternal destiny. The ambiguity of that explanation, which seemed to reduce the supernatural to the merely natural order, making Christ Himself a product of the evolutionary process, led to doubts about Father de Chardin's Christian orthodoxy. Even his words in the "Epilogue" that Christ occupies the centre of the "spiritually- converging world", and that "the redeeming Incarnation is the most realistic and cosmic of all men's faiths and hopes", did not dispel all misgivings. So we find him writing to reassure the Father-General of the Jesuits: "I am irretrievably bound to the Christ of the Gospels."

The "noosphere" was a de Chardin flight of fancy. Just as the air forms the atmosphere surrounding the earth, so Father de Chardin mentally pictured the multiplication of human beings as forming by thenconstant thinking a dense intellectual mind-sphere or "noosphere" ("nous" being Greek for "mind") enveloping our planet. Your present point, however, is that as a religionless agnostic you think people should by now have outgrown belief in Christianity. Yet, for all your admiration of some of Father de Chardin's ideas, you are at variance with him here. As a matter of fact, one of his own great desires had been to die on the day of Christ's resurrection, which meant so much to him. He was granted that wish. He offered Mass on the morning of Easter Sunday, April 10, 1955, in New York, U.S.A., dying later that same day. Unless you could have assisted at that Mass with the same faith as his, he would regard your mind as poles apart from his.

A "noosphere" from which we can derive ideas by tuning into it does not exist. In any case, the same "noosphere" could not be providing yourself with a kind of half-truth and myself with a kind of half-truth in this matter by different wave-lengths; for our positions are straightout contradictions. I believe firmly in the Divinity of Christ who was born into this world of the Blessed Virgin Mary for our redemption but who, before the Incarnation, existed and ever continues existing as the Eternal Son of God, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity. That doctrine Bertrand Russell, Julian Huxley and yourself reject as quite false. Nor, despite the difficulties in which Father Teilhard de Chardin became involved in his efforts to blend a scientific evolutionary philosophy with a Christ-centred doctrine of man and of man's eternal destiny, could you claim that your present position is in any way reconcilable with his basic beliefs.

These vary from enthusiastic support through qualified approval to complete rejection. The Anglican Canon C. E. Raven, who holds doctorates in both science and theology, offers nothing but praise in his book, "Teilhard de Chardin: Scientist and Seer." At the other extreme, the archaeologist and biblical scholar, Professor W. F. Albright, a Methodist, says in his book, "History, Archaeology and Christian Humanism," that Teilhard's main work "The Phenomenon of Man" is mere speculation "based on misuse of the principle of analogy." He declares the book to be "full of the most amazing examples of loose analogical thinking . . . applications of patterns which somewhat resemble one another, usually quite superficially." And he concludes that Teilhard offers us "the rosy illusions of a dreamer" and "a travesty of New Testament eschatology;" that is, of New Testament teachings about the Second Coming of Christ, the Last Judgment, and the end of human history in this world as we know it.

I am not aware that such is the case. That students are duly informed concerning his theories when the opportunity presents itself within the syllabus of studies I have no doubt; and that is as it should be. When, after his death in 1955, Father Teilhard's writings were published, above all his "Phenomenon of Man", they attained such publicity and caused so much excitement in so many different countries that people even began to speak of the "Phenomenon of Teilhard de Chardin." Heated controversies arose between supporters and opponents of his views throughout the press of the civilised world. Scientists, philosophers and theologians were critical of those aspects of his work which touched upon their particular fields. But multitudes of readers were deeply impressed by the immense sweep of his vision, embracing as it seemed the whole of reality. Teilhardian "Associations" were formed to promote the reading and discussion of his various works, and more and more books were being written about them. The official position of the Church in regard to his writings consists in her instructions to teachers that they must safeguard students from dangers to their faith arising from the ambiguities and incidental errors to be found in his books (See n.29 above). Teilhard himself foresaw the possibility of such errors. "I might well have deceived myself," he wrote, "on a number of points. Let others, then, try to do better." In our Catholic secondary schools, then, some account of Teilhard de Chardin's theories should be given at appropriate times as a preparation for later references to his work which will so often be encountered; but attention should be drawn to the hypothetical nature of many of his scientific assumptions; to the confusion arising from ambiguities in much of his philosophical thinking; and, from the viewpoint of the faith, to the danger of reducing everything to a natural evolutionary level as if Christianity involved no supernatural order of reality at all. In general, it can be taken for granted that no students in any of our Catholic schools are left under the impression that Father de Chardin's writings have been officially approved by the Church as being fully in agreement with the requirements of the Catholic Faith. With no particular authority attaching to it, what Father Teilhard believed to be probable takes its place among a host of other speculative theories in matters of science, philosophy and theology facing the test of time and the sorting out of elements of lasting value from those lacking such inherent powers of survival.

Joel lived about 400 B.C. and like other prophets proclaimed God's word, God's word often referring both to the present and the future. Joel's prediction of the distant future was far more significant than he himself understood, and he could not clearly decipher it. In the first part of his book he describes a contemporary plague of locusts which had devastated the land, declared it God's punishment of the people's sins, and promised that repentance would bring deliverance from it. Prophetically, he saw the whole episode as a type of a future Day of the Lord when God's judgment would fall upon the surrounding nations for their ill-treatment of Israel as His people. Meantime, His people in Jerusalem would find safety and deliverance in the Holy City by invoking the name of the Lord. Moreover, God would pour out His Holy Spirit upon them, effecting in them a deeply religious renewal. That prediction of Joel was fulfilled, not in the form in which he interpreted his vision, but in the way God Himself made clear by the actual events on the Pentecost Sunday which inaugurated the predicted messianic era of the "New Israel."

St. Peter knew that the fulfilment of all Old Testament messianic prophecies had come with Jesus, the Saviour of mankind. Moreover, Jesus had promised the apostles, in His discourse after the Last Supper, that "the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things." Jn., 14:26. Also, immediately before the ascension, He told them: "I will send the gift promised by my Father upon you; but stay in Jerusalem until you are endowed with power from on high." Lk., 24:29. In the Incarnation itself there was an intervention from on high and from outside humanity by the Eternal Son of God to fulfil the work of redemption from within humanity. In a similar way, a further intervention from on high by the Holy Spirit was necessary to enable the Church to begin her mission among humanity. When, on the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended upon the small group of assembled disciples in Jerusalem, with signs and wonders amazing and perplexing to onlooking local and visiting Jews from distant places, St. Peter had but to quote the description of the outpouring of the Spirit as predicted by Joel for all to see the fulfilment of at least that part of his prophecy in the events they had witnessed. St. Peter went on to say that the source of the gift was Jesus of Nazareth, crucified, risen from the dead, ascended into heaven, and the one hope of salvation for all prepared to believe in Him, to repent of their sins, and to be baptised in His name. This promise, he said, "is to you and to your children and to all that are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Him." Acts, 2:41, tells us that, as a result of this first discourse of St. Peter, "there were added that day about three thousand souls" — a first contribution towards the amazing growth of the Church.

