The resurrection creates a new world. This is the world in which we live. The Christian gospel makes very great claims for the dignity of human beings. Impossibly great, some have said. The gospel commands us to regard every single human being as a person, so claiming for them a great range of godlike attributes. They are free. They are sovereign, independent and autonomous. They are rational. We may speak to them and they may speak to us. Each is available and accountable to every other. None is too mighty to be held accountable. You may address them and attempt to persuade them and expect that they will respond rationally. They speak for themselves so no one speak for them or take their voice away. But they must be treated as unique, they are not interchangeable, you cannot substitute one for another. They cannot be collectivised or conglomerated. This is a very high view of man. On this basis, man – every single human being – is like God, a true counterpart and companion of God. That is the new thing that the Christian gospel into human culture. It was there, implicit, in Jewish thought. Other than that, no human political culture had conceived such a revolution as this.
The culture created, or at least, transformed by the gospel, is evidence of the divine nature. It is evidence of God. It is of course not proof of God; the evidence that it represents may be overlooked, a pattern not recognised. Yet the pattern is there that reveals a history and causality. Western society is the product of the Church which the product of the resurrection.
So there is a divine character to West society and that is the aspiration to freedom. Freedom is a characteristic of God and is a gift – of the Spirit – to man. And where that gift is given, there the Church appears – that is the community which meets freely, in which every person is willing to associate themselves with all these others and to be counted as one of them, and is available to called upon by them and put themselves at the disposal of these others. In the Christian conception freedom is unthinkable without love. And love is unthinkable without freedom. You may love, but whoever you love is not bound to return that love, or to return in the way you give it. Your love cannot bind them, and certainly cannot confine them. It can only wait for them. So for Christians = and so we are able to share in the divine patience. The Lord waits at the door. He does not come and pull us out. He waits, for days, years, lifetimes, periods of time beyond our definition. The Lord waits, for us. He waits because he wants to, and yet we make him wait. So the love – and passion of God for us.
