To believe the Gospel of Christ is worth spreading does not imply that God is nowhere outside the Church, according Anglican priest and theologian, Professor Nigel Biggar.
Speaking to The Tablet in Dublin about the divine commission and colonialism, Professor Biggar, whose most recent book is Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning said, “God is outside the Church.”
The emeritus Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford formerly held the chair of Theology and Ethics at Trinity College Dublin. He was in Dublin to deliver a talk on coping with the past and lessons from colonialism and cancel culture at the Church of the Assumption, Booterstown in Dublin, hosted by Skellig.
“God is outside the Church,” Professor Biggar said, arguing that the New Testament should make it clear that the Holy Spirit is not confined to the Church. “The Holy spirit is out there in the world. The world is God’s world and God was there first.”
Of what the Christian gospel has to add to people of other faiths, he said, “First of all it can illuminate things that people already intuit but are not quite sure of. Sometimes it does result in a radical change as well as a kind of clarification.”
He dismissed the assumption that “Christian missionaries were the lackeys of empire” and were “complicit in the abuses of colonial rule” as he did not think colonial rule was always abusive.
Stating that colonial officials on the whole did not want missionaries in the colonies, he cited the East India Company’s ban on missionaries in India until the early part of the 19th century.
“It is often the case, whether in New Zealand or Canada, missionaries were among humanitarians who lobbied the imperial government to stop abuses.”
Professor Biggar said those who cancel do so “because they can’t answer” and questioned why management in publishing houses and universities are “so willing to indulge the illiberal clamouring of woke junior members”.
“It is fine for young colleagues or any colleagues to have progressive opinions. But I don’t quite understand why the adults in some publishing houses or universities yield so readily,” he said.
He blamed European post-modernist philosophies for encouraging people to regard all hierarchies and all social orders as “designed to entrench oppressive power” and which must be uprooted “by whatever means possible”.
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