ISSN 0014-1690 the Ethical Record Vol. 99 No. 10 November 1994

TYNDALE AS TRANSLATOR OF THE BIBLE David Daniell 3

WHO KILLED HILDA MURRELL? Judith Cook 6

ETHICAL THOUGHT AND ETHICAL PRINCIPLES Jonathan Dancy 11

DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS AND•THE DISCREDITING OF CHRISTIANITY Daniel O'Hara 14

DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS (1808-1874) LASKI - A LIFE ON THE wrote Leben-Jesu in 1835. In 1842 an English LEFT Reviewed by translation, "The Life of Jesus", was published in Dorothy Forsyth 22 London by Henry Hetherington with the above engraving as frontispiece. See page 14. VIEWPOINT Eric Stockton 23 EDITORIAL — THE HUMANIST THREAD FUTURE EVENTS 24 Prof David Daniell (page 3), in telling Tyndale's tragic story, refers to the study of classical texts by the renaissance humanists, and to Tyndale's use of the original Greek and Hebrew sources (instead of the 4th century Latin version) when doing his translation. Daniel O'Hara (page 14) reveals F.D. Strauss as a modern humanist in his effort to understand the content of the Bible as a human and not a superhuman production. Both Tyndale and Strauss were attacked and resented by the religious establishments of their time. There is bound to be a conflict between disinterested scholarship, the pursuit of novel truths — and The defenders of well-worn dogma, whether ecclesiastic or secular.

There is an echo of this conflict in the field of moral philosophy — Prof Jonathan Dancy in his paper Ethical Thought and Ethical Principles (page I I) quotes George Eliot's diatribe against "the men of maxims". Whereas this particular conflict may be capable of resolution, I see no possibility of a synthesis between the Christian view of man as doomed if without faith in supernatural assistance and the humanist conviction that religion is an invention — we are on our own in the universe. SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY

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Trustees The Trustees (technically, the Holding Trustees) named below (with year of AGM election given) serve a 10-year term (I-year for over 75s). In law, the members of the General Committee are regarded as the Society's Charity Trustees. Louise Booker ('94), Miriam Elton ('94), Sheila Gold ('94), Marion Granville ('93), Peter Heales ('94), Don Liversedge ('94), Barbara Smoker ('94), Harry Stopes-Roe ('85), Gerald Vinten ('93). Appointed Lecturers The AGM on 2.10.94 reappointed the list of Lecturers: Harold Blackham, T.F. Evans, Peter Heales, Richard Scorer, Barbara Smoker, Harry Stopes-Roe, Nicolas Walter. Officers The General Committee elected the following on 5.10.94.: Honorary Representative: Nicolas Walter. General Committee Chairman: Barbara Smoker. General Committee Vice-Chairman: Govind Deodhekar. Treasurer Don Liversedge. Editor. The Ethical Record: Norman Bacrac. Librarian: Edwina Palmer. Registrar Marion Granville. Secretary to the Society: Nina Khare. Tel: 071-831 7723 Fax: 071-430 1271 (The Secretary's office is on the 2nd Floor, Bradlaugh House, 47 Theobald's Road) Hall Staff Manager Stephen Norley. Tel: 071-242 8032 for Hall bookings. Head Caretaker David Wright. Convenors of Sub-Committees The following were elected Convenors of Sub-Committees by the General Committee at its meeting on 5 October 1994: Education: Don Liversedge. Executive: The Secretary. Exhibitions: Hall Manager. Finance: Don Liversedge. Hall: Hall Manager. Legal: Barbara Smoker. Library Working Party: Jennifer Jeynes (Executive Librarian) Name: Richard Benjamin. Programme & Editorial: Jennifer Jeynes.* Rules & Standing Orders: The Secretary. South Place Sunday Concerts, Chamber Music Library & Clements Memorial: Lionel Elton.* General Committee Apart from the above Officers and Convenors, the General Committee comprises: James Addison, Ian Buxton, Naomi Lewis, Graham Lyons*, Victor Monger*, David Morris*, Terry Mullins, Tom Rubens*, Harry Whitby, Jean Woodman* (• Elected at the AGM on 2.10.94) New Members Ray Dahlitz, Beatrice Feder, John Goodhew, Steven Yeo.

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2 Ethical Record, October, 1994 TYNDALE AS TRANSLATOR OF THE BIBLE

Professor David Daniell Universil) College London Lecture to the Ethical Society, 2 October 1994 on the Quincentenary of the birth of William Tyndale

William Tyndale, who was born 500 years ago in 1494, gave us our English Bible. An Oxford scholar, he was the first to translate the New Testament from Greek into English, and print it: and even more remarkably, translate half the Old Testament from Hebrew into English, and print that. This work was done at a time when to translate the Bible, or even to read it, in English, had been strictly forbidden by the Church in England for over a century. He did all his translating and printing in exile on the Continent. His work cost him his life, and after a sixteen-month imprisonment he was strangled and burned outside Brussels on the morning of 6th October 1536.

Do not Thank God — Thank Tyndale Though he reached and influenced more people than Shakespeare, our debt to him is only slowly coming into view. The three panels of divines summoned by King James, between 1604 and 1611, nearly a hundred years after Tyndale's first work, to produce a new Bible translation (the 'Authorised Version' or 'King-lames Bible') were happy to take, without acknowledgement, 90% of Tyndale's work in the New Testament, and not much less in the Old. 'AV' is acknowledged as one of the glories of what is called England's heritage. It has had more influence on English-speaking people than any other document on any people in the world. Yet the man who made so much of it has been forgotten, and his genius denied him. Until very recently indeed — until the 1990s — it has been customary to thank God that our first Bible translation was not made with any ingredient of artistry, but simply flowed out of a simple soul (i.e. Tyndale) as God poured it in. That this is poppycock, and incipiently dangerous, is something I want to show here.

Tyndale's genius was that on top of an expert knowledge of good Latin, and, unusually, Greek — and, quite remarkably, Hebrew — he translated into an English which was not specialised, but everyday. His translations are not in a literary English, which in the 1520s and 1530s meant heavily Latinised syntax and vocabulary, often with a strong dash of French, nor in some curious philological `translatorese% so 'faithful' to the original that it obstructs understanding. Thus he gives us Jesus in Luke 14 talking of 'the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind', and not 'the pecuniarily disadvantaged, the physically assaulted, the progressionally obstructed with the addition of the visually impaired' —instead of Latin jargon he gives us spoken English monosyllables. Nor does he go for 'translatorese': a few lines later, the Jerusalem Bible of 1966 has 'Go to the open roads and the hedgerows and force people to come in to make sure my house is full.' I find that rebarbative. Tyndale, in 1526, has 'Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come, that my house may be filled.' His ear for spoken English rhythms, for the short units that are, for example, thc legacy of English proverbs, gives his translation at all times that precious and unusual quality, clarity: and as a result, timelessness. (The Jerusalem Bible's 'please accept my apologies' in earlier verses in the same chapter is already dated, where Tyndale's 'I pray thee have me excused', oddly enough, is timeless.)

Humanist Interest in Earliest Texts After boyhood in Gloucestershire, in prosperous circumstances, Tyndale spent about 10 years at Magdalen Hall Oxford, and then possibly some time at Cambridge, where the great Erasmus had been teaching Greek. He returned to Gloucestershire to teach the

Ethical Record, November, 1994 3 children of Sir John and Lady Walsh, not a heavy task. There. in Little Sodbury Manor, I believe he studied Erasmus's ground-breaking Novum instrumentum ol.1516: the first ever printed Greek New Testament, with Erasmus's own Latin alongside and copious annotation at the end. With this book, it was now possible to challenge the Vulgate, that Latin translation of the Bible which the Church had had since the fourth century AD. Humanist advances just before Tyndale's time had opened up interest in the earliest texts, though for many in authority in Europe. for someone to attend to the original languages of the Bible (Greek for the New Testament and Hebrew for the Old) was heretical: the Church had the Latin version made by Jerome, and the Church could not err. Moreover. to translate the Greek and Hebrew into the vernacular, and particularly into English, was damnable: if the common people could have the Scriptures — all the Scriptures — in their hands, they would undoubtedly interpret them amiss: that is, in ways not sanctioned by the Church. This is of course what happened, for study of the New Testament by laymen allowed out the awkward fact that, for example, the doctrine of Purgatory did notappear there. A major source a Church revenue (at its worst, in the selling of indulgences) was undercut.

Tyndale had to go to Germany and the Low Countries to work. He printed 3,000 (some say 6,000) pocket-size copies of an English New Testament in Worms in 1526, and smuggled them down the Rhine to English seaports. There they were eagerly read at all levels of society, but hunted down, confiscated and burned in heaps at St. Paul's Cross by the Bishop of London. Their owners were punished. Only one textually complete copy survives, now proudly shown in the British Library, which has recently bought it forl million.