Joel, with his inadequate ideas, had in mind Jews resident in Jerusalem and such Jews as the Lord would have called there from their dispersion among the nations about to fall under God's judgments. It was, however, a common theme of Israel's prophets that by its infidelities Israel of old was preparing a doom for itself, but that this would not prevent God's promises to Abraham from being fulfilled. Some of the children of Abraham would remain faithful and would survive as a remnant. The Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit inaugurated the messianic era, and those Jews who accepted Christ as the fulfilment of Israel's expectations and hopes formed "the remnant whom the Lord had called." As St. Paul puts it, in Romans 11:5, "At this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace." But since the Church founded by Christ as the "New Israel of God" was destined to expand among all nations and last till the end of time, the Old Testament idea of a "remnant" as applying to members of the particular nation of the Jews constituting the Israel of old has no place now in Christianity itself.

He did. His verdict, however, was dictated, not by history itself, but by reading into it an interpretation based upon his own anti-religious prejudices. He was determined to grant nothing that might tell in favour of the divine origin of Christianity. He published the first volume of his work in 1776, the 15th and 18th chapters of which contained his attack on Christianity. The whole work was completed in 1788. Its vast erudition and mastery of style will forever rank him among the greatest of historical writers. But since in the writing of history a selection of facts has to be made and their significance interpreted, we have to ask what Gibbon's criterion was in his selection of certain facts and his omission of others; and what influenced his interpretation of those he chose. His own personal philosophy did that, and his own personal philosophy was that of a rationalist and sceptic. What made him a sceptic? Certainly not the historical facts. Others knew those, and were not sceptics. Aware of this, Professor Gilbert Murray, himself an agnostic, says in his "History of Christianity," p.76: "Whether Christianity is to be explained as a natural development or as a miraculous revelation cannot be settled by historical research, and must be answered by each man according to his bent." Sir Gilbert Murray realised that for a historian, precisely as a historian and putting aside his religious beliefs or lack of them, the problem has to be left as an open question.

The five causes by which Gibbon thought to account for the expansion and influence of Christianity were: (1) The fanatical zeal of the first Christians; (2) Their doctrine of a future life; (3) Their false claims to miracles wrought by God; (4) Their high moral ideals; and (5) The Church's strict discipline and power of self-organisation. But Gibbon did not allow for the fact that any power of the Church to organise herself presupposed the conversion of people to her; and he omitted consideration of all the external and internal factors standing in the way of such conversions. Externally, Christianity had to meet an incredible corruption of morals, the derision of pagan philosophers, studious vilification, the allurements of worldly pleasures, and violence even to martyrdom. Internally, the obstacles were not less. The first Christians were destitute of all means of propaganda. They lacked the personal qualities necessary to gain the minds of others, nobility, philosophical training, and reputation. And they preached the necessity of believing in a despised and crucified Jew who had claimed to be God. The Jews found this a scandal and the pagan Gentiles found it folly. Only the grace of God could account for conversions to such a religion. But Gibbon not only omits consideration of these external and internal obstacles. He allows his bias to intrude. As the "Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church" points out, by Gibbon "all supernatural considerations are treated with bitter irony and ridicule," while he declares the Middle Ages to be "the triumph of barbarism and religion." Lord Acton, in his essay in the "Home and Foreign Review," said that Gibbon, as a rationalist, not believing in the supernatural, could only assign all manifestations of it to erratic enthusiasm, superstition or fraud; and he added that a Catholic like Bossuet, aware of the divine fire at its centre, was more truly at home in the history of one and the same organic Church continuously developing through the ages than Gibbon could ever be.

To its having survived and become solidly established so rapidly and so widely long before Constantine put an end to the era of the intermittent and fierce persecutions by his Edict of Milan, 313 A.D., declaring Christianity a lawfully recognised religion. It is amazing to find St. Paul writing to the Christian community in Rome, early in 58 A.D., telling the Christians there of his proposed visit to them and that their faith was already proverbial wherever he went. Tertullian, writing in North Africa about 197 A.D. to the provincial governors of the Roman Empire, told them their policy of persecution was folly. The more of us whom you destroy, he wrote, the more we multiply; for the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians. What is certain is that the Church succeeded in supplanting the pagan cults with the dominant personality of Christ as the fulfilment of ancient prophecies. Against the rampant pagan philosophies, mythologies and mystery religions, the apostolic proclamation pitted, not a new philosophy, but a gospel of salvation demanding self-denial, the abandoning of evil ways, and faith in Christ "Chosen People of God," enabling them to live on the higher spiritual levels to be expected of the children of God. St. Augustine's dilemma still stands. The success of such a religion was due to accompanying miracles wrought by God, or not. If due to such miracles, it is divinely guaranteed. If not, its survival and rapid expansion themselves constitute a miracle. One bent on refusing to admit the intervention of God may, of course, merely dismiss the problem, refusing to think about it. But Gibbon, having thought and written about it, should have declared it an insoluble enigma.

It was not meant to do so. St. Peter was addressing the Jews assembled in Jerusalem, many of them from distant places, who had come for the Jewish Feast of Pentecost, the fiftieth day after the Passover. He told them that David could not have been speaking of himself, for "his tomb is with us to this day." David, he said, foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of Christ; of whom, he added, "we are all witnesses." The Jews themselves knew that the kingdom of David, who lived about 1000 B.C., foreshadowed a more wonderful kingdom, that of a future Messiah who would be of the line of David. This promise, St. Peter told them, was fulfilled in the Risen Christ. His argument was that the Church Christ had established would henceforth be the kingdom of God for a new Chosen People of God. (We know that as a visible society this kingdom would exist as a preparatory institution on earth, finding its full perfection only in heaven.)

Cornelius, although a Gentile, was a proselyte or half-way convert to Judaism. Dissatisfied with paganism, he worshipped the God of the Jews and knew their scriptures, without accepting the full Mosaic Law. A divine intervention occurred in his case, inspiring him to send for Peter and ask for instruction in the Christian religion. Very different was the approach of St. Paul when, in 50 A.D., he addressed the pagan Greeks at Athens (Acts, 17:22f.). Without referring to any biblical prophecies, St. Paul drew their attention to the fact that they had built an altar to "the unknown god" and declared that he spoke in the name of the God they worshipped as unknown. He told them that the true God was He who created this universe and everything in it; that He is the Lord of heaven and earth; that He has fixed a day for the judgment of all mankind; and that this judgment will be a divinely-appointed man who has proved His mission by His resurrection from the dead. When the Athenians heard of the resurrection, some mocked; others said they would like to hear more about it; and a few decided to become Christians. St. Paul had far greater success among the Greeks in Macedonia, some two hundred miles to the north, and in Corinth, about fifty miles west of Athens.

The Old Covenant which God gave through Moses ended with John the Baptist as forerunner of the New Covenant given us in Christ. So Christ Himself said: "The Law and the Prophets were until John; from that time the kingdom of God is preached." Lk., 16:16. Again, at the Last Supper, Christ said: "This is the New Covenant in my blood which is poured out for you." Lk., 22:20. Hebrews, 8:8-13, quotes Jeremiah's words: "I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel . . . not according to the Covenant I made with their fathers", saying later, in 12:24: "Jesus is the Mediator of the New Covenant." In Galatians, 6:16, therefore, St. Paul declares Christians to be now the "Israel of God." The Jewish expression about the "law being written in their hearts" emphasises the dominant characteristics of the two Dispensations. In the "New Israel" (Christianity) the interior spirit of religion will be of more importance than the external observances in Israel of old; not that interior dispositions did not count in the Old Law, nor that there are no external duties in the New Law. But in the Sermon on the Mount Christ stressed the greater importance of a truly interior spirit of religion in one's heart, as contrasted with merely external observances.

