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THE RECONSTRUCTION OF BELIEF
THE HOLY SPIRIT AND
THE CHURCH
BY CHARLES GORE, D.D.
HON. D.D, BDIN. AND DURHAM, HON. D.C.L. OXFORD, HON. LL.D. CAMBRIDGE
AND BIRMINGHAM, HON. FELLOW OF BALL10L AND THINIT? COLLEGES,
OXFORD, FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON, FORMERLY
BISHOP OF OXFORD
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1924
PREFACE
DR. JOHN DONNE, the famous Dean of St. Paul's,
published, about 1630, certain Paradoxes and Pro-
blems,, of which one was the problem, " Why doe
young lay-men so much study divinity ? " I do not
suppose that anyone would consider himself called
upon to investigate this problem to-day. But there
is still a large number of men and women, young
or old, for whom the questions of ' divinity ' are the
most interesting and important of all questions, and
it is in their interest that these volumes on " The
Reconstruction of Belief 53 have been written. '"" fjj
In the earlier volumes Belief in God and Belief in
Christ no reference was made to the authority of
the Church or the Bible. I endeavoured to pursue
a purely critical method. I sought to construct the
fabric of belief which seemed to me the most prob-
able on the evidence. In result it appeared that the
intellectual construction which best satisfied the
requirements of reason, and criticism was substan-
tially the traditional faith of Christendom,
I
This method has been misunderstood from different
quarters. On one side it has been accused of
rationalism and individualism. But I think un-
justly. I never concealed from my readers that the
method ^pursued in these books was not in my case,
any more than with the vast majority of mankind,
the method by which my intellectual convictions had
vi PREFACE
been actually obtained. Almost all men in some
sense come to believe whatever they believe, whether
about nature or about God, on authority of some
sort and by various kinds of emotional and moral
attractions. But, however we come to believe, the
test of the rationality of our faith lies in its sub-
mission to the light of reason and history. It is, as
I contend at length in this volume, quite a false view
of authority which represents it as precluding free
enquiry. It is our intellectual duty and responsi-
bility to think freely. In recent times a vast deal
of language has been used which presents the posi-
tion of tradition as opposed to the position of reason
and criticism as if we had to choose between
authority and reason. The best way to show that
this is not the case is to abstain from all appeal to
authority and to show that the construction which
best responds to all the evidence is a construction
which is, in its general effect and all its main lines,
conservative of tradition. For this free appeal to
reason and criticism there is precedent of the most
weighty kind in some of the greatest names among
the theologians of the Church.
There is, of course, a risk in thinking freely. Free
thinking, free criticism, may lead us away from the
faith. And I cannot deny that at the last resort
it is a man's duty to follow his conscience and reason
even if they lead him (as I think) widely astray.
And I believe that, as God is good, for such a man
the way of reason and conscience sincerely and faith-
fully followed will be ultimately the way to the light.
Of course a minister of the Christian religion who,
by thinking freely, is led by irresistible conviction
outside the central tradition of the faith he was
ordained to maintain, must cease to hold office as a
minister of the Church, None the less he is morally
bound to follow his personal convictions. I cannot
deny this. But I believe that the main reason,
PREFACE vii
intellectually speaking, why so many men have
been led (as I think) astray in their personal convic-
tions on religions subjects, is because the Church
has appeared to them not to be encouraging free
thinking or criticism. It has been asking for an
irrational submission. And I think the best service
that a student can do for the faith is to show that
the conclusions which are the most probable, on the
evidence freely examined, are the conclusions which
are embodied in the Creed of the Church, That is
what I have been trying to do. I repudiate the
charge that, as an orthodox professor of religion, I
am * reasoning in chains.' However I got my faith,
I am convinced with an ever-growing conviction
that, far better than any other hypothesis, it satisfies
the evidence ; though in order to do this it has in
each age to purge itself of inherited mistakes and
misunderstandings .
Of course the majority of men have not the voca-
tion or the opportunities of a student. They also
must * test all things ' ; but the testing will be
mainly the testing of moral experience. But students
are part of the equipment of the Church ; and the
intellectual reassurance of the average Christian lies
largely in the consciousness that the students of the
Church are facing the facts, and are open to the
light, whencesoever it comes, and however novel or
even revolutionary it seems ; and are showing them-
selves constantly able to express what is substan-
tially the old Creed in terms of the new knowledge.
If men do not feel this as has too often been the
case the average Christian becomes ashamed of his
faith and intellectually disheartened. Thus in these
volumes it has been my aim to consult the interests
of the ordinary educated man by presenting properly
intellectual and critical reasonings and conclusions in
language which the unacademic mind can under-
stand.
viii PREFACE
II
From the side of 4 Modernism * I have been
charged with not going far enough. c If you accept
such and such critical conclusions, e.g. that this or
that reported saying of our Lord in the First Gospel
cannot be relied on, you ought to go much further
and accept such and such a representation of Christ
which is seriously opposed to the tradition.* This sort
of argument is not at all impressive in the abstract.
In almost every intellectual movement which deeply
stirs mankind there is an element of solid advance
in perception of the truth and also a great deal of
exaggeration. It seems to me (as to St. Chrysostom
of old) quite impossible to maintain the literal in-
fallibility of the Gospel records. On the other hand,
it seems to me certain that these records, if they are
approached on genuinely critical lines , yield his-
torical results which are as certain as historical
results can be ; and that the purely humanitarian
or non-miraculous estimates of Christ, or even such
an estimate of Him as the late Dr. Emmefc and Miss
Dougall recently presented in The Lord of Thought,
does violence to the evidence on the largest scale. 1
I do not think the verbal accuracy of the Gospels
can always be defended. But I think their sub-
stantial truth is wh&t alone can account for the
earliest history of the Christian Church and for its
deepest spiritual experience.
Ill
What I have done so far is to vindicate to my own
satisfaction the rationality of the traditional faith ia
God and in Jesus Christ as the incarnation of God.
1 In the above I have had in mind a review of Belief in Chriftt
in The Church Quarterly, April 1923, p. 24, by the late Dr. Emmefc.
As one who knew him not only as a friend and as a Biblical critic,
but also as an excellent parish priest, I demre to pay him the tribute
of a deep regret.
PREFACE ix
But as He passes from the scene there takes His place
in history " the Church which is His body," inspired
by His Spirit, claiming to be His appointed repre-
sentative and the organ of His continual life among
men. Thus, to complete my plan, I must set myself
to study the faith in the Holy Spirit and in the
Church. And this enquiry must be. in the first
instance again purely critical. It is widely denied
that the Church represented the deliberate intention
of Jesus Christ. He founded no Church, we are told,
and instituted no sacraments. The idea of the
sacramental church, which already in the New Testa-
ment occupies the ground, does not belong to the
Jewish root of Christianity and is not to be ascribed
to Jesus. Its real origin is to be found in the
' mystery religions,' which had a vast influence on
the primitive Gentile communities. These critical
questions have to be considered, and the idea of the
religion of the Spirit in the Church, as it is presented
in the New Testament, has to be set in as clear a
light as possible (chaps, i-iv).
When this is done, we shall find ourselves face
to face with the question of church authority, which
has hitherto been deliberately ignored, and on which,
to judge from the reviews of my books, the curiosity
of 4 the religious world ' is mainly centred. I strive
to present what I think is the true and original idea
of authority in religion (v), and to distinguish it
from its perversion (vi), and to distinguish the true
from the false idea of the development of Christian
doctrine (vii), and to maintain the authority of Holy
Scripture in a sense which seems to me compatible
with historical science (viii). This leads on to an
attempt to summarize the results of accepting the
authority of the Church and of the Scriptures, and
to answer the question c What then is of faith ? * or
* What is essential orthodoxy ? ' (ix).
Then, to reassure those who are alarmed at a long
x PREFACE
string of c articles of faith/ I seek to show that
there is a strong solidarity amongst them ; and that
they follow with a certain inevitable sequence from
the fundamental acceptance of the Biblical concep-
tion of God and man and human sin, or, from another
point of view, are coherent with the principle of the
Incarnation. There is only one principle at stake,
not a variety of independent principles (chap. x).
Then finally (xi) I attempt to show the bearing
of all this body of conclusions on the problem of
the present day and on the vocation of that district
of the Catholic Church to which I belong. But this
can, of course, only be done in outline. I am, as
every good Christian must be, deeply moved by the
revived interest in the reunion of Christendom ; and
I have been always quite ready perhaps too ready
to take my part in the controversies which the
question of reunion raises about Romanism, Ortho-
doxy, Anglicanism, and Protestantism. But of one
thing I feel sure. There will be no real progress
towards fellowship except so far as men are pre-
pared to view the questions about the Creed and
the Church and the sacraments and the ministry
afresh, laying aside their traditional assumptions as
far as possible in order to ask again the question
What is the mind of Christ concerning the propa-
gation of His religion ? Does it not after all appear
to be in a high degree probable that the New Testa-
ment documents interpret it aright, and that we
cannot get behind them or away from them ?
And this volume, no less than those which pre-
ceded it, is a challenge to men to think freely. We
are apt to 4 reason in fetters. 3 And to-day the
fetters are quite as likely to be the fetters of what
professes to be * criticism ' but is really a false
philosophy which denies the transcendence of God
and (very probably) the real freedom of man, as the
fetters of an unreasoning orthodoxy. And when we
PREFACE si
come down to the region of current ecclesiastical
controversies, the fetters are likely to be those of
the spirit of our party, which is apt to be singularly
enslaving. But whatever the source of possible
enslavement, the challenge of these books to men is
to dare to think freely.
I cannot help expressing my regret that a book
about the Holy Spirit, which one would wish to make
devotional, should by the necessities of the case be
so dominantly argumentative. Nevertheless I dare
to invoke His blessing in sending it out into the world.
a G.
6 MABOABET STBEET,
LONDON, W.I.
Epiphany, 1924.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
?
TESTAMENT .
PAGE
THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT IN THE NEW-
CHAPTER II
DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH ? . 85
CHAPTER III
CHRISTIANITY AND THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS . 72
CHAPTER IV
THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH . . 108
CHAPTER V
THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH . . . 151
xiv CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI
PAGB
AUTHORITY IN ROMAN THEORY . * 184
CHAPTER VII
THE TESTS OF LEGITIMATE DEVELOPMENT . 208
CHAPTER VIII
THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE . * 244
CHAPTER IX
WHAT is OF FAITH ? 282
CHAPTER X
THE TEST OF RATIONAL COHERENCE , .817
CHAPTER XI
PRESENT-BAY APPLICATION . . . . 836
TABLE OF SUBJECTS 359
INDEX OF NAMES 368
AND
CHURCH
CHAPTER I
THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
WE are to-day constantly being told, and quite truly,
that what we need to make our religion more real,
more full of power, and more attractive, is a deeper
apprehension of the presence and activity of the
Holy Spirit of God. This call for " the religion of
the Spirit " comes from many quarters. Thus Pope
Leo XIII, in his Encyclical Divinum illud munus of
1897, * expressed his bitter regret that Christians have
but a very meagre knowledge of the Holy Spirit.
" They often use His name in their exercises of
piety, but their faith is surrounded with dense dark-
ness " ; and he charges all preachers and those who
have charge of souls to regard it as a duty to teach
their people " more diligently and more richly *' on
what concerns the Holy Spirit, so that the lamentable
" ignorance of these great and fruitful mysteries
may be completely banished/' Similar lamentations
1 The teaching of the encyclical is summarized in Cavallera's
Theaaurua Doctrinae Cath., pp. 288 if. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1920).
The references in the text above are taken from Marmion (the
Abbot of Maredsous), Le Christ Vie deVAme, p. 125 (Paris: Descl<e,
de Brouwer et Cie, 1923). The Abbot Marmion himself uses
what, judging from our experience in England, I should have ven-
tured to hope was exaggerated language about the prevailing
ignorance of the Holy Spirit : " Combien pourtant de chre*tiens
d'aujourd'hui qui ne le connaissent que de nom et ne savent presque
rien de ses operations dans les Smes."
1
2 THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT
and exhortations come to us from quite opposite
quarters ; and to feel how much they are needed
we have only to realize that the gift of the Holy
Spirit, and the meaning and consequences of the
gift, constitute one at least of the dominant themes
of the New Testament. If you had asked an original
disciple in Jerusalem, or one of the members of the
Churches founded by St. Paul, what it was to be a
Christian, you would probably have got one of two
answers : either that 'it is to confess that Jesus is
Lord 9 or that * it is to have received the Spirit. '
And up to a certain point there is a more or less
general agreement among seriously religious people
as to the meaning of life in the Spirit. It is to be
possessed, and feel ourselves to be possessed, by an
inward power and presence greater than ourselves,
a power and presence which we acknowledge to be
God working in us, to give us spiritual enlightenment
as to the purpose of life, and the knowledge of Him-
self, and personal guidance, and power to control our
passions, and the pre-eminent gift of love.
So far there is not much difference among us.
But when you pass from the practical consideration
of " the fruit of the Spirit 3J as seen in the individual,
to the consideration of the methods by which this
Divine Spirit works, and the conditions under which
His presence is to be looked for and relied upon, the
differences between what I may call the ' modern *
and the Scriptural point of view become somewhat
startling.
Since the day when Hegel wrote about the philo-
sophy of spirit, and gave a great impulse to the com-
parative study of religions, what has been meant
commonly in intellectual circles by a Religion of the
Spirit is fairly evident, and I will seek to describe it,
1. The comparative study of religions has led us
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 8
to entertain the idea of religion as in all its phases
and varieties essentially one. Everywhere we find
the human spirit becoming conscious of its relation
to something vaster than itself to something divine
which at last is conceived of as one and universal.
By the human ' spirit ' which has become awakened
to fellowship with the universal spirit is meant some-
thing more than understanding or intellect. Spirit
involves intelligence, but it is in feeling and conation,
even more than in intelligence, that this cc sense
sublime " is awakened and sustained. And it is this
awakening and growth of spirit which, broadly, is
what is meant by religion. The fascination of such
a book as The Golden Bough is that, surveying the
rude and savage origins of religions all the world over,
it makes us feel that mankind is one, and his religion
one in essence, all the way up from its crudest to its
most exalted forms. Throughout the whole process
there is an awakening and realizing within the man
of his fellowship with divine spirit. This is the re-
ligion of spirit as we moderns like to conceive it. 1
This general idea of the religion of spirit may take
a more pantheistic form, as when the conception
suggested is that of an impersonal spirit of the uni-
verse coming to the consciousness of itself in man ;
or a more theistic form, as when the conception is
that of a personal God, who is spirit, disclosing
Himself and imparting Himself to man, more or less
in all countries and through all phases of his civiliza-
tion 2 ; but whether the religion of spirit is more
1 I had a variety of books in view in writing the above. Per-
haps I may refer to essays i, viii, ix, in the volume entitled Spirit :
God and His Relation to Man considered from the Standpoint of
Philosophy t Psychology, and Art, edited by Canon B. H. Streeter,
with the motto " In him we live, and move, and have our being."
2 In very modern days, as in the theology of Mr. H. G. Wells,
it takes the form of asserting a fellowship of the human spirit with
a. spirit in the world which is striving for good, which is greater
than man or the individual man, but is very far indeed from being
universal or cosmic. On this, see Belief in 6fod, pp. 47-8.
4 THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT
pantheistically or more theistically conceived of, in
either case it is of a universal process that we like
to think, by which, mankind everywhere, under all
sorts of religious beliefs and institutions, becomes
conscious of something which is already within him
and only needs to be awakened, or something which
is available for Mm individually, as a gift, without
regard to any c institution. 3
The process, it is acknowledged, may have moments
of culmination. It may be acknowledged that it has
so far found its climax in Jesus and the Christian
religion. But essentially all religions represent one
movement, and the truth or value of all alike is a
question of more or less. There is no one absolutely
true religion in contrast to a number of false ones.
That ancient claim made alike by Judaism, Islam,
and Christianity is a pretension which must be
abandoned. 1 The religion which actually won Europe
and is called Christianity owed almost as much to the
Greek as to the Jew ; and if India is to call itself
Christian, its Christianity will, again, owe as much
to India as to the Europe which evangelized it.
2. Thus the religion of spirit, as it is commonly
conceived of in modern intellectual circles, though, as
has been said, it can tolerate the idea of a relative
culmination attained in the past, does not readily
tolerate the idea of a final culmination once for all
attained. It wants a continuous process of religious
discovery by the absorption of new elements and the
correction of the old. If it is prepared to express
this as being " not the supersession but the inter-
pretation of the Christ, 55 yet it resents the idea of a
standard of truth, whether about God or about man,
expressed in written scriptures or credal forms of the
past, which claim to lay their restraining hand upon
modern developments of belief or modern reconstruc-
1 This feeling was much promoted by Lessing's famous drama
Nathan der Weise,
THE MODERN CONCEPTION 5
tions of formulas and ideals. 1 " The letter killeth, 53
we hear it said, but " the Spirit giveth life." The
Spirit must be free to " lead us into all the truth," *
and we must expect to see the standards and formulas
of the past, however venerable, superseded in the
light of increasing knowledge, and the sacred books
of the past read in a light their authors would not
have recognized.
This idea of the fluidity of all the religions of his-
tory and the transitoriness of their specific forms is
expressed in an uncompromising form by Dr. Kirsopp
Lake in the opening paragraph of his Landmarks in
the History of Early Christianity* :
ct At first sight the historian of religions appears to be
faced by a number of clearly distinguished entities, to
each of which he feels justified in giving the name of a
separate religion ; but on further consideration it be-
comes obvious that each one of these entities has been
in a condition of flux throughout its history. Each began
in a combination or synthesis of older forms of thought
with comparatively little new in its composition ; each
ended by disintegrating into many elements, while the
best were taken up into new life in some new religion.
The movement was more marked at some times than at
i See Auguste Sabatier's The Religions oj Authority and the Ee-
ligion of the Spirit (Engl. trans., Williams & Norgate, 1909).
a These two texts, it should be remembered, are very frequently-
quoted in a sense alien to their original meaning. By the " letter
that killeth" (2 Cor. iii. 6) St. Paul meant the law * written and
engraven in stones," with its authoritative prohibitions, thou
shalt not." This was divinely given to kill, i.e. to make men
conscious of their state of alienation from God, because of their
inability to keep the law. Then only, when man had been duly
"killed, 39 i.e. made conscious of his inability and his need, the
offer of redemption could be made and accepted, and the Spirit
entering into the man could empower him and strengthen him to
become actually righteous; cl Bom. ii. 27-9, yii. 6. The phrase
is not concerned at all with the relation of a religion of authority,
" the letter," to a religion of individual inspiration, the spirit.
Again " all the truth " into which the Spirit is to lead the disciplea
in St. John xvi. 13 is defined and explained in the context, xvi. 14 ;
of. 3dv. 26. It is the truth as it is in Jesus.
"* Macmillan, 1920.
6 THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT
others, and the differentiation of the various religions
depends chiefly on the recognition of these moments of
more rapid change. But the process never really stopped ;
from beginning to end new elements were constantly
absorbed and old elements dropped. For religion lives
through the death of religions. Nothing illustrates this
so well as the history of Christianity, for no religion is
so well known."
This is an extreme statement, to which perhaps
few would completely assent. But the ideas of uni-
versality of process and continuous progress towards
an unattained ideal are certainly the ideas which in
modern literature are commonly associated with " the
religion of the Spirit."
8. But there is also a more old-fashioned concep-
tion of the religion of the Spirit or of spiritual religion,
associated with Protestantism throughout its history,
which has still a very wide hold upon our English
inind. It is that which puts what is spiritual into
antithesis with what is external or material. Spiritual
religion is still spoken of as if it were concerned only
with the inward relation of the single soul with God,
and as if anything which represented it as (so to speak)
embodied, or in some way annexed to external rites
or social institutions, were a derogation from its
spirituality.
I have thought it well to call attention at starting
to the ideas which seem to be preoccupying our minds
when we use the phrase " the religion of spirit " or
"a spiritual religion/' because we need to be on our
guard against, entertaining prejudices which may
turn out to be misleading, and deceiving ourselves
by using Scriptural phrases in a sense quite different
from what they were intended to bear. And what
I am claiming of my readers is that they should make
a determined effort, first of all, to consider the religion
which in history has made the chief claim to be the
religion of the Spirit I mean, of course, the Christian
AS REPRESENTED IN THE BIBLE 7
religion objectively and as it appears at its origin.
It is a difficult thing to divest ourselves of prejudices
and read the history of the past simply according to
the intentions of those who were the actors in it.
Let it be granted that it cannot be done perfectly.
But the claim of historical criticism is that it can be
done, if not perfectly yet with some measure of real
effectiveness. Let us make a serious effort, then,
first to examine the idea of the Spirit and of the
religion of the Spirit, as it is suggested in the Old
Testament and as it presents itself in full flood in
the New, before we make any attempt to estimate
its value and truth.
The first point that will strike us when we seek
frankly to appreciate the Bible teaching about the
Holy Spirit is that it speaks of it or Him not as
something which men naturally possess and only
need to realize, but as a gift given, so to speak, from
outside and (especially in the New Testament) under
definite and objective conditions.
II
The idea of spirit (breath, or wind) as the invisible
principle of life, and the idea of spirits, that is, in-
visible but living beings good or bad, is, I suppose,
approximately universal among men. But what
specially distinguishes the Old Testament among
ancient literatures is the development of the idea of
the one Spirit of the living God the Spirit of Jehovah
or His Holy Spirit. 1
As the Israelites came to believe in one only
God, the living God, the Creator of all things, they
spoke of His spirit or active energy as going forth
1 The teaching of Zoroaster about the good Spirit, which is very
closely identified with God, if not identical, is very striking. But
Zoroaster, if he is not clearly dualistic, never clears himself from
dualism.
8 THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT
into the whole creation. "The spirit of God was
brooding upon the face of the waters." " Thou
sendest forth thy spirit, they [the creatures] are
created ; and thou renewest the face of the ground.
Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? " '^By his
spirit the heavens are garnished," So particularly
of man : " The spirit of God hath made me, ^ and the
breath of the Almighty giveth me life." " The
spirit of the Almighty giveth men understanding. *
Also any remarkable gifts of individuals, the strength
of Samson, the skill of Bezalel, are ascribed specially
to the spirit of God. 8
So far, then, the spirit of God is universal in its
action and, though a communicated influence, is in
some sense necessary to the very being of a living
creature. But the most characteristic idea of * the
holy spirit/ even in the Old Testament, is that
which specially identifies it with the divine process
of redemption, which, if it is ultimately to become
universal, runs as yet exclusively through the channel
of the chosen people, Israel. It is the prophets who
are the special organs of the spirit, and, as the fea-
tures of true prophetic inspiration become more and
more distinct, the prophets appear as the instruments
of a continuous self-revelation of God which is to
reach its culmination in the days to come. To be
the scene of this self -revelation is the special voca-
tion of Israel. The gift of the spirit is moral, and
as such is sometimes spoken of as the normal agent
of moral recovery. Thus " Take not thy holy
spirit from me " is the cry of the penitent heart.
But on the whole it is thought of as at present the
endowment of the prophets, but to be expected in
the future in its fullest richness in the person of the
Messiah or the Servant of Jehovah, and then to be
i Gen. i. 2; Ps. civ. 30, cxxxix. 7; Job xxvi. 13, xxxiii. 4, xxxii. 8,
a Exod. xxxi. 3 ; Judg. xiii. 25, xiv, 6.
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 9
poured out on the whole of the redeemed Israel
in the day of culmination, the day of the Lord. 1
In the Book of Wisdom, which was written under
Hellenistic influences, the spirit of God is practically
identified with His (personified) wisdom, the opera-
tion of which is universal. Thus it is said, " The
spirit of the Lord hath filled the world," and " Thine
incorruptible spirit is in all things " ; and when we
read " From generation to generation passing into
holy souls, she maketh men friends of God, and pro-
phets/' * we wonder whether the author is not con*
templating an inspiration beyond the limits of Israel.
But nothing of this kind is suggested in the canonical
books ; and in the New Testament, to which we
pass, it is very noticeable that while the idea is
conveyed to us of a universal activity of God in
nature and in the minds of men, the idea is associated
with His Son or Word,' and not with the Spirit.
The gift or activity of the Spirit is exclusively asso-
ciated with Christ and the Church. Let us consider
the facts, even though it involves a little repetition
of what was said in the previous volume.
