WA-.. '4Li i^'^c,'r^'r\:<- 7' iFrnm tl|? ffitbrar^ of ProfeB0nr Srn;amtn Ir^rktnrtbg^ fflarfolb tl|0 iCtbrarg of J^rtnrrtott Slljfalnstral ©mtttarg BR 477 .L53 1892 c.l Lindsay, James, 1852-1923. The progressiveness of modern Christian thought THE PROGRESSIVENESS MODERN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT ^ vlUL 2': THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF Modern Christian Thought / JAMES LINDSAY, M.A, B.D, B.Sc. F.R.S.E., F.G.S., MINISTER OF THE PARISH OF ST ANDREW'S, KILMARNOCK Respice, A spice, Prospice " WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCXCII All Rights 7-eserved TO THE CLERGY AND THE CULTURED LAITY OF ALL THE CHRISTL4N DENOMINATIONS AT HOME AND ABROAD, THESE STUDIES IN THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF MODERN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT ARE INSCRIBED, WITH MUCH RESPECT, BY THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. I MAKE no apology for this book. No book of my theological acquahitance, British, Continental, or American, quite realises the ends I have in view, or seeks them by the plan and in the spirit that will be found to pervade this work, in which, from the wide range of theological topic considered, an exhaustive mode of treatment must give place to one which can at most only be sug- gestive. References, generally fragmentary or fugitive in character, have not been al- together wanting in connection with the progress of modern Christian theology, but the subject has appeared to me to call for Viii PREFACE. some more adequate treatment, and the attempt to supply this want cannot fail to meet with approval in all competent quar- ters, whatever may be thought of the present execution of this task. The book is apologetic in its aim, and constructive in its tendency. Its prevail- ing method is critical rather than historical, but it retains so much at least of the his- torical spirit and method, it is hoped, as to seek, through self-effacement of the writer, the objectivity needful when we come, in Spencer's phrase, "to take stock of our progress " recently in Christian theology. This consideration should be sufficient to prevent readers from identifying, as of necessity, the author's own theological posi- tions with every noticed phase or attitude of recent Christian theology. I feel free, however, to admit In the frankest manner my perfect sympathy — without which the present work would not have been under- PREFACE. IX taken — with all the main lines of recent ad- vance in our most Christian thouQrht, believ- ing the poet's words applicable to such recent theological movement, as " A mainly moving forward, never wholly retrograde." I have sought to serve the interests only of Christian truth, not caring to write a line that should subserve the interests merely of theological school or party : there is no school or party to which I do not gladly own myself debtor ; this holds true even if I should be found most in accord with a liberal and progressive Christian Theology, whose life is in the freedom of the spirit rather than in bondage of the letter. If the book should wake a deeper in- terest in the subjects of which it treats in any of its readers, I shall be abundantly rewarded. JAMES LINDSAY. Kilmarnock, April 1892, CONTENTS, CHAPTER I. THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF MODERN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. PAGE Christian Theology mistakenly deemed unprogressive . . i Need of apologetic endeavour to set its progressiveness in true light 2 Objection against it as unprogressive from the scientific, the literary, and the religious side ...... 3 Fact of theological progress in the past 4 Past progress a pledge of that of the future .... 5 Progress guaranteed by the nature of theological science . . 5 Original attitude of Christian theology progressive ... 6 The theologising faculty in the early Christian centuries, in the Medieval, the Reformational, and the Modern periods . 7 Theology in our age specially active and progressive . . 8 More spiritual in impulse 8 Freer in spirit and truer to spiritual reality .... g Avoids one-sidedness in conservatism and liberalism alike . . 10 Its law of progress 10 Fascination of theological study 12 Transience of theological systems 12 Christian Evolutionism in theology 13 Modern Christian theology true to the permanent elements in the Christian theology of the past . , , . 13 Xll CONTENTS. Bases of modern theology 14 Rooted in the past 15 Progress a necessity 16 Operation of the law of progress 16 Progress Biblical in basis 17 Processes of excision and of assimilation in theological process . 18 Perils of blind conservatism 19 Progress in theology marks the development of the Church's faith and life 19 Wherein lies the possibility of theological progress ... 19 Theology for life and life for theology 20 Theology must be scientific 21 Its motor power is the Christian consciousness .... 22 By its growth theology its own vindication .... 23 Special call to progress in the present 24 Theology an inspiration of secular progress .... 24 Finality of character wanting to theology 25 Its dealings are with vital forces 26 It is progressive in idea and in its modern spirit ... 