to look at things with Him, and not simply in terms of our own experience in life, that we shall see them making sense.
Again, as long as we think of God as bound up with ourselves, we are bound to underestimate his love. We may not be able to say in precisely the same sense as the original compilers of the Nicene Creed that “for us humans and for our salvation he came down from heaven,” but if nothing of that “came down” remains, if God is simply a part of my own being and experience and not in any way external to them, then we shall have lost not some easily expendable piece of Christian metaphysic, but the miracle of divine love that makes Christianity go.
Once we have learned the meaning of this “in heaven” we shall not need to be deeply troubled about anthropomorphism—the description of God in terms of human properties. We shall know how they are to be taken. That is why I begin at this point. We must first grasp the meaning of “in heaven,” and then go on to speak of God as Father. This we will do thinking first of fatherhood in relationship to the father.
FATHERHOOD IN RELATIONSHIP TO THE FATHER
Let us start simply and unashamedly with human fatherhood and then see what this means when transformed by the words “in heaven.” What does it mean that I am the father of my son? I think I should answer that in terms of responsibility and that in two senses. I am responsible for my son’s existence in the sense that I am the human cause of it, and share in the human origin of it. Whether his presence in the world means good or evil for him or for the world, I am responsible for it. I am also responsible for his existence in the sense that having brought him into the world, I have a moral responsibility for maintaining him, for preserving the life that I caused to exist.
Thus when I declare that God is our Father in heaven, I mean that God assumes responsibility for human existence. The whole human race is one family, God’s family, and God is responsible for it. He brought it into being and is responsible for maintaining it. As the Sermon on the Mount, a few verses back, proclaims, your Heavenly Father knows what things you need.
There is nothing which so breaks a person than the assuming of a responsibility that is not theirs. It is this primarily, and not the speed of modern life, not the noise of it, and certainly not hard work that causes the breakdowns which are so marked a feature of modern life, and not least of university life. I am not referring to those anxiety states of which there is commonly an epidemic in June. Sometimes the sufferer is responsible for them. When people do not believe in the responsibility of a Heavenly Father, they either cease to care at all, or they feel they must take all the burdens of the universe on their own shoulders. And they are not fit to stand the strain. Let me try to make this point also practical and realistic.
Will it be too egoistic if I venture to recall that last Thursday I was giving a general lecture on the place and role of theology in a university. I argued that theology was not out of place, in a society in which people follow the question wherever it leads, and conduct their inquiries, so far as may be, without prejudice and without presupposition. A Christian theologian can take part in this activity precisely because his own subject matter tells him that he must live by faith, not by sight; and therefore he may and must question everything that he can see, living by faith in the invisible truth of things. This applies not only to the Christian theologian, but to the Christian student of every subject, he should be the first and most confident student of all, because he will ask the strangest questions, and get to do so in the absolute confidence that though he may not find it, there is a satisfying and creative answer to every question. The running of the universe does not depend on the fragmentary knowledge I have of the universe or of its Maker. The running of the universe depends on God, and if as a Christian I know God as my Heavenly Father, I have the freedom of the universe and I can poke and pry into every corner of my Father’s huge mysterious realm, knowing that there are no hidden goblins in the dark corners but only fresh angles and aspects of the Father’s love.
This looks at the matter from the intellectual angle. You can look at it from others, for example moral life. Those who know they are living in a world, a family, for which the Heavenly Father is responsible, can achieve the freedom and spontaneity in which true moral life exists. He is not a good driver who has to stop at every traffic light, take out the Highway Code, and look up what he has to do next. It is the same with morals. He has not learned the secret of the good life, who has to stop at every moral crossroads, and look up the rules.
I am not saying that rules have no use, any more than I am saying that the Highway Code has no use. But what really matters is the spontaneous right reaction to circumstance, and as far as morals are concerned this can only come when I have ceased to think about myself, and have learned to rely on the fact that the Heavenly Father is responsible for his world, for the maintenance of right and wrong, and for me and my neighbor. The same is true of spiritual life. I do not at all underestimate the importance of discipline here, and yet there is no such thing as living a truly spiritual life simply by the book—ask St. Paul. My relations with God do not depend on my having said so many prayers, read so many chapters of the Bible, heard so many sermons, they depend on God, God who assumes responsibility for me, his child.
This is true also of the life of the Church, though the Church often gets it wrong. Look fairly at the Church, any church and you will often get the impression that it feels that it has to take responsibility for God. It must look after him. People who spread error about him must be burnt at the stake. People who are not properly qualified according to the book, cannot be allowed to come to his table, though when he lived on earth he seemed to have been shockingly careless in the matter himself. No wonder we get worried about the Church. But this is all wrong. God is responsible for the Church. If we could only learn this lesson, the problems of reunion would be solved, and the world might at last believe.
God’s responsibility as Father means Christian irresponsibility. That is a dangerous expression, and if you can stand theology, I should prefer to speak of justification by faith; the faith that lets God be the pardoning God he means to be in Christ, and trusts him completely with all the issues of life and death. To a theologian this suggests the next step.
OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO GOD, FATHERHOOD IN RELATIONSHIP TO THE CHILD
I can and must put this in context. To be God’s child means to grow up in relative independence. But words are important. Perhaps the best way to begin is to recognize that all I have said about God’s responsibility for the world raises dreadful questions. If God is responsible, what of evil, and suffering? One can only begin to answer the question in terms of the kind of fatherhood that Jesus reveals. One of the hardest things a father has to do is—you will learn it in time—to stand back. But he must do it, he must let his child suffer, not in spite of his love but because of it. There are even times when he must make them suffer, not in spite of his love but because of it. Anthropomorphic again? Qualify it by “in heaven”? God’s children must learn to grow independent, more and more related. And yet there is only one way the world family will work and that is the Father’s way.
Faith always has obedience at its core. Or to put it another way, the Christian can never fail to be grateful for the responsible care of his Father, and if he is grateful he will express his gratitude not only in words of praise, but in a life conformed to the Father’s will. “Our Father who art in heaven.” I would not say that contains the whole truth about God, but it is enough for most of us. And because it contains truth about God the Father, it also contains truth about us, God’s children who live to do his will on earth, even as it is done perfectly and unconditioned in heaven.
“THE NARROW WAY”—Matthew 7.13–14
[Preached once at Durham Cathedral on 7/1/55]
Is it then so narrow a way that leads into the Christian faith and life? Is Christianity