The Jews of the latter days had come to believe
that for many centuries there had been no inspired
prophets among them ; but a revival of prophecy
was expected. 4 And the New Testament at once
1 For the Holy Spirit as guiding the people as a whole, see
Isa. Ixiii. 10 1, Hag. ii. 5, Zech. iv. 6, Nehem. ix. 20 ; for the
Holy Spirit in the heart of the individual Israelite, Ps. li. 10 1,
cxliii. 10 ; for the Spirit in the Messiah, Isa. xi. 1, 2 ; in the ser-
vant of Jehovah, Isa. xlii. 1, Ixi. 1; in the whole people in
Messianic days, Ezek. xi. 19, xxxvi. 24 ff., xxxvii. 14, xxxix. 29,
Isa. xxxii. 15, xliv. 3, lix. 21, Zech. xii. 10, Joel ii. 28 (" all flesh "
ss all Israel of all ages and both sexes).
* Wisd. i. 7, xii. 1, vii. 27, ix. 17.
3 See below, p. 17. The only possible exception is in Bev. i. 4,
where " the seven Spirits which are before the throne of God "
and "the seven Spirits sent forth into all the earth" (iy. 5, v. 6)
represent the universal activities of God. See Zech, iv. 10 and
Swete, in loc.
* 1 Mace, iv. 46, ix. 27, 54, xiv. 41.
10 THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT
proclaims the revival in John, the son of Zacharias,
who was " filled with holy spirit l even from his
mother's womb. 5 ' And his father Zacharias "was
filled with holy spirit, and prophesied," and Simeon
was " in the Spirit " when he recognized the Lord's
Christ. Thus prophecy revives to herald the Christ.
And Jesus is the perfect work of the Holy Spirit.
He it is who quickens the germ of life in the womb
of the virgin mother so that she conceived her son
of the Holy Spirit. He it is who consecrates Him
for His mission in the world at His baptism ; Jesus
leaves the place of His baptism " full of Holy Spirit "
and was " led by the Spirit " to the wilderness of
temptation. " In the power of the Spirit " He
returns to Galilee, and in the synagogue at Nazareth
applies to Himself the prophecy uttered concerning
the servant of Jehovah, " the Spirit of the Lord is
upon me." "In the Spirit of God " He is said to
cast out devils. So evident ought it to be to all men
that there is in Him a victorious action of God over
the spirits of evil, that to ascribe His powers to Satan
is to " blaspheme against the Holy Spirit." His
own inner life was lived in the Spirit : " He rejoiced
in the Holy Spirit." St. Peter in the Acts sum-
marizes the story of Jesus in the words " God anointed
him with Holy Spirit and power: who went through
the land doing good, and healing all who were being
overpowered by the devil." After His resurrection
His last injunctions were given to the apostles
" through the Spirit." 2
1 It cannot be maintained that, where there is no article used in
the Greek, there the reference always is to the gift and not the
person. For " Holy Spirit " without the article may be used as
a proper name. But " the Holy Spirit " with the article always
does refer to the person, and " holy spirit " without the article
often = inspiration ; see Robertson, Grammar of the Or. N.T., p, 756.
2 In Heb. ix. 14 Christ is said to have offered Himself to God
upon the cross in " eternal spirit." But this seems to refer not
to the Holy Spirit specifically, but to the divine quality of His
self-oblation
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT II
This is the witness of the Synoptic Gospels and
specially of St. Luke. In all of them John the
Baptist is represented as bearing witness that His
greater successor is to have power to do what he
could not do, " to baptize with holy spirit." * There
is very little said in any of the first three Gospels
about the preparing of the disciples for this supreme
gift. 2 But at the beginning of the Acts St. Luke
represents the risen Lord as reminding the disciples
about " the promise of the Father, which (said he)
ye heard from me," and these particular words* as
well as the atmosphere of expectation in the minds
of the disciples, imply some such preparation of the
disciples' minds as the Fourth Gospel records at
length. There we have a plain statement that
whereas in the future the believers were to receive
the Spirit, yet during the ministry of Jesus on earth
" Holy Spirit was not yet," because Jesus was not
yet glorified. 3 And in the later discourses the dis-
ciples are assured that even the loss of Christ's visible
companionship would be more than compensated by
the greater gift of the Spirit, the " other helper,"
whom, after Jesus was gone out of their sight, He
would send upon them, or the Father would send
in His name, both to supply His absence and to
accomplish His presence within them.
1 " And with fire" St. Luke adds (Luke iii. 16), But " and with
fire " is omitted in Acts i. 5.
2 See, however, Mark xiii. 11 and parallel passages, and Luke xi. 13.
3 Recent writers in The Journal of Theological Studies, vol. xxiv,
Professor C. H. Turner (No. 93, pp.' 66 fE.) and Mr. F. J. Badcock
(No 94, pp. 169 ff.), have been urging us to follow some ancient and
modern authorities and to punctuate these verses (John vii. 37-9)
so as to read thus : " If any one thirst let him come unto mo,
and let him drink that believeth on me ; as the scripture has said,
Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. This spake he
of the Spirit, which they that believed on him were to receive ; for
the Spirit was not yet (given), because Jesus was not yet glorified."
So also Burney, Aramaic Origin of the Fourth Gospel, p. 110. This
must surely be right. Whatever the exact meaning of the refer-
ence to Scripture, it is plain that in the writer's mind the vessel of
the Spirit, out of which it is to flow, is not the believer, but Christ .
12 THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT
The actual bestowal of the gift of the Spirit is
described with great particularity, and with a pro-
found sense of its importance, in the Acts* The
bestowal is made upon the whole body of disciples *
at a particular moment, with external signs accom-
panying its coming and proving its arrival within
their souls and bodies. It takes possession of them
and shakes the very foundation of their being.
Henceforth as the Church expands it becomes the
normal possession of each member of the new Israel,
according to the prophecy. But it is bestowed on
each as an objective gift following baptism, and the
normal instrument of its bestowal appears to be
the laying on of apostolic hands. The effect of the
Holy Spirit within them is represented as a life of
fellowship in which they are knit into one, joyfully
inspired with courage and faith, guided and sanctified
in their personal lives, corporately enlightened to
make right decisions touching the development of
the Church, and endowed with special gifts
" tongues " and prophecy and the working of signs
and wonders. 2
And the Church in which the Spirit is given appears
as a body organized under officers. Renan spoke of
" the divine institution of the hierarchy " as a
" favourite thesis " of St. Luke and P. Sabaticr
speaks of " hierarchical pretensions " as character-
1 That, I think, is implied especially at ii. 17 f.
a Some critics are inclined to speak as if St. Luke was so much
interested in the wonderful manifestations of the Spirit, such as
tongues, prophesyings, and miraculous healings, as to have little
or no perception of His permanent indwelling and its normal moral
fruits. I do not doubt that St. Paul gives us a fuller theology of
the Spirit (and of Christ) than St. Luke, who was not a theologian.
JEklt Luke certainly gives us a very vivid picture of the life of fellow-
ship and love into which the Spirit bound the Church (ii, 42, 44-
46, iv. 32), and of the joy and goodness of their common life. We
should remember the phrase " He was a good man, and full of the
Holy Ghost " (xi. 24). Certainly "love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness/' are in the Acts u the fruit of the
Spirit."
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT IB
izing the conciliar decree in the Acts. 1 I do not like
either expression* But at least they have the
Advantage of recognizing a fact which many of our
contemporaries are fond of ignoring viz. the exist-
ence and recognition from the first (according to
our records as they stand) of the authority of the
apostles not as witnesses only but as rulers which
was inherent in them from the first by Christ's
appointment of them. St. Peter in his speech im-
mediately after the Ascension speaks of a " ministry
and apostles hip" and (by a quotation from the Psalms)
" overseership. " a The special position of the apostles
within the community is vividly represented in the
text 3 " And by the hands of the apostles were many
signs and wonders wrought among the people ; arid
they [the apostles] were all with one accord in
Solomon's porch. But of the rest [of the disciples]
durst no man join himself to them : howbeit the
[Jewish] people magnified them ; and believers were
the more added to the Lord."
There were, it appears, from the beginning three
bonds of unity for the Church : the common teaching
" the apostles' teaching " accepted as " the word
of God " and the sacramental rites which were the
instruments of divine gifts baptism and the laying
on of hands and the breaking of the bread and the
ministry of the apostles, the later development of
which under their authority we can more or less
clearly discern. Upon these matters I shall have to
return, and upon the contention of those who sug-
gest that the picture in the Acts reads back upon
the first beginnings of the Church what was in fact
1 Renan, Lea Apdtres, p. xxxix ; P. Sabatier, La Didache, p. 155.
2 Acts i 17, 20, 25 ; see more in detail in chap, iv.
8 Acts v. 12. See Rackham's note. For the meaning of " the
rest " see Luke xxiv. 9, " The eleven and all the rest." jcoXXS<r0<u,
as in Acts ix. 26 (of. 1 Mace. iii. 2, vi. 21), means to join oneself to
others, as one of their number. The note on this passage in the
new Clarendon Bible, Acts, p. 153, seems to me unsatisfactory.
14 THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT
a somewhat later cycle of ideas. Here I am only
Insisting that, as the records stand, the gift of the
Holy Ghost is in the Acts represented as a gift given,
so to speak, objectively to a definite and visible
society, claiming to be the true Israel, and to it, as
far as appears, exclusively, and to individuals only
as members of the society. To the reception of the
Spirit there is no gate but baptism in the name of
the Lord Jesus. 1 Even when the acceptableness of
the Gentile Cornelius has been demonstrated by a
manifest effusion of the Spirit upon him and his
pious associates, still they are baptized in the name
of Jesus Christ. 2 Those at Ephesus who had been
baptized by John's baptism, but had not heard
that the Holy Ghost had been given, were baptized
afresh in " the name of the Lord Jesus," and received
the Holy Spirit with the laying on of St. Paul's hands.
What is presented to us is the picture of a com-
munity of which the Holy Spirit is the animating
presence. To lie to the apostles is to " lie to the
Holy Spirit. " The Holy Spirit guides all their move-
ments and their development. They associate the
Holy Spirit with themselves in their collective
decision : " It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to
us. 93 It is the apostle who appoints the presbyters
In a local Church, but he declares that it is " the
Holy Spirit who has made them bishops." The total
effect is that we recognize the gift of the Holy Spirit
as a gift embodied in the Church.
When we turn from the Acts to St. Paul's Epistles,
the picture is just the same. St. Paul loves indivi-
duality. He loves to recognize the variety of the
Spirit's gifts. But there is no trace of any such
individualism as would admit of his recognizing the
Spirit as a gift belonging to or given to an individual
1 Acts ii. 38, " Repent ye and be baptized every one of you in
the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins ; and ye
shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." * Acts x. 47.
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 15
apart from the body. There is no conception of any
membership of Christ except by baptism, which is
incorporation into " the body " the Church. " By
one Spirit were ye all baptized into one body. " When
he talks about the reception of the Spirit, he talks
about it as a gift received at an assignable moment.
" Received ye the Spirit/' he asks, " by the works
of the law or by the hearing of faith ? " 1 He is
recalling to their minds a particular incident of their
lives. Those, again, who have become Christians
and received the Spirit are exhorted not to " grieve "
the Spirit, or to " stir up the gift " they have received,
or to yield themselves to cc be filled with the Spirit,"
but never to ask for the Spirit. He has already
become a permanent endowment of their life ; and
it is an endowment which they have received as
" members " of the Body. Their union with Christ
in the Spirit is indistinguishable from their union
with the Church. Even more manifestly than in the
Acts the Spirit in the Epistles of St. Paul is a spirit
which has taken to himself a body, and thereby pro-
vided for Christ, whose Spirit He is, a visible organ
and instrument in the world. The principle of unity
in the body is the Spirit, which might be described
as its soul : but there are necessary external con-
ditions of union also, and they appear to be, as in
the Acts, the acceptance of the common " teaching "
or " tradition" or " faith " ; and the sacraments of
fellowship, baptism, and the eucharist ; and the
authority of the apostles, upon which, at the last
resort, St. Paul, as will appear, is prepared to insist
very strenuously. 2
And there is nothing in the Epistles other than
St. Paul's to suggest that any other teacher of the
Church would have hesitated to identify the gift of
the Spirit with the fellowship of the Church.
1 Cf. Swete's Holy Spirit in the New Testament, pp. 202, 204, 216
(Macmillan). * 2 Cor, xiii. 10.
16 THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT
III
We have now contrasted broadly two different
views of the religion of the Spirit that with which
we are familiar in a great deal of the modern literature
on the subject, which would represent it as universal
in humanity, with that which is presented in the New
Testament, where it appears that the gift of the
Spirit is given only in the Church. At the same time
we must not exaggerate the contrast. The modern
view also is in part countenanced in the Old Testa-
ment and in the New. Thus it is the fundamental
doctrine of the Bible that man was made in the
image of God and after His likeness, and that there
is a spirit in mankind everywhere, breathed into him
by God, which responds, or may respond, to the
offer of God. This is why the preachers of the
Gospel can make their appeal to the universal con-
science " commending ourselves," as St. Paul says,
"to every man's conscience in the sight of God.* 9 *
It is everywhere in the Bible taken for granted that
the good which men see in the disciples of Christ
will appeal to them as responding to their best in-
stincts "that they may by your good works, which
they behold, glorify God in the day that he shall visit
them." 2 Thus Christians are not to despise human
nature as it stands, but to " honour all men." Our
Lord in the Gospels appreciates tenderly what we
should call 'natural goodness/ even in trivial ex-
amples "a cup of cold water only." There are
men of faith outside the Kingdom who are already
prepared to enter it. 3 So we hear of the Lord
" having much people " * even in a singularly corrupt
city like Corinth. And St. Paul appeals to natural
virtue in the world at large as a fit subject for the
contemplation of the disciples of Christ " if there
1 2 Cor. iv. 2. a 1 p e t. ii. 12.
3 Matt. viii. 11. 4 Acts xviii. 10.
THE CONTRAST NOT ABSOLUTE 17
be any virtue, and if there be any praise." l He also,
in spite of his strong conviction of human corruption,
believes in the natural conscience, individual and
social, and speaks of some men who know not the
law, that is are Gentiles, as " doing by nature the
things of the law. 55 2 He thinks, that is, of the law
of Sinai, like the Schoolmen, as being the republica-
tion of the original law of nature, never quite obliter-
ated in men's consciences.
Moreover, it is the function of the natural reason
and conscience in all men everywhere to " seek God,
if haply they might feel after him, and find him,
though he is not far from each one of us ; for in
him we live, and move, and have our being ; for
as certain Stoic poets said, We are also his off-
spring." 3 All this is a recognition of spirit in man
in the modern sense, and of a movement of God
towards man everywhere, and of a universal presence
of God in nature ; only in the New Testament, in which
the Son or Word of God is distinguished from the
Spirit, this movement of God towards all men and in
all men, and in nature as a whole, is ascribed not to
the Holy Spirit, but to the Son, or Word. " The
life," i.e. the life of the Word, " was the light of
man." He (the true light), who was coming into
the world (in His incarnation), was all along * 4 the
light which lighteth every man." And " All things
were made by him; and without him " (the Word)
" was not anything made which hath been made." 4
" Through him " (the Son) " are all things." cfi All
things have been created through him, and unto him
. . . and in him all things consist " or have their
coherence. 8 " He upholds all things by the word
of his power." 6 Thus in the vision of the City of
God in the Apocalypse we are made to see that the
i Phil. iv. 8. a Bom. ii. 14-15.
8 Acts xvii. 27-8. 4 John i. 4, 9, 3.
* 1 Cor. viiL 6; Col. i. 16, 17, fi Heb. L 3.
18 THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT
perfecting of its beauty requires that the glory and
honour of all nations should be contributed to it. 1
They have all something to give which it needs.
So St. Paul and the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews and St. John must have been conscious
that the current Hellenic philosophy of the Logos or
divine reason in all things contained a considerable
element of truth which they needed ; and in fact,
as the religion of Israel had assimilated elements
from Persia and Greece before Christian days, so
Christianity assimilated more or less largely from
Hellenism. As "the Law 5 * had been for the Jews
a guardian to bring them to Christ, so their philo-
sophy had been to some at least of the Greeks. This
the Alexandrian fathers recognized, and St. Paul and
St. John would, perhaps, not have protested against
this view. Justin Martyr, who had been " a philo-
sopher " before he became a Christian, and remained
so afterwards, recognized in all who were true to their
best light, before Christ came in the flesh in Socrates
and Heracleitus no less than Abraham and Elijah,
"friends of Christ " and " Christians " before their
time. Like Justin, so also Augustine, two centuries
later, knew that in his 'own case the Platonic philo-
sophy had brought him to Christ. And not only so,
but also Augustine, like Origen before him, deliber-
ately approved of Christianity "borrowing" from
Hellenism. 2
As I have said, however, all this divine influence
outside the limits of the Church was attributed by
the New Testament writers to " the Word/' not to
"the Spirit." But when Origen, in a strange pas-
sage, 3 drew from the New Testament the positive
i Bev. xxi. 24-6.
3 See Appended Note A on Borrowing from Hellenism, p, 31,
8 The most distinct passage of Origen is quoted in Greek by Dr.
Westeott (Diet, of Chr. Biog, t iv, p. 136, col. 2). No reference
is given and I cannot at present find the passage. (I call it
" strange " because it represents the activity of the Word or Son
THE GROUNDS OF THE CONTRAST 19
conclusion that the Holy Spirit did not in fact act
universally in the world, like the Father, nor even
like the Son in all rational creatures, but only in
" the saints," the later Church refused to follow
him in this positive restriction of the Holy Spirit's
action ; and in developing the theology of the Holy
Trinity they constantly insisted that the Holy Spirit,
" the Lord, and Giver of life," must be recognized
as in some sense operative wherever life is. 1 Thus
there is much in the New Testament and in Christian
fathers to encourage, and nothing to forbid, the
modern missionary in China or Japan or India
seeking diligently for the elements of truth in non-
Christian religions, and making the most of them as
preparations for Christ. They can rightly present the
religion of Christ to Indians and Chinese and Japanese
as the consummation and satisfaction of the highest
thought and aspiration of their own sages.
1. Nevertheless, when all this is said and acknow-
ledged, there remains a difference, so great as to be
startling, between the popular modern view and that
of the New Testament. The root of the difference
lies in the New Testament emphasis on sin. It had
not wholly obliterated the image of God in man.
But it had thoroughly defaced it. It had turned
what was meant to be a world of light into dreadful
darkness. It had brought it about that the whole
movement of God towards man must become a
movement to redeem or buy back, under extreme
difficulty, a world which had come to lie in the evil
one it must be a movement to seek and to save
that which was lost. How dominant this view of
mankind is both in our Lord's attitude towards men
as extending only to rational beings, whereas in the New Testa-
ment His activity is extended very distinctly to all creation.)
But a similar passage is to be found in Latin in de Princip. t lib. i,
cap. iii, 5.
1 See Lux Mundi: The Holy Spirit and Inspiration (ed. 15),
p. 232.
20 THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT
and in that of the New Testament writers I have
tried to make plain already. 1 It cannot be denied.
It pervades all the books. St. James and St. Peter
are as * pessimistic * in their view of the world, as
it is, as St. Paul or St. John. Thus, if the New Testa-
ment does not exclude the idea of the universal
operation of the Holy Spirit of which we get glimpses
in the Old Testament, it says nothing about it. It
represents mankind as needing a new effusion of the
Holy Spirit. It deliberately concentrates our whole
attention upon the divine purpose and 'enterprise ^of
redemption, and views this purpose and enterprise
as taking concrete shape first in Israel, then in the
Christ, in whom the purpose of Israel was fulfilled,
and then in the Church, the New Israel, the society
which is commissioned to make effectual among men
the offer of salvation, and which is the shrine of the
Spirit and the body of Christ. There alone were
men entitled to expect and receive the Spirit, and to
find that sonship to God for which they were divinely
created, and that brotherhood which is essential to
the life of humanity, actually realized. 8
Thus all the efforts of Christian missionaries, from
the apostles downward, was to present the offer of
God, of which all men ought to feel their need, in a
concrete shape, a thing of " here " and now. " Be-
hold, now is the day of salvation. " " Neither is there
any other name under heaven, that is given among
men, wherein we must be saved." And the shelter
of that name belongs to those only who have had it
invoked upon them in baptism and have received
1 Belief in Christ, chap. ix.
2 It must not be forgotten that the N.T. consistently proclaims
not that all men are sons of God and brothers, but that they are
meant to be so and in Christ have really become so. See John i 12,
1 Pet. ii. 17, " Honour all men: love the brotherhood"; cf.
2 Pet. i. 7, where " love of the brethren " is to be the school of
universal "love." See also Dr. Pollock (Bishop of Norwich),
The Brotherhood of Man (S.P.C.K.).
THE ONE TRUE RELIGION 21
the Spirit of Jesus within them, " Repent and be bap-
tized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ
unto the remission of your sins ; and ye shall receive
the gift of the Holy Ghost." So it is that, without
denying that there is some truth in all religions, they
unhesitatingly identify the " word of truth " with
"the Gospel/' 1 the definite Christian message, and
" the spirit of error " with all that withholds men
from accepting it, 2 and they talk of the past of those
who have come from contemporary heathenism as
a shameful past, as darkness compared to light and
foulness to cleanliness speaking certainly as if those
they are addressing would agree with them " your
vain manner of life handed down from your fathers ' '
" your former lusts in the times of your ignorance "
gross vices and" abominable idolatries " "God hath
called you out of darkness into his marvellous light." *
" We all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, and
were by nature children of wrath," "having no hope
and without God in the world," " led away unto those
dumb idols," "sacrificing to devils." 4 Relatively at
any rate and in practical fact, they do declare that the
Christian faith is the one true religion, and all others
are by comparison false. For Jews indeed all that
was necessary was that their eyes should be opened
to the true tendency of their own religion. But for
the Gentiles what was needed was the acceptance of
a new religion. As Remigius told Clovis centuries
later, they must "burn what they have adored."
We must have the courage to face this fact.
2. St. Paul and St. John in different ways recog-
nize, as we have seen, 8 that development will be
necessary in the understanding and appropriation of
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge which lie hid
i Eph. i. 13. 2 1 John iv. 6.
8 1 Pet. i. 14, 18, ii. 0, iv. 3.
4 Eph. ii. 3, 12; 1 Cor. x. 20, xii. 2.
a See Belief in Christ, pp. 318 f. See also below, chap, vii, on
the development of Christian life and doctrine.
22 THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT
in Christ ; and they sanction by their example the
appropriation of contemporary ideas and terms from
non-Christian philosophies and religions, which proved
to be part of the method by which the Christian faith
developed. Nevertheless their emphasis is on the
finality of the Christ and of the message concerning
Him of which the apostles were the stewards. This
message constitutes the tradition which the Church
is to hand down unimpaired and unaltered. A good
deal more will have to be said about the finality of
the Church's Creed. At present all we need do is to
recognize that the emphasis on finality is far more
marked in the New Testament than the recognition
of development.
3. Finally, to recur to the third feature in the
contemporary estimate of the meaning of a spiritual
religion which we referred to above, we cannot dis-
cover in the New Testament any trace of that un-
willingness to associate the Spirit's action or presence
with material forms which traditionally has charac-
terized Protestantism. There is hardly to be found
in the Bible, Old Testament or New, any echo of
the Oriental or Hellenistic horror of matter, or the
material body, as evil and the source of defile-
ment. According to the Bible, everything which
exists was made by the one good God and is in its
original nature very good. " Every act of giving
[on God's part] is good, and every [divine] gift perfect,
coming down as it does from above from the Father
of lights." x Sin has its source, not in the body or
material forces, but in the perverted or rebellious will.
" Sin is lawlessness," not materiality. God had no
hatred of flesh as such. On the contrary, the climax
of His manifestation is incarnation. "The Word
was made flesh." The human " flesh " became the
organ of very God. So when the Spirit came down
to fulfil the presence of Christ among men, He too
1 Jas. 17
SACRA1IENTALISM 28
took body in a visible institution, 1 the old Israel
reformed, with visible sacraments, the baptism of
water and the laying on of hands and the bread and
wine of the eucharist. There is no sign in the New
Testament of horror at this sort of cc materialism. 35
So in the glorious prospect of the final consummation
there is no idea of a world of pure unclothed spirits.
The prospect is of a resurrection of the body, after
the pattern of Christ's, and of a " restitution of all
things " a glorified nature.
No doubt God is pure spirit, and there are spirits,
good and evil, who are not material, at least in our
sense ; and in our present bodies there is a grossness
and corruptibility which will not belong to the
" spiritual body " of our future perfection. In this
sense " flesh and blood " cannot inherit the Kingdom
of God. But what the future holds in store for us
is still a real embodiment, like the " glorious body **
of Jesus. For us men the material is the sphere and
organ of the spiritual, and is to be so to all eternity.
