The question arises, because Christian tradition has always assumed that these chapters are as historical as any of the historical books of the bible. For most of its course tradition has assumed this in a rather naive, quasi-fundamentalist way. The naivety of fundamentalism or literalism, is no longer intellectually possible in the light of modem historical, archaeological, palaeontological and literary criticism. But does this formidable array of criticism compel us to abandon the traditional assumption altogether?

I think not. Theologically we are still committed, not merely by the decisions of the Roman Biblical Commission, of which the latest (that I know of) and most genial is the letter to Cardinal Suhard of Paris, 16th Jan. 1948, but by the whole weight of theological tradition and the most up-to-date biblical hermeneutics (e.g. that of von Rad), to maintaining that these chapters are historical in some way or another: but it will be in a very peculiar way which the modern professional historian will not easily recognise as historical.

Rahner makes a distinction between historical in form and historical in content. It is a useful distinction to start from. To illustrate: a narrative which is historical in content but not in form would be Nathan’s parable to David, 2 Sam. 12. Its content in fact describes what David had done, but in form it was a kind of parable. It was history disguised as fiction. A narrative that is historical in form but not in content would be something like a historical novel—fiction disguised as history.

I come here then, simply as a Parish Sister; yes, I have had a background of teaching. I still consider my basic missionary thrust educational but I can only speak as a Sister in Pastoral work. I will speak from nine years experience in a dockland area of Liverpool, of living and working with people there, of being there from nine in the morning till eleven at night—sometimes till one or two the next morning—for seven days a week, forty-eight weeks of the year. Just being there, living there, working there, trying to be a neighbour, a friend—in the name of Jesus. From that experience I may say things that may not make sense to you—that you may not agree with—that you may not find helpful—but just now at the beginning I want to say that I am trying to explain, as honestly and forthrightly as can, what the phrase The Sister and Education means to me in Inner City Liverpool—what my new ministry there has shown me.

Up there in Liverpool, if you are going north from the Pierhead, along the Dock Road and if about three-quarters of a mile along the docks you turn left and come “up the brew” through three sets of traffic lights, you will find a solid Victorian building-ancient but freshly painted—on the edge of Smith Estate with the name ‘The People’s Centre” in strong white lettering on the black door.

Priests working in parishes up .and down the length and breadth of Africa are faced with a severe, and ever increasing problem. They refer to it as the “school leavers’ problem”, meaning the thousands of disaffected and frustrated primary and secondary school graduates, who having completed their course of education, and armed with their hard-earned certificates find themselves unemployed and unemployable. They may have spent years in the city, have tried every avenue and have drifted either into delinquency and crime, or have gravitated back to the “bush”.

They went to school in the hope that school would free them from the grinding poverty of the rural areas, by obtaining employment hopefully in town, and even more hopefully, white-collared: an easier and more interesting life than their parents’ was their goal. Their parents looked on this as an investment, insurance against their old age or infirmity, and likely as not made tremendous sacrifices to send them, equip them, and keep them there.

It rarely .turns out that way and years of expense, sacrifice and effort dissipate themselves as the graduates slip back into, at best, semi-literacy. Their styles and standards of living, their outlook and ambitions are often indistinguishable from those of their “less-fortunate” brothers and sisters who did not go to school.

For decades, and often in the teeth of Colonial opposition, the Churches founded schools, and brought “education” to the furthermost comers of Africa. To do this the Church, as much as the parents themselves, made huge sacrifices of personnel and material, time and money.

On 1st February 1933, two days after his election as Reichskanzler, Hitler published a proclamation in the Völkischer Beobachter in which he promised to take Christianity, ‘the basis of our whole morality’, under his ‘Firm protection’. This meant that the state religion would have to conform with and support National Socialist ideology. For some who rebelled against this it meant exile and for others death.

The universities were among the earliest of state institutions to be purged after the confirmation of Hitler as Chancellor of Germany and as early as April 1933 Bernhard Rust, the Prussian Minister for Cultural Affairs, had suspended the theologians Emil Fuchs, Professor at Kiel, Karl Ludwig Schmidt at Bonn and Paul Tillich at Frankfurt where he was Professor of Philosophy and Sociology, together with teachers of other subjects in other universities.

Tillich had lived a curious life in Germany up to that time. Having been an Army Chaplain in the 1914-18 war and having endured the battle at Verdun, he became firmly identified with the political fate of Germany after the war. He became a Religious Socialist and had a very reserved and equivocal association with the institutional church. Yet he managed to combine his socialism with an enthusiastic participation in the parties of upper class society, and he combined his Lutheran Christianity with a still more enthusiastic participation in a wide variety of sexual adventures. Despite his detestation of the thuggery of Nazi university students he was loath to leave Germany even after the accession of Hitler and his desire to return from New York in 1934 and be given a university job led him to produce a most compromising letter to Rust in which he appealed for employment in Germany.

First, two reprints, one of an undoubted classic, Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence of God, in Donald Attwater’s excellent translation, with a relatively new introduction by Dorothy Day. This must be the most attractive English edition available now. It may be doubted whether Cardinal Suenens’ A New Pentecost? will survive the test of time, but it is likely to endure long enough to justify its new paperback edition. (For a review of the original edition, see New Blackfriars, November 1975).

There is also an anthology of the Cardinal’s dicta compiled by his devoted biographer, Elizabeth Hamilton, Ways of the Spirit, and this makes a pleasant book to dip into, and could be used as an aid to meditation.

The SPCK offers us a new edition of Bishop Appleton’s One Man's Prayers, revealing a generous and trusting spirituality, expressed in simple prayers which many might find helpful on occasion.

John Gunstone, The Beginnings at Whatcombe is a lucid and readable account of the growth of one of the more convincing communities to emerge from the “charismatic movement” in this country, and offers wise advice about the difficulties of living together in community without simply fleeing to naive supematuralism.