In at least its initial stages, yes. "The last days" was a technical expression referring to the messianic times fulfilling the Law and the Prophets - times which arrived with the birth of Christ, the predicted Messiah, in Bethlehem of Juda. Christ established His Church "on the mountain tops", a symbolical phrase indicating a visible institution which all men could see, even though His kingdom was to be a spiritual and religious one, in the world yet not of the world. And that kingdom exists, not for the Jews only, but for all nations to whom the Gospel had to be preached "beginning at Jerusalem," Christ said; and again, to the Apostles: "You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, and even to the uttermost parts of the earth." Acts, 1:8.

It was in Zion or Jerusalem that Christ founded His Church. Its continuity with Israel ensured its being the house of the God of Jacob. As the Messiah predicted by Israel's prophets, Jesus made the Jewish people His first concern; only later commissioning His Apostles to preach the Gospel to all nations. To the Apostles He gave the power to "teach all nations" (Matt., 28:19); to rule in His kingdom, saying: "Whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven also" (Matt., 18:18); and to sanctify souls, saying: "Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them" (Jn., 20:23). So the word of the Lord comes forth from Jerusalem where Christ founded His Church; and many from all nations are taught His ways and walk is His paths by their fidelity to the teachings and precepts of the Catholic religion.

It has, to the extent that the Church Christ founded in Jerusalem still exists in this world as a visible and imperishable religious institution, remaining One by the bonds of a central authority or law which came forth out of Jerusalem; Holy by teaching us God's revealed truth and how to walk in His ways; Catholic or universally intended for and available to all nations; and Apostolic because linked by unbroken descent with the Apostles chosen by Christ Himself. Where is that One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church today? It is the one which comes spontaneously to everybody's mind on hearing someone so much as speak of the Catholic Church; or, when asked his religion, says simply that he is a Catholic.

According to the New Testament, Christ Himself spoke of the Church He founded as His kingdom (Matt., 16:18, 19). Moreover, it was long after the ascension when St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: "Walk worthy of God who has called you into His kingdom" (I Thess., 2:12); and to the Colossians that they should give thanks to God who has "transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son in whom we have redemption" (Col., 1:13).

The kingdom of Christ is not of this world in the sense of not being of worldly origin, worldly government, and for merely worldly purposes. But Christ was born into this world and belonged to the institutional religion of the Jews, being in fact its promised Messiah, the very reason for its existence. He could not fulfil the Old Law without providing a new institutional religion in this world, forming a "New Israel" or "Chosen People of God", in direct succession to Israel of old. And He laid the foundation of His new institution by choosing twelve apostles for His "New Israel" as representing the Twelve Tribes of Israel of old, entrusting to them powers to teach, to rule, and to sanctify by sacramental means the new "People of God." The Jews in general, looking for a temporal messianic kingdom of this world, rejected Him and the spiritual yet visible kingdom He offered in the form of His Church. But some, like Holy Simeon, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, were enabled to say, blessing God, and with a great sense of peace: "My eyes have seen thy salvation . . . a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for the glory of thy people Israel." Lk., 2:27-32. That insight is granted to those who see the Catholic Church as the "People of God", founded by Christ with a hierarchical constitution intended for the extending of God's rule in the hearts of men and for the salvation of their souls - the whole organic society or institutional assembly existing as the mystical body of Christ, the very Son of God. Such is God's kingdom on earth, in the world yet not of it, preparing for its perfect fulfilment in the eternal and heavenly glory of Christ and of all members of Christ, with whom He identifies Himself and who have identified themselves with Him.

Hie right was based on the fact that the Church, primarily concerned with spiritual aims, is yet a visible society in this world. The Emperor Constantine's conversion and his Edict of Toleration in 313 A.D., ending three centuries of persecution, made the foundation of what we speak of as "Christendom" possible. Christianity came above ground and spread rapidly throughout the Roman Empire. But this meant two visible societies everywhere, Church and State, each having jurisdiction, the one spiritual, the other temporal, over the same members. In 800 A.D. the Emperor Charlemagne of the West looked out, no longer upon a pagan Roman Empire, but upon an Empire that had become Christian, and in which all professed the same religion. He realised that mutual agreements between the authorities of the Church and State were essential. So, acknowledging himself to be a spiritual subject of the Church, he had himself crowned as first Emperor of the "Holy Roman Empire" by Pope Leo III, promising his protection of the welfare of the Church and receiving from the Pope for himself and his successors such privileges in regard to ecclesiastical administration within his territories as could be lawfully granted to him. Such ideals might have continued to hold good if only history would stand still. But one has only to look back over the political conflicts which have torn Europe to shreds during the past thousand years and the religious divisions which have ended the "undivided Christendom" that once was, to realise that charges and counter-charges were inevitable, namely, either that the Church was seeking absolute supremacy over all things for the spiritual power, or that the States were seeking absolute power over all things for the secular rulers. That long-standing and complicated problem, however, belongs to the past. The Second Vatican Council, in its "Constitution on the Church in the Modern World", n.76, said: "In the proper spheres, the political community and the Church are mutually independent and self-governing. Yet, by a different title, each serves the personal and social vocation of the same human beings . . . (The Church) does not place her hope in privileges conferred by civil authority. Indeed, she stands ready to renounce the exercise of certain legitimately acquired rights if it becomes clear . . . that new conditions of life demand other arrangements." Being the same Church, the Catholic Church would find herself quite at home were she thrown back into the same environment that was hers during the first three centuries of persecution, before any secular powers deigned to grant her recognition at all.

Not in the sense that the Holy Spirit guides individual members of the Church in a way contrary to the official teachings and rulings of the Church. Christ Himself established His Church for the preservation and diffusion of His religion, under the guidance and protection of the Holy Spirit, for the service of all times, all peoples great and small, learned and illiterate alike. We have to hold that, since the Holy Spirit does not contradict Himself, there can be no conflict between His guidance of the Church collectively and His guidance of her members individually. I am speaking, of course, of doctrines and duties essential to Christianity as such. There are areas where the Holy Spirit may guide individuals in personal matters over and above but never in conflict with official decisions already proclaimed by the Church under His guidance.

I do not speak for "any" Church. Discussion of differences between Churches must be reserved for questions on Ecumenism. Here it will be enough to say that no Catholic is asked to believe that the Holy Spirit is guided by'the ChurdL what tie New Testament pots before us is the fact that God who in times past spoke throng the prophets, has in these days spoken to lis by His Son CHsb., 1:1-2). That Divine Son in turn established His Chord* to continue His work under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, teaching afl nations and baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Sprat (Matt., 28:19, 20j. By baptism we become members of the Church which the New Testament describes as the "body of Christ". The Christian lives as a matter of coarse in virtue of the life of the body of which he is a member. It is true that each member has his own particular needs, his own personal decisions to make in many matters, and responsibility for his own individual salvation. He cam therefore, rely upon necessary7 guidance by the Holy Spirit in his own particular case in answer to his prayers. But such guidance by the Holy Spirit is always within the context of the individual's incorporation as a member within the Church as tie mystical body of Christ; nor will t i e Holy Spirit's guidance ever be at variance with responsibilities arising from such membership. One who has rightly grasped the mind of the Holy Spirit realises that there is no place for separatist individualism where the Christian religion is concerned and that he cannot rightly claim to be guided by tie Holy Spirit into a rejection of the Church as the very means appointed by God for our guidance in His name and with His authority.

