“The phrase ‘Revolutionary Christianity’ is fashionable . But what it describes is more often a way of talking than a way of walking. It is revolution at the level of argument rather than action. We take daring liberties with the Christianity of the Creeds and the traditional ideas about God. We go into the fray, armed to rend an Altizer or Woolwich apart or defend them to the death. We sup the heady wine of controversy and nail our colours to the mast — mixing our metaphors in the excitement! The Church, we cry, is in ferment. She has bestirred herself out of her defensive positions and is on the march! And so she is — on the march to the nearest bookshop or theological lecture room or avant garde church to expose herself to the latest hail of verbal and paper missiles.

“This is not revolution. It has more in common with the frenzied scratching of a dog to rid itself of fleas than an epic march on the Bastille or the Winter Palace. Revolutionary Christianity is so uncomplicated in comparison that it is almost embarassing to have to put it into words. It is simply doing costly things for Jesus’ sake.

“For the life of me I cannot see why a world which has rejected the God of traditional theology should find Woolwich’s or Tillich’s ‘God beyond God’ any more interesting. For this is really exchanging the theological word game for the word game of the philosophers, and both are intellectual pastimes whose devotees are probably less numerous than Times crossword fans though drawn from the same corners of our society. The judgement upon is us not that we have failed to bring our theology into line with the best modern thought, though that may be true, but that we do not act to the limit of the theology we already have.”

Colin Morris