What is Christianity?

Little Book of Guidance

Rowan Williams

• Publisher: SPCK
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780281074433
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Christianisme

A fresh look at the basics of the Christian faith, written accessibly by one of the world's greatest living theologians.

1

What is Christianity all about?

Imagine someone watching, over a period of about one year, the things that happen in a Christian church. They would be aware that one day of the week has special significance. Particularly if they are observing what happens in a historically Christian country, they would notice that Sunday is seen as important for meeting and praying. They would see that Christians meet to sing and speak to a God whom they describe as the maker of all things and the judge of all things, and that they kneel or bow in the presence of this God, thanking him and acknowledging their failures and sinfulness. They would see that extracts from a holy book are read in public and that instruction is given by leaders of the congregation in how to understand this book. They would perhaps notice that most of the prayers end with words referring to someone called Jesus Christ, and describing him as ‘Lord’.

They would see that at different seasons Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus and also commemorate his death and his miraculous return from death. Sometimes they would hear prayers and blessings mentioning ‘the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’. And finally, they would see that new members are brought into the community by a ceremony of pouring water on them or immersing them in water, and that the most regular action performed by communities of different kinds is the blessing and sharing of bread and wine. They would notice, perhaps with bewilderment or even shock, that this sharing of bread and wine is described as sharing the body and blood of Jesus.

In this little book, I am trying to think what questions might arise for someone looking at Christians from the outside in the way I have just imagined. These may or may not be the questions you have. But perhaps the attempt to answer these questions will help bring other questions more clearly into focus.

God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit

Let me begin with the most obvious features of Christian prayer. We pray ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord’. And the best known of all Christian prayers begins with the words ‘Our Father in heaven’. These belong together. Probably the most important Christian belief is that we are given the right to speak to God in exactly the same way that Jesus did, because the life, the power, the Spirit that filled Jesus is given to us also.

We believe that Jesus, son of Mary, is fully a human being. But we believe more than that. Because of the divine authority that he shows in his power to teach and to forgive, as our Gospels describe it, we say also that the whole of his human life is the direct effect of God’s action working in him at every moment. The image used by some Christian thinkers is that his human life is like iron that has been heated in the fire until it has the same power to burn as the fire does.

We call him the Son of God. But we do not mean by this that God is physically his father, or that he is made to be another God alongside the one God. We say rather that the one God is alive and real in three eternal and distinct ways. God is first the source of everything, the life from which everything flows out. But then we say that this one God is also living and real in that ‘flowing-out’. The life that comes from him is not something different from him. It reflects all that he is. It shows his glory and beauty and communicates them. Christians say that God has a perfect and eternal ‘image’ of his glory, sometimes called his ‘wisdom’, sometimes called his ‘Word’, sometimes called his ‘Son’, though this is never to be understood in a physical and literal way. And we say that the one God, who is both source and outward-flowing life, who is both ‘Father’ and ‘Son’, is also active as the power that draws everything back to God, leading and guiding human beings – and indeed the whole universe – towards unity with the wisdom and goodness of God. This is the power we call ‘Holy Spirit’.

So when we speak of ‘the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’, we do not at all mean to say that there are three gods – as if there were three divine people in heaven, like three human people in a room. Certainly we believe that the three ways in which God eternally exists and acts are distinct from one another – but not in the way that things in the world or even persons in the world are distinct. This is important in the context of dialogue with other faiths, not least with Islam: when Christians read in the Qur’an the strong condemnation of ‘associating’ with God other beings that are not God, they will agree wholeheartedly.

If we then return to what Christians believe about Jesus, perhaps we can see why they say that he is ‘Son of God’. Because the eternal Word and wisdom of God completely occupies his human mind and body, we say that in him this Word and wisdom has ‘become flesh’, has been ‘incarnated’. Just as the Word and wisdom eternally reflects God’s glory and beauty, so in our human world, in human history, Jesus reflects this glory and beauty, showing us both the splendour of divine love and the true dignity and glory of humanity as God intends it to be. Because the Word and wisdom of God is sometimes described in the Jewish Scriptures of the Old Testament as a ‘child’ of God – and also because these Scriptures often call the kings of God’s people who rule according to wisdom the ‘sons of God’ – we come to say that Jesus, who embodies God’s wisdom and is anointed as ruler of God’s people, is God’s Son. And, as we have seen, from the very first, Christian thinkers have said that this language must not be thought of in any physical way.

When Jesus himself prays to God in his own human voice, he calls him ‘Father’. And what we must now add to what we have said so far is that this title expresses not only the acknowledgement on the part of Jesus that his whole being comes directly from God, but also the trust and complete confidence that he enjoys with God. As the Gospel of St John ...