27 Progress unlimited by space and time 29 Progress not an aimless abstraction or quantitative result . . 29 A definite aim in progressive theology 30 Progress of modern Christian theology unquestioned . . 31 Compared with the progressiveness of the sciences • • • 33 CHAPTER II. THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF MODERN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY SEEN IN ITS SPIRIT, METHODS, AND RELATIONS. Cumulative proofs of the position already assumed as to the progressiveness of Christian theology .... 34 Progress in the spirit of Christian theology, grown more scien- tific, more ethical, and more Christian .... 36 Progress in the course of its use of the subjective method . . 37 Its improvements in method illustrated in the inductive, histori- cal, comparative, deductive, thetical, genetic, and factual methods employed 38 CONTENTS. XIU Its better co-ordination of the theological contents ... 40 Its Christo-centric basis, its scientific rigour, and its modern spirit 41 Improved relations between modern Christian tlieology and modern Science ......... 42 Christian theology and Positivism ...... 44 Illustrative gains to modern Christian theology from modern science 46 Greater indebtedness of modern science to Christian theology than has always been understood ..... 47 More harmonious relations of Christian theology and modern Philosophy 48 Philosophy of religion 49 Domination of philosophical thought 49 Theology and metaphysics ...... .50 Services rendered Christian theology by modern philosophy illustrated 50 Ideahstic philosophy 51 Modern Agnosticism and evolutionary philosophy ... 51 Interactions of philosophy and theology 52 Progress in the adjustment of the relations between modern theology and modern Life ....... 54 Voices of life no longer stifled 55 Theology known only through life 56 Kindlier relations sustained to theology by modern Literature . 56 Theological influences of modern literature illustrated . . 57 Interactions of literature and theology ..... 57 Growth of better relations between Christian theology and modern Art 58 Art sustains a truer spiritual ministry to Christian thought . 59 CHAPTER in. THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF xMODERN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AS SEEN IN THE STUDY OF ITS CHRISTIAN CONTENTS. Progress in the theological conception of God since the Deism of last century 61 Modern emphasis on the Divine Immanence .... 63 XIV CONTENTS. Larger presence of ethical elements in the modern conception of God Anthropomorphism and the Personality of God . Influence on theology of the recent stress on the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God Progress in the presentation of the proofs for the Divine Ex istence The Cosmological proof in its modern aspects critically reviewed The Teleological argument in modern theology critically consid ered in relation to modern Evolutionism The recent course of the Ontological argument and how it is re garded by recent Christian thought .... Value of the foregoing arguments as theological proofs High place of the Moral argument in modern theology Modern progress of Trinitarian thought .... Rational character of Trinitarian teaching in recent Christian theology Growth in apprehension of the doctrine of angels Methods of Creation and modern science . Creation and evolution ..... Creation and man ...... Place of Man in modern theology Recent Christian thought in relation to theories Materialism and Agnosticism on man Better anthropological basis of modern theology Clearer apprehensions of the doctrine of Immortal ideal manhood of modern ty, and of 64 64 65 66 67 70 73 74 75 n 79 80 82 83 84 86 87 CHAPTER IV. TROGRESS IN THE SPHERE OF THE CONTENTS OF CHRISTIAN iwv.o\.OQ\—co?2iinucd. Modern views of Revelation ....... 90 Progress in modes of conceiving its historic nature and pro- gressive method .... .... 91 92 Old distinction between natural and revealed relifrion discarded Modern relations between revelation and reason 93 CONTENTS. XV Former place of authority in revelation 94 Organic view of revelation 94 Progress in modern conceptions respecting Miracle ... 94 The miraculous element : how regarded and retained . . 95 Advance on deistic position 95 Miracles no longer violations of the laws of nature ... 96 Miracles not exterior attestations but constituent elements of revelation .......... 97 Their relation to Christ's Incarnation and Person ... 98 Their emblematic character 99 Improved views of Prophecy ....... 99 Prophecy viewed in less external light and used in less technical manner .......... 100 Organic whole of prophecy 100 Advances wrought of the historic method as touching prophecy loi Changed views of Inspiration ....... 102 Inspiration and modern criticism 102 Mechanical theories discarded 103 Progress of the dynamic theory illustrated 104 Blending of the divine and the human elements in the inspira- tional process 105 Old theory of absolute inerrancy dropped ..... 105 Wiser hold on reality of Biblical inspiration .... 106 Progress in modern theology in respect of the Incarnation . 106 Relation of the Incarnation to God's Self-Revelation . . 