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| God In Us Anthony Freeman, Imprint Academic. 2001 This is a pivotal book for Christianity. At a time when volumes pour off the presses as never before, few truly radical visions survive for long. Now in its second printing, "God In Us" has stood the test of more than a decade without losing a gram of its weight. It cost the author his job when it was first published in 1993 - a fact which should be to the ongoing shame of the Church of England establishment. A factor which makes Freeman's work of considerable account - and correspondingly dangerous to those who will act basely to defend "the faith" - is the clarity and simplicity of his writing. It's all-too-easy to dress theology in elaborate verbal garments. Such writing may strut the boards of academic fashion well enough. But its studied drapery doesn't reach the streets except in much modified form. The author has done a competent and enjoyable job of translating obtuse theological ideas into language and concepts which ordinary people can take on board with relatively little difficulty. All those who have drifted away from the Church because it has ceased to mean much to them will be encouraged and enlightened by this short work. A forward by Bishop John Spong remarks that
There are, says Freeman, three religious approaches to the radical revolution of human thought and perception which has willy-nilly overtaken the West in the past three hundred years. The first is that of the conservative Christian who seeks to freeze the faith in its first century form. The second approach is that of the liberal whose response to change is more yielding yet ultimately resistant to change. While the faith is to be expressed in modern terms, it is only the outer garments which are to be modified. The undergarments are those worn by Augustine and Aquinas and other Church giants. The third way is the one causing most trouble in the sleepy cloisters of ecclesiastical probity. The radical vision admits that
This is the crux of Freeman's thesis. It is the aspect of his writing which got him into trouble. It's all very well to debate the existence of God in academic terms, for example. But when God is acknowledged to be a human creation, the powers that be must lash out if their already precarious position is not to become terminally unstable. One quibble I have with this readable and indeed remarkable book revolves around the nature and degree of change in our outlook since the heady days of Medieval power and certainty. Freeman limits himself to ecclesiastical aspects of the perceptual revolution since the Enlightenment. However, there is much more to be said about this than to point out how the language of the English Prayer Book as changed over the years. It may be useful to look back at the Church and remark that the creeds are no longer useful to us. But the fact is that the world in which we live is completely different from that of only a hundred years ago. The difference lies not only in the outward things like cities and technology, but much more fundamentally in the way we perceive reality. We are utterly sundered from the world of the 17th century in a way in which Elizabethans were not from the world of Caesar and Pompey some 1600 years before. Freeman could have given more space to exploring this aspect of change as it relates to the Church at large. Perhaps that explains why he focuses rather too much on Christianity as a belief system when it is more fundamentally a way of life. Another quibble concerns Freeman's opinion that the search for a Jesus of history over more than 200 years has failed. This is true only if history is thought of as a discipline which delivers unequivocal truth about "what really happened". That it doesn't claim to do so is important. Historians know, for example, that no historical account of Adolf Hitler will ever be more than an author's personal perceptions. Such perceptions may or may not be validated by a wide range of other historians. If they are, then they may pass into a body of received wisdom. If not, they tend to disappear into a repository of forgotten opinions. The point is that "Jesus" as a construct can be one of two things. It can be the intended vehicle of an ideology, designed to pass on to others an individual or group vision. This version of "Jesus" is to be guarded jealously. He is to be protected from the distortions of those who operate outside imposed norms. Thus today we have a Jesus of evangelicals, of Catholics, of Anglicans, of Quakers and many other versions. A Jesus of history, even though formed by the perceptions both of witnesses, original authors, and historians, presents a more solid base. Yes, there have been many "historical" Jesuses over the years, and there will be many more. Having said that, a fairly consistent Jesus of history has emerged about whom historians (as differentiated from Christian teachers and theologians) have a good degree of consensus. So the boundaries of what can be called historical in the gospels and what cannot may be fuzzy and may shift in and out of focus from time-to-time. But it nevertheless does exclude certain versions of Jesus and demand certain others. For example, few now think John's Gospel contains much good history, and even fewer think he was anti-Jewish. Similarly, fascist dictators like Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin had to control the Jesus whom history reveals because he flatly contradicts the political systems they imposed on their nations. This Jesus therefore not only excludes certain ways of relating to the world, but inescapably defines key behaviours. The ideological Jesus in contrast can be moulded into many types of faith, types which derive their essence not from someone who once walked this earth, but on the person doing the moulding. Conversely, the Jesus of history has now been well formed and can hold his own against those who try to advance a designer model. John Spong appears to think that Freeman has perhaps overcooked his God in the humanist oven, remarking:
That this is a God created by Bishop Spong is clear from what he himself says - which is precisely Freeman's point. |