Tyndale learns Hebrew Tyndale, undeterred but full of grief that his own country could burn the word of God, set out to learn Hebrew to tackle the Old Testament. Only two people in England knew that difficult language, neither of them interested in translating. Tyndale may have spent time at Wittenberg, where Hebrew was studied and translated into German, and may indeed have met Luther. We do not know. But within two years he had such excellent Hebrew that he was able to translate the first five books of the Old Testament, and print them in another small volume, also smuggled across. This was the first time any Hebrew had ever appeared in English. So good was Tyndale's Hebrew, and his sense of it in English, that most of what he did has survived until today — a remarkable achievement, considering the advances since 1530 in Hebrew texts available and knowledge of the language. A reader in London would have found.

In the beginning God created heaven and earth. The earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the deep. and the Spirit of God moved upon the water. Then God said: let there be light and there was light.

That reader would have been used to Fiat lux ! facia est lux, or, if able to see one of the hand-written 'Lollard' translations from the Latin of the 1380s. 'Be made is light; and made is light.' Tyndale's English feels easy, not just because it is familiar. He told us elsewhere that he found that Hebrew went best into English, far better than into Latin. Moreover, so good a scholar was he that he made a most important discovery, as he explained at the start of his Prologue to the revision of his translation made in 1534. This was that underneath the Greek of the New Testament are quite often Hebrew forms. The resulting translation was even more accurate, and ahead of its time. Indeed, we now know Tyndale's New Testament scholarship was well ahead of anyone else in Europe, and certainly of Luther and Melanchthon and the leading scholars M. Wittenberg.

4 Ethical Record. November, 1991 Tyndale executed but his Work lives on That work of Tyndale was done in Antwerp, as was the continuation of his Old Testament translation, not printed until after his death. He wrote other small books which arose from his Bible work, particularly The Obedience of a Christian Man of 1528, written to counter the lie being put about that the Reformers, and Tyndale in particular, were preaching sedition and treason. It was shown by Anne Boleyn to her husband-to-be: King Henry VIII approved.

Tyndale was tricked into arrest in May 1535, imprisoned in a cell in Vilvoorde Castle near Brussels for 16 months, tried, condemned, strangled and burned. He was forgotten, apart from the account ofJohn Foxe's Actes and Monumentes ('F oxe's Book of Ma rtyrs'). His wOrk, however, lived on in successive 16th century Bibles, and then, through the Authorised Version, into the world. King James effectively instructed his panels to take several steps back, and in AV there is a wash of Latinity which sometimes obscures Tyndale's directness, as in the difference between AV at the end of Matthew 6, 'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof', and Tyndale's Tor the day present hath ever enough of his own trouble.' Such proverbial forms are everywhere in Tyndale, and thousands.of them have enriched our language — 'the spirit is willing', 'live and move and have our being', 'fight the good fight', 'the scales fell from his eyes', 'the powers that be' (for the latter, the 1989 Revised English Bible has 'the existing authorities').

Tyndale was at Oxford, where he learned classical rhetoric: his maturity coincided with an uprush of new interest in that discipline led by Erasmus, whose little book known as De copia (1512) introduced many generations of schoolboys for over a hundred years to the craft of arranging words, that is, writing. In that book, Erasmus, famously, demonstrated an exercise of saying 'Your letter has delighted me very much' in 150 ways, albeit in Latin.

Tyndale's Whole Being given to the Craft of Writing Further, Tyndale was a scholar of languages. As a child in Gloucestershire he would have been aware of Welsh, and the German and Flemish of merchants in the area for the wool trade. It is credibly said that, as well as English, he was master of eight languages. This was a man, like Shakespeare, whose whole being was given to the craft of writing, of what words could'clo when spoken, and on the page: and like Shakespeare, his words were on the page to be spoken. The more his translations are studied, the more apparent it is that he knew precisely what he was doing, with a technical skill matching that of a designer of aircraft engines. His sense of cadence, for example, of the way the fall of the voice can stir the heart, is unique: 'But Mary kept all those sayings, and pondered them in her heart' (Luke 2); 'for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again: and was lost, and is found' (Luke IS); Tor we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is no hope. For how can a man hope for that which he seeth? But and if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience abide for it' (Romans 8); Tor the lamb which is in the midst of the seat shall feed them, and shall lead them unto fountains of living water, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes' (Revelation 7).

A neglected study of Tyndale is of the way that he matches the original. The 66 books of the Bible contain more than 66 styles of Hebrew and Greek, from the stark tragi-comedy of the Fall in Genesis 3 to the long novel-like narratives of Joseph (Genesis 37-48) or David's court (2 Samuel 16 — 1 Kings 2); from the elemental lucidity of the parables of Jesus in the Gospels to the Hebrew-in-Greek theology of Paul; from the journal at the end of Acts to the surreal hallucinations of Revelation. A bad translator makes it all sound the same — a fault that can be laid at the door both of the old Latin Vulgate and the very modern, trendy, 'have-a-nice-day' Bibles. Tyndale is conscious always of the topography

Ethical Record, November, 1994 5 beneath the surface, as it were: of the variety on the sea-bed, with mountain ranges and steep valleys and great shelves and plains, in the Hebrew as well as the Greek.

Tyndale gave his life for the power of the Greek and Hebrew Testaments in every person's hand, whoever they were. Foxe quotes his famous remark that 'even the boy that driveth the plough' shall know Scripture. We owe to him our freedom to own Bibles and to interpret their pages in the light of the whole. Above all, to have the Scriptures in an English that speaks directly to the heart. This small, retiring scholar, passionately brave in giving men and women the Word of God, single-handedly changed the whole course of our history. It is time to know him better. 0

WHO KILLED FIILDA MURRELL?

Judith Cook Lecture to the Ethical Society, 9 October 1994

On the morning of 24 March 1984 the body of an elderly woman was found in a copse six miles outside Shrewsbury. She was half-naked and there were superficial injuries. The probable cause of death was hypothermia. After a lengthy investigation, the police concluded that the woman's death was the result of a break-in by an opportunist thief which had gone "tragically wrong". They have never deviated from that conclusion.

The Enemy Within The woman's name was Hilda Murrell and the murder has become a cause c6lebre, passing into legend as one of the great unsolved mysteries of its decade. It has been the stuff of legends, speculation, fantasy and fierce controversy. Theories abound. On the wild side it has been said she was the victim of some kind of Satanic rite connected with the spring equinox. A strong body of opinion considers that she was a nuclear martyr as she was about to present a paper on nuclear waste to the Sizewell B Inquiry and that somehow she had had access to damning information which has never been revealed. While the nuclear issue may certainly have played an indirect part in her death, it seems more likely — in spite of all the attempts to rubbish any but the official version — that her death was the result of a train of apparently disconnected events, a cockup rather than a conspiracy. She died because she was the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time.

She was also a victim of the times. The first years of the Thatcher administration were marked by a climate of paranoia. "Political correctness" has now come to mean jokes about short people being described as "vertically challenged". Political correctness in 1984 was about being "one of us", fears of "the enemy within": a time when legitimate, democratic dissent was regarded as little less than treasonable. This is in no small way due to the fact that we have no written constitution, no Bill of Rights, no Freedom of Information Act and because our security services are accountable to no one.

Many of the facts of the case are now widely known. At the time of her death, Hilda Murrell was seventy-nine and had long since retired from the family rose-growing business which she had run somewhat reluctantly having hankered after an academic career — she read modern and mediaeval languages at Cambridge. She never married. In retirement she concentrated on conservation issues 'and felt passionate about nuclear energy.

6 Ethical Record, November, 1994 Premonitions of the End We know that she suffered from growing anxiety, telling some of her friends she felt she was under some kind of surveillance, culminating in an extraordinary phoneca II to Gerard Morgan Grenville of ECOROPA on 25 February 1984 which ended with her saying: "If they don't get me first I want the world to know that one old woman has seen through their lies".

On the 21 March she had arranged to spend the day with friends in Wales. Returning from a shopping trip before setting off, she appears to have disturbed the thief or thieves. There was a struggle. after which the assailant drove her out of the town (witnesses saw the car) and dumped her in the copse. Her body was discovered three days later. The break-in was unusual. The thief had disconnected the telephone. At first the police said it had been "expertly disconnected", then that the wires had merely been yanked out of the wall and, indeed, a policeman later appeared on television holding some broken wires. The thief then searched her files and papers before leaving with a small amount of cash. A police statement that she had been sexually assaulted was later amended to there being signs of sexual activity on some clothing.