107 Relation of the Incarnation to the creation .... 108 Its cosmical significance 108 Relations of the Incarnation to the Atonement in modern Chris- tian theology 109 True relations of the Incarnation and the Fall, as apprehended in recent Christian thought 109 CHAPTER V. PROGRESS IN THE SPHERE OF THE CHRISTIAN CONTENTS — continued. Progress of modern Christian thought in the way Sin has been viewed rather as a disease of our distempered self-hood than xvi CONTENTS. as a debt, and not as a necessity of an inferior stage of de- velopment, but rather as an arbitrary and abnormal element in The imique character of sin as the sad reality now frankly faced, and its lawless nature admitted 112 Less stress on original sin 113 Recent Christian thought and heredity as proclaimed by science 113 Recent Christian thought on sin and solidarity . . . .113 Its opposition to the teachings of Agnosticism and Pantheism on sin . . . . . . . . . .114 Nature of the unpardonable sin more clearly elucidated . . 115 Stronger growth in recent Christological thought illustrated in the Kenotists T15 Recent advances in the apprehension of the Pre-existence of Christ 117 Newer methods of proving Christ's Divinity . . . .117 Progress in Christian speculation as to the Person of Christ . 118 Underlying advances in modern modes of viewing the doctrine of Atonement or Reconciliation 119 Redemption not now regarded as a contrivance of sheer Almightiness 120 External modes of view in the background .... 120 Greater spiritual reality gained 120 Its greater emphasis on moral substitution and remedial aspects of the Atonement . ........ 121 Recent improved presentations of objective and subjective aspects of Reconciliation ......... 121 Solidarity of mankind in Christ . 122 Clearer grasp of Christ's Resurrection 122 Modern efforts to resolve it into subjective impressions . . 122 Its relations to Christian history 123 Christ's Exaltation growing in its hold on Christian thought . 123 His High-Priesthood in closer relation to human life . . 124 His indwelling in more factual relation to holiness . . . 124 Improved Soteriological representations ..... 124 Election less emphasised on its Divine side in recent Cliristian thought . . . . . . . . . .125 The ethical character of God better preserved in connection therewith 126 CONTENTS. XVil Election exhibited less as result of decree than of inward reahsa- tion of life eternal . . . . . . . . .126 Deeper as well as higher views of Regeneration . . . .127 Justification by faith in lights less fictional and more real . . 128 The moral character of Justification more satisfyingly pre- sented 129 Sanctification presented in less artificial aspects . . . .130 Progress in practical aspects of Sanctification as seen in improved Christian Ethics 131 Influence of this ethical elevation on modern Christian theology 131 Perseverance, or preservation, of the saints less mechanically viewed in modern thought, and set in closer relation to spiritual experience 132 The assurance of grace and salvation in recent Christian thought 132 The origin of Evil in current thought 133 CHAPTER VI. PROGRESS IN THE SPHERE OF THE CHRISTIAN CONTENTS — contijiiicd. Growth of modern Ecclesiology in apprehension of the doctrine of the Church ......... 136 Greater catholicity of spirit 137 Its opposition to baleful individualism 137 Progress in Christian thought respecting the Holy Spirit . . 138 Greater stress on the personality and immanence of the Holy Spirit, as the self-communicating God 138 Marked advance in modern Christian Eschatology . . . 139 Place of the Second Advent in progressive Christian thought . 139 Its relation to Christology ........ 139 Recent advances in the teaching touching the question of an Intermediate state 140 No loss in the activities of consciousness after death . . . 141 Holiness progressive in intermediate state 141 Dogmatic pronouncement of probation after death not delivered by modern Christian theology ...... 142 XVI 11 CONTENTS. Life as education, not simply probation, emphasised . . 142 Modern Christian conceptions of tlie resurrection from the dead 142 The spiritual body in Christian thought ..... 143 The Resurrection and the scientific principle of continuity . 144 Advances of modern Christian thought beyond Annihilationism and Conditional Immortality 144 Gains of recent Christian thought in defining its position as against Universalist and Restorationist theories . . . 145 Juster views of what is termed final judgment in its relations to judgment in the present life 148 Grasp of the consummation of all things grown firmer . . 149 CHAPTER VII. THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE. Theology has a Future 152 Forecast of the theology of the future is to be attempted . . 155 Suggested contrasts between the theology of the future and that of the present ........ 157 The theology of the future more spiritual and also more scientific 157 Its basis will be anthropological 157 Its philosophy of Theism and its Apologetic standpoint . . 158 Its light on the Agnosticism of the future, and on the problems of immanence and transcendence 159 Its character intuitional 161 Its answers to the charges of Anthropomorphism and the claims of Cosmism ......... 