Leslie Weatherhead: Believer

“... I believe that the annihilation of even one soul spells a defeat of God’s purposes, a denial of Christ’s teaching and a closure of heaven against those who love the lost soul.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.253 [ellipsis added]

Love , God , Soul , Christ

“When people said to me, ‘I should like to be a member of the City Temple, what must I believe?’ I used to say, ‘Only those things which appear to you to be true.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.30

People , Appearance

“Let us never imagine that faith can ever be furthered by suppressing doubt, let alone by suppressing evidence. All truth is one, and religion must be as eager as science to know the truth as far as man can perceive it. If something we have treasured as truth is really contradicted by unanswerable evidence, then in the name of the God of truth we must part with it however venerable it may be. Let us never suppose that we can take over faith from our parents without examination, or believe anything merely because another says it is true. But let us not be content with a static agnosticism which never rouses itself to make inquiry. Let us examine the evidence and then in complete loyalty to its trend make a leap both of intellect and will, and, committing ourselves, acting as if all were established, try out in life the faith that carries us on wings after the hard road of fact and reason stops.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.231

Life , God , Truth , Faith

“I am not prepared to hand over to any other person, though wise and learned, or to any institution however ancient or sure of its position, my inalienable right to search for ever-growing and ever-expanding truth. I believe the craving for security in belief is one which arises from within ourselves, and can only be met adequately from resources which are within ourselves. It seems to me that it is far more important for a soul in evolution to believe a few things because it has struggled, thought and suffered to discover and possess them, than it is for it to have a comfortable and orderly faith which it has adopted from any source outside itself.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.58 (Dr. Raynor Johnson: A Religious Outlook for Modern Man. 1962. Hodder and Stoughton. ppp. 122-23)

Truth , Faith , Soul , Search

“Men glibly turn to an infallible Bible, or an infallible church, or an infallible Pope, or an infallible conscience, or an infallible Christ, and say that that authority is sufficient for them and enables them to accept truth. I believe all that kind of talk is false. It is false psychology or a failure of insight, and it is the fruit of mental laziness; a refusal to think things through. The most important convictions in religion cannot really be reached on the word of another. We can assent to propositions out of laziness of thought, or a desire to please, or an inability to argue, but one of the reasons why, in a crisis, men often feel let down by their religion is that they glibly assented to this or that, and falsely called their assent ‘belief.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.50

Men , Truth , Religion , Feeling

“Though not as important as loving, believing certainly matters. It matters so much that, if it has any relevance to the business of living, it must be born in the individual mind, not thrust by church authorities on others.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Preface, p. 19, sentences 3,4.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

Love , Business

“In fact, many professing agnostics are nearer belief in the true God than are many conventional church-goers who believe in a body that does not exist whom they miscall God.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Preface, p. 14, sentence 12.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

God

“It may take some eons, as we think of time, or even many reincarnations, but we have the highest authority for believing that the Great Shepherd himself will not be content if one of his sheep is missing from the final fold.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.287

Thinking , Time

“I believe passionately that Christianity is a way of life, not a theological system with which one must be in intellectual agreement. I feel that Christ would admit into discipleship anyone who sincerely desired to follow him, and allow that disciple to make his creed out of his experience; to listen, to consider, to pray, to follow, and ultimately to believe only those convictions about which the experience of fellowship made him sure.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Preface, p. 16, sentences 2,3.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

Life , Way , Feeling , Passion

“I believe that all men, whatever their religion or lack of it, pass on into another phase of being, to another class in God’s school.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.266

Men , God , School , Religion

“Of course, the human soul will always have the power to reject God, for choice is essential to its nature, but I cannot believe that anyone will finally do this.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.287

God , Soul , Nature

“All lovers of Christ can believe in him without believing the same things about him.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.161

Lovers , Christ

“When I really believe a thing, I mean that its truth possesses me... Truth is self-authenticating, and when it possesses me, nothing can shake it from its enthronement until some greater truth displaces it or gives it less prominence.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.31 ,[ellipsis added]

Truth

“I would like to be able with authority to present the case for believing in God, but I would far rather be an authoritative argument for believing in God. The saints are the best argument for Christianity. They have the highest authority in the world for they coerce us and yet our coercion is a willing one. They drive us along the way which in our best moments we want to go. When we read their lives, and even more when we touch their lives with our own in day-to-day living, we meet Christianity’s unanswerable argument. We know, with an authority nothing can resist or overcome, that Christianity changes lives and that if Jesus Christ were given a chance he would change the world.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.63

God , World , Way , Change

“Since I have talked with many self-styled * atheists, I have come to believe that the true species does not exist, and that atheism, so-called, is either an emotional deviation in the same category as neurotic illness and with a similar causation, or else the denial of the existence of a mythical figure who certainly does not exist.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Preface, p. 15, sentence 4.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

“We use the word divine because the word human is not big enough. He is so much more like God than any other. But the word “divine” is really only an expression of Christian agnosticism. I am quite ready to say that I believe in the divinity of Christ, but I do not know what it means, nor can I find anyone who can explain what it means, least of all some of the theologians from Paul onwards. I sincerely believe that he is the Savior of the World, and if I am immediately challenged about what he saves men from, my answer is that he saves men from the utter despair which would fall upon a thoughtful man, who, conscious of high aims and immense possibilities within himself, was condemned to try to achieve them without any aid save his own, and purely human help of his fellows.”

Leslie Weatherhead

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.94

Men , God , World , Help