We shall have to recur to this great principle later
on, and to examine certain specific charges made
against St. Paul of attributing sin to the flesh or the
body. But I hope the general estimate which I
have given of Bible teaching about the body and the
material world will be accepted as true and unexag-
gerated.
The result is that " spiritual " in the New Testa-
ment is put in opposition to " carnal," or to the
body only as polluted and distorted by sin and
habituated to sinful ways. It is not put in opposi-
tion to the bodily as it ought to be and may be.
Isaac's birth, according to St. Paul, was " after the
Spirit," not because it was less material than Esau's,
which was " after the flesh," a but because it was
in accordance with a spiritual purpose and a promise
* On the idea of an "invisible Church," see Appended Note B,p. 32.
a Gal. iv. 29.
3
24 THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT
of God. And life " in the Spirit " is not life alienated
from material things and common interests, but life
dominated by spiritual purpose, just as life " in the
flesh " is life controlled from below by the selfish
lusts and passions and it is contrary to man's true
liberty to be controlled from below.
Thus if, as we shall see more in detail, the New
Testament uses very simply the language of sacra-
mentalism, there is nothing in this to surprise us.
The horror of the material as the vehicle of the
spiritual is simply not there nor the conception of
the spiritual as the disembodied. This is particu-
larly apparent in respect of marriage and man's
sexual nature. Our Lord indeed tells us that all
the conditions of marriage will have passed away
from our perfected humanity ; and St. Paul in the
First Epistle to the Corinthians, still under the
dominance of the expectation of an immediate end
of the world, thinks marriage a less wise course than
celibacy for Christians though in later Epistles he
talks about marriage in a way which suggests some
change of mind ; but the sexual nature of man in
itself is never in the New Testament disparaged or
treated as evil, but always as good. It is
" honourable in all respects, and the bed undefiled."
And surely there is no restraint upon anti-sacra-
mental language so effective as is to be found in this
region. Is not the production of a new personality
a soul or spirit destined for an immortal life in God,
but liable also to the most awful spiritual disaster
is not this the greatest of spiritual events in the
world and the most wonderful of the activities of the
creative spirit ? And is not this entrusted by God
to a material process the most liable, as experience
shows, to carnal misuse ? In view of this momentous
fact, can any of the arguments have any value at all
which would treat the sacramental system of the
Church as wholly unacceptable, and something we
SACRAMENTS NOT CHARMS 25
cannot attribute to God, because it puts spiritual
realities under the control of men who may be bad
men, and material things which may be unspiritually
used ? We may wonder at the divine adventure,
but we cannot deny that that is the way of God.
But in thus declining a false argument, we must
not be blind to the exceedingly important element
of truth which Protestantism has sought to guard
even while it has distorted it. Outward forms are
notoriously liable to become formal, and religious
ceremonies very easily become unspiritual ; because
the spirit is slumbering or occupied in other regions
while the sacred actions are being performed, or
because it is relying on the mere performance of a
sacred routine, or on the satisfaction of the imagina-
tion by splendour of ceremonial. Nothing, in fact,
is more conspicuous in the history of the Church than
this sort of degradation of sacraments and sacred rites.
They very easily become charms. It was the sense
of this peril, intensified by their horror of the magic
and the imposing ritual of the pagan mysteries,
which made some of the Fathers use such puritan
language about Church ceremonies l ; and it was
their experience of the misuse of externals in Chris-
tian worship which made some of the leaders of later
monasticism use similar language. But a religious
rite is not less material or less necessary because it
is simply performed. And the safeguard of the
1 Of. Tertullian, de Baptismo, 2 : *' There is really nothing which
so blinds men's minds as the simplicity of divine operations con-
trasted with the magnificence of their promised effect. So in the
case of baptism, since all that happens is that with the greatest
simplicity, without pomp or any novel apparatus, and without
any expenditure, a man is brought down into the water and washed
to the accompaniment of a few words, and comes up again little or
no cleaner, therefore it is regarded as incredible that he should
thereby obtain eternal life. I am a liar if, on the contrary, the
solemnities and sacred rites of the idols do not produce their im-
pressiveness and authority from their elaborate apparatus. Yet
what a miserable incredulity is this which leads you to deny to
God His special properties simplicity with power ! "
26 THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT
sacramental method lies only In an insistence, like
St. Paul's, on the spiritual valuelessness for the indi-
vidual of everything external except in proportion
to the faith which uses it and the good living which
results from it.
I hope enough has now been said, by way of pre-
liminary, to call attention to the Nev Testament
idea of the method of the Spiritthe embodiment
of the Spirit in the visible Church and to put it in
contrast to certain dominant modem views of the
religion of the Spirit which would detach it from
visible institutions, and sometimes also from par-
ticular historical events and from any unique or
authoritative Gospel. And we are now to proceed to
ask whether the set of views about the Spirit and the
Church which so plainly characterize the New Testa-
ment as a whole can really be ascribed to Christ Him-
self whether He did really found, or refound and
equip, the Church as a visible society or whether all
the sacramental ideas of the Church, already apparent
in St. Paul, come, as so many moderns would have
us believe, from the Hellenistic atmosphere in which
the early Christian disciples found themselves, and
have little or nothing to do with Christ, But I am
conscious in this matter of being up against a vast
wall of prejudice. The Catholic Church of history
has by its superstitions, its moral and intellectual
weaknesses, and its narrownesses specially at cer-
tain periods alienated such a vast body of the
world's best feeling, that the very idea of the Church
as the one home of the Spirit (" Extra ecclesiam
nulla salus ") excites the sort of resentment which
seems to deprive many men of the very capacity for
fresh enquiry. Now I want to ask for fresh enquiry,
such as leaves out of sight for the moment all present-
day questions, and seeks simply to examine the
origin of Christianity, and to ask what seem to have
THE ROOT IDEA OF CHURCH 27
been the intentions of Christ Himself and of His first
interpreters ; and to facilitate that, I want, before
I proceed to argue as to the facts, to urge some
considerations which may serve in some measure to
disarm prejudice and make the idea and principle of
the Church at least more intelligible.
/I. There is nothing, I think, more central to the
mind of Christ than the principle that you can only
love God in fellowship that you can only love God
by and in loving your neighbour. And then, when
you ask " Who is my neighbour ? " it appears that
your neighbour is every man ; and that the function
of the Church is to give a home to all men indis-
criminately, if only they want to live the good life ;
and to let men see in the Church what brotherhood
means, there where the motives of men are sufficiently
purged to make real brotherhood possible. Unfaith-
ful to this principle as Catholic Christianity has some-
times shown itself to be, this is its root principle.
It was comparatively easy for the first disciples to
love one another, for they were all Jews, united by
a common tradition of patriotism. But when they
found out that they were required to live on equal
terms with Gentiles, it was another matter. Yet
St. Paul, in the spirit of Christ, insists on Catholicism
that is, on the brotherhood of all men in Christ.
" Receive ye one another, even as Christ also re-
ceived you." Now human nature in its races and
sects and competing individualities is appallingly
disruptive. Nothing in Christianity could have kept
believers in Christ together except the positive obliga-
tion of the one body the obligation of membership
by baptism, grace by sacraments, adherence to the
apostolic ministry. The sacraments are social cere-
monies as well as visible ceremonies. The " tying "
of grace to sacraments in the Church embodies for
each person the principle that he can only have
fellowship with God by abiding in " the brotherhood. "
28 THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT
It is because the mass of men are, as they stand,
beyond the appeal of brotherhood, that the method
of God is to gather those who respond to the appeal
of the Gospel into an organized society which shall
show, embodied in fact, what human brotherhood
really means. I do not believe that till we have
fully appreciated this law or fact we shall ever have
a chance of understanding what Catholicism at its
root means ; and Church History really deserves the
name only by exhibiting the principle of brotherhood
in actual practice. " Ecclesiastical " ought to mean
" brotherly.** It did really mean this in the days
when it cost men much to call themselves Chris-
tians. It may come to be so again in no distant
future, and the Church may regain its ancient mean-
ing. Meanwhile no one ought to be able to study
afresh the origins of Christianity without perceiving
that the principle of Church and sacraments lies
neither in materialism nor in narrowness of spirit,
but in the recognition that mankind cannot realize
divine sonship except in brotherhood, and that man-
kind as it is can realize neither except by being
redeemed. If the first Christians had not been
bound together by the necessity of adherence to the
one Church and its sacraments and ministry if they
had not identified salvation with membership in the
one divine society represented by the local Church
the disruptive tendencies of class and race and
tradition would have rendered the divine attempt
to establish a catholic fellowship nugatory from the
beginning. Here we get the fundamental reason
why " credo in sanctam, ca,tholicam ecclesiarn "
follows at once on "credo in Spiritum Sanctum."
How to make the principle of this sequence effective
again in modern society is, I think, actually the most
important matter for consideration by Christians at
the present day. ^
2. I do not think it can be denied that St. Paul
THE IDEA OF SALVATION 29
and St. Luke and St. John teach Implicitly that
" extra ecclesiam nulla salus," but I think we easily
fail to understand what is or should be meant by
" salvation." Salvation or redemption describes a
great and continuous and consummated action, of
God in history for the realizing of His original purpose
for man, which sin had baffled and almost obliterated.
It is, as represented in the Bible, an action of God,
public and covenanted. God, as it were, comes out
into the open with His great offer. " There is the
salvation." The offer was made in stages. There
was an old covenant and a new. But in both stages
alike the offer is made publicly, visibly, under cove-
nant. By their relation to this great offer men are
to be tested. To accept it is to be approved. To
reject it or to ignore it is to be judged and (in pro-
portion to the moral clearness with which it has been
presented to man) to be condemned. This is the
constant language of the New Testament. The
preaching of the Gospel is by St. Paul compared to a
triumphal procession through the world, the incense
of which fills the air, but which (so to speak) smells
differently in different nostrils, according to the
different moral dispositions of men. It smells of life
to those who are being saved, who welcome it as
the satisfaction of their deepest need. It smells of
death to those who are perishing that is, who love
the world too well to listen to it. This is the judge-
ment. 1 And St. Paul and the other preachers of the
Gospel triumphantly proclaimed the going forth of
this self-acting judgement into the world. They
appear to have no doubt that the good will hear
and obey, and the evil or the proud only will refuse.
Their experience seemed to justify that. They are
not perplexed by the problem of " the good man
without faith." And in fact we feel that the moral
splendour of the Christian Church, as it showed itself
i 2 Cor. iii. 14-15.
80 RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT
in the comparative purity of its first history, made this
triumphant proclamation legitimate. But the his-
tory of the Church has been a strange onq. If its
appeal varies in force with its general moral character
as St. John and St. Paul and St. Peter lead us to
believe it has often and in many different places
made a sadly weakened appeal. It has had to
depend on something different from the visible
evidence of sanctity and especially of brotherhood.
Some will argue, no doubt, from this that the nature
of the appeal must be fundamentally altered. Those,
on the other hand, who believe this conclusion to be
mistaken, will still feel that the responsibility of men
for not yielding to the appeal of the Church has been
a very variable responsibility, because the Church
has itself given them so many excuses for gainsaying.
Those who feel this though their sense of the un-
dying purpose of God through the Church will not
be weakened, though they would have the Church
reformed and not rejected nevertheless will rejoice
to reflect that the Covenant of Salvation does not
represent the whole action of God,
Apparently now all parts of the Church agree on
this. In old days the Church does seem to have
believed itself entitled to pronounce the final sen-
tence upon anyone who in fact rejected its message
or refused its authority. But by emphasizing " in-
vincible ignorance," or by considering more broadly
the conditions of human responsibility, we have
quite passed out of this frame of mind. " We know in
part, and we prophesy in part." We are to " judge
nothing before the time." It is the Church's duty
to declare the message of God, and (while at the same
time it makes sure that what it is delivering is " the
message " and nothing else) to refuse to reduce it.
It may be its duty to judge and to excommunicate
this or that individual or group. But this is to
leave them to God not to profess to pass the final
BORROWING HELLENISM 31
sentence on them. The Church was surely going
quite beyond its commission and authority when it
sought to formulate an answer as to what would be
the destiny of unbaptized infants, or unconverted
heathen, or of anyone however rebellious and sinful.
It has got authority to bear a certain witness. It Is
set to administer a covenant of redemption or sal-
vation. It must let men know the warrant by which
it speaks and acts. But it can pronounce no final
sentence. It has no authority to draw up any list
of the lost or any infallible catalogue of saints. The
day of judgement, we are assured, will be a day of
surprises, and we are to " judge nothing before the
time."
Nevertheless, here in the New Testament we find
this covenant of salvation offered to us in the Church
on the authority of Christ. Is it rightly so offered ?
Did Christ really found such a Church as appears in
the New Testament, or was the conception due to
other influences and had Christ nothing to do with
Church and sacraments ? That is the question which
next claims our attention.
APPENDED NOTE A (to p. 18)
ON BORROWING FROM HELLENISM
St. Augustine de Doctrina Christiana., cap. xl, xli, gives
a suggested allegorical explanation of the Israelites
u borrowing of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels
of gold, and raiment," and so " spoiling the Egyptians."
They were commanded to take these things, he says, to
convert them to a good purpose. In the same way in
more recent times the heathen have not only false super-
stitions and heavy burdens, which Christians, when they
go out from their fellowship, ought to hate and avoid,
but also (he is speaking, he says, specially of the Platon-
ists) liberal instruction and moral principles and some
32 THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT
true things about the worship of the only true God,
which they did not invent, but dug, as it were gold and
silver, out of the mines of God's providence which is
universal ; and aU this Christians shall " convey " to good
uses. So also their useful social institutions, which may
be represented by the " raiment " of the Egyptians. Such
" borrowing " St. Augustine attributes to innumerable
Greek Christian authors and among the Westerns to
Cyprian, Lactantius, Victorinus, Optatus, and Hilary*
The suggested interpretation, which Augustine does not
wish to press, is based probably upon Origen's letter to
Gregory of Neo-Caesarea, though Origen appears to
restrict what may be " borrowed " with more caution
than Augustine. Cf. Dr. McNeile's Exodus (Westminster
Commentaries), p. 74.
So also Origen and Augustine call attention to Moses
receiving enlightenment from Jethro (see Origen, Horn,
in Ex. and Aug. de Doctr. Christ., prolog. 7). " For
Moses," says Augustine, " knew that a wise counsel, in
whatever mind it might originate, was to be ascribed not
to the man who devised it, but to Him who is the truth,
the unchangeable God." For Justin Martyr, see ApoL 9
i, 46.
APPENDED NOTE B (to p. 23)
ON THE IDEA OF THE INVISIBLE CHURCH
From the sixteenth century, beginning with the teach-
ing of Luther, down to modern times, an idea has been,
associated with Protestantism that while the (local)
churches of which we read in the New Testament were
indisputably visible and mixed bodies with good mem-
bers and bad the Church, the one home of salvation,
the Church of which such glorious things are spoken in
the Epistle to the Ephesians and elsewhere, was an
invisible company of the elect known only to God in His
predestinating love and independent of all local and
visible attachments. I do not think it is necessary to
argue against this at any length. Since Rothe wrote his
Anfdnge der Chrutlichen Kirche (1887) it has passed into
disrepute in Germany, its first home. Its present status
THE INVISIBLE CHURCH 33
may be seen in Hamack's Constitution and Law of the
Church^ especially in his controversy with Sohm, pp.
176 ff. I may refer also to the discussion in The Church
and the Ministry, chap, i, and to Dr. Mason's essay on
** Early Conceptions of the Church " in The Early History
.of the Church and Ministry (Macmillan).
In the Acts and in the Epistles of St. Paul we hear
constantly of " the churches," i.e. the local churches
established at each place. In the New Testament these
local churches do not seem to be regarded (at least not
generally) as federated into one Church or as component
elements of the one Church. Rather they are regarded
as each of them representative of the one Church. Each
church is the Church; and the members of each local
church are thereby members of the one Church, bap-
tized by one Spirit into one body. To put it conversely,
the one Church of God the Church refounded in Jesus
Christ is not composed of all the different churches of
Judsea, Asia, Achaia, etc., but it is composed of all the
individual members of all the local churches. But this
one Church of God is, just as much as the local churches,
a visible body, save that the Head (Christ) and the
members departed this life are of course out of sight.
This may now be taken for granted, and I will content
myself with quoting Dr. Hort, as he writes in his post-
humous book The Christian Ecclesia, p. 169, in which
he assuredly does not exhibit any ecclesiastical bias.
** I said just now that the one ecclesia of [the Epistle to
the] Ephesians includes all members of all partial ecclesiae.
In other words, there is no indication that St. Paul regarded
the conditions of membership in the universal ecclesia as
differing from the condition of membership in the partial
local ecclesiae. Membership in a local ecclesia was obviously
visible and external, and we have no evidence that St. Paul
regarded membership in the universal ecclesia as invisible
and exclusively spiritual, and as shared by only a limited
number of the members of the external ecclesiae, those, namely,
whom God had chosen out of the great mass and ordained
to life, or those whose faith in Christ was a genuine and true
faith. What very plausible grounds could be urged for this
distinction was to be seen in later generations ; but it seems
to me incompatible with any reasonable interpretation of
St. Paul's words."
34 THE RELIGION OF THE SPIRIT
We notice that St. Paul writes in his earlier epistles
to " the churches of Galatia," " the church of the Thes-
salonians,*' " the church of God at Corinth," but in his
later Epistles to " the saints " at Philippi and Ephesus
and Colossae. But still we get the local " church " in
Phil. iv. 15 and Col. iv. 16, and the use of " church J>
for the congregation assembling in a particular house*
CHAPTER II
DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH ?
THE Bible record divides itself naturally into three
stages. First, in the Old Testament, we have the story
of the long process by which Israel's God, Jehovah,
becomes defined in 'character as the one and only
God, the Creator of all that is, perfect in goodness
and power, who has chosen Israel for His organ or
instrument of self-disclosure, and is one day to mani-
fest Himself through Israel to all the world in the
perfection of His kingdom. Part of the first volume
of this series was devoted to vindicating this claim of
Israel to be the prophet of the real God. 1 Next, ia
the Gospels, there comes into the forefront the figure
of Jesus of Nazareth, and He comes to be defined in
the minds of His disciples as the Christ, the fulfil-
ment of the purposes of God, His true and only Son
incarnate, "the Word made flesh, 33 The validity
of this definition was the subject of our second
volume. Finally, as Jesus passes out of sight into
the heavens, whence He is to come again to wind up
the history of this world, the stage which He has left
is occupied (in the Acts and the Epistles) by the
coming and activity of the Holy Spirit the Spirit
of the Father and the Son and He too receives
embodiment that is, the Spirit appears as inspiring
and fashioning the Church, and the Church appears
as the only organ of the Divine Spirit and instrument
of the great salvation.
1 Belief in Ood f chaps, iv, v, vi, and see also Belief in Christ, chap. i.
35
86 DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH
Here again, however, at this last stage of divine
self -disclosure, we advance upon the ground of con-
troversy old and new. For (1) various traditions of
Protestantism have refused to assign so high a func-
tion to the visible Church ; and indeed the history
of the Church has made it sadly evident that it
cannot be regarded as the manifestation of the Spirit
in that complete and perfect sense in which Jesus
Christ is the manifestation of God. There is plainly
here a good deal that requires discussion, and we
know too well what strong prejudices of different
kinds make frank enquiry in this field singularly
difficult to many of us.
2. Upon the old controversy between Catholic and
Protestant something has been said in the last chap-
ter that is, it was argued that the high conception
of the function of the Church is unmistakably
present in the New Testament as it stands. And
this, we note, is now commonly conceded by modern
critics. But also they commonly attribute this con-
ception, with much besides in traditional Christianity,
to St. Paul and other influences which helped to form
the mind of the early disciples, and would have us
believe that it was read back upon Jesus without
historical justification. Here, then, we get upon one
of the chief grounds of modern controversy which
will occupy us in this and the following chapter
the question whether really Jesus of Nazareth is
responsible for the Church at all.
I
In the volume which preceded this we had to give
consideration to an idea of Christ which has been
specially associated with the names of Schweitzer and
Loisy, and which has had in England both eager
partisans and strenuous opponents. 1 According to
* Belief in Christ, pp. 37-8, 151 f.
APOCALYPTIC OBJECTIONS 37
these adherents of wliat is called the " apocalyptic "
idea of Jesus Christ, it is impossible to attribute to
Him the foundation or equipment of the Church,
because that involves His making more or less elabo-
rate provision for an indefinite future ; whereas in
fact He anticipated no future for the world at all.
His death was to be the signal for the divine inter-
vention. He would be at once raised to the glory
of God, and as the Messiah from heaven would be
sent to end the world and judge the world and in-
augurate the Kingdom of God, in which His elect
would share with Him eternal felicity. It was only
the complete breakdown of the expectation of the
immediate coming of Christ (which He Himself pro-
claimed) which made room for and also made neces-
sary the institution of the organized Church, and the
idea of the Church as in some sense already the
Kingdom of God on earth. But all this was an after-
thought due to the experience which proved that the
apocalyptic proclamation of Christ was a delusion.
We have already seen cause to reject this whole
view of the position and teaching of Christ as singu-
larly one-sided. In particular we saw reason to be-
lieve that our Lord when on earth had explicitly
declared that He had no map of the future spread
before His eyes, and later had warned His disciples
that the " times or seasons " were not to be disclosed
to them ; and that, though He certainly prefigured
His final coming and the end of the world, He also
paid much attention to the intervening period the
length of which He wholly refused to define which
was to be occupied with the growth of the Kingdom
on eaUth and the preaching of the Gospel in all the
world, and warned His disciples of the severe testing
of their faith which " the divine delay " would in-
volve. 1 The rejection of the extreme position of
Schweitzer has become general. Nevertheless the
* See on all this, Belief in Christ, chap. v.
38 DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH?
apocalyptic idea is still frequently made the ground
for the assertion that Jesus can have founded no
permanent Church, and instituted no sacraments or
ministry, and given it no rules or directions l ; and,
on other grounds, it is so commonly denied that
He founded any such rite of perpetual memorial 2
as the Lord's Supper, and the connexion of Church
institutions, such as appear plainly in the Acts and
the Epistles, with the historical Jesus is so frequently
repudiated, that the whole question must be carefully
examined the question, I mean, whether our Lord
really made any such provision for the future of the
movement inaugurated during His lifetime, and if
so, what it was.
We must, of course, proceed as before purely on
the historical and critical basis asking simply what
is the most probable conclusion on the evidence.
It has been already remarked that if you had asked
one of the early converts what it was to be a " Chris-
tian,' 5 he would have replied either that it was to
believe that " Jesus is the Lord"" or that it was
to have "received the Spirit." The original Creed,
which summarized the first experience of the Chris-
tians prior to any reflection or theory, may be said
to have consisted of these two articles the one being
concerned with a past experience, the experience of
the crucifixion and glorification of their Master ; the
other with a present experience of the activity of
the ascended Christ, in both of which experiences they
saw the fulfilment of prophecy. 3 If you had had the
opportunity further to question this primitive Chris-
tian, you would have found that he and his fellows
anticipated no long continuance for the Cffurch.
The death of any one of their fellow- Christians was
1 As by Dr. Inge, see Outspoken Essays, series i (1919), pp.
227 f. and 249 ; also see below, p. 39,
2 As by Dr. Bashdall, Idea of Atonement, p. 69.
8 See App. Note A, p. 64, on 3ST.T. interpretation of prophecy.
APOCALYPTIC OBJECTIONS B9
a shock to them. For their eager hopes led them to
expect a very speedy " coining " of Christ in glory
to end the present order and establish His kingdom
in the world. But you would have taken note that
this expectation of the speedy dissolution of the
world, and absorption of the Church in the Kingdom,
did not hinder their sense of present duties. Alike
at Jerusalem, at Antioch, at Corinth, and elsewhere,
you would have seen the Church behaving like a
permanent society which has to take counsel for
the future, and organize itself and use its resources*
It has certain sacred meetings and sacred rites, and it
is under a certain rule or order which was delivered
to it ( u the tradition ") by its apostolic founders.
Dr. Inge, writing about the vexed question of
divorce, has recently used a very unfortunate argu-
ment. He has said that
" the real difficulty in appealing to the Gospels [on this
subject] is a different one. Our Lord was not in a posi-
tion to repeal either the law of Moses or the laws of
the Roman Empire, nor did He ever think of doing so.
