Tokens of Trust – the Archbishop on what it means to believe
One advantage of using the train is being able to read. So last week’s jaunt down to Brighton meant I got round to reading Rowan Williams’ latest book, Tokens of Trust. This is the Archbishop’s introduction to Christian Belief which takes a walk through the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed in order to paint a picture of what it means to say “I believe”. As the title of the book hints at, the creeds invite us to trust the God who made heaven and earth, and that such trust is actually what it means to believe.
“Bad religion is about not trusting God, trying to avoid God or even outwitting him”
It is from this starting point that the Archbishop reflects on the essentials of belief and invites us to trust a God who has shown himself to be trustworthy, especially in the person and story of his son Jesus.
“What God shows himself to be in Jesus is simply what he always is; he doesn’t decide to be like Jesus for thirty-odd years or even thirty thousand. God is thus and not otherwise”
The book moves through the key phrases of the creed exploring the implications of a belief in God, Jesus, the church and resurrection. It is a deeply thoughtful exploration that prompts us to return to the essentials set out in the creeds long before we got caught up in debates over models of atonement and the like.
One area that this book seemed to contribute to an ongoing reflection, at least in my head, is about the way in which we read the bible as community (or not). I think it was Rob Bell in Velvet Elvis that pointed out that reading the bible in private is a relatively new invention. The Archbishop says something similar, calling us back to put the bible at the heart of the church again and also reminding us of one of the fundamental beliefs of baptists - that it is Jesus, revealed through the bible, not the bible itself that is our final authority.
“[the Bible] is not a sort of magical text, supernaturally giving us guaranteed information about everything under the sun. What we call its ‘inspiration’ is it capacity to be the vehicle of the Holy Spirit, making Jesus vividly present to our minds and hearts…”
Worth a read, I think…
