A.T. Robinson Sermon, 1964-06-03, On "Honest To God"

the it's it's the been been pope we have a business to say to introduce me a visual it because he's the reason you're here are many of you here have been his students and that many others have been is that there should be a reader is that even

before his more recent fame are you've been leading him with great appreciation as a great student of the new testament has so i don't think it's a necessity to introducing i wanna say something about the title of a famous book which are i seem to me to be a single a happy one and one of the reasons why i think it's suitable especially that he's come to jordan university these tigers of course are getting little out of an honest to god as you probably know has been applied to bubble up with the title for christ's sake i know and as he was that once served as a

great service that division has performed for us by this book has been the honesty of its approach land the way we've been sensitive to real questions about our being raised all the time in this academic community as in other circles academic intellectual concerns and so we're very grateful to him for the way he has rip off because because because you know this fact of a club that is the scene of one of the more traumatic experiences in my life and

i was taken with a very long time ago as a variant role young man and i thought to lunch in this club with john knox miller which was witnessed today i am and suddenly the penny dropped and i just finish my coffee that i was meant to addressing this and this contained miami byron all the all of the galaxy a medic and a lot of education and my heart that's dissent and then i was at the memphis to stand up and i'm speaking this group nine and really quite the family association that building that moment i got through that site to get through this they say you should start with the title which is one of things about the book which i rejected it is my wife suggests it's

such a positive some months before publication to try out the text on a few of my more trusted friends that we got on a thumbs up to the title on this oh yes very good michael and has been part of the secret that must say i do deploy the depreciation of the cut in syracuse city and since then at a baghdad who are most are indeed miss i gather use in the city and i can be heresy in the news today is starts off in his book the precarious mission with the question can a truly a contemporary person be a christian and he says there are two answers to this law and why of course course not and it says that neither of these were

due that he is firmly convinced that the onset is indeed yes but certainly not of course and that if you like i think is the isu run which raises almost de gaulle debate has sent i believe fashion and then that a modern secular man of the mid twentieth century it can be a christian but not if the presentation of the faith is tied to marinate all the traditional thought forms with which of the two it has been associated and i've tried in honesty gotten even more in my little essay at the end of the almost got better to try and say it was as i see as we have to detach the teaching of the gospel

from if it is to have a chance of getting through to an age which has turned its back i think decisively on what i call a super nationalist view of the world on how much a logical picture of the universe on a great deal of metaphysics and a great deal all these religious worldview and go on preaching it in the old times is mandated to invite obsolescence well i would like to say again i am constantly having to repeat that i would not so those anything wrong as so much weight and it all this language with any of these images with any and all these projections and for those for whom they are still viable and band aid they perform and perfectly adequate way of making the gospel real and indeed behalf of

myself that are perfectly usable be so concerned that i've had is with those for whom progressively let are becoming more of a hindrance than a help and clearly the response to this pope has shown that these mass pitfall more numerous an idea to write a previously thought and then second layer i would want to stress again nurse i named him all this all preaching a new gospel r in fact one of the ironies of it is that most of the things i believe most strongly were presuppose in the book rather than express i was writing as i mentioned to a public who if they hadn't read other things i had written and read minds and would know generous offer position

which i well and they wouldn't recognize that i was first and foremost a biblical theologian and still am an indian stuck my neck out and is on the field and find this all a hazardous the occupation is i'm now mentors of stood up against tilikum the rest of the audio unequal towns and this isn't my field of expertise at all and the worm really assumed that anything that isn't within these hundred and twenty pages i cannot believe that as my health assumption throughout life was that basically want to take the truth of the biblical gospel for granted and was simply occupy a means in which it could be communicated to bed and then thirdly there it's perhaps less stood to stress again because i'm often accused of despondent i saw men are interested in trying to sell the gospel at any

price in any form that it will be palatable to vote ma'am i'm not asking what jones will swallow rather as william temple said when accused of the same thing i'm james asking what that is to eat ah and because i'm jens because i am very much as we all are in this room but modern secular twentieth century man conditioned by upbringing article on the universe which we have this to be a father raises a tremendous amount of all problems are in fact with integrity you can be a christian in the modern world and basically the concern of my book was i suppose simply to be honest with myself to try and catch up during a period when i have to my back for three months with a slipped disk

