In order to gain an understanding of any mediaeval liturgical text, but especially the Roman Rite, which was the central liturgical text for the Latin West, it is essential to realise that the liturgy of the Middle Ages, unike the liturgy of today, was embedded in a culture which was ritual in character. The world of commerce, for example, was sacralised through its management by the economic guilds, whose liturgical basis ensured that production was perpetually crossed out by being offered in worship. This was a time when the Offertory gifts were not disconnected from the produce of everyday life; indeed, the category itself of ‘everyday life’ was perforce a thoroughly liturgical category. For the community was not seen as a given, existing prior to, or in separation from, its reception of the Eucharist. Rather, the community as such was seen as flowing from eternity through the sacraments. The historian John Bossy has shown this by stressing the sacramental nature of all social bonds in the mediaeval period.3 Supremely, the Church as ‘body of Christ’ was ceaselessly recreated through receiving the gift of the Eucharistic body of Christ. Because of this reciprocal link between life and liturgy, any liturgical reform must take into account the fact that the liturgy which it seeks to revise is as much, or more a cultural and ethical phenomenon, as a textual one. Now, criticisms of liturgical reform, such as those implicit in what I have just said, are often dismissed as conservative or nostalgic.

The prospect of meetings provokes a variety of responses: dread, despondency, lethargy, scepticism, cynicism, and, occasionally, hope and the prospect of progress. Much of the natural aversion, it seems to me, centres on the inherent capacity of meetings to engender disagreement. Disagreement, however, so often ignores yet still rests upon a more fundamental agreement among participants, an agreement which very often only comes to the fore, discretely, when the air of the meeting clears and the assembly adjourns for lunch. By reflecting upon Emmanuel Lévinas and Thomas Reid, this paper argues that more attention, and attentiveness, needs to be given to the proto-agreement upon which any subsequent (dis)agreement rests.

Lévinas opens Totality and Infinity by simply stating in the Preface that ‘[e]veryone will readily agree... (on conviendra ais?ment...)' and then proceeds to argue the priority of ethics, with its thought of the infinite, over knowledge understood as a counterpart to ontology’s reductive comprehension of the other to the same. The problem, however, is that not everyone does readily agree with Lévinas, as is evident in Derrida’s criticism of the rationality of Lévinas’ position. In Violence and Metaphysics, Derrida draws attention to ‘the theoretical incoherence of the notions of pure infinity and absolute otherness, or exteriority.’ Like a ‘square circle,’ the concepts of an ‘absolutely other’ or an ‘otherwise than being’ are empty intuitions and are meaningless. Lévinas’ relation with absolute alterity is a thought which one cannot think, a logical contradiction inviting a sceptical response.

Edward Schillebeeckx’s richly thought-provoking explorations of Christology are focused in his two studies, Jesus and Christ. These works have brought out with considerable force the need to acknowledge differing, yet parallel interpretations of the person of Christ which are embodied in the life and experience of very different communities in contrasting periods of history. The New Testament itself bears ample witness to this diversity in so far as it is marked by a density of imagery and variety of interpretation which is the product of the churches both of the Jewish Diaspora and the Hellenic world which gave it its shape. The limits of this rich diversity are clearly established by discovering an identity between the exalted Christ and the life and ministry of the earthly Jesus: what Jesus said and what he did provides the necessary ground for the developing Christology of those who follow after their master. Schillebeeckx recognises what Donald MacKinnon insists on, in talking about ‘the explosive intellectual force’ of Jesus’ life and ministry, which confronts those scholars who would seek to reduce the earthly reality of the Christ event to ‘an acted parable of intellectual reconciliation’.

Schillebeeckx argues powerfully that the “‘Jesus affair”... is not just a vision born of faith and based solely on the disciples’ Easter experience; it is his self-understanding that creates the possibility and lays the foundation of the subsequent interpretation by the Christians’. (Jesus, pp 311-312) For Schillebeeckx, the fundamental tenets of soteriology are established by developing the implications inherent in the call to follow after Jesus rather than by way of a developing reflection on the saving significance of Jesus’ death as such.

This essay started with the experience of teaching Loss and Gain to an English Literature research class. I was teaching a novel that illustrated an important aspect of the intellectual history of Victorian Britain; the class had been reading a psychological novel which they found (often simultaneously) both perverse and amusing. They were, of course, laughing at Newman rather than with him. I imagine that the response I encountered is not untypical: however Loss and Gain might have been regarded in the past, it is not going to be looked at in the same way today. And when we take account of the impact of critical theory, the picture becomes even more complicated: feminist and New Historicist critics, while not necessarily taking a hostile view of Loss and Gain, are inevitably going to discuss it in a way that challenges traditional approaches. This prompts the question I want to consider: whether current sceptical critical approaches can be reconciled with a sympathetic appreciation of the serious intent of Loss and Gain?

I

A split in criticism becomes apparent immediately if we consider a basic point: Newman is writing about a man’s world. And why not? The Oxford of his day did not admit women. But times change, and even nonfeminist readers today are likely to be struck by the effete remoteness of the university life he depicts, perhaps seeing it as an environment that encourages a fear of women. The problems are apparent in the breakfast party that the junior tutor, Mr Vincent, arranges for Charles Reding and other undergraduates.