My second memory was of an enjoyable conversation with the educational Selector. He asked me about my reading, and I spoke with great gusto of books that had influenced me, and others that I was currently reading. ‘Such as?’ he threw at me. I replied that I had just finished Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian, then gave a résumé of the book and why I found it unconvincing.
The Selector said with a quizzical smile, ‘Well now, imagine that one day you bumped into Bertrand Russell in Blackwell’s bookshop and you were given the opportunity to show why you are a Christian. What would you say?’
With some rapidity I gave my answer. The Selector looked at me, still smiling broadly, and said after a long pause, ‘Well, Carey, I hope you don’t meet him for a very long time!’ It was a response I deserved. I had a long way to go in understanding the difficulties of those who honestly cannot believe, as well as in appreciating the deeper issues of philosophy, science and epistemology that separate unbelief from faith.
A few weeks later I was informed that the Selection Board had recommended me for training, and I was given the green light to go to college that autumn, at the age of twenty-two. But which college? Pit-Pat was desperate for me to go to either Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, or Ridley Hall, Cambridge. If neither of these appealed to me, he felt I should choose a clear-cut evangelical college such as Oak Hill or, preferably, Tyndale Hall, Bristol, where he had trained for the ministry.
I was open to all suggestions, and visited six or so colleges in rapid succession. Each was excellent, but one stood out for me – one that Pit-Pat did not know well and did not care for particularly, the London College of Divinity, at Northwood. LCD, as it was known, was the former St John’s, Highbury, which was destroyed by enemy action in the war. The Principal responsible for the college’s move to Northwood was Dr Donald Coggan, who in 1956 became Bishop of Bradford, and was later to become Archbishop of Canterbury. Now, under the principalship of an Irishman, Dr Hugh Jordan, LCD was enjoying great popularity and attracting many students.
There were two reasons why LCD appealed to me. It was an evangelical college, but it was not narrow or partisan. I must have felt instinctively that I needed a broader theological education, and that LCD would suit my temperament. The second reason was equally important I was attracted by the intellectual rigour of the London Bachelor of Divinity course, with its emphasis on languages, philosophy and historical theology. The course taught at both LCD and King’s London offered all I was most anxious to study. It did not worry me that I was bypassing colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. I was fully aware of the excellence of theological education in those venerable universities, as well as the snob value of an Oxbridge degree, but I was quite satisfied that the London BD offered a more satisfying course that would stretch me fully.
For non-degree students the basic course for those under thirty was the three-year ALCD (Associate of the London College of Divinity) course. Those who had matriculated to do the degree course, such as myself, were required to do the four-year course, which included the ALCD.
It was with some nervousness that in September 1958 I entered the gates of the London College of Divinity and set out on a four-year programme that was to change me forever. Deep friendships were developed, and the rigorous academic regime was punctuated with much fun and fellowship. One particularly memorable moment was when Eileen paid her first visit to the college. It was an inflexible rule that girlfriends could only visit at the weekends, and then only with the Principal’s approval. On the last Saturday of the Michaelmas term I went to the station to meet Eileen. During my absence the other students covered the walls of my room with pictures of their girlfriends. Eileen’s astonishment and my dismay at seeing photographs of dozens of girls caused great amusement, but I had trouble persuading her that they had nothing to do with me. The embarrassment was completed when later that evening, having returned from taking Eileen to the station for her journey back to London, I found that the lock had been changed on my room and my bed was now outside the Principal’s office. I was grateful that Dr Jordan was able to see the joke.
Compared to today, the theological training of my day was monastic and Spartan. The few married students in college were required to live apart from their wives, with only two free weekends per term. Permission to marry during one’s training had to be obtained from the Principal and one’s Bishop. The day started with worship at 7.15 a.m., and failure to be there meant an explanation to the Principal. The mornings were given over to lectures, and the afternoons devoted either to sport or manual work around the grounds. Further study followed from 4.30 p.m., and after evening prayer and supper, study continued until 9.30 p.m. Compulsory silence was demanded from 11 p.m. until 6 a.m.
For those of us newly returned from National Service, and especially for someone like myself, for whom education had come at such a price, this discipline hardly seemed draconian. Indeed, I soon found that I wanted more time to study, because I enjoyed it so much. Although I pitched myself into the social life of the college and had a regular place in the football team, I felt that I had to discipline my use of time so as to squeeze as much as I possibly could from the hours given to me. I found that by getting up slightly earlier than the others, going to bed slightly later, spending a little less time drinking coffee after supper and so on, I had more time for the reading and study I so relished.
There was no protection from the world of hard ideas and difficult questions. The staff was dedicated and talented. I particularly remember Victor McCallin, the Vice Principal, another Irishman from Trinity, Dublin, who gave us splendid, though whimsical, lectures in philosophy. ‘Never avoid critical questions during your time here,’ he would warn successive generations of students, ‘because if you do, when you are alone later in ministry they will come and grab you by the throat.’
I was not alone in finding many of my ideas and beliefs being challenged. Degree students such as myself were required to prepare for a university entrance exam at the end of our first year, so the work was thorough and searching. It seemed at times as if the faculty intended to drive every certainty from us: our Old Testament study focused on the historicity of the texts, and took us into the arid wastes of dry Germanic scholarship; New Testament study seemed designed to show that we could know very little of the Jesus of history; philosophy led us to questioning certainty of any kind; and history and comparative religion forced us to consider the competing claims of other religions and other denominations. That we did not cave in under this avalanche of critical theology owes much to the rhythm of worship which underpinned our studies, as well as to the caring teaching we received. We were in no doubt that each member of the staff was a practising and believing Christian, and that they were always on hand to explain and assist if any student floundered intellectually or spiritually.
All this was grist to my mill. To swim as a tiny minnow in this ocean of ideas and follow in the wake of great giants like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Karl Rahner and William Temple was a wonderful privilege. Although an evangelical and thoroughly committed to a belief in the authority of the Bible, I was unable to accept narrow theories of inerrancy, in which the Bible was held to be historically accurate as well as literally ‘true’ in every detail. I did not, for example, see a scientific world-view as incompatible with the world view of the scriptures. Many evangelicals may have believed the world was created in seven days, but that was not my interpretation of the Book of Genesis. As time went on I realised that there was nothing preventing me from accepting with conviction the trustworthiness of the Old Testament in its fundamental purpose of disclosing God’s will for His chosen people Israel, and the unfolding drama of redemption leading to the coming of Jesus. In short, I did not require a book devoid of human error, corrupted texts or mistakes.
When later in my first year I asked a prominent evangelical preacher to explain to me why 2 Chronicles was so different from 2 Kings when both books were largely describing the same historical events, his reply astonished me. ‘The difference,’ he opined, ‘is that similar to a photograph and a portrait. The books of Kings describe what actually happened, but the books of Chronicles are looking at it from an artistic point of view.’ Even though I had just commenced Old Testament studies, I was staggered by the ignorance of this answer, although no doubt the speaker truly believed what he said.