He was not legislating even for the Church, for there
was no Church to legislate for ; none of His disciples had
any suspicion that * the Church * was anything more
than a brief stop-gap till the Messianic Kingdom of God
should come." x
Now, to me it appears quite certain that our Lord
did, not indeed repeal, but revise by His own au-
thority the law of Moses in general (" It was said
to them of old time . . . but I say unto you ") as one
who was establishing Israel and its law on a new
basis ;%tnd if words have any meaning and if the
combined authority of our earliest documents really
gives us trustworthy witness about Christ, He did
revise the law of Moses in respect of divorce particu-
larly, quite definitely and trenchantly, though there
1 The words are quoted from an article called " A Defence of
our Divorce Laws " in the Evening Standard of December 21, 1922.
40 DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH?
is a discrepancy in the reports touching one single
point. But I am not being drawn away from the
course of my argument by the particular question of
divorce. My point is this. Dr. Inge would have us
believe that the expectation of a speedy end of the
world renders absurd the idea of Christ having legis-
lated for the Church. This argument I call " un-
fortunate," because we do precisely know that in
the minds of the first disciples there was no such
incompatibility between the expectation of the
speedy end and the belief that they were, as a Church,
in this particular respect under a law. St. Paul
when he wrote the first Epistle to the Corinthians
certainly expected the speedy coming of the end
before his own death. But none the less he shows
himself throughout the epistle an organizer of the
Church, zealous to confront and meet its present
difficulties, as one who builds for the future. And in
the task of organizing the Church he is conscious of
a certain " tradition " which is common to him and
the rest of the apostles * ; and at the centre of
this tradition there are certain " words " or com-
mands " of the Lord " to which he appeals from time
to time as of final authority/ amongst them being
a word of Christ prohibiting divorce, which St. Paul
carefully distinguishes from his own judgement on
matters touching marriage 3 judgements which at
one point at least are affected by his expectation of
an immediate end of the world.
Quite certainly then in St. Paul's mind the expec-
tation of the speedy end of the world was not incon-
sistent with the belief that Christ had in the/ifoatter
of divorce and in other matters legislated for the
Church while He was on earth. St. Paul regarded
himself certainly as an officer in the Church, which
was indeed to have a very short existence in this
1 1 Cor. xv. 1-3, 11. * See Belief in Christ, p. 89.
8 1 Cor. vii. 10, 12, 25.
OUR LORD'S PROVISION FOR THE FUTURE 41
world, but was meanwhile " under the law to Christ/'
And this confirms the conclusion which we draw
from all the Gospels, that Christ did both announce
His future coming though in fact He definitely
refused to say anything about the time or season of
the coming and also in certain particulars made
careful provision for the intermediate period,
whether it should prove to be long or short.
No doubt "the Lord," whose words St. Paul
occasionally refers to, was by him predominantly
thought of as the glorified Christ in the heavens,
who, as he believed, had called and commissioned
him as one of His apostles. But the conditions of
his call he knew to have been exceptional. " Those
who were apostles before him " had been already
so when Christ appeared to them after His resurrec-
tion on the third day. 1 He knew therefore that they
were appointed during Christ's lifetime on earth ;
and from the beginning of his converted life he had
received the " tradition " of the institution by Christ
of the eucharist for the continual memorial of Him-
self. 8 Certainly, then, St. Paul held that it was
during His life on earth that our Lord had, in part,
equipped His Church with officers and a solemn rite*
as well as certain specific commands. And if this is
sufficiently evident in St. Paul's epistles, it is at
least as evident in the Acts. There at starting the
necessary condition for apostolate is described as
being a long companionship with Christ on earth
from the preaching of John the Baptist to the Ascen-
sion. This is one of the links which binds the Acts
to the Third Gospel as two volumes of one work.
What you see occurring in the Acts was prepared for
and provided for during the earthly life of Jesus. 4 ; |
But if it be acknowledged that the apostles them-
selves were more or less mistaken about the im-
1 Gal. L 17; I Cor. xv. 4-11.
2 This is argued in Belief in Christ, pp. 99 .
42 DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH ?
mediate Coming, is it not possible that St. ^ Paul and
St. Luke were mistaken about the origin of the
Church, and threw back upon Christ while on earth
what was in fact only or mainly the growth of
necessity after He had disappeared ? I think there
is a very great difference between the possibilities of
mistake in the two cases. But we will ignore this.
Whatever might have been possible in the way of a
mistake, I think the whole historical situation, as^the
Gospels represent it, no less than particular sayings
ascribed to Christ, which show the surest evidences of
authenticity, compels us to believe that Christ did
in fact make precise provision for His Church.
II
It is, however, a mistake to ask whether Christ while
on earth founded the Church, for it was already in
existence. We understand nothing if we do not
understand this. 'The Church' is in the first
instance the holy people of God Israel. St. Stephen
in his speech before the Jews gives us the clue. He
is represented as saying of Moses that u he was with
the church in the wilderness." 1 The Church, that
is, was at least as old as the redemption of Israel
from Egypt and its foundation as a nation. The word
ecdesia was the common Greek word to describe the
official assembly of any people. In the Greek Bible
it is used in this sense with another word c synagogue '
to translate two Hebrew words for the assembly
of the holy people the " congregation of the chil-
dren of Israel." But in New Testament times the
second word (* synagogue ') is used to describe the
place of religious assembly for the Jews other than
the temple, and the first word ('ecclesia') had in
the Greek Bible tended to mean the holy people
itself, whether assembled or not. It was in this sense
1 Acts vii. 38.
THE OLD CHURCH REFOUNDED 4S
especially, though not exclusively, that it passed
into the language of the New Israel 1 ; and this is
the sense in which Stephen uses it. It means the
same as Israel or the people of God* Into this people
our Lord was born. In it He was educated in the
Scriptures, and there are the most evident signs in
His frequent references to the Scriptures that, while
He in no way anticipated the scientific investigation
of later ages, He not only had meditated deeply upon
them but interpreted them, by contrast to Pharisees
and Scribes and apocalyptic fanatics, with a pro-
found spirituality of insight. In the Scriptures he
found the Messianic hope, the expectation of the
Kingdom of God, and, as we have seen, reconstructed
that hope, partly by the elimination of certain gross
elements of unreal expectation, partly by recalling
to vivid expression forgotten elements, and pro~
claimed a doctrine of Messiah, which was both old
and new in which sense He Himself was the Christ
who was to come. But the coming of the Christ
meant the consummation of Israel's hope, not its
extinction. In the days of the Christ, according to
the prophets, the holy people were to be consecrated
under a New Covenant : it was to receive a new out-
pouring of the Spirit ; it was to witness the Resur-
rection of the dead ; it was to become the centre of
religion for the world. 2 The Christ is not an isolated
figure. He is the central figure in a renewed people.
His coming is or implies the coming of the Kingdom,
and it is in the Kingdom or universal reign of God
that the hope of Israel is to be consummated. All
i Harnack, Constitution and Law of the Church (Engl. trans.,
Williams & Norgate), p. 15, says : ^ Qahal-in the ^translated
as a rule by teX^/ais the community in its relation to God J .n*
Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, by Moulton and Milhgan (Hodder
& sToughton), says : It is the LXX term for the community of
Israel, whether assembled or no." These statements are much too
absolute, as a concordance to the LXX will show us. However,
there is tendency towards this meaning.
a See Belief in Christ, pp. 14-19.
44 DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH?
this we see clearly to have been in the mind of Jesus
of Nazareth. It was the atmosphere which He
breathed.
But the record of Israel, generation after genera-
tion, had shown it to be a body obstinately refusing
to walk after the counsel of God. " Israel doth not
know, my people doth not consider " is the com-
plaint of God through the prophets. " Ye stiff-
necked and uncircumcised in ears," exclaimed
Stephen, "ye do always resist the Holy Ghost : as
your fathers did, so do ye." But the failure in the
people and their leaders is not to defeat the purpose
of God through Israel it only narrows its channel
temporarily. There is always a faithful remnant,
"the meek of the earth," who, though politically
insignificant, become the channel of the divine pur-
pose. This is the interpretation of history offered
by Isaiah, Micah, Zephaniah, the second Isaiah
indeed we may say all the true prophets. So it was
in our Lord's day. The people and their rulers reject
the counsel of God. They refuse the Christ. But
there was again a faithful remnant, " the meek and
lowly in heart," who accepted Him. This then again
is the true Israel, in our Lord's eyes. " Fear not,
little flock," He is recorded to have said to them ;
46 it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the
Kingdom." l
1 Luke xii. 32. The particular phrase is peculiar to Luke.
But the sense of it is common to all the Evangelists. Thus (1)
the preaching of John the Baptist has for its object to provide a
new Israel, true children of Abraham, '* a people prepared for the
Lord." (2) The revision of the Law, including the divorce law,
by our Lord means that the vocation of Israel is being fulfilled and
not annulled. (3) The exclusive mission of Christ: "I am not
sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel " means that
He is come to reconstitute Israel, so far at least as it will consent
to listen. (4) The claim that " Jesus is the Christ " or '* the Christ
is Jesus '* is of itself sufficient proof that the believers in Him are
the true Israel.
After the statements of the case made from very different points
of view by Harnack (in his Constitution and Law of the Church,
THE INSTITUTION OF APOSTLES 45
There was a crisis in the Galilean ministry which
may be identified with the murder of John the Bap-
tist, and the mission of the Apostles, and the feeding
of the five thousand (St. Mark vL), when Jesus appears
to have taken for granted His rejection by the Jews
as a whole and by their leaders. They would not
have Him at all, or they would only have Him on
terms with which He would make 110 compromise.
Yet His time was not yet come to go up to Jerusalem
and die. He has a preliminary task to fulfil. This
appears to be the training of the Twelve, and on this
accordingly He concentrates Himself* There ensues
a period of journeyings outside the dominions of
Herod, who had murdered John and was suspected
of a like design upon Jesus, 1 and for a time outside
the Jewish territory altogether, which brought Jesus
and His Apostles at last round to Caesarea Philippi,the
scene of Peter's confession ; which again is followed by.
the last slow progress to Jerusalem. 2 The training
of the Twelve is all through this period the central
occupation of the Lord ; and He appears to be
Sx 221, 224, and in Expansion of Christianity, i, 300 1), and by
r. H. F. Hamilton (People of God, vol. ii, pp. 29 ft), it is hardly
necessary to repeat the proofs that the Christian Church from
the first believed itself to be the old Israel reconstituted. The
sense of this is constantly in St. Paul's mind, as in his whole appeal
to the Old Testament, or when, writing to Gentiles, he speaks of
the old Jews as " our fathers," 1 Cor, x. 1, or in his argument in
Gal. iii. 16 and Bom. ix. 6 ft and xi. 5, 16 ft. It is the assump-
tion of St. James in the Acts (Acts xv. 14-18) and of the Epistles
of St. Peter ( 1 Pet. i. 1) and St. James (i. 1), and of the Apocalypse
(see Swete's note on vii. 4-8, pp. 96 1), and of the Epistle to the
Hebrews. The sense that only the believers in Christ constitute the
true Israel is equally apparent after it has become obvious that
the old Israel has in the mass rejected Christ (Apoc. ii. 9, iii. 9), and
also, as in the beginning of the Acts, while the hope is entertained
that they still may welcome Him. Even in St. James's Epistle
you still feel the unwillingness of the writer sharply to distinguish
the Old Israel and the New. Nevertheless it is the Christians
whom, he addresses as ** the twelve tribes."
1 Luke xlii. 32.
2 See Headlam's Life and Teaching of Jesus Christ, chap, vii
(Murray).
46 DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH?
training them not only as disciples, but as apostles,
as rulers and pastors of the Israel to be.
Thus in the parable of the husbandmen the vine-
yard is Israel, and the point of it is that the vine
dressers, the actual rulers of Israel, who are in charge
of its destinies, are to be utterly rejected, and the
vineyard entrusted to " others " (Mark and Luke)
or * 4 other husbandmen/ 5 I think this most natur-
ally means the apostles. It is only they who can be
said to take the place of Scribes and Pharisees and
Chief Priests in order to " render " to God " the
fruits of the vineyard [Israel] in their season." *
Again, in the parable of the household, during the
prolonged absence of the Master, 2 we have " ser-
vants " left in " authority." And when Peter asks
the question, " Lord, speakest thou this parable
unto us [the Twelve], or even unto all ? " our Lord,
as usual giving no direct answer, suggests by another
question that he (Peter) or they (the Twelve) * are
in the position of the " faithful and wise steward,
whom his lord will set over his household, to give
them their portion of meat in due season." Here we
have another figure of the house of Israel under new
government or management. The Twelve are being
prepared to be its " stewards." Once more in the
day of the Kingdom, the day of Christ's sovereignty,
the Twelve are to be found seated upon twelve
thrones, judges of the twelve tribes of Israel, as well
as participants in the heavenly feast. 4 In a sense,
as we have seen, 5 the glorification of Christ and the
mission of the Spirit was the coming of Jesus in His
1 In Matt. xxi. 43, after the change of metaphor from vineyard
to building, we have the words, " The Kingdom of God shall be
taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. n
This, I suppose, would be the Church of the believers in Jesus.
a Mark xiii. 34-7 ; of. Luke xii. 36-48.
3 On the relation of Peter to the other apostles, see Appended
Note B, p. 65.
* Matt. xix. 28 ; Luke xxii. 30,
6 Belief in Christ, pp. 144-5.
ON THIS ROCK I WILL BUILD 47
Kingdom ; and nothing is more certain than that in
the beginning of the Acts the Apostles appear as
the judges and pastors or rulers of the New Israel.
Nothing seems to me to be more idle than the attempt
to deny either that St. Luke in the Acts represents
the apostles as divinely appointed officers of the
body of the disciples, or that St. Paul conceives the
apostolate which he shared with the Twelve as
instituted in the first instance by Christ on earth
and as possessed of official authority by divine
appointment. 1 Their position after Pentecost con-
firms what the parables and sayings of St. Mark and
St. Luke suggest, that our Lord constituted and
trained the Twelve as the future officers of Israel.
Critical scholars are not willing to rely on the record
of the First Gospel when it is unsupported by the
others without scrupulous examination, and that for
substantial reasons. But I think the famous passage 2
which, in the First Gospel alone, follows the Con-
fession of Peter falls in so precisely with the story
of the Gospel and the Acts as a whole that we may
or must accept it as true. Every word of it tells
and reflects the historical situation.
The confession of the Messiahship of Jesus by
His disciples was confessedly a crucial event. It
was most natural that Jesus should have met it
with His solemn benediction, as something wrought
in the soul of Simon by God Himself. " Blessed art
thou, Simon Bar- Jonah : for flesh and blood hath
not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in
heaven. 5 ' 3 But also the sense of relief to the soul
of the Master which the confession brought, and which
is suggested by the rich benediction, pronounced upon
1 On the Acts, see above, pp. 12 fie. On. the authority of the
apostles in St. Paul, see Appended Note C f p. 68,
2 St. Matt. xvi. 17-19.
3 See Bruce as quoted in Dr. Box's excellent commentary in
The Century Bible, p. 263.
48 DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH?
Simon, is unmistakably genuine. 1 Jesus elsewhere
shows the value He set on a solid foundation for a
spiritual fabric. Such a foundation He could not
find in the shifting and untrustworthy faith of the
multitude. He " did not " indeed He could not
"trust himself unto them." But, by a process of
selection and training, now at last there had been
engendered in the Twelve, or in Simon their spokes-
man, a faith at least capable of being solidified into
such a rock as could be safely built upon. So He
blesses Simon, under a name which the Fourth
Gospel tells us He had found for him on first meeting
him. " I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter
Rock-man and on this rock 2 1 will build my Church,"
or, as Dr. Hort would render it, " My Israel/' the
true Israel acknowledging the Christ. And as the
old prophets had always proclaimed the nucleus of
Israel indestructible, so Jesus proclaims the Israel
of His new foundation "the gates of death [hades]
shall not prevail against it." 3 And just as Isaiah,
under divine commission, had appointed Eliakim, son
of Hilkiah, steward of the house of David, with the
power of the keys to open and shut, in place of the
worthless Shebna, so Jesus promises to appoint Peter
steward of the new house of David (Isa, xxii. 22),*
1 EL S. Holland's memorable sermon in Creed and Character,
p. 40.
2 The rock is surely the person : ef. a remarkable Eabbinic say-
ing concerning Abraham, " When God saw Abraham who was
going to arise, he said, Lo, I have discovered a petra to build and
to found the world upon. Therefore he calls Abraham * rock,*
as it is said (Isa. li. 1). }> See Taylor, Sayings of the Jewish Fathers,
p. 160.
3 Two points should be noticed. (1) The foundation was no
doubt a refoundation; cf. St. James's quotation of the ** prophets,"
" I will build again the tabernacle of David " (Acts xv. 16). (2)
What is promised to the new Israel is neither more nor less than
that it shall not, any more than the Christ Himself, be swallowed
up by death.
4 ** The keys of the Kingdom of heaven " I think it cannot be
doubled that here "the Kingdom*' is identified with the Church,
though doubtless in general it is a wider and a vaguer term.
THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM 49
and He assigns to him the authority to 4i bind " and
" loose " which was well recognized among the Jews 9
and meant official authority to prohibit or allow a
legislative power in the Church, that is, but no
absolute power, for, to the Jews, these words implied
a divine law to be interpreted. It was this interpre-
tative authority which the Jewish rabbis had so
grievously misused. " They had made the word of
God of noneeffectby their tradition." This authority,
then, is to pass from the present Jewish authorities
to Peter, i The authority, we note, is by Christ
reconstituted, although it has been so grievously
abused, but with the warning subsequently given that
it may be so again. 2
In a later passage of St. Matthew's Gospel our Lord
is again reported to have referred to the power of
binding and loosing, now apparently as inhering in
the smallest church, or community of believers, who
shall meet in His name, and here the power is so
described as to be plainly not only legislative but
also disciplinary over the individual "to bind'*
carries with it exclusion from the community. 3
At this point we must pass from the First Gospel
to the Fourth. There our Lord is represented on the
evening of His resurrection as commissioning " the
disciples," which here in all probability, as throughout
the later part of the Gospel, means the Twelve, 4 to
perpetuate His own apostolate : " As the Father hath
1 On the relation of Peter to the other apostles, implied here and
elsewhere in the N.T, see Appended Note B, p, 65.
a Luke xii. 45-8.
3 This passage, Matt, xviii. 15-20 which follows very closely
on Jewish precedents, see Dr. Box's notes must be noted here
because of the importance of the disciplinary power which is at-
tached to binding and loosing. Taken in general, it suggests a
situation where there are a number of small Christian communities.
That is a later situation, and accordingly critical scholars doubt its
authenticity. I wish to use it only as showing the meaning assigned
to " binding *' and " loosing. 35 It may be, however, that vers. 18-20
should be detached from vers. 15-17.
4 See Appended Note D on the meaning of John xx. 21, 22, p. 68.
50 DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH?
sent me, even so send I you. And when lie had
said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them,
Receive ye Holy Spirit: whose soever sins ye
forgive, they are forgiven unto them ; whose soever
sins ye retain, they are retained/ 5 If we interpret
the authority to bind and loose promised to St.
Peter in St. Matthew, chap. xvL, as it is interpreted
In chap, xviiL, viz. as including the authority of
discipline over individuals, it will be seen that it is
substantially the same authority which was then
promised to Peter which is here bestowed upon all
" the disciples." It is the authority to admit indi-
viduals to the Church or to exclude them as unfit,
to excommunicate and to absolve, and it implies as
its background the kind of legislative power which
was ordinarily carried by the phrase " binding and
loosing. 9 * And again in the appendix to the Gospel
(chap, xxi.) Peter is given the commission of a
shepherd which in Jewish language means a ruler
to govern and feed the flock of Christ, the circum-
stances of this commission strongly suggesting that
what we are witnessing is the restoration of Peter
after his fall, and that we are not meant to draw the
conclusion that the pastoral office was peculiar to
St. Peter. 1
These passages of St. Matthew and St. John will
be estimated differently by scholars, no doubt,
according to their differing estimates of the trust-
worthiness of these Gospels. They appear to me to
indicate as belonging to the apostolate just the kind
of authority which in fact we see belonging to it,
and unquestioned, in the Acts and in St. Paul's
Epistles. 2 This unquestioned authority attributed
to the apostles seems to me to require some specific
acts of Christ to explaip it. Thus I see no reason to
doubt that the texts we have been considering are
really historical.
* See below, p. 65. * See below, p. 68.
THE WITNESS OF GOSPELS AND ACTS 51
But whatever be the historical estimate formed of
these passages, the evidence of the Acts and St.
PauPs Epistles must not be underrated, nor the
indications in St. Mark and St, Luke explained away*
If it be asked why the same explicit stress is not
laid by these two evangelists on the apostolic com-
missions as appears in St. Matthew and St. John,
I suppose the right answer probably is, that when
these Gospels were written there was no dispute
about the apostolic authority, as being derived from
Christ Himself, such as would have suggested any
particular enquiry into what exactly Christ had done ;
that St. Mark's selection of incidents was probably
determined in the main by a previous selection made
by St. Peter for the instruction and edification of
converts ; and that St. Luke appears to have been
under pressure of space and he may naturally have
felt that enough about apostolic authority appeared
in the Acts. On the other hand, I think it is very
likely that the emphasis on St. Peter's position
which is apparent in the First Gospel was due to
the need the author felt to correct the tendency in
Jewish-Christian circles to make St. James the chief
of the apostles. And the Epistles of St. John show
us plainly why he should have wished to emphasize
the apostolic commission by recalling what were to
him well-remembered incidents. But the reason why
this or that incident does not appear in a historical
record is, we know, a matter of very uncertain
speculation.
Jesus then, let us conclude, did not found a new
Church, but He did refound the old Church on the
new basis of faith in His Messiahship, and did equip
it with teaching, new as well as old, and also, in the
persons of the Twelve, with authoritative officers,
52 DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH?
Ill
Further, we have no critical justification for calling
in question the institution by Christ, as sacraments
or sacred rites of His New Israel, the ordinances
of baptism and the eucharist. Baptism, it would
seem, was already in the time of our Lord (with
circumcision and sacrifice) the rite for the incorpora-
tion of Gentile proselytes into the community of
Israel. 1 The whole ceremony was their " new birth "
as Israelites 2 ; and as circumcision of course applied
only to males and sacrifices were confined to Jerusa-
lem, baptism assumed the chief importance. As
used by John the Baptist, baptism was based upon
the need to constitute ** a people prepared for the
Lord,'' that is, an Israel based, as in the teaching of
the ancient prophets, not merely upon physical
descent, but also upon moral fitness ; and, according
to the Fourth Gospel, John's baptism was carried on
in the circle of the disciples of Jesus. 3
But in John's teaching, as represented in the
foundation records (Mark and Q), it was announced
that He who was to come, whose precursor John
was, would baptize with a new sort of baptism, to
administer which John could make no claim. " He
shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost," or " wit
the Holy Ghost and with fire." If these words stood
alone, it might be doubted whether the baptism here
spoken of was to be literal or symbolical ; but the
1 See a note with references in Headlani's Life and Teaching of
Jesus Christ, pp. 137-8, and Edersheim's Life and Times of Jesus
the Messiah, App. xii.
3 See references to the Babbis in Edersheim, I.e. : "As he
stepped out of these waters he was considered as ' born anew *
in the language of the Rabbis, as if he were a 4 little child just
born * or 4 a child for one day.* One who makes a proselyte
was as if he created a soul." These quotations of course are later
than the New Testament and it cannot be proved that the idea of
the proselyte as * new born * dates from our Lord's time,
8 John iv. 2.
THE INSTITUTION OF BAPTISM 53
abundant pouring out of the gifts of the Spirit was
from of old associated with the coming of the Messiah
and the Kingdom. Very little is said about it in
the Synoptic Gospels ; but at the beginning of the
Acts it is unmistakably implied that Jesus before
His departure had assured the disciples that the
C promise of the Father " would e fulfilled to them
within a few days. And on the day of Pentecost
they were accordingly " baptized " with the gift of
the Spirit and its accompanying power. As the
matter is described in the Acts, the gift of the Spirit
was given in the first instance to the original nucleus
of believers by a sudden effusion, accompanied by
outward signs, which was unique ; but for subsequent
adherents of the new fellowship it was given (without
any apparent question or deliberation) through
baptism, which was regarded as the instrument of
the forgiveness of sins and incorporation into the
community, and was accompanied or followed by
the gift of the Spirit, normally attached to the laying
on of hands. We should thus be led to suppose
that baptism in the literal sense was an institution
of Christ's which the apostles administered from the
first on His instructions. And in the First Gospel
at its conclusion we have the express direction of
Christ given to the Eleven, " Go ye and make disciples
of all the nations, baptizing them [into [or ' in '] the
Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost. 35 Now, there is no good reason to doubt
that all these words formed part of the original text
of St. Matthew ; yet critics may not unreasonably
doubt whether our Lord on this occasion can have
so solemnly and emphatically pronounced the three-
fold name of God. If it had been so, we cannot but
suspect, the early teaching in Jerusalem would
have been somewhat different. But it is probable
enough that, so far at least as the command to go
out and baptize is concerned, the First Gospel was
54 DID JESTJS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH ?
following the lost ending of St. Mark. 1 This no
doubt is only conjecture, but the unquestioned
position of baptism in the Church from its very
beginning would certainly seem to indicate that it
was an appointment of Christ. St. Paul's language
also (in Eph. v. 25-6) seems to attach it to Christ.
