I don't think we need a stand because it makes too much noise, but we're going to pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of those who believe in you, and kindle within them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created, and you will renew the face of the earth. Let us pray. May the outpouring of your Holy Spirit over all cleanse our hearts, and make them fruitful by the inward sprinkling of his dew. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. I think I'm going to call this lecture just a general perspective of our work and its fundamentals. You very probably here are accustomed to beginning your conferences and lectures with prayer anyway. But I was particularly encouraged to begin our new little course in theology explicitly in this way, because it really is my conviction, and I believe the conviction of the Fathers of the Church and our Fathers in monastic life,

[01:05]

that all real theology begins with prayer and should normally lead back into it. However dark and dry and mysterious that prayer may sometimes be. I was also given an additional push by reading of a priest who had somehow acquired a degree of Doctor of Theology, and yet was rather surprised to meet with this customer at the beginning of certain theological lectures in Rome. He was, I imagine, a typical of those many of my generation who were accustomed to thinking of theology primarily as an exalted classroom subject. And on that account, on a more or less equal footing with any other academic pursuit. Something to be mastered first and foremost with the aid of a textbook, and therefore a subject in which one might gain credits or even degree without necessarily believing very much at all. That idea of theology as professional life beside the spiritual life,

[02:09]

against which those of you who happen to have read my little book, Asking the Fathers, will probably remember that really it's a fairly silent protest. It was actually written very much in protest against that view of theology, which I found very unbearable, and therefore I made rather a nuisance of myself to my teachers, because I was so often asking questions they thought were rather silly. Now in referring to this frightening possibility, that we might just treat the whole thing as very academic, it's not of course my intention to say that theology as a subject of formal study is meant to be the same kind of thing as a homily. Though it may often be more edifying than some homilies are. Nor do I wish to deny that theology will need to help us to learn some technical language, through thoughtfulness and precision.

[03:13]

And that it would therefore as such have at least some aspects which can, as far as words go, be mastered with a certain amount of goodwill and attention. But it's very much my intention to remind you that theology is a discipline which, if it is to be alive and true, must remain aware that it's rooted in the mystery of faith, and can only be authentically renewed from the sources of faith. Now the exact meaning of that last phrase in relation to what we're going to be doing here, will, I hope, begin to become clearer during the course of these first few lectures, perhaps as we get to Numbers 7 and 8 or something like that. For words like mystery, faith and source ought not to be so lightly used as they sometimes are, on the assumption that everyone has agreed in advance as to what they mean in the context we are now speaking in.

[04:17]

For today I should be content, if I succeed in confronting you to begin with, with something which was, I think, too seldom mentioned in the way I was myself taught, and certainly never referred to as what might be called a theological aim, though it bears a very close relationship to the aspect of mystery which necessarily underlies our work. Not everyone who follows a course like this can be expected to become a doctor or master in theology, but everyone can, I think, be expected, with its help, to develop what I would like to call an overall theological sense. This is a conviction I've long held, but it was only as I was thinking and praying about how we should begin our work together that I was forcibly struck one morning at vigils by a verse and response which seemed to me exactly to be making the point I had in mind.

[05:22]

The phrases are based on the first letter of John, chapter 5, verse 20, which I see the Revised Standard Version translates as We know that the Son of God has come and given us understanding to know the true God. The Latin I was using, because in fact I mostly say my office still in Latin when I'm saying it in private, was Deidit nobis sensum, has given us a sense to know the true God. Now, as a rendering of the original Greek, this is, I believe, better than the English word understanding, preserving, as the double use of the word sense does, the hint of something almost physical. Like becoming aware that one has a very good burgundy in one's glass. Or, if you prefer it, a good bourbon.

[06:27]

Certainly the Greek noun, the Latin and the English were supposed to be translating dianoion, which comes from a verb, the Greek verb, that means, first of all, having in mind. And it doesn't, of course, necessarily mean that we are immediately able to say a lot of things about what we have in mind. But it disposes us, like giving us, as it were, a sixth sense, to recognise the difference between the real thing and a second class fraud or a synthetic substitute. My choice of where a connoisseur knows a good burgundy or whisky, was, of course, deliberate, really, is this kind of sense. Well, these things are very hard to talk about, but not, I think, too difficult to develop a sense for, if one gets a chance to do it. Now, I suppose if it were not possible to be deceived about what is compatible with sound belief in Christ our Lord, the Son of God,

[07:38]

theology might never have come into existence. And perhaps even the Gospels would not have taken quite the form they do. For although from very early times John's Gospel was seen to be a kind of apostolic theology, and hence St John was the first to be known as the Divine of the theologian, I believe that in recent years scholars, both Catholic and Protestant, have been more and more forced to see that none of the Gospels is really giving us a straightforward piece of historical narrative, in the modern sense of the word. Am I going too fast for you, Brother Dino? Good. And indeed, occasionally, perhaps not so such verifiable history as some bits of John are. But I think these scholars have been forced to see that one and all, the Gospel writers, are seeing the person of our Lord through the believing eyes of a theologian, in order that we may believe.

[08:48]

In other words, they are always, in one way or another, leading us back to a confrontation with one in whom, as the Letter to the Colossians says in chapter 2, verse 9, all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. Another concentrated form of the same conviction is not only the prologue to the Gospel of John, which is a very obvious one, but the very elaborate opening sentence of the Letter to the Hebrews. You'll remember how it goes, in many ways, many and various ways, God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. In other words, although, as we may note by implication here, the words of Holy Scripture are going to play an important role in what we shall be studying,

[09:51]

even more important than these words, or any reported words of our Divine Son, of the Divine Son himself, is that Word of God which he embodies in his person. This embodiment is so rich that it's virtually inexhaustible. Nor is it surprising that in the days of the early Church, and again in our own day, I think, which in so many ways renews the circumstances of those early days, great theological battles should have been and are being fought over what we mean by the person of Christ. And I suppose we may add that it's hardly necessary to say that the sources of our conclusions about these battles will, in large measure, be determined by whether or not our confrontation with the Son gives us personally a sense of the truth of God.

