DEAN INGE’S BOMBSHELL.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 1 December 1925, Page 9

DEAN INGE’S BOMBSHELL.

DOCTRINES MUST BE RECAST. LONDON, Nov. 2. Dean Inge,'in contributing to a volume entitled “Science, Religion, and Reality,” hurls a bombshell at Christian opinion. He says: “The Church must give up shuffling, and recast familiar doctrines. The whole idea of geographical heaven must be abandoned. There is a serious conflict between religion and science. Until the discoveries of Copernicus, heaven and Hell were geographical expressions. It is also obvious that the bodily resurrection of Christ is intimately connected wi th bodily ascension. We can hardly imagine that an infinitely distant star was chosen as the site of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the belief in a subterranean place of punishment lias faded away. The Church must face the problem which it has kept at arms’ length for 400 years.” Anything is better than concealing an open sore, which destroys our peace and joy in believing. If we recast our doctrines, upsetting the geocentric theory, we shall be driven to think of God less anthropomorphica 11 y and of heaven as a state rather than a place. Dean Inge adds: Tran substantiation is dried ground. The body of Christ is in heaven, and it is contrary to the properties of a natural body to be in more than one place at the same time.” Miracles also appear to have no place in Dean Inge’s philosophy.