A Bible fit for a King…...

When I was young I confess I was fairly cynical. But cynicism is easy when you’re young. Life is simple, and you have all the answers. And even if you don’t, you’re fairly sure that there are answers within easy reach. The fact that you have experienced nothing (or at least very little) of life’s complexities doesn’t give you pause. Now I am older. I have learned that even the simple things in life come with their complexities, so I try not to be cynical. Where others are concerned, whom I might have rushed to criticise in the past, I have learned that their motives and inner workings are closed to me. I can observe their behaviour and infer motives from that. But I am as likely to be wrong as I am to be right. Given that my own deepest motives are often opaque even to me, and given the common human capacity for self-deception, even when someone actually articulates their motives it is only prudent to treat them with a degree of respect and scepticism.

I also have to confess that as well as being a cynic, I was also a bit of an iconoclast, taking great delight in criticising cherished beliefs and institutions, particularity those of others. The institutions that I happened to like or admire (there are always some) were somehow immune to criticism. But when you have nothing invested in a particular institution (because of a lack of age or interest), one to which you have contributed nothing, why not throw few (metaphorical) rocks at it? What then was one to make of the events of today, Saturday 6th May, 2023 – the coronation of King Charles III?

First of all, it was a dramatic reminder that, for all its pretensions, the United Kingdom is not constituted as a secular state. A recent Guardian editorial fairly pointed out that “….modern Britain is not a holy nation. Nor is it even a largely Protestant one. Britain instead is increasingly secular….”. And yet this ceremony, the formal public recognition of our head of state as our head of state and King, and of his wife as our Queen, was a religious, indeed specifically a Christian, service. Hymns and anthems were sung, there were Bible readings, prayers were offered and there was a (short) sermon. At the heart of proceedings, the King was anointed with oil in a ritual lifted deliberately and knowingly from the Old Testament, and communion was celebrated. Less than half of the population may now identify as Christian, but apparently the state both thinks in such terms (if the “state” thinks), and wants to be seen in such terms. This presumably reflected the desires of the King, but it involved many other state actors. The Prime Minster, no less, a practising and for all I know an entirely sincere Hindu, read from Colossians 1:9-17.

But there is a problem. The Prime Minister does not believe that the words that he read are true. And it gets worse, for things were not entirely as they seem. Many other participants either explicitly or implicitly don’t believe much of what was read and sung either. Consider the Bible that was presented to the King. It was accompanied by the following words: “Receive this Book, the most valuable thing that this world affords. Here is Wisdom; this is the royal Law; these are the lively Oracles of God. More valuable than the gold about to be placed on his head is the word of God which shows us our failings and leads us to Christ.” The Christ in question is the one who, in the words read by the PM “is the image of the invisible God”. Such truth is now so hedged about with caveats and redefinitions by many of the clerical participants in today’s proceedings, that it has been emptied of much of its truth. As for Him being the “..firstborn from among the dead..” or the one in whom “the fullness of God was pleased to dwell”, this has become so mangled as to be meaningless. To have the current Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London recommend the Bible as the Word of God to the King added a certain irony to the proceedings, given how they are now viewed by the overwhelming majority (up to 85%) of the world Anglican communion. And at the centre of the debate within the Anglican communion is precisely the authority of the same book presented to the King.

Even the particular Bible presented by the Archbishop appears to be more about the look and ritual than substance. It turns out to be a specially commissioned copy of the edition prepared in 2011 for the 400^th anniversary of the production of the King James version of the Bible. But this rather goes out of its way to preserve not just the mistranslations inherent in the KJV, but about 350 misprints that were produced in the 1611 original. Of course, if the Bible is just a book, then none of this really matters. The misprints kind of take on a charm of their own. On cold nights in a draughty Royal palace, one can imagine “spot the misprint” becoming an entertaining diversion. But if the Bible is authoritative Scripture, indeed in the form of the autographs the very words of God, then accurate translation becomes an important issue. If not quite a matter of life or death (because God’s truth will out), perhaps not far off that. Fortunately, His Majesty has both the means and the intelligence to lay his hands on an improved translation should he wish to do so.

It is at this point that it would be fairly easy for my former cynicism and iconoclasm to manifest themselves. Except that much of what was said (and sung) in today’s ceremony was actually true, even although it is barely recognised as such. And to hear it at the centre of this national occasion is at least faintly heart-warming. It is in the Bible (as was said) that we learn that the King of Kings really did come to serve rather be served, and that this is a model for those in authority. If our King (and our politicians) were to take this to heart, this would be a major turning point for this nation. And the book the King was given is all that he was told it is. And more. For it has a power not confined by the inadequacies of those who were reading it publicly today. For all that we have had a couple of centuries of naive belief in the inevitability of human progress, and the development of multiple human philosophies that have sought to displace Bible truth and the God and Saviour it reveals, actual Truth was at the centre of today’s proceedings. 

Contained in a Bible that is fit for a King. And not just for the King.