On Christian Theology

"In my view, Rowan Williams is the biggest intellectual genius of our time by quite a long way. It is one of God’s ironies at a time when the church is meant to be declining he raises up two intellectuals as religious leaders – the Chief Rabbi [Lord Jonathan Sacks] for the Jews and Rowan Williams. Rowan translates from about 11 languages; anything you think you know about, he knows far more. It is really rather depressing! Some of his work is very easy – for example, some of his simple sermons. But some of his essays on theology need quite a lot of grappling with. I am assuming that my five books are for people who really want to grapple quite seriously, so there must be something of Rowan Williams. On Christian Theology is a collection of his essays from the 1980s and 90s and on a range of subjects. Just thinking about his intellect, one of the things he tossed off was a major scholarly book on Dostoyevsky when he took a month off! It is very difficult to sum it up, but he is acutely aware of all modern dilemmas. He understands the postmodern world. He understands all the major philosophical difficulties because he has read everything. Everything he writes is acutely aware of some of the searching aspects of modern philosophy and sociology and other disciplines and that is why some of his writing is so difficult because he can’t write a sentence without immediately getting thousands of qualifications in his mind. He can speak very simply and everything he writes comes across as extraordinarily authentic and real. And, of course, he is a published poet as well. Well, that is a very big question! I think if you have a religious upbringing you need to start by exploring your religion and seeing what it has to offer. I find with a lot of people, when they begin to look at other religions they find themselves finding truths about their own religion for the first time. They come to appreciate the other religion but also it uncovers things in their own religion that they hadn’t properly seen before. But there is no Archimedean point above all religions where you can just stand back and say this one is true and that one is untrue. So you have to bed down in your own place and start from there. Yes, I was chairman of the Council of Christians and Jews for many years. I don’t believe that all religions are saying the same thing. Some religions are saying very very different things. And there are Truth Claims in all religions. I think that what one can say is that whatever one thinks is true, it is equally clear that one does not grasp the fullness of truth and that lies beyond one. And I certainly think there is a huge amount of overlap and much in common between Judaism and Christianity, and a fair amount with Islam as well. There are some principles. But if people want to say they are a Christian they need to be able to define themselves in their own way. But for me being a Christian basically means adhering to the Christian creed, not in a literalistic way. Christian language is what I call symbolic symbolism – not mere symbolism as some people say, but it is metaphor which points to something which is ultimately real. I go along with the basic fundamental truths of the Christian faith, as does the Anglican Church, as do all the mainstream churches. There is not all that much which divides the mainstream churches these days. They have discovered that many of the issues that divided them at the Reformation, and earlier between East and West in the 11th century, have been got over. Not all of them, of course, but many of them have been got over."