“There is no God”, says bishop of Durham
John H Saturday 9th June, AD 2007
No, don’t get excited, not that bishop of Durham.
While NT Wright is a major figure in world Christianity, for anyone aged over 35 or so here in Britain, the phrase “bishop of Durham” is still likely to conjure up images of Wright’s 1980s predecessor, David Jenkins. Jenkins became notorious for his apparent dismissal of the traditional view of the resurrection as “just a conjuring trick with bones”, which delighted news editors everywhere, since an “unbelieving” bishop provides so much better copy than the regular old “believing” kind.
Long before Jenkins became bishop of Durham, he preached a sermon entitled “There is no God”. This title might appear to confirm everyone’s worst suspicions about him, but in fact he provides a fresh and illuminating perspective on atheism and the question of God’s existence. I have not been able to find a copy online, and the book from which it is taken is now out of print, but if anyone interested is in reading it then please email me or request it in the comments and I can send you a PDF.
Jenkins opens his sermon, preached in 1956, as follows:
“There is no God.” Is it only the fool who says there is no God? Surely the declaration of atheism has been made by some of the most sensitive, the most passionate and the most serious of human beings.
Indeed, following a discussion of philosophical issues such as the ontological argument, Jenkins continues:
If you have not sensed the strength of the arguments for atheism, it is more than probable that you have not really sensed what we mean when we say we believe in God.
The heart of Jenkins’ sermon is his summary of the various ways in which people have declared “there is no God”: as “a cry nearly of despair”, as an “exultant cry of freedom” or as “a sober statement of fact”:
“There is no God.” A despairing cry: how can perfection exist when perfection means that which is beyond anything now known to exist, that which is beyond our strivings, that which our very strivings testify does not exist? “There is no God.”
“There is no God.” An exultant cry: we are not shut in by any conception, any scheme or any pattern already existing … We are free. “There is no God.”
“There is no God.” A sober statement of fact: we must be content with what we can observe, measure and see … There can be no evidence for that which goes beyond the evidence. “There is no God.”
Not all atheists will share all three of these emphases (my own youthful atheism was a combination of the second and third approaches, as is that of Richard Dawkins). But all will agree on the conclusion: “worship is a mistake … ‘God’ is a mental construction.”
Jenkins acknowledges that there is “no logical step, no proof, from the fact that we conceive of God to the fact that God exists“:
The only thing that the observable fact that a very large number of human beings worship God goes to prove is that a very large number of human beings indulge in a practice called worship.
However, Jenkins then goes on to consider “two questions which we can ask ourselves“, looking at the issue “not as outside observers of the phenomenon [of worship] … but as people who are ourselves part of the evidence which we observe”. I will go on to look at these in my next post.
[...] In my previous post, I described how David Jenkins (in his 1956 sermon, “There is no God”) proposes two questions that we can ask ourselves as those who worship God, rather than as outside observers of the phenomenon of worship, in response to the atheist’s cry that “There is no God!” (This is reminiscent of CS Lewis’ distinction between “looking at” and “looking along”.) [...]
I would like to have a copy of that sermon, please. Thanks.
[...] John also has some very interesting observations from David Jenkins, the former bishop of Durham (part 1, part 2). John also has a very good post on the subject of Christian children. ***R. Scott Clark on ‘Baptism, Election and the Covenant of Grace’. If nothing else, one has to be impressed with Clark’s chutzpah in distinguishing Lutherans from Protestants. Those terrible Lutherans, suggesting that Baptism actually does something! ***John Piper’s The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright will probably be released in November. ***There is a pre-publication special offer for Logos Bible Software’s electronic version of NTW’s Jesus and the Victory of God. ***I am encouraged. I thought that I read too many blogs. However, I only have about 250 blog feeds on Bloglines; Macht has about 550. If you don’t already use a feed aggregator like Bloglines, I strongly suggest that you start. It makes blog reading so much quicker and easier. ***Cooking for Engineers [HT: Peter Roberts] ***John Barach discusses Alias, strong male figures in popular TV shows and the manner in which shows such as Alias and 24 can desensitize us to surveillance and torture. As a fan of LOST and 24 (although my faith in both shows has taken a bit of a beating over the last season) and someone who has watched most of the first couple of seasons of Alias, I find that I agree with many of John’s observations. ***Please pray for the Presbyteer’s church. ***Some helpful productivity advice [HT: Mark Horne] ***From lifehacker: [...]
Jesus has come back from the dead and yet you still can’t believe. God has shown you what he can do. He has the worse temper in the universe. Soddam and Gomorrah were two cities that were exactly like the U.S. People wer gay, having sex, everything that was not what God wanted. He destroyed them both with fire and hell. That is exactly how he will destroy the U.S. Nuclear Warheads. Why do you athiests try to fight a god that you don’t think is there. You are contradicting yourselves. You choose not to believe God. When there is the most compelling evidence you still can’t believe. As science says you can’t make something from nothing. That is where God comes in. But you know what is different between Christianity and all the other religions. Their gods haven’t risen from the dead. They are all still in there graves. I hate it when athiests everywhere think it’s unconstitutional to have God in schools. Our country was founded on Christianity. When people would rather start coming out of the closet than cleaning it it is a sign that the judgment of God is going to fall. The people who signed the decleration of Independence believed you couldn’t call yourself a true American if you didn’t have Jesus in your life. We are now #1 in teen pregnancies and violent crimes. Why? Because God isn’t in schools. I am not saying the government should make you christian but i’m saying this country would be a lot better off with God and his laws. Stop handing out condoms and start handing out the word of God. I am doing this because i have something to fight for. God and his ways. You have no reason to make a stupid blog because you have nothing to fight for. If there is no god then why do you fight him. Hmm? Satan decieves you. He tells you there is no god but fight him anyway. I will close with this word of passage. The fool* says in his heart “There is no God”
Very interested in your article would be grateful if you could send me the PDF file of Bishop Jenkins book
There is no God
I would like a copy of Bishop Jenkins 1956 sermon if possible please.