Abstract
The distinction made by P.F. Strawson between ‘revisionary’ and ‘descriptive’ metaphysicians could with equal appropriateness be applied to theologians and philosophers of religion.1 The ‘revisionary’ theologian or philosopher of religion would be one who proposes a new conception of God, and of man and the world as related to him; while his ‘descriptive’ colleague tries to clarify or justify those which already exist. The latter would not be concerned with propounding a new set of doctrines, or even a radically new way of understanding old ones; his attention would rather be to get clear about the nature and implications of what is already believed.
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Notes
P. F. Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, Methuen, London, 1959, pp. 9–12.
God and the Soul, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1969; Providence and Evil, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977; The Virtues, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977.
Cf. especially the chapter on hell in Providence and Evil.
Cf. especially Theology and Falsification’ in A.G.N. Flew and A.C. MacIntyre (eds.), New Essays in Philosophical Theology (Library of Philosophy and Theology), SCM Press, London, 1955, pp. 96-99 and 106-108; A. G. N. Flew, God and Philosophy, Hutchinson, London, 1966.
John Hick (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate, SCM Press, London, 1977; referred to as MGI in subsequent notes.
Cf. the statement that ‘orthodoxy is a myth’ (MGI, p. x). And yet the whole point of the book is that Christianity would be better off without that aspect of ‘orthodoxy’ which is belief in the Incarnation taken literally. If some belief which was not ‘orthodox’, but rather merely marginal or aberrant, were at issue, the matter would not be the important one which these authors rightly assume that it is.
Cf. Maurice Wiles, ‘Christianity without Incarnation?’ (MGI, pp. 8-9).
For historical reasons, cf. especially Frances Young in chapters 2 and 5, Michael Goulder in chapters 3 and 4, Leslie Houlden in chapter 6, and Don Cupitt in chapter 7; for the philosophical, Maurice Wiles in chapter 1 (especially pp. 4-6), Don Cupitt in chapter 7, and John Hick in chapter 9; for the practical, cf. the Preface and John Hick in chapter 9.
That analysis of the meaning for its author of each particular New Testament text is necessary and inevitable (cf. Leslie Houlden, MGI p. 125), does not entail that synthesis of the meaning of the whole is not possible, or indeed absolutely necessary for the business of Christian theology. It is in the synthetic task that it may reasonably be doubted whether authors of this book have learned as much as they might have done from the work of earlier Christian generations.
According to the Synoptics, Jesus refers to God as ‘my Father’, and ‘your Father’ but never as ‘Our Father’, except in a context where he is telling his disciples how they ought to pray. To God the Father he is ‘my beloved Son’, and other men are commanded to listen to him (Mk. 9.7; Mt. 17.5; Lk. 9.35; cf. Mk. 1.11; Mt. 3.17; Lk. 3.22). Paul uses what is virtually a technical term huiothesia, to distinguish the sonship of the faithful from that of Christ (Gal. 4.5; Rm. 8.15 and 23, 9.4; Eph. 1.5). In the Gospel of John, Jesus is ‘the only-begotten Son’, and the faithful are called not huioi but tekna theou. Cf. B. Lonergan, De Deo Trino, I, apud aedes Universitatis Gregorianae, Rome, 1964, pp. 124-125.
For the Old Testament background as giving meaning to the acts of Jesus, cf. E. C. Hoskyns and N. Davey. The Riddle of the New Testament, Faber and Faber, London, 1931, pp. 173-175.
Cf. B. Lonergan, ‘The Dehellenization of Dogma’ in A Second Collection, Darton, Longman and Todd, London, 1974, pp. 11-32; The Way to Nicea, Darton, Longman and Todd, London, 1976.
Cf. The Way to Nicea, Section IX; ‘The Dehellenization of Dogma’, pp. 22-23.
The foregoing account owes an immense amount to the writings of Lonergan; cf. especially Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Longmans, London, 1957, and Method in Theology, Darton, London, 1972. On the notion of a ‘universal viewpoint’ from which relativity to one’s culture can in a manner be transcended, cf. Insight, xxiv, pp. 564-568, 738-739.
MGI, p. 14. If the development of the doctrines of orthodox Christianity is to be understood in the way that I have suggested, it would not seem that they were essentially tied up with any political system or attitude (cf. Don Cupitt, MGI, pp. 139-146). I think that the use of titles with overtones of political authority for Christ has a significance more or less the reverse of what is suggested by Dr. Cupitt; Jesus Christ, and only Jesus Christ, is the divine leader that other men have blasphemously been supposed to be, and thus no merely human leader can claim absolute and unconditional authority.