through oscar just in what form did that i could read it on this to put the conventions which have not changed and it gave me the charms all the lying to a good many things to flip to the surface which had been simmering underneath and i think the extraordinary effects of all all the publication which i never imagine any more instantly that my publishers then that would go outside the usual small circle of taking each other's washington these subjects the effect i think is very largely due to the fact that precisely the same thing it evidently had been happening on the surface of a great many other people and it was because fundamentally didn't say anything

radically new law because it corresponded with naughton on the inarticulate dobson questionings and hesitations and frustrations and that someone had brought these to the surface and have articulated and the fact that it was a probably helped a great deal because this are many of those people could say well if he says it's all right then i probably quite such an outside as i thought and i think that it removed and releases a great deal of basically an acknowledged guilt nato why it sort of broke or barnes and the way it did still remains some made a mystery and indeed a matter before which i just sort of feel like an enemy in a humble because sutton it was an know part of my

intention and having kids taught me quite a lot about the mystery off communication because we all are obsessed in this modern world with a problem of communication with the techniques of getting through getting across getting over and that we think that fundamentally it is a question of sort of just getting right gimmick all otherwise and something will happen well this is certainly a taught me that its primary automatic technique of toll because this didn't set out to be a popular book and i must sadly manson that would be otis who i find struggling with it as that introduction to theology and it is quite astonishing to me were people and they seem to have got it even though clearly a great many of the words most are gone right over the head

because i think that the secret of this is not that epiphany lip frozen spoke people's language but that he did it the darn speak to the conditions that the loss of a sympathetic compassion with feelings the mood the sense or the way i mention as one would need to explain say the fantastic influence of an artist in our generation like picasso with sudden lead singer of a few concessions to lucidity it didn't speak to the popular language in a superficial sense of toll it obviously has been a man who went by intentional or just buy general sympathy and ron paul has been so close to me mood and the spirit all his generation of people have recognized in his painting something that speaks to the much more direct and much more closely than the old masters

and this book seems to have corresponded to what has gone on under the surface it's evident here touched and know which has gone pretty deep and this i think explains it will not describe the troop rock the kind of reaction that has ensued because whatever else may happen it hasn't just so touched people as were the top of their heads something pretty elemental something pretty darn has been hit to which they responded on stimulus or in pain and this appears to have happened almost all over the world and in many different types of people it doesn't have been using superficial in this education and suddenly it i didn't think it wouldn't gone in the way that it has if it'd just been frost

as it were blown up by a blizzard and the press i've been involved in in the defenses of other books which had been blown up into such nine days one that and i know very well the difference this doesn't feel the same thing at all and indeed this whole response has convinced me that whatever trouble we may have over the word god has made either toll that this would moscow respond to some reality which has created deep for most people all they wouldn't have been so hit and wouldn't have felt it can send them and who mattered for him to wear hooded obviously hands i think it has triggered off as i said something which was written waiting there to be released and in a sense it has been one of those books which is had the good fortune is it would come upon its power that is a

matter that amount of prowess i think and indeed in a manager at the time it's still difficult to put it in its context of a hero in england and their age i couldn't borrow less mom has swollen of abortions which it has a cause but it has all been seen as part of a much more widespread firm and that's what i wrote on my back shop on in my room without reference to anyone but in the time between my finishing the manuscript and its publication shortly afterwards a great many other things break surface things for instance like soundings on the us affected cambridge objections to christian believe also from cambridge he says god is no more and a lot more morbid fear all things in articles in

newspapers which all this is show that there was a considerable sum of ferment of bubbling up all around which i can testify were completely unorganized source of a sudden their connection and collusion indeed i was not a member of the signings group at cambridge there cause they were all friends of mine i let the camera just about the time it was being organized and i suspect i'll never checked this that i didn't receive an invitation to join had not made it because it was known that i was shot leaving but also because i was regarded as much to much of this crowd that because the election for any such radical group the fact remains that sense people have descended wants always in some sense belongs together and in the document think i follow this firm and won his cambridge theology is a cold i think the so