161 Its methods, historical and comparative ..... 163 Its theory of Theopneustia and of the Canon .... 163 Its principle Cliristo-centric ....... 164 Its cosmopolitan significance 164 Its larger hold on spiritual reality 165 Its method speculative in approved sense 165 The necessity of specific experience will be recognised without being exaggerated 167 A higher organic unity will pervade the theology of the future . 168 Christ will have in it a larger place as its "Middle Term" {Mi/icllngrif) 168 CONTENTS. XIX Future study of the questions that cluster around the Person of Christ 169 Its stress on the Priestliood of Jesus ...... 170 Its larger place for Personality, and its greater light on freedom, atonement, and the solidarity of mankind .... 170 Its humanitarian aspects, and its emphasis on the Kingdom of God 172 Its factual methods and final synthesis 172 Recent hopes of an imdogmatic Christianity illusory . . . 173 The continuity of life will be maintained amid evolutions of dogma 174 The historic disciplines will have their rightful functions dis- criminated 174 The verifications of the future and their scientific value . . 175 The harmonisation of Naturalism and Supernaturalism in the theology of the future 175 Its teaching in respect of future probation and the intermediate state 178 Its note as to the Resurrection and the Final Judgment . . 179 The Church of the future in relation to the Theology of the future ........... 180 THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF MODERN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. CHAPTER I. THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF MODERN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. T T is hardly open to doubt that theology, as ^^^ j the scienc e of relio^on at once in its ob- {^'i^l^A,^ jective and subjective aspects, admits of end- ?^^/^< less research, and is an eminently progressive -^^-A^*-^ science. But doubt has largely prevailed as to '^ ' V. whether such progressiveness is predicable of . ^ /fc^*t^> Christian theology, using that phrase in the broad sense of th£__QmstiaiLJ:eligiott" in all the forms of its scientific treatment. From the ' 1 '*^'^-^ scientific, the literary, and the religious side, the a. y A 2 TROGRESSIVENESS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. objection has been preferred that, hopelessly bound down to the "beggarly elements" of original revelation, it is, and can only be, un- progressive, is even an obstacle to man's pro- gressive intellectual development. An impres- sion is thus created w^hich has, we believe, not a little to do with that '' recession of the theo- logic tide " which marks our era. The need emerges that Christian theology be set in a true light as not only susceptible of substantive and perpetual progress, but as itself the highest inspiration of all intellectual advancement. The most powerful apologetic of Christian theology is here taken to be the exhibition of that theology itself, not merely in its dogmatic contents or results, but also in its susceptibilities of progress, the inherent power it possesses to put itself into positive harmony with the whole world of know- ledge, volition, and thought. Now that every modern theologian speaks in ready, even ardent, recognition of the enormous advances and splen- did possibilities of the scientific spirit within the physical realm, it is the less easy to escape wonder at that absence of the '* scientific con- science," which allows the stray scientist, in ALLEGED OBJECTIONS TO PROGRESS. 3 ill-starred hour, to intrude into the theologic sphere with an innocence of the massive gains and superb capabilities of Christian theology that would be amusing if it were less absurd. From the literary side, the objection has been forcibly enough stated by Macaulay, in the well- known passage where, in contrast to the progress- iveness of the sciences, he represents theology as hermetically sealed against " Progress, man's distinctive mark alone." They who, from the religious side, regard the progressiveness of Christian theology as no more than a modern conceit, ipso facto show they have failed to catch or understand the spirit which informs what is here regarded as the most real and the most inspiring of all modern develop- ments, and cannot be expected to judge aright a movement alien in its progressive spirit to their own. " Why should there be progress in everything else, only not in religion?" "There is nothing in the idea of revelation that excludes progress, for whatever definition of revelation we may adopt, it always represents a com- munication between the divine on one side 4 rROGRESSTVENESS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. and the human on the other. Let us recognise that the divine element in revelation is immut- able, 3'et the human element, the recipient, must always be liable to the accidents and infirmities of human nature." " But as in every other pursuit, so in religion also, we want less and less of darkness, more and more of light ; we want, call it life, or growth, or development, or progress ; we do not want mere rest, mere stagnation, mere death." ^ The past stands wit- ness to the fact that vast progress has been made by Christian theology: many theological monu- ments meet us on the highway of the past, the hope of whose builders for their successors was — " Forsan et hasc olim meminisse juvabit : " the theology of to-day is only the nearest and greatest memorial reared by the scientific spirit in its instinctive homage to consistency and orderly demonstration of the truth. We apply the words of Richter, " Only from lofty heights can the backward road be surveyed and the future estimated,"^ to the Christian theologian, ^ Prof. Max Mliller, Natural Religion, pp. 9, 10. - Levana, § 31. Nur auf Anhohen kann zuriickgclogter Weg bcscliauet wcrden, \\\c kiinftiger bercclinct. FACT OF PAST PROGRESS. 