Controversy over the investigation is also common knowledge: for instance, that her abandoned car was not checked out even though it was reported twice; that the owner of the land on which the body was found stated he had walked the area on the Thursday and there was no corpse there then; that a policeman had searched the house for two hours on the morning of the 24 March without discovering she was not there. After months of speculation, the Inquest was held in December 1984, the Coroner returing a verdict that she had been Unlawfully Killed. Detective Ch ief Superintendent David Cole confirmed the view that she had died at the hands of a random burglar, stating he had evidence in his incident room which led to that conclusion. That evidence has never been revealed. Following mounting criticism of the conduct of the investigation, the West Mercia force called in their colleagues in Northumberland to undertake an inquiry. Six months later it was announced that while there were minor criticisms of the way the investigation had been conducted, no real flaws could be found. The full report, like the information in the incident room, has also never been published.

The Murky World of Surveillance So to the two main strands. First the nuclear issue. In January 1985, thanks to journalists assisted by a Gary Murray, a private investigator, it was discovered that Sizewell B objectors had indeed been the object of surveillance. The operation on behalf of an anonymous client (consensus opinion being that it was MI5) was put out to Zeus Securities, who in turn put it out to the Sapphire Investigation Bureau of Acle in Norfolk run by Barry Peachman. He, in turn, contracted the work out still further to a man variously known as Vic Norris or Adrian Flampson. Norris/Hampson, a convicted child sex-abuser, was known to have links with the extreme right. Indeed he ran a Nazi memorabilia mail order business from his office in Colchester. There is documentary evidence of this three-way link.

After their activities came to light, everyone frantically back-pedalled except Peach man who was totally out of his depth with Sizewell. Three weeks after Flilda's murder, he blasted half his head off with a shotgun. The Inquest heard that Peachman, a married man, had been under severe emotional strain due to his involvement with another woman. It was not quite like that. His relationship with his mistress had lasted many years; indeed she helped run his agency and they had a nine-year-old son, something that had long been accepted by his wife and family.

Ethical Record, November, 1994 7 The world of private security firms is a murky one. It is also complicated. Some of those employed by one might well run another on their own account. All use freelances. Hilda's name did not appear on any list of those being surveilled but then it didn't need to be as she was a member of a number of organisations who were listed and, for instance, telephone taps can be granted for an entire organisation, covering anyone in it.* At its 1993 Press Conference on the Murrell murder it was stated that "the Security Services" had assured West Mercia police that Hilda Murrell had never appeared on their files or been the object of scrutiny. This was greeted with scepticism.

A Tremendous Flap in Downing Street So to the Belgrano connection. Thatcher had been swept to power in the 1983 election on a tidal wave of patriotic jingoism. The Falklands campaign had been a Godsend; prior to it, her poll rating stood at the lowest for any Prime Minister since records began. an achievement now overtaken by John Major. Just why she decided to tell the country, backed by her Ministers, that the battleship had been stink as it was sailing towards the British Task Force, not away from it, is unclear. As ex-Defence Minister, Alan Clark, said in his Diaries, most of the British people couldn't have cared less if it had been sunk while tied up in port. However, once having decided to prevaricate, her face had to be saved at all costs. The fly in the ointment was Labour MP Tam Dalyell who worried at the issue like a terrier with a rat. By December 1983 his questions were getting so near the bone that a special committee, under Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong, was set up to look into the leaks.

By the 19 March 1984 it was evident that Dalyell had material which was quite specific. That day there was, says an informed source, "a tremendous flap in Downing Street" and the order went out that it must be found at all costs, every avenue explored however remote. Could it be that copies of raw signals concerning the sinking had come into Dalyell's hands? Rumours abounded. Had information come from a Lieutant Sethia, a junior officer on the submarine Conqueror which had sunk the battleship? There was also deliberate misinformation. Newspapers were told the Conqueror's log was missing, the inference being that it had been stolen. In actual fact Conqueror had been acting as a spy for the USA, monitoring Soviet ships dropping sounding equipment and the Americans had demanded the Log be sent to Washington after the Falklands campaign.

Back then to the signals traffic. Only one senior officer, Commander Robert Green, who had played a crucial role in naval intelligence at Northwood during the Falklands campaign, had since left the service. It can now be said that Dalyell did receive material based on signals from Conqueror. Sethia was not the only officer who was sickened by the hypocrisy surrounding the whole affair. The material came into the hands of a London publisher (now dead) who, after taking advice from a colleague, had it passed on to Dalyell who probably still does not know its origin.

A Nightmare of Harrassment I became involved in the affair in the summer of 1984 after being approached by a friend of Hilda's For a good while I did not get involved as, to be honest, I did not think there was any real cause for disquiet. It was only after being persuaded to visit the area, then talking to the nephew (and discovering the Belgrano involvement) that I became convinced something was badly wrong. The next eight months, leading up to the publication of the first small book, was a nightmare of harrasment: letters opened, phone tapped, heavy-handed surveillance when I went anYwhere and, finally, threatening phone calls in the night. slEditor's italics]

8 Ethical Record, November, 1994 In 1993 a book appeared called Enemies of the State by the private investigator, Gary Murray. The Murrell murder was one of a number of examples instanced of State power having apparently got out of control. Murray was a maverick, has made powerful enemies and every effort has been made to dimiss him and what he has to say but there is no doubt whatsoever that he does have access to a great deal of undercover information.

' Murray's new information had come from a young woman, Triona Guthrie, who had been a friend of Hilda's in Shrewsbury. She had since ta ken up a conservation post in Lincolnshire and had also become a Prison Visitor. It was while visiting a prisoner in a north country jail that she heard the story of a fellow-inmate, a story which she was recommended to pass on to Murray. Miss Guthrie swore her information on affidavit. No one who has spent time with her and questioned her closely can doubt her sincerity or balance and she cannot be described in any way as an obsessive.

The Break-In As briefly as possible then: In March 1984 a group of freelances, which had been used before by a shadowy north of England investigation agency which called itself "Ceres" and was the offshoot of a larger, unnamed organisation was brought together for a soft target operation. The liaison officer, whose name is known and who has openly bragged of his links with MI5 and MI6, called himself "Demeter". The team's task was to search Hilda's house, Ravenscroft, for papers. It was known (thanks to phone taps) that on the 21 March she would be out all day. Four people actually went into the house, led by the man described in Murray's book as Team Member 3 and backed up by his girlfriend and two other men, one of whom was the source of the story.

Seeing her leave the house and assuming that she would not be back until the end of the afternoon, they had broken in, disconnected the telephone (a drawing of its state on the morning of 24.3.84 has now been published) and begun their search. Team Member 3 soon found the deeds to The Shack, Hilda's holiday cottage on the Welsh border not many miles away and he decided to take his girlfriend and search there first, leaving the other two men to continue going through Ravenscroft. Shortly after he left, the two men were taken totally by surprise when Hilda returned. There was a brief struggle, she was tied up and dumped on her bed. One of the men, with a taste for violence, then tried to make Hilda tell him if there were "stolen papers" in the house, roughing her up in the process and becoming sufficiently sexually aroused to masturbate. Team Member 3, returning soon after having found no papers at all at The Shack, was appalled. Here the story becomes somewhat confused, but basically it is that it was decided to remove her, that she was taken first to a deserted airfield known locally as Little America, before being dumped in the copse on the Friday before she was found. After which the professionals were called in to clean up the mess.

Needless to say, Murray's book met with a barrage of criticism but, as a result, West Mercia police announced they were re-opening their inquiries. Murray gave no names of those involved but it was known that Team Member 3 had later died in Cleveland in 1987 after a police chase. It did not therefore take a Sherlock Holmes to trace him. His name was David Gricewith and he had been wanted in connection with the fatal shooting of a policeman during an abortive robbery in Leeds in October 1984. He does not seem to have been suspected locally of having any criminal activity and indeed lived in the village where he had grown up, ran a garage business and seems to have been well-liked. He did look very much like the artist's impression published at the time of Hilda's death of a man seen running away from her car.

Ethical Record, November, 1994 9 After his death just about every serious violent crime that had occurred in the area in the previous fourteen years was laid at his door. It must have done wonders for the local clear-up rate. There was nothing to show that he had been such a Napoleon of crime, prior to his violent demise. Other information is, however, more interesting. Gricewith had known and long-standing links with the extreme Right both in this country and in Europe. He had carried out undercover work for private security firms on previous occasions. He had been used as an agent provocateur during the miners' strike, being responsible for a particularly violent incident.

