John Robinson (1919-1983)
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John A.T. Robinson was a distingushed Anglican thinker and bishop working in the area of theology that has since come to be called "Secular Theology." He wrote many important publications, the most famous being Honest to God in 1963. Robinson's own evaluation of Honest to God, found in the subsequent Exploration into God stated that the chief contribution of this work was its successful synthesis of the work of seemingly-opposed theologians Paul Tillich and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
At the time he was Bishop of Woolwich but he went on to be Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1975 until his death from cancer in 1983.
Honest to God caused a storm of controversy as the first publication by a leading churchman which asked the question
- "Now that we have rejected the Ancients' view of God living in a material heaven above the actual sky what does God's existence mean?"
Robinson proposed changing language to talk of "God out there" instead of "God up there".
Robinson was also famous for his speech in the House of Lords against the censorship of Lady Chatterley's Lover
While the bulk of his ideas have become integrated with the more progressive circles of Christian thought--he is still considered an extremist by some. As is often the case with thinkers who question traditional thinking and "the norm," his ideas are considered anathema by Barthian evangelicals and those with a Supernaturalist God-model.