HOW “THE HONEST TO GOD DEBATE” BEGAN Articles from The Guardian and its weekly Sunday edition, The Observer, related to the publication of John A. T. Robinson’s book, Honest to God, March-April 1963 The Observer, Sunday 17 March 1963, page 21 OUR IMAGE OF GOD MUST GO ‘Honest to God’, by the Bishop of Woolwich, will be published on Tuesday. In this article the Bishop expresses the main theme of this controversial book 1; the urgent need to question the traditional image of God as a supernatural Person if Christianity is to survive. by Dr. John Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich FEW people realise that we are in the middle thodoxy” should be identified with it, when it of one of the most exciting theological fer- is simply an out-moded view of the world. ments of the century. Some theologians have The new ideas were first put on record by a sensed this for years: but now, quite sudden- German pastor in a Nazi prison in 1944: “Our ly, new ideas about God and religion, many whole 1,900-year-old Christian preaching of them with disturbing revolutionary impli- and theology rests upon the ‘religious prem- cations, are breaking surface. ise’ of man. What we call Christianity has If Christianity is to survive it must be always been a pattern – perhaps a true pattern relevant to modern secular man, not just to – of religion. But if one day it becomes ap- the dwindling number of the religious. But the parent that this a priori ‘premise’ simply does supernaturalist framework within which tra- not exist, but was an historical and temporary ditionally it has been preached is making this form of human self-expression, i.e., if we increasingly impossible. Men can no longer reach the stage of being radically without re- credit the existence of “gods,” or of a God as a ligion – and I think this is more or less the case supernatural Person, such as religion has already – what does that mean for Christian- always posited. ity? Not infrequently, as I watch or listen to a “It means that the linchpin is removed broadcast discussion between a Christian and from the whole structure of our Christianity a humanist, I catch myself realising that most to date.” of my sympathies are on the humanist’s side. Those words were written on April 30, This is not in the least because my faith or 1944. It is a date that may yet prove a turn- commitment is in doubt, but because I instinct- ing-point in the history of Christianity. For ively share with him his inability to accept on it Dietrich Bonhoeffer first broached the the “religious frame” within which alone subject of “religionless Christianity” in a that faith is being offered to him. I feel that smuggled correspondence with his friend as a secular man he is right to rebel against it, Eberhard Bethge, who subsequently edited and I am increasingly uncomfortable that “or- his “Letters and Papers from Prison.” 1 “Honest to God”, by the Bishop of Woolwich (S.C.M. Press, 5s.). 1 Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor of very has called “an almost audible gasp of relief” traditional upbringing. Had he lived, he when these things are said openly. would now be in his late fifties. From 1933- It is not easy to put one’s finger on the 35 he was in charge of the German congre- common factor. I suppose it is the glad accep- gation in Forest Hill, South London – where tance of secularisation as a God-given fact. the church, rebuilt out of British war-dam- For we of our generation are secular men. age money, is now dedicated to his name. In And our question, as Christians, is: How can the inner circle of the German Resistance, he Christ be Lord of a genuinely secular world? was privy to the plot on Hitler’s life, and Hitherto, says Bonhoeffer, Christianity within a year of penning that letter he had has been based on the premise that man is been hanged by the S.S., on the eve of libe- naturally religious: and it has been presented ration by the Americans. as the best and highest religion. The corollary When his letters were first published – a has been that to the non-religious it has bare 10 years ago – one felt at once that the nothing to say. A person had to become relig- Church was not ready for what Bonhoeffer ious first – to have, or be induced to have, a was saying. Indeed, it might properly be religious sense of sin or need for God: then understood only 100 years hence. But it Christ could come to him as the answer. seemed one of those trickles that must one day split rocks. MODERN man has opted for a secular world: he has become increasingly non-relig- THE speed with which his ideas have be- ious. The Churches have deplored this as the come current coin, is not, I think, the result great defection from God, and the more they solely of the quickening pace of communi- write it off, the more this movement has seen cation and change. It is the result of one of itself as anti-Christian. those mysteries of human history whereby, But, claims Bonhoeffer boldly, the period apparently without interconnection, similar of religion is over. Man is growing out of ideas start bubbling up all over the place at it: he is “coming of age.” By that he doesn’t the same time. Without this, I suspect, Bon- mean that he is getting better (a prisoner of hoeffer might have remained a voice in the the Gestapo had few illusions about human wilderness for decades, like Kierkegaard a nature), but that for good or for ill he is century earlier. putting the religious world-view behind him Perhaps at this point I may be personal. A as childish and pre-scientific. year ago I was laid up for three months with Bonhoeffer would accept Freud’s anal- a slipped disc. I determined to use the op- ysis of the God of religion as a projection. portunity to allow their head to ideas that had Till now man has felt the need for a God as been submerged by pressure of work for some a child feels the need for his father. He time past. Over the years convictions had been must be “there” to explain the universe, to gathering – from my reading and experience protect him in his loneliness, to fill the gaps – which I knew I couldn’t with integrity ig- in his science, to provide the sanction for his nore, however disturbing they might seem. morality. But I wrote my book* shut up in my room. But now man is discovering that he can What has astonished me since is the way in manage quite happily by himself. He finds which within the last six months similar ideas no necessity to bring God into his science, have broken surface in articles and conversa- his morals, his political speeches. Only in tions in the most unlikely places – as far apart the private world of the individual’s psy- as Africa and Texas. However inarticulate chological need and insecurity – in that last one may be, one detects an immediate glance corner of “the sardine-tin of life” – is room of recognition and what the editor of Prism apparently left for the God who has been 2 elbowed out of every other sphere. And so properly think them naive. But what they are the religious evangelist works on men to rebelling against is this image of a Being out coerce them at their weakest point into feel- beyond the range of the farthest rocket and ing that they cannot get on without the tute- the probe of the largest telescope. They no lage of God. longer find such an entity credible. But “God is teaching us that we must live To the religious, the idea of a supreme as men who can get along very well without Being out there may seem as necessary for him.” And this, says Bonhoeffer, is the God their thinking as was once the idea of a Be- Jesus shows us, the God who refuses to be a ing up there. They can hardly even picture Deus ex machina, who allows himself to be God without it. If there wasn’t really some- edged out of the world on to the Cross. Our one “there,” then the atheists would be right. God is the God who forsakes us – only to But any image can become an idol; and I meet with us on the Emmaus road, if we are believe that Christians must go through the really prepared to abandon him as a long- agonising process in this generation of de- stop and find him not at the boundaries of taching themselves from this idol. For to life where human powers fail, but at the cen- twentieth-century man the “old man in the tre, in the secular, as “the ‘beyond’ in our sky” and the whole supernaturalist scheme midst.” seem as fanciful as the man in the moon. Another way of putting this is to say that Sir Julian Huxley has spent much time in our whole mental image of God must under- his deeply moving book. “Religion Without go a revolution. This is nothing new in Chris- Revelation,” and in subsequent articles in tianity. The men of the Bible thought of God this paper, dismantling this construction. He as “up there,” seated upon a throne in a loca- constantly echoes Bonhoeffer’s sentiments, lised heaven above the earth, and it was this and I heartily agree with him when he says, God to whom Jesus “ascended.” “The sense of spiritual relief which comes But with the development of scientific from rejecting the idea of God as a super- knowledge, the image of the God “up there” human being is enormous.” made it harder rather than easier to believe.