Compiled in 2003 while a Cathedral Organist in Limerick and faced with public criticism for my belief in a progressive form of Christianity
I am sometimes asked how I reconcile my views on theology with my post as a very
traditional Cathedral Organist. Surely there is a degree of hypocrisy. For my reply I give below a letter I sent
to a person who wished not to engage in any discussion either in the press or on the web. This followed my
intervention, in the Irish press, in a debate about progressive Christianity. I respect that and have removed
all personal references.
"I am quite happy to be, as you say, ‘interested mainly in spirituality’.
That, after all, is my function here in St. Mary’s Cathedral and, indeed, spirituality is the basis of any
authentic religion. I have never known creeds to convert anyone! However I must stress that I am a baptised
and confirmed member of the Church of England, which perhaps enjoys a more open stance than the Church of
Ireland on many issues including such as the interpretation of the creeds and the applicability of the 39
articles. Suffice it to say for the moment that the C of E has generated such bishops as Robinson of
Woolwich with his ‘Honest to God’ approach of the God within, and Jenkins of Durham with his denial of the
Virgin birth and a physical resurrection, not to mention a Doctrinal Commission of the late 90s which
concluded that Hell does not exist. Happily the 2 churches remain in full communion and long may it
continue.
If we could start with our point of agreement it is that we are all on a spiritual
journey of faith. That is the substance of my whole ethos. This means that I am more than happy to accept
the spiritual journey of others as valid provided they are open to change and the questioning of others.
Equally I accept as totally valid the many expressions of the traditional faith handed down. In fact I have
spent much time here in Limerick enhancing them. Thanks to my initiatives I have originated candlelit
Advent, Christmas and Epiphany Carol Services, and challenged successive bishops to produce services of
Readings and Music for Lent and 3 hour devotion services for Good Friday. More to the point I have
reintroduced children into the Cathedral Choir, many from outside the C of I who have subsequently become
confirmed in the C of I, and proceeded to become staunch members of other communities on their departure.
Pupils I have taught (as Head of RE of a local school) have gone or are intending to go on to become priests
in the C of I.
Perhaps you misunderstand my approach. I believe in an evolutionary concept of
theology which draws on the theology of God’s revealed creation in all its forms as well as that of man.
(Indeed, is there any difference?) Evolution indicates progress while keeping the best of the past and
respecting what the past has achieved. That I practise. One example might indicate my approach. We now
celebrate Christmas in a way undreamed of before my arrival. I and the Choir had an intensely busy Christmas
with carols for the children’s and geriatric units in the local hospital, a Cathedral 9 Lessons and Carols
for the City, and singing in the local RC Church’s Carol event. On Christmas Eve alone we made 2 broadcasts
for RTE Lyric FM before proceeding to enhance the midnight liturgy with a full choral eucharist. We then
returned on Christmas Day to do it all again. More to the point, we have an unwritten rule that no one will
disabuse our probationers about Santa Claus. Consequently, when most children are playing with their toys on
Christmas day, ours are singing their hearts out to the glory of God, and telling us all what Santa brought,
while I, in my heart, celebrated the advent of all truly spiritual beings on earth.
Do you see
the inference? My concern is to start people on a spiritual journey, to expose them to its demands,
disciplines, and the joy and freedom which this can bring, but at a level they can both understand and
achieve. As you infer, the journey is undeniable. The Church consistently fails to recognise the limited
intellectual and spiritual capabilities of young people, capabilities which can be understood only by an
appreciation of the physical development of their brains. One cannot expect a child to grasp the concept of
spirituality, nor a confirmation candidate to grasp the theory of the Trinity. In fact my dismal view of
Confirmation is based on many years of questioning confirmation candidates on what they have learnt and what
they expect from Confirmation. It ranges from a comprehensive list of expected gifts, including a sheep (!),
to total confusion and disappointment when nothing happened at the laying on of hands. The socio-economic
aspect of this so-called gift of the Holy Spirit will be the focus of ‘Thought for the Month’ in my web site
at Pentecost.
As a result, even though I have severe reservations with a Virgin Birth in
Bethlehem on 25 December 2003 years ago nevertheless my sense of evolutionary theology means that I have no
hesitation in encouraging celebration of the birth as part of a spiritual journey. Jesus, after all, was
born sometime! Each step of the spiritual journey is valid at that time for the person undertaking it and
must be respected, but only so long as it remains an open and never-ending journey which respects the open
humanity of others. There is no end to the spiritual journey in this life.
