Of course I was tempted to think I had hit on the correct way to reconcile the sacred and the secular; and necessarily so to persuade me to continue until I had said all that I had to say. Similarly Jesus must have been tempted to think his was the complete Revelation, to motivate him to face the agony of the cross. But it was not true. He had nothing to say about running a community. Similarly the worthy fathers at Nicaea were no doubt tempted to think their Creed was immortal truth, to encourage them to do their best. And they would have been disappointed to be told at the end of their conference, that it was ”not a very good best”. I expect people will say the same about me. It is the old paradox, which Philip Pullman identified: “Without the story, there will be no church, and without the church Jesus will be forgotten”. The fathers at Nicaea chose the church. Who dare say they were wrong about that? But have not times changed since then? Nowadays do you preach a Gospel which your agnostic, science-loving public will understand? Or preach the legend of your treasured beliefs, and allow the church to die? Creation always has more to reveal than any one man can envisage. This must be so, otherwise life would cease to be exciting. And then it would not be worth living!
So if I limit Jesus on the one hand, I never diminish him, I exalt him on the other. He was the first man to dare to believe he had a sense of communion with the Almighty, the Creator, and the audacity to put it into practice, despite the appalling consequences for himself which he knew would follow. He did this in the only way possible, through the archetypes in the subconscious, which have a habit of coming alive, if you respond to them. So he ended up with a sense of communion with the Spirit of God within. But knowing nothing of the language of modern psychology, he had little option but to use the revolting symbolism of demanding that to believe in him, you had to eat his flesh and drink his blood. In other words, you had to be like him, and dare to believe that you too similarly have an indwelling with the Almighty, despite the fear that the reward of your temerity may be a lecture such as poor Job received, “Where were you when I laid out the foundations of the world?” This fits in with Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, in which he said that unless a man was born again, he could not see the kingdom of God. And the point of such an intimacy with God is that it enables us to ask what our vocation is, which potentially we all have, and which may or may not be crucifying. It is not to enable us to prance around saying, “I’m a born-again Christian!”
So looking back in old age, what do I see? In the Brexit negotiations, I have not seen one word of gratitude for what Britain did for Europe between 1939-45: how Britain stood alone from June 1940 to June 1941, how Britain bankrupted and exhausted herself, to help free Europe from Nazi tyranny. Indeed, in Germany there may be no gratitude? Germany’s only regrets may be that Hitler lost the War, which he so nearly won? And on my spiritual adventure, I am disposed to see that I escaped catastrophe by the skin of my teeth. For that, I am profoundly grateful.