Only a few minutes after the events of September 11, 2001, the perfidious terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington were being linked with the religious sphere. It made no difference whether it was the slogan of “battle of the cultures” (S.P. Huntington) which made the rounds of the mass media or whether the public took a look at the simplistic Islamic thoughts of Mohammed Atta, which the pilot of death had left behind in his will, or whether it was in the context of the political war rhetoric which accompanied the allied attack on Osama bin Laden and the whole of Afghanistan, or whether it was in the statements made by church officials at the innumerable memorial services for the victims of the attacks: religion was or, rather, is, always involved.

The questions are obvious: What is this link between violence and religion about? Is there a potential for violence which is structurally inherent in the religious - outside or particularly also within the concrete religions of revelation: Judaism, Christianity and Islam? Does the terrorist attack on the twin towers of Manhattan - symbols of globalized capitalism - demonstrate the reawakening of “religious mania” (as the German news magazine Der Spiegel put it)? These and similar questions challenge (Dominican) theologians to give their opinions about this, since each religion determines its relationship to violence through its particular theology (cf. H.-J. Sander).

In Summa Theologiae 3a, q48 Thomas Aquinas proposes five ways or models of atonement. These are, in order, the ways of merit, satisfaction, sacrifice, redemption and efficient causality. In line with the patristic and mediaeval tradition, Aquinas presents these five models very much in terms of what Hans Urs von Balthasar might call a theodramatic ‘action’ between God and humanity—a drama centred on the person of the incarnate Son who in some sense or other offers recompense to his Father for our sins. This theodramatic approach to soteriology dominates Catholic thought from Anselm to Balthasar and Protestant thought from Luther to Barth and beyond, but it takes little account of the latest thinking in historical Jesus studies or of current interpretations of Paul and other New Testament writers, and in this article I would like to suggest a way of rereading Summa Theologiae 3a, q48 in the light of what might be termed the Schweitzer/Sanders/Wright understanding of Jesus and Paul.

For Albert Schweitzer, Jesus was an eschatological prophet who saw himself as heralding the end of the age and who, when his preaching did not result in the anticipated apocalypse, effectively ‘broke himself on the wheel of history’ in order to bump human history over into the next phase. Paul picked up on this, and (according to Schweitzer) his ‘Christ-mysticism’ explored the various ways (being ‘in Christ’, dying and rising with Christ, mystical body, Holy Spirit) in which Christians become bound up with the Messiah whose death has inaugurated the eschatological kingdom.

As we approach, and prepare for, the Johannesburg Summit—Rio plus 10—we need all the wisdom we can muster if the human family is to move, beyond the faltering steps of Rio ‘92, into genuine sustainable living on the earth. Anything less than genuine sustainability, considering our present population, consumption, and technology, will spell catastrophes within this century. The Earth Charter, an interfaith declaration of principles, says ‘Every individual, family, organisation, and community has a vital role to play. The arts, sciences, religions, educational institutions, media, businesses, non-governmental organisations, and governments are all called to offer creative leadership.’ The Earth Charter identifies no one religion, nor religion itself, as the global ‘mother church’, or pre-eminent pillar of earth ethics. Significantly, however, several important contributors to the Charter are Christian. One, Steven Rockefeller, observes, ‘Many of the critical concerns and spiritual ideals affirmed in the document resonate with values that have traditionally been important to Christians.’ The Christian religion has a cosmic dimension, for in Jesus incarnate, God unites himself with all humanity, and therefore with the whole earth community. Rockefeller argues that social ethics extends to the whole earth community. More strikingly still, an American astronaut, and Christian, James Irwin, says, ‘It is more important that Christ walked upon the earth, than that man walked upon the moon.’

John Macquarrie has written of John Henry Newman that “in emphasizing conscience, he is thinking along the same lines” as theologians such as Karl Rahner, “who have claimed that the human being has the capacity for transcendence towards God”. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this claim, with specific reference to the similarities that exist in Newman and Rahner in their respective treatments of the ‘way to faith’. I shall show how the role of mystagogy as a way to faith in Rahner can help us understand the role of conscience as a way to faith in Newman. In particular, I shall address the issue of Newman’s proof of God from conscience, and how its effectiveness is dependent on its not being regarded as a proof of God in the sense of the traditional proofs. Finally, having responded to some Wittgensteinian objections to the apparently grandiose claims of Newman and Rahner, I shall show how a passage in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty can help us understand the pastoral effectiveness of the Rahnerian and Newmanian ways to faith, and shall suggest why Newman felt unable to publish the work he planned on the argument from conscience.