Further, in the Fourth Gospel we have the record of
a conversation of our Lord with Nicodenras in which
He defines the future instrument of the new birth
as " water and the Holy Ghost, 95 and we have abun-
dant reason for refusing to consider the words of
Christ reported in the Fourth Gospel as destitute of
historical basis.
However, without resting our case on single passages
or on conjectures, the original prophecy of John the
Baptist coupled with the record of the Acts, indicat-
ing the undisputed position of baptism from the first,
suffice to warrant the belief that Jesus Christ took
over the ceremony of washing, freed from animal
sacrifices and circumcision, from the Jewish Church
as the ceremony of initiation into the New Israel,
henceforth to be accompanied with the new power
of the Spirit which belonged to the Messiah.
But the evidence that Jesus instituted the sacra-
ment of His body and blood in the bread and cup
of the Last Supper is much more direct and indis-
putable. I have already contended 2 that there is no
reasonable ground for doubting that the portion of
St. Paul's original teaching at Corinth on this subject,
which he recalls to the memory of the Corinthians in
his First Epistle (xL 23 fL), was, like the formulated
account of the Resurrection and the appearances of
the risen Jesus which he also recalls (xv. 1 fL), some-
thing which he had " received " at his conversion.
Therefore it was already the formulated tradition
1 The command to baptize is also implied in [Mark] xvi. 16.
3 Belief in Christ, p. 99, note A. I have also there spoken (p. 101)
about the shorter text of St. Luke.
THE INSTITUTION OF THE EUCHARIST 55
of the Church a very few years after the Crucifixion.
I need not repeat the argument here, which seems to
me convincing.
St. Paul's words are very familiar: "I received
from the Lord [as its source] that which also I
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 brake it, and said^
This is my body, which is for you [on your behalf] :
this do in remembrance 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 accounts in St.
Mark's Gospel and St. Matthew's, though doubtless
later in date, are substantially the same. If they
do not contain the words " This do in remembrance
of me," they must imply them. St. Mark must
have been fully alive to the practice of the churches
of St. Paul's foundation and others. He must have
taken it for granted that the rite, as instituted by
Christ, was, as St. Paul specifically says, intended for
subsequent observance by the Church. Thus I
think it is arbitrary in a high degree to doubt that
our Lord did institute this sacrament of perpetual
memorial for His new Israel. 1
But some more attention must be paid to these
mysterious words " Take ye : this is my body
which is for you. This is my blood of the covenant,
which is shed for many." If we try to imagine the
scene, we see that what we are witnessing is a rite
of communion or "sharing together." That was
the unmistakable meaning of the distribution of
the one loaf and the drinking of the one cup. And
it is a sacrament that is being instituted, in the sense
that the purpose of the institution is the imparting
1 On the force of rovro Troietre, etc., see Dr. Lock in Theol.,
November 1923, p. 284, " This is the passover which ye are to
keep in memorial of me."
5
56 DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH?
not of physical nourishment, but of something
whi,ch the bread and cup symbolize and with which
they are somehow identified. So St. Paul interprets
the rite : " The cup which we bless is a sharing together
in the blood of Christ. The bread which we break
is a sharing together in the body of Christ." It is
sometimes suggested that " the body of Christ "
may have been understood by St. Paul as the Church,
which he calls the body of Christ. But this sugges-
tion wholly breaks down before the parallelism of
"the body " with ;t the blood. 51 The body and the
blood together must describe Christ's sacrificed
humanity as that which is being imparted under the
figure of bread and wine. I cannot see any possible
source of this language except in the sacrificial system
of the Jews. Christ is speaking of His body as being
given in sacrifice for the people, and His blood as
being shed in sacrifice for them the * blood '
meaning * the life,' as in the case of the animals
sacrificed under the ritual law, according to the saying
in Leviticus l : " The life [soul] of the flesh is in the
blood : and I have given it to you upon the altar
to make atonement for your souls : for it is the blood
that maketh atonement by reason of the life [soul]."
Now, there were recognized in the Jewish law
many distinct classes of sacrifice, and of these one
was the peace offering ; and the characteristic of this
large class of sacrifices was that the substance of the
sacrifice was shared by the worshippers in a sacrificial
meal. (This kind of sacrifice holds, as we know, a
very important place, perhaps the chief place, in the
institution of sacrifice as it appears all over the
world.) What our Lord must have meant then by
His words to His disciples, at once affirming the
1 xvii. 11; cf. ver. 14, "As to the life of all flesh, the blood
thereof is all one with the life thereof : ... the life of all flesh
is the blood thereof" ; cf. Gen. ix, 4," Flesh with the life thereof,
which is the blood thereof."
THE EUCHARIST AND JEWISH SACRIFICES 57
sacrifice of His body and blood, and calling upon
them to feed upon it, was that His sacrifice of
Himself was of the nature of the peace offerings in
this respect, that it was to be shared by the wor-
shippers, though in its purpose it was an atonement
for sin. We shall remember that in the Epistle to
the Hebrews the writer implies that the one atoning
sacrifice for sin, offered on the cross and at the
heavenly altar, is also to be partaken of by the
worshippers. The members of the Christian Church
in this respect have a higher privilege than belonged
even to the priests under the law. 1
There are many people who appear to resent the
very idea that Christ should thus by the institution
of the eucharist have connected the New Israel
with the Old, as in other respects, so also in respect
of the institution of sacrifice. But it is noticeable
that our Lord, while He denounces the tradition
of the Scribes and Pharisees and exalts the moral
law above ceremonial observances, yet never by word
or act shows any sign of disrespect to the temple
worship. An attempt has been made to treat His
* cleansing of the temple ' as a repudiation of the
principle of animal sacrifices ; but the attempt has
no justification. And He appears to have attended
the feasts and kept the passover ; and He is recorded
to have spoken with reverence of the altar, like a
pious Jew. 8 Presumably He regarded the animal
sacrifices as a divinely sanctioned institution which
demanded fulfilment, and to which He Himself was
to give fulfilment.
And if He intended His disciples to learn at the
Last Supper that in some mysterious sense they
Were to receive into themselves His body and blood
1 Heb. xiii. 10 f., with Westcott's notes. Also the Jews
the law were by no means to partake of the blood of the
in any case.
2 Matt, xxlii. 18, cf. v. 23 , Mark i. 44 ; Luke xvii
58 DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH?
as spiritual nourishment and this cannot be denied
without violence to the evidence then it is surely
probable that the disciples had been prepared for
this startling announcement, and that the discourse
of St. John vi. rests on a historical basis. It is prob-
able that the background of that discourse, as St.
John gives it us, is sacrificial that is to say, that
when our Lord speaks of His " flesh " as not only
to be the bread of life given to the world but also
as given " on behalf of the life of the world," * He is,
as at the Last Supper, speaking of it, or of Himself,
as to be offered in sacrifice. But, whether this is or is
not the case, the whole point of this startling chapter
is to insist that His flesh 2 and blood ; which means
His humanity which can mean nothing else is to
nourish His people for eternal life ; and the explana-
tion of a thought so startling is at last offered by
the instruction that they are not to think of His
material flesh as they now see it, but of what He
will be when He has returned to His heavenly state,
and His flesh and blood will be " spirit and life." 3
But to sum up however much or however little
the disciples at the Last Supper had minds prepared
for the institution of this sacrament of Christ's body
and blood, I cannot see what reasonable ground
there is for doubting that Christ instituted it ; also
I cannot see what other interpretation can be put
upon it than what St. Paul puts upon it, and that too
in such terms as suggest that it was the accepted
interpretation which he had no need to do more
than recall to the minds of his converts " The cup
of blessing which we bless, is it not a sharing together
1 John vi. 5L
2 I do not think much difference can be assigned to < flesh " as
distinguished from "body," because both alike are put side by
side with blood.
3 John vi. 61-4; cf. Burney, Aramaic Original, p. 108, who trans-
lates ret p^fjiara d e*7tb AeXdX^/ca Ojfuv, " The things about which I
have been speaking to you." Cf. my Dissertations, App. 0.
THE MEANING OF THE BODY AND BLOOD 59
in the blood of Christ ? The bread which we break,
is it not a sharing together in the body of Christ ? " ;
and, finally, I cannot see to what other source we
can refer for the interpretation of this language of
Christ about eating His body and drinking His blood
except to the Jewish institutions of sacrifice, which
were akin to those which prevailed all over the
world, and which recognized as one at least of the
purposes of sacrifice the feeding upon the victim
by the whole group of worshippers or offerers, though
by identifying Himself as the victim He gave to the
ancient symbols a new and spiritual meaning. * I
am to become your sacrifice : by my body broken in
death and my blood shed you are to be redeemed ;
and upon that sacrifice you are to feed : my sacrificed
manhood is to be your spiritual nourishment.'
It is now often argued that the idea of feeding upon
the flesh and blood * of Christ must have been derived
from the Hellenistic mystery religions ; and this is
part of a much larger suggestion which we shall be
considering in the next chapter. But to anticipate
what we shall be seeking to prove as regards the
institution of the sacrament of Christ's body and
blood, it will not help us. The idea of eating a
sacrifice was indeed familiar to the Hellenistic
world, as it also was to the Jews. And so long as
men were able to believe that a plant or an animal
was a god, they could entertain the idea of securing
the divine virtue of the god by eating it. But the
mysteries had long passed out of such a barbaric stage.
Their religions were now anthropomorphic. And
1 It has been matter of endless contention whether the Eucharist
can rightly be called a sacrifice. I suppose that for^the ancient
world, Jewish or Greek, it would have been a sacrifice, simply
because it was a feeding upon a sacrifice. That was one at least
of the essential elements of sacrifice. And that ^ we may feed
on Him, Christ is there presented to us as sacrificed, in His
body offered and His blood shed 4 ' The Lamb as it had been
slain."
60 DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH?
there is nothing discoverable in classical literature to
lead us to suppose that the idea of eating any one of
their divine heroes or saviour gods would have been
tolerable to them. It would seem that our Lord
must bear the burden of the startling language He
chose to use alone. And it admits of no other
interpretation than that He who was to inaugurate
a new covenant with His people by the sacrifice of
His life was also to be their spiritual food.
Before we leave this subject let us remind ourselves
that that which seems so difficult, if approached as
an intellectual problem, has seemed quite otherwise
to the hearts of Christians in all generations. It is
not a barbaric instinct to which these words have
appealed, but the highest spiritual aspirations of
men, and " the Holy Communion " has created and
nourished in all generations of Christians the sense
of " Christ in us the hope of glory."
I do not think, then, that on a review of all this
evidence there is any room for doubting that Jesus
Christ did not indeed found the Church, for it had
been long in existence, but refounded it under a
new covenant, and under new government, that of
the apostles, and empowered by a new life, that of
His own Spirit, instructed anew by His teaching and
His death and resurrection, and equipped with
certain outward rites or sacraments which, with the
Scriptures, marked its continuity with the Old Israel.
Four remarks may be added in conclusion.
1. The faith of the first Christians in the guidance
of the Spirit, as being really the guidance of Christ,
was so intense that we should suppose they were
not much inclined to distinguish in value between
what was " ordained by Christ Himself " during His
life on earth and what He was still ordaining from
heaven. Nevertheless the things that Jesus began
to do and teach while on earth remained determinative*
THE CHURCH AND THE KINGDOM 61
He could not have changed. Thus, before the Gospels
were written, the greatest stress was evidently laid
on His acts and words on earth. This is especially
apparent in the writings of the apostle who had
not companied with Him on earth. And the oral
record of what Jesus had done and taught lies behind
the written Gospels. Between. A.D. 29 and A.D. 70
the conservative feeling radiating from those who
were " eye-witnesses and ministers of the word "
must have been a very stern restraint on the inventive
power of the religious imagination.
2. The relation of the Church to the Kingdom of
God is most easily understood when we view t^
Church, as historically we should, as in direct con-
tinuity with ancient Israel as being in principle
the same theocratic society, only refashioned and
renewed. For the constant idea of the prophets of
the Old Testament is that Israel is God's kingdom,
the society in which God is the real king. Neverthe-
less there was a good time coming when God would
manifest His kingdom in all the world and Israel
would be glorified. This is what is meant in the New
Testament by the coming of the Kingdom.
Only it appeared in the course of the apostolic
experience that this coming was not to be one
single act, or the matter of a single moment. In
one sense Christ implied in His teaching that the
Kingdom was already among men in virtue of
His presence. In another sense it appeared that it
was to come in His resurrection and glory and in
the mission of the Spirit. In this sense the Church
is even identified with the Kingdom, as already
appears to be the case in the parable of the drag
net and in the words of Christ to Peter, " I give
unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven." x In
1 Surely it is only so far as the Church is the Kingdom that Peter
can have its keys. He can admit into the Church. But surely
in the wider and final sense of the Kingdom the admission into it
lies only in the judgement of God.
62 DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH?
another and fuller sense the Kingdom comes only
with the final and universal triumph of God in
Christ "His appearing and his kingdom." Thus
tc non adhuc regnat hoc regnum" The Church now in
the world represents the Kingdom and in a real sense
is it ; but still it must pray cc Thy kingdom come " ;
and when that Kingdom comes in glory, the Church
will pass into it as into something much greater
than itself. This double feeling about the Church
as being, and also as not yet being, the Kingdom of
God accounts for the way in which from the first
Christians both laboured to develop and organize the
<?*\urch on earth, and yet eagerly expected the mani-
festation from heaven of something much vaster and
more glorious.
3. In the argument of this chapter I have appealed
simply to historical considerations. But there is an
appeal also open to us to common sense and universal
experience. How can any spiritual movement due
to the initiative of an individual teacher or prophet
hope to maintain itself in being ? There are two
chief means. The one is to embody the teaching in
a book. This way of proceeding Jesus Christ did
not adopt. The only book with which He left His
Church was the, now confessedly imperfect, book of
the Old Testament Scriptures, which had its value
because it was prophetic, not because it was adequate.
The other way of proceeding is to found an institu-
tion to embody and perpetuate the idea. Jesus Christ
indeed did not need to originate an institution, for
He found it in being the Church of God which was
the people of Israel ; but He needed profoundly to
modify and refound it. This, we have sought to
show, He did do in fact. But may we not say He
must, as a wise man and wise teacher, have done
something of the kind ? Can we imagine that He
could have left His doctrines to float, so to speak,
loose in the world ?
NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL $
And in support of this argument I will not appeal
to a theologian. I will appeal to Seeley's Ecce Homo.
If anyone is disposed to doubt whether Christ is
responsible for the Church whether with the deepest
deliberation He founded or refounded it I could
wish nothing better than that he should read this
remarkable book ; and the conviction which I think
it will generate in him is not only that He did found
it, but that as a wise master-builder He must have
done so.
4. I suppose that the whole tendency of modern
enquiry into the religions of the world is to prove
their "group origin." They belong to the tribe or
nation ; and whatever personal religion they are
capable of nourishing grows up under the shelter of
the social institution. This was certainly so among
the Jews. Thus if Jesus had made no provision
for the future of His disciples, it may very rightly be
argued that as Jews, believing themselves to be the
believers in the true Messiah, they must have organ-
ized themselves as a Church ; and that the natural
tendency to organization, bred of their Jewish origin,
would have been deepened, as Gentiles were incor-
porated, by the equally strong tendency to form
religious organizations which characterized contem-
porary Hellenism. There is in fact no justification
for putting the idea of Christ having instituted the
Church into antagonism to the idea of natural cir-
cumstances having favoured its formation. Those
who believe in Christ as God, believe also that God
is at work in the processes of natural human develop-
ment. The supernatural influence would have worked
in with " the natural inclination which all men have
unto sociable life." But contemporary critics have
been seeking to persuade us that the genesis of the
Church was purely natural, and that Christ neither
provided for it nor was interested in it. And the
object of this chapter has been to show that the
04 DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH?
evidence condemns such a representation, not by
any means to deny that the natural tendencies of
the period, both Jewish and Gentile, promoted its
development.
APPENDED NOTE A (see p. 38)
IS THE NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION OF PKOPHECY
SUBSTANTIALLY ERRONEOUS ?
In the Church Quarterly for April 1923 the Rev. W.
Maurice Pryke has an interesting but surprising article
in which he contends that the ascription to the Hebrew
Scriptures of the prophecy of a suffering, dying, and then
glorified Messiah, an ascription which in the Gospels is
constantly attributed to our Lord Himself, and in the
rest of the N.T. to the apostles, is quite unjustified by
the facts. " Let us then admit unreservedly that no
single passage of the O.T., whether from prophet or
psalmist, can rightly be produced as a prediction, conscious
or unconscious, of the sufferings, death, resurrection, ex-
altation, and return to judgement of the Messiah " (p. 125 ;
cf> p. 127, " So far the Jews were in the right "). But
it is astonishing that Mr. Pryke gives no consideration
to Isa. HiL Certainly (see Belief in Christ, pp. 60 ff.) one
main feature in the teaching of Christ was the import-
ance given to the " suffering servant " as constituting
an element of the greatest importance in the Old Testa-
ment picture of " him who was to come." Certainly
our Lord took the " suffering servant " of Isaiah (and
also the glorified form " like unto a son of man " in
Daniel vii.) into His conception of the Christ. He re-
garded it as moral blindness to omit the figure of the
sufferer from the picture. And undoubtedly the in-
tensely individualized picture of Isa. liii. does describe
one who redeems by suffering and death and passes
through contemptuous rejection and death to glory.
(See Driver's Isaiah, in " Men of the Bible," pp. 177-8
and 152 ff., quoted in Belief in Christ, pp. 59 f) And
round this passage group themselves a number of other
ST. PETER AND THE TWELVE 65
pictures of suffering servants of God, in the Psalms especi-
ally (xxii. and hdx,), which emphasize the idea that the
true servant of God must expect rejection, suffering, and
ignominy in the fulfilment of his mission. In a few of
the Psalms I do not think it is possible to doubt that
the idea is presented of the faithful servant living
through death (see an article by Dr. E. H. Askwith in
Expository January 1923, "The Hope of Immortality in
the Psalter " and Dr. Briggs's Notes on Ps. xvi 10-11,
xvii. 15, xlix. 15, Ixxiii. 23 f.). The question whether
the contention of our Lord and His apostles, that the
death and resurrection and glory of the Christ was
prophesied in the Old Testament, was justified in fact,
depends in the main on the question whether Isaiah liii,,
and the Psalms which group themselves round this central
conception, really ought to be taken into the picture of
" him who was to come," that is, the Christ.
APPENDED NOTE B (seep. 46)
THE RELATION OF ST. PETER TO THE OTHER APOSTLES
This is a subject which has been blackened with con-
troversy, so that it is difficult to gain or keep a free mind
about it. The Roman Church has appropriated the
Petrine texts, in much the same way as Protestant
tradition has appropriated the Epistle to the Galatians.
Yet on consideration we do not find either that the
Roman contention is supported by the New Testament
as a whole or the Lutheran individualism by St. Paul's
Epistles.
I. The prominence of Peter and his leadership of the
apostles must surely be admitted. But, apart from any
question of his office, his prominence is due to what one
may call his forthcomingness. When our Lord asked
the great question, " Who do ye say that I am ? " Peter
was forward to answer for all. He was their spokesman.
Immediately after his confession, followed in St. Matthew
by Christ's startling words of benediction, he again was
forward in vehement deprecation of the Lord's prophecy
of His rejection and crucifixion. Accordingly to him
60 DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH ?
also was addressed the tremendous rebuke, " Get thee
behind me, Satan. 5 ' But it was not meant for him
alone. All the rest probably shared his mind. Again, it
was he who was forward in professions of loyalty just
before the passion, which accounts for two solemn warn-
ings addressed to him personally " Simon, Simon,
Satan hath desired to have you, that he might sift you
as wheat ; but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith
fail not : and do thou, when once thou hast turned again,
strengthen thy brethren 5 ' (Luke xxii. 31-2). "Simon,
sleepest thou ? couldest thou not watch with me one
hour? 5 ' (Mark xiv. 37). In the event he alone denied
his Lord, but they all forsook him and fled. Then when,
in Galilee after the Resurrection, he is solemnly cross-
questioned by the Lord as to his love for Him, and
solemnly restored to his pastoral function or apostolate
for surely the Fathers are right in so interpreting the
scene l he is still a representative man, representative
of the others with whom he shares the pastoral com-
mission, both in their weakness and in their penitence.
We should notice that the representative character of
St. Peter is a great point with the Fathers " gerebat
personam ecclesiae," as St. Augustine says. (See Denny,
p. 60.)
2. But also he is the leader among the apostles. If
this is more obvious in St. Matthew than elsewhere,
that is perhaps because the tendency of the Jewish
Christian to exalt St. James into a "bishop of bishops "
had to be rebuked. But there can be no mistake about
his leadership. The disciples are called " those about
Peter " in the uncanonical ending of St. Mark's Gospel,
and " the disciples and Peter " is in Mark xvi. 7 the
name for the whole group. Also his leadership after
the Ascension is obvious in the Acts. But nothing can
have happened, we must remember, to prevent James
and John from seeking the foremost seats of honour in
the day of Christ's glory (Mark x. 37), or the whole
group discussing " which of them is accounted to be
greatest " (Luke xxii. 24). The commission promised,
1 See Roman Catholic Claims, chap, v, pp. 80, 81 ; and with much
greater fullness, Denny's Papali&m, 1C, pp. 65 H
ST. PAUL ON ST. PETER 67
not given, to Peter alone, in Matt. xvi. is very im-
pressive. But it must be remembered that the com-
mission actually given in John xx. to the whole group is
in substance the same. The keys to open and shut and
the authority to bind and loose (which go together) are
both involved in the commission to absolve and retain
sins. The Fathers seem to hold it as unquestionable
that the power of the keys is nothing else than the power
to bind and loose and to absolve and retain sins, and
that it was given to all the apostles : see Benny, p. 57,
Still we ask, Is not the stewardship given to Peter some-
thing unique and personal, like the stewardship of his
Old Testament prototypes, Eliakim and Shebna ? And
in St. Luke xii. when Peter asks the question, " Speakest
thou this [about the stewardship] to us, or even unto
all ? " though our Lord's reply is addressed to them all
('* I say unto t/ow"), yet it has been suggested that the
stewardship is still spoken of as the office of a single
person. There is something that is ambiguous in the
Gospels, and we naturally go to the Acts and the Epistles
for elucidation of the ambiguity.
a. And the Acts and the Epistles, it seems to me,
negative the idea that any special office, other than a
leadership among equals, belongs to St. Peter. In
St. Paul's the " stewardship " belongs to all the apostles
(1 Cor. iv. 1), or indeed to all the presbyter-bishops
(Tit. i. 7). His language about St. Peter seems positively
to exclude any recognition on his part of any authority
belonging to him which he himself and the other apostles
did not share equally. He ranks " James, Cephas, and
John " together as " they who were reputed to be
pillars." He sees Peter twice at Jerusalem with some
others " reputed to be somewhat," but " they added
nothing to him." His own apostolic authority he has
received neither " from men nor through man." He
rebuked Cephas to the face when he stood self-condemned
for inconsistency at Antioch (Gal. i. and ii.). When he
is speaking about the Corinthian parties " of Paul, of
Apollos, of Cephas " (1 Cor. i. 12), there is no hint of
superiority of one to the other. All the apostles had,
it seems, the same authority under Christ the head.
The idea of a headship on earth appears to be excluded.
