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ESSAYS
CATHOLIC AND CRITICAL
en q Oe :
A heme ‘ie ry
ESSAYS
CATHOLIC & CRITICAL
BY MEMBERS OF
THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION
EDI EE DS yi
EDWARD GORDON SELWYN
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NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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PREFACE
Tue contributors to this volume have been drawn together by a
common desire to attempt a fresh exposition and defence of the
Catholic faith. They have nearly all been engaged in University
teaching during recent years, and have thus been brought into
close touch with the vigorous currents and cross-currents of
thought and feeling amid which Christianity has to render its
own life and truth explicit ; and they have been compelled, both
for themselves and for others, to think out afresh the content and
the grounds of their religion. “This book is the result of their
endeavour.
Among precursors in the same field, the essayists owe pre-
eminent acknowledgment to the authors of “ Lux Mundi,” a
book which exercised upon many of them a formative influence
and still has a living message. But by two forces especially, both
of them operating with great intensity, theology has been con-
strained both to lengthen its cords and to strengthen its stakes
during the generation which has elapsed since that work was
first published. On the one hand many thoughtful men have been
led by the spectacle of a disordered and impoverished Christen-
dom to a keener discernment of the supernatural element in
religion, and to a renewed interest in the expressions of it which are
seen in Catholic unity andauthority, in whatever form these come ;
so that solidarity has taken its true rank at the side of continuity,
as a necessary “note”? of the Church. On the other hand, the
critical movement, which was already in “ Lux Mundi” allowed
to effect a significant lodgment in the citadel of faith, has continued
with unabated vigour to analyse and bring to light the origins and
foundations of the Gospel. As the title of this volume implies,
it is the writers’ belief that these two movements can be and must
be brought into synthesis ; and we believe further that, in the
task of effecting it, in thought, in devotion, and finally in the
visible achievement of the Church’s unity, the Anglican
vi Preface
Communion and its theologians have a part of peculiar import-
ance to play.
For the two terms Catholic and critical represent principles,
habits, and tempers of the religious mind which only reach their
maturity in combination. ‘To the first belongs everything in us
that acknowledges and adores the one abiding, transcendent, and
supremely given Reality, God ; believes in Jesus Christ, as the
unique revelation in true personal form of His mystery; and
recognises His Spirit embodied in the Church as the authoritative
and ever-living witness of His will, word, and work. ‘Yo the
second belongs the exercise of that divinely implanted gift of
reason by which we measure, sift, examine, and judge whatever
is proposed for our belief, whether it be a theological doctrine or
a statement of historical fact, and so establish, deepen, and purify
our understanding of the truth of the Gospel. The proportion
in which these two activities are blended will vary in different
individuals and in relation to different parts of our subject-matter :
but there is no point at which they do not interact, and we are
convinced that this interaction is necessary to any presentment of
Christianity which is to claim the allegiance of the world to-day.
The scope and arrangement of the essays call for little
explanation. ‘The first three essays are concerned with the
presuppositions of faith—with its rudimentary origins and
development, with its justification in reason and experience, and
with the claims of the Catholic Church to provide for it a rational
basis of authority ; though there is a sense in which no doctrine
of authority can claim to be more than a kind of torso, so long
as the divisions of Christendom hinder its concrete expression
and operation. ‘The second and central section of the book aims
at unfolding the revelation of God and the redemption of man
which centre in, and derive from, the Person of Christ, incarnate,
crucified, and risen; and the historical evidence for these facts
is considered with some fulness in face of modern criticism.
‘The concluding section embraces the institutional expression and
vital application of the redemptive resources of Christianity in the
Church and the sacraments, particular heed being given to
certain aspects of these which are much in men’s minds at the
present time. It will be clear that many problems have had to
be left untouched ; but some omissions were necessary, if the
book were not to assume an inconvenient bulk. Our purpose,
Preface Vil
however, has not been to be exhaustive, but rather to bear witness
to the faith we have received and commend it, so far as may be,
to others.
‘In a work of this kind the measure of collective responsibility
is not easy to define. Nor perhaps is it necessary. Domiciled
as we are in different places, and not all of us even in England,
we have found it impossible to meet together for discussion. On
the other hand, each author has seen and been encouraged to
criticise every essay, and all criticisms have been considered
before any essay assumed its final form. In some cases care has
been taken by the use of the first person to show that an expression
of opinion is markedly the writer’s own. ‘These cases, however,
though not unimportant, are few ; and while none of the authors
should be held responsible for more than his own contribution,
it may be legitimately said that the volume represents a common
faith, temper, and desire.
FE. God:
Eastertide, 1920.
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CONTENTS
I
. THE EMERGENCE OF RELIGION : -
EDWIN OLIVER JAMES, PH.D., F.S.A., Fellow of the no
Anthropological Institute, Caer of St. Thomas’, Oxford.
ies THE VINDICATION OF RELIGION . e
ALFRED EDWARD TayiLor, M.A., D.LITT., LITT.D., Fellow
of the British Academy, Professor of Moral Philosophy in
the University of Edinburgh.
PeAUTHORITY :.. : : : :
I. Authority as a Ground of Belief
ALFRED EDWARD JOHN Rawlinson, D.D., Student and
Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford, Examining Chaplain to
the Bishop of Lichfield.
Il. The Authority of the Church.
WILFRED L. Knox, M.A., Priest of the Oratory of the Good
Shepherd, Cambridge.
ii
4. ‘THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF GoD :
LIONEL SPENCER THORNTON, M.A., Priest of the Com- ,
munity of the Resurrection, Mirfield, formerly Scholar o
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Theological Tutor and
Lecturer in the College of the Resurrection.
5. THE CHRIST OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS
Sir Epwyn C. Hoskyns, Bart., M.A., M.C., Fellow and
Dean of Corpus Christi College, Canbades
6. THE INCARNATION A - { : :
JoHN KennetTH Moztey, M.A., B.D., Warden of St.
Augustine’s House, Reading, Lecturer of Leeds Parish
Church, Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Oxford.
PAGE
29
121
PS,
Contents
xX
7. Aspects OF Man’s ConplirTIon
(a) Sin and the Fall.
EDWARD JOHN BICKNELL, D.D., Prebendary of Chichester,
Vice-Principal of Cuddesdon Theological College.
(6) Grace and Freedom.
JoHN KENNETH Moz.ey, M.A., B.D.
8. THe ATONEMENT : : :
KENNETH E. Kirk, M.A., B.D., Fellow and Lecturer of
Trinity College, Oxford, Six- ieacher in Canterbury
Cathedral, Examining Chaplain to the Bishops of Sheffield
and St. Albans.
g. HE RESURRECTION : : : :
EDWARD GorDON SELWYN, M.A., B.D., Editor of Theology,
Rector of Redhill, Havant, Hon. Chaplain to the Bishop of
Winchester.
RET
10. THE SPIRIT AND THE CHURCH IN HIsTORY
Eric MILNER-WHITE, M.A., D.S.O., Fellow and Dean of
King’s College, Cambridge, Priest of the Oratory of the
Good Shepherd.
11. THE REFORMATION : : -
A. HAMILTON THomMPson, M.A., St. John’s College,
Cambridge, Hon. D.Litt.. Durham, F.S.A., Professor of
Medieval History in the University of Leeds.
12. ‘(HE ORIGINS OF THE SACRAMENTS
NORMAN POWELL WILLIAMS, M.A., Fellow and Precentor
of Exeter College, Oxford ; Lecturer in Theology at Exeter
and Pembroke Colleges, Oxford ; Examining Chaplain to
the Bishop of Newcastle.
13. THe Eucuarist : : , :
WILL Spens, M.A., C.B.E., Fellow and Tutor of Corpus
Christi College, Cambridge.
INDEX : : ‘ : ‘ 5 :
PAGE
203
247
cal
321
3h3
367
425
44.9
THE EMERGENCE OF RELIGION
BY EDWIN OLIVER JAMES
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. InrRopucTorY . : : : : : 4 : 3
II. Lirz, Dzeatu, anp ImMMortTatity In Earty Cutt . : 4
1. Beliefs in Survival after Death : 4 : 4
2. Response to the Mystery of Nature and Life : ‘ 8
3. Ideas of Body and Soul 4 ' ' TL 9
III. Earty DeveLopMents oF THEISM. é : : FeO
. The Divine King and Culture-hero . ‘ 2)
2. The Beneficent Creator . : : 1 aE
3. Towards Monotheism in Greece and a . aren oh YD
I
INTRODUCTORY
THE progress of scientific research in recent years has not only
changed our view of the universe, but it has also materially altered
our conception of human and religious origins. In the old days
when it was thought that the world was brought into being ina short
space of time by aseries of special creative acts culminating in man,
the whole scheme of creation and redemption seemed to fit together
into one composite whole. Now, for those who are acquainted
with contemporary thought, religion, like all other attributes of
the universe, is known to be a product of evolution, inasmuch as
it has proceeded from simple beginnings to complex conceptions
of man and his relation to the supernatural order. But since this
fact was first demonstrated in the latter part of the nineteenth
century, further evidence has thrown much new light on the early
history of religion. Nevertheless, anthropology is still a young
and somewhat speculative science, and it becomes anthropologists
to be very modest in their assertions. At present we know only
in part, and with the completion of knowledge (if indeed such
is attainable) doubtless many of our provisional hypotheses will
have to be abandoned or at least modified. “Therefore, in venturing
upon an account of the emergence of religion, it should be made
clear to the general reader at the outset that we are dealing with
tentative propositions based upon evidence that is in process of
accumulation. But provisional formulation according to the data
available at a given time and the use of the scientific imagination
are part of the scientific method and not to be despised in the great
quest of truth. Moreover, it is impossible for a writer who is
himself engaged in specialised research to be entirely free from
a mental bias resulting from his own investigations. It is the
business of the scientist to collect and classify the data at his dis-
posal and to form judgments upon the basis of this classification,
but always claiming the right, of course, to adjust his conclusions,
or, if need be, change them, in the light of new and additional
4 The Emergence of Religion
evidence Therefore, while he is concerned primarily with facts,
he cannot altogether escape from theories.
It is now becoming clear that the view concerning the origin
of religion which the late Sir Edward Tylor put forth in 1872
in his great work, “‘ Primitive Culture,” is too specialised to be
a ‘‘minimum definition,” as he described it. Religion, he thought,
originated in animism, a term used to signify a “belief in the
existence of spiritual beings,’ + that is to say, of “spirits” in
the wide sense that includes “souls.”” Man is supposed to have
arrived at this conception by the realisation that within him
dwells a kind of phantasm or ghost which is capable of leaving
the body during sleep, trance, or sickness, and finally going away
altogether at death. ‘This doctrine is thought to have been
extended to the rest of creation, so that the entire scene of his
existence was pervaded by these “spiritual beings.” That such a
view is held to-day by many people living in a primitive state of
culture is beyond dispute; but does it follow, therefore, that this
was the case when man first emerged from his mammalian
forbears ?
II
Lire, DEATH, AND IMMORTALITY IN EArRLty CULT
1. Beliefs in Survival after Death
When we turn from modern native races to the evidence
revealed by the pick and spade of the archzologist—and after
all it is this that is of supreme importance, since the savage can
never be anything but a “modern man,” however arrested his
development may be—the first indication of religion occurs in
what. is known as the Middle Palzolithic period (the Old Stone
Age), when, shivering under the effects of the great Ice Age,
man was driven to seek shelter and warmth in the caves of France
and Spain. ‘The inference is based upon the manner of burial
adopted by the prehistoric race named Neanderthal (after the place
where the first example of the type was found), which inhabited
these caves and rock-shelters perhaps a quarter of a million years
ago. ‘“Lhough brutish-looking fellows, the Neanderthalers not
only made beautifully worked flint tools, but also laid their dead to
1 Primitive Culture (London, 1891), 3rd ed., i. 424.
Life, Death, and Immortality 5
rest with great care and ceremony. “Thus at Le Moustier the
skeleton of a youth about sixteen years of age was found carefully
placed in the attitude of sleep, with the right forearm under the
head.
78 The Vindication of Religion
who “ in his blindness, bows down to wood and stone,” or the lover
who lavishes his spiritual treasure on a light woman. Religion
is not proved to be an illusion by its aberrations, any more than
science by the labour wasted on squaring the circle or seeking the
elixir and the philosopher’s stone, or love by the havoc it makes of
life when it is foolishly bestowed. “The sane judgment of reflexion
is required to direct and correct all our human activities. We are
neither to suppose that there is no way to God because some ways
which have been found promising at first have led astray, nor yet
that because there is a way, any way that mankind have tried must
be as good a road to the goal as any other. We may freely assert
that even the most puerile and odious “ religions” have had their
value ; they have this much at least of worth about them that those
who have practised them have been right in their conviction that
the “other-world”’ is really there to be sought for. But to
draw the conclusion that “all religions are equally good,” or even,
like the ‘‘ Theosophists,” that at any rate every religion is the best
for those who practise it, and that we are not to carry the Gospel
to the heathen because they are not at a level to appreciate it, is
like arguing that all supposed “ science” is equally good, or that
we ought to abstain from teaching the elements of natural science
toa Hindu because his own traditional notions about astronomy
and geography are “the best he 1s capable of.” Views of this
kind rest in the end on an absurd personal self-conceit, and
a denial of our common humanity. A true religion, like’a true
sclence, is not the monopoly of a little aristocracy of superior
persons; itisfor everyone. We may not beable to teach the mass,
even of our own fellow-countrymen, more than the first elements
of any science, but we must see to it that what we do teach them
is as true as we can make it. And so even more with religion,
because of its direct relation with the whole conduct of life. A
savage may be capable only of very elementary notions about God
and the unseen world, but at least we can see to it that the ideas
he has are not defiled by-cruelty or lewdness. Not to say that
you never know how far the capacity of amy mind for receiving
true ideas extends, until you have tried it. The “‘ Theosophist ”’
usually claims to show a broad-minded humanity, which he con-
trasts complacently with the “‘ narrowness ”’ of the Christian who
wishes all mankind to share his faith. But he belies his own pro-
fession the moment he begins his habitual disparagement of the
From God to God 79
missionary. ‘To say that in religion, or in any other department
of life, the vile or foolish is good enough for your neighbour is the
arrogance of the half-educated. “The neighbour whom we are
to love as ourselves deserves at our hands the best we can possibly
bring him.
The point I chiefly want to make, however, is that the specific
experience of contact with the divine not only needs interpreta-
tion, like all other direct experience, but that, though it is the
directest way of access to the “ wholly other,” it is not the only
way. If we are to reach God in this life, so far as it is permitted,
we need to integrate the “religious experience” with the sug-
gestions conveyed to us by the knowledge of Nature and of our
own being. It seems clear that in its crudest manifestations the
experience of this direct contact is not specifically connected with
superiority in knowledge or in moral character. At a sufficiently
low level of intelligence we find the idiot regarded as God-
possessed in virtue of his very idiocy. (He is supposed to be in
touch with the transcendent “ other” because he is so manifestly
out of touch with our “this-world” daily life.)1 And the
“holy men” of barbaric peoples are very seldom men who show
anything we should call moral superiority over their neighbours.
Even among ourselves it is often the simple and ignorant who
make on us the impression of spending their lives most in the sense
of God’s presence, and again the men who show themselves most
keenly sensitive to “religious impressions” are by no means
always among the most faultless. Indeed, ‘“‘ moral excellence ”
itself, without humility, seems only too often to close the soul’s eye
to the eternal. A self-absorbed prig is in deeper spiritual blindness
than many an open sinner. But if we would look at the Lord
“all at once,” we must of course integrate the glimpses we get in
our moments of direct adoring contact with all that Nature and
Morality suggest of the abiding source of them both. In par-
ticular, we need to have the conception of the “ holy,” as the object
of adoration, transformed in such a way that it is fragrant with moral
import before “‘ Be ye holy because I am holy” can become the
supreme directing note for the conduct of life. In principle this
work of integrating our experience has been already accomplished
for us by Christianity, with its double inheritance from the Jewish
1 Cf. Wordsworth’s application to idiots of the words ‘‘ Their life is hid
with Christ in God.”
So The Vindication of Religion
prophets and the Greek philosophers who freed their “ reasonable
worship ” from entanglement in the follies and foulnesses of the
old “ nature-religions.”” But the root of the old errors is in every
one of us ; we cannot enter into the highest religious experience
available to us except by a perpetual fresh interpretation of the
given for ourselves. We may have Moses and the prophets and
Paul and the evangelists, and yet, without personal watching unto
prayer, all this will not avail to ensure that we shall think
Christianly of the unseen, or that our sense of its reality will of
itself lead us to a noble life rich in good works. And this answers
for us the question “‘ Who are the experts?’ ‘The true “ expert
critic” of the constructions and hypotheses of science is the man
who has already learned what the men of science have to teach
him. ‘The true expert critic of the painter or the musician must
first have learned to see with the painter’s eye and hear with the
musician’s ear. Without this qualification, mere acuteness and
ingenuity are wasted. In the end, all effectual criticism must
be of what a man has first seen and felt for himself. So the verdict
on the religious life if it is to count must come from the men who
have first made it their own by living it. Only they can tell
‘how much there is in it.”
I have urged that the suggestions of an eternal above and
behind the temporal are derived from three independent sources,
and that the agreement of the three in their common suggestion
gives it a force which ought to be invincible. But I would end
by a word of warning against a possible dangerous mistake. “The
fullest recognition of the reality of the transcendental and eternal
‘other’? world does not mean that eternity and time are simply
disconnected or that a man is set the impossible task of living in
two absolutely disparate environments at once. “Lhe two worlds
are not in the end isolated from one another, since the one shines,
here more, there less, transparently through the other. In man,
in particular, they are everywhere interdependent, as Kant held
that the real (or moral) and the apparent (or natural) realms are.
We are not to spend half our time in the service of the eternal and
the other half in the service of the secular. If we try to do this
we shall merely incur the usual fate of the man with two masters.
Weare not called to be pukka saints half the week and “ worldlings ”
for the other half. Strictly speaking, we cannot divide a man’s
occupations and duties into the “ religious”? and the “ secular.”
From God to God Sr
The true difference between the religious man and the worldly is
that the religious man discharges the same duties as the other, but
in a different spirit. He discharges them “ to the glory of God,”
with God as his chief intention, that is, with his eye on an end the
attainment of which lies beyond the bounds of the temporal and
secular. ‘The truest detachment is not retreat to the desert, but a
life lived in the world in this spirit. Thus, for example, a man dis-
charges the duty of a husband and a parent in a secular spirit if he
has no aim beyond giving his wife a “happy time of it”? and bring-
ing up his children to enjoy a lucrative or honourable or comfort-
able existence from youth to old age. Marriage and parenthood
become charged with a sacramental spirit and the discharge of their
obligations a Christian duty when the “ principal” intention of
parents is to set forward a family in the way to know and love God
and to be spiritual temples for His indwelling. It may be that
the temporal will never cease to be part of our environment ;
what is important is that it should become an increasingly sub-
ordinate feature in the environment, that we should cease to be at
its mercy, because our hearts are set elsewhere. Christianity has
always set its face against the false treatment of the eternal and the
temporal as though they were simply disconnected “ worlds.” In
the beginning, it tells us, the same God created heaven and earth,
and its vision of the end of history has always included the
“ resurrection of the flesh ” to a glorified existence in which it will
no longer thwart but answer wholly to the “ spirit.” If we are
told on the one hand that a man who is in Christ is a “ new
creation,” we are also told by the great Christian theologians that
“ grace ” does not destroy “ nature ”’ but perfects and transfigures It.
Bibliographical Note.—Besides the books referred to or quoted in the text
I would specially recommend to the reader the following. Of course they are
only a selection out of a much larger number. Perhaps I may also mention,
as further illustrating some points touched on in the first part of this essay, an
essay by myself in the volume on Evolution in the Light of Modern Science
(Blackie, 1925).
HUGEL, F. von. Eternal Life. T.& T. Clark. 1912.
— Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion. Dent
& Sons. rg21.
SOLOVIEV, V. The Fustification of the Good. Eng. Tr. Constable. 1918,
Ward, J. Naturalism and Agnosticism. A. & C. Black. First published
1899.
——-— The Realm of Ends. Cambridge University Press. 1911.
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AUTHORITY
BY ALFRED EDWARD JOHN RAWLINSON
AND
WILFRED L. KNOX
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. Autuority as A Grounp oF BELIEF . : 4 eee
. The Authoritative Character of Chiteniy ; cee
2. The Relation of the Gospel to the Church ., : a ear
3. Authority as a Ground of Belief ; ; : Sars
Il. THe Autuority oF THE CHURCH : : oes
1. The Divine Commission of the Church ' ATPL S fs
2. The" Infallibility” of Scripture. : . J\ineOe
3. Nature of the Authority of Scripture : : wana es
4. The Method of Christian Development : aie Re |)
5. Lhe Meaning of Christian Experience : TO4
6. Religious Experience and the Laie of Cpinile
Doctrine : ‘ : 2h TOR
7. The Formulation of Civitan Dea ; : Reais,
8. The Claims of Catholic Authority . ; ! oi Le
9. The Certainty of the Catholic Tradition . Reo wc:
AppitionaL Notes. : ( : P : UAT LG
]
AUTHORITY AS A GRouND oF BELIEF
By A. E. J. Rawzinson
1. The Authoritative Character of Christianity
THE Christianity of history is a definite, historical, and positive
religion. It is not (in the phrase of Harnack) “ Religion itself,”
neither is it true to say that “the Gospel is in no wise a positive
religion like the rest.””1_ On the contrary, the Gospel is in such
wise “‘a positive religion,” that it came originally into the world
in a particular context, and as the result of a particular historical
process. It has ever claimed to be the divinely intended cul-
mination and fulfilment of an even earlier historical and positive
religion, that of the Jews. It has been characterised, in the course
of its persistence through the centuries, by a specific and definite
system of religious beliefs, as well as by what has been, in the main,
a specific and definite tradition of spiritual discipline and cultus—
a system of beliefs and a type of cu/tus and discipline, which have
been discovered in experience to have the property of mediating
(in proportion as they are taken seriously) a spiritual life of a highly
characteristic and definite kind. From all of which it follows
that Christianity is not anything which could be discovered or
invented for himself by any person, however intellectually or
spiritually gifted, in independence of historical tradition. "The
term “Christian”? is not an epitheton ornans, applicable in the
spheres of religion and ethics to whatever in the way of doctrine,
ideal, or aspiration may happen to commend itself to the judgment
of this or that individual who is vaguely familiar with the Christian
tradition as the result of having been born and brought up in a
country ostensibly Christian. It is a term which to the historian
possesses a definite content, discoverable from history. And
because Christianity is thus an historical and positive religion, it
is impossible, in the first instance, for the individual to know any-
1 The statements controverted are quoted from Harnack’s What is
Christianity ? (E.T.), p. 63.
86 Authority
thing about it at first hand. He must be content to derive his
knowledge of it from authority, whether the authority in question
be primarily that of a living teacher, or of past tradition.
It belongs, further, to the essential character of Christianity
that (in common with all the great prophetic and historical
religions) it claims to be a religion of revelation, and as such to
proclaim to mankind an authoritative Gospel in the name of the
living God. “The idea of authority,” writes Friedrich Heiler,
“is rooted in the revelational character of the prophetic type of
religion.” + “This certainly has been the characteristic of Chris-
tianity from the beginning. It appears to have been character-
istic of the historical attitude of Jesus Christ, as may be seen from
the story of the scene in the synagogue at Capernaum in St. Mark
(Mark 1.21 sqq.). It has been pointed out by the German scholar
Reitzenstein that the Greek word @&%ovot«, which we render
‘authority,’ was employed in Hellenistic Greek to denote, in a
religious context, the idea of a combination of supernatural power
with supernatural knowledge of divine things.2. So in St. Mark’s
narrative the word is used to suggest the combination in Jesus of
supernatural power with supernatural authority to teach. ‘‘ What
is this? A new teaching! With authority, moreover, he com-
mandeth the unclean spirits, and they obey him !” (Mark 1. 27).
«« He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes ”
(Mark 1. 22). “The Lord, as a matter of actual historical fact,
astonished people by teaching independently of scribal tradition,
with the unhesitating “authority ” of immediate inspiration. In
this respect His manner and method of teaching resembled that
of the great Old Testament prophets, but with the significant
difference that whereas the Old ‘Testament claim to prophetic
authority was expressed through the formula “Thus saith
Jehovah,” our Lord said simply “I say unto you.” ‘The
authority claimed by the Lord Jesus in matters of religion may
thus be described as prophetic and super-prophetic : that is to
say, He claims for Himself, without any hesitation, the plenitude
of spiritual authority inherent in God’s Messiah, z.e. in the Person
in whom God’s spiritual purpose of redemption, in every legiti-
mate sense of the word, is summed up and destined to be realised,
1 F, Heiler, Das Gebet, p. 266.
2 R. Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen (2nd edn.), pp. 14,
TOEMIO8.
Authority as a Ground of Belief 87
in the first instance for Israel, but ultimately also, through Israel,
for mankind.
And this attitude of spiritual authority, characteristic of Jesus,
is characteristic also, according to the New Testament, of the
Church. To the Church as the redeemed Israel of God is
entrusted the word of the Christian salvation as an authoritative
Gospel, a message of good news, to be proclaimed as the truth of
God “in manifestation of the Spirit and of power.” “ He that
heareth you heareth me: and he that rejecteth you rejecteth
me: and he that rejecteth me rejecteth him that sent me”
(Luke x. 16). “As the Father hath sent me, even so send I you”
(John xx. 21). Fundamental in Christianity is this claim of the
Church to have been divinely commissioned, divinely “ sent.”
The Church is not primarily a society for spiritual or intellectual
research, but a society of which it belongs to the very essence to
put forward the emphatic claim to be the bearer of revelation, to
have been put in trust with the Gospel as God’s revealed message
to mankind, and to have been divinely commissioned with pro-
phetic authority to proclaim it as God’s truth to all the world,
irrespective of whether men prove willing to hear and give heed
to the proclamation, or whether they forbear. In this respect the
tone of the Church must always be “* Thus saith the Lord”: she
must proclaim her message in such a fashion that men may
receive it (like the Church of the Thessalonians in the New
Testament) “ not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the
word of God.”
It is, moreover, in this sense—that is to say, as an authoritative
Gospel—that the message of Christianity comes home, whenso-
ever and wheresoever it does come home with effect, to the hearts
and consciences of men. ‘“‘ Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing
by the word of Christ” ; and the Gospel, thus authoritatively
proclaimed, proves itself still to be “the power of God unto
salvation unto every one that believeth.” The apologetic work
of reasoned argument and philosophical discussion, the dissipation
of prejudices, the antecedent clearing away of difficulties, the
removal of intellectual barriers, may in particular cases be the
necessary preliminaries to conversion. But conversion to Chris-
tianity, in any sense that matters, is not primarily the result of an
intellectual demonstration. Itisthe work of the Spirit. “ Noman
can say ‘ Jesus is Lord,’ but by the Holy Ghost.’ Nevertheless,
88 Authority
when a man zs thus enabled by the power of the Spirit to say
‘* Jesus is Lord,” he does so for the reason that he has been made
aware, in the very depths of his soul, that he has been brought
face to face with a truth which he did not discover, but which has
been spiritually revealed to him, even the truth of God, “as truth
is in Jesus”; and he knows henceforward that he is no longer
his own master: he has given in his allegiance, in free and
deliberate self-committal, to the supreme authority of Him who
is the truth: he is from henceforth “a man under authority,”
being “‘ under law to Christ.”
2. The Relation of the Gospel to the Church
With what has been thus far written, it is probable that the
representatives of almost all types and schools of thought in Chris-
tianity would find themselves to be, upon the whole, in substantial
agreement. It is common ground that “‘ grace and truth came by
Jesus Christ,” and that the Gospel is God’s authoritative message
to mankind. ‘The main difference between the Catholic and the
Protestant traditions in Christianity lies in the kind and degree of
recognition which is given, side by side with the authority of the
Gospel, to that of the Church. How is the relation of the Church
to the Gospel properly to be conceived? Is the Church the
creation of the Gospel? Or is the Church, in a more direct
sense than such a view would suggest, the supernatural creation of
God—a divine institution—the Spirit-filled Body of Christ ?
Now, it can be recognised freely that the Spirit operates to-day,
in varying measure, outside the borders of any institutional Church,
that “the wind bloweth where it listeth,’ and that ‘“ Jordan
overfloweth his banks all the time of harvest.” Nevertheless it
must be afirmed that according to the New Testament the Church
(the idea of which is rooted in that of Israel, the holy people of
God) is the covenanted home of the Spirit, and the Church is
historically the society which is put in trust with the Gospel for
the benefit of the world. "The Gospel does not descend from
heaven immediately, as by a special revelation. It reaches men
through the instrumentality and mediation of the Church. This
is true obviously in the case of all those who are born and brought
up within the fold of the Church, and who acknowledge them-
selves to be her spiritual children. It is true equally, though less
Authority as a Ground of Belief 89
obviously, in the case of those Christians who would be disposed to
deny the idea of any ecclesiastical mediation, and who would
conceive themselves to derive their faith directly from the New
Testament ; since it is a plain fact of history that the very exist-
ence of the New Testament presupposes the prior existence and
activity of the Church, of whose authoritative tradition it forms
a part.
The Church, therefore, is not the creation of the Gospel.
‘The Gospel is rather the divine message of redemption which
is entrusted to the Church. ‘There is ideally no opposition or
antithesis between “‘ Catholic” and “ Evangelical.” If Catholi-
cism has ever in any degree failed to be Evangelical, it has to that
extent and in that degree failed signally to be true to its vocation.
Catholicism stands, according to its true idea, both for the
presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in its fulness, and also
for a certain wholeness, a certain completeness, in the development,
maintenance and building up of Christianity as a system and
spiritual “‘ way,” or manner of life. “The Catholic Church in
idea is not simply the redeemed Israel of God: it is also the
missionary of Christ to the world, the society which is put in
trust with the Gospel. It is bound therefore of necessity to
regard itself as an authoritative society, in so far as it is entrusted
with an authoritative message, and empowered with divine
authority to proclaim it. Beyond this, as the Beloved Community
of the saints, the familiar home and sphere of the operations of
divine grace, the ideal Fellowship of the Spirit, the Church
possesses a legitimate claim upon the allegiance of its members,
and exercises over them a teaching and pastoral authority, an
authority not of constraint, but of love, in respect of which those
who are called to the office of pastorate are enjoined in the New
Testament so to fulfil their ministry as to seek to commend
themselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.
There are accordingly different types and kinds of authority
in the Church, all of which are important and real, even though
admittedly all (because of the frailty of men, and of the earthen
vessels to which the divine treasure is committed) are liable to
abuse. ‘There is the fundamental and primary authority of the
Gospel, the divine message of revelation. There are the sub-
ordinate and totally different questions of disciplinary authority in
the Church, of the administrative authority of Church officers,
go Authority
of the prescriptive authority of custom, of the obligation or
otherwise, in varying degree, of different types of Church
ordinances and rules. “There is further the moral and religious
authority of the saints, and of the devotional and ascetic tradition
of Christendom, in relation to the proper development of the
spiritual life in its most characteristically Christian forms. Any
one who is wise will, if he desires to develop such spiritual
life, go to school to the saints and pay heed to the devotional
traditions of Christendom. ‘The sciences corresponding to this
type of authority are those of moral, ascetic and mystical theology.
They are essentially practical. “They presuppose the desire to
make progress in the life of the spirit in its Christian form, and
the readiness to learn from the experience of the saints and of
former generations of Christians. But the proper concern of
this essay is not with any of these forms of authority: it is with
authority as a ground of belief—belief, not in the sense of what
S. Paul means by fazth (z.e. the response of the “ heart,” or of the
whole personality, to the primary appeal of the Gospel) but in
the sense of the acceptance of beliefs, the acknowledgment of
particular doctrines or historical assertions as true.
3. Authority as a Ground of Belief
For it is, in point of fact, obvious that the preaching of the
Gospel, considered simply as the proclamation of a divine message
which is primarily prophetic in type, presupposes as the intellectual
ground of its validity a number of truths—philosophical, historical,
and theological—which it is the business of Christian apologetics
and theology to substantiate, to interpret, and to defend, It is
possible to point, even in apostolic times, to the inevitable
tendency to draw up short statements of Christian truth, dogmatic
summaries of the intellectual content of the faith. “The work
of the teacher in apostolic times went on side by side with that of
the evangelist or preacher. The proclamation of the Gospel as a
divine message of Good News presupposed, and required as its
supplement, the teaching of doctrine. Unless certain dogmatic
assertions are true, the whole Gospel of Christianity falls to the
ground, ‘The truths, therefore, which to the Christian mind
have appeared to be implicit in the truth of the Gospel, or to be
presupposed by the assumption of the validity of Christian Church
Authority as a Ground of Belief gI
life and devotional practices, were eventually formulated, more
and more explicitly, in the shape of dogmatic propositions 5 with
the result that a body of credenda arose, which in the traditionally
Catholic presentation of Christianity are proposed for the
acceptance of the faithful on the ground of the teaching authority
of the Church.
From the point of view of the effectual handing on of the
Christian tradition such a method of teaching was in practice
inevitable, and has analogies in all branches of education. “The
acceptance of alleged truths on the authority of a teacher who is
trusted is commonly, in the initial stages of the study of any subject
whatever, the dictate of wisdom. Authority, for those who are
under instruction, is always, at least psychologically, a ground of
belief ; nor is there anything irrational in the acceptance of beliefs
on authority, provided always that there is reasonable ground
for believing the authority on the strength of whose assurance the
beliefs in question are accepted to be trustworthy, and that the
degree of “interior assent” is proportioned to what is believed
to be the trustworthiness of the particular authority concerned.
There is nothing therefore prima facie irrational in the attitude
of a man who in religious matters elects, even to the end, to sub-
mit his judgment to authority, and to accept the guidance of the
Church, since it may be argued that in respect of such matters it
is a priori probable that the wisdom of the community will be
superior to that of the individual, and the question may be asked :
If the Christian Church does not understand the real meaning of
Christianity, who does? “The Church in each successive genera-
tion has always included within its membership a considerable
proportion of such unspeculative souls, who have been content to
accept such teaching as has been given to them “on authority,”
and to live spiritually on the basis of a faith the intellectual content
of which they have not personally thought out, and the purely
rational grounds of which they have not personally attempted to
verify.
Even in the case, however, of those who could thus give no
other intellectual account of their beliefs except to say simply that
they had accepted them on authority, it is probable that the real
grounds on which the beliefs in question are held are not exhausted
by such a statement. A doctrine may have been accepted, in the
first instance, on authority, but it remains inoperative (save as a
92 Authority
purely abstract and theoretical opinion) unless it is at least to some
extent verified in the experience of life. It is doubtful whether
those who have accepted their beliefs on authority could continue
to hold them, if the experience of life appeared flatly to contradict
them ; and conversely the extreme tenacity with which Christian
beliefs (seriously challenged, very often, by contemporary critical
thought) are not uncommonly maintained by those who in the
first instance accepted them “ merely on authority,” is to be
explained by the fact that the beliefs in question have mediated
to those who entertain them a spiritual experience—valuable and
precious beyond everything else which life affords—of the genuine-
ness of which they are quite certain, and with the validity of which
they believe the truth of the beliefs in question to be bound up.
It was on an argument of this general kind, based on the
pragmatic value of the “ faith of the millions ” (7.2. on the capacity
of traditional Catholic doctrine and practice, as shown by experi-
ence, to mediate spiritual life), that the late Father George Tyrrell
was at one time disposed to attempt to build up a ‘“‘ modernist ”
apologetic for Catholicism, And the argument is of value as far
as it goes. It suggests that in such religious beliefs or religious
practices as are discovered in experience both to exhibit “ survival
value,’ and also to be manifestly fruitful in the mediation of
spiritual life of an intrinsically valuable kind, there is enshrined,
at the least, some element of truth or of spiritual reality, of which
any adequate theology or philosophy of religion must take account.
It is the function of theology in this sense to interpret religion, to
explain it, without explaining it away. ‘Ihe argument of ‘Tyrrell
at least constitutes a salutary warning against any such premature
rationalism as, if accepted, would have the latter effect rather than
the former.
But the argument of Tyrrell, while suggesting that in every
spiritually vital religious tradition there is some element of truth,
of which account must be taken, does not obviously justify the
intellectual acceptance at face value of the prima facie claims of
any and every tradition, as such. The plain man may be pro-
visionally justified in accepting religious beliefs and practices upon
the authority of the Church—or more immediately, in actual
practice, upon the authority of some particular religious teacher
whom he trusts—and may discover in his own subsequent experi-
ence of the life of the spirit, as lived upon the basis of such accept-
Authority as a Ground of Belief 93
ance, a rough working test of the substantial validity and truth of
the doctrine in question. But what the plain man is thus enabled
directly by experience to attest is rather the spiritual validity of
Christianity as a way of life, and the fundamental truth of the
spiritual reality behind it, than the strictly intellectual adequacy
or truth of the intellectual forms under which he has received
it as a dogmatic and institutional tradition. Meanwhile, in
the world of our time, all Christian teaching whatever is very
definitely under challenge, and the issues are further complicated
by the existence of variant forms of the Christian tradition, and
of a number of more or less conflicting religious authorities. “The
plain man may indeed simply choose to abide by the tradition in
which he has been personally brought up and which he has to a
certain extent “‘ proved ” in experience, and to ignore the whole
issue which the existence of current contradiction and conflict is
otherwise calculated to raise. But a large number of plain men
are not able to be thus permanently content with the practice of a
religion which they have in no sense thought out, and with the
acceptance of doctrines the properly intellectual basis of which
they have never considered. “They ask for a reason of the hope and
of the faith that isin them. In some cases they become conscious
of a vocation to serve God with their minds. ‘The mere existence
in the world of conflicting religious authorities raises problems
enough. It is clear that religious authority has been claimed in
different quarters for a large number of statements which, because
of their manifest conflict, cannot all of them be equally true, and
in some cases are definitely false. No claim has ever been made
with more emphasis by religious authority than the modern
Roman claim that the Bishop of Rome, under certain narrowly
defined conditions, is possessed ex officio of a supernatural infalli-
bility. ‘The writers of this volume are united in the conviction
that the claims made in this respect for the Papacy are in point of
fact untrue. “The question inevitably arises, What is the ulti-
mate relation between authority and truth? What of the in-
tellectually conflicting claims put forward by different self-styled
authorities in the sphere of religion? Or again, What is the
strictly rational authority of the main intellectual tradition of
Christian theology ?
It is obvious that these questions, when once they are raised,
can only be solved, in the case of any given individual mind, on
94 Authority
the basis of an act, or a succession of acts, of private judgment.
This is true even in the case of an individual whose solution of the
problem assumes the form of submission to Rome. ‘There is a
recurrent type of mind, fundamentally sceptical and distrustful of
reason, and yet craving religious certitude and peace, which will
gravitate always towards Rome ; and for minds of this type it 1s
probable that only the Roman Communion is in the long run in
a position to cater. “Che demand of such souls is not for any form
of strictly rational or verifiable authority. It is for authority in
the form of a purely external and oracular guarantee of intellectual
truth, an authority of which the effect, when once its claims have
by an initial act of private judgment been definitely acknowledged,
shall be to exempt them from any further responsibility of a per-
sonal kind for the intellectual truth of the religious beliefs which
they entertain. “There are indeed good reasons for believing that
such a solution is an illegitimate simplification of the intellectual
problems involved in religious belief, but it is clearly a solution
the attractiveness of which to some minds is exceedingly strong.
In the earliest days of Christianity the Church does not appear
to have made claims of a kind strictly analogous to those of the
Papacy. “Ihe modern Roman conception of authority is the
result of a development in the direction of rigidity and absolute-
ness of claim, which appears to have been at least partly the result
of reaction from, and opposition to, the religious confusions of
Protestantism.
Reaction and antithesis are not commonly the pathways to
absolute truth. In any case it would appear to be clear that
for the allegiance of those who, in despair of existing confusions,
demand simply the kind of authority which, in virtue of the sheer
absoluteness of its claim, shall appear to be its own guarantee,
independently of any further appeal either to reason or to history,
no other Christian communion will ever be in a position effec-
tively to compete with the great and venerable communion of
Rome.
The rejection of the claim of the Roman Church to be possessed
of authority in the form of what I have ventured to describe as
an external and oracular guarantee of the intellectual truth of its
doctrines carries with it, in the long run, the rejection of the
purely oracular conception of religious authority altogether.
Neither the oracular conception of the authority of the Bible, nor
Authority as a Ground of Belief 95
that of the authority of the ecumenical Councils and Creeds, is
in a position to survive the rejection of the oracular conception of
the authority of the Pope. ‘This does not of course mean that
the authority either of the Bible, or of the Church, or of the
ecumenical Documents and Councils, has ceased to be real. It
means only that such authority is no longer to be taken in an
oracular sense, and that the final authority is not anything which
is either mechanical or merely external, but is rather the intrinsic
and self-evidencing authority of truth. It means that authority
as such can never be ultimately its own guarantee, that the claims
of legitimate authority must always be in the last resort verifiable
claims. ‘The final appeal is to the spiritual, intellectual and
historical content of divine revelation, as verifiable at the three-
fold bar of history, reason and spiritual expertence.
This of course does not mean that the individual is capable
in all cases, or in any complete degree, of effecting all these forms
of verification for himself. It is the wisdom of the individual
to pay reasonable deference to the wider wisdom of the community,
and to regard as tentative the conclusions of his individual reason,
save in so far as they are confirmed and supported by the corporate
mind, as well as by the spiritual experience, not only of himself,
but of his fellows. It does mean, however, that there exists a
very real recognition and conception of religious authority which ts
capable of Rene reconciled with inner freedom, a conception of
authority which is capable of forming the basis of such an essentially
liberal and evangelical version of Catholicism as that for which the
Anglican Communion, at its best, appears ideally to stand. It is
not at all true to say that the Church, on such a theory of authority,
would be precluded from teaching clearly and dogmatically those
foundation truths on which Christianity may be reasonably held
to rest. On the contrary, the Church will be enabled to teach
doctrine with all the greater confidence in so far as she is content
to make an essentially rational appeal—in so far, that is, as her
authority is conceived to rest, not simply upon unsupported
assertions, but upon the broad basis of continuous verification in
reason and experience. ‘The true authority is that which is able
to flourish and to maintain itself, not simply under a régime of intel-
lectual repression, but in an atmosphere of intellectual and religious
freedom. I submit that it should be the aim of the Church so to
teach her doctrines as by her very manner of teaching to bear
96 Authority
witness to her conviction that they are true, and that they will
stand ultimately the test of free enquiry and discussion : to teach
them, in other words, not simply as the bare assertions of an
essentially unverifiable authority, but as the expression of truths
which are capable of being verified—spiritually verified, in some
sense, in the experience of all her members; verified intellec-
tually, as well as spiritually, in the reason and experience of her
theologians and thinkers and men of learning.
It is involved in such a conception of Church authority that
the tradition of Christian orthodoxy will not be in its essence a
merely uncritical handing on of the beliefs and conclusions of the
past: it will rather assume the form of the stubborn persistence
of a continuously criticised, tested and verified tradition. I have
argued elsewhere! that the amount of strictly intellectual and
rational authority which attaches to the broad theological con-
sensus of orthodox Christianity is in direct proportion to the
extent to which it can be said to represent the conclusions of a
genuinely free consensus of competent and adequately Christian
minds, and in inverse proportion to the extent to which unanimity
is secured only by methods of discipline. “There have been periods
and countries in which the expression of unorthodox opinions has
been attended by danger, not merely of ecclesiastical penalties,
but of physical violence and suffering to those who professed them.
To that extent what would otherwise be the overwhelming intel-
' lectual and rational authority attaching to the virtually unanimous
orthodoxy of such countries and periods requires to be discounted.
Nevertheless, intellectual sincerity is a virtue which cannot be
wholly eliminated by any system of discipline from the minds of
Christian men. It may fairly be argued that the broad doctrinal
tradition of orthodox Christianity has both maintained itself
through long periods under considerable intellectual challenge,
and has also exhibited very considerable powers of recovery after
apparent defeat—a good example being the revival of Nicene and
‘Trinitarian orthodoxy within the Church of England, after the
widespread prevalence in intellectual circles, during the eighteenth
century, of Deism. The weight of rational authority attaching
to the proposition that ‘Trinitarian orthodoxy represents an intel-
lectually true interpretation of the doctrinal implications of
1 In the Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1923, published by Messrs. Longmans,
Green & Co., under the title of Authority and Freedom, pp. 14 sqq.
Authority as a Ground of Belief 97
Christianity in respect of the being and nature of God is, on any
view, very far from being negligible.
‘To sum up the argument : The fundamental authority which
lies behind the teaching of the Church is the authority of revela-
tion, in the form of the (primarily prophetic) message of the Gospel,
which the Church is divinely commissioned to proclaim. The
purely dogmatic teaching of the Church represents the statement
in intellectual terms of such truths as the Church holds to be either
implicit in the truth of the Gospel, or else presupposed by the
assumption of the validity of her spiritual life. The weight of
intellectual authority which, in the purely rational sense, attaches
to such statements is in proportion to the extent to which they
represent a genuine consensus of competent and adequately
Christian minds.
It will be obvious that, from the point of view of an argument
which thus regards rational authority as attaching to statements
of doctrine in proportion to the extent of their real acceptance,
and to the impressiveness of the consensus which they may be
said to represent, the weight of actual authority attaching to
particular statements of doctrine will be a matter of degree. The
weight of rational authority will be at its maximum in the case
of such statements of doctrine as are commonly ranked as “‘ ecume-
nical,” and that on the ground both of the extremely wide con-
sensus of genuinely Christian conviction which lies behind them,
and also of the large number of Christian thinkers and theologians
by whom they have been sincerely and freely endorsed. It will
be at its minimum in the case of doctrines or practices which have
either failed to gain wide-spread acceptance, or else are apparently
only of temporary, local or insular provenance. Nevertheless, it
needs to be recognised that some degree of rational authority
attaches to every doctrine or practice which at any time or in any
place has commanded the serious allegiance of Christians, and in
the power of which men have been enabled to have life unto God,
and to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit. What is merely
sectarian or local need not necessarily be taken into account,
indeed, at its own valuation. But it needs to be taken into account,
and to have such truth and reality as it in fact represents fairly
treated and adequately represented, in whatever may eventually
prove to be the ultimate and finally satisfying statement of
Christian theology.
98 Authority
II
THe AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH
By WitFrrep L. Knox
1. The Divine Commission of the Church
Aut Christians of whatever shade of belief would agree that the
Church, in whatever sense the term is to be interpreted, is a body
possessing a divine commission to preach the Gospel to the world.
This claim proceeds inevitably from the belief that the one God,
who revealed Himself partially to the prophets, law-givers and
wise men of the old covenant, revealed Himself fully and finally
in the person of Jesus, and continues to speak to mankind through
the Holy Spirit, who dwells in the whole Church which is the
Body of Christ. In this sense all Christians would agree that
the Church has a divine authority, in virtue of which it can claim
the absolute assent of the reason and conscience of all mankind.
Unfortunately this agreement does not carry us very far towards
solving the many controversies which have arisen with regard to
the authority of the Church. ‘These controversies concern the
interpretation of the divine revelation committed to the Church
by our Lord, the nature of the body to which He committed that
revelation, and the means by which that body ts able to formulate
the true interpretation of His teaching. It is with these contro-
versial matters that this essay is chiefly concerned.
2. The “ Infallibihty” of Scripture
It will be convenient if we begin by clearing up a controversy
which time and the progress of knowledge have solved for all
but the blindest partisans. “This is the old controversy as to the
position of the Bible in Christian teaching. “The Church from the
outset accepted the old Jewish Scriptures and regarded them, just
as the Jewish Church had done, as the verbally inspired teaching
of God. It avoided the obvious difficulties of harmonising the
letter of the Old ‘Testament with the teaching of Jesus by the use
of allegorical interpretations often of a rather desperate character ;
in the conditions of human knowledge in the early Christian
centuries it had no other means of solving the problem, unless it
was prepared to abandon the whole claim that Christianity was
The Authority of the Church 99
the true development of the old Jewish faith. This the Gnostic
heretics did ; but their attempt to reject the Old Testament, and
where necessary parts of the New, was obviously fatal to the whole
belief that Christianity is the one true revelation of God.
‘To the Old Testament the Church added its own Scriptures,
the New Testament. With the origin and formation of the
New ‘Testament canon we are not here concerned ; it is sufficient
to notice that for centuries before the Reformation the Church
had possessed a body of sacred literature, which was universally
accepted as divinely inspired and absolutely true, though the most
important truth of certain portions might lie in an allegorical
rather than in the literal meaning. In order to harmonise the
Scriptures with the practice of the Church, as it had developed
in the course of history, Catholics claimed that the Bible must be
interpreted in the light of ecclesiastical tradition. Although the
claim may often have been abused, and although the prevalent
conception of the nature of ecclesiastical tradition may have been
untenable (a point which will be considered later), there can be
no doubt that the Catholic claim, that the Bible without some
standard of interpretation cannot be applied to the daily life of the
Christian individual or community, was in itself true. The
Reformers claimed as against this that the Bible as it stands is
the only source of authority for the teaching and practice of the
Church. ‘The Reformers were in many cases justified in appealing
to the New ‘Testament against the errors of much popular teaching
and the abuses of their age ; but the claim that the Bible alone is
the final and sufficient guide for Christian belief and morality was
entirely untenable. In actual fact it involved not the appeal to
the Bible, but the appeal to the Bible as interpreted by the system
of some particular Reformer, who claimed that his particular
system was the only true interpretation of the Scriptures ; the
result was to produce a multitude of warring bodies, each holding
to a different system of belief and anathematising all others ; the
only ground of agreement being their denunciation of the errors
of Rome.
‘The scientific development of the last century has rendered
untenable the whole conception of the Bible as a verbally inspired
book, to which we can appeal with absolute certainty for infallible
guidance in all matters of faith and conduct. On the one hand
the exact meaning of its various parts and the authority which they
100 Authority
can claim are matters to be discussed by competent scholars ; it
is hardly to be supposed that they will ever reach absolute unani-
mity as to the various problems which the Scriptures present ; and
even such unanimity could only be provisional, for it is essential
to scientific thought that it should always contemplate the possi-
bility of further progress. On the other hand the Christian body
as a whole needs a standard of faith and life which it can accept
as being, if not absolutely true in every sense, yet absolutely
adequate as a means of salvation. Obviously this distinction is one
which will need careful examination later ; for our present purpose
it is sufficient to point out that the Church as a whole, and the
individual—at least the individual who is not a highly trained
theologian—need some means of deciding precisely what the
Christian message is. If the Church is to bring men to God
through the person of Jesus, or if the individual is to come to God
through Jesus, there must be some means of ascertaining Who
Jesus is, and how we are to find Him. It is perfectly possible
that many people have found Him by merely reading the Bible ;
but it is obvious that we cannot merely hand the Bible to the
inquirer, with no further guidance, and be certain that he will
find Jesus there aright. In practice the Reformed bodies have
attempted to solve the difficulty by drawing up their own confes-
sions of faith ; but the drawing up of such confessions was really
an admission of the inadequacy of the Bible, since these confessions,
while claiming to be the only true interpretation of Scripture, are
found to differ widely in important matters of doctrine. Clearly
the claim that the Scriptures alone are a sufficient guide in matters
of faith could only be maintained if all impartial inquirers arrived
at the same conclusions. It may be added that the measure of
agreement to be found in these documents ts largely due to the
fact that on many points of fundamental importance they adhered
to the doctrines of the Catholic Church, which Catholics and
Protestants alike believed to be clearly stated in the Scriptures ;
in reality, however, these doctrines were only made clear by the
earlier developments of Catholic theology. At the time they were
not disputed by any party, and were therefore accepted by all as
the clear teaching of the Scriptures ; it is now clear that they can
only be regarded as the clear teaching of Scripture if it is admitted
that the orthodox Catholic interpretation of the Scriptures on
these matters in the first four centuries was in fact the correct one.
The Authority of the Church IOI
3. Nature of the Authority of Scripture
At the same time all Christians would agree that in some
sense the Bible possesses a paramount authority in matters of
belief and conduct. Although it can no longer be regarded as
a collection of infallible oracles from which it is possible at any
moment to draw with certainty a complete answer to any question
that may arise, it would be generally admitted that any development
of Christian teaching must very largely be judged by its compati-
bility with the teaching of the Scriptures as a whole. Opinions
may differ as to what this teaching is, and how it is to be ascertained;
in particular, Christian scholars and teachers, and organised
Christian bodies may differ as to which elements both of the Old
and New Testaments are to be regarded as of final and permanent
importance, and which possess only a local and temporary value ;
but it is universally recognised that the Scriptures contain a divine
revelation, which in its essential elements lays down the lines
which all subsequent developments of Christianity must follow.
‘This authority proceeds from the nature of Scripture itself. The
Old ‘Testament shows us the process by which the religion of the
Jewish nation was developed from a system of mythology and
folk-lore similar to that of the other Semitic nations into a severe
monotheism, based on the identification of the nature of God with
ethical perfection, and safeguarded by an elaborate religious code
from contamination with the lower religious systems of the ancient
world. “The New Testament contains the history of the full and
final revelation of God to man in the person of Jesus, as recorded by
the men who had lived under the influence of His earthly life,
together with their interpretations of His life and teaching in its
bearing on the relations of God to man.
It is impossible to believe that the literature which records
and interprets this historical process was compiled by the human
authors without a special measure of divine assistance. It is of
course possible to deny the account of the origin of the Scriptures
given above : but obviously to do so is to reject Christianity as in
any sense a divine revelation. If it be accepted, it follows for the
Christian that God must have chosen the men who were to carry
out the task, and given them special gifts of the Holy Spirit for
doing so. “This need not imply in any way that they wrote with
explicit consciousness of anything but ordinary human motives,
102 Authority
or that they were divinely delivered from the possibility of human
error. It does imply that these writings possess an inspiration
different from that which is to be found in the greatest monuments
of human literature and that they contain in substance the record
of a divine dispensation to which all subsequent developments of
Christianity must conform.
4. The Method of Christian Development
Anyone who is acquainted with the methods of modern in-
vestigation of the Old “Testament recognises that the historical
development of Israel was very different from that which the
narrative describes. Instead of a series of catastrophic divine
revelations to the patriarchs and Moses resulting in the permanent
codification of the Jewish system of law and worship, we find a
very slow evolution which only reached its final form some three
centuries before the Incarnation. Although this evolution was
largely due to the work of individuals whose writings we possess,
it is obvious that their labours would never have led to any result,
if they had not been able to appeal with success to the religious
and moral ideas of their contemporaries. Any prophet or re-
former in any branch of life depends for his success on his power
to commend his message to his hearers. “Their response may not
be immediate ; but he must in some way gain the assent of those
whom he addresses, if his work is not to be an absolute failure.
‘Thus although we may truly say that the development of the
Jewish religion was the work of the prophets and law-givers of
the nation, yet it is equally true to say that it was the work of the
hearers, who accepted the progressive stages of that process of
modification which transformed the national faith from the
worship of the original tribal deity and such other local deities as
attached themselves to the nation in the course of its history into
the worship of the one God, who is the Creator and Ruler of the
universe.
We see the same process in the history of the earthly teaching
of Jesus. Although He taught as one having authority, yet He
does not appear as a teacher of a dogmatic system. Even in His
ethical teaching He continually appeals to the conscience of His
hearers to make it clear that the teaching He gives is the logical
conclusion to be drawn from the Mosaic Law as accepted by them.
The Authority of the Church 103
The first incident in His public ministry which has a really dog-
matic importance is the question put to the disciples at Caesarea
Philippi. ‘‘ Who do men say that I am?” and the subsequent
question, “But who say ye that I am?” ‘The disciples
are challenged to say whether in the light of their more intimate
experience of His work and teaching they can regard the views
of the general public as being in any way adequate ; St. Peter’s
answer is an admission of their inadequacy, and a confession
of the supernatural character of the origin and mission of Jesus,
which is the germ of Catholic Christology. Its importance
for our present purpose lies in the fact that it is only elicited by
our Lord in reply to a question which presupposes some months
of experience of His life and teaching; incidentally it may be
noticed that it comes from one of the three disciples who had a
more intimate experience of that life and ministry than the rest.
A similar phenomenon may be observed with regard to the death
of our Lord. It is only after the incident at Caesarea that He
prepares His disciples for the shock of His crucifixion; and
although at the moment the blow was too much for their faith,
yet it did not completely destroy it. For the disciples were still
an united body, apparently looking for some further development
when our Lord appeared to them after His resurrection. In
other words their experience of Him made it impossible for them
to suppose that His death was really, as it seemed, a complete and
final catastrophe.
If we examine the later history of the apostolic period we find
a similar process of development. ‘The first serious issue of
controversy which the Church had to face was that which arose
over the admission of uncircumcised Gentiles. Even the auto-
cratic personality of St. Paul could only solve the question when the
natural leaders of the Jewish party, St. Peter and St. James, had
come to realise that the essential elements of Christianity lay in
the new powers bestowed by Jesus on His followers, which rendered
it unnecessary to insist on the old methods by which Judaism had
preserved itself from heathen contamination. In the later books
of the New Testament we see a steady process of development.
The Fourth Gospel and the later Pauline Epistles show a marked
tendency to appreciate more fully the implications of the belief
in the supernatural character of the person of Jesus, and to con-
centrate the attention of the Church on this aspect of Christianity
104. Authority
rather than on the supposed imminence of His return. In other
words we see the mind of the Church, as reflected by the writers
of these works, developing under the influence of Christian
experience.
5. The Meaning of Christian Experience
Since the terms “religious experience” or ‘ Christian
experience ”’ will play a considerable part in the remainder of this
essay, it will perhaps be well to explain at this point the exact
sense in which they will be used. By Christian experience
is meant that apprehension of God through the person of Christ
which is vouchsafed to all Christians who in any way attempt
to live up to the standard of their profession. It may be no
more than an experience of power to overcome temptation and
to advance in the direction of Christian holiness in however
rudimentary a degree. It includes any sense of communion with
God in prayer and worship, whether that sense of union is of the
elementary type described by theologians as “sensible devotion ”
or rises to the higher forms of prayer to which the great mystics
have attained. It covers also such indirect forms of communion
with God as the sense of deliverance from the burden of sin. To
a greater or less extent, according to the religious development of
the believer and his power to adjust his religious beliefs to his daily
life, it covers the whole of his outlook upon the world in general.
It is not in any way confined to any kind of mystical experience of
God, nor yet to that “ sensible devotion ’”’ which a certain type of
modern theology seems to regard as the main element of religion.
‘The person who finds no particular consolation in his prayers,
but only knows that by using the means of grace he is able to
attain to a higher standard of life than he would otherwise achieve,
has a Christian experience as genuine as the greatest mystic,
though of a much lower degree of intensity. On the other hand
the higher forms of experience of God through our Lord are an
important part of the whole sum of Christian experience, though
not the whole of it.
Clearly from the Christian point of view religious experience
cannot be treatedasa purely natural phenomenon. It isthe know-
ledge of God vouchsafed to man by the power of divine grace and
the illumination of the Holy Spirit. Its method of operation has
already been indicated in the foregoing section. “The reforms
The Authority of the Church 105
of the religion of Israel by prophets and lawgivers were the result
of their own personal experience of God, achieved by prayer and
reflection on the nature of the divine Being. In the case of many
of them it is obvious that the experience of God was of a peculiarly
intense character. In the same way their ability to commend their
message to their hearers depended on the fact that the latter had,
in however elementary a form, some sort of consciousness of the
nature of God, in virtue of which they were able to recognise the
truth of the prophetic message. Naturally this recognition was
only slowly effected, since the hearers as a rule possessed a far more
limited consciousness of God than the prophet ; often no doubt
it took several generations to enable the mass of the nation to
assimilate even the general outlines of his teaching. But without
some religious experience of however elementary a kind in their
hearers the prophets would have had nothing to appeal to.
The same phenomenon appears in the New Testament. Our
Lord appeals, as has been noticed above, to the religious conscious-
ness of those brought up in the atmosphere of prophetic teaching
and ardent Messianic expectation which prevailed in Galilee in
His days. On the basis of this religious experience He builds up
His own exposition of the true nature of the Kingdom of God,
primarily in His disciples, but to a lesser extent in the general
body of His hearers. In appealing to the Gentiles, St. Paul
appeals to a religious experience already moulded either by famili-
arity with the Judaism of the synagogues of the Dispersion, or in
a few cases by the highest religious teachings of Gentile philo-
sophy. In both cases his main appeal is to a sense of sin as a barrier
between man and God, and the impotence of Judaism or of human
wisdom to provide a means of escape from it. His teaching is to
a peculiar degree modelled on his own religious experience, especi-
ally on his conversion ; but it necessarily appeals to the religious
experience of his hearers, however slight that experience may have
been at the moment when he first addressed them.
6. Religious Experience and the Development of Christian
Doctrine
In modern controversies on the subject of the nature of
Christian authority and the proper organisation for its exercise,
the part played by Christian experience has often been overlooked.
106 Authority
It may be doubted whether the sterility of these controversies has
not in part at least been due to the omission. In the actual
history of the process by which the historical system of Catholic
Christianity has been built up the part of the general religious
experience of the whole body of Christians has necessarily been
of primary importance. ‘The actual formation of the canon of
the New Testament was almost entirely due to the general sense
of the Christian communities of the first two centuries. Books
were indeed often admitted because they were believed to be the
work of Apostles, but others were rejected although they bore no
less venerable names. But although the reason for their rejection
was the belief that they were spurious, yet in an age which had
little knowledge of critical methods the main test of authenticity
was whether the doctrines laid down in such books were a correct
interpretation of the implications of the religious experience of the
Christian body as a whole. In certain cases, indeed, we find
appeals to a supposed body of unwritten teaching left by the
Apostles ; but although much teaching given by the Apostles
must have been left unrecorded, there is no evidence whatsoever
that there was any coherent body of traditional teaching which
has not survived. ‘The appeal is fairly frequently met with in the
first three Christian centuries, especially in the controversies of
the Church with Docetism and Gnosticism. But while it can-
not be justified in this form, yet it represents a quite legitimate
appeal to that interpretation of the original deposit of Christian
doctrine to be found in the canonical books of the New ‘Testa-
ment, as interpreted by the Christian experience of the Church in
all places and in all generations since the Incarnation. “The im-
portance attached in these centuries to certain sees which claimed
apostolic founders was not justified, in so far as it was claimed
that they possessed over and above the written records of the New
‘Testament a further body of apostolic doctrine ; it was justified
in so far as the circumstances of their foundation and early history
guaranteed that the Christian consciousness of those Churches had
from the first rested on a basis of orthodox Christian teaching.
