Gilo Guarding The Flock Redress, Independence and Accountability
Stephen Parsons Surviving Church Charisma and Abusive Power – The Case of Chris Brain
Colin Coward Unadulterated Love Daring Not to Know God
Anna Brooker Women and the Church Just another Sunday morning
I thought the Lord Jesus Christ came to make the Father known to us (John 1:21).
This idea that God cannot be known seems to be completely at odds with Christianity as revealed by God Himself and received by Christians through the ages.
Whoops John 1:18 rather!
Thank you for drawing attention to that important verse. To me though it illustrates the problem of knowing God through ancient texts and traditions. There is a typical problem of fitting this assertion in with other elements, such as Exodus 24:11 where the elders of Israel see God and eat and drink in his presence. Then there is the remarkable problem of identifying the word that is used, the manuscripts being different, some saying God and some saying Son. Then it must be clear that though the Word has explained God to us, the explanation has not been such that… Read more »
What fools we Christians are!
Well, I’ve read most of the Rovelli works (which disappeared during my move, dammit, dammit) and I don’t see what’s so controversial about the article. There was a wonderful interview with him published in ‘The Tablet’ a couple of years back. 40-some years ago, I recall being at a lecture at which Kallistos Ware was asked to explain the Orthodox preference for apophatic theology: he summed it up as ‘What we think we know about God we’re probably better off forgetting.’ (He also likened much Christian prayer to Neddy Seagoon in ‘The Goon Show’ answering a telephone by jabbering, ‘Hello,… Read more »
“Were I a linguist I’d want to ask what was understood by ‘know’ in these misgivings. Is it the semitic yd’ (as in ‘And Adam knew his wife Eve,’ thus intimate and relational) or Græco-Roman ‘ginoskein,’ or ‘gnosis,’ propositional knowledge.”
The former.
And when God tells Moses the divine name, it is untranslatable and unknowable.
I would not agree with that deduction. God says a series of things in relation to the disclosure of the inner significance of a name already used by Israel in Genesis. “I will be with you.” “Then you will know that I am the LORD.” “I will be as I will be” in relation to what you will see and know in my coming deliverance of you. Rashi put it well. The YHWH of Genesis is a God of promise and the YHWH of Exodus is the God of fulfillment of those promises. The Greek rendering “I am being” fails… Read more »
Thinking Anglicans know the difference between the OT and NT? I begin to wonder!
A bit Old Testament no ? Jesus said I am … at least 7 times!
Thanks, I feel even more foolish than I did before.
David – a belated thank you for your post – especially for the Neddy Seagoon Goon Show reference. There is divine wisdom and humour in the works of Spike Milligan (whose grave in Winchelsea churchyard I reverenced last year).
Gareth. Well I wouldn’t call it daring – as if it is something we choose. It happens not because we have lost or abandoned faith but because God is beyond knowing through our human minds – dwells in ‘unapproachable light’. 1 Tim 6.16. ‘Now we see dimly … in part ‘ 1Cor 13.12. So it is not at odds with Christian faith, it is an inevitable of it. This is the well established apophatic tradition in Christian spiritual life – faith beyond words because God is inexpressible. I am reminded of a sermon ++Stephen Cottrell preached on darkness and light… Read more »
Let’s stick with the passages you’ve cited. 1 Timothy 6:16 is referring to people seeing God, not whether or not God can be known or indeed revealed to us in Christ. On 1 Corinthians 13:12 – there’s a distinction between saying that something (or someone) cannot be known completely and saying that something (or someone) cannot be known at all. Indeed our understanding of God is not complete, but that’s not the same as saying God cannot be known at all. The Scriptures clearly tell us that we can truly know God through Jesus Christ and indeed that God has… Read more »
Gareth. I would be interested in how you read Stephen Cottrell’s reflections on darkness and not knowing as an experience of authentic Christian faith. I quoted it to illustrate my response to your comments and I feel you have not understood me. Where did I say God cannot be known at all? Furthermore ”seeing’ and ‘knowing’ are both expressions of the same thing in bible faith. Finally, I have no idea you toss in the text about the resurrection at all. Do you really hear me arguing for agnosticism, atheism and denying the resurrection?
