HONEST TO GOD BY JOHN ROBINSON

The Observer, Sunday 17 March 1963, page 21

OUR IMAGE OF GOD MUST GO

‘Honest to God’, by the Bishop of Woolwich, will be published on Tuesday. In this

article the Bishop expresses the main theme of this controversial book1

; the urgent

need to question the traditional image of God as a supernatural Person if Christianity

is to survive.

by Dr. John Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich

FEW people realise that we are in the middle

of one of the most exciting theological fer[1]ments of the century. Some theologians have

sensed this for years: but now, quite sudden[1]ly, new ideas about God and religion, many

of them with disturbing revolutionary impli[1]cations, are breaking surface.

If Christianity is to survive it must be

relevant to modern secular man, not just to

the dwindling number of the religious. But the

supernaturalist framework within which tra[1]ditionally it has been preached is making this

increasingly impossible. Men can no longer

credit the existence of “gods,” or of a God as a

supernatural Person, such as religion has

always posited.

Not infrequently, as I watch or listen to a

broadcast discussion between a Christian and

a humanist, I catch myself realising that most

of my sympathies are on the humanist’s side.

This is not in the least because my faith or

commitment is in doubt, but because I instinct[1]ively share with him his inability to accept

the “religious frame” within which alone

that faith is being offered to him. I feel that

as a secular man he is right to rebel against it,

and I am increasingly uncomfortable that “or[1]1 “Honest to God”, by the Bishop of Woolwich (S.C.M. Press, 5s.).

thodoxy” should be identified with it, when it

is simply an out-moded view of the world.

The new ideas were first put on record by a

German pastor in a Nazi prison in 1944: “Our

whole 1,900-year-old Christian preaching

and theology rests upon the ‘religious prem[1]ise’ of man. What we call Christianity has

always been a pattern – perhaps a true pattern

– of religion. But if one day it becomes ap[1]parent that this a priori ‘premise’ simply does

not exist, but was an historical and temporary

form of human self-expression, i.e., if we

reach the stage of being radically without re[1]ligion – and I think this is more or less the case

already – what does that mean for Christian[1]ity?

“It means that the linchpin is removed

from the whole structure of our Christianity

to date.”

Those words were written on April 30,

1944. It is a date that may yet prove a turn[1]ing-point in the history of Christianity. For

on it Dietrich Bonhoeffer first broached the

subject of “religionless Christianity” in a

smuggled correspondence with his friend

Eberhard Bethge, who subsequently edited

his “Letters and Papers from Prison.”

2

Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor of very

traditional upbringing. Had he lived, he

would now be in his late fifties. From 1933-

35 he was in charge of the German congre[1]gation in Forest Hill, South London – where

the church, rebuilt out of British war-dam[1]age money, is now dedicated to his name. In

the inner circle of the German Resistance, he

was privy to the plot on Hitler’s life, and

within a year of penning that letter he had

been hanged by the S.S., on the eve of libe[1]ration by the Americans.

When his letters were first published – a

bare 10 years ago – one felt at once that the

Church was not ready for what Bonhoeffer

was saying. Indeed, it might properly be

understood only 100 years hence. But it

seemed one of those trickles that must one

day split rocks.

THE speed with which his ideas have be[1]come current coin, is not, I think, the result

solely of the quickening pace of communi[1]cation and change. It is the result of one of

those mysteries of human history whereby,

apparently without interconnection, similar

ideas start bubbling up all over the place at

the same time. Without this, I suspect, Bon[1]hoeffer might have remained a voice in the

wilderness for decades, like Kierkegaard a

century earlier.

Perhaps at this point I may be personal. A

year ago I was laid up for three months with

a slipped disc. I determined to use the op[1]portunity to allow their head to ideas that had

been submerged by pressure of work for some

time past. Over the years convictions had been

gathering – from my reading and experience

– which I knew I couldn’t with integrity ig[1]nore, however disturbing they might seem.

But I wrote my book*

shut up in my room.

What has astonished me since is the way in

which within the last six months similar ideas

have broken surface in articles and conversa[1]tions in the most unlikely places – as far apart

as Africa and Texas. However inarticulate

one may be, one detects an immediate glance

of recognition and what the editor of Prism

has called “an almost audible gasp of relief”

when these things are said openly.