It may indeed be said that in these centuries it was mainly
due to the general religious sense of the Christian community
that these entirely destructive heresies were eliminated from the
Church. Although we possess the names and writings of some
of the orthodox theologians of the time, it may well be doubted
The Authority of the Church 107
whether their labours would, from a purely intellectual point of
view, have won the victory. On the other hand, their attitude
was felt to represent the true development of the original deposit
of the Christian faith, while the doctrines of the various heresi-
archs were rightly rejected as alien additions or false interpreta-
tions which were fatal to that religious experience which the
faithful felt themselves to have enjoyed in the Church. This
reason for the rejection of these doctrines was perfectly legitimate.
The claim of a religion to acceptance lies in its power to awaken
religious experience in the believer — naturally the Christian
claims that Christianity is unique in respect both of the nature of
the experience it conveys and of the manner in which it conveys it. |
A doctrine which is fatal to the enjoyment of that experience
must be rejected, unless we are to admit that the experience was
an illusion, and to abandon the religion which appeared to convey
it. “This, of course, does not mean that the individual’s judgment
as to a particular doctrine is necessarily correct. On the other
hand, the rejection of a false doctrine or the establishment of a
true one can never be the work of an individual. Even when it
is largely due to the labours of an individual theologian the reason
for the success of his labours must in all cases be the fact that he
has succeeded in commending his teaching to the general Christian
consciousness. Just as the success of the Jewish prophet depended
on his ability to commend his view of God to the nation, so the
Christian teacher must commend his doctrine to the Christian
consciousness as a whole, if his labours are not to perish. For our ;
present purpose the point of primary interest is that in the first /
three centuries the Church overcame the gravest perils that ever |
faced her without any organised method of formulating the true
developments of doctrine or rejecting the false ones by the instinc- |
tive action of the corporate consciousness of the Christian body as
a whole. ‘The orthodox Church proved the truth of its teaching
by its survival: the falsehood of rival forms of teaching was |
proved by their disappearance.
7. The Formulation of Christian Doctrine
It is clear, however, that the general Christian consciousness
is by itself a vague and fluctuating mass of individual opinions,
approximating in each case to the truth, yet perhaps in no case
—
108 Authority
fully grasping the whole truth with no admixture of error.
Even in the most rigidly orthodox body of Christians different
individuals will base their religious life more definitely on some
elements of the whole Christian system than on others. A
Christian who could grasp not only in theory but in the practice
of his life the whole system of Christian teaching in all its fulness
and with no admixture of error would obviously be a perfect
saint and a perfect theologian ; he would indeed see the truth
as it is present to the mind of God and correspond with it perfectly:
for moral failure inevitably carries with it failure to apprehend
the truth. “The whole sum of the Christian experience of the
Church at any given moment must be an inarticulate mass of
opinion comprehending in general the whole body of divine truth
as revealed in Jesus ; its only way of articulating itself will be its
power to express approval of some particular statement of the
faith as put forward by an individual theologian, unless the Church
is to have some means for expressing its corporate voice. Hence
it was natural that with the ending of the ages of persecution the
Church should find some means of articulating her teaching and
putting into a coherent form the sense in which she interpreted in
the light of Christian experience the original deposit of faith which
she had received from her Lord.
We are not here concerned with the history of the Councils
which decided the great Christological controversies, nor yet with
the process by which the decisive influence in all matters of
doctrine passed, at the cost of the Great Schism between the East
and West, into the hands of the Papacy. “The important matter
for our present purpose Is to consider the claims which are made on
behalf of the various definitions of Christian doctrine by bodies
claiming to voice the authority of the Holy Ghost speaking
through the Church, and the sense in which those claims can be
_regarded as justified.
It has in many if not in all cases been claimed that the various
doctrinal pronouncements of Councils and Popes are simply the
affirmation of what the Church has always believed. In the strict
sense the claim cannot be maintained ; for it is easy to find cases
in which theologians of the most unquestioned orthodoxy put
forward doctrines which were subsequently condemned, or re-
jected doctrines which were subsequently affirmed as parts of the
Catholic faith. Hence it is now generally admitted that such
The Authority of the Church 109
pronouncements are to be regarded as affirmations in an explicit
form of some truth which was from the outset implied in the
original deposit of the Christian revelation, though hitherto not
explicitly realised. This claim is in itself a perfectly reasonable
one. For the Christian revelation begins with the life of Jesus,
presenting itself as a challenge first to the Jewish nation and then
through His Apostles to the whole world, not with the formula-
tion of a dogmatic system. It was only when Christian thought
began to speculate on the whole subject of the relations of God to
man and man to God implied in that revelation that the need was
felt for some body of authoritative teaching which would serve
both to delimit the Christian faith from other religions and to rule
out lines of speculation which were seen, or instinctively felt, to
be fatal to the presuppositions on which the religious experience
of the Christian body rested. It should be borne in mind that
the great majority of authoritative statements of doctrine have
been of the latter kind, and that they usually aimed rather at
excluding some particular doctrinal tendency, which was seen to
be fatal to the Christian life, than at promulgating a truth not
hitherto generally held. aot
In this sense it seems impossible to deny that the Church ought
to possess some means for formulating her teaching, which will
enable her to adjust that teaching to the developments of human
thought, while eliminating doctrines which would, if generally
accepted, prove fatal to the preservation and propagation of the
life of union with God through the person of our Lord,
which it is her duty to convey to mankind. It might indeed
be argued that even without such means for formulating her
teaching the Church did in the first three centuries eliminate
several strains of false teaching, which would appear on the
surface to be more fatal to the specifically Christian religious
experience than any which have threatened her in later ages. It
must however be remembered that unless the Church has some
means of defining her teaching in the face of error there is always
a grave danger that the simple may make shipwreck concerning
the faith. “This might not be a very serious matter, if we were
merely concerned with intellectual error as to some abstruse point
of theology ; the danger is that large numbers of the faithful may
fall into conceptions of the nature of God which are fatal to the
attainment by them of the specifically Christian character and the
IIO Authority
specifically Christian religious experience. Even though in the
long run the truth should, by the action of the Holy Ghost on the
whole Christian body, succeed in overcoming error, the Church
is bound to exercise the authority given to her by our Lord in
order to preserve her children from this danger. If this account
of the reasons which underlie the formulation of the teaching of
the Church be accepted, certain conclusions will follow. “The
organ through which the Church pronounces must be in a position
to judge correctly what the Christian religious experience really
is. “This involves not merely intellectual capacity to understand
the meaning of any doctrine and its relation to the rest of the
Christian system, but also that insight into the Christian character
which is only derived from a genuine attempt to live the Christian
life. [he same applies to all theological thought: G@ristian
theology no less than other sciences has suffered profoundly from
the disputes of theologians and authorities who, often uncon-
sciously, confused the attainment of truth with the gratification
of the natural human desire to achieve victory in controversy
or the natural human reluctance to admit an error.
It is however more important for our present purpose to
observe that if the authority of the Church is to decide whether
a particular doctrine is compatible with the religious experience
of the whole Christian body, it must be able to ascertain what the
religious experience of the whole body really is. In other words
it must be able to appeal not merely to the religious consciousness
of a few individuals, however eminent they may be in respect of
sanctity or learning. So far as is possible, it must be able to appeal
to the whole body of the faithful in all places and in all generations.
It must inquire whether any particular form of teaching is com-
patible with that experience of union with God through our
Lord which all generations and nations of Christians believe
themselves to have enjoyed ; whether it is implied in it or whether
it definitely destroys it. “The extent to which any pronounce-
ment can claim to be authoritative will depend on the extent to
which it can really appeal to a wide consensus of Christian experi-
ence representing the infinite variety of the types of man who have
found salvation in Christ. Naturally it will not be content
merely with counting numbers ; it is also necessary to consider
how far the consensus of the faithful on any given matter represents
the free assent of men who were able to judge, or on the other hand
The Authority of the Church III
merely represents the enforced consent of those who either
through ignorance or even through political pressure were more
or less compelled to accept the faith as it was given to them.
8. The Claims of Catholic Authority
It is from this point of view that the claims of the Catholic
tradition are most impressive. For it cannot be denied that the
Catholic tradition of faith and devotion manifests continuous
development reaching back to the origins of Christianity. In
spite of wide divergences in its external presentation of religion, it
can show a fundamental unity of religious experience throughout
all ages and all nations of the world, reaching back to the times when
the Church had to propagate her teaching in the face of the bitter
persecution of the State. Although in later times the Catholic
Church has lost her visible unity, yet the general system of Catholic
life and worship has shown its power to survive and even to revive
from apparent death. ‘The exercise of the authority of the Church
has indeed been impaired by the divisions of the Church 3 but the
general unity of the trend of Catholic development in spite of these
divisions is an impressive testimony to the foundations laid in the
period of her unity.
None the less it is necessary to inquire exactly what measure
of assent may be claimed for those definitions of doctrine which
have the authority of the undivided Church, and how we may
recognise those pronouncements which really have the highest
kind of authority. It is usually held that any definition of doctrine
promulgated by a Council which can really claim to speak in the
name of the whole Church, as a doctrine to be accepted by all
Christians, is to be regarded as the voice of the Holy Ghost
speaking through the Church, and is therefore infallible. “Uhe
same claim is made by those who accept the modern Roman
position for pronouncements made by the Pope, in his character of
supreme Pastor of the whole Church, on matters of faith and morals.
The exact extent to which any pronouncement, whatever the
weight of authority behind it, can be regarded as infallible
will be considered in the following section. It is however con-
venient to consider first the whole conception of authority as
residing in the nature of the organ which claims to speak with
final authority. From this point of view it is in the first instance
112 Authority
only possible to defend the claim that any organ can claim in-
fallibility by means of the distinction generally drawn between
doctrinal definitions which all Christians are bound to believe
and disciplinary regulations intended to govern the details of
ecclesiastical procedure and the popular exposition of the Christian
faith. In itself the distinction is a sound one ; for it is reasonable
that the Church should have the right to exercise some control
over such matters as the conduct of Christian worship and also the
teaching of the Christian faith. For instance, it may be desirable
to control the extent to which new teaching, which at first sight
seems difficult to reconcile with existing beliefs, should be ex-
pounded to entirely ignorant audiences. A further complication
arises from the fact that~it is by no means always clear whether
a particular organ has the right to speak, or is at any given moment
speaking in the name of the whole Church. For instance, there
are numerous cases in which bodies professing themselves to be
general Councils have promulgated decisions which have since
been seen to be untenable. It is usually said that these bodies
were not in fact general Councils at all. “The same difficulty
applies under modern Roman theories to papal pronouncements,
for it is dificult to say with precision which pronouncements on
the part of the Papacy are promulgated with the supreme authority
of the Holy See and which are only uttered with the lesser authority
of disciplinary pronouncements. Hence it has happened in the
past that the decisions of Councils which claimed to be general
Councils have been reversed by Popes or later Councils, and that
papal decisions have been tacitly abandoned. ‘Thus in fact the
mere nature of the authority which utters a decision, whether
Pope or Council, is by itself of no value as a test of infallibility.
If in fact we inquire what decisions made by authorities
claiming to speak for the whole Church are generally regarded.
as infallible, we shall find that they are those which have won the
general assent of the whole Christian body, or, as in the case of
more modern Roman pronouncements, of a part of that body
which claims to be the whole. It has been urged above that the
function of authority in the Church is to formulate and render
explicit, where need arises, truths implied in the spiritual
experience of the Christian consciousness, and it is therefore not
unnatural to suspect that the measure of truth, which any such
pronouncement can claim, Is to be tested by the extent to which
The Authority of the Church 113
after its promulgation it commends itself to the authority which it
claims to represent. In point of fact it is manifest that this is what
has actually taken place. Pronouncements which have in fact
commended themselves to the general Christian consciousness
have gained universal acceptance and have come to be regarded as
expressing the voice of the whole Church. ‘Those which have
been found in practice to be inadequate, or have been shown to be
untenable by the advance of human knowledge, have been relegated
to the rank of temporary and disciplinary pronouncements, or else
the body which promulgated them has been held not to have spoken
in the name of the whole Church, sometimes at the cost of a
considerable straining of the facts of history.
It seems however more reasonable to recognise the facts rather
than to strain them in order to suit a preconceived idea of what the
authority of the Church should be. From this point of view it
would appear that just as the inherent authority of a particular
pronouncement depends on the extent to which it really represents
a wide consensus of Christian experience, so the proof of that
authority will lie in the extent to which it commends itself by its
power to survive as a living element in the consciousness of the
whole Christian body. Its claim to validity will depend very
largely on the extent to which that body is free to accept it or not,
and also on the extent to which it is competent to judge of the
matter. It will be observed that this does not imply that the truth
of a pronouncement is derived from its subsequent acceptance by
the faithful. Obviously truth is an inherent quality, due to the
fact that the Holy Ghost has enabled the authority which speaks
in the name of the Church to interpret aright the truth revealed by
our Lord and realised in the devotional experience of the Church,
and to formulate that truth correctly. But the test of any in-
dividual pronouncement, by which it can be judged whether it
possesses the inherent quality of truth or not, will be its power
to survive and exercise a living influence on the general con-
sciousness of Christendom over a wide area of space and time.
9. The Certainty of the Catholic Tradition
At this point the obvious objection will be raised that on the
theory outlined above the Christian will at any given moment be
unable to know precisely what he is bound to believe. He will
I
II4 Authority
never know whether a particular doctrine, which has for centuries
enjoyed a wide veneration, but has in later days come to be
assailed, is really as true as it seems to be. “This objection is
often raised in controversy from the Roman Catholic side and has
a specious sound. In reality its apparent force is due to the fact
that it rests on a confusion of thought. For it confuses the act of
faith by which the individual submits his mind and conscience to
the authority of Jesus in the Catholic Church with the quite
different act of acceptance of the whole system of truth as the
Church teaches it at any given moment. ‘The first of these two
acts is necessarily an act of private judgment pure and simple.
The individual can only accept the faith on the ground of his own
purely personal conviction that it is true, although that conviction
may be very largely determined by the fact that the faith is
accepted by others, and by the impressive spectacle of the faith
of the Catholic Church. ‘The second act is a surrender of the
private judgment by which the individual, having decided that
the Catholic faith as a whole is true, proceeds to accept from the
Church the detailed filling-in of the main outlines which he has
already accepted.
Now on the theory put forward in this essay the position of
the individual is no worse than it is on the most ultramontane
theory of ecclesiastical authority. For the determining factor in
his acceptance of the Catholic system will be, as it must always
be, the belief that it is the truest, and ultimately the only true,
account of the relations of God to man. ‘This act of faith,
rendered possible by a gift of divine grace, can never rest on any-
thing but the personal judgment that the Catholic system as a
whole is true. As regards the structure of Christian doctrine
he will find, precisely as he does at present, a large body of doctrine
and ethical teaching which is set before him with very varying
degrees of authority. Some elements in the system will present
themselves to him with a vast amount of testimony to their proved
efficacy as means for enabling the believer to attain to the genuine
religious experience of Christianity, in other words to realise com-
munion with God through the Person of Jesus, dating back to
the most venerable ages of the history of the Church. Some, on
the other hand, will present themselves as no more than minor
local regulations, judged desirable by the Church as aids to his
private devotion. Between these two extremes there will lie a
The Authority of the Church iTS
certain amount of teaching which presents itself to him with
varying degrees of authority. This he will accept as true on the
authority of the Church ; and unless he be a competent theologian
he has no need to trouble himself about it. He will know that
it has behind it the guarantee that it has proved fruitful as an aid
to the development of the Christian life ; and even if he is unable
to find in some parts of it any assistance for his personal devotion,
he will be content to recognise their value for others. If, on the
other hand, he be a theologian, he will still respect the various ele-
ments in the Catholic system as a whole merely on the strength of
the fact that they form a part of so venerable a structure. Further,
he will recognise that every part, in so far as it has in practice
served to foster the spiritual life of the Church, contains an
element of truth which all theological inquiry must account for.
The greater the extent to which it has served that purpose, the
greater will be the respect he will accord it. At the same time he
will regard the Catholic faith as an organic whole, the truth of
which is guaranteed more by its intrinsic value as proved by past
experience than by the oracular infallibility of certain isolated
definitions. He will indeed reverence such definitions, and he
will reverence them the more in proportion to the extent and the
quality of the assent they can claim. But he will recognise that
their claim to be regarded as absolutely and finally true is not a
matter of absolute certainty or of primary importance. It may
be that the progress of human knowledge will lead to a better
formulation of the most venerable articles of the faith ; but it will
always preserve those elements in them which are the true cause
of their power to preserve and promote the devotional life of the
Catholic Church. It will be observed that in acting thus he will
be acting precisely as the investigator does in any branch of science,
who recognises that any new advance he may make must include
all the elements of permanent truth discovered by his predecessors
in the same field, even though it may show that their discoveries
had not the absolute truth originally supposed.
It should further be observed that the theologian will recognise
that any formulation of doctrine by the Church has the highest
claim on his respect. Even if he cannot hold its absolute truth,
he will realise that it contains an element of truth which any new
definition must preserve, and he will also respect the right of the
Church to restrain him from putting forward his own views, where
116 Authority
they differ from the authoritative statements of the Church in such
a manner as to disturb the faith of the simple or to lead to unedifying
controversy. He will admit that the mere fact that a particular
statement has been solemnly put forward by the whole Christian
body creates a strong presumption in favour of its embodying a very
high degree of truth, and will be careful to avoid the danger of
denying the truth which a formula contains, even if the formula
seems to him to be defective.
It will certainly be objected that this view leaves the door
open to “ Modernism.” ‘The answer is that Modernism as
hitherto expounded has obviously undermined the foundations on
which Christian experience rests. Ifa new type of Modernism
were advanced, it would either have the same effect or it would not.
If it did not (we need not concern ourselves with the question of
the possibility of such an hypothesis), there seems no reason to
deny that it would be a valid restatement of the essential truth of
the Catholic system, and it would stand simply as a more accurate
statement of those truths which it is the function of the Church
to teach to her children in order to attain to salvation through
Jesus.
It may be added that the fear of ‘‘ Modernism” seems to suggest
a lack of trust in the power of the Church to eliminate false
teaching from her system. Jt may be desirable to restrain the
dissemination of teaching of an unsettling kind; but the Christian
should have sufficient confidence in the inherent strength of the
Catholic system to view with equanimity the exploration of every
possible avenue of inquiry. If a particular line of thought is
really, as it seems to him at the moment, fatal to the whole content
of Christian devotion, it will certainly come to nought. If his
fears are unfounded, it can only lead to a fresh apprehension of the
truth and the enrichment of Christian devotion.
NOTES
1. THe Hoty Roman Cuurcu
Anglicans have tended in the past to a rather facile depreciation
of the claims of the See of Peter. It must be admitted that the
agerandising policy of certain Popes was largely responsible for the
division of Christendom ; but it must also be admitted that the
Notes 17
See of Constantinople was by no means free of blame in the matter.
In the same way the papal court was largely responsible for the
rejection of the demands of the more moderate Reformers ;_ but
the excesses of the Protestant leaders rendered the preservation of
Christian unity impossible. If the general position put forward
in this essay be accepted, it will follow that there is some error in
the claims usually made on behalf of the Papacy, in view of their
proved tendency to destroy the unity of Christendom, but also
an element of truth in that devotion to the Holy See which has
done so much to preserve the Catholic faith in Western Europe.
As regards scriptural authority the Petrine claims cannot
claim to be more than a development of the commission given by
our Lord to St. Peter and the position held by him in the primitive
Church ; it is only by the results that we can judge whether they
are a legitimate development or not. Hence controversies as to
their exact meaning are bound to prove futile. In general it may
be said that the question at issue is whether the Papacy is to be
regarded as the organ through which the Holy Ghost speaks
directly to the whole Church, or whether it is the organ for articu-
lating the experience of the Christian body as a whole, that
experience being produced by the influence of the Holy Ghost on
the corporate consciousness of the Church. It may seem that this
is a somewhat subtle distinction ; but it is one of supreme practical
importance. From the former conception is derived the tendency
to regard the Pope as an autocratic ruler of the Church, responsible
to God alone ;_ he has only to speak and the faithful are bound to
obey. From the latter point of view the Pope is the representative
of the whole Church, whose function is not to promulgate truth
but to regulate the general line of Christian thought in so far as it
may be necessary to save the simple from the disturbing effects
of false teaching and to preserve that measure of uniformity in
matters of faith and conduct which is necessary to the welfare of
the Church. In this case he is to be regarded as holding a pastoral
office as first among his brothers the Bishops of the Catholic
Church. At the present time it is impossible to say which of these
conceptions is the true one from the Roman point of view. Either
can be made consistent with the definitions of the Vatican Council,
and both are held in different quarters within the Roman Com-
munion. It is clear that the former view is entirely incompatible
with the position advanced in this essay ; but that does not justify
118 Authority
Anglicans in refusing to recognise the element of truth which
may be claimed for the Papacy if it be regarded in the latter light.
There can be no doubt that the Holy See has on many occasions
preserved Catholicism from the gravest dangers; but it has
always done so by acting as the voice of the Christian community
in general as against fashionable errors. It is when the Papacy
has claimed to speak with the direct authority of the Holy Ghost
and without reference to Christendom as a whole that it has
aroused that hostility which has led to or kept alive the disruption
of Christendom. In any question of reunion the vital issue is
whether the Church can be safeguarded against that natural
tendency to self-aggrandisement which is the besetting vice of all
human institutions, and which has caused the Papacy to claim
prerogatives which large bodies of Christians have felt bound to
reject. But such a rejection of autocratic claims need not involve
the rejection of the view that the Papacy has a special function to
fulfil in the life of the Church. Further, just as the authority
of the episcopate is held to be de jure divino on the ground that by
a process of legitimate development the episcopate has become
the repository of the authority given to the Apostles, so it might
be held that the Papacy possesses authority de jure divino as having
become by a similar process the repository of a primacy held by
St. Peter. Anglican theologians can and should be prepared to
discuss this possibility with an open mind. But while doing so
they cannot concede the actual claims made or presupposed by the
majority of Roman theologians in regard to the position and
authority of the Papacy.
2. THe Rerticrous ExPERIENCE OF PROTESTANTISM
In this essay for the most part only the religious experience of
Catholicism has been considered. Obviously, however, the various
schools of Protestantism have in history proved for many a
means of access to God through the person of our Lord of a very
genuine kind. On the other hand, it is to be observed that the
dogmatic systems of historical Protestantism are showing a tendency
to disappear, if they have not already been tacitly abandoned.
This fact shows that the element of permanent value in them was
not the dogmatic systems which the original Reformers regarded
as essential. ‘“Ihis, however, is not intended to deny or to belittle
Notes 119
the importance of the religious experience of historical Protestantism.
It must, however, be observed that much of it has been drawn from
its insistence on the power of the believer to enter into immediate
personal communion with God through Christ, and its strong
personal devotion to the humanity of our Lord. But these or
similar features of historical Protestantism are simply aspects of
the Catholic faith, which the Reformers regarded as having been
obscured by the Catholicism of the time. It must be admitted
that to a very large extent they were right in thinking so. Yet, in
so far as it is these elements of Protestantism which have in the
past given it value as a means of providing the Protestant with the
experience of Christian devotion, and are still in fact a living force
in the Protestant bodies, the strength of Protestantism lies in the
fact that it emphasises certain elements of Catholicism. Further,
Protestantism, although in its positive dogmatic systems it failed
to establish any final truth, may claim to have rendered a genuine
service to Christianity by showing the untenable character of much
of the old tradition of Catholicism, and by its insistence on the
necessity of justifying Christian doctrine by the appeal to the
Scriptures and to human reason. In the sweeping away of false
conceptions, and establishing a truer conception of the nature of
the means by which truth is to be apprehended, Protestantism has
played a vital part in the life of the Church and the progress of
mankind.
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THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION
OF GOD
BY LIONEL SPENCER THORNTON
CONTENTS
I. Tue Atrrigures or Gop . . : : :
. The contrasted aspects of Deity, in Heth be the con-
trast of Majesty and Friendliness .
2. The development of these contrasts (a) in Hy Old
Testament, (b) in the Incarnation, (c) in the hefai
of the attributes
3. Revelation and the attributes—T he ee of reoblaeee
exhibits (a) a scale or series, (b) the contrast of tran-
scendence and immanence
II. ‘Tue Hoty Trinity .
: The Word and the Spirit
(a) The Christology of St. Sohn pay, on Paul.
The Word of God and the idea of revelation .
(b) The Spirit in the New Testament. The revela-
tion of the Trinity ; :
2. Personality in God : : ‘
Modern conceptions of Naina The religious
background
Personality and the Nicene formula
Analogy from the direction of human life as crowned
by Christian experience
3. [wo primary difficulties
(a) The meaning of Unity in the GH
(b) Lhe distinction of Persons
Repudiation of Modalism and Tri-theism
III. Creation, Miracre AND ProvipENCE.
AppiTionaL Note (By E. J. Bicknell)
PAGE
p23
123
127
130
134.
135
135
137
139
143
145°
148
“Tip God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of
Jacob. . . . He is not the God of the dead, but of the living ; for
all live unto him.” ‘These words of our Lord take us to the
heart of the Bible and the revelation which it records. The
Christian’s God is One who has to do with living men because
He is Himself the living God. He is the Covenant-God who
enters into the course of history and communicates the knowledge
of Himself in a special way to a particular people, at first partially
and in various stages, then finally and completely in the Person
of Jesus Christ. All this is without prejudice to the truth that
there is a wider and more general revelation of God given to all
men, to which all religions bear witness, whose evidences are
written in the book of nature and upon every human heart. If
we claim that in the religious history of our race a special revelation
occupies the foreground of the picture, nothing is to be gained by
overlooking this far-stretching background. Yet from the point
of view of historic Christianity the Gospel provides the clue which
alone can interpret the riddle of God’s world-wide Self-revelation.
The argument of this essay starts from the conclusions reached
ina preceding essay on “ The Vindication of Religion.” Assuming
the truth of theism, we are concerned with the content of that
conception of God which the Christian Church has received.
The subject falls naturally into two main parts : (i) The attributes
of God; (ii) The Holy Trinity. In discussing these subjects
certain pressing questions of current thought will be kept in view,
such as the idea of revelation, the possibility of reconciling different
aspects in the traditional doctrine of God, and the meaning of
personality in God.
I
Tur ATTRIBUTES OF GoD
1. The Contrasted Aspects of Deity
When religion is traced back to its beginnings in the history
of man, nothing is more striking than the dominating position
which it appears to occupy. Religion is the thread upon which
124 The Christian Conception of God
are strung whole systems of cultus, custom and taboo, tribal morality
and mythological explanation. “Thus from its first appearance
religion is concerned with the whole man and with the whole of
human life. But again the first stirrings of the religious impulse
appear to take the form of definite emotional moods in which man
reacts to the mystery in his environment and to the mystery in his
own life. Doubtless there were even in man’s primitive experience
a variety of emotional moods and attitudes of this general char-
acter. But all varieties ultimately resolve themselves into two
main types of attitude. “The object of man’s worship is terrible
and awe-inspiring and yet in other moods is felt to be protective
and friendly. Religion means abasement before divine majesty
and yet fascination which draws men to seek communion with the
divine. ‘The religious revelation given to Israel emerges out of
this dim background and continues in its progress to exhibit these
general characteristics. “There is the religious fear awakened by
local theophanies or manifestations of deity, or again by the in-
fringement of some taboo ; and on the other hand there are homely
and joyful festivals at the local shrines. Yahweh is revealed in
fire, thunder, and storm-cloud. He marches with the tribes to
the destruction of his enemies ; He is a jealous God. But there
is also another picture : the God who enters into friendly covenant
with patriarchs and kings, who promises protection and blessing
to the race. When Hebrew religion rises to the level of theism
we still find these contrasted aspects of majesty on the one hand
and homely intimacy on the other. But the combination attains
a new significance. For in the development of prophetic mono-
theism the majesty of God is seen ever more and more clearly to
transcend the crude imaginations and limited horizons of primitive
religious thought until He is known in prophetic faith to be the
perfectly holy and righteous God who rules all the nations, the
Creator of heaven and earth. Yet this revelation of divine tran-
scendence does not crush out the more homely aspects of religion.
Rather those aspects are purified of their grosser elements and
reappear in deeper and more penetrating forms.
Meanwhile the religion of Israel, like other religions, concerned
itself with a people and all its national and local interests. But,
unlike most other religions, it overleapt the boundaries of these
restricted interests and preoccupations and provided an interpreta-
tion of Israel’s history and destiny which gave to that people an
The Attributes of God 125
unparalleled consciousness of divine mission and religious vocation.
All the changing events of national experience are woven into the
texture of this historical interpretation by a long succession of
prophets and prophetic writers. Like other Semitic peoples they
explained all events in terms of direct causation by the will of the
deity. But the action of the divine will is related to a moral
purpose which has nothing capricious or arbitrary about it. It is
this purpose which gives unity and significance to history and to
Israel’s part in history. “Thus through a prophetic interpretation
of history in terms of divine purpose there is a steady enlargement
of horizon and an enrichment in the content of religion and of
religious ideas. “The horizon is enlarged to include all events,
international as well as national, within the scope of divine govern-
ment. National interests are thus transcended and moral interests
are made supreme. Once this point is reached, it involves a great
deal more. “The Lord of history is the moral Governor of the
world, the Creator of the universe, the only true object of worship.
Thus religion is enriched by entering into partnership with
morality and reason, and a conception of God is reached which can
satisfy all the awakening faculties of man. For in the last resort
the higher needs of man cannot be separated. We cannot rest
permanently in a moral revelation however sublime, unless it
expresses the character of One who is the ground of our lives and
of the universe in which we live. Nor could we yield the fullest
worship of heart and reason to a Being who did not manifest His
will in the form of a moral purpose controlling and overruling the
course of events by which our destinies are shaped.
Now without going further at this stage into the biblical
conception of God, we can see that the broad facts of Hebrew
monotheism have already decided some of the conditions of our
knowledge of God and the limitations which the subject imposes
upon human language. For the God who is disclosed to us in
Old Testament prophecy is already in effect the God of Christian
theism. He is the supreme Reality behind all the phenomena of
sense and the source of all intuitions of the human spirit. “The
external world-process and the interior world of human experience
must both alike be traced to Him. The religious impulse can
find adequate satisfaction only in such a God—One who is the
ground of all forms of our experience, emotional, moral and
rational. Consequently, when we try to state the content of our
126 The Christian Conception of God
conception of God, such a statement must be in terms which cover
all the various fields of our experience. Now since there is a great
diversity in the forms of human experience, our approach to the
idea of God must be made along a number of different lines, each
of which is an attempt to give rational form to some definite part
of experience. ‘These different lines of approach give us what are
called the attributes of God. We can never attain to a completely
synthetic view of what God has revealed Himself to be. For that
would involve a level of unified knowledge which can belong to
none but to God Himself. Such a simple and simultaneous know-
ledge of what God is must exist in God Himself. But we on our
part must be content to approach the sanctuary from the outside
and from a number of different points of view. But if this is our
necessary starting-point it is also true that as we seek to penetrate
from the circumference to the centre we find the lines of approach
to be convergent. Contrasted attributes are really interdependent
and are mutually necessary to one another. But here the pro-
portion of truth often suffers from the inadequacy of our minds to
grasp the whole. All words that we can use are inadequate and
more or less anthropomorphic in character, relating God either by
affirmation or negation to human experience. We cannot avoid
this difficulty. But it calls for a severe discipline of the mind and
not least by criticism of such conventions of thought as happen
to be familiar or congenial to ourselves or to the age in which we
live. For example, it has often been too readily assumed that, in
dealing with moral qualities or categories which enter deeply into
human experience, transference of such ideas from a human to
a divine context can be effected with security in proportion to the
familiarity of the ideas. It has sometimes escaped men’s observa-
tion that they have been defective in their grasp upon those very
ideas from which they have argued. Failure to realise this has
been in part due to that very familiarity which has been the ground
of confidence. It is easy to detect this danger in the thought of
the past. It is not so easy to remember that it is still operative.
When we look back over Christian thought about God we see, in
different ages of history, special prominence given to this or that
particular idea. “Thus we have the impassible divine substance or
nature of Greek theology, the conceptions of legal justice which
have characterised Latin theology through many centuries of its
history, or again ideas of the omnipotent sovereign will of God
The Attributes of God 127
dominating men’s minds in the age of the Renaissance and the
Reformation. The currents of thought in our own age are
running strongly in other directions and largely in reaction from
these ideas. In the necessary reconstruction we must needs be on
our guard against being content with a mere swing of the theological
pendulum, replacing the ideas of Augustine, Anselm, and Calvin
by some modern version of Marcion’s gospel.
2. The Development of these Contrasts
If we return now to our starting-point, the characteristics of
Hebrew monotheism as it emerged from its origins in more
primitive religion, there is another characteristic which needs
further consideration. Reference has been made to two con-
trasted aspects of deity which are clearly developed in Hebrew
prophecy, but which can be traced back to two different kinds of
emotional mood everywhere present and operative in the religious
experience of mankind. ‘The contrast in question—between the
majesty of God on the one hand and His willingness to enter into
intimate relations with His creatures on the other—is one which
can be traced through the whole course of revelation in the
Scriptures. God is holy and righteous, yet also loving and gracious.
He is Judge and King, yet also Father and Saviour. He is Creator
of the world and Sovereign over the nations, yet He dwells with
the humble and lowly in heart and the contrite in spirit. But once
more, these ideas are not simply held in contrast. Again and
again they are blended in one experience. In the experience
portrayed in Psalm cxxxix. the writer’s conviction of God’s near-
ness to and knowledge of his own soul is blended with a parallel
conviction of God’s omnipresence and omniscience with regard to
the world as a whole ; and the two ideas appear to reinforce one
another in his mind. In the book of Job, which perhaps more
than any other part of Scripture emphasises the inscrutable majesty
and power of the Creator, it is precisely by a revelation of this
aspect of the Godhead that an answer is given to all Job’s searching
questions about the divine handling of his individual life. More-
over, this experience of Job’s is in line with the experiences through
which some of the great prophets received their call. Isaiah and
Ezekiel witness a theophany of the divine holiness and glory and
then a Voice speaks to them and they are given a personal mission.
128 The Christian Conception of God
As the revelation of God to Israel moved forward it became
more universal in form and at the same time more effectively con-
cerned with individual worth and destiny, more penetrative of the
spirit of man and on the other hand more transcendent of this world-
order. When we pass to the New Testament and the teaching
of our Lord, we find that the heavenly Father of whom He spoke
stands in a universal relationship to all men without respect of
persons. Yet this relationship reaches to the heart of man more
completely than was possible under the Old Covenant. ‘The
souls of sinful men and women are now set in concentrated rays of
light and seen to be mysterious treasure, over which the Heart of
God yearns and travails. Moreover, these things are not simply
set forth in idea. “They’are already in operation. ‘They are part
of the hidden reality of a Kingdom, which is here and now present
as the action of God upon the world. Christ Himself is the truth
of the Kingdom which He preaches. This Kingdom is pro-
claimed in the language of apocalyptic as something which alto-
gether transcends the course of history and which finally breaks
the bonds of mere nationalism. Its claim is absolute against every
earthly counter-claim. Yet this Kingdom has come down to
earth in the human form of Jesus Christ and it is actualised in the
fellowship of His little flock. Thus the Incarnation was the final
ratification of the principle that God is revealed to us under
contrasted aspects. In the very inadequate language of theology
we say that God is both transcendent and immanent. But these
two ideas are not sheer opposites in an insoluble contradiction.
‘They exemplify that “ double polarity ” of Christianity with which
Baron von Hiigel has made us familiar. “The Incarnation not
only ratified this principle of a union of opposites. It embodied
the principle ina new form. Christianity is the universal religion,
and at the same time it is the religion which raises individual
personality to its highest power. In the New Testament we see
the creation of a wholly new experience of fellowship between
God and man reaching down to the roots of the human spirit. Yet
the individual is thus recreated within the compass of a religious
movement which breaks through all the old particularist limita-
tions and claims for itself universal scope as the bearer of an absolute
and final revelation of God.
‘The immediate effect, therefore, of God’s love “‘ shed abroad
in our hearts”” was an immense enlargement and enrichment of
The Attributes of God 129
the whole idea of God. The idea now called for a new language
in which it could be expressed. ‘The search for such language
already appears in some of the great doctrinal passages in the
writings of St. Paul and St. John. As the development of
Christian thought proceeded, it was impelled to borrow from
philesophy’s vocabulary of abstract words and impersonal categories
of thought. Only by the use of such language, it was found, could
justice be done to a revelation which was, as given to experience,
intensely personal and concrete in form. ‘Thus in the traditional
list of the divine attributes there is a large proportion of such abstract
and impersonal terms side by side with others which are drawn
more directly from the vivid, personal language of religious
experience. Again, although we are not as yet primarily con-
cerned with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the formulation of
that doctrine provides a further illustration of what has been said.
To sum up, the limitations of the human mind and the facts of
revelation alike require that the content of the idea of God should
be formulated under a variety of aspects. No true simplification
is effected by attempts to reduce the diversity of our religious
experience, or to submerge under the dominance of any one idea
the diversity of divine attributes which reflect that experience.
Moreover, Christian theism, as the trustee of all religious revela-
tion, bears witness to a fundamental duality running through all
our experience of God ; and the contrasts which this experience
implies are ultimately irreducible facts, of which theology is bound
to take account. ‘These considerations impress themselves upon
the mind in a great variety of ways. God guides the stars and He
also touches the heart. He embraces all the worlds and He is also
the Voice that speaks in Jesus Christ. He is to be known in His
cosmic relations through the severe impersonal studies of science
and philosophy. Yet He can be vividly known to each one of us
in the penetrating sway of conscience and in the hidden depths of
prayer. We know Him through very varied schools of discipline
and through many channels of revelation. None of these can be
left out of account. For all contribute to the enrichment of each
and every particular field of experience with which as individuals
we may be most concerned.
130 The Christian Conception of God
3. Revelation and the Attributes
Much light is thrown upon these questions by two principles
of great importance in the speculative thought of to-day. “These
are (a) the principle that there are different grades in the structure
of reality ; and (4) the principle that all knowledge is trans-
subjective. Both of these principles illuminate the religious con-
cept of revelation and have an important bearing upon the whole
subject of the divine attributes.t
(a) It is the glory of Christianity that God has been revealed
to us in terms of a human life ; because humanity is what stands
nearest tous. But if we consider man’s place in the world-process
this must mean a great deal more. For man is a microcosm of
nature, and human life is the meeting-point of an inner world of
spirit with the external world through all its levels. Further, the
revelation of God in Christ is an historical revelation and, on any
Christian interpretation, must be regarded as occupying the centre
of history. Its universality is exhibited upon the background of
the ages, through which its eternal principles are refracted both
forwards and backwards for our clearer understanding. Here,
then, we have a series—Nature, Man, History, the Incarnation—
a series which forms a graded sequence with interconnections.
‘The four factors in the sequence taken together provide all the
data we possess for our knowledge of God. Revelation in its
widest sense must be spread over the whole of this field and through
all its stages and levels. Now it is precisely this fact which is
represented in what are called the attributes of God. Moreover,
as the different stages and levels of revelation are interconnected,
so must It be with the attributes. “There is here a real parallelism
which is worthy of notice.
If we consider the attributes from this point of view we find,
in the first place, that for Christian thought God is above the whole
order of nature and the historical process of events which is un-
folded upon nature’s system. He is infinitely more than can ever
be apprehended by man, the microcosm of nature and the subject
1 For the first point cp. the recent Gifford lectures, Space, Time and Deity
by Prof. Alexander and Emergent Evolution by C. Lloyd Morgan; also
W. Temple, Christus Veritas, ch. i., and F. W. Butler, Christianity and History,
cc. i, and ii. For the second point cp. Von Higel, Essays and Addresses,
pp. 51-57, and L. A. Reid, Knowledge and Truth (a recent criticism of
the “‘ new realist,’’ “‘ critical realist’? and other m dern theories of knowledge).
The Attributes of God ie
of history, either through the medium of the external world and
its temporal processes or through man’s own inner life. God
must for ever be contrasted with all the positive content of these
things. “This is the principle of negation. We do not know
what God is in His ultimate Being. Such knowledge of Him as
we possess is as a flicker of light upon a background of cloud and
mystery. He is infinite, eternal, ineffable, absolute, inscrutable,
wholly beyond this world of our experience and not subject to its
changes and chances. In form these attributes are negative ;
but their meaning for us is not simply negative. They are symbols
of God’s greatness and of our smallness, through which the
attention of the mind is strained towards the Object of all desire.
But, secondly, there is another knowledge of God which is
mediated to us through the same series of our temporal experience.
We may know the Creator through His creation, however in-
adequately, yet with sufficient clearness and certainty to satisfy
the cravings of the human spirit. God is revealed through all
levels of creation in the measure which is possible to each level.
What He possesses as an undivided treasure is refracted through
nature and man in an ascending scale. God possesses in a more
eminent sense all the true goods which exist in this world, all ful-
ness of energy, life, mind and personality. He is rational, free,
self-determining Spirit. In Him are realised all the values which
these words connote. ‘Thirdly, God is in active relations with
His creation through all its stages as its ground, cause, and sustainer.
All processes and events of the temporal order are within the com-
pass of His knowledge and the control of His will. So, too, with
the spiritual life of man and the expression of that life in society
and in history. In this sphere also man can recognise what God
is, both by contrast with himself and through the best in himself.
God stands to man in a series of relations as Creator to creature,
Deity to worshipper, Lawgiver to conscience, Sinless to sinful.
These relations of contrast are asserted when we speak of God’s
majesty and glory, of His holiness, righteousness and goodness, of
His perfect beatitude. Finally, through the Incarnation in its
whole context and issues God is revealed as Love and Mercy, as
Father, Saviour and Friend.
In this survey of the attributes we see a sequence which
corresponds broadly to the factors or stages through which revela-
tion is mediated. ‘We move from the negative to the positive,
132 The Christian Conception of God
from the abstract to the concrete, from transcendence to im-
manence, from the limitations of our knowledge to the light of
positive revelation ; from nature to man as set in the order of
nature and then to man on the field of history, from man in the
social order of history to man the individual recognising his God
through religious and moral intuitions ; finally from man and his
aspirations to their fulfilment in the Incarnation.
(4) A prevailing characteristic of thought in the nineteenth
century was its tendency to seek for an explanation of the world
in terms of some one comparatively simple idea either of causation
or of development. Such a principle the mechanistic theory
seemed at one time to provide, or, again, the idea of evolution con-
ceived as the continuous and inevitable unfolding of what existed
in germ or in essence from the first. In all this the spell of
Descartes’ “‘ clear and distinct idea” was still potent. But as the
sciences steadily won their way to autonomy, this method became
less and less adequate. Now we are faced with a new conception
of reality in the graded series of matter, life, mind and spirit which
the hierarchy of sciences discloses. “This change of outlook is
driving out the old monistic theories of knowledge. Descartes
left the awkward legacy of an unresolved dualism between subject
and object. Upon this fierce onslaughts have been made ever
since and are still being made Yet even Professor Alexander,
who surely sings the swan-song of evolutionary monism, is unable
to eliminate this dualism of subject and object.2. Each grade of
reality has its own “system of reference” and lays upon the
knower its own categories of thought. ‘The real yields up its
secrets only to those who accept it as something given, to which
the mind must be receptive. Now here we gain a flood of light
upon the whole idea of revelation, which comes forth from its
place in theology to claim a wider field. “This given-ness of the.
objects of knowledge persisting over every stage of so vastly varied
a range throws a new meaning into the question as to what sort
of knowledge we may possess in a revelation of God. At every
step in the scale the given reveals itself to mind as something of
which we may have real knowledge ; and yet in such a way that
our knowledge is never complete. Knowledge is trustworthy as
far as it goes ; yet the object always escapes from the knower’s net.
1 E.g. by the American “ New Realists”” and in the philosophy of Croce.
2 Space, Time and Deity, vol. ii. bk. ili. ch. iv. B., pp. rog—115.
The Attributes of God 133
There is always attainable a degree of certainty sufficient for a
further advance. But there is always an unsolved mystery left
over. “The higher we go in the scale of revelation the more
significance this double principle attaches to itself. Moreover,
throughout the whole series, consciousness of mystery remaining in
no way conflicts with an assured confidence of knowledge already
attained. We may even suggest that of these two characteristics
the one is an ingredient in the other. “The things which we feel
are most worth knowing are known not as solved problems but as
fresh vantage-grounds, providing new horizons and fascinating
fields for further exploration. ‘The more we are at home in the
world which we know, the more strange and mysterious it is to us.
How much more, then, is this likely to be true in the knowledge
of that Being, who is the ground of all that is and all that knows, the
source of all revelation and the all-inclusive object of knowledge.
It is this truth which is reflected in the contrast of transcendent
mystery and condescending love, which we have found to be
a permanent factor in religious experience and in that intellectual
formulation of the attributes, which endeavours to do justice to
such experience. But this is not the whole truth. It has its com-
plement in the fact that, unlike all finite objects of knowledge, God
is Himself the ground of the knower. As the ground of all our
experience He is less strange to us than any finite creature can be.
He comes as the infinite Creator to the rescue of our finite powers
and embraces our aspirations with immense condescension. “The
paradox of revelation has its reverse side. He who is wholly
beyond us is infinitely near. “The Creator’s love is more native
to our spirits than any affinity of His creatures can be.
The conception of revelation outlined above cuts across certain
currents of theological thought which have been running strongly
since Ritschl’s day. “These were congenial to that whole type of
thought which we have seen to be characteristic of the last century.
A variety of causes, into which we need not here inquire, led men
to seek, in the break-up of traditional foundations, for some one
clear and simple foundation upon which to build anew. “Uhey
found this in the human figure of our Lord and in the moral
revelation of divine love disclosed in His life and teaching. “They
rightly saw that here if anywhere the light of revelation shone most
clearly. But they did not sufficiently consider the fact that what
is in itself most luminous will not remain luminous if it is taken out
134 The Christian Conception of God
of itscontext. "The context of Jesus Christ is all that we can know
of nature, man and history. ‘The context of divine love is all
that we can know of God at all levels of reality and through all
channels of knowledge. “The Gospel is too tremendous to be
apprehended on any narrower stage, and that just because the
revelation of God’s love in Christ transcends all other stages of
revelation and is the culminating point of the whole series. Again,
underlying all these considerations is the fact that religion makes
its ultimate appeal to the whole of human nature. Religion,
indeed, has its roots in emotional types of experience. But it was,
as we have seen, the special province of Hebrew prophecy to bring
religion and morality into permanent alliance in such a way that
religion itself might ultimately claim the whole of human nature
and so be able to justify itself in satisfying the claims of both
morality and reason. In the Old Testament revelation the
emphasis remains upon the moral response to God, that is to say
upon religion moralized in the form of obedience to the Law.
In the Gospel revelation of divine love religion becomes com-
pletely transcendent of morality, whilst taking morality up into
itself and transfiguring its character. “Thus the eternal fascination
of religion, which consists in man’s deepest levels of desire being
met and satisfied by the self-communication of the divine—this is
now charged with moral quality and meaning ; and morality itself
in turn is fused with mystical and emotional power. ‘This is the
peculiar ethos of the New Testament. It is summed up in the
word cyan, the most pregnant word of apostolic Christianity.
We therefore feel rightly that love is the most significant of all
the aspects under which God is revealed to us. But it is so, not
as an idea which excludes other ideas, but as a ray of light which
illuminates everything which it touches.
Il
Tue Hoty Trinity
The Catholic doctrine of the Holy Trinity is believed by the
individual Christian in the first instance on authority. It is the
tradition to which he has been delivered at his baptism. He has
accepted it in accepting the general trustworthiness of the Church’s
mental outlook and the body of experience which that outlook
represents. He continues in this faith because his own religious
experience corroborates the value of what he has received. But in
The Holy Trinity ack
the third place, in so far as he reflects upon the contents of his
religious beliefs, he must necessarily seek to understand the Church’s
doctrine with the help of such light as can be obtained from human
knowledge asa whole. It is with this third stage that we are here
mainly concerned.1
1. The Word and the Spirit
It is a familiar thought that revelation and inspiration are
complementary ideas ; that the Word of God aptat Deum homint
and that the Spirit of God aptat hominem Deo In other words,
all revelation may be regarded from the side of the object revealed
and also from the side of the recipient of the revelation. “Thus
we think of God’s self-revelation as an objective manifestation
mediated through nature, history, and the life of man. But this
idea requires for its counterpart an interior unfolding of man’s
powers of spiritual apprehension. “These two conceptions provide
a background for the Christian belief that Jesus Christ is the
revealing Word of God and that the revelation thus given has been
committed to a community of persons whose inner life is quickened
and illuminated by the Holy Spirit.
(a) In theology the doctrine that Christ is the Logos or Word
of God has from the first had two contexts, both of which are to be
found in the Prologue of St. John’s Gospel. “There the Word is
the author of creation and the light which enlightens mankind
through a revelation given in the order of nature. But the Word
is also, in the same passage, said to have been manifested in history
to His own people, in a process whose climax was the Incarnation.
Following part of St. John’s thought we may therefore regard the
revelation in Jesus Christ as the goal towards which all earlier and
lower stages of revelation were tending. ‘Lhe conception of
Christ as the goal of the world-process conceived as a single divine
plan unfolding through the ages is also one of the leading ideas in
the Epistle to the Ephesians. The word there used indicates,
not that our Lord is the last term in a series, but that He is the
summation of the whole series. He includes in Himself all the
1 The writer is not here concerned to raise, still less to prejudge, questions
concerning the respective functions of authority, faith and reason in religion.
The remarks in the text are confined to a general statement of facts.
2 The phrases are taken from Du Bose, The Gospel in the Gospels, Part Tic:
8 Eph. i. 103 cp. also zd. iv. 13.
136 The Christian Conception of God
content of revelation as exhibited through all its stages. He is
the final expression of the purpose of God as disclosed in nature,
man and history. He is the “perfect Man.” But we cannot
rest satisfied with such an idea. ‘There isa correlative truth stated
emphatically by St. Paul and St. John. Creation is not only
“unto Him”; it is also “through Him” and “in Him.” He
is not only the substance of all revelation given to man and its
ultimate meaning. He is also the ground of the whole created
order through which revelation comes. “The Christ of the New
Testament is not evolutionary precisely because He is the Word,
the absolute revelation. ‘This antithesis becomes clear if we follow
up the conception of revelation already outlined in this essay. In
all revelation there is a disclosure to man of some aspect of reality
which yet transcends our power of knowing. As we ascend the
scale that which is given to knowledge increasingly transcends and
escapes from the dissecting analysis of intellect ; and yet at the same
time comes ever closer to what lies within and at the root of man’s
most significant experiences. “Thus at the top of the scale truth,
beauty and goodness have infinitely larger meanings than we can
ever findinthem. Yet they correspond to our deepest intuitions,
and are not only the ends which we seek but the grounds of our
seeking. “They are always beyond us and yet always with us.
‘They are wholly native to our minds and yet altogether transcend
every sequence in our mental and moral life. But they are only
rays of that “ light which lighteth every man,” who is the Way,
the Truth and the Life.
It follows that if Christ is the summation of that series in which
such values appear and the goal towards which they point us, then
the double principle of revelation must reach in Him its final and
absolute expression. He sums the series of revelation because
He transcends it entirely. He spans all avenues of revelation
because He is the supreme Revealer, the personal Word, who is
the source of all partial utterances of revelation and of all particular
parts and sequences of that temporal order through which they are
mediated to us. “The Christ of history stands in an_ historical
succession; yet He cannot be explained from within it. He
enters It ab extra ; and, to say the least, such an idea appears both
rational and intelligible on the view that all revelation exhibits
characteristics of transcendence. A previous essay has urged that
1 Col. i. rs—17 3 Johni. 1-4.
The Holy Trinity 137
Nature and man are not self-explanatory, that both point to
a supernatural world which is the ground of this world, and again
that man himself belongs to both of these worlds.t It is in virtue
of such considerations that man appears pre-eminently fitted to be
the recipient of a revelation from that supernatural order. Now
the Johannine doctrine that Christ is the Word made flesh declares
that the whole revelation of God to man, the final summation of
all that man can know of God, was projected into human life at
a point in the historical sequence in the Person of Christ? “The
possibility of such an event St. John finds in the fact that He who
enters thus into human nature is Himself the author and sustainer
of the cosmic process, of that humanity which He took and of
that historical succession into which He entered. “In the
beginning was the word and the word was with God and the
word was God.” From this cycle of Johannine ideas springs
that theological tradition which connects together Creation and
Incarnation as two stages in one divine action, and which finds the
ground of both in the deity of the Word or Son of God. St. Paul
reached the same result, but along a different line of approach.
Here the experience of redemption from sin was the principle
governing the process of interpretation. Christ not only reveals
God toman; Healso redeems manto God. He brings down the
supernatural to man and also raises man to that supernatural order.
Where these two lines of thought meet, as they did conspicuously
in St. Athanasius, there theology most truly reflects the balance
of the New Testament. But both lead to the same conclusion.
For it is through the experience of Christ’s redeeming action that
God’s character is revealed to us; and the substance of the
revelation is that God is redeeming Love. The conclusion in
both cases is that God is revealed to man and man is redeemed to
God by One who is Himself within the life and being of God.
(1) The idea of revelation requires for its counterpart the
corresponding idea of inspiration. Man is indeed fitted to be the
recipient of a revelation by the fact that he is made in the image of
the Word ; since the Word is alike the author of man’s being and
the ground and substance of that revelation which is made to him.
1 Essay II.
2 This in no way precludes us from recognising the limitations of Christ’s
earthly life ; cp. what was said above on the “‘context’’ of the revelation in
Christ, pp. 133, 134.
138 The Christian Conception of God
Nevertheless, since what is given in revelation is from a super-
natural source, man stands in need of divine assistance or grace
from the same supernatural source, that he may be able to appre-
hend what is revealed. ‘This process of inspiration entering into
the spirit and life of man goes forward part passu with all stages of
revelation. It is as wide in scope and as diverse in form as we
have found revelation to be. But in particular, as the Old
‘Testament revelation developed, Jewish thought distinguished the
Spirit from the Word and looked forward to a full outpouring of
the Spirit as a special mark of the Messianic Kingdom. ‘This
hope was fulfilled in the Pentecostal experience of the apostolic
Church. ‘The recipients of this experience traced the gift of the
Spirit to their incarnate Lord, and found in the fellowship of the
Spirit a new life whereby they were enabled to appropriate the
meaning of that revelation which had been given in Christ. In
the place of that objective historical manifestation of divine love
in terms of human life which they had seen in Christ they now
possessed an interior presence of indwelling love in the fellowship
of the Christian community ‘This presence was personal in its
action, creating a new social fellowship and renewing the life of
individuals within that fellowship. The Spirit experienced as
the source of such rich personal values was understood to be
Himself personal! and yet distinguished from the incarnate Lord,
whose revealing life He illuminated and whose historical redeeming
action He transmuted into the form of an abiding interior principle
of sanctification. ‘There were, therefore, in this new cycle of
experience two distinct features. God has revealed Himself
through the redeeming action of Christ ; and God so revealed is
present in the Christian community and in its individual members
through the gift of the Spirit. “The love of the Father is revealed
in the grace of the Son ; and the grace of the Son is possessed and -
enjoyed in the communion of the Spirit.?
It does not fall within the scope of this essay to trace in full the
development of the doctrine of the Trinity in the early Church
until it reached its final expression in the fourth century. In the
New ‘Testament we find no formulated doctrine ; but rather the
materials for such a doctrine taking shape in the form ofa developing
1 £.g. such phrases as évepyet . . . xaOdo BobAetar in 1 Cor. xii. 11
suggest an active subject rather than an impersonal influence. Still more
definite is the use of the pronoun éxeivog in John xiv.—xvi.
9°
Seo akin TA,
The Holy Trinity 139
experience which is already feeling its way vigorously towards
adequate intellectual expression. “This stage is already manifest
in the Pauline epistles. It reaches its maturest expression in
St. John’s Gospel. Here Father, Son and Holy Spirit are Three
“Subjects” or “ Persons’; and on the other hand the dis-
tinctions drawn between the Three are balanced by emphatic
statements of divine unity and mutual relationship. “The develop-
ment of patristic thought consisted in a series of attempts to do
justice to such language and still more to the apostolic experience
which lay behind it. Not all of such attempts were successful ;
each advance was made at the price of many abortive experiments
But the controlling principles of the process are sufficiently clear.
The twofold experience of redemption through Christ and of new
life in the fellowship of the Spirit is the continuous link between
the apostolic Church and the Church of Tertullian and Ongen,
and again of Athanasius, Basil and Augustine.
2. Personality in God
It has often been pointed out that to the influence of Christianity
must be assigned a large part in the development of modern concep-
tions of personality. “The case is somewhat parallel to that of
another comparatively modern conception, that of history. In
both cases the development of the Christian idea of God in the
Bible and in theology has had much to do with the emergence of
these conceptions. Of history something has already been said in
this essay. “The question of personality confronts us in any discus-
sion of the doctrine of the Trinity. In its modern connotation
personality probably includes two main aspects. On the one hand
there is the idea of mental life organised in relation to a conscious
centre. What is distinctive of man as an individual, on this view,
is self-consciousness. But on the other hand consciousness of self
as a centre of mental life already involves the further idea of other
such centres of consciousness. Personality has a sociological as
well as a psychological significance. It involves the idea of rela-
tionship with other-than-self. It has a social as well as an individual
aspect. It is awareness of self and of not-self. It means self-
regarding reflection and activity on the one hand, and capacity for
passing out of self into social relationships on the other.
There can be no reasonable doubt that religion has played an
140 The Christian Conception of God
important part in the long process of thought which lies behind
these developed ideas. But the connection between the two ideas
of God and of personality in human life becomes strikingly manifest
if we concentrate attention upon the New Testament and the early
Church. Here we see blossoming forth new conceptions of God,
of society and of individual life. These are three aspects of one
creative experience, three strands intertwined. We see the
Christian community emerge as a new sociological factor, a new
experience of fellowship. We see also the Christian individual
with a new consciousness of his individual worth and ends and of
their possibility of attainment. A deeper meaning for personality in
both its individual and social aspects has begun. ‘Thirdly, within
the same movement there emerges a new conception of God, in
which the living, personal God of earlier revelation becomes known
as a fellowship of Persons. We must now follow up this clue of
a connection between personality in God and in man.
Any attempt to translate the formula of Three Persons in One
Substance into modern language is beset with acute difficulties.
For example, Descartes has given to the idea of “ consciousness ”’
a new meaning and emphasis for us which differentiates our habits
of thought from those of the Nicene Fathers. Such a phrase as
“Three Centres of One Consciousness”’ represents a bold attempt
to grapple with this difficulty... But do we know enough of
consciousness to be quite sure of our ground? No formula can
be adequate. But, in view of the fluid state of modern psychology,
it would perhaps be better to avoid the word “ consciousness ”
altogether and to speak of Three Centres of One Activity? In the
case of human personality relationship can exist only between
separate individuals. “The Nicene formula, and any modern
equivalent, must mean that such relationship exists in God, but
not as between three individuals. ‘The three centres of relation-.
ship are here comprehended within the unity of One Absolute
Activity. Such a statement presupposes that personality exists in
God after a manner to which human personality offers some
analogy, but in a more eminent sense as is the case with all positive
statements about God.? ‘The main difference would seem to be
1 Bishop Temple in Christus Veritas.
2 The word “ Activity’ was suggested to me by Professor A. E. Taylor,
to whose kind criticism this essay owes much.
3 As Professor C. C. J. Webb well says, we speak of ‘‘ Personality in God ”
rather than ‘‘ the Personality of God.” See his God and Personality.
The Holy Trinity 141
that characteristics and functions, which at the human level of
personality appear in tension and conflict as antithetical tendencies,
exist in God within a unity and harmony which transcend all
analogies from human experience. In man the individual and
social aspects of personality are in tension and conflict. In God
the self-regarding and other-regarding aspects of personality are
integrated within the unity of one mental life. Within this unity
there may indeed be tension, deeper tension than we can know.
But if so it is tension within harmony. We can dimly perceive
that this means a higher kind of personality than ours. Moreover,
although the mystery of the Blessed Trinity far transcends our
powers of understanding, yet there are features of human experience
which point directly towards the truth of the mystery.
We turn naturally to the special forms of experience within
which the Christian conception of God as a Trinity first appears
and to which reference has already been made! Christianity
came into the world as a way of life with a specific doctrine of
life? Man attains his true self through the principle of sacrifice
or dying to self. By this means he may transcend the purely
self-regarding aspect of personality and find a larger life of fellow-
ship. ‘The New Testament shows this transcendence of the self-
regarding ego as the Way of the Cross which our Lord inculcated
and which He Himself followed out, fulfilling that Way to the
uttermost in His death. ‘The same principle of self-transcendence
is also set forth as something actually and vividly realised in
experience by the early Christian community. It was realised in
the fellowship of the Spirit and was recognised to be an operation
of the Spirit. But what the Spirit wrought in the Christian life
was a mystical union with Christ, whereby the self-transcending
power of Christ’s life passed into the soul and, bursting through
its natural bonds of selfishness, carried it up to a supernatural
level of love, where the dualism of self and other was in principle
already solved. It was not, however, solved by the annihilation
of self, nor by the merging of the individual’s personality in the
community, nor again by the absorption of that personality into
the life of God in any pantheistic sense. What is characteristic,
for example, of St. Paul’s doctrine of mystical union is exactly the
reverse of such absorption. ‘The transcendence of self which is
1 See above, pp. 139 f.
2 Cp. Royce, The Problem of Christianity, vol. i.
142 The Christian Conception of God
there described leads to the transfiguration of self. “I live, yet
no longer J but Christ liveth in me; and that life which I now
live in the flesh I live by faith which is in the Son of God. . . .”
‘*T can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me.” Where life
is all grace, all Christ, all death to self, there also it means enlarge-
ment and enrichment of self. Now this supernatural experience,
as we must call it, carries us both in promise and in fulfilment to
a level beyond the range of natural human capacity. “The develop-
ment of culture and civilisation in itself shews no tendency to
overcome the tensions existing between the individual and society
and again between society as a whole and smaller groups within it.
On the contrary the development of human society leads of itself
to increasing stress and complexity. “The evolutionary process
as a whole appears to be characterised on the one hand by increase
of complexity and on the other hand by the emergence, at various
stages, of new factors which take control of this growing com-
plexity.2. On this view the Christian experience of grace, union
with Christ and the fellowship of the Spirit, might be regarded as
the emergence in, or rather entrance into, the series of a yet
higher factor, which takes control of the complexities of self-
conscious human personality.
