In Defence of Christianity

The Hulsean sermon is a philosophy of religion sermon, so in talking about faith and reason I make no apology for saying more about reason than about faith. What I want to do is to try to show you some of the reasoning that can be used in support of the Christian faith. Now I'm perfectly well aware that reason is not the basis for faith. Christian faith is not founded on arguments. Most believers have either grown up and been nurtured in what have been called 'convictional communities' and have just found that religious faith and participation in religious life makes sense to them, or else have been precipitated into religious commitment and practice by some powerful conversion experience. Few people are actually reasoned into faith. And of course, for practising Christians, the actual foundations of faith, if indeed our faith is true, are the reality of God and God's action in revelation, incarnation, inspiration and redemption. The arguments I'm going to sketch are more like buttresses than foundations, reasons that can be given, as I say, in support of what Christians believe.

Reason can be shown to support faith in two ways. I'm going to concentrate on only one of them. In the first place - and this is not my subject for this morning - there are a number of wide-ranging considerations which in no way presuppose faith, but which do, cumulatively, suggest theism, that is, belief in God, as offering the best explanation of the world in which we find ourselves, the best explanation of its very existence and of its capacity to evolve persons, morality, art and culture, including philosophy and religion. This is the sphere of natural theology. Such general arguments are not restricted to the support of Christianity. Our Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh friends can appeal to them just as well. But, in the second place - and this is my subject for this morning - reason can be used to support a particular faith such as Christianity by showing its inner rationale, as, for example, when philosophical theologians attempt to demonstrate the logic of incarnational and trinitarian belief and the moral and religious power of what Christianity has to say about sin, redemption and the future of creation.

Now, I have to say again, I know Christian belief is not ordinarily accepted just because it explains things. But that does not mean we should pooh-pooh the claim that Christian belief can find support both from the argument that theism does provide the best explanation of the world's existence and nature, and also from the argument that Christianity does provide the best account of God and of God's way with the world, including its redemption and its ultimate future.

Before I try briefly to sketch the rationale of Christian doctrine, I need to stress the fact that revealed theology - to use a shorthand phrase for theology that appeals to revelation - is just as open to rational scrutiny and explication as is natural theology - the more general arguments suggestive of belief in God. And I also need to point out how considerations of natural theology and considerations of revealed theology come together to form what has been called a cumulative case suggestive of, and supportive of, the Christian faith. Indeed I hope to show how these arguments are not just cumulative, but mutually reinforcing. (The specified subjects for the Hulsean sermon, incidentally, are 'the truth and excellence of Revealed Religion or the Evidences of Christianity'. Being a devout Anglican, I see this not so much a matter of 'either/or', as of 'both/and'. Indeed, I hope to show that the truth and excellence of revealed religion are part and parcel of the evidences of Christianity.)

Let me insert just a word about reason as a tool for exploring and defending all aspects of Christianity, including its revelation claims. Bishop Butler once wrote: 'reason is the only faculty we have wherewith to judge concerning anything, even revelation itself'. Such reasoning is not just a matter of analysis, singling out the different elements in the worldview of Christianity and explicating their logic and defending them independently. It involves that. But it's also a matter of exploring and defending the way in which the elements of Christianity, including its key doctrines, fit together and mutually support each other. This kind of reasoning has been called 'synoptic rationality'. It involves informed, rational, judgement concerning the meaning and the interpretative power, both theoretical and moral, of the whole worldview of Christianity.

Moreover, the rationality of revealed theology is not unconnected with the rationality of natural theology. A strong case for theism should lead us to expect revelation. Recently, the newspapers informed us that Professor Antony Flew, after decades of writing and lecturing on 'the presumption of atheism', has become convinced that the fine tuning of the early universe, as discovered in contemporary cosmology, does, after all, suggest a creative intention behind the whole world process. (I should stress the fact that 'fine tuning' is not the only basis for a design argument. As I have already pointed out, the very capacity of the basic stuff of the universe to evolve intelligent, personal life is suggestive of design.) Flew's conversion to deism is a step in the right direction, but it does not get us very far. If there is indeed a creative mind behind the whole world process, then it is quite unreasonable to suppose that that mind just sets the universe going and takes no further interest in it. As I say, natural theology should lead us to expect revelation, and indeed to take seriously the purported claims to revelation that we encounter throughout the history of religions. As has often been pointed out, one's assessment of alleged evidence depends very much on one's background beliefs. The theist is bound to read the history of religions differently from, and more favourably than, the atheist or even the agnostic.

