Out of the thousand things which follow directly from this reading of John, I choose three as particularly urgent.
First, John’s view of the incarnation, of the Word becoming flesh, strikes at the very root of that liberal denial which characterised mainstream theology thirty years ago and whose long-term effects are with us still. I grew up hearing lectures and sermons which declared that the idea of God becoming human was a category mistake. No human being could actually be divine; Jesus must therefore have been simply a human being, albeit no doubt (the wonderful patronizing pat on the head of the headmaster to the little boy) a very brilliant one. Phew; that’s all right then; he points to God but he isn’t actually God. And a generation later, but growing straight out of that school of thought, I have had a clergyman writing to me this week to say that the church doesn’t know anything for certain, so what’s all the fuss about? Remove the enfleshed and speaking Word from the centre of your theology, and gradually the whole thing will unravel until all you’re left with is the theological equivalent of the grin on the Cheshire Cat, a relativism whose only moral principle is that there are no moral principles; no words of judgment because nothing is really wrong except saying that things are wrong, no words of mercy because, if you’re all right as you are, you don’t need mercy, merely ”˜affirmation’….
” I grew up hearing lectures and sermons which declared that the idea of God becoming human was a category mistake.”
Did Wright grow up in a liberal church? I am surprised to hear this; I thought his formation was pretty clearly evangelical. Or is this an “unreliable” memory?
I don’t know what kind of church the Bishop grew up in. I do know that this is a remarkable sermon, theologically rich and yet presented in accessible language for those who have ears to hear, and at the end, immensely practical as well as deep. It’s a keeper.
I would imagine, at the least, he may mean during his time in Oxford in the late 60s and 70s.