[10:54]

It seems to me that it's my grave duty to insist upon this point, for although it flows primarily from reading Holy Scripture, it is, in a certain way, an important way, I think, prior to it and presupposed to that reading. Evidently I'm saying that out of the fact which has simply been confronting biblical scholars that all the Gospels are, in their own different ways, really theological views of the person of our Lord. I shall, for the most, ask St. Augustine today, that most bodiless of fathers in so many ways, to answer the question that may well have been forming itself in your minds when I am saying something like this, as he will also, I think, have known so very well, came into the minds of many of his heroes as Hippo, when he was talking to them,

[11:58]

to judge by the number of times he returns to this point in sermons which have come down to us. Namely, the question, how can we, who have never had an opportunity of seeing the Son of God in the flesh, come to an apprehension of his person as that which I'm speaking? In substance, of course, Augustine is going to say that our situation is not radically so different from that which many actually did see our Lord, and even touch him physically. For, as he says many, many times in the course of his sermons, many of those who did see him never had any conception of who he really was. But I prefer to let Augustine speak for himself in his direct and delightful way. Augustine, of course, is one of the many fathers. He's like St. Bernard in this way.

[12:59]

He could write and speak in quite a different style according to his audience. You'll find that a book like The City of God, or The Confessions, is addressed to a very, one might call it a very cultivated, very sophisticated audience. But when he's speaking to the people in Hippo, then he's speaking in a very direct and very simple way. And sometimes, of course, he's saying from the expressions on their faces, I can see what you're thinking. And things of that sort. So all the time he's very simple and direct when he's talking in Hippos. And I've chosen two passages from some sermons he preached during the Easter season, which have been conveniently put together in one of the volumes of Sources Chrétien. It's actually, for those of you who can use the Sources Chrétien, which has a Latin and French translation, it's volume 116 in these Easter sermons put together. And the first one I want to mention is number 237,

[14:02]

where he begins with the resurrection appearance of the apostles in the Last Supper, in the last chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, when our Lord tells them to handle him and see. It's Luke chapter 24, verse 39. I think we're not for the moment concerned with Augustine's refutation of heresies about the reality of our Lord's humanity. But as Augustine points out, what the apostles believed, like what Thomas believed when the offer was made to him personally, was not, of course, something visible or tangible. Let no one believe of Christ something other than he himself wished to be believed about him. And what is Christ? The Son of God, the Word of God. But what is the Word of God? The Word of God is something that a human word cannot express.

[15:07]

Do you ask me to tell you what the Word of God is? Why, if I wish to tell you what a human word was, I shouldn't really explain it. It wears me down. Of course, I give up. I cannot explain the power of a human word. How much more is this true of the Word of God? Notice that before I say what I want to say to you, there is a word in my heart. I have not said it yet, and it's there in me. It is said by me, and reaches you without leaving me. You wait to hear a word from me, and I feed your minds when I speak. If I offered you food for your stomachs, you would divide it between you, and the whole of it would not reach any of you. But I have just given you food for your minds, and the whole of it will barely reach you. Any of you.

[16:10]

If I say, here you are, take and eat. This is for everyone, and the whole reaches each of you. So you see how the power of the human word cannot be explained. Yet you say to me, what is the Word of God? The Word of God feeds so many millions of angels. I think you can see Gussie is not just playing here. He is really, really helping one to concentrate upon the mystery of this is. This mystery of the apprehension of the incarnate Word in the person of our Lord. And then the next day, the Thursday of Easter week, in Sermon 246, Gussie is speaking of our Lord's appearance to Mary Magdalene. Who thinks he is the gardener. And if you think of it, if we are the plants, Christ is the gardener. Is he not the gardener who sowed a grain of mustard seed?

[17:15]

Which is spore and hot seed. And he grows and shoots up and makes a tree big enough for the birth of the heir to take rest on its branches. He himself said, if you had faith, like a grain of mustard seed, mustard seed seems to be little enough, hardly worth noticing. Yet nothing is stronger. What is this other than the supreme warmth and hidden power of faith in the church? And yet of course as he says, our Lord tells Mary Magdalene not to touch him. And Gussie continues, If she should not touch him standing on earth, would she have been able to touch him standing in heaven? And so what does touching mean, other than believing? For we touch Christ by faith. And it is better not to touch him with our hand, yet touch him by our faith,

[18:17]

than it is to touch him with our hand and not by our faith. The Jews touched him when they arrested him. Touched him when they bound him. Touched him when they hung him on the cross. O Catholic Church, touch him by faith. Touch him by faith. And Gussie repeats it. Were you to think that Christ was only a man, you would have touched him on earth. But were you to believe that Christ the Lord is equal to the Father, then you would have touched him when he ascended to the Father. Thus he has ascended for us when we really understand who he is. He ascended once in time, but now he ascends every day. This conviction that the power of the mysteries of the Incarnate Son

[19:19]

is communicated to us now, is present now, is, I think, of the utmost importance for the Catholic sense of theology. I had actually just reached this point approximately in the preparation for this lecture. When I had to translate for our use of visuals a new commandment, one of my favourites of the Epiphany sermons of St. Leo the Great, preaching 30 or 40 years later in Augustine, where Leo is saying the same sort of thing about the mystery of the Epiphany. And my commandment brothers will remember how we listened to St. Bernard saying something almost identical of the Christmas mystery in the splendid 6th or 7th paragraphs of the 6th sermon for the Vigil of Christmas. Please don't feel very deprived about this, because I'm going to provide you each with a copy of these two translations that I made,

[20:23]

so that you'll see how there's a very continuous contradiction, quite different people who don't depend on each other in thinking about the mystery of Christ in this way, that the touching of Christ is first and foremost the touch of faith, that really we aren't so much of it as we can't see our Lord walking through the door. Because that by itself didn't really help everybody. And you mustn't imagine that that experience of the immediacy of the Divine Presence stops with the early 12th century. Lots of things do appear to me almost to stop at that time, but they don't quite. To quote one example with which I'm rather specially familiar, the great 17th century French cardinal de Berrieu, perhaps you don't know him, I'd better write him up. His name was Pierre.