People don't Believe the Police Theory At a press conference held in Shrewsbury in February 1994, West Mercia police announced they could find no "shred of evidence" to support Triona Guthrie's informant's story. All the members of the anonymous team (except for "one now deceased") had been interviewed and eliminated from inquiries. It had been established that one of the alleged participants, currently serving a long prison sentence, had read an article about the Murrell murder in late 1989 and, in an attempt to focus media attention on himself and what he believed was his wrongful conviction, had made the whole story up, basing it on the article. Police had also visited "the Headquarters of the Security Services" (they did not specify which one) and "the Services" had co-operated fully. They had no knowledge of Hilda Murrell prior to her death and were not involved in her murder.

Had police had unrestricted access to intelligence files? No, but they had been given access to the parts of files which would have contained the relevant details had there been any to contain. Criticism was levelled at all those who had sought, since the 1984 investigation, to suggest there was anything behind the murder other than the panic of an opportunist thief. Answers to questions from journalists were hampered by any to do with "the Security Services" being disallowed on security grounds! The event was best summed up in a question asked by John Osmond of HTV, one of the first and most persistent journalists to have covered the Murrell affair: "Don't you realise", he said, "that the reason there has been so much speculation over the years is because people just don't believe the police theory of the random walk-in burglar? Because what you say simply isn't credible?" Assistant Chief Constable Thursfield replied that he did not agree with this view but was prepared to defend Osmond's right to hold it.

No doubt the police are sincere in their beliefs, so why do so many of us remain unconvinced? One reason is the newspaper story on which the prisoner's story was said to have been based. It , had appeared in the Independent in November 1989. The writer, Amanda Mitchison, was interested in the obsessive effect the murder has had on people. One section only dealt with the murder itself To base the "Ceres" scenario on it would take, one feels, the combined talents of P.D. James and Ruth Rendell. The instigator would also have had to weave in a host of previous associates and an employee of a security firm who does actually exist. And for what? How could it help him to focus media attention on his own conviction? If it was proved to be a pack of lies, then he would do his own case no good at all and spend even more time in jail for wasting police time. If it proved to be true, then he could find himself tried as an accessory to one of the most notorious murders of the last decade.

Shortly after I delivered My book, a retired MI5 officer often used as a consultant by the media was casually asked about the Murrell murder. Freelance operatives had, he said, been sent in and they had panicked when the old lady returned unexpectedly. Their MI5 handler had been severely reprimanded.

Judith Cook's book, Unlawful Killing is published by Bloomsbury at f 16.99 A poem by Martin Green entitled "Who killed Hilda Murrell" is available on request. Send a S.A.E. to the Editor.

10 Ethical Record, November, 1994 ETHICAL THOUGHT AND ETHICAL PRINCIPLES Professor Jonathan Dailey Unhersity of Eerie Lecture to the Ethical Society, 16 October 1994 The stated purpose of the South Place Ethical Society is 'the study and dissemination of ethical principles'. This statement manifestly presupposes that ethical thought concerns itself with principles; from which we may infer that practical ethical judgement is the application of principle to particular cases. But this presupposition can be challenged, and it is the purpose of this talk to mount such a challenge.

Reasons are Context-sensitive I start somewhere apparently quite different. In practical ethical thought, as opposed to philosophical ethical thought, we consider ethical reasons for and against possible courses of action. I do not see any hard distinction between ethical reasons and moral reasons. So from now on I will speak more of the moral. How do moral reasons function? There is a received view (received even by the Ethical Society), which is that though considerations such as the pain I will cause her if I persist are indeed moral reasons, they are only able to be such reasons if there is a principle into which they are keyed. In this case the principle is obvious; it is something like 'It is wrong to cause pain to the innocent'. The fact that I" will be causing her pain is only a reason against continuing because it enables my action to be subsumed under the moral principle — to come under it, as we say. These principles do not change from case to case; they remain unchanging. And this means that the fact that I will be causing someone pain if I continue is always a reason against continuing. It is everywhere the sort of reason it is anywhere.

Not all reasons are like this, however. Reasons for belief function in a different way. For instance, the fact that I seem to be seeing something red before me is normally a reason to believe that there really is something red before me. But not always. If I had recently been injected with a drug that makes blue things look red, the fact that this looks red to me is now a reason to suppose that it is not red, but blue. So the context can affect what is a reason for what. As the present case shows, something can be a reason for a certain belief in one context, and a reason for the opposite belief in another. Reasons for belief can change their polarity, as we might put it, from case to case.

Should we sUppose that this phenomenon is restricted to reasons for belief, or do we also find it with reasons for action? An example that I often use concerns pleasure. That it will give pleasure to admit the public to a spectacle is normally a reason in favour of doing so. If, for instance, we can without too much disruption give free access to our orchestral rehearsal, we should do so; and the reason why we should do so is that they will get pleasure from it. But this is not always so. People would probably get pleasure from attending a public execution. But this is not a reason for admitting them — for holding executions in public. Rather, it is a reason on the other side, a reason for excluding them. In fact, once one sees this point, one can find lots of examples where the pleasure makes things worse, not better. If fox-hunting is bad, the enjoyment of the hunters makes it worse, not better. It is not any sort of mitigating consideration.

So it seems as if reasons for action are in general as context-sensitive as are reasons for belief. The question now is whether moral reasons are different from all the rest. Is it the case even here that whether something is a reason, and if it is what sort of a reason it is, is heavily dependent on context? My view is that there is no justification for taking moral reasons to be different from other practical reasons in this respect. A consideration can

Ethical Record, November, 1994 I I count in favour of an action in one case (in moral favour, as it were), against in another, and be simply indifferent in a third.

There are no Moral Principles Now this might seem quite innocuous. But it has the dramatic consequence that there are no moral principles at all. For moral principles specify considerations as always counting the same way. If it is wrong to lie, it is always wrong to lie. If it is right to help others, that is alsvaysa feature that makes one's action the better, and so on. But if moral reasons are like other reasons, nothing like this will ever be true. So there will be no general truths anywhere about what is a reason for what, and so no general truths or rules in ethics.

This is in fact my conclusion. To many it seems horrific — it seems to be the abandonment of moral thought altogether. But I am not alone in my view. George Eliot wrote:

All people of broad, strong sense have an instinctive repugnance to the men of maxims; because such people early discern that the mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims, and that to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy. And the man of maxims is the popular representa- tive of the minds that are guided in their moral judgement solely by general rules, thinking that these will guide them to justice by a ready-made patent method, without the trouble of exerting patience, discrimination, impartiality — without any care to assure themselves whether they have the insight that comes from a hardly-earned estimate of temptation, or from a life vivid and intense enough to have created a wide fellow-feeling with all that is human.'

Absolute and Pro Tamp Principles Now Eliot appeals here to the complexity of real situations. But that appeal is inadequate to establish the point. We should distinguish between two conceptions of moral principles: absolute principles and pro mato principles. Ifwe take the principle 'It is wrong to lie as. an absolute principle. it tells us (hat whatever the circumstances, a lie is wrong and should not be told; lying is. as we say, absolutely wrong. If we take is as a pro 'onto principle, it tells us only that an action that is mendacious is the worse for that; its being a lie, that is, counts against it, but it remains possible that there are enough other considerations counting in favour of it that overall it ought to be told. So sometnnes we should lie, even though lying is wrong — but only if we are dealing here with a pro tunto rather than an absolute principle.

Using this distinction, we can see that any plausible absolute principle will have to be very complex.lt is (absohnely) wrong to lie' is just too simple to cope with the rich variety of cases that it is supposed to be applicable to. Pro tanto principles don't need to be made more complex in this sort of way. They can cope with complexity without change. For the complexity of a situation is just the presence ol'ot her relevant lea tures, and these are to be understood in just the same way as the first. For instance, while we might need to complicate our absolute principle to read 'Lying that is not to save a life is absolutely wrong., we can leave ourpro tonto principle alone. For it tells Us only that if you are lying to save a life, that you are telling a lie makes your action worse than it would otherwise have been. It may still be so good for being a l&-saver that its goodness outweighs its badness. leaving it as required of us overall.

'The Mill on the Floss, end of Bk 7, ch.2.

12 Ethical Record, November, 1994 The model here is a sort of kitchen-scales model. The mendacity pulls the scales down on one side; the life-saving pulls it down harder on the other. This is often the sort of model we have in mind when we talk of the balance of reasons, and it is what the idea of the pro wow is trying to capture.

Though there is this distinction between two conceptions of moral principles, it is no help against my argument that what is a reason in one case may be the opposite reason in another — that reasons are sensitive to context. For if my argument is sound, there are no absolute moral principles and nn pro wow ones either. This is because both types of principle try to say something about lying (e.g.) that is supposed to be true independent of context. The absolute principle says that if an action is a lie, it is wrong no matter what. The pro tamo principle says that if an action is a lie, that always counts against it, even if there may be more counting on the other side. But neither of these things will be true, if I am right. There can be no true moral principles.