Honestly I don’t read them. I’m far more interested in looking to what Scripture says and what God has spoken. I’m presuming you read Colin’s article which is what I was replying to originally? “Let me put that more strongly. God cannot be known as an object. The fact that Jesus is worshipped as the Son of God doesn’t mean that Jesus can any more easily be known as an object. This is why I have a problem with the way the Church talks about God – and those who self-identify as orthodox, traditional, biblical Christians have a problem with… Read more »
There’s a truth in the idea that God has been made known to us in Jesus. There’s also a truth in acknowledging that our knowledge of God is and can only be partial, because God is infinite and we are not. Our limited human minds can’t take in the fulness of God. The writers of the scriptures are attempting to express this paradox to us when in one place we’re told that Moses saw God face to face, but in another that no one can see God’s face and live. The seeming contradiction—the paradox—is the deepest of all truths. Yes,… Read more »
Yes. As G.K. Chesterton said, ‘A paradox is a truth standing on its head and waving its legs in the air to attract attention.’ We – or at least some of us – can say both ‘through Jesus Christ, I have a relationship with God’ and ‘I don’t know God’.
I’m more than happy with the conclusion that we don’t have a full knowledge of God. That said it’s untrue to state that we don’t know much about Him or indeed that we can’t know Him. Scripture’s very clear on that. I definitely disagree with the claim that all speech about God is metaphorical when God has clearly acted in history. I’m starting to think the difference is between those who believe that God can and has revealed Himself clearly through the prophets and in His Son and those who don’t believe that God can or has revealed Himself clearly… Read more »
To say “I asked Jesus to come into my heart” is a metaphor. The heart is a pump that moves the blood around our bodies. It is not the seat of the emotions, the intellect, or the will. Nonetheless, those who ‘give their hearts’ to a loved one, or to God, know what they mean. The metaphor is not literal truth, but it carries truth in a much more powerful and poetic way. Years ago I heard a speaker say that, in his view, we spent too much time thinking about God living in our hearts, and not enough time… Read more »
You may be condemning Gareth for the conclusions of other TA contributors, Tim. They’ve claimed God is unknowable because scripture describes Him metaphorically not physically; Gareth is simply pointing out that it also describes His physical existence on earth and thus not all the description is metaphorical. He’s not making a value judgement about whether prose is better or more reliable than poetry – others have done that.
Thank you
I don’t think that metaphors aren’t real insofar as what they depict. It’s just not true to say that all that we can know about God is metaphorical. Particularly when God has acted concretely in history and when God became flesh and walked among us. That God is a living God who has entered the world in history and that God is a living God who is actively at work in the world today by the work of God the Holy Spirit. There’s a difference between saying metaphors are used to describe God and saying all speech about God is… Read more »
I do not doubt that God can speak clearly. I just think that some of the clarity is not as clear as we’d like to think. To be clear myself: I believe in the resurrection of the body (Jesus’, and ours). But I can’t help noticing that the majority of resurrection appearances mention that at first the disciples didn’t recognise him – or, in Matthew’s account, that when they met him in Galilee and were looking at him face to face, ‘some doubted’. And the risen Lord was apparently completely uninterested in proving that he was right by appearing to… Read more »
It’s pretty unambiguous in Matthew too, Tim. He calls himself the Son of Man a number of times (‘the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head, … came eating and drinking, ..did not come to be served but to serve, …is about to be delivered into the hands of men and they will kill him’) Then he says ‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him.’ And when Peter observed ‘You are the messiah, the son of the… Read more »
‘Son of Man’ is an ambiguous title. ‘One like a son of man’ (Daniel) is meant to emphasise the humanity of the figure who approaches the throne. Colloquially it means ‘human being’, but of course it then carries the freight of Daniel 7.13-14. C.F.D. Moule (‘The Origin of Christology‘) thought Jesus’ use of the definite article was important – ‘the Son of Man’, meaning ‘that Son of Man, the one Daniel referred to’, but not everyone agrees with that.