This Christian doctrine of life sets the movement of human
life in train towards a goal already achieved in Christ, who in this
way, as Pauline Christology declares, sums up in Himself the cosmic
process. As has already been said, however, Christ is not only
the goal but also the ground of this process in the developed teaching
of St. Paul and St. John.? ‘The truth of this now appears from
another point of view. What Christian experience and the New
‘Testament alike declare to be the true direction of human life,
the higher possibility of self-conscious personality under the action
of divine grace, this Christian theology from St. Paul onwards
declares to be, not simply achieved within the historical order in
the life of Christ and in process of attainment in the fellowship
of the Spirit, but already existing in the life of God and in the
eternal activities which belong to that life. The harmony of
reciprocal personal relationships, which when carried to its highest
1 This point has been worked out at length by Royce. See op. cit.
* On this point cp. J. Y. Simpson, Man and the Attainment of Immortality,
CC. 1X.—Xle
3 Cp. pp. 135-137 above.
The Holy Trinity 143
level is called &y&my in the New Testament, this is the true end of
man because it is the eternal mode of God’s life. ‘The inner
reality of this mystery of Triune Love is something utterly beyond
us. All thought and speech are helpless and impotent before it.
Yet this same mystery is utterly near to us. For all avenues of
Christian experience lead up to it and lead back to it. Because
the truth of this doctrine is rooted in experience, its formulation
was inevitable. No formulation indeed can be adequate. But
we can at least endeavour to see what sort of difficulties must, from
the very nature of the case, accompany all thought upon the subject.
3. Two Primary Difficulties
There are really two primary difficulties which beset human
thought upon 4his matter. “One is ‘the difficulty of conceiving
rightly the unity in the Godhead. ‘The other is the difficulty of
conceiving rightly the distinction of Persons. It does not matter
which of these questions we consider first. For each leads
eventually into the other. Our mental life is of such a kind that
it is always bringing unity into the manifold of sense impressions
through the medium of abstract concepts and ideas. Abstraction
is the unifying principle of all intellectual activity. Consequently,
the mind inevitably tends to think of unity itself as having the
characteristics of an abstract principle or idea. It is a fact well-
known in the history of thought that the philosophic and scientific
mind finds personality difficult and intractable to system. From
this point of view, if the idea of God is introduced, it is valued
chiefly as providing a rational ground for the unity and order of the
world-process. Medaljsm—is—the interpretation of the Trinity
which..is-mest_congenial to this type of thought, “The Persons
become aspects, modes or phases of a single principle rather than
centres of consciousness-in-relattonship.—... This conception of unity
is however very inadequate to reality as we know it to-day. The
unities which the sciences reveal to us consist in the correlation
of different kinds of energy and in the harmony and balance set
up by the reciprocal interactions of these energies. As we move
up the scale of reality the characteristics of unity necessarily change
as the higher factors of life and mind emerge and take control.
But the changes which occur move steadily in the direction of
self-conscious personality and personal relationships. “This series,
144 The Christian Conception of God
as we know it, is unfinished. Personality, as known to the
psychologist, is an imperfectly realised unity, in which conflicting
tendencies have not yet attained to such a harmony as it is necessary
to presuppose as the goal of personality. Moreover, this incom-
pleteness in the unity of the individual is reflected in his corre-
sponding inadequacy as the unit in a system_of social_relationships.
Yet this unfinished series is a clue as to the direction in which we
ought to look for our ideas about unity and personality in God.
A different line of approach is that of religious experience which
starts, not from the idea of unity, but from the experience of personal
relations. For that is in essence what religion means, even in the
earliest stage of religious history, when the object of worship is
not clearly recognised in terms of such relationship. “The peculiar
difficulty with which religion is beset is not abstraction but
anthropomorphism. Consequently, religious thought, in attri-
buting personality to God, finds it difficult to strip off from the
idea of personality the assogiations of human imperfection and
limitation which cling to it. , Now the essential Christian experi-
ence of God is, in its completeness, what the New ‘Testament
records, namely personal communion with Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, a threefold experience of personal relationship. ‘This
involves the idea of a fellowship of Persons in God; and this
fellowship is partially and imperfectly but truly reflected in the
fellowship of the Christian community. On the whole, therefore,
it seems true to say that, as reason is primarily interested in the
unity of God, so religious experience is primarily concerned with
the distinction of Persons. | Owing to the difficulty referred to
|
py atecne to Tri-theism. The human mind tends to think of \
the essence of personality as consisting in what sets one individual
apart from another. “The whole zzsus of human personality
towards self-realisation seems to confirm this idea ; because in our
natural experience there is a deep fissure between the individual
and social aspects of personality which it is hard to bridge over.
But the Christian reading of this natural experience is that it is in
large part to be explained in terms of sinful pride and selfishness.
It points away from the true meaning of personality, not towards it.
Philosophy also teaches a very different lesson. he higher values
or goods of life are of such a kind that they can and must be shared
For they can be fully realised or enjoyed by each only in com-f
\
Creation, Miracle and Providence 14.5
munity with others. If then we strip off our present limitations
Preis a ere me ERT PRE would
mitan something not Tes but more truly/social Khan anything-of
which we have experience,. It would mean precisely what is
indicated in the mysterious doctrine that there is a complete mutual
indwelling and interpenetration of the Three Persons in the
Godhead.
BET a
CREATION, MriracLE AND PROVIDENCE
In conclusion, something must be said as to the view of God’s
relation to the world and to human life which follows upon this
conception of God. For Christians, creation has always meant
that God made the universe “‘ out of nothing.” No other view Is
compatible with the absolute and transcendent character of the
Deity as understood by Christian theism, It follows that God 1s
the necessary ground of creation. Can we in any sense speak of
creation being necessary to God? Here there is need of careful
distinction. Some philosophers seem to think that a perpetual
process of creation is a necessary counterpart to the idea of a living
personal God. Whether there is such perpetuity of creation is
surely an irrelevant question, which we have no means of answer-
ing. The vital point is that God does not create under any
necessity external to Himself, but by the perfectly free action of
benevolent will. Since, however, there is nothing arbitrary in
the divine will, this is the same thing as to say that He creates
in accordance with the laws of His own nature. He does not
create because He stands in need of creatures, but through the
overflowing fullness of His love which must manifest itself
in condescension. It is unfortunate that the English language
possesses no convenient way of distinguishing between these two
kinds of necessity. But whatever language we use the dis-
tinction must be maintained. Upon this difficult subject the
doctrine of the Trinity throws a flood of light. In a Unitarian
conception of God, where there is no subject-object relation within
the Godhead, the idea of creation inevitably comes to mean that
the world is the necessary object of divine activity. The world
thus takes the place of the eternal Son, and God is subjected to
external necessity. If, however, there are hypostatic distinctions
within the Godhead, we can find in God an eternal ground and
L
146 The Christian Conception of God
possibility of creative action without introducing such necessity.
The creative capacity which we know in human personality attains
its ends through growth and succession ; and such attainment is
but a mode of self-realisation within the created order of which
we are parts. But a transcendent Creator cannot be thought of
as finding His adequate object in a created order, which is and must
always remain less than Himself. Such an adequate object the
Father possesses in the Son, who is the eternal reproduction of
Himself. “The doctrine of the Trinity indicates in God eternal
activities of personal relationship such as provide a rational ground
for creative activity. Eternity is no mere negation of succession.
For the most significant forms of human experience transcend
successiveness and yet they are immanent ina succession, Wemay
therefore believe that in the eternal activities within the Godhead
there exists in a more eminent way all that is abidingly significant
in the temporal process.4
Closely connected with the subject of creation are important
questions concerning miracles and providence. Upon these
matters nothing more can be attempted here than the indication
of a point of view. We have seen that the graded series of reality
known to us through the sciences is actually an unfinished series.”
Moreover, as new factors emerge in the series, horizons proper
to the lower stages are transcended. Again, the whole series
is transcended by God its Creator. It follows then that God’s
action upon the world as a whole must transcend our experience
of what falls within the series. ‘The series itself contains the
principle of transcendence and points beyond itself to horizons out-
side our experience of the system which we call Nature. In other
words, it points to a supernatural order. It is, to say the least,
hazardous, therefore, from our partial standpoint to prejudge the
question as to what kinds of special action might or might not be
appropriate to the fulfilment of God’s redeeming purpose for His
creatures. “The Christian conception of God and of His relation
to the world involves at least the possibility of miracles. Miracles.
may be defined as unusual events in which we catch a glimpse of
a divine purpose which is actually embodied in all events. Further,
they are unusual to such a degree that in that respect they fall
outside the horizon of our normal experience altogether. “Che
1 This is what I understand Dr. Temple to mean in Christus Veritas, ch. xv.
2 DEE PP 11305519211.
Creation, Miracle and Providence 147
‘6 ?
* miracle,’
6
term as thus defined, has a more restricted meaning
than the term “supernatural,” which covers operations of grace
as well as abnormal events. ‘The distinction seems to be mainly
relative to our experience (we have continuous experience of grace,
but not of miracle). If, however, miracles are contra quam est
nota natura, the same is really true of the whole action of grace
upon the soul. For the power of grace overcomes the sway of
natural propensities and enables freewill to assert itself. Thus
psychological laws are transcended by grace as physical laws are
transcended by miracle. “Theidea of miracle belongs toa group of
ideas which includes freewill, providence, prayer and grace. “These
in turn run back to creative will and a revelation of personality
in God. Wecannot properly dissociate any of these ideas from one
another. “There are as substantial arguments available against
human freewill and against the validity of prayer as against any
physical miracle. If it is appropriate for human freewill to break
through psychological laws by the aid of divine grace, then we
cannot rule out the possibility that it is appropriate for the Creator
Himself, for sufficient reasons, to supersede the normal sequences
of the physical universe. “The universe exists, not primarily for
the purpose of exhibiting unvarying sequences of law but, that it
may be sacramental of God’s glory and goodness and may be the
medium through which God fulfils His providential purposes for
man. ‘The providence of God is directed towards personal ends
and is concerned with the priceless treasure of human souls, In
the last resort the universe is best understood as the unfolding
expression of God’s love. Its deepest secrets are disclosed in such
sayings of our Lord as “‘ Come unto me and I will give you rest”
and “*’There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth ” ;
or again in the words of St. Paul, ‘‘ All things work together for
good to them that love God.” 4
1 In these brief remarks the writer has intentionally confined himself to
one point only in the modern controversy about miracles, namely its meta-
physical aspect, this being the only point which seemed relevant to the subject
ofthisessay. ‘The writer is well aware that other aspects are raised by the bearing
of modern anthropological and psychological inquiries upon the evidence for
particular miracles. An admirable discussion of the metaphysical aspect will
be found in Dr. F. R. Tennant’s recent work, Miracle and its philosophical
presuppositions.
148 The Christian Conception of God
ADDITIONAL NOTE
By E. J. BICKNELL
Tue TRINITARIAN DoctTrRINE OF AUGUSTINE AND AQUINAS
Tue aim of this note is to examine the statement that in Augustine and
Aquinas the personal distinctions of Father, Son and Holy Spirit are
reduced to mere functions or activities within one single divine mind or
consciousness.
The terms “‘ Una Substantia,” ‘‘ Tres Personae,” are first found in
Tertullian. While the precise meaning of “ substantia”’ is disputed, there
is a general agreement that “‘ personae”? is in origin a grammatical term,
taken from texts used to prove the distinctions of the Persons, as where
the Father addresses the Son, or the Spirit speaks of the Father and the
Son, i.e. the Three are regarded as holding intercourse with one another.
Hence, as in ordinary speech, “ persona’ means a party to a social relation-
ship.
Augustine, unlike earlier Latin writers, approaches the Trinity from
the side of the divine unity. “The Trinity is the one and true God”
(De Trinitate,i. 4). “’The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
intimate a divine unity of one and the same substance in an indivisible
equality” (i. 7). Whatever is spoken of God according to substance or,
as he prefers to call it, essence (vii. 10), is spoken of each Person severally
and together of the ‘Trinity (v. 8). All that God is He is essentially.
In Him are no accidents. For what is accidental can be lost or changed.
His substance is at once both simple and manifold (v. 5, vi. 8). Each
Person is as great as the other two or as the entire Trinity. It is hard to
say either ‘‘ the Father alone” or “ the Son alone,” since they are in-
separable and are always in relation to one another (vi. 9). ‘The divine
substance is in no way a fourth term. We do not say three Persons out
of the same essence in the same way as three statues out of the same gold,
for it is one thing to be gold, another to be statues. Nor, are they like
three men of the same nature, since out of the same nature can also be
other threemen. “ In that essence of the Trinity in no way can any other
person exist out of the same essence” (vii. 11). ‘The truth that each is
equal to the three is difficult because the imagination uses spatial images.
In all their operations ad extra the Three have one will and activity
(1.9). ‘Their unity is by nature and not by consent. Hence the Son takes
an active part in His own sending (11. 9), and the Angel of the Lord in the
Old ‘Testament is the appearance not of the Son, but of God, that is the
Trinity (i. end).
Yet, though inseparable, they are a Trinity. As their names cannot
be pronounced simultaneously, so in Scripture they are presented to us
through certain created things in distinction from, and mutual relation
to, one another, ¢.g. at the Baptism (iv. 30, cp. Ep. 169). The reality of
essential distinctions within the Trinity is maintained by the theory of
relations. ‘The Persons cannot be accidents. But “ every thing that is
said about God is not said according to substance. For it is said in rela-
tion to something, as the Father in relation to the Son and the Son in
Additional Note 149
relation to the Father, which is not accident.” ‘The terms are used
reciprocally. ‘‘ Though to be the Father and to be the Son is different,
yet their substance is not different ; because they are so called not accord-
ing to substance, but according to relation, which relation however is not
accident, because it is not changeable ” (v. 6).
» Such teaching is only a development of the doctrine of coinherence
as found in the Cappadocian Fathers. It is unfortunate that in vil. 7-12,
through his ignorance of Greek, Augustine’s treatment of their terminology
is so confused that it is not worth discussion. ‘They indisputably did not
reduce the Persons to three aspects of a single self. Augustine goes
further in this direction. ‘The analogies of ix.-xiv. are all taken from the
activities of a single mind. He begins by asserting that it is through love
that we can best attain to the knowledge of the Trinity, and finds in the
threefold nature of love a trace of the Trinity. “‘ Love is of someone
that loves, and with love something (or in one place someone) is loved.
Behold then there are three things: he that loves and that which is loved
and love”’ (viii. 14). Elsewhere he identifies the Spirit with the love
of the Father for the Son (vii. 3-8), or with the will of God which is a
will of love.
On the other hand, he did not wish to be a modalist. "Though he
disliked the word ‘‘ Personae” as unscriptural, yet he recognized that
something had to be said to deny the teaching of Sabellius (v. 10, cp. vil. 9).
In his ‘‘ Retractations ” (I. iv. 3), composed at the end of his life, he
corrects ‘‘ He who begets and He who is begotten, is one,” by changing
“is”? into “ are,” in conformity with John x. 30. Further, in a famous
passage of the De Trinitate he expressly affirms that each Person has a
knowledge and memory and love of His own. ‘There emerges at length a
view inconsistent with the idea of God asa single self (xv. 12). It cannot
be set on one side asa mere slip. It is anticipated in xv. 7, and occurs
independently in Ep. clxix. 6. It is so elaborately worked out that it
represents an essential element in his theology. Lastly, though his psycho-
logical illustrations are borrowed from the functioning of a single self,
he ends a prolonged apology for their inadequacy. ‘“ But three things
belonging to one person cannot suit those three persons, as man’s purpose
demands, and this we have demonstrated in this fifteenth book ” (xv. 45).
Two other considerations deserve notice. First, he gets more
modalistic, the further that he gets away from Scripture into the region of
logic. Secondly, the influence of Neoplatonism has at times led him to
force the Christian idea of God into moulds of thought borrowed from
pagan philosophy, so as to endanger its Christianity.
In Aquinas, the dominant analogy is that of distinct functions within
asingle human mind. ‘The relation of Father to Son is that of a thinker
or speaker to his thought. ‘The Spirit is love. ‘The Son proceeds by
way of intellect as the Word, the Spirit by way of will as love. Is then
the Son only the divine thought, and the Spirit the love which God has
for the object of His thought? ‘This simple explanation is hard to
reconcile with other passages. “‘ Persona” is defined, in the words of
Boethius, as ‘‘ rationalis naturae individua substantia ” or “ subsistentia ”’
150 The Christian Conception of God
> is not used in the case of God in the
same sense as in the case of creatures, but “* excellentiori modo.” It
denotes a relation existing in the divine nature “‘ per modum substantiae
seu hypostasis,’ not as a mere accident. ‘Cum nomen ‘alius’
masculine acceptum non nisi distinctionem in natura significet, Filius
alius a Patre convenienter dicitur.”” We say “ unicum Filium,” but not
*‘ unicum Deum,” because deity is common to more than one. A neuter
signifies a common essence, but a masculine a subject (suppositum).
“Quia in divinis distinctio est secundum personas non autem secundum
essentiam, dicimus quod Pater est alius a Filio sed non aliud: ete
converso quod sunt unum non unus” (Summa Theol. I. xxxi.2). Again,
‘“Apud nos relatio non est subsistens persona. Non autem est ita in
divinis. . . . Nam relatio est subsistens persona” (xxxiii. 2). In xxxvii.
the name love is only applied to the Spirit as “ personaliter acceptus.” In
his discussion of the Incarnation he decides that though it was fitting that
the Son should become incarnate, it was equally possible for either of the
other Persons to have been incarnate (III. ii. 5 and 8). Further words
predicated of God and creatures, are predicated not univocally, but either
analogically or equivocally (I. xi. 5). In xxxix. 4, he shows that persona
is not used equivocally. ‘Therefore it must be used analogically. This
analogous use implies some likeness between the divine and human persons.
In short, even in Augustine and Aquinas there is evidence of the
inadequacy of the single human mind with its functions to furnish a
complete illustration of the threefold process of the divine life. It
suggests that it needs to be supplemented by something like the analogy
from a perfectly unified society.
or “ hypostasis.”” “* Persona’
THE CHRIST OF THE SYNOPTIC
GOSPELS
BY SIR EDWYN CLEMENT HOSKYNS, Br.
CONTENTS
I. ‘THe ProspremM
II. Tue Lisperat Protestant SOLUTION
III. Its Rerrection 1n Catuortic MopeErRnNisM
IV. NeEep oF A SYNTHETIC SOLUTION
1. Literary Structure of the Gospels
2. Canons of Historical Criticism
3. Fallacies in the Liberal Protestant Reconstruction
V. Governinc Ipgas oF THE GosPELs
. The Kingdom of God. :
2. The Humiliation of the Chit \,
BULL AGH a Oruces man,
4. The New Righteousness and Eternal Life
VI. Conctiusion
PAGE
Leg
Sey
158
160
161
164
166
171
171
173
174
175
176
“ There is an absence of all reason in electing humanity to Divinity.”
TERTULLIAN, Apology.
“ Beloved, outward things apparel God, and since God was content to take
a body, let us not leave Him naked and ragged.”—JOHN DONNE.
“Doe this, O Lord, for His sake who was not less the King of Heaven for
Thy suffering Him to be crowned with thornes in this world.”—-JOHN DONNE.
‘“‘ Wherein lies happiness ? In that which becks
Our ready minds to fellowship divine,
A fellowship with essence ; till we shine
Full alchemiz’d, and free of space. Behold
The clear religion of heaven.”
KEATS, Endymion.
“¢* What think you of Christ,’ friend ? when all’s done and said,
Like you this Christianity, or not ?”
RoBERT BROWNING, Bishop Blougram’s Apology.
I
THE PROBLEM
For the Catholic Christian “‘ Quid vobis videtur de Ecclesia,
What think ye of the Church? ” is not merely as pertinent a
question as “* Quid vobis videtur de Christo, What think ye of the
Christ2”?: it is but the same question differently formulated.
This unity between Christ and the Church, vital though it is for
Catholic religion, raises a historical problem as delicate as it is
important : delicate, because of its extreme complexity ; impor-
tant, because the study of the history and development of primi-
tive Christianity has a subtle though direct bearing upon Christian
belief and practice.
The problem is this : What is the relation between the life
and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ of St. Paul, of
St. John, and of Catholic piety? And further, what is the rela-
tion between the little group of disciples called by Jesus from
among the Galilean fishermen and the Corpus Christi of St. Paul
or the Civitas Dei of St. Augustine? This problem was first
clearly recognised, when, in the latter half of the eighteenth
century, the exegesis of the books of the New ‘Testament was taken
out of the hands of the dogmatic theologians and entrusted to the
154 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels
historians. Since that time many theories have been advanced in
order to explain the development of Christianity in the apostolic
age, and many attempts have been made to analyse and describe
its essential character. “hese, however, show such radical dis-
agreement, and are so mutually exclusive, that it can occasion little
surprise if the intelligent observer grows sceptical of the ability of
the historian to reach conclusions in any way satisfactory ; “* facts
being set forth in a different light, every reader believes as he
pleases ; and indeed the more judicious and suspicious very justly
esteem the whole as no other than a romance, in which the writer
hath indulged a happy and subtle invention.” 1
The chaos is not, however, so great as would at first sight
appear. ‘There is at the present time a fairly widespread agree-
ment among a large number of scholars as to the main outline of
the development within primitive Christianity. The conclusions
arrived at accord so well with modern demands that they have
strayed into quite popular literature, and are found to be exercising
considerable influence outside strictly academic circles.
Il
Tue LIBERAL PROTESTANT SOLUTION
The reconstruction is roughly as follows ? :
Jesus was a Jewish prophet, inspired by the Spirit of God
at his baptism by John, and called to reform the religion of
1 Henry Fielding, Foseph Andrews, Book III, chapter i.
2 The more popular exposition of this view may be found in the following
books: E. F. Scott, Te New Testament To-day; J. Estlin Carpenter, The
First Three Gospels; W. Wrede, Paul, English translation by E. Lummis,
preface by J. Estlin Carpenter; C. Piepenbring, La Christologie Biblique ;
B. W. Bacon, The Beginnings of the Gospel Story, esp. pp. 38-40 ; A. Harnack,
What is Christianity? ; T. R. Glover, The Fesus of History, Fesus in the
Experience of Men, esp. chap. ix; G. Frenssen, Dorfpredigten.
Such expositions are largely based upon elaborate literary and historical.
critical studies, and upon the more important critical commentaries on the
books of the New Testament. The following have been of especial importance :
H. J. Holtzmann, Hand-commentar zum Neuen Testament, Lehrbuch der
Neu-Testamentlichen Theologie; A. Harnack, Beitrdége zur Einleitung in das
Neue Testament, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte; E. Klostermann, Com-
mentary on the Synoptic Gospels in the Handbuch zum Neuen Testament,
edited by H. Lietzmann ; J. Wellhausen, Das Evangelium Marci, Das Evan-
gelium Lucae, Das Evangelium Matthaet; R. Jilicher, Die Gleichnisreden
Fesu; A. Loisy, Les Ewangiles Synoptiques; W. Bousset, Kyrios Christos ;
R. Reitzenstein, Die Hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen ; Claude Montefiore,
The Synoptic Gospels; F. J. Foakes-Jackson and Kirsopp Lake, The Beginnings
of Christianity, (esp. 1. pp. 265-418).
The Liberal Protestant Solution 15s
the Jews, which in the hands of the scribes and Pharisees had
been overlaid with burdens which the common people were
unable to bear, and in the hands of the Sadducees had been
bereft of all spiritual content. After the death of John, he
continued the Baptist’s work, discarding, however, his crude
and inhuman asceticism. Jesus came to interpret the Mosaic
Law and to awaken in men the love of God and the love of
one another. A true Jew, he felt himself one of the great
line of prophets and proclaimed that union with God and the
brotherhood of men depend upon righteousness and purity of
heart. In the Sermon on the Mount, with unerring insight,
he emphasised the essential characteristics of that righteousness
which is pleasing to God, and his teaching was embodied in
his life. The authority of his teaching and the power of his
life rested upon his own intense faith that God was his Father ;
a belief which, owing to his regular practice of silent and lonely
prayer, led to an actual experience of union with God. In
the parables his simple teaching was presented to the crowds
in language which they could understand, and his miracles of
healing were the natural expression of the power of the spiritual
over the material. It is true that at times he chose the
exaggerated and poetic language of Jewish eschatology as a
vehicle for his teaching, but such language was natural at
the period in which he lived, and causes little surprise. His
essential Gospel is not to be found in the eschatological
speeches, but in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the parables
of the Sower, the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan.*
Whether or no he claimed to be the Messiah, and in what
sense he used the title, if he did use it of himself, we cannot
now know. Nor can the modern historian recapture the
exact significance of the phrase the ‘Son of man’; perhaps
it was but the expression of his consciousness of the dignity
of his essential humanity. These are problems which need
further consideration, and which may perhaps be insoluble.
1 Recently, however, since the publication of Johannes Weiss’ monograph,
Die Predigt Fesu vom Reiche Gottes, and of the works of Albert Schweitzer,
Shizze des Leben Fesu, Das Abendmahls Problem, and von Reimarus Xu
Wrede, most New Testament scholars have been compelled to treat the eschato-
logical element in the teaching of Jesus far more seriously. “The consequent
readjustment in the reconstruction of the development of primitive Christianity
is best studied in Kirsopp Lake’s Landmarks of Early Christianity.
156 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels
But one negative conclusion may be regarded as certain. He
did not claim to possess a divine nature. ‘The possibility,
however, must always be allowed that his sense of union with
his Father in heaven may have led him at times to claim to be
the Messiah and even the Son of God ; if so, these titles were
the expression of his sense of divine vocation and of the com-
plete surrender of his human will to that of his Father.
The crucifixion was the greatest of all human tragedies.
True to their traditions the Jews killed the greatest of their
prophets. But history has reversed the judgment of Caiaphas.
He is only remembered as the man who chose to hand over
Jesus to Pilate as a leader of insurrection against the emperor,
rather than to accept- his teaching and himself undertake the
reform of the Jewish religion.
The divinely inspired ethical humanitarianism of Jesus,
originally evolved within the narrow sphere of an attempt to
reform Judaism, could not be thus permanently confined.
At times Jesus seemed to feel that his religion was capable of
infinite expansion, for 1f every human soul were of infinite
worth in the eyes of the Father of all, there could be no peculiar
people and Jewish particularism was therefore undermined at
its foundations. But he foresaw no formal mission; he
founded no Church to propagate his ideals ; he left them to
grow and expand in the hearts of those who had heard him,
conversed with him, and lived under the influence of his
personality.
‘The influence of Jesus over his disciples was immensely
increased by their belief that he was still alive after the cruci-
fixion. “The importance of the resurrection experiences for
the later development of primitive Christian faith cannot be
exaggerated. “Lhe disciples were convinced that Jesus was
the Messiah, and that he would shortly return in glory to
destroy the power of evil and inaugurate the final rule of God.
By a process of enthusiastic reflection upon the death and
resurrection of Jesus, and upon vague memories of certain
obscure sayings of his, they advanced the first step toward
Catholicism. Whereas Jesus had preached a Gospel, his
disciples preached him. And yet they still remained Jews,
loyal to the traditions of their fathers, and distinguished from
other Jews only by their claim to know the Messiah, and
The Liberal Protestant Solution LSy.
by the intensity of their expectation of his coming. ‘They
waited for Jesus, the Christ.
This Messianic enthusiasm spread, as such beliefs are
known to spread in the East ; but its progress can with difh-
culty be traced, for it moved underground, just as the piety
of the Balymous (Plymouth) brothers spread up the Nile
valley during the nineteenth century. Groups of disciples
appeared at Damascus and at Antioch and even some Greeks
were converted to the new faith. With the mission of St.
Paul the number of believers grew, and, since his converts
were drawn chiefly from the Greeks and not from the Jews,
popular Greek ideas penetrated Christianity, and his epistles
were largely influenced by this new element. Paulinism both
in form and content is popular Greek paganism Christianised.
Jesus Christ became the Lord and Saviour, the centre of a
sacramental cult based upon the interpretation of His death as
a sacrifice, and Christian phraseology was so turned as to
suggest that the Oriental-Greek cult deities had been super-
seded by Jesus, the Son of God. What was historically the
gradual apotheosis of a Jewish prophet under the influence of
Greek-Christian belief and worship was then thrown back |
upon the Jesus of history and the story of his life and death
was related as the Epiphany of the divine Son of God. ‘This
stage of Christian development was completed when the
author of the Fourth Gospel completely re-wrote the narrative
of the life of Jesus, and borrowed the language of Greek
philosophy in order to interpret his significance for the world.
He was the Logos incarnate.
Thus Christianity became a mystery religion which
tended increasingly to express its doctrines in terms of Greek
philosophy. In other words, by the beginning of the second
century the main features of Catholic Christianity had been
evolved. In one respect, however, Christianity was in-
finitely superior to all other mystery religions. Christian
immortality was morally conditioned to an extent which Is not
found elsewhere. Initiation involved moral conversion, and
the Eucharist involved a moral conformity to the footprints
of the Son of God, the vestigia Christi. In this way the
teaching of the Jesus of history was preserved within the
growing Catholic Church ; it was not altogether submerged
158 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels
under the mythical interpretation of his person. ‘This moral
sincerity ultimately saved Christianity from the fate of other
mystery religions. “They perished, but it endured. ‘The
gradual disappearance of the Jesus of history, however, con-
stituted a grave danger to the persistence within Catholicism
even of this moral earnestness.
The rediscovery of the Jesus of history in our own days
by the application of the historical method to the study of the
earliest Christian documents, and the consequent reconstruc-
tion of the development which issued in the Catholic Church
of the second century, is far more than a monument to the skill
and honesty of the historian. A basis is now provided for a
new reformation of the Christian religion, capable of ensuring
its survival in the modern world. In the Gospel of Jesus is
to be found the pure religion of civilised and united humanity.
Thus the assured results of liberal historical criticism form as
necessary a prelude to the Christianity of the future as the
preaching of John the Baptist did to the original proclamation
of the Gospel.
{PT
Irs REFLECTION IN CATHOLIC MOopERNISM
This reconstruction of the origin and development of primitive
Christianity is undeniably attractive, not so much on account of
the sanction which it gives to modern idealistic humanitarianism,
but because for the first time Christian historians have presented
a rational account of the relation between the Gospel of Jesus and
the Catholic Religion, on the basis of a critical analysis of the
documents contained in the New Testament. “The method is
historical and the conclusions are supported by evidence drawn
from the documents themselves. “hese conclusions have not left
even Catholic scholars unmoved, and Catholic Modernism is, in
one of its aspects, an attempt to explain and defend Catholicism on
the basis of this historical reconstruction, It is maintained that
Catholicism is the result of a development in which the Gospel of
Jesus formed but one element, “The dogmas of the Church and its
sacrificial sacramentalism are pagan in origin, and for this reason can
be shown to correspond to demands essentially human. Catholicism
is a synthesis between the Gospel of Jesus and popular pagan
religion ; and, because it is a synthesis, Catholicism can claim to
Its Reflection in Catholic Modernism 159
be the universal religion! Thus, while Liberal Protestantism
tends to find the religion of the future safeguarded by the discovery
of the Jesus of history, and by the consequent liberation from the
accretions of Catholicism, so foreign to the modern mind,? Catholic
Modernism welcomes the broadening of the basis of Christianity,
due to the recognition of its having preserved and purified the
mythology and worship of countless ages of men, and feels no
regret that a way of escape from the tyranny of a Jewish prophet
has been so solidly secured by the historical and critical approach
to the study of the New Testament.
The conclusions, which give this newly discovered liberty the
sanction of unprejudiced and scientific historical research, have,
however, been shown to be open to very severe criticism, which is
by no means confined to those who may be suspected of a desire to
defend orthodoxy. ‘These critics do not only question the details
of the reconstruction ; they judge the whole to have sprung less from
a nice historical sense, than from an impatient anxiety to interpret
primitive Christianity ‘‘in terms of modern thought.” ®
Those who regard the writing of history as a gentlemanly
accomplishment which requires little more than sufficient leisure
to ascertain the relevant facts, and a certain facility for embodying
them in adequate literary form, not unnaturally discover in the
1 Loisy ably defended Catholicism along these lines in his L’Ewangile et
Lig és iglise (esp. chap. iv). The book was a criticism of Harnack’s What 1s
Christianity ? and of A. Sabatier’s Esquisse d’une Philosophie de la Religion.
Loisy’s point of view was developed byG. Tyrrell inThrough Scylla and Charybats
and in Christianity at the Cross-Roads ; it appears in more modern form in
Friedrich Heiler’s recent book, Der Katholizismus (esp. pp. 17-78, 595-660).
2 “ Above all, the figure of Jesus stands out all the more grandly as the mists
of theological speculation are blown away from him, and we come to discern
him as he really sojourned on earth. It isnot too much to say that by recovering
for us the historical life of Jesus criticism has brought Christianity back to the
true source of its power. The creeds, whatever may have been their value
formerly, have broken down, but Jesus as we know him in his life, and all the
more as his life is freed from accretions of legend, still commands the world’s
reverence and devotion. The theology of the future, it is not rash to prophesy,
will start from the interpretation of Jesus as a man in history.” —E. F. Scott,
The New Testament To-day, pp. 89 ff.
8 G. A.van der Bergh van Eysinga, Radical Views about the New Testament ;
Arthur Drews, The Christ Myth; P. L. Couchoud, The Enigma of Jesus,
preface by Sir J. G. Frazer ; V.H. Stanton, The Gospels as Historical Documents ;
Pierre Batiffol, The Credibility of the Gospels. To these must be added the learned
and voluminous writings of Theodor Zahn. ‘These authors agree in recognis-
ing that the Gospels stand within the sphere of Christian orthodoxy ; ‘they
disagree, however, completely as to their historical value.
160 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels
disagreements of the critics nothing more than a fresh instance of
that persistent and irrational hatred which theologians are commonly
supposed to feel for one another. “Those who assume that the
Gospel of Jesus was a simple gospel are equally irritated by the
inability of the critics to reach agreed conclusions, and attribute
this disagreement to the innate tendency of the academic mind
first to complicate what is obvious, and then to perform mental
gymnastics as prodigious as they are unnecessary. Books written
under the influence of such prejudices are, however, calculated
rather to inflame the imagination than to sharpen the intellect, and
fail to lead to an accurate appreciation of the canons of historical
criticism or of the peculiar problems which confront the historian
of the beginnings of Chuistianity.
English theologians, trained in the study of the Classics, and
accustomed to an exacting standard of scholarly accuracy, have
looked with suspicion on such popular accounts of Christian origins,
and have shown far less confidence in the “assured results of
modern criticism ”’ than their colleagues in Germany, Holland,
and France. ‘The effect of this tradition of learned conservatism
has been that, whilst English theologians have made important
contributions to the study of the history of the text of the New
‘Testament, to the literary analysis of the first three Gospels,
technically known as the Synoptic Problem, and to the exegesis of
the -various books of the New ‘Testament, they have generally
refrained from attempting any comprehensive reconstruction of the
development of primitive Christianity on the basis of these exhaus-
tive preliminary studies, and have been content mainly with a
criticism of the critics.
IV
NEED OF A SYNTHETIC SOLUTION
It can hardly be denied that English theology stands at the
cross-roads. “The preliminary studies with which it has been
chiefly concerned are now on the whole so well-worn that the
results have passed into the textbooks ; and the attempt to force
the energy of all the younger men into these channels threatens to
involve them in work which must be largely unproductive. On
1 Eldred C. Vanderlaan, Protestant Modernism in Holland, provides a
useful survey of recent Dutch literature; cf. K. H. Roessingh, De moderne
Theologie in Nederland, and Het Modernisme in Nederland.
Need of a Synthetic Solution 161
the other hand, the analysis of the religious experience within
primitive Christianity, and of the beliefs by which it was stimulated,
offers a new line of approach to the history of Christian origins,
and provides a field of investigation almost untouched, except by
those who have little or no first-hand knowledge of the necessary
prolegomena. If this be a correct statement of the present
situation, there can be little doubt that the time has come for
English theology to make its contribution to the study of Christian
beginnings, a contribution which may be all the more valuable for
this long preparatory discipline. An examination of the recon-
struction outlined above provides a convenient point of departure.
Should it survive the examination, it only remains to perfect the
whole by a greater attention to detail; if it be found unsatis-
factory, an alternative reconstruction must be attempted and
submitted to the judgment of scholars. “The main purpose of this
essay 1s to state the problem afresh, and to indicate the lines along
which a solution may perhaps be found.
1. Literary Structure of the Gospels
The literary analysis of the four Gospels has shown that the
first three Gospels are closely related documents. Both St. Luke
and the editor of St. Matthew’s Gospel made use of St. Mark’s
Gospel in approximately its present form, and also of an early
Christian collection of the sayings of Jesus. Since both writers,
apparently independently, made constant use of the same documents,
it may not unreasonably be deduced that they regarded them as of
especial importance. In addition to the material common to the
First and Third Gospels each editor has incorporated into his
narrative special material not found elsewhere. ‘Therefore, if
St. Mark’s Gospel be called AZ, St. Matthew’s Gospel T,
St. Luke’s Gospel Z, the collection of sayings Q, the special
material in St. Matthew’s Gospel S1, and the special material in
St. Luke’s Gospel $2, T is composed from 47+ Q-+ S1 and L
from 474+ Q-+ S2. But it must not be assumed that the editors
incorporated their sources unchanged. “They show considerable
freedom in the use of their sources, a freedom which 1s however
considerably curtailed when they record actual sayings of Jesus.
The literary construction of the First and Third Gospels may
therefore be expressed by the formulae T (47+ Q-+ S81) and
M
162 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels
L(m+Q-+ 82). The first three Gospels depend ultimately
upon tradition, which was preserved not in the interest of
accurate history, but for the guidance and encouragement of the
Christians. It is therefore always possible that the tradition may
have been transformed before it was committed to writing. It
must be borne in mind, however, that the belief that the same
Jesus who had been taken from them into heaven would return
in like manner may well have been more powerful in preserving
an accurate tradition of His words than any theory of unprejudiced
historical investigation.
The Fourth Gospel occupies a peculiar position in the New
Testament. In form it Is a narrative of the actions and sayings of
Jesus; that is,it is a Gospel. In substance it is primarily an inter-
pretation of Christianity in the light of Christian experience.
The author has no doubt made use of oral tradition, or of a part
or the whole of the Synoptic Gospels, or of apostolic reminiscences,
or of all of these, but they have been transformed in such a way
that it is almost impossible to disengage the tradition from the
interpretation. ‘[herefore, whereas the historian is free to make
full use of the Fourth Gospel in describing the Christian religion at
the close of the first century, it is dangerous for him to use it as an
authority for the earliest form of the Christian tradition.
Since none of the Gospels can have been written down in their
present form before the second half of the first century, the Pauline
Epistles are the earliest written Christian documents which
survive. “The Epistles, therefore, offer important evidence of
the primitive Christian tradition in those passages where St. Paul
refers to the teaching he had “ received,” and where, when
writing to those who had not been converted through his preaching,
he assumes certain beliefs to be held by all Christians alike.
If this literary analysis be accepted as sound, it follows that
though the documents do not provide sufficient material for a
detailed “ life of Jesus,” they ought not to be dismissed as entirely
untrustworthy. ‘[here is no reason to assume that the character-
istic features of His teaching could not have been accurately
preserved, or even that incidents recorded as giving rise to sayings
of especial importance were entirely due to the creative imagination
of the Christians. “Ihis, however, needs careful testing.
The investigation of the origins of Christianity must begin
with the exegesis of St. Mark’s Gospel (JZ) and of the sayings
Need of a Synthetic Solution 163
common to Matthew and Luke (Q), and then proceed to an
examination of the Matthean-Lucan corrections of JZ and of the
variant forms in which the Q source has been preserved. “The
treatment of the special material (S1, $2) is best reserved until.
this has been completed, since the valuable check afforded by a
comparison of Matthew and Luke is no longer available.
Assuming the exegesis of 4Z, OQ, S1, $2 and of the Matthean-
Lucan corrections of AZ and Q to have been completed, two
important questions arise. Do these surviving extracts from
primitive Christian tradition agree or disagree in their description
of the Gospel proclaimed by Jesus ? and Do they agree or disagree
with the tradition received by St. Paul ?
‘The Synoptic Tradition consists of sayings, miracles, parables,
and a careful record of the events which immediately preceded the
crucifixion. A Gospelasa literary form emerges when, not merely
the events immediately preceding the crucifixion, but the whole
tradition is arranged and narrated as the Way of the Cross crowned
by the resurrection. ‘This arrangement gives unity to the whole,
and the reader ts hardly conscious of the fragmentary nature of the
parts. Whence came this order? Was it a literary device of
the Evangelists? Was it the result of the faith of the Christians?!
or did it go back to the Lord Himself? No reconstruction of
the Gospel of Jesus is possible unless it is possible to answer these
questions.
The unity which ts achieved by ordering the material so as to
secure movement towards a fixed point is also achieved by the
central position given to the Kingdom of God, or of Heaven, as
a concrete reality ; the whole tradition, including the narrative
of the crucifixion, being brought into the closest relationship with
it. “The recognition of this unity of direction and standpoint
leads, however, to a simplification more apparent than real. “The
Kingdom eludes definition. It is both present and future. “The
full significance of the phrase “‘ the Kingdom of God” is presumed to
be intelligible only to those who believe in Jesus as the Christ, and
yet when Peter declares his belief, the obscure title Son of Man is
1 The literary structure of the Gospels has been minutely examined by
three German scholars since the war. The conclusion arrived at is that the
Gospel framework is a literary creation, which emerged from the Hellenistic
Christian community ; cf. K. L. Schmidt, Der Rahmen der Geschichte Fesu,
19193 M. Dibelius, Formgeschichte des Evangeliums, 1919; R. Bultmann, Die
Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition, 1921.
164 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels
substituted for that of the Christ (Mark iv. 11, vill. 29-32).
Thus the Christology underlies the idea of the Kingdom, and the
title Son of Man underlies the Christology, and the eschatology
underlies the whole. “The problem which has to be solved can be
clearly formulated. Is this complexity due to the existence
within the Synoptic Tradition of various strata of Christian piety
with which the original tradition has been successively overlaid, or
is the origin of this obscurity to be sought in the life and teaching
of Jesus? If it be maintained that the latter is demanded by the
evidence of the documents, then a synthesis of the apparently
divergent elements in His teaching must be found.
2. Canons of Historical Criticism
No solution of these intricate problems is possible without
strict adherence to carefully defined canons of historical criticism.
Some of these need stating by way of illustration. (1) Passages
which do not occur in the earliest documentary sources, but which
are found in later sources, should not be dismissed as necessarily
originating at the date of the document in which they are found.
Therefore S1 and S2 may be as valuable as 4Zand Q. ‘They may
be even more primitive. (2) Editorial corrections of an older
document need not necessarily be bad corrections. Ifa document
be open to misinterpretation, an editorial correction, however
clumsy, may nevertheless correctly elucidate its meaning. “There-
fore the Matthean-Lucan alterations of JZ and Q require careful
and sympathetic attention. For example, “ Blessed are the poor
in spirit”’ (Matt. v. 3) may well be an admirable gloss on the saying
recorded by St. Luke, “ Blessed are ye poor” (Luke vi. 20).
(3) If a word occurs only in a comparatively late document, it
does not follow that what is expressed by the word is secondary.
Therefore, for example, from the fact that the word “‘ Church” is
not found in the Synoptic Gospels exceptin S1, and then only twice
(Matt. xvi. 18, xvill. 17), it cannot be assumed that the existence
of a corporate body of believers, into which men and women could
enter and from which they could be excluded, did not form an
integral part of primitive Christian tradition.t (4) Ifthe analysis of
a document disentangles distinct strata of subject-matter, it must not
1 Commenting on Matt. xvi. 18, Montefiore writes : “‘ This passage could
only have been written after the death of Jesus, for the Christian community
was hardly founded by Jesus, but only after his death on the basis of his supposed
Need of a Synthetic Solution 165
be presumed that the dates of their origin can be arranged in definite
chronological order.) Therefore, if the analysis of the Gospels
reveals Jesus as a prophet, as the Messiah, and as the Saviour of the
world, and His teaching as consisting of moral exhortations, of
eschatological predictions, and of the promise of supernatural re-
generation and immortality, it does not follow that this represents
merely successive stages in the development of Christian faith and
experience. And as a rider to this it also follows that, in dealing
with religious texts which chiefly record supernatural events, and
yet contain much that is normal and human, it must not be assumed
that what can easily be paralleled from human experience Is
historical, and that what is supernatural has been superimposed by
the irrational credulity of later enthusiastic believers. It must,
nevertheless, be allowed that an experience felt to be supernatural
tends to be expressed symbolically, and the symbolical language or
actions are capable of misinterpretation as literal fact, without,
however, the symbolism being thereby necessarily obscured.
Alterations in religious texts, which appear at first sight to be
caused merely by a “‘love of heightening the miraculous,” are
more often due to an instinctive desire to perfect the symbolism in
such a way that the reality may thereby be given more vivid and
adequate expression. Therefore, for example, when it Is found
that $2 contains a parable, the subject of which is the destruction
resurrection.” With this may be compared the interpretation of Matt. xvill.
1g—-18 given by Estlin Carpenter: “ The church whose authority may be
invoked is very different from the Master’s “Kingdom of God’; and the
rejection of the evil doer on to the level of the heathen or the publican hardly
savours of the tireless love which came to seek and to save the lost. Here,
likewise, may we not say, the practice of the later community seeks shelter
under the Founder’s sanction” (The First Three Gospels, chap. i. 4). Compare the
conclusion most solemnly stated by H. Holtzmann : ‘‘ Therefore it is generally
recognised that Mt. (in xviii. 17) has substituted the Church for the Kingdom
of God just as he hasrdone in xvi. 18, 19. To-day, the impossibility of finding
in Jesus a founder of a church is accepted by all theologians who can be taken
seriously ” (N. T. Theologie, 2nd Ed., vol. ii, p. 268, n. 3).
1 Upon this assumption Bousset built the theory which he elaborately
developed in Kyrios Christos: ‘‘ There will emerge from the presentation
(ie. of the history of the Christology) a clear distinction between the original
community in Palestine and in Jerusalem, and between Jerusalem and Antioch.
At the same time it will, I hope, become clear how far Paul belongs pre-eminently
to the Hellenistic primitive communities, thus making a contribution to the
solution of the great problem of the relation between Paul and Jesus. The
first two chapters of my book, which treat of the primitive community in
Jerusalem, form also no more than the introduction, the starting-point, for the
presentation which follows” (Kyrios Christos, p. Vi).
166 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels
of a fig-tree (Luke xiii. 6-9), and that JZ includes an incident in
which a fig-tree is cursed and destroyed (Mark xi. 12-21) it is
possible that the latter is a later form of the former. But in both
cases the fig-tree symbolises Judaism, which failed to produce the
fruit (righteousness) demanded by the Messiah, and the trans-
formation of the parable into a miracle emphasises rather than
obscures the symbolism. Considerable portions of the Synoptic
Tradition may perhaps have been influenced by similar trans-
formations.
Finally, (5) In cases where a word or a phrase in an ancient
document can be translated or paraphrased by a word or phrase in
common use at a later period, it does not follow that the meaning of
the original is best reproduced by such a translation or paraphrase :
it may be even completely obscured. For instance, “ “Thou art my
beloved Son ”’ seems an obvious rendering of the original Greek in
the narrative of the Baptism (Mark 1. 11, Lukeii. 22), but the sug-
gestion of uniqueness, which belongs to the Greek word ayanytég}
is in no way reproduced by the English word “ beloved.” Hence
the use of such phrases as “ the call of Jesus,” or “the supreme
intuition of his divine mission,” ? tends to obscure the meaning of
the passage, by employing easily understood language to paraphrase
language which is strange and allusive.
3. Fallacies in the Liberal Protestant Reconstruction
‘Tested by such canons as these, the popular reconstruction of
the various stages in the development of primitive Christianity is
found to rest upon a series of brilliant and attractive intuitive judg-
ments rather than upon a critical and historical examination of
the data supplied by the documents. S1 and S2 are used just in
so far as they are convenient. ‘The parable of the Prodigal Son .
(Luke xv. 11-32, $2) is held to be original because forgiveness
of sin 1s not complicated by any reference to the atoning death of
the Christ, whilst the speech at Nazareth (Luke iv. 16-30, 82),
which concludes with the prophecy of the rejection of Jesus by the
Jews and of His acceptance by the Gentiles, is treated as a Lucan
1 Cf. The Fournal of Theological Studies, July 1919, pp. 339 ff., Jan. 1926,
pp. 113 ff., and the detached note on “* The Beloved ”’ as a Messianic title in
Armitage Robinson, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, pp. 229 f.
2 Loisy, Ewvangiles Synoptiques, i. 408, quoted by Montefiore, The Synoptic
Gospels, 1. 47.
Need of a Synthetic Solution 167
composition !; and the important sayings, “ But I havea baptism to
be baptised with ; and howam Istraitened till it be accomplished !”’
(Luke xii. 50, $2), and “Fear not, little flock; for it is your
Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom ” (Luke Siu 2sny oy
are hardly mentioned. The subject-matter of the Sermon on the
Mount is accepted as authentic throughout (Matt. v.—vil., Q + ST),
but no reference is made to the parable of the Drag-net (Matt. xiii.
47-50, SI), or to the saying addressed to St. Peter, embedded in
the episode of the Stater in the Fish’s Mouth, “’Yherefore the
sons are free” (Matt. xvil. 26, ST).
St. Mark’s Gospel is regarded as a primary source, but the
narratives of the Stilling of the Storm, the Walking on the Sea, and
the Transfiguration are dismissed as altogether untrustworthy,
even though they record the awe experienced by the disciples in
the presence of Jesus and their halting, stammering questions,
“They feared exceedingly, and said one to another, Who then is
this?’ (Mark iv. 41), ‘* They were sore amazed in themselves ”’
(Mark vi. 51), ‘They became sore afraid . . . questioning
among themselves what the rising again from the dead should
mean” (Mark ix. 6, 10). Nor is any serious attempt made to
explain the significant fact that this attitude is accepted and even
encouraged by Jesus, which suggests that He regarded a true
interpretation of His Person as only possible on the basis of some
such experience. Sayings firmly rooted in the tradition, such as
1 Montefiore comments on Luke iv. 14-30: ‘“‘ Luke now makes a great
change from the order of Mark. B. Weiss supposes that in doing this he
followed his extra special authority (L); it is more probable that the transporta-
tion of the rejection in Nazareth to this place, and the variants in, and additions
to, the story are entirely the work of the Evangelist. His aim is to symbolise
the rejection of the Gospel and the Christ by the Jews, and their acceptance by
the Gentiles. The miracles which Jesus is said to work outside Nazareth
represent the diffusion of the Gospel beyond Israel. The widow of Sarepta
and Naaman are types of Christians who were once heathen” (Syn. Gosp.,
ii. 872). Commenting, however, on Luke xv. 11-32, he describes the parable of
the Prodigal Son as “the purest Judaism,” and quotes with approval the
remarks of J. Weiss: “‘ The gospel of the grace of God is announced without
any reference to the cross or the redemptive work of Christ. There is no hint
that the love of God must first be set free, so to speak, or that a redeemer
is needed. Jesus trusts in His heavenly Father that without more ado He will
give His love to every sinner who comes to God in penitence and humble
confidence. Thus our parable is in fact a ¢ gospel’ in miniature, but not a gospel
of Christ or of the cross, but the glad tidings of the love of the heavenly
Father for His children” (Syn. Gosp. ii. 9913 cf. Jiilicher, Die Gleichnisreden
Fest, i. 365).
168 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels
‘*’The Son of man is delivered up into the hands of men, and they
shall kill him ; and when he is killed, after three days he shall rise
again”? (Mark ix. 31), or “The Son of man came not to be
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for
many ”” (Mark x. 45), are held to be secondary and to owe their
present form either to the influence of Paulinism or to the first
efforts of the Christians to create formulas which were developed
later into creeds entirely foreign to the teaching of Jesus.
The use in the New Testament of language which can be
paralleled from the surviving records of popular Greek and Eastern
religious cults is presumed to imply an assimilation of primitive
Christian piety to Greek-Oriental models. The possibility that
such language may have. expressed and effectually reproduced a
relationship to Jesus which existed from the beginning, and which
it had been the main purpose of His life and death to evoke, is
hardly ever seriously discussed.
The assumption that the original preaching of the Gospel was
simple and at once intelligible to ordinary people, and was only
misunderstood by the Jewish authorities, whose sympathy had been
perverted by hard and unbending ecclesiasticism, underlies the
reconstruction outlined above, and conditions the manipulation of
the analysis of the subject-matter of the Synoptic Gospels. What
is supernatural is transferred to the period of growth, what is
human and merely moral and philanthropic and anti-ecclesiastical
is assumed to be primitive and original. “The miracles and the
Christological passages are, therefore, treated primarily as pre-
senting literary and historical rather than religious problems
Consequently their value as evidence for the existence of a unique
experience dependent upon a unique faith is entirely overlooked.
The possibility has, however, to be reckoned with that the ex-
perience of salvation through Christ, or as St. Paul calls it, Justi-.
fication by Faith, rather than an ethical humanitarianism was from
the beginning the essence of the Christian religion, and that the
conviction of salvation was from the beginning the peculiar posses-
sion of the body of the disciples who surrounded Jesus, and that
the peculiarly Christian love of God and of men followed, but did
not precede, the experience of salvation by faith in Christ, and the
incorporation into the body of His disciples. In other words,
not only may the supernatural element have been primitive and
original, but also that exclusiveness, which is so obviously a char-
Need of a Synthetic Solution 169
acteristic of Catholic Christianity, may have its origin in the
teaching of Jesus rather than in the theology of St. Paul.
These criticisms are not, however, wholly to the point unless
the exegesis of the Marcan narrative of the Baptism, upon which
the whole reconstruction ultimately rests, can be shown to be
unsatisfactory and misleading. It isclaimed that the natural mean-
ing of the narrative is that Jesus, conscious of the need of repent-
ance, and therefore possessing a sense of sin, came to be baptised
by John. At the moment of His baptism He passed through a
religious experience, of which He alone was conscious, and that
He then felt Himself called to associate Himself with the work of
the Baptist. “Thus, in spite of all the later Christological accre-
tions, there is preserved in St. Mark’s Gospel a genuine reminiscence
of the consecration of Jesus to the work of a prophet, in the light
of which the claim to the Messiahship, if He did make the claim,
must be interpreted. “The Matthean version of the Baptism shows
the early church in the process of obliterating all traces of this
human experience by the insertion of the preliminary conversation
between Jesus and John, and by the substitution of “ This is my
beloved Son” for “‘’Thou art my beloved Son,” which has the
effect of transforming an intimate personal experience into a public
proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah (Mt. 1. 13-17, AZ + S1).
But is the Marcan narrative really capable of such psychologi-
cal treatment? And is it necessary to convict Matthew of such
wilful and unprincipled editing? “The Second Gospel opens with
the description of John the Baptist as the forerunner of the Christ,
preparing “‘ the way of the Lord,” and proclaiming the advent of
the Messiah to baptise with the Holy Spirit. Jesus is then im-
mediately introduced, coming unknown and unrecognised among
the crowd, and His baptism is narrated as the fulfilment of the
great Messianic passages in Isaiah xi. 1-9, xlii. 1-4, Ixi. 1-3, and
in Psalm ii. 7. Most significantly the latter half of the citation
from the Psalm (ii. 7), “‘ This day have I begotten thee,” is
omitted, and an echo of Isaiah xlii. 1, ‘““ In whom I am well
pleased,” substituted for it. No less significant is the inser-
1 The citation from Ps. ii. 7 is completed in some manuscripts of the Lucan
version of the Baptism (Da bc ff?). Canon Streeter considers this to be the
original reading of Luke iii. 22 (The Four Gospels, pp. 143,276). Itis more
easily explained as an assimilation to the Psalm. Even if it were original in
Luke, its Christological significance cannot be unduly pressed, since in Acts xiii.
33 the citation is applied to the resurrection.
170 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels
tion of the word “beloved,” which at least suggests uniqueness,
and may be a synonym for “only begotten.” + “hus the intelligent
reader, who is expected to feel the allusions, is from the outset
initiated into the secret of the Messiahship of Jesus. “The question
as to whether there was or was not a moment when He became
the Son of God is neither raised nor answered by the Evangelist.
Having made it perfectly plain that Jesus is the Christ, the Son
of God, he proceeds to record the steps by which the disciples
were led to accept Him as the Messiah. ‘The introduction to
the Gospel which consists of the preaching of John the Baptist,
and the account of the Baptism of Jesus, must therefore be inter-
preted by the whole narrative which follows, and especially by
the Transfiguration, the Grucifixion, and the Resurrection.
If the Marcan narrative be open to this interpretation, the
Matthean corrections admit of a comparatively simple explanation.
They do not involve the transformation of a human prophet into
a supernatural Messiah, since the Marcan source itself implies a
supernatural Christology. “hey do, however, gloss over the
reiterated emphasis laid by St. Mark on the fact that the Messiah-
ship of Jesus was recognised by none except by the evil spirits
until the confession of Peter, and that it was not proclaimed in
public until the trial before Caiaphas. “Ihe use of the baptismal
narratives for an analysis of the religious experience of Jesus is at
best a very hazardous procedure, and almost inevitably results in
confining His experience within a framework supplied by an
incomplete knowledge of the psychology of vocation.
‘The conclusion to which these arguments have been leading is
that, so far as the subject-matter of the Gospel is concerned, no
one of the Synoptic Gospels can be contrasted with the others, nor
can portions of the Gospels be set over against the remainder, nor
is there any evidence of the existence of older lost Christian |
documents which contradict those which survive. “The main
problem of the origin of Christianity can, therefore, be stated
with considerable precision. Was this unity of subject-matter
achieved in the period between the crucifixion and the date when
the Christian tradition was first committed to writing? Or did
1 In the LXX the Hebrew word 1)m is translated indiscriminately by
[ovoryevng or KYATNTOS (Judg. 4 345 Tob, til.n8,. vic 243 Ps. ceva
Gen. xxii: 2,-12,/16, Am. Vill..10, Jer. vi. 26.5 ch. Mk. xii) 6, Lk xx teva
Vlil. 42, 1x. 38). See references, p. 166, note r.
Need of a Synthetic Solution ua
it originate with the teaching of Jesus? In solving this problem
the personal judgment of the historian can never be wholly
eliminated. For example, even if it be granted that the Marcan
narrative of the Baptism implies a supernatural Christology, it is
still possible for the critic to claim that Mark was himself influenced
by a developing Christology, and that he has allowed his narrative
to be controlled by it. ‘This must, however, remain no more
than a supposition so long as it is supported by no documentary
evidence ; and the necessity for some such supposition is con-
siderably reduced if it can be shown that the elements which
together form the subject-matter of the Gospels are capable of a
synthesis.
V
GovERNING IDEAS OF THE GOSPELS
1. The Kingdom of God
The petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven,” indicate that the
phrase ‘‘ the Kingdom of God,” or “‘ of Heaven,” is more than a
poetical representation of an ideal. It presumes that the Kingdom
of God exists in heaven. In the immediate presence of God
His sovereignty is complete and absolute, and heaven is the sphere
in which that sovereignty operates perfectly and eternally. “The
genitives which qualify the word “‘ Kingdom” are primarily
genitives of origin. If the Kingdom is to be established on earth,
it must come from God or from Heaven. Thus the salvation of
men, that is their incorporation into the sphere in which the
sovereignty of God operates, is only possible either by their ascen-
sion into the heavens, or by the descent and extension of the
supernatural order from heaven to earth. Salvation is therefore
conceived of as necessarily dependent upon an act of God. ‘The
conception that the human order can be transformed into the
Kingdom of Heaven by a process of gradual evolution is completely
foreign to the New ‘Testament.
The Synoptic Gospels assume throughout that the supernatural
order has descended to earth. “The Kingdom has come. ‘The
Beelzebul speech (Mark iii. 20-30, Matt. xii. 22-30, Luke xi.
14-23), in which our Lord’s interpretation of His miracles, of the
72 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels
call of the disciples, and of their acceptance of His call is recorded,
gives this classical expression. Beelzebul, the Prince of the evil
. spirits, has usurped authority over men, and has become, as his
name indicates, the master of the house (cf. Matt. x. 25).1 “The
miracles of Jesus are effectual signs that a stronger than Beelzebul
has come. “The Mighty One is robbing the Prince of evil of his
authority, and spoiling his goods. When the twelve accepted the
call of Jesus, they passed from the sovereignty of Beelzebul under
the authority of the Christ ; and the family of Jesus who do the will
of God is thus sharply distinguished from the house of Beelzebul
(Mark il. 33-35, cf. Matt. xii. 30, Luke xi. 23). But the under-
lying distinction is between the Kingdom of God and of His Christ,
and the Kingdom of Satan. “The Matthean-Lucan addition to the
Marcan narrative, “Then the kingdom of God is come upon
you” (Matt. xii. 28, Luke xi. 20), is admirably appropriate. “The
authority of Satan is undermined by the advent of the Christ, and
by the descent of the Kingdom of God (cf. Luke x. 18). The new
supernatural order has descended upon earth, and is realised in
Jesus and His disciples. Because He is the Christ from heaven,
they have become the sons of the Kingdom and the Messianic
people of God, to whom the mystery of the Kingdom has been
given. ‘Lhe true love of God and of men is thus embodied in a
living organism.
Judaism is, therefore, superseded and fulfilled. “The authority
exercised by the chief priests and scribes and Pharisees passes to the |
disciples of the Christ, and especially to the twelve apostles, who as
the twelve patriarchs of the new people of God are to lead the
Messianic mission to the world, to cast out devils and fish for
men. Finally, they will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve
tribes of Israel: ‘‘ Fear not, little flock ; for it is your Father’s
good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke xii. 32, xxii. 28-30,
Matt. xix. 28, cf’ Mark i. 17, xi. 9). This radical attitude to
Judaism, which gives point to the parable of the Wicked Husband-
men and to the Cursing of the Fig-Tree, underlies the whole of
our Lord’s teaching. Judaism is superseded, not because a new
1 The name Beelzebul may mean either Lord of dung or Lord of the habita-
tion. Mt. x. 25, and the whole sense of the Beelzebul speech, seem to demand
a play upon words. Jesus is the true, Beelzebul the false, Lord of the house.
The variant reading Beelezebub, which occurs in no Greek manuscript, is best
explained by assimilation to 2 Kings, 1, 2, 6, when the significance of the name
Beelzebul was not understood (cf. Swete, St. Mark ad Mk. iii, 22).
