Justification

There have been two recent attacks on The Sea of Faith: the article by the Bishop of Oxford in The Guardian and The Heart of the Matter programme on Rev Andrew Freeman. This article will answer the charges made in these attacks.

The Heart of the Matter both recently and in its earlier Sea of Faith programme innocently claims to be simply reporting on a development in Christianity, but the angle of the questions and the perpetual tone of shock and outrage make it clear that the programmes aim to create a scandal rather than educate viewers on the issues involved.

The subliminal message of The Heart of the Matter is that The Sea of Faith stands totally outside the Christian tradition in its rejection of supernaturalism, and as such is a shocking heresy and its adherents should be thrown out of the Church.

The recent programme's discovery of Rev Andrew Freeman who does not believe in a God "out there" who performs miracles, in particular the miracle of the physical resurrection, fails to also inform viewers that all significant theologians for the past 100 years agree with him. In what sense then is he heretical?

A quick investigation revealed the following quotes:

The Catholic Edward Schillebeeckx writes, "Jesus' resurrection is not a return to life as in the story of Lazarus... it is certainly not a miracle of intervention in natural laws to raise a corpse to heavenly life" (from "God Among Us", p. 134).

The Catholic Hans Kung writes that the resurrection "can not be a historical event... there was nothing to photograph or record" (from "On Being a Christian", p. 349).

The Catholic Karl Rainer, in his "Encyclopaedia of Theology" writes "Jesus did not rise in a body belonging to this world".

The Protestant Paul Tillich writes that the physical theory of the resurrection raises "the absurd question as to what happened to the molecules which comprise the corpse of Jesus of Nazareth. Then absurdity becomes compounded into blasphemy" (from "Systematic Theology", vol. 2,p.180).

The Protestant Rudolph Bultmann writes "the resurrection itself is not an event of past history" (from "Kerygma and Myth", p.39).

The Protestant John MacQuarrie writes "it is obvious that the resurrection is not an historical event in the same way that the cross is, that is to say, not a publicly observable event" (from "Principles of Christian Theology", p.288).

The Protestant Karl Barth writes "Christians do not believe in the empty tomb but in the living Christ. Is the empty tomb just a legend? What matter? It cannot but demand assent, even as legend." (from "Church Dogmatics" III, 2, p.454).

Theologians however are simply incorporating the finding of Biblical studies into their theology, for it has become equally commonplace in Biblical studies that the oldest Christian tradition consisted simply of appearances of Christ, such as St Paul had, which were later developed into the "empty tomb" stories of the gospels. Paul Tillich for example writes "both the legend of the empty tomb and the appearances insist on the physical reality of the risen body of the Lord... but these are certainly later embellishments of the primitive tradition".

Bishop Stephen Neil, in his "The Interpretation of the New Testament" writes "for many years it has been almost an agreed point among New Testament interpreters that the belief of the disciples in the Resurrection depended only on their encounters with the risen Jesus, and that the 'legend' of the empty tomb grew up at a later date to reinforce a belief that was already held." (p.287).

When SPCK's journal "THEOLOGY" had a special issue on the resurrection in March 1986 these views were taken for granted. What has changed?

If the church does not regard it as heretical to believe that God does not perform miracles, surely any metaphysics consistent with this cannot be heretical either?

The second attack against The Sea of Faith came from the Bishop of Oxford in an article The Guardian. In it he argued that there was a clear choice to be made between God and atheism and The Sea of Faith was in error in failing to recognise this. I disagree. It seems to me there are two quite separate judgements to be made when investigating the claims of religion, making a choice of four options - one of which is the SOF option.

The first judgement concerns "the supernatural", or a reality beyond that understood by science. This concerns a wide range of issues such as does fate exist, do miracles exist, is there life after death, are prayers answered and various other areas, for example those covered by the term "New Age". This judgement can be made without reference to some external God "out there" and indeed there are many who believe in spiritual laws such as karma and reincarnation and see religion only as a primitive response to this other reality.

The second judgement does concern God, and this may be entirely separate from the first judgement. All leading twentieth century theologians reject the view that the resurrection was a historical event like the crucifixion, with a similar judgement made on miracles. There is a strong current of modern theology that prefers to see God as a Ground of Being rather than a separately existing being, and who therefore does not directly act on reality. The SOF as continues this view of God without miracles, and asks how we can understand God as being within the human reality and not outside of it.

Therefore instead of theism and atheism, we have four choices:

Where by "miracles" I simply mean some other reality outside of our scientific understanding able to act on the world.

Even if in practise the choices are not quite as clear cut as this (modern Christianity is hesitant to be dogmatic about where metaphor ends - it may ultimately only believe in a very minimalist type of miracle, such as that "everything will work out in the end") we can see SOF as a particularly pure form of the modern theological current that views miracles with scepticism, rather than some hybrid between atheism and Christianity.

The reason why people are scandalised by SOF is the lack of general education in the developments in theology and biblical studies over the past 100 years. SOF opponents make use of this, deliberately avoiding the experience of thinking Christians in modern times and how it relates to the SOF enquiry.

We need to respond to charges of heresy by showing how close modern theology is to SOF thought, and showing that it is more frequently those who attack us who are on the borderline of modern theological thought.

John Mann October 1993