Gerald Priestland (1927–1991)

“I tried throughout my Progress, to commence each stage by recording as honestly as I could what I found I believed…. I found that I had no doubt of the existence of a personal God with whom there was a two-way communication. What I did doubt was the reliability of the Bible as the key to understanding his will… (page 30)
“The doctrine of the Holy Spirit, of which I made such heavy weather, seems to me essentially about our response to God: the divine within responding to the divine without. I am persuaded that it is a useful tool, especially for those seized with the conviction of God’s active presence in eth Church today….
Much the same thing happened with the Trinity. Again, I can see how the doctrine arose and there is no doubt that many of Christendom’s best minds still find a useful tool. More than that they find it a convincing expression of the God they experience. I heard many justifications of Trinitarians…[but] All of them seemed to me to be straining our language to the point where the creaking and groaning of it was proving distraction; and when in conversation with , .. we began to wonder ‘Why not a Quaternity, to include the feminine element in the Godhead?’ I became convinced it was time to keep mathematics out of religion. So I shall defend Trinitarianism to the death, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” (pg 213)… (more)