Doubts about Doubt: Honest to God Forty Years On
Honest to God, published in 1963, was one of the most public religious bestsellers of the twentieth century. Because it was written by an Anglican bishop it was especially controversial. Yet there are questions that remain and this article highlights seven such questions which draw attention to weak...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
2005
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| In: |
Journal of Anglican studies
Year: 2005, Volume: 3, Issue: 2, Pages: 181-195 |
| Online Access: |
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| Summary: | Honest to God, published in 1963, was one of the most public religious bestsellers of the twentieth century. Because it was written by an Anglican bishop it was especially controversial. Yet there are questions that remain and this article highlights seven such questions which draw attention to weaknesses in the book. An alternative proposal is offered here. Robinson had his finger on a real problem in postwar British church life and, in a measure, theology. I believe the problem was mostly or largely caused not by the New Testament and historic Christianity itself, but by the way in which the post-Enlightenment world had assimilated and re-expressed the Christian faith. What Robinson referred to when speaking of supraor supernaturalism belonged within an essentially Deist or Epicurean framework, and he was struggling with the unwelcome consequences of people being unable to relate to their absentee landlord, and simultaneously puzzling over the fact that some people did not find this a problem. The huge popularity of his book shows that he struck a chord with a great many people. The tragedy of Honest to God, as I perceive it, is that Robinson did not see that what he was rejecting was a form of supernaturalism pressed upon Christianity by the Enlightenment; that he did not therefore go looking for help in finding other ways of holding together what the classic Christian tradition has claimed about God. |
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| ISSN: | 1745-5278 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of Anglican studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1177/1740355305058889 |