5 taking many a backward survey and many a forward glance from the niveau on which he stands to-day. He sees advances on the past which prove theology, when keyed to true spiritual life and thought, to be no stationary science, but so living and progressive as, always dissatisfied with its own highest thought and knowledge, to be ever pressing on to higher and worthier conceptions of the Deity, and His relations to man and the universe. Not that he fails, through any obliquity of moral vision, to note with sad regret the wretched timidity too often displayed by theology in the past in daring not to pass beyond the '' Hercules Pillars " of fixed dogmatic truths as finalities of thought, and venture on the broad and open *'sea of faith" that lay a limitless expanse beyond. But the progress of the past taken in whole is to him a pledge at least of the greater progress of the future, a progress undoubtedly guaranteed by the nature of theological science. Far as any pro- gress of the past has been from sounding the ^clOt] of the self-revelation of God, as little will any progress of the future find resting-place for its plummet in the *' Godhead's deepest sea." 6 PROGRESSIVENESS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. The analogy of the past makes the progress of the future nothing short of a moral certainty to faith : faith cannot give up tasks which for her ever remain unfinished : the inherent impulse of faith, always more strong and masterful, is ever towards a more complete intussusception of the Christian contents : the living faith of the present cannot but believe that before the Church of to- day lies a progress in Christian theology magnifi- cent and unparalleled. The progressive spirit of Christian theology was seen in the original mental attitude of that greatest of Christian theologians, who, having forgotten " things behind " {ra oTTiaco), was ever '' stretching forwards" (eVe/c- retvofievo^) to the things that lie before : with the watchword eirl ti^v reXeLoTTjra cpepcofMeOa,^ it can brook no retrogression which forgets that ra apyjua TraprjXOev ^ : the course of its develop- ment is " from faith to faith," until it attain the fulness, strength, and unity of a perfect, harmonious, and symmetrical organism, within which no foreign material is encysted. It is now recognised that the starting-point of the development of Christian theology lies not ^ Hub. vi, I. - 2 Cor. V. 17. THE THEOLOGISING FACULTY. in the completed revelation of the Scriptures, \ Crf-«^ but only in the initial attainments of the Church under the apostolic teaching, which, as compared with the unapprehended fulness, perfectness, and sufficiency of the Scriptures, we may surely say j were modest enough. The theologising faculty asserted itself in the early Christian centuries in the power with which the Greek masters of theology — Clement, Origen, Athanasius — set forth the completed grandeur of all that had been going on since Creation in the massive fact of Incarnation, and depicted in Revelation (ja^ (t^ the process whereby the immanent Deity was continuously revealing Himself to finite reason ; in the skill with which the Athanasian Trinitar- ianism and the Augustinian Hamartology were forged, and the inadequacy of such forms of theological thought as the Arian, the Apollinar- ian, and the Macedonian, was exposed ; as well as in the way in which Augustinianism evolved its elaborate representations of God, the God- man, and grace. When, after a large interval — an intercalated period of comparative stagna- tion, not unmarked, however, by theological ad- vances in Anselm, Abelard, Aquinas, and Duns 8 PROGRESSIVENESS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. Scotus — we come upon the Reformation, we find it to be itself a revolt against finality, a regress to, and a progress in and by, the Scriptures, a vindication of the freedom of faith and of thought, and a paving the way for those advances which three succeeding centuries, spite of formal orthodoxism, unillumined Deism and rationalism, dogmatic Agnosticism, and other uninspiring in- fluences, have seen, as also for that Reformation, new and nobler, which we to-day still await. In our own century, theology has evinced a wondrous capacity for growth — meet source of satisfaction to quickened faith that the century of rapid and brilliant advance in science should also be instinct with theological as with philo- sophical energy — and is still growing, attaining conceptions along the whole lines of her thought, larger, purer, more truly Biblical, more thoroughly ethical, and more profoundly Christian. For the Christian theology of to-day, called to higher intellectual planes and to new and difficult views of truth, has learned to be _vvi^ply pns. siy^ iindfr the inbreathings of God's supremely illuminating Spirit, and nobly positive in the forth-putting of faith's endeavours to bring within the broadening NEED OF PRESENT PROGRESS. 