What's the Fuss about the "Sea of Faith"?

In his recent book God in Us the Rev Antony Freeman, a Church of England priest describes a wonderful "conversion" experience in which he felt a weight had been lifted from him. Nothing unusual about that you might think until you realise his "conversion" was the realisation that God did not exist.

Rev. Freeman is a member of the rapidly growing radical group called The Sea of Faith, who understand religion to be a human creation and therefore the God of religion to be a part of the human reality. The group was formed in the late 1980s as a response to the BBC TV series by Rev Don Cupitt called The Sea of Faith in which he argued that we could no longer believe in the old supernatural God "out there", and instead must internalise our concept of God. Last year the group doubled its membership but it has also been attracting growing criticism from the Church, accompanied by calls to discipline clergy who are members.

Two of the more recent attacks on The Sea of Faith have been an article by the Bishop of Oxford in The Guardian and a programme in The Heart of the Matter series 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 claimed to be simply reporting on a development in Christianity, but the angle of the questions and the perpetual tone of shock and outrage made it clear that the main aim was to create a scandal rather than educate viewers on the issues involved.

The real message of The Heart of the Matter was 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 on Rev Andrew Freeman emphaised his failure to believe in a literal resurrection, but it failed 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 of Twentieth century theologians 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 The Sea of Faith 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 Sea of Faith 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 The Sea of Faith 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 The Sea of Faith is the lack of general education in the developments in theology and biblical studies over the past 100 years. The Sea of Faith opponents make use of this, deliberately avoiding the experience of thinking Christians in modern times and how it relates to the The Sea of Faith enquiry.

The Sea of Faith are making a genuine attempt to understand what religion means today, and any such attempts should surely be encouraged by the Church, rather than responding in their more traditional way by stoking up the fires to burn the heretics on.

John Mann October 1993