It is not easy to put one’s finger on the

common factor. I suppose it is the glad accep[1]tance of secularisation as a God-given fact.

For we of our generation are secular men.

And our question, as Christians, is: How can

Christ be Lord of a genuinely secular world?

Hitherto, says Bonhoeffer, Christianity

has been based on the premise that man is

naturally religious: and it has been presented

as the best and highest religion. The corollary

has been that to the non-religious it has

nothing to say. A person had to become relig[1]ious first – to have, or be induced to have, a

religious sense of sin or need for God: then

Christ could come to him as the answer.

MODERN man has opted for a secular

world: he has become increasingly non-relig[1]ious. The Churches have deplored this as the

great defection from God, and the more they

write it off, the more this movement has seen

itself as anti-Christian.

But, claims Bonhoeffer boldly, the period

of religion is over. Man is growing out of

it: he is “coming of age.” By that he doesn’t

mean that he is getting better (a prisoner of

the Gestapo had few illusions about human

nature), but that for good or for ill he is

putting the religious world-view behind him

as childish and pre-scientific.

Bonhoeffer would accept Freud’s anal[1]ysis of the God of religion as a projection.

Till now man has felt the need for a God as

a child feels the need for his father. He

must be “there” to explain the universe, to

protect him in his loneliness, to fill the gaps

in his science, to provide the sanction for his

morality.

But now man is discovering that he can

manage quite happily by himself. He finds

no necessity to bring God into his science,

his morals, his political speeches. Only in

the private world of the individual’s psy[1]chological need and insecurity – in that last

corner of “the sardine-tin of life” – is room

apparently left for the God who has been

3

elbowed out of every other sphere. And so

the religious evangelist works on men to

coerce them at their weakest point into feel[1]ing that they cannot get on without the tute[1]lage of God.

But “God is teaching us that we must live

as men who can get along very well without

him.” And this, says Bonhoeffer, is the God

Jesus shows us, the God who refuses to be a

Deus ex machina, who allows himself to be

edged out of the world on to the Cross. Our

God is the God who forsakes us – only to

meet with us on the Emmaus road, if we are

really prepared to abandon him as a long[1]stop and find him not at the boundaries of

life where human powers fail, but at the cen[1]tre, in the secular, as “the ‘beyond’ in our

midst.”

Another way of putting this is to say that

our whole mental image of God must under[1]go a revolution. This is nothing new in Chris[1]tianity. The men of the Bible thought of God

as “up there,” seated upon a throne in a loca[1]lised heaven above the earth, and it was this

God to whom Jesus “ascended.”

But with the development of scientific

knowledge, the image of the God “up there”

made it harder rather than easier to believe.

And so, very boldly, Christians discarded it.

I say very boldly, for in order to do so they

had to go against the literal language of the

Bible.

For it they substituted another mental

image – of a God “out there,” metaphysical[1]ly if not literally. Somewhere beyond this

universe was a Being, a centre of personal

will and purpose, who created it and who sus[1]tains it, who loves it and who “visited” it

in Jesus Christ. But I need not go on, for this

is “our” God. Theism means being con[1]vinced that this Being exists: atheism means

denying that he does.

BUT I suspect we have reached the point

where this mental image of God is also more

of a hindrance than a help. There are many

who feel instinctively that the space-age has

put paid to belief in Gad. The theologian may

properly think them naive. But what they are

rebelling against is this image of a Being out

beyond the range of the farthest rocket and

the probe of the largest telescope. They no

longer find such an entity credible.

To the religious, the idea of a supreme

Being out there may seem as necessary for

their thinking as was once the idea of a Be[1]ing up there. They can hardly even picture

God without it. If there wasn’t really some[1]one “there,” then the atheists would be right.

But any image can become an idol; and I

believe that Christians must go through the

agonising process in this generation of de[1]taching themselves from this idol. For to

twentieth-century man the “old man in the

sky” and the whole supernaturalist scheme

seem as fanciful as the man in the moon.

Sir Julian Huxley has spent much time in

his deeply moving book. “Religion Without

Revelation,” and in subsequent articles in

this paper, dismantling this construction. He

constantly echoes Bonhoeffer’s sentiments,

and I heartily agree with him when he says,

“The sense of spiritual relief which comes

from rejecting the idea of God as a super[1]human being is enormous.”