respectable hemisphere nations are embarrassed that as an adult oxford was a lot of movement and he has gap and the other is a circle a phenomenon called softbank religion which is meant to bear ferment it investors of solitude which have a long and with both of these brushes i'm todd endo needless to say the press nobody else has tended to lump things together and see connections which i'm really that nevertheless this i think is a reality that over the last eighteen months i would've thought that that is a gender a new permanent at work in the church bomb which indeed some people sort of somewhat proudly declare i would have thought are suggesting adds up to lots of beginnings of something like a new reformation yeah i had and i'd

just be lecturing in this country under the title a new reformation with a very big question mark against it ah but it is sufficient exciting to feel if something might break which is positive consideration i think from two years ago the basic response has in canada i think as i suggested earlier be and juan galt relief and release and indeed i would agree with a prism of criticism in the by ralph moulton of the ana community and then he said in the journal the chronicle that crimea the response has been a negative one people have not suddenly said now at last i know what the christian faith means rob lowe they have said not last time a good many things which it need not me and this has been quite a liberating experience and rob portman

as understand that this was precisely the reaction first of preaching of jesus that was what he didn't believe intel men they need to do which read a study interest and also cost of the opposition and the same was true with polo all same is true with martin luther king at the ninety five theses on the church door creaking that contained no reference to justification by faith they were simply an attack on indulgences but the breaking of the negative a lot of the positive to shine through and i think the same very much as being true of the power and influence of man i bombed have on our generation it isn't because he's preached a negative gospel of religion as christy hammett and it is because people see in that it may indeed be possible for mulch man who is basically non religious may be still to be a christian and i

think that this whole reaction could be summed up not by saying people now feel well now i need to believe but now perhaps i can believe that if it meant accepting all that other stuff as well as part of a package deal and then that this would not be possible that if in fact this can shine through and come with power and be liberated from aceh many of the phone calls in which previously that it be delivered to us then looks like being sung possibility of release and i think that it has served to release a catch what it's released across is nobody's business and i have been welcomed by every korean second son has now died last all that they never taught but i

imagine this is probably a common fight i think that law as i talk run the place and because i talk to students and young people the kind of the impression i get is summed up in a comment that was made to me by agnostic president of the union of one of the modern secular universes in england when he said that until then he'd always imagined that theology air was a debate between a close circle of mandarin was discussing with in the agreed terms of the system and he felt that he had absolutely no place in this circle or debate atoll suddenly to read ice in fact that it might actually be an open ended search for the truth

which might conceive of it says something to him and the possibility of faith or something he had to take seriously one small have been opened up as a viable option and i think the people who have in fact responded whether they've agreed on the ambient people who various groups are really about the gender renee often those who have reacted with panic all opposition that's ten days on idol wing who don't want the ends opened up either because they got a girl tied up to logic and prefer not to have their presuppositions a stand on their answers questions and all almost exactly the same reaction not fun for muscle professional humanists at the other end who think

they know what they had dismissed and again don't want to have the question reopened so awkward pause that always comes of these things give a

president a union seminary was to say something written something so fast race they kind of questions in his mind it's a mosque and i think about the important question is how you really preserve some sense of the transcendence in terms of judgment that also in terms freedom of gotten that freedom a man you you'd have identified a guy with the death of a man in such fashionistas threaten and sevens in these sense well i mean this is a refined theological question probably is almost every question i'm asked these days is so fundamental which is in itself a sign of grace and that it would take an enormous amount and onset probably unify caught

i would like to say the fundamental and my concern in this book as i did say and i think it's got a lead someone is not in any sense to deny transcendent the precise is trying to find a different model through which it could be given an expression for on education not thinking because they have many of the traditional models of transcendence i think just making piggy i'm real formal man and if people don't like the death of symbolism well i'm not committed to if it and then there was like a little concerned i may not succeeded in safeguarding this senator specter has all along and i suggested out of being true cheyenne give expression to the fundamental biblical conviction of god as are additive which

is both ultimate an intimate and the sole witness of the profits of the sofa lawns are all in fact they say bostian theology which emphasizes on they're much in my blood and while i believe i'm dumb i don't want anything i said to suggest nine times draws the nation now i may not in fact it succeeded in reducing or an adequate alternative model and i would be that degree this maybe so and i think that anyone really honest to god taken by itself among could easily census of pantheistic so strengthened throat and that's what an eyewitness confidence and freedom so there is a bit of a legend i wouldn't want to do that at all naughty to remove the element of judgment which he's formed a large part of my thinking on that