[21:38]

He was a great centre of the extraordinary world of Paris in the 17th century. Everybody knew him. Francis of Sales knew him, Vincent de Paul, and so many other people. And Berrieu began to study the Fathers of the Church, as far as one can see, primarily because he had to be able to argue with Protestants. But I think we may say that in the end it was the Fathers who converted him. It's, I think, extremely sad that his wonderful central theological insight about the presence of the mysteries of Christ to us now is so little known to those who cannot read his very splendid 17th century French. For I've never seen a substantial translation of him into English, or even seen a satisfactory modern French edition of him by comparison with the lovely early edition which I first read sitting in the peace of due comforts, great old library at Oxford,

[22:43]

which must have been built somewhere about the same time as Berrieu was writing. It's a lovely room, I know that. If it's an afternoon like this, it would be wonderful to sit there today. But my purpose in this entire course, including today, is not just empty nostalgia, which would in any case be, of course, in direct contradiction with what I've just been saying. And so I should like to show you how this theological sense never dies by sharing with you a fine passage from a great modern German theologian, Karl Rahner, who must, I calculate, be 80 this year, since he was born in 1904, but seems to show no particular sign of ageing in anything he writes. I don't apologise for quoting him at some length, speaking in a lecture on Scripture and Tradition, which was delivered in Munich on 10th February 1963, before the Council had made its decision about a document

[23:46]

on divine revelation, which I ask you to have a look at in advance. Rahner is saying, what ultimately is Christianity? Undoubtedly it is God's truth which is proclaimed to us. Yet precisely this revelation of the divine saving truth is not a proclamation which occurs primarily in doctrinal propositions or catechetical texts. It is a proclamation in events. What is proclaimed in Christianity is not a general, necessary, abstract truth, which could be attained equally well from any point in history, because it shines forth an internal sameness and clarity in the heaven of ideas. No, Christianity is primarily the event in which God, in his grace, acts on us. It is a free event, an event of his powerful love,

[24:48]

an event which cannot be derived from anywhere else, but must be experienced in its free historical reality, and which therefore has also to begin with a perfectly determined spatio-temporal situation in the history of man. Revelation, in the proper, original sense, is the revealing deed of God in historical concreteness, in historical spatio-temporality. This does not exclude, but in fact includes, the fact that the word belongs to constitutive elements of the act of revelation itself. It follows, then, that if such a saving event takes place at a perfectly determined point, if the word becomes pledged precisely of the Virgin Mary in Isis and Nazareth, if we are redeemed into the glory of God

[25:51]

precisely by the fact that this particular man hung on the cross at a particular point in time and in a particular place under Pontius Pilate, then this saving event must come towards us from this particular point in time and place if it is to reach us not only in the depths of our grace-filled being, beyond all our own historical experience, but also in the spatio-temporality of the historical existence of humanity, and in this way come towards us. Hence the conception of paradosis, of tradition, of handing down. From a biblical point of view, it has its ultimate and deepest meaning and reality not so much in the handing down and transmission of propositions, but in that paradosis, handing over or transmission, in which the Son of God became man,

[26:52]

the Divine Logos in the flesh, always hands himself over and delivers himself up anew in the celebration of the sacred mysteries, the Lord's Supper of the Church in the Eucharist, proceeding from the event of the last summer in union with his death. This is the event in which tradition primarily takes place, in which the once-for-all salvation event of the death and resurrection of Christ delivers itself anew to men in their humanity, by always going on and extending further. Now I'm afraid that must sound like rather a mouthful. But if you think it over with the help of the copy of it I shall give you I've finished for the moment and we can take a pause and later on today perhaps

[27:55]

or some other time when you can do it I think you'll see that it does state with very careful theological precision why and how it is that the simplest peasant who would never understand all these words is brought into immediate contact with that living mystery which is the very subject matter of theology. This is not of course a reason for pretending to be peasants if we don't happen to be them and refusing to put our thoughts in order as best we can. And so the second reason why I wish to bring this passage to your attention here is not only its value as a modern statement addressed to a modern educated audience of the kind of thing which I hope I've shown that the Fathers and the greatest theologians habitually teach but also as a way of suggesting by implication that the words of Scripture

[28:57]

are going to form part of our subject of study in so far as words certainly form part of that historical event communicated to us by the one who is the word in the unique sense. But the words of Scripture are going to form part of our study only as understood by those who handed over these words. And thus our study will include what accredited teachers have taught where and in so far as we can know this. Of course this is always something of a problem even here and now there may be some of you who are more puzzled than others about what I'm saying and this is true very often of people in the past too sometimes I think we find it hard to get in touch with them in other cases they seem to come very near and so we don't have such a problem.

[29:58]

But I think the effort of making that kind of personal contact where we feel we can do it is of extreme importance for us and also to develop our theological sense. And when I'm saying this I'm not of course saying that everything that could be said and even correctly said about this saving event in the incarnation of the Son has necessarily already been said by someone in the past. This would in its own way seem to me to be as ridiculous as the view that some people including some biblical scholars appear to hold that Christianity has never been properly understood by anyone in the past and it is only now we can really begin to understand it and we must have read that kind of thing in some scriptural books nowadays people do tend to talk as though we are for the first time

[31:01]

discovering what the apostles ought to have understood it. It seems to me clearly that if the apostles didn't know what Christianity was about we would never know what it was. That's simply not possible. So always there is this problem of communication and the feeling that it's worthwhile making the effort to get across to feel the other one speaking to you until you understand them and of course for most of us this means going through the scriptures again and again so they keep on rising to the surface and you hear them talking to you and some of us, I hope many of you here at least who have done this with some of your earlier satirical writers who do this I think in a way which for many of us today does come across very very alive indeed and so they too will be rising to the surface in this way and of course often saying as I'm giving one example of from St. Bernard today something which comes very very near

[32:03]

the sort of thing we might want to say ourselves if we were preaching I think we must remember that what theologians in the past have said just like theologians at any time was and is to a very large extent determined by the kind of questions they have asked and we must once for all become aware that the norm of the soundness of what we teach and understand is the same for us as it was for those who taught and believed in the past namely Jesus Christ himself as Father Rahman in fact later goes on to say in the same talk Jesus Christ is the absolute norm for every future tradition since he is the absolute reality you can see how much again this goes back to the thing the sensuous thing like a glass of wine it's getting the feeling