We must manage without Principles This leaves us with two possibilities. The first is that since there are no moral principles, there is no such thing as morality. This is a total moral scepticism, which certainly doesn't attract me. The second is that though there is such a thing as morality, and such things as moral reasons, such reasons don't need the support of principles. Morality and principled morality are not the same thing, and the former is much the better. Of course everybody tends to conflate the two. But this is just a mistake, whose explanation is historical. In fact the appeal to principle is evidence of a very unfortunate inflexibility in moral thought, since it will lead one to fail to notice the differences made by changes in the situation. One will always be tempted to think This feature made that action wrong; so it must make this action wrong. This action was the worse for having that property; so that action, which has that property too, must be the worse for it'. If I am right, all such forms of inference are unsound. Moral reasoning and moral judgement must manage to do without them.

Though I believe this conclusion to be sound, I find it hard to get people to believe it. There are three main forms of opposition that I want to mention before I close.

The first can be put at its simplest in this way: moral reasons constitute constraints on choice; constraint means regulation; and regulation means rules. So without moral rules (aka moral principles) there can be no moral reasons at all.

The reply to this is that constraint amounts here to reasons for failing to follow one's own inclinations. In this sense, it is undeniable that moral reasons constitute constraints. But it is an illusion to suppose that constraints of this sort require rules. Such self- constraints can be self-imposed, and focused entirely on the particular case before one. The fact that this person needs our help is a moral reason for helping them, even if that means missing a pleasant evening with our friends. But its status as a reason is relative to the case before us. It might not be such a reason in another case. Crucially, it doesn't have to be that reason elsewhere in order to be that reason here. But if it is that reason here, it is a constraint on our behaviour. Even if the constraint is not sclf-imposed, but external, it does not have to come in the form of a general rule. If this action is wrong. its wrongness may constitute a constraint on my behaviour because of how others will respond to my doing it, without that doing anything to show that all such actions are wrong. ft only matters for the existence of the constraint that this one should be.

The second form of opposition is the charge that an unprincipled morality is a lax morality. The person of principle is unbudgeable — she stands by or on her principles.

Ethical Record, November, 1994 13 And this is what we expect of a truly moral agent. So if there arc no principles, there cannot be a truly moral agent, and this destroys the very concept of morality.

, The reply to this is that nothing prevents someone persuaded by my denial of moral principles from being of a very firm conviction case by case. Unbudgeability and principle need not be linked in the way suggested. What is more, are we sure that a person'of principle (George Eliot's man of maxims) will be unbudgeable on the right points or occasions? The person who is unbudgeably wrong is not a moral hero but a disaster.

The last charge is that without the constraint of principles, there will be too much scope for special pleading. lt will be always possible to find some dilDrence between this act and a plain duty that we can appeal to in order to weasel off the moral hook.

Good Will and Honesty the Best Policy The best reply to this is honesty. There is indeed always a danger of special pleading. But this danger needs to be met, not with the panoply of moral principles (which we have already shown to lack real application) but with a sound sense of what is a reason for what. Someone who does not have that sense may be beyond our help altogether. But those who do have it, despite a constant tendency to find excuses, can be shown by others or even show themselves what they really ought to have done, if they will honestly consider the structure of the situation before them and the ways in which the various features combine to generate moral demands on them. There is no substitute for this honest attempt at self-evaluation, but it is a practice that can be effective, and often is. With a good will, the sort of moral reasoning that I have been talking about is quite capable of correcting the back-sliding that we are all liable to. We do not need principles for this purpose.

DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS AND THE DISCREDITING OF CHRISTIANITY

Daniel O'Hara Lecture to the Ethical Society, 30 October 1994

It is arguable that the two figures from the 19th Century who did most to undermine the credibility of Christianity were the near contemporaries, David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874) and Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882).

Though neither was the first in his field in point of time, both provided massive and detailed evidence for views which were to be literally epoch-making. In Darwin's case, the achievement was a comprehensive and completely naturalistic explanation of how life had developed on this planet. This was an explanation which made the hitherto widely accepted beliefs in God as the supernatural creator and man as the unique pinnacle of creation redundant and indeed untenable. Daniel O'Hara

Christianity Confuted from Within and Without The German philosopher and theologian, David Friedrich Strauss likewise offered for the first time a comprehensive and completely naturalistic explanation of how Christianity arose in the ancient Jewish world. This was an explanation which enabled the New

14 Ethical Record, November, 1994 Testament to be understood for the first time largely as a collection of religious myths. Strauss showed that the orthodox beliefs in a decisive divine intervention in human affairs in the person ofJesus Christ, and the Gospels as reliable historical records of that intervention, are redundant and indeed untenable.

In a nutshell, we might say that while Darwin, working from the outside, showed that the whole edifice of natural theology, and in particular the argument from design, was based on a false or at least a question-begging premise, Strauss, working from the inside, showed that the traditional, orthodox doctrine of Christianity as a revealed religion could not be sustained.

Both these great thinkers were able to establish their ideas only on a scientific basis of meticulous and detailed investigation coupled with an unprecedented boldness in formulating and testing theories. In Darwin's case this involved the most careful study of the anatomy, physiology and distribution of a wide range of plant and animal species around the world and through geologkal time. For Strauss, the achievement was wrought through the meticulous study in the original languages of the texts of the Old and New Testaments, inter-testamental Judaism, the Early Church Fathers and the authors of classical antiquity, together with the work of the most important philosophers and theologians of the intervening centuries, coupled with a boldness of spirit which placed the claims of truth, clarity and honesty above the demands of tradition and conformity to ecclesiastical orthodoxy.

Thus the publication in 1835 of Strauss's 'Life of Jesus Critically Examined', and the publication in 1859 of Darwin's 'Origin of Species' both marked watersheds in the history of thought. Just as no natural philosopher after 1859 could write as though Darwin's work did not exist, and even his fiercest critics were forced to come to terms with his theory of evolution by natural selection, so no religious philosopher after 1835 could ignore Strauss's work. It can indeed be argued that the whole course of theology in Western Christendom throughout the rest of the last century and into our own was set by Strauss, with other theologians either accepting his views and trying to work out their implications, or else resisting them totally, or at least trying to insulate faith from historical scepticism.

South Place studies Strauss in 1840 Among the first publicly, and positively to discuss Strauss's Life of Jesus and its implications in England was, interestingly, an assistant minister at the South Place Chapel* in Finsbury, named Philip Harwood. His Six Lectures on Strauss's work published in book form in 1841 under the title German Anti-Supernaturalism were based on the third edition of Strauss' Leben-Jesu which appeared in Germany in 1839. It was in this third edition that Strauss made (as Darwin was to do in later editions of the Origin) concessions to critics of the earlier editions which he later came to regret, and indeed withdrew in the Fourth Edition of 1840 which was substantially in agreement with the First. These concessions were largely about the Fourth Gospel, which Strauss had decided was historically worthless, then under pressure he conceded that it might have some historical basis, finally reverting to the view that it contained no reliable historical material whatsoever.

In Philip HarwoOd's audience at South Place was a young woman named Rufa Brabant, later the wife of Charles Hennell. She was shortly to embark on an English translation of Strauss's work, but gave it up finding the task beyond her. Before long her friend Mary Ann Evans (who was to win fame a decade later as the novelist, George Eliot) responded quite magnificently to the hope expressed in the Preface of Harwood's published lectures that "the time may come .when English Literature will be enriched with a well-executed translation both of the Leben-Jesu the Streitschnfien." It was from the fourth edition of the Leben-Jesu that Mary Ann Evans, while 'The precursor of the South Place Ethical Society

Ethical Record, November, 1994 15 still only 24 years old, started in 1844 upon her epic translation which was published by Chapmans in 1846, bringing Strauss to a wide audience in the English-speaking world. For her two years of intensive labour she received the sum of 1:20, but her name did not appear anywhere in the 3-volume publication. Philip Harwood's publicly expressed hope that the StreOsehrifien (three volumes of answers by Strauss to his critics) might also be translated into English remains. incidentally, unfulfilled.

After Strauss's death in 1874, it was another minister of South Place Chapel. the great Moncure Daniel Conway himself, who published in pamphlet form one of the best short assessments in English of his life and work. And later still, both J.M. Robertson and G.A. Wells have been among the prominent British critics of Christianity who have expressed their debt to Strauss. Who then was this figure who made such a significant contribution to the discrediting of Christianity?

