My The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions (Oxford University Press) appeared in 2012. In 2014 it went into a paperback edition, which allowed me to list some reviews and promise to enter into dialogue with all the reviewers. This article takes up such dialogue and discusses what came from nine reviewers. Glenn Siniscalchi wrote two reviews. Eduardo Echeverria went much further by writing two long essays on the book.

For twelve of the years during which he spent a semester lecturing as a visiting professor at the Gregorian University (Rome), Frederick Copleston enjoyed close contacts with Bernard Lonergan. He was one of the two ‘house’ censors of Insight. He also wrote a very positive review of the book for the Oxford-based Journal of Theological Studies, which was then co-edited by Henry Chadwick. The personal and professional contacts between Copleston and Lonergan have been widely neglected; they call for further study and evaluation.

This article aims at reinstating an older interpretation (offered e.g. by R. H. Lightfoot) of the astonishment, fear, and silent flight with which three women responded to the message they heard from the angel in Jesus's open and empty tomb. It was an appropriate reaction to the astonishing revelation of the resurrection. The article argues that this reaction is not to be reckoned as an unexpected failure on the part of the women. Throughout Mark's Gospel they proved exemplary in their following of Jesus, right through to being present at his crucifixion. Mary Magdalene and her two companions remained temporarily silent until they could deliver the angel's message to the appropriate audience, the male disciples.

This article argues that, unlike some exegetes (e.g. Francis Moloney), Thomas Torrance correctly interpreted Mark 16:19–20 in support of a theology of the ascended Christ's continuing prophetic activity. In the ministry of the Word, Christ remains present and at work witnessing to himself. This prophetic office, associated with and not to be separated from his kingly and priestly functions, is not to be played down. He is the primary agent forever actively involved in Christian proclamation.

In his sermons, Answer to Faustus a Manichean, and other works, Augustine insisted that belief in Christ's resurrection establishes the identity and defines the faith of Christians. In justifying resurrection belief, he appealed to evidence from (1) created nature and (2) human history, and to (3) the desires and experiences of those he addressed. From the perspective of creation, ‘the miracle’ of the world and all the wonders it contains (particularly the worldly pattern of ‘new life after death’) support Easter faith. Historically, Augustine argues from a visible effect (almost the whole of Roman society accepting the resurrection) to the only adequate cause of this phenomenon (Christ's victory over death). Finally, the human hunger for happiness, Augustine argues, finds its fulfilment only through sharing in Christ's resurrection – though in this context he does not forget the light provided by the Holy Spirit, through whom ‘with the eyes of the heart we behold’ the risen Christ (Sermon 263).

This article critically examines the views of Jacques Dupuis, Gavin D'Costa, and Francis Sullivan on the church's intercession for those of other living faiths or of no faith at all. After clarifying what the Scholastic terminology of “final” and “moral” causality means, it shows how 1 Timothy and Vatican II's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy elucidate intercession for “others.” Here a rich tradition of philosophical-theological reflection on the efficacy of prayer can no longer be ignored. Finally, intercession for “others” is inspired by love for them, and brings the faithful to share in Christ's priestly ministry for the whole world. In these ways, the article aspires to open up new themes for the theology of religions.

Arthur Peacocke, a biochemist turned theologian, accepted Christ's personal resurrection but not his bodily resurrection from the grave. He argued from Paul's silence about the discovery of the empty tomb, from Christ's sharing fully in our human condition, and from the irreversible processes of nature. John Polkinghorne, a physicist turned theologian, has maintained that Paul's view of resurrection implies an empty tomb, that Christ's resurrection from the grave has revealed the transformed destiny of matter, and that, for good reasons, God can suspend and change the laws of nature. In Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's vision of an evolving world, Christ's resurrection from the grave released a new force of love and revealed the spiritual destiny of matter. With Polkinghorne he shared a hope for the transformation of the universe, a process initiated by the glorious raising of Jesus’ crucified body.

On Christmas Day 2007, Channel Four took its viewers for two hours on an alleged search for ‘the real Jesus’. The programme largely failed to introduce any real experts; there were errors and painful gaps in the ‘information’ provided; there was hardly any recognition that, over and over again, there was another side to the positions being presented. Among the fantasies once again trotted out was Jesus’ supposed life and death in India, a ‘thesis’ that was invented without a shred of evidence in the 1890s. The presenter repeatedly pushed theories about early followers of Jesus reworking beliefs and practices from Gnostic and other sources. St Paul was portrayed as the ‘real’ founder of Christianity, without a word being said about this view being proposed and long ago refuted. The poor quality of this programme was astounding. One expects something much better, especially on Christmas Day.

In Jeffrey Archer's The Gospel According to Judas, Judas dismisses the virginal conception of Jesus as no more than another example of ‘Greek myths that tell of gods in heaven who produce offspring following a union with women of this earth’. To attribute such a view to a first-century Jew like Judas seems strange, since the earliest evidence shows Jewish critics of the Christian movement rejecting the virginal conception as a case of illegitimacy. In any case such Greek myths do not provide plausible sources for the two Gospel accounts of the virginal conception. Yet such merely historical debate is insufficient. One should press on to illustrate the religious significance and theological importance of the virginal conception within the whole story of Jesus: for instance, the role of this conception in revealing the Trinity at work for human salvation.

In 1918, on the very day the First World War ended, Karl Barth (1886–1968) wrote of doing theology with the Bible in one hand and the newspapers in the other. The scriptures and the daily papers converge in presenting one real, if highly unpleasant, feature of our human existence: hatred.