9 domain of theological thought all the facts of revelation and experience, as ''the old order changeth, yielding place to new." From the ever - accumulating treasures of exegetical ore, she is coining afresh the current theological con- ceptions, sending forth, for those that had been relatively pure and true, expressions of the truth more perfect and more v^orthy of herself as the exponent of the Spirit's mind. A theology w^hich shall be the living offspring of a religion_^of insight, not merely of tradition, we need, and this can be ours only as we put , ourselves into as original and immediate rela- tion and contact with the realities of the spiri- I tual universe as to faith and consecration may } be possible. The Church of this and every age is bound to claim the right to build up its own theology, scientific and free, unfettered by tra- dition and unconfessional in type, upon the Scriptures as, to the divinely enlightened con- sciousness, the credible records of the pure authoritative self - revelation of God consum- mated in Christ, since the needs of every age, themselves peculiar, impose peculiar tasks. The truths with which, as the precipitate of the 10 PROGRESSIVENESS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. religious consciousness, Christian theology is charged, need not be held in mere solution or in constant flux without being allowed to crys- tallise into definite forms, but no angular and oppressive incrustations of system, no dogma which has ceased to be the offspring and the minister of progress, must be suffered to retard the course of theological advance. No blind mechanical conservatism, under the guise of fidelity to the past, can be allowed to impede that soul of religion which cannot live without progress and forward movement, which, in their turn, demand new scientific expression ; and no cry for progressive movement, for perpetual ad- vance towards perfectibility, must keep us from fidelity to the already known, the real heritage of the past, in wise using of which the con- tinuity and consistency of a true progress are alone possible. The law of progress must be that we take up the inheritance of the past into which we arc come and which none can renounce, what- ever the legacies of unreason it may seem to bring with it, and, by faith's individual effort, eliminate the misapprehensions of the past, and. THE LAW OF PROGRESS. II in a gradual enlargement, expand in their occult implications and extend in new directions the vital truths given us in this inalienable inherit- ance, so that the outgrowths of knowledge, reason, reflection, and experience, may be seen in a progress whose continuity and symmetry shall prove it to be, as one has said in another connection, " a logical and graduated evolution, in which the idea of to-day is connected with that of yesterday, as the latter is to a still more remote past." The law here as in all progress must be that, as the theology that is to be increases and that which is decreases, the becoming theology will in its waxing life be absorptive and assimilative of everything that is discoverably new. "The real question is, whether the whole of the past can be so wrought into the life of the present as to be- come the guarantee of the future. Bare ex- ternal tradition is lifeless : the utterly new is formless : what we need is eternal and historic truth born fresh in the living soul. ' Not fixed- ness nor revolution,' says Ullmann, * but evolu- tion and reform ' is the motto for our times." ^ 1 Dr H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, p. 127. 12 PROGRESSIVENESS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. Whereas the bane of theology has been the ex- cessive and burdensome authority wielded by systems that could only be provisional state- ments of the Christian contents, the fascination and inspiration of theological study lie in the free appropriation of the truth achieved in the course of theological progress — a course strictly independent of, and sublimely indifferent to, any churchly sanctions of its methods and results. We do not dwell on the transience of all theological systems for the Mephistophelean reason that ''All that grows deserves to de- cay," ^ but because, while the theological or- ganism preserves, at every stage of its develop- ment, a rounded completeness, an apocalypse of progress always gathers before the vision of its maturest attainment, and beckons it to higher fulness and perfection. The state or " law of becoming," rather than of being, is, according to the cardinal idea of this progress- iveness or Christian evolutionism, to be taken as characteristic of our theological systems : to them we may apply the words of Plato, — li to ^ Faust : " Allcs, was cnlstchl, isl wcrlli class cs zu Grundc gcht." THE PERMANENT AND THE TRANSIENT. 