STEPHEN TROTT'S claim that or him the Kingdom of God is a present reality as well as an eschatological truth. indicates a salutary combination of principles that many Christians seem in danger of forgetting nowadays.
We would all be less foolish if we kept more constantly in mind the awe-ful inevitability of our own Last Judgment by God. But it is in regard to the great highway connecting these two; — the immediate and the ultimate, — where he seems weak.
This highway which traverses the centuries and transcends the world is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ: — the Obedient Church, manifested. as I wrote. in the Roman Catholic Church as a "standing miracle" of unity; defying all human explanation.
Mr Trott dismisses as "ultrainontane" my whole point that Christian Obedience both in the Church and in the individual souls comprising it, is the essential human response to God's eat of The Faith.
It is in fact the very pivot on which our Redemption turns. Nobody is forced. The Faith is proffered but our freewill either accepts or rejects. The responsibility for either is entirely our own, for which we must account at our judgment, If we accept. as do Roman Catholics. their docility to the Revelation of Christ: and to the morality, the doctrine and the jurisdiction of the Church which Mediates this Revelation. is a "must".
It is saturated with the marvellous blend of authority and liberty which proceed from the Gospel. written and unwritten. It is fantastic to hold that human intellect, my own, or Mr Trott's or anyone else's has priority of choice over Divine Revelation. Our clear duty is to accept and obey with loving alacrity, once we have grasped that the Church is theaandiating authority.
Let us make no mistake about it. If the Roman Catholic Church is not the mediating authority. then Christ is not God. There is no escape from this stark fact.
But Christ is God. He disposed His Church to exhibit the mysterious Unity of the Holy Trinity, and said so. Indeed. He disposed that the Church's Unity be so manifest as to constitute proof to the world of His own Divinity.
Thus human reaction to Faith must render unquestioning obedience to both Christ and Church; i.e. to an authority external to oneself That is what real Faith is. To learn the certitudes of Divine Truth, subjective Intellect must subordinate in order to be expanded to contain them. and our position assured on the highroad of Christ.
As to St Thomas More, that greatest of Christian Common Lawyers. he died precisely and solely on behalf of this "external Authority". Harold McCrone Northants