‘I’m starting to think the difference is between those who believe that God can and has revealed Himself clearly through the prophets and in His Son and those who don’t believe that God can or has revealed Himself clearly at all. Both of these conclusions can’t be correct.’ There’s a whole spectrum between those two extremes, and I suspect most TA contributors are nearer the middle of that spectrum than either end. Just to clarify, this is the comment I was replying to. I might add that it’s possible to believe that God can and has revealed himself clearly, but… Read more »
There’s a whole spectrum between those two extremes, and I suspect most TA contributors are nearer the middle of that spectrum than to either end.
Mind you, any fraction of infinity is also infinite. So half knowing God is just as good as knowing the infinity of God.
God cannot be known as an object because he is the ultimate Subject – the most significant being and the instigator of all that is. God is supreme over all other subjects.
Luckily we know plenty about God’s character because we have the living record of how He’s interacted with His people and we know how He lived among us and indeed how He lives among us. God is a real being who can be known. The Scriptures testify to that. Now to be fair Colin does say frequently in his blogs that he doesn’t like the Christian teaching that God can be known through the prophets and most supremely in His Son. At some point we have to acknowledge that divergence and say it’s fine if you want to forge a… Read more »
Gareth, I do not like Christian teaching that elevates one way or particular ways of knowing God above all other ways. Not elevating your way above other ways, the mystical way, for example, is not me creating a new religion. It’s a Christian way that is as traditional and authentic as recognisably traditional and authentic and Christ-centred ways. What kind of statement is “Christianity teaches that God can be known”? Known like my next-door neighbours? Known like I know a friend? Christianity teaches that God encounters us and that we encounter God, but I’d never want to claim that I… Read more »
I am generally fearful of making any pronouncements or opinions on the nature of God. It is a little presumptious. It reminds me of God’s response to Job. However, with my IT and data modelling hat on, objects can be material or abstract. With my physics hat on, nothing ‘exists’, we merely have models and we evaluate how our experiments conform to predictions from our models. So, instead of wondering what the nature of God is, I am more interested in the behaviour of God. Which is, of course, equally presumptious. One of God’s behaviours was to come to earth… Read more »
I was using ‘subject’ and ‘object’ in their grammatical senses.
My point remains. I would be happy to replace my single use of the word ‘object’ with ‘subject’.
People of two (perhaps more) religious worldviews, or paradigms, contribute to Thinking Anglicans. Referring in debate to what is written in the Bible as “what God says” is speaking firmly within one paradigm and suggests to me an unwillingness to engage with the paradigm of those who see the Bible differently. So perhaps it is not surprising that the same kinds of arguments get repeated ad nauseam. The battle seems to be over the paradigm, not really (for example) over what we think about homosexuality. Just think of William Taylor’s recent labelling of certain bishops as false teachers: yes, but… Read more »
There’s a distinction between saying: – I can wrong and my knowledge of God is incomplete. A statement I’m actually rather happy to make! And: – God can’t be known – God can’t speak clearly The latter two positions aren’t statements about my own rightness, they are claims about God that Scripture clearly contadicts in several places. That’s why I’m saying that they seem to be incompatible with the very essence of Christianity. Moving from this to stating we’re creating a new religion seems more accurate to me. I agree that the divergence isn’t in the particulars of the sexuality… Read more »
Yes, we could talk in terms of starting a new religion. Or we can define Christianity wide enough to encompass things that some may see as unchristian. People might call me not Christian. I think that trying to follow the teaching and example of Jesus, while perhaps not believing in some historic doctrines, could be a healthy development within the church. You can have hundreds of Protestant denominations or a broad tolerant church. I think the latter would be more healthy.
‘All that is required is an attitude of “I might be wrong”, more specifically “My way of seeing things might be incomplete/not perfect/a work in progress and therefore I shouldn’t condemn those who see things differently.”
Might you be wrong about this?