68 DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH?
Under Christ are " first apostles," etc. (Eph. iv. 9-16),
It is the " holy apostles and prophets " who are the
foundation stones of the Church (Eph. ii. 20), as in the
vision of John in the Apocalypse the wall of the New
Jerusalem has " twelve foundations s which are the twelve
apostles." There is no room left for any Petrine au-
thority, except that which he shared with all the others.
Nor is there any suggestion of more than an original
leadership in the Acts of the Apostles. When the
Church " sent down " Peter and John to Samaria, they
are sending seemingly two equal officers to complete
what Philip could not complete. Peter opens the door
to the Gentiles, but Paul bears the brunt of keeping it
open. He appears to eclipse Peter, just as the apostolate
to the Gentiles which belonged to Paul and Barnabas
was so much more important than the apostolate to the
circumcision which was allotted to James, Cephas, and
John. In the Council at Jerusalem, Peter gives crucial
testimony, but James presides and gives the verdict.
And there is no hint of special authority in St. Peter's
Epistle.
4. The later witness of the Fathers (which I have sought
to summarize in Roman Catholic Claims, but which is to be
found much more fully in Denny, op. cit. 9 and in Puller's
Primitive Saints and the See of Rome) is not at all favour-
able (if one excludes the testimony of Rome itself) to
the Romanist interpretation of the Petrine texts. This
is not the place to speak of the claim made for the
transmission of power supposed to be Peter's to his
successors in the see of Rome, of which, of course, in the
New Testament there is no hint.
APPENDED NOTE C (see p. 47)
THE AUTHORITY OF AN APOSTLE
The authority of an apostle, as St. Paul represents it,
is the authority (c&nwria) of a regular officer of an
organized society. As being such, he can claim support
for himself and his wife, if he is married, in the churches
of his foundation ; and that by the ordinance of Christ
THE AUTHORITY OF AN APOSTLE 69
(1 Cor, ix. 1-14 ; 2 Thess. iii. 9). His mission, given him
by Christ, is to preach the Gospel (1 Cor. i. 17) and to
" edify " the churches, but also, where necessary, to
exercise sharp discipline (2 Cor. x. 8 9 xiii. 10). Apostles
are " ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries
[revealed secrets] of God" (1 Cor. iv. 1). St. Paul also
speaks of his ministry in sacerdotal terms. ** I have
written to you," he says (Rom. xv. 15), " with a certain
freedom in virtue of my commission as a priest of Christ
Jesus to the Gentiles in the service of God's gospel." 1
In effect, then, the office of the apostle is the full pastoral
office to feed and to govern the flock of Christ, with the
special qualification of a founder or initiator ; and it is
essentially a world- wide office, though practically arrange-
ments have been made that some apostles should go
to the Jews and others to the Gentiles. It authorizes
St. Paul to judge and excommunicate an offending Chris-
tian if possible in union with the local church to which
the offender belongs and to absolve another who has
repented " in the name of the Lord Jesus " or " in the
person of Christ " (1 Cor. v. 3; 2 Cor. ii. 10). St. Paul,
we observe, does not like exercising mere authority, but
prefers to work by persuasion. Thus he tells Philemon
(ver. 8) that he " exhorts " him to do the right thing by
Onesimus, but that he has full authority in Christ to
command him.
The apostolate is the chief office in the Church, set
there by God or by Christ, the head of the Church. He
gave " some as apostles " " first, apostles " (Eph. iv. 11,
1 Cor.' xii. 28). It is " neither from men, nor through
man, but through Jesus Christ, and God the Father "
(Gal. i. 1). St. Paul himself received his apostolate
from the glorified Christ in heaven, whom he saw. But
he was appointed " out of due time." There were
" apostles before him " who had been apostles when
Christ appeared to them after the Resurrection, and
must therefore have been appointed during His life on
earth (I Cor. xv. 5-8 ; Gal. i. 17).
Words could not express more simply or clearly than
those of St. Paul that the authority of the apostolate
did not accrue to it by the voice of the Church, or under
1 Dr. James Moffat's translation.
70 DID JESUS CHRIST FOUND THE CHURCH?
the pressure of circumstances, or by personal influence.
It was an original institution in the Church, of Christ's
creation, the same in the case of St. Paul as in that
of the original Twelve.
In the Acts we perceive that it is the function of the
apostle to convey to the baptized the gift of the Holy
Spirit by the laying on of hands 1 ; and in the Acts and
the Pastoral Epistles it appears to be also the function
of an apostle in some kind of undefined co-operation
with the local presbyter-bishops to perpetuate the
ministry in the Church, again through the laying on of
hands, viewed sacramentally as a means of conveying a
special gift of the Holy Spirit. But about this we shall
have occasion to speak in a later chapter.
APPENDED NOTE D (see p. 49)
THE COMMISSION IN ST. JOHN XX. 21-3
The general sense of this passage seems strongly to
suggest that it is an apostolate which is being conferred,
which is a continuation of Christ's apostolate. Cf. the
earlier commission to the Twelve (St. Matt. x. 16; cf,
Luke ix. 2), " Behold, I send you forth," and the words
in the prayer of our Lord before His passion, " As thou
didst send me into the world, even so sent I them into
the world " (John xvii. 18). In a sense the commission
is to the Church as a whole ; but the sending of men
into the world as evangelists is especially applicable to
the apostles, though the Seventy may have shared their
mission. In the latter part of St. John, however, " the
disciples " appears to mean the Twelve 2 ; and the nature
1 If Dr. Swete is right in interpreting Gal. iii. 5 ('* He that sup-
plieth to you the Spirit and worketh miracles among you ") of the
apostle, not of God directly, then we should have a reference to
" confirmation " ; but I do not feel sure that Dr. Swete is right.
We notice that in the Bezan text of Acts xi. 17 Peter protests :
** Who was I that I could withstand God, that I should not give
them the Holy Spirit when they believed on him ? " Cf. p. 132, n. 2.
2 Cf. Westcott on St. John xxi. I, "By the disciples is meant
in all probability the apostles." Cf. The Church and the Ministry
p. 207, n. 2 *'
THE COMMISSION IN ST. JOHN 71
of the commission strongly suggests administrative
officers and not merely ordinary members of a society.
Apparently there were other people present (Luke xxiv.
83), but the special apostolic commission may very well
have been given in the presence of others. The commis-
sion In St. Matt, xxviii. 16 is specially said to be given
"to the eleven disciples" (cf. [St. Mark] xvi. 14-15),
but it must probably be identified with the appearance
"to above five hundred brethren at once" recorded
by St. Paul.
Dr. Hort, whose great name is chiefly quoted for
making the commission general, seems to me, as to Dr.
Mason, in his posthumous work on The Christian Ecclesia
(Macmillan, 1897), greatly to underrate the evidence that
the apostles were understood from the beginning to be
the divinely appointed rulers of the Church, See The
Church and the Ministry (Longmans), App. Note M 5 p.
379. But it should be noted that in respect of the apos-
tolic commission recorded in St. Matthew and St. John,
SfTHort speaks very hesitatingly. " Doubt is possible " ;
u Granting that it was probably to the Eleven that our
Lord directly and principally spoke on both these occa-
sions (and even to them alone when He spoke the words
at the end of St. Matthew's Gospel), yet it has still to be
considered In what capacity they were addressed by
Him." My contention is that It is plainly as officers of
the future community and not merely as witnesses or
disciples. I think the free and easy manner in which it
is commonly taken for granted that the commission was
given to the Church as a whole augurs a considerable
amount of wilfulness of mind.
CHAPTER III
CHRISTIANITY AND THE MYSTEEY EELIGIONS
So far what we have done is this : we have found
in the Acts and Epistles of the New Testament a
religion of the Spirit which is also a religion of the
Church for the only recognized sphere of the Spirit's
action is the Church of the believers in Jesus as the
Christ and Lord. And the Church we found to
regard itself as no new foundation, but as the ancient
people of God the Israel of the prophets reformed
on the basis of faith in Jesus as the promised Christ,
and admitting Gentile and Jew on equal terms into
its fellowship. And we saw convincing reason to
believe that Jesus Himself did regard His disciples as
the only true Israel, and that He was at pains to re-
equip this renewedlsrael,this new "household of God/ 5
with certain stewards or officers in the persons of the
Twelve and with certain symbolic rites or sacra-
ments of incorporation and fellowship. Thus the
religion of the Spirit in the Church appears in the
New Testament as the culmination of the religion of
Israel. "Salvation is of the Jews." This is un-
doubtedly the account which the New Testament
gives of itself and its origin.
We must not, however, altogether exclude the
notion of the incorporation into the religious develop-
ment of Israel of elements from the religions of other
nations. The truly original features of the Jewish
religion, i.e. the prophetic doctrine about God and
72
ASSIMILATION 73
man, and the social and religious life based upon it,
did in fact grow in the heart of a Semitic tribe or
group of tribes more or less possessed already of the
common Semitic type of religious ideas, traditions,
and institutions. What we discern in the Old
Testament is that the prophetic doctrine succeeded
in transforming and correcting these ideas, traditions,
and institutions, and so making of them a quite
new thing. And later, when the developed religion
of the prophets was brought into close contact with
Babylonian, Persian, and Greek influences, it appears
to have incorporated elements from them, such as
appear in the later Jewish teaching about angels
and about Satan, and in the doctrine of the Divine
Wisdom immanent and operative in all nature,
but not to such an extent as to imperil the distinctive
character of the prophetic doctrine. 1 We may find
indeed among the Jews such an amalgamation of
the prophetic faith with alien features as seriously
to corrupt the tradition. Thus we may stand in
doubt whether the Essene communities, contem-
porary with our Lord, were not more Oriental than
Jewish in their religion 2 ; or whether some of
the Apocalypses do not seriously pervert the cxpecta-
1 Thus we may take it for granted that the later Jewish teaching
about angels was due in part to Persian influences, yet it was held
on a basis of belief in the unique majesty of God, due to the pro-
phetic teaching, so that no " worship of angels " (Col. ii. 18) could
be tolerable to a Jew who knew his Bible. And the later doctrine
of Satan as a rebel angel who had by his rebellion become the
adversary of God, as compared to the earlier doctrine of Satan
as one among the sons of God (see A. B. Davidson's TheoL of the
O.T., pp. 300ff.) wa s really an inevitable outcome of the fuller
recognition, under the stress of the prophetic teaching, of the
divine goodness, which made it impossible to think that the adver-
sary and the tempter could be among the agents of God's will
(see Jas. i. 13). And the idea of "the Wisdom'* of God the
*' immanent God "learned in part from the Greeks, was an out-
come of the teaching of the divine omnipresence as seen in Ps. cxxxix.
The assimilated ideas maintained the prophetic teaching and in no
wise corrupted it.
2 Hastings, Diet, oj the Bible, s.v. "Essence."
74 CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY RELIGIONS
tion of the prophets. 1 But this was not the case with
the religion of the Old Testament as we see it passing
into the New. That is essentially the religion of the
prophets, and of the ceremonial and civil law as
reconstructed under the leadership of the prophets.
When we have passed from the Old Testament to
the New we find certainly a similar process of assimila-
tion going on. Confessedly Christianity * borrowed '
from Greek philosophy, 2 and the process is already
beginning in St. Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews
and St. John, and is still more marked in the early
Apologists (to go no farther). Again the question
arises how far did the process go ? Is the Chris-
tianity of the Epistles really in all its substance the
religion of the prophets, consummated in Jesus
Christ and realized in the mission from Him of the
Holy Spirit, as it obviously claims to be, or is it an
amalgamation of Jewish and Hellenistic elements in
about equal proportion ? In particular, is all that
has been associated with the religion of the Spirit
in the Church the idea of the Spirit of God, or Christ
by the Spirit, indwelling the community and its
individual members, they in Him and He in them,
the idea of the sacraments as channels or instru-
ments of spiritualgrace, accomplishing man's regenera-
tion and re-creation by incorporation into Christ
and feeding upon Him, and the idea of a priestly
ministry divinely appointed to teach and to safe-
guard divine mysteries, is all this group of ideas
which has largely constituted the substance of
Catholicism, as it appears in history from St. Paul
downwards, really not due to the prophets or to
Jesus Christ or to Hebrew tradition at all, but to
Hellenism ? Was it even the case that the spirit
of Hellenism passed in such full flood into the first
Christian communities outside Palestine, with the
1 See Belief in Christ, pp. 21-5.
2 See above, pp. 181, 311
CHRISTIANITY 'EXPLAINED 9 75
influx of the Gentiles, as really to transform the
religion of Jesus substantially into a mystery religion
on the Hellenistic pattern ?
This I suppose to be at the present moment the
most formidable of the proposed c explanations * of
Christianity and, owing to its elusiveness, the most
difficult to deal with. We have always been accus-
tomed to see in the Gnostic sects, in marked dis-
tinction from the early Catholic Church, amalgama-
tions of Hellenism with Jewish and Christian ideas
a group of amalgamations in which Hellenism had a
substantial victory. But is it after all the case that
as between the Gnostic sects and the orthodox
Church, even the Church as St. Paul expounded it,
it is only a question of more or less that even the
Church as St. Paul expounded it is substantially
Hellenistic, and so far quite alien to the mind and
intention of Jesus of Nazareth ?
In part we have had to face this theory already
as when it would attribute the title " Lord " as
applied to Christ to Hellenistic influences, assimilat-
ing Christ to Serapis or Adonis or the like * saviours/
and we found the attribution really quite groundless. 1
Again, we had to consider the attempt to detach
from Christ the institution of the sacrament of His
body and blood, and to present it as an element
of* contemporary mysticism which passed into St.
Paul's mind in a vision a communication which
he believed to be from the Lord Jesus, but which
was really due to the ' sacramental 3 atmosphere of
the Hellenistic world ; and this interpretation again
we found we must decisively reject. 2 But it does
not suffice to deal with this theory of the Hellenizing
of Christianity piecemeal. We must seek to envisage
the position as a whole. It presents itself from two
sides: from the side of the anthropologists or students
i See Belief in Christ, pp. 102 ft, Note B.
8 See op. cit., pp. 99 f., Not A, and in this volume see pp. 54.1
76 CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY RELIGIONS
of comparative religions, as represented, for instance,
by Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough ; and
from the side of students of the Hellenistic move-
ments and literature, amongst whom Reitzenstein
is the most conspicuous. 1 And we will consider Sir
James Frazer's position first.
Sir James Frazer is among the most distinguished
of the anthropologists who have devoted themselves
to the study of comparative mythology ; and after
thirty years of laborious investigation, which began
from the legends connected with the priest of Nemi
and has spread over the whole of our globe, he has
recently condensed into a single volume the evidence,
reasonings and conclusions of the twelve volumes
previously published, under the general heading of
The Golden Bough.* Perhaps the most interesting ,
feature of these widespread enquiries is the disclosure
of the deep impression made on primitive man, in
widely separated portions of the world, by the seeming
death of nature in the autumn and its revival in
spring, or in tropical countries by its death under
the tyranny of the sun and its revival with the rains.
Sometimes we see men apparently afraid that nature,
on whose bounty their life depended, was in real
danger of death, and devoting themselves by ' sym-
pathetic magic ' to keeping it alive or renewing its
life. Then, as the regular recurrence of the seasons
made this fear absurd, we see them none the less
impressed with the constant spectacle of Mother
Nature living by dying, and conscious also of their
own Idns^ip with nature in this respect. Thus in
some forms of barbaric nature worship, some animal
* See Belief in Christ, p. 133.
2 The Golden Sough, a study in magic and religion, by Sir James
George Frazer, F.B.S., F.B. A., Abridged Edition (Macmiilan, 1922).
"THE GOLDEN BOUGH" 77
or plant, which is the representative of nature, is
worshipped as a divine being, and some individual
specimen of the proper species is consecrated and
eaten by its worshippers as a religious act, in the
belief that its life and strength will so pass into
them. So we get religion associated w r ith sacrifice
and 'sacramental' feeding, 1 And as by a nearly
universal instinct men either shrink from death and
desire to perpetuate their lives, or believe that the
human spirit does in fact survive death, so the hope
grows that by eating their god who lives by dying
the corn-spirit, for example they can secure them-
selves against death or win a happy state of existence
after death. This outcome of nature worship seems
to be proved in certain cases and is very interesting.
Then w r hen religion passes into an * anthropo-
morphic ' stage, that is when the gods are figured
in quasi-human forms, we have the same funda-
mental fact of the death and revival of nature figured
in myths of the death and recovery of some
divine or semi-divine man, beloved of a goddess
(Mother Nature). Thus Tammuz, whom the Greeks
called Adonis, beloved of the Babylonian goddess
1 There is good evidence for this "sacramental" feeding in the
ritual of the Aztecs (see Frazer, op. cit., pp. 488 ff.) and in some
tribes of Northern Europe. But in Frazer's chap. L, on " Eating
the God," most of the examples are very questionable. We remem-
ber that when the Jews ate their peace offerings, they attached
no such idea to the eating. " Upon data so fragmentary and
uncertain," Frazer remarks in one instance (p. 491), "it is im-
possible to build with confidence." The same remark might be
often repeated. He quotes from Cicero (without a reference),
p. 499 : " When we call corn Ceres and wine Bacchus we use a,
common figure of speech; but do you imagine that anybody is
so insane as to believe that the thing he feeds upon is a god 1 3>
Cicero would have spoken differently if he had had any idea that
the common people did so believe or ever had so believed. There
is no evidence that when the worshippers of Attis ate out of a
drum and drank out of a cymbal they had any such belief, or when
the votaries of Eleusis absorbed the sacred drink (KVKWV). But
the kind of belief may have been widespread wherever the god was
identified with an animal or plant : see further App. Note, pp. 105 f.
78 CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY RELIGIONS
Ishtar or Aphrodite, and Attis, beloved of the
Phrygian Cybele, and the Egyptian demi-god Osiris,
beloved of Isis, were beautiful young men killed by
accident, or self-mutilation, or murder, and then in
some way brought back from death or made lords
of the dead. In each case there were solemn rites
commemorating the divine hero's death, as you read
in Ezekiel of the idolatrous women in Jerusalem
" weeping for Tammuz," and the sorrow of the
devotees was turned into joy in the contemplation of
his life renewed and the power that was now his.
And there were * mysteries ' or secret cults 1 asso-
ciated with these divine couples by which the
initiates were assured that they too would pass
through death to life. Thus one of the sacred
hymns of Attis said, " Take courage, O ye initiates,
because the god is saved ; so to you also after troubles
shall be salvation" ; or a hymn of Osiris said, u As
truly as Osiris lives, he also shall live ; as truly
as Osiris is not dead, shall he [the initiate] not die ;
as truly as Osiris is not annihilated, shall he not
be annihilated.' 3 And these mystery-cults were
celebrated with an imposing or frenzied ritual,
and were in charge of special priesthoods.
The cults just named were oriental in origin ; but
there were like cults, which were of very old standing
in Greece. Thus the divine Dionysus or Zagreus
had been murdered in the form of a bull and raised
to life again by his father Zeus, and in the festival
of his commemoration the frenzied worshippers tore
a live bull to pieces with their teeth and perhaps
1 Perhaps the best and most trustworthy source of information
on these cults is Cumont's Religions orientales dans le paganisme
remain (Oriental Religions : Engl. trans., 1911, Chicago Open
Court Publishing Co., and Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner
& Co., London). Dr. Perey Gardner's Religious Experience of
St. Paul, chap, iv (Williams & Norgate), is also suggestive; and
indeed the subject is now one of widespread interest among th
learned and is becoming popularized.
THE VOGUE OF THE MYSTERIES 79
originally believed themselves to eat their go<L a
And, in spite of the savage origin of this cult, a man
as refined as Plutarch can comfort his wife over the
death of their infant daughter with the hope of
immortality assured to them by the mysteries of
Dionysus into which they were both initiated. g
And the mysteries of Eleusis, besides incorporating
the Dionysus myth, were based upon the story of
Persephone who was carried off by Pluto to Hades,
and won back again, at least for two-thirds of the
year, by her mother Demeter (Mother Earth). And
there seems to be no doubt that all these gods or
semi-divine beings, Oriental, Egyptian, or Greek,
rescued from death and promoted to glory, were, in
more or less thinly- veiled disguise, the corn-spirit or
god of vegetation in some form. It is the death
and resurrection of nature which lies at the root
of all these worships.
Acquaintance with these mystery religions shows
that their ideas and rites were at bottom barbarous
and obscene. 3 Nevertheless, as the established State
religions of Greece and Rome became discredited and
abandoned, these mystery religions took their place
in the affections of the people, and, in spite of official
resistance, became the fashion among religious-
minded people, and even among the later philo-
sophers. The mood of the world had become a
mood of pessimism. Men were oppressed with a
sense of overhanging fate and with a feeling of the
* See, however, below, p. 105.
2 Consol. fid ux. 9 10 : T& [tvo-ruck <rifyt/3oXa r&v irepl rbp Ai6vv<rw
dpyia<r/A&v & ff^viff^v dXX^Xots ol' Kowutvovvres.
3 And in great part they remained so : see Strabo (born
about A.D. 64), Geogr., xii, 2, 3, and xii, 3, 32, and 36, as^to the
accompaniments of the worship at Comana in Cappadocia, and
Comana in Pontus, and Corinth. The degrading effect of the
myths and rites upon the mass of men is also admitted in one of
the few classical books about the mysteries Plutarch's de Isid&
et Osiride. He wishes to give the myth and the ritual alike a
philosophical meaning ; but he is quite explicit about the actual
facts: see capp. 20, 35, 68 (end), 70, 71.
80 CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY RELIGIONS
pollution of physical life. In this atmosphere all
sorts of superstitions flourished, and a wide welcome
was given to mysteries which promised their associates
release and immortality, and fellowship with a divine
being through the medium of initiations and symbolic
rites, even though their origins might be barbarous
and degrading.
It is easy to use language which assimilates these
mythological mystery religions to the Christian
creed and rites. Thus Frazer, though he has aban-
doned an extreme form of the mythical theory
which at one time he put forward to account for
the crucifixion of Jesus, 1 does not scruple to use
this kind of language abundantly. Thus" The
god [Osiris] who annually died and rose again
from the dead " ; "As Osiris died and rose again
from the dead, so all men hoped to rise again like
him from death to life eternal " ; "He gave his
own body to feed the people ; he died that they
might live"; "The fast which accompanied the
mourning for the dead god [Attis] may perhaps have
been designed to prepare the body of the communi-
cant for the reception of the blessed sacrament " ;
"A man-god slain to take away the misfortunes of
the people "; " The good god [Saturn] who gave his life
for the world." 4&& of course the virginal conception
of Jesus is regarded as a feature in this assimilation.
" His [Attis 5 ] birth is said to have been miraculous.
His mother Nana was a virgin." Again a parallel to
Christian ideas is found in the remoter East. " Thus
through the mist of ages the tragic figure of the
Pope of Buddhism God's vicar on earth for Asia
looms dim and sad as the man-god who bore his
people's sins, the good shepherd who laid down his
life for the sheep." 2 Besides all this, Frazer is
constantly pointing out how the popular observances
1 See Golden Bough, vol. ix of the original work p 412
2 See op. cit., pp. 325, 34=7, 367, 376, 351, 586, 347^ 574^
SUPPOSED SOURCES OF CHRISTIAN BELIEFS 81
of Christian festivals show obvious connexion with
the ancient pagan feasts which they superseded.
How all this language of Frazer's impresses people
is shown from an incidental remark of Mr. Bertrand
Russell * : " Sir J. G. Frazer in his Golden Bough has
shown that most of the elements of Christianity are
derived from worship of the spirit of vegetation,
the religion invented in the infancy of agriculture to
insure the fertility of the soil."
I will give one more instance of this assimilation
from Loisy. 2 He thus summarizes St. Paul's con-
ception of his Lord. " He was a saviour-god, after
the manner of an Osiris, an Attis, a Mithra. Like
them he belonged by his origin to the celestial
world ; like them he had made his appearance on
the earth ; like them he had accomplished a work
of universal redemption, efficacious and typical ;
like Adonis, Osiris, and Attis he had died a violent
death, and like them he had been restored to life ;
like them he had prefigured in his lot that of the
human beings who should take part in his worship,
and commemorate his mystic enterprise ; like them
he had predestined, prepared, and assured the
salvation of those who became partakers in his
passion." This suggested assimilation of Christian
beliefs and processes to those of Oriental mysteries
which is just now very popular we must attentively
examine. But first of all let us make four important
concessions to those who make such suggestions, if
" concessions " is the right word to describe what is
very cordially made.
The first is that, if we believe in one God the
common Father of all who has all through human
history been at work in the heart of man arid has
nowhere left Himself without witness, we shall not
1 The Prospects of Industrial Civilization, p. 47.
* Hibbert Journal, October 1911, p. 51. The foundations of such
a theory are laid in Les Mystere* patens, etc., referred to later.
