John Robinson (bishop of Woolwich)

Modern Universalist writer Brian Hebblethwaite[11] cites Robinson's In the End, God: A Study of the Christian Doctrine of the Last Things [12] as arguing for the universal reconciliation of all immortal souls. Ken R. Vincent, in The Golden Thread [13] states: "Robinson notes that Christ, in Origen's old words, remains on the Cross so long as one sinner remains in [H]ell. This is not speculation: it is a statement grounded in the very necessity of God's nature." George Hunsinger, author of Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth [14] writes that "[i]f one is looking for an uninhibited proponent of universal salvation, Robinson leaves nothing to be desired."

In this book, an analysis of the early history of the doctrine of the parousia, Robinson states: "That the heart of the Christian hope was now, once more to 'wait for God's son from heaven', for a second and final coming which would complete and crown the first, is a belief for which we have found no firm foundation in the words of Jesus himself."[15] Robinson further argued that there was a tendency in the early church to alter the meaning of sayings of Jesus that originally referred to his death and ascension into heaven, to refer to an event in the future that had not yet happened.[lower-alpha 1]

Robinson wrote several well-received books. The most popular was Honest to God published in 1963.[16][17] According to Exploration into God in (1967), he felt its chief contribution was its attempt to synthesize the work of theologians Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, both of them well known in theological circles, but whose views were largely unknown to the people in the pews. The book proved contentious because it called on Christians to view God as the "Ground of Being" rather than as a supernatural being "out there". The modifications of the Divine image posited by Robinson have some aspects in common with the psychological deconstruction of God-ideas put forward by his fellow Cambridge theologian Harry Williams in his contribution to the symposium "Soundings" edited by Alec Vidler and published in 1962.[18] When that book was being produced, Robinson was not asked to contribute, because he was then thought to be too conservative a New Testament scholar.[19] This view has never quite dissipated, for in his later books, Robinson would champion early dates and apostolic authorship for the gospels, largely without success,[20] although in recent years the liberal Baptist theologian and spiritual writer John Henson has claimed some affinity with the idea that the Fourth Gospel was the earliest.[21]

The media furore concerning "Honest to God" – one which was to portray him as anything but conservative in the public mind - led to a criticism of Robinson in the Church Assembly – the precursor of the General Synod by the Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey, and there were calls from many quarters for Robinson to resign or be deposed. Whilst Ramsey took Robinson to task for his views, Ramsey's pamphlet "Image Old and New" rushed out as a response, did not entirely dismiss what had been said.[22] Indeed, Ramsey would later admit in a letter to Mervyn Stockwood that he regretted the way in which he had handled the matter.[23] The book, which has remained almost consistently in print, proposes abandoning the notion of God "out there", existing somewhere 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 as "Love".[24] After endorsing Paul Tillich's assertion that God is the "ground of all being", Robinson wrote: "For it is in [Jesus] making himself nothing, in his utter self-surrender to others in love, that he discloses and lays bare the ground of man's being as Love[25] ... For assertions about God are in the last analysis assertions about Love".[26] While some of its ideas have been taken up by more liberal circles of Christian thought, proponents of the traditional interpretation of Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, reject Robinson's thesis as an unnecessary capitulation to Modernism.[27]

To what extent this is in fact the case depends very much on the frame of reference of the reader. However, the work of Robinson in Honest to God provided a departure point which would be followed up in the writings of the radical theologians Don Cupitt and John Shelby Spong and in the 1977 symposium The Myth of God Incarnate, edited by John Hick. Whether Robinson would have gone as far as Cupitt did in declaring the idea of God to be an entirely human creation is something which can only be conjectured. However, he said as he was dying that he "never doubted the essential truth of Christianity".[28] Robinson seemed to rapidly become a person upon whom religious people projected their own ideas of what he was like, and the book The Honest to God Debate, edited by Robinson and by David L Edwards, also published in 1963, contains a mixture of articles which either praise Robinson for his approach or accuse him of atheism.[29]

Although Robinson was considered a liberal theologian, he challenged the work of like-minded colleagues in the field of exegetical criticism. Specifically, Robinson examined the reliability of the New Testament as he believed that it had been the subject of very little original research during the 20th century. He also wrote that past scholarship was based on a "tyranny of unexamined assumptions" and an "almost wilful blindness".[30]

Robinson concluded that much of the New Testament was written before AD 64, partly basing his judgement on the sparse textual evidence that the New Testament reflects knowledge of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in AD 70. In relation to the four gospels' dates of authorship, Robinson placed Matthew as being written sometime between AD 40 and the AD 60s, Mark sometime between AD 45 and AD 60, Luke sometime during the AD 50s and 60s and John sometime between AD 40 and AD 65 or later.[31][32] 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 attributed to him; and that the "John" who wrote the fourth Gospel was the apostle John. Robinson also suggested that the results of his investigations implied a need to rewrite many theologies of the New Testament.[33][34][35]

In a letter to Robinson, the New Testament scholar C. H. Dodd 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."[36][37] Robinson's call for redating the New Testament – or, at least, the four gospels – was echoed in subsequent scholarship such as John Wenham's work Redating Matthew, Mark and Luke: A Fresh Assault on the Synoptic Problem and work by Claude Tresmontant, Günther Zuntz, Carsten Peter Thiede, Eta Linnemann, Harold Riley, Jean Carmignac, and Bernard Orchard.

Robinson's early dates for the gospels, especially those for John, have not been taken up among most modern scholars of Biblical historicism.[38] Some conservative and traditionalist scholars, however, concur with his dating of the synoptic gospels.[20]

In The Priority of John,[12] Robinson furthered the argument put forward in Redating the New Testament that all the books were written before 70 AD, by focusing on the book that is placed early least often. He also wanted to prove that John is independent of the Synoptics and better than them at describing the length and time period of Jesus' ministry, Palestinian geography, and the cultural milieu of the early first century there.

This work was put together posthumously by J. F. Coakley according to Robinson's basically complete but unfinished notes for his Bampton Lectures.