Equally theology is
the servant of the spiritual journey and there can be no end to the understanding or definition of it.
Humanity will never be so advanced that it can encapsulate God in words. It can produce only models relevant
to the time in which the words were formulated.
So, where do we differ? Probably in that last
statement. My problem is the interpretation of, to use your phrase, the ‘faith once for all given to the
saints’ . That faith must originate with Jesus and must encompass the 2 great commandments (to love God and
your fellow human being). Indeed why should it go further? Should it include the creeds - the Nicene Creed,
or that of the Apostles or Athenasius? In this day and age I have to conclude ‘no’, not in their present
structure.
The faith handed down to the Fathers, if one regards this as through the creeds, is in
many ways a myth, a symbol of persecution and enforced compliance. Where does one start or stop, I wonder,
in defining its ‘one holy catholic and apostolic church’? Are we speaking of Patrick’s Celtic Christianity
destroyed by the Synod of Whitby and subsequently the Normans; or the faith of original quaint signatories
such as the Armenian and the Syrian Churches both still in existence; or the Orthodox or Roman Catholic
churches and which is superior following the Great Schism; or the redefining moment of the Reformation and
the 39 Articles for the emerging Anglican Church? They all may claim to be Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. The
one thing they cannot claim to be is ‘one’. How valid then remains the creed when such factions predominate?
Again, how does one view the drop of the ‘filioque’ clause in the recent installation of the Archbishop of
Canterbury? Further, if we look at the effect of implementation of the Nicene Creed on the Christianity of
the 4th century what do we find - bloodshed with thousands of Christians who could not accept the creed
called heretic and killed for their belief. Even David Edwards, in his book ‘The Futures of Christianity’
regards this divisive impact as shameful. In this, I wonder, where was Jesus’ commandment to love God and to
love your fellow human being? Was not the intellect dominating the spiritual, the seeds of death in any
religion!
The problem in the Apostles Creed with its belief in descent into Hell is well
documented in the Church of England’s Doctrinal Commission of the late 90s . Equally the problems in the
creeds surrounding a Virgin Birth and physical Resurrection are well documented. On this latter problem few
theologians mention Paul’s experience which was purely a spiritual experience of the resurrection yet
accepted as valid by the Apostles. Would they have done so if theirs was otherwise, especially in view of
the frequent disputes with Paul?
There remain three further points concerning the faith handed
down. The first concerns the totality of this message. If we are to regard the faith of the New Testament as
valid then it is time we accepted fully Paul’s attitudes as expressed in his Epistles or we have to regard
him as a flawed human being, a real Pharisee in sheep’s clothing, the kind Jesus did not appreciate! We
cannot pick and choose. I speak of his misogyny, his approval of slavery (Philemon), and his acceptance of
the Divine Right of Emperors to rule no matter what their beliefs. Paul believed that it was all part of
God’s plan. Such attitudes, as I am sure you are aware, are inherent in the establishment of creedal belief
under Constantine. One cannot accept the words of the creeds without accepting the inbuilt social structure
which gave them birth. Constantine was more concerned to unite his newly conquered Empire with a religious
moral glue while establishing his Divine Right to rule than he was to establish an independent universal and
spiritual religion. Hence the controversial definition of Jesus and ‘homoousius’, which was not a construct
of the bishops but of Constantine's Greek (and pagan) secretary. What mattered to him was universal
conformity to an accepted norm, i.e. dominance of the intellect. Let us not forget that what mattered to
Jesus was the rebirth of the individual in the here and now, i.e. dominance of the spiritual.
The
second point relates to the effects of modern research in the whole field of God’s creation. Perhaps you
have read Julian James’ book ‘The Origins of Consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind’. This is
a seminal work which has gained positive reviews for enhancing our understanding of the changes in the
spiritual minds of writers in the Middle East up to the time of Jesus. It is all to do with the
understanding of the brain and how it has developed over the last 5,000 years thanks to the effects of cross
cultural exposure, numeracy, writing and the environmental changes which gave rise to the ability to produce
more population through the advent of farming. As a result, for example, we can now accept that Abraham was
a classic schizophrenic in his treatment of his son Isaac, and that Moses was the last of the right brain
activists at a time when left brain logical and time-orientated activities drove the concept of God from
every day environment into remote mountains and burning bushes.
