It is obvious to everyone, except church-goers, that a rethinking of religious doctrine is necessary, or it is “curtains” for the dear-old-C.of E. In such a rethinking, everything of the past is at stake. What folly, scientists say, to be bound hand and foot to the views of men 1700 years ago; men who were highly intelligent, but who accepted slavery, and had only ever lived under tyranny: assumptions we indignantly repudiate. Every scientific theory has to be revised in the light of new experimental evidence that simply does not fit current theory. Wise men would say it is the same for religion. So a rethink may involve stripping Jesus of his titular divinity. He could keep it, if the incarnation includes us, as well as him; but I have met few Christians who like the price of acceptance. If he loses his titular divinity, given him centuries after he died, he can still be regarded as the first person to grasp that the Spirit of God pervades the entire universe, from the very big to the very small, and we would add from the stars in the heavens down to the tiny atom and the elements of the Periodic Table, and who yet still allowed his character to reach its full stature. Inevitably parochially minded men opposed him, in the event savagely. So we can still regard his contribution to Man’s spiritual evolution as crucial, leading us all out of Plato’s cave of shadows into the sunlight of truth outside.
Actually, if one adopts the language of modern psychology, and says that the Spirit of God lurks in the depths of the psyche, and you ignore Him at your peril, which I firmly believe to be true, you avoid the language of incarnation. Jesus did, and called an individual becoming aware of this a “Second birth”. St. Paul called it “a new creation”. Jesus taught men to stand upright.
Sadly the Church, whilst doing much good, also did much harm. By insisting that its members subscribe to its creeds, it tended to cripple the spirit of its members once again. And by persecuting deviation, undid everything Jesus had died to achieve. The temptation was considerable; it preserved the clergy’s power and jobs. And when they had supreme power, it went to their heads!
But do not truths that need to be enforced by torture and burning at the stake, cease to be truths? Does not the Church’s long history of intolerance, and of religious wars, mean that the old doctrine is simply not worth defending? Why? Because God himself abandoned those concepts long ago. It would demesne Him to ask men to accept them again. It has frequently been said that God makes all things new. So is there not considerable truth in the aphorism that theology is ignorance masquerading as knowledge? Or at least, out of date knowledge masquerading as relevant knowledge? And has the hierarchy of the C.of E. really changed since Trollope’s day? Is not Religion too serious a matter to be left to priests, just as War is too serious a matter to be left to soldiers?
Do not let anyone think that “second birth” solves the problems of life. Rather it enables a person to face the real problems of life, which previously convention would have decided for you; the problem of vocation, of when to subscribe to convention, and when to reject it, of threading your way through the labyrinth of life without straying into absurdity, of standing upright.