[33:06]

does this man know is he really in touch usually one can't put this to the test but on the whole I think we can say the church as a community always makes up its mind and develops a very sure sense of this I hope you will now see a little better what I meant by saying earlier on that an essential purpose in a course like this is the development of theological sense and what is the context in which we are developing this sense part of it is of course our personal prayer our direct contact with Christ our Lord however dark that may often seem to be because of course I suppose we ought to remember when prayer is going rather hard that the lives of the apostles and our Lord

[34:09]

and he was often very parsley in things that he both said and did and we shouldn't really expect life with our Lord in the life of prayer to be very different from us the sort of thing it was for the apostles in fact I suppose we have to be converted every day and decide to become monks every day as long as we live this is a very real thing this personal dimension is very clearly present but it is also that prayer whether we are explicitly thinking of this or not as made in the context of and as members of the living church this is why the scriptures and our prayer are important but not enough for us to be able for the handing over

[35:09]

of the Christ event to us necessarily passes through an oral tradition we meet it in the words of other people all of us have Father Ron puts it rather beautifully in two concentrated little sentences later in the same talk which would be convenient if we come on the same piece of paper I had to copy he says the church we may say quite correctly in so far as it has Jesus Christ in her midst let us say the church of the apostles is what is handed on she is handed on of course not only in her teaching but in what the church is herself what she believes and celebrates the church in her sacraments in her concrete life in her experience her Lord's supper and of course also in the reflex expression of what she has heard and what she lives herself

[36:11]

in the word of the apostles I suppose especially in monastic life we ought to develop this very strong sense of the liturgy many of you as for me this morning standing in the new sanctuary but having the same experience of the church alive in the same place a specific group of people all quite different from other people but somehow something can actually see a kind of physical being and yet what is it? this is another dimension of this mystery we are talking about now the talk from which I have been quoting was given before the proclamation of the dogmatic constitution on divine revelation I must ask you to believe though it hardly matters if you don't that this lecture was already

[37:12]

written up to this point before I returned to the text of this document which must of course be for us a primary statement a principle about our work together I confess that I was delighted to find that it opens with a quotation from the first letter of John perhaps you noticed that I am using this one big copy it was put together by a contemporary of mine at Oxford called Austin Flannery an Irish Dominican he and I started together in Oxford and it is a very useful edition of the documents of the council in English because in fact it contains some subsidiary documents which sometimes are relevant to the major documents of the council

[38:13]

not a very long document but it is extremely dense and very important for our deficits document undervaluation anyway, it is not my intention at this stage to give you an analysis of this document as a whole relatively short though it is I should like simply to underline some of the things it says which I believe apply very much to us as guidelines for our work giving us both courage and a sense of direction I should like in the first place to draw your attention to the opening sentence of the first chapter of this constitution called from its opening words Dei Verbum Word of God this chapter begins

[39:23]

with the words It pleased God I have got it here in the Latin document It pleased God in his goodness and wisdom to reveal himself and make known the mystery of his will remember that is the first chapter of the Ephesians Sacrament and Voluntatis his will that human beings homines should have access to the father through Christ the word made flesh in the Holy Spirit and thus become sharers in the divine nature it seems to me that here we have the central sense of the place of the church's liturgy in our lives which is in the Son through the Holy Spirit and also the very

[40:25]

personal and mystical purpose of all that is publicly done by the church namely that we should be sharers in the divine nature comes of course from the second letter of Peter a phrase which is very, very loved by all the fathers of the church we find it constantly quoted by them thus our theology requires to have a picture of what it is to be human which is not merely philosophically satisfactory insofar as we can make it so but also determined by perspectives for human development which could not be certainly known save by revelation because to say that we are called to be sharers in the divine nature is something the meaning of which we cannot know except in a very mysterious way by faith so this adds, if you like a dimension to something

[41:27]

we're going to have to say about ourselves in the latter part of these twelve days I think we're going to have to talk about ourselves quite a bit especially in the light of what the Son of Man has to say about human introspection we're going to have to take that into account too but it is going to be very important to see that conception that we are called to be sharers in the divine nature as it were deepening, enlarging, widening the perspective next I'd ask you to bear in mind paragraph five of this same this says quoting the letter to the Romans the obedience of faith must be given to God as he reveals himself by faith a human being

[42:30]

commits the entire self to God making a full submission of their intellect and will to God who reveals and willingly assenting to the revelation given by him before this faith can be exercised a human being must have the grace of God to move and assist them that's going to raise all kinds of fascinating questions isn't it I think it's perhaps wise not to try to ask them in too concrete a form because God can be doing this in very many mysterious ways but the document is that our thinking our intellect and our will our desiring and this is going to happen under the influence of grace I suppose none of us know I often thought it was a strange thing when one finds

[43:31]

that one believes sometimes one only knows this when we meet somebody who doesn't believe and then one is puzzled and one experiences the immediacy of faith which affects the way we think and the way we feel and it's fairly large these phases suggest I think we shall quite properly need to look at a fairly early point at the theology of the virtue of faith sometime next week I'm hoping but not just for a day or two and also of course inevitably because this is going to involve the minds and the wills of all of us and each generation we are no longer the early Cistercians we are the contemporary Cistercians we soon will be the early Cistercians if the world goes on

[44:32]

if it goes on for another thousand years I would not tell the Apostle Theos to this particular one so we might be quite early but whatever it is we're going to be in on this process and so it isn't going to be something static it's going to be something going on in the church which is as you all have seen explicitly referred to in the document saying that faith is in fact something which is being continuously penetrated and in this way is developing it's something which Carl Newman was rather especially distinguished for thinking about in the 19th century which has now I suppose become common to everybody's way of thinking and it's there and very definitely

[45:37]

is confirmed by the council's document in saying that this is normal for the life of the church as indeed we can see we wouldn't be sitting here this afternoon in 1984 if there hadn't been people sitting in other places thinking about this and finding it a matter of concern conclusion of chapter 2 paragraph 8 which says the tradition that comes from the apostles makes progress in the church with the help of the Holy Spirit there is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on this comes about in various ways it comes through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these things in their

[46:38]

hearts it comes from the intimate sense of spiritual realities which they experience intima spiritual intelligencia and it comes from the preaching of those who have received along with them truth there is not any doubt it is charitable I may just say by way of a footnote it always seems to me extremely important that anybody who preaches in the church should remember that they always are preaching as a delegate of the episcopate that the bishops may not necessarily be able to analyse it very thoroughly and we shall not be able to do that either but somehow if we develop the theological

