Jesus was processing his life of human experience and emotions and relationships with exactly the same resources as you and I process our lives and experience. One difference between us (not the difference between divine and human nature) is that our experience, if we are Christians, is processed through the constructs of theology and faith that evolved following Jesus’ death and have been evolving ever since. We are programmed in a way Jesus wasn’t.
Prejudice, abuse, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism, are not and can never be Christian fundamentals. Life in all its fulness and God’s unconditional, infinite, intimate love have become fundamentals for me – revisionist fundamentals – for the formation of a healthy personal spirituality and faith and for the evolution of a non-abusive Church. They underpin all progressive movements towards justice, equality and full inclusion, the contemporary foundations of a movement rooted in God who is ontologically, in essence, a revisionist. Revision is integral to the nature of that which we name God.
On Wednesday afternoon, 6th September 2023, five members of the Church of England met for three hours in a London garden. Two members of the group were unable to join us. When I first suggested that we met in person, I did so because I wanted to know whether my ideas and visions were off the wall or accorded with their experience of Christianity today. By the time we met this week I knew my ideas weren’t off the wall. For several months I have been writing and circulating a series of papers. Tuesday’s blog, What is the Christian Story today? was the briefest outline of elements of our thinking. It is time to explore whether this can be converted into a movement within the life of the Christian Church. In the course of the coming weeks I will publish some of the other papers I circulated. This blog is the briefest survey of evolution, Christian origins, Western Church history from the sixteenth century, contemporary crises and possible responses.
How do I, do we, do you, do other people, think about God (and Jesus)? I know I think differently about God from other people. We all have our own conceptual version of God. Churches, bishops, theologians, mystics, men, women, gay activists, homophobes, misogynists, etc., each have their own version of ‘God’. Some claim their version to be the unique, unquestionable, authorised, ‘true God’’. ‘He’ isn’t. It’s their version of a truth. We think we ‘know’ God, but we don’t. We know God in the same way we know ourselves and other people – partially, incompletely, and elusively.
In 1957, aged nearly 12, I knew with an arrogant conviction that if God disapproved of me loving another boy, then God was wrong and I was right. I knew I was right to trust my feelings and physical desire for intimacy and love. I trusted my intuition, my awareness of who I am. I have had to learn again to trust the arrogant wisdom of my youthful self. Today I am still learning to trust and listen to my contemporary self, my body and feelings, and the energy within.
In April 1984 Channel 4 broadcast three one hour long documentary programmes titled Jesus: the Evidence. Three of the issues addressed in the programmes were that Jesus never called himself God in the Gospels; that the titles attributed to Jesus in the Gospels (e.g. ‘Son of God’) were not in fact used during his lifetime; that Jesus, as a Jew, was hardly likely to have claimed to be God. I find myself wondering how many Church of England clergy still believe that Jesus thought of himself as divine, the Son of God. How many think that Matthew and Luke’s birth narratives are historically true? How many think the resurrection narratives in the four gospels are accurate historical accounts of an event that happened?
This week I’ve been particularly interested in the authority of bishops. I realised that the status of the authority of bishops has changed significantly in my lifetime, in a way that I had been intuiting but hadn’t quite identified. I haven’t found it easy to find the right words to describe this, but I believe the bishops of the church, the teachers and leaders and theologians, senior staff at Church House and Lambeth Palace, the members of the Archbishops’ Council, no longer, ontologically, embody the kind of wisdom authority to the same degree that many church leaders embodied in my youth and my years in parish ministry.
Jesus’ authority is predicated on God’s authority. Biblical authority is predicated on God’s authority. Jesus declines to answer the question posed by the chief priests and elders. He poses instead a question they find it impossible to answer – clever move. But the question of what authority Jesus has remains unanswered. What amazed the people was not Jesus’ authority - the people were amazed at his teaching because, unlike the scribes, he taught with a note of authority. It’s the teaching, not the authority, that is fundamental.