No passage in the New Testament suggests that the guidance of the Church may at any time be discarded. There we are told that Christ is the head of the Church; that we are members of Him by being members of the Church; and that our duty is to "strive to excel in building up the Church" (I Cor., 14:12). We must remember that on Pentecost Sunday the Holy Spirit descended as promised upon the apostles and disciples gathered together in Jerusalem as an organic group, thus manifesting the social character of Christian existence. The Church as the body of Christ is collectively indwelt by the life-giving Spirit of God, a grace in which individuals as living members necessarily participate. But Christ Himself appointed as authoritative spokesmen for the Church the apostles and their successors. It was not for non-Christians, but for those who were already Christians that St. Paul wrote to Timothy that the Church "is the pillar and safeguard of truth" (I Tim., 3:15). At the Council of Jerusalem, in 49 A.D., the apostles themselves, in issuing a disciplinary decree, prefaced their decision with the words: "It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us" (Acts, 15:28). Again, about ten years later, addressing the bishops of Asia Minor gathered at Ephesus to bid him a final farewell, St. Paul said: "Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock wherein the Holy Spirit has made you guardians to rule the Church of God" (Acts, 20:28). The reciprocal duty of ordinary members of the Church is stressed in Hebrews 13:17 with, the words: "Obey your prelates and be subject to them, for they watch as being to render an account of your souls." These aspects of New Testament teaching need to be taken into account if we are to hold balanced views on the nature of Christianity and not become victims of an isolated individualism quite foreign to it.

The Council provided no grounds for such an over-simplification. Its Decree on ''The Constitution of the Church" ("Lumen Gentium") begins by declaring that Christ founded His Church upon the apostles, listing the various figures of speech in the New Testament which explain the mysterious nature of the Church, and proclaiming the mission of the Church, with powers of teaching, ruling and sanctifying derived from the apostles, to establish the reign of Christ in this world among men. enrolling them as members of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. The second chapter of the Decree particularly emphasises that, as God formed for Himself a Chosen People of old from the nation of Israel, so Christ. Israel's promised Messiah, established a New Covenant and formed a new "People of God" independently of racial and national limitations who were to remain one "People", and one only, within the unity of His Church. The Council added that, although this Church is to be found in the Catholic Church, many elements of truth, belief in Christ, reverence for holy scripture, and a sacramental bond with her by baptism have survived in Christian communities separated from her; also that these elements inspire in them a desire for unity such as Christ intends, although they do not yet see their way through the barriers of their denominational divisions. The realisation that Christ willed the new community of all who believe in Him to form a unified "People of God" should be a help towards readjusting one's outlook and to rise above inherited loyalties to different and divergent groups.

No Catholic believes the Catholic Church to be "an organisation set up by the hierarchy." In explaining the origin and nature of the Grarch. the Vatican Council said that "Christ called together a people made up of Jews and Gentiles, making them one. not according to the flesh but in the Spirit." That stressed the basic dignity of being Christians apart from any distinctions among them according to office. But Christ Himself chose from among His disciples the twelve Apostles, to whom He gave authority in the Church, an authority they shared out to bishops they appointed in various localities. All Catholics, popes, bishops, priests, brothers, nuns and laity alike, constitute "The People of God in the kingdom of God." No individual Catholic or particular groups of Catholics can say "we are the Church", but all can say that they are equally members of the Church; and that applies from the Pope down to the most recently baptised infant.

St. Peter, in those words, transfers to the New Israel or followers of Christ the titles given in Exodus 19:6 to Israel of old. Moses constantly impressed upon his people that they were to regard themselves among the nations as a priestly nation consecrated to God, as holy to the Lord, and as called upon to exemplify true religion in the world. The very claim of the Catholic religion to be the true religion involves a claim that St. Peter's words apply to all who profess it. However, although they ought to do so, it does not follow that all Catholics will in fact live the holy lives of a people especially consecrated to God. Christ Himself, under no illusions concerning the weakness and instability of human beings, said of His Church that it would be like a net holding good and bad fish (Matt., 13:47). But bad fish in the net do not mean a bad net. The Catholic Church provides her members with all the means of holiness, and the canonised saints throughout the centuries are evidence of her influence upon those who make serious and generous efforts to live up to their religion.

The Catholic religion remains both a religion of the spirit and a religion of authority. The one does not exclude the other. The whole of the gospel inculcates the necessity of personal virtue and holiness by means of grace derived from one's union with Christ who said: "I am the vine and you are the branches" (Jn., 15:5). But a fully developed and properly balanced religion demands three elements embracing the whole man as God made him, mind and heart and will - a divinely revealed truth taught with authority and to be believed; personal religious experience in a spirit of worship; and the will to obey the disciplinary laws necessary for the social or community life of the Church Christ founded as a visible institution. All three elements are essential characteristics of the Catholic religion.

It is part of our faith, of course, that the Catholic Church can never cease to be the one true Church established, commissioned and guaranteed by Christ till the end of time, "the pillar and safeguard" of divinely-revealed truth, as St. Paul puts it in I Tim., 3:15. Times, however, change, and the Church has to change her methods with them. In that sense we may say that the world conditions the activities of the Church which has to adapt herself to the ability of any given age to grasp the meaning of Christianity. What the Church must do is to make sure that what she is trying to convey remains the same; that is the authentic religion of Christ. As for the Church's influence on the world, in 1965, during the Fourth Session of the Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI flew to the United States to address the United Nations Assembly. That a Pope should be welcomed there, with all members listening willingly and respectfully to what he had to say to them, made headlines in all the world's newspapers; and the effect of his words on all present about the world's needs and their own responsibilities has been deep and lasting, even though we do not look for miracles overnight.

Where the internal affairs of the Church are concerned, one who still has the Catholic faith realises that talk of a democratic attitude is an unjustified recourse to secular political ideas. On October 5, 1966, Pope Paul VI, in a public audience, said that the recent Council had indeed paid attention to the rights and duties of the laity; but he stressed that the Church is not a merely human and democratic institution; that it is divinely-established and endowed from above with divine authority; and that all of us, himself included, remaining disciples, must seek the fulfilment, not of our own desires, but of the Divine Will; and he strongly rebuked any spirit of indiscipline and self-assertion which would seek emancipation from due submission to the Will of God as made known to us by the official teachings of the Church.

Much depends here on what people understand as infallibility. Some think Catholics regard every utterance of their Church on anything as necessarily the revealed Word of God. They do not. They certainly see obedience to the disciplinary laws of the Church as the will of God for them. But the infallibility of the Church relates essentially to the divinely-revealed truth given to the world by Christ and the Apostles. It means a God-given inability to fail in preserving and proclaiming that truth. Directly, the defined dogmas of the Church are merely official declarations binding on the whole Church that certain doctrines are integral parts of that truth. Indirectly, Divine Providence sees to it that her ordinary teachings on religion and morals are neither opposed to that truth nor liable to lead her people in ways conflicting with it.

