FROM THE BOUNDARY

In 1963, an English theologian, Dr. John Robinson, then Suffragan Bishop of Woolwich, published a book with the memorable title ‘Honest to God’. The book was intended for mainly educated lay folk. It took as its central premise, to quote from the Preface, that “there is a growing gulf between the traditional orthodox supernaturalism in which our faith has been framed and the categories which the ‘lay’ world (for want of a better term) find meaningful today”. In other words, Robinson was saying that many of the dogmas and beliefs of our faith, speaking, as they do, of the supernatural, simply stretch the credulity of many believers too far, and so become meaningless fairy-tales which, though they may well be mouthed from the pew, are not truly accepted in the heart.

 

In particular, Robinson criticised the primitive notion, which many of us were schooled to accept – and still do – that God is an old man up in the sky; a God, that is, who only really appears at the edges of life, at times of bereavement or other tragedy, or for a specific purpose like appealing to Biblical texts to scorn gay lifestyles, and, in broader terms, simply when we want something.

 

Well, the book caused a considerable stir. I remember that when I read it, I was so shocked I thought Robinson should be arrested. Not everyone who criticised it had read it, of course, but many cast it as blasphemous. For a Bishop to say these things was not only rocking the boat. It was sinking it. Concerned that the faithful wouldn’t be caused undue offence – though this never seemed to bother Jesus – the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, rebuked Robinson openly.

 

Twenty years later, public fury again erupted when the Bishop elect of Durham, Dr. David Jenkins, then Professor of Theology at Leeds University, made various remarks on a TV programme on the symbolic, rather than factual, nature of the ‘virgin conception’ in the context of what he called the real issues of living the faith today. What Jenkins said was that the word ‘virgin’ had been mistranslated from the Hebrew and meant simply a ‘young girl’ not a physical virgin. So: “A young girl shall conceive and bear a son….” Jenkins suggested, as Robinson had done, that faith didn’t require a bundle of supernatural beliefs to keep it upright. Well, as a result, Jenkins received a large volume of hate mail – aren’t Christians nice to each other? And when, three days after his consecration at York Minster, fire broke out there following a thunderbolt, many saw it as a disapproving thunderbolt from God, thereby proving Jenkins’ thesis. One letter Jenkins received ended “May you rot in hell”, and was signed “A True Christian”. “A True Christian” – that’s a marvellous topic for a sermon, isn’t it? For me, a rose is a truer Christian than me. What about you?

 

In fact, nothing that Robinson or Jenkins had said was very new. Much of ‘Honest to God’ was derived, as Robinson acknowledged, from the writings of three German theologians: Paul Tillich, writing from the US, in his sermons collected in ‘The Shaking of the Foundations’; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, imprisoned by the Nazis and hung in 1945, who wrote many letters from prison to friends which were collected in ‘Letters and Papers from Prison’; and Rudolf Bultmann in his ‘New Testament and Mythology’, first published in 1941. Tillich had spoken of God as “the depth and ground of all being”. Bonhoeffer, in his scattered writings, had talked of “religionless Christianity”. Bultmann had explored the mythological elements in the New Testament. He had also clearly influenced Jenkins thesis but, as Jenkins tells us, his views about the word ‘virgin’ had been knocking about the theological colleges in England for 70 years or more.

 

The upshot is that there’s a theological world out there which, for our purposes, has been left uncharted, if not also suppressed. I don’t remember ‘Honest to God’ ever mentioned at Codrington, though Robinson had actually suggested that time would prove that he hadn’t gone far enough – an assertion with which many would agree. But there are times when I can’t help thinking that in theological terms we do rather short change our people and become, despite ourselves, con men.

 

However, of course, many lay folk would have no idea what these people were talking about. For them it might create an uncertainty for belief which might do more harm than good – and particularly when it’s a bishop who’s surveying the landmarks. We won’t have that problem here, of course. 

 

Yet if our concern is the effect on the faithful, surely we have to think very carefully about what we want from our religion. Do we just want reassurance that all will be well, the certainty that ‘God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world’ – an idea in which the pursuit of truth is a very poor relation? Or is our faith big enough and bold enough to accommodate those such as Robinson and Jenkins who, even as bishops, have sought to explore the boundaries of Christian belief, and our idea of God, in a way which most of us would, at least roughly, understand? If it isn’t, then the question is whether our faith is worth keeping, and whether it’s ultimately in danger of becoming irrelevant even to the simplest of souls.

 

Sure, to answer ‘yes’ would require on our part a leap of faith; yet, paradoxically, it’s precisely from the profoundest faith that we can dare to doubt, dare to question, dare to explore, even to the very depths. Surely, it’s in the nature of man, made, as we say, in God’s image, and in accordance with the gift of reason he’s given us, to exercise the right to explore our faith, to question orthodoxy where its truth values are uncertain, to push back the frontiers of understanding, to unravel the riddles, to dissolve the paradoxes, to search for meaning, to elicit the truth – for it’s in the name of truth that all this takes place.

 

Yes, but it will be a demanding business, though ever rewarding, and we shall have to bring to it all our experiences and carry the hard knocks of our journey. There may be many dark nights, many tears of doubt and uncertainty. Yet, as St. Paul tells us, we must all “work out our own salvation in fear and trembling” and, at the end of it, our goal couldn’t be nobler. For please tell me, what’s nobler than sorting through our relationship with the eternal thou? Isn’t that more noble than the closed mind, feebly doing just what we’re told and how we must think and otherwise burying our heads through fear and greed? Why are we so obsessed with making ourselves so very small and ultimate reality so small with us? Go safely, then – until the next time.

 

The ultimate question from the boundary: “What do we really believe? I mean, believe in such a way that we stake our lives on it?” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).