Here in England we have the pleasure of being ministered to (i.e. preached at) by a relatively new Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the worldwide Anglican church. (Must be a bit like being appointed Captain of the Titanic halfway across the Atlantic!)
All the media reports concerning his appointment commented that the new incumbent,
Dr Rowan Williams, is reputedly a very intelligent man, having excelled at theology
college and speaking five languages fluently. He is quoted as saying as a joke, in
response to a question, that "theologists always start in the middle of things",
and this started me thinking. Surely it's more a case that theologists always start
at the beginning but then have nowhere to go except round in circles? Why do we need
theologists anyway? And how can a "very intelligent man" believe in fairy tales -
The Oxford English Dictionary defines theology as "the study of God and religious belief". To my mind, the purpose of study is to try to understand a complex subject. If a subject is simple and straightforward, there is little need for it to be studied; the facts of the matter are plain and self evident. The fact that theology colleges and theology professors exist, and theologians spend careers and lifetimes in study suggests that the subject matter is anything but simple and straightforward. Because of this, we get an army of priests who set themselves up as being superior to the rest of us, claiming that they and they alone have the intellect and understanding to make sense of it all. They will interpret for us the complex teachings of the scriptures, and try to explain to us the mysterious ways in which God moves. Of course the common man (or woman) is incapable of understanding the hidden meanings of God's purposes, but if we listen to them and believe what we're told all will become clear.
But why should this be? This subject was started by God, and surely God is quite
capable of making himself and his wishes crystal clear to all his creations? Why,
if the Holy Word is given by God himself, does it need to be explained and interpreted
by others? The answer, I think, is quite simple. The Word was not given by God himself,
because there is no God. The Bible was cobbled together from a collection of ancient
writings, myths, legends and specially-
Which brings me neatly back to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Here we have "a very
intelligent man", who has spent years in the study of religion and the bible. As
such, he cannot fail to be aware of the masses of contradictions, errors of fact
, ridiculous stories and support of immoral practices such as slavery, degradation
of women , and genocide , with which 80% of the bible is filled. And what does he
do with this learning and this knowledge? Does he try to enlighten people to the
true content of the bible by telling them the stories they don't usually hear? Does
he offer powerful and graphic demonstrations of God's power by drinking poison and
handling snakes in the pulpit? Does he even try to do the honest thing and admit
the contradictions and errors and try to explain them to his followers? No, of course
not. He does none of these things. Instead, he carries on the grand tradition of
the church conmen by ignoring the problems, safe in the knowledge that 95% of his
followers will never have read enough of the bible to be aware of them, and that
the 5% who have come across the so-