To do that, one would have to abandon faith in God as the Source of truth, in Christ as the Word Incarnate, and in the Holy Spirit whom He bestowed upon the New Israel or People of God which He called His Church and founded upon His twelve Apostles. Belief in the indefectibility and infallibility of the Church, taken collectively as a Church, leads back inevitably to faith in the basic truths I have mentioned. Far greater supernatural powers were bestowed upon the New Israel than upon the Old Israel for the guardianship of the truth brought to the world by Christ who said that He Himself is "the Way, the Truth and the Life" (Jn., 14:6), a claim no prophet of old ever dreamed of making. On our present subject, there are three considerations to be kept in mind. Firstly, Christ declared His intention of establishing a Church against which the forces of evil would never prevail (Matt., 16:18), as such forces would prevail if they could lead the Church into distorting, falsifying and betraying the essentials of the Gospel of Christ. Secondly, we have the promise of Christ to the Church (represented by the Apostles) that the Father "will send the Spirit of truth to remain with you forever" . . . "who will guide you into all truth" (Jn., 14: 16, 17; 16:13), a promise fulfilled when the Holy Spirit descended upon the assembled apostles and disciples on the first Pentecost Sunday (Acts, 2:1-4). Thirdly, Christ's final commission to His Apostles is unintelligible if there were no supernatural guarantee of their reliability. "All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me," He said. "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and behold I am with you all days even to the end of the world." Matt., 28:18-20. His presence and protection must still be a reality.

Did any of them do so, he would not only no longer be a leader of the Catholic Church; he would cease to be a Catholic at all, ranking as an unbeliever who had lapsed from the Catholic Faith. The Second Vatican Council, in its "Constitution on the Church", n.25, reaffirmed that "the infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed His Church to be endowed in defining a doctrine of faith and morals extends as far as extends the deposit of divine revelation, which must be religiously guarded and faithfully expounded." That the more than two thousand Catholic bishops assembled at the Council should have endorsed that declaration, promulgated in 1964, sufficiently answers your suggestion.

We are dealing with religion. The reference is to the Catholic Church as the "New Israel" or "People of God;" and the subject matter concerns the divinely-revealed truths contained in the Christian Faith. All Catholics have the same faith; but some are better informed about its contents, others less well-informed. Not all are trained scripture scholars and theologians, any more than all law-abiding citizens with sufficient practical knowledge of civic duties are trained lawyers, experts in all aspects of civic legislation. The average Catholic receives instruction in the basic truths contained in the Apostles' Creed; on the nature of the Mass and the Sacraments; on the moral obligations imposed upon us by God's commandments and the precepts of the Church; on the significance of life in this world and the next; and they learn the main prayers for daily personal use. Over and above this explicit knowledge of their religion, they have implicit faith in whatever else competent Church authorities have officially declared, when the need arose, to be the correct and necessary meaning of other aspects of the Christian religion. This follows from their acceptance of the proposition in the Apostles' Creed: "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." It should be noted that, since human beings think, different individual Catholic writers, while retaining the same essential faith, arrive at different insights concerning the significance of various Catholic doctrines. Their opinions are not authoritative and have no more value than the reasons they can advance for them. Naturally, these personal opinions do not fall within the scope of the formula: "I believe all that the Church believes and teaches." However, there is a far wider area within the Catholic Church for differences of opinion in religious matters than most people imagine, provided that all who claim to be Catholics keep within the boundaries of those teachings which have been infallibly defined by the Church as articles of faith and which must be accepted under pain of forfeiting one's membership of the Church; and also provided they do not advocate opinions which the Church, even though not infallibly, has authoritatively declared unacceptable because of their ambiguity or perhaps a divergence in principle and logical consequences from authentic Catholic doctrine.

The answer to that is obviously - no. If a man does not believe a thing, then he does not believe it; and that's all about it. If he professed outwardly to believe it, while saying within himself: "All the same, I don't," he would not really believe it at all. But granted that a man is a Catholic who already has faith in the Catholic Church and in her divinely given teaching-authority, then he acknowledges the right and the duty of the Catholic Church to prescribe what the Catholic religion requires of him if he wishes to remain a Catholic. His conscience dictates an obligation to believe both in the Catholic Church and in all that she defines in the name of God to be an The answer to that is obviously - no. If a man does not believe a thing, then he does not believe it; and that's all about it. If he professed outwardly to believe it, while saying within himself: "All the same, I essential and integral part of the divinely-revealed truth. If his conscience is so atrophied that it no longer dictates such an obligation, then he has simply ceased to be a Catholic, in whatever way he may attempt to rationalise his position.

We cannot declare to be psychologically impossible an experience which is that of all human beings without exception; an experience without which our system of education, primary, secondary and tertiary would come to a standstill - no students being prepared to accept implicitly what their teachers put before them; without which social relationships would become chaotic - the rule being to doubt everybody without compelling proof of reliability in each case; and without which the training of highly-qualified legal, medical and other professional men to put their skill at the service of clients and patients would be a sheer waste of time - clients and patients refusing to take any advice unless the specialists in question spend time giving compelling reasons why one should believe what they say. As a simple test-case, ring the Railway Inquiry Bureau and ask when the next train leaves for a given destination. On receiving your answer, tell the officer in charge that you find it psychologically impossible to believe personally that the information given you is true unless you are given compelling reasons as a motive for accepting it. You will merely hear the click of his 'phone as he replaces it and turns to the next inquirer. As far as psychology is concerned, the same common-sensed attitude prevails, although on a different level, where it is a question of a Catholic's confidence in the reliability of his Church's teaching-authority on religious matters.

The general infallibility of the Church means that she can never fail in preserving intact the divinely-revealed truths of the Christian religion; or, as Jude, 3 puts it: "The faith once delivered to the saints." It is only in extraordinary circumstances, however, that the Church exercises her full teaching-authority by issuing a particular infallible definition. Technically infallible particular decrees are, therefore, comparatively rare. Usually, in her day-to-day teaching, the Church issues official and authoritative decisions which do not claim infallibility, but which do demand sincere religious acceptance by Catholics. Such acceptance is called religious because the motive is religious, namely, confidence in the ordinary yet still God-given authority attached to the teaching-office of the Church even when it is exercised non-infallibly. A Catholic knows, not merely as a possibility but with moral certainty that he is safe in "thinking with the Church", being convinced that the Holy Spirit watches over her normal and ordinary guidance of the faithful for the sake of the collective welfare of the whole Christian community.

Her infallibility does not mean that the changing circumstances of history itself will not create new problems for the Church in adjusting herself to them, while maintaining the essentials of Christian faith, Christian discipline and Christian worship. These problems Pope John XXIII thought to be of sufficient gravity to warrant his calling upon the Bishops of the Catholic Church as successors of the Apostles to assemble from all parts of the world in a General Council (1962-1965) for the sake of discussion and the deciding of the issues involved.

Taking the Catholic Church as a whole, it certainly cannot be so altered as to become another kind of a Church, different from the kind of Church Christ established. In secondary matters, however, which Christ Himself left to the discretion of the Church, changes can and will necessarily occur from age to age, as in further clarifications of doctrine and in such altered disciplinary measures as circumstances require. In this sense, as you say, there will be reforms in the Church; but there cannot be any reform of the Church in the sense of repudiating the existing Church and forming another and man-made Church, different in kind from that instituted by Christ.