[47:38]

sense we will be able to guess when it is not being passed on thus as the centuries go by the church is always advancing towards the plenitude of divine truth I suppose here one has got the conception of this thinking and this willing, this desiring when it is fulfilled when we see, which we thus see, that is what it is these phases will I hope help us to realise without being self conscious about this as to what our role is that we nevertheless have a role to play in the growth and life of the church even by our careful study of divine truth however humble our efforts may be a few men and women

[48:39]

who are really letting these words come to life for them and developing also with this a very strong sense of what it is saying it's prayer really praying and this is of course where our fidelity to the spirit in which theology has been pursued by the men of prayer in the past comes in for as this same paragraph continues the saints of the holy fathers are a witness to the truth finally I would draw attention to paragraph 10 of this same chapter 2 which was I believe a little advanced on what had been said at Vatican 1 while still leaving a certain openness on the question of the exact identification

[49:40]

of what is meant by tradition of the word of God which is entrusted to the church and adhering to it by adhering to it the entire holy people united to its pastors remains faithful to teaching the apostles to the fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers the act of the apostles chapter 4 of course those of you who know the text which later got written into the monastic tradition will I hope slowly and ever more fruitfully be able to place themselves in that life giving context this gives us I think our sense of direction I hope with the help of St Augustine chiefly

[50:41]

tomorrow at any rate I'm not going to use him all the time that's what I'm hoping to do tomorrow but we're now going to take a pause and you can come back and tell me what you find difficult perhaps I shall find it difficult too well let me first say is there anyone with something that is burning to say because that would be an excuse for me to go yes? I'm not sure I'm burning

[51:43]

but in your presuppositions you have something really in your mind about theology in my innocence I don't know exactly except that we're going to be doing something about theology so I wondered if you could somehow or other fill us in on your vision or how it's come across to you well I suppose I tried to do it really in a way which I can very simply recapitulate which is that I think of it as I try to think of it as I think the fathers and monastic teachers have always thought of this let's say in other words that they think that theology is about confrontation with Christ because inevitably it is the mystery of faith into which we are being drawn by our calling as Christians this is something which

[52:45]

begins with our baptism it doesn't have to be the theology of monastic life has tended to develop a theory of monastic profession as being a kind of second baptism it is partly because it is both a recall of the baptismal call an explicit choice to live this out in a special sort of way and I suppose also to take the consequences of it because conformity to Christ is not only going to be illumination sometimes difficulty because it may mean cross but I think it is well worth while because it doesn't seem to be sufficiently pointed out in most books that I know that there is a continuous tradition of thinking that if you like the way I mentioned the cardinal of Beryl

[53:46]

the way Beryl does it in his meditations is to say well the power of the incarnation of our Lord is something which is still available to us now we can be at Bethlehem because what happened at Bethlehem is there for us always because it lives on in Christ and this is true of all the other mysteries does that seem very implausible it ought to in a certain way seem implausible it does for the reason you can't unless you really have any kind of faith it doesn't seem to be meaningful to see this in other words I think the difference between what we should be doing here what people who were is that we are not just studying some piece of past history whereas in fact

[54:47]

let's say what we did at the Eucharist this morning would be meaningless if it were only history it's important to remember the background of the word do this in memory of me where you've got the whole Jewish sense of what memory means when I think it's in the story of Elijah where a widow says have you come to bring back all the past to me this is what memory is in the Hebrew sense of the word memory makes a thing there of course in many many ways as we were talking about the stage or talking about the sun just a moment ago one of the things I suppose what the stage also tries to do is at any rate they so identify with what they're actually doing that they relive it in a certain way because you can't act very well

[55:49]

and you can't teach very well unless you really feel what you're saying you can't learn it out of you because there's no way of learning it out of book it either goes through you or it doesn't but this is a much deeper it's a long time ago but who's here now and this is what the decree on revelation is obviously about it's not in other words it's not saying to us it really is reminding us in a certain way of something which I pointed out at the beginning of this talk it's very existent in the New Testament itself this can be made into a polemical point which I didn't want to do at all and I don't think we should ever do this when talking to Protestants but it's very important to remember if the Church hadn't existed the Bible wouldn't exist either the Bible is essentially

[56:51]

the Church's product and the entire New Testament is written by members of the Church and the decision as to which were the books that belong to the Bible is very important too in fact the Council of Trent drew up a list which as I shall point out tomorrow when we're talking about Augustine appears in one of the earliest forms which is exactly identical to what Trent said or was said by Augustine in the 5th century and on the whole we can say there was fairly general agreement in both the East and West as to which the canonical books were in fact they are products of a given society which has a faith before it has the books whereas the typical I suppose the typical Reformation attitude towards it at least that's the way it looks now I don't think it was only that but the typical Reformation

[57:51]

way of looking at it was to be very much concerned for instance to learn whether the Old Testament books were all written in Hebrew or whether certain generations of Jews had spoken Greek and in fact sometimes we would find it quite difficult to know what certain bits of things like the Prophets Isaiah actually meant if we hadn't got at least a Greek version of them because this does give us at least what Jews themselves who had no special axe to grind in the matter thought these texts meant does anybody read in Hebrew at all do you? you read a little tiny bit Mark well do you all know then Mark I can illustrate this for everybody else in a rather silly way I won't give you a general key let's suppose that we want to say a word which begins with W

[58:52]

we can't decide whether the next letter is going to be A or E or I it could be way or it could be wind now one of the reasons why many of our earliest manuscripts in Hebrew are difficult is because Hebrew was written normally simply in consonants and so until you had a system of marking little points here or here or here or some other way you couldn't possibly know what sort of vowel sound it would make in a certain field usually because it occurs in things which perhaps don't matter very much like the names of animals and trees and plants and so on sometimes that's why we don't even know to this day sometimes what plant or tree it is that's being referred to because sometimes we just have got to make

[59:53]

what seems to be a reasonable guess but as I say when you're dealing with things which were done by the Masolites in other words there was a tradition this is something I don't know whether any of you would have met this in America but it must have existed at one time and it certainly does exist in the Philippines I would think rather do you know doesn't it still there are many people who probably can learn things by heart I certainly when I was doing my theological studies it was a very extraordinary thing but you see this we've lost the function of memory because we all think we're going to be able to look it up in a book so the idea of tradition I had the last I think one of the most moving experiences I had during the last war I was in fact engaged in agriculture most of the time