1 3 'yt/'yvofjievov /lev koI airoWv/jievov, oWco? Be ovBeirore 6v. Man's theology, like himself, '' partly is and wholly hopes to be." Of philosophy it has been said that ''each great philosophical system is in its tarn set aside ... a dead-looking seed of thought from which, by the combined agency of intelligent experience and speculation, a new philosophy will one day spring." ^ The same we here hold as true of theological thought. The Christian theology of to-day, with an ab- solute faith in the moral and spiritual, hesitates not to say to the timid guardians of defunct theologies or superannuated S3^stems, Non tali aimliOy nee defensoribtcs istis. For it is fully con- scious, — while admitting no possibility of true progress by dispensing with, or departing from, those essential facts and truths whereby men are saved according to those elements or as- pects of Christian truth which are unchange- able, — what need and room exist for unlimited progress, indefinite expansion and improvement, in the human apprehension and verification and exposition of the questions relative to these facts and doctrines. This is not to undervalue past 1 " Prolegomena" to Wallace's Logic of Hegel, p. xli. 14 PROGRESSIVENESS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. prof^rcss, or depreciate the revelation committed to the earHest centuries, that we may gain for our own age the appearance of progress and the sensation of growth ; ^ rather, it is to magnify that revelation which, in its pure full substance, the enjoyment of the earliest times not less than of our own, is a treasure - house which yields, before the unwearying process of living Christian thought, always larger stores of truth, brighter gems of spiritual reality. Progressive theology keeps in view that, in every realm, a truly scientific progress postu- lates basal beliefs, ascertained facts, as the groundwork of further progress. The forms of Christian theology may vary from age to age, but there is an inner essence o r substance whi ch, as we take to be now well understood, is co nstan t ; and the law of progress which obtains in theology as in other spheres of scientific inquiry may be taken as finely typified in the lines of Dante, — " Ripresi via per la piaggia diserta, Si che il pic fermo sempre era il piu basso,"- ^ xMozley, Theory of Development, p. 158. - Dante, " Inferno," canto i. Mr Gary's rendering is,- " I journeyed on over that lonely steep, The hinder foot still firmer," RELATIONS TO THE PAST. 1 5 or, in words of a modern poet, — " Who climbs keeps one foot firm on fact Ere hazarding the next step." The fitting motto of a truly progressive Chris- tian theology may be found in the word of St Vincent of Lerins, " Profectus non permutatio " — progress not change, expansion not displace- ment, extension not extermination, advance by the fusion or interpenetration of the conservative elements of the " faith once delivered to the saints" with that progressive spirit which is of the essence of living faith. ''The past is no more a whole without the present than the pres- ent without the past." So rooted in the past is the theology of the present that, while welcoming fresh light from every quarter, it forgets not that, as the human heart has altered little essen- tially with the growth of the generations, the saving truths by which it lives remain the same, but, just because this is so, it feels the danger to be greater of our allowing stagnation and death to creep over our formulas and beliefs, and the need more pressing that we pass beyond the historical and traditional into the vital spheres of psychology and Christian experience. Stag- 1 6 PROGRESSIVENESS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. nation in theological science there can never be, while the full meaning of the Christian revelation is being evolved in the course of history, and a higher knowledge of God is being opened out before us with the Divine Spirit's unfolding of the whole of truth amid the rolling of the years. Through the Scriptures, — in the facts and pro- cesses of nature and of history, — in the course of national as in the manifold aspects and relations of individual life, — in the secular progress of humanity, the play and function of the human mind, the course of philosophic thought, the growth and development of Christian conscious- ness ; — theology traces out the revelation of God through every stage of the universal evolution — " From seeming evil still educing good, And better thence again, and better still In infinite progression." The progress of which we speak is no addled motion or circular movement : its advance is neither through chameleon changes nor inor- ganic accumulation : its procedure is neither by spiritual cataclysms nor by fits of saltation to the changeful piping of the Zcit-Gcisf, which it SOURCES OF PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY. 1 7 sways more than it serves : it lies in gradual, organic, cosmic growth, in progress at once ex- tensive and intensive, embracing broader com- prehension of the facts linked to deeper insight into their