Equally, consciousness studies
indicate a need to redefine what it is to be human and what divine. Perhaps the Hebrew mind was correct in
defining us all as Sons of God. Cosmology indicates the probability of other civilisations in the Universe
far more advanced than we, while Quantum and Chaos theory coupled with evolution indicate the probability
that nothing in this universe is cast in stone and that God is also subject to the forces which he created,
i.e. that God is not in total command of evolution but is interacting with it as it develops yet available
to all who seek to make sense of order out of chaos, be they Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu etc.
This has resonances with the first chapter of Genesis where humanity is created in the image of God, i.e. to
help hold back the forces of Chaos out of which creation was evolved. It speaks of partnership, which, after
all, is the very stuff on which the Universe is built.
Such modern studies in consciousness are
taking place in many universities and similar foundations world wide. Even more so do we need to consider
the effect of modern social studies on the Bible. Who now, for example, would countenance the invasion and
subjugation of another state in the name of their God? What Joshua and the Israelites did in the name of
Jahweh was wrong, yet when I studied Theology at Birmingham this was never regarded as an issue which might
affect one’s view of their God. Thus was born the narrow minded exclusivity of faith which has dogged
Judaism and Christianity ever since. We were too concerned with the myth of the emergence of one universal
moral God which we imposed on the Hebrew Bible. Excluding the teaching and healing ministry of Jesus the
Bible remains a story of fractured progress. We see this myth re-enacted every week with sanitised portions
of the psalms - carefully chosen, and readings which often exclude the underlying theological message or
historic circumstances of origin. We gloss over Abraham with his wives, concubines and slaves and his
concept of one god among many; we ignore David the terrorist who ran protection rackets in his youth yet was
elevated to Kingship purely because of his success in this field.
All of this brings me to the
third and final point of the need to re-evaluate, the nature of Reformation. The original Reformation took
place at a time when humanity, thanks to the advent of the printing press, was exposed to the excesses of
the static expression of the Roman Catholic Church and the possibilities posed by alternative and modern
thinking of that time. The Reformation was a two stage process. The first was the enhanced ability to
transmit information through such new inventions as the printing press. Yet to have any impact this was
dependent on the second stage, the development of new ideas. The Old Order was complacent, even corrupt,
unable to comprehend the need to develop the spirituality of the individual. Acceptance of an historic
‘divinely ordained’ formula, the so called faith handed down to the Fathers, was the touchstone of Faith
however this was to be determined by the essential power of Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church. The
second stage was the development of an open faith in which all could find a place for the expression of
their Christianity by opening up the historical books and liturgies in languages which they could understand
and take part. The evolutionary rise of individual responsibility and expectation was given voice in that
Reformation.
Have we not reached a similar position now? Why should ‘Reformation’ be viewed in
the singular? Since the last Reformation the world has moved forwards and, indeed, the United Nations has
eclipsed the Christian Church in its statements on human individual and social rights and the equality of
the sexes. It is an interesting point whether the Church of Ireland has breached the ‘faith handed down’ by
its ordination of women. Paul would never have approved. Yet it is a welcome step forward, but only one of
many which the Church needs to make not so much to survive but to obey God’s evolutionary plan for the
Universe.
Further, there are nascent courses developing in universities around the world which
seek to combine the spiritual disciplines and experience of all religions in determining what it is to be a
human and spiritual entity in the 21st century. Even here in Limerick the University offers a cross cultural
and spiritual course. As at the time of the Reformation these organisations are increasingly tired of the
old dogma of the supremacy of the Creeds and the limited view of faith of former times. I would commend you
to the Scientific and Medical Network and the Templeton Foundation for further exploration of what
spirituality/religion/science can now contribute.
More to the point is God’s inbuilt quality of
evolution which God built into the universe. The Bible is a limited document, limited in its concept of God
and humanity and in its definitions of both God and Humanity. If we limit ourselves to the faith handed down
we are in effect saying that God has nothing more or new to say to a humanity which he endowed with
evolution and the spirit to search and to develop. This I cannot accept. If we adhere strictly to the faith
handed down then we have to accept the entire package as a once for all donation to Christianity, which
includes male superiority, slavery, the divine right of Kings, the settlement of heresy by torture and
death, rule by strict conformity, the dominance of the intellect over the spiritual, and the outmoded
influence of Greek philosophy. These I cannot accept.
Nowhere do the creeds enjoin believers to
live in love and harmony through spiritual development. This I cannot accept.
What I can accept
is Jesus’ 2 great commandments and the spiritual journey. All else must be secondary, even my love of
liturgy, music and theology.