The history of religions is the sphere to which the convinced theist will first look for signs of divine revelation. Indeed it is with the history of religions that natural theology begins to shade into revealed theology. Without necessarily disparaging other alleged channels of divine revelation, theists within the Judaeo-Christian tradition will appeal to the development, over time, of a special form of ethical monotheism in which a particular people came to see themselves as called to be a light to the nations, to embody the idea of redemptive suffering, and to look for some future vindication, both within history and beyond history, of God's promise and God's love. Christians, of course, see a singular culmination of that historical channel of revelation in the story of Jesus and his Resurrection, to which the Church's scriptures bear witness. Not that revelation need be held to stop there. Developing interpretation of those events and of that witness, and their effects in human life and history, provide continuing signs of God's providence and grace - and revelation - not least in the lives of the saints. Further evidence of God's revealing providence may be found in the admittedly only partial penetration of world history by the values of God's Kingdom, namely, justice, mercy, freedom, peace and truth.

The cumulative case for Christian belief includes not only appeal to these historical factors, the history of Israel, the story of Jesus, the emergence of the Church and its scriptures, the gradual and as I say all too partial gracing of society, but also in the rational exposition and justification of the Christian doctrines themselves that emerged in order to make sense of all this. Let me say just a word about the inner rationale of Christianity's key doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity in this connection.

As I say, the convinced theist, expecting divine revelation, finds many deep, developed, revelation claims in the history of religions. Among them we find the claim that God himself has come amongst us in person, as one of us, in a prepared and necessarily particular religious context, in order to make himself known to us, to enact and demonstrate his forgiveness and his love, and to win our love in return. The force of Christian incarnational belief was beautifully captured in Kierkegaard's story of the King and the humble maiden. In order to win the village maiden's love, the King had to put aside his royal panoply, dress as a peasant and go and live a peasant's life in the village. Only so could the maiden's love be won for its own sake in an unforced way.

I once had a Jewish student doing our paper in the Tripos, and Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments, in which this story is to be found, was one of the set texts. I remember him saying, as we discussed his essay, that reading Kierkegaard's parable of the King and the humble maiden had enabled him to see for the first time what Christians were talking about with their doctrine of the Incarnation. Previously it had been double Dutch to him.

But there is more to the doctrine of the Incarnation than that. The story of Jesus led to the cross. And in the passion and cross of Christ the Christian faith sees God in Christ taking the world's suffering and evil upon himself, accepting responsibility for the terrible cost, in sin and suffering, of the creation of a world of finite free persons. All this is what makes Christianity supremely a religion of redemption. As my favourite theologian, Austin Farrer, put the matter: 'What, then, did God do for his people's redemption? He came among them, bringing his kingdom, and he let events take their human course. He set the divine life in human neighbourhood. Men discovered it in struggling with it and were captured by it in crucifying it. What could be simpler? And what more divine?'

The moral and religious power of these doctrines of incarnation and redemption is very great. But so is that of the doctrine of Christ's resurrection. For, according to the Christian faith, it is the Spirit of Christ crucified and risen that transforms humankind and takes God's personal creatures into the very life of God. Now there is no doubt that the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead plays a key role among the evidences of Christianity. The story is there in the Gospels. What do we make of it? Well, remember my point about the difference made by background beliefs. We don't assess the evidence from a neutral uncommitted standpoint. Belief in God leads one to expect revelation. Belief in divine revelation might lead one to expect divine incarnation, once the moral and religious power of that doctrine is seen. Similarly it can be claimed that belief in incarnation and redemption makes little sense without the resurrection. So the evidence that it occurred is bound to be more favourably received by anyone persuaded by the prior stages in the cumulative case for Christianity. Of course Judaism had already developed a strong belief in a general resurrection in the end. That emerged from reflection on the steadfast love of God. It was - and is - a very proper and necessary theological belief, not a piece of anthropology or philosophy. As such, it helps to make its anticipation in the case of the incarnate one all the more credible. And the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead reinforces the general hope of resurrection in the end. I can only touch on that aspect of Christianity - its eschatology - here.

But I will add a word about the doctrine of the Trinity. There is no doubt that this doctrine arose in response to the growing conviction of the early Christians that in Jesus Christ they had to do with God made man, and that they had been given the gift of the divine Spirit. What they had to try to make sense of was belief that God had come to them in the form of a man who prayed to God, and that the Spirit not only dwelt within them, but interceded for them 'with sighs too deep for words', as St Paul put it in Romans 8. The result was an understanding of God as consisting of three internally related personal subjects, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But there are purely rational considerations pointing in the same direction. For, when you come to think of it, there is a problem about any concept of God modelled on that of an isolated individual, especially if that God is held to be revealed as love. Such a God would have to create a world of finite persons in order to have an object for his love. Most forms of theism, certainly those of the religions of Semitic origin, have been very reluctant to accept the idea of creation being necessary. Creation has rather been seen as a matter of pure grace, reflecting or mirroring the divine love, not enabling it to have an object. This problem is overcome if the eternal God can be seen, in trinitarian terms, as already consisting in love given, love received and love shared still more. For these - and these alone - are the key elements in the very notion of love, as Richard of St Victor pointed out in the twelfth century.

