Candid Comments on Bishop Pike’s Christian Candor

May 23, 1965
Rochester

Candid Comments on Bishop Pike’s Christian Candor

“We are in the midst of a theological revolution, a time in which people are increasingly aware that old doctrines, old traditions, are in many cases obsolete.” If a Unitarian Universalist minister says that, most people who know of us, might yawn a bit and ask “so what else is new?” But when a leading Episcopal bishop asserts such startling theological opinion then attention is considerable and controversy stirs. This controversy moves around the Bishop [of the] California diocese of the Protestant Episcopal Church, James A. Pike. He is a man of considerable talent, competence and frequently captures headlines with his strongly stated opinions.

His book published in 1964, A TIME FOR CHRISTIAN CANDOR,, summed up various theological positions Bishop Pike has announced from time to time. This has caused criticism within Christian theological circles to surge to a rather high tide. Various other Christian theologians have asserted that Bishop Pike’s propositions are heresy and entirely to be rejected by any believing Christian. Others hear Pike’s voice as “courageous and daring... ready to probe and criticize sanctified traditions so that the gospel may be allowed to break through as light and life....” (Theology Today, on a book jacket).

Bishop Pike attempts to make Christianity relevant for today’s world by pointing out that Christian dogmas were created for a different age than our own and are inappropriate or confusing statements for our time and culture. Because Christians generally resist any radical change and interpretation of their doctrines a roadblock has been created which in Bishop Pike’s words takes this form (p. 73), “But there is an even more formidable roadblock to the understanding and acceptance of Christianity and it is one which, by and lager, spokesmen from the Church have themselves erected. It works not only to keep people out; it keeps insiders really outsiders – as far as the real thing goes. And it tends to keep Christianity irrelevant.

“What is this roadblock? It is harder to state, but in the end it is the churchmen’s well-intentioned idolatry. What is historically conditioned is presented as eternal, what is relative is presented as absolute, what is ’packaging’ is presented as the product, what are mores is presented as morals, what is fallible is presented as infallible, what is contingent is presented as ultimate, what is secondary is presented as primary, what is nonessential is presented as essential, what is custom and ’machinery’ is presented as final reality; the notions of men are presented as the mind of Gog, the words are men are presented as the will of God.”

[inserted: Bishop Pike may be asserting that one can be numbered among orthodox Christians while holding Unitarian beliefs. Little wonder that some liberals wonder if Bishop Pike doesn’t belong in Unitarian Universalism. Some wag in the Corning, NY fellowship wrote these lines adapted from Dr. Fell ?

They do not dig you
Bishop Pike;
The Trinity you want
to spike.
Come be our guest,
we think alike.
They do not dig you,
Bishop Pike.

If you like, you can be a bit smug and assert that Universalists and Unitarians have been saying these things from the days of Ballou, Emerson and Parker, but I’m not interested in stroking the proud feathers of our vanity. I would like to discuss two ideas in Bishop Pike’s book with the purpose of evaluating the question, “If such theological liberalism is a strong current in the Protestant Episcopal church, why should we continue to ring the changes on our alleged theological progressivism?” Has our effective influence, measured and justified as a separated religious association of societies, come to an end?

I will approach these questions through presentation of two main themes in Pike’s book, although there is a great deal more worth reading and discussing. Bishop Pike’s honest doubt about the [origins, meaning, and finality] of Jesus’ crucifixion, and the necessity of holding to a belief in the Trinity, is primary in the anxieties he has caused among traditionalists as well as the support he has received from progressives, who have not been comfortable with the chasm that has existed between reason and faith.

Bishop Pike dismisses the historical nature of the Virgin Birth and the Christmas miracles. He is quite candid in saying that the historical truth can “hardly be regarded as an essential of faith.” Furthermore he believes that whether or not Christians agree about what happened at Jesus’ birth is a “secondary matter,” while describing the worship and celebration which surround Christmas “folk activities.” (p. 140)

There are varieties of theological reason for the crucifixion in Christian doctrine. But the primary element in them all is that “God was in Christ.” Christians have believed God in Christ saved man from his sins by voluntarily assuming human form and paying the price for man’s sins on the cross, thereby establishing the mode of redemption.

This Christian theological scheme has been our Unitarian Universalist point of departure for nearly two hundred years. Our belief in a human Jesus, who died as a man, not as a God, is basic to both historic Unitarianism and Universalism from almost the earliest times. It has been this rejection of a scheme of supernatural redemption and all it implies which has been our distinct theological assertion, as well as being the reason why most Christian groups have been somewhat alarmed about us or hostile toward us.

Bishop Pike states the reasons for Jesus’ execution which have much less to do with the old story of Christian salvation than with reasons of high human conviction amid the pressures of an oppressive social order.

