To go back to the point where we began – to the plight of Sabina, in Milan Kundera's novel: her condition is that of one who is inwardly, in a double sense, an exile; in flight not only from the kitsch propagated by the ruling official orthodoxy in her homeland, but also, equally, from the opposing forms of political kitsch prevalent in her place of refuge. Her experience, thus, serves to highlight the underlying sameness – at a certain level – of the mass-psychological mechanisms at work, over four decades, on both sides of the Cold War.

In Europe, the Cold War split in half the traditional heartlands of Christendom.

In view of the fateful consequences of the split, in the twin phenomena of competitive neo-colonialism and the nuclear arms race, what is one to make, in particular therefore, of the historic failure of the churches, on both sides, to bear a more effective prophetic witness against it?

And how ought we to respond at a theological level; so that our thinking may be equal to the full depth of all the problems uncovered by that failure?

The argument up to now may have been somewhat roundabout; in the nature of the case, it has had to be. But this whole work springs from an original preoccupation with just these questions. If I have wanted to reconsider Hegel, it is because I think he has insights which can be of some real practical help in the search for answers here.