Strauss's Outstanding Scholastic Success David Friedrich Strauss (known to his family as 'Fritz') was born on 27 January 1808 in the Swabian town of Ludwigsburg, north of Stuttgart. His father was a poet of a mystical turn of mind, and an able scholar, fluent in both classical and modern languages, who gave up the prospects of an academic career to take over the family mercantile business. His mother was of a more pragmatic and rationalistic temperament. Fritz was their third child, but the first to survive infancy, and he early showed considerable intellectual ability. At 13Y2, he entered the prestigious Lower Seminary at Blaubetiren, where he was one of an outstanding class, five of whom graduated with maximum marks, and where one of his teachers was Ferdinand Christian Baur, later a professor at the Evangelische Stift (Protestant Seminary) in Tdbingen where Strauss took his degree in 1830 as the most oustanding student of his year.

The twenty-two year old Strauss was ordained in the Lutheran Church, and served a nine-month curacy in the village of Klein-Ingersheim, before becoming briefly a tutor at the Maulbronn Seminary where he taught Latin, Hebrew and History to the final year students. While there he obtained his Doctorate in Theology from the University of TObingen, with a dissertation on the Lucan doctrine of 'The Restoration of All Things'.

Already an enthusiastic student of Hegel's writings. Strauss travelled to Berlin in the Fall of 1831 in order to hear Hegel lecture in philosophy. Within a week of his arrival, and after attending only two of his lectures, Strauss heard from Schleiermacher that Hegel had just died of cholera. Strauss blurted out his dismay with the words: "But it was for his sake that I came here to Berlin!" Schleiermacher, who was thc foremost German theologian of his day, took this as something of a personal insult. He and Hegel had been bitter rivals. In the wake of Kant's demolition of neo-seholasticism, Schleiermacher had attempted to re-found the Christian faith on the psychological basis of the human feeling or sense of absolute dependence (in German: Das Gefiihl der schlechthinnigen AbhdogigkeiD, to which Hegel had responded that on this basis, the dog was of all animals the most religious!

Strauss repaired his relationship with Schleiermacher, attended his lectures and beca me deeply impressed with his exposition of the life of Jesus, at that stage only available as notes taken at lectures the previous year by several students from which Stra uss made his own copy. These helped him, albeit temporarily, with his difficulties over how something might be true dogmatically while doubtful or even false historically. It was the kind of double-think which has characterised theology down the ages, and which Strauss was eventually to reject with such far-reaching consequences.

16 Ethical Record, November. 1994 Leben-Jesu renders Strauss Unemployable Finally dissatisfied with Schleiermachcr's approach, Strauss returned to Tfibingen in May 1832 to take up a tutorship in theology and philosophy at the Evangelischc Stift, and to start working with remarkable industry on his own Life of Jesus, a work of enormous erudition and thoroughness which occupied him for much of the ensuing three years and. when published, ran to nearly 1500 pages of print. It was a spectacular achievement, particularly for a man still in his mid-twenties. The first volume appeared on I June 1835 and the second that October. though the title page carries the date 1836. Both volumes had therefore appeared when Strauss was 27.

Trouble started within weeks of the appearance of the first volume. Its methods as much as its unorthodox conclusions led to a great hue and cry among the faithful, as a result of which Strauss was dismissed from his teaching post in Tnbingen, and the Church authorities were successful in ensuring that, other than a brief period as a schoolmaster, he never again obtained an academic post anywhere. Even though he was appointed to a theological chair in Zdrich by the radical administration in 1839, his appointment was countermanded following a huge public outcry, and he was pensioned off on half-pay without ever taking up his post.

What, precisely, was it that caused such offence? Others before Strauss had cast doubts upon orthodox doctrines without stirring up anything like the furore which greeted the first volume of his Lehen-Jesu within weeks of its publication. In his biography of Strauss published in 1973, Dr. Horton Harris correctly identities the cause of the offence:

What shocked the orthodox believer most of all was the frank and open repudiation of the historical veracity of the Gospels. What had previously been accepted as irrefutable and invulnerable to attack was now set in doubt. The mighty fortress had now been undermined and appeared to be about to collapse in ruins. It was not merely that the Christian faith had been repudiated — Voltaire and the French Philosophes had poured out their vitriolic scorn on Christianity without causing any great theological commotion... Voltaire and his friends had merely denied the traditional doctrines; Strauss had destroyed the foundations on which those doctrines stood: (he)...had remorselessly exhibited the discrepancies, contradictions and mistakes in the Gospel narratives, and made the supernatural explanations appear weak and untenable. (p.410

The Human Capacity for Myth-making What Strauss had also achieved was to show up as ridiculous those earlier rationalistic explanations proffered by such of his predecessors as Paulus, who had explained the feeding miracles, for example, by supposing that Jesus' willingness to share his paltry rations with his disciples had shamed the multitudes into getting out and sharing around the sandwiches they had selfishly secreted upon their persons! Paulus likewise explained the resurrection ofJesus on the basis that he had not really died on the cross, and had later revived and crept from the tomb, much as D.H. Lawrence had later supposed in his noyella, The Man who Died. Strauss supplied the coup de grace to the swoon theory.

Horton Harris is wrong, however, to claim that Strauss had dismissed the possibility of miracles on apriorist grounds. Several times he levels this charge against him, but George Wells has argued, in his Religious Postures that Strauss's achievement was to show, not that miracles are impossible, but that we do not need to resort to the highly problematical idea of miracle to explain the New Testament. That which may be explained more economically on the basis of what we do know of natural phenomena should not, on principle, be given a supernaturalistic explanation which must rely, a fortiori, on what we cannot know or understand.

Albert Schweitzer was later to suggest that Strauss had simply left the problem of miracles

Ethical Record, November, 1994 17 unsolved, and succeeded merely in keeping the question off the agenda in the ensuing scientific study of the Gospels. But what Strauss had succeeded in demonstrating was that the alleged miracles in the Gospels are so poorly attested, and so much the more readily understood as myths based on fanciful theological interpretations of the Old Testament by suggestible members of an enthusiastic Messianic sect in the first century of the common era.

The Occa mist principle is here deployed to great effect. The Gospel miracles are neither to be believed nor are they to be explained away: they are to be seen as products of the human capacity for myth-making and fantasy. In this respect, they are not significantly different from the miracles of other religions and secular antiquity, except where these can be identified as deliberate deception. We may note in passing that the other school of German anti- supernaturalism, that represented by H. Samuel Reimarus, considered that Jesus was a common agitator and his followers conscious and deliberate deceivers of the credulous. A similar view has been revived in our own time by Morton Smith, though it had been disposed of as thoroughly by Strauss as the rationalistic anti-supernaturalism of Eichhorn and Paulus.

Sister Anna's Visions As a digression, one might point here to a notorious proleptic attempt to circumvent the historical scepticism about the life ofJesus which Strauss's approach engendered. In 1834, a year before Strauss's Leben-Jesu appeared, Clemens Brentano published part of a work that had been dictated to him by a catholic nun, Anna Katherina Emmerich, who had died in 1824, describing her visions directly communicated (it was alleged) by God, of the Passion of Christ. This famous work, The Bitter Sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ, added all manner of colourful detail to the bare narrative given in the Gospels. From her we learn that Jesus was precisely 33 years, 17 weeks and 6 days old when he died; that Judas Iscariot was the illegitimate son of a dancer and a military tribune, that he had black hair and a red beard; that the fish caught with a stater in its mouth was so big it provided a banquet for the apostles, etc. etc.

One can only wish that Sister Anna had lived a century later, for she might then have been able to fill in some of the lacun(c so inconsiderately left by Daisy Ashford in the biography of Mr. Salteena. Seriously, though. it is important to note that Brentano was absolutely convinced of the veracity of Sister Anna's revelations, which were finally published in full only after Brentano's death in three volumes between 1858 and 1860, and that The Bitter Sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ long held an honoured place in Catholic piety. Even Albert Schweitzer was moved to deseribe Sister Anna's embellishments of the Gospel as 'rather attractive', adding 'one cannot handle the book without a certain reverence when one thinks amid what pains these revelations were received.'

But the generality of at least Protcstant theologians were as dismissive of the revelations of Sister Anna as they were enraged by the logical rigour of Dr. Strauss, and it was he whom the many felt the need to answer and neutralise. Even most of the few who were in substantial agreement with Strauss found it prudent to keep quiet, and his erstwhile teacher, F.C. Baur, while sharing his views about the historical unreliability of the Gospels, was at pains to distance himself from what he called Strauss's 'negative' criticism. Besides prudence, Baur was probably also motivated by jealousy that his pupil had won fame before himself He went on to become the centre of the radical "Tubingen School" of theology, and though he never felt able to give Strauss his due, it is clear Baur could not have done his work without Strauss's preparatory clearing of the ground.

