SPRING 1990 PAGE 13 SEA OF FAITH MAGAZINE A RADICAL PARSON'S PROGRESS by John Hodgkinson Born in 1927 I grew up within the church and with an assurance of God's presence and power. The step to ordination seemed a natural progression from all that I had known, and it was linked with a desire to serve, the prospect of adventure, and sheer wonder at the complexity and wonder of the universe.
With a background of science at school, and two years in the army, I went to Cambridge in 1948 to study Theology. Biblical criticism, doctrine, and church history, soon showed up the anomalies of a simple faith, and it became necessary to accept two sources of knowledge ; reason and revelation. This involved a slight adjustment in the mind, and I could then happily pursue both avenues. However, during my final year, Charles Raven, who had held us spellbound with his prayers and sermons at Great St. Mary's, paused during the midst of a lecture. He looked up from his notes and spoke from his heart. "Gentlemen, always face up to your doubts. If you don't, then you may well become great preachers and successful clergymen, but you will have lost your souls." I wondered what he was talking about, for I didn't have any doubts. Nevertheless, the words have been well remembered.
The next two years were spent at Lincoln Theological College where I entered into a rich tradition of prayer and worship. Our minds were increasingly focused on the parishes where we would soon put our theology to the test, but we also heard the distant rumblings of Bultmann and demythologisation. I remember struggling with the doctrine of Original Sin, and trying to reconcile the Fall with Evolution, but at another and more important level I was finding inspiration from the past ; St. Francis de Sale's "An Introduction to the Devout Life" and William Law's "A Serious Call".
Most of the parishes where we served as assistant curates were sharing in the excitement of the 'Parish and People' movement, with its rediscovery of the Church as the People of God, and the replacement of more formal acts of worship with the Parish Communion. To celebrate from the other side of the altar, and to ask the laity to join in the saying of the prayer of humble access, were daring changes to make in the late fifties. New churches were being built in the round as the barrier between nave and sanctuary diminished. Some of the churches had the appearance of a tent, for we were God's people travelling lightly through this world. We had discovered that the church is people and not a building.
The theological scene changed rapidly in the sixties.
John Robinson's "Honest to God", Harvey Cox's "The Secular City" and Paul Van Buren's "The Secular Meaning of the Gospel" were making it possible for me to acknowledge my growing doubts about the 'God out there'. I tried to understand what it meant for God to be in the depths of my being. Commentaries on St. Mark by Dennis Nineham and St. Matthew by John Fenton helped many to read the gospels with a new insight, and with the benefits of modern scholarship.
The suggestion that the resurrection of Jesus might have been an inner experience of the disciples rather than a literal rising from the grave first came to my ears in a lecture by Gerald Downing. This was all very unsettling, but it was only 1965. Fortunately, I discovered Teilhard de Chardin, and his mixture of new scientific terminology and mystical insight seemed to rise above the old distinctions between revelation and reason. The essays on "The Mass on the World" and "The Spiritual Power of Matter" will surely endure. The concept of spirit developing from inanimate matter and blossoming as man's self consciousness ; and the idea of God as the ultimate attractive power of love, drawing creation along against all odds to a growing spiritualisation ; were but two of Teilhard's thoughts that suggested the coming together of mankind's scientific and religious experience.
By 1966 the undermining of traditional belief was getting through to me, and I went to see Kenneth Riches, Bishop of Lincoln, who wisely recommended H.A.William's recently published "The True Wilderness". It was good to realise that I wasn't the only priest in the wilderness, and I found new strength for years that lay ahead.
In the seventies attention was focused on the question of Christ's divinity. The definition of Nicea, "God of God, Light of Light ... of one substance with the Father" seemed very remote from the Jesus the carpenter of Nazareth, and it was good to recover something of the humanity of Jesus. Grollenburg, Don Cupitt, "The Myth of God Incarnate", all helped, but for me none more than Jeremias in his "Introduction to New Testament Theology". John Fenton said that it SPRING 1990 PAGE 14 Over the years it had become possible to accept new definitions of the Holy Spirit, and of Christ, but God the Father still remained reasonably secure in the heavenly places, though not for long. Bonhoeffer had already pointed the way and Cupitt's "Taking Leave of God" was another disturbing push in that direction.