82 CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY RELIGIONS
be surprised to find all the world over ideas in the
minds of even barbarous tribes which we shall recog-
nize as akin, even if remotely akin, to the ideas of
incarnation and atonement and divine fellowship
which we associate in their highest form with Jesus
Christ and His redemption of man. So far from
being shocked to find anticipations of such ideas
even in the religion of savages, we ought to be^eager
to recognize them, (1) as evidence of the unity of
the human race, and (2) as a sort of prophecy. (1) No
one can read the evidence of the beliefs and customs
of primitive men all the world over, as Sir James
Frazer has accumulated it, without being deeply
impressed with the sense of identity in human senti-
ment and aspiration everywhere, and feeling how
naturally religion in all parts of the world takes on
a ' sacramental ' form, that is, expresses itself in
rites and ceremonies which are believed to convey
some sort of spiritual influence. Certainly, we feel,
we are " of one blood " even with Aztecs and Aus-
tralian bushmen. (2 ) No one can believe that God has
a purpose for man, whieMs ultimately to be realized
in and through Jesus Christ, without welcoming the
signs that, even in a savage form, aspiration was
being evoked which was one day to find satisfaction
in a form from which all savagery had been purged
away. Thus we should examine the connexion of
Christian ideas and institutions with those of the
pagan world quite without prejudice. And I think
that anyone who takes an unprejudiced view of the
circumstances of early Christianity will admit that
the * mystery religions 5 of the empire created a sort
of widespread spiritual appetite which Christianity
showed itself better able than anything else to satisfy :
but of this I shall say something more before I
have done.
Secondly, we shall (with St. Chrysostom) recognize
that Jewish institutions such as temple and sacri-
CERTAIN ADMISSIONS SB
fices and festivals and sacred dresses and taboos
had their origin in the common stock of Semitic
customs or ideas. The evidence of this is clearly to
be found in the study of the earliest layer of the Old
Testament literature ; and as the Christian institu-
tions or ideas were based upon the Jewish, so they
were, even in virtue of their Hebrew origin, very
remotely based upon the common stock of human
religions.
Thirdly in view of Frazer's tendency to argue
from the dates and observances of the Church festivals
let it be recognized that when Christianity came
out into the world and was making its way to become
the established religion, it found certain annual
festivals in possession of mankind, such as the festival
of the winter solstice, the spring festival, and the
midsummer festival, associated with moments in the
annual course of the sun or of the crops. These
were natural festivals, corrupted no doubt with much
superstition and vice, but too dear to the hearts of
the people to be easily suppressed. No wonder
then if the Church, having its own spring festival,
with its date determined by the Jewish Passover,
instead of entering into rivalry with the old festivals,
sought to superimpose the new Christian feast upon
the old and let the new Christian ideas banish the
old vices and superstitions. So in England they
identified the Paschal festival with the old pagan
spring festival of cc Easter " and even retained the
old name as Bede says, " giving to the old feast a
new consecration. 35 So the festival of St. John the
Baptist was used to give a new meaning to the old
midsummer celebration. So, it may be (but this
is not at all certain) the date of Christmas was
fixed to correspond with the festivals of the winter
solstice. 1
1 See Duchesne, Christian Worship, pp. 256 fi.
84 CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY RELIGIONS
Fourthly, there can be no doubt that, when Chris-
tianity became the religion of the Empire and began
to be the only safe religion to profess, and a little
later was accepted by barbarous races in mass at the
bidding of their chiefs, a great deal of pagan super-
stition passed inside the Church. With such corrup-
tions of the tradition we are not yet concerned.
For some three centuries Christianity had been kept
relatively pure by the danger of professing it. And it
is only with the religion of the early centuries, and
especially with the religion of the New Testament,
that we are concerned.
But when due account has been, taken of all this,
it must be admitted that Frazer and Loisy are
behaving very unscientifically in relying upon
similarities of language and sometimes, it must be
added, very forced similarities as an argument for
similarity of origin, without any real regard to the
source of the language in each case.
Thus though, remotely hidden, the origin of the
Jewish festivals of the Passover and Pentecost and
Tabernacles may lie with a Semitic nature worship,
based upon the decay and revival of nature, such
origin appears to have been utterly forgotten by the
Jews, who for centuries before Christ had retained
no traces of nature worship, but held it in abhorrence.
And the Jewish belief in the resurrection of the dead
had not arisen in any connexion with the life of
nature, but out of the belief in God and His justice
and the relation of the soul to God. J
And when the belief in resurrection among the
Jews received its confirmation in the death and
resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the belief in His
resurrection was wholly alien from any idea of
* corn-spirits ' or gods of vegetation. Nor do the
anthropomorphic legends of Osiris and the rest
suggest the conception of resurrection as the Chris-
tians understood it. Some of these wholly mythical
FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCES 85
hero-gods * were returned from the world of the dead
by the decree of Zeus for part of the year, like
Adonis and Persephone ; and the fragments of the
murdered and dismembered Osiris, re-collected by the
loving search of Isis, were remade into an Osiris who
became the Lord of the dead. The Christian word
C4 resurrection " with its very concrete associations
can hardly be properly applied to such vaguely
conceived returns of souls from the world of the dead
or glorifications of a dead hero in Hades.
Again, there is no suggestion in any of these
myths, as the ancients give them us, of a " redeemer-
god " or a " saviour-god " who had come from
heaven to save mankind by the sacrifice of his life.
These myths are concerned (for instance) with
beautiful youths, loved by goddesses, who were put
to death by a wild beast or by suicide or murder,
and were themselves saved and rescued from death
by one of the higher gods, yielding to the importunity
of the divine lover. There is not a trace of the
Saviour- God who came down to earth and sacrificed
Himself that men might live. The passage in Frazer
in which such a r61e is assigned to Saturn is exceed-
ingly forced, and based on a more than precarious
idea that Saturn in a certain rite of the Saturnalia
was regarded as sacrificed apparently to himself. 8
As for the strange sentences about the Thibetan
Lama, 3 one has only to read the preceding pages to
realize how little they are based upon. There was
indeed in the Prometheus myth, as Aeschylus treated
it, the idea of the self-sacrifice of a semi-divine hero
for the good of men, side by side with that of the
jealousy and cruelty of the higher gods, but it
inaugurated no cult and had no apparent influence.
1 Plutarch, we notice, de Isid. et Osir., cap. 11, repudiates witli
horror the idea of the myth being true Set w$h otea-Oai rot/re^ . . .
yeyovtis o#rw /cat 7T7rpoLy/j.^votf. Cf. capp. 21 if.
2 Frazer, op. cit. t p. 586. 8 p. 574,
86 CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY RELIGIONS
Nor, again, is there any justification for language
which finds in these nature mysteries a counterpart
to the Christian idea of communion in the body and
blood of Christ. There is nothing to suggest the
eating of the god, except at the stage of religion
where the plant or animal is crudely believed to be
a god. But this stage had long been outgrown in
the anthropomorphic myths, and there is nothing
to suggest the " man-god " feeding his people with
Ms own substance. 1
Finally, it is true that the mother of Attis is said
to have "conceived by putting a ripe almond or
pomegranate in her bosom " ; and there are of course
multitudes of legends of " miraculous births " by the
intercourse of gods with women, but they suggest
nothing in the Bible except the single fragment of
unassimilated mythology in Gen. vi. 1-6. And if
the presence of this passage in the sacred books of
Israel has any purpose, it must be to make it plain
that all such ideas could be associated only with
what was disastrously evil, and could enter in no
wise into the purpose of God. We must agree with
Harnack about the virginal conception of Christ
that " the conjecture that the idea of His birth from
a virgin is a heathen myth which was received by
Christians contradicts the entire earliest develop-
ment of the Christian tradition. 5>
II
Now let us recall to our minds the distinctive
qualities of the Christian religion, as it appeared in
the first churches of apostolic foundation, and
especially, where we know most about it, in the
1 See Appended Note A, p. 105, where this is discussed afc some
length.
THEOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES 87
churches of St. Paul the distinctive qualities of
the religion, which both kept it separate from all
the religions of the empire in a jealous aloofness
which was the cause of their hostility to it, and also
force us to recognize its uniqueness as a historical
religion.
There was nothing in the Hellenistic world to be
compared to the Jewish theology of the One God,
the Creator, either in its definiteness of teaching or
clearness of outline. It was a doctrine which in
the race of Israel had struggled for centuries against
the native tendencies of the people, and finally,
through the depth of a seeming failure, had passed
into control of the nation and all its concerns, as the
one and only word of God. Then on the basis of
this definite self-revelation of the one God (as it
claimed to be) the religion of Israel had assumed
still more definite content in Jesus the Christ. Here
was one who was unmistakably man, the Son of Man,
who had recently lived a human life, and proclaimed
a certain teaching, maintained in careful remem-
brance, and had died a malefactor's death at the will
of His misguided people and at the hands of a recent
Roman magistrate, but had been vindicated by God
in His resurrection from the dead, of which the
Apostles were the witnesses, and been recognized,
on the basis of his own language about Himself, as
the Son of God, the real and only manifestation of
the one God in human nature, coming in order to
enlighten the world and save it from sin and redeem
it from all eviL
All this message was definitely concrete and
historical. It knew exactly what it appealed to and
on what grounds it based its confident and exclusive
claims. We can easily familiarize ourselves with its
tone in the New Testament. It is unmistakable.
Then we contrast with this the vague and shifting
and formless character of the 'theology* and
7
88 CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY RELIGIONS
tradition of the mysteries. 1 The god of one mystery
fades into the god of another. They betray their
origin as vague symbols of nature. They have no
character or history. Thus In the best and most
intelligible account of initiation into any of the
mysteries which classical literature presents to us
the Metamorphoses of Apuleius Isis, whose rites are
being celebrated, declares herself identical with the
Phrygian Mother Goddess, with the Athenian Min-
erva, with the Venus of Paphos, with Diana, with
Proserpine, with Ceres, with Juno, with Bellona, with
Hecate. 2 So again the originally distinct divine
mothers of Asiatic worship merge into one another.
So the legends of Demeter and Persephone become
inextricably mixed up with the legend of Dionysus
in the Mysteries of Eleusis. So in Egypt Amon of
Thebes was identified with Ra of Heliopolis and
again with Min, who was later identified with the
Greek Pan. Plutarch makes a great point of this
identity of the divine under the veil of different
names. Everything is vague and shifting and
nebulous and unhistoricaL
Again, the Christians derived from the ancient
prophets a profound belief that God has a purpose in
all history. This gives an importance in their eyes
lo history and to facts which is quite alien to the
mythology of the Hellenistic world. s There was to
be found no hope for the redemption of the world
no idea of a world-wide purpose with which men
were called to co-operate but only a method of
escape for the individual from corruption and misery.
It is the sense of what God has actually done for
1 Aristotle is quoted by Synesius as saying that those who par-
took of the mysteries did not learn anything but were the subjects
of an impression c/ fj.Qt.deiv n Sslv dXXct irafatv /cat SiareOTjvai,
Synesius, Dion., 10.
2 Apuleius, Metamorph., bk. xi, cap. 5; cf. Plut., op cit. f cap. 61.
8 On this prophetic doctrine see Belief in Christ^ pp. 11-19, and
Belief in Qod 9 p. 132, n. 1.
ETHICAL 8
men In historical fact, coupled with the sense of
what He is pledged to do the gospel of the Kingdom,
which accounts for the sense of joyful strength in
the early Christian Church and their assurance of
coming victory over the religions of the idols, which
are " vanity " or " nothing at all " or " demons " im-
potent against God. Certainly, then, the theological
and historical content of Christianity suggests no
debt at all to the mystery religions.
Again, the Christianity of the New Testament
inherits the sternly ethical tradition of the prophets.
To these prophets we owe what to us seems inevitable
and obvious, but was quite strange to the nature-
worships of antiquity or the myths they generated
the intimate association of religion with morality.
This intimate association is deepened in the teaching
of our Lord and His apostles. It is the common-
place of St. Paul. " This ye know of a surety, that
no fornicator, nor unclean person, nor covetous man,
which is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the
kingdom of Christ and God. Let no man deceive
you with empty words : for because of these things
cometh the wrath of God upon the sons of disobedi-
ence. Be not ye therefore partakers with them ;
for ye were once darkness, but are now light in the
Lord : walk as children of light . . . ; and have no
fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but
even reprove them ; for the things done by them in
secret it is a shame even to speak of." 1 St. Paul
is conscious of the danger, incurred by the Christian
communities, that the influx of Gentiles might
weaken their moral sense. St. Jude's Epistle and
the letters to the Seven Churches in the Apocalypse
reveal a sense of fearful peril. But there could be
no doubt what Christianity stood for, and it did in
fact weather the storm and carried into the empire
its great tradition of moral purity and of the spirit
i Eph. v. 6-12.
00 CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY RELIGIONS
of unselfish fellowship. Much more than on its
theological doctrine, it relied on its moral witness to
convince "those without. "
But in all this the basis and the tradition of the
first Christian Church was in marked contrast to
that of the mysteries. Their origin lay in what is
barbarous and obscene ; that is their character in
classical literature. It is true that nothing could
suppress them. They became the popular religions
of the empire. They appealed to a craving for
deliverance from fate and the contaminations of
physical life, and for immortality, and for fellowship
with the divine. They learned to use lofty language,
and produced, no doubt, a profound impression even
on educated people. But their appeal was emotional
rather than moraL One of our few really luminous
witnesses to the meaning of initiation into one of
the mysteries is Apuleius (an author of the second
century), who records at great length the initiation of
his hero, Lucius who represents himself into the
mysteries of Isis. 1 He describes magnificent and
imposing processions, and a solemn period of pre-
paration in the temple precincts, and sacrifices and
mystical objects exhibited by the priests, and a
ceremonial purification and a long abstinence, and
white robes ; and then, going as far as he dares in
describing what may not be revealed, he says of the
actualserviceof initiation, "I drew near to the confines
of death, I trod the threshold of Proserpine, I was
borne through all the elements and returned to earth
again. I saw the sun gleaming with bright splendour
at dead of night, I approached the gods above,
and the gods below, and worshipped them face to
face. Behold I have told thee things of which,
though thou hast heard them, thou must yet know
naught."
1 The Metamorphoses, or "Golden Ass," bk. ad, Engl. traone
1910, vol. ii, pp. 138 f. (Clarendon Press).
RITUAL DIFFERENCES 01
All this is very solemn. It may be Intended to
hint at some dramatic ceremonies or at a process of
hypnotism. It is declared to result in a life of
dedication to the goddess. Then two other initiations
follow the description including sly intimations of
the important place held in these processes by the
demands of the priests for fees and banquets. Lucius
(or Apuleius) was clearly a person of a high emotional
sensibility ; but the book, which concludes with these
experiences and narrates the previous adventures of
the hero, is full of lewdness, and the character of
himself which Apuleius gives us in his Apologia
does not suggest moral seriousness at all. The
mysteries, we should gather, cultivated and in
part satisfied the religious emotions of very many
people. But there is no evidence that they were
likely to effect a permanent moral reformation. 1
Christianity in its later history adopted an impressive
ceremonial, and sometimes relied dangerously on
appeals to the dramatic emotions, but it was not so
at all in the early centuries, 1 and certainly in its
methods of appeal it had in its early days learned
nothing from the mysteries, which it viewed with
horror on account of their immoralities. 3
1 See Gardner, Eeligi&us Experiences of St. Paul, p. 87: " We
have no reason to think that .those who claimed salvation from
Isis or Mithras were much better than their neighbours."
8 Tertullian, de Baptismo, 2, as we have seen, contrasts the bare-
ness and puritanism of the Christian rites with the splendour of
the ritual in the mysteries*
8 I have said nothing about Mithraism, to which M. Loisy
alludes in the passage quoted above, partly because it is so aston-
ishingly unlike Christianity in its theology and in the picture which
it offers of the adventures of its hero, partly because its influence,
which was very great and widespread from the second century
onwards, does not appear to have been felt at the formative period
of Christianity in the regions where it took shape. See Cumont, op.
eit. t pp. xix, xx, and 140, 148. No doubt at the middle or end
of the second century Justin and Tertullian see in the mysteries of
Mithras a satanic imitation of the Christian sacraments (Justin,
I Apol; 66; TertulL, de Praescript., 40). We should prefer to say
that there is a sacramental instinct in all religions which may
2 CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY RELIGIONS
III
Neither then in respect of its theology, nor of its
morals, nor of its ritual, did the Christian Church
owe anything to the mysteries at its origin. But a
more plausible case can be made out for its saera-
mentalism. It must be admitted that the Christian
Church, as it appears in St. Paul, shared with the
mysteries in some sense the habit and principle of
attributing a sacramental value to symbolic ritual
acts* It must be admitted also that sacramentalism
was not a characteristic of the Jews. The Jews
regarded their sacred rites as divine commands,
elements in a covenant of God of which they were
the subjects. They were circumcised because it had
been so commanded, that they might remain within
the covenant, into which as Jews they were born. 1
They offered sacrifices because they were the divinely
appointed means for maintaining or renewing their
good relations with Jehovah. But they did not regard
them as instruments of spiritual grace. Even in Philo,
in whom the mystical sense is strongly developed,
it shows itself only in interpreting historical events
and scriptural phrases in a spiritual sense. But in
St. Paul's language about baptism and the eucharist,
and in the Gospel accounts of the institution of the
eucharist, we already see the sacramental sense
proper in unmistakable exercise. 2 Did it, we ask,
express itself in ceremonies of purification and sacred meals. But
to acknowledge similarity is not at all the same thing as saying
that both have a common origin.
1 Such phrases as " Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your
hearts" (Deut. x. 16, xxx. 6) are not properly sacramental ; i.e.
they do not attribute to circumcision of itself any spiritual effect*
The only suggestion of sacramental effect ascribed to a religious
rite that I can think of is that ** the spirit of wisdom " in Joshua
is attributed in Deut. xxxiv. 9 to the laying on of Moses 1 hands.
But not so in Num. xvii. 18.
a ^In the next chapter we shall examine St. Paul's sacramental
position with care.
CHRISTIAN SACRAMENTALISM B
enter the Church from the Hellenistic atmosphere
around them ? I think the answer must be in the
negative, on historical grounds.
As we have seen, a new and powerful outpouring of
the Spirit of God was associated in Jewish prophecy
with the coming of the Messiah. John the Baptist
had contrasted his baptism with that of " him who
was to come " in the sense that " he shall baptize
you with the Holy Spirit." And when, by what
seems to have been the direction of Christ, baptism
with water was taken over from the Jews by the
Christian Church, we find attached to it, in associa-
tion with the laying on of hands also a rite familiar
to the Jews a sacramental value as a spiritual
cleansing (not merely an admission to membership
in the New Israel), and as the instrument for the
reception of the Spirit. 1 This, St. Luke tells us,
antedated the conversion of St. Paul, and also any
influence of Gentile mysteries that can reasonably be
imagined. It directly attaches itself to John the
Baptist's words and the Old Testament prophecy of
the fruit of the Messiah's coming. The rite of
washing and the laying on of hands had thus become
more than symbolical. It had become spiritually
effective or properly sacramental. 8
Once more we have seen that the precise account
of the institution of the eucharist which St. Paul
gives us must be accepted as part of what he " re-
ceived " at his conversion only a few years after
the crucifixion of Jesus, like the formulated account
of the appearances after the Resurrection. It must
be accepted as a historical account of what actually
happened, which is repeated in almost the same
terms by St. Mark. And we must interpret it in the
* Acts ii. 38, viii. 18, xlx. 5, 6. See below, chap, iv
2 This belief was no doubt confirmed among the disciples by out-
ward signs. -The newly incorporated members spoke with tongues
and prophesied
94 CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY RELIGIONS
light of the sacrificial system of the Jews. 1 The
New Covenant, like the Old, is being inaugurated in
sacrifice the self-sacrifice of Christ and the disciples
of Jesus, the members of the New Israel, are to feed
upon the sacrifice. The bread and the cup are to
be the instruments of a real spiritual nourishment.
The manhood in which Christ offered Himself His
body and blood are to be imparted to them under
those material forms. They are sacramental.
All this sacramentalism of the New Covenant has
its roots, then, in properly Jewish soil, and derives its
materials thence; and the sacramental belief is
already there before contact with Hellenism can
reasonably be imagined to have taken place. More-
over, we must not exaggerate the resemblance of
these rites and beliefs among the Christians to any-
thing which was to be found in the Gentile religions
and mysteries. The Syrian religions and mysteries
in particular appear to have been notoriously corrupt, 2
and most unlikely to furnish models for the Christians.
It is true that washing has been all the world over a
religious or symbolic rite ; and also religious or
sacrificial meals have been common. But they were
also Jewish institutions of immemorial antiquity with
1 The phrase " the table of the Lord " used by St. Paul in con-
nexion with the eucharist (1 Cor. x. 21) has, as St. Paul implies,
analogies among the heathen in what he calls "the table of
devils." Both alike are sacrificial feasts. There is a celebrated
papyrus from Oxyrhynchus in which a certain Cheremon invites
his friend to be a guest " at the table of the Lord Serapis in the
Serapaeum to-morrow." But it is also the case that " the table
of the Lord " was an old Jewish phrase for the altar of sacrifice
(Mai. i, 7-12; Ezek. xli. 22, xliv. 15, 16). We should take note that
the idea of the papyrus is that of having the god for host at a
banquet. That is not the idea suggested in the New Testament
for the eueharist ; there the function of Jesus Christ is not that
of host, but rather (in whatever sense) that of victim and food.
2 See Apuleius, bk. viii, cap. 24 to ix, cap. 10, for the reputation of
the " Dea Syra " and her priests and holy emblems (ix, 4). These
chapters are interesting because, revolting as the priests and their
rites are, they attract the reverence of the "chief citizen" of a
Thessalian city " who had a religious disposition" (viii, 30).
IDEAS CONCERNING SPIRIT 95
specially Jewish associations. The heathen mysteries
dealt in imposing ceremonial and hypnotic influences
and frenzied excitement. Their barbaric origin was
still prominent. There was nothing of this sort
among the Christians. As to the * sacramental *
banquets among the Gentiles and the ideas attached
to them, we know practically nothing. And we
must not argue from the altogether unknown, when
the known supplies us with all we need to account
for the origin of the very simple and deeply ethical
Christian sacrament.
Finally, we must consider the suggestion made by
Reitzenstein and others * that in particular the whole
complex of ideas associated with "the religion of
the Spirit " in St. Paul's and St. John's writings is
part of a common stock of ideas which was pervading
the Hellenistic world more or less abundantly, having
their origin in great part from Egypt ; and that in
their Christian form they can be best explained by
Hellenistic influence. By "the complex of ideas 55
about the religion of the Spirit is meant such as the
following: that a man may become possessed by
divine spirit and thus become a " new man " or be
" born again," and pass from the defiling and transi-
tory life of this world into life eternal and divine ;
that he will experience conflict between the spirit
and the flesh or between spirit and soul (natural
life) ; that the spiritwill triumph and that he has even
now concealed within him a spiritual body, immortal
and indissoluble, waiting for liberation from the
incumbrance of the present gross material body ; and,
finally, the idea of the inspiration of particular indi-
viduals by a divine spirit, so that they are taken out
of themselves and speak supernatural truths.
This proposal of Reitzenstein 's to find a new source
for Christian ideas is very elusive partly because
there are confessedly many ideas concerning spirits
1 See Belief in Christ, p. 133.
96 CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY RELIGIONS
and spiritual influences which are common to men
of many traditions and races ; partly also because
the dates of many of the documents which are
relied upon by Reitzenstein and those who think
with him are profoundly uncertain. Thus in some
cases where some connexion between the non-
Christian and the Christian documents appears to be
unmistakable, it may be, not that the non-Christian
document has influenced the Christian, but the other
way. This uncertainty especially affects the Hermetic
documents 3 which have generally, and it would seem
rightly, been reckoned to exhibit the same sort of in-
fluences from Hebrew religion as the Gnostic theories
and documents undoubtedly do. 1 Under these cir-
cumstances of uncertainty the most satisfactory
method of argument is to start from the clearly
known that is, the influence of the Old Testament
upon the first Christians, and their own experience
in the school of Jesus the Christ, and to ask how far
this accounts for all the ideas about the religion of
the Spirit which we find in the New Testament ;
and also to note not only the resemblances but the
differences which undoubtedly exist between the
New Testament ideas and those to be found in
Hellenism, and consider whether they reach the point
of making any fundamental influence of the latter
on the former improbable.
