Thank you for sending me the recent issues of QUEST. Their insistance that Jesus was not starting a new religion but rather taught that "true religion" was helping others and loving humanity is important in emphasising the toleration at the centre of Jesus' message.
As I have mentioned before, there are many similarities between QUEST and the Sea of Faith group of religious thinkers based in England, who emphasise the human origins of religion and base their ethics squarely on humanism. In fact they are currently quite successful, as they have doubled their membership last year, but are still quite small (500 members in England and 250 overseas). However in following the Sea of Faith (SOF) group I have noticed that they appear to have reached a dead end.
Let me first characterise what I see to be the central judgements to make concerning religion.
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 I understand it 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:
| God + miracles | no God + miracles |
| God + no miracles | no God + no miracles |
Where by "miracles" I simply mean some other reality outside of our scientific understanding able to act on the world.
Now of course the choices are not quite as clear cut as this, for 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". However 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.
Now, having said why I think SOF is the inheritor of a valid and interesting stream of theology, I must admit that so far it has produced nothing substantial or interesting. Unfortunately it appears to me to be an entirely empty faith, consisting only of humanism supported by the theatre of religious observance!
Therefore the question we must address is whether Christianity must affirm some form of supernaturalism, and if so what does it consist of, and if not, then what are we left with?
I ask this question with respect to your recent articles also, since I again see an emphasis on the moral and ethical (which in the light of Christianity is perfectly reasonable) but outside of this what is there?
After all, you "ground" this ethics in the teaching of Jesus, but we may ask why should we accept this teaching? If you attempt to justify this grounding, you again start to build a non-moral set of beliefs (the nature of Christ), which is where the "mess" of intolerance all started from!
I ask this question not to criticise you, but to identify myself with exactly this problem - if we remove the "supernatural" claims about Jesus, we lose our intolerance, perhaps, but we also lose our ground of morality!
We need to discover a new religious ground, outside of supernatural claims (it being the supernatural claims which, because they cannot be resolved, cause intolerance) upon which to base our understanding of Jesus. I am sure that part of this quest involves the newly discovered Gnostic writings, and include a new translation of The Gospel of Thomas which I hope you enjoy, and which will perhaps shift your "intolerant" view of Gnosticism somewhat!
We need to discover a new language and a new human religion with which to frame the world, to let positive experiences and hope reveal themselves, and to clarify the moral issues we face. A "secular", non-miracle world view is possible, but the range of the possibilities are difficult for us to grasp. This I think is the importance of Heidegger, as he shows the possibility of a secular but at the same time sacred world view, the possibility that we can speak of God, faith and care without committing ourselves to supernatural beliefs.
This discovery is being awaited, I am sure, by many millions unable to accept supernaturalism but unwilling to reject all notions of faith, hope and love. I am sure your journal is pointing in the right direction. Good luck for the future, I look forward to your next edition.
John Mann 8th October 1993