Governing Ideas of the Gospels ce)
prophet has arisen, but because the Messiah has come and effected
the purification of the heart and brought into being the new People
of God. The Messianic Kingdom has arrived and Judaism is ful-
filled by the advent of the Messiah and by the actual righteousness
which belief in Jesus carried with it. Of this Messianic purifica-
tion and illumination the miracles are signs and symbols. “The
blind who see, the dumb who speak, the lepers who are cleansed,
the hungry who are fed, and the dead who are raised have their
more important counterparts in the apostolic vision of the Christ
at the Transfiguration, in St. Peter’s convinced declaration after
a long period of inarticulate stammering that Jesus is the Christ,
in the cleansing of Mary Magdalene, Levi, and Zacchaeus, in the
Eucharistic bread and wine, and in the eternal life which is promised
to those who leave all and follow Jesus. “The apostles, having
heard the call of the Christ and having been incorporated into the
supernatural order of the Kingdom, are the true believers in God
and the true lovers of men, and as such are given especial authority.
They are the salt of the earth, and to them is entrusted the Messianic
purification of the world.
2. The Humiliation of the Christ
During the earthly ministry of the Christ all this is veiled in
obscurity, not because the Kingdom will only come with the end
of the world, but because He must first complete His work. “The
humiliation of the Christ of divine necessity (Mark vill. 31)
precedes the apostolic mission to the world, because this mission,
to be effective, depends upon His death and glorification. Until
this is accomplished His disciples are ignorant both of the meaning
of His life and teaching and of their own significance for the world.
The humiliation of the Christ underlies the Synoptic ‘Tradition
throughout, and is carefully emphasised, as a comparison with the
Apocalypse clearly shows. He was subject to temptation, His
power was dependent upon faith and prayer, the sphere of His
work was limited to Jews resident in Palestine, He was compelled
to face the united opposition of the Jewish authorities. He spoke
in parables and His actions were symbolic, because the Gospel
could not be nakedly expressed. Of this humiliation the cruci-
fixion was both the climax and the completion, for by it the Christ
was both freed and glorified.
174 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels
‘* | have a baptism to be baptised with ; and how am I straitened
till it be accomplished ! ” (Luke xi. 50).
“The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by
the elders, and the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and
after three days rise again” (Mark viil. 31).
The death of the Christ was, however, far more than a
necessary stage in His personal glorification; it inaugurated a new
order, as the sacrifice on Mount Sinai inaugurated the Old Covenant.
Our Lord’s words at the Last Supper must be taken primarily
as assigning to His death redemptive significance.
3. The Via Crucis
It is not, however, suggested that this liberty of the Christ,
accomplished through His death and glorification, will carry
with it at once the liberty of His disciples. “They must remain in
the world and succeed to His former position. If He was the
humiliated Son of God, they are to be the humiliated sons of God.
‘The persecuted and humiliated Christ 1s to be succeeded by the
persecuted and humiliated disciples ; but whereas His work was
limited to Jews, the sphere of their work will not be thus bounded
(Mark xiii. 9-13, 27). In other respects they must follow in His
footsteps. Possessing supernatural power, they will be tempted
from within and from without to misuse it ; their power will be
dependent, as His was, upon faith and prayer ; they must take up
their cross, for they also will be brought before governors and kings
for His sake! ; they must be willing to die. For some, as for
Judas, these demands will prove too severe and they will return
whence they had been rescued—that is, they will pass from the
Kingdom of God to the Kingdom of Beelzebul. Into this life
of Christian humiliation the disciples were initiated by the words.
spoken at the Last Supper. “The Last Supper, therefore, both
1 Professor Burkitt (Christian Beginnings, p. 147) holds that “‘ governors
. and kings”? (Mark xiii. 9) are Roman officials and Herods in Palestine, and that
‘the mental horizon is still Palestine, not a formal worldwide evangelization.”
In the context, however, in which the saying stands, the horizon is not Palestine
merely (xill. 8, 13,27). The eschatological mission of salvation before the End
can, it is true, hardly be described as a formal evangelization. Mark xii. con-
tains no suggestion of formality. If it be granted that the chapter refers to an .
eschatological mission which, after the death of the Lord, the disciples are to
lead beyond the boundaries of Palestine, there seems every reason to regard
Mark xiii. as, at least, reminiscent of words spoken by Jesus.
Governing Ideas of the Gospels 175
gave formally to the death of the Christ its redemptive value and
also formally initiated the disciples into the mystical and actual
participation in His sacrifice and of its benefits. The disciples
must share in His broken Body and His outpoured Blood. Only
thus could they be enabled to continue His work, to share in His
victory over sin and death, to take up their cross confidently and
follow Him, and to endure the hostility of the world until the End.
4. The New Righteousness and Eternal Life
The Synoptic Tradition presumes eternal life to be dependent
on moral conversion effected by belief in the Christ and by incor-
poration into the body of the disciples of Jesus. “The apostolic
Gospel, therefore, is both a gospel of supernatural moral purification
and a gospel of immortality. Possessing the supernatural righteous-
ness of the heart, the disciples possess also eternal life, and those who
have received and maintained this righteousness need not fear the
Judgment which is to come. “The Christian gospel of immortality
has its roots in Jewish eschatology as transformed by our Lord,
rather than in the cycle of ideas and experiences characteristic of
Greek-Oriental mystery cults.
The character of the new Messianic righteousness, upon which
the Christian hope of ultimate immortality is based, is illustrated
in our Lord’s teaching on marriage and divorce. Moses, He
allowed, wisely permitted divorce, because of the hardness of men’s
hearts, and Judaism rightly followed his teaching. But with the
coming of the Christ and the consequent entrance of those who
believe on Him into the sovereignty of God, this hardness of heart
has been removed, and His disciples can not only, therefore, fulfil
the law of God promulgated in the second chapter of Genesis,
‘“‘ Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall
cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Gen. 1. 24,
quoted Mark x. 7, 8, Matt. xix. 5), but they can even, for the sake
of the Kingdom, remain celibate without falling into sin (Matt. xix.
12). Hence adultery and fornication among Christians are not to
be regarded as lapses from a moral law, but as apostasy from the
Kingdom. Similarly, the purpose of the Sermon on the Mount is
to describe the new Messianic righteousness by which the old 1s
authoritatively superseded and fulfilled, rather than to construct
a new moral law on the basis of the old. Still less is the Sermon on
176 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels
the Mount a loosely constructed list of ideal moral virtues. “The
advent of the Christ and the existence of the Messianic community
which He has brought into being are presumed throughout. “he
most serious humiliation of the Christians is that this righteousness
which they have received has to be maintained in the face of
manifold temptations, and may be lost. It is possible for the
salt to lose its savour, and of this Judas becomes the terrible
symbol.
‘The emphasis on the humiliation of the Christ and on the
subsequent humiliation of His disciples 1s crossed by the eschatology
which alone renders the whole position tolerable and intelligible.
Though the humiliation of the Christ ends with His death and
resurrection, the humiliation of His Ecclesia must last until He
returns, not this time unknown and unrecognised, but in glory,
on the clouds, and visible to all. “Then the righteous will be
separated from the unrighteous, and the Kingdom will be established
in glory and for ever. ‘he final reunion of the Christ and His
disciples is also foreshadowed in the words spoken at the Last Supper.
The Eucharist looks forward beyond the humiliation of the Christ,
beyond the humiliation of His disciples, to the time when it will
be no longer possible for them to share in the sacrifice of His body
and blood, for He will drink the wine new with them in the
Kingdom of God (Mark xiv. 25). “The Eucharist is, therefore,
as St. Paul says, the commemoration of the Lord’s death “ tz// he
come”’ (1 Cor. xi. 26). But when the Kingdom will come in
glory, or when the Christ will return, no one can know ; of this
even the Christ Himself was ignorant. Only this is certain :
the Gospel must first be preached to all nations, and, what is a far
more difficult task, it must be preached in all the cities of Israel.
But the impression given by the Synoptic Gospels is that the End
will not be long delayed.
VI
CONCLUSION
From this reconstruction it will be seen at once that a whole
series of contrasts underlies the Synoptic Tradition. “These con-
trasts, however, do not break the unity of the whole, since they
are capable of synthesis. The failure of most modern scholars to
formulate the contrasts correctly has led to their failure to recognise
the possibility of a synthesis. The contrast is not between the
Conclusion 1A
Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, but between the Christ
humiliated, and the Christ returning in glory ; the two being held
together by the title Son of Man which suggests both (Ezek. i. 1,
Psalm vill. 4-6, Dan. vii. 13, 14, interpreted by Enoch xlvi. 2,
2 Esdras xiii.) : “‘ The Son of man must suffer” (Mark vill. 31) ;
“The Son of man hath not where to lay his head ” (Luke ix. 58) ;
‘*’Ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and
coming with the clouds of heaven’ (Mark xiv. 62); ‘“ And he
said unto his disciples, (he days will come when ye shall desire to
see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it. And
they shall say to you, Lo, there! Lo, here! go not away, nor
follow after them : for as the lightning, when it lighteneth out of
the one part under the heaven, shineth unto the other part under
heaven ; so shall the Son of man be in his day. But first must he
suffer many things and be rejected of this generation ”’ (Luke xvii.
22-25). “The double significance of the title Son of Man may
have caused our Lord to use it for the interpretation of His Person,
in preference to the easily misunderstood title “ the Christ.” “The
contrast is not between a reformed and an unreformed Judaism,
but between Judaism and the new supernatural order by which it
is at once destroyed and fulfilled : not between the disciples of a
Jewish prophet and the members of an ecclesiastically ordered
sacramental cultus, but between the disciples of Jesus, who, though
translated into the sovereignty of God, are as yet ignorant both of
His claims and of the significance of their own conversion, and the
same disciples, initiated into the mystery of His Person and of His
life and death, leading the mission to the world, the patriarchs of
the new Israel of God. ‘The contrast is not between an ethical
teaching and a dreamy eschatology, or between a generous humani-
tarlanism and an emotional religious experience stimulated by
mythological beliefs, but between a supernatural order characterised
by a radical moral purification involving persistent moral conflict
and the endurance of persecution, and a supernatural order in which
there is no place either for moral conflict or for persecution. “Thus
stated the contrasts are capable of synthesis by a fairly simple view
of history. Judaism is fulfilled by the advent of the Christ, who
inaugurates the new order, which is the Kingdom of God on
earth. “The existence, however, of the Kingdom of God and of
the kingdoms of the world together involves conflict and opposition,
which is to last till the return of the Christ and the final destruction
N
178 The Christ of the Synoptic Gospels
of evil, when the Kingdom will come in earth as it is in heaven, or,
to use St. Paul’s phrase, when God shall be all in all.
A synthesis of the contradictory elements within the Synoptic
Tradition having been thus achieved, the last step in the historical
reconstruction of the origin of the Christian religion is almost
inevitable. “This was the Gospel proclaimed by Jesus, and these
were the claims made by the Jesus of history for Himself and for
His disciples. Ultimately this conclusion is, and must be, a
subjective judgment, but it is a conclusion from which it is
exceedingly difficult to escape.
It remains only to point out what is gained by this alternative
reconstruction. ‘The historian is freed from the necessity of being
compelled to assume that a foreign influence was exerted upon
primitive Christianity between the crucifixion and the appearance
of the earliest Pauline Epistles, and he is therefore enabled to treat
the development represented by the Pauline Epistles, the Johannine
writings, and the literature of the Catholic Church of the second
century primarily as a spontaneous Christian development. “The
commentator will find that the New Testament is one book, not
merely because certain documents have been collected together by
ecclesiastical authority or by common Christian usage, but because
it presumes an underlying unity of faith and experience.
In conclusion it may be suggested that the results of a purely
historical investigation of the origins of Christianity have a more
than purely historical importance. “There seems no reason to
doubt that the characteristic features of Catholic piety have their
origin in our Lord’s interpretation of His own Person and of the
significance of His disciples for the world. ‘The religion of the
New ‘Testament provides, therefore, a standard by which the
Catholicism of succeeding generations must be tested, and which
it must endeavour to maintain.
THE INCARNATION
BY JOHN KENNETH MOZLEY
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THe DocTRINE AND THE GOSPELS . : : F ei By
I]. "THe Reaction AGAINST THE DocTRINE . : . neko
II]. Liperatism anp EscHaToLocy : : : F ee ay)
IV. Tue Doctrine oF THE Iwo Natures : F ; . 190
V. FurTHER CONSIDERATIONS IN RESPECT OF THE CHALCEDONIAN
CHRISTOLOGY . : : : : : 2 . O4
VI. Finat DirricutTies As TO THE DoctrRINE OF THE INCARNA-
TION EXAMINED : : ; : . 196
APPENDIX ON MIRACLE . : : : . . 199
Tue doctrine of the Person of Christ, in its historic form, gives
the fullest illumination to the doctrine of God and the fullest
expression of the doctrine of grace. “That is because the theologia
Christi is essentially, as Kaftan, the theologian of the Ritschlian
right wing, says, the doctrine of Christ’s Godhead. “ Christ 1s
spoken of as God’’ : so, in opposition to assailants of the Lord’s
real divinity, writes an anonymous author quoted by Eusebius,
with an appeal to the Fathers of the second century. If Christ is
perfect in His Godhead, then in Him God’s self-revelation reaches
its highest point, nor is there any peak beyond this peak which man
will, under the conditions of his earthly life, ever need to ascend
in order to gain the light of a fuller knowledge of God. ‘The
Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation rules out every thought of a
repetition of that supreme act in which God became man. It 1s
concerned with one who is truly God incarnate, not a temporary
avatar of deity. And the wealth of God’s favour to man is
pledged and given in the gift of the Son. ‘‘ How shall He not
with Him freely give us all things?”? The great problems of
theism, as they affect both speculative inquiry and practical
religion, come to the fullest rest which man can enjoy, in that
faith which has been the foundation of the victories of Christianity
in the world and the power in which those victories have been
won. Browning only puts in an absolute form the confidence
which the doctrine of Christ’s Godhead inspires :
I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ
Accepted by thy reason solves for thee
All questions in the earth and out of It.
It is natural enough that round this doctrine the most dramatic
controversy in the history of the Christian Church was fought
out; it is equally natural that in the religious world of to-day,
with all its cross-currents and hesitations, it is in relation to this
same doctrine that the most real divisions, productive of the most
far-reaching consequences, appear. ‘The religious discussions and
confessions of faith, to which so large a space has recently been
182 The Incarnation
given in popular journalism, all come to their critical turning-
point, whether the writers have perceived the fact or not, when
the choice has to be made between a Jesus as divine as the Father
and a Jesus whose divinity, if the term is used, is the immanental
divinity of the race at the highest point which it has yet reached.
And it is the crisis within all that calls itself Christian as well as
between Christianity and the world that lies without.
I
Tue DocrrinE AND THE GOSPELS
In the previous essay the question has been approached from
the side of the study of the Gospels and of the picture which they
give of Jesus Christ. Such a treatment is indispensable. In the
Christian religion historical facts and theological doctrine cannot be
detached from one another and put into separate compartments.
‘That issue was effectively settled in principle when the Gospels
came to be written. But the relation between the Gospels as
documents which certainly intend (let us for the moment put it
no higher than that) to record facts of history and the doctrine of
the Incarnation calls for much accurate discrimination. In the
first place, the Gospels are products of the doctrine in the form
which that doctrine possessed about the middle of the first century
or a few years later, and witnesses to it; they were not written
to establish it ; that is no more true of St. John’s Gospel than of
St. Mark’s. And, secondly, it is not necessary to hold that one,
and only one, evaluation of the historical matter in the Gospels
is essential to the doctrine. Among the various attempted re-
constructions of the Gospel history and delineations of the central
Figure, some, of course, make the interpretation which the Church
regards as the one true interpretation at least dificult. But even
radical criticism may compel the recognition of a mystery suz
generis about the Person of Jesus, and not compel but allow of
the belief that nothing less than the Catholic doctrine is an adequate
explanation of the facts. “That the “reduced Christology,” to
use Dr. Sanday’s phrase, of the liberal theologians of Germany
did cohere more or less closely with views as to the unreliability
of the Gospel narratives, especially of the Fourth Gospel, in the
report of sayings and doings of Jesus in which the element of
transcendence comes notably to the front, is undeniable. But
it makes a great difference whether this element is judged to have
The Doctrine and the Gospels 183
been intruded into the history, because an examination and com-
parison of strata and traditions can be brought to show or suggest
the unauthentic character of the Gospels at the points in question,
or whether the Gospels are pronounced to be unreliable in the
relevant passages because of the intrusion of this element. It 1s
not necessary, nor would it be right, to present these alternatives
as though, in practice, they could be quite clearly and sharply
differentiated from one another. But in so far as a place has to
be found for the second alternative, we are thrown back on to
distinctively theological issues. For the determining of those
issues other considerations must be present than the data of the
Gospels can by themselves, if taken in isolation, supply.
Il
THE REACTION AGAINST THE DocTRINE
We turn then to the doctrine itself, to the belief that in the
Person of Jesus Christ we have the incarnation of the eternal,
divine Son of God; and, first of all, to the reaction against that doc-
trine, or, at least, the deflection from it, characteristic of the many
Christologies which can be studied from rather different angles in
Schweitzer’s ‘‘ Quest of the Historical Jesus,” and in Sanday’s
“ Christologies Ancient and Modern.” It is noteworthy that the
very idea of a Christology, of a doctrine of Christ’s Person, implies
that in that Person there is present something, some overplus, as com-
pared with what is true of other persons. It is possible to adopt
what may be called a wholly humanitarian view of Jesus. Some
world-views necessitate such a conclusion. In such cases the break
with the Christian tradition is absolute. But whenever, against
a theistic background, it is recognised that there is something
in respect of the relation of Jesus to God which can be associated
with none other than Him, a step has been taken within the borders
of Christology. Though they may not be aware of the fact,
modern writers often raise just the same problem as underlies the
doctrine of the Church. Butin their thought there is less thorough-
ness and less care than is manifested in the theologians of the
Church. It is a curious fact that the accuracy with which the
theologian feels that it is necessary for him to try to approach the
expression of a coherent world-view seems, at times, almost to be
imputed to him as a fault, whereas the metaphysician is not subject
to this charge.
184 The Incarnation
What are the objections to a Christology which, while ad-
mitting an overplus in the Person of Jesus, surrenders the Catholic
doctrine of Christ’s Godhead, thus opposing itself to the Creed
of Nicaea not less than to the Definition of Chalcedon? In the
first place the break, at this point, is made with tradition precisely
where tradition is strongest. For the strength of tradition con-
sists not merely in consistency of belief but in the sense of what
is indispensable to life and health. If the Christian conception
of the meaning of existence is untrue, then the doctrine of the
Incarnation falls ; but if that conception is maintained and de-
fended as giving the true religious interpretation of the world ;
if that interpretation is found to be consistent only with a doctrine
of a personal God whose relations with the world are expressed
by such terms as creation, providence and redemption ; if, further,
Jesus is regarded as, in a special way, illuminating and even mediating
some of those relations, as possessing (a point on which Ritschl
laid great stress) a unique historical vocation; and if, finally,
a distinct place is kept for the truth and importance of the resur-
rection of Jesus, with whatever dissent from the form of the Gospel
narratives—then, in such case, the rejection of the doctrine
which has, in the history of Christian thought, been associated
not formally and externally, but by the most intimate of internal
connections, with the affirmations of Christian faith and the
struggles, heroisms and achievements of Christian practice, needs
to be justified by weightier arguments than are usually forthcoming.
The pages of criticism in Loofs’ small book “‘ What is the Truth
about Jesus Christ?” may be referred to as a careful and temperate,
while definite, attempt to show that the Catholic doctrine is
untenable. But apart from the fact that the Incarnation, as a
possibility for God, cannot be disproved by the exhibition of re-
sulting paradoxes which are then pleaded in support of the view
that the doctrine is irrational, it is, I think, fair to say that the
weakness of Lutheranism, and of German liberal theology in
general, in its grasp of the idea and importance of the Church,
makes it difficult for Loofs to appreciate the force of a question
which might be written across his book taken as a whole—TIf,
in such large respects as this work reveals, what the Church has
believed about Christ is true, is not the Church likely to be right
in that further belief about Him which makes of the Church’s
faith a coherent unity? Obviously it is impossible to reach more
The Reaction against the Doctrine 18 5
than a measure of probability along the lines of such a question,
and the argument involved possesses in this context the charac-
teristics and the limitations of an argumentum ad rem: never-
theless, it ought to be faced by those who agree that the Church
is right in ascribing to Christ a unique place in relation both to
God and to man and in striving to bring the world to an acknow-
ledgment of this His position, but is wrong in the interpretation
it offers—an interpretation which, in the fourth century crisis,
was essential to the survival of Christianity as vital religion.
Anyone who reads the fascinating account of the beginnings of
the Arian controversy, and especially of the contrasted doctrines
of Arius and Athanasius in Harnack’s ‘‘ History of Dogma,” may
well feel that he is preparing for himself a position of unstable
equilibrium if he tries to make his own what is, in effect, Harnack’s
conclusion, that Athanasius was religiously at the centre, dog-
matically absurd.1
Then, secondly, Christian experience decidedly favours the
Nicene doctrine of Christ’s true Deity. Warily though it is neces-
sary to walk in the attempt to apprehend the character and to
determine the tests of the argument from experience, it is possible
for any careful observer to arrive at certain results after a broad
survey of the course of Christian history. And whether attention
be directed to the Church as a whole or to the great Christian souls
who have revealed themselves to us, or, so far as that can be known,
to the piety of the individual Christian who has achieved no super-
eminent degree of saintliness and progressed not far along the
mystic way, the strength and the inspiration of life has been that
devotion and self-committal to Him, that trust in Him as Saviour
and loyalty to Him as Lord, which finds its completion in the
adoration of Himas God. But that is not all : not only are Christian
piety and the Christian life historically bound up with the con-
fession of the Godhead of Christ, so that each is intellectually
coherent with the other, but the highest ascents and the most
far-going adventures of Christian saints who have made of life
a continual means of sacramental or mystical communion with
God have been, at the same time, the attempt to win a fuller
1] have adapted a phrase quoted by Mr. H. G. Wood as used of W.
Herrmann, “religiously at the centre, dogmatically worthless.” Like all such
epigrams it is too sweeping. But Herrmann’s view of the relation of Christian
religion and faith to dogma makes it intelligible in his case, whereas in the case
of Athanasius the disjunction is far less tolerable.
186 The Incarnation
knowledge of Christ, and to discover more of the meaning of
what has been already confessed. If Christians had not believed
in the Godhead of Christ, both the most distinctive and the most
wonderful things in Christian experience would never have come
into existence. “[hat to which they witness is that from which
they have sprung. It is not simply a case of the creed being an
intellectual explication of the experience. If that were all,
there would be comparatively little difficulty in allowing that a
change in the creed would, after the necessary readjustments in
thought, make no difference to the future history of the experience.
But what has happened, when belief in Christ’s Godhead has been
given up and some other form of doctrine has taken its place,
gives no ground for any-such idea. If the richest and the most
penetrating kind of Christian experience is to continue, its con-
ditions will remain what they have always been.
And, thirdly, whereas the Catholic doctrine gives a rational
interpretation of the Person of Jesus in relation to God, and,
in connection with Him, of God in relation to the world, the
Christologies which stand on the other side find it hard to rise
above description to explanation. After accounts with historical
criticism have been settled the individual scholar or theologian
must, if he wishes to go as far as possible into the depths of his
subject-matter, put to himself such questions as ‘‘ How is it that
Jesus was the kind of person that the sources, after cross-examina-
tion, show Him to have been?” and “ Why did the primitive
communities think of Him after the fashion revealed throughout
the New Testament?” It is not easy to answer the first question
along the lines of a non-Catholic Christology, while keeping a
firm hold on the uniqueness of Christ. Arianism, in its historic,
dogmatic form, is as dead as an opinion can be, but the root-
difficulty of Arianism remains in Christologies which are quite
differently expressed and seem free enough from everything of
a mythological character. Historic Arianism made of Christ an
intermediate being whose physical characteristics isolated Him both
from God and from man. ‘The Christologies of modern times
do not isolate Christ so far as His nature is concerned ; as to that
He is man, simply and exclusively, with whatever affinities to
God man possesses in virtue of his Creator’s will, or, if the back-
ground of thought is pantheistic rather than theistic, of the terms
of the cosmic and evolutionary process. But the grand soli-
The Reaction against the Doctrine 187
tariness of Christ, His moral and spiritual difference, has been
constantly emphasised, and much made of those features in His
life and teaching which belong to Him as they do not belong
to others, and which we do not associate with mankind in general.
As to how and why this should be so, a Christology which rejects
the doctrine of the Incarnation cannot readily explain. As the
medium of the conceptions of the world and of God’s dealings
with men which appear in the teaching of Jesus, Messianic and
apocalyptic notions may rightly be exhibited. But these do not
account for Him, and that is the heart of the problem. ‘The
belief that in Jesus the Spirit of God was present in the highest
degree is the nearest approach which liberal Christologies make
to the Catholic doctrine : but this doctrine does not so much solve
one problem as raise another, namely how we may understand
the action of God in the choice of a particular person at a particular
time for this superlative endowment ; or, if the stress Is laid rather
on the achievement of Jesus than on the work of God, how we
may understand the supremacy of Jesus in the moral and spiritual
sphere. Christologies of an immanental or inspirational character
involve in this case an ethical development per saltum to which
no parallel can be offered. “This perplexity, at least, does not
confront the believer in the Incarnation, since in that case what
we have is not a sudden break in the normal moral history of
the race, but a new beginning. St. Paul’s contrast drawn be-
tween the first Adam and the second is one way of expressing the
difference which Christ makes for mankind. But to find the
material for such a difference in the history of one individual
member of the race involves an assertion of spiritual relevance
in this one person such as challenges us to go further into the
meaning of a truth of which the phenomenon of His life affords
the one and only example.
But the belief that the historic doctrine of the Church has
advantages of a purely rational character over its rivals ought
not to prevent those who hold it from feeling a very real sympathy
with others who have been able neither to make the Church’s
doctrine their own nor to evacuate the Gospels of personal mystery.
A logic which may seem insuperable to others should not lead to
the attempt to force hard and fast alternatives on those who can
more easily be impaled upon a dilemma than saved by one. ‘The
Liberal reconstructions in Christology were not built to be
188 The Incarnation
immortal ; yet amid all the confusion of an era which inevitably
set its sons searching for guiding-posts to take the place of their
fathers’ landmarks, which were for the time at least, and some
thought for ever, being submerged beneath the incoming flood
of discovery and criticism, they did service to their own generation
and even beyond. ‘They aimed at showing the religious view
of the world to be concentrated in and mediated through the
Person of Jesus; they refused to admit that Christianity was
merely a department of religion, and religion of philosophy.
When all the reservations on which they insisted had been made,
it was still clearly the case that the history of Jesus Christ and
of Christianity was much more than one chapter in the compara-
tive history of the religious experiences of mankind.
Ti
LIBERALISM AND ESCHATOLOGY
A word may be said on the greatest difference in scientific
outlook between the Liberals on the one hand and their critics
from the side of eschatology on the other. For the former it
was natural to try to present the Person of Jesus as rationally
intelligible and interpretable in terms of the standards and ideas
of an age far later than His own. ‘That age, their own, was
being immensely affected in its world-view by the science and
criticism which were so striking a feature in the development
of its intellectual life. It would almost seem as though the
unconscious notion prevailed that He could be of use to the nine-
teenth century only by being shown to lack the characteristics
of a Jew of the first. So rationalisation entered not only into
explanations of narratives in the Gospels but also into the
delineations of the figure of Jesus. Against this the eschatologists
set their faces, and with much right. “They had strong arguments
to bring forward both in criticism and in theology. And when
those who have stood on this side have been penetrating enough,
as was the case with von Hiigel, they have deepened the impression
of mystery, to which the Liberals were not insensitive, in con-
nection with Jesus. “They have called attention to the strain
and tension which the Gospels reveal, by what they report of
some of His words and of His actions, to have beset Him. And
so, especially in connection with the life of the Church and its
dependence upon Him, they have heightened the sense of some-
Liberalism and Eschatology 189
thing extraordinary attaching to His Person by the very fact that
they have viewed it in its historical context. The eschatological
side of the Gospels, even if we admit the truth contained in von
Dobschiitz’ valuable phrase “transmuted eschatology,” involves
perplexities which neither the critic nor the theologian can hope
wholly to straighten out. But perplexity is not the only word.
The eschatological sayings of the Lord give us, as perhaps no
other part of the Gospels does, the power of appreciating some-
thing of the results in consciousness that might be expected to
follow upon that bringing together of God and man which the
doctrine of the Incarnation presupposes. Von Hiigel speaks
of the “junction between Simultaneity and Successiveness ”” ;
and unless the human were to be simply lost in the divine,
it would seem inevitable that conflict, or at least strain, should
follow upon junction. The narrative of the ‘Temptation suggests
its presence in one way, the eschatological sayings in another.
In both cases it is in connection with Christ’s Kingdom that
the signs of tension appear, and, even more fundamentally, in
connection with Jesus as King. In comparison with this side of
the Gospels the language of Nicaea and still more of Chalcedon
seems to present us with a static impassive union of two elements
human and divine. But the comparison is not apposite, and
ought not to be raised to the level of a contrast. In a formulary
the content of a historical situation does not need to be mentioned,
except in the briefest way and with reference to some fact that
has a special dogmatic significance, as when in the Nicene Creed,
it is said that Christ “was crucified also for us under Pontius
Pilate.’ The abstractions of a formulary are not to be taken
and applied as they stand to the concrete experiences of which
historical narratives tell. |The four words of the Chalcedonian
Definition which we translate ‘‘ without change, without con-
fusion, without division, without separation,” do no more than
say that in Christ what is divine remains divine and what Is
human remains human, while they are not isolated from one
another as they would be if there were one Person who was
divine and another Person who was human. How the divine and
the human acted in relation to and upon each other in Christ
they do not try to declare. Such statements were, indeed, not
lacking ; but, whatever be thought of them, they are not essential
deductions from the language of approved dogmatic decisions.
190 The Incarnation
IV
Tue DocrrinE OF THE “Two NATURES
If criticism has at times its conventions which are obstacles
to a clear understanding of the way in which progress may best
be made, that is also true of theology. In the doctrine of Christ’s
Person the disparagement of the formula of the “Iwo Natures
has become in some circles almost a convention. It is one from
which we have gained very little. Chalcedon can be criticised
as offering to us a psychological puzzle which we can never hope
to solve by any help which it gives us ; but if the doctrine of the
Incarnation is true, we cannot escape from a psychological puzzle.
If either the divine or the human element could be abandoned
or explained away we could avoid such puzzles. But if the ele-
ments are allowed to be there, in the life, then, whether we do
or do not use the phrase T’wo Natures, we recognise what the
formula recognises and puts on record.
But, it is said, the doctrine of the Iwo Natures is incompatible
with the unity of Christ’s Person. Dr. Mackintosh, in his well-
known and highly (and rightly) valued book, “The Person of
Jesus Christ,” lays great stress on this :—‘‘ The doctrine of the
two natures, in its traditional form, imports into the life of Christ
an incredible and thoroughgoing dualism. In place of that
perfect unity which is felt in every impression of Him, the whole
is bisected sharply by the fissure of distinction. No longer one,
He is divided against Himself. . . . Uhesimplicity and coherence
of all that Christ was and did vanishes, for God is not after all
living a human life. On the contrary, He is still holding Himself
at a distance from its experiences and conditions. “There has been
no saving descent. Christ executed this as God, it is said, and
suffered that as man.” }
Now it is quite true that inferences can be drawn from the
traditional statement of the doctrine which are very prejudicial
to real unity, and that a mode of expression, “ He did this as God,
that as man,” became habitual, which seems to suggest that the
danger was not avoided. But that is not to say that the Chalce-
donian phraseology is no longer possible for us, still less that we
cannot make the meaning of Chalcedon our own. Certainly
Christ was, and is revealed in the Gospels as, really one. His
personal unity is as unquestionable as Dr. Mackintosh affirms,
SR 2OAs
The Doctrine of the Two Natures Ig!
and as the theologians, who spoke in ways which suggest the
bisection of which he complains, would most sincerely have
confessed. And following out the line of thought of which Dr.
Moberly made so much we shall say that all the experiences
of Christ were the experiences of God in manhood. But unless
we are prepared to say that the divine is human and the human
is divine, we must admit a distinction between the two in the
Person of Christ and discover a relationship between them which
is dependent upon the fact that each of the terms “ divinity,”
“humanity,” expresses a real truth about the one, whole Person.
Let us take three descriptive phrases from documents of the
fifth century and see how the truth expressed by the Two Natures’
formula can be expressed in language which lacks the disputed
phrase, while at the same time exactly the same distinction is
made as that which is inherent in the theology and terminology
of the Two Natures. In Quicunque vult the writer points out,
as against views which were supposed to follow from the principles
of Apollinarius, that in the oneness of Christ we are to see not a
conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but a taking of the manhood
into God. ‘That does not mean a change of the substance of
manhood, but a new relationship of manhood to Deity under the
new conditions which have come into existence with the Incarna-
tion. Again, Leo in his “Tome” speaks of Christ as “ com-
plete in that which is His, complete in that which is ours” 5
the distinction is clear enough, but so also is the intimacy of the
relationship, since everything falls within the circle of the unity
of the one Person. Lastly, the Chalcedonian Definition itself
says that the one Lord Jesus Christ is “ complete in Godhead,
complete also the selfsame in manhood.”
If what the Church means by the word “incarnation”? is
a true belief, it is impossible not to speak in such ways as the above
references illustrate. If the words obog and natura had been
scrupulously avoided, the problem, except for a greater exactness
in definition, would have remained just the same.
The famous passage in Ignatius concerning the one physician
who is “spiritual and fleshly, of Mary and of God,” ? contains the
whole theological meaning and truth of the doctrine of the ‘I'wo
Natures. And when we say, as believers in the Incarnation
are bound to say, that Christ is truly God and truly man, while
1 Ad Ephes. vii, 2.
192 The Incarnation
at the same time we do not and cannot allow that He is the one
in virtue of being the other, we affirm what the traditional state-
ment affirms and mean the same thing.
In the passage which I have quoted, Dr. Mackintosh
exaggerates the dualistic impression which methods of employing
the doctrine of the T'wo Natures can convey, through not allowing
for the orthodox emphasis on the unity of the Person which is
the correlative of the emphasis on the duality of the natures.
And further, when he charges the doctrine with leaving no place
for a human life as lived by God, one may ask what the truth is
which this phrase implies and which Chalcedon omits and by
implication denies. For it is the one orthodox doctrine—and all
orthodox theologians, whatever differences appear among them,
agree in this—that all the experiences that fall within the circle
of the incarnate life are experiences of the one divine Person.
If the objection is that in the traditional theology a number of
experiences are selected as essentially human, and Christ is said
to have had them in respect of the flesh or of His humanity, one
may agree that, in so far as this suggests an alternation or action
by turns on the part of Christ, now as God, now as man, an arti-
ficial oscillation as between the human and the divine is introduced
into the picture of a life which is at unity with itself. And
further, it may be allowed that we can get very little way along
the lines of such distinctions within the sphere of the Incarnation.
But unless we are to be greatly embarrassed by a drift in the direction
of pantheism we must bring in the idea of human nature as inter-
mediate between God and human experience. “The Alexandrine
Christology, with all its stress upon the divine aspect of the Incar-
nation, was compelled to do this when, in its best representations,
it stopped short of monophysitism. So Cyril of Alexandria in
his ‘‘ Epistola dogmatica”’ explains the ascription to the Logos
of birth and death.
‘The doctrine of the Two Natures does not endanger the unity
of the Person when it is associated with that other doctrine to
which so much exception has been taken, that Christ’s human
nature is impersonal. ‘This difficulty arises from the failure to
distinguish between the abstract and the concrete. Catholic
theology never meant that, in the concrete, the human nature of
Christ lacked its persona. Leontius of Byzantium brought in
no new idea by his employment of the term exhypostasta. All
The Doctrine of the Two Natures 193
that went on within the incarnate life, all that was static and all
that was dynamic, was covered, if the word is permissible, by the
Person of the Son. But regarded in abstraction the human
nature of Christ is rightly spoken of as impersonal, since in this
case and this alone discrimination can be made between human
experiences and a human subject of the experiences.
The Chalcedonian Christology holds its ground as the only
one which has a right to be regarded as fully Catholic. But,
for the very reason that its implications undoubtedly present
difficulties, and that the attempt to follow out the meaning of
the doctrine to its further conclusions in respect of the incarnate
Christ can be made only with the utmost care—while yet, if it is
to be made at all, it must be made with the boldness that comes
from a grasp upon first principles—honourable reference is due at
this point to the chapter entitled “Towards Solution” in the
late Bishop Weston’s ‘‘ The One Christ.” No one but a real
theologian could have written it. Its peculiar strength lies in
the consistency with which Bishop Weston conceives of the
manhood of the self-limited Logos as the one medium of all that
took place within the state of the Incarnation. When the Logos
took human flesh which, with its own proper and complete soul,
He constituted in Himself so that He became truly man, living as
the subject or ego of real manhood,” ? He imposed upon Himself
such a “law of self-restraint’’ that ‘“‘ He has, as Incarnate, no
existence and no activity outside the conditions that manhood
imposes upon Him.” ‘This law, as we may call it, determined
the character of all the relationships involved in the state of in-
carnation. With this Bishop Weston combined the thought of
“the essential inseparableness of the universal relations of the
Logos from His relations as Incarnate, seeing that all are based
in one and the selfsame Person.” 4 ‘The same idea appears in
“Christus Veritas,” where the Bishop of Manchester speaks of
the value of thinking of God the Son as most truly living the life
recorded in the Gospels, but adding this to the other work of
God.® And to such a conclusion the logic of the Christian
doctrine of God may point, but even the best of analogies (and
Bishop Weston’s were more than ordinarily good) can do very
little to enable us to form a conception of the reality involved.
1 Second edition, 1914. 2 Pp. 150 ff. SPs are sy
SP i8 1. BrP LIAR.
194 The Incarnation
V
FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS IN RESPECT OF THE
CHALCEDONIAN CHRISTOLOGY
On the strictly theological side the objections to the Chalce-
donian Christology as a statement of the doctrine of the Incarnation
are less formidable than the propounders of them suppose. And
the failure to replace the old terminology by something equivalent
in value and equally effective as a bulwark against restatements
which involve an alteration not only in the form but also in the sub-
stance of the doctrine is important ; for it is an argument against
the view that it is no serious loss if we regard the Definition put out
by the Council as possessing only the interest which attaches to an
historical landmark, and of no inherent validity for the guidance
and regulation of our conceptions. On the philosophical side
the difficulties are greater. A doctrine of Christ’s Person that
approached adequacy and completeness would go along with a satis-
factory doctrine of personality. Such a doctrine did not exist in the
fourth and fifth centuries, and though the problem of personality
has come to the front in philosophy as one that demands serious
attention, the stage of an agreed solution has not yet been reached.
If what Dr. Cave, the writer of the latest monograph in English
on the subject of Christology, calls “the beginnings of a philosophy
of personality ” 1 in the works of modern philosophers is further
developed, theologians may find avenues of insight into the Christo-
logical problem opening out before them from the side of meta-
physics. Du Bose, had he been able to handle the question
simply as a philosopher, and been gifted with greater lucidity of
expression, might have contributed much in this connection.
As it is, while the Chalcedonian doctrine neither answers nor
professes to answer all the inquiries which naturally arise out of
the faith in Christ as one who ts both God and man, it remains
the bulwark of that faith, and does not, as is the danger with
some modern restatements and speculations, render the faith itself
precarious. It has not barred the way to the study of the con-
ditions of our Lord’s life on earth, and it has left ample room for
different types of devotion, resting on the clearer apprehension
of His Godhead or of His manhood. And it decisively prevents
the conversion of a doctrine of incarnation into the highest form
1 The Doctrine of the Person of Christ, p. 240.
The Chalcedonian Christology 195
of a doctrine of divine immanence. ‘This latter mode of thought
gives us a Christ who is as we are, except that He has in richest
measure what we have in small portions. Grace is poured into
Christ, as into us, but in His case without stint? But, that being
so, there is no place for the thought of an absolute dependence upon
Christ as Redeemer. He does not have for us the value of God.
Something in Him does, since the value of that which indwells
Christ is divine. But so it is with ourselves. And if Christ ts,
by virtue of God’s indwelling within Him, the most highly privi-
leged member of the human race, then the faith, the mysticism
and the ideas of sacramental union which we find in the New
Testament, directed towards Him and placing Him in a position
where He Himself and not something in Him becomes everything
to man, cannot be justified. It is not as though immanence and
incarnation were two theological ways of expressing the same
thing. They are the beginnings of different religions, though
along the divergent lines there may be points of resemblance.
We do not know all that it means to say that God is immanent
in a man; and we do not know all that it means to say that God
is incarnate ; but we know enough, and the religious history of
mankind helps us, to see that a real difference is involved.
The faith of the Church and its doctrinal expression set before
us Christ as one who is man, but also God. ‘That is its account
of the facts, but what kind of a thing, viewed apart from the
facts, the incarnation of God would be it does not try to say. But
if we take the idea of the T'wo Natures as one which asserts the
diverse realities of divinity and humanity, and then try to conceive
of the consequences of those two realities being united, neither
fused nor lost, in a Person who does not result from the union
but is precedent to it and enters into new conditions because of
it, we shall come under the unescapable difficulties which attach
to the attempt to determine in the abstract the character of what
is, ex Aypothesi, a new kind of fact and the single instance of it.
1Cf. S. J. Davenport, Immanence and Incarnation, p. 229: ““ Does the
immanental theory imply that... given a perfect man ¢pso facto we are
presented with an Incarnate God? If such is a necessary implication of
immanentism, then, as we have argued above, this is not the Christian con-
ception of Christ. He is Absolute. Even a perfect man a priori would derive
his perfection through the Logos, from whom he derives his constitution, his
existence. Perfection is by no means synonymous with hypostatic union, for
the former is possible, abstractly, for all men, but the latter belongs to the Second
Person of the Trinity alone, that is, to Jesus Christ.”
196 The Incarnation
If the word “incarnation”? is rightly used, then the fact of the
Incarnation is the one instance of the particular being its own
universal. We should have to say the same thing in another
way if we possessed no heritage from Aristotle and the Scholastics,
But as to speculations in Christology, the data afford us little
opportunity for supposing that we can lay down rules for the
testing of the validity of our conclusions, “There have been such
speculations, but they fall right outside the faith and the dogma
of the Church, which is concerned to make decisions only with
reference to the concrete historical fact. So it is with regard to
kenotic theories, and, in partial opposition to them, to specu-
lation as to the work of the Logos outside the circle, but during
the period, of the incarnate life. Such a tentative idea as Dr.
‘Temple has put forward in “‘ Christus Veritas,’ + that supposing
from the life of Christ the presence of God incarnate were with-
drawn we should not be left with nothing, but with the life of a
man, belongs to the same order of untestable suggestions. All
that the Church asserts as positive truth is what must be asserted
if we are to think ofa real incarnation. For that, Christ must be
both God and man, not successively and by division but wholly
and simultaneously.
Vi
FinaL DIFFICULTIES AS TO THE DocTRINE OF THE
INCARNATION EXAMINED
When all necessary explanations have been given, two obstacles
to faith may still remain. ‘The first is that the notion of incar-
nation involves an incredible relationship between God and the
finite order; that God, the Eternal, cannot be thought of as entering
into time after the manner expressed in this doctrine. In popular
form the objection takes exception to the discovery of a final
1 Dr. Temple writes (p. 150): “‘ If we imagine the divine Word withdrawn
from Jesus of Nazareth, as the Gnostics believed to have occurred before the
Passion, I think that there would be left, not nothing at all, but a man.” If
the Bishop had stopped there, one might feel that an incursion had been made
into the region of the most unverifiable speculation, and that behind it lay a
really inadequate view of the meaning of the Incarnation. But he continues,
in words which (especially with the note calling attention to the avoidance of
the phrase “‘ human person ’’) make all the difference in substance, whatever
be thought of their form, “‘ yet this human personality is actually the self-
expression of the Eternal Son, so that as we watch the human life we become
aware that it is the vehicle of a divine life, and that the human personality of
Jesus Christ is subsumed in the Divine Person of the Creative Word.”
Final Difficulties Examined 197
revelation in something which happened a long time ago in an
obscure corner of the world. A full consideration of this ob-
jection and of the answer to it would necessitate an examination of
the significance of the pre-Christian history to which the title
preparatio evangelica is given, and a discussion of the doctrine
of God as the background against which the idea of incarnation
becomes intelligible. Here it must suffice to point out that
while Christian theology has repudiated all explanations of the
Incarnation which imply that God immerses Himself in such
a manner in the finite order that He becomes for a time no more
than part of it, it has presented the doctrine as the one in which
alone the gap between God and the world is effectively overcome.
The world-order is raised potentially to the level of the divine
life which has been manifested within it. ‘That is the truth of
the idea of deification. But this idea is not construed as though
the Incarnation worked like leaven to the production, by a quality
of permeation, of a human super-nature. “The Christian tradition,
if account is taken of its chief emphases and of its total character,
has viewed the Incarnation in relation to God’s redemptive and
ethical purposes, which man must receive and make his own if
he is to know the joy of communion with God, The ethical
confusion to-day is the result of uncertainty as to the existence of
an ethical interpretation of life, which is the real meaning of life
and not superimposed upon life, while a grasp of the ethical character
of life becomes less firm in the absence of knowledge of where
to look for the true ideals, standards and laws of moral well-being.
‘The Incarnation brings light at the point where lack of light must
work out in lack of power. It gives the assurance of the reality
of moral values in God and in the world-order. It reveals God
as making Himself one with man, and entering into the world’s
moral life and undergoing the passion which is born of the travail
of good in its struggle with evil, It is only as we view the Chris-
tian Church and the Christian life, both of which derive from
the Incarnation, that its moral fruitfulness begins to be manifested
both extensively and intensively. But immediately following upon
conviction of the truth of the Incarnation comes the realisa-
tion of a new unity accomplished, which gives the best of all
answers to those most poignant of all doubts, in which the drama
of the world and of the soul seems to have nothing moral at its
heart and to move towards no moral end,
198 The Incarnation
The other principal difficulty arises out of the study of the
Gospels. The picture which they bring before us is held to be
incompatible with the faith in Jesus as God incarnate. Some-
thing that bears on this has been said earlier. “Ihe extent of the
difficulty will depend upon the judgment formed as to the miracu-
lous sections of the Gospel.4 But it is largely the consequence of
a priori assumptions, which may be held with no full conscious-
ness of their nature, as to the form which an incarnation of God
will take. ‘The sense of injurious speculation concerning the
Person of Christ which kenotic doctrines often produce must be
ascribed to preliminary judgments of what is both possible and
fitting in the case of one who is God incarnate. But the doctrine
of the Incarnation, as the one that best satisfies all the facts which
are bound up with the beginnings and history of Christianity
as religion and way of life, is not to be rejected on the ground
that the life of Jesus contains features of a surprising and un-
expected character. Like the Apostles we have to learn that
apparent stumbling-blocks may be the way in which God effects
His will. If the Cross has not prevented the confession of the
Godhead of Jesus, but has revealed the full glory of the self-
impoverishment of the Eternal Son, the recognition of limitations
in His knowledge and His power while on earth need not do so.
‘The question of the finality of Christianity as the “absolute
religion” has come into some prominence of late. It is a question
which depends altogether for any valid answer upon the view
taken of Christ. { Christianity is not primarily the most satis-
factory philosophy “of religion, embodying in the most perfect
form certain universally valid religious principles, but faith in
a Person, to believe in whom is to believe in God. If that is not
true, then all that is most distinctive in Christianity falls, and even
though a sentiment about Him and an attachment to Him remain,
Jesus Christ will no longer be the Way, the Truth and the Life.
‘The Church at least knows what is at stake. Her life is not
centred in herself but in Him. Her tradition, derived in the
first instance from the faith of the apostolic age, is the rational
account which she has given of her experience. And believing
herself to be the trustee, not only of the Christianity which deserves
the name, but of vital religion and of its continuance within
human life, she sees no future for her office and no security for
1 See the appendix to this essay.
Appendix on Miracle 199
her efforts except in the pan E ee ae ns and adoration of Jesus
Christ as Lord and God. /
APPENDIX ON MIRACLE
The stage which the question of the miraculous element in the Gospels
has reached seems to be describable as follows: The opposition to miracle
from the side of those sciences which reveal the orderly flow of sequences
in nature, and are thereby responsible for the phrase “ natural law,’ is
no longer formidable. It is clear that no decision can be reached with-
out taking into account the prior questions which arise around the problem
of theism. With regard to literary criticism of the Gospels, no dis-
covery has been made which suggests the existence of any primitive non-
miraculous documentary deposit which has been overlaid by later strata.
On the other hand, there is no sign of a return to the old kind of
argument which built upon miracle (and upon prophecy) for evidential
and theological purposes. ‘The miracles are not taken just as they stand,
as though no problem were raised by their appearance. ‘Though they
may be regarded as “in place” in the life of Christ, they are
so regarded in consequence of an interpretation of His Person;
they are not usually appealed to directly for establishing the truth of
that interpretation. It is inevitably impossible to reach a settlement
which could be put forward as representing objective truth, since the
approach to a decision can be reached only along the lines of this or
that praejudicium. The non-Christian, and more definitely the non-
theist, may admit that the historical evidence has its strong points, that
the narratives are not far removed in time from the facts, that they are
not worked up into a form which suggests mere legend-mongering, and
that they are embedded in a context which there is no reason to distrust.
But even so he will reject them because it is impossible for him to find a
place for them in a non-theistic world-view. His non-theistic successor
ages hence may be able to accept them on the basis of knowledge which
is at present hidden. But that is mere hypothesis; at the present time
a non-theist will not and cannot accept the truth of the Gospel miracles.
He may or may not be able to explain the accounts in a way satisfactory
to himself and to others. But even if he cannot do that, even if his con-
jectures seem as absurd as some of the methods taken to find a way round
the Gospel-narratives of the morning of Easter Day and of the resurrection,
he will be guilty of no irrational behaviour when he denies that these
wonderful things happened. His fault lies further back. Where he
is wrong is in not believing in God, and in Christ as the Son of God.
In other words it is, broadly speaking, only from within the Christian
200 The Incarnation
tradition that he is capable of a true verdict upon the miracles of the
Gospel.}
But because the Christian is free from a praejudicium which is anti-
miraculous because it is anti-theistic, he will not necessarily go on to the
assertions which the other has denied. He still may feel difficulties.
Unless he believes in the verbal inerrancy of Scripture he is not able to
affirm that a miracle which appears in one of the Gospels must have
happened as a miracle. He knows that stories of miraculous events
appear all over the world in connection with different religions, and he
is probably not prepared to accept those which have their place in religions
which are rivals to Christianity. What is it, he may ask, which gives tae
New Testament miracle-narratives a special claim to be accepted as
true statements of wonderful occurrences in the natural order ?
I can do no more than suggest the lines along which an answer
may be found. In the first place I would say that the problem of miracle
concerns not God’s will to produce certain results through acts attribut-
able immediately to Him without the appearance of any mediate agencies,
but God’s will to produce those results under certain conditions which
involve a particular relationship between Him and the human soul.
There is a mediate agency, namely man in fellowship with God. In
a theistic world-view, which finds the greatest of all powers under God
to be those of spiritual beings in fellowship with God, and cannot regard
the material side of existence to be at any point simply intractable and
unmalleable, it is impossible to set limits to the results which might be
produced, given favourable conditions in respect of communion with
God.
Then, secondly, whatever be the case with other conditions under
which miracles have been said to have occurred, the context of the Gospel
miracles raises no difficulty. ‘That Jesus Christ lived in the most intimate
communion with the Father, that His power was the natural fruit of that
communion, and was manifested in a moral holiness which, apart from
questions of “ Christology,” gives evidence of His pre-eminence among
men, is the picture of His life which we can derive from the Gospels.
That in His case, in response to the faith in which He drew upon God
for help, certain things happened in God’s world of nature, which revealed
in a way that we call miraculous the supremacy of spirit over matter,
is not surprising. And the miracle-narratives do not appear in their
context oddly and awkwardly as might be expected if they were really
1’That seems to me true with this reservation. The evidence for the
resurrection possesses a specially impressive character, and makes a more general
appeal than any other miraculous section in the Gospels. Why this should be
so is not difficult to understand. ‘The truth of Christianity and the truth that
‘Christ is risen are inseparable, and part of the evidence for the resurrection is
the account of the tomb that was found empty.
Appendix on Miracle 201
out of place. If the element of miracle in them is untrue, they are, if
not conscious inventions—a most improbable supposition—, the product
of pious imagination misinterpreting certain natural phenomena. Such
a view does not, at least as a rule, arise spontaneously out of the study
of the Gospels without the presupposition of a theory adverse to miracle.
And, thirdly, if Christianity is the true religion because Jesus Christ
is the Son of God incarnate, the record of the Gospel-miracles possesses
this essential difference from the record of other miracles, that the personal
Subject differs from all other persons. His divine-human sovereignty
in the sphere of the spirit, in virtue of which He is Lord, Judge, Saviour
and King, has as its other side a divine-human sovereignty in the sphere
of nature. ‘The Son of Man has power in both. Incarnation and miracle
do not, perhaps, cohere so closely together as to enable us to say that
where the one is the other must be found; but, on the other hand, if
the Incarnation is in any real way apprehended as the greatest event
in human history, miracle cannot be ruled out as possessing no fitting
occasion for the manifestation of such a mode of divine operation.
These considerations may be particularised in reference to the miracle
which, through its relationship to the beginnings of our Lord’s earthly
life, Christian theology has viewed in specially close connection with the
doctrine of the Incarnation. Here, I think, we may legitimately contrast
with great clearness and sharpness two propositions. On the one hand,
if we did not believe that Christ was truly the Son of God, we should
not believe that He was born of a Virgin. Some of the Ebionites could
do so, but that does not matter: no lengthy argument is needed to con-
vince us that their position is untenable. On the other hand, if we do
believe that Christ is truly the Son of God, the Virgin-Birth appears as
a truth in respect of His advent into this world congruous with the truth
of His eternal being and essential Deity. Chary as we may be of pressing
arguments which cannot be conclusive because they contain an element
of unverifiable speculation, the difficulty, to which defenders of the
orthodox tradition, most recently the learned American Baptist scholar
Dr. A. T. Robertson,! have called attention, of combining the notion of
incarnation with the belief that Jesus was the Son of Joseph and Mary,
is not an unreal one. And the fact that disbelief in the Virgin-Birth,
and belief in other doctrines of the Person of Christ than that He was
the Son of God incarnate, do very largely go together suggests that the
Incarnation and the mode thereof are neither easily nor truly dissociated
from one another. ‘The possibility of theoretical abstraction of the one
from the other does not prove that they are not, in fact, a living unity.
There is one point to which attention may be drawn. May we not
lay stress on the partactively taken by the Blessed Virgin in co-operation
with God, coming along the avenues of mystical experience? The
1 In his book, The Mother of Jesus, p. 28 f.
202 The Incarnation
importance of this idea, which is not inconsonant with the story of the
Annunciation in St. Luke’s Gospel, lies in the fact that it recognises in
connection with the physical miracle the relevance of the human, spiritual,
mediate agency. Mary did all that she could do, by making her will
one with the will of God, to make it, from her side, possible for the Son
of God to be born of her. It is, therefore, quite wrong to treat the
Virgin-Birth as though no spiritual significance were to be discovered
in connection with it. A narrative in which the woman’s part was of
no essential worth, and nothing emerged except a divine decision that a
particular birth should be brought about in a miraculous way, might
fairly be regarded as of no spiritual consequence, except for the exhibition
of the power of God. But that is not St. Luke’s narrative. In his
account the faith and willingness of Mary show that, even in such an
event as this, all the factors are not exhausted in the one idea of divine
omnipotence. ‘There is spiritual response and spiritual preparation from
the human side. We cannot define the exact character of the Annunciation.
We may quite properly hold to its objective reality without thinking
of the angel coming to the Blessed Virgin in any way parallel to a person
coming into a room through its door. The word “ vision” may help,
and so may the word “ experience.” In any case St. Luke has given us
what he did not make up, a most appropriate spiritual context for the
physical wonder of the Virgin-Birth. And both the context and the
wonder are appropriate to Him who came, in the fulness of time, true
God made man.
ee rr —~—S
ASPECTS OF MAN’S CONDITION
BY EDWARD JOHN BICKNELL
AND
JOHN KENNETH MOZLEY
I. Sin AND THE Fai
. Basis in Experience of the Theological pee ‘a We
CONTENTS
Fall and Original Sin
2. Various Forms of these Doctrines in History
3. The Need for Restatement
4. The State of Fallenness
II. Grace anp Freepom .
. The Idea of Grace
2. The Idea of Grace in the Bible and Christian T heology
3. The Supernatural Order, Grace and Freedom
AppitTionaL Nore:
Dr. Oman’s Grace and Personality
PAGE
205
205
209
216
22%
224.
224
228
235
243
I
SIN AND THE FALL.
By E. J. BicKneELt.
1. Basis in Experience of the Theological Doctrines of the
Fall and Original Sin
(a2) Tue doctrines of “ original sin” and “ the Fall” are pieces
of theology. Theology is the science of religion. It springs
from the effort of man to understand his own life. Always
religion comes first, and theology second. Experience precedes
reflection on experience, and the two must not beconfused. Man
lives first and thinks afterwards. Accordingly we shall not be
surprised to find that these two doctrines, so closely connected,
were not revealed ready made, but have behind them a long history
of development in time. Our first duty therefore will be to
consider what are the facts of experience which they attempt
to express and to correlate. What is their relation to practical
religion ?
Let us start from common ground on which all Christians are
agreed. Weall have no difficulty in understanding what Is meant
by “actual” sin, It is a concept that can be denied by no one
who believes in a personal and righteous God and in some measure
of free-will in man. /Actual sin denotes an act of disobedience to
God or the state of find and heart that results from such acts of
disobedience. Christ depicts sin as the alienation of the will and
heart of a child from an all-righteous and all-loving Father. It
is important to remember for our present discussion that sin is
always against God. ‘The term belongs to the vocabulary of
religion, not to that of moral or political philosophy. ‘To an
atheist sin can only appear to be an illusion. “‘ Against thee and
thee only have I sinned” is always the cry of the awakened sinner.
No doubt historically the content of the term sin has varied
enormously in accordance with the conception of the character of
God attained by the community. Even within the Bible we find
a development in the idea of sin pari passu with a development in
the understanding of the character of God. In primitive times
206 Aspects of Man’s Condition
sin is simply that which displeases God. Exclusive attention is
paid to external acts, not to motives. Individual responsibility is
hardly recognised. Ritual irregularities are not distinguished
from moral offences. Unintentional breaches of custom are put
on a level with wilful disobedience. But gradually personality
comes to its own and distinctions are made. ‘The root of sin is
seen to lie in the will. Merely ceremonial defilement is felt to be
of smal] account beside moral evil. “The development reaches its
culmination in the teaching of Christ that nothing from outside a
man can defile him but only that which comes from within. Still
always and everywhere sin is that which offends God. We do not
wish to discuss here the difficult question of the relative degrees
of guilt or accountability which sin involves. We only assert
summarily that in the last resort only God who knows the heart
can estimate the exact measure of guilt in any case. Nor canwe
discuss the relation between sin and thesense of sin. We deliberately
put these problems on one side1 All that we are concerned to
maintain is that the one constant element in the concept of sin is
that which puts man out of fellowship with God.
(4) So far our path is clear. When, however, we look into
ourselves we discover the fact, so mysterious t to all who believe ina
good God, that we find there evil tendencies and desires, similar to
those which result from indulgence in actual sin, but which are prior
in time to, and independent of, any such actual sin. For these bad
tendencies and impulses we do not recognise any personal responsi-
bility. “They are not the consequences of our own acts of choice.
‘They seem to come to us ready made. Yet, quite as fully as those
bad habits which are the result of actual sin, they incapacitate us
from full fellowship with God. ‘They hamper and thwart our
better purposes. They are not simply imperfections: they are
positively evil. “They are loyalties that conflict with and weaken
our loyalty to God. Nor do we show any signs of outgrowing
them. ‘They do not disappear as we get older. In other words
our nature, as we receive it, appears to be not merely undeveloped
but to possess a bias towards evil, a disunion within itself, an inability
to rise to higher levels. We find ourselves out of sympathy with
God from the start.
This analysis of human nature is confirmed when we look
1 For a discussion of them see Bicknell, The Christian Idea of Sin and
Original Sin, pp. 43-49.
———
Sin and the Fall 207,
outwards and study human life as disclosed in history and politics.
The history of the race is that of the individual writ large. “There
is no doubt marvellous progress in many directions. It is the
recognition of this, that prompts the objection that man has not
fallen, he has risen./ But the rise is only in certain limited directions.
He has gained an increased mastery over the material world. He
has accumulated a vast amount of experience and turned it to good
account in ministering to the needs and comforts of the body. He
has also advanced in intellectual knowledge. He has before him
more material from which to draw conclusions and better methods
of sifting and arranging that material. He has also developed more
complex and refined moral ideals. “There is among civilised men
less open brutality and cruelty, less violence and unabashed lawless-
ness. But there is no evidence that his moral and spiritual powers
have proportionately developed. The wonderful inventions of
science are in themselves morally neutral. “They may be used in
the interests of the common good or for selfish ends. Science
provides impartially a hospital or the latest poison bomb. It may
well prove that man’s moral powers are so inadequate to stand the
strain of all this increasing mastery of the material world that he
will use it to destroy himself. So, too, though the outward forms
of human selfishness have changed, there is no ground for believ-
ing that men are at the bottom less selfish than they were. “The
highwayman has been superseded by the profiteer, but the only gain
is a loss of picturesqueness. Nor do improved conditions of life
necessarily go hand in hand with an improved condition of soul.
Men can be as selfish and godless in a palace asina slum. Vice
does not cease to be vice because it is gilded. “The polite and
polished self-indulgence of the smart set hides the glory of God even
more effectually than the brutality and coarseness of the savage.
Nor does mere learning carry with it an increase in holiness and
righteousness. A professor can be further from the kingdom of
God thana coal-heaver. Nor isit enough to have higher and more
elaborate ideals. The real question is how far we live up to them.
In short when we study the causes that underlie the decay of
nations and the degradation of public life, or the misuse of new
powers and knowledge, we always come back to man himself.
