Yea, the voice of Dr Williams shall be heard

Long ago, when there was a body called the South Wales Miners' Federation, there was a dispute in one of the lodges, or branches, about which of its members should be nominated to go on to higher things in the union. There were two candidates. Let us call them Will and Twm. The latter, his supporters urged in his favour, had always been active not only in the lodge but in the village as well. He was a pillar of the St John's Ambulance and a vice-president of the local rugby club. The chairman of the meeting intervened to say that, while there was no questioning Twm's public spirit, the nomination should go instead to Will, a quieter, more introspective character.

"You see," the chairman explained, "Will has got the dialectic."

By this he did not mean that Will was necessarily formidable in argument, though he might well have been so, but rather that he understood the writings of G W F Hegel and Karl Marx. Though syndicalism rather than simple communism was the popular doctrine in the South Wales of that time, a thorough understanding of Marx and those who had influenced him was nevertheless thought desirable in aspirants to power in the working-class movement. How different, how very different today! Even so, the appointment of Dr Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury reminded me of the story. He may never have run a parish but he has certainly got the dialectic: not so much Hegel and Marx (though I am sure he knows more than most of us about them) as St Augustine and the Fathers of the Church. And he has had a better press than any other incoming archbishop that I can remember. Adverse comment has concerned only his beard.

Some authorities have urged him to shave it off completely; others have advised that a light trim would suffice; few, as far as I can see, have told him not to worry and that he looks perfectly all right as he is. The majority complain that his beard makes him look like something out of the Old Testament, as if this would be the last thing any self-respecting archbishop might want to be. In fact we do not have the faintest idea what the Prophets looked like. They are given straggly beards because that is the pictorial convention; as the Almighty is depicted with a beard bigger and more straggly still.

But I am not one to underestimate the doctrinal significance of Dr Williams's beard. With it firmly in position, and attired in his customary garb of black cassock and pectoral cross, he could pass as a priest of one of the Orthodox communions. I have not, I confess, read all his books. But I did try his recent production Christ on Trial, expecting to find a brisk correlation of the Gospel accounts, an examination of the role of Pontius Pilate and a confirmation of one of my favourite beliefs, or hobby-horses: that the Jews could not possibly have killed Christ – one of the age-long causes of anti-Semitism – because they had no authority to kill anybody, crucifixion being an exclusively Roman punishment inflicted by the occupying power. Moreover, if Christ had not been killed by somebody there could have been no Christianity, depending as it does on the Resurrection.

Of this there was nothing that I could find in Dr Williams's effort. But you should never blame authors for writing the book they wanted to write rather than the one you wanted to read. Here there was a pervasive and, to me, often incomprehensible spirituality. To Dr Williams, I suspect, Christian unity does not so much mean the coming together of Roman and Protestant as of Western and Eastern Churches. For centuries, after all, the centre of Christianity was Constantinople and not Rome.

He is clearly a holy man. The only other holy man to have become Archbishop of Canterbury since the war was Michael Ramsey. In the early 1970s he was being entertained to lunch by a group of journalists in a private room at that Old Labour stronghold, the Gay Hussar restaurant. Ramsey, who combined saintliness with a liking for food and drink, was much taken with the veal escalope in breadcrumbs which was being served as the main course.

"This is most excellent fish," he remarked. "What is it?"

The restaurant manager, the late Victor Sassie, who was hovering somewhere in the background, was confronted with a choice between contradicting a Prince of the Church and overlooking his error. He chose the latter course. Unhesitatingly, he replied:

"Plaice, your Grace."

Dr Williams is, by all accounts, as distinguished a theologian as Ramsey. Though I have not heard him perform myself, he is universally recognised as the better speaker. Unlike Ramsey, he has strong views on public affairs and an urge to express them forcibly. The most pressing concern is Mr Tony Blair's support for a US invasion of Iraq. Dr Williams has said that he would not support such a war unless it had first been sanctioned by the United Nations. Mr Blair says that this authority is quite unnecessary but that none the less – by what means, who can tell? – the action must be in accordance with international law.

There is a deplorable tendency today to lump together all recent actions involving the use of force and to allocate persons to either the peace or the war party. Often, indeed, such a crude division works in practice. Thus Mr Tam Dalyell and Mr Tony Benn are always to the front of any peace party, while, oddly perhaps, Mr Ken Livingstone and, less oddly, Mr Blair support the cause of war. Dr Williams is seen as a natural member of the peace party. But his qualified support for action against Iraq shows that this is not inevitably so, though his qualification is most unlikely to be met. For recent actions have not all been the same. The Falklands war and the Gulf war were both undertaken to repel clear acts of aggression. In the latter, Mr George Bush senior was entirely correct to stop when he did, just as Harry Truman before him had been right to prevent Douglas MacArthur from carrying the Korean war into North Korea and possibly into China itself.

More recent conflicts, in Kosovo and Afghanistan, have been different in nature. Any invasion of Iraq will be different yet again. Admittedly the United States has intervened to change regimes before, in South America; just as the old USSR did to preserve the governments of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. But for the first time for generations a state will have intervened in a faraway land to overthrow its government. No wonder if Dr Williams is angry. And, if he is, he has the ready-made advantage of a big pulpit, seven days a week.