Doublethink about God
Sir: I must thank Quintin Hogg for so opera- tically demonstrating my suggestion that the position taken up by such as he can have na resort to reason (21 June). But I confess puzzle-. ment that,a man claiming to be so deeply in God's graces should also be so splenetic. This may provide an important theological lead : perhaps the so far unlocated seat of the soul should be sought in the spleen.
I must also thank him for unintentionally supporting my point that, confused and uncer- tain though philosophers—and psychologists, I added—are, this trepidation is small in com- parison with that within the Christian church.
May I, incidentally, remark upon the tech- nical disadvantage one is at in a two-part pub- lication of this nature. One writes an article so as to make a genuine—though admittedly per- haps futile—attempt to look helpfully and ob- jectively at a complex problem. This article is then sent to one's so far unknOwn protagonist, who is thus able at leisure to dissect its parts while avoiding attention to the larger _questions raised. In other words, having deployed one's troops in full view of one's opponent, one is then committed to standing one's ground with- out right of manoeuvre, while the other side makes his attacks in any manner he selects. That being so, it is a pity that Mr Hogg spent himself on fulminating battle-cries rather than actual use of armament—perhaps he has none? None the less. spluttering (as one would have hoped he had by now learned from his long ex- perience in Parliament and on public platforms) is not effective artillery fire.
As for `name-dropping'—as he chooses, with his renowned pertness, to label my reference to authorities germane to my argument—may L with the greatest good will, recommend that he picks up a few of them? Naturally one assumed that a man so widely read would already be conversant with the writers I mentioned; but as, quite plainly, he has not so far had the time to investigate them, he will find, possibly to his
profit, that theological debate has developed far beyond the quaint simplicities at which he is intellectually arrested.
Kenneth Allsop Golden Fleece House, Braughing, Ware, Herts
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