“The church leadership should get beneath the issues of form and ritual, both traditional and modern, and communicate the essence of God’s Word in ways younger people can understand.”
Tony Craig, ‘Letters to the Editor’, The Times
The start of Advent, heralding the beginning of the Christian year, is as good a time as any to explore the case for logical Christianity. It was Richard Hooker (1554-1600) who first spoke of the three-legged stool of scripture, tradition and reason as forming the basis for Anglican understanding: but over recent decades, particularly since the introduction of the welfare state, the ‘tradition’ leg has assumed a disproportionately large size in contrast to the ‘reason’ leg, which has shrunk in public perception.
A couple of weeks ago, the Church Times reported ‘Public does not think much of CofE’; and there is indeed major concern in the Church about the benign indifference to which it referred. In a world where people are brought up to ask ‘why?’ at every opportunity, it's also important to ask this question of faith. A new film, ‘The Most Reluctant Convert’, is the story of how author C S Lewis tackled these questions.
So in this commentary we’ll take an outline look at four aspects of logical Christianity – creation, morality, community, and spiritual existence - in the hope of fostering further thought over the Christmas period ahead.
A few years ago, I prepared the podcast ‘Love in Creation’, and have since posted it onto YouTube. For those who've been watching the BBC’s ‘Universe’ programme with Brian Cox, you might imagine that everything started with the Big Bang and the stars. But ‘Love in Creation’ looks at the three great laws of nature which make the whole process of evolution possible: gravity, light and time: where did they come from?
There’s also an additional law of nature to explain, photosynthesis, without which life could not exist at all: since all the hydrocarbons on which our existence depends rely on this extraordinary process.
Most Christians accept evolution; but it had to start somewhere. So, the first logical conclusion is that the conscious creator, which we call God, crafted these laws of nature in the image of unconditional love for the creation process.
And, as creation by evolution is a continuing process (St. Paul refers to creation groaning in his letter to Romans 8:22), it's logical also to see the struggle of morality at a cosmic level: why else should millions of people suffer in natural events which have nothing to do with human causation? This issue is addressed in a second podcast, ‘Love at the Cutting Edge’. If you believe, as Christians do, that God is perfectly good, then the 7-day creationist idea that it was completed with all this suffering included simply doesn't hang together.
So, if you're prepared to accept the above thread of logic, it's entirely reasonable to conclude that the conscious creator who is God should choose to visit this planet in human form: not only to experience the impact of creation, but also to show us the nature of God, how to relate to one another, and in order to provide a bridge between the continuing creation of the physical world, with all its suffering, and the divine. It's that bridge which Christians refer to as ‘redemption’, and it comes to a climax each year in the story of Easter.
So Jesus walked this earth - it's a historical fact - and told us how:
- We should love our neighbours as ourselves (the second great commandment);
- Those neighbours are the people who we would be least likely to regard as our neighbours (the story of the Good Samaritan); and
- It is through caring for those most in need that we carry out the first great commandment, i.e. to love God (‘whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me (Matthew 25:40)).
The logical conclusion of this is that community action is where the Christian faith begins its journey and is most evident: which explains why, when the welfare state took over from the Church after the Second World War, people lost sight of the Church’s relevance in their lives.
Finally, we should ask ourselves about our own existence as individuals. Do we really just walk on this earth for 100 years or so, and then end up six feet under? Is there a spiritual existence? That seems to be accepted by huge numbers of people, notwithstanding their indifference towards the Church. If there is, it has to be relevant to our life on earth: otherwise it would be meaningless. If in the spiritual state we are able to recognise who we are/were, our memory must be in our soul, with our brains providing a continual modem-like information flow. I've written this up in a piece called ‘Love and the Individual’, and in due course it will probably also join the podcast library.
So, if you can spare time away from wrapping and unwrapping presents, and preparing and consuming masses of meals over the next few weeks, please think deeply about what logical Christianity means for you; and how it might change your outlook on life.
Gavin Oldham OBE
Share Radio
