John AT Robinson

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John AT Robinson ( John Arthur Thomas Robinson ) (born May 16, 1919 in Canterbury , † December 5, 1983 in Arncliffe, Yorkshire ) was an Anglican theologian and Bishop of Woolwich . His book Honest to God (1963), in which he defended a situation ethic, was a provocation. His dating of all books of the New Testament ( Redating the New Testament , 1976) to the time before the destruction of Jerusalem (70 AD) was taken up by biblical theologically conservative New Testament scholars.

Life

Robinson studied at Trinity College in Cambridge as a student of Charles Harold Dodd and then taught here in the New Testament. In 1959 he became Regional Bishop of Woolwich in the Southwark Diocese of the Church of England . After ten years he resigned from office and became dean of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Robinson caused a stir in 1960 when he defended the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover in the House of Lords .

His 1963 book Honest to God (German: God is different ) drew even more attention to him. In the book, which was widely read at the time, he took up the thoughts of Paul Tillich , Rudolf Bultmann ( demythologizing ) and Dietrich Bonhoeffer ( religionless Christianity ) and developed his own theological approach from them. Robinson rejected the idea of ​​a God acting outside or on the other side. Instead, God is thought to be “present in the depths of existence” and can be experienced. God is "the ground of being".

meaning

Along with Harvey Cox, Robinson was the most important representative of Anglo-Saxon-American secular theology of the 1960s, known in Germany as " God-is-dead-theology ".

His contributions to New Testament research found less resonance. In them he advocated a consistent early dating of the texts of the New Testament, especially the Gospel of John ( The Priority of John ), as well as their apostolic authorship.

Despite the references mentioned, Robinson was an independent thinker - Tillich had a particularly strong impact on language and content. Honest to God has meanwhile become an important document in the history of theology, on the one hand because of its conceptual significance and on the other hand because of its unusual distribution (the German edition had ten editions up to 1965). However, the book is also closely related to the context of its time. Therefore it lost a lot of weight as early as the 1980s.

Robinson did not shy away from self-criticism. He said that the radicalism with which he questioned “the whole garment” in which Christianity appears today was “far from radical enough” - and this will one day be accused of being a mistake. Robinson cannot be assigned to any particular theological school. His intellectual independence seen in the fact that the German editions of his New Testament work in the evangelical embossed Verlag R. Brockhaus published.

Remarks

  1. ↑ To some critics, the book already appeared "like a museum piece" ". See Rowan Williams : Anglican Identities , Darton, Longman & Todd: London 2004, ISBN 0-232-52527-7 , p. 116.

Works

  • In the End, God: A Study of the Christian Doctrine of the Last Things . 1950.
  • The Body: A Study in Pauline Theology . 1952.
  • Jesus and His Coming: The Emergence of a Doctrine . 1959.
  • On Being the Church in the World . 1960.
  • Honest to God . 1963, John Knox Press. reprint edition: ISBN 0-664-24465-3 , 40th anniv. edition 2003: ISBN 0-664-22422-9 .
    • God is different . Ch. Kaiser, Munich 1963 (ten editions until 1965).
  • Exploration into God . 1967.
  • But That I Can't Believe! 1967.
    • Questionable, credible . Kaiser, Munich 1968.
  • Christian Freedom in a Permissive Society . 1970.
  • The Human Face of God . 1973.
  • Redating the New Testament . 1976.
  • Truth is two-eyed . 1979.
  • Wrestling With Romans . 1979.
  • The Roots of a Radical . 1981.
  • Where Three Ways Meet . 1983.
  • The Priority of John . 1985.
    • John - the gospel of the origins . Updated edition, ed. by Hans-Joachim Schulz. R. Brockhaus, Wuppertal 1999, ISBN 3-417-29433-9 (Biblical monographs; Vol. 4).

literature

  • Peter Jaskola : God has for us . Ecumenical dogmatics study with Christology John Arthur Thomas Robinson. 1986
  • Eric James: A Life of Bishop John AT Robinson. Scholar, pastor, prophet. 1987
  • Mark D. Chapman:  Robinson, John Arthur Thomas . In: Religion Past and Present (RGG). 4th edition. Volume 7, Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2004, Sp. 564.

Web links

predecessor Office successor
Robert Stannard Bishop of Woolwich
1959–1969 		David Sheppard


personal data
SURNAME Robinson, John AT
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Robinson, John Arthur Thomas (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Anglican theologian, Bishop of Woolwich
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Canterbury
DATE OF DEATH 5th December 1983
Place of death Arncliffe , Yorkshire , England