Closely aligned with the theme of the passio Christi apud Sinenses is that of the emulation of heroes. Mao led his nation in an extraordinary struggle to reshape the values, attitudes and ideas of an entire people. James Reston, senior editor of the New York Times was astounded by the ‘staggering thing that modem China is trying to do. They’re not trying merely to revolutionize people, and establish a sense of social conscience, but they’re really trying to change the character of these people. The place is one vast school of moral philosophy.’ Many methods pour into this enormous programme of thought-reform: preaching, teaching, wide-ranging techniques of persuasion from the outside, and orgies of self-criticism in which people testify to their conversion away from selfishness and incorrect ideas towards an exalted service of the masses in the name of the party. In all this ideological struggle to practise good deeds, overcome selfishness and reach true equality in a new society, the emulation of heroes (and sometimes of heroines) has emerged as a major means used on a nation-wide scale.

I would like to explore this imitation of heroes. It would be silly to speak of it constituting an imitatio Christi apud Sinenses (imitation of Christ among the Chinese). Nevertheless, certain interesting Christological implications may emerge.

It has been conventional to describe theology as ‘faith seeking understanding’. We might, however, care to shift from the private sphere of understanding to the public sphere of language and call theology ‘watching one’s language in the presence of God’. Either way Christian theology must show itself to be truly Christian. It should seek understanding in the light of Jesus Christ. It should watch its language in the presence of the God-man.

Using either version of theology, what might we say about the New China and the recent Chinese experience? What insights and reflections does faith in Christ suggest about the era and the nation on which Mao Tse-tung has put his stamp? Where can belief in the Crucified and risen Jesus take its stand vis-a-vis contemporary China?

When asked to confront Christ and Mao’s China I have no short or easy answer to give. Let me single out two themes (suffering and the emulation of heroes), and then conclude by listing some major points of comparison and contrast when we bring together the two figures themselves, Jesus and Mao.

First of all, suffering. Over twenty years ago Father Robert W. Greene’s Calvary in China appeared. In 1937 he had begun his missionary career in China. He was imprisoned after the Communist victory in 1949, put on trial in 1952, and then expelled from the country.

Early this year I heard a lecture by Hans Georg Gadamer (a retired professor of philosophy from Heidelberg University) on the history of relations between philosophers and poets. Gadamer mused on the ups and downs, the loves and hates, the convergences and divergences of that relationship. It runs all the way from Plato to the later Heidegger. Plato called the poets’ stories of the gods ‘theologies’. His ideal republic—he believed—would be better off if it severely controlled this kind of theology and even banished the poets. Plato refused to accept that his own master in philosophy, Socrates, had corrupted the youth of Athens, but he clearly believed that poets could be corrupting influences. Other philosophers have been much kinder to poets. In our own century Heidegger turned from his earlier work to draw from poetry the material for his later philosophical reflections.

All in all, it was a brilliant lecture by Gadamer. It set a number of questions buzzing in my head. Would a period that was high on poetic imagination prove likely to be low on philosophical thought? Do poetry and philosophy represent completely different ways of approaching reality, which neither match one another nor even have much to do with one another? And then came the question that gave rise to this lecture. Would reflection on some of the ways poets and philosophers work throw light on the mind behind the preaching of Jesus?

Let us explore that last question and see what comes up. First of all, the philosophers and their revolutions. Some philosophers like Wittgenstein have stood back from their culture, surveyed centuries of intellectual history, and quite consciously tried to take philosophy and human thought in new directions. In their own way such philosophers could appropriate the sentiment of Jesus, ‘Of old such and such was said to you. But I say to you’.

Men and women martyred for their faith form a coherent and distinctive group—from Socrates and Stephen, through Joan of Arc, Savonarola and Thomas More, down to Dietrich Bonhoeffer in our own day. Violent death came to each in such a way that we can classify them all with Jesus.

Particular circumstances may allow us to match their martyrdoms with his passion and crucifixion. At times betrayal by former friends or similar forms of treachery led to arrest and imprisonment. The trials which preceded the death penalty frequently centred on some fatal question. Did Thomas More wish to deprive Henry VIII of the title which Parliament had granted him? How would Jesus answer when the high priest asked him : ‘Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?’ (Mark 14:61). Finally, many martyrs shared the same geography of death with Jesus—public execution. Some were, of course, butchered in their prison cells, or like Bonhoeffer led away to the sinister secrecy of a Nazi hanging. But Joan of Arc died in the Rouen market-place, Savonarola outside the old Palace in Florence, and Thomas More on Tower Hill.

Granted these and other similarities, we need, nevertheless, to be sensitive to much that gives Jesus’ passion and death its own particular profile. The differences go beyond the obvious and massive fact that no one even alleges that the other martyrs have reconciled the entire human race with God. We must not let other notable contrasts slip out of sight. Let me examine one of these.

Recent decades have seen a flood of books and articles dealing with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. At no time since the second and third centuries has the central affirmation of Christian faith won so much attention from theologians and exegetes. This renewed interest in the resurrection was pioneered by Karl Barth (1886–1968), whose Epistle to the Romans in its second edition of 1922 marks thereal beginning of twentiethcentury theology. To prevent this investigation of Barth's view of Christ's resurrection from becoming confused and confusing, it seems advisable to make use of a distinction between the earlier and the later Barth. His Anselm study (Fides Quaerens Intellectum) of 1931 forms the turning point. It would be inaccurate to maintain that Barth's later theology represents a total break with his work in the 1920's, but it is incontestable that certain important shifts take place.