[60:53]

which is a very important thing and I was reserved for this work even after the end of the war and at one point I often wonder how many of them are still alive because they may easily have been killed in various wars in Israel they were going out to Palestine to form the new Jewish community there and these young men during the sort of break we've just had between our meals between our lecture would also between meals they would recite passages either psalms or passages in the Old Testament rhythmically and there of course you get actual verbal tradition so there is this sense of tradition this way of passing on which is there is some words in your head it's for me one of the slight problems

[61:54]

I don't know I suppose most of you here probably have been almost the younger of you certainly who had Latin at one time and sometimes I find it very difficult to prepare a homily if I haven't got Latin in concordance because I hear the phrases of Scripture coming to me in Latin rather than in English or out of liturgy and this is one of the problems I suppose about having a vernacular liturgy in every different country is that the literal memory of passages of Scripture will tend to be different especially sometimes I think rather worryingly in certain modern translations even the Scriptures which are really rather paraphrases than translations because it means certain things that people could recite I remember for instance one of my old priors

[62:55]

many years ago saying his father was required with crowns and that's what we had to be able to say the epistle by heart I'm not saying that we can attempt to do those sort of things nowadays obviously it would be rather silly but I think we shouldn't forget that older types of societies and Valadino probably has met this kind of thing the Philippine type thing isn't this true? Well from my recollection there are some old people especially religious they are lay people but they are very devout Catholics and during the Passion they could recite the whole scenery of the Passion but then always in a musical yes, exactly

[63:56]

and also I recall an old Chinese with whom I was associated with for some time he could recite by heart a whole lot really, yes that's quite a considerable work do you all know the Tao? it's quite a considerable work it's a very remarkable thing everybody ought to know that document anyway it's not such a very big work but it's still quite enough there's no doubt there is a certain kind of loss of that, I think that somehow or other we have to find some way of compensating for this I think as a kind of monastic problem I expect all of you have to face this in some way or another if you are to do very profitable lexio divinia especially if as an American

[64:56]

you've been taught to read fast you have to learn how to read slow isn't that true? have you had that problem brother Mark? I haven't experienced that I know that when I was maybe others here Father Paul was a novice minister here one of the first things he gave us when he was a postulant that was published in Reader's Digest but it got the point across and it was about a man who was a prisoner of war and he had one book and he had so many years so he just trained himself to study each first he would start with a cover he would spend days just looking at the cover memorizing the design on the cover and then he would go and I'm sure there's no doubt about it even the dullest book

[65:57]

becomes much more interesting when it's the only one you've got when you've got to make something of it and that certainly is one of the ways isn't it? one of the ways to keep it sane is to turn the senses inside out and upside down until you really have got everything you can out of them does that really answer your question? I could have said that in one sentence I wouldn't need to take an hour to say that I seem to have taken the right number of minutes to say that but I think that's why it is complex and it does seem to me that I'm not just inventing this it does seem to me really in the document don't you think this by the labyrinth do you feel convinced of the truth of this and that is what the document is saying, what the council is saying it really is saying that it is a confrontation with the person of our Lord first and foremost that it's mediated through

[66:58]

words but it's not there is this double sense of word and word there's the word which is the word and of course in one way I suppose I imagine that you I've certainly for so many many years I've read all four Gospels in sequence each year and I'm always astonished how very new they do seem if you just read them without a commentary I don't mean to say that I don't go to commentaries when I feel very very puzzled especially when I like what somebody else thinks about it but at the same time if you just let them speak of themselves if you meet them like people then they do become very vivid and very individual

[68:00]

and so you do get very special mediation of our Lord at any rate in this way you can see that one of the practical problems we are going to be confronted with all the way through however long we work together at the moment we've only got 12 days is that of course none of us can possibly know even one of the Fathers very well my friend he read the whole of it he read 20 times in the course of his monastic life he died two years ago but that must be fairly rare I would think I've never met anybody who claimed to have read the whole of Augustine Augustine found it quite difficult to do himself actually he did as you know he was in his 70s

[69:02]

when he wrote a book which is usually called The Confessions he says about the Confessions when I read them now I feel just exactly as I felt when I wrote them he was 40 about at the time and sometimes he is saying I would rather have said so and so I don't think this was the best way to say it sometimes he is in fact retracting what he is saying but it is a vast volume of work and he found of course he has a sort of large chest as far as I can tell which he kept his things in like the Pope's did originally they had what was called a screen in the last room which was the old papal palace where they put documents and so on I suppose nobody ever knew quite what was in them one of the reasons why I was talking to the fathers of the church congress

[70:04]

in Oxford this summer about a piece of Greek and it was very suspicious whether he really got something that was written entirely by Gregory himself because we do happen to know that he did write a letter which we have the text on late in his life asking for the notes of this particular work to be returned to him because he wasn't satisfied he had been correctly reported and the letter was written so late he can never receive the text he was suspicious about whether Gregory wrote them or not and a number of other scholars were present who were interested in this too and we had quite interesting discussions about which were the possible passages which may have been interpolated a little bit later because there was this box left behind where Gregory died and anybody could get in the box

[71:05]

there were at least 50 years they died and do remember the people in the early centuries didn't worry so much wouldn't have bothered to give the references I gave by the poor they wouldn't have said where they took something from if they thought it was good they would just put it in you would never know what was there or somebody else's and sometimes they even of course if they wanted to defend the antiquity of the monastery they knew it was only 500 years old and wanted to make it 700 that is I think not wholly unconscious but again I suppose that's the feeling that ought to be accepted I myself lived in religious life with men who would talk about tradition and by that they meant the ancient past

[72:11]

You've talked about this a little I wonder if you could talk about it a little more it seems like you want us to acquire some you've spoken of the sense of theology a taste as it were for what is genuine and what is counterfeit it seems like you want to teach something that is in a way unteachable and I wonder if you could talk about both that difficulty and the problem of doing it in 12 days Yes, well of course I already said something just a moment ago about this and let's say we can't any of us hope to read Father Moon Lifetime but what we can hope to do even if we have to use translations let me just say a general word on the whole the ancient Christian writers series although sometimes it's giving you a deliberately archaic translation in other words for some reason some translators feel

