Rowan Williams - Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief

TOKENS OF TRUST

TOKENS OF
TRUST

An Introduction to
Christian Belief

ROWAN WILLIAMS

2007 Rowan Williams

First published in 2007 in Great Britain by the Canterbury Press

Norwich (a publishing imprint of Hymns Ancient & Modern Limited, a registered charity) 9-17 St Albans Place, London, n1 onx

2010 U.S. paperback edition

Originally published in hardback in the United States

by Westminster John Knox Press in 2007

Louisville, Kentucky

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 2915 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Westminster John Knox Press, 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202-1396.

Book design by Vera Brice

Cover design by Paul Poll

Cover photograph courtesy of Derek P. Redfearn/Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Williams, Rowan.

Tokens of trust : an introduction to Christian belief / Rowan Williams.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-0-664-23213-9 (alk. paper)

1. Theology, DoctrinalPopular works. 2. Trust in God. 3. Belief and doubt.

I. Title.

BT77.W575 2007

230dc22

2007006718

ISBN: 978-0-664-23699-1 (paperback edition)

Most Westminster John Knox Press books are available at special quantity discounts when purchased in bulk by corporations, organizations, and special-interest groups. For more information, please e-mail .

CONTENTS

In the early centuries of the Christian Church, one of the most important jobs for its leaders was to prepare people for initiation into its life. Usually this happened at Easter, in a solemn night-time ceremony involving stripping off your clothes, being immersed in water and anointed with oil. In the weeks leading up to Easter, the local bishop would have been giving intensive instruction in what belief meant, the climax of a process of preparation that might have taken a couple of years.

Well, we dont do it quite like that today. But the period before Easter is a good time to think about the essentials of what Christians believe as they get ready for the greatest celebration of the year. And it was with this in mind that I decided to offer some talks in Canterbury Cathedral, in the week before Easter 2005, that might give an outline of what it was all about. This book is a slightly enlarged version of what was said in those talks.

I have tried to keep some of the conversational style of the talks; and I have also tried not to take too much for granted about what readers might or might not know about the Bible or the Churchs history. Some of the people who came to the talks in the Cathedral were regular churchgoers in search of a refresher course, but some were fairly new to it all, and I hope they didnt feel that I was assuming they knew more than they did. So I must ask the reader who does know a lot about it to be patient if I explain the obvious.

For example: there are plenty of quotations from the Bible, and the reader will ideally need to have one handy and to know that the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures is the record of how God dealt with the (Hebrew-speaking) tribes of ancient Israel over a period of well over a thousand years; and that the New Testament, the Christian Scriptures, contains the four Gospels, giving the outlines of the life of Jesus, and a lot of letters to newly founded Christian communities around the eastern Mediterranean by senior leaders of the first generation. Most are by Paul, a man who had been a violent opponent of Christianity and had a famously dramatic conversion; others are by people about whom we dont know much but who are still very close to the historical beginning of it all and to the people whod known Jesus.

Basic to everything here is the idea that Christian belief is really about knowing who and what to trust. I shall be suggesting that Christianity asks you to trust the God it talks about before it asks you to sign up to a complete system. I hope it may become clear how, once you have taken the step of trust, the actual teaching, the doctrine, flows out of that. A good and sensible bit of Christian teaching is good and sensible because it has grown out of exploring the implications of believing in a completely trustworthy God.

So all through these chapters, Im assuming that we are not just talking about ideas in their own right, but about the interaction between thinking, doing and praying out of which the statements of belief originally came. These statements, mostly held in common between all major Christian bodies in the world, took shape in the first three hundred years of the Churchs history, and have shown themselves remarkably tough and durable in all the problems the Church has been through. Youll find the text of the two oldest and most widespread of these creeds (from the Latin for I believe) at the beginning of the book.

The pictures are one way of helping you to read a bit more slowly and meditatively. Some of them are by the great twentieth-century poet, painter and engraver, David Jones; he has a way of producing a picture that seems to invite you into a much deeper world by the mysterious lightness of the strokes and the colours. And I hope that one effect of Christian believing is always seeing the world in a new way seeing beyond the surface without letting go of whats actually there on the surface (which still matters immensely).

The other pictures are simply of some of the people who make sense of the words by their lives. If the sketch of faith Ive written here rings any bells, it will be mostly because you will have met people like this, trustworthy people who themselves show how to live in the real physical world while opening up the depths of things. These photographs are meant to remind you of such folk, to tell you that there are those who make sense of it all in this living way.

Im very grateful to everyone who has helped with turning the talks into a book: Sarah Williams and Jonathan Jennings who looked after the recording and transcribing, Christine Smith of Canterbury Press who encouraged me to think of making a book out of what emerged, Jonathan Goodall, Linda Foster and Mary Matthews who helped so much with editing and checking. And thanks also to all those who turned out to listen in the Cathedral, who stayed through the week (and stayed to pray and listen to music after each evenings session) and who responded so patiently and generously to the whole experience. This book is specially for all of them, and for all Gods people in Canterbury.

R OWAN W ILLIAMS

All Saints, 2006

The Apostles Creed

I believe in God the Father almighty,

maker of heaven and earth:

and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord,

who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,

born of the Virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, dead, and buried.

He descended into hell;

the third day he rose again from the dead;

he ascended into heaven,

and sitteth on the right hand of God

the Father almighty;

from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost;

the holy catholic Church;

the communion of saints;

the forgiveness of sins;