“Might you be wrong about this?” I might be. Let’s say I am. That would enable someone to assert that their way of seeing things is complete and perfect. They have zero doubt. Everyone must agree. Hmm, sounds familiar…
So everyone ought to agree with you, actually.
I agree that that sounds arrogant. However the opposite of what i have written would be to claim certainty regarding one’s beliefs and that one couldn’t be wrong. Is that what you wish to claim? That sounds no less arrogant than my saying that, yes, everyone should agree that uncertainty over faith claims is appropriate. So in fact both sides are saying that everyone should agree with them- either everyone should agree that all should admit a degree of uncertainty OR everyone should agree with their view that “Scripture clearly says…” (or whatever). You write, “So everyone ought to agree… Read more »
All that is required is the hegemony of liberalism!
“Liberalism” has multiple meanings. What I advocate is not the hegemony of liberal theology, but liberalism in the sense of tolerance of a diversity of views. Would you want to argue against that?
Because there is a truth, and there is a reality – If you were going in for surgery would you be content for the surgeon not to wash his hands because the hospital “tolerates a diversity of views”? If you wouldn’t, then why can you not understand the dying old man who upon asking if there’s life after death trusts that the vicar will comfort with the gospel?
If there was genuine debate over the benefits and dangers of washing one hands then a diversity of views would be legitimate. But there isn’t. Saying you have no doubt regarding life after death is in a very different category. Far more reassuring for the dying old man, I would imagine, is someone he knows to be honest and to have grappled with the deep questions of life and faith, saying to him (as I would), “I do believe that there is some kind of life after death. It would be dishonest to say I am certain.” The young confident… Read more »
As a basis for constituting the church, absolutely!
Did Jesus want to “constitute a church”? I understand the appeal of a clear delineation as to what is and is not Christian, and who is and is not Christian. But I suggest that God loves everyone and calls everyone to repent of their sin.
If we can only “know God” through Jesus Christ does that imply that God hid himself entirely until a couple of thousand years ago, and continues to hide from all but Christians?
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handwork. Day after day utters speech, and night unto night showetheth knowledge.
All things were created through him and for him.
At its most compelling, the Anglican spiritual temper is one of faith lived amidst doubt rather than beyond it. From the father’s prayer in Mark 9, “I believe; help my unbelief”, through the writings of Hooker and Ramsey, to the saints I’ve had the privilege both to minister to and to be ministered by, is the same conviction: faith is not the absence of doubt, but trust in the midst of it.
Thank you for that observation, Allan (and also thanks to David for the quote from Stephen Cottrell). I believe both posts home in on something very precious in our tradition, and the traditions that preceded Anglicanism. Yes, of course, in Jesus Christ we encounter a great revelation of the nature of God: as One who is compassion and love, self-giving and sacrificial. And who seems to be faithful and devoted in the desire to draw us toward covenant relationship and the very compassion of God which we witness in wonder in the life and death and resurrection of Christ. We… Read more »
There’s nothing “cocksure” about having confidence in what God has spoken and in looking to how God has revealed Himself in Christ.
It’s more cocksure to suggest that God can’t be known when He’s revealed Himself to us surely?
What you don’t know, you don’t know, which is the beginning of wisdom.
T S Eliot, or did he steal it from previous thinkers?
I don’t think it’s cocksure to know that God has spoken. What is cocksure is being certain that we have understood and grasped what God has spoken. And if that were not the case, there would be little room for spiritual growth.