[73:16]

they have to make the fathers sound very old fashioned which of course they didn't when Augustine was talking he didn't sound old fashioned he sounded just like any of us talking to each other now and so he shouldn't be particularly inaccessible but what's much more worrying is that for instance since I've mentioned Augustine in this connection there is a translation of rather important Let on Prayer in the Fathers of the Church series written by Augustine where it's quite clear to me that the translator very frequently didn't understand the grammar of Augustine's sentences so it's not just the original text and so I think on the whole when somebody's around who can read the original text or has an idea what the translation is like it's good to consult them about this if you've got to depend on translation there's more and more people who have to

[74:17]

I'm afraid we just have to accept the fact that there are fewer and fewer people who read many many languages other than their own so we're now trying to be able to get things done my publisher has just asked me to do he's just been commissioned an Anaconda publisher who's just been commissioned to do something more a new set of translations for colleagues which is very badly needed of course he's very interested to know that I'm sometimes doing this which I do unofficially from time to time because in fact sometimes the translations don't get into the collect and so on so I suppose really in terms of your question what I am saying is that I think we can only

[75:17]

it's rather like there's the old saying one knows people by the company they keep I'm not saying we should exclusively keep the company of the great people of the past but I think we ought at least to keep it some of the time where we can I think it's a question of personal taste to some extent I don't see why we should always necessarily go for one particular writer because we think it's famous I think perhaps Augustine must have been rather trying to get on with sometimes I can think of several people I would rather have met though I think Augustine was also a very fascinating meet he was possibly a Berber one doesn't quite know for certain he was a North African anyway so he certainly wasn't dull all the time but I think it seems to me we can only do our best because that's what anybody ever can do in a lifetime

[76:19]

but it seems to me that at least it's a good habit to form the habit of reading books which are original books whether they're contemporaries or the people from the past rather than don't read a book about St. Bernard and this perhaps is one of the very earliest but it still remains the very best I think Jesus Christ the Mystical Theology of St. Bernard it's still one of the very best things after St. Bernard it's a very original introduction if you need to have one and sometimes you do but you know why on earth read a book about what St. Bernard said when you can actually read what he did say even in a bad translation it seems to me this is one of the ways one has to develop the sense of what people have been saying in the past and the letters of Ignatius

[77:21]

for instance you've got a very good translation really in the ancient Christian writers so you can get a very important don't take more than you would you can take one of them a day comfortably you can read them several times a year until you really have Ignatius of Antioch really inside you that's a very important kind of thing to do is that a sort of answer? I think this is I say it seems to be infinitely better to read those letters because they are accessible and reasonable in length even for a modern reader there you get the conception of the church both as acting as teacher and performing the liturgy these two images are continuously brought before you the letters are not really intelligible except they recall the kind of vivid picture one has as we were all standing together in the sanctuary this morning and that's the way

[78:22]

I think this sense comes in those places which are consciously trying to be loyal to the church's liturgical sense and tradition I think that some young people of course it's very very interesting I would have thought I don't want to go too far saying this is the danger of talking extemporaries one hasn't had the time to think of things one reserved about but I've not forgotten for instance one very charming French dramatist his wife talking to me one evening after an evening mass which I'd celebrated in Norway which I often did for visitors saying to me what were they to do about the young people in their family who were saying because the clergy want us to do this we can just sort of play them at home

[79:23]

and I know at the same time that several young people often stopped by a church and asked if they could make a retreat there so that there were right across the generations there are some people who are aware that sometimes things are going on in church which are really I mean rather strange people the church is so big a thing nobody can keep it all under control but I suppose on the whole we can say that it's not too difficult to get a working sense of what most people thought about certain things when they're given a bit of time I'm sure that it would be wrong not to think one should read some contemporary writers because I'm quite sure

[80:26]

that although a writer like Carl Rahner or actually even more someone like Werner Donegan is not really accessible for every modern reader they are in the passages which are not too difficult to read talking about things which are extremely important trying to for instance make people face the fact one of the things which I've taken responsibility for without saying so a name that you can't have if you like one standard theology anymore the attempt to do so of course was a very brief lived one I think we've got to remember that it was very well trained I suppose for a very short period partly on the inspiration of Pope Leo XIII who was responsible for the promotion of the study of St. Thomas some people taught

[81:28]

what they called Thomism which wasn't always the same thing as the teaching of St. Thomas I think one ought to say as though it were the only theology in the church whereas of course it never had been they often failed to mention that at one point St. Thomas had been condemned and buried and never had I think very many very faithful disciples at any period in time including the period in which I myself was being trained you've only got to be conscious of Cardinal Cajetan which are printed in the Leonine edition to see what a very extraordinary thing you can make out of what St. Thomas actually said by a man who thought he was really trying to penetrate it indeed he was making something very ingenious out of it but certainly it was very dubiously anything St. Thomas an interpreter

[82:36]

should be recognised as such even if he's a very distinguished man that includes me of course I'm not distinguished but I am inevitably all teaching involves some element of interpretation it's absolutely impossible that it shouldn't and so really I suppose this is why I bother to give out some documents if somebody hasn't clicked there may be a spare number perhaps it is a spare copy but make sure that you've got what I can give you the very few things I can because those I attach much more value to than anything I say and I would always like you to come and say to me but it says so and so and how this can be designed to this moment in protest no, I'm not going to say I'm just I guess I'm just kind of

[83:38]

agreeing with what you say it sounds like what I was thinking originally was that we get this sense this theological sense most immediately from reading the scripture to reading the fathers yes, I think so and then I was just when you caught me I was just reviewing what you passed out here and well scripture is implied and we have the fathers and we also have a modern theologian who also is imbued with the scriptures and with the fathers and so I was correcting my original thought by stating that we get this sense too yes, I think a good interpreter is usually making the effort

[84:38]

I suppose this is what one can say the best interpreters try to do this is really why I think myself as a young student got into trouble with some of my teachers is that it seemed to me to be clear and widely accepted it was not very wise to read St Thomas in the light of people who were writing sometime after him but it was much more important to know what people had said before him because after all this was the world in which he was himself writing this is partly why I began to read these assertions among other things one of the reasons was I wanted to know what had come before St Thomas and I think you can see that historically he came just at a point when the last possible moment when something like this could have come really because you can see behind it