nature and significance. The theolo- gical knowledge, of which such qualitative and quantitative progress is predicable, is, in b asis, Biblical ; but truths unfolded and developed in the course of Christian history, however present germinally in Biblical principles and declarations, form, in their actual and gradual development, integral parts of theological progress. '' More light " is ever to break forth from the Holy Word : it will take the orchestra of many and diverse Churches, and the chorus of myriad minds, under the conduct of the One Eternal Spirit, to give that masterpiece of Revelation its full effect in the growing ages. That effect will stand at vast remove from that reached by theologians who, in their well-meant but mechanical treatment of the Scriptures, '' turned their breathing organism into a colossal Memnon's head, with a hollow passage for a voice." Grasping more firmly those essential facts and truths of man's salvation which have been the B 1 8 PROGRESSIVENESS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. unchanging heritage of the Church since her morn of Pentecostal radiance, and absorbing everything that is vital and permanent in the old, Theology, inbreathed upon by the Divine Spirit, and impelled by advancing science and culture, unweariedly pursues her unending task of gathering together the ever-ripening historic fruits of faith, of reviewing and building up the waste places of her thought, and of raising her- self, by '' steps of infinite progression," as one who has not thereto attained, but as yet knows only in part, ever nearer the sacred height of a perfect yet expanding theology. If this should mean that some cherished idols that have dese- crated the temple of our thought be by her cast out, it is only that truth, which shall be the better equivalent of spiritual reality, be had in reverence of them that approach the sacred shrine. If it should mean that, in pursuit of her loved task, she anon lop off some branches on the trunk of existing system through which the sap of life seems never to have freely pulsed, or prune some shoots overgrown with leafy foliage of human tradition, it is but because such excision of the fictitious and the decayed is needful to the POSSIBILITY OF THEOLOGICAL PROGRESS. 19 stronger growth and freer development of the stately tree of spiritual truth. " Inutilesque falce ramos amputans Feliciores inserit." ^ The time past may suffice to have shown the most conservative of theological minds that " there is nothing so dangerous, because nothing so revolutionary and convulsive, as the strain to keep things fixed, when all the world is, by the very law of its creation, in eternal progress." The Church must, by her very essence, progress : it is only in the continuity and progress of her life, so subject to the law of cyclical movement and so rich in celestial impulse, that she becomes fitted for, and filled with, the fulness of God in Christ — a growing fulness that craves expression in a theology whose eternal asymptote is an ever higher and more exact accordance with the facts and phenomena of spiritual life, thought, and experience. If no theory of life covers life, so no theological system covers this spiritual ful- ness, at whose breasts successive systems are nourished, in so far as they are filled with vitality : in the growing approximateness of ^ lior., Epod. ii. 13, 14. 20 PROGRESSIVENESS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. our theologies lies the possibility of progress. Life has only to be restricted to the study of theology for that study itself speedily to become impossible. Christian truth unfolds itself, as theology is at length more surely coming to see, not to the '/ mere thinker," but to Emerson's "man thinking" — man thinking in the totality of his being, will, conscience, feeling, imagina- tion, called into play before his own perplexities and miseries, and those of the race ; and man, ■ following his instinctive craving for consistent thought and formulated knowledge, even in re- spect of things pertaining to the life, in its subtle illimitableness, that comes from above — " Knows partly but conceives beside, Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact, And in this striving, this converting air Into a solid he may grasp and use, Finds progress." The truth may, in the Christian revelation, be a thing sui generis, given, not attained, theology may be *'une philosphie, dont la base est donnee," but Christian theology, starting from the truth as objective basis, assumes a scientific form only by undergoing the same subjective THEOLOGY MUST BE SCIENTIFIC. 21 processes, the same appropriations in experience (though here more spiritual and profound), the same mental generalisations and verifications, as obtain in every other realm of truth. Theology, as much as either physiology or psychology, for example, comes under the conditions of scientific progress, and is, as much as either of them, subject to human conditions in its development, — such conditions we mean as may, for instance, be found in contemporaneous civilisation, philo- sophy, and science. Thus Christian theology is an eminently human and progressive thing : the t/-»