William Temple on Incarnation and Justice (midweek)

 

 

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

William Temple on Incarnation and Justice

November 6, 2019

 

Today is the Feast Day of William Temple, archbishop of Canterbury from 1942 to 1944. The son of another Archbishop of Canterbury, Temple wrote passionately on the Incarnation of our Lord and what this means for our common life and ethics. He believed that Christianity was primarily about this life, this common life we share, not merely about some afterlife or our personal, private morality and actions. He believed that Christianity had become largely irrelevant to policy discussions and the public sphere because it had wrongly privatized and ‘spiritualized’ faith, compromising its beliefs about the incarnation:

 

“The primary principle of Christian ethics and Christian politics must be respect for every person simply as a person. If each man and woman is a child of God, whom God loves and for whom Christ died, then there is in each a worth absolutely independent of all usefulness to society. The person is primary, not the society; the state existed for the citizen, not the citizen for the state. The first aim of social progress must be to give the fullest possible scope for the exercise of all powers and qualities which are distinctly personal; and of those the most fundamental is deliberate choice. Consequently society must be arranged as to give to every citizen the maximum opportunity for making deliberate choices and the best possible training for the use of that opportunity. Freedom must be freedom for something, as well as freedom from something.” (from Temple’s Christianity and Social Order)

 

In this, Temple criticizes both the political Left (for not stressing the dignity of the individual enough) and the Right (for not realizing the need for social and community action to enhance the sphere of opportunity for individuals).  Other Temple aphorisms are often quoted:  "The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members." "One who faces his own failures is steadily advancing on the pilgrim's way." "The worst things that happen do not happen because a few people are monstrously wicked, but because most people are like us."

The collect for this day is as follows: 

 

O God of light and love, who illumined your Church through the witness of your servant William Temple: Inspire us, we pray, by his teaching and example, that we may rejoice with courage, confidence, and faith in the Word made flesh, and may be led to establish that city which has justice for its foundation and love for its law; through Jesus Christ, the light of the world, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Grace and Peace,

 

Fr. Tony+