I’m not sure where this discussion comes from or goes to. There is much we can learn about God’s nature from Jesus, and more transcendent aspects that are beyond us. But many TA discussions relate to how much weight should be put on the instructions for living found in scripture. That’s a different question related to how accurately scripture has been transmitted and how it was inspired. It seems to me it has little to do with our limited ability to comprehend God’s nature. We may not be capable of fully understanding God, but He is surely well capable of… Read more »
The question I would ask is rather about whether God is fully revealed, on the one hand, and fully apprehended on the other. The idea that finite scriptures can fully reveal “the invisible God” of whom Christ is the image (Colossians 1:15) is surely false: God confined to human form (eg Philippians 2:6-11) is not God revealed in every possibility. Now we know in part (1 Corinthians 13:12). And the idea that human apprehension of God is complete is therefore also mistaken. Reflecting on the fact that there is more that we don’t know about an infinite God than that… Read more »
You’re saying this as if I haven’t already said that we don’t know God completely. I’ve even spoken to one of the verses you cited earlier. What is wrong though is to say we can’t know God at all. Particularly when God has revealed Himself to us in Scripture and most supremely in His Son. We know a lot about God’s character as a result if we trust what He’s spoken to us and learn from how He’s dealt with us in Scripture and how He deals with us today. So yes we don’t know everything, we do know plenty,… Read more »
What I was getting at was more the vastness of what we don’t know. Of course what has been revealed to us is significant – God would not have revealed it otherwise. But what we know is not just incomplete, it is almost unimaginably so – a finite portion of an infinite thing. That is a perspective that Christians have found, as I wrote before, humbling, but also enriching.
Why doesn’t Bible God have anything to say about cats then?
And why doesn’t the Bible say anything about Germain Greer or Bananarama?
Exactly. Do we know what God thinks of the Archers? The idea that Gareth’s Scripture tells us all we need to know about the deity is preposterous.
Difficult to please all the people all the time. Richard Feynman couldn’t believe that God would want to spend 30 years living somewhere as small and insignificant as the earth, whereas you won’t be happy without a dominical twitter feed
Not the right answer.
“The Archers have sorely grieved him” Genesis 49.23
Hi Gareth, I want to apologise for using the word ‘cocksure’ which I think was unhelpful of me. It is of course precious to people’s life and faith, that they can trust in what God reveals to them in the person and example of Jesus Christ. As you say, we may find blessing in the way God is revealed in Jesus Christ. As a Christian who experienced a ‘born again’ event in my own life, I know how Christ can intervene in our lives, and be revealed to us. In that process of faith, our hearts and minds can be… Read more »
Gareth, I’d also like to give thanks to God for your own ardent love of God’s grace and love, and the sincere commitment involved for you, in living your life as a Christian. I think, in the Church, there are many sons and daughters of God, each with God-given temperaments and gifts, and God – knowing who we are and who we are uniquely called to be – may open our lives to faith in a variety of expressions. Very often, we do not know from the beginning all that God purposes to show us through life’s course. One thing… Read more »
I did not find the word “cocksure” even once in the nuanced piece by hidden sister. Very much a male thing!
Not normally a part of my parlance.
Here’s the relevant portion of her post.
“There is quite a difference between the fundamentalist instinct to box everything up about God, so it’s all explained and controlled by our cocksure minds… and the willingness in the apophatic tradition to let go of control when it comes to knowing God. To gaze. To wonder. To receive, not in our own efforts, but as God chooses to unfold to us.”
Much to reflect on in what you and David have written – thank you both, and not least for your insight into the seeking after certainty that feeds the ‘fundamentalist instinct’. I read +Stephen Cottrell’s words as I was preparing for the funeral of a friend who has suffered much and as I was thinking about what to write for our All Souls’ Requiem. Unless the next-of-kin asks for them, I never open a funeral with the Sentences – those beautiful words of Easter faith – as it will often be Jesus’ lonely cry from the cross which speaks more… Read more »
Thank you – very moving.
This is so beautiful. Thank you.
‘There may, counter-intuitively, be more scope for faith and for growing into who God wants us to become, if we actually accommodate our ‘unknowing’, our doubts, our uncertainties… because what’s then left is… trust.’
This speaks for my experience.
Gareth – your statement begs so many questions. I’ve not bothered to respond to you until now because tour bald statement tells me that you are unlikely to understand that I also claim to know God having had a lifelong grounding in the Bible, prayer, preaching and worship. I also know that the God “I know” is not known by other Christians – and vice versa. I am an intuitive person. I know God intuitively. Is my intuitive awareness and knowledge of God any more reliable than the God of those who know cognitively primarily through the Bible? The Lord… Read more »
‘If only God placed his imprimatur on approved and non-approved ways of making Godself known.’
