John Robinson (bishop of Woolwich)

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.

Life

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

General Robinson caused a stir in 1960 with his defense of the publication of Lady Chatterley 's Lover in the House of Lords.

Still more directed in 1963 his book Honest to God ( German: God is different ) attention to him. In the time of his popular book, he took thought of Paul Tillich, Rudolf Bultmann ( demythologizing ) and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (religion Wireless Christianity ) on and developed its own theological approach. The idea of ​​an outside or otherworldly acting God rejected Robinson. Instead, God is thought present and experienced as " in the depths of existence." God is "the ground of being ."

Importance

Robinson was next to Harvey Cox of the most important representatives of the Anglo - American secular theology of the 1960s, known as the "God - is - dead theology " in Germany.

Less audience enjoyed his contributions to New Testament research. In them, he stood for a consistent early dating of the texts of the New Testament, especially the Gospel of John (The Priority of John ), and for their apostolic authorship of one.

Robinson, despite the above references - particularly strongly affected in language and content Tillich on him - an independent thinker. Honest to God theology has become an important historical document, namely on the one hand because of the conceptual meaning, and secondly because of its unusual distribution ( so experienced the German edition until 1965 ten editions ). However, the book is also closely interwoven in the context of his time. Therefore, it is already in the 1980s greatly lost weight.

Robinson did not shy away from self- criticism. So he said, the radicalism with which he put " the whole garment " in which Christianity appears today in question was " far from being radical enough " was - and this one will hold against him once as an error. Robinson can be ascribed to any particular theological school. His intellectual independence seen in the fact that the German editions of his New Testament work has appeared in the evangelical R. Brockhaus Verlag.

Comments

Works

  • The Body: A Study in Pauline Theology. In 1952.
  • Jesus and His Coming: The Emergence of a Doctrine. In 1959.
  • On Being the Church in the World. In 1960.
  • Honest to God. 1963 John Knox Press. reprint edition: ISBN 0-664-24465-3, 40th anniv. 2003 edition: ISBN 0-664-22422-9. God is different. Ch Kaiser, Munich 1963 ( until 1965, ten editions ).
  • Questionable credibility. Kaiser, Munich 1968.
  • When was the New Testament? Publisher Boniface printing, Paderborn, 1986, ISBN 3-87088-485-1; Brockhaus, Wuppertal, 1986, ISBN 3-417-29325-1.
  • John - the Gospel of origins. Updated edition, ed. by Hans -Joachim Schulz. R. Brockhaus, Wuppertal 1999, ISBN 3-417-29433-9 ( Bible Scientific Monographs, Vol 4).
C. H. Dodd Lady Chatterley's Lover God is dead Integrated Authority File
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