A Visit From William Temple

We cannot ignore history.  We must know what happened before our time because that happening has affected our time.  We must know something of the Great Depression in America to understand the basis for and the ramifications of the Social Security program as we presently know it.  We must know about the two World Wars of the twentieth century to understand the wars of the twenty-first century. 

The same is true with great personalities of the past.  They, too, have had an effect on the present.  No one can argue the fact that Abraham Lincoln contributed greatly to what we are now as a people and a nation.  I don’t think any of us can ignore the twentieth century influence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on these early years of the twenty-first century.  What has happened before affects the now.   To know the “before” can help us avoid the pitfalls of the “now.”  

To know what people thought and what they wrote a century ago can save us from wasting our time re-discovering what has already been discovered.  It can save us from the rampant disease of contemporaneity, the arrogance of thinking we are the first to come up with a thought, or idea, or the use of a certain word, or to experience this situation or that event.  This does not mean that we cease to “keep up” with the great personalities of our own day—it is a matter of applying the holy conjunctions “both/and.”  I will acquaint myself with both the voices of the past and  the voices of the present.

This is why I am so very thankful for those friends of the past who visit me occasionally here in my study.  I welcome them when they come to me and talk with me through their own written words or the words of a biographer.  I have such a visitor this morning:  William Temple (1881-1944).  A renowned teacher, author, philosopher, and preacher, Temple served as a bishop in the Church of England.  He was the Archbishop of Canterbury (as his father before him) from 1942-1944.  He was instrumental in the founding of the World Council of Churches and in his efforts to combat anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice in Britain.  I have learned a great deal from Archbishop Temple who died the year after I was born.

William Temple said of the scientific method:  “The simple and plain fact is that the scientific method wins its success by ignoring parts of reality as given in experience; it is perfectly right to do this for its own purposes; but it must not be permitted by a kind of bluff to create the impression that what it ignores is non-existent.”  Now I can ponder that thought all day long.