What did Strauss Believe? While the Strauss of the first Leben-Jesu was more or less completely destructive of the historical reliability of the Gospels, he nevertheless retained both his belief that there was an historical

18 Ethical Record, November, 1994 Jesus, and his belief (based on his acceptance of Hegelian philosophy) tharthe spiritual essence of Christianity could survive the shaking of its historical foundations. Over the decade following its publication, however, he gradually shed all his Hegelian views, and by the time he came to write his "New Life of Jesus for the German People" in 1864, he had long since emancipated himself from all Hegelian influence.

Some commentators, such as Albert Schweitzer and Karl Barth, who have expressed lavish, if backhanded, praise for the 'First Life' have nevertheless been scathing about the 'New Life'. It was, however, the 'New Life' which Strauss himself, shortly before his death, selected for inclusion in the planned twelve-volume collected edition of his "Works". And it is the 'New Life' which, of course, presents us with Strauss's more mature and considered views on the Jesus question. I think it is largely because this work is less vulnerable to some of the criticisms levelled against the earlier work that Christian apologists seek to dismiss it. It is, in my view, still well worth reading.

In his last work, The Old Faith and the New Strauss posed the following questions: Are we still Christians?, Do we still have a Religion?, What is our conception of the Universe? and What is our rule of life? Strauss's discussion of the last of these questions may now appear somewhat quaint, and there is no doubt that Karl Barth enjoys poking fun at him. This, for example, is what Barth has to say about Strauss's final thoughts on how civilised post-Christians might spend their Sundays:

They do this with political discussions, and then with studies in history and natural science, with edification from Hermann and Dorothea (Goethe's highly sentimental epic poem) and finally with performances of works by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. 'A stimulant to mind and spirit, humour and imagination' (Barth is here quoting Strauss) 'such as leaves nothing to be desired. Thus we live, thus we pass blissfully upon our way.'t

Certainly some of Strauss's political views (such as his espousal of Prussian nationalism, royalty, aristocracy and capital punishment) may be open to question, but not, I think, his insistence that human civilisation and culture are, with scientific knowledge, worth pursuing for their own sakes. One influential critic, H.R. Mackintosh, claimed that Strauss's 'materialism' was based on a 'wholly erroneous interpretation of Darwin'. But Strauss was in fact a careful and astute student of Darwin, who kept up-to-date in his reading of the English naturalist. Strauss did not accept that there was more than a semantic quibble between 'materialism' and 'idealism': he considered that both views taken alone were polarised abstractions. For him the real divide was between 'Monism' and 'Dualism'; and here he was an unequivocal Monist.

As for Strauss's impact on theology, we cannot go along with Barth's impudent assertion that 'Proper theology begins just at the point where the difficulties disclosed by Strauss and Feuerbach are seen and then laughed at'. As Professor Wells has pertinently observed, 'Counter-arguments come less easily than laughter', and it is only fair to add that Strauss's arguments have never been effectively answered. They are, indeed, accepted either tacitly or explicitly by most modern liberal theologians, even if some attempt to smuggle back in by the window what had been so decisively ejected through the door.

Defects in Harris's Biography Any comprehensive treatment of Strauss would, of course, have to deal with his unfortunate marriage to the famous soprano, Agnese Schebest, his years of intellectual *Strauss must have seen a SITS programme. [Ed]

Ethical Record. November, 1994 19 isolation, his foray into national politics. his literary and philosophical criticism, his increasingly reactionary political views and his miscellaneous writings on a range of topics. But it is his early theological work for which he will always be remembered. and Horton Harris is surely right to say that Strauss's LebenThlesu was 'the most intellectually reasoned attack which has ever been mounted against Christianity'.

We must, however, take issue with some of Harris's conclusions in the final chapter of his Biography of Strauss, while at the same time applauding his defence of Strauss against such critics as Barth and Schweitzer, who said he was no great thinker. Exactly the same criticism, we may remember, was made against Darwin, and equally unjustly. Harris claims, however, that, for Strauss, 'the deeper philosophical and theological issues remained like a blind-spot in his eye'. This remark presupposes that there is some genuine deep knowledge to be gained from philosophy and theology, and Strauss was surely right to decline to accept such a view.

I have already alluded to Harris's view that Strauss dismissed the possibility of miracles on apriorist grounds, and G.A. Wells' answer to that charge. Harris also refers to Strauss's 'prior presupposition that there is no transcendent personal God', which he attempts to elucidate in a footnote: 'That is. a God possessing personality in himself'. What Harris here overlooks, but what Strauss himself did not overlook, is that the very notions of 'transcendence', 'personal' (as applied to a hypothetical immaterial entity) and, for that matter, 'God' are by no means clear and self-explanatory.

One of the best elucidations of this confusion is that provided by Patrick Nowell-Smith in a reply to Sir Arnold Lunn. in which he notes that to say any real event is 'inexplicable as a result of natural agents' is already beyond the competence of any scientist, 'and to say it must be ascribed to supernatural agents is to say something that no one could possibly have the right to affirm on the evidence alone'. This is to say that to describe any event as a miracle is already to have smuggled into the equation an indefinable hidden-term that is dependent on faith. It is thus inescapably a begging of the question. The same applies equally to any assertion including such terms as 'supernatural'. Nowell-Smith tellingly concludes his essay with these words: 'The supernatural is either so different from the natural that we are unable to investigate it at all or it is not. If it is not, then it can hardly have the momentous significance that [is claimed] for it; and if it is it cannot be invoked as an explanatioh of the unusual.'

Strauss Forbids Religion at his Funeral In conclusion, I want to say something about Strauss's last days and his directions for his funeral. In the late autumn of 1872, after his last work was published. Strauss decided to move back to Ludwigsburg, the town of his birth, and it was here that, with his health declining, he lived out the remaining sixteen months of his life. Though under fierce attack bv critics including Nietzsche, he remained serene and sanguine about the lasting value of his achievement. On 22 June 1873, he composed his Last Will and Testimony with re2ard to his burial, which it is worth quoting in full:

The burial must be simple, without any pomp.

In order that this may not be seen as stinginess, but as the conviction that pomp is not appropriate for a corpse, 100 florins shall on the day of my burial be placed at the disposal of the local authorities to be given to the poor of the district.

Most important of all, the Church shall be excluded from all participation in the

20 Ethical Record, November, 1994 burial service. For this decision I am responsible, and my children are responsible to me for carrying it out; all the less responsibility falls on them when definite instructions from me stand behind them.

4. So then, no Church bells, no music from the Church Tower, no cross on the pall, but a simple black covering, or even none at all.

5 But above all, no minister shall take part; there shall be no speech, no prayer, neither at the grave nor in the house. 1 should most of all prefer complete silence during the act; yet I was also extremely taken with what I read recently about the instructions which Sainte-Beuve gave for his own burial: The retinue only of friends and other participants; then after the coffin had been lowered, one of the friends stepped up to the grave with the words: 'Adieu Sainte-Beuve, adieu cher ami.' Following this came a few words of thanks to the retinue. 'Messieurs la solennite est finic.' Something like that will be necessary so that no unauthorised person speaks and afterwards gives cause for gossip.

6 Also in regard to the later erection of a gravestone, will my children keep within the limits of the simplest kind.

Strauss died on 8 February 1874, and was buried on Ilth. 1 am glad to say his last wishes were respected, except that a brief speech was made by his old friend Gustav Binder, who, in honouring Strauss, provoked a petition with over 200 signatures calling for his dismissal as Director of the Board of Education for publicly associating himself with an avowed atheist.

NIoncure Conway recalls Strauss's Motives On 22 February 1874, just two weeks after his death, a commemorative service was held for Strauss at South Place Chapel, during which Moncure Conway gave an address in which he alluded to their meetings in Germany:

Some years ago, as 1 walked with him by the banks of the Ncckar, he declared to me that the motives he had in publishing his 'Life of Christ' were hardly less political than religious. "I felt oppressed" he said "at seeing nearly every nation in Europe chained down by allied despotism of prince and priest. I studied long the nature of this oppression, and came to the conclusion that the chain which fettered mankind was rather inward than outward, and that without this inward thralldom, the outward would soon rust away. The inward chain I perceive to be superstition, and the form in which it binds the people of Europe is Christian Supernaturalism. So long as men will accept religious control not based on reason, they will accept political control not based on reason. The man who gives up the whole of his [non' l nature to an unquestioned authority has suffered a paralysis of the mind, and all the changes of outward circumstances in the world cannot make him a free man. For this reason, our European revolutions have been, even when successful, merely transfers from one tyranny to another. 1 believed when I wrote that book that, in striking at supernaturalism. I was striking at the whole evil tree of polhical and social degradation." n

Full notes and bibliography available on request. Send S.A.E. to the Editor

See page 24 for details of Daniel O'Hara's 6 week evening course The Bible for Unbelievers

Ethical Reconl, November, 1994 21 BOOK REVIEW

HAROLD LASKI, a Life on the Left, by Isaac Kramnick and Harry Sheerman, published hy Hamish Hamilton at £25 (hardback).

