In one sense, this is evidence that the days of Dawkins setting up Aunt Sallies only to knock them down are gone, and that can only be a good thing. It would seem rather unlikely that an Archbishop of Canterbury — particularly one renowned as a thinker, theologian, spiritual writer and poet — would have a feeble Christian faith; but that was the impression they had got.
Looking back on the dialogue, though, I realise that the 'God' word was not used much. And Jesus didn't get a mention.
One reason for this, I'm sure, is that for Dawkins, the 'God word' is ammunition : it's the Aunt Sally he reacts to, and it doesn't help discussion. This left me reflecting on the famous text from the 6th century BCE, Psalm 137 :
Beside the rivers of Babylon we thought about Jerusalem, and we sat down and wept. We hung our small harps on the willow trees. Our enemies had brought us here as their prisoners, and now they wanted us to sing and entertain them. They insulted us and shouted, "Sing about Zion!" Here in a foreign land, how can we sing about the LORD?
Jerusalem, if I forget you, let my right hand go limp. Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I don't think about you above all else.
Israelite intelligentsia, taken as captives into exile in the alien culture of mighty Babylon, are goaded into 'singing songs' of their faith so that they can be ridiculed. So they hang up their harps. But in their hearts, they think of nothing except God.
Our secular culture has similarly secularised the language such that Christian 'language' — by which I mean that whole network of linked concepts, stories, ideas and vocabulary originally developed in the Bible and then further developed through Christian history — words like 'grace', 'salvation', 'God', 'Holy Spirit', sanctification, 'Word'; stories like Jacob's ladder, Elijah's jar, Adam & Eve, Babel, walking on water, death and resurrection etc. etc. etc. — all of that has been rendered largely unspeakable in secular modern Britain. Some years ago I was doing a question and answer session with a class of nine-year-olds and I mentioned Adam. A boy retorted (words to the effect) "you don't believe that rubbish, do you?" I asked him whether he thought maybe there was a first human being . . .
The influence has been so pervasive (and it predates modern 'militant atheism' by decades) that even churchpeople can't use Christian language any more, and often see little point in reading the Bible. I worked once with a priest of the 'Death of God' school who refused to use any such vocabulary, believing that nothing could be spoken of in theological language that couldn't more effectively be spoken of using secular language. So 'God' became 'Values' . . .
2 comments:
Yeah it's a bit depressing isn't it. And yet when you work to unpack religious language, for example, when preparing families for baptism, it can be quite heartening to see the ideas getting through.
In relation to the debate - how can your atheist friends (sorry 6.9 agnostics!) not see the way half way through,Dawkins was taken to task by Kenny and the AoC over his sad ignorance of modern philosophical thought. They did it very politely but it was a bit embarrassing.
I agree that it is depressing. But I also can't help wondering if one of the major reasons Evangelical churches are doing a lot better in terms of numbers than churches of other traditions is because we place a higher priority on explaining at least the basics of our theology to anybody who will listen. Even if we don't use the language of Christianity as much as we used to, it's still as relevant as it has always been.
And, though I didn't see the debate, revjgoode's point about philosophy seems quite sound. For somebody who makes such a big thing of commenting on religion, Dawkins has a remarkably poor knowledge of both philosophy and theology.
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