the president has been he's been he's been it's b this bill well

no i personally experienced a little of the reaction to braithwaite partly because at that time the narrator and indeed still now i'm not prime time philosopher i was in the discussion a great deal obviously line rated it struck most people outside the fairly narrow the linguistic philosophy i think as someone area id i don't think it's a lot of work clothes in a sense with their muscle flesh and god made people feel this was a living and a vital thing i think they performed a useful stripping dimes of a function i wouldn't buy any means go away with him because i think that in fact even a self taught on what i would feel it was an essential element in the ho

response all faith that it is a response that it is a response to something which is an object a reality which is meeting you and i mean you hit me i thou relationship and psalm and i wanted to see this the belief as describing not met in my reaction to this but the thing which is hitting them from which i cannot escape and there's this terrible objectivity i think about the biblical faith which i don't think comes through in the sort of analysis which braithwaite gives but i think basically on his id bracelets was a an academic philosophical analysis which spoke to be blue in that field but i don't think it really has been very far outside that you will on

their new practice of reasons and if they are as they are at the wellhead and as i read this from the fog how it's attacked a cloven foot to the professional and has no because i absolutely agree that if one is expanding either of these two for their own sake or might have to draw attention to the fact that an amendment that are

moving in different directions i was rapt silence group the us and is using them oil and also came to happen all of those bits although it would seem to me to speak to myself and i think that in fact there is an aspect of all of it and those to embolden iran which represent different approaches to the same subject now there may in fact not moving on power lines toll may not meet all i can say is that and partly i think that's a definition because clearly they are using what religion that a different way and that widening that by any means is different as perhaps they would appear to be all i can say is that both of these speaks to me and to different aspects of a maybe a mosque of the friendly and i think that i mean a great many other people must be too because it's quite

obvious that as i talk with non professional at that elements in ordinary people to whom these things paul speaking and and very much ring bells and i feel as though these things can be true at the same time that this may be for the professional eye the whole and in the idea that if one pressed through maybe this is a position which one cannot find their solar maintain equilibrium i mean men i buy most of the people who have commented on honest go ah i don't want to push on and won every direction on a jamaican direction as the minute one other direction not find them as they were like on evidence like that what i can say is this but some speak to me in particular the tentative the sun wins this i think it is that aspect of tick that read it its mayor and i think that's an it's

an aspect which is a much underrated in some of the critiques of to the clinic system because it's well i just treating cinemas climates without ever taking account of the empty reconcile and i think in some ways i did a walrus and then some of the best and i do that i would have thought this might be evened out of the heart of the man and some of things in the system and i certainly don't feel myself committee to his whole philosophy in oncology they on the point at which added may the health law it any of ramadan says this question i thought this it was splendid adele for the other day when i was having a theological discussion and they are as stuart and on the borders anyway and every a dutch men's of their legend and the nato response that has been quite fantastic bread and he commended response the way in which is that right across old alliances i'm troy their government has been anywhere and that

we had exactly this question from one of the professional theologians top got a medical professors urges don't understand this week and spend our time so they're asking whether what we said is exactly true ah ah exec without a lot of ex at nineteen five and someone else in a nineteen fifty nine saw we just take things in any kind of a pause and put them together and this is the way science advances and i think that the and a need for a narrative that atoll and not only babies and that is common issue this is the president's ear year race is an operation the ground being very honest liar it has a circulation or

worse i think that it's part aggressor language obviously and proud one is using so i'm bob russell the state language and i have no doubt have got to get away from war to discredit the kind of images which focus this for the imagination for and prayers in the bible and the liturgy i simply want to be able to be what you'll be able to use them rowden stumbled on the president obama says all this language about father which is apt as sam fulfill a hose and a christian understanding of god in christ that this is the reality the relationship that we are trying to describe a simple joy experience of life or this language is

pointing to symbolic all a reality which is fundamentally out of operational reality and interpersonal rivers reality and that in our third person will language trying to describe it trying to talk about it and then we all inevitable a committed to certain sorts of projections and we say well this person in our relationship as well must be given expression an image in the idea of god as a person homes baby and so now it seems to me that takes a critique of this is bad and that infects all that we can speak about is fundamentally it's essential relationship the rest of the language which reduced to theology eyes about it is

