John Arthur Thomas Robinson (1919 in Canterbury, England – December 5, 1983 at Cambridge) was a New Testament scholar, author and a former Anglican Bishop of Woolwich, England.[1] He was a lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge, and later Dean of Trinity College[2] until his death in 1983 from cancer.[3] Robinson was considered a major force in shaping liberal Christian theology. Along with Harvard theologian Harvey Cox, he spearheaded the field of secular theology and, like William Barclay, he was a believer in universal salvation.[4]
His book Honest to God caused controversy, as it called on Christians to view of God as the "Ground of Being" rather than as a supernatural being "out there". In his later books, he championed early dates and apostolic authorship for the gospels, largely without success.[5]
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Robinson was educated at Marlborough school and in the University of Cambridge (Jesus College).
He studied for ordination at Westcott House, Cambridge and his first post was as a Curate at St Matthew, Bristol. After this he was Chaplain of Wells Theological College. Next he became a Fellow and Dean at Clare College, Cambridge and a Lecturer in Divinity at the University[6] until his elevation to the Episcopate.
Robinson wrote several notable books, the most famous being Honest to God in 1963. Robinson's own evaluation of Honest to God, found in the subsequent Exploration into God, stated that the chief contribution of this work was its successful synthesis of the work of seemingly opposed theologians Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Robinson proposed abandoning the notion of a God "out there", existing somewhere out in the universe as a "Cosmic supremo", just as we have abandoned already the idea of God "up there", the notion of the old man up in the sky. In its place he offered a reinterpretation of God, whom he defined as Love.[7] After endorsing Paul Tillich's assertion that God is the "Ground of all being", Robinson wrote: "For it is in making himself nothing, in his utter self-surrender to others in love, that [Jesus] discloses and lays bare the Ground of man's being as Love".[8] He also wrote: "For assertions about God are in the last analysis assertions about Love".[9]
Honest to God caused a storm of controversy. While the bulk of his ideas have become integrated with the more liberal circles of Christian thought, he is considered an extremist by some. His ideas are considered anathema by Barthian evangelicals and by those whose concept of a supernatural God supersedes other theological concerns.
Although Robinson was within the liberal theology tradition, he challenged the work of colleagues in the field of exegetical criticism. Specifically, Robinson examined the New Testament's reliability, because he believed that very little original research had been completed in the field during the period between 1900 and the mid-1970s. Concluding his research, he wrote in his work, Redating the New Testament,[10] that past scholarship was based on a "tyranny of unexamined assumptions" and an "almost willful blindness".
Robinson concluded that much of the New Testament was written before AD 64, partly based on his judgement that there is little textual evidence that the New Testament reflects knowledge of the Temple's AD 70 destruction. In relation to the four gospels' dates of authorship, Robinson placed Matthew at 40 to after 60, Mark at about 45 to 60, Luke at before 57 to after 60, and John at from 40 to after 65.[11][12] Robinson also argued that the letter of James was penned by a brother of Jesus Christ within twenty years of Jesus’ death, that Paul authored all the books that bear his name, and that the apostle John wrote the fourth Gospel. Robinson also opined that due to his investigations, a rewriting of many theologies of the New Testament was in order.[13][14][15]
C. H. Dodd, in a frank letter to Robinson wrote: "I should agree with you that much of the late dating is quite arbitrary, even wanton, the offspring not of any argument that can be presented, but rather of the critic's prejudice that, if he appears to assent to the traditional position of the early church, he will be thought no better than a stick-in-the-mud."[16] Robinson's call for redating the New Testament was echoed by subsequent scholarship such as John Wenham's work Redating Matthew, Mark and Luke: A Fresh Assault on the Synoptic Problem. Other subsequent works calling for redating of some or all of the gospels were written by such scholars as Claude Tresmontant, Gunther Zuntz, Carsten Peter Thiede, Eta Linnemann, Harold Riley, Bernard Orchard.
Robinson's early dates for the gospels, especially John, have not carried widespread conviction among modern-critical scholars, although most conservative and traditionalist scholars concur with his dating of the synoptics.[5]
Modern Universalist writer Brian Hebblethwaite (2010) cites Robinson's In the End, God. A Study of the Christian Doctrine of the Last Things (London: James Clarke & Co., 1950) as arguing for universal reconciliation of all immortal souls.[17][18]
Robinson was also famous for his 1960 court testimony against the censorship of Lady Chatterley's Lover,[19] claiming that it was a book which "every Christian should read".
| Church of England titles | ||
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| Preceded by Robert William Stannard |
Bishop of Woolwich 1959–1969 |
Succeeded by David Stuart Sheppard |
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