The Cambridge Objectors

Objections to Christian Belief is a brand-new volume of theological essays --written not, as the title suggests, by ardent atheists but by four devout Anglicans, three of them priests. They are among the dozen or so English academic divines known as the Cambridge Theologians, who today are producing some of the world's most provocative and searching studies of religious issues.

Individually and collectively, the Cambridge Theologians are involved in what one of their fans, Bishop John Robinson (Honest to God), calls "a moral and intellectual spring-cleaning" of Christianity. Their aim is to clear the way for a purified, relevant Christian faith for modern man, and in the interests of stripping away doctrinal deadwood they are willing to question even fundamental premises of the faith: Is God personal? Was Jesus divine? Is the morality of the church immutable? In Objections (Lippincott; $2.50), which has sold 18,000 copies in Great Britain, they cite the most devastating criticisms of Christianity on moral, psychological, historical and intellectual grounds--and then admit that to a large extent the attacks may well be right on target.

Like England's postwar Angry Young Men, Cambridge's middle-aging theologians are more of a group to their enemies than to themselves. They do share a common Anglican faith, teach at the same university and contribute occasionally to the same scholarly journal, Theology. Some of them meet once a term after dinner to discuss a theological paper. But in viewpoint, they range from High Church to Low, from demythologizing radical to ethical conservative, and they quarrel with each other as much as with men who never crossed the Cam. "We have no common ground in a positive way," says one of them. "We agree negatively that the kind of questions the liberal theologians were asking between the wars must be asked again." Among Cambridge's questioners:

>Alexander Roper Vidler, 64. A goateed, beekeeping bachelor, Vidler is dean of King's College. As editor of both Theology and Soundings, he regards himself as the "midwife" of much of the new Cambridge thought. His specialty is ecclesiastical history, and Vidler is a trenchant critic of the "legalisms" and archaic institutions that have be come fossilized within the Church of England. He believes that most Anglican theologians have been "lethargic, dealing with secondary questions." To him, the merit of Cambridge theology is that, right or wrong, it has attempted to tackle basic issues concerning church, faith and God.

> Harry Abbott Williams, 44, fellow and dean of Trinity College, is perhaps the most radical of the group. Departing from the family tradition of naval service, Williams served as a London parish priest before teaching theology, found his spiritual perspective singularly altered when he underwent psychoanalysis in 1951. Now, he says, "I'm chiefly interested in the relation between theological ideas and the understanding and insights analysis provides." As applied by Williams to Christian morality, these insights often shock. He believes that premarital sexual intercourse can sometimes be a form of "spiritual healing" rather than a sin, suggests that the great modern commandment ought to be: "Thou shalt not exploit another person." Williams not only condemns the obscurity of much Christian belief, but works to restore its inner meaning. The Thirty-Nine Articles' "Works done before the grace of Christ . . . have the nature of sin" becomes, in Williams' Freud-oriented interpretation, "Good works whose dynamic is love are admirable and free of sin, but good works done out of a compulsion of guilt-without love, which is the grace of Christ--have no value."

> Canon Hugh Montefiore, 43, sometime dean and fellow of Gonville and Caius College and vicar of Great St. Mary's Church in Cambridge. At the age of 17, as a student at Rugby, Montefiore converted all in one day from Judaism to Christianity. Now one of England's best-known New Testament scholars, Montefiore temporarily abandoned teaching last year to see, pragmatically, how the "new thought" works out at the pastoral level. His own view of the Gospel tends toward skepticism about the Evangelists' reports of Jesus' deeds, the historical reality of the Virgin Birth, and the Empty Tomb. Christ's resurrection appearances, he says, "have something in common with the appearances of people shortly after their death (sometimes called 'veridical hallucinations'). I do not know what would have happened if you or I had been present with a camera, but I suspect that Jesus' resurrection appearances would not have shown up."

>Donald MacKenzie MacKinnon, 50, divinity professor and fellow of Corpus Christi College. Scotland-born Layman MacKinnon taught philosophy at Oxford and Aberdeen and in Britain's armed services before coming to Cambridge in 1960. He is an ardent nuclear disarmer and a thinker equally at home in moral theology and philosophical ethics. "The church has lost touch with its rank and file, but also with secular philosophy," he says. "My work is trying to bridge the gap between sacred and secular philosophy. I don't really see how this concern with theology in the narrow sense will ever be fully meaningful until it submits to deeper interrogations of trained philosophers."

The Cambridge Theologians have been heatedly accused of destroying what they would seek to rebuild, and their critics within the church include the current Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Michael Ramsey. Instead of presenting a faith for modern man, argue their opponents, Vidler and his friends are merely resurrecting a rationalized blend of old, odd heresies. To Dr. Eric Mascall of London University, the Cambridge group has too often ignored the wisdom contained in church tradition, and have often ended up by grappling with secondary problems in a shallow way.

The Cambridge Theologians are the first to admit that they have no new faith to put forward, and no solutions to present dogmatically. But they also believe that the church cannot go on as an institution marked by chattering parsons, dreary hymns and "an incomparably un-Christian liturgy." It can only survive by asking, and answering, radical questions--much as did Christians of an earlier age, who are commemorated in the Anglican hymn:

They wrestled hard, as we do now With sins, and doubts and fears.

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