The life of the Church surely consists in her continuing to be what Christ intended her to be, a visible religious society in this world founded by Him upon His Apostles and commissioned by Him to continue His work till the end of time, assisted by the indwelling Holy Spirit, teaching, guiding, saving and sanctifying all willing to accept her ministrations. Many people think of a Church as a merely humanlydevised association of like-minded persons according to their own particular preferences, and for them such a Church will be merely the human beings comprising it. But that is not the New Testament idea of the Church. In the New Testament the Church is put before us, not merely as an organisation, but as a living organism, simultaneously human and divine; that is, as something greater than the merely human elements belonging to it, whether taken individually or collectively. Christ, we are told, is the Head of the Church which is His body; and we who are members of the Church are members of Christ, with the same unifying Holy Spirit linking both Head and members. The life of every individual member of the Church without exception ought, of course, to be characterised by ever-renewed efforts to live according to the teachings and precepts of the Church and thus attain to closer union with Christ the Head of the Church, a union He declared to be so necessary when He said: "I am the vine, you are the branches. As the branch cannot bear fruit unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me." Jn., 15:4. Christian virtue results from our taking seriously these declarations of the Word of God; our failures result from our own neglect of them.

The reference to "earthen vessels" occurs in 2 Cor., 4:7, where St. Paul, with his own deficiencies in mind, says that the preaching of the Gospel of Christ has been entrusted to men of no great attainments and subject to human weaknesses, in order to show that the preservation of its truth and power must be due to the divine influence and protection, and not to any merely human qualities they may possess. The Catholic Church speaks of her own apostolate in precisely the same way as St. Paul spoke of his, fully admitting that without the divine influence and protection she herself would neither have survived nor succeeded in spreading a knowledge of the Gospel to so many millions of souls throughout the two thousand years of her existence.

That the Catholic Church is infallible, that is, unable owing to the protection of the Holy Spirit to teach officially doctrines opposed to the Gospels, does not mean that members of the Church are endowed with impeccability, that is, with inability to corrupt themselves by sinful behaviour. That is another matter altogether. As regards infallibility, St. Paul's description of the "Church of the Living God" as "the pillar and mainstay of truth" (I Tim., 3:15), which could only be by the transcendent Will and Power of God, excludes the possibility of her "corrupting the Gospel bequeathed to her." As regards the statement that "the Church is always sinning," we have to be realists enough to accept Christ's parable of His Church as a net holding good and bad fish, the bad ones eventually being sorted out from the good ones and discarded (Matt., 13:47). But bad fish do not mean a bad net, and we do not rightly judge the "net" or "Church" by those within her who do not live up to her teachings. Those who have fully lived up to her teachings are her canonised Saints, who were not "always sinning". And does not St. Paul, in Ephesians 5:27, describe the Church as Christ visualises it: "a glorious Church, without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish?" That is the kind of Church which will be found still there when the great sorting out has occurred and the "bad fish" have been cast out of the net. Meantime, and once more, the dominant power of God does not permit the deficiencies of the human elements in the Church to affect her official reliability or infallibility in fulfilling her God-given mission to proclaim faithfully the Gospel of Christ through all ages till the end of time.

Surely by all three, together of course with the help of God's grace. Since God has given us intelligence, He expects us to use it. In ordinary everyday business, domestic and personal activities that is evident to everyone. Where religion is concerned, an intelligent Catholic wants to live intelligently as a Catholic. He takes seriously Christ's declaration: "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Jn., 8:31. To continue in the word of Christ can only mean to persevere both as regards belief and practice in the essentials of the religion He gave to mankind through the Apostles and the Church upon whom He sent the Holy Spirit on the first Pentecost. Among the essentials is the power of the Church through her Bishops as successors of the Apostles to make necessary disciplinary laws. So Christ Himself commanded that we "hear the Church" which he endowed with powers of "binding and loosing" (Matt., 18:18) - powers to be exercised by those appointed "to rule the Church of God", with the assistance of the Holy Spirit (Acts, 20:28). Directly, this power concerns religious matters affecting both our beliefs and our conduct. Indirectly, it concerns temporal interests in so far as they are connected with the welfare of souls. In purely civic and political matters which do not overlap into the moral sphere, the Church merely declares it the duty of her members to be law-abiding citizens.

The Second Vatican Council, in its "Constitution on the Church", n.25, declared as a conscientious duty that "the faithful are obliged to accept their bishop's decisions on matters of faith and morals and to adhere to them with a ready and respectful allegiance of mind and will." Normally, a Catholic who had previously thought differently, is only too happy to admit that he was misinformed once he hears or reads his bishop's statement of what the Catholic position really is. If, greatly attached to his own opposite opinion, he found difficulty in accepting the decision, his first duty would be to look into things more closely, suspecting his need for further knowledge of the subject. He would do well also to consult others competent to advise him. Above all, he should remember that the presumption would stand for ecclesiastical authorities speaking in the name of their responsible office, which carries with it a right to the special assistance of the Holy Spirit in the fulfilling of its duties. In a spirit of faith he could quite reasonably say to himself that in religious and moral problems the ecclesiastical authorities are more likely to be right than he is, and that it would be wiser on his part to prefer their judgment to his own. To yield to such second and wiser thoughts would better preserve his "intellectual integrity" than would obstinate adherence to his own first thoughts.

Not if he received ecclesiastical permission to do so. When such permission is given, it is usually with the declaration that it does not imply endorsement of the views expressed by the writer. Even so, the author would certainly behave wrongly were he to manifest any lack of reverence for those holding official positions in the Church, thus further disedifying the faithful beyond the confusion and dismay his wayward opinions in themselves might cause among them. Should his lawful superiors forbid his publishing his views, he would be obliged in conscience to refrain from doing so, keeping his own opinions to himself; or restricting them to private discussions of them in academic circles, or with appropriate ecclesiastical authorities until these should judge otherwise, granted his willingness to make suitable emendations.

Not to the extent the news-media may have led many to imagine. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) naturally gave rise to discussions and conflicting opinions as to what changes an up-dating or renewal of the Church required, and within what limits these were permissible. The Council's proceedings secured world-wide publicity. Books by theologians, biblical scholars, liturgists, canonists, and interested laity poured from the press; articles appeared in innumerable periodicals; and the kindest thing to say would be that the disciplinary formalities of the Church as regards the publication of such material were in many cases thought of as in abeyance rather than defied during such a period of transition. One cannot deny, however, that some extremists became very vocal in their destructive rather than any truly constructive criticism of the Church; and newspapers, ever on the lookout for the sensational, have gladly given them the publicity they sought. These extremists have shown little respect for the authority of the Church. With a confidence bordering on arrogance they have proclaimed their own novel ideas as if these were legitimate developments of doctrine rather than distortions of it; and the spirit of their utterances suggests that an ultimate choice between having to retrace their steps or persisting in their obstinacy would find them unhappily persisting - but no longer as Catholics. To revert, however, to your question. One's final judgment should be reserved for a later and more settled period, in the meantime being based on the better balanced majority of Catholic spokesmen and writers than on a minority of irresponsible extremists.