Don Cupitt’s argument (MGI, p. 133ff.) seems vitiated by a failure to distinguish between mere innovation, and such innovation as makes explicit what was already in some sense implicit.
Cf. the discussion between Michael Goulder and Frances Young in chapters 4 and 5 of MGI (The Two Roots of the Christian Myth’; ‘Two Roots or a Tangled Mass?’).
H. Riesenfeld, ‘Reflections on the Unity of the New Testament’ (Religion 3, 1973, 35–51); cf. especially 40-42.
Riesenfeld’s own book The Gospel Tradition (B. Blackwell, Oxford, 1970) is a good example of this; so is The Riddle of the New Testament, (note 11 above), which has not ‘dated’ in relevant respects.
‘Reflections on the Unity of the New Testament’, 39-41.
The evidence is conveniently summarised by Sydney Temple, The Core of the Fourth Gospel, Mowbray’s, London and Oxford, 1975, pp. 3-7.
Raymond E. Brown, New Testament Essays, Chapman, London and Dublin, 1965, p. 143.
For example, in a letter to The Times by R.P.C. Hanson (11.5.1974). Here acceptance of the view that John is more or less without independent historical value is taken as the test of an informed historical attitude to the Bible. Frances Young will have it that the approach to the discourses attributed to Jesus in John which regards them as ‘built out of homilies based on synoptic-type traditions’ is ‘most fruitful’ (MGI, p. 15); but one may wonder whether the fruitfulness does not consist rather in the support it gives to the liberal theological consensus, than the support it finds in stringent historical inquiry. For argument to a different effect cf. C.H. Dodd, Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1963; and Leon Morris, Studies in the Fourth Gospel, W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, 1969.
Cf. e. g., R. C. Zaehner, Concordant Discord: The Interdependence of Faiths, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1970, p. 443. Dr. Cupitt’s charge that Christianity was paganised in the early centuries (MGI, p. 138) is particularly interesting in this connection; orthodox Christianity may well be termed ‘pagan’—just because of its close analogy with other world religions, as their fulfilment—if the cast of one’s piety is essentially Islamic or unitarian.
In the discourse on the Bread of Life in the sixth chapter of John, ‘the feeding of the five thousand is… seen to point to Jesus as the ultimate answer to man’s hunger’ (F. N. Davey, in E. C. Hoskins and F. N. Davey, The Fourth Gospel, Faber and Faber, London, 1940, cited by Leon Morris, op. cit., 57-58). It may, incidentally, be wondered how a historical Jesus whose view of himself was as proposed by these authors could have instituted a cult focussed on himself. But there is no historical proposition about Jesus more certain than that he did so.
That belief in the incarnation as literally true, and not as a mere façon de parler, is central to the piety and devotion of ordinary Christians, is strongly suggested by the manner in which so many Christmas carols harp on the paradox that one and the same is God and man. ‘Enough for him whom cherubim / Worship night and day / A breast full of milk / And a manger full of hay.’ ‘Lo! within a manger lies / He who built the starry skies.’ Professor Wiles, I think, is the most sensitive of the authors to the elements of the traditional doctrine which capture the imagination; he feels that a frank unitarianism is comparatively impoverished (MGI, p. 6). But I cannot see how his own suggestions, which amount in effect to a combination of an imaginative picture of the incarnation with a unitarianism of actual belief, can be very satisfactory in the long run from the point of view either of ordinary piety or of systematic coherence.
A cumulative argument of this kind needs a mass of detail to be properly developed, and can hardly make its effect in a brief sketch. Zaehner’s book cited above (note 24) is an example of how the thing should be done. For a comparatively simplified approach, cf. Hugo Meynell, ‘Religious Disagreement’, Religious Studies 9, 1973, 427-435, and ‘The Mechanics of Atonement’, Theology 77, 1974, 21-27.
Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III, ix, 4. Aquinas’ treatment of the problem was revolutionary for his time, in that he granted that Christ must at least in some sense have developed in respect to the knowledge which he had as a man.
