‘We must remain absolutely silent on what we cannot talk about’. Wittgenstein’s interdict would surely apply to the mystery of human suffering; at certain intensities of pain it becomes literally as well as idiomatically unspeakable. Even to allude to the educative value of pain is to risk an inhuman glibness, a coldblooded reduction of the specificity of suffering to chill, abstract formulae. We must begin by confessing the ultimate intractability of the problem. Against pain and death we fight a losing battle; and the mystery, always insoluble, has, if anything, become more agonisingly problematic in our own time. Caring for the chronically and terminally ill has always been intensely difficult; in the modem world, technological advances notwithstanding, it has become immeasurably more so.

A world without anaesthetics would be a hell; deprived of analgesics even so routine an event as a visit to the dentist would be something to be dreaded and shunned. To avoid or to minimise pain is an instinctive natural reflex; the deliberate search for suffering is a perversion to which we give the name masochism. Yet it is equally true that a world without pain would be calamitous. Pain is essential to survival—without it we would perish. It is an early warning system, a defence mechanism, vital in preventive medicine against incipient and impending evil. Without pain teeth would rot insensibly in our gums, limbs quietly crumble to ash in the flames or be mangled beyond repair in the machinery, cancers placidly proliferate in our bodies. Once bitten, twice shy. The old adage crystallises the argument that pain educates, teaches us to avoid certain courses of action harmful or destructive to us. Pain is a necessary part of a rational world, regulating behaviour, signalling the need for treatment.

Hans Urs von Balthasar is correctly perceived within the contemporary Catholic Church as an exponent of an orthodox, even conservative, understanding of the faith. His nomination to the rank of cardinal just before his death is evidence of this, as was his friendship with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Nonetheless, one aspect of his theology, that dealing with the possibility of the salvation of all souls, drew upon him ‘fire from the right.’ He was taken to task by, among others, Gerhard Hermes and Heribert Schauf. In reaction to such criticism, Balthasar wrote a book entitled Was dürfen wir hoffen? (‘What may we hope for?’), recently published in translation by Ignatius Press under the title, Dare we hope ‘That all men be saved’? One of the purposes of this article is to examine this answer by Balthasar to his critics. I believe that certain aspects of his argument are, indeed, inadequate and have been justly criticised. Nonetheless, the major question raised in the book (and, indeed, by the entire controversy) is a legitimate one—and precisely in the sense that Balthasar asks it. A second purpose of the present essay, therefore, is to suggest the parameters within which we might hope ‘that all men be saved.’

My First point is one of agreement with Balthasar. Balthasar rejects those criticisms of his own work that suggest that, in so far as we know that at least some souls are damned to eternal perdition, we may not in any sense hope for the salvation of all souls.

The controversy which arose in the summer of 1989 over the presence of a Carmelite convent adjacent to the former Nazi deathcamp at Auschwitz in Poland momentarily brought to world attention the entire field of Holocaust studies, including the theology of the Holocaust. In America, for example, various colleges and universities have established institutes for study of the Holocaust. These centres usually sponsor conferences and scholarly meetings, offer courses on various aspects of the Holocaust, and often do the important work of recording oral and video testimonies from the shrinking pool of concentration camp survivors, thereby documenting the brutality of those years. Some American states have introduced Holocaust studies components into the social studies curricula of their primary and secondary schools. In both Jewish and Christian theological circles, the Holocaust has raised anew such questions as the meaning of suffering and the existence of God, Providence and the vicissitudes of human history, and the entire Christian perspective on Jews and Judaism (including what role Christianity may have played in aiding and/or abetting anti-Semitism).

The Auschwitz convent controversy focused attention on the entire realm of Holocaust studies. But what the controversy did not do was to foster discussion about the central issue upon which the controversy turned: what is the Holocaust?

It is the ambiguity of the definition of “Holocaust” which provided fertile soil not just for the debate over the Carmelite cloister at Auschwitz but also for other disputes. During his June 1991 pilgrimage to Poland, Pope John Paul II was criticised by some Jewish organisations for speaking of abortion on demand as a “Holocaust” of the unborn.

The term ‘solidarity’ is in danger of developing into a clich?. It has been employed so often as a kind of ‘compassion football’ between a guilt-ridden (for some) oppressor ‘First’ World and an indignant (for some) oppressed ‘Third’ that its significance has become opaque. That lack of precision undermines its value for clarifying the relevant Christian response to the divisions between North and South, powerful and powerless, in our world. Solidarity shows us a way which eschews both a patronising attitude and a sense of guilt on the part of the North, and a feeling of being alone in the struggle on the part of the South. Solidarity empowers both and leads to a deeper understanding of what Jon Sobrino, recalling St Paul’s injunction, calls ‘bearing with one another in faith’.

In this article I wish to explore the theological roots of solidarity in an attempt to recapture the flavour of its deeper meaning in a belief that solidarity is a key concept for those who ‘hunger and thirst for what is right’ (Mt 5:6). I follow Albert Nolan’s argument that its roots are found in the Old Testament, but that it broadens its scope when Jesus begins his mission. The new theology of neighbour then becomes the model of solidarity for later thinkers, theologians and activists (‘militantes’ to the Latin Americans) in both the Third World and the West, in their struggle to live an authentically human, and therefore authentically Christian life. Lying at the core of solidarity is co-responsibility for the planet, and the humanisation of life for every being on it, by ridding the world of the structures of widespread injustice and deep-seated division which disfigure the created oneness of humanity.