That was a build-up to suit news-reports themselves. Long before the Council assembled, a Commission was appointed to find competent experts or "periti" on this or that given subject, biblical, philosophical, ^canonical, theological, liturgical, sociological etc., who could act as consuitors when necessary. In Germany, Dr. Hans Kung had published a specialised study of the Calvinist Karl Barth's teaching on "Justification by Faith" in the light of the defined doctrines of the Council of Trent. Because of his researches on that particular subject, he was chosen by the Commission. He was one of some two hundred such consultors thus chosen, Pope John XXIII merely ratifying the list. It is only fair to say that Father Kung himself made no claim to have been personally chosen by Pope John XXIII; nor did any of the periti claim that their competence in the subjects for which they were chosen meant that they were competent in everything. As a matter of fact, in 1961, the year before the Council, Father Kung published a second book entitled: "The Council, Reform and Reunion." Msgr. James C. Fenton, for many years professor of dogmatic theology in the Catholic University of America, reviewing this book in the "American Ecclesiastical Review", Sept., 1962, declared it "an extraordinarily unsatisfactory source of information about the nature and the activities of the Catholic Church," showing how inaccurate was Father Kung's "own grasp and understanding of the theology of the Church." Msgr. Fenton was himself one of the experts at the Second Vatican Council "named by Pope John", if one wishes to put it that way.

The First Session of Vatican II finished on December 8, 1962; the Second Session was to commence on September 29, 1963. In between the Sessions, Father Kung engaged in lecturing-tours, publicising his own ideas of what the Council should do in its future Sessions. It is his misfortune if press-reports have not done him justice; but since the ideas ascribed to him have so impressed the public, comments upon them are necessary. Father Kung, of course, had no particular mandate to castigate anybody, and a use of the word "totalitarian", with all its sinister associations, would be quite indefensible. As for his attributing the laity's observance of the laws of their religion to timidity, cowardice and a lack of self-reliance, Mr. Evelyn Waugh, a Catholic layman present at the lecture, said that such extravagant expressions could only mislead the Council Fathers into entertaining ideas "far from the hopes of the large but less vocal body of the laity." One is left wondering what Father Kung himself hoped to gain by indulging in such unbridled invective at King's College, London University.

That means only that a man must be truly conscientious in all that he does. What is conscience? It is a practical judgment of man's reason as to what he is morally obliged to do. The Catholic, rightly convinced that the Catholic Church is the divinely-authorised guide of mankind in matters of faith and morals, reasonably judges that it is his duty to accept her official teachings in those matters and conscientiously adheres to them. He obeys his conscience in doing so. But Father Kung wanted to suggest that Catholics are independent of the guidance of their Church as to what they are religiously obliged to believe and do, an idea quite opposed to the Catholic Faith. It is significant that, in the following year, 1964, a Protestant writer, A. M. Carson, in his book "Roman Catholicism Today," pp. 8-11, says that, although Dr. Kung speaks in many ways like a Protestant and has been permitted more latitude than others who have raised rebellious voices in times past, Protestants must not be deceived into thinking him truly representative of the Catholic Church. Mr. Carson accordingly, for purposes of reference in his own book, prefers to use another German and more orthodox exponent of Catholicism, Dr. Ludwig Ott, in his book "Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma."

A Catholic who has been both baptised and who has received due, even though elementary instruction in his Catholic Faith, and who later thought he should abandon it, would have an ill-informed conscience; and his moral obligation would be, not to follow, but to remedy his erroneous impulsive judgment by seeking advice from a priest or someone else competent to help him. If, through lack of goodwill, he is not prepared to do that, he is blameworthy before God for the mistake leading to his deliberate rejection of the teachings of the Church. No responsible theologian would publicly proclaim in any case a rare and exceptional possibility as ordinary Catholic doctrine which the average person could only interpret as the principle of private judgment, and as if Catholics were morally free in conscience to stay in the Catholic Church or abandon it as they pleased.

In the text quoted, St. Paul was speaking neither of obedience nor of proving anything. He was warning individual Christians not to take it for granted that every idea they imagined to have come to them from the Holy Spirit was really from the Holy Spirit. His advice was to stop and think, because self-deception in this matter is very easy. Msgr. Knox rightly translates the verse: "Scrutinize all carefully, retaining only what is good, and rejecting all that has a look of evil about it." It was unpardonable to use such a text in reference to a wholly unrelated subject and to suggest that we owe obedience to lawful authorities only provided they explain to our own satisfaction their reasons for the decisions they make.

Father Kung's tendentious reference to "blind" obedience was for rhetorical purposes. There is such a thing as implicit obedience to those in authority precisely because they have authority. In an army, when commanding officers have planned some given operation, soldiers implicitly obey orders; but their observance of military discipline is not itself "blind". It is due to an intelligent realisation that orders are orders and that chaos would result if the rule for each individual soldier was only what he personally decided to do. A moment's thought will recall many instances where discipline must be maintained, as between parents and children in a home, or teachers and pupils in a school, reason demanding that the one in charge should be obeyed, without the reason for each particular command having to be given. Where the Church is concerned, of course, we move into the sphere of religion, one essential element of which is necessarily a spirit of obedience. We went from God by disobedience. If religion is to get us back to God, it must require a retracing of our steps by obedience. Christ, having become man for our redemption, said of Himself: "I came, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me." Jn., 6:38. To us He says: "If you love me, keep my commandments." Jn., 15:15. One of His commandments is that we must obey the authority He has vested in His Church; so much so that if a man "will not hear the Church, let him be to you as the heathen and publican" (Matt., 18:17) that is, as one not belonging to the "People of God" at all.

As a theologian, particularly in a popular lecture, he should have added that the conscience of a Catholic itself dictates obedience to lawful ecclesiastical authorities acting within the sphere of their competence. Since God's authority remains always supreme, ecclesiastical authorities themselves being subject to it, no duties can be imposed upon us by anyone holding office in the Church which are clearly opposed to God's known commandments. If we were told even by the Pope to do anything obviously sinful, we would have to refuse obedience on the ground that he had exceeded his authority and that "we must obey God rather than men." Acts, 5:29. But here we have to beware of selfdeception. If it is a question of pitting our own judgment of the meaning of God's law against the Church's official interpretation of it, the presumption stands for that of the ecclesiastical authorities who, in the exercising of their office, have a promised assistance of the Holy Spirit in a special way not guaranteed to us in our individual private judgments.