In Bishop Pike’s words “as the freshest (in both senses of the word) rabbi of His day, Jesus ended up exposed on too many fronts at once.

“(Jesus) had concluded that his time was short; the preaching of the present power of the Kingdom and the opening of men to its reality He put first.” (p. 116)

While Jesus was akin to the Pharisees in taking the historical religion of Judaism seriously, he divided with them on the questions of precise following of legalistic codes.

Bishop Pike speaks of the opposition of Jesus to the Sadducees whom he describes as “the power structure” of the time. They were the “Quislings, the collaborationists, and they had control of the biggest local industry, the Temple with its concessions; the sale of animals for sacrifice and the changing of money.” Jesus “involved himself in a ’demonstration’: he let all the animals out of their cages and knocked over the carefully arranged tables of the bankers. That did it.

“A fourth front is important. The government got into it. The cynical Roman colonialists couldn’t have cared less about indigenous theological quarrels. Pilate and his colleagues, assigned to Israel, had no constructive program for the development of the area and were simply holding on – and didn’t want the boat rocked. That might interfere with a nice next assignment.

“So from every point of view, Jesus had to go. And He did.” (p. 117)

Thus Bishop Pike makes a good case that Jesus was a noble, radical, brave man dedicated to human causes, who was so much of a nuisance to the oppressors that they got rid of him. Well most of us in the UU faith agree. This was a human event in the context of historical events and cultural forces. One can understand that the orthodox Christian has ample cause to classify as heretical Bishop Pike’s interpretation of Jesus’ life and death. The ... is not made orthodox by Bishop Pike’s rather weak conclusion notes that because Jesus willingly risked safety on all fronts, that “this was – and is – the great moment, the Great Break-Through. For everything that has happened, before or since, God made it fully.” (p. 118)

It follows that Bishop Pike would have to strain to find ways to still hold to Trinitarian belief. After all, if the explanation of Jesus’ life is made on human terms, it takes some doing to justify a trinity which represents a tri-une god – God, Son and Holy Spirit.

One can understand the alarm of many Christian thinkers when Bishop Pike writes quite plainly (p. 124):

“The Church’s classical way of stating what is represented by the Trinity has in fact been a barrier with the well educated and less educated alike. And it is not essential to the Christian faith.”

He makes the point that has been elementary in our teaching that the early followers of Jesus never heard of the Trinity, let along believing in it, and that the New Testament has no authentic references to it.

He considers “The Trinity” to be a theological formula which emerged in classical times and “if the categories of thought involved in the classical formulation of the Trinity are no longer viable, then we need not feel troubled by them in regard to the conventional Trinitarian declaration.” (p. 129) In other words a belief in the Trinity is not necessary for Christian faith. But oddly enough Bishop Pike follows this heretical declaration with the rather inconsistent assertion that even though we don’t have to be Trinitarian it’s nice to behave as if we were: “We (ought to) use with a sense of reality the liturgical formulae of the respective churches, not disclaiming the basis of their ideological development, but respecing the serious theological enterprise which resulted in these now-dated definitions.” (p. 129)

My candid opinion of Bishop Pike’s “Christian Candor” is that a person may qualify as a believing Christian if he uses the ancient formulas, even if he believes they are not true in any historical factual sense.

Now perhaps in such a brief commentary I have given insufficient explanation to the scope of Bishop Pike’s argument, but the case he makes is like unto a great many thoughtful persons I have met who are committed members of orthodox Christian churches, but who have assured me that they are Unitarian rather than Trinitarian in their idea of God; Universalist rather than fundamentalist in their idea of salvation and believe that Jesus was human. But they strain at symbolic interpretations of creeds and liturgies because they believe in the humanitarian goals, social situations or inspiring worship of the particular church of their allegiance.

This sort of evasive belief reminds me of a little bit of the politician in the midst of a political campaign who, when asked what his particular color was, quickly replied, “plaid.”

Bishop Pike has not been alone in this equivocal attitude about what would seem to be vital. A continental theologian seems almost snobbish when he writes, “Therefore it does not matter at all whether the uneducated believe that all this really happened in distant, primitive times or more educated people take this myth as a mere image of truth (Schweitzer in The New Theology #1, p. 53).

Perhaps he needs the reminder that Jesus is credited with saying, “let what you say be simply ’yes’ or ’no’; anything more than this comes from evil.” (Matthew 5/37)

The famous historian of ideas Arthur O. Lovejoy concluded that the history of Christian doctrine consists of a “series of facts which taken as a whole, have almost nothing in common except the name Christian and the formal loyalties the name symbolizes.” (Quoted by Jaroslav Pelikan, CHRISTIAN CENTURY, 1/6/65, p. 9)

In an attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable – ... the theologians seem [to] have urged that the words be said – but more important is the impact that religion will have on the individual and society.

