This is a baggy, curious book that could have done with better editing. True, the writer helpfully defines his terms early on.
I am using the term ‘liberal’ to refer to a tradition that is found, par excellence in writers such as [the English c.1700] Chillingworth, who apply a rational methodology that does not deny the role of Revelation and that ends up by supporting a series of traditional Christian claims, even though these are expressed in ways that take into account contemporary thought’ (13).
Chillingworth’s modern version of ‘Reason’: stood for a search for the truth and ethical implications. The latter is perhaps the touchstone of such liberal Christianity, seen in Chillingworth’s own death-bed denial that non-Christians could not be saved. Such an ethical tradition led ‘to the first serious movement to abolish institutional slavery’, which would have been news to William Wilberforce. Langford seems to imply that he is interested in Chillingworth and the Great Tew group because they were the last liberals to be as religious as they were liberal.
In the heart of the book we get a reaffirmation of belief in Kant, that space and time do not so much really exist, as they are categories we use to make sense of reality. With Kant and Hume: we can’t know what but we can know that there are noumena.
In case this might get all a bit heavy and ‘continental’, Langford tells us that: ‘Practical reason (ethics again) gives us hints of “what it’s all about” ’. (At a practical level, we do get some wise words about finding a church on p. 211). Liberalism refuses to be overawed by authority, it has a dislike of church-state formal links (which seems his personal taste rather than typical of theological liberalism), fosters a scepticism of claims not backed up by reason or experience, and has a tolerant attitude to those who disagree. Grace builds on nature, so that we can go a long way with natural theology. The more voices we hear, the close we get to truth. With Habermas, we hold out to each other that we are speaking the truth so far as we can, and the project of seeking a universal truth is worthwhile one. Hooker distinguished between certainty of evidence and certainty of adherence, so be strong on devotion and soft in public proclamation. It is also a theology of common sense and moderation: of course God is love, of course there is reality out there (pace ‘postmodernism’). Likewise, in a discussion of foreknowledge, God knows the sweep of history but not the details. Grace is defined as the beautiful in life which we need to respond to by valuing life is having more good than bad in it.
Three annoying (but perhaps endearing, depending on one’s mood) things stand out. First, there is a tendency to mark other positions as extreme, as when he writes that our attitude to miracles should be ‘quite different from claiming that certain public events prove the reality of God’ (115). But is anyone claiming that? Second, this gentleman’s philosophy of religion seems impenetrable at times: ‘If God to be God, must be necessary’ in the sense of ‘non-contingent’, then it follows that imagining his non-existence does not make sense, and this is turn suggests either that we should be able to prove the existence of God as absolutely certain, or that the term ‘God’ is incoherent so that God cannot possibly ‘exist’. Third, there is the kind of sugary stuff which makes one feel one has been reading theological Mills and Boon: ‘The eternal castle is not designed to keep other people out—it is there to welcome everyone in. The drawbridge is permanently down. Paradoxically, the eternal castle does not represent the stronghold of eternal invulnerability (even though it suggests eternal joy); rather it represents the strength of a love that involves accepting our vulnerability’ (231).
His overall thesis is that liberalism is not about denying any doctrines, but about insisting that doctrine is not altogether necessary and that such Anglicanism can be a bridge between Protestant and Catholic. The spirit of Schleiermacher hovers when he proposes individual responsibility, but not collective guilt or original sin. Abelard is preferred to Anselm for teaching that it was love not suffering which made the difference on cross, and the cross is a symbol which works through the Eucharist, and thus is ‘objectively subjective’. There is a lot here that is thoughtful but little of the content is either original or incisively presented.
