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[Preached once at Durham Cathedral on 7/1/55]

Is it then so narrow a way that leads into the Christian faith and life? Is Christianity so exclusive, so intolerant, so impatient of our expanding interests and concerns? To be more particular: is this an appropriate, is it even a tolerable and intelligible text to announce at an academic occasion? We can say, I hope without flattering ourselves, that we represent between us a certain breadth and even depth of learning. We are scientists, philosophers, historians, linguists, men and women of affairs. Must we be told as soon as we have graduated in our various subjects that our learning is of no use, and that the way to life leads through a door so narrow that it will no more accommodate our width of learning than the eye of a needle will accommodate a camel? Ought not the Church to be content simply to invoke a blessing on the broad field of human and academic achievement, and leave it at that?

There is a real problem here, and of course it is not a new one. Thoughtful men and women have felt it for centuries. At the end of the fourth century, for example, after the Church had triumphed over the Empire, one Symmachus wrote an apology for the old pagan religion. It was too late now to oppose the Christians, they were too firmly in the saddle for that. But for old time’s sake, if for nothing else, could they not abate their intolerance? Granted that Christ must have his place among the gods, could he brook no colleagues in office? It were better that he should. How else could people ever reach the truth? “Not by one faith alone,” wrote Symmachus, “may human beings come at so great a mystery.” Not by one faith, and surely not by a narrow path.

Symmachus was not left unanswered. Ambrose of Milan, was not the man to listen to such a plea with patience. The death knell of pagan antiquity rings out in the words “what you are ignorant of, that we have learned by the voice of God, what you seek after by faint surmises, that we are assured of by the very Wisdom and Truth of God.” Yes—by one path only. We have the voice, the wisdom, the truth of God. Of course you may say, not without truth, that Ambrose was an arrogant, contentious, and litigious ecclesiastic, but here at least the arrogance is not his own. It is the arrogance, the intolerance of the Gospel.

The problem is not new, but it continues to be real. What is the place of Christianity in academic, learned life? Can a person be a scholar and a Christian? If this place is a studium generale, a place where most of the disciplines of sound learning are pursued, that must mean that we endeavor to set ourselves at a universal point of view. Few things in the life of a university, and especially of a residential university, are worth more than the opportunity of learning to look at life from many points of view. You can’t live in college with men and women from different homes, different schools, different lands, without learning to see things from new lights, and new angles—at least I hope you can’t. We learn to suspend judgment where the evidence does not suffice for a decision. We learn to distinguish party cries from truth, factious prejudice from principle. We acquire, to put it rather grandly, something of the measured sobriety of the Greek. And then—we are confronted with this narrow door, this Christian intolerance which demands not suspense of judgment but a decision, which damns our lukewarm moderation with “because thou art neither hot nor cold, I will spew you out of my mouth.”

I have sketched this problem at some length because I know it is real, and that many of the most thoughtful among us are exercised by it. No one needs to argue that the abandonment of Christian values has scarcely made the world a happier or more secure place. There are not many who would not like to see them re-established. But can we accept this presupposition? Can we honestly become Christians today? I have left myself time to say perhaps two things about this:

1) Being a Christian means in the first instance not so much passing a judgment as accepting one. It does not require that we begin by weighing up all the history and all the doctrine and reaching proper orthodox conclusions on all disputed points. Make no mistake: I am not decrying orthodoxy. I regard it as vitally important. But it is not with our orthodox judgment that we begin. Rather we begin by accepting God’s judgment of us.

The very picture of the narrow gate and the broad way, implies that as human beings, we stand under God’s judgment. The existence of two ways sets a question mark against our existence. Morning by morning I come here to lecture on Palace Green. As soon as I have crossed Framwellgate Bridge I have to decide, shall I climb the narrow path of the broken walls, or follow the traffic up Silver Street to the Market Place? The existence of two ways—in this most trivial of examples—sets a question mark against my existence. This parable of Jesus does the same thing. It is set in the Sermon on the Mount; and though we often think of that sermon in other terms, it is true that it stands like a giant question over our lives. Here are people involved in human and ethical relationships and in the practices of religion—almsgiving, prayer, fasting—and at once the question is raised, What is the meaning of all this human activity? On what road is a person’s feet set? What is the end of his existence—life or destruction?

Now the first step is not to answer all the questions ourselves, but to recognize our answerability—to God. To recognize his right to question us and the fact that he does lay claim to our obedience. This recognition that our very obedience is questioned, that it cannot remain confined within its own circumference, that our being as humans lies under the judgment of God, is the way of freedom. Human beings who have opened their lives to God by accepting his judgment are free from themselves, and that is ultimate freedom and true breadth of life.

2) But that is only one side of the picture. There is another thing to say. “Enter by the narrow gate,” says Jesus. What is the gate, what is the way by which we enter into life? These are not the easiest of questions; perhaps they are harder than they seem to be. But the New Testament itself finds the answer in the end. You will remember these other words—“I am the door, by me, if anyone enter in, they shall be saved.” Or “I am the way, the truth, the life, no one comes to the Father but by me.”

The door, and the way, are narrow indeed. They are a single person. This is true to the record of Jesus as we know it. The challenge of his message was ever sharpened to its finest point in his own person. In the last resort, the question of discipleship was always the personal question of relationship with him. To those who followed, he was the center of their loyalty; they followed him. To those whom he offended he was himself the focal point of the offense; his weakness and obscurity, his suffering and death were the root of the objection. He propounded no shibboleths, insisted on no party line; but he called people to loyalty to himself. That was the way to life. And it still is.

There are at least some here who know that the wide scope of Christian history and the narrow scope of Christian doctrine mean not a little to me. I spend most of the hours of every day trying to understand and teach them. But it is not these things which construct the intolerant and nearly intolerable challenge of the narrow door. It is Christ himself that you must reckon with.