there is, all the physics there is, all the mathematics, whatever it is you choose, it is there.
And let me add this explicitly; being a Christian imposes no limits on your curiosity. Rather it should stimulate it. Some people seem to think that for Christians there are doors marked “Danger: No Admittance.” You mustn’t examine this or that lest it imperil your faith. There are no such restrictions. For one thing, a faith that won’t stand up to investigation and truth is a faith not worth having, and for another a Christian who believes that he lives in his Father’s house has every reason for exploration and none for inhibition. His faith is in truth the foundation of the scientific method, for unlike most people, he has good reason to believe that the universe makes sense, and that ultimately reason and order will prevail within it. But it is true, and this provides the opportunity, to take another step. Having told his readers “all things belong to you,” he adds, “and you belong to Christ.”
AND YOU BELONG TO CHRIST
This is not a limitation of human freedom and sovereignty, it is a condition of it. I can best explain this by going back to what I was saying a moment ago. All things belong to you, all history, all mathematics, for example. So they do—potentially. But you will only make them yours if you belong to them. I mean if you are prepared to give yourself up to the discipline of the historical or mathematical method. I should not like to be misunderstood. I have not been put up by the Vice-Chancellor to tell you all to be good girls and boys and to work hard. This is not an exhortation, it is a simple fact. You can pass examinations without that kind of dedication. But without it, you will not become a really educated, still less a really learned, person. The world of scholarship is at your disposal, it can belong to you, but only if you belong to it.
Take an example from another field, that of personal relations. I chose my example deliberately in the hope that one or two people may find it worth reflecting on, not only as an illustration but in itself. One of the features of modern university life is that, for good or ill, men and women are thrown into fairly close association with one another, a fact that is not without its problems and tensions. The point that I am making can be put in a sentence. No woman ever belongs to you, unless equally and exclusively you belong to her. And no man ever belongs to you, unless equally and exclusively you belong to him. Again this is not exhortation, it is a fact. And if it saves one of you from making a fool of yourself in the next three years, then the last two minutes will have been well spent.
But the point is this: All things are yours, yes, but this involves a condition. All things belong to you and you belong to Christ. This is not simply a religious proposition though I could put it in those terms. Paul has said that all the apostles, himself, Peter, Apollos, belong to you; and (without trying to sort out the apostles between the churches) it would be right in this united service to say that all the churches Church of England (like St. Oswald’s) Baptist, Methodist, Congregational, Presbyterian, and so on—all are yours in that all offer you their fellowship and their chaplaincies and their services, but that this ecclesiastical circus achieves reality for you so long as you belong to Christ.
But as I say, this is not simply a religious or ecclesiastical proposition. Whatever else Christ is, he is representative humanity, and if the whole field of human enterprise, human relationship is yours (and it is), you enter into possession of it as you belong to Christ, who is representative humanity. You may well say—What does that mean? Is it more than a pious phrase? Can you explain it? I think so, but if we are to do it, I must go on to Paul’s next words, “and Christ belongs to God.”
AND CHRIST BELONGS TO GOD
There is a parallel between our belonging to Christ and Christ belonging to God. But what the latter means, anyone who reads the Gospels can very clearly see. It was expressed in obedience. Jesus knew that the two supreme requirements of God were ‘you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ These being practiced without limitations or reserve through the practice of them led him straight to crucifixion. It is one thing, and a good thing, to heal the sick, feed the hungry and so on at no particular cost to yourself. It is another to do so when you know that every action you take is leading you to death. But this was what belonging to God meant. It sometimes did and often did not take the shape of conventional religion. The important thing was that it always took the shape of complete self-giving to God and to humankind.
From this we learn what it means to belong to Christ. I should not, if I were you, despise the offerings of organized religion. Jesus did not, and college chapels and S.C.O.T. and D.I.C.C.U. and denominational societies and city churches all have something to offer. But incomparably more important is that you personally belong to Christ and express that belonging in the service of God in faith, and in service of your fellow human beings in love. “All things are yours, and you are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.”
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“WHAT HAVE YOU THAT YOU DID NOT RECEIVE?”—1 Corinthians 4.7
[Preached four times from 5/4/71 at Hull University to 11/12/95 at Bishop Auckland]
A year ago through the kindness of my own university, I had a term’s sabbatical leave, most of which I spent in Germany. Thus it was that I came to visit the great doyen of New Testament studies, Rudolph Bultmann, very old, frail, and I think lonely, far too profound and original to command everyone’s consent, far too stimulating to have ended the debate that he initiated, yet the man whom we all recognize as among the very greatest in the trade. And when I met him once more, I recalled how twenty years ago, this great man ended the last lecture he gave before his retirement. He quoted two texts, one from the Old Testament one from the New Testament. Genesis 32.10—“I am not worthy of the least of all thy mercies, and of all the truth which thou has shown unto thy servant.” 1 Corinthians 4.7—“What hast thou that thou did not receive? But if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou had not received it?”
It is particularly this New Testament text that I bring before you this morning. What have you got that you did not receive from someone else? This is, beyond question a text for scholars.
A TEXT FOR SCHOLARS
For academics of any description young or old, this is our text. There is none of us who does not stand on someone else’s shoulders. This is true even in the newest subjects and among the most original thinkers. None of us starts from scratch. We all of us owe a personal debt to our teachers. I believe that our sense of it, at its lowest, perhaps when we are undergraduates, increases with years, increases even as we see the gaps in their equipment, and the tasks the problems which we see and they didn’t. There is a personal debt we owe to them, for were they never patient with you when you deserved to be smashed for impertinence? But also an academic debt, since they gave us the idea of how to study, to read, to think, to write. And the total debt runs back through more generations than the best of historians could easily compute. For in all the ages persons who have sought truth are our creditors, and it is no bad thing that at least once a year we should publicly acknowledge our indebtedness. Not every search for truth has reached its objective. True and sincere persons have sometimes landed in what we can see to be the most appalling error. Nevertheless, they are our ancestors and benefactors. What is our own little contribution in comparison with what we have received from the past?
Nor should we who are academics forget the debt we owe to those who are not and were not academics. Today at least you cannot forget it, for this is your Founder’s Day Service and it commemorates T. R. Ferens, a beneficent founder and a man of great ability, but not a man of scholarship. I do not know how it impresses you, but I find it almost embarrassing that one should rate my activities as a scholar so highly as to endow them on such a princely scale. We may be embarrassed. We certainly ought to be grateful, grateful to all who made possible the privileged life we enjoy in such places as this. All: it is a longer list than I could compile but