For the real question of belief is not the

existence of God, as a person. For God is

ultimate reality (that’s what we mean by

the word), and ultimate reality must exist.

The only question is what ultimate reality is

like. And the Christian affirmation is that

reality ultimately, deep down, in the last ana[1]lysis, is personal: the world, incredible as it

may seem, is built in such a way that in the

end personal values will out.

Professor Bondi, commenting in the B.B.C.

television programme, “The Cosmologists,”

on Sir James Jeans’s assertion that “God is a

great mathematician,” stated quite correctly

that what he should have said is “Mathemat[1]ics is God.” Reality, in other words, can fin[1]ally be reduced to mathematical formulae.

What the Christian says is that in, with and

under these regularities, and giving ultimate

significance to them, is the yet deeper relia[1]bility of an utterly personal Love.

4

That, in the world of the H-bomb, is a

desperate act of faith. On purely humanistic

grounds I could have no basis for believing

it as more than wishful thinking. Huxley

ends his book with the words “My faith is in

the possibilities of man.” It is significant

that he was able to reissue it in 1957 with[1]out even a mention of the possibility, not to

say probability, that there might not, within

his frame of reference, be any prospects for

humanity at all.

The belief that personality is of ultimate

significance is for me frankly incredible un[1]less what we see in Jesus of Nazareth is a

window through the surface of things into

the very ground of our being. That is why,

in traditional categories, the survival of

Christianity turned upon the assertion that

he was “of one substance with the Father.”

For unless the substance, the being, of things

deep down is Love, of the quality disclosed

in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus

Christ, then we could have no confidence in

affirming that reality at its very deepest level

is personal. And that is what is meant by as[1]serting that God is personal.

This has nothing necessarily to do with

positing the existence of a Person, an al[1]mighty Individual, “up there” or “out there.”

Indeed, as Paul Tillich, the great American

theologian, also from Germany, has said:

“The protest of atheism against such a highest

person is correct.”

Tillich has shown that it is just as possible

to speak of God in terms of “depth” as of

“height.” Such language is equally symbol[1]ic. But it may speak more “profoundly” to

modem man brought up on “depth psychol[1]ogy.” Indeed, I believe that this transposition

can bring fresh meaning to much traditional

religious symbolism. Tillich talks of what is

most deeply true about us and for us, and goes

on: –

“That depth is what the word God

means. And if that word has not much mean[1]ing for you, translate it, and speak of the

depths of your life, of the source of your be[1]ing, of your ultimate concern, of what you

take seriously without any reservation. Per[1]haps, in order to do so, you must forget

everything traditional you have learned about

God, perhaps even that word itself. For if

you know that God means depth, you know

much about him. You cannot then call your[1]self an atheist or unbeliever. For you cannot

think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself

is shallow. Being itself is surface only. If

you could say this in complete seriousness,

you would be an atheist, but otherwise you

are not.”

THOSE words from his “Shaking of the

Foundations” (now published as a Pelican)

had a strangely moving effect on me when I

first read them 14 years ago. They spoke of

God with a new and indestructible relevance,

which made the traditional language about a

God that came in from outside both remote

and artificial. And yet they preserved his

“profound” mystery and transcendence.

The ultimate Christian conviction is that at

the heart of things there is “nothing, in death

or life … in the world as it is or the world as

it shall be, in the forces of the universe, in

heights or depths – nothing in all creation that

can separate us from the love of God in Christ

Jesus our Lord.” That I believe passionately.

As for the rest, as for the images of God, whe[1]ther metal or mental, I am prepared to be an

agnostic with the agnostics, even an atheist

with the atheists.

Indeed, though we shall not of course be

able to do it, I can understand those who urge

that we should give up using the word “God”

for a generation, so impregnated has it be[1]come with a way of thinking we may have to

discard if the Gospel is to signify anything.

I am well aware that what I have said

involves radical reformulations for the Church

in almost every field – of doctrine, worship,

ethics and evangelism. This is a dangerous

process, but immensely exhilarating; and the

exciting thing is that it is not being forced

upon the Church from outside but up from within.