TLS: We Cannot See

We cannot see
by John Habgood

review of BELIEF. A short history for today. By G. R. Evans. 240pp. I. B. Tauris.
Paperback, Pounds 12.95 - 978 1 84511 225 7.

In a recent review of Roger Scruton's memoir Gentle Regrets (TLS, August 18 & 25, 2006), A. N. Wilson wrote: "Today Christianity is fading not so much because of rows in the Churches about esoteric internal matters such as whether it is possible to ordain women or practising homosexuals. For the huge majority of thinking people, the challenge of the faith is that it is impossible to believe".
G. R. Evans begins from a different point in Belief: A short history for today.
She asks what it was about Christianity which made it so attractive that thinking people were prepared to wrestle with seemingly intractable philosophical and theological problems in order to make sense of it, even at the cost of violence and division. "Christianity was never meant to be complicated", she writes. But if we are to understand what went wrong, and why to many it now seems so unbelievable, we need some insight into the problems which the earliest formulators of Christian doctrine felt it necessary to tackle.
The Christian faith claims to be rational, and took shape in a culture where rationality mattered. However, religions also tend to thrive on certainties; hence the popular appeal, very evident today, of those forms of faith that offer the clearest and most dogmatic constructions.
Given that religion is also about being in touch with ultimate mysteries, there is a further danger of pretending to greater certainty in obscure matters than is actually possible. It is this complex balance between what can and what cannot be said, which the earliest Christian theologians and philosophers tried to keep. The story of how they and their successors attempted it, while bringing some clarity and informed understanding to Christian belief, is the theme of Evans's refreshingly practical and down-to-earth historical essay.
In case the word "belief" should arouse too many suspicions in the minds of those who like to think of themselves as purely rational and objective, it is worth a reminder that everybody lives by beliefs of one kind or another, not all of them rational or fully acknowledged. In addition, as becomes clear while the story unfolds, not all beliefs, particularly those in the field of human relationships, necessarily benefit from being rationalized and articulated.
Gillian Evans is Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History at Cambridge University, and has obviously been captivated by the essential simplicity of what Jesus taught and did. Her extensive knowledge of early Christian scholarship has taught her to be suspicious of attempts to rationalize his words and deeds, and so to turn them into a coherent intellectual system. "The first lesson of a history of Christian belief", she writes, "is that being reasonable is not as simple as it looks." Religion has the additional problem that its object is, by its very nature, indefinable. To speak of God at all it is necessary to climb a conceptual ladder in which words carry an excess of meaning, and which may well include hidden philosophical debts, say, to Platonism, as certainly happened in the early centuries. But even this stretching of language is not enough. "The light which God emits is so bright that it dazzles us and we cannot see."
Despite such caveats, theologians have not lacked things to say about God, and the history of theology is littered with bizarre speculation, much of which is fascinatingly explored in Belief. The doctrine of the incarnation, for instance, is a particularly fruitful field, laden as it is with apparently insoluble contradictions. How can God remain unchanged, for instance, while God-as-man dies and is resurrected? Creation, too, has its conceptual problems.
How far is God distant and distinct from what he has created, or "present" within it in Wordsworthian style, or even actively engaged in tweaking it here or there? The dilemma faced by creationist tweakers was neatly summarized in a splendid letter Evans quotes from The Times. "Sir, I think it shows considerable disrespect for God to suggest that he is anything other than a good manager. The concept of intelligent design has all the hallmarks of the deplorable micro-management so loved by new Labour."
Evans's treatment of sin and redemption takes its starting point from Albert and the Lion. With Albert duly in the lion's stomach, Ma and Pa react differently. Pa wanted a cash payment in compensation, whereas Ma demanded that someone should be summonsed. In the face of wrong, a mere transaction is not enough, she insisted.
Something has got to be done, and someone has got to be punished. The ramifications of atonement theology are an attempt to spell out what this "something" might be. The cost is heavy. The traditional starting point has been the universality of human sinfulness, and divine anger as the driving force requiring it to be put right. But Evans questions whether any of the classic theories really provides a morally convincing argument why the "something done" had to be the way it was. Luther would have been horrified by her claim that the Epistles of James and John represent a better starting point, with their emphasis on love and mutual acceptance, in contrast to the tortuous arguments which have bedevilled St Paul's theology of salvation.
Which, she asks, is nearer to the teaching of Jesus? When the sheep and goats in the parable are separated, it is striking that their main reaction is surprise. Unselfconscious goodness seems to be as significant in God's eyes as conscious and articulate faith.
This is not to say that the complex history of Christian thought is irrelevant.
The divisions between and within religious communities have had, and are having, momentous consequences, and can only be understood by going back to the difficult conceptual questions which religious thinkers were trying to answer, and the historical contexts in which they were trying to answer them. There is still essential work for theologians and philosophers of religion, if present divisions and misunderstandings are to be overcome. Nevertheless, there remains a basic simplicity which Evans commends to those who are perplexed by historic Christianity, with its quarrelsomeness, its doctrinal complexities and its fear of radicalism. Not everyone will agree with her. There will always be those who rightly feel impelled to think things through, whatever the complexities, and whatever the potential divisions their conclusions may generate. But it would be hard to dissent from a paragraph near the end of the book, where she summarizes a possible starting point for would-be modern believers, especially those for whom the historical and philosophical complexities are a deterrent.
Jesus said that things might most reliably be known for what they were by examining their fruits. The opening out of belief into a general loving hopefulness seems, as far as it is now possible to see, authentically Christlike.
The believer who is honest with himself or herself in deciding what to believe, who tests it inwardly against a personal sense of "rightness" and "reasonableness" as well as outwardly as a practical way of living, is unlikely to go far wrong.
And the future is wide open to unimaginably greater hope.