…Self-regarding interest, in whatever guise it appears (and even the language of rights descents to self-interest when the theological roots of that language are forgotten) is an inadequate basis for moral action.
For Nicolas Lash, the gospel can be summed up in the simple statement ‘We have been made capable of friendship‘ – with God and with one another. To say this, seriously, against our actual background of brutality and devastation, of ancient and deep-rooted group and individual egotism, of terror, isolation, and exhausted disbelief, is to say something either very foolish or, if sensible, then very dark and strange indeed. And yet, I have been taught by that particular people which identifies me more deeply than does my British nationality – namely, by Catholic Christianity – that I must learn to place my fundamental loyalty with no people, no possibility of friendship, more restricted than the human race.
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