Honest to God
Created | Updated Apr 25, 2004
When ‘Honest to God’ was published in 1962, the author, John Robinson, was both an academic and the Bishop of Woolwich. He had previously challenged church tradition, and church leaders by appearing as one of the main witnesses for the defence in the indecency trial of D.H. Lawrence’s ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’. In ‘Honest to God’, he challenged the traditional image of God as ‘an old man with a beard on a cloud’, and argued that instead God was ineffable, and was ‘no sort of thing’ as he could not be limited by words, or what we could comprehend, as he was incomprehensible. Robinson expressed this view in language which the non-specialist reader could understand, thus providing arguments which the individual conscience could use to help define its beliefs.
This was a prime example of various sources of authority contradicting each other. Robinson was both a scholar and a religious leader, yet his authority was opposed by other religious leaders and scholars, who disagreed with him. He disputed tradition and also came into conflict with the individual conscience, as although he had provided material for this source of authority to make use of, many quarrelled with his view, as they saw a statement of God as being ‘no sort of thing’ as being too close to God being said to be nothing.
There was a large debate over the book between scholars, religious leaders, and people’s individual conscience, such that in 1963 Robinson published a second book, ‘The Honest to God Debate’, which contained fifty of the hundreds of letters he received. Nowadays, the individual conscience has become more able to adopt his view, without it denying God, and in fact the indistinct view of God has received a greater emphasis in the tradition of some more liberal areas of Christianity, partly due to its larger acceptance by religious leaders. A few years after the publication of ‘Honest to God’ the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Arthur Ramsey published a pamphlet entitled ‘Image Old and New’, which endorsed many of Robinson’s points. Nevertheless, by then Robinson had been seen as too controversial, and had been removed to academia. Whilst some groups within each religious authority still oppose the book, the passing of time has led to a change in the direction of those authorities which Robinson challenged.