It became difficult to continue as a parish priest, to preach the orthodox faith and yet retain my integrity.
The temptation was to cut loose from the pain, to fall back on infallible revelation and to push the intellect into the background, or to leave the active ministry.
To battle on was to accept a very real cross. Deep down I knew that the Christian Faith worked, for the experience of suffering accepted, and death and resurrection, were at the heart of human experience.
The fellowship of love within the church, the celebration of birth, marriage, death and holy communion, all continued to be effectual means of grace.
Whilst on holiday in Provence I went to Mass at Grasse Cathedral with my wife and two Anglican friends. I'd never taken communion before at a Roman Catholic Mass, and on this occasion it was far from my thoughts. However, on impulse, I followed my friends, and the priest placed the wafer upon my tongue, "Corpus Christi". Instantly, I felt an intense sense of communion, not with the divine, but with the people of Grasse. I sensed a communion not just with the present generation, but with all their forebears from the beginning of time. I was part of their pain and their rejoicing, I sensed the passing of armies, I was part of their soil and the hard-won harvests.
Some years later I was introduced to the writings of PP- Carl Jung, and when I read about the collective unconscious I began to understand something of what I had experienced in Grasse.
Discovering Jung marked the beginning of a new chapter. I slowly moved to the understanding of religious images as projections of the unconscious mind, a necessary factor in reconciling the forces within, and the achievement of wholeness. But I still wanted to say, "Like as the hart desireth the water brooks, so longeth my soul after thee 0 god." How could I express this devotion if God was only a projection of my inner being ? I continued, with some trepidation, to follow Don Cupitt's rigorous and radical progress. I accepted "The Sea of Faith" with my conscious mind, but I still scuttled back to George Herbert for comfort, as I had done many times before.
One year later, in an isolated villa on an Aegean island I read "The Sea of Faith" a second time. Now, # ` SEA OF FAITH MAGAZINE was a book which he thought I would enjoy, but it revolutionised my understanding of the New Testament.
I was able to take the final step, and to accept God as the sum of my values, and to pursue a religion that didn't depend upon a supernatural being, or a revealed set of infallible truths.
As with all conversions, the sense of relief was enormous. I vividly recalled Plato's parable of the cave, in which men were chained to a world of shadows, and from which a man escaped into the light and saw reality for the first time. The escapee returned to pass the good news to those who were still bound to the darkness by their chains. Of course, they wouldn't, they couldn't believe him. As a schoolboy the illustration had confirmed my belief in the supernatural world, and now I realised that it also worked in reverse.
In the twilight world between being orthodox and radical, prayer, worship and the scriptures were full of problems. However, once I had passed through the pain barrier and relinquished the old, I found that it was given back to me with a new vitality. I can now read the scriptures, recite the creeds, and the words of the liturgy, and find them full of insight and nourishment. I no longer argue with the different world views that are expressed or implied, but I stand alongside them and accept them as part of my heritage. I pray with the psalmist in his pre-Copernican world, read the New Testament alongside the young churches as they feel their way forward within the Roman Empire. With the Book of Common Prayer I share in the excitement of the Reformation, and the richness of conservative and radical traditions that battle for supremacy. The spiritual experiences of the past feed into mine and help me to move towards an authentic expression within my own generation.
Likewise, I can now range over the spiritual experience of mankind apart from that of Christianity.
An inexhaustible treasure house has been opened up to me.
So where do I find myself now ? God, as father and mother, stands for the richness of the universe where I have been privileged to spend a few years. I respond with continual thankfulness for the gift of life, and I am reminded that men and women of all races and creeds are my brothers and sisters. The Christ represents our hope for the future, with the values that we see in Jesus taken up and fulfilled in each generation. In the Eucharist we join together in the shared memory of Jesus, and we are refreshed.
The pilgrimage continues. There is good company on the way, with whom I share good news and considerable love. I may never arrive anywhere, and it doesn't matter. I wouldn't have missed the journey for the world.
John Hodgkinson is a parish priest in the Lake District.