The intrinsic logic of scripture-based Christian theology is that he did. In those places within scripture where we find the divine address encountered through scripture, we can discern that God’s will is to make himself known through scripture. In other ways too, but not less than through scripture.
Critics may say that this is circular. Indeed. But many step by faith into the circle and find that it becomes life-giving.
Believe it or not I’m not opposed to people approaching God in a variety of approaches. That said if those approaches end up with conclusions that diverge from Scripture we’ve got to be open to the idea that maybe we aren’t speaking about the God who revealed Himself in them and maybe we’re forging a new religion. If God is God He reveals Himself to us. In the same way if someone introduces herself and says I’m Sarah it’d be absurd to say that he’s John! It wouldn’t respect the idea that Sarah gets to tell us who she is… Read more »
When I was a very new curate in my very early twenties I was co-opted onto Diocesan Synod by a bishop who no doubt thought that the presence of a young female stipendiary lay worker (there were no women deacons or priests as yet) might leaven the synodical lump in wholesome ways. There happened to come onto the agenda a motion about racism (I don’t remember the details), urging the synod to pass a resolution rejecting this manifestation of prejudice and injustice. Taking my slight courage in hand, I stood to make my first ever synodical speech in which I… Read more »
But that does not mean that there should be no explicit concern over matters of race. In any event, I don’t see that much backward bending going on
The article was very depressing, but rang all too true. The excess of overt piety (genuflecting twice in such a short space of time) & reference to ‘Lady Vicars’ all speak of people harking back to a contrived 1950s alternate reality where they imagine that women still ‘knew their place’. As an aside I may say that all that ostentatious genuflecting just made me think of Tom Lehrer’s ‘Vatican Rag’ & laugh.
I totally endorse what you and Anna Brooker have written but how I wish you had gone further. For most of my life I was an agnostic. And then a close friend had a harrowing death from motor neuron disease. We held a memorial service for Vicky at St James Piccadilly because she had a long connection with the Royal Academy but how to bury Vicky ? Her husband was an atheist and Vicky and I were “lapsed Anglicans”. A neighbour, a gay Anglican priest, offered to say simple prayers for Vicky over her grave. And something quite extraordinary happened… Read more »
Gido lays some very clear and justified challenges against powerful players within the institution. The following well known questions spoken in Parliament by Wedgwood Benn seem equally appropriate in the context Gido sets out for us, and apply particularly to William Nye:
If you’re an atheist politician to whom every situation is most naturally understood through the dynamics of power, these may seem the most pressing questions. While power dynamics need attention in any context, these may not be the only or best questions to apply in an ecclesiastical context. Number 5 worries me. Eliminating opponents is not logical in the Kingdom in the way it can be in the saeculum.
I think it’s short-sighted to assume that there are no power dynamics in the Church. One would hope we had moved past that naivete after three-plus decades of disclosures of abuse, coverup, and inept leadership. I think question 5, “how can we get rid of you?” is the most pressing one in the life of Anglicanism at present. And I think it is especially relevant to the order of bishops. This circles around to how bishops are accountable for their conduct in church governance. Almost none are competent to be playing at the CEO game, yet are ushered into seats… Read more »
Who said there are no power dynamics in the church? The question is how they are to be navigated, and with what end.
If only Kingdom principles were seen and known to exist in all the (shady) corners referenced by Gilo, I might agree with you.
This article was written only 2 years ago. Much remains hidden.
Not confidential. Secret.
https://survivingchurch.org/2024/12/30/__trashed-4/
For example, the complete, current membership list for The Club of Nobody’s Friends in 2026 is not publicly available, as it is a private and historically secretive dining club.
My questions remain.
I’ve never understood no.5 as a mechanism for eliminating opponents/opposition. Instead as a colloquially-phrased way of asking, what structures are in place for confirming your ability to do your job to the necessary standard, and what is your accountability to those above you who will bear responsibility if you get it wrong? As well as checking their employment contract (and assuming they have one!) follows standard HR practices of dealing with complaints or incompetence, up to and including dismissal.
