Religion
What the Bishop saw
Edward Norman
Christian truth is not easily sifted from the cultural values of men. It was a proper instinct which suggested the importance of initiation to the early Christians: those aspiring to the profession of Christ were to be born again, to surrender the priorities of the world; they were to make all things new, to transcend the sufferings of this present life through service and prayer. As ambassadors of a Kingdom not of this world, Christian men were called to witness to a distinct spiritual culture. For although Christ took his religious materials from the existing Judaic deposit, he pointed to a new revelation whose authority derived from his divinity. He was God in the nature of man. He made his followers wise with a wisdom inherent in the worldly experiences of men — as he himself was truly God and truly man — yet he illuminated human life through his own perfection in the flesh: with a light which fell upon the creation from another realm.
For those given to formal learning, this has always been a hard truth: that the knowledge asesmbled by men is liable to corruption according to the corruption of their natures — that human intelligence is most properly employed in cutting through the intellectual screens, fashioned by men, in order to see again the simple vision of truth reflected in the humble and the uneducated. The Christian man, therefore, is called to enter a spiritual tradition transmitted through the centuries by those in whom simple belief has been the final distillation from a thick solution which the world esteemed. It is to simplicity of vision, to the faith of the fishermen of Galilee and of the little children, that the Christian intellect is directed: of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. Whilst 'accepting human society as the essential field for the exercise of compassion, and as the human culture (itself reflecting the creative will of God) in which the springs of spirituality are embedded, the Christian man is really an aspirant to a society of celestial priorities — to a company absorbed for eternity in the contemplation of God — perceived in belief, maintained by obligation, soaked in the language of devotion used by those in whose lives Christ has been present through the ages. The world itself, as an expression of the providence of God, remains as mysterious as ever men supposed it was. The spiritual tradition of Christianity remains grounded in the world; but it is not of it.
In modern society there is much formal knowledge: much that has been learned about the mechanisms of the universe and of things with life. But human wisdom has remained constant — we are no wiser than our predecessors. Indeed, in some dimensions of our experience it is possible that we have so suppressed our instincts through the adoption of formal knowledge that we lack some of the wisdom which those nearer to the fabric of the world accumu. lated. Religious wisdom is the chief quality Of the spiritual tradition which is Christianity. It is not self-evident, especially to this generation — who are themselves increasingly engulfed by cultures and intellectual modes which nobody even pretends were constructed in order to seek out the infinite. The Christian spiritual tradition has to be learned and lived; it has to be studied and handed on. The truth is so moulded into the tradition that Christ IS inseparable from it: the prayers and the lives of centuries of faithful men have borne witness to the authenticity of the Christ which the tradition sustains. It is, of 'course, necessary for the content of this tradition to be reinterpreted to the human expectations .of each succeeding generation — but the content must not be changed, for it is the knowledge of Christ, whose truth is entrusted to human agency. It was only to be expected that tensions would arise between the eternal and the transitory instincts of men. .
How, then, does Bishop Robinson interpret the nature of the Author of the universe, of the Christ of the centuries of faith? "When the woman wiped Jesus's feet with her hair, she performed a highly sexual action," according to a Canadian Council of Churches. "Did Jesus at that moment experience an erection?" Robinson Prints the question in his new book:* it is, he says, "a good question to ask ourselves." He also considers the possibility that the birth of Jesus was the consequence Of "conception outside marriage by an unknown party, subsequently condoned by Joseph." It is, furthermore, also worth considering whether Jesus "night have been homosexual." He may, too, "have been. schizoid in tendency "; he "insisted on a• single-minded obedience" which the Bishop thinks may indicate mental unbalance. Robinson is careful to avoid say ing that any of these things are definitely true, but they are suitable matters for Christians to think about. He has a pur Pose in this. It is to show that those whose reverence for God in Christ restrains the sort of mental hat its he commands are really just afcaid of admitting things about themselves, None of us, we are told, like to see Jesus as a real man; "We cannot stand the identity of the same flesh and blood, the continuity of genes and sperm." To see in Christ a perfect man is a Psychological need" of those unable to affirm life.