Cf. Bernard Lonergan, De Constitutione Christi, apud aedes Universitatis Gregorianae, Rome, 1956; De Verbo Incarnato, Pontifica Universitas Gregoriana, Rome, 1964. In the last few decades ‘attention has increasingly turned to the consciousness of Christ…. The doctrine of one person with two natures transposes quite neatly into a recognition of a single subject of both a divine and a human consciousness’ (The Dehellenization of Dogma’, p. 25). This seems to suggest the manner in which one might rebut the dilemma so skilfully set out by Dr. Cupitt (MGI, pp. 134-139). If Christ is divine, he cannot in any way be limited in knowledge; to appeal to a Christology of kenosis will not do, since for God to have ‘emptied himself to the extent of being ignorant in becoming incarnate would be for him to have ceased to be divine. But by applying the doctrine of the two natures in Christ in the manner suggested, one may perhaps combine conciliar orthodoxy with a critical view of the bible, without being forced into that form of the doctrine of ‘kenosis’ which Dr. Cupitt rightly charges with inconsistency.
Leaving the Fourth Gospel out of account, one might cite Mt. 11, 27 (Lk. 10, 22) on the matter; also the use of the solemn ego eimi in some significant contexts in Mark (cf. E. Stauffer, tr. D.M. Barton, Jesus and His Story, SCM Press, London, 1960, VIII, p. 6). And the Epistle to the Colossians may, for all one knows, mean something when it declares that all the treasures of knowledge and wisdom are hidden in Christ (Col. 2, 3).
MGI, p. 13. As Leslie Houlden says, ‘Once conclude that descriptive, factual statement about God is to be disallowed, and the credal mode is done for’ (MGI, p. 130). But at that rate, it is difficult to see how the Christianity of the future could amount to anything more than the evincing of emotions and the fostering of traditional liturgical habits.
MGI, p. 48.
MGI, p. 75.
MGI, pp. 72-79.
For a less imaginative account of the relation of Paul to his Christian contemporaries, cf. B. Gerhardsson, tr. E.J. Sharpe, Memory and Manuscript (Seminarium Neotestamenticum, Acta 22), University of Uppsala, Uppsala, 1961, pp. 272-318.
To be exact, as Ebionism or Unitarianism. It does seem a defect in these authors that they seem to have a blind spot for unity within heresy, as well as in orthodoxy, in spite of changes in intellectual milieu and verbal expression over the centuries. One can see that it may be less embarrassing to identify oneself clearly and unambiguously with a position traditionally recognised as incompatible with mainstream Christianity, than to argue as though the latter never really existed.
MGI, pp. 188, 194. Dr. Goulder seems very nearly to have grasped this point: ‘It is impossible to justify claims… to Jesus’ sinlessness, or his complete devotion to God’s will, or his invariable attitude of love’ (MGI, p. 53); but in that case what grounds can he have for saying that Jesus ‘was not just one of a group of men of universal destiny… he is the man of universal destiny’ (MGI, p. 57)? It is precisely the claim for the uniqueness of Jesus, which Dr. Goulder does think is essential to Christianity, which has no warrant on his general position.
MGI, p. 200. Dr. Cupitt will have it that ‘the core of a religion does not lie in the biography or personality of the founder, but in the specifically religious values to which, according to tradition, he bore witness’ (MGI, p. 205). But this is simply false; traditional Christianity, with its belief in the incarnation, is the obvious counter-example—unless indeed one denies that it counts as a religion at all.
Dennis Nineham and Maurice Wiles do concede that some continuity between the historical Jesus and the preached Christ is needed (MGI, pp. 200-201). But it seems to me that they can fairly be faced with a dilemma: either the theological Christ is just the historical Jesus considered from the systematic and transcultural viewpoint made possible by later developments, or he is not. If he is not, the needs not only of the orthodox theologian, but also of the simple believer, are not met.
Two radically different positions, often unfortunately confused with one another, are to be distinguished on this; (i) that we cannot, at least at present, attain reasonable certainty as to how far the Gospels are historically accurate concerning, for example, the words of Jesus; (ii) that we can now be reasonably certain that a large proportion of the sayings, for example, the majority of those reported in the Fourth Gospel, were not due to Jesus, and indeed give a radically misleading picture of his view of his own person and work. The former position is of course quite compatible with Christian orthodoxy, a typical stance of which is that faith goes beyond what can be demonstrated by secular reasoning, but is perfectly consistent with it as far as it goes.
The tendency of Don Cupitt and John Hick is towards a frankly Unitarian belief; that of Maurice Wiles towards an overlay of Unitarian belief—which is what is taken literally—with Christian symbolism—which justifies up to a point traditional Christian ways of talking and of liturgical practice. For Leslie Houlden and Frances Young, Christianity does not appear essentially to involve belief about what is so at all.
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Meynell, H. (1991). On Improving Christianity. In: Lewis, H.A. (eds) Peter Geach: Philosophical Encounters. Synthese Library, vol 213. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7885-1_18
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