As described earlier, ever since I was a very young child, sitting in church for hours, not just on Sundays but at other times as well, I have often thought that there is something wrong with the traditional interpretation of the Biblical narrative. It has been badly skewed by an overemphasis upon sin and misunderstandings of “salvation.” My deepest intuition from earliest days, since then corroborated by years of study and reflection, is that we, each of us, come from divinity and are destined to return to God again. Certainly this is by no means a unique or original experience or idea. The fact that it has always felt so deeply a part of oneself is, I believe, a testimony to its belonging to a very wide base indeed. In fact, it belongs to what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious of humanity. It is really the basic monomyth or underlying story that lies at the core of every one of the major religions today. It is often obscured by rituals and almost buried by dogmas, but it is there all the same. It needs to be rediscovered and reaffirmed for the common good. Here are some Biblical pointers that for me are foundational to such a view.
The Genesis mythos of the creation of Adam and Eve makes it abundantly clear that we are “made in the image of God”—the Imago Dei. The text says further that God breathed into Adam and “he became a living soul.” The words in Hebrew and Greek for “spirit” are virtually the same, and both words also mean wind or breath. Accordingly, we are made in the likeness of God and it is God’s breath or life force that forms our essence or being. There is a profound and spiritually rich wisdom in that.
But there is more. Psalm 82:6, in the heart of the Hebrew Bible and thus at the centre of both Jewish and Christian worship, states quite boldly: “Have I not said you are gods and children of the Most High?” Those being addressed are the people of Israel, but also through them the whole of humanity. It is a very significant assertion of who we are.
When we come to the Gospels, there is a passage in John’s account that one seldom if ever hears mentioned. While arguing with the officials of Judaism over allegations that he was making himself out to be the Son of God—which they said was “blas-phemy”—Jesus is given this response: “Is it not written in your law ‘I said you are gods’?” He goes on to point out that if those to whom the word of God had been given were called gods, then why do they say that he is blaspheming “because I said I am the son of God”? His opponents are unable to answer him. Quite plainly, then, according to the Jesus of the Gospels, we are all “gods” and sons or daughters of God, as he knew himself to be. The blunt truth is that Jesus nowhere makes claims to be God or the son of God in any absolute sense that does not apply equally to everyone who had “ears to hear.” Hence his sharp rebuke to the rich young man in Mark’s account who calls him “good master.” Jesus retorts, “There is none good except God himself.”
I want to return just for a moment to that wonderful account in the Acts of the Apostles of Paul’s experience while preaching in Athens. He tells the crowd that he is most impressed by all the signs about him of Athenian devotion to various deities. He notes there is an altar to “the Unknown God” and tells them that this is the God he has come to make known to them. This God, he says, made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—“though indeed he is not far from each one of us.” Then comes the crucial passage beginning: “For in Him we live and move and have our being; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘for we too are his offspring’” (italics mine).* The fact that the author/ editors inserted such an admission—that early Christian and Pagan thinking were in agreement on our divine origins, the divine “spark” in every person—is of profound importance. It’s crucial for understanding the core of the message in both camps. And it’s of critical importance now if we are to find a truly universal ground on which all religions can meet and offer a global view of human evolution and destiny.
Agreement on this is not by any means a step towards having one lowest-common-denominator-type world religion to replace the great religions of the earth. God must love diversity since the whole story of Creation from the beginning has been of an overflowing, abundant, proliferating splendour of differentiation throughout the whole phenomenon of life. Science witnesses to this daily in the new species discovered, often in the most unlikely places, such as in hot springs in the ocean’s floor or in the deepest, darkest caves. The differences will remain. But what an incredibly unifying and pacifying reverberation would spread throughout the whole inhabited planet if every believer of every faith, from Islam to the smallest sect, held that every single one of us, those inside and those outside this or that faith or specific denomination, are truly “God’s offspring” bearing the spirit and image of the one source of all that is. That’s my lifelong vision and my hope.
One thing I have remained deeply certain of, even back in the days of my discussions and debates with my atheist tutor at Oriel, Richard Robinson: atheists and agnostics too have a deep intuitive awareness of an emptiness within that only God or something they cannot name can fill. Their hunger for transcendence is too often quelled or wholly deterred by bad religion, by thinking and behaviour that give the lie to claims made on behalf of an unbelievable, highly anthropomorphic deity. The noted literary critic Harold Bloom in his 2005 book Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine speaks eloquently of this deeply human longing for transcendence, “the saving remnant of divine light” without which “we stumble about in the void, beggars with amputated feet”—that profound yearning in the human heart without which we remain “mere vessels of entropy” bound for extinction. I believe that is why I get so many more letters from skeptics and agnostics than anyone would suppose.
Before he retired, the old archdeacon under whom I had served my curacy in 1955/6 paid me a visit in my West Hill parish, at the end of which he said, “Let me give you a piece of wisdom. If you can survive as many years as I have in the ecclesiastical industry [the institutional church], you have to still believe in miracles.” I spent enough time in and around “the industry” to know it intimately myself. He certainly spoke the truth. I want to claim that miracle here. While my understanding of religion in particular has been utterly transformed, reaching out to every living being on the planet and to the farthest reaches of the cosmos, I find my belief in the dimension of being that most of us call God is stronger than ever before. I have witnessed the shadow side of religion both in its bitter, warring past and in the various religions today. When doing investigative journalism on religion, I learned “where the bodies are buried”—and have critics and even enemies because of that. But I have also seen and known first-hand its glories, its great achievements for good, its help for the needy and championship of the oppressed. There is deep within me a confidence that not only Christianity but the other world religions can be born again.
But there is a secret to this. It cannot happen simply out of enthusiasm for something fresh or fear of failure. The secret has two fundamental aspects. In the first place, all faiths need to recover the central meaning and transforming power of myth. The greatest potential for evil done in the name of God flows from a failure to comprehend this. All religions begin with mythology because mere history and dead literalism cannot convey eternal truths. However, the huge error of taking myth as history has wreaked untold havoc, from the earliest book burnings and slaughter of “heretics” by overzealous Christians to the horrors perpetrated today by Islamic terrorists in the Middle East and around the world. Ultra-extremist Jews in Israel are victims of the same phenomenon. I repeat: the “letter kills” as Paul says, but the Spirit gives life.
The second insight that is essential to a rebirth for not just the Church but the other faiths as well is equally potent and indispensable. It is this: all language about God and the activity of God’s Spirit is first and foremost that of symbol, of metaphor,