What is he up to? He seeks to apply contemporary intellectual culture to the World of the New Testament. The spiritual tradition of Christian:ty, the two thousand Years in which the inherent truths of Christ Were given form, are swept aside as Irrelevant accretions believed by men given to ignorance about the real nature of the world. It is only, he writes, in the last century that we have accurate enough knowledge to understand the real humanity of Christ. Christ does not reside in a Spiritual tradition at all, the ' God,guage' was deceptive, even harmful: He is characteristically to be found on the shifting frontiers of social change, in the relatives of events rather than in a timeless absolute above or beyond it all."
The Human Face of God John A. T. Robinson (SCM £2.50) Some very learned points of Biblical scholarship are brought on to back up the new Christology, but they are all in the end seen to be assertions required by some emotional condition of the Bishop's — which it would not be respectful to explore — and almost entirely dependent for their plausibility upon interpretations of the value of contemporary intellectual endeavour which are, to say the least, questionable. "The Christian is distinguished by the divinity he sees in man." "If men are to believe in God, it can only be ' a-theistically '." ".Jesus is but the clue, the parable, the sign by whom it is possible to recognise the Christ in others." ' Christ' is here given a very specialised meaning, rather resembling a synonym for human mutual respect.
After a good deal of hedging around, Robinson's position finally emerges. It is a guarded version of the error known as Adoptionism ' — that Jesus adopted God at about the same time that ' God ' adopted Jesus. "Humanely speaking," we read, Jesus was "not to be regarded as 'a great man '." During his life on earth he was changed by events and adjusted his beliefs according to his fate; making virtue of necessity, in fact. "He was, like everyone else who has tried to change the world, himself changed by it." Jesus was a man ' bespeaking ' God. Like Feuerbach, Robinson believes that a representation of Christ as transcendant merely alienates "the real world for secular man." Quite unnecessary, too; for 'objectively projected' notions of the Resurrection were just ' hallucinations ' "the bones of Jesus may still be lying around somewhere in Palestine." The spiritual tradition of Christian truth must be wrong, according to the Bishop, because modern men can't believe it. He reports that Swedish schoolchildren don't regard Jesus as especially interesting. "We must have the courage to ask our own questions in terms of what is most real for us," he writes. Robinson actually has no more evidence for his human Christ than the former advocates of a frank docetism had for a Christ of unmixed divinity. Despite his carefully spaced assertions to the con trary, he has created a new imbalance between the two natures of Christ. The sense in which he will allow that Jesus was God is so specialised, and so contrived — and expressed in language so removed from the experience of God — that it is impos sible to imagine it inspiring the early Christians to their truly extraordinary (indeed unearthly) aChievements. It is strange that the Bishop, who seems to imagine that Jesus had no mysterious powers, should appear to believe "recently attested examples of Buddhist holy men" who have transformed "material substance into spiritual," Bishop. Robinson's departure from the spiritual tradition which is Christianity must involve him, and those who think like him, in an immediate difficulty. He is trying, by his own admission, to get the spiritual education of ordinary Christians elevated to the level of the theologians. It is not particularly likely that Christian people will either want this, or will be capable of perceiving the intellectual subtleties required. Robinson's Christology is not one for the common man. The existing spiritual tradition, quite apart from its .inherent truth, has the advantage of being established in pastoral experience. People know the reality of Christ's nature through the experience of worship and prayer; they have felt the consolation of his presence in . times of distress and at death. The Christ who then comes to men is a Christ of transcendent divinity, whose humanity speaks to that of the afflicted. His presence does not prompt one to imagine that he " might have been homosexual." Robinson's Christ is far too donnish: he sees a Jesus who embodied all the reverence for human values which contemporary humanists do; a portrait scratched upon the canvas by a hard rationalism, a terrible insensitivity to the spiritual instincts of men; a Jesus who is judged by his words and his cultural assumptions; not a mysterious presence, inexplicable in large measure; still, despite the reality of the flesh, a man unlike all other men. The book has ephemeral qualities in more ways than one. The publishers have contrived a binding which is so insecure that the volume, like its contents, disintegrates after being read.
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