The millenium dome is a precise model for the medieval view of man in society under a sacred canopy in which all culture and behaviour; the power of royal and civil hierarchies were placed and protected. Sir Thomas More grew up believing that Christian tradition was supported by the twelve box girders in Greenwich that hold up Peter Mandleson's creation. They might well represent the tribes of Israel but better the twelve apostles to whom More believed Christ had entrusted his teachings and authority to Peter and his successors.

Greenwich provides an image of man's endeavour under one sacred roof: state and politics; church and spirituality. Thomas More could only conceive of the ordering of society finally in the context of a response, an offering to God. Art, scholarship, and liturgy; statecraft, parliament and king each making its endeavour somehow a prayer to the God of their fathers through Christ the head of the church whose representative on earth stood at the apex of this divine and social order - a theocentric model of reality.

BUT! this structure was about to be rocked as never before; the country needed an heir and Cardinal Wolsey as chancellor of England now had to lay aside piety and prayers and resort more subtly to practical politics. The consequences for Thomas More were catastrophic - the dome was threatened; tradition was vulnerable. And across the channel, radical opinion talked of alternatives to More's singular sacred canopy. There could only be one church guided by the Holy Spirit; its practices derived from two sources: sacred texts - scripture - and the traditions of generations transmitted from one to another through the councils and committees of Catholic Christianity.

How hard the twentieth century has struggled to realise the One Church. In 1910 in Edinburgh, the denominations were e

mbarrassed by their competitive divisions; 1948 gave birth to a remedy which in the nineties, has more or less dwindled away: the World Council of Churches took the lead but few semed to follow: the churches were tribal after all. They might cooperate but they could not co-habit. How sadly Michael Ramsey reflected on the failure of the Anglican-Methodist Union in the seventies.

Thomas More could hardly conceive it: Anglicans, Baptists, Children of God, United Reformed, Heaven's Gate, Russian Orthodoxy. More belonged to his time as we belong to ours and yet he saw the signs of the times and something had to be done. He was a lawyer; the objective of a just society was in his mind linked directly to his belief that the law was the mechanism by which the grace of God was dispensed to mankind in the context of political and moral affairs. Justice was the handmaid of revealed truth.

The world, mankind, history - the whole body politic had the blood of Christ coursing though temporal veins and each arena of human endeavour had its part to play under this God -given sacred canopy. Outside there was nothing, nothing. Only the fires of hell or eternal darkness.

Under this all -embracing and overarching canopy, the minutiae of legal casuistry was led by spiritual forces towards spiritual objectives. It was finally a service to God - an offering along with literature, music, humour and cathedrals. Above all, the intelligence of every man was a gift from God to be exploited in the service of God according to the rules mediated through the Supreme Pontiff in Rome.

Thomas More, the founding father of Christian humanism saw the writing on the wall. He began to see that a species of intellectual self-consciousness was emerging from the communal spirit of medieval piety. The sacred canopy was beginning to let in the drafts as winds began to gather pace from across the channel. A sort of ecclesiological Euro entered the theological currency. Alternative ways of defining man in society and in history was seeping under the doors of the universities, the offices of state and the structures of the judiciary.

And that wasn't all: across the channel, some sneaky engineering tricks were slowly gathering pace which would prove to be more important than the founding of the railways four hundred years later; more important than Marconi and his whiskers or Orvil Wright and his flying contraption. Thomas More might well tremble as he heard the gentle clatter of moving type. These radicals proclaimed that God's cause - they said - was advanced 'not with sword or target but with printing.' New ideas were seeping and creeping and More was going to have none of it! He took the gloves off; no more his graceful Latin prose full of irony, wit and elegance. More would now use all the slander he could muster against the arch -enemy of Catholic truth: Luther. His attack would not be spared the most vituperative and smutty images that simply cannot be uttered in a Christian pulpit let alone in the company of ladies particularly with civic eminence.

More's humanism mobilised ideas that elucidated ancient

philosophy and culture in a way that confirmed that the Holy Spirit of God had been at work before the final revelation in the Christ of the gospels. Printing enhanced Catholic principles, piety and perception. But now it was spreading a new disease: heresy - any attack on the church - let alone the king - was an attack on God. Thomas More was aghast at any suggestion that there could be anything other than one divine realm; there could not be two. At root was the basic question: was the state a congregation of believers ruled by the intervention of divine grace as revealed by the institutions of the Catholic Christianity under the Holy Spirit? That was how More defined it. Or: was it merely an association of men ruled by rational law devised by men and based on an assessment of truth delivered by reason? Was it a mysterious or a natural grouping? You can guess the view of Thomas More.

