Having got over the shock of being dead, Professor Hick began to settle down to enjoying life again. Naturally, he soon sought out some philosophers.

‘Which one,’ he asked a passing angel, ‘is Thomas Aquinas? Or has he, perhaps, gone to the other place?’

The angel looked scornful and flapped its wings in a rather frightening manner. ‘You are talking about my namesake,’ he retorted. ‘And, for your information, not only is he here, but he is also quite respected in the highest quarters. Perhaps you would like an interview?’

The Professor agreed, and some time later he was ushered into a large study filled with shining copies of the Blackfriars Summa. In the middle of a pile of books sat Aquinas himself.

‘Hic est Hick,’ announced the angel.

‘Welcome’, said Aquinas, lapsing into English. ‘What can I do for you?’

I’m interested in talking to you about faith,’said the Professor.

‘I don’t see there’s much to be said,’ replied the Dominican. ‘Isn’t all that sort of thing behind us now? Haven’t you read what I wrote in the Secunda Secundae?’

‘Well, my point,’ replied the Professor, getting himself comfortable, is just that. You see, I am quite sure that what you sayabout faith is wrong. Indeed, I said so myself in my book Faith and Knowledge. You might also look up my lecture ‘Religious Faith as Experience-As’. Don’t you agree that my criticisms of your view of faith were correct and that I did a much better job on the topic than you did?’

The idea of holding a general council may be traced to a suggestion made to Pope Pius IX by a curial cardinal as early as 1849. The immediate background may be outlined as follows. In 1799 Pope Pius VI died in exile, a prisoner of the French. In 1813 his successor, Pius VII, a prisoner at Fontainebleau, was forced by Napoleon into signing documents which gave the emperor virtual control over the Church. With the collapse of Napoleon the pope was able to return to Rome to begin to restore his authority. When he died in 1823 the main issue at the long conclave that followed was whether a man could be found who would stand up for the independence of the Church over against the great Catholic princes. The man who was found, Leo XII, set about reorganising the Vatican with great vigour, but his reign lasted little more than five years. His successor, an old sick man who had once been among Napoleon's prisoners, died within two years. It was only in 1831, then, that, with the election of Gregory XVI after a conclave lasting seven weeks (the Spanish government intervened to veto the election of another candidate), the modern ascendancy of the papacy really began. Significantly enough, in the dark days of 1799, when he was still a young monk, lie had brought out a book entitled II trionfo della Santa Sede e della Chiesa contra gli assalti dai novatori, combattuti e respinti colle stesse loro armi, which appeared (naturally enough) in a third edition in 1832 and was translated into German in 1838. Dedicated to Pius VI, then of course a prisoner, the book identifies the Church with the juridical structure of its government, insisting that it is monarchical, and goes so far as to say that the Church is infallible because the pope, its head and foundation, is so.

That there are social, political and economic problems in India is a fact that needs no proof. The task of the believer in this situation can be spoken of in line with the general understanding of revelation which encourages the Christian to act like Christ, who gave himself unto death; to act like the apostles who spent themselves for their brethren, because our fellow men are members of Christ and in order that the peace willed by Christ may reign in this world. Yet such a description of the task of the Christian leaves his role as regards the structures of human society relatively undefined.

In India today, there is the effort to analyse the structures themselves and establish Christian positions in dealing with them, so as to re-construct a social order in which sin as a structuring element is less present.

The present article seeks to present the general lines of the approach followed by Indian theologians and then try to offer, for the information and comment of Western theologians, certain approaches by which the theology of liberation as formulated for and in India could have an impact in regard to other approaches to the theology of liberation.

Even the most systematic considerations in the matter of the theology of liberation are formulated as “hypotheses”. The present article seeks to present some of the present approaches to the theology of liberation in India. Admittedly, it is a difficult task to synthesize the perspectives of the analyses of Indian society already made and the “projects” suggested due to the “particularity” of the viewpoint of each author. But it is necessary to make some attempt in order to set our comments in perspective.