Preface to Appendix A
This is a set of five introductions to ideas of particular thinkers in the Catholic tradition, which I wrote for a series of evening discussion sessions under the title ‘Thinking about Christ’ in my own parish of St Peter Apostle, Leamington Spa, in 2013. The aims and structure of these discussions is explained in the Outline (circulated before the series began) and the General Introduction (with which I opened the first meeting), both copied below. I read aloud the introduction to each session but gave the bibliography for each session to those present as a possible ‘further reading list’. I have not revised these texts subsequently for ‘Goodness Gracious’; they therefore reflect the situation in 2013, when (for example) Rene Girard was alive – he died in 2015.
Outline of Discussion Sessions
1 René Girard’s theory of Christ the Scapegoat (9 January)
Jesus spoke in parables to ‘expound things hidden since the foundation of the world’ (Matthew 13: 35). Were these the violence at the heart of every human society and most religions, and the culture of death that infects us all? And what was Jesus’ answer to them?
2 Karl Rahner’s Christology from below (16 January)
Instead of thinking of Christ as ‘God become man for us’, should we think of him as ‘the man who became God’? Would this change our aspirations and way of life?
3 Origen’s approach to the ‘Word of God’ (23 January)
‘I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ … through him all things were made.’ How could a first-century Palestinian Jew have had a hand in the creation of the universe, an event that occurred (or at least began) 15 billion years before he was born? The way the third-century ‘father of systematic theology’ read the prologue to St John’s gospel may give us a clue.
4 Christ the ‘Omega Point’ for Teilhard de Chardin (30 January)
Is Christ the active principle in forming the stars and planets and in Darwinian evolution? Is he also the goal towards which man and the universe are evolving?
5 F X Durrwell’s account of salvation through Christ in his Church (6 February)
Where on earth is the risen Christ today? Does he live now in his Church? What is his Church, and what should it be?
General Introduction to the Discussion Series
I proposed and offered to lead this series of discussion sessions on some ideas about Christ that I have come across in my general reading and found interesting – not necessarily ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ or even consistent with each other, but each idea, in my view, can give valuable insights into our beliefs. I am not a theologian, nor am I an ‘expert’ on any of the thinkers I shall introduce. It is my hope that people more expert than I am will be present at some of these sessions who can correct any errors in my understanding of these ideas.
In each of these five weekly sessions I will do my best to outline the idea in question (with some background on its author and on how it fits into his other ideas) in the first 20 to 30 minutes. I will then chair about 45 minutes open discussion of it; and in the last 10 minutes or so I’ll try to sum up some of the points that have come out of the discussion and introduce the topic of the following session. So the whole thing should take about an hour and a half. I will distribute at each session an outline in bullet points of what I am saying, possibly also in some cases short excerpts from relevant documents, and at the end a short list of books that might help anyone interested in learning more about the idea and its author.
The ideas I am putting forward are from Catholic (or at least Christian) thinkers and are not (I believe) in any way heretical, though they are a little out of the mainstream of the religion I learnt at school. The ideas are not connected (except perhaps in my mind); that is, none of their authors was particularly influenced (as far as I know) by any of the others. So, coming to one of these sessions does not commit you to coming to any other (though I may occasionally mention a connection I happen to see between one of these ideas and another).
Some people may ask, ‘Why should we think about Christ? The Bible and the Church provide us with all the information we need for us to get to know him and pray to him. If there are a lot of things we don’t understand, we must accept these mysteries in faith and not try to understand them.’
As I mentioned in the leaflet about this series, I take the view (and hope some of you share it) that, having been created in God’s image as the only creatures we know of with the ability to think rationally and reflect on what we know, we have a God-given duty to use that ability to the utmost in deepening our knowledge of God and his Christ. From its earliest days, the doctrine of the Church has developed through a long line of thinkers (some later canonized and named ‘Doctors of the Church’) who tried to penetrate deeper into each ‘mystery’ of the faith, sometimes producing ideas which have not stood the test of time, but always daring to argue things out. We must respect the doctrinal formulae hammered out in previous centuries, but recognize that they are often couched in terms that fit poorly into the rest of the thinking by which we lead our everyday lives; we may need to reinterpret them (as we reinterpret passages from the Bible) into the language and culture of 21st Century England.
Whilst I would not want anyone to be led astray from orthodox Christian doctrine, I do not think we should be frightened in the discussion from voicing thoughts that seem at first glance at variance with some of those doctrinal statements. So, in chairing the discussion, I will encourage people to think laterally or ‘outside the box’ as they say. And in exploring and testing our understanding of what we believe, we must be able to express honestly held ideas without being immediately told that we may not think them, because they are contrary to the Church’s magisterium.
Goodness Gracious 