Where Luther would say "I think that this or that is the case" More would reply "No! God has revealed that this or that is the case!" The Protestants were perforce, striking their axe at the base of the trunk; they were laying siege to an inherited cosmology expressed in the structures of catholic rhetoric and argument. The absolute was being elbowed aside by the relative ª and More was having none of it! The elevation of individual conscience was at the cost of divine truth mediated through the councils of the historic church. Both could not exist under one canopy. The sacred dome was singular: one God, one church - just like the Jews: One Temple and only one: god could not be in two places at once on the Day of Atonement when present in the Holy of Holies. No wonder the Samaritans were despised and heretical in their alternative Galilee Temple.

And that wasn't all: William Tyndale - celebrated these days by an exhibition in the new British Library - William Tyndale was Lutheran, a heretic and a scholar. Salvation he said, was by Pualine faith and not by papal works. More might have agreed had these protesting maniacs not sought to drag the whole of Christendom into the mud simply because some of its practices were corrupt. More of course, knew that; but the attack was on the roots rather than the branches. So - said William Tyndale - give the Word of God to the people mediated through the vernacular rather than the Vatican; English instead of Latin. This was war said Sir Thomas against the manipulation both of doctrine and movable type in pamphlets coming from Strasbourg. Gutenberg was born there and this charming little town was as troublesome to Thomas More as it was to Margaret Thatcher! Thomas More's world was in a state of profound change and there was now only one way to stem the invasion of heretical energy: violence - official measures to be an example to aliens sneaking through the Nothing to Declare gate at the ports. They were a plague said More - these 'frantik blokes' were poison: they attacked the sacrament; they denied the Eucharist. Above all, they undermined the certainties of Christian doctrine and thus the stability of the social order under the hierarchical sacred dome with its towering apostolic supports. They were the anti -Christ - they were demonic. Conscience ousted confession; intellect took precedence over induction; personal interpretation over episcopal pronouncement.

This was the birth of the secular. As Luther's gradually inflating sacred dome took shape in Europe, his new men were drawn under it. Not only said Luther, was the historical message being corrupted by papal abuse, the message itself was in error. Luther had read Paul's letter to the Romans. Sola fidei! Man was given conscience to respond to revelation by faith. More replied 'extra ecclesiam nulla salus: for ecclesiam read dome. There were now two canopies: state and church - separated by notions of autonomy. This was war, said Thomas More! His medieval world drawing to a close.

It was a fearsome division: For Luther, the king was appointed by God to protect the church. More said No, No! No! The Church through its councils and the Holy Father appointed the king to rule in effect by revelation umpired by the senior clergy. Like Wolsey, they were men both of sacrament and statecraft. More affirmed that in no regard was the state autonomous; in no manner was conscience autonomous. But Luther had read Romans chapter 13 "Let all be subject to government authorities; for authority is from God and government is constituted by God." Paul's temporal civic conscience was carved into the Christian tablets and would become eternally valid. More had also read Romans 13 and came to a diametrically opposed interpretation: the state was subject to divine law. So was the church said Luther. Both are judged. For More, the state refined the social order on divine instruction. For Luther, the Church is to be refined with appeal not to sacrament but to scripture; not to compulsion of clergy but the competence of conscience. Thomas More's hermetically sealed sacred dome was punctured and there was now another. The niceties of Latin -speak gave way to slander and polemic: More scraped the top of the barrel for the needed slander to castigate the villainous excommunicate.

Heretics they were and heretics will be burned. If they do not recant - and many did - they would be in the Tower and to hell with them and their moralities. It was a nasty spectacle - unless you lived at the time and could enjoy it all. It had nothing to do with human rights. More put it neatly: "after the fire of Smithfield, come the fires of hell, where they shall burn for eternity." The future of the world was at stake and this was not a compassionate and fair -minded lawyer ranged against the criminal; this was the action of God against the devil.

Thomas More could not imagine; he could not conceive of that which today we take for granted - that there are indeed, two interrelated but autonomous spheres, church and state. The debate about disestablishment rumbles on and perhaps the Upper House will dispense with the bishops - who knows?! Nevertheless, sacred and secular are firmly defined. Heresy trials are rare because everyone is entitled to their opinion!

