Who do you think you are kidding, Dr Williams? (Part 1)

There are no famous theologians as there are famous footballers, historians, scientists, political leaders, etc., etc. (there are even famous cooks, for goodness’ sake), and so this series on theology (which will not last for eternity but will certainly feel like it) will be addressed to the archbishop of Canterbury, who is at least sort of famous for having been on telly and for having a pointy hat and pointy eyebrows, even if very few people (Christians included) could say what are his principal theological achievements.

To set the scene, consider the following remarkable statement by Sunday reporter Trevor Barnes concerning the UK Council of Christians and Jews (the UK’s first inter-faith group). The Council has, apparently, entered its “mature phase” and “is confident enough to explore theological differences and to subject absolute truth claims to rigorous intellectual scrutiny”.

First, “mature phase” might be expected to apply to a round of Stilton and not a committee. In fact, the phrase is apt, since, according to Barnes, earlier in its seventy-year history relations between Christians and Jews on the Council were somewhat tetchy, with both sides regularly throwing their opponents’ theologies out of the pram. (This is, of course, relative. Jews living, say, 700 years ago, when they were the subject of widespread discrimination and persecution, would no doubt have found tetchiness a positive relief. It’s not progress in theology that allows Christians and Jews to talk to one another without one side inventing the Ghetto to shovel their neighbours into. After all, if the Bible is the unchanging word of God, John 8:44 presumably means the same now as it did to the Christian rulers who expelled Jews from their countries and worse. Religious interpretation – that fickle whore – has actually been mercifully guided by the moral decency of humanism and prodded by secular arguments into turning a blind eye to all those biblical verses unambiguously endorsing hatred and violence.)

But I digress. It is not the detail of the Council’s discussion that is of interest, but their method, which it is claimed involves subjecting “absolute truth claims to rigorous intellectual scrutiny”. Is the presence of “absolute” here an insurance policy against empirical embarrassment?  “We’re not making truth claims relative to the universe,” the theologian seems to say, “the kind that mere science troubles itself over, the kind that can be settled by appeal to the facts. Oh no, our claims are absolute, and therefore beyond enquiry and reason and practical exploration. Our claims can only be backed by faith.”

What good “rigorous intellectual scrutiny” when the standard being used is faith and not reason? Anything goes! Clever people can be wrong about many things, and sometimes a group of clever people together can be very wrong, unless there is an error-detection mechanism at work. The ability to manipulate concepts and arguments is certainly an intellectual skill, but the conclusions reached count for nothing if care is not taken over the premises. There is a world of difference between a valid argument and a sound argument.

Charles Babbage, mathematician and computer scientist (1791–1871), is reputed to have said:

On two occasions I have been asked, “Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?” I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

The wrong premise at the core of every theological argument is the existence of some kind of super-agency. Of course, theological arguments are enthymemic with respect to this premise, which is taken as read: the existence of God is an example of a tacit assumption without which the conclusion of many theological arguments would be a non sequitur (Warburton 2008, p. 59).

I don’t know how the Council of Christians and Jews conducts its business, but I recently saw on stage what I imagine was a similar display of “rigorous intellectual scrutiny”: the RSC’s production of Written on the Heart (especially the opening scene as the scholars and priests – although not quite all fifty-four involved in the translation – gather in Ely House). Towards the end of the play, after years of work on the new translation of the Bible for King James, after countless discussions and disputes, there are still few remaining matters of contention, including whether “fold” should become “flock”.

E = mc² it ain’t.