There is nothing outside him that hinders a triumphant upward
movement turning all fresh discoveries into means for promoting
the highest welfare of each and all. The hindrance lies in man
-
208 Aspects of Man’s Condition
himself, in his inability to love the highest when he sees it and to
subdue his antisocial impulses. History lends no support to the
idea that these are being outgrown. At bottom the problem is one
of moral and spiritual weakness,
(c) ‘This impression is deepened when we turn to the human
life and example of Jesus Christ. “here we see man as he was
intended in the divine purpose to become. We realise anew his
imperfection and degradation by placing ourselves beside the
concrete picture of the ideal. Christ shows up not only the weak-
ness but the fallenness of human nature. His life throughout is
based on unbroken communion with God. He exhibits a perfect
harmony between all the faculties and impulses of His human
nature. His growth is uniform and unbroken. He is in full
sympathy with the mind and purpose of God. ‘Taken by itself,
the life of Christ might well only provoke us to despair. We see
in it what we acknowledge that we ought to be, but what we are
wholly unable in our own strength to attain. It makes us all
the more conscious of the evil impulses within us. It shows up
our “fallen” condition. ‘Thus introspection, a study of human
history, and the example and teaching of Christ all unite in wit-
nessing to our present state as unnatural. By what name are we
to designate it ?
(d) Since it is indistinguishable in all except the consciousness of
personal responsibility from that condition of heart and will which
results from actual sin, in theology it has long received the name
of “original sin.” Indeed the two are so closely intertwined in
actual experience that it is often hard to distinguish them. “The
alienation from God that they produce is almost identical. We
cannot wonder at the choice of the term, “To-day, however, the
term “original sin” is widely criticised, and with good reason.
Many writers argue that the word sin should be restricted to
actual sin—that is, to states of character or conduct for which the
individual is personally responsible by acts of moral choice. “The
wider use of the term, they say, only leads to confusion of thought
and endangers morality. It is a relic of the days when the con-
cept of sin had not yet been moralised. Its retention to-day only
tends to blur the sense of the heinousness of sin or to lead to morbid
scruples. If we were starting theological terminology, there
would be much to be said for a clearer distinction. But the use
of the term sin to include other states of character than those for
Sin and the Fall 209
which the individual is personally responsible, not only has a long
history behind it, but witnesses to certain truths of great im-
portance. What are we to substitute for the phrase * original
sin’? ? Various suggestions have been made, but none of them
are entirely satisfactory. “Inherited infirmity” expresses the
important truth that our unhappy condition does not carry with
it guilt in the sense of accountability or expose us personally to
the wrath of God, but is hardly adequate to the seriousness of the
situation. ‘* Moral disease” has the advantage that it brings out
the positive danger to spiritual health. But neither phrase
sufficiently emphasises the important truth that by this state of
heart and will we are disqualified for that full communion with
God which is the indispensable condition of all sound human life.
Religion is not mere morality, but is a walking with God ; and
“two cannot walk together unless they be agreed.” Further, the
old term has this additional advantage that it leaves room for the
idea of corporate sin. In his moral and spiritual life the individual
is interpenetrated by the community. The will of the community
is not simply the sum-total of the wills of the individual members
who compose it, though indeed it has no actual existence outside
of or apart from them. ‘There is such a thing as a group mind,
though probably not a group consciousness. And though an act
of moral choice can only be made by an individual, he makes it
not as an individual, but as shaped and moulded by the community.
Thus we find corporate action which can only be described as
sinful since it is objectively opposed to the will of God, though it is
certain that not every member of the body is personally responsible
for it. Our Lord judged not only individuals, but cities, as
Capernaum or Jerusalem. If we attempt to limit sin to states of
character or acts for which the individual is personally in the
sight of God responsible, we shall find ourselves in difficulties
about those corporate sins which are both recognised in the
teaching of Christ and implied by modern psychology
2. Various Forms of these Doctrines in History
If, then, we decide to retain the term in spite of its manifest
disadvantages, that does not mean that we accept all doctrines of
original sin. It is most important to study the various forms
which this doctrine has assumed.
210 Aspects of Man’s Condition
(a) If we begin with the Old Testament, we find there a full
recognition of the badness of human nature, but hardly any theory
of original sin or any attempt to account for it. In the third
chapter of Genesis there is a vivid picture of temptation and of
actual sin by an act of disobedience to a command of God recog-_
nised as binding, but though the act of disobedience is followed by
punishment, it is not suggested that this included a bias towards
evil in Adam’s descendants. Further, when the conspicuous
wickedness of a later generation is recorded, the explanation of it
is found not in Adam’s transgression, but in the strange tale about
the ‘sons of God” and the ‘“‘ daughters of men.” Nor is there
any certain reference to the story of Adam to be found in the whole
of the canonical books. When we pass on to the post-canonical
literature, we find more than one apparent attempt to account for
the empirically universal wickedness of man. ‘There is the
Rabbinic doctrine, based on Genesis vill. 21, of the evil impulse
already existing potentially in the heart of man and only waiting ©
for the right stimulus to emerge in a sinful act. ‘There are the
more popular theories which connect man’s present condition with —
the disobedience of Adam or with the unions of evil angels and —
women. ‘Thus it may be said that a doctrine of original sin in
some form was held by many in the Jewish Church in the time of
Christ, but hardly as an official doctrine of the Church. Nor
was there any agreed doctrine of the fall of man. ‘The word
“ fall > does not occur in this connection in the canonical writings.
It is first found in a quite untechnical sense in Wisdom x. 3.
(5) In the teaching of Christ Himselfas recorded in the Gospels
there is no formal theology of original sin. Indeed we should
not expect such. What we do find is the full recognition of the
facts of human nature and history which the theological doctrine
was formulated to express. It is not too much to say that in His
teaching and ministry He assumes that all men are in a condition
of “fallenness.” ‘They are sick and need a physician. “They
cannot cure themselves. “They need not only enlightenment,
but redemption. They are in bondage to a strong and cruel
tyrant. ‘hey are no longer free and cannot deliver themselves.
‘They are not only undeveloped, but misdeveloped, and therefore
must undergo not simply growth and education, but new birth.
The existing world order is largely under the domination of evil
powers. It resembles a field in which an enemy has sown tares
Sin and the Fall 211
among the wheat. “The wheat and tares are hopelessly inter-
mixed both in the hearts of man and in all human life. Nothing
is more startling than the way in which He assumes the presence
of evil in all human hearts. “If ye then, being evil, know how
to...” He says. The Lord’s Prayer includes a petition for for-
giveness. “Lhe only class of people of whom He seems to despair
are those who are unaware of any need for repentance or change of
mind. We cannot develop this subject at length, but it is plain
that in all His teaching He implied that mankind as a whole had
strayed from the right path and swerved away from God’s purpose.
This judgment on all men is in the sharpest contrast to His own
claims to an unbroken communion with the Father and undimmed
insight into and sympathy with His purposes. While He sum-
moned all men without exception to repent He displayed no need
of repentance Himself. No prayer for pardon or amendment for
His own life passed His lips. His own sinlessness, if we use
what is too negative a term to express the positive and harmonious
energy of His life towards the Father, shows up the failure and
disharmony of all other human lives.
(c) In St. Paul we find the beginnings of a Christian doctrine
of original sin, starting from the Jewish speculation which connected
man’s present condition with the disobedience of Adam. In the
famous sentence ‘‘ as through one man sin entered into the world,
and death through sin ; and so death passed unto all men, for that
all sinned : for until the law sin was in the world : but sin is not
imputed where there is no law,” we find a foundation on which
many large and imposing structures have been built. Unfortu-
nately St. Paul’s meaning is most obscure. His primary interest
in the whole chapter is in the universality and completeness of the
redemption brought by Christ. Man’s sinful condition is only
brought in as a foil to this. Indeed the actual sentence which
speaks of all men sinning is never finished. It may simply make
the statement that as a matter of fact all men after Adam did for
some reason or other commit sin, without connecting this with
Adam’s sin. ‘That is exegetically possible, and it may be argued
that if ‘“‘in Adam ” was to be added, the addition is so important
that it must have been expressed. But the context is against this
interpretation. ‘The whole passage is based on the parallelism
between Adam and Christ, and there is little doubt that the words
‘“‘in Adam” are to be supplied in thought, though the fact that
212 Aspects of Man’s Condition
St. Paul did not actually insert them proves that the dominant
purpose in his writing here was not to give a theory of the origin
of sin. Further, what is the connection between the sin of Adam
and the universal sinfulness of his descendants? Is the tendency
to sin transmitted by heredity? ‘The passage gives no answer to
such questions. “They clearly were not in St. Paul’s mind at
this moment. Perhaps all that we can say with certainty is that
Jewish tradition connected man’s present sinfulness with Adam’s
transgression, and St. Paul assumes a general familiarity with this
idea. If we press for a closer examination of St. Paul’s meaning,
we may perhaps find a clue in the parallelism between “in Adam ”’
and “in Christ’? which pervades the whole context. Christians
are “in Christ,” and a study of his general line of thought shows
that this means more than that they individually adhere to Christ
by personal faith, though it includes this. It also conveys the idea
of membership in His Body the Church. For St. Paul the
Christian life was always mediated by fellowship in the divine
society, the people of God. So “in Adam” may well convey the
idea of membership in an unregenerate humanity. This would
suggest that Adam’s sin affected his descendants not merely by
way of bad example, but by the subtle influences of social tradition
in all its forms.
It is also important to remember, though the point is often
overlooked, that when at the opening of the Epistle, St. Paul
develops the picture of mankind as wholly given over to sin and
needing a new power for righteousness, he never mentions Adam.
He never suggests that Jew and Gentile have fallen away from
God because they inherited a weakened or depraved nature. He
blames them for wilfully turning away from the light given to
them. His language is consistent with a recognition of the social
nature of sin but hardly with a strict theory of heredity.
(2) When we turn to the early Church, it is long before we
meet any formulated doctrine of original sin. Before the time of
St. Augustine there is neitherin East nor West a single and consist-
ent theory of original sin. “The early Christian writers were more
concerned with deliverance from demons from without than with
deliverance from an inherited bias towards evil within. In the
main, the Greek Fathers represent a “ once-born” type of re-
ligion. Under the influence of St. Paul’s language, they often
allow that Adam’s sin has affected his descendants, but it is very
Sin and the Fall ie
difficult to be certain of the way in which they regard this effect.
The general tendency is to lay stress on the inheriting, through
the solidarity of the race and its unity with its first parent, of the
punishment of Adam’s sin rather than of the moral corruption of
the sin itself. Where emphasis is laid on the effects of the Fall on
human nature, they are regarded rather as a prevatio than as a
depravatio, a loss of supernatural light and gifts. There is always
a strong insistence on the reality of free will and responsibility.
Even though in Origen and in Gregory of Nyssa we find the
germs of a doctrine of original sin similar to that of St. Augustine,
there is no doctrine of original guilt and the consequences of such
a doctrine are not thought out.
In the West, Tertullian’s traducianism led him to formulate a
theory of a hereditary sinful taint—* vitium originis.” Adams
qualities were transmitted to his descendants. Yet, as his argu-
ments for the delay of baptism show, he was far from regarding
human nature as wholly corrupt. Nor did he deny free will.
But he established a tradition in the West which was continued by
Cyprian and Hilary and developed by Ambrose until it attained a
systematic form at the hands of St. Augustine.
(c) In St. Augustine we reach for the first time a systematic
theology of original sin. In considering it we must take into
account all the factors that have gone to its construction. We
place first among these the profound spiritual experience which
he had undergone in his sudden and violent conversion, similar
to that of St. Paul. His religion was essentially that of the twice-
born type and gave him an insight into the meaning of St. Paul’s
Epistles possessed by few of that age. As he reflected on his
experience, it seemed to him that his former life had been one
of entire badness from which he had been rescued by an act of
divine love. God had done all ; he had done nothing, except to
offer a vain opposition to God’s irresistible grace. Secondly, in
the face of this conviction, the teaching of Pelagius that every man
at any time, whatever his past conduct, was able to choose equally
and freely either right or wrong, seemed unmitigated folly. No
less inadequate was the Pelagian view of grace as primarily the
nature bestowed on man in virtue of which he enjoyed this free
will, or a merely external assistance such as the example of Christ,
or at most an inward inspiration useful indeed as seconding man’s
efforts but in no way indispensable for salvation. Accordingly in
214 Aspects of Man’s Condition
revolt against Pelagius, who taught that all men at birth receive a
sound and uncorrupted human nature, he emphasised to the utmost
the corruption of human nature. Mankind was a “ massa per-
ditionis.””! We do indeed possess free will by nature in the sense
that the sins which we commit are our own choice, but we do
not possess a truly free will in the sense that we have the power
to choose right. Apart from the grace of God we can only choose
sin. In support of this teaching he appealed to the authority of
St. Paul. The Pelagians argued that practically universal sin was
due to the following of Adam’s bad example and to the influence
of bad surroundings, regarded in a purely external way. Against
this, relying on the mistranslation of Romans vy. 12, “ In whom
(72 quo) all sinned,” he taught that Adam’s sin involved the sin
of all his descendants and that they in some sense sinned when he
did. ‘Thus, going beyond the teaching of St. Paul, he insisted
not only on original sin, but on original guilt, a conception
which it is impossible to reconcile with either reason or morality.
When driven to offer a defence for this indefensible position, his
replies were by no means either clear or consistent. At times he
put forward the theory of our seminal existence in Adam, as Levi
existed in the loins of Abraham. At other times he fell back on
a mystical realism in which he held that not only Adam’s nature,
but his personality were shared by his descendants. Elsewhere
he appealed to the mystery of divine justice. In close connection
with this view of inherited guilt involving the further assertion
that unbaptised infants were condemned to hell, was the theory
familiar to Gnostics and Manicheans, but strange in the writings
of a Christian teacher, that inherited sinfulness consisted mainly
in that concupiscence through which the race was propagated,
since under the present conditions of a fallen world marriage,
in itself right and sinless, was inevitably accompanied by passions
which are sinful. Few theories have had more disastrous results
in later Christian thought. Such teaching as this would seem
logically to carry with it some form of traducianism, but, though
he inclined towards it, he never actually adopted it.
In this short summary of St. Augustine’s teaching it is clear
that he has gone very far beyond the teaching of St. Paul. Not
only does he omit the other side of St. Paul’s teaching where he
insists on the need of human effort, but the novel conception of
1 e.g. De correptione et gratia, 12.
eer
Sin and the Fall ks
original guilt gives a new colour to the concept of original sin.
‘To St. Paul, original sin is of the nature of a deadly spiritual
disease disabling man from full fellowship with God, objectively
contrary to the will of God and in that sense sinful, but not blame-
worthy. Men stricken with it are unable to help themselves,
but their plight appeals to God’s pity rather than to God’s wrath.
This teaching does full justice to man’s need of redemption, and
is in full accord with the facts of life. St. Augustine on the other
hand ignores a large field of facts, and though his interpretation of
religion goes far deeper than that of Pelagius, his theology is one-
sided. His doctrine of man as inheriting a totally corrupt nature
by physical transmission from a historical Adam and involving
guilt in the sense of accountability is often taken to be the Catholic
doctrine of original sin, but this is by no means the case. We must
not confuse the doctrines of the Fall and of original sin with the
Augustinian presentation of them.
A short survey of Church history is sufficient to show that the
complete Augustinian system has no claim to be considered Catholic
in the true sense of the term. As we saw, the teaching of the
Fathers before him, even in the West, gives no certain voice on the
subject. The Church agreed with him in his rejection of Pela-
gianism, but was by no means ready to accept the system that he
offered in its stead. The Eastern Church has never received
Aupustinianism as a whole. Its teaching on original sin does not
at most go beyond that of Gregory of Nyssa. In the West his
views aroused at once considerable opposition, especially in South
Gaul. ‘The so-called Semi-Pelagian School protested with effect
against his doctrine of grace and election as a novelty, and main-
tained that even man as fallen had some power of free choice,
though weakened, so as to be able to co-operate with grace. “The
celebrated “ Commonitorium ” of Vincent of Lerins, in which
“semper, ubique, ab omnibus,” is laid down as the test of
Catholicism, was probably aimed at the teaching of Augustine.
The Synod of Orange in 529 maintained a considerably modified
Augustinianism. While emphasising the need of grace, including
prevenient grace, it expressly condemned the idea of predestination
to evil which was implied in the doctrine of irresistible grace. As
regards the Fall it asserted that Adam’s sin affected not only himself
but his descendants, and that it has impaired not only the body
but the soul. Nothing however is said about entire corruption.
216 Aspects of Man’s Condition
In the Middle Ages the general movement was away from the
stricter teaching of St. Augustine, in spite of the veneration for
his name. Aquinas taught that on the positive side original sin
was a wounding of nature, a disordered condition, the result of a
loss of superadded graces which Adam had enjoyed in his state of
original righteousness. In contradiction to Augustine he denied
that natural goodness was forfeited by the Fall or free will destroyed,
and held that concupiscence is not properly sin. Duns Scotus
represented an even greater departure from the standpoint of
Augustine. He insisted more strongly on man’s freedom and
taught that the first sin, whose gravity he tended to minimise, had
affected not man’s nature, but only his supernatural gifts. “The
Council of ‘Trent with an ingenuity worthy of our own Thirty-
Nine Articles contrived, while using the language of St. Augustine,
to produce a formula which could be interpreted in accordance with
the much milder Scholastic teaching. The Fall is said to have
involved the loss of original righteousness, the tainting of body
and soul, slavery to the devil, and liability to the wrath of God.
Original sin is propagated by generation.
It is to the Reformers that we must principally look for a re-
vival of Augustinianism. Calvin and Luther agree in describing
the depravity of human nature in the strongest terms, in insist-
ing on the guilt of original sin, and in maintaining the doctrine
of irresistible grace. “They both did what Augustine shrank from
doing, namely, taught explicitly that some men are predestined to
evil. Hereagain,if we study the history of Protestantism, we find
an increasing reaction against such teaching. It is hardly too
much to say that modern Protestantism, so far as it has any doctrine
of the Fall and original sin, has repudiated the stern but logical
teaching of Calvin and Luther.
3. The Need for Restatement
Within the last century new knowledge has accumulated which
compels a reconsideration and restatement of the whole question.
New data unknown to the theologians of the early Church and
of the Middle Ages may well cause us to revise their teaching in
the interest of truth. All that reverence for Catholic tradition
demands is that the new theology of original sin should be no less
Sin and the Fall 217
adequate to the facts of the Christian life and should possess the old
spiritual values.
We may especially consider three sources from which fresh
light has been thrown on the subject.
First, literary and historical criticism have shown beyond any
reasonable doubt that the opening chapters of Genesis do not give
us literal record of fact. ‘They are, to use a phrase of Bishop Gore,
‘inspired mythology.” “Vhis does not diminish their value for
religion, however. ‘The picture of the temptation to disobedience
followed by the act of sin is of abiding value as an analysis of the
spiritual drama that is constantly being re-enacted in our own souls.
No words could bring out more clearly the subtlety of temptation,
the nature of actual sin, and the alienation from God that it brings.
On the other hand the value of these chapters as literal history has
been for ever shattered. There is a strange reluctance in many
quarters to face the consequences of this discovery. Historical facts
can only be proved by historical evidence. We have therefore no
right to draw from the stories in Genesis deductions about the condi-
tion of Adam before his disobedience and make them a basis for
theories about the condition of unfallen man. How much theology
has centred round the purely hypothetical supernatural graces of an
Adam for whose existence we have no historical evidence Laeelghe
chapters of Genesis do indeed bear witness to man’s conviction that
his present condition is unnatural and not in accordance with God’s
will. ‘They attest a sense of fallenness, but give us no information
whatever about a historical Fall.
Secondly, we have come to realise that man has been evolved
from a non-human ancestry, and that he has inherited impulses
and instincts which he shares with the lower animals. Recent
psychology has emphasised the fact that not only the human body,
but the human mind has been thus evolved.
Thirdly, psychology has given us the concepts of the “ uncon-
scious mind and purpose.” Whatever be the ultimate verdict
about the theories connected with the names of Freud and Jung,
there can be very little doubt that they have thrown light on the
structure and mechanism of the human mind, and that this will
have to be taken into account in all attempts to understand and deal
with our spiritual life.
How, then, can we apply these considerations to the doctrine of
original sin?
218 Aspects of Man’s Condition
(2) We owe to Dr. Tennant the first attempt, at least in
England, to reinterpret the doctrine in the light of biology. It is
quite unfair to regard his treatment as merely naturalistic. He limits
the term sin to actual sin, claiming that this limitation brings
out all the more clearly the seriousness of sin. So-called original
sin he regards as the survival in man of animal tendencies, useful
and necessary at an earlier stage, but now felt to be an anachronism.
Our consciousness of divided self is due to the fact that these animal
impulses are only in process of being moralised. As man has
evolved he has exchanged a life of merely animal contentment and
harmony for one of moral struggle and effort. He has become
dissatisfied with his brute life and contrasts his animal passions
and habits with what -he would fain become. So his sense of
dissatisfaction is really a sign of moral advance and is the
inevitable outcome of man’s development.
Though we are unable to accept this as an adequate explanation
of all the facts, we owe much to Dr. Tennant for his treatment of
the problem. But we feel that he has underestimated the gravity
of the situation. He has explained admirably the origin of the
raw material of our evil impulses and tendencies, but the real
problem is not the possession of these animal tendencies but the
universal failure to control them. We believe that the human life
and character of Christ were based upon just such elements of
instinct, but in Him they were directed and harmonised into a
perfect whole. ‘There is in this material of instinct and impulse
nothing that is intrinsically evil. It is all capable of right direction.
The problem is that men universally fail to control and direct it.
The mere possession of these impulses could not be called sinful
in any sense of the term. It is in full accord with the will of God.
But it certainly results in very much that cannot be in accordance
with the will of a good God. We may also criticise Dr. Tennant
on the ground that he regards sin as a purely moral problem. He
passes over lightly the religious aspect. He has replied indeed that
there was no need to emphasise the fact that sin is against God,
because no one had ever disputed it. But there is always a danger of
allowing too little weight to considerations which are taken for
granted. Sinisa religious term and religion is more than mere moral-
ity. “The seriousness of original sin is that it cuts man off from God
and from that fellowship with Him for which man was made.
1 Fournal of Theological Studies, Jan. 1923, p. 196.
Sin and the Fall 219
(b) Let us then lookatthe facts again. Science and psychology
unite in teaching us that we must regard human nature not statically
but dynamically. It does not come to us ready made. It isa
process. When we are born, we are so to speak candidates for
humanity. We inherit a number of quite general instincts out
of which we build up our life through experience. We also
inherit certain mental dispositions and capacities, though there is
a wide difference of opinion as to their number and nature. Our
powers are undeveloped. What if this mental structure has been
already misformed before the conscious life begins ? May we not
find on these lines an explanation of those phenomena which are
comprised in the term “‘original sin” ? Older theology regarded
men as inheriting a tendency to evil by generation much in the
same way as physical peculiarities, “This 1s still the official
doctrine of the Roman Church, following St. Augustine. It comes
very near to reducing moral evil to a physical taint. Further the
transmission of any such bias-to evil would be a case of what
is called the transmission of an acquired characteristic. “The
possibility of this is strongly denied by the dominant school of
biologists. “They hold that modifications acquired during the
lifetime of an organism cannot be passed on to its descendants by
heredity. It is true that many scientists are of an opposite opinion,
but until science has made up its mind on the question—and it is
for science to decide—it is rash to explain original sin by heredity.
Further, it is hard to see in what way any element in our nature
can have become intrinsically bad, since God created nothing evil
in itself. fRather it is the balance of our nature that is upset, and
desires arft-impulses good in themselves and necessary for the
completeness of our human life have become-attached to wrong
objects or got out of control. =
‘ gest therefore that more weight should be attached to
what is often called, not quite accurately, “social heredity.” We
have already called attention to the fact that there 1S ‘no such thing
as a mere individual. ‘The individual only comes to himself as
a member ofa community. This truth long familiar has received
a eerie through modern psychology. We have come
to see that from his earliest moments, even perhaps in the period
before birth, the infant is having his tastes and tendencies moulded
by the influence of those around him. And all through life we
are being shaped by social tradition in all its many and subtle forms,
220 Aspects of Man’s Condition
In all his moral and spiritual life the individual is being inter-
penetrated by the moral and spiritual life of others. ‘There is a
real solidarity of mankind. Herd instinct prompts our conduct
far more than we like to assume and, let us remember, herd instinct
is in itself at best morally neutral. When we have attained a
certain stage of development, mere herd instinct tends to lower the
moral level of the individual. We must distinguish between mere
herd or mass suggestion and the group mind or mind of an organised
society, which is able to raise the minds of the members of a group
to higher levels of moral and intellectual life. This innate capacity
for social life is then itself morally neutral. As it may be the
condition of progress, so it may be equally the condition of move-
ment away from the purpose of God. We may see in original
sin the result of misdirected social influence. Some such concept
is an intellectual necessity. F Social sin is as much a fact as social
righteousness. All societies possess in a real sense a corporate
mind, the product not only of its present members but of its past
members also, and all who belong to and share its mind come
consciously or unconsciously under its sway. We suggest that
original sin is to be found not simply in the possession of animal
impulses and passions imperfectly disciplined and in the failure to
discipline them by the individual, but rather in the positive mis-
directing of such instinctive tendencies by bad social influences at
every stage. Psychologists have invented a new term “ moral
disease’? to describe a mental condition in which instinctive
tendencies which conflict with moral standards have been repressed
into the unconscious and from there exercise a pernicious influence
on the conscious life. Without committing ourselves to the
position that original sin consists merely in repressed complexes,
we may see here one way in which the moral life may be disordered
through no fault of the individual but simply through social
environment.
Ina review of Dr. Tennant’s book in the “‘ Journal of Theo-
logical Studies” 1 Mr. C. S. Gayford wrote : ‘‘ Granted that the
propensities which constitute the fomes peccati come to us from our
animal ancestry, and are in themselves non-moral, the last step in
the evidence should tell us what attitude the will itself at its first
appearance is seen to adopt towards these propensities. Is it
neutral ? Does it incline towards that higher law which is just
IVA Priliigo3;pyag 2:
Sin and the Fall 221
beginning to dawn upon the consciousness? Or is it found from the
first in sympathy and alliance with the impulses which it ought to
curb?’ Modern psychologists would complain that this language
treats the will as a separate faculty, whereas they regard it rather as
the whole man moving in response to some stimulus. But if we
modify this view of the will, the quotation corresponds to our
suggestion. When man becomes responsible for his actions, his
power of choice is limited and perverted by “sentiments” and
“complexes” formed under the influence of his social environ-
ment during the time when his power of moral choice was still
undeveloped. While these do not destroy his power of free choice,
they curtail the range within which such choice is now possible.
(c) Dr. Tennant’s view has also been attacked from another
direction. It has been argued in several quarters lately that we
cannot isolate the evil tendencies in man from the evil in nature :
that the process of evolution was vitiated long before man ever
appeared on the scene. It is impossible to suppose that a perfectly
good and wise God would have created, say, the cobra or the
cholera germ. It is not enough to say that the world is imperfect.
The existence of “dysteleology” in nature, the ruthless competition
and cruelty all go to show that it does not perfectly express the will of
God. So the nature which man inherited from his animal ancestry
was fallen before ever he inherited it. He appeared on the scene
burdened by an inherently self-centred nature dominated by in-
stinctive structures of animalism whose overpowering bias towards
evil he could not be expected to control. Those who maintain
such views as these make out a strong case. “They argue for a
‘¢ Fall,” but a Fall which is “‘ pre-organic ’’—that is, prior in time
to the whole evolutionary process. Certainly this idea clearly
emphasises the reality and seriousness of original sin.*
4. The State of Fallenness
The doctrine of a Fall of some kind is an inevitable deduction
from the recognition of original sin. If we hold that our present
condition is not in accordance with the will of God we must
believe that the race as a whole has fallen away from the divine
purpose. As we have seen, we can no longer use the story in
Genesis as historical evidence. Nor have we any other source of
1 See e.g. Formby, The Unveiling of the Fall.
222 Aspects of Man’s Condition
light on the moral and spiritual condition of primitiveman. Wedo
not even know for certain whether all mankind are descended from
a single pair or not. Nor does the study of the scanty remains of
primitive races throw light on our problem. It seems as if man
had made one or two false starts, and that races who had attained to
a certain degree of development died out. It can also be inferred
from the possessions buried with the dead that they believed in some
kind of future life, and therefore had some kind of religion. More
than this we cannot say, nor does it seem as if we shall ever get any
clear evidence on this point. It 1s quite conceivable that there once
was a time when the human race was developing on right lines,
a period of what we might call, to use the old term, “ original
righteousness.” Science is more ready than it was to admit of
leaps forward in evolution. We can picture one such when man
became aware, however dimly, of a spiritual environment and of
his capacity to correspond to it. It may have been that for a
time long or short he did respond and began to develop on right
lines and then failed to respond. He refused to make the moral
effort to live up to his calling and so forfeited that full fellowship
with God which could alone give him the power to control his
animal impulses. Science cannot say anything against such a
hypothesis. Indeed, Sir Oliver Lodge in his last book puts forth
asimilar view. Man experienced “‘a rise in the scale of existence,”
but fell “‘ below the standard at which he had now consciously
arrived, “The upward step was unmistakable ; mankind tripped
over it and fell, but not irremediably.” 1
Another possible view is that there never existed in actual
history any period when man fulfilled God’s purpose for him,
but that before ever he emerged, the evolutionary process was
marred by some rebellious spiritual influence. Some have
attempted to revive Origen’s teaching of a Fall of individual souls
in a pre-existent state. “[his is open to all the arguments against
pre-existence and is hard to reconcile with the justice of God.
If our present lot is the rightful consequence of disobedience in
some previous existence, then it is morally useless to punish us
for it unless we are able to remember it. Others again have put
forward a theory of a world-soul which by some pre-cosmic act
was shattered and defiled so that the life-force is in itself tainted.
‘This is a piece of pure mythology, and corresponds to nothing in
1 The Making of Man, pp. 84, 151.
Sin and the Fall 223
human experience. It is difficult to criticise it because it eludes
both the understanding and the imagination. It is more reason-
able to conjecture that the world-process has been distorted by
rebellious wills other than human. ‘There is nothing irrational
in supposing that there are other conscious beings than man in
the universe. We know in our own experience the possibility of
disobedience to the will of God. If sin can arise in our own lives
in this way, itisnot unreasonable to hold that it arose in like manner
in other beings who, however unlike ourselves, resemble us in
this, that they enjoy some measure of free will. “This certainly
can claim the support of Scripture, which assumes the activity of
rebellious spirits other than human behind the world-order. St.
Paul includes in the redemption won by Christ not only mankind,
but angels above man and nature below man.
To sum up: Christian tradition and experience unite in
bearing witness to a belief that mankind as a whole and not merely
individual man has fallen away from the purpose of God. What is
important is to recognise the fact of fallenness. “The practical
value of this belief is great. “Io believe in original sin is to face
the facts, but not to take a depressing view of human life. It 1s
to make an act of faith that we ourselves and human society are
not what God intended us to be, and that our present condition
is a libel on human nature as He purposed it. “The human race
as a whole and every member of it needs not only education and
development, but redemption. It cannot save itself, but must be
as It were remade or born again. And we believe that in Christ
God has provided exactly what we need. In Him the human race
made a new start.
Further, just as we saw that original sin was propagated by
membership in a fallen humanity, so in the Church, the Body of
Christ, we see the new people of God, the new humanity. “The
Church is in literal truth the home of grace. By’ baptism? the
1 The question may be asked whether the rejection of much of the tradi-
tional theology connected with the Fall of man does not necessitate a revision of
our doctrine of baptism. We must first insist that much of the language
employed in connection with baptism,which is taken from Scripture, was used
in its original context to refer to adult baptism. It dates from a time when,
as in the Mission field to-day, infant baptism was the exception and not the
rule. Accordingly when it is transferred to apply to infant baptism we cannot
wonder that its meaning needs to be modified. Thus an adult coming to be
baptised needs forgiveness of his past actual sins. He needs not only to be
cleansed but to be pardoned. But an infant is not in the least responsible for
224 Aspects of Man’s Condition
Christian is born again, because he is brought within the sphere
of the new life achieved by Christ and imparted normally by mem-
bership in His Body. ‘‘ For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ
shall all be made alive.”” Over against original sin we set the
redemptive power realised through fellowship with God and with
one another in Christ.
I]
GRACE AND FREEDOM
BYs |e Wa VLOZLEY,
1. The Idea of Grace
Tue differences which inhere in any two individual lives are, in
part, the result of the differences of the two persons concerned.
But they are also, in part, the result of the differences of the two
particular environments. For no two persons, at any stage, Is
environment precisely the same, and the secret of a life, which may
be revealed though very incompletely at some moment in its
course, and is more fully disclosed when that course has reached its
earthly end, is the secret of the interaction between the self and its
environment. Yet this is not the whole truth. “The Christian
sees the deeper truth of the self and its earthly environment in the
his share in a fallen humanity. He needs indeed the grace of God to counteract
the perverting influences which have already begun to work upon his life,
but God cannot be said in any sense to blame him for his present condition.
Nor can we believe that infants are personally exposed to the wrath of God.
All that we can assert is that God hates and condemns that condition of humanity
which shuts men out from fellowship with Himself. Only in this quite abstract
sense can sin that is only “ original’”’ be said to deserve God’s wrath. The
unhappy use of St. Paul’s phrase “ children of wrath ” in the baptismal service
has been responsible for many misunderstandings. In its context, as all New
Testament scholars agree, it only means “‘ objects of wrath.” There is no
reference whatever to infancy. St. Paul insists that men by “ nature,” that is
apart from the assistance of God’s grace, cannot overcome their evil tendencies
and be pleasing to Him. Even so God’s wrath is directed, as we have seen,
against their condition, not against themselves. God cannot condemn men for
a state for which they are not accountable. Rather, as suffering from a disease
of the soul which disqualifies them for the highest life, they are the objects of
His pity and redeeming purpose. So, again, when infants are said to be born
“in sin,” the term is being used in its widest sense, to include all tendencies of
life that are contrary to the divine purpose. The phrase means “ born into
an environment that will mis-shape them.”
Grace and Freedom 225
light of the relation of each to a higher order of reality which
supplies the only adequate account both of what is and of what is
intended to be. ‘There is a unity underlying variation. A two-
fold relationship, constituting a twofold environment, forms the
permanent setting of the life of every individual. We are one
through our membership of a fallen and sinful humanity ; we are
one through our membership of a redeemed humanity which offers
us the hope of such a final liberation from all sin and every form of
evil as will mean the fulfilment of a glorious destiny.1
Both these are real environments. “They give the spiritual
conditions of our lives. ‘There are certain moral facts connected
with humanity, out of which no individual can contract. ‘This is
clear enough of the evil. It has penetrated too deeply for any
sort of Pelagianism to hold its ground, when the appeal goes to the
facts. It is on the moral side that pessimism has its strength.
There is a real facing of a mass of evidence in the belief that though
humanity is conscious of a call to moral idealism and achievement
it neither has nor ever will have the power to attain. The other
condition is not equally clear. Indeed, to some it may seem too
great a paradox to speak of humanity both as though in it a kingdom
of evil held sway, and also as in fact redeemed. Some who reject
pessimistic conclusions, while seeking to face bravely and honestly
the widespread signs of evil strongly entrenched, would probably
prefer to describe humanity and the world as to be redeemed rather
than redeemed. But the Christian Church will never allow its
songs of triumph to be set in the minor key. “The work of Christ
means something more than a specially powerful movement in the
long warfare between good and evil. ‘The two great epistles
Colossians and Ephesians bear testimony to that. We have but dim
conceptions and inadequate words for expressing what is known as
the cosmic work of Christ. A veil hides from us the mysteries
both of creation and of redemption. But the Church with all the
richness of its life is not to be understood as the means to the attain-
ment only of moral ends, nor is the Kingdom to be reckoned as no
more than that “ far-off divine event” which will some day close
the book of world-history. “The Church is here, and the Kingdom
comes because of the eternal present value of Christ’s work of
salvation. We have our place in a new world-order as truly as in
that which binds us with the chains of its ancient evil.
1 Cf. Romans viil. 18-25.
226 Aspects of Man’s Condition
But though the belief in a new order is characteristic of
Christianity, the relationship of the individual to this order in
which the old things have become new is not “ given ”’ in the same
sense as his relationship to that sinful humanity which represents the
continuance of the old order. For the efficacy of his member-
ship in it depends upon his personal response to it and use of it.
He himself, for this to be possible, must become a new creation.
No utterance of the New ‘Testament better expresses the nature of
the environment in which the believer has his dwelling and of the
change which the reaction between it and himself involves than
2, Corinthians..v..173)"\ In’ Christ’ 2°) a new. creations ftuat
description briefly comprehends the reality of the new life as
possessing and possessed *by the individual. And the word which
gives the best and fullest description of this new life, expressing
both its nature and also the individual’s proper reaction to It, is
the word Grace.
This word is one of the classic words of Christian theology,
aS an exposition of its frequency and importance as yéprc¢ in the
New ‘Testament, and of its standing in the great dogmatic schemata
of Catholicism and of Protestantism, would show. Yet the
framing of a wholly satisfactory conception of it has not been
unattended by special difficulties, and both in popular religious
thought and in theological interpretations, it has occasioned mis-
understandings and perplexities which have not been chiefly on the
surface or at the circumference of Christian faith. We must allow
first of all for impressions, which can hardly be called intellectual
conceptions, of grace as an impersonal force, a “ thing ” which can
be brought into touch with persons by some process of permeation.
That is the danger of the phrase “infused grace.” We cannot
abandon it. It has both too honourable a history and too essentially
religious a meaning. But we must not let it convey to our minds
the idea that grace is a kind of invisible fluid which passes into
persons and produces effects through contact. “The materialism
of attenuated and etherialised substances is still materialism ; and
though matter and spirit are not contrary the one to the other,
seeing that each is dependent upon God and serves God’s purposes 3;
though, further, matter can be used in the highest interests of
spirit, else the Incarnation would be impossible and the sacraments
possess no inward part ; it is always true that spirit remains spirit,
and matter matter. Grace stands for the personal dealings of God
Grace and Freedom 27
with man in various ways and through various media. He does
not start a process which ends in the pouring of grace into man ;
but grace means God in action, regenerating, blessing, forgiving,
strengthening. It is the suggestion of impersonal operation which
has found an entrance into the terminology of grace that needs
to be eradicated. ‘Then, secondly, difficulties arise in connection
with the place given to grace and with the effects ascribed to
its activity. It is both intellectually justifiable, and also of great
spiritual value, to believe that man is not the victim of illusion
when he claims to possess a measure of freedom, and that that
freedom is never overwhelmed or destroyed. Man’s free self-
expression is variously limited, and in no two persons is it of
exactly the same quality, but the moral aim of life is towards an
expansion not a contraction of it, and in all moral attainment free
action of personality is involved. Now the workings of grace
have been so expounded as to leave no place for freedom. The
Augustinian tradition so emphasised the necessity of acts of will
being in accordance with the state of human nature which lay
behind the will, that grace was in danger of being regarded as an in-
vasive and irresistible force which so changed man’s nature that man
was then “‘ free” to do what had formerly been impossible for him.
For Augustine the true freedom was the beata necessitas boni,| and
the goal of the spiritual life. “To this description of the ideal no
exception is to be taken : but there is grave objection to the idea that
the human will, or, better, the willing person, never makes any
contribution in connection with salvation except that of willing
what he has to will because his whole being is in the control of
a force which turns it like a ship’s rudder.
There is no hope of escape from this annulment of freedom by
the delimitation of the moral and the religious life as two different
spheres, with freedom the characteristic description of the one, and
graceoftheother. “This isan unsatisfactory and unreal compromise.
Even if grace could ever be regarded as operating in man in such
a way as to leave his freedom alone and not to invade that region of
his life in which moral decisions have to be made and moral values
achieved, that could be applied only to quite low levels of experience.
Only on such levels is any divorcement between ethic and religion
conceivable. Ethic is not religion, and religion is not ethic, but
1 Cf. De Civ. Dei, xxii. 30. The phrase itself I take from Harnack’s
History of Dogma, v. p. 113.
228 Aspects of Man’s Condition
only as they meet and interpenetrate in experience are the highest
levels of either attainable.1 If grace is to be allowed for at all,
that is progressively the case as the moral life grows to higher
stature and becomes richer and more comprehensive. And the
consciousness of dependence upon grace is the best way to moral
attractiveness, It is the lack of this consciousness which is the
most serious and suggestive defect in the pagan moral ideal. How
little Aristotle conceives of a way out of the moral struggle whereby
the individual may reach a higher state of goodness and abide therein
is clear from his comparison in the seventh book of the “ Ethics” of
the ignorance of the incontinent man, and its cessation, with the
phenomena of sleep and awakening. ‘There is simply an alter-
nation of contrary experiences. As for the Stoic sage, we may
admire him, without impulse or desire to imitate him. Whatever
theory be held of the matter, it is the union of religious dependence
with moral independence in the Christian saint which gives him
his pre-eminence religiously and morally. It appeals as a unity,
not as two admirable but isolated facts lying side by side within
one personality.
2. The Idea of Grace in the Bible and Christian Theology
Before we go further into the question of the presence and
scope of grace in the Christian life, and of the character of its
relation to freedom, a sketch of the idea of grace as we find it in the
Bible, and of the place it occupies in the historical development of
Christian thought, will be useful, and may point us in the right
direction for a solution of the difficulties which have gathered
round the subject.
We may note at the start that the general notion involved in
the word “‘grace”’ is, when viewed in relation to God or the gods,
that of divine favour flowing outwards to man, and, when viewed
from the side of man as the recipient of that favour, enhanced
powers which may reveal themselves in physical or spiritual growth
and capacity. According to the character and development of
religion, so will be the conception of grace. If we take two
definitions of grace when it is conceived in accordance with the
whole Christian outlook—that of Dr. Gore that it is “‘ God’s love
1 Otto’s insistence on this point has been strangely overlooked by many
of his critics.
Grace and Freedom 229
to us in actual operation,” 1 and that of Dr. W. N. Clarke who
describes it as ‘‘ the suitable expression, in such a world as this, of
the fact that God’s gracious purpose is to bless sinners ” 2—-we see
how far such phraseology goes beyond the primitive ideas of grace
which we find in ethnic religions? But wherever there is the
conception of a mysterious power or virtue attaching to particular
things, or, more personally, of beauty and strength bestowed
on men by a divine being, there we may recognise the rudi-
ments of what was to become the Christian belief in grace. A
passage in the “‘ Odyssey” shows how yéet¢ can be construed as a
physical gift from the gods. Before his meeting with Nausicaa
Odysseus is beautified by Athene ; she makes him “ greater and
more mighty to behold, and from his head caused deep curling
thick locks to flow like the hyacinth flowers . . . and shed grace
about his head and shoulders. ‘Then to the shore of the sea went
Odysseus apart, and sat down, glowing in beauty and grace.” *
Yet, though materialistic or quasi-physical conceptions of the gods
involve similar conceptions of grace, we must not exclude a
primitive moral interpretation. The favour of the gods possesses
this moral connotation, in that the opposite of the divine favour,
namely the divine anger issuing in punishment, is the result of
offences which draw down upon individual or tribe supernatural
wrath. And though, at early stages of religion, no sharp division
between the ceremonial and the ethical is possible, allowance must
be made for the presence of an element truly, though in quite
primitive fashion, ethical.®
The Old Testament is permeated with the conviction of God’s
gracious dealings with man. But we must recognise different
levels of insight into the character of these dealings. “There is the
primitive conception of grace as it comes before us in the story of
Noah’s sacrifice ®; there is the highly developed teaching of the
Prophets whose doctrine, on its side of hope and promise, is one
of grace specially directed towards the Community.7 There is
1 The Epistle to the Romans, i. p. 49.
2 The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 89.
8 For primitive notions of grace and the concept of “mana” see R. R.
Marett, The Threshold of Religion, pp. 101 ff.
4 Odyssey, vi. 229-237 (tr. Butcher and Lang).
5 See the chapter entitled “ Morality”? in Dr. F. B. Jevons’ Introduction
to the Study of Comparative Religion.
6 Genesis vill. 21.
7 Cf. Amos v. 15 3 Hosea xiv. 25 Is. xxx. 18.
230 Aspects of Man’s Condition
nothing akin to pagan conceptions of grace as won from super-
natural powers through magical processes. In the sacrifices of
the Law, it is God who through the cultus gives man the means of
approaching Him and being accepted by Him.4 Where the Old
‘Testament, as a whole, is incomplete is in placing so predominant
an emphasis on the national covenant-relationship with God that
the individual is in danger of being overlooked, and in the confine-
ment of God’s gracious purposes and blessings to Israel. But the
manifestation of grace as the antithesis of sin and the source of
mercy and forgiveness 1s constantly found in the Old ‘Testament,
beginning with the Protevangelium. It would take us too far
away from the subject to pursue this thought further, but it may
be said that modern misconceptions of the religion of the Old
‘Testament and its doctrine of God are largely due to a failure to
pay attention to the place and importance given in the Old Testa-
ment to God’s manifestation of His grace.
In the New Testament, though the word “ grace” is unevenly
distributed through the various portions of its literature, the reality
for which the word stands is of the essence of the revelation of
God’s attitude towards man. “he Gospel is always one of grace.
It is so in our Lord’s preaching of the fatherhood and the love
of God, nowhere more prominently than in the parables which
St. Luke has preserved for us.2_ And when we pass to St. Paul’s
epistles, grace appears as “‘that regnant word of the Pauline theo-
logy” 3 in which is contained the answer to the fact and problem
of sin, bound up with the Incarnation and cross of the Son of God,
and linked on, as the Dean of Wells shows, with the extension of
the Gospel to the Gentiles.4 Anyadequate discussion of St. Paul’s
understanding of grace would have to take account of problems
which can only be mentioned. “These concern the universality of
ERR ReUL ey ok Vitek ce
2 Cf. Dr. Townsend’s The Doctrine of Grace in the Synoptic Gospels. On
p. 106, writing of the first two parables in St. Luke xv. he says: ‘‘ In the Christian
religion the emphasis is on the divine quest of God for man. God is the seeker,
and these parables affirm the restlessness of His grace in Christ, until that which
was lost is found.” Cf. what St. Paul says of ‘‘ being known of God” in 1 Cor.
vill. 3 and Gal. iv. 9.
3 Miss E. Underhill’s expression in The Mystic Way, p. 178.
4 See, in his edition of Ephesians, the exposition on ii. 10, pp. 52-3: “It
was the glory of grace to bring the I‘wo once more together as One in Christ.
A new start was thus made in the world’s history. St. Paul called it a New
Creation.”
Grace and Freedom 231
grace, the relationship in which it stands to the divine righteous-
ness, its doctrinal connections with the Apostle’s theology of the
indwelling Christ and of the Holy Spirit, and its bearing upon his
conception of the sacraments. It is sufficient for our purposes to
point out that the problems or even dilemmas of which he was
conscious, at least in part—and we still more when we try to
systematise the controlling features in St. Paul’s religion—must not
be solved or evaded by any compromising formula which is always in
danger of missing the point of the Apostle’s meaning. For him the
true interpretation of religion depends on the recognition of the
priority of grace to all human endeavours. ‘This grace he found at
its richest and most illuminating in Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
crucified and risen, and when he thought of the working out of
God’s purposes in the ages to come, he saw it as an increasing
manifestation of ‘‘ the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness
towards us in Christ Jesus.” *
As in the New Testament, so in Christian theology, grace
is one of the dominant words. Yet in the first centuries it gained
no special attention. ‘The sacramental associations of grace are,
as early as Ignatius, deriving from the Incarnation and pointing
forward to a climax in “ deification.” 2 No one was concerned
to go deeply into the question of the effect of grace upon human
freedom. Origen has something to say on the matter, and ends his
discussion with the declaration that both the divine and the human
element must be maintained.’ But for the full significance of grace
to be expounded, both a man of quite uncommon religious history
and genius and the occasion of a great controversy were necessary.
The need was supplied by Augustine and the issues which rose
round the sharp reactions from one another of himself and Pelagius.
We must leave on one side the story of that first great clash of
rival efforts to state a Christian anthropology. Suffice it to say
that Augustine’s whole doctrine of grace rests on two pillars
which rise from the ground of one of the profoundest of religious
experiences. One of them stands for the absolute necessity of
grace, as the source of all real goodness, the other for the character
of grace as real power infused into the human heart. And the moral resolutions so originated are
capable of achievement. “The power of God manifested in the
raising of Christ from the dead is what has raised Christians from
paganism to the moral freedom of the converted life ® ; and it is
for ever available to them as a potent instrument for the conquest
of sin. ‘The purpose of the resurrection was that believers should
be joined with the living Christ,’ and find grace through that
union. And this privilege carried with it obligations of a most
definite kind. It involved renunciation of sin and of the“ lusts of
the flesh.” In writing to the Corinthians St. Paul lays particular
emphasis on the incompatibility of any breach of the law of purity
with the Christian profession.8 But it would probably be an
1 1 Pet. i. 6-8; cf. 2 Tim. ii. 8-10. * ACE X..43; KUL eee,
SSROMs1V a2 5: 4 Rom. vi. 4.
beAC Ors Vat
¢ Eph. iu. 5% Colo inst9 Romavitiez: 7 Rom. vii. 4.
SU Corvie tA, Loe
The Apostolic Teaching 237
error to restrict his allusions to the mortification of the flesh to
impurity alone.t Rather we should interpret them as coterminous
with the whole range of purely selfish impulses and desires which
in St. Paul’s philosophy are characteristic of the natural man. In
reference to all of them the faith of the resurrection meant for the
Christian the deliberate pursuit of the “ purgative way.” But it
involved likewise new standards of positive conduct—a walking
“n “ newness of life.2 A fresh worth-whileness has been given
to the spiritual life as such. “ If then ye are raised together with
Christ,’”’ says the Apostle, “‘ seek the things that are above, where
Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the
things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth.” °
Thus the claims of the unseen order upon men’s thoughts and
interests are laid upon them by virtue of their relation to the risen
Lord.
So decisive is the ethical teaching of the resurrection that St.
Paul can write definitely, “‘ If Christ hath not been raised, your
faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins.” * It is part of one of the
arguments he uses against sceptical opponents at Corinth who
mocked at the notion of immortality. He would not have done
this, and the argument would not have served its purpose, had not
Christian morality been regularly and closely linked with Christ’s
resurrection in his own and the Church’s teaching. He seems
indeed to be prepared to admit the strength of the Epicurean—or
rather the Cyrenaic—argument for pleasure as the highest good,
if the resurrection is a myth. For the resurrection is the one
sure pledge and guarantee men have of the reality and claim of that
other order of ends and values whose evidence proves the fallacy
of hedonism. Christ’s resurrection, the Christian’s experience of
moral redemption, and his hope of immortality are three facts
so closely locked together that none of them can be disowned
without the repudiation of the others. It is significant of the whole
outlook of the first age of Christianity that this great chapter on
the Christian hope should close with the note of practical exhorta-
tion. ‘ Wherefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, un-
movable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as
ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” ®
1 Rom. vi. 12-19, Vill. 12. 2 Rom. vi. 4.
3 Col. iii. 1 (The Epistle for Easter Day).
4 1 Cor. xv. 173 cf. 1 Cor. XV. 32. 5 1 Cor. xv. 58.
288 The Resurrection
But we are already trenching upon that further issue which for
large numbers of Christian believers throughout the ages has given
to the resurrection of Jesus its most significant appeal. It is true
to say that thousands to whom the doctrinal or the moral bearing
of the Easter message means little or nothing yet pin their faith to
it as the main assurance we have of the life beyond the grave. And
in this the popular sentiment of Christendom undoubtedly reflects
the mind of the New ‘Testament. It is by that act of raising Jesus
from the dead, and by that in unique measure, that God has certified
believers of their immortality.
A full discussion of the New Testament doctrine of immortality
would fall outside the scope of this essay ; and we must confine
ourselves to those aspects of it which have a direct and detailed
bearing upon the problem of the resurrection of Christ. The two
passages of particular importance are both to be found in the letters ~
which St. Paul addressed to the Church of Corinth.! It is not an
accident that that cosmopolitan city should have elicited a peculiarly
full treatment of the subject. [he Church there contained both
Jews and Greeks, and it was in close contact with a world where
every phase of speculation passed rapidly from mouth to mouth.
‘Thus the Jewish element found little difficulty in believing in a
resurrection ; but they were no less exercised than the Jewish
Christians of ‘Ihessalonica as to what the belief portended for those
who died before the “coming” of the Lord. ‘To the Greek
element, on the other hand, the whole idea of resurrection was
perplexing. If they had avoided the current scepticism of the
philosophical schools, it was usually through recourse to some
Orphic or Platonic conception which asserted only the immortality
of the soul and despaired altogether of the body. St. Paul, who
was at once Jew and Greek, was well equipped for handling such
a situation; and we can, in fact, see him in 1 Corinthians xv.
addressing himself now to the Jewish and now to the Greek section
among his readers.”
‘The Apostle’s teaching in this chapter, so familiar to us from
the Burial Service, may be summarised as follows. Christian
immortality is conceived after the analogy of a grain of corn, which
is sown in the earth dead and renews itself in the grains of the
ensuing harvest. It involves, that is to say, a continuity of indivi-
JOT COG AY.) 5 een Orn.
2 Cf. Lake, Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, p. 218.
The Apostolic Teaching 289
dual life, but a transformation of the form or “ body” in which
that life finds expression. “There is a connection between the
earthy body and the heavenly body, in that each in its time is
appropriate to the individual life which it embodies ; though the
point is emphasised that the heavenly embodiment is the gift or act
of God. In the case of Christians already dead, or dying before
the Lord’s ‘‘ coming,” the transformation from the earthy to the
heavenly body entails the dissolution of the former in death,
followed by a period of waiting ; whereas for those who survive
to that day the transformation is immediate and sudden. But in
point of fact death is really irrelevant for Christians. For them the
only thing in connection with death which matters is sin, “They
share the physical mortality of all the sons of Adam ; but, if they
have laid sin aside, this mortality is overwhelmed in and swallowed
up by that other life which Christians also now share, the immortal
life of Christ.
The irrelevancy of death as a barrier to immortality, and the
certainty of the spiritual body, are proved by Christ’s resurrection.
In one sense the Greeks are right 5 ‘‘ flesh and blood,” the material
particles of the body, cannot as such inherit eternal life. But they
are wrong in not seeing that there must be a body in that life. At
the same time there are differences between the resurrection of
Christ and that of those who are His, corresponding to the difference
of rank which belongs to Him in the hierarchy of spiritual beings.*
So He experienced ‘‘ on the third day ” that completeness of trans-
formation for which Christians who are dead have to wait until
His “coming.” He is distinguished from Christians already dead
in that His body knew no decay; from Christians now living in
that the spiritual body is already His. His bodily transformation,
though it involved death, did not involve corruption ; and, though
it involved resurrection, did not involve an interval of waiting.”
1 y Cor. xv. 23. Canon Streeter’s whole treatment of the resurrection
in Foundations is governed, as he admits, by the assumption that the parallelism
between the resurrection of Christ and that of Christians is complete. But
this is surely too facile. What is true, as Professor Lake points out, is that
certain important features in St. Paul’s view of the resurrection of Christians
are based on his knowledge of the resurrection of Christ.
2 The argument is not affected if we adopt Dr. McNeile’s thesis (The Problem
of the Future Life, p. 107) that “in some sense the formation of the spiritual
body has already begun [sc. in this life here], and is being progressively formed
with our spiritual progress.” The idea is attractive, and, as he points out, is
consistent with much N.T. teaching. But it would still remain true that for
U
290 The Resurrection
That is the gist of St. Paul’s teaching in the two great passages
under review. It issometimes said that the later passage (2 Cor. v.)
is inconsistent with the earlier. But careful examination does not
endorse this. There is a change of phraseology through the use
of the metaphors of a heavenly “ house” and of heavenly “ cloth-
ing” to describe the spiritual body. There is a change in the
practical point of the argument, which in the earlier passage turns
on popular doubts and questionings, in the later on the contrast
between the sufferings of the present and the glory of the future.
And there is, further, the addition of a new idea—the idea that
Christians already dead are if anything more privileged than those
still living, because they are in closer proximity to their Lord.
But so far as the main principles of the teaching are concerned,
there is no alteration. It still remains true that, for St. Paul,
immortality means a body of different texture from that of earth ;
that this body is an endowment given to each believer by God 5
that Christians already dead pass by resurrection, after a period of
waiting, to the manifestation of this transformed or spiritual body,
while those who survive to the ‘‘coming” enter upon it suddenly
and without delay; and that of both these hopes the resurrection
of Christ is the great security and pledge.
It has been necessary to describe St. Paul’s teaching in these
chapters with some fulness, because it is sometimes stated that his
doctrine would not be stated as it is, if he had accepted the tradi-
tional ideas connected with the empty tomb. ‘That, however,
is to overstate the case. Not only is there a very wide agreement
among critical scholars, including even Schmiedel, that one who
like St. Paul had been brought up in Pharisaical circles must be
assumed to have accepted these traditional ideas, unless he definitely
states the contrary ; but it also ignores some important considera-
tions. It ignores, for example, the care with which St. Paul sets
Christ in a “rank” of His own distinct from those of other
Christians ; and still more it fails to recognise that details of the
manner of Christ’s resurrection would be foreign to the argument
which the Apostle is here developing. On the other hand, it can
fairly be urged that the very fact that St. Paul keeps these details
in the background, even though he assumed them as part of the
St. Paul Christ’s resurrection is differentiated from that of Christians in that
the process of transformation was in His case completed without corruption and
within a very brief period of time.
The Appearances of the Risen Lord 291
regular belief of the Corinthian Church, is not without its signi-
ficance ; while the emphasis he lays upon the difference between
the earthy and the spiritual body in the case of Christians does
require us to suppose that he conceived of Christ’s risen body as
spiritual too, transcending the ordinary properties of matter, in
conformity with that heavenly order into which at the resurrection
He had passed. It will be important to bear this in mind, when we
come to deal with that subject more closely.t
. BL
Tue APPEARANCES OF THE RisEN LorpD
1. The Nature of the Evidence
We have considered at some length the evidence for the reac-
tion of the resurrection-faith on the first generation of Christians ;
and we have seen that it postulates the occurrence in the historical
order of some fact of transcendent significance touching Jesus
Christ. It is now time to examine the more direct historical
evidence. In part, we have already touched it; for St. Paul’s
teaching in 1 Cor. xv. is prefaced by a brief historical summary,
which is in fact the earliest documentary testimony we have as to
the resurrection. Its date is somewhere in the middle fifties of
the first century ; and it points back to still earlier dates—one the
period of St. Paul’s first preaching in Corinth, which may be placed
in A.D. 49 or 50; the other that of his conversion, probably in
35 A.D., when he received authoritative instruction in the truths
of the Gospel. ‘The facts, that is to say, of which he reminds
the Corinthians, are facts which he had received and believed for
several years past ; and they were the common property of the
Church in Jerusalem within at most six years of the crucifixion.
‘The summary itself, moreover, falls into two parts. “The first
has all the marks of a primitive credo. It not only contains the
death, burial, resurrection, and appearances of Jesus, but notes that
1 It may be pointed out, further, that both the passages we have been
considering may be dependent on the Book of Wisdom. Cf. W. L. Knox,
St. Paul and the Church in ferusalem, pp. 128 f. .
292 The Resurrection
the death was “ for our sins,” that the resurrection was “ on the
third day,” and invests both events with the dignity of religious
dogma by adding that they were fulfilments of Scripture. “The
second part contains further allusions to appearances of Jesus,
closing with that which had been experienced by the Apostle
himself ; the purpose of this second section being to reinforce the
evidence for the resurrection, to expand its significance, and to
account for St. Paul’s own title to be an Apostle.}
‘The evidence of the Gospels is naturally of a different kind
from that of St. Paul; for here we are dealing with narratives
definitely purporting to be historical. Nowhere does the criticism
of the Gospels present more complicated literary and historical
problems than in regard to the resurrection.
The earliest narrative, St. Mark’s, unfortunately bee off
after recording the discovery of the empty tomb and before coming
to speak of any appearances of Jesus ; and the concluding twelve
verses are usually recognised as a précis, compiled by a much later
hand, of other accounts then current in the Church, some of which
are more fully given in our other Gospels. St. Luke appears to
have material of his own for this part of his story no less than for
that of the Passion, derived perhaps from some member of the
Herodian household# ; and it is possible that his concluding
chapter may have belonged to the first edition of his work, if
such were indeed prepared, and so have been written no later than
St. Mark. ‘The internal evidence of this Gospel cuts both ways :
for while the naturalness of the narrative, especially of that of the
walk to Emmaus, tends to bear out the high opinion of St. Luke’s
trustworthiness as a historian which his own preface and the study
of his works as a whole have led scholars to form, yet there are
features in it which many will regard as secondary and as presuppos-
1 A division of this kind seems to me necessitated by the phrasing. To the
end of verse 5 (‘‘ then to the twelve ’’) each clause is introduced by the con-
junction 6t1, while from verse 6 onwards the direct statement is used (2mert«
607). Moreover it is impossible that the record of the appearance to St.
Paul himself (v. 8) could have been part of the primitive credo ; so that a divi-
sion somewhere in the list of appearances is inevitable. ‘This is also Meyer’s
view. At the same time it is quite possible that the whole list represents an
agreed statement arranged between St. Paul and the other Apostles on one of
his visits to Jerusalem, with a view to making clear his title to'the Apostolate.
2 Cf. Sanday, Outlines, p. 172.
8 Cf. Canon Streeter’s hypothesis of a Proto-Luke, which has secured
influential support.
The Appearances of the Risen Lord 293
ing problems and questionings of a later day than the resurrection
‘tself Nevertheless it is important to remember that St. Luke
was brought into close touch with 5t. Paul and the other Apostles,
and no doubt had access to several streams of oral testimony. St.
Matthew’s account is from the historian’s point of view perhaps
the most baffling. It has commonly been supposed to incorporate
part at least of the “‘ lost ending ”’ of St. Mark ; but this is impos-
sible to prove, and internal evidence points to certain features of the
record as having been amplified in transmission. The verdict of
the historian on the Synoptic evidence for the resurrection would
recognise that in St. Mark and St. Luke we have two independent
lines of testimony of whose general worth we can form a clear
estimate ; while the first Gospel, if in some respects it follows
St. Mark, also incorporates elements of floating tradition the value
of which cannot to-day be determined.
