Madam, - Some recent letters to this page have derided liberal theology and "the jaded tradition of rational theology". Yet the fact remains that Christianity, in all but its most fundamentalist forms, is shrinking because 21st-century people can no longer take on first-century thinking.
My Rite and Reason article of December 22nd and my recent book, Saving Christianity (The Liffey Press) are attempts to get Christians of all denominations in this country talking about what they really believe, deep down.
I have held a traditional belief for most of my life. But now I am desperately concerned about all the people who are walking out of the Church (or failing to come into it) because they hear what the Church is saying with 21st-century ears and it does not make sense to them. "Jesus of Nazareth is God." Whaaat? You can tell them what Tertullian said in the third century - "I believe because it is impossible" - but it doesn't help them.
So we surely now have to ask, "What do we mean when we say that? What did the first-century writers mean when they wrote all that down?"
People like me are not saying. "Jesus was just a good man". That would be as inadequate as saying, "Bach was just a good composer". But a real, actual, genuine human being cannot be the same material ("substance") as God. God is non-material. A possible conclusion, therefore, is: we all have something of God in us; some people have a huge amount of God in them; and Jesus had so much God in him that he was 100 per cent God-filled.
This is why later generations decided he must have been, in some way, "God". But 21st-century people no longer think that way, blending myth and metaphor with history. So we need to find new ways of expressing those ancient doctrines that 21st-century Christians will be able to hold with integrity, without the old ways being discarded by those for whom they are good.
These new ways of thinking are already out there, but the many people - including clergy - who are contacting me with thanks are mostly unable to voice their views in their Church communities. - Yours, etc.,
Canon HILARY WAKEMAN, Schull, Co Cork.