second grade and must be subjected to the primer evidence of the relationship itself and that i think that a great deal of the circus own language about god as a being one of the like in fact it has so far and helping to initially experienced reality has in fact for so many people dead made to promote incredible arm and arm actually been a hindrance to their sharing and to that extent i think fairly effective justified and say well this sort of racial language in fact does not describe a being a describe something which is much better defined in terms of a ground a part of being itself but that doesn't

mean to say that i pray now to that thing do something else the language of pride remains i think walk you symbolize in terms of these various biblical liturgical concepts to prescribe the interpersonal relationship but that if you ask well i was for the sake of trying to forty to metaphysical all philosophical terms what does it what is at the end of that relationship then i would prefer to mix languages some of the more traditional one but i think that it isn't that i have not started prayed to invest more as a line of previous as franco person oriented these different levels of language and that's fundamentally what the christians and send to keep it to their hearts of his whole life and relationship is this rather jesus spoke of in terms of apple farmer

mission job he'd all this day no doubt that did this in the traditional super naturalistic so much a logical framework as a person who is up there somewhere i am that we made inglis are differently about the reality remains the same even though the projection men fans defoe of different ages i had an active ingredient will endure in the second reading of the gospel which five prophecy you preface a lot more radical than expected and that in writing a review of this i made a point on it but whereas you were attempting to find ways in which we might think

about and speak up deity assuming that this law was an attempt to do away with all the cotton irritate references altogether and that in fact it's really quite a different sort of book with you cousin he's right and i lied and said he's wrong and i don't think i want on says gerson toll quit i'm rather surprised by how critical you all rove and perhaps this is where the profit is that nominees and country i feel i want to get the winnings listen to this bloke and take it really seriously i did suggest in my essay and honest to god to base a few grimaces and i went on to make up that i stuck my neck out on this quiz

this was simpler before been published in a toll on i haven't had anyone else's reaction and i think by large i would so want stand by their schools now he's so convinced that it can't just be dismissed as a basis of chris's anti humanism i think that if one is can find them maybe takes this linguistic authenticity of what it is and have to do once they are legit weekend the sort of terms of reference which he and then things as possible today then i think that something like this is how it comes out and i don't know what reddit i gather he's moved good deal further since then to the left and the eyewitnesses they wanted to go with him but i thought it was a process of them do justice to the gospel with in

this they're respected and i certainly wouldn't want to dismiss it as being an invalid attempt in fact i would have thought that i liked the debate very different developments in different directions out of those whoa moments and this is one note a left wing development which i didn't buy tvs want to seasonal cut off before it has a chance of justifying itself i want so say we'll have to see whether this idea of god or not anti immigration

our mistakes now i would think it's very much the same well in fact they were taking it this way is that a matter of a response on the ethics august was most interesting meaning because normally in england the press never takes notice all the judgment unless he speaks out about politics or sex ii and the sizzling when companies complained of no one reported what he said about god at all whereas the extraordinary thing about the reaction to this was that the ethics jenkins almost completely ignored for three months and be the honest to god debate is evidence of this album and it wasn't and all model out with a perfume or scandal which i was held responsible a an enormous amount of that and read a whole

atmosphere has been set was overcharged may have a heated and moderated that until recently it's been very difficult to say just where was going to come out of this i would have thought that the long term effect was once not so much liberation as i think people who wanted to be integrated <unk> has taken it themselves endlessly oh but of a feeling that maybe it was on sale possible a responsible as well as being liberated and i would have dinner at this might effect i have as hugh moment of seeing it tried to follow those up in little booklet called christian morals and day which was a tense of god my right flank that i've since been exposing my left want in this country a little more dangerous there which at the moment being and i wouldn't say it was really a responsible thing to do because the whole atmosphere is so still so mixed

up that your body taken wrong whenever you say and i saw that and i do this but some of you have appointments and i know that the bishop and the better or this tv taping can you tell us when this program is going to be a what is on tap on sunday i mean eleven is for the church wall street debut once you more about cbs a cbs or so thank you overcoming a bank's most especially wanted a measure giving us the ta da it's been the pittsburgh