There remain the Fourth Gospel and the Acts. Our estimate
of the Johannine evidence must clearly be very largely affected by
the view we take of the historical value of the Gospel as a whole ;
though it must be recognised that no part of it falls in so well with
the belief that the writer was, or was in immediate touch with, an
eye-witness and disciple of Jesus as the last two chapters. “The
narratives are detailed, and yet marked by the greatest reserve ;
they are marked by inward consistency, and yet this consistency
does not appear artificial ; and they imply such a conception of the
resurrection as we may well suppose St. Paul to have held. Canon
Streeter has recently gone so far as to conjecture that St. John xxi.
rather than St. Matthew xxviii. is our best guide as to the © lost
ending” of St. Mark. Be that as it may, it is difficult to believe
that the historian who approaches these chapters without parti
pris can fail to be arrested by their intrinsic claims to his serious
consideration.
Before we pass to a study of what the records tell us, a word
should be said with regard to the importance of the Acts of the
Apostles. What the Acts does is to attest beyond all question a
fact which must govern our whole estimate of the historical evidence
for the resurrection. It is the fact of the changed lives and
characters of the Apostles. Whatever else we may say of the
resurrection, we are compelled by the narrative in the Acts to see
in it a historical happening adequate to account for the vast psycho-
1 Cf. Loisy’s view that it is influenced by reaction against Docetism.
294. The Resurrection
logical and spiritual change thus attested.1 What Paley said of
«the Christian miracles” in general is true of the resurrection,
that “‘ many professing to be original witnesses . . . passed their
lives in labours, dangers, and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in
attestation of the account which they delivered, and solely in con-
sequence of their belief of these accounts; and that they also
submitted, from the same motives, to new rules of conduct.”
That is a fact which may not take us very far in the determination
of historical detail ; but it will at least absolve us from giving
serious attention to the views of those who attribute the rise of
belief in Christ’s resurrection either to some skilful fraud or to
some trivial mistake.”
Further, a very strikmg symbol of this change in the lives of
the disciples may be seen in the religious observance of the first
day of the week, of which Acts records the beginnings.? It is
clear that the primitive Church in Jerusalem maintained, even
with some ostentation, the customs of the Jewish Church and not
least that of the Sabbath ; but they added to this the regular
observance of the first day of the week as their especial day of
worship, and this gradually came to supersede entirely the obser-
vance of the Sabbath. When one reflects on the tenacity with
which devout people cling to religious customs of long standing,
it is obvious that some unusually strong cause must have operated
to produce so startling an innovation as that involved in the institu-
tion of the Christian Sunday. Such a cause can be found in the
association of the first day of the week with the Lord’s resurrec-
tion, but in nothing else. There is no suggestion in antiquity that
this observance had any other root but the commemoration of that
fact * ; nor is there any trace of evidence for any kind of apostolic
1 It does not seem to me necessary here to discuss the narratives in the
apocryphal Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of Peter. These
are clearly Tendenzschriften belonging to the second century, and cannot be
regarded as independent sources. The former is interesting, however, as stating
that the appearance to St. James was accompanied by an eucharistic action—
““ He took bread and blessed and brake ’”—analogous to that at Emmaus.
2 As, for instance, that the women went to the wrong grave, or that the
Lord was not really dead when taken down from the cross.
STAC SAT se cf t Gord xine.
4 There appears to be no suggestion that the occurrences of Pentecost
recorded in Acts ii. were responsible for the observance of Sunday. Pentecost
remained for Christians, as it had been for Jews, an annual festival (Acts xx. 16),
and no connection with the weekly Sunday can be traced.
The Appearances of the Risen Lord 295
decree initiating the usage. It grew up, that is to say, as the natural
and spontaneous expression of the faith that on the first day of the
week Jesus rose from the dead ; and it thus affords strong indirect
support to that note of time In regard to the resurrection in which
all the documents agree.
It has often been observed that the Gospel narratives of the
resurrection present a number of discrepancies, which it is
exceedingly difficult and indeed probably impossible to harmonise.
Some of them are insignificant ; but others, such as the place of
the appearances, whether Jerusalem or Galilee or both, and the
length of time over which they were spread, are more substantial
and we need not shrink from admitting that the evidence forbids
our giving upon them a decisive verdict. But this is by no means,
as is sometimes supposed, to discredit the evidence as a whole. On
the contrary, it is rather a testimony to its honesty. When we
remember that the facts it handles were ex hypothest such as baffled
a complete explanation, and that the first witnesses confessed them-
selves incredulous and bewildered in face of them, then the existence
of discrepancies in the accounts argues a close contiguity with the
experiences related ; whereas a compact and coherent narrative
would have given us cause to suspect the deliberate artifice of later
hands. Precisely similar discrepancies, moreover, meet us in the
evidence available for many of the most striking events in history 3
and yet we do not for that reason reject them. What we do is to
weigh the documents by reference to the position and character of
their writers ; to weigh the different statements of each by reference
to the access which the author may be supposed to have had in each
case to means of observation ; to prefer eyewitnesses or those who
have had access to the testimony, whether written or not, of eye-
witnesses ; and not to reject evidence simply because it is of later
date or lays more emphasis on the supernatural.2 Our duty
towards the evidence is not to harmonise it, but to weigh it, and
so doing to form as true an estimate as we can of the happenings to
which it relates.
1 These are fully set forth by Schmiedel, in £.B., art. Resurrection.
2 Cf. Sir Edwyn Hoskyns’ essay above, pp. 164 ff. Also Dr. E. A. Abbott’s
St. Thomas of Canterbury, i. pp. 348, 388. Note, for instance, Dr. Abbott’s
observation that the account of Herbert of Bosham, though biassed against
“ miracle,” is often wrong where others are right.
296 The Resurrection
2. Theories of Visions
One of the main characteristics of modern attempts to account
for the evidence thus briefly surveyed is the emphasis laid on the
records of the appearances of Jesus and the interpretation of these
by some theory of visions. “The kernel of truth, it is urged, which
underlies the resurrection narratives, is the fact that the disciples
saw visions of their Master soon after the crucifixion, and passed
to the inference that He had risen from the dead ; and out of this
belief and the experiences behind it grew up the legends of the
“miraculous” resurrection. ‘Lhe theories of visions fall broadly
into two classes, according as the visions are regarded as “ sub-
jective” or “ objective.” Supporters of the former view, which
is well represented by Schmiedel in the Encyclopedia Biblica,}
insist that the disciples’ visions were “subjective” in the sense of
being simply a product of their mental condition at the time. “This
theory, however, encounters acute difficulties from the standpoint
both of psychology and history. On the psychological side it
requires us to ascribe to the disciples morbid and pathological
dispositions which their whole subsequent conduct appears to belie ;
while historically it involves us in the almost grotesque belief that
a world-wide religion of some nineteen centuries’ vitality was
founded on a series of delusions. It is not surprising that more
sober critics, such as Harnack and Meyer in Germany and the
English school generally, should have sought for a version of the
theory which would not be open to such palpable objections. So
arose the theory of “ objective”’ visions, which, ever since Keim
propounded his notion of the “telegram from heaven,” has had
weighty supporters. According to this view the belief in the
resurrection sprang from the disciples’ visions ; but these visions
were caused by the invisible Christ Himself, really present with
them. ‘The disciples were inspired by God to see what they saw :
Jesus was really alive, and the eye of faith could behold Him.
An initial criticism of this theory of visions, in whichever of
these two forms it be presented, is that it involves the use of a
distinction between “subjective” and “ objective’ which has no
warrant either from psychology or from philosophy ; and the facts
which the theory is advanced to explain are left as much hanging
1 Art. “‘ Resurrection.”
The Appearances of the Risen Lord 297
in the air as ever. It is arguable that the distinction corresponds
closely with that which psychology makes between hallucinations
and illusions ; but it has been used, at least by supporters of the
“objective” version, to support a conclusion which involves the
philosophical judgment of “true” or “‘false.”” “The truth 1s that
all visions are objective as well as subjective, in that what is seen in
them, be they dream or hallucination or mystical insight, 1s as
much an object as in the case of normal perception : the question
is whether or not the object which the mind images is real or unreal.
In the former case, the vision may be called “ true” or “ veridical”’;
in the latter case it may be called “‘ false” ; and in the case of our
Lord’s resurrection that is the issue which is of primary importance.
It is necessary, therefore, to discard the distinction which has
dogged the theory of visions in the literature of Higher Criticism
on the resurrection. Yet various considerations should make us
pause before we discard the theory itself. Wehave to remember
certain facts which make it difficult to believe that, in the narratives
of the Lord’s appearances, we are dealing with cases of normal
perception by the disciples. “These facts are partly of a historical,
partly of a doctrinal order. On the historical side we have the
fact already alluded to, that none but believers (so faras the Scriptural
evidence goes) saw the risen Lord ; the Fourth Gospel makes it clear
that His entrances and exits were mysterious ; and the presumption
is not unnatural that, if a Herod or a Caiaphas had been present in
the upper room, he would not haveseen Jesus. “This presumption
is strengthened by considerations of doctrine. We have St. Paul’s
clear statement that ‘‘ flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom
of God’’—a statement which, as Professor Lake points out,?
appears to rest on his knowledge of Christ’s resurrection and to be
inconsistent with the belief that His risen body was “‘ material.”” We
have, finally, our Lord’s own teaching about the resurrection
state, in which “ they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but
are as the angels in heaven.” ‘There is, therefore, very strong
ground for saying that the Lord’s risen body was not physical in the
sense that it possessed metrical properties, and therefore not per-
ceptible to any normal percipient.2__ In such circumstances we are
1 The Resurrection of Fesus Christ, ch. 1.
2 It would, I suppose, be possible to argue that the risen Lord, though
normally “ spiritual,” could and did “ externalise ’’ Himself for the duration
of each appearance, and invest Himself with ‘“‘ mass” for that period. ‘This
seems to rest on the belief that the appearances of our Lord afford stronger
298 The Resurrection
justified in saying that the theory of visions deserves on its merits
a more sympathetic consideration than it is apt to receive from
orthodox theologians, It hasa value, that is to say, which is largely
independent of the question of its adequacy to account for the
Church’s belief in the resurrection. The appearances of Jesus,
evidence for His resurrection if they involved normal sense-perception on the
part of the disciples than if they were “ spiritually discerned.” The following
passage from an article by a modern philosopher, Dr. C. D. Broad (Hibbert
Journal, Oct. 1925, pp. 42, 43), will serve as a reminder of how complicated
the matter in fact is:
““ Perception may roughly be defined as being in direct cognitive contact
with an existent something which manifests certain qualities to the percipient,
and is instinctively regarded by him as a part or an appearance of a more
extended and more enduring object which has certain other qualities that are
not manifested to the percipient at the moment. £.g. when I say that I see
a penny, I am in direct cognitive contact with something which manifests the
qualities of brownness and approximately circular shape ; and I instinctively
regard this as a part or an appearance of something which is permanent, which
has an inside as well as an outside, and which has qualities like hardness and
coldness that are not at present being manifested to me. If this belief be
mistaken, I am not perceiving what would commonly be called a ¢ penny.’
Now it is notorious that in ordinary sense-perception we are often deluded, and
sometimes wildly deluded. A simple example is mistaking a mere mirror-
image for a physical object, and a still more striking example is perceiving
snakes or pink rats when one is suffering from delirium tremens. It is quite
certain, then, that there are delusive sense-perceptions. Now, in the case of
sense-perception there are several tests which we can use to tell whether a per-
ception is delusive or not. We can check one sense by another, e.g. sight by
touch. We can appeal to the testimony of others and find out whether they see
anything that corresponds to what we see. Finally, we can make inferences
from what we think we perceive, and find whether they are verified. We can
say: ‘If there are really rats running about my bed my dog will be excited,
bread and cheese will disappear, and so on.’ And then we can see whether
anything of the kind happens. Now it does not seem to be possible to test the
alleged supersensible perception which some people claim to have of God by
any of these means. Very few people have had the experience at all ; they are
very difficult to describe, and therefore to compare; and it is very hard to
point to any verifiable consequences which would follow if, and only if, these
perceptions were not delusive.” .
On this we may observe that, on the theory here advocated, precisely the
same three tests are applicable to the disciples’ perception of our Lord.
(2) Sight is checked by hearing, and vice versa. St. Luke implies—though he
does not state—that touch also was used. But, as Professor Goudge has pointed
out, this sense no less than sight or hearing has its counterpart in mystical
experience. (b) The testimony of others. So the Emmaus story is checked
by the Eleven ; that of the Eleven by St. Thomas ; that of the women by the
two disciples from Emmaus, etc. And the collective character of some of the
appearances is here in point. (c) The verification of inferences in practice
corresponds to what the masters of the mystical life speak of as the vocational
effect of a true mystical experience.
The Appearances of the Risen Lord 299
in short, require, and will be found to repay, a careful study simply
as mystical or vocational experiences of the disciples.
3. Tests and Types of Mystical Experience
When we place the “appearances” of Jesus in that category,
we render them comparable at once with a series of religious
phenomena with which Catholic theology has a long familiarity.
It is theology, moreover, of a type fully as critical of its subject-
matter as that which we are accustomed to associate with modern
Protestantism. Mystical writers, for instance, such as St. “Theresa
or St. John of the Cross, insist constantly that the extraordinary
phenomena of the religious life—ecstasies, visions, locutions and
the like—are subject to countless dangers, imitations and delusions.
This is no occasional concession to scepticism, but is a fundamental
principle of their whole treatment of the subject. “Their phrase-
ology differs in many respects from that of our psychologists to-day;
but they are no whit less alive to the distinction between the false
and the true, the pathological and the spiritual, and to the frequent
occurrence of morbid states of mind which closely simulate those
of healthy life. They set themselves, therefore, to diagnose the
symptoms of each condition ; to formulate canons applicable to
them ; and to prescribe remedies, such as more exercise and fresh
air, in cases where there is reason to suspect delusion. In all cases,
moreover, subjects of abnormal experiences are advised to submit
them to the criticism, and their lives to the guidance, of some
competent director. ‘The writings of the great mystics are thus
characterised by precisely those qualities of vigilance, candour, and
love of truth which we find in any scientific tradition of thought
to-day ; and in applying their criteria to the records of the risen
Lord’s appearances, we are not removing these “into the clouds,”
but are submitting them to tests of a very concrete and searching
kind.
Among the many criteria by which the mystical writers are
wont to test the truth of visions and locutions, two stand out pre-
eminently. One is that expressed in the saying of Richard of St.
Victor : “‘I will not believe that I see Christ transfigured, unless
Moses and Elias are with Him.” 1 He means that no mystical
1 Cited by Miss Evelyn Underhill in Theology, x. 1o—an article to which
I am much indebted.
300 The Resurrection
experiences can be trusted as true, unless they are in concord with
the moral law and with divine revelation. “They must be in
relation, that is to say, with the authoritative tradition which forms
the background to the subject’s spiritual life. “This does not mean
that they are not individual and original ; St. ‘Theresa insists that
divine communications made in this way are commonly sudden in
their occurrence and unexpected in their content. But they are
not fantastic. “They have their context. The form, whether
visual or auditory, in which they are clothed, must have palpable
links with the corporate and institutional life to which the subject
belongs, however much abstraction from it or re-association of its
elements there be.1 We cannot, of course, always trace these
connections in the records of their experiences which prophets and
seers have left to us ; but salient illustrations of the principle come
readily to mind. “Thus, Isaiah’s vision is plainly coloured by his
knowledge of the mysterious figures which brooded over the
mercy-seat. “The “showings” of the Seer of Patmos are steeped
in the imagery of the Book of Ezekiel and of the Jewish apocalypses.
St. Augustine’s hearing of the words, tolle, /ege, was the experience
of one who knew that the Christian faith was contained in
Scriptures. “The heavenly beings seen by Joan of Arc were
modelled on the statues familiar to her in her parish church at
Domrémy. Comparison of the Lucan narrative of the Nativity
with some of the stories in Judges will suggest that the visions of
Mary were deeply influenced by her familiarity with the records
of her nation’s saints.
The importance of this principle is that it provides a point of
contact between the saints and modern psychology. ‘The “ tradi-
tional”? element in the mystical experience on which the saints set
such store is nothing else than what psychologists denote to-day
as the product of the unconscious or subconscious mind. ‘They
assert that visions, trances, dreams and the like are the precipitate,
so to speak, of activities in which the mind has been engaged below
the surface of consciousness. “The phenomenon, moreover, 1s
1 My friend, the Rev. H. K. Skipton, points out to me what is probably
an interesting example of this in the life of Bunyan. According to Pilgrim’s
Progress, what eases Christian of his burden is the sight of a crucifix: and
various facts make it likely that this was a crucifix thrown to the ground some
years before Bunyan’s day within the precincts of an old monastic house (now
called Ihe Chantreys) beside the Pilgrim’s Way, which is the “road”’ of
Bunyan’s book.
The Appearances of the Risen Lord 301
by no means restricted to religion. “The well-known French
mathematician, Henri Poincaré, 1 gives a remarkable example of
its occurrence in the development of his own researches ; and
similar first-hand evidence is available for Lord Kelvin. In
recognising, as the mystical writers do, that the thoughts and images
round which the mind was working before the vision or audition
is experienced determine in large part the form of the experience,
they exhibit a close agreement with the scientific thought of to-day
as to the psychological mechanism underlying it. Where they
differ is in refusing to regard this admittedly subjective element as
the whole story ; the ultimate truth or value of the experience as
a whole depends on its harmony with the truest and most valued
convictions and experiences of their conscious life ; and by use of
this criterion they drew a distinction (which was not a psychological
distinction) between veridical and non-veridical visions—the former
coming from God, the latter, either by the suggestion of hallucina-
tion, or by direct experience, from the devil. And those who
believe that truth was really reached in analogous ways by a
Poincaré or a Kelvin will not hesitate to say that on that point the
saints were right. :
A second and more certain test of the validity of such visions ~
and locutions is to be found in their effect. “The first fear ‘and
confusion are tranquillised into peace and joy; the soul is humbled,
not elated ; the words heard are rich in meaning and implication
and are never forgotten ; their truth is whole-heartedly believed,
and they are charged with a life-giving authority and power.?
They are, that is to say, fundamentally vocational. “The test
provided by the traditional imagery in which such experiences are
clothed is by itself inconclusive ; its absence renders them suspicious,
but its presence is not a sufficient guarantee of validity. It is when
this criterion is reinforced by the further and more telling criterion
of the effect of the experience on character and life that its veridical
1 Cited by Canon Streeter in the Hibbert Fournal for January 1925. It is
curious that Canon Streeter does not notice the inconsistency between this
citation and his own unproven assertion that this method of arriving at truth
is characteristic only of ‘‘ primitive ’’ ages or peoples.
2 Cf. especially The Interior Castle, Mans. vi.
8 This is so in the case of religious experience. In the case of scientific
knowledge a better word would be dluminative. It is significant that H.
Poincaré mentions ‘‘ conciseness, suddenness, and immediate certainty ’”’ as
leading characteristics of this experience.
3.02 The Resurrection
nature becomes evident. “The demonstration that the visions of
an Isaiah or an Ezekiel were no product of delusion lies in the
activities to which they were called and through which they left
an abiding mark upon history ; and the same is true of St. Peter’s
vision at Joppa, and of St. Paul’s on the way to Damascus. “The
experiences bore precisely those fruits of penitence and peace, of
certainty, and above all of clear vocation which the “higher critics”
of the mystical life assert with unanimity to be the hall-mark of
divine revelation.
Once more, the critics of the mystical life discriminate not
only between true and false in the experiences we are considering,
but also recognise differences of type among those which are
veridical, and classify them accordingly. “Three kinds of visions
and locutions especially are distinguished, and are called respectively
exterior, imaginal, and intellectual : a classification which is pro-
bably psychological, corresponding to the degree of visualisation
in each case. Exterior visions and locutions are those in which
the subject believes himself to see the object with his bodily eyes
and to hear the words with his bodily ears. “hese are regarded
as very rare ; and they are marked by an element of error, in that
the object seen is not entirely such as in the vision it seems to be.
The resurrection appearances are commonly assigned to this
category, in that the Lord’s body, though real, was glorified and
no longer subject to ordinary physical laws.? Imaginal visions, on
the contrary, are those in which the subject is aware that his physical
senses are not employed : he sees with the eye, and hears with the
ear, of the soul ; the bodily eyes and ears may be closed. Such
experiences are often accompanied by ecstasy, and sometimes by
anzsthesia ; the image seen is often an infused light ; and it is
gone in a flash, though it leaves a permanent impression. “The
visions of Isaiah, of St. Stephen, and of ‘‘ St. John the Divine” are
commonly classed here ; a more modern example would be St.
Francis’s vision at the time when he received the stigmata. . It is
significant that a modern mystic like the Sadhu Sundar Singh, who
appears to have been unacquainted with this classification of visions
1 Dr. Thouless has coined this word as a substitute for the word “ imagin-
ary ’’ (used by the mystics themselves) as less open to misunderstanding. Intro-
duction to the Psychology of Religion, p. 73.
2 Cf. St. Thomas, Summa Theol., III. qu. 54, art. 1-3, where the nature of
angelic beings is discussed.
The Appearances of the Risen Lord 303
and locutions when describing his own, made precisely the same
distinction between the exterior and the imaginal experiences in
his own life on purely empirical grounds. The third type of
phenomena are those which are called “ intellectual,’ when the
subject is aware of a divine presence and communication, but
without either sense or imagination appearing to be impressed.
These may often be of long duration ; and the mystical writers
agree in regarding them as the most valuable, because the least
liable to error, of all the three types of experience. It is to this
class, in all probability, that we should assign the vision described in
the closing pages of Dante’s Paradiso or that which Pascal records
in his “‘ Memoriale,” or that again which is recorded by Sir David
Shackleton in South.1 Finally, we find records of experiences
which, like some of the “showings” vouchsafed to Julian of
Norwich, cannot be assigned to any one of these classes simply,
but can only be styled “ mixed,” in that they present characteristics
belonging to more than one class.
In dealing, however, with the resurrection-appearances of
our Lord, there is an important discrimination to be made.
Several of the recorded appearances were to a number of people at
the same time ; whereas the mystical experiences we have been
considering are normally those of individuals alone. This point is
important, not for its bearing on the truth or falsehood of the visions
and auditions (for any argument that might be based on the psycho-
logical theory of collective hallucinations is open to correction
at once from the historical fact of collective vocation), but for its
bearing upon our estimate of the evidence. ‘The effect is greatly
to broaden our basis of judgment. We have no reason to assume
that, in the case of these collective appearances, the experiences of
all the witnesses were of the same type : indeed it is probable that
they differed considerably in the degree of their visualisation, and
consequently in the details which they recorded. A cause of this
1 “*T know,” he writes, after describing the march across South Georgia
(chapter x), “that during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours
over the unnamed mountains of South Georgia it seemed to me often that we
were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but
afterwards Worsley said to me, ‘ Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that
there was another person with us.’ Crean confessed to the same idea. One
feels “ the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech ’ in trying to
describe things intangible, but a record of our journeys would be incomplete
without a reference to a subject very near to our hearts.”
304 The Resurrection
kind may explain, for example, the discrepancy between the Lucan
and the Johannine accounts of the appearance to the Eleven on the
first Easter evening. “Io some who were present it may really
have appeared that the Lord “ did eat before them,” and St. Luke
may have preferred this testimony asa safeguard against Docetism! ;
while St. John preferred evidence in which the “ exterior”
elements in the experience were less prominent. We can be
certain that these collective experiences gave rise to various streams
of oral tradition, and that St. Luke—and probably also the author
of the Fourth Gospel—was conversant with these. Each
Evangelist selected the version which best fitted his general purpose
and his whole conception of the resurrection. But it is a mistake
to suppose that the versions are mutually exclusive for the historian.
On the contrary, the differences are what we should expect, if the
experiences were of the mystical type.
4. Application to the Records of the Appearances
‘The application of these principles to the narratives of the
resurrection produces results of importance in more ways than
one ; and we may summarise them as follows :
1. ‘he conclusion, which seems dictated by general considera-
tions of psychology and history, that the visions of Jesus which the
disciples saw and the locutions which they heard were veridical
is filled in and confirmed. A new factor is introduced into our
estimate of the internal evidence for the Lord’s appearances ; and
features in the records which historical criticism has tended to
fasten upon as pointing to the “ subjectiveness ”’ of the experiences
are found in no way to prove them valueless or untrue, but rather
to point the other way. ‘Thus, it has been urged that the allusions
to the breaking of bread at the conclusion of the walk to Emmaus
and to the exposition of Scripture in connection with that vision
and with others provide the real clues as to what happened ; and
that the repetition by the disciples of that solemn rite and of the
searchings of prophecy to which Jesus had accustomed them pro-
duced an atmosphere of tense devotion, and led to their supposing
that they saw and heard Him. But, if the rigid canons of criticism
proper to experiences of this kind be applied, the contention loses
1 Though I think that a simpler reason may be found in the fact that
St. Luke was a doctor.
The Appearances of the Risen Lord 305
\
much of its force. “The breaking of bread and the exposition of the \
Scriptures provide precisely those links with the context of the
disciples’ previous life which in parallel cases are regarded as a mark
of genuineness.1_ The feedings on the hill-side, the Eucharist at
the Last Supper, the many occasions when they had listened to
Jesus interpreting the Old Testament in public or in private—
these experiences had sunk deep into their minds and been the food
of their constant thoughts, until the shock of the cross had seemed
to dismiss them as only an idle memory. And so they must have
remained, had not the events of ‘ the third day ” stimulated them
afresh into consciousness, not now as a medley of bewildering and
unrelated ideas, but as a coherent and convincing revelation of
truth, the answer to a thousand questions. A sound psychology
will demand a cause for such a mental revolution 2; but, when the
cause 1s forthcoming, it will see in the features of the narrative—
the breaking of bread and the exposition of Scripture—symptoms
of the mind’s working which it knows to be wholly natural.
2. Still more significant is the way in which the resurrection
appearances answer to tests of vocational effect. The twice-
repeated ‘‘ Peace be unto you” prefacing the investiture of the
disciples with their priestly calling in St. John, the apostolic com-
mission to preach the gospel recorded in St. Matthew or St. Luke,
the threefold charge addressed to St. Peter, the words addressed
to St. Paul at his conversion—all these represent the impression
made on the minds of the Apostles by these experiences. They
belong to every strand available in the documentary evidence ; and
their testimony is unanimous that the visions and locutions which
the disciples received at this time were vocational. And they pro-
vide, as nothing else can, an adequate explanation for the fact that
1 Thus, H. Poincaré says that experiences of the type he describes in his own
life are not fruitful unless they come as the crown of “ days of voluntary efforts”
on the subject in hand.
* It is not perhaps inconceivable that such a revulsion of mind might have
occurred spontaneously, given sufficient time. But it is asking too much to
believe that it could have occurred spontaneously within forty-eight hours of
the crucifixion. And no fact is better attested historically than that the
change occurred on “‘ the third day.”
° St. Theresa seems to have come very near to the conception of the sub-
conscious mind. Speaking of imaginal locutions, she says that ‘ whether
from the lower or the higher soul, or from outside, these originate from God.”
She recognises, that is to say, that in these experiences God frequently speaks
to the soul along the lines of the mind’s natural pre-occupations and ideas.
x
i
306 The Resurrection
the men of broken faith who forsook their Master in the hour
of danger went out into the world a few weeks later fearless
and certain, proclaiming Christ as the Saviour and Judge of
mankind.
3. This emphasis on the vocational character of the appearances
which is so marked a feature of the narratives in the Gospels has
a direct bearing on the interpretation of the earliest testimony to
the resurrection, that of St. Paul. The fact that in his first letter
to the Corinthians St. Paul places the appearance to himself on the
way to Damascus in the same category as the other appearances
which he records has long been felt by theologians to present a
difficult problem ; and criticism has not been slow to suggest that
St. Paul regarded his own experiences as the norm of the others and
as having equal evidential value with them for the resurrection
of Christ. The inference, however, is premature. St. Paul’s
language undoubtedly requires us to understand that om some plane,
and in some important respects, his vision and those of the other
Apostles were strictly parallel and of equal value. But to assume,
as is commonly done, that he regarded them as of equal value on
the evidential plane is to jump to unwarrantable conclusions.
Careful study of the records of the appearances in the Gospels
suggests, on the other handj that for the Evangelists the vocational
elements in these experiences were fully as important as the eviden-
tial : in some they are manifestly predominant. } ‘The appearances
of Jesus are recorded, that is to say, to account not only for the
resurrection, but also and equally for the mission of the Apostolate
and the Christian Church. They are as much the first chapter
of Church history as the last of the story of the Incarnation.
What if this be their primary meaning and interest for St. Paul f
Various considerations make it probable that this was, in fact, the
case. Histitle to the Apostolate was, as we know, hotly challenged
at Corinth ; and from the beginning circumstances must have made
it essential that his position in the Church should be defined
according to some recognised principle, “he principle chosen was
the fact that he had seen the Lord. \ His vision, that is to say,
was accepted by the leaders of the” Church as having the
same vocational character as that experienced by themselves. }
And, finally, if we turn again to St. Paul’s words, we find
them entirely consistent with such a view. Not only does
he close the chronicle of the appearances with a discussion of
The Appearances of the Risen Lord 307
his own title; but the chronicle itself is introduced as though
it constituted a distinct article of belief} in the Gospel which
he had received—as distinct from the resurrection as that was
from the burial, or as the burial was again from the redemptive
death. Linguistic considerations, that is to say, confirm what we
have already seen to be probable on other grounds, viz., that the
appearances, owing to their vocational character, were regarded by
the early Church as having a credal value independent of their
testimony to the resurrection. ‘They represent the divine com-
mission of the Apostolate and the Church ; and in that context
St. Paul needs to make no discrimination between the various
appearances which he records.
4. At the same time, it does not follow that in other respects
discrimination should not be made; and the testimony of the
mystical writers suggests that in fact the appearances were not all of
the same type, even though all were equally veridical. ‘Thus, St.
Paul’s conversion-experience bears all the marks of an imaginal
vision. Weare told that a bright light shone round him ; but in
none of the accounts is it said that he saw the figure of Jesus? ;
while, on the other hand, the locutions were clear and it was Jesus
who spoke them. It would, of course, be hazardous to attempt to
classify the recorded appearances of Jesus with any precision; but it is
at least possible that some of them were of the same kind as St. Paul’s.
The story of the walk to Emmaus, again, presents some of the
characteristics of an intellectual vision ; the emphasis throughout
is on what the disciples “‘ knew ” rather than on what they saw or
heard, and the experience is of long duration. This difference of
character, moreover, might perhaps account for the fact that this
appearance is ignored by St. Paul. At the same time the evidence
points clearly in certain cases to the visions and locutions being
exterior. ‘That to Mary Magdalene was evidently of this type,
and St. Luke’s narrative implies that the appearance to the Twelve
on the evening of the first Easter Day was likewise ; for in both
* Each article is introduced by the conjunction 8+, which is well repre-
sented by inverted commas in English. Thus St. Paul says his teaching was:
“ Christ died,” ‘He was buried,” ‘“‘ He rose again,” ‘‘He appeared.” The
argument is independent of whether or not the “ primitive credo” ends
with verse 5 ; cf. supra, p. 292.
* His question, “‘ Have not I seen the Lord?” is none the less fully justified,
but as an interpretation rather than as a description of his experience. So, too,
picts ima, SX Tat
308 The Resurrection
cases we find the element of mistake which is a characteristic of
exterior visions. It is probable, also, that the ascension is best
explained in this way. But the evidence in fact does not admit
of our speaking with confidence.t ‘There is good reason to suppose
that the Church at Jerusalem did everything possible to discover
and to record what took place on each occasion, and this tendency
must always be set off against any tendency to “ materialise”
experiences which were essentially part of a mystery. But in any
circumstances such experiences are difficult to describe with
accuracy ; and the Apostles had not at hand those principles of
classification which theology was later to develop.
Peculiar significance attaches to the appearance to St. Peter.
Not only does St. Paul place it at the head of his list 5 but St. Luke
alludes to it in a way that conveys the strongest impression of
veracity. At the same time, it is nowhere described. Various
reasons might be conjectured for this, but none is more probable
than that the experience was in fact indescribable in its clarity and
power. One is tempted to conjecture that we may have here
the clue to the abrupt ending of St. Mark’s Gospel. The Pauline
and Lucan evidence points to the fact that this incident would
normally have followed next in his narrative. St. Mark may have
written some account of it, and on further reflection have torn it up 3
or he may have come to feel, when he reached this point, that he
could indeed go no further. In either case he might feel loth to
record any of the other experiences, if he could not record this, the
chief and most striking of all. “The conjecture is, of course, no
more than a guess; but it at least absolves us from postulating a
“lost ending ” for which no evidence exists, and gives a reason for
the abruptness of the ending that we have.?
5. The study of the appearances of the risen Lord as mystical
or vocational experiences of the disciples goes far to mitigate the
difficulty presented by the discrepancies in the evidence for the
1 Allowance must also be made for the possibility that the experiences were
of a “‘ mixed” character ; cf. Thouless, The Lady Fulian, p. 44.
2 Canon Streeter thinks that the appearance to Peter of which St. Luke
and St. Paul speak is identical with that described in St. John xxi. This
seems impossible to reconcile with the time assigned to it by St. Luke and (by
implication) by St. Paul. Nor is there any difficulty in supposing that there
was more than one appearance to St. Peter. The Johannine statement that
the appearance by the Lake was the third appearance #o the disciples seems to
call for no such elaborate explanation as Canon Streeter gives it.
The Appearances of the Risen Lord 309
ascension. In the Acts St. Luke dates the ascension forty days
after the resurrection! ; but from his Gospel we should gather
that the story of Christ was complete on the evening of the first
Easter Day itself ; while St. John gives no account of the ascension
but suggests that it was closely coincident with the resurrection,
and that His appearances were manifestations of One whose
journey to the Father was already advanced beyond the borders
of time and space.2 The discrepancy becomes less formidable,
however, in the light of the foregoing discussion, ‘The experience
known as the ascension will then be regarded as an “ exterior
vision” from which the disciples learnt that their Lord had
ascended into heaven. ‘There is no real inconsistency in St.
Luke. In his Gospel he records those visions and locutions which
were especially evidential for the resurrection. In the Acts he
singles out for particular mention that experience which more than
any other brought home to the disciples the reality and scope of their
new vocation. In both cases he is serving the purposes he had set
himself as the historian first of Christ and then of Christ’s Apostles.
St. John, on the other hand, writing as a theologian with his whole
attention concentrated upon the Person of the incarnate Son, sees
nothing in the incident called the ascension which adds or can add
to men’s knowledge of Him and of His glory. Whatever be the
process of interior personal change through which the Lord passed
in His relations with the Father after the resurrection, it was not
such as could be measured in time. All that could be measured in
time was the education of the disciples, and he records moments in
this education and brings out their vocational significance. But
the Lord whom they see has already resumed the heavenly life
which He had with the Father before the creation, and it is from
that mysterious other world that He appears to His Church on
earth.
? It is significant that the Epistle of Barnabas implies that the ascension
took place on a Sunday.
? Cf. especially St. John xx. 17 (‘‘ Touch me not,” etc.). Few utterances of
our Lord are more difficult to interpret. But, if the text be right, I should
paraphrase as follows: ‘‘ The old reserve and detachment which have marked
our intercourse still hold good: for I am still with you, but not yet in you,
and my journey is not yet finished. But go and tell my brethren that it is
ending and I am already ascending, etc.” The present tense &vaBatves, rather
than &vaBjoouat, is significant.
° The “element of error” which characterises exterior visions was in this
case the belief that our Lord was lifted physically from the earth.
310 The Resurrection
6. Finally, it may be claimed that consideration of the ap-
pearances as veridical visions goes some way towards solving the
problem of where they took place. ‘The problem does not lie
merely in the fact that St. Matthew and the Johannine appendix
describe appearances in Galilee, whereas St. Luke restricts them
severely to Jerusalem and its environs. “That the disciples should
have journeyed to Galilee and back again to Jerusalem within the
forty days before the ascension 1s by no means impossible. “The
real difficulty, however, lies further back, in the meaning of the
Lord’s promise, “I will go before you into Galilee.” It has been
observed ! that these words occur at a crucial point in the Marcan
narrative ; and that, if they were literally meant, they represent an
anticlimax hard to reconcile with the known principles of our Lord’s
discourse. It can be shown, moreover, that both to St. Mark and
to St. Luke they presented a puzzle, which each unravelled in his
own way. ‘The true clue, however, is provided by St. Matthew
who, when recording the appearance in Galilee, lays the whole
emphasis upon the fact that the disciples received from Jesus the
revelation of His plenary authority and their own world-wide
commission to the Gentiles. What the Lord had meant by Galilee,
in short, was contained in the prophet Isaiah’s phrase, “ Galilee
of the Gentiles” ; it was the symbol of the world waiting to be
evangelised. “The Lord’s allusion, in fact, was precisely to that
vocation of the Apostles which, as we have seen, was the main
meaning of the appearances and caused them to constitute for
St. Paul almost a distinct article of his creed.
This does not of itself go very far towards settling the historical
question as to whether there were appearances in Galilee. But it
illuminates other evidence which does. We need not suppose that
the Johannine appendix represents the “ lost ending” of St. Mark
in order to justify ourselves in giving credence to the tradition of a
Galilean appearance there embodied ; and the Matthzan record
of the appearance on the mountain in Galilee has usually been
regarded as providing the occasion for the appearance, to which
St. Paul refers, “to five hundred brethren at once.” I do not
1 By Sir Edwyn Hoskyns, in Theology, vii. 14 ff. I can do no more
than summarise the arguments and conclusions of that article. ‘The difficulty
is also faced by Spitta in his Streitfragen der Geschichte fesu 5 cf. Montefiore,
The Synoptic Gospels, p. 1089. Cf. also Dr. Wade, New Testament History,
p- 480.
The Appearances of the Risen Lord 311
think that we can get rid of the evidence for the occurrence of
appearances in Galilee. But, if the ascension be interpreted as
we have interpreted it above, and as apparently St. John interpreted
it, the discrepancy with the Lucan tradition ceases to be grave.
The broad difference of character between the Jerusalem and the
Galilean appearances—the former evidential, the latter vocational
—s seen to go back to the mind and purpose of our Lord Himself.
St. Luke is concerned with those appearances whose primary
meaning lay in their testimony to the Lord’s resurrection. St.
Matthew, in the majestic conclusion of his Gospel, lays the
emphasis rather on the world-wide vocation to which the risen
Lord now called His disciples. “The Fourth Gospel, as its manner
is, combines the two, and brings out in unmistakable fashion the
dominant significance of each series. Nor is it difficult to see why
the second lesson needed different surroundings from the first.
The vast truth of their vocation which the disciples had to realise
as implicit in the resurrection was not one that would easily come
home to them amid the bustling multitudes of the Jewish capital.
For that, as for the realisation of the fact itself, other influences
would be needed as well as the words of the risen Lord Himself ;
and foremost among these would be all the associations of Galilee—
its memories of earlier missions and commissions, and all that the
Lord’s teaching and ministry there had made it to mean. Only
after this lesson had been learnt were the minds of the disciples ripe
for understanding the truth declared in the ascension, that the
Lord had indeed entered into His glory.}
‘To sum up. ‘The study of the appearances of the risen Lord
as mystical experiences of the disciples is justified by the fact that
the resurrection was itself a “ mystery,” and that the manifesta-
tions accompanying it were confined to those whose faith Jesus
had Himself trained. "The details of the evidence, moreover, con-
firm the view, which on broad psychological and historical grounds
is seen to be most probable, that the visions and locutions experienced
1 The view here advocated suggests a change in the traditional in-
terpretation of 1 Cor. xv. 7 (toig &mootdédotg m&ow), which is usually
referred to the ascension. But there appears to be no reason whatever for this
identification, except the desire to ‘“‘ harmonise” the accounts. The E.V. trans-
lation of té éxtedpate (1 Cor. xv. 8), “to one born out of due time,” probably
suggested the idea that St. Paul has in mind the fact that his vision was in the
period after the ascension. But the word has no note of time about it, and refers
simply to the suddenness and violence of his conversion.
RL 2 The Resurrection
6
by the disciples—even though in the strict sense “ subjective ”—
were veridical : for it shows them to be traditional in form and
vocational in character; and this vocational character is the
common element in virtue of which St. Paul speaks of all the
appearances as of the same validity for faith. At the same time
there are signs that the experiences in question were not all of the
same type, though all alike were veridical; and the differences re-
vealed in the narratives, though they may not be pressed, correspond
in many ways with those clearly distinguished types which are
familiar to the saints. And, finally, all the appearances, to which-
ever type they belong, admit readily of the Johannine interpretation
of the Lord’s risen life, in the sense that they are appearances of
the heavenly and glorified Christ. What St. Luke records in the
Acts was that particular vision which taught the disciples what
they could not have apprehended immediately, that their Lord had
indeed departed to the Father. “The Galilean appearances were
concerned to impart a fuller revelation of the resurrection and of
all that it involved for the universal mission of the Church.
Before passing on to consider the adequacy of this theory to
compass the whole faith and fact of the resurrection, it is worth
while to pause and note how much it involves. Whatever
philosophy we profess—whether we call the resurrection mystery
or miracle—we have to recognise that in such a matter as this a
point must be reached sooner or later where the mind’s progress Is
arrested in a reverent agnosticism. For believers generally that
point is reached at a stage further than we have so far travelled ;
it is reached, that is to say, when we stand by the empty tomb.
But there are many thoughtful believers to-day who cannot go so
far, and who halt at the point which our enquiry has now reached.
‘They do not regard the evidence as certifying us of more than the
fact that the Lord appeared to His disciples and gave them a clear
call to work in His behalf. It is desirable, however, that both
orthodox and modernist should realise how much this belief signifies.
It signifies accepting as true a number of occurrences or experiences
which the saints do not hesitate to describe as “ miracles.” It
involves also accepting them as acts in which God has definitely
intervened in human experience to reveal and to teach. “These
acts are interpreted, moreover, in a way which gives to the
occurrences a profoundly spiritual meaning, and which renders
irrelevant alike the liberal’s question as to how the risen Lord was
The Appearances of the Risen Lord 313
clothed 1 and the traditionalist’s assertion that the earth was lighter
by so many pounds when the Lord ascended into heaven.2 Finally,
they are of that transcendent and supra-normal character which
claims and receives the homage of a man’s whole surrender and
obedience ; so that those who accept in practical faith this theory
of veridical visions cannot but commit themselves to that Spirit
who prompted them and who built upon them the Church of the
Apostles
5. Limitations of this Analogy
Nevertheless, while all this is true, we must face at the sam:
time the limitations of this faith. In the first place, in so far as it
is a doctrine of Christ, it is a doctrine of His foundation of the
Church and of His giving commission to the Apostolate rather than
of His resurrection from the dead. Noone who seriously believed
this faith could belittle the Church’s supernatural calling or doubt
its vocation to holiness or question its title to be the Body of Christ.
In that sense it exacts a Churchmanship which is unquestionably
Catholic. But it does not reach by itself to the Catholic belief in
Christ’s resurrection. It is not in essence the Easter message.
For that message is first and foremost a message of the Person rather
than of the doings of the Son of God. It declares something that
happened to Him as the climax of His human life and death.
ts primary reference is to His experience, not to the experience,
tion to the disciples lies a prior mystery concerning only Himself, |
which others had of Him. Behind the mystery of His new ee
and the Father and embodying in one signal event the mighty power
of God. And it is this which is the kernel of the Easter faith.
Secondly, the act of God involved in the theory of visions is an
act which determines the future rather than interprets the past.
But the gospel with which the primitive Church went out into
the world, though it claimed to represent the authoritative word of
God and vision of Christ, was first and foremost a gospel of divine
redress. It was the gospel of the cross, because it was at the same
time the gospel of the cross’s reversal and transvaluation. It is
1 Cf. Liberalism in Religion, by the Dean of St. Paul’s. Dr. Wade, in his
admirable (even if unduly modernist) New Testament History, says, I think, all
that we need say : “* The details of the Appearances (dress, speech, wounds, etc.)
were mediated through the memory.”
2 Cf. Some Loose Stones, by the Rey. R. A. Knox.
J
314 The Resurrection
possible that the appearances alone might have led the disciples to
infer that their Master had survived death ; but what they said
was far more than this—they said that He had conquered death.
This is a belief which quite outranges any doctrine of immortality,
‘The first Christians believed, as we have seen, that those who died
before the Lord’s coming were immortal in the sense that they
survived death ; but they did not say of them that they conquered
death. “They reaped indeed the benefits of the conquest ; but the
conquest itself was Christ’s. And the certainty of their faith on
this point calls for some more substantial ground than was provided
by the appearances alone. It calls for an act of God in the life of
Christ which matched at every point the apparent defeat which
He suffered on the cross. Christ’s conquest of death must be as
complete, as convincing, as all-embracing as death’s apparent con-
quest of Him had been. It must extend to every relation of His
Person which death had touched, and show that at no single point
was the power of sin and death left in possession of the field.4
And assurance of that kind is not sufficiently accounted for
by any theory of visions. ‘There is nothing in the theory which
conflicts with it, except the claim that it is inadequate. But its
inadequacy requires us to review the evidence again ; to restore
the appearances, which we have isolated for a particular purpose,
to their place in the whole narrative ; and to pick up along with
them those other strands of testimony which the documents offer
to our Investigation.
IV %
‘THe REsuRRECTION OF CHRIST
1. Convergent Testimony
Few facts are more strongly attested by the documentary
records of the resurrection than that the disciples’ belief in it
rested in the first instance upon a number of converging lines
1 Professor Taylor draws my attention to the striking passage on resur-
rection where Soloviev urges that, unless the physical dissolution of life is reversed
by resurrection, evil is obviously more potent than good. (Three Dialogues on
War, Progress, and the End of History, English translation, pp. 162 f.)
The Resurrection of Christ 215
of evidence, none of which by itself was convincing. ‘ This is a
feature of the narratives which is not easy to account for, unless it
be authentic. It is perhaps intelligible that, if the disciples had
reached the conviction that Christ was risen simply on the strength
of the appearances, their belief should have come to embody itself
in a legend of the grave being empty ; but it is not at all easy to
believe that a legend of this kind should have presented us with a
picture of the formation of the conviction so natural, inwardly
consistent, and free from artifice as that which we have. Such
evidence is of a high degree of credibility. It is discordant and
uncertain precisely on those details of time and place which men
easily forget ; it is harmonious, on the other hand, and coherent on
that which they most easily remember—namely, the impact of
great experience on the development of their own minds, And
when we find this impact varying with different individuals and at
different moments in the story, and varying in ways which our own
experience of life shows us to be intrinsically probable, we have a
right to conclude that our evidence is in close contact with the
truth,
Little more need be said here with regard to the appearances.
The view which regards them as analogous to the mystical experi-
ences of the saints will seem to some inadequate ; and they will
prefer to think of the risen Lord “‘as one who no longer felt
physical obstacles, but who could still submit, if His purpose so
demanded, to physical conditions.” 1 “The present writer does not
feel that this doctrine of what one may call occasional externalisa-
_ tion contains any truth which is absent from the theory of veridical
visions, while it entails, in his judgment, difficulties of its own,
and particularly in regard to the ascension. But the conditions
of our Lord’s risen life are confessedly outside our experience, and
our interpretation of them cannot be other than partial. In either
case the question is not so much whether an analogy with mystical
visions exists, but how far it can be pressed ; and on that issue
there may well be difference of opinion.
Mention has already been made of two other factors besides the
+ Gore, Belief in God, p. 269. Cf. also Dr. Sparrow Simpson, The Resur-
rection and Modern Thought, p. 418: “ In that glorified body the penetration
of matter by spirit was so complete that He could at will re-enter into terrestrial
conditions and become perceptible to the senses of human beings upon earth.”
Yet I am not sure that this fully represents Dr. Sparrow Simpson’s view on the
whole.
316 The Resurrection
appearances which contributed to the disciples’ conviction of the
resurrection — the exposition of Scripture and the breaking of
bread. Both these occur in St. Luke’s narrative of the walk to
Emmaus ; but it is significant that he does not say that they led
the two disciples to the inference that Jesus was risen. “The effect
was to cheer and encourage them with the belief that He was not
far from them. Other narratives in the Gospels illustrate the
occurrence further. “Thus, St. Luke records that on one occasion
Jesus ate before them, in proof that He was not a ghost. “The
silence of St. John on this incident, though otherwise he records
the appearance, suggests that St. Luke is recording a version of an
act which was in reality of a piece with that at Emmaus 1}; and the
narrative in the Johannine appendix points to a similar experience.
What would appear probable is that the solemn distribution of food,
recalling the mysterious feedings on the hill-sides and still more the
rite at the Last Supper, was used by the risen Lord as a means of
recognition.
Not less striking is the part played by the exposition of Scripture.
‘¢ Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the
way, and opened to us the scriptures ? ”—there we seem to have a
glimpse of a real experience often repeated since in the story of the
Church. Both St. Luke and St. John in different ways point to
the fact that the understanding of Scripture played an essential
part in the formation of the resurrection faith. St. John records
as exceptional the fact that the beloved disciple believed in the
resurrection on the strength of the empty tomb alone, seeing that
he and St. Peter “as yet . . . knew not the scripture, that He
must rise again from the dead.” St. Luke narrates in connection
with the appearance to the Eleven and their commission on the
first Easter evening a repetition of the exposition of prophecy which
was so signal a feature of the walk to Emmaus. And _ both
Evangelists are recording a feature of the disciples’ experience at
this time which the severest critic must submit to be intrinsically
probable. For it is not the kind of fact which the weavers of
legend, eager for miracle, would have any interest in recording.
On the contrary, it supplies a link in the evidence which shows the
1 St. John xx. 20 contains an allusion to Jesus showing His hands and His
side—language which the writer of the Fourth Gospel might well use, if he
had in mind the Eucharistic rite. The incident belongs to the appearance
recorded in Luke xxiv. 36-43 and John xx. 19-25.
The Resurrection of Christ Baa ki
disciples to have been reasonable men. The fact of the resurrec-
tion, that is to say, despite its external attestation, was not faith for
them, until it had been integrated with the rest of their religious
life. For this life the Scriptures had a peculiar authority, second
only to the words of the Lord Himself. Only when they saw that
the cross and the resurrection were the fulfilment of prophecy
could they fully believe that Christ had risen from the dead.
Once more, this emphasis on the understanding of Scripture
has a close bearing on the adequacy of the theory of visions. For,
if the visions of Jesus rather than the empty tomb were the
decisive factor in the formation of the disciples’ faith, we should
suspect that the parts of Scripture now unveiled would have
reference to them. We should expect St. Paul to say that Jesus
“ appeared” “according to the Scriptures,” as he said this of the
death and the resurrection ; and there were many passages in the
Psalms and the Prophets which he and the Evangelists could have
cited, But neither in St. Paul nor in the Gospels is the exposition
of Scripture given any bearing whatever upon the appearances.
They lie side by side as collateral evidences to a great fact other
than themselves, for which the main evidence was of a different
character.
2. The Empty Tomb
We come, therefore, finally to that evidence which was
regarded by the primitive Church and has been regarded ever since,
as the principal guarantee for Christ’s resurrection—I mean, the
empty tomb. It is no exaggeration to say that, so far as the
documentary evidence is concerned, no fact recorded in the New
Testament is better attested than this. Not only is St. Mark’s
narrative available here to confirm those of St. Paul and of the later
Evangelists ; but the discovery is told with a directness and simpli-
city which seem to be the echo of the eyewitnesses themselves. It
is reasonable that those who reject the entire Gospels as historically
valueless should reject this testimony too; but to accept them
generally as good sources of historical information and yet to refuse
to follow them on this point argues an apriorismand an arbitrariness
in dealing with evidence which is an affront to scientific method.
It is not surprising, therefore, that contemporary criticism
should concentrate rather on accounting for the grave being
318 The Resurrection
empty than on questioning whether or not it was so. Various
theories have been advanced on this score. “The earliest, VIZ.,
that the disciples secured the Lord’s body by stealth, is no more
credible to-day than it was when the first Evangelist wrote his
Gospel. Nor can we attach credence to the view that the Jews
themselves removed the body ; for, had they done so, they could
have nipped Christianity in the bud by avowing the fact when the
resurrection was first preached. Insurmountable difficulties, in
fact, attend any theory which attributes the removal of the body
either to the devotion of friends or to the malice of enemies. And
the same difficulties really attach, though at a stage further on, to
the view that “the Romans, fearing a public disturbance, took
advantage of the Sabbath quiet to remove the body.” 1 For it is
incredible that the Lord’s disciples and friends should have been
the only persons interested in the grave and likely to visit it. Even
if we reject the intrinsically probable statement of Matthew that
the Jewish leaders asked for and obtained a guard, we may be
perfectly certain that they would not leave the grave entirely
unvisited and unwatched, at least by day ; and it could not have
been long before they too were asking the question as to why it was
empty. Had Roman soldiers removed the body, or had such a
statement had the slightest foundation in fact, the Jews must have
given it currency, and the Romans would have had good cause to
encourage the notion. ‘The saying, still current when the first
Gospel was written, that the disciples removed the body by stealth
represents in fact the bankruptcy of all attempts on the part of the
Jews to suggest any other explanation.
The truth is that the empty tomb presents the mind with one
of those issues where the decision is made at a deeper level of
personality than that which is concerned simply with the weighing
of historical evidence. Ifa man follows the evidence so far as to
envisage the empty tomb but then deserts it for pure hypothesis,
it is because he is drawn aside by other than historical considera-
tions. It is because he has been overcome by that arrested wonder
which underlies all serious agnosticism. And the effect of the
empty tomb is either to arrest wonder or to expand it.0.0) Dineriaase
with us who study the evidence is the reverse of what it was with
the first witnesses. We first satisfy ourselves as to the appearances
of the Lord, and find our wonder expanding as we do so, until it
1 Canon Streeter, in Foundations, p. 134.
The Resurrection of Christ 319
comes either to arrest or to yet further expansion at the empty
tomb. ‘The first disciples begin to wonder when they hear of
the empty tomb. Mary’s first impulse is one of dismay : “They
have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre and we know not
where they have laid him.” Peter and John run to verify the
tidings ; and, though for the beloved disciple wonder at the state
of the grave ripens swiftly then and there into faith, Peter departs
“ wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.” The
two disciples walking to Emmaus have heard that the grave is
empty, but can only find in it matter for astonishment. Only
when the Lord has appeared decisively and when Scripture has been
added to interpret their experience—only then does the first wonder
expand into faith and adoration. Nevertheless, for us as for them
the full truth of the resurrection requires each strand of the three-
fold cord of evidence for its apprehension. It requires the ap-
pearances as the basis of a transcendent vocation deriving from
the risen Lord ; it requires Scripture as the bond which links the
resurrection with the cross in one redemptive Gospel ; it requires
the empty tomb as the great pledge that death has indeed been
conquered.
The reality to which the evidence thus points is of an order
beyond our comprehension. Reason can estimate the evidence ;
but when that is done, it must make way for other functions of the
mind—for constructive imagination, for wonder, and for faith.
What is involved is such a change in the body of Jesus as takes it
out of the category of things to which the laws of natural science
apply, and sets it in a relation to experience, both His and ours, to
which we know no parallel. Various terms have been coined to
describe it, such as sublimation or etherealisation ; but these are no
more than symbols of our ignorance and wonder. Wedo not know
what are the potentialities of matter when indwelt by the soul of
the Son of God, though we can well believe that in such a case itis
exempt from the sentence of corruption. What faith claims is that,
in embodying the manhood of God Incarnate, the whole course
of physical evolution reached its highest destiny, and through the
conquest of death passed over into forms of energy as yet unguessed.
Into the mystery of that mode of being only the heart of the
worshipper can penetrate ; and its only language when it does so is
that of St. Thomas, My Lorp anp my Gop.
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; Me ary Probably the Mithraic sacred meal of bread and water
mixed with Aaoma-juice should be added to the list,® though it
is possible that this ceremony was a deliberate imitation of, and
therefore not a true pagan parallel to, the Christian Eucharist.
This list embodies the principal instances of (apparent) sacra-
mentalism in the pagan mystery-cults. We cannot, however, tell
that there may not have been more; and it is a reasonable pre-
sumption that those which we have enumerated would have
familiarised the inhabitants of Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece,
amongst whom the first expansion of Christianity outside the
borders of Palestine took place, with the ideas of cathartic lustra-
tions and sacramental, perhaps even of “ theophagic,” meals. It
is suggested that the specifically Catholic conceptions of Initiation
and the Eucharist are the product of a gradual infiltration of such
ideas into Christianity from the mystery-faiths described above,
a process for the inception of which, it is contended, St. Paul must
bear the chief responsibility.? “The Apostle is not, indeed, accused
1 Other inscriptions, however, imply that the effect of this blood-baptism
was only supposed to last for twenty years.
2 See J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, pp. 482-92 3
A. Loisy, Les mystéres paiens et le mystére chrétien (1914), p. 32 ff.
3 Farnell, of. cit. ili. 187. APIDIG a 1NA19 5: 5 Ibid. iil. 186, 195.
6 F. Cumont, Les mystéres de Mithra (1913), p. 163.
7 It should be said that Harnack (Mission and Expansion of Christianity,
E. tr., 1908, i. p. 230), and two distinguished British scholars, Prof. H. A. A.
Kennedy (St. Paul and the Mystery Religions, 1913), and Dr. T. R. Glover
(Paul of Tarsus, 1925, p. 161 ff.), favour or seem to favour a modified form of
the “Mystery” theory, which finds the influence of the pagan Mysteries
clearly manifested in later Catholicism, but not in the writings of St. Paul,
who is thus exempted from the responsibility alluded to above. This position,
however, appears ultimately to rest upon the assumption that there is an essential
390 The Origins of the Sacraments
of having, consciously and with his eyes open, embarked upon a
policy of paganising Christianity in order to commend it to the
Phrygian and Anatolian populations. ‘The theory is rather that
his first converts,! on being admitted to the Christian fellowship,
and finding that it revered a human Messiah as, in some undefined
sense, the ‘“‘son of God,” that it admitted new adherents by means
of a ceremonial washing, and that it celebrated a common meal
with special and sentimental reference to the death of its hero
and prophet, naturally thought of all these matters in terms of
the mystery cults with which they were familiar : in other words,
that they envisaged Jesus, the Jewish-Christian Messiah, as a
Kyrios,2 a mystery-god analogous to Attis, Serapis, Mithras, and
the other pagan Kyrioi or Redeemers® ; that they interpreted the
harmless symbol of Baptism as a mysterious and awful sacrament
of regeneration, and the “‘ eschatologised Kiddish,” which con-
cluded the club-feast, as a realistic participation in the body and
blood of the Kyrios. But, instead of striving with might and
main to exclude the infiltration of these alien ideas (the theory
goes on) St. Paul weakly acquiesced in them. “The Apostle, or
his immediate coadjutors and epigoni, found that the work of
evangelisation was immensely simplified and accelerated if the
pagan inquirer could be addressed in the terminology already
familiar to him, and if the Gospel could be represented as “ the
last,” and the only true, “‘ word”? in Mystery Religions. Stated
in this way, Christianity spread with a surprising rapidity ; and
St. Paul not merely accepted this transformation as expedient,
but actually came to believe in it as true. By a kind of un-
6 6
incompatibility between the ‘‘ ethical’’ and the “‘ objectively sacramentalist ”’
conceptions of Christianity ; and as (for the reasons explained in our intro-
ductory section) we repudiate this assumption, we may be permitted for the
purpose of this essay to confine ourselves to the more thoroughgoing form of
the “‘ Mystery ’ hypothesis, as set forth by its leading Continental expositors.
1 W. Bousset, Kyrios Christos (1921), p. 99, suggests that the beginnings of
the transformation described above should be placed in the primitive Christian
community of Antioch, the first Gentile-Christian Church to come into
existence, before St. Paul’s missionary journeys.
2 See W. Bousset, Kyrios Christos (1921), c. lll. pp. 75-104.
3 The words of St. Paul in 1 Cor. viii. 5 f. ‘“‘ For even if there are so-called
gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many ‘ gods” and many
‘ Kyrioi’), yet for us there is one God, the Father . . . and one Kyrios, Jesus
Messiah . . .” show that the idea of a parallelism between Christ and the
Pagan Redeemers existed in St. Paul’s mind ; but it will be argued later that
parallel conceptions need not be related as cause and effect.
The Mystery Religions 391
conscious auto-suggestion, he persuaded himself that Baptism and
the “‘ Lord’s Supper ” really were and could do what the Mithraic
taurobolium and the Dionysiac omophagia only pretended to be and
to do, and that the Eucharist, at least, had been explicitly instituted
by Jesus as a mystery of sacramental might. Christianity thus
became Catholicism, and its triumph in the Graeco-Roman world
was purchased at the cost of a surrender to the pagan sacramentalism
which it should have resisted to the death.
Though considerations of space forbid us to dilate upon the
matter now, it is worth while to emphasise the fact that the
“« Mystery-Religion ” theory of the origins of the sacraments (or
rather of the origins of the belief in their objective efficacy) does
not stand by itself; it is part and parcel of a wider thesis, namely,
what may be called the “ Mystery-Religion” theory of the
origins of Catholicism in general, including the idea of Christ as
a pre-existent Divine being and that conception of God which
is ultimately necessitated by a “ pre-existence” Christology,
namely, the idea of the Trinity. The solidarity of the whole
religionsgeschichtliche explanation of Catholicism is understood well
enough in Germany, though in England there seems to be a
tendency to speak and write as though its purview were confined
to the sole question of the significance of the sacraments. But
such an impartial witness as Heiler will tell us that neither in
history nor in logic is it possible to dissociate the idea of Jesus as
“* Kyrlos ”’ from the ideas of Initiation and the Supper as
“ Mysteries.” 1 The educated Catholic, from his own point of
view, may be grateful for the implied admission that Catholic
Christology and Catholic sacramentalism are interdependent.
