(THE CHURCH)[29th March 1987]

[Redbook3:71-72][19870329:1210u](THE CHURCH)[29^th March 1987]

19870329.1210(BST)

[continued]

These things do matter. They form one of the two obstacles which discourage me from entering a Church with other people (I love to sit alone, or at least when there is no service, in a Church). I wanted [d] to be christened as I believe it may help her inner development, as knowledge and membership of Christianity undoubtedly helped mine.

But whenever I am asked to say: '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 … On the Third Day he rose again....'* and so forth, the words stick in my throat, because I have been trained to examine evidence critically; and while I am prepared to believe that to God anything is possible, I cannot betray my own intelligence (such as it is**) to the extent of exaggerating the historical reliability of events for which the evidence is not overwhelming: nor do I think that these claims alter the authority of Jesus one way or the other. To God, anything is possible, and nothing is necessary?*** – and we mislead ourselves if we seek to recognise Jesus as Christ by externals: we only recognise him truly by the Inner Sense.

*[From the Apostles Creed, recited by the congregation as part of the service of Morning Prayer (e.g. on Sundays) in the Church of England.]

**[145 (and rising) when last measured at age c.12, apparently, although precious little to show for it. Probably gone down ever since.]

***[Emphasis added subsequently to the manuscript.]

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