Thomas More could even less conceive of a secular view of the gospels and of Christian origins in first century eastern Mediterranean politics. Least of all, could he conceive the process which turned a Jewish Galilean preacher into a god -figure in the space of half a century. These were secular forces understood in terms of historical analysis; for More they were divine and absolute provisions with the character of revelation. The question "What actually happened?" was not in his purview.

Nor could Thomas More conceive of an answer to that question outside of what is written in the gospel pages. We know what happened: Christ loved his church and gave himself for it - as the Bishop of Norwich said at the recent royal wedding. That is doctrine and for Thomas More, doctrine was fact. To us it is reconstruction.

Nor could Thomas More conceive of a historian's approach undertaken outside the boundaries of catholic doctrine. Indeed, the Roman Catholic church more or less maintained its ban on historical biblical criticism until the 1950's let alone the 1550's! It was the Lutherans who took the initiative in Germany in the nineteenth century and More would have raged at any meddling with the sacred text that tore it from its Latin universal pennant. Translation was desacralisation; Luther was a demon all the more for putting the Bible into German. More called him a slut like a London whore. And so was Tyndale who did the same for the English. Nor could Thomas More conceive of any leniency towards the Protestants and their demonic interpetation: historical investigation in our time was heretical insolence in his: it deserved the fire.

Nor could Thomas More for all his brilliance, conceive of the quest for the historical Jesus begun some three hundred years later arising from Luther's approach. The distinction between the Jesus of first century Palestine and the Christ of Catholic doctrine would make no sense. But it does to us: we want to know. The central issue for the survival of Christianty today depends on our willingness to bite the bullet of historical research and accept its findings. Our contemporaries want an intelligible answer to a basic and intelligent question: 'what actually happened?'

Channel Four made it quite clear last night that contemporary Christendom sustains a medieval strain that looks like both lunacy and tyranny. Sensible people are being led by con -men into cults and sects that exploit, delude and destroy: Waco 95, JonesTown 78 not to mention the London Church of Christ that leads all sorts into despair.

Nor could Thomas More conceive the problem of the Jews and the anti -Jewish sentiment in the gospels that laid the foundation for Luther's bitter condemnation of all Jews for killing Christ, [rather than Jesus.] More would not question that Jesus called the Jews the children of the devil. This was historical truth from the Apostle himself faithfully reporting the words of Jesus. Besides, he did not approve of the elevation of scripture above the councils of the church; he would be astonished at the mindless manners of modern evangelical sects. Nevertheless, in 1965, the Second Vatican Council did apologise to the Jews and in February 98, the Pope went further admitting the 'erroneous reading of the gospel of John' where the Jews are the villain and Pilate the good guy. While Luther created havoc by separating the political realm from the ecclesial, closer to home, Thomas More consigned to the Tower any he caught doing the same with scripture: the church - not the individual - decide issues of interpretation. Put the text into the language of the common folk and you produce a religion of the common folk; you pull the skids from under the pylons that support the sacred dome.

Thomas More was right: pluralism was released like a poison gas by the heretics and it wafted across Christendom out of control: Thomas More was powerless. He stuck to his guns but lost his cause: Catholic Christianity would never be the same again. Henry had defied the Pope; Luther had defied the Pope; Tyndale had defied the Pope. Christianity would be privatised, desacralised, democratised. Unified authority flowed out with the protestant bath-water. Catholic Christianity was nationalised; the Bible vernacularised. The legacy for the nineteenth and now the twentyªfirst centuries is a search for other aspects of the truth; the process has shifted slowly from the theologian and the philosopher to the historian and the social anthropologist: what actually happened? What did he actually say? Who actually plotted his execution? Did he actually rise from the dead? Did he actually change water into wine? The legacy of Thomas More's battle against Luther is our search for the context of the text and which political, social and theological ideas gave rise to it? Scholars are at least free to make their answers public without the threat of a burning in Smithfield, as much as some would like to! Sir Thomas More gave a warning to his generation that to undermine revealed truth meant chaos; he was as sceptical as the next man - but not of the absolute. It would be centuries before a notable catholic had the courage to say yes, even the absolute, even the revealed.

What would Thomas More have said to Cardinal Newman's famous line: "Spare no effort in your search for the truth; but beware the man who has found it."

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