But, from the point of view of the “ Mystery ” hypothesis, the
Christ of traditional dogma ts a generalised blend of Attis, Osiris,
and Mithras, wearing as a not too-well-fitting mask the features
of Jesus of Nazareth ; and the Christocentric mysticism which
is the heart of Catholic devotion is derived from Hellenistic- ,
Oriental paganism, not from anything believed by Israel or taught |
by Jesus Himself. The silent recollection, with which the
Catholic believer, kneeling in some still and empty church, fixes
his eyes upon the Rood, becomes but the after-glow of the
emotions with which the Mithraic initiate, in some crypt or
chapel of the warrior-god, contemplated the Tauroctony, or
1 Cf. Der Katholixismus, pp. 48) 49-
392 The Origins of the Sacraments
carven retablo depicting the slaying of the mystic bull. ‘The
lights and the Alleluyas of the Christian Easter are in great measure
but the mirage-like reflection of the joy which filled the devotees
of Attis, when on the Hilaria, the crowning day of the vernal
commemoration of his passion, the chief priest whispered to them,
as he administered the sacramental balm, ‘‘ The God has been
saved |? 1
Vv
CRITIQUE OF THE ‘‘ Mystery’? Hyporuests
Such in outline is the great, modern, skilfully articulated and
impressively coherent, a/ternative explanation of the genesis of
Catholicism which now confronts the traditional belief in the
Deity of Christ and in His direct institution of the sacraments.2
If this alternative explanation can establish itself as the truth,
there is an end of historic Christianity as we know it. On the
other hand, if it can be shown to rest on arbitrary assumptions and
to involve historical or psychological impossibilities, the traditional
theory will remain in possession of the field. ‘The scope of this
essay 1s necessarily limited to the question of the sacraments only ;
and a few words regarding the method which we propose to follow
In examining the “ Mystery’ theory will conduce to clearness.
It will have been observed that the theory, as sketched above,
assumes a detailed picture of the state of the “ Mystery Religions ”
during the first generation of Christian history which is by no
_ Means universally recognised as an accurate representation of the
' facts.8 Most of our evidence for the character of these cults dates
1 See J. G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris (Ota) i peasa.e
2 Signs are, however, not wanting that the “ Mystery ”’ theory has reached
the zenith of its popularity, and may shortly enter upon a period of decline,
even in Germany ; see an article by Robert Eisler, ‘‘ Das letzte Abendmahl,”’
in Zeitschr. f. N.T. Wissensch., Nov. 1925, in which the author explains that
he was once an adherent of the “‘ Mystery ”’ theory, but now considers it ‘‘ one
of the most erroneous conclusions that has ever arisen in the whole history of
New Testament study.”
* A striking instance of the precariousness of the evidence for the “ Mystery ””
theory is provided by the ‘“‘ Hermetic ” writings. R. Reitzenstein, perhaps the
best-known Continental student of the subject, regards them as “‘ scriptures ””
venerated by “‘ Hermetic congregations,”’ so that he is able to use them, in con-
junction with magical papyri which mention the name of Hermes, for the
purpose of reconstructing a scheme of ideas supposed to have been common to all
Mystery Religions in the first century A.D., and to have included the conceptions
Critique of the ““ Mystery” Hypothesis 393
from the second and third centuries a.p., and there is no proof
that we are entitled to employ it as evidence for the first century.
The use of Mithraism in this connection is peculiarly unjustifiable,
inasmuch as during St. Paul’s lifetime it was all but unknown in
Europe, and never took root in lands of Greek speech and culture.+
It has not been proved that all the apparent analogues of Baptism
and the Eucharist to be found in paganism were conceived as
sacramental, nor yet that all mystery-cults possessed all of the three
cardinal points of the generalised ‘‘ mystery-scheme ” presupposed
by the theory, that is (1) a Kyrios, (2) a ceremonial washing, and
(3) a sacred meal, But an attempt to reconstruct the stages of
development to which the various Mystery Religions had severally
attained during the period a.p. 29-70 would require far more
space than is at our disposal. In spite, therefore, of the uncer-
tainties just indicated, we will, for the sake of argument, assume
that the advocates of the “‘ Mystery” hypothesis have construed
the available evidence correctly, and that their picture of the
Mystery Religions in the first century a.D. is free from anachronisms.
We can afford to concede them this considerable logical advantage,
because, if the strongest form of the “‘ Mystery” theory can be
overthrown, it will carry with it in its fall any weaker forms
which a searching historical analysis might reveal.
Our criticisms of the ‘‘ Mystery” hypothesis will, therefore,
not be concerned with details ; they will refer solely to its funda-
mental positions, which may be formulated as follows :
(2) That there is no reliable evidence that Christ did institute |
the sacraments.
(b) That His “‘ eschatologically limited outlook” proves that _
He could not have instituted them.
(c) That the parallelism between Pauline and pagan sacra-
mentalism is only explicable on the supposition that the
former is directly derived from the latter.
of the “‘ Spirit,” ‘‘ new birth,” and the efficacy of the Redeemer’s Name. (See
especially Poimandres, 1904, pp. 1-36, 219, 226 ff., 366, 368 ; Die Hellenistischen
Mysterienreligionen, 1910, pp. 33 ff., 112 ff.) The latest editor of these documents,
on the other hand, Mr. Walter Scott (Hermetica, vols. i, ii., 1925), dismisses the
idea of a Hermetic “cult”? and “ congregations”’ as a pure invention, and
pronounces the Corpus Hermeticum to be no more than a fortuitous collection of
late Greek-Egyptian philosophical and religious writings, only bound together
by the fact that their authors happened to use the figures of Hermes and Tat as
conventional dramatts personae.
1 F, Cumont, Les mystéres de Mithra (1913), p- 31 f.
394 The Origins of the Sacraments
It will be convenient to consider these points in an order
somewhat different from that in which we have stated them.
1. “S Parallelism”? and “ derivation ’>—the question 0,
a prior! probability
The contamination of a higher religion by surviving elements
of a lower which it has conquered or is in process of conquering
is a phenomenon familiar to the student of the history of religions :
the fusion of Yahwism with Canaanitish ba‘a/-worship denounced
by the Hebrew prophets, and the transformation of Buddhism
into Lamaism, are instances in point. No one who is intimately
acquainted with Catholicism as it exists to-day in Mediterranean
countries and amongst peoples of Iberian stock can deny that it
contains many details of external observance and of popular piety
which are directly borrowed from Graeco-Roman paganism ;
a comparison of the model legs, arms, and hands suspended as
ex-votos before continental shrines of our Lady with the precisely
similar objects employed for the same purpose in temples of Isis
will bring this fact vividly before the reader’s eyes. Graecia capta
ferum victorem cepitt—the well-known Horatian line applies
as much to the struggle of her folk-religion with the victorious
faith of Judaea as to the contest of her culture with the barbarian
rusticity of Rome. From the same source are descended the
stories of holy wells and trees, winking pictures, sweating statues,
flying houses, and other fetichistic and animistic beliefs which
flourish rankly in the underworld of the Mediterranean religious
consciousness. It was, perhaps, hardly to be expected that the
ark of the Church could traverse the Sargasso Sea of the ancient
religions without acquiring some adventitious incrustations of this
kind ; and it is not necessary here to distinguish between those
which are harmless or even picturesque, and those which defi-
nitely retard the speed of the ship. And it may be observed, in
parenthesis, that whatever less desirable effects the Reformation
may have had, it conferred at least one permanent benefit upon
religion in Northern countries by decisively plucking up the roots
of all such heathen survivals, so as to make possible, at any rate
in England, a fresh start, and the working out of a presentation
of Catholicism which should contain no vital element of which
I HoreBpr lls its.
Critique of the ‘‘ Mystery” Hypothesis 395
at least the germs were not to be found in the New ‘Testament.
But these toys of the uneducated, ‘‘ miraculous”? stocks and
stones, ex-votos, and the like, stand on an entirely different footing
from the sacraments, which are the subject-matter of our inquiry :
partly because such things as thaumaturgical images are in principle
no more than separable accidents of any version of Catholicism,
and could be relegated en masse to the dust-heap without any
disturbance of its logical structure, and partly because the begin-
nings of their infiltration into Christianity can be historically
controlled and linked with the vast influx of semi-converted
heathen into the Church during the fourth and succeeding
centuries ; whereas the sacraments, In substantially their Catholic
shape, and the conception of Jesus as Kyrios which they pre-
suppose, appear in the pages of the New Testament itself. “The
fact that direct, if unconscious, borrowing can be proved in the
later and less important case of parallelism between Christian and
pagan custom does not in itself compel us to assume a similar
explanation of the earlier and more important.?
Considered in itself, the statement that parallelism proves
dependence would seem to be entirely arbitrary. As applied to
the relations between Christian and ethnic sacramentalism, it 1s
by no means new : it was asserted as strongly by the early Christian
Apologists as by the modern non-Catholic critics, the only dif-
ference between these two bodies of writers being that, whereas
the critics assume the Christian sacraments to be the reflection of
the pagan Mysteries, the Apologists held that the Mysteries were
Satanic parodies of the sacraments. But both alike appear to have
overlooked a third prima facie possibility, which would surely
occur to a cultivated Martian or other completely unbiassed
investigator, namely, that the connection between the Christian
and the pagan rites might be collateral (in the sense that both
might be independent products of the same psychological factors)
and not one of direct dependence or causality. “The researches
1 The same consideration applies to the facts (1) that in the fourth and
succeeding centuries much “ mystery ” terminology was applied to the sacra-
ments—cf. the title of St. Cyril of Jerusalem’s instructions on the sacraments, |
Catecheses Mystagogicae—and (2) that certain details of liturgical observance
(e.g. the use of milk and honey in connection with Christian initiation—see
H. Usener, Rhein. Mus. fir Philol. \vii. 1777) seem to have been borrowed from
or at least influenced by the procedure of the pagan mysteries. We are here
only concerned with the fundamental essence of Christian sacramentalism as
it appears in the New Testament.
396 The Origins of the Sacraments
of anthropologists seem to show that man everywhere tends to
satisfy the same instincts in the same way : the works of Frazer,
“Crawley, van Gennep, Durkheim, Hubert and Mauss, contain
thousands of instances of similar myths, rites, customs, and tabus
which have sprung up, to all appearance independently, in diverse
lands in response to the same social or individual needs, and there is
no necessity to postulate a “monophyletic” origin even for so
elaborate a system as totemism. In no other department of
scientific thought is it assumed as axiomatic that similar phenomena
must be directly related as cause and effect ; and there seems no
reason for making such an assumption within the sphere of the
history of religions.1_ From the most severely impartial point of
view, therefore, it must be at least an a priori possibility that the
Christian lustration and sacred meal came to be interpreted in the
same way as their pagan analogues, simply because it was found
by experience that they did (for whatever reason) provide a full
satisfaction for the same spiritual needs, that is, for those cravings
for purity and ghostly strength, which in the pagan world had
created the Mystery Religions as a means to their own partial
gratification or sublimation.
But a detached Christian investigator—by which phrase I
mean an inquirer who had come to admit, in a general sense,
the uniqueness and supremacy of the Christian revelation, without
having decided which of the existing forms of our religion appeared
to be the truest—would, I submit, be prepared somewhat to
enlarge the field of this possibility. He would at least concede
that Almighty God, in accordance with the principle of continuity
which can be discerned running through His providential govern-
ance of history, may have willed to do for man, through His final
self-revelation, what man had attempted to do for himself through
crude and imperfect means of his own devising; and _ that
Christianity, as it claims in other respects to sum up and gather ©
into one the various lines of man’s secular search for God, may
also claim—with pride, and not with apology—to be by divine
appointment the supreme and ideal Mystery Religion. He
would see no reason why the “‘ creed of creeds ” should not include,
+ We do not forget that some anthropologists, like the late Dr. W. H. R.
Rivers, do explicitly assume that all similarities of custom, religious and social,
in different nations must be due to the spread of civilisation from a single centre ;
but they are far from having converted all their fellow-students to this view.
Critique of the “* Mystery”? Hypothesis 397
side by side with an ethic loftier than that of Socrates, and a
theology richer and grander than that of Aristotle, ‘‘ Mysteries ”’
more pure and ennobling than those of which Sophocles wrote :
©S TOLGOABLOL
xetvot Bootay, ot tata SepyOévtes TéEAy
udrawa &¢ “Atsov.!
And, assuming him to believe both in human free will and in
God’s all-pervasive providence, he would admit that the Mystery
Religions may have been an integral element in the vast praeparatio
evangelica which began with the emergence of man from the ape 3
that, viewed from the standpoint of human initiative, they may |
have been models and symbols, first fashioned by man for himself,
which God, condescending to man’s limitations, vouchsafed to
reproduce within the framework of the final religion ; and that,
viewed from the standpoint of divine providence, they may have
been, like the Levitical ordinances, types and foreshadowings of
* good things to come.”
The supposed axiom that “ parallelism implies dependence ”’
is, therefore, neither self-evident nor inductively proven, and cannot
be used to invest the hypothesis of “ pagan infiltration”? with a
degree of a priori likelihood superior to that of ‘ Dominical insti-
tution.” So far as our argument has gone, both hypotheses would
seem to stand on the same level of probability. We may now carry
our analysis a little deeper, with the object of showing that the
“Mystery theory,” so far from being more probable than the
traditional view, is actually less so, inasmuch as it involves a gross
psychological impossibility. To make this point clear, let me
remind the reader of the part which, according to this theory, was
played by St. Paul in the genesis of Catholic sacramentalism. As
Augustus found Rome brick and left it marble, so St. Paul is said
to have found Christianity a vague movement of apocalyptic
enthusiasm and to have left it a sacramental Kyrios-cult, a more or
less organised Mystery Religion—not as the result of any deliberate
action on his part, but through his too complaisant acquiescence in
the tendency of his converts to construe the Gospel in terms of the
Mysteries with which they were familiar. Now we have seen
that, on the admission of the most typical champions of the Mystery
1 ‘‘ How thrice-blest among mortals are they, who having beheld these
rites go to the house of Hades’ (Soph. Fr. 719, ed. Dindorf).
398 The Origins of the Sacraments
theory, the Catholic ideas regarding Initiation and the Lord’s Supper
are already present in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, a docu-
ment which can hardly be dated later than a.p. 55. But the first
conversions of pure Gentiles, that is of persons who were neither
Samaritans nor Jewish proselytes—and the theory requires a large
influx of pure Gentiles to account for the first beginnings of
the “infiltration ’-process—cannot have happened earlier than
A.D. 30-35, between which dates practically all systems of New
‘Testament chronology would place the persecution which arose
upon the death of Stephen, scattering the members of the primi-
tive Jerusalemite community through Palestine and Syria, and
thereby bringing to pass the momentous circumstance that certain
“men of Cyprus and Cyrene” “spake unto the Greeks also the
preaching of the Lord Jesus.””1 The radical transformation of
the whole idea of Christianity which the Mystery theory assumes
must, therefore, have taken not more, and probably rather less,
than twenty years for 1ts accomplishment.
Consider for a moment the implications of this supposition.
It compels us to suppose that, within a comparatively short space
of time, St. Paul’s Asian and Hellenic converts unconsciously
infected their master and father in Christ with what was, on the
hypothesis which we are considering, a profoundly un-Christian
point of view; and that this mental infection was so thorough-
going that the Apostle, whilst still at the zenith of his intellectual
and spiritual powers, and still enjoying an unimpaired memory of
his past life, came to believe—in diametrical opposition to the
truth—that he had “received from the Lord,” through the Mother
Church of Jerusalem,? and had always taught to his disciples,
traditions and ideas which in fact he had unwittingly imbibed
from them. It necessitates the ascription to him of an incredible
degree either of simplicity or of carelessness, in order to account
for the alleged fact that—whilst engaged in a campaign against
those pagan cults which, in his bitterest moments, he regards,
like Justin Martyr, as the work of daemons,? and which, in a
more tolerant mood, he dismisses contemptuously as the worships
of “many (so-called) Kyrio:”? #—he should have unsuspectingly
+ Actaixinzo,
* TI here assume the accepted interpretation of éy@ . . . mapékaBov &md
tov xvetou in x Cor. xi. 23 3 see below, p. 400.
® Compare 1 Cor. x. 20 f. and Justin, 1 Apol. 66.
ANT USOL LV illoets
————— eT ae
Critique of the “* Mystery” Hypothesis 399
allowed the texture of his devotion and his thought to become
saturated by conceptions borrowed from those very “‘ Mysteries”
which it was the object of his mission to destroy. If this be
incredible, and yet the “ Mystery”? hypothesis be retained, it can
only be on the supposition that St. Paul was dominated by the
desire to attract converts at any price, even the price of truth.
Only if one or other of these suppositions be accepted—only if
we assume that the most heroic of evangelists may pervert his
message for the sake of a cheap success, or that the most vigorous
of thinkers may so befog himself by self-hypnosis as to lose grip
on the realities of his own past life—shall we think it a prob-
able explanation of the genesis of Catholic sacramentalism that
“St. Paul, though ready to fight to the death against the Judaising ©
of Christianity, was willing to take the first step, and a long one, *
towards the Paganising of it.”
And only if we attribute a hardly believable blindness to the
primitive nucleus of Jewish-Christians, can we suppose—as the
“Mystery” theory would compel us to suppose—that, whilst
attacking St. Paul with unmeasured ferocity for his liberalism in
regard to the imposition of the Law upon Gentile converts, the
Judaising faction should nevertheless have acquiesced, with
inexplicable placidity, in his far-reaching contamination of the
faith of Israel with Gentile ideas of a Kyrzos and of “ sacraments.” 4
2. The evidence for “ Dominical Institution” re-examined :
(a) The Eucharist
If the foregoing conclusions as to the a priori probability of
the traditional and the “ Mystery’ hypotheses are cogent—and
I cannot see any way of escape from them—we may now proceed
to a re-examination of the a posteriori evidence for the “‘ Dominical
institution,” with the general disposition to trust such evidence,
if it can be found. It will be convenient to discuss in the first
instance the evidence for Christ’s institution of the Eucharist
as a permanent rite. We may concede at once that the main
weight of this hypothesis must rest upon the command which He
is believed to have given, ‘‘’Uhis do in remembrance of me,”’ and
1 If the Judaisers had raised any serious protests against St. Paul’s Christ-
ology and sacramentalism, some traces of the fact would surely be found in
the Acts and Epistles.
4.00 The Origins of the Sacraments
that, in the present uncertainty as to the genuine text of Luke xxii.
17-20," the words of St. Paul in 1 Cor. xi. 24, 25 constitute
our sole authority for this command. But, given the conclusions
of our last paragraph—and leaving out of account for the moment
the “ Mystery” critic’s trump card, namely, his contention as to
the impossibility of our Lord’s having made any provision for
the future, owing to His “ eschatologically limited outlook ”—
it is reasonable to suggest that St. Paul’s authority is prima facie
good enough. ‘The Apostle’s affirmation is so solemn and signi-
ficant that it may be quoted at length :
“ For I received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto
you, how that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was
betrayed, took bread ; and when he had given thanks, he broke
it, and said, This is my body, which is for you: this do in re-
membrance of me. In like manner also the cup, after supper,
saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood : this do, as
oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.”
The opening words of this passage, “I received of the Lord
that which I also delivered unto you,” are almost identical with
those which introduce the list of the resurrection appearances
in ch. xv. 3 of the same Epistle, “‘I delivered unto you that which
I also received,’ and presumably bear the same meaning, namely,
that the teaching which St. Paul transmitted to the Church of
Corinth he had himself received from the Mother Church of
Jerusalem. Such, indeed, is the accepted interpretation of the
phrase : Professor Percy Gardner’s suggestion,” that the Apostle
thereby implies some vision or supernormal “ revelation” as the
medium whereby he “ received”’ this information “‘of the onl:
has won very little acceptance. St. Paul, then, asserts quite
definitely and bluntly, not only that Christ instituted the Lord’s
Supper as a permanent rite, but that he himself had been informed
of the fact by the immediate disciples of Christ. There can be
no reason why these latter should have wished to deceive their
* See above, p. 382. This admission does not invalidate the phrase in our
present Prayer of Consecration, “‘Who .. . did institute, and in his holy
Gospel command us to continue . . .,” as some recent proposals for Prayer
Book Revision seem rather pedantically to assume ; the words “in his holy
Gospel ”’ need not mean “ in one of the four canonical Gospels,”’ but may more
appropriately be taken as signifying ‘‘ in his general message of salvation to
the world.”
® The Religious Experience of St. Paul (TOI1), p. 210.
Critique of the “ Mystery” Hypothesis 401
great recruit and future colleague ; and we have already shown
reasons for rejecting the supposition that St. Paul deluded himself
into the belief that he had received the Eucharistic tradition from
the original Apostles, in much the same way as George IV
deluded himself into believing that he had been present at the
Battle of Waterloo. The Pauline testimony, then, holds the
field so far. It is not temerarious to add that, if it had been only
the acts and intentions of Alexander the Great or of Julius Caesar
that were in question, testimony from an analogous source would
never have been challenged.
The question may be very reasonably raised at this point :
“Tf the words, ‘ This do in remembrance of me,’ are a genuine
logion of the Lord, how is it that they are absent from the Synoptic
Gospels, and presumably from the ultimate sources used by the
Synoptists, that is, the Petrine tradition underlying Mark, and
what is usually termed LQ, the early and reliable tradition from
which Luke drew his Passion-narrative?”? This question
deserves a careful reply, all the more so because an adequate
treatment of it will involve coming to close grips with the ultimate
contention on which the “ Mystery” theory rests and apart from
which, as we have seen, it does not possess any measure of
probability—the contention, namely, that Christ cou/d not have
instituted any sacraments or made any provision for a future
Church, inasmuch as He believed that this present world was on }
the point of coming to an end. It will conduce to clearness if
we formulate our answer first, and state the grounds on which
we base it afterwards.
Our answer is in substance as follows. ‘‘ The silence of the
Synoptists, and possibly of the traditions which they employed,
as to the command ‘ This do’ is amply accounted for—and any
argument which might be founded on this silence, of a nature
hostile to the hypothesis of ‘ Dominical institution,’ is cancelled—
by the fact that both Mark (followed by Matthew) and Luke
contain another, more enigmatically expressed /ogion, which,
though difficult of comprehension at the time of its utterance, was
later recognised as being fraught with the same meaning as * This
do,’ namely, the expression of the Lord’s purpose that His actions
should be repeated by His future Church. This /ogion is the
verse, ‘ Verily I say unto you, I will no more drink of the
[this, A7@¢.] fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new
2D
402 The Origins of the Sacraments
[with you, 44¢.] in the kingdom of God’ (Mk. xiv. 25=Mt.
xxvi. 29 1=Lk. xxii. 18, with apparently a doublet in v. 16).
As the Synoptists record this saying, they might well have thought
it unnecessary to record the command ‘ ‘This do,’ even if they had
known of it.2. “There is, however, no reason why both sayings
should not have been uttered by our Lord at the Last Supper, the
Synoptic traditions preserving one and the Pauline tradition the
other.?’ We must now proceed to justify the meaning which we
have attributed to the Synoptic saying, “* Verily I say unto you, etc.”
We can best develop our exegesis of this passage by sketching
the interpretation of it which would be given by thoroughgoing
upholders of the view opposed to our own. ‘The key to its
meaning lies in the phrase “the Kingdom of God.” For our
Lord’s contemporaries, the Kingdom of God meant a new world-
order, conceived as a somewhat materialistic millennium, which
would immediately succeed the Day of Jehovah with its accom-
panying cataclysms, in which the present world-order would have
been dissolved. In this Kingdom the sovereignty of God would
be exercised by the Messiah, reigning over a rejuvenated earth,
which would be possessed by the Saints, that is by pious Israelites,
in boundless peace, wealth and happiness. We have already
sketched the theory that these expectations were shared by our
Lord, and that His mental horizon was limited, so far as the
existing world-order was concerned, by the belief in the imminence
of the End; from which it would follow that He can have had
no idea of providing for the future of His group of disciples under
the conditions of this present life by instituting sacraments. ‘This
theory, however, provides what is (given its assumptions) a not
unreasonable explanation of His action at the Last Supper and of
the /ogion now under discussion. It was apparently a common
device of the apocalyptists * to represent the bliss of the millennial
1 We assume that the Marcan version of this saying is more likely to be
original, as being more fresh and vivid in phraseology, than the Lucan. The
question as to whether it was spoken before the sacred action (Lk.) or after it
(Mk., Mt.) is irrelevant to the argument.
2 The presumption is that St. Luke at least aid know of it, owing to his
association with St. Paul.
3 Cf. the two sayings said to have been addressed by our Lord to Judas at
the moment of the betrayal—‘* Comrade, [do] that for which thou art here ”’
(Mt. xxvi. 50), and “‘ Judas, with a kiss dost thou deliver up the Son of man ?”’
(Lk. xxii. 48)—both of which may well be historical.
4 Cf. t Enoch xav., lxii. 14; Test. Levi, xviii. 11.
Critique of the “ Mystery” Hypothesis 403
“Kingdom” under the figure of the “ Messianic banquet ”—
an image ultimately derived from the words of Isaiah xxv. 6,
‘In this mountain shall the Lord of hosts make unto all peoples
a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full
of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.” Now it has been
noticed that the acts of blessing and breaking bread in a specially
solemn manner are recorded as having been performed by our Lord
on at least one other occasion during His earthly lifetime, in
connection with the miraculous feeding of a great crowd (or on
two other occasions, if the stories of the Five and Four Thousand
be regarded as based on two separate incidents). Dr. A. Schweitzer
has made the brilliant suggestion! that, in order to heighten the
vividness of His teaching about the joys of the coming Kingdom,
Jesus was accustomed from time to time to hold what may be
described as a dramatic or symbolic rehearsal of the ‘ Messianic
banquet,” distributing to each of those present a tiny portion of
some common food, bread and fish, or bread and wine ; that the
stories of the “ miraculous feedings”? represent accounts of such
rehearsals, touched up (when their original significance had been
forgotten) by the addition of the assertion that the participants had
previously been fainting with hunger, but were supernaturally
satisfied by the multiplication of the food; and that the actions
performed by Him at the Last Supper were meant to be the last
and most solemn of these ceremonial rehearsals, carried out within
the privacy of His own circle of intimate friends, under the
shadow of the impending Passion, by which He believed that He
could force the hand of God and compel the Kingdom to appear.
On this hypothesis, the meaning of the declaration “I will no
more drink of the fruit of the vine” is clear. Roughly paraphrased
it means ‘‘ This is the last of our ceremonial rehearsals of the
* Messianic banquet,’ the last of our symbolic foreshadowings :
the next meal at which we shall meet will be the reality, the
* Messianic banquet’ itself, celebrated in the new world-order, in
the unearthly Kingdom of God to be brought down from heaven
by the suffering which lies before Me. Now I drink, and invite
you to share, the old wine of this present world, which is ripe to
rottenness and on the point of passing away ; but then we shall
drink the new wine of the world to come.”
Von Reimarus xu Wrede, E. T., The Quest of the Historical Fesus (1910);
P- 374 ff.
404 The Origins of the Sacraments
/ It is impossible within the limits of this essay to examine the
fs eschatological” theory of the life of Christ in detail ; but it is
not too much to say that on the whole such writers as Johannes
Weiss and Schweitzer seem to have established, as against the
older ‘‘ Liberal Protestant’ view, their main contention, namely,
the centrality of the conception of the future “ Kingdom” in
our Lord’s message, and the relatively subordinate position of His
ethical teaching, as being merely a “ propaedeutic”’ or preparatory
discipline designed to qualify men for entrance into the Kingdom.
‘The acceptance of this general position, however, does not by
any means carry with it an acceptance of the more particular
assumption which has coloured and determined these writers’
whole presentation of the life of Christ, that is, the assumption
that our Lord meant by “the Kingdom of God” xo more than
what His “fewish contemporaries meant by that phrase. ‘Vhis
latter is the fundamental postulate which lies at the bottom of the
hypothesis of His “ eschatologically limited outlook,” and, con-
sequently, at the bottom of the whole “ Mystery”’ theory. But,
I submit, it is a postulate which, though not susceptible of
mathematical disproof, is contrary to the inherent rationality of
things and renders the general course of human history unintelli-
gible ; for it assumes that the greatest Man of all time possessed
little or no originality in the intellectual sphere, that He was the
slave and not the master of popular phraseology, and that He did
not possess even so much power of foreseeing and providing for
the future as is attributed by Mommsen to Julius Caesar.1
It is not necessary to invoke the Christology of Nicaea and
Chalcedon (which consistent advocates of the “‘ Mystery” theory
naturally do not accept), or to dogmatise about the very difficult
problem of the limitations of the knowledge exercised by our Lord
as man, In order to rebut this assumption ; it is sufficient to appeal
to the general probability that the supreme Messenger of God
to the world (and we cannot, within the limits of this essay, argue
with any one who denies the historical Jesus this position) was
not a deluded fanatic, whose prophecies were conspicuously
1 Mommsen (History of Rome, E. tr., 1894, V. xi.) credits Caesar with the
conscious intention of bringing into existence that unified and homogeneous
Italo-Hellenic empire which actually did realise itself under his successors ;
why should not a greater than Caesar be credited with the conscious intention
of creating that Church and faith which actually did spring from His life
and death ?
Critique of the “ Mystery” Hypothesis 405
refuted by the facts, less than a generation after His death. ‘Those
who accept this general probability will be prepared to believe
that our Lord was perfectly capable of pouring a new and refined
content into current popular phrases, and that His prediction (in
its Marcan form) ““Uhere be some here of them that stand by,
which shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the kingdom of
God come with power ”’ ! was fulfilled in very truth at Pentecost,
when the Kingdom of God came with power as the Catholic
Church and faith, which went forth from the Upper Room,
conquering and to conquer. On this hypothesis, the ‘‘ Kingdom,”
which is both present and future, both an interior inspiration and
an external power, both the product of gradual growth and a
catastrophic irruption into the time-series from the eternal world,
is nothing other than the new dispensation of faith and grace
which actually did spring from Calvary; it is the ‘“‘new
covenant ”’ consecrated by the blood of the Messiah, the new
universal Ecclesia or Israel of God. With such an interpretation
of the meaning of the ‘‘ Kingdom ” the facts of our Lord’s life
and teaching, as re-grouped by the “ eschatological theory,” come
into perfect line ; and a new and deeper significance is given to
the conception of the “ Messianic banquet,’ as implied in the
passages mentioned above.
In the light of this interpretation we may well accept the
suggestion that our Lord’s action at the Last Supper was not the
first action of the kind. It is very probable that the feeding or
feedings of great crowds, whether accompanied by miraculous
circumstances or not, were meant in the first instance to be
symbolic portrayals of the future banquet, which would gladden
the hearts of the members of the Messianic Kingdom ; and that
the same thought was present to our Lord’s mind when He spoke
of the Gentiles as “reclining at meat” with the patriarchs, at
the mystic feast that was to be. But, if the ““ Kingdom of God”
is the Christian Church and faith, what else can the ‘* Messianic
banquet”? be than the Eucharist, the sacrum convivium which is
the centre of its life, and in which the Messiah Himself is believed
to be both the Breaker of the bread and the Bread which is broken ?
1 Mark ix. 1; the Matthaean version (xvi. 28) misunderstands the point
of the saying, and turns it into a prediction of the end of the world and the
Parousia of the Son of Man.
2 Matt. viii. 1: = Luke xiii. 29.
4.06 The Origins of the Sacraments
If this is so, the Fourth Evangelist has, at the least, shown a
true instinct, and may well be conforming to the historical course
of events, when he appends his great Eucharistic discourse
at Capernaum to the account of the ‘“ miraculous feeding.”
Whatever the exact purport of the words “ This is my body”
and “ "This is my blood”—and I should be trenching on the
ground of another writer if I were to discuss this question in
detail—it is clear that, on any showing, the communion ad-
ministered by our Lord at the Last Supper must be regarded as
having been sui generis and exceptional, because, at the moment
when He pronounced these words, His body had not yet been
broken, nor His blood shed; and we may, therefore, without
irreverence, conclude that there must have been something, as it
were of imperfection, or of a provisional nature, in a communion
administered before the accomplishment of that which every
Communion is meant to proclaim, namely, the Lord’s death.2
If this is so, then the mysterious /ogion, from which this section
of our discussion has started, may be interpreted as meaning :
“This is the last of those prophetic actions, whereby I have
endeavoured to impress upon you, through type and shadow, the
glories of that future ‘ Messianic banquet,’ which will be shared
by the elect in the * Kingdom of God.’ “The next imene
we meet together on such an occasion as this, I shall still be the
Host, though present invisibly, and not in tangible form. But
the next celebration of this Feast will not be, as this Is, a pro-~
visional and anticipated transaction of the sacramental mystery 5
it will be the mystery itself, consummated in the Kingdom of God,
that is, in My Church, which in its universalised or Catholic
form will be constituted by virtue of the great events which lie
before us, My death and resurrection, and the coming of the
Holy Ghost.” |
Interpreted in this way, the saying is not indeed a command
to continue the observance of the solemn “ drinking of the fruit
of the vine”: but it is an affirmation that the observance would
‘in point of fact be continued in the future Kingdom : and such an
affirmation, made by one who believed Himself to be the King-
designate, is the equivalent of a command, in so far as it is an
explicit declaration of His purpose and intention. It may there-
fore be concluded without extravagance that the Synoptic and the
* See the Note appended to this essay, ‘“‘ On Mark xiv. 2 Sia
Critique of the “‘ Mystery” Hypothesis 407
Pauline traditions, taken together, constitute evidence for the
“ Dominical institution’ of the Eucharist (that is, for the per-
formance by Christ of certain actions with the intention that they
should be repeated), such as would be considered reasonably
adequate for any alleged event belonging to the secular history
of the same period and country.
’
3. The evidence for “ Dominical Institution” re-examined :
(b) Initiation
The question whether Christian Baptism can be said to
have been “instituted” by Christ or not is in some ways a more
difficult one. It is clear that in this connection the term cannot
be taken as synonymous with “ devised’? or ‘‘invented”’ ; for
the custom had already been practised by Christ’s forerunner,
John. It will be used, therefore, during the following discussion
in the sense of “adopted,” ‘‘ sanctioned,” or “enjoined.” At
this point the earliest Christian documents which we possess,
namely the extant letters of St. Paul, fail us; for though the
Apostle of the Gentiles, as we shall see, attributes the highest
value to the rite, he does not make any statement, in that part of
his correspondence which has survived, as to its exact origin.
The only direct statement on the subject contained in the New
Testament is the famous verse, Matt. xxviii. 19, in which the
risen Christ is represented, not merely as commanding the uni-
versal administration of Baptism, but also as prescribing the
Trinitarian formula for recitation in connection with the sacra-
mental act. It is impossible, for the reasons mentioned above in
Section III,! to deny the force of the suggestion that this passage
may be a piece of compendious symbolic narrative, that is, of
dogmatic theology cast into a quasi-historical form, rather than
of history strictly so called ; and we are therefore debarred from
using the Matthaean command, “‘Go ye therefore . . euasia
means of settling the question without further discussion.
On the other hand, there is a reasonable probability that even
“Matthew,” with all his lack of the minute scrupulousness
demanded by the modern scientific historian, would not in regard
to a matter of such crucial importance have made so plain and
1 p. 380 f.
408 The Origins of the Sacraments
direct an assertion without any sort of @ posteriori justification.
Even though his statement as to the exact occasion on which,
and the precise terms in which, the precept was given may not
command the fullest confidence, it is possible to hold that it
embodies a kernel of truth, and that, on some occasion not known
to us, Christ did with His human lips actually enjoin the practice
of the custom upon His disciples. In other words, whilst we
cannot attribute overwhelming weight to St. Matthew’s testimony,
it cannot be reasonably denied any weight at all. It is at least
good evidence for the belief of the Christian Church some fifty
years after the resurrection. The most logical view, therefore,
of the function which it may play in our inquiry into the origins
of Christian Baptism, will be to regard it as the feather which may
decisively weigh down that scale of the historical balance which
represents ““ Dominical institution,” if sufficient indirect evidence
can be gathered from the rest of the New Testament to invest
this hypothesis with considerable likelihood. This text, taken
together with the words attributed to our Lord by St. John,
about the new birth through water and the Spirit,! will be just
enough to turn a high degree of probability into reasonable cer-
tainty, assuming that such a probability can be established by
other means. But if the weight of probability turns out to be in
favour of the alternative hypothesis—namely, that which assumes
that the disciples spontaneously copied the baptism of John, or
the Jewish baptism of proselytes, without any explicit instructions
from our Lord so to do—then the Matthaean text, not being more
than a feather, will not avail to weigh down the opposite scale.
We will, accordingly, leave the Matthaean evidence for the
moment on one side, and examine the data furnished by the
remainder of the New Testament, in the hope of finding some
independent indications as to the origin of Christian Initiation.
Such a review must necessarily start from the baptism of John
and its Jewish antecedents, but need not go further back into
history: the idea of symbolising purification from uncleanness
by the act of washing in water is so obvious and natural, and has
occurred independently to so many peoples,? that it is neither
necessary nor indeed possible to determine its ultimate beginnings.
* John iii. s.
* For detailed information see Hastings, E.R.E., vol. ll., art.
“* Baptism
(Ethnic),”’
Critique of the “ Mystery” Hypothesis 409
In the Levitical law, ablutions with water are prescribed as a
means of removing ceremonial pollution contracted by the touch
of a corpse, or in other ways.1 “These precepts doubtless represent
the survival of a primitive stage of religious thought, in which
evil is conceived quasi-materialistically as “‘ bad mana.” From
these Levitical lustrations were derived both the baptism of the
Essenes,2 and that by which proselytes after circumcision were
made full members of the Jewish Church.® In the latter instance
the idea was rather that of cleansing the Gentile from the cere-
monial defilement with which he was assumed to be infected
through a life spent in idolatry, than that of abolishing “‘ original
sin,” in anything like the Augustinian sense of the term. John the
Baptist adopted the custom, but gave it a distinctly ethical and
spiritual, as contrasted with its previous quasi-material, significance.
This is shown by the fact that John’s baptism is described as a
‘baptism of repentance,” * and that it was preceded by, or at any
rate closely associated with, a confession of sins.6 Here we
discern for the first time two of the essential elements of the great
Christian rite of Initiation, namely (a) Confession, and (4)
Baptism. ‘The purpose of John’s baptism is said to have been
the ‘‘ forgiveness of sins,” § and we need not doubt that he and
his disciples believed that this was really effected by the act ;
the distinction between a declaratory symbol and an efficacious
sacrament is too subtle to be grasped by unreflective enthusiasts
such as were those who thronged to hear the Baptist’s preaching,
and is, in any case, alien to ancient modes of thought. “This
“ remission of sins,” it would seem, had an eschatological orienta-
tion and purpose. “Those who received it believed that they had
been thereby invested with an invisible spiritual ‘‘ character,”
which would be their passport through the terrors of the End,
and would ensure their entrance into the calm haven of the
Messianic millennium. We are not told that any verbal formula
was associated with John’s baptism. Despite his eclipse by his
mightier Successor, and his early death, his movement seems to
have possessed sufficient vitality to persist in the form of a
“Johannite” sect, which survived as a kind of parasite on
1 Cf. Lev. xv. passim, xvii. 15, 16 5 Num. sabe
2 Jos. B.F., II. vill. 7.
8 Yewish Encyclopaedia, arts. Baptism ” and “ Proselyte.”
4 Luke iii. 3; Acts xix. 4. 5 Matt. iii. 6 = Mark i. 5.
6 Luke iii. 3.
410 The Origins of the Sacraments
Christianity, administering the “* baptism of John,” at least down
to A.D. 55. It will be remembered that one of its most illustrious
members was Apollos, who was eventually led by Aquila and
Priscilla into the larger life of the Christian Church.
It is in contrast with this baptism of John that we perceive
most clearly the differentia of Christian Baptism, or baptism “ into
the name of the Lord Jesus.” We are told that at Ephesus
St. Paul found certain members of the Johannite sect, who are
given the title of “disciples,” 2 and must therefore be presumed
to have been indistinguishable in most respects from full Christians,
but who appear to have manifested none of those supernormal
phenomena generally attributed to the action of the “Spirit,”
and who upon examination confessed that they had not even
heard of His existence. ~ St. Paul thereupon rebaptizes them “ in
the name of the Lord Jesus” ; and we are told that when this
rebaptism had been completed by the imposition of the Apostle’s
hands, the Holy Spirit came upon them, with the result that they
at once manifested the characteristic signs of His presence, namely,
“ glossolaly ”? and prophecy. ‘This incident is instructive. It
shows, first of all, that the baptism of John and Christian Baptism
at this date were regarded as entirely different things, not as
imperfect and perfect forms of the same thing. Secondly, we
gather that, on the external side, the differentia of Christian
Baptism is found in the employment of the “ name of Jesus” as
part of a spoken formula ; and, thirdly, that on the spiritual side
its characteristic effect is, not merely the ‘remission of sins,”
which the Johannine baptism also claimed to bestow, but the
impartation of “holy spirit.” We need not here investigate the
psychological rationale of the extraordinary phenomena which
the early Christians attributed to “ holy spirit,” or the validity of
the conception itself. We are only concerned to draw attention
to the fact that, whereas Johannine initiation consisted only of
(a) repentance, and (4) baptism effecting only the “ remission of
sins,” Christian Initiation consisted of (a) repentance, (4) baptism,
and (c) laying on of hands, which produced both the ‘ remission
of sins” and also possession of the Holy Spirit.
This ascription to Christian Initiation of a double effect,
negative and positive, sin-annulling and Spirit-bestowing, appears
1 Acts xviii. 26. 2 Acts xix. 1.
3 Acts xix. 1—7.
Critique of the “ Mystery” Hypothesis 411
to run back into the very earliest days of the infant Church. On
the Day of Pentecost St. Peter instructs his Jewish hearers as
follows: ‘ Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the
name of fesus Christ, unto the remission of your sins ; and ye shall
receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”+ In other words, whereas
the Johannine practice was a water-baptism only, the Christian
rite was both a water-baptism and a Spirit-baptism. At first, it
would seem, the illapse of the Spirit was mediated by the baptism
alone.2. Later, when the Apostles began to be confronted by
baptisms which did not at once produce the supernormal
charismata which testified to the Spirit’s presence, it was found,
as at Samaria,3 that the imposition of the Apostles’ hands was
accompanied by the bestowal of what was lacking in the way of
spiritual gifts ; and thus, apparently, the impartation of the Spirit
became specifically associated with the “laying on of hands ”’ as
a distinct, though not as yet a separate, part of the rite. In this
way what we now call “ Confirmation” came into existence as
embodying the positive effects of Initiation, the negative effects
being specifically associated with the actual washing ; and in the
Epistle to the Hebrews we find the * doctrine of baptisms ”’ and
of “the laying on of hands” bracketed together as part of the
“foundation,” in which it is assumed that adult Christians do
not need instruction.4 ‘The complete continuity between this
Apostolic practice and the combined rite of Penance, Baptism,
and Confirmation, as we find it in the early patristic period,® does
not need to be emphasised.
It is clear from the language of the New Testament that the
subjects of this initiatory rite were normally adults, who alone
were capable of the repentance and confession which formed its
initial stage ; though it would be rash to assert that children were
never baptized, and the well-known saying of Polycarp, “ eighty
and six years have I served Christ,’ ® seems to show that at least
one instance of infant baptism must have taken place before the
fall of Jerusalem in a.p. 70. Consonantly with this fact, it
appears that “the sins”? which are conceived as being washed
1 Acts ii. 38.
2 Exceptionally, as in the case of Cornelius and his household, the illapse
of the Spirit might actually precede the baptism (Acts x. 44 ff.).
8 Acts vill. 14. Si Hebivi, 2;
6 £.g. Tertullian, De Baptismo, 7, 8, 20.
6 Martyrium Polycarpt, 9.
412 The Origins of the Sacraments
away by Baptism are what we should call actual sins.1 Yet, in
the exuberant enthusiasm of the Church’s youth, it was natural
to assume that interior conversion of the soul and exterior
initiation into the Christian society were, not merely in theory
but in fact, different aspects of the same process, like the concave
and convex aspects of a curve. At first, Baptism seemed to have
the effect of transforming its recipient into a “new creation,” 2
so effectually that all his sinful impulses and appetites were
destroyed, and sin became both a moral and a psychological
impossibility for him. We need not now review the steps of the
process whereby it was found, through bitter experience, that
this ultra-optimistic estimate of the transforming effects of Initia-
tion was exaggerated, and whereby, in the teeth of embittered
opposition, ‘‘ Penitence”? was detached from its place at the
beginning of the initiatory rite, and shaped into a subsidiary
sacrament for the purpose of imparting a second remission of sins
to post-baptismal offenders. We are only concerned with the
ideas which prevailed on these subjects during the lifetime of
St. Paul ; and it is sufficient to refer the reader for an extensive
treatment of the effects of Christian Initiation to cc. v—viii. of
the Epistle to the Romans, in which the Apostle elaborates the
primitive ideas of the “remission of sins” and the bestowal of
“Holy Spirit”? into a magnificent sequence of pictorial con-
ceptions, representing the effects of “ faith? and Baptism, that
is of the whole change from non-Christianity to Christianity,
under the figures of incorporation into the Messiah,? the cruci-
fixion of the “‘old man,” 4 the ‘“‘annihilation of the body of sin,”’ 5
a mystical participation in the death, burial and resurrection
of the Redeemer-God, and the reception of the “Spirit of
adoption,” ° which entitles the neophytes to repeat the words of
the Lord’s own prayer, “* 4bba, F ather,” ? and which will one
day transform them into the “splendour of the freedom of the
children of God.” ® A more prosaic, but no less characteristic,
1 It is impossible here to examine the rationale of Paedo-baptism and its
connection with the doctrine of “‘ original sin ” ; a full discussion of the matter
will be found in my forthcoming Bampton Lectures, The Ideas of the Fall and
of Original Sin.
#2: Cory ye 37; ® Rom. vi. 3; cf. Gal. iii. 27.
4 Rom. vi. 6. SayiE6; Siuiliiires
? viii. 15: for the interpretation of ‘‘ Abba, Father ” as the opening words
of the Lord’s Prayer, see Th. Zahn, Rémerbrief (1910), p. 395.
* vil. 18° ff.
Critique of the “ Mystery” Hypothesis 413
summary of the various elements in Christian Initiation, both
inner and outer, is found in 1 Cor. vi. 11, in which passage the
Apostle, after having detailed various abominable types of human
sin, adds, with considerable frankness—‘‘ And such were some
of you [in your pre-Christian lives]; but ye were washed, but
ye were sanctified, but ye were justified [i.e. absolved] in the name
of the Lord Fesus Messiah and in the Sprrit of our God.”
It has been said above that this Pauline conception is clearly
continuous, indeed identical, with the doctrine of the earliest
Christian writers outside the New Testament, that is, for all
practical purposes, with the Catholic doctrine. Can it show a
similar continuity with the ideas held in regard to Baptism during
the earliest days of Christianity? Prima facte the continuity
between St. Peter’s teaching as reported in Acts il. 38 and
St. Paul’s teaching as expressed in the passages just mentioned
appears to be without a break ; the threefold scheme, Penitence,
Baptism with water in the Name of the Lord Jesus, Reception
of ‘‘ Holy Spirit,” runs all through the New Testament allusions
to the subject. We have already adduced considerations to show
that St. Paul was not likely to have “ paganised,” or to have
acquiesced in the “‘ paganisation ” by his converts of, an originally
non-sacramental custom ; and these considerations apply just as
much to Initiationas to the Eucharist. It is true that his theology
of Initiation represents in one respect an advance upon the primi-
tive ideas embodied in the early chapters of the Acts, in so far as
the spiritual effect of Baptism is said to include not merely the
impartation of “Holy Spirit” but a transcendental or mystical
union with Jesus, the Kyrios: this, however, is not so much an
addition to the primitive teaching as a clarification of it, which
necessarily followed from the ever-growing realisation of the
personal distinction between “ the Lord” and ‘‘ the Spirit.” The
suggestion that the Pauline or deutero-Pauline phrase “ having
cleansed it” (the Church) ‘‘ by washing of water with a word” 4
implies a magical conception of Baptism (the ‘“‘ word ” being the
Name of Jesus used as a spell) and therefore the beginnings of
“pagan infiltration,” seems purely arbitrary.
Weare, then, entitled to conclude, on the basis of this survey
of the relevant New Testament passages, that one single con-
ception of “ Initiation” runs through the thought and the
1 Eph. v. 26.
AI4 The Origins of the Sacraments
surviving literature of the Christian Church between the Day of
Pentecost (? A.D. 29 or 30) and the destruction of Jerusalem
(A.D. 70). This Christian Initiation, with its ¢hree members,
Penitence, Washing, Reception of “ Spirit,” is clearly based upon
the Baptist’s initiation, which included two members only,
Penitence and Washing. In fact, the Christian rite may be
described as being identical with John’s baptism, save for the
addition of two all-important features, one external and the other
internal, namely, the use of a formula containing the name of
Jesus,* and the consequent or concomitant impartation of “ Holy
Spirit’ to the baptized person. By what authority or by whose
will were these additions made? ‘Three considerations may be
adduced, the cumulative effect of which (I would suggest) is to
establish a very great probability that the historic cause which
transformed the baptism of John into Christian Baptism was the
expressed will of Christ Himself.
(1) The language of 1 Cor. x. 1-4, with its reference to the
Old ‘Testament types of the two great sacraments, shows that
St. Paul bracketed together Baptism and the Eucharist, very much
as a modern Christian might, as rites of equal or all but equal
dignity and awe. (‘Our fathers . . . were all baptized unto
Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and did all eat the same spiritual
meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink.” 2) But there
cannot be any doubt that he bases the whole wonder and mystery
of the Eucharist on the fact of its Dominical institution, and it is
extremely unlikely that he would have coupled with it, as a rite
on the same level, a mere Church-custom which could not
claim a similar august origin. It is, further, inconceivable that
he can have based his exalted conception of Baptism on nothing
at all, or that he naively took this rite for granted without raising
1 The early and universal substitution of the Name of the Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost for the ‘“‘ Name of the Lord Jesus”? was presumably due to
the influence of Matt. xxviii. 19. In view of the eighteen centuries of pre-
scription which the use of the Three-fold Name can now claim, the modern
Church is doubtless justified in making its employment an absolute condition
of the technical ‘‘ validity’ of the rite as administered at the present day ;
but the Roman Catholic scholar, W. Koch (Die Taufe im N.T., 1921, p. 7)
quotes Pope Nicholas I (Respons. ad consult. Bulgar., ap. Denzinger-Bannwart,
Enchetridion Symb. et Def., 33 5). Cajetan, and Hadrian of Utrecht (later Pope
Hadrian VI) as asserting the standing validity of baptism ‘‘in the name of
Jesus ” or “* of Christ.”
* See Kirsopp Lake, Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, Pp £78,214,
Critique of the “‘ Mystery” Hypothesis 415
the question of its provenance. It is equally improbable that,
like Tertullian,! he connected the saving effects of Baptism with
the intrinsic properties of water, or that he relied on the authority
of John the Baptist, whose baptism he expressly declares at
Ephesus to have been imperfect and provisional. And it would
be anachronistic in the extreme to suppose that his theology of
Baptism, as a mystical identification with the deathand resurrection
of the Messiah, was founded merely on an ‘induction’? from
the “observed effects”? of a custom which owed its origin and
universal diffusion to mere chance. ‘The earliest Christians were
not self-conscious enough to analyse their “ experience” in the
manner of the modern introspective psychologist, or to base
scientific “inductions” upon it. ‘The fact that St. Paul’s extant
correspondence does not contain any explicit attribution of the
institution of Baptism to Christ does not prove that other letters
of his now lost may not have contained such an attribution ; and
an argument a silentio hostile to “ Dominical institution ”’ cannot
legitimately be based upon this fact.’ We are therefore entitled
to claim, on the ground of the great solemnity with which St. Paul
speaks of Baptism, implicitly co-ordinating it in respect of majesty
and efficaciousness with the Lord’s Supper, a very high degree
of probability for the supposition that he believed its celebration
to be founded on the declared will of Christ. And if such was
St. Paul’s conviction, it must also have been the current teaching
of the Mother Church of Jerusalem. He can hardly have
claimed for his teaching with regard to Baptism any other
authority than that on which he bases his Eucharistic doctrine—
“T received of the Lord” (through the mediation of those who
had known Him in the flesh) ‘‘ that which also I delivered unto
ol eg
(2) The narrative of the Day of Pentecost contained in
1 De Baptismo, 3-5.
2 The much-quoted sentence, 1 Cor. i. 17, ‘‘ Christ sent me not to baptize,
but to preach the gospel,” if interpreted in the light of its context, merely
means that St. Paul’s characteristic function, as Apostle of the Gentiles, was
preaching, rather than (what we should call) liturgical ministration 5; he usually
employed others to baptize for him, in order to avoid the possibility of his
converts developing an excessive attachment to his own person. Under cir-
cumstances similar to those which prevailed at Corinth, these words would
have risen quite naturally to the lips of many Catholic mission preachers, from
Savonarola down to Father Dolling ; and it seems purely arbitrary to construe
them as a disparagement of Baptism or a denial of its Dominical institution.
416 The Origins of the Sacraments
Acts il. represents St. Peter as stating, without a moment’s hesi-
tation or reflection, the fully developed theory of Christian
Initiation in its three elements, Penitence, Baptism, and the
reception of Holy Spirit.t If this narrative can be taken as
historically exact, Dominical institution is proved, because there
had been obviously no time in which St. Peter could have con-
sidered the results of Christian Baptism and formed an inductive
conclusion to the effect that it really did impart the Holy Spirit.
We do not, however, leave out of sight the fact that the remi-
niscences of those earliest days transmitted to St. Luke by the
Christians of the first generation, may have been unconsciously
modified and remoulded in the light of subsequent experience ;
and we will not therefore claim this passage as testifying to more
than the conviction of the Palestinian Church, some twenty-five
years after the resurrection, that Peter did on the Day of Pentecost
behave and speak as though he knew beforehand what spiritual
effects Christian Baptism would produce, a knowledge which in
the nature of the case could only have been derived from the
Lord Himself. This passage therefore indirectly testifies to the
belief in Dominical institution, as held by the Mother Church
of Christendom less than a generation after the end of Christ’s
earthly life.
(3) The two foregoing considerations have reference ulti-
mately to the beliefs of the Church of Jerusalem, the fountain-
head of all Christian tradition, shortly after the middle of the
first century of our era. But to this may be added a consideration
based upon probabilities arising out of admitted facts. If Christian
Baptism does not rest upon the declared will of Jesus Himself it
must be regarded as the continuation within Christianity, either
of John’s eschatological baptism, or of Jewish proselyte-baptism.
(There is not the slightest reason for supposing that the first
Christians were influenced by the practice of the Essenes.) Now
it is not likely that the disciples of Jesus would, in the absence of
express Instructions from Him, have continued the custom peculiar
to John. From the point of view of our Lord’s followers, John
had no importance save as the forerunner of the Messiah icemte
that is but little in the kingdom of God is greater than he” 2) ;
and there is no reason why a custom of his should have been
supposed to be invested with an authority which did not belong
Lt Acisings: 2 Matt. xi. 1x—Luke vil. 28,
Critique of the “ Mystery” Hypothesis 417
to its author. This view, moreover, leaves unexplained the
immense importance attributed to the use of “the name of the
Lord Jesus” by the earliest Christians: it is not likely that
the baptism of John was ever administered in the name of John,
either by the Baptist himself or by his later disciples. “The
second hypothesis, that Christian Baptism represents the mere
survival of Jewish proselyte-baptism, appears equally unsatisfactory.
Proselyte-baptism could ex hypothesi only be administered to
“inners of the Gentiles,” who were assumed to be polluted
with idolatry and stained with all the vices of the Graeco-Roman
world ; and to invite orthodox Jews, members of the holy nation,
such as were the three thousand baptized on the Day of Pentecost,
to submit to this rite would have been to offer them a gratuitous
insult, if such an invitation had no better authority behind it than
St. Peter’s own sense of the fitness of things.
Both these hypotheses, therefore, are quite inadequate to
explain the deeply impressive phenomenon of the universal preva-
lence of Christian Baptism from the earliest days of the movement
onwards: and the use of the ‘‘ Method of Residues”’ suggests
that the true explanation is to be found in some command, or
expression of purpose, given by the Lord Himself.
We claim, then, that for the unbiassed explorer of the origins
of Christian Initiation these three considerations constitute a
group of direction-signs, converging upon the supposition that
our Lord, during His earthly life or through one of the resur-
rection-visions, conveyed to His followers some clear indication
of His will in the matter; and that by themselves they would
render “ Dominical institution”? at least much more probable
than any other hypothesis, even if no record of any facts which
could be interpreted as such an “ institution > had survived.
Another finger-post, pointing the same way, is to be seen in the
prediction of the Baptist that the Messiah would inaugurate a
“ Spirit-baptism,” which (in 5t. Mark’s version) is explicitly
contrasted with the speaker’s own ‘‘ water-baptism.” * Deeply
significant, too, Is the fact that Jesus Himself, having submitted
to John’s “‘ baptism of repentance > in Jordan, experiences forth-
with the illapse of the Spirit, which mediates to Him the full
realisation of His divine Sonship and therewith some unimagin-
able consciousness of new birth, as expressed in the mystic locution
1 Mark i. 8; Matt. iii. rr—Luke iu. 16.
2E
4.18 The Origins of the Sacraments
“Thou art my Son, to-day have I begotten thee.”1 It does not
appear an exaggeration to suggest that by undergoing this momentous
experience, in which the interior influx of the Spirit was super-added
to the exterior affusion of water, our Lord Himself,in Hisown Person,
transformed the water-baptism of Johninto Christian Spirit-baptism.
We are now in a position to effect our final evaluation of the
evidence. If we place in that scale of the balance which represents
‘ Dominical institution’? the cumulative probabilities set out
above, adding thereto the feather-weight of the Matthaean
testimony ; and if we throw into the opposite scale what is in the
last resort the only positive argument for “accidental origin,”
namely, the assumption of our Lord’s “ eschatologically limited
outlook,” an assumption which we have already seen to be of a
highly arbitrary naturé and devoid of any real weight, the reader
will be able to judge for himself which scale must be taken to sink
and which to “kick the beam.” If, in Butler’s words, “‘ proba-
bility is the very guide of life,’2 and if, in dealing with events
which lie on the further side of a gulf of nearly nineteen centuries,
a very high degree of probability may be taken as the practical
equivalent of certainty, in sacred as in profane history, the
“ Dominical institution,” in some form, of Christian Initiation
may be regarded as reasonably assured.
If a more precise determination of the mode of this “ institu-
tion” be demanded, the following theory may be tentatively put
forward. The Fourth Gospel tells us that, towards the beginning
of His ministry, Jesus “‘came into the land of Judaea, and there
. . baptized,” at a time when John was still engaged in adminis-
tering Azs baptism, at Aenon near to Salim (ill. 22, 23). This
statement is amplified in iv. 1 by the note that the baptism of
Jesus soon outstripped that of John in popularity, and slightly
modified in the following verse by the observation that Jesus
(like St. Paul at a later date *) did not Himself act as the ministrant
of baptism, but delegated this function to His disciples. If these
statements are historical (and there seems to be no reason why
they should not be 4) a probable outline of events suggests itself ;
* Luke iii. 22 (according to the “‘ Western,” and apparently more probable,
reading),
2 Analogy of Religion, Introduction. 8 See above, p. arg, n. 2.
4 It is coming to be universally admitted that the Fourth Gospel contains
at least a large infusion of good and reliable tradition, and the details noted
above may well belong to such tradition.
\
Conclusion 419
namely, (1) our Lord receives baptism from John, and through it
the influx of “‘ Spirit’ ; (2) He consequently (if we may, without
irreverence, employ human language in this regard) conceives
the idea of a Messianic baptism, superior to the Forerunner’s
baptism, which will admit to the “Kingdom” (that 1s, to the
New Dispensation) and impart ‘‘ Holy Spirit” ; (3) He Himself
administers, or provides for the administration of, this baptism
during His earthly lifetime, as the means of initiating men into
the little group of His adherents, which was the nucleus of the
future Ecclesia ; (4) this pre-Passional administration of Baptism
was, however, necessarily imperfect, just as the one pre-Passional
celebration of the Eucharist was imperfect! ; though Jesus
received the Spirit for Himself, at His own baptism, He could
not as yet impart Spirit to others, “‘ for Spirit was not yet’ [so far
as our Lord’s adherents were concerned] “‘ because Jesus was
not yet glorified,” 2 in other words, because He had still to win
the gift of the Spirit for His new Israel by His suffering and
death. Consequently (5) through one or more of the resur-
rection-appearances He intimates to His followers that the pre-
liminary water-baptism which they have received, whether from
John or Himself, will be supplemented and validated by the gift
of the Spirit (“‘ ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many
days hence”’®), and that the complete rite of Initiation is hence-
forth to be the means of admission into the new People of God.*
Vi
CONCLUSION
If the foregoing considerations are well founded, we are
entitled to conclude that the “‘ institution,” in the sense previously
defined, of the two original and fundamental sacraments, Initiation
and Communion, by the Founder of Christianity Himself, may
be taken as proved, in the sense that the historical evidence for
this hypothesis would be regarded as sufficient by an unbiassed
inquirer. The outlines of the traditional theory stand fast,
though a certain amount of reconstruction and restatement has
1 See the Note at the end of this essay. 2 John vil. 39.
8 Acts.i. 5, 4 Matt. xxviii. 19.
\
\
420 The Origins of the Sacraments
been necessary in regard to detail. It may be reasonably asserted
that the affirmation of the Dominical origin of the sacraments
rests upon a much wider and more nearly contemporaneous
consensus of testimony than do the affirmations of the birth of
Herodotus at Halicarnassus or of the martyrdom of St. Peter at
Rome ; and yet, of these two latter affirmations the first is not
challenged at all, and the second is only disputed by those who
on other grounds are strongly opposed to the claims which are
made in the name of St. Peter by the present Church of Rome.
If, then, the reader is still prepared to admit the cogency of the
contention developed in the second section of this essay—namely,
(1) that zf the sacraments were really instituted by Christ they
must be of quite overwhelming importance in the Christian life,
and (2) that if they are’ of such overwhelming importance, it can
only be because the grounds of their efficacy contain an element
which is simply “given” or objective—a task of no small
significance will have been accomplished.
But though the argument set forth above would, we believe,
be good enough for a student who approached the question
without parti pris, we do not claim for it mathematical irresisti-
bility. As it will always be possible (st parva licet componere
magnis) for those who are subconsciously dominated by anti-papal
sentiment to deny any sort of connection between St. Peter and
Rome, so doubtless it will always be open to those who feel an
unconquerable aversion from the idea of objectively efficacious
sacraments to reject the case for Dominical institution on one
ground or another. ‘To affirm this is not to fall into the vulgarity
of imputing a lack of intellectual honesty to those who, like
Eduard Meyer, are convinced a priori that “The thought, that
the congregation . . . enters into a mystical or magical com-
munion with its Lord through the reception of bread and wine
. . . can never have been uttered by Jesus Himself’ 1; it is
merely to draw attention to the well-known fact that, in the
concrete processes of psychic life, thought and feeling mutually
suffuse and interpenetrate one another, and that men’s judgments
as to what Is true, especially in regard to historical questions on
which vital practical issues depend, are apt to be insensibly deflected
by the unconscious wish that some particular solution may turn out
to be true. Whether the influence of such disturbing factors has
1 E. Meyer, Ursprung u. Anfange des Christentums (1921), i. 179.
Conclusion 421
been successfully eliminated from our own exposition or not must
be left to the reader’s decision.
