KEITH WARD is one of Britain’s most influential philosophers of religion. He has written many books, but this latest slim volume may be the most significant.
This year, I reviewed John Caputo’s book What to Believe? Twelve brief lessons in radical theology (Books, 8 March). While praising the book for the rigour of its approach, given Caputo’s rejection of any traditional understanding of God, I also said that it provided a challenge for any who wanted to affirm a more traditional understanding of Christianity in the light of modern science and biblical scholarship.
I doubt that Ward has read Caputo’s book, still less the review, but, in many ways, his book is providing exactly the sort of response that was needed. It is easily accessible, rigorous, and, above all, honest in facing up to the challenges that Christianity faces, without patronising the reader. His book will not be popular with biblical fundamentalists or with those who wish to be constrained by conventional liturgy or exclusive claims to Christian truth. Ward manages, however, to retain fidelity to central Christian ideas while providing new and persuasive interpretations.
The idea that we can know what Jesus actually said is rejected. He spoke in Aramaic, and the recollection of his words would have been translated some time later into Greek. Both he and St Paul were people of their time, and Paul’s initial idea that Jesus would soon return a second time was clearly wrong. Paul could have known nothing of the cosmos as we understand it today, or of the laws that govern it.
Ward is clearly critical of the many Anglicans who will have had some exposure to biblical scholarship in their training and yet do not pass this on to their congregations. As he puts it, “I have heard sermon after sermon which retells a simple Gospel story as though no critical study had ever been made of it. . . it will become intellectually irresponsible to tell biblical stories as if they record exactly what happened in Jesus’ day.”
Ward attributes the clergy’s reluctance to be truthful to the fear that honesty will alienate congregations, but says that the congregations have already largely been lost. What is needed is an account of Christianity and of science which retains central Christian insights. Ward succeeds in this.
Ward explores key Christian claims, including the incarnation, atonement, salvation, life after death, the nature of God, and spirituality. While rejecting central parts of traditional understanding, he provides plausible and persuasive alternatives that can be intellectually tenable in the modern world.
At the end, he is an idealist holding that mathematical and other truths necessarily exist, that mental states cannot be explained by the natural sciences, and that God chooses (an important word) to actualise one of a variety of possible worlds in which love, freedom, and a life after death for human beings are central.
Ward’s book should be read and absorbed by bishops and priests, and his ideas communicated both to a wider lay audience who are hungry for greater honesty and rigour in their sermons and also to those who dismiss Christianity as anti-intellectual.
Dr Peter Vardy is a former Vice-Principal of Heythrop College, University of London.
Spirituality and Christian Belief: Life-affirming Christianity for inquiring people
Keith Ward
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