Attempting to get closer to the truth

As one who has had several essays about columnist Bill Cummings published in The Telegraph over the past year or so, I was struck by Bill Ferguson’s recent column on the same subject (“Heresy on the editorial page,” Dec. 9). The ongoing conversation about Christianity between Cummings and his readers is indeed rare and remarkable in a daily newspaper, far elevated above the usual newspaper fare, and The Telegraph should be commended for allowing it.

What Ferguson wrote is mostly true as far as it goes. He acknowledges that “to the more conservative Christian believers the stakes are incredibly high in this debate.” Yet the overall tone of the column is one of “Why all the fuss over Cummings?” Ferguson maintains that “it might seem odd … that his columns should provoke such negative feedback;” writes dismissively about people getting “worked up” over religion; refers condescendingly to those who are “upset” by Cummings’ work and reports that “I have found the topic of religion is one people can get very emotional about,” as if that should be surprising. I would respond that it would be surprising if Cummings’ Christian readers didn’t react as they do, because as I’ve said in these pages before, the questions involved are the most important questions there are (goo.gl/XUJs4g). Though Ferguson might disagree, this is not like debating about who has the better football team or even about who should win an election.

The fundamental question about our world is whether there is anything beyond it or whether, as atheists believe, “what you see is what you get” and that’s all that anybody gets. In the greatest of all paradoxes, the fundamental question about life is about non-life — is death simply the end or does life in some form go on? Christians of course answer those questions with the first and second alternatives respectively, and many millions of them have staked their lives on those answers. In bygone days in Georgia, on rural roads, one would occasionally encounter crude, hand-lettered signs imploring “Get right with God” or asking “Where will you spend eternity?” There is no more powerful question than that, because eternity, being infinite, is by definition infinitely greater than anything in this finite world, as any mathematician will affirm.

Because he is such a formidable biblical scholar, Cummings’ ongoing public rejection of traditional Christianity constitutes a powerful full-frontal body slam to the beliefs on which many millions of people have staked their lives (though he would probably disagree with that characterization). Cummings apparently does believe in God, though it is more a “Mister Rogers”-style God than the one most Christians believe in (goo.gl/kp6xqH). But he clearly subscribes to the “just a good man” theory of Jesus, in which Jesus, while he might have been doing the work of God or inspired by God, was no more divine than Buddha, Confucius, Lao-tsu or any number of other moral teachers. As I have said before, “To strip Christianity of its supernatural dimension, to demote Jesus to being merely a moral teacher and to relegate historical Christianity to ‘additions and redactions’ is to reduce Christianity to something that, while it might be admirable, cannot without absurdity be called Christianity” (goo.gl/TykhOU). It is therefore, Ferguson notwithstanding, the opposite of surprising that Cummings’ Christian readers should react as they do.

In any event, may Cummings continue to write, may his readers continue to read, think and react, and perhaps thereby, both may approach ever so much closer to the truth.

This story was originally published December 20, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "Attempting to get closer to the truth."