This is not to suggest tritheism - belief in three gods. That would involve three finite 'gods' externally related. That's the trouble with all artistic representations of the Trinity, including Rublev's wonderful ikon of the three figures sitting round a table. Artistic representation inevitably involves finite images. But we are talking about the infinite. It is the one infinite God, who is understood by Christians to be internally differentiated in three mutually interrelated, interpenetrating, subjects of love given, received and shared.

Let me sum up the positive cumulative case in support of Christian belief that I have sketched for you this morning. Considerations of natural theology suggest that a universe that has it in it to evolve intelligent, personal life, society and culture - and saints and mystics - is best understood as the product of creative will and purpose. Divine revelation, then, is only to be expected. The world religions can, with good reason, be best interpreted as possessing revelatory, even salvific, significance. Among them, the Christian tradition, with its inalienable roots in Judaism, has come up with a theology of incarnation and redemption, with their inevitable trinitarian implications, of great moral and religious power.

But let me remind you of where I began. These tentative arguments are offered simply in support of a faith position occupied by many on the basis of participation and experience. I have said nothing about the way in which Christian people, on the basis of their own experience of being forgiven, inspired, called, loved by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, can sing with confidence, 'Firmly I believe and truly…' To preach about that would be a quite different, non-Hulsean, sermon.

I had intended to stop there, having sketched the outlines of a positive apologetic, in support of Christianity. But I find I must add just a few words of negative apologetic, suggesting how one might reply to the main objection to a theistic worldview, and especially to a Christian one. I refer, of course, to the problem of both natural and moral evil, brought so forcefully and fearfully to our minds by the Asian tsunami and by the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. How can a God of love have allowed such things to happen?

I'm sure the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chief Rabbi were right, in what they said about these terrible events, to concentrate on what God inspires his creatures to do in response to horrendous evils, and on the promise of resurrection to a perfected new creation for all life's victims. But those points do not begin to answer the question why the horrendous evils are permitted in the first place. To answer that question, we have to investigate the necessities involved in the indirect and gradual formation, from below, of finite personal life, in and through a whole evolving universe.

Bertrand Russell wrote, in The Analysis of Mind: 'there is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past'. But that, like much of what Russell wrote and said, is nonsense. 'Human beings', posited in being five minutes ago with built-in 'memory' traces, would not be human beings. The suggestion is logically incoherent.

In fact, to be an adult human being, we have to have gone through a real process of growth and nurture and a real history of interpersonal relation in a real and specific culture. One can even suggest that it is necessary for the Creator to have fashioned us in and through a whole evolving physical universe. As, again, Austin Farrer put it, 'if God wished to make no more than any single one of us, he would need to make half a universe. And why? Because no one of us would be the creature he is, if a thousand thousand lines of converging history, both physical and personal, had not met in him. Your life or mine is but a half-sentence in the book of the world. Tear it from its place, and it cannot be read; or if it can be read, it signifies nothing'. And, of course, it is the same law-governed energies and forces that make us and all the sensitivities and values of our human being, life and culture possible that also render us vulnerable to clashes and accidents and deprivations of often horrendous kinds. As with all animals, our own exposure to disastrous accident is a function of our physicality.

You may reply, granted that specifically human life is essentially bound up with its physical roots, both in terms of its evolutionary background and in terms of its many-levelled structure, did the creation of finite personal life as such have to be like this? But maybe there is a deeper necessity for some such grounding, some such formation from below, some such drawing of God's personal creatures out of nature into spirit. Maybe, in order to have any kind of finite personal creatures, with a being and nature of their own, the Creator has to place a kind of screen between his infinite glory and their creaturely selves. The material, evolving, universe would be just such a screen, begun with the most elementary organisation of energy, and gradually built up, level by level, till rational personal beings emerge, thoroughly rooted and grounded in what is fundamentally other than God. Maybe such rooting and grounding of God's creatures in a physical, evolving, universe and letting the human world make itself precisely in and through the processes of evolution and history are necessary conditions of the formation of any finite persons, with their own God-given being and nature, before ever thy can be drawn into relation with their Maker and eventually immortalised.

Another of Kierkegaard's fruitful ideas was that of 'indirect communication'. There are good reasons why God reveals himself to us gradually, indirectly, in and through very messy human histories, to which all-too-human, albeit inspired, scriptures and traditions bear witness. I am now applying the logic of indirect communication to the logic of indirect creation and providence. At least during the formative phase of the creative process, the hand of God has to be hidden, the structures of the universe, like our freedom, have to be respected. Not even omnipotence can create heaven directly. The structures are not rigid structures, of course. They are flexible structures, open both to our own free action and to God's grace and providence. But the structures themselves, in this formative phase, have to be respected, not overridden. They are indeed overridden by resurrection, but that is not, and cannot be, God's way in history, within the formative phase. Resurrection marks the transition from here to eternity. For that we can only wait in hope.