Well, Paul’s exhortation in Galatians 6.1 and Jesus’ emphasis on ‘regaining your brother’ in Matthew 18 seem to me to strike a different tone, and articulate a nobler hope, than the stark objective of ‘getting rid’.
CofE is similar to secular charities in the arrogant assumption that it is morally superior in every respect to the grubby world of politics, commerce, etc.
Reality is somewhat different, and it is well known that secular charities can be appalling employers, and that anyone who works for them is well-advised to join the appropriate Union. The CofE is no better, despite all the pious posturing.
I am no fan of the late Wedgwood Benn, but his 5 questions cannot be dismissed, just as William Nye cannot be dismissed.
I am mostly a fan of the late AWB, but it has to be said that for all his politics, he remained true to his class to the end. He left all of his vast wealth to his children, his eldest son inherited his disclaimed title, and the only place that the Essex coastal path has to deviate from the coast is to skirt round the Benn family pile at Stansgate.
Interesting piece by Colin, as ever. The thoughts on religion of two non-religious physicists have interested me over the years. Dirac was struck by the elegant mathematics of physics, which led him to an allegorical view of God as a master mathematician. For physicists, the aim is to explain everything according to the smallest number of laws, which leads eventually to the idea of ’emergent’ laws – things like the gas laws which can be explained as resulting from deeper underlying ideas. Then the question is whether the elegant maths was devised by the creator, or is a sort of… Read more »
Gilo, in referring to Bishop Mullaly, you speak of ‘all that you have heard from trusted contacts and your own experience of the disconnectedness and cruelty of this bishop’. Yes indeed, but might I suggest more than that? In 2021 after the Coroner had made her judgement on Father Alan Griffin’s death and given her judgement to Justin Welby, then Archbishop, Sarah Mullaly in her role as Bishop of London, apologised unreservedly to Fr Alan’s family and friends, emphasising the need for cultural change within the church to prevent ‘similar tragedies in the future’. I can assure readers there seems… Read more »
I like Rovelli – must read that latest book. Have just read his book about Anaximander, the Greek who first looked for “naturalistic” explanations for, e.g. rain. The beginning of science. The Babylonians.depite being very clever astronomers and accurately charting the heavens for centuries, thought that the movements of the heavenly bodies reflected what the Gods were up to, and what they would do. There is really no meeting of minds possible here, is there? Wittgenstein would say that there is no prospect of a productive dialogue unless people share some criteria of meaning and justification. If one person quotes… Read more »
I think there have always been people with vastly different frames of reference about faith in the church. That need not be a problem if both sides can coexist. But that coexistence is normally achieved by one side remaining silent in church. Whenever as an LLM I shared some of own more heterodox faith in preaching and teaching I was often surprised by the positive reaction it received, and by who had reacted. I gained the impression that there is a larger than often realised number of people in many churches, who share Colin’s more mystical ideas, but whose faith… Read more »
I felt very sad reading Ms Brooker’s article. How wearisome to have to deal with such silliness at that time in the morning, or at any time of the day for that matter. I’d be reluctant to do the ‘triple’ again if I were her. As a man I’ve not had to deal with this of course. Only once did I face open homophobia from a non churchgoer who wanted her child baptised by someone who she believed to be straight. Once the penny dropped, I sweetly explained that as the Rector I would be delighted to officiate. After some… Read more »
Having just read Anna Brooker’s article I’m left feeling sickened and ashamed by the conduct she describes. How is it that behaviour so despicably rude and ungracious is deemed ‘acceptable’ in churches because of points of supposed doctrine? Quite frankly, if I were a ‘seeker’ or someone wondering about faith, and witnessed this, my reaction would be – if that’s what being a Christian means, then stick it. Why bother? That sort of behaviour would be deemed immature and undesired in a five year old, never mind a supposedly grown man. And we are supposed to be lights to the… Read more »