Edward the Confessor and Faith
“For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.” Romans 10.10
One of the letters I had from a cousin after my father’s funeral commented on my eulogy. My family had wanted a non-religious service, but I had said in the course of the tribute “I am a Christian and so believe that my dad is now with God, and more alive than he has ever been, and that I shall see him again.”
My cousin wrote: “ It’s a shame that we can’t all believe that there will be life after death and that we will all be together one day. But it’s such a huge thing to believe. Paul, my husband, has such faith and I envy him.”
It is a genuine plea which I have heard so many times down through the years: “I wish I could believe.” And then they often add, “like you”. And I think, “if only you knew how I believe...”
How is it that some people seem to believe so fervently and deeply and others cannot believe even although they want to?
I make no apology for returning to a subject that we have looked at before because it is so important for our own self-understanding and for our understanding of the task laid upon us by our Lord to make disciples of all nations.
Today we remember one of the many rather dubious saints, Edward the Confessor. He was born in 1003 and became King Edward III in a roundabout way, when Hardicanute died unexpectedly in 1042.
He had a fruitless marriage to Edith Godwin, probably because he had taken a vow of celibacy and eventually banished her to a monastery. Rather extreme family planning.
Some historians blame him for the Norman invasion of 1066. If he had left an Anglo-Saxon heir, William the Conqueror might never have invaded.
Edward seems to have been a peaceful man and undertook no wars except to repel an inroad of the Welsh (and we can understand that), and to assist Malcolm III of Scotland against Macbeth, the usurper of his throne.
He was certainly a devout Christian, was very religious as a boy growing up in Normandy, took care of the poor when he was king, and decided to build a great Minster mausoleum to the West of the City of London on the site of St Peter’s Abbey - this became Westminster Abbey. It was consecrated only a week before his death in January 1066,
He was canonized by Pope Alexander III in 1161. His body was translated on this day in 1163 by St. Thomas of Canterbury in the presence of King Henry II.
So much for the history. But was it easier for Edward to believe than for us? Is the gift of faith somehow historically dependent? Did he live in an age of faith?
Well, in the long-term, faith is certainly dependent on our long human history.
And before we look at faith we should perhaps ask where did self-awareness come from in our evolutionary history, for there can be no faith without self-awareness?
Well, we don’t really know. About 3 million years ago - a mere nothing in comparison to the age of the earth. (If the 4 billion years of the earth’s existence are represented by a clock, then we are looking at just over half a minute ago.)
-about 3 million years ago, Neanderthal humans appeared with brains the size of the planet; brains bigger than any other animal on earth. And they used only a tiny proportion of that massive brain.
So late Neanderthals or maybe Cro-Magnon humans began to use this spare brain capacity for inventing language and tools and weapons; and then art and music; religion and laws; and eventually political parties and Kentucky Fried Chicken…
At some point, and the experts differ as to when, these humans started to reflect upon themselves. They realised they would die, like the animals which they killed to eat.
They realised they were conscious - they were self-conscious. Julian Jaynes in his controversial book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Penguin 1990) (it would have sold a lot more copies if it had had a more memorable title) reckons that self-consciousness as we know it appeared less than 4 thousand years ago - that there was a dramatic shift in the hard wiring of the human brain. Most scientists think it was much earlier.
Whatever, our God-consciousness emerged as part of our self-consciousness.
Non-realist theologians, sometimes called textual nihilists (Don Cupitt and the Sea of Faith group) and many philosophers of other faiths and none, assert that God-consciousness is only an extension of our inward monologue.
In other words, it cannot be an awareness of a Mind that is ‘other’ and somehow separate from our own minds. It is a defence mechanism that religion provides to make sense of our existence. It is talking to ourselves.
This argument runs, that the elaborate development of religions is an internal trick that has served human evolution quite well. It has socialised us and, for quite long periods, stopped us living like the beasts we are, red in tooth and claw.
And the argument concludes that in the 20th and 21st centuries intelligent men and women can’t believe in this objective reality of God any more.
But of course many millions of people do believe. And many wish they could, and can’t.
Is it hard-wired in our brains? Is it in our psychological make-up? Is it a gift from God, given to some and not to others?
Remember Elsie whom I met in Southlands Hospital in my home town of Shoreham- by-Sea? She’s an elderly lady and Southlands is a dilapidated, run-down old 30s building, that was due to be rebuilt after the war.
She had been close to death at one point, and a bright young doctor had asked her, if she lapsed into unconsciousness, whether she wanted to be revived?
“I ask you” Elsie said, “I’m at the gates of Paradise and they ask me if I’d like to come back to Southlands!”
I envy that sort of faith.
The Myth of Certainty (Daniel Taylor, Word, 1986) is a book I found very helpful back in the late 80s when all the certainties of my faith seemed to be deserting me. I was sinking into post-hippy scepticism. And more importantly, I was turning grey and turning 40. I was beginning to think that faith was believing what you know isn’t true.
And so I learned, with many others down through the centuries, to abandon certainty and to embrace genuine biblical faith. That is, acknowledging what I believe - more strongly on some days than others - and acting upon it.
We cannot wish for the faith of others if we will not build on the little faith we have. “Lord I believe. Help thou my unbelief!” is the cry of all of us.
However intricately tied up our faith is with perhaps our genes, our psychology, our upbringing, an unpleasant experience with a nun...
If we wish to follow the likes of St Edward the Confessor, then we must act upon what we do believe.
There are certainly sufficient reasons for faith, but in our age in the West, few seem to find sufficient reason for a religious faith that results in action.
Biblical faith and hope always spring from action. If we believe half of what we are about to sing in the creed, then the hope and love which are the hallmarks of Christians, will flow from the actions we take in the light of that belief.
People stay away from church and sacraments and then complain that they find it hard to believe - it is hardly surprising. Those of us who come regularly to the altar often find it hard to believe!
People act in unloving and embittered ways and complain that they cannot believe in a God of love. It is hardly surprising.
John Donne, that early 17th century poet priest, was in some ways a great man of faith, another great confessor, and yet he hardly dared believe. He ends his Hymn to God the Father with these words.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spunWhether we have great faith, or only a tiny mustard seed of faith, if we act upon it, and treat it as a revelation of God’s truth, the hope of the Gospel,we can be free from fear.
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done;
I fear no more.
“For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.” Romans 10.10