It does not in any case fall within the scope of this essay to
deal in detail with the ancient and indurated anti-sacramental
praeiudicium, which is the real, though hidden, source of the
inhibition which restrains many religious persons from so much
as considering the possibility that historic Christianity may
actually be in possession of the marvellous treasure which it claims.
The unexpressed conviction, which to those who hold it appears
axiomatic, that a religion of priests, sacraments, liturgies, and
ecclesiastical institutions—a religion, that is, which avowedly
expresses itself through a phenomenal body or time-garment—
must in the nature of things be a lower and inferior kind of
religion in comparison with one consisting solely of intellectual
concepts or ethical values, eludes dialectical attack by virtue of
its emotional origin and its unprovable character. It is not,
indeed, difficult to formulate the arguments on which it is
nominally founded, as (a) that it is degrading to our conception
of God to suppose that He can or will produce spiritual effects
through the direct instrumentality of material things or external
and sensible ceremonies ; () that sacraments understood in any
other than a purely symbolic sense involve a sacerdotalism which
is inevitably hostile to individual and civic freedom ; (c) that the
belief in their objective efficacy is refuted by the sins of many
who habitually receive them and the lofty Christian virtues of
many who, like the Quakers, reject them. Nor is it harder to
set against each of these arguments a group of considerations
which would seem in logic to cancel it. To the first, it might
be replied that God has never told us that He cannot or will not
work spiritual effects through matter or the phenomenal world ;
that unless we are prepared to accept a Deistic or Manichaean
dualism, He is doing so every day through His immanent Real
Presence in the vast multiform sacrament of the visible universe 5
that (as Bishop Gore has pointed out) no spiritual operation
ascribed to the sacraments of the Church is more sharply super-
naturalistic, or bears a more frankly ex opere operato character,
than the miracle whereby the creation of a new, unique, and
individual human personality supervenes upon the consummation
of what, considered in itself, is a purely material process. To
the second the obvious rejoinder is, that whilst any institution
422 The Origins of the Sacraments
existing amongst men is doubtless capable of perversion, Catholic
sacerdotalism, involving as it does that impersonal conception of
the part played by the human officiant which is expressed in the
doctrine that “the unworthiness of the minister hindereth not
the effect of the sacraments,” is in principle much less liable to
abuse by private ambition than theories of the ministerial function
which by placing its essence in preaching and exhortation make
its eficaciousness to depend entirely upon the talents, virtues
and personal qualities of the individual minister ; and that the
history of Calvinistic Geneva and Puritan Massachusetts is
sufficient to show that ecclesiastical tyranny has no necessary
connection with any one type of sacramental theory. The
third is sufficiently countered by two principles which are inherent
in the Catholic theology of sacramental grace, namely, Deus non
alligatur medits, and Homo potest sacramentorum gratiae obicem
ponere. But the real vitality of the anti-sacramental praeiudicium
resides in the emotional energy with which it is charged, and which
flows from various underground sources—fear of the Papacy, the
xenophobia which makes beliefs held by members of other nations
than one’s own appear for that reason alone as intrinsically repulsive,
the unconscious survival of dualistic modes of thought which sunder
God from all contact with matter, hereditary influence, and social
suggestion. “Those who are subject to this prepossession must
always argue back from it to a negation of ‘‘ Dominical insti-
tution” ; it will always appear self-evident to them that Jesus,
as the highest spiritual teacher known to our race, cannot have
intended to found what they believe to be a religion of the lower
grade, and that therefore any evidence that He did so intend must
be unreliable.
Historical argument alone can no more dissolve so tough and
closely knit a psychic structure than it can create the corresponding,
but opposite, conviction, the deep, calm, infinitely satisfying
intuition which can only be experienced by those who know the
Catholic system from within, and which reveals to them the
ineffable harmony and homogeneity of the sacramental principle
with the kindred truths of God’s immanence in the whole world
of created being and of His unique self-expression in the
Incarnation. But faith can move mountains, and love wear
down seemingly adamantine barriers; and the believer in the
traditional interpretation of the Christian sacraments will rely
:
Conclusion 423
upon their inherent power and mysterious compelling attractive-
ness to be in the long run their most effective missionary. He
will confidently accept the implied challenge of Dr. Kirsopp Lake’s
words, ‘“‘ If the Catholic theory of sacraments prove in the end to
cover all the facts, and to be the only theory which does cover
them, it will in the end be universally accepted”? 1; and he will
look for the ultimate fulfilment in a re-united Catholic Christen-
dom of the promise made to the Church of the elder dispensation :
“Tn those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold
- out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt
of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you, for we have
heard that Gop is with you.” 2
ADDITIONAL NOTE ON MARK XIV. 25
A point connected with this /ggion may be here further explained,
in order to elucidate the view taken in the text as to the significance
of our Lord’s actions at the Last Supper:
The implied contrast between the “old wine”? which our Lord
had just drunk Himself (this is clearly indicated by the words “ I will
not again drink . . .”’—odxétt od wh mw) and given to His disciples,
and the “ fruit of the vine”? which He would drink “new” in the
Kingdom of God, suggests that the imperfect and provisional character
which in the text of the essay has been attributed to the only pre-Passional
‘¢ celebration of the Eucharist,” may have been so thoroughgoing as to
make it true to describe our Lord’s actions on that occasion as constituting,
not a “‘ Eucharist’ as we know it now, but a ‘‘ shadow’ Eucharist—
a typical object-lesson, not the mystic and glorious reality which could
only be consummated in the “‘ Kingdom of God” (i.e. the new Christian
dispensation) which His death was to inaugurate. If this is a permissible
view, the Apostles at the Last Supper did not feed upon Christ, as we
do now, in reality, but only in figure; their first real and sacramental
Communion in the body and blood of Christ can only have been made
after that body and blood had been glorified and freed from spatial
limitations by the resurrection. This view completely avoids the almost
insoluble difficulty inherent in the traditional interpretation— How
could our Lord with His own hands give His body and blood to His
disciples (se dat suis manibus) whilst evidently standing there before them
in His intact, unbroken body?” It must be admitted that there is no
ancient authority for this view: but it appears to be that favoured by
Dr. H. L. Goudge, “‘ 1 Corinthians,” p. 105.
1 Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, 1911, p. 434- 2 Zech. Vill. 2.3.
, nA
A ae
ue i
THE EUCHARIST
BY WILL SPENS
CONTENTS
I. InTRoDUCTORY
II. SymBpot anp SACRAMENT
III. Tue Evcuaristic SAcriFICcE
IV. Tue Rear Presence .
V. Conctiusion
427
428
450
439
445
I
INTRODUCTORY
Ir has often been said that one of the greatest needs of our time
is a satisfactory glossary of religious terms. As things stand, the
Christian apologist finds himself confronted with a dilemma. On
the one hand, it is possible for him to try to discard much of the
traditional phraseology in which Christian ideas are clothed, and to
use only such language as may be supposed to be intelligible to any
educated person. “The obvious danger of such a policy is that he
will, in fact, fail to convey many of the deeper and more difficult
ideas for the expression and transmission of which the technical
language was developed. His attempt would be like that of a man
of science, who should try to give some account of the physical
universe without employing any of those terms which scientists
haveinvented. ‘The other alternative is for the apologist to accept
frankly the terminology with which the piety and thought of the
Church have provided him, and to draw out its significance for the
faith of intelligent men to-day. In pursuing this task he may find
that some of the old terms are, in fact, no longer useful ; or, again,
he may find that they are only useful if they are given a somewhat
different meaning from that which they originally connoted. None
the less, this policy has certain advantages. It goes far to ensure,
for example, that no elements of proved value in the thought of the
past are lost by misadventure ; while since the terms which he is
discussing are not merely intellectual but also emotional symbols,
his thought is kept at every point in close contact with the concrete
experience of the worshipping Church. ‘These conditions apply
with peculiar force in dealing with a subject like the Eucharist,
which is the acknowledged centre of the Church’s devotional life,
and yet has, for many centuries, given rise to acute theological
controversy. Here, if anywhere, it is obviously important that
discussion should be synthetic, as well as clear ; and for this purpose
it is essential that the second of the two possible policies should be
adopted.
In the present case, moreover, this course is clearly more con-
venient, inasmuch as many of the terms which belong to the current
428 The Eucharist
coin of Eucharistic theology have been the subject of careful
discussion in the preceding essays and the result of those discussions
will be assumed here. “Thus the sixth essay will have made clear
the sense in which the word “‘ grace”’ is used when we speak of
the sacrament as a ‘‘ means of grace.” Again, much has already
been said in the essay on the Atonement about the cross as a
sacrifice for sin, expressive at once of sin’s awfulness and of its
forgiveness. Still more germane, of course, to the present essay, is
that which has immediately preceded it, in which it was urged that
the sacraments are not merely dramatic but effectual symbols, and
that they derive their significance from the fact of our Lord’s
appointment. All these words—grace, sacrifice, sacraments,
symbol—will occur again in a rather different setting in our con-
sideration of the Eucharist, together with other terms to which
reference has not yet been made ; but the discussion will assume,
throughout, the general theological and historical background
provided by the rest of this volume.
II
SYMBOL AND SACRAMENT
It would probably not be denied that symbolism of some kind
is a necessity of religion as soon as it receives a social and institu-
tional expression. ‘That this is so would seem to be proved not
least by the practice of those Christian bodies which have, in fact,
set themselves, so far as possible, to do without it. Nowhere ts
this more clear to us than in the case of the Society of Friends,
whose emphasis upon the sovereignty of the inward aspect of
religion has not prevented them from adopting a symbolism in
dress and speech which was, at one time, a picturesque and well-
known feature of English life. Symbols are, in fact, a kind of
language which men use when words fail them. One aspect of
this use was expressed by Pope Gregory the Great, when he spoke
of images as the “ books of the unlettered,”’ 1 implying that words
would be beyond their wit to read ; another aspect is expressed in
civic, no less than in religious, ceremonies, as when the unfurling
of a flag or the beating of a drum expresses something for which
words would be too weak. Symbolism of this kind occurs fre-
quently in the historical and prophetic books of the Old ‘Testament 5
1 Gregory, Lib. ix, Ep. cv, ad Serenum.
Symbol and Sacrament 429
- and our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem provides a significant example
of it in the New. In all such cases, however, the symbolism is
dramatic or didactic.
There is, however, another kind of symbolism to which the
word effectual may be given, and which is no less a feature of human
society ; and it is to this type rather than to the other that the
Christian sacraments belong. ‘The distinctive mark ofan effectual
symbol is that it not merely conveys a message, but effects a result.
The accolade is a case in point. More familiar, if less obvious,
examples are supplied by token coinage to which an authoritative
decision of the State gives certain purchasing value, defined in
terms of the sovereign, but quite independent of the coin’s intrinsic
worth. A little reflection will suggest, in ever-growing number,
other illustrations. “The essence of such symbolism lies in the
association of certain results or opportunities with certain visible
signs by a will which is competent to bring about those results or
give those opportunities. To the properties which the action or
object has in itself are added other properties which may be civic,
social, or economic, and it is this second series of properties which
is taken for all practical purposes as determining the nature of the
symbolic action or object. “Those who recognise the authority
which appoints the token do not, in fact, use or think of their florins
as though they were counters.
From all merely human symbolism, even of this type, the
sacraments are, of course, differentiated by the character of the
results and opportunities connected with them, and by the fact that
these are determined by the will of God Himself; but none the
less the analogy is valuable and real. When we say that the sacra-
ments are effectual signs we mean that certain actions or objects
are invested by divine authority with certain spiritual or supernatural
properties. “Che action of washing, for example, in Baptism admits
the baptized not merely into the visible fellowship of the Church
but into the regenerate order, the Kingdom of God, of which the
Church on earth is the expression. In the case of the Eucharist,
the bread and the wine are given by Christ’s ordinance new proper-
ties, which, while they do not annihilate the natural properties of
giving sustenance and refreshment, yet so supersede these that we
can rightly speak of the objects themselves as wholly changed and
transfigured. As Theodoret says, “‘ They remain in their former
substance and shape and form, and are still visible and as they were
4.30 The Eucharist
before ; but they are apprehended as what they have become, and
are believed and adored as being what they are believed to be.” +
These considerations, moreover, will enable us to make clear
what was involved when Christian theology found itself unable to
rest contented with the close parallelism between Baptism and the
Eucharist on which the earlier Fathers, notably St. Augustine,
used to insist. “The form which the development took was the
claim that the Eucharist contained not only the two elements which
were recognised in Baptism—namely, sacramentum and wvirtus
sacramenti—but a third element also, which was distinguished
as res sacramenti. In other words, it was claimed that in the
Eucharist there was not only a symbolism of action, but a symbolism
of objects as well. And this threefold distinction is a development
which is reflected in Anglican formularies, where our Catechism
speaks, in the case of the Eucharist, of “sign,” “ thing signified,”
and “‘ benefits.” If weask, moreover, the reason which prompted
this development we shall be compelled to find it in the words which
our Lord is represented as using at the institution of the Eucharist
—words which have no parallel in the case of Baptism. “To the
narratives of that institution we must now turn with a view to
discovering what our Lord meant by the effectual symbolism of
objects which He then established.
Ill
THe EucHaristic SACRIFICE
If a student of comparative religion, not otherwise acquainted
with Christianity, were to enter a church where the Holy Mysteries
were being celebrated, and were afterwards asked what kind of
service he had been attending, he would undoubtedly say that it
was some sacrificial rite ; and he would find his answer endorsed
if he were to turn from the service which he had witnessed to the
earliest narratives of its institution. It is not only that the descrip-
tions of the rite in the New ‘Testament are marked by certain
expressions which have all the appearance of liturgical fixity, nor
again that the words used by our Lord, such as the reference to the
new covenant, are strongly suggestive of sacrifice. Even more
significant is the fact that the records are agreed in placing the rite
in a context which is replete with sacrificial associations. On the
1 Dialogue II, P.G, Ixxxiil. 165-168.
The Eucharistic Sacrifice 431
one hand, that is to say, it is made clear, particularly by St. Luke,
that the Last Supper, and the Eucharist which was its climax, took
place under the shadow of the Passover ; and the force of this fact
is not diminished, if we adopt the Johannine view as to the date of
the crucifixion. On the other hand, all our evidence makes it
clear that the rite at the Last Supper was connected by the closest
ties with that sacrifice of Christ upon the cross which was so soon
to be consummated.
In the light of these facts the natural meaning of our Lord’s
phrase, ‘Take, eat, this is my body,” and of the corresponding
and even more startling phrase as to His blood is surely not difficult
to determine : they must have meant that in receiving the bread
which He had broken and the cup which He had blessed the
apostles were made partakers in a sacrifice, and thereby in the
blessings of a sacrifice, in which He was to be the victim. We
need not suppose, nor does the evidence suggest, that ritual partici-
pation in sacrifices was always regarded as securing and conditioning
spiritual consequences. We cannot assign, for example, to the
Paschal meal a clear sacramental significance. But this is bound
up with the fact that the Jews had apparently ceased to assign to
the killing of the Paschal victims any supernatural consequences.
In the case, however, of a sacrifice which was regarded as truly
propitiatory (and therefore in the case of our Lord’s death)
it is impossible to believe that devout ritual participation in an
appointed manner would not have been supposed both to secure
and normally to condition participation in the blessings which
flowed from it.
Or, again, if we turn to passages of the New Testament other
than the records of the institution, the same conclusion holds
good. St. Paul’s language, for instance, seems definitely to
require this view ; for he was writing for persons familiar in a
greater or less degree with Mystery Religions, and it is incredible
that he should not have guarded his language far more carefully,
had he not regarded the Eucharist as a sacrifice, and believed that
devout ritual participation in this sacrifice secured and conditioned
participation in spiritual blessings. “There is no evidence, more-
over, that St. Paul was subject to any criticism on the score of
his Eucharistic teaching, and it must therefore be taken as repre-
senting what the apostles understood our Lord to have meant.
Once more, even the sixth chapter of the Fourth Gospel gives little
432 The Eucharist
real support to any different conception of the Eucharist. If by
eating His flesh our Lord is taken to have meant merely the
reception of His teaching, then His language as recorded could
only be pronounced unaccountably misleading and provocative.
A real difficulty is removed if the issue was intended to lie not
between the Jews’ literal interpretation of His words and a final
explanation that eating our Lord’s flesh meant receiving His
teaching, but between that literal interpretation and the sacra-
mental explanation which the Eucharist afforded. On such a
view the phrase “‘ the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit
and are life” referred to His whole foregoing teaching, including
that on the Eucharist. Whatever view be held as to this or as
to the historical character of the discourse—and on that question
no view is here expressed—it is safe to say that its language could
not be what it is unless the Evangelist either himself understood
the discourse as having a sacramental and sacrificial reference or
was at least endeavouring to account for a current tradition of
Dominical teaching in this sense which he could not ignore.
Neither the Fourth Gospel nor any other evidence! affords any
real ground for setting aside that conception. As we have seen,
it is implied by the other Evangelists and by St. Paul ; and it may
be summed up by saying that the Eucharistic Host and Chalice
not only represent our Lord as appropriable in a visible rite as
our sacrifice, but also render Him thus appropriable ; an idea
which carries with it participation in His life.
Enough has already been said to justify the earlier statement
that a stranger present at the Eucharist would naturally describe
it as a sacrificial rite. It is necessary, however, in view of current
misunderstandings and controversies, to carry the analysis further,
and it is the more profitable to do so at this moment in view of
recent developments of Eucharistic theology associated with the
1 Cf. the Rev. W. L. Knox’s Second Appendix entitled ‘“‘ The Primitive
Eucharist ’’ at the end of his St. Paul and the Church of Ferusalem. It is not
easy to take seriously the attempts which have been made to use the Didache as
an argument against a sacramental view of the Eucharist. We need only point
to the standard of exegesis in the book, which is not merely trivial but on
occasion manifestly superficial and untrue. For example, shortly before the
often quoted passage on the Eucharist occurs the sentence: ‘‘ Let not your fasts
be with the hypocrites ; for they fast on Mondays and Thursdays, but do you
fast on Wednesdays and Fridays” ; while shortly after it occurs the sentence :
‘Do not test or examine any prophet who is speaking in a spirit; for every sin
shall be forgiven, but this sin shall not be forgiven.”
The Eucharistic Sacrifice 433
name of Pere de la Taille.1 The definition of sacrifice from
which we shall best approach this task is that which describes
it as consisting in two main and necessary elements, one the
death of the victim, and the other certain ritual acts, very
often concerned with the blood, which invested the death with
a supernatural significance or effect. The word ‘death ”’ is used
rather than “ destruction”’ because, although it is true that not
all sacrificial gifts are animate and therefore cannot be said to die
when sacrificed, yet the word “ death ”’ is in fact more applicable
in cases where a living victim is offered. It does not, that is to
say, beg the question of the purpose of the killing of the victim,
but leaves the way open for the explanation that at least one purpose
of the victim’s death is the release and the appropriation of its life.?
In the case of the sacrifice of the death of Christ the importance
of this point is obvious. “The technical term generally used for
this element in a sacrifice is immolation or mactation. The
principal objection which has been urged and rightly urged by
Anglican theologians against what has been until recently the
dominant tradition of Roman Catholic teaching, is that their
doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice appeared to suggest a further
immolation of Christ in every Mass. This idea is obviously
inconsistent with the New ‘Testament, and with its clear belief
in the all-sufficing efficacy of the death of Christ. At the same
time the alternative to such a view appeared to be that the Mass
could only be called a sacrifice in a sense so subordinate and
secondary, and so different from that entertained by Roman or
Orthodox theology, as to make the description at best misleading.
‘The importance of a definition of sacrifice on the lines suggested
above is that it makes it possible to describe the Eucharist as a
sacrifice In a primary sense, without involving or suggesting any
repetition of the cross,
1 In view of a considerable similarity between his doctrine of the
Eucharistic Sacrifice and my own, it should be said that the position adopted
in this essay was worked out independently of Pére de la Taille’s work, and
in fact before I had become acquainted with it. It can be most fully studied
in his Mysterium Fidet de augustissimo Corporis et Sanguinis Christi Sacrificio
atque Sacramento.
2 This fact has led Pére de la Taille to say that “‘conversion”’ would be a
better term than “ destruction ”’ to use of the sacrificial gift. In O.T. sacrifices
(and in many others) ritual acts concerned with the blood would often appear
to involve this conception, the blood representing the life to the worshippers.
Zs
434 The Eucharist
For, in the first place, it is asserted on this view that the act
of destruction, in virtue of which the Eucharist is a sacrifice, 1s
the one historical death of our Lord on the cross, not some further
act of destruction or other corresponding change. But, in the
second place, it goes on to discover in sacrifice a second element
which is no less characteristic or essential than the victim’s death.
We can best see the character and the necessity of this element by
an illustration. Suppose that Abraham had slain Isaac without
ceremony, instead of preparing to slay him on an altar or in ac-
cordance with some other convention which clearly expressed his
purpose of sacrifice. Would one regard that as fulfilment of a
command to sacrifice his son? ‘Think of any other sacrifice,
actual or legendary, and imagine all ritual acts omitted, leaving
simply an act of destruction, not performed in a ritual manner.
Whatever the purpose of the act, would it fully correspond to
what we mean by a sacrifice, save as we have come to apply the
term in a metaphorical sense? In short, is not some ritual act
which expressly invests the death with its sacred purpose or signi-
ficance at least as characteristic an element in sacrifice as is the
death itself ?
If, as appears to be the case, this last question must be answered
in the affirmative, the explanation is not far to seek. Consider
first honorific sacrifices. It is not possible to regard these simply
as gifts to the deity worshipped ; the gift is so made as to constitute
an act of homage, a formal recognition and acknowledgment of
his sovereign claims. There lies the explanation, for example,
of the fact that the inherent value of that which is surrendered is,
on the whole, less important than that it should have been expressly
appointed or that it should possess a natural symbolism ; and there
also lies the explanation of the need for such act or acts as will
expressly invest the rite with its significance. In consequence,
if a formal definition of a sacrifice is to be attempted it would
appear necessary so to frame it as to treat this aspect as an essential
element, by asserting, for example, that a sacrifice is a series of
related actions dictated by belief in some Higher Power and
involving (a) the giving or giving up of something, in and through
a death, to a supernatural Being—or to secure a supernatural end
or to secure supernatural aid ; and (4) an act or acts dependent on
or closely related to the death, and of such a character as formally
to invest this with supernatural significance, and thus to render
The Eucharistic Sacrifice 435
the rite an express acknowledgment of a relation to some Higher
Power.
The need for some such definition appears to be no less real
in the case of propitiatory sacrifices than in the case of honorific
sacrifices. We would hesitate to describe as a propitiatory
sacrifice an act of destruction, even if this was conceived as
effecting a propitiation, unless the act of destruction was per-
formed in such a manner or accompanied by such further acts
as served to express its purpose and significance. If a god was
believed to have required the death, say, of the king’s son in
consequence of tribal sin, and if the king’s son was promptly slain
without ceremony, we should say that the purpose of his death
was the propitiation of the god, but we should not describe what
took place as a propitiatory sacrifice. We should so describe it if
the manner of his death, or other closely related ritual acts, gave
expression to the purpose and significance of the death ; and an
explanation of the apparent necessity for such ritual acts may
again be found in the fact that they render the rite an express
acknowledgment of a relation to God, in this case a relation which
has gone wrong. It is precisely in virtue of the presence and signi-
ficance of such acts that there is not only a purpose of propitia-
tion, but an avowal of that purpose. The rite thus becomes an
express acknowledgment of the need for propitiation and, in so far
as this propitiation is held to be necessitated by sin, an acknowledg-
ment of the nature of sin and its significance. Nor is acknowledg-
ment before God the whole story. Propitiatory sacrifices are
conceived not only as an acknowledgment by man before God,
but, in so far as they are thought of as divinely appointed, as an
authoritative declaration to man of the significance and effect of
sin. In short, such sacrifices have a manward as well as a God-
ward reference, and the declaration to man as well as the acknow-
ledgment before God implies ritual acts which expressly assign its
significance to the act of destruction.
If, then, we are justified in regarding as an essential and
important element in sacrifice, no less essential or important than
immolation, acts which expressly invest the immolation with its
significance, the first condition is secured for a solution of our
problem. It may be noted at once that as shown, for example,
by the case of the Passover, it is such acts, rather than the killing
of the victim, which are necessarily performed by the priest.
Z2EZ
436 The Eucharist
On this ground, and for the sake of brevity, in what follows such
acts will be referred to as “‘ sacerdotal acts.”
It will by now be obvious that the view to which we are
approaching is that the Last Supper and the Eucharist are not
separate sacrifices from that of Calvary, but supply a necessary
element in the sacrifice of Calvary, by expressly investing our
Lord’s death before God and man with its sacrificial significance.
There is nothing, moreover, in sacrificial conceptions to preclude
the multiplication of the sacerdotal acts. In the case of our
Lord’s sacrifice such multiplication was necessary if that sacrifice
was to be truly proclaimed, and its benefits duly appropriated, by
successive generations. And this necessity is not less but greater
in view of the absolute significance we ascribe to our Lord’s death
in contrast with the “‘ types and shadows”? of the older dispensa- _
tion. For, as has already been pointed out elsewhere in this
volume, the essence of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross consists in
the fact that it is an acknowledgment before God and man of the
nature and consequences of sin. It is sin’s “‘ covering”’ or pro-
pitiation, which is a necessary antecedent to man’s reconciliation
with God. What is asserted here is that the Eucharist is that part
of the sacrifice of Calvary which, by our Lord’s appointment,
expressly invests His death with its significance and thus renders it
such an acknowledgment. By it He ensured that Christian wor-
ship should be centred in the confession of God’s infinite holiness
and of the awfulness of sin, and that His worshippers of all times
and places should only on the basis of that wholly evangelical con-
fession stand secure in His fellowship and grace. It is not an
accident that in every ancient liturgy the prayer of Consecration
issues from the solemn accents, at once uplifting and humbling, of
the Sanctus. In other words, while our Lord’s death supplies in
itself an adequate expression of the nature and consequences of
sin, our profiting from the satisfaction thus effected must surely
involve our acknowledgment and recognition of this. Such re-
cognition requires expression no less than any other element in
religion ; while, if a particular manner of acknowledgment has
been appointed, then it is for us to give our recognition this ex-
pression rather than to urge, like Naaman, the equal or greater
efficacy of possible alternatives. |
On the other hand, we cannot regard the Eucharist simply as
an acknowledgment by man that our Lord’s death exhibits the
The Eucharistic Sacrifice 437
nature and results of sin, an acknowledgment which is effected by
our expressly assigning to that death the significance of an expiatory
sacrifice! At the Eucharist, our Lord’s death is invested with
this significance in and through a rite which, since it affords parti-
cipation in the blessings of our Lord’s sacrifice, must be held to be
performed with divine authority. Because it is in and through
such a rite, and therefore with such authority, that the Church’s
ministers solemnly invest our Lord’s death with an expiatory
significance, and thus acknowledge before God and declare to man
the nature of sin, they may properly be termed priests. On the
other hand, such a statement of the position is something less than
the truth. ‘This Divine authority is possessed, as we believe,
because the Eucharist is celebrated by our Lord’s command,
whether given at the Last Supper or through the Holy Spirit to
the early Church. In accordance with our conception of Chris-
tians not as external to our Lord, but as members of His body,
Christian acts performed by His command must be thought of less
as performed by His authority, than as performed by Him through
the members of His mystical body. Asa result, He is to be con-
ceived as Himself the Priest in the Eucharist, no less than at the
Last Supper ; but because His ministers are also our representatives
we participate in His sacerdotal act.
On sucha view the Eucharist isa sacrifice, not only or primarily
because we offer thanksgiving or give money or hallow bread and
wine, or even because Christ is there given to be our food, but
because by word and act, by the words of institution and in the
double consecration and through the act of Communion, His
death is proclaimed, before God and man, as an expiatory sacrifice,
and because this express investing of a sacrificial death with its
significance is no mere declaration, adding nothing beyond declara-
>’
1 The phrase “‘expiatory sacrifice’ is used as best describing a sacrifice
which is regarded as propitiatory alike in intention and effect, and as necessitated
bysin. That this significance is assigned to our Lord’s death by the Eucharist,
and that the early Church regarded the institution as assigning to it this signifi-
cance, is made clear by the words of institution, as given in the various records
and as taken up into the Eucharistic liturgies. Our Lord’s body is described
as given for us, His blood as poured out for us, as inaugurating a new coverant,
and as poured out unto the remission of sins. Even apart from the presence of
the last of these phrases we should be justified in reading its meaning into any
description of our Lord’s sacrifice which represents this as propitiatory, since
the propitiation thus effected was, from the first and as a matter of course, held
to be necessitated through sin.
438 The Eucharist
tion, but is itself an essential element in such a sacrifice, required,
not by some trick of definition, but in order to supply an overt
acknowledgment and declaration of the nature and consequences of
sin. Whether we think of the cross as the one sacrifice or of each
Eucharist as a sacrifice, whether we speak of Christ as having been
once offered upon the cross or as being offered in every Mass,
depends simply on whether we are thinking in terms of one or other
of two essential aspects of sacrifice. If we think of sacrifice in
terms of the act of destruction, Christ was once offered upon the
cross. If we think of sacrifice in terms of the sacerdotal acts
which expressly invest an act of destruction with its significance,
then Christ is offered in every Mass, Either view is correct
from its own angle : and for either view the death is fundamental.
Nor does a choice appear possible or desirable between one or ~
other mode of expression. Both must be used in their proper con-
text if we are not to minimise unduly either the cross or the
Eucharist.
‘There is one subordinate point in regard to sacrifice which
appears to be of sufficient value and relevance to deserve emphasis.
Details in the symbolism of the sacerdotal acts are often highly
significant and of real devotional value. It is in this connection
that it appears possible to retain and use the truth embodied
in conceptions of the Eucharistic sacrifice which emphasise the
offering of bread and wine. ‘The fundamental fact in the conse-
cration is that Christ is given to be appropriated as our sacrifice,
and that His death is thus expressly invested with a sacrificial
significance. But, in subordination to this, we may well dwell on
the symbolism of the means by which it is secured : on the conse-
cration of typical gifts of God ; on how much is thereby made of
gifts so common or so capable of abuse ; and, by that identification
of the worshipper with the thing consecrated, which is so frequent
an idea in sacrifice, on the purpose of hallowing ourselves, not
to become as many separate and inadequate sacrifices as there
are individuals, but to become one with and in Him who is the
only perfect sacrifice. If another conception of the Eucharistic
sacrifice seems to have been omitted which is too deep-rooted to be
thus ignored, it must be replied that the solemn assertion, before
God as well as before man, of the expiatory character of our Lord’s
death is in itself in the strongest possible manner a pleading of that
death. Further pleading of that death in the Eucharistic liturgies
The Real Presence 439
is valuable as bringing out what is thus involved. It can add
nothing to what is involved.
Tosum up. ‘Thewriters of the New Testament, when they
speak of the Eucharist, are unanimous in bringing it into the closest
connection at once with the Passover and with the cross. “They
represent our Lord as celebrating this rite, if not for the first time,
at least with a new (sacrificial) significance, on the eve of His
passion and death. “They imply a clear purpose on His part that
He should be done to death at the hands of wicked men ; and they
show Him forestalling the certainty that His death would appear
to His disciples as no more than the judicial murder of a martyr by
giving to it, in advance, a significance which, in the light of the
resurrection and ascension, would supersede that other interpretation
altogether. By what He said and did at the Last Supper, and in
our repetition of what He then did, our Lord invested and invests
His death with its significance as a sacrifice for sin ; and it was
because of this that St. Paul could write, “ As often as ye eat
this bread and drink this cup ye show forth the Lord’s death till
he come,” and that the writer to the Hebrews could describe the
cross as an altar (Heb. xiii. 10). Both alike, the cross and the
Eucharist, are integral to the sacrifice of our redemption. ‘The
fundamental element—fundamental because of the nature of Him
whose life was offered on the cross—is the death of Christ; and
that immolation once made can never be repeated. But equally
necessary in its bearing upon the salvation of the world is the rite
by which down the long succession of ages our Lord makes His
death to be our sacrifice and enables us to appropriate the blessings
thus secured.
IV
THe REAL PRESENCE
The doctrine of the Real Presence, more perhaps than any
other element in Eucharistic teaching, is charged with all the warmth
of Christian devotion. “The idea of a special presence of God
would seem to be in itself one with which religion cannot dispense.
It is what gives to many moments of spiritual experience, described
in both the Old Testament and the New, their peculiar vividness
and freshness of appeal. When Jacob says “ Surely the Lord is in
this place, and I knew it not”; or when Moses, at the burning
440 The Eucharist
bush, “‘ hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God” ; or when
the psalmist cries “ Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or
whither shall I flee from thy presence ?”’ or, again, “ “The Lord
is in his holy temple, the Lord’s throne is in heaven ”’—in all
these cases we are confronted with utterances and actions which
belong to the very heart of religion. Jewish faith in particular
distinguished three modes of this presence—in Nature, in the
Chosen People, and in that central shrine where the invisible glory
of the Shekinah brooded over the Mercy-seat ; yet there is nothing
to show that their emphasis upon any one of these displaced or
weakened their hold upon the others. In all cases, moreover,
the context of the term presence suggests that its primary
reference is to the experience of grace, and that that reference
provides the best key to its definition. Inthe New Testament we -
find this element of Jewish faith, as we should expect, transfigured
by the fact of the Incarnation and the dispensation of the Spirit.
Christ is Himself the personal embodiment of the divine glory
and tabernacled amongst men. He promised that when His visible
presence was withdrawn He would still be present in the midst of
believers gathered in His name; and the Epistles bear abundant
witness to the way in which the earliest Christian communities
found this promise fulfilled in their experience of the Holy Spirit
and their incorporation into Christ in the Church. ‘The doctrine
of the Real Presence asserts that in addition to (but as a consequence
of) the more general presence in the Church, the Eucharist
affords a presence of our Lord as our sacrifice, and that this
presence is of such a character as to give opportunity for full and
concrete expression of our worship of the Lamb.
No more than in the case of the Jewish Shekinah are other
modes of our Lord’s presence depreciated or excluded; and,
indeed, all true Eucharistic theology insists that in the Eucharist
our Lord is present as priest as well as victim, “The sacramental
presence, that is to say, depends upon and derives from Christ’s
priestly presence in the Church. But that is not to say that the
Eucharistic presence has not its own characteristics and claims.
In the Eucharist, Christ is present as the Lamb slain from before
the foundation of the world ; and the space devoted in each of the
Gospels to the narratives of the Passion and crucifixion imply that
this is an aspect of our Lord’s Being and work which it would be
impossible to emphasise too much.
The Real Presence AAI
So much will probably be generally admitted ; difficulty arises
rather when we come to interpret these ideas in relation to the
Eucharistic Gifts. Various terms have been used in Catholic
theology to describe this relation. If what has been said in the
preceding sections of this essay holds good, we are bound to say
that the bread and wine are changed by consecration. “They
acquire a new property, namely, that their devout reception secures
and normally conditions participation in the blessings of Christ’s
sacrifice, and therefore in His life. Regard being had to their
sacrificial context, this is the natural meaning of the description of
the consecrated elements, in relation to their consumption, as our
Lord’s body and blood—His body given for us and His blood shed
for us. Outwardly, we have bread and wine; the inward part
and meaning of the sacrament is that these become in this sense
the body and blood of our Lord, and as such are received by His
people. ‘The act of reception requires appropriation by faith, if
reception is to have its proper consequence and complete meaning ;
but the opportunity for reception and appropriation Is afforded by
the sacramental Gifts. The body and blood of our Lord are
given after a spiritual and heavenly manner, not by any process
separate from, and merely concomitant with, visible administra-
tion, but because the bread and wine become in the above sense
(without any connotation of materialism) His body and His blood.
It is true that this occurs simply in and through their becoming
effectual symbols, but wherever the significance of an effectual
symbol is certain and considerable we naturally think of it in terms
of that significance, as well as in terms of its natural properties.
We do not carefully separate in thought the natural properties of
a florin and its purchasing value ; rather, we combine the two, and
we think of the florin, quite simply, asan object * which has certain
natural properties and certain purchasing value. We tend to think
of the latter as to all intents and purposes a property of the object ;
yet it depends simply and solely on the fact that the object is an
effectual symbol. The case for a similar view of the Eucharistic
symbols is, of course, infinitely stronger. In the first place, the
Eucharistic character of the elements turns more directly on the
1 Here, and throughout the essay, the word object is used to connote a
complex of persisting opportunities of experience which have a common
situation in space. The properties of an object are the component oppor-
tunities. Further analysis of “objects” is of course necessary from various
points of view; the above definition appears adequate for the present purpose.
442 The Eucharist
connection between a certain act—to wit, devout reception—and
certain results, and the basis of this connection is identical with
the basis of those potential sequences between action and effect
which constitute the natural properties of a visible thing. ‘The
Eucharistic sequences and the natural sequences are both determined
by the divine will. In and through consecration those complexes
of opportunities of experience which we call bread and wine are
changed, not by any change in the original opportunities of ex-
perience, but by the addition of new opportunities of experience
which are equally ultimate and have far greater significance.
Such considerations justify the tendency to speak of the con-
secrated elements as Host and Chalice, or as the Blessed Sacrament,
or, using our Lord’s words, to describe them as His body and
blood, not as asserting any material or quasi-material identity with
His natural or glorified body and blood, but as asserting that they
render Him appropriable as our sacrifice. Any Eucharistic theo-
logy which does not begin by treating the words of institution as an
immediate assertion of an identity tends also to use such phrases as
the sacramental body and blood or the Eucharistic body and
blood. Such phrases have a real value. They avoid much mis-
understanding, and at the present day and in present circumstances
they probably avoid more and more important misunderstandings
than they create. On the other hand, they are in turn open to
misunderstanding and to criticism which may be summed up in
the incongruous phrase employed in this connection, that they
teach a multi-corporal Christ. In the only sense in which we can
still think of our Lord’s glorified body as identical with His
natural body, we must, however, think of His sacramental body
as identical with that body. ‘The identity between our Lord’s
glorified body and his natural body must be held to consist in the
facts that opportunities of experience which each includes, and
normally conditions, are directly determined by that nature which
our Lord assumed at His Incarnation ; and that in each case the
whole complex of opportunities of experience exists as such in
immediate dependence on that nature and affords immediately an
expression of it. All this is, however, also the case in regard to |
the Eucharistic body or blood. And the doctrine thus resulting
admits of more than one philosophical expression. In the terms
of a value-philosophy, the word “ Convaluation”?1 meets the
1 Cf. W. Temple, Christus Veritas, pp. 247 ff.
The Real Presence 443
case 3 though it may be questioned whether “ T’ransvaluation ”’
would not do so even better. If the doctrine were translated into
scholastic terms it would involve the assertion that the sub-
stance of the Eucharistic body and blood is the substance of that
body and that blood which our Lord assumed at His Incarnation ;
and it isin this sense a doctrine of transubstantiation. But it
is not such a doctrine of transubstantiation as is condemned
in Anglican formularies, and is neither open to the objections
nor presents the difficulties to which those testify. It does not
overthrow the nature of a sacrament but is directly based on
assigning to a sacrament that nature which Anglican formularies
assign, and is deduced from the traditional Anglican view simply
by insistence on the significance and implications of the facts that
in the Eucharist we have primarily a symbolism of objects, and
that the effectual symbolism of a sacrament is based on, and deter-
mined by, the divine will.?
It will be obvious that the views which have been advanced
have an immediate bearing on the question of Eucharistic adoration.
The danger of idolatry (in its narrower sense) lies in the identifi-
cation ofa material object witha divine person. “The position with
regard to images is exactly parallel to that with regard to pictures.
They may legitimately afford a means for expressing as well as
1 This is perhaps the most convenient point to notice an important criti-
cism of the line of argument which is being employed. It is urged that this
proves too much: that all that is claimed in regard to the Host or Chalice
might be claimed in regard to unconsecrated bread or wine on the ground that
these have the ‘“‘ property ”’ that they can be consecrated to become the Eucharistic
body and blood, and that this “ property,” and either complex as including
this “‘ property,” also depend on our Lord’s being and nature. When, how-
ever, an opportunity of experience depends on a special capacity to utilise an
object, which capacity is possessed only by certain persons, the opportunity of
experience thus presented cannot be regarded as a property of the object, and is
rightly referred to the capacity, not to the object. The possibility of the
“Venus of Milo” or of Leonardo’s ‘‘ Last Supper ’’ was not a property of
some piece of marble or of certain pigments, although dependent on these. So
with the bread and wine. The opportunity which the unconsecrated bread
and wine afford is not general, so that the same act by any person in the same
(regenerate) order would normally have the same effect. It depends on a
special power inherent in the priesthood, even although this power of the priest
is, of course, merely the power of an ambassador, and what is involved in his
making bread and wine effectual symbols depends not on his will but on the
divine will. A further reply can also be made, in the judgment of the writers,
by regard to immediacy of dependence and the nature of the “ property ” in
question, but the above consideration appears adequate for the purpose, and is
considerably simpler.
444 The Eucharist
stimulating feelings. Unless it is improper for a man to kiss the
picture of one he loves, or place flowers before a picture of a dead
wife, or for ardent politicians to decorate the statue of Lord
Beaconsfield, it cannot be improper for the Catholic to place
flowers or lights before the image of a Saint. Nor is this situation
different when the image is an image of our Lord, and, in conse-
quence, of a Person to whom adoration may be paid. But there
must be no identification of the object with the person: these
must consciously be held apart or idolatry results. In the case of
the Sacrament the matter is different. On the view advanced we
have objects which are a direct expression of our Lord’s being and
nature 3 which exist in direct dependence on that being and nature
as such an expression, and which enable us not only to participate
in the blessings of His sacrifice but to be strengthened with His
life, thus affording a relation to Him even more intimate than that
which His natural body made possible. It is, of course, obvious
that even such an object may not be worshipped in itself with that
worship which may only be properly paid to a person. Even if
our Lord were present in His glorified body, when we knelt
before it in our worship of Him, we should not be giving to the
Body in itself that worship which may be properly paid only to a
divine person, but we should be so far identifying the object with
the person that our worship of the person found expression in rela-
tion to the object. If the Eucharistic body and blood are no less
directly related to Him in that they are no less directly dependent
on His being and nature, and if they mediate an even more intimate
relation than did His natural body, a similar attitude is justified,
and our Eucharistic adoration finds natural and proper expression
in acts related to the Sacrament.
It may be worth while, finally, to point out the bearing of
these considerations on the devotional use of the Reserved Sacra-
ment. It is desirable to emphasise that from the point of view
here advanced the question whether our Lord is present and
may be worshipped in the Reserved Sacrament, and the question
whether Communion may be given by means of the Reserved
Sacrament, are not two questions but one question. When it is
asserted that our Lord is present in the Reserved Sacrament, it
is not a question of asserting something additional to the fact that
Communion may be given by the Reserved Sacrament. If the
Reserved Sacrament is in fact capable of giving Communion
Conclusion AAS
precisely the arguments as to Eucharistic adoration which have
already been advanced apply in the case of the Reserved Sacrament.
Further, when this finds expression in devotional practices, what
is involved is simply the transposition—in time, though not in
thought, and for convenience though not in principle—of elements
which are intrinsic parts of the Eucharistic rite. Thus, the
devotional use of the Reserved Sacrament is not something inde-
pendent of Communion and deriving from some separate con-
ception. It is precisely because devout reception unites us to our
Lord that the Reserved Sacrament is His body, that He is present
in a special manner, and that He can be thus adored.}
V
CONCLUSION
The foregoing argument will have suggested that the Eucharist
is only very imperfectly described in the phrase, so often repeated,
that it was given only for the purpose of Communion ; but it
will also have been clear that the whole doctrine here advanced
is at every point rooted in, and dependent on, the idea of Com-
munion asan integral and culminating part of the rite. If we were
to define the purpose of the sacrament, we probably could not do
better than use the language of the Catechism, and say that it
was instituted ‘‘ for the continual remembrance of the sacrifice
of the death of Christ, and of the benefits which we receive
thereby.” ‘This essay has been an attempt to draw out the mean-
ing of that pregnant definition. It is, however, by no means the
only statement in our formularies which appears to presuppose a
Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. The rubric with regard to
reconsecration, for instance, would be unnecessary, if not super-
stitious, if, instead of the symbolism of the rite being one primarily
of objects rather me of action, the acts of individual adminis-
tration were held to be directly sacramental. “The same view is
1 The desirability of the devotional use of the Reserved Sacrament, and the
forms which it should take, involve considerations outside the scope of this essay,
since practical questions arise as to the risk of inadequate teaching with consequent
superstition, and as to such an excess of these devotions as would destroy the
proportion of the faith. It may, however, be fairly claimed that objections of
these types hold against many other forms of devotion, and that experience in
the case of these would appear to show that a remedy is better sought in regula-
tion than in prohibition.
446 The Eucharist
suggested by the rubric as to the consumption of what remains of
the consecrated elements ; while more broadly still, the whole
structure of the English Communion Office—its requirement of
priesthood in the celebrant, its detailed directions as to vesture and
ceremony, its preparation of the worshipper by confession and
absolution, and not least its truncated Consecration prayer with its
abrupt emphasis on the words of institution—points to the
symbolism of the rite being conceived as at once sacrificial and
effectual.
At the same time, the truth that the Eucharistic sacrifice finds
its consummation in Communion is one which cannot be too
strongly emphasised. ‘The principle is implicit in the universal
fact that no Eucharist is ever celebrated without the priest at least
communicating ; and it is an axiom of Catholic teaching that
only by devout reception of the Sacrament can the individual
worshipper appropriate its benefits. “There have been periods in
the Church’s history, no doubt, when this side of the truth was
forgotten ; and it may be admitted that one cause of this has some-
times been an undue stringency of penitential or ceremonial dis-
cipline. More serious, however, is a difficulty of an opposite kind,
which must be faced before we close. It cannot be denied that
to many minds the notion that the partaking of a sacrament should
be “‘ generally necessary to salvation” is a great stumbling-block.
To such minds the sacramental principle appears to involve a
reaction from that pure and spiritual religion which Jesus Christ
came to establish. “The issue is too large for adequate treatment
here, and we must be content with no more than an outline.
It will generally be found on examination that this difficulty
involves an important underlying assumption—the assumption,
namely, that our spiritual experience is, and should be, inde-
pendent of and separable from our natural experience. But is
that true? Is it not rather the case that spiritual experience,
though of course it is more than natural experience, is yet so
commonly intertwined with it as to stand to natural experience
in the relation of whole to part? Certainly this is the case in
our social relationships. An outstretched hand, for example,
may be the expression of an offer of renewed friendship ; and in
such a case the offer and its acceptance alike involve this expression
as part of the whole experience. In certain circumstances a
salute to the national flag is not something separable from our
Conclusion 44.7
loyalty, but is an integral part of such loyalty and of the experience
which this involves. At every turn in our social life acts or
opportunities of personal intercourse are ordinarily associated with
some outward expression, suitable for its purpose but otherwise
arbitrary ; and the facts would appear to suggest that a healthy
emotional life requires such an expression in asubstantial measure.
Within the special field of religious experience the same would
appear to be the case. It is easy to say that an excess of sacramen-
talism is harmful : it is difficult to deny the value of sacramental-
ism as an element in religion. And sacramentalism found at once
a fuller opportunity and a more adequate basis when God became
incarnate. By His own acts on earth and through the Church as
His mystical body it became possible in a new degree for the Word
of God to give expression to opportunities and gifts of grace, and
thus to utilise a method of intercourse which men had always
employed in their personal relations with each other, and after
which they had sought so earnestly, if often so mistakenly, in their
relations with God.
There will, of course, always be those whose thought and
devotion will tend to lay especial stress upon the “ exemplarist ”
aspects both of the Incarnation and of the cross, and to whom
spiritual and moral progress will consist chiefly in the development
of the understanding ; and it will usually be found in such cases
that the appeal of the Eucharist is not strong. Yet even such
people will probably admit that Christ’s example, in His life and in
His death, is not the whole Christian Gospel, but that this involves
an activity of God towards man and in man deriving from the
historic and glorified Christ and continuous in the Church ever
since. ‘That activity is what we mean by the word “ grace.”
And what the Catholic belief in the Eucharist asserts is that this
grace is normally given by means of the Sacrament, which when
received in faith—and even for natural nourishment active assimila-
tion is necessary—does in fact renew the believer’s union with
God. It cannot be too often asserted that it is on the actuality
and fruits of that union, and not any conscious feeling of it, that
the emphasis is laid in Catholic teaching and practice. It would
probably be true to say that “sensible devotion” at the time of
Communion is the exception rather than the rule in the case of
those who most regularly receive. But “we know whom we
have believed,’’ and find in experience that God performs all that
448 The Eucharist
He promises in this rite, so far as our frail faith and feeble peni-
tence allow. More thanthat we cannotask ; but less wedare not
claim.
NOTE
The above Essay is based on an article on the Eucharistic Sacrifice
in Theology (October, 1923); on a pamphlet by the late Mr. Arthur
Boutwood (Hakluyt Egerton) and myself, 4 Cross Bench View of the
Reservation Controversy, published by the Faith Press; on the Second
Appendix to the Zrexicum of John Forbes by the editor of this volume;
and on other material lavishly supplied by him. I am indebted to the
publisher of the above article and pamphlet for permission to incorporate
certain passages. .
PNGB
ABAILARD, 259%.
Abbott, Dr. E. A., 2957.
Adam, 26
Aeschylus, 24
Alexander III, Pope, 352
Alexander, Prof., 130%”., 132
Ambrose, St., 213, 278
American Anthropologist, 13
Andrewes, Lancelot, 363
Anselm, 127, 263”., 277
Apollinarius, 191
Apuleius, 388
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 47f., 63,
148f., 233, 244, 302%., 372
Archaeology, Journal of Egyptian, 17
Aristotle, 22”., 24ff., 47ff., 63f.,
196
Arius, Arianism, 185, 235
Athanasius, St., 127, 139, 185, 250
Augustine, St., 127, 139, 148ff.,
Dagrercastt., | 219, 227,238 ff.;
2637., 300, 430
BACON, 75
Bacon, B. W., 154”.
Barbarossa, 350
Barnabas, Ep. of, 309”.
Basil St. 139
Batiffol, P., 159
Beaconsfield, Lord, 443
Becket, 350
Bernard, St., 2407”.
Bernardino of Siena, 335
Bicknell, E. }., 206, 2417.
Boethius, 149
Bonaventura, St., 43f., 63, 70,
244Nn.
Boniface VIII., 351, 356
Bosanquet, Prof., 657.
Bothe, Bishop, 354”.
Bousset, W., 154”., 165%”., 390%.
Box, G. H., 384”.
Breasted, 12f., 21%.
Broad, G..D.,\33, 2937.
Browning, R., 153, 181
Bruce, Robert, 261
Buddhism, 331
Bultmann, 1637.
Bunyan, 3007.*
Burkitt, Prof., 1747.
Burnet, 49
Butler, 63, 66, 418
Butler, F. W., 1307.
CALVIN 127,210, 233
Carlisle, Statute of, 3527.
Carpenter, |, £7154
Castle, The Interior, 3017.
Catherine of Siena, 335
Catholic Encyclopedia, 372n.
Cato, 386
Cave, Dr.; 194
Chalcedon, Council of, r90f., 193 ff.,
404
Charles V, 356
Chase, F. H., 33807.
Chopin, 74
Cicero, 386
Clarke, W. N., 229
Cleanthes, 24, 26, 237
Codrington, 9”.
Coelestius, 232”.
Constantine, 346, 387
Couchoud, P. L., 1597”.
Crawley, 396
Croce, 132%.
Cumont, 3887., 3937.
Curtis, W. A., 234n.
Cyprian, 213
_Cyril of Alexandria, 192
Cyril of Jerusalem, 395”.
DANTE, 303, 356
Darwin, 33
Davenport, S. J., 195”.
Dechelette, 107.
De Groot, 147.
De la Taille, Pére, 433
De Morgan, II 7.
Demosthenes, 388”.
Denney, Dr., 275
450
Denzinger-Bannwart, 4147.
Descartes, 132, 140
Dibelius, M., 1637.
Didache, The, 380, 432n.
Diognetus, Ep. to, 240n.
Dixon, 362”.
Docetism, 106, 293%., 304
Dominicans, 233
Donne, John, 153
Dort, Canons of, 233
Drews, A., 159n.
Du. Boses Dr.) 1357-:; 277
Durkheim, 396
EBIONITES, 201
Edward III, 351, 352
Edward VI, 358f.
Egyptian religion, 11 ff.
Eisler 21302 7.
Elizabeth, Queen, 359f.
Encyc.| Rel. and) Ethics, 13, 14,
233%., 239N., 244n., 408N.
Epicurus, 50
Erasmus, 335
Eschatology, 176ff., 188ff., 383f.,
401 ff.
Essays and Reviews, 337
Eucharist, the, 176,
381 ff., 427 ff.
Eugenius IV, Pope, 3542.
Euripides, 24
Eusebius, 379”.
Evans, A., 157.
S055 SLO;
FARNELL, 22%., 388.
Fielding, H., 154
Foakes- Jackson, F. J., 154”.
Folk-lore, Journal of American,
16n., 23
Forcellini, Lexicon, 277
Formby, 2217.
Francis, St., 77%., 302
Frazer, Sir J.,.G.)°17,11597.; 396
Frenssen, G., 154
Freud, 217
GARDINER, I7
Gardner, A. H., 13f.
Gardner, Prof. P., 400
Gayford, C. S., 220
Geol. Soc. Quarterly Journal, 5
Glover, T. R., 154n., 389n.
Gnosticism, 106, 196%”., 214
Gompertz, Prof., 24
Gore. 29 ear sis he ae
Gosse, Philip, 33 f.
Goudge, Prof., 298n7., 423
Index
Gratian, 353
Greens Eotii.705
Gregory the Great, Pope, 349, 428
Gregory of Nyssa, 213, 215
HADRIAN VI, Pope, 4147.
Hamilton, 26”.
Harnack, A., 85, 154”., 185, 227”.,
232n., 296, 389n.
Harrison, J., 10, 389”.
Heiler, F., 86, 1597., 384, 391
Hellenic Studies, Journal of, 15n.
Henry II, 349
Henry V, 353
Henry VIII, 350ff.
Heraclitus, 25
Herbert, George, 345
Herrmann, W., 1857.
Hewitt, 157.
Hilary, 213
Hinduism, 331
Hocart, 9n., 19”.
Holtzmann, H. J., 1547., 165”.
Homer, 22:2),7245 220
Hooker, R., 262n., 278
Horace, 394
Horus, 17f.
Hoskyns, Sir E., 2957., 310n.
Howitt, 2o0n.
Hiigel, F. von, 8172). 12513077,
240N.
Hume, 52, 63, 235
Hus, 335
IGNATIUS, IQI, 231, 385
Inge, W..R., 77%. 313
Innocent Tif) 350/452
Irenaeus, 2317”., 240”.
Jackson, J. W., 7”.
James, William, 239”.
Jansen, 233
Jastrow, 217.
Jevons, F. B., 229n.
Jewish Encyc., 409n.
Joan of Arc, 300
John, King, 350
John of the Cross, St., 299
Josephus, 409”.
Julian of Norwich, 303
Jiilicher, 1547., 167n.
jung,.217
Justinian, 346
Justin Martyr, 385, 398
KAFTAN, I81
Kant, 63, 67, 235
Index
Keats, 74, 153
Keith, Prof., 6
Kelvin, Lord, 301
Kempe, Archbishop, 354
Kennedy, H. A. A., 3897.
Kennedy, W. P. M., 359”.
Klostermann, E., 154”.
Knox, R. A., 313%”.
Knox a1 b., 271.%.;:2981:;.432%.
Koch, W., 414”.
Koldeway, 14”.
LAKE, Kirsopp, 154%”.,155”., 288n.,
297, 380%., 414N., 423
Lang, A., 20”.
Laud, Archbishop, 345, 363
Leo sPope, Tor
Lloyd, C., 376%”.
Lodge, Sir Oliver, 222
Loisy, A., 154”., 159%., 166, 293%.,
384n., 389n.
Lollards, 348, 360
Loofs, 184, 232”.
Luther, 216, 233f., 2547.
Lux Mundi, v.
Lyndwood, 353
MACALISTER, Prof., 5, 8
McGiffert, A. C., 2717.
Mackintosh, H. R., roof.
McNeile, Dr., 2897.
McTaggart, Dr., 239”.
Maitland, 353%”.
Manichaeans, 214, 421
Marett, 8, 229”.
Marcion, 127
Martin V, Pope, 354
Mary, Queen, 359
Mayew, Bishop, 354”.
Melton, Archbishop, 351%”.
Meyer, Eduard, 2847., 292%., 296,
420
Meyerson, F., 53
Mal) ye Ss 53
Moberly, Dr., 191, 253, 276f.
Modernism, 116
Modernism, Catholic, 158 f.
Mohammedanism, 331
Mommsen, 404
Montefiore, C., 154, 164n”., 166%.,
167N., 310Nn.
Morgan, C. LI., 130”.
Mozley, J. K., 263”.
Murray, Prof. Gilbert, 3877.
NEANDERTHAL Mav, 4f.
Neoplatonism, 149
451
Newman, 38
New Realists, 1327.
Newton, 37
Nicaea, 404
Nicholas I, Pope, 4147.
Nietzsche, 324
OBERMAIER, 5%.
Oldcastle, Sir John, 348
Oman, John, 243
Orange, Synod of, 215, 232
OTigengisG, is, 2227251
Origin of Species, 337
Otel anaes
Otho, 353
Otley - D1. 2977
Otto Dri. Sin 237 fae aay
228n.
Ottobon, 353
Oviedo, 137.
PAPACY 7031.7 )4108,ia0112 eel Owe
347 ff.
Papias, 379
Paris, Matthew, 350”.
ParkyR iA. eit.
Pascal, 303
Pecok, Reginald, 348
Pelagius, Pelagianism, 213f., 225,
Zar t,
Perry, W. J., 197.
Petey, Gospel of, 294n.
Petrie, Sir Flinders, I1v., 17u.
Piepenbring, 1547”.
Pindar, 24
Plato; 25,157, 03,:07
Poincaré, Henri, 301, 305”.
Rolycarp, St,412
Posidonius of Apamea, 239”., 380
Pringle-Pattison, A. S., 45”.
Propitiation, 270, 435
Protestantism, 118 f., 216, 340, 369f.
Provisors, Statutes of, 354
Pirlier Hos Weses 75
Pumpelly, R., 11%.
QUAKERS, 377, 421, 428
Quibell, 18%.
RADIN, 237”.
Radulphus Ardens, 277
Ramsay, Sir W., 388
Rashdall, H., 250, 251 ff., 274 ff.
Rawlinson, A. E. J., 96%., 3697.
Reid lA t30 7
Reinhardt, 386”.
sn
4.52
Reitzenstein, R., 86, 154”., 392n.
Relativity, theory of, 37f.
Resurrection, 259ff., 279 ff.
Revelation, 86ff., 130 ff.
Richard of St. Victor, 299
Richard IT, 348, 352
Ritsenl, 133)235
Rivers, W. H. R., 396”.
Riviére, M., 2657., 277
Robertson, A. T., 201
Robinson, Dr. Armitage, 166n., 230
Roessingh, I60n.
Ross, W. D., 49”.
Royce, 141”.
SABATIER, A., 159%.
Sabellius, 149
Sacrament, Reserved, 444f.
Savonarola, 335
sayvce, ANH. 147,
Schiller, Dr., 437.
Schmidt, 1637.
Schmiedel, E. B., 295., 296
Schweitzer, A., 155”., 183, 403
scott, B, F., 154”., 159”.
Scotus, Duns, 244
Selwyn, E. G., 236
Simpson, J. Y., 1427.
Skipton, H. K., 300m.
Smith, Elliot, 6”., Io, 11, 7s
Smith, W. R., 21.
Socinianism, 234
Sollas, 7.
Soloviev, 817., 3147.
Sophocles, 24, 397
Sorley, Prof., 457.
Sparrow-Simpson, Dr., 3157.
Spencer, Herbert, 65
Spitta, 310%”.
Stanton, V. H., 1597.
Stevenson, R..L., 40
Stoics, 24 ff., 237%.
Storr, Canon, 259”., 264n., 275 ff.
Streeter,Canon B. H., 289n., 202”.
293, 301n., 308n.
Stubbs, Bishop, 3497.
Sundar Singh, Sadhu, 302
Swete, Dr., 1727.
,
TATIAN, 382
Taylor, Prof. A. E., 43n., 49N.,
81%., 140M., 237, 239”., 244n.,
314n.
Tell-el-Amarna, 21
Index
Temple, Bishop W., 71, I30Nn;
I40n., 146n., 193, 196, 442n.
Tennant, Dr., 147n., 218f.
Tertullian, 139, 148, 153,
411N., 415
Thales, 22
Theodoret, 429
Lheol. Studies, Journal of, 166n.,
243, 277
Theresa, St., 299, 300, 305.
Thomas a Kempis, 335
Townsend, 2307.
Tradition, 99
Trent, Council of, 216, 233, 360, 375
Tutankhamen, 21
Tylor, Sir E. B., 4
Tyrrell, George, 92, 159n.
273m
UNDERHILL, Miss E., 230n., 299.
Usener, H., 395n.
VAN DER BERG VAN
G. A., 159”.
Vanderlaan, E. C., 160n.
Vatican Council, 32, 117
Vincent of Lerins, 215
Vincentian Canon, 374f.
EYSINGA,
WAD®B, Dr.) 310 1 3rsen
Walker, J. R., 20n.
Ward, James, 45n., 8117., 239
Waugh, W. T., 351.
Webb, C. C. J., 67, 140m.
Weigall, 21 2.
Wellhausen, 154%.
Weiss, Joh., 155”., 167”., 404
Wesleys, the, 335, 364
Wessel, 335
Westcott, Bishop, 278
Weston, Bishop, 193
White, Dr., 276
Whitgift, 345, 363
William the Conqueror, 349
Williams, N. P., 412”.
Wilson, Canon, 276
Witgenstein, 58.
Wood, H. G., 185.
Wordsworth, 79.
Wrede, W., 1547.
Wycliffe, 335, 348
XENOPHANES, 24 ff.
ZAHN, Th., 159”.
Printed in England at Tue BALLANTYNE PRESS
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Colchester, London & Eton
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