I’ve just started reading Brian McLaren’s Faith after Doubt. He argues that questions and doubts are not the enemies of faith, but rather a way to a more mature and satisfying kind of faith. It’s a liberal view that chimes with the times. Having question and doubts over the reaching of the church would have got one in very hot water (or more likely a fire) over the centuries. The old certainties are graphically portrayed in the ‘Doom’ painting in Wenhaston St Peter’s.
The Last Judgement painting is thought to have been created by a monk from nearby Blythburgh around 1480. The divine judge sits on a rainbow at the top. At the bottom left St Peter holds the key to the gates of heaven and receives four of the saved, a king, a queen a bishop and a cardinal. Opposite, souls are weighed, on the far right a fish’s head and a swine’s snout represent the Jaws of Hell and Lust, one of the Seven Deadly Sins, carries a female figure upside down. The legend at the bottom is a quote from Romans 13 warning against any form of dissent.