Review by Dorothy Forsyth

This book is a very comprehensive account of the Labour movement and of Laski's activities in the USA and in England in the first half of this century. His thinking and writings are still relevant today.

Laski was born in 1893, to a wealthy orthodox Manchester Jewish family who were pillars of society. He broke with his family when he married a progessive feminist, Frida, and when he spurned his religion. He was a delicate child who spent much of his childhood ill in bed but reading avidly. He went to Oxford and to Harvard, where he studied law, science, history and politics. He taught politics and law, and Ile involved himself actively in the USA and England in the political scene. He was a passionate socialist committed to "revolution by consensus". During the war when we had a coalition government, he put a lot of pressure on both Winston Churchill and Clement Atlee to bring in socialist measures, but both of them said they had no mandate to do this. He was Atlec's right hand man, and wrote many of his speeche•; he also wrote the American ambassador's speeches.

He is best known for having taught at the LSE, (The Americans knew LSE as the place where Laski taught). Laski was a close friend of Franklin de Roosevelt and Ed Murrow, the American TV journalist. He fought for free speech for lecturers, when there were attempts by the government to curb his speeches. He was sometimes the preoccupation of question time in the Commons. He taught Nehru and Krishna Menon and helped fight for Indian independence. He influenced people like Michael Foot and James Gallaghan.

He helped shape Labour manifestos in the 1930s, and worked for its victory in 1945. He was on the NEC for many years. He was in endless conflict with the Labour Party leadership who wanted modernisation above all else. He was threatened with expulsion several times for activities that the leadership did not approve of, like trying to help the European Jewish refugees. He confronted antisemitism throughout his career, even from colleagues on the left. He also contributed to the writing of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

He was one of the leading British intellectuals of the 20th century. His life abounded in dramatic confrontations, reversals and triumphs; his teaching and writing transformed the landscape of the democratic socialist left in Britain and the USA. He was extremely gregarious and helped refugees and students wherever he could with money he earned from lecturing and writing. He was loved by his students, but he was a thorn in the flesh of the Labour Party. He was a founder member of the NCCL and the Left Book Club and wrote for Tribune. He was the Fabian delegate at Labour Party conferences. He wrote and spoke out against the corporate act of worship in schools. Later he became a Zionist when he became actively involved in the plight of Jews in Europe. He wrote about 25 books.

In 1937 he felt that Britain wanted to fight Germany in order to maintain her imperialist policies. He wrote "weapons would be used in support of Fascism and an Imperialist war of reaction and of colonial suppression". Later he approved of the war

22 Ethical Record, November, 1994 effort, when he saw what an evil regime the Nazis had. He tried to unite the left, but could not get Labour to work with the Communists.

Laski's Downfall In 1945 Laski was accused by three newspapers, including the Evening Standard, of having advocated, at a campaign speech, socialism by violent means. He sued the papers, and had a most unfair case directed against him by counsel Sir Patrick Hasting, who read out complicated extracts from his books and asked him to answer "yes" or "no". He lost the case, and he was a broken man. The costs were enormous. He felt that all he stood for had been diminished by this accusation. But the Labour Party set up a fund: people in the USA including Einstein and Linus Pauling, and in England, raised the money to pay the damages, and sent messages of support.

He was never the same again, the fire having gone out of him. He had always suffered from ill health; he had bronchitis every winter. Although he cut down his activities and responsibilities, no longer standing for the NEC, he died at the age of 56 in 1950 after a short illness.

The book is a monument to a monument of a man. I have only been able to mention some of the content in a book of nearly 600 pages. My criticism of the book is that it highlights nothing, and gives too much detail, but is well worth reading. ID

VIEWPOINT Are Ultimate Questions Silly? Following Richard Scorer's example (ER July/August 1994) I have mused on 'ultimate questions' in general. Suppose someone poses what, it is claimed, is an ultimate question then there are two possible outcomes (supposing the question to be intelligible):

One is that it can never be answered (except formally) in which case it is not worth asking; it is thus a silly question.

The other is that it can be answered meaningfully, in which case the answer is bound to prompt further questions, in which case, the original question ceases to be ultimate, it becomes merely an 'ordinary' question — one that is an intermediate link in a chain of questions.

There are many silly questions that nobody holds to be ultimate but have I not demonstrated that truly ultimate questions are silly questions and, consequently, that people who make weighty delphic pronouncements about them are merely wasting their time and ours? Eric Stockton — Orkney

South Place Ethical Society 69th CONWAY MEMORIAL LECTURE SHOULD WE BE HIERARCHIC DEMOCRATS? Ted Honderich Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, University College London 7.00 pm Thursday 8 December 1994 Admission Free — All Welcome Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WCI

The views expressed in this journal are not necessarily those of the Society

Ethical Record, November, 1994 23 PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT THE ETHICAL SOCIETY The Library, Conway Hall Humanist Centre, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC1 Tel: 071-831 7723 NOVEMBER 1994 Tuesday 8 6.30 pm THE BIBLE FOR UNBELIEVERS: What is the Bible and how did it come to us? No I of 6-week evening course. Tutor Daniel O'Hara. Fee El per evening includes tea. Sunday I 3 11.00 am THE NEMESIS OF FAITH BY J.A. FROUD E. Elinor Shaffer discusses the influence on Anglicans such as J.A. Froude of George Eliot's translation of Strauss's Life of Jesus. 3.00 pm ESTHER ON 'PSYCHIC FORESIGHT Video Seminar Tuesday 15 6.30 pm No 2 The Rise and Critical Study of the Bible: Tutor Daniel O'Hara. Sunday 20 11.00 am FREEDOM FROM FAITH - THE LIMITS OF SCIENTIFIC TRUTH Prof Richard Scorer. 3.00 pm The Origins of Christianity - a humanist explanation A talk by member Richard Soole. Tuesday 22 6.30 pm No 3. The Old Testament: Law, Prophets and Writings. Tutor Daniel O'Hara. Sunday 27 11.00 am DARWIN AMONGST THE ULTRAS. James Moore previews his forth-coming book on the legend of Charles Darwin's "death-bed conversion". In life, Darwin played safe, but atheists and fundamentalists have held their own postmortems. 3.00 pm Montaigne, the first modem humanist. A talk by member Len Smith Tuesday 29 6.30 pm No 4 The New Testament Context, Text and Canon. Tutor: Daniel O'Hara. DECEMBER Sunday 4 11.00 am WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HUMAN NATURE? Robert Young, founder of Free Association Books, discusses his forthcoming book based on lectures given recently at Winnipeg. 3.00 pm Herbert Spencer and the biological basis of moral behaviour. A talk by member David Wedgwood. Tuesday 6 6.30 pm No 5. The Gospeit Do they give us reliable information about Jesus? Tutor Daniel O'Hara. Thursday 8 7.00 pm SHOULD WE BE HIERARCHIC DEMOCRATS? Prof Ted Honderich. Sunday 11 11.00 am THE IMMORALIST IN THE MORAL MAZE. David Starkey of the BBC's Moral Maze (Radio 4 and TV) offers an historian's perspective.

SOUTH PLACE SUNDAY CONCERTS — 6.00 pm. Tickets 83.00 Nov 13 BEETHOVEN STRING TRIO and JOHN YORK (piano). Beethoven: String Trio in D Op.9 No 2. Gideon Klein: String Trio (Compased in Theresienstadt concentration camp). 1944. Brahms: Piano Quartet in C minor No 3 Op.60. Nov 20 PIERS LANE - PIANO. Beethoven: 6 Bagatelles Op.126. Chopin Sonata No 2 in B flat minor Op.35. Beethoven: Sonata Op.106 The 'Hammerk1avief. Nov 27 LYRIC STRING QUARTET. Haydn: String Quartet in B flat Op.76 No 4. Ross Edwards: String Quartet 'Maninya IP. Sibelius: String Quartet Op.56 in D minor 'Voices intimae'. Dec 4 BRITTEN STRING QUARTET and ROGER CHASE (viola). Brahms: Quintet in F Op.88. Hindemith: Suing Quartet No 2 in C Op.16. Brahms: Quintet in G Op.111. Dec II MUSICIANS of the ROYAL EXCHANGE Beethoven: String Trio in C minor Op.9 No 3. Schuman- Carnaval for solo piano Op.9. Dvorak: Piano Quartet in E flat Op.87.

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