Some might argue that with this openness of interpretation becoming a strong minority attitude within the substantial, enlightened area of Christian churches, we would do well to add our strength to it. If we could find a way to rationalize or swallow our disbeliefs in doctrine and dogmas, would we not add strength to the undoubted courageous social position being taken by so many Christian churches and Christian individuals? I would guess that there might be many who might be so persuaded and find membership in our non-creedal societies unnecessary or insignificant.

But I am not persuaded. I like what Albert Camus wrote in THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS, (p. 31): “Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.” I am not too content to say Trinitarian liturgies even when I have tacit consent to be Unitarians. I would feel intellectually dishonest repeating hell and damnation doctrines when I am thoroughly Universalist in my ideas of redemption; I am not content to propose justice for the “Green Hill far away,” when justice is needed on the street right at hand.

Furthermore, the excellent Bishop does not deal with two aspects of a free faith which are vital to Unitarians and Universalists:

First, the strong Humanist feeling and influence among us which views all theologies as products of human inheritance, human perception and human interpretation. It is not only that among us one is free to believe in a Unitarian God and a human Jesus, but also one is free to doubt that any and all human efforts to establish gods or God are persuasive or necessary.

Second, our prevailing attitude toward the other great religions of the world. We hold not only that one is free to re-interpret or reject the traditional teaching of Christianity, but also one should appreciate the other great religions of the world. We recognize that the Hindu religion may be the most true faith for the Hindu; that the teachings of Buddha most relevant for the Buddhist; and the faith of Islam the best for the convinced Moslem.

More than that, we stand for the newer Universalist emphasis which has been acquiring some momentum for a generation that there is a certain merging of truth and understanding particularly concerning human attitudes and values among the great religions. To increase the dimension of that common ground should be of as much concern to us as the value of our relationship to historic and modern Christianity.

One thing more than seems to me to be as important for our present and future as our relationship to Christianity ... is to improve ways for communication with and relatedness to the important cultural emphases of our day.

For the predictable future Unitarian Universalist societies will be a place for those who have moved away from the Christian supernatural doctrine which claims “this is the only truth,” whether literally held or accepted in some vague figurative sense. But also we will achieve relevance and be an effective force for positive human values by understanding the forces of modern life and incorporating that understanding in our symbolism and worship.

It is just in this area that Bishop Pike makes an authentic challenge of shortcoming on the past of the modern religious liberal. In justification of ancient, Christian liturgical ways of worship, he writes (p. 133), “... part of the value in worship, preaching, and ceremonial (sic) is communication to, and nourishing of, the unconscious mind. The capacity of ideas to reach this level depends on well-worn paths into the unconscious level; hence the importance of continuity of symbols and phrases.”

Now certainly we should be candid enough to recognize that he has a point. Through the years we have professed a rational faith based on fact and formed into philosophic structure by intelligence. The reality is that, by and large we have not sufficiently recognized the deep pools of the unconscious, the years of repressed feeling or sublimated impulse. When we believe that our faith is complete in the rational statement and the humanistic hymn, of course we are expressing only a part of our lives. Bishop Pike is right when he writes that we must communicate both and nourish the unconscious mind.

But I cannot believe that the way to accomplish this is through liturgies that do not represent our ideas, gestures, incense, symbols or ceremonies that for us have become barren of creative meaning.

We must come to terms with the deep and irrational powers within us. But our course is not the ancient well worn paths, but the creative expressions of our day which embrace the irrational. We can communicate with and nourish those forces by appreciating the disturbing colors put abstractly on canvas by the painter whose skilled ... are expressing the deep feeling we all keep hidden. We can communicate and appreciate through atonal, as well as harmonic, wordless music. We can communicate with and nourish that deep pit of feeling by appreciating the voiceless movement of modern dance, the strange and passionate puzzles of modern theatre of the absurd, the murky but human stream of consciousness in some modern literature.

Some of these arts we can (and) should incorporate in our worship from time to time, although the performance will not be easy and will surely antagonize some as these arts deal with feelings (that are) convenient to keep buried. More often we will appreciate these arts in their own media and permit the expression to temper any vanity we may have about the superiority of our rational religion.

I like what one of our own historians, Dr. Conrad Wright of Harvard Divinity School says, “Religious liberals will reach a consensus from time to time on religious truths; but what makes them liberals is not the conclusions they reach but the spirit of openness with which they search and find. There are times, and perhaps this is one of them, when religious liberals need to remember that the real test of a man’s liberalism is his willingness to listen – to listen to the voices with which he disagrees.”