[85:41]

the Gloss Bible I am going to mention this some other day as we've got time I'd perhaps like to give you a visual impression of what a Gloss Bible is like I've seen in Cambridge at least in one of the colleges in Cambridge when I was studying manuscripts they did have a wonderful printed edition of the most famous of the Gloss when St Thomas is referring to the Gloss as he sometimes is a thing done by Manuel Nicolas of Marra and this is really you've got a text of scripture down the page you might perhaps have let's have a look out like that then you've got in the margin against each single line

[86:42]

Gregory Augustine almost anybody you see little sentences taken from now all great writers including St Thomas himself often took their comments on a scriptural text from one of these Glosses so the Gloss was a very important kind of source book but do remember again that's a second hand book so in fact as you probably know one of St Thomas' own problems which he was very acutely aware was that he couldn't read any Greek and in fact he had to find somebody who could translate for him a man called William of Merwick who did a lot of translation for him and I've always thought that if you want to see how very brilliant a man St Thomas was simply as a thinker as a man he had a terrible translation of Aristotle's De Anima which is a very difficult book

[87:45]

in Greek indeed extremely difficult because it's a kind of notebook some of the sentences are hardly complete and so on and yet somehow or other through this terrible translation St Thomas I think often arrived at the conclusions what Aristotle probably meant and that's been a remarkable feat of being able to do that in a very big way and he did a great deal of it so one hasn't always got to assume that medieval writers are going to have done what I recommend you should do read a chunk of Gregory when you can though even that I think is better I mean it's better to have read perhaps one bit of Gregory you know right through than it is to just know a sentence or two but still of course this is one so in other words that's really what we're talking about Mark isn't it we either get it fairly directly through the scriptures

[88:46]

or through the fathers if we happen to be able to read them sometimes we're getting it second hand sometimes of course an interest may be awakened I mean for instance I'm quite sure that Gerson's book which I've mentioned on St Bernard I think some of the things he said in the course of it if you're going to think like this you'll probably never see one of these there are very few of them but with all their little notes at the side from different sources you might suddenly come across something you think is an extraordinary thing let's have a look and see what this looks like in the original and it makes you want to go back again at any rate it seems to me always somehow whether you are doing it or not it's something that makes you look at the thing again and it makes you want to know I suppose I ought to say

[89:46]

I'm sorry this is going down on tape because I've always wondered how they got got away with the New Testament version of the Jerusalem Bible in English which is very different from the French of course it isn't really the Jerusalem Bible at all as far as the French is concerned it sometimes seems to me very dubious that's going to be the end of it we're not working unless you're are you all too tired? are you too tired? what I was going to say there I think there's such a high degree of interpretation especially in the Bishops of St Paul that it really is very very dangerous to use their translation as a basis for theological argument do be careful of it it really is very dangerous in its way I don't suppose it's directly heretical

[90:48]

but it's you could easily become a heretic with the help of the Jerusalem Bible the English one anyway not the French one which translation would you say would be safe to read well it's very hard to know what the answer is to this one I really just don't know it seems to me that in view of what I've said just to be quite fair to the Jerusalem Bible as it stands one surely ought to say about any other translation do have a look at another translation as well especially when your nose you know the sense thing that I've been talking about says to you I wonder whether they really said that so never neglect

[91:49]

the revised standard version which is sometimes dull but generally is quite nearly the Greek in the New Testament anyway so you would recommend the RSVS I think as a control yes I would always use it I think as a control for something you felt a bit doubtful about anybody got any strong views about this John about it even King James of course about the justification like one of the ones I was looking at the other day suddenly I thought let's see what King James does with this and it was really rather good I thought I've been doing some other kinds of work not theology work particularly but something that I've had to go back and back to

[92:51]

is the diary readings because you get a translation and the thing is you read that it's always wrong that they've mistranslated it it's not true there's a special word about the diary version you know the one we're talking about it was so called because for a long period there was a whole lot of English Catholics were living in a place called Douai which is pronounced diary I don't know how you do it in America but that's the way we do it in England so they produced a translation Bishop Terena did the main thing the main amount of work it was strongly influenced by the King James version but where it's sometimes useful is of course on the sapiential books because one of the things I always feel sad about for those people who have to read St Bernard and other secession writers in English translation

[93:52]

is that St Bernard is of course full of allusions to the sapiential books and the Psalms because he's got a different Latin version and occasionally the diary will give you a Vulgar version which you want to know if you can't read the Vulgar for yourself then you're going to get it from the diary so for the sapiential books I would have thought sometimes look at the diary version if you can I'm sure that's right I usually have about 4 or 5 in a row I look it up as much as I can because unfortunately one has to keep on rethinking one's language all the time yes something that maybe you could

[94:53]

elaborate on you mentioned the Ignatius of Antioch yes and his view of the church yes and how that was assimilated or taken over by monasticism I think you said something like that yes I think you see that I think the well I can't obviously give a kind of positive history of this in just a few minutes but it seems to me that if you read the letters of the Ignatius of Antioch you get a kind of physical picture he sometimes consciously calls this up of, you'll remember of course that all St. Augustine was talking to his people and all the other early bishops of the church would be talking across the altar as you are in your church here at the moment so you've got the man who's leading

[95:56]

the ex cathedra from the seat here surrounded with benches along the wall by the deacons and the clergy and so Ignatius would sometimes say it's rather like a harp and so you've got a picture of the communicating and then of course the altar is not going to have an altar bell but cancelli it's going to be up to the height of your breast right to the time of Gregory the Great even in St. Peter's in the time of Gregory the Great the altar was carried in a portable altar and the deacons collected both the bread and the wine they had very big you've probably seen pictures of them sometimes big vessels of that sort being carried

[96:56]

for the Eucharist at the cancelli and there's a nice story of Gregory the Great refusing communion to a noble lady who laughed when she saw that he was handing her a piece of bread that was obviously her own nose but I suppose this idea of the celebrating and of course in Rome at any rate the deacons were going to take both the Eucharist for the sick and also portions to other churches around the city both the Eucharist

[97:39]

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