Those are not the words of a theologian, but rather of a demagogue. When the attention of his own bishop in Germany was drawn to his extravagances, the bishop replied, over-indulgently: "He is a young man and likes to be given his head." At the time of his London lecture, Father Kung was but thirty-five years of age and he should have been the last in the world to complain of a lack of freedom. His slanderous references to the administrators of the Congregations, Tribunals and Offices of the Church were, of course, inexcusable. Even conscientious men in the service of the Church may make mistakes at times in dealing with particular cases, but they must be given credit for being conscientious, intent on safeguarding the Faith and acting for the welfare of souls. The trick of equating Catholicism with Communism was adopted twenty years ago by that bitter enemy of the Catholic Church, Paul Blanshard, in his book "Communism, Democracy, and Catholic Power." Even the Anglican "Church Times", of London, June 13, 1952, saw through Blanshard's trick, saying that his tactics are to establish an essential kinship between two great authoritarian systems denying freedom to the minds of men. But he does not see that there is a sense in which the Church must be authoritarian. "Unless it is to fail in its duty," this Anglican paper rightly stressed, "it must assert the absolute supremacy of God as much as Communism must assert the supremacy of its own dismal creed." The differences, however, begin to appear "when the supremacy is defined and the ways in which each body tries to exercise its claim are examined." For Communism, the State is the ultimate source of all human rights and liberties. There can be nothing outside the State; nothing above the State; nothing against the State. Catholicism strikes at the root of all this by declaring everything to be limited by the laws of God, the State itself being subordinate to the fundamental rights of the human person given by God. The Congregationalist biblical scholar, Dr. C. H. Dodd, in his Bampton Lectures "Gospel and Law" at Columbia University, New York, 1950, pp. 35, 36, insisted that according to the New Testament the Church as established by Christ must claim a rightly-understood absolute religious authority, but that this cannot be called totalitarian in the political sense because the Church is not a self-determining power but one "entirely subordinate to ends beyond itself, the ends of Christ." Father Kung, for rhetorical purposes, preferred to adopt the trickery of Paul Blanshard. But one does not do justice to the Catholic Church by omitting all consideration of her supernatural aspects, by dwelling on and exaggerating defects in her purely human elements, and by a selective emphasis creating distorted and superficial resemblances to Communism!

Awareness of God

The Faith of Israel

The Importance of Man

Origin of the Gospels

The Divine Redeemer

The Catholic Church

The Papacy

The Biblical Tradition

The Blessed Virgin Mary

Liturgy and Sacraments

Moral Problems

Final Realities

The Ecumenical Movement

Catholic Apologetics in Question & Answer Form

Awareness of God

The Faith of Israel

The Importance of Man

Origin of the Gospels

The Divine Redeemer

The Catholic Church

The Papacy

The Biblical Tradition

The Blessed Virgin Mary

Liturgy and Sacraments

Moral Problems

Final Realities

The Ecumenical Movement

QUESTIONS IN VOLUME 5

101. In the Apostles' Creed we say: "I believe in God the Father Almighty . . . and in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary."

102. Does it not follow that, not the First Person of the Holy Trinity, but the Holy Spirit was the Father of our Lord?

104. The opening verse of St. John's Gospel reads: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

105. Did St. John mean that the "Word" was the name of Christ's spirit when He was in heaven before the Incarnation?

106. We Christadelphians believe Christ to be the "Son of God", but not "God the Son" in a Trinitarian sense.

107. One cannot believe Christ to be the Son of God, yet to be God! He cannot be both.

108. In John 14:18, Jesus said: "The Father is greater than I." That does not suggest equality with the Father.

109. If Jesus was God, He must always have known all things.

110. Such teaching has one and the same Person as God knowing all things, yet as man not knowing all things. Is not that rather paradoxical?

111. According to Mark, 13:32, speaking of the end of the world, Christ said: "Of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

112. On one occasion Jesus did not know who had touched Him and had to ask who it was (Lk., 8:45). If He were God, that would not have been necessary.

113. Did the resurrection of Lazarus (Jn., 11:1-44) really happen, or was it—as has been said—a story invented as a parable to illustrate the teaching of Jesus?

114. Why did not the first three Gospels mention so wonderful a miracle?

115. What did Jesus mean when He said to Martha: "I am the resurrection and the life"?

116. Was it not strange teaching that if one hates not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, and his own life also, he cannot be Christ's disciple? (Lk., 14:26).

117. Were Christ God as well as man, how could He cry out on the Cross: "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?" Matt., 27:46.

118. Your references to the Trinity make me ask: Who is the God we are supposed to worship?

119. Are there really three Divine Beings or just One?

120. What basis is there in Scripture for the doctrine of the Trinity?

121. When was the doctrine as such instituted?

122. When was the doctrine accepted by the Church?

123. You have said the coming of the Son of God into this world as man for our redemption fulfilled Old Testament prophecies. Yet Father J. L. McKenzie says, in his "Bible Dictionary", p. 698: "It is a common misconception of Old Testament prophecy that it means prediction."

124. Do non-Catholic biblical scholars support Father McKenzie?

125. The New Testament quotes prophecies about Christ centuries before he was born.

126. If the predictions of their own prophets were fulfilled in Christ, why did not the Jews themselves recognise the fact instead of rejecting his claims?

127. Why did the learned members of the Sanhedrin, Israel's official leaders, fail to recognise Christ as the Messiah of their prophecies?

128. In Luke, 13:23-24, Jesus, who had spoken of the kingdom of God, was asked whether those who are saved will be few; but He merely replied: "Strive to enter by the narrow door, for many will seek to enter and will not be able."

129. To say the least, Jesus was asking the Jews to accept a new religion, understandably a hard choice to make.

130. Christians hold that they are no longer bound by laws in the Old Testament which the New Testament declares to have been made "void" and "abolished".

131. Where do Christians stand now in regard to the Old Testament?

132. Romans 3:23 declares that there is no distinction between Jews and Gentiles, since all have sinned and fallen short of the justice of God.

133. Do Catholic theologians today accept such an explanation?

134. Was the whole work of our redemption accomplished by the sufferings of Christ on the Cross?

135. Since ail three Persons of the Trinity are equally God, when God the Son died on the Cross for our redemption, did God the Father and God the Holy Spirit also die?

136. As an unbeliever, but not inhuman, I am utterly repelled by your doctrine that God should decree the suffering of the innocent for the guilty, even sentencing to death one whom you declare to be "his own beloved son!"

137. The very idea of "Supreme Innocence" suffering and dying on a cross can only appear to most thinking people as a mockery of justice and a hideous distortion of love.

138. Granted its significance, the fact of Christ's death is within our reach. But Christianity demands that we accept also as a fact that "on the third day He rose again from the dead."

139. Could you name any scientific historians who class the resurrection of Christ as a historical fact as certain as any other historical fact of the period?

140. Why do scientific historians by-pass the resurrection of Christ?

141. What is the attitude of serious unbiased historians?

142. Surely if Christ rose from the dead He is certainly God, as we declare Him to be.

143. Why is it that historians, writing as historians, never seem to commit themselves as to whether the resurrection actually occurred or not?

144. Where did our Lord's ascension take place, in Galilee or in Judea?

145. Acts 1:9 says that, as the apostles looked on, "he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight." In other words, he ascended bodily. Are we to believe that he defied the laws of gravitation? And where did his body go?

146. How do you explain His appearances to His disciples?

147. Although an agnostic, I have read and appreciated Father Teilhard de Chardin's book "The Phenomenon of Man", with its original ideas and new scientific terms to explain man's evolution.

148. For Teilhard, there is only one way for mankind, that of the evolutionary process according to nature's laws until we are all one in the universal mind or "noosphere", which he called "Point Omega".

149. Too many, in my opinion, are living in the "noosphere" of the first century.

150. To me, your explanations show you cannot at present tune into the same wave-length from the "noosphere" as Bertrand Russell, Julian Huxley and myself.

151. What have been the reactions of competent non-Catholic scholars to Teilhard de Chardin's work?

152. Despite Rome's official disapproval, why are Teilhard de Chardin's evolutionary ideas now being taught as facts to students in Catholic secondary schools?

153. In Acts 2:16, Peter told the Jews in Jerusalem that the Pentecostal descent of the Holy Spirit on the assembled disciples fulfilled the prediction of the Old Testament prophet Joel. Had Joel himself that idea?