What God Counts Wise

Seeing the impressive number of floral tributes to the late Jo Cox MP laid at the foot of the Joseph Priestley memorial in Birstall sent me researching into who Priestley was.

He was born in 1733 in the Fieldhead district of Birstall. The Age of Enlightenment was in full swing and Priestley was a true son of that era. He travelled a great deal, sometimes impelled by persecution because of his freethinking views. His most famous discovery was probably that of oxygen, though there are rival claimants to that honour. But there was a string of other surprising discoveries, some of which we take for granted today. One was carbonated water - the original fizzy drink! Priestley demonstrated how it was possible and others, including a certain Mr Schweppe, developed and commercialised it.

Indeed we owe to Priestley much of our understanding of the air we breathe and the environment we live in. Priestley demonstrated photosynthesis, the chemical process by which plants derive sustenance from sunlight and water. But all this hardly scratches the surface of his scientific achievements.

Other than that, we should note his contribution to philosophy. He was politically on the Liberal wing. He did not see eye to eye with the Establishment and in religious terms (a matter still held to be of great importance in that day) he was a firm Dissenter, providing education in the Dissenting academies that were founded as an alternative to the universities.

Less happily for one like myself who believes firmly in the Trinity, he was a founding member of the Unitarian Church. Unitarians refuse to assert that Jesus Christ is one with God the Father and the Holy Spirit: the Three-One God.

Unitarianism appealed to the logical minds of the time. How could God be one God and yet three at the same time? It seemed irrational. You might well argue till the cows came home that water can occur in three different states (ice, water and steam) and yet be one and the same substance. There are indeed many such true to life models that can help us understand Trinity. Unitarians remained firmly unconvinced.

Yet Christianity is full of areas where a thing and its apparent opposite are both true at the same time. God is sovereign and in control of His universe, yet humans are responsible for their actions. How can this be, if they are just tools in the hands of a sovereign God? It would, though, be a wacky world if He did just push us around like pawns on a chessboard.

To my mind, the real breakthrough in human religious thought took place within a few years of Jesus’ death and resurrection. That hard-bitten persecutor of Christians, the apostle Paul, was driven to understand that he must call the risen Jesus Christ “Lord” - the same title that his Jewish religion gave to God Himself. Yes, it defied logic. Yes, it jarred with every fibre of his being as a Hebrew of Hebrews. Yes, it put him in immediate danger of death at the hands of the very nation he was proud to represent. But it was a conclusion his Damascus Road conversion forced him to accept. Neither logic nor his Jewish heritage came into it.

We owe much to Joseph Priestley and his courageous, innovative and fertile mind. We likewise owe much to Jo Cox, who was bold and positive in humanitarian causes and who voiced what she thought without fear or favour. In many ways she was a true spiritual daughter of Joseph Priestley. It is fitting that tributes to her were laid at the foot of his memorial.

We should also pause to thank God for the apostle Paul, the reluctant independent thinker. Under God, he gave us authentic Christianity - a faith not confined to the strait-jacket of mere human thought.

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men (1 Corinthians 1:20-25 ESV).