1. Let us then have it clearly present to our
imagination that the idea of * spirits * and conse-
quently of * spirit * is approximately universal
among men. It seems to be derived from the sense of
breath in men and animals. There is something clearly
tenuous and invisible but yet real in men's bodies
1 See Dr. H. A. A. Kennedy, St. Paul and the Mystery Religions,
pp. 1441, 167, etc. (Hodder & Stoughton). Critics, like the late
Dr. Edwin Hatch, have often rebuked orthodox writers, and justly,
for quoting documents without due regard to their precise date,
I think, however, it is time for the orthodox to retaliate.
IDEAS CONCERNING SPIRIT $7
which at least in death departs from them. This is
soul or spirit. Also the world of nature with all its
mysterious movement and life appears to be the
habitation of spirits. Such beliefs are approximately
universal among men. And the conception of ' spirits *
is generally that of tenuous and aerial, rather than
completely immaterial, substances. Besides this
belief in spirits in general, there is commonly also a
belief in some more powerful spirits or gods. And
inasmuch as men all the world over have passed
their lives in an awful dread of these spirits greater
and lesser, the acceptable religions have been those
which appeared to possess control over them, or which
taught men how to keep on the favourable side of
them. There is also almost universal in the world
the conception of the inspired man that is, the man
possessed by a divine spirit, rapt out of his own self-
consciousness into trance or frenzy, and becoming
thus " a new man," * and perhaps the organ of a
god to declare his will or to give guidance in answer
to questions. All this belongs to natural religion
and to the lower ranges of natural religions.
2. This traditional background is often unmistak-
ably felt in the Old Testament, but it is kept a,t a
distance and in restraint by the distinctive beliefs, due
to the prophets, which gradually came to absorb the
whole tradition of the Jews and to control all their
literature especiallythe belief inoneGrod, the Creator,
to whom all spirits must be absolutely subordinated/
as His creatures. In St. John's Gospel our Lord is
represented as saying " God is spirit " ; and the
expression carries with it no speculation on the
divine essence. In its context it seems to mean
that God is absolutely raised above all the limitations
of place, and knows things as they are, and values
them by moral, not material values. It was in fact
i See 1 Sam, x. 6, where Sanrael says to Saul, " Thou shalt be
turned into another man."
98 CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY RELIGIONS
along the lines of the unity 9 the moral perfection, the
omnipotence, and the omnipresence of God, and the
absolute distinction of the Creator from His creatures,
and not by any philosophical speculation, that the
Jews reached the idea of God as " pure spirit/'
But they attached to the spirituality of God at
least in the literature of the Bible no idea of aloof-
ness. God is Intensely active in the world. And
this universal activity in creating and sustaining is
called His spirit. As we have seen, however, the
idea of the spirit of God came to be almost reserved
for the action of God in the redemption of Israel,
and through Israel the whole world, including the
sanctification and transformation of individual souls.
And it was in this reserved sense that it passes into
the New Testament. There the gift of the Holy
Spirit is found pre-eminently in Christ and then
passes as His gift from Him upon His Church. So
concentrated is the thought of the New Testament
writers upon "the Holy Spirit," the Spirit of the
Father and of Jesus, as something of which they
have personal experience, that, though they continue
to talk of evil spirits, they speak no longer of good
spirits, but only of the one Spirit of the one God and
the one Lord, and of the human spirits, which He
comes to enrich. 1 There is nothing in any religious
tradition with which the first Christians could have
come into contact at all resembling this overwhelming
belief in the one God and the one Lord and the
one Spirit, and no one would suggest that this
t belief could come from any source but one.
The philosophic world did indeed believe in some
sense in one God (though not in such a sense as to
1 We hear in the New Testament of angelic beings of many
grades, but they are never called "spirits," unless in the quota*
tion from the Psalms in Heb. i. 7, where B.V. translates " winds."
In 1 John iv. 1-3 *' spirit " seems to be used impersonally, almost
as we talk of the * spirit ' of such and such a movement : see my
Epistles of Si. John, pp, 168-9.
IDEAS CONCERNING SPIRIT m
exclude the many gods of popular belief), and they
spoke much of the divine as immanent and operative
in the world, under terms such as * logos ' (reason or
law or force) or 'nous 5 (mind). But they did not
commonly use the term fc spirit.' Even in Plotinus,
when philosophy had come to be so deeply occupied
in what we call c the spiritual life, 3 the term (^vev^ia)
* spirit ' is of rare occurrence and without importance
in his system. 1 In English books this is not always
made apparent, because there is a habit, which Dr.
Inge warmly commends, of translating nous (mind)
by 'spirit. 3 But the fundamental ideas are essen-
tially different. Nous is fundamentally intellectual
and static, and pneuma is dynamic. Nous is con-
cerned with thinking, and pneuma primarily with
acting. They must not be confused. Thus upon
Philo, Jew though he is, the Alexandrian influence is
so strong that the idea of " the Spirit " is almost
absent except with regard to prophets rapt into
trance. The only field of Greek speculation previous
to Christianity a where * spirit ' was much heard of
was Stoicism, where the all -pervasive God, conceived of
as elemental fire, was spoken of as the sacer spiritus ;
but the writers of the New Testament had nothing
in common with this Heraclitean speculation ; and
though some allusions in Stoic writers to the converse
of men with "the holy spirit" have a Christian
sound, the underlying ideas are very different. 1
When Dr. Inge * speaks of " the adoption of the Stoical
7rvv/jia by the Christians," he seems to me to be
speaking without any regard to history. With the
Christians the belief in the Spirit of God has entirely
1 Inge's Plotinus, ii, 38,
2 In some later, e.g. Mithraic, documents there is language re-
sembling the Christian about the divine spirit, but it may well
be due to an infiltration of Christian ideas.
3 See Dr. Edwyn Sevan's Stoics and Sceptics, pp. 42-3. For the
tiee of * spirit * in the Hermetic books see App, Note B, p. 107,
**Op. cit., p. 247.
100 CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY RELIGIONS
a Jewish origin and an origin more ancient than
Zeno.
It is further to be noticed that the doctrine of
spirit among the Stoics is pantheistic, and with them
to be identified with the spirit is to be "deified. 55
Christians in the early centuries and later occasion-
ally used this sort of language. But it is alien to
the New Testament. 1 True, the consciousness of
possession by the divine spirit carries with it the
sense of fellowship in the eternal or divine life
even now, with the hope of fuller fellowship here-
after ; but the idea of Christians being * made
gods * or * becoming god * would be abhorrent
to it.
8. No doubt with the Jews, as with the Greeks,
the idea of spirit had been very closely associated
with the 6 inspiration * of holy men ; and no doubt,
as has been already explained/ the idea of inspiration
which lies at the basis of the Old Testament was the
common idea which prevailed throughout the world,
which finds the evidence of * possession ' in frenzied
excitement or trance or ecstasy. The special prophets
to whose inspiration we owe the religion of Israel
never wholly lost this association of inspiration with
trance or ecstasy* It is seen especially in Ezekiel.
It is seen in St. Paul. But it comes to occupy a very
small place. The message which the prophets receive
both in the Old Testament and in the New is addressed
by the Divine Spirit to their own alert consciousness
and will. s Thus when Philo, under the alien influences
of Alexandrian Hellenism, identifies inspiration with
trance and ecstasy, and declares that the reason and
intelligence of the prophet must be utterly extin-
guished while he is under the divine influence
1 The nearest approach to it is in 2 Pet. i. 4, " partakers of the
divine nature."
8 Belief in God, chap. iv.
8 See Belief in God, p. 87.
CONCERNING PROPHECY 101
cc The mind In us is expelled at the arrival of the
divine spirit and returns to its home at its removal ** *
he is departing definitely from the higher ground of
Jewish prophecy on which Christian prophecy con-
tinued to stand. " The spirits of the prophets,"
says St. Paul, " are subject to the prophets." * No
doubt the psychical perturbation common in the
Gentile world, which was attributed to possession
by spirits, was seen among the Christians especially
in the phenomenon of " the tongues. " Such psychical
phenomena, unaccompanied with intelligence, have
occurred 'in connexion with all sorts of religious
movements. St. Paul does not deny their divine
origin, 3 but he ranks them low among spiritual
gifts ; and, even so, if " the tongues " among the
Christians are compared with the phenomena of
* possession * among the Gentiles, they appear
restrained and sane indeed. 1 Thus there is indeed
some connexion between the phenomena of inspira-
tion ^ or possession in the Jewish-Christian world
and in the world of Gentile religions. But the char-
acteristic development of the gift, and conception of
the gift, in the former is markedly different, and the
result on the whole markedly distinct. The Christian
Church of the second century was quite right when
it repudiated the Montanist conception of prophecy
(in which the prophet was deprived of his senses) as
pagan and not Christian.
4. The more we study the Hellenistic lore of * the
spiritual life/ the more, I think, we feel that it is not
1 San day, Inspiration, p. 74; Swete in Hastings, D. o/ ., ii,
405.
2 1 Cor. xiv. 32.
3 I should speak more strictly if I were to say " divine or dia-
bolic."
4 Cf. the account in Apuleius, Metamorph. viii, 27, of the ges
ticulations and self-macerations of the priests of the " All-Mother ":
" One of them raved more wildly than the rest ... as though he
were filled with the breath of some divinity."
102 CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY RELIGIONS
fundamentally ethical. " The holy faith " and " the
glorious faith "of which Apuleius speaks in connexion
with different mysteries, 1 the ceremonial " purity "
demanded, the temporary asceticism required, the
46 salvation " which is the goal, do not really have the
same meaning as the same words would have in a
Christian document. To be holy means to be
dedicated to a divine being, who may, like the
goddesses worshipped at Ephesus and Corinth, be quite
indifferent to morality ; the salvation is deliverance
from the pollution and transitoriness of physical life ;
the purity is ceremonial rather than moral ; the
asceticism is based on the conception of certain
things as essentially evil that is, on an essential
dualism. 2 On the other hand, there runs through
the whole Bible the healthy sense that the beginning
and end of true religion is moral, and is to be seen in
our dealings in common life ; that all created things
are in themselves good ; that the blame for sin cannot
be laid on the body or on fate, but must be borne
by the will ; that when the will is once set right all
the whole nature will follow ; and that sacraments are
not charms nor substitutes for change of character.
Certainly our Lord or St. Paul was very unlike a
Hellenistic hierophant, with his secret tradition and
his magical charms.
St. Paul has been accused of regarding the body and
the flesh as essentially evil. He does use language
which looks like it. But he is speaking of the body
as it is enslaved to sin. That is what he means by
u the body of sin " ; and by " the works of the
flesh " he describes the kind of life which men live
when their lower nature is allowed to dominate their
higher. On the whole, he leaves no room for mistake.
It is our whole nature, bodily and mental, which,
under the control of the converted will and by
1 Apuleius, Metamorph., viii, 28, xi, 11.
2 This is very obvious in Plutarch, de Isid. et Osir.
COMMON TERMS 103
the power of the indwelling Spirit, is to be first
sanctified and then glorified ; and the goal of re-
demption is for the whole of our nature and not
only for souls. 1
5. Finally, we must not be misled into supposing
that the use of certain terms by St. Paul means that
he used them, in the same sense as the votaries
of the mysteries. They talked of course about
mysteries, meaning rites handed down in a secret
tradition and not to be revealed to the profane.
But before St. Paul's time the word had passed
into meaning generally " a secret," and is so used
in the Greek Bible. St. Paul uses it to mean a
" secret," and once apparently as meaning a
" symbol " 2 ; but his most characteristic use of it is
to mean a secret purpose of God now revealed, which
it was the business of the messengers of the Gospel
to proclaim to all the world. This is very far off
its meaning in the Greek mysteries. No doubt the
mysteries had created a vocabulary which no one
who used popular Greek could quite avoid. " Per-
fect " with them meant " fully initiated," and in St
Paul's use of it there is a trace of such a meaning,
but he much more often means by it complete or
" full grown." s He once says " I have been
initiated " (lAe/wijfjuu, Phil. iv. 12), but it is only
into the secrets of how to use both poverty and
wealth ; his use of " wisdom " and " knowledge " is
what the Old Testament would suggest. One word
which Christianity really had in common with the
* See 1 Cor. vL 19, 20; Rom. xii. 1, viii. 11, 21 ; Phil. iii. 21.
It is not apparently certain whether any belief in a c * spiritual
body," other than a ghost, was current in Hellenistic circles
before St. Paul's day. But it is, I think, certain that St. Paul's
idea of the spiritual body is based on what he believed about the
risen and glorified body of Christ. See Kennedy, op. cit.> p. 184.
a Eph. v. 32. For St. Paul's use of " mystery," see especially
Dr. Armitage Robinson's Ephesians, pp. 234 ft
8 S$e especially 1 Cor. iL 6, where rAaot = jrrevpdnKot (Hi. 1)
and is put in contrast to irfmoi; cf. xiv. 20.
S
104 CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY RELIGIONS
mysteries " rebirth " occurs only once ia the
Pauline letters. 1
On the whole, I dare to think that the answer to
the problem with which this chapter began is fairly
plain. Christianity, the religion of the Spirit, is in
its whole original substance derived from the Jewish
root and from Christ. From these sources comes the
idea of the one Spirit, and the conception of the
Church of God as His home, and the beliefs about
the sacraments of initiation and communion, and
the conception of life in the Spirit, and of the destiny
of the body. The Christian idea of inspiration is
essentially Jewish and not Hellenistic ; and the
absence of secrecy in the early days about the
doctrines and rites of the Church, and above all its
sturdy moralism, betoken an origin different from
the mysteries.
The mysteries, then, played no part in the origin
of Christianity. But they surrounded the Church
when it went out into the Gentile world and were
an important element in the atmosphere in which
it lived. They do not appear to influence the New
Testament in any important particular. But when
we find the later Church calling baptism and the
eucharist " mysteries," and mysteries not to be
disclosed to the profane, we do feel their influence ;
and it was not always for good. Still, on the whole,
they may be said to have created a temper of mind
in the world which made the Christian message of
redemption and salvation irrespective of class or race
1 Tit. iii. 5. For the whole subject of " St. Paul's relation to
the Mystery terminology " see I>r. Kennedy, op, cit. t chap. iv.
Some uses of the idea of "rebirth," in connexion "with Mithraism,
and ^ else where, were very likely influenced by Christianity; but
the idea itself the idea of a man being possessed by some divine
affatua and becoming '* another man " is so natural that no bor-
rowing of one religion from the other can. be established on the
ground of the common use of it.
THE MYSTERIES AND THE EUCHARIST 105
acceptable and familiar ; and, by those who believe
in a divine providence, the prevalence of the mysteries
in the Roman Empire will certainly be regarded as
part of the divine preparation for the spread of a
universal Gospel. Indeed the ideas and needs asso-
ciated with the mysteries appear to be so fundamental
in humanity, that no religion could really have
claimed to be the religion for mankind which was
not able to appreciate and to satisfy them.
APPENDED NOTE A (see p. 86)
THE PAGAN MYSTERIES AND THE EUCHARIST
M. Loisy in Le$ Mysteres paiens et le Mystere chretien and
Dr. Farnell in his Cults of the Greek States (vol. v, under
the head of the Dionysus worship) would have us believe
that in the worship of Zagreus or Dionysus (and in the
Orphic mysteries) the worshippers believed themselves to
eat their god ; and on this ground M. Loisy assimilates
the Eucharist to the mysteries. Sir James Frazer, as we
have seen, does the like. It has indeed become a common-
place to do so. But the evidence quoted by Loisy and
Farnell does not support this idea. I am allowed to
quote the following passages from a letter of Mr. Edwyn
Sevan, who writes on Hellenistic matters with an au-
thority I could not claim :,
" I have looked up what Loisy says about the sacramental
eating of the slain god in the Zagreus cult. Apparently the
Zagreus worshippers did eat, as a religious ceremony, a living
bull, tearing it to pieces * & belles dents ' (p. 32), and Loisy
says that the rationale of this was that the bull was regarded
as an embodiment of the god and that the worshippers con-
ceived divine virtue to be communicated to them by the
sacrament. He says (pp. S4, 35) :
" 4 Sauf que la participation s*e"tablit dans le sacrifice
chr6tien moyennant le pain et le vin, non par tine victime
animale, Feconomie du mystere eucharistique est conyue de
la m&tne faon que celle du mystere dionysique.*
" But in the passages which Loisy cites in the footnotes I
cannot find any statement to the fact to the effect that the
106 CHRISTIANITY AND MYSTERY RELIGIONS
bull was regarded as identical with the god or that the wor-
shippers derived divine virtue from eating. One passage
is from Firmicus Maternus ; it says that the Cretans
devoured the bull in memory of Zagreus* being devoured by
the Titans * crudeles epulas annuis commemorationibus
excitantes * nothing about divine virtue being derived from
eating. The second passage is from Arnobius ; it says that
the Bacchae devoured goats, not in order to get divine virtue,
feut in order to show (i.e. by doing something superhuman)
that they were full * dei nurnine ac maiestate.* Loisy's inter-
pretation seems therefore a merely conjectural reconstruction
of the theory underlying the rite. It looks as if (supposing
it is true that the idea had originally been that the god him-
self was eaten) the rite was not understood in this sense at
the time to which the statements of Firrnicus and Arnobius
refer.
" Loisy also tries to prove the same thing with regard to
the Orphic mysteries. His data seems to be : (1) That it
* parait certain * (a suspicious phrase always) (p. 46) that
the Orphics practised o>juo0ay/a. The evidence he adduces is
a fragment of Euripides (footnote, p. 44). (2) The Orphic
formula pxj>os es- ya\a cTrcroy (the meaning of which, I
believe, is very doubtful). Putting these two together, he
concludes (p. 47) that * Finiti< rg6nere, tait sauv< en
s'assimilant le chevreau mystique, en mangeant la chair de
la victime qui reprsentait, qui 6tait tou jours d'une certaine
maniere, pour la foi, Dionysus Zagreus, en devenant ainsi
lui-meme " chevreau,*' en s'identifiant a Bacchus.' But if
Loisy has no data for this beyond those he quotes, they would
seem a very inadequate foundation for his beautiful descrip-
tion of the Orphic sacramental belief, which seems to be
taken out of his own head."
I entirely concur in Mr. Sevan's judgment. And of
the passages cited by Dr. Farnell in his notes on the
Dionysus worship none support the supposition that the
frenzied worshippers believed themselves to be eating
their god. ^ He cites a passage from Clement of Alex-
andria which says something quite different: w/xa ya/>
ya-Qiov Kpea ol fivopevot Aiovixra) Scty/ia rot? rcXou/iei/ot? rot;
<nrapayfto{5 ov wr&rrq AIOFUCTOS TT/>O$ rw MatvaScov. That IS to
say, they ate raw flesh as a memorial of the mythical
incident. I have already quoted Cicero's saying which
shows that he at least thought the idea of "theophagy "
too absurd to be even suggested.
4 SPIRIT' IN THE HERMETIC BOOKS 107
I have only been able to find one reference at all eon-
temporary with, or within the area of, nascent Christianity
to eating a god, and that is Plutarch's description (<fe
Isid. et Osir. 9 cap. 72) of how neighbouring cities in Egypt
would provoke one another to war by contemptuously
eating the god of their neighbours. Thus the inhabitants
of Cynopolis ate the fish which was the godof Oxyrhynchos,
and the Oxyrhynchites retaliated by sacrificing and eating
a dog. And the Lycopolites ate a sheep, saying that
was the way of their god. This does not look as if to
eat your god was a form of devotion, even where edible
animals were gods.
The conclusion to which I would ask adhesion is that,
though it is possible the bull who was torn to pieces in.
the mysteries of Dionysus may in a remote past have
been identified with the god, yet the evidence shows
that this was so no longer.
NOTE B (see p. 99}
OK THE USE OF * SPIRIT * IN THE HERMETIC BOOKS
These books, which appear to be of Egyptian origin, are
a sort of manual of the spiritual life, as it was understood
in the third century in some non-Christian mainly neo-
Platonist circles. There does not appear to be any
good reason for assigning to those * chapters * which we
possess an earlier date : see Belief in Christ, p. 1S4
la them 4 spirit J is mostly conceived of as an element
in nature the principle of physical life. It is coupled
with fire or air or light : " The spirit is in the body and
penetrates the veins and arteries and blood and moves
the living being " (see cap. i. 9, 16 [reading TH;/>OS for
Trarpos], 17, ii. 6 3 8, iii. 1, iv. 1, ix, 9, x. 13). But in
cap. xiii the creator god is called 6 spirit bearing * and
a higher position seems to be assigned to spirit. Cer-
tainly there is nothing in these books suggesting any
connexion with the N.T. doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
CHAPTER IV
THE HOLY SPIEIT IN THE CHURCH
IN the two previous chapters we have freed ourselves
from certain doubts which some influential modern
writers have been instilling into us. Not only par-
ticular passages and texts of the New Testament,
but the whole historical setting in which Jesus is
presented to us, as the Christ who was to fulfil the
vocation of Israel, has reassured us in believing
not that He founded a Church, but that He refounded
the Church, the true Israel henceforth consisting of
those who believed that Jesus was the Christ, or
the Christ was Jesus ; and that in the persons of the
twelve apostles He re-equipped it with a body of
officers in the place of those who had lost their
position by their absolute rejection of " the counsel
of God '* ; and that He sanctioned and instituted
in baptism and the eucharist certain rites of spiritual
fellowship for the observance of the Church, which
were to be safeguards of its unity. The extreme
apocalyptic view which would regard all this as
impossible, because Christ anticipated no future for
the world, we have set aside as arbitrary, resting its
case as it does on a one-sided emphasis on part of
the evidence and rejection of the rest. Moreover, the
purely " apocalyptic " conception of Christ cannot
account for the earliest Church, as we see it in St.
Paul's Epistles and in the Acts, organizing itself
from the first to deal with a developing situation.
It is quite true that our Lord gave few specific
108
WHAT WE MAY NOW ASSUME 109
directions to His Church, and left it in the main to
organize itself, under the guidance of His Spirit.
Nevertheless, when He left the world, He left behind
Him a certain rudimentary organization already in
being.
We have looked steadily at the mystery religions,
as providing in great part the Gentile atmosphere In
which the Church spread. It is a study of absorbing
interest ; and we have recognized there a world of
religious societies, bound together by secret rites
into the fellowship of gods whose patronage was
relied upon to save their votaries from the present
world of change and dissolution, and translate them
into a world beyond, free from death and corruption.
We have recognized how much the prevalence of
these mystery religions, as in some sort religions of
redemption, facilitated the spread of the religion of
the Church, and also the danger the Churchman of
assimilation to these truly superstitious associations.
But we have seen the best of reasons for rejecting
the modern suggestion that either the fundamental
doctrines or characteristic ideas or rites of the
primitive Church were derived from these pagan
mysteries. On the one hand, the doctrines and ideas
and rites of the Christians of the New Testament
are accounted for by the tradition and Scriptures
which they inherited from old Israel, interpreted in
the light of the new and overwhelming experiences
through which they had passed in the fellowship of
Jesus and in the receiving of His Spirit experiences
which antedated any immediate contact with the
world of Hellenism. And on the other hand, the
attitude of St. Paul in his epistles and St. Luke in his
history towards the Gentile " idolatries " makes the
notion of their imitating the practices or assimilating
the ideas of the heathen in a high degree improbable.
Moreover, we have been led to feel that those who
would assimilate the Church to the mysteries are apt
110 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH
greatly to exaggerate the resemblances in idea and
rite and language and to ignore the differences.
So we are left believing the New Testament record
that Jesus Christ did intend to perpetuate His work
in the world for a period which He refused to define,
and did refound and refashion Israel to be His organ
for this purpose, and did really inspire into it His
own and the Father's Spirit ; and our next task must
be to examine more closely the religion of the Spirit
and the Church, as we see it in our earliest records.
All that Christ did in the world, He did in and by
the Spirit which possessed Him wholly, and when
from His throne in heaven He poured out His Spirit,
which is also the Spirit of the Father, upon His
Church, it was in order that all the rich endowment
of humanity which had been found in Him might be
transmitted to the Church which is " His body/*
Thus, if in one sense the ascension of Christ repre-
sents an end and a climax, as it is the fulfilment of
humanity on the throne of God, in another sense it
is but the beginning. For that humanity of Jesus is
the fountain-head of a new race in which all the
attributes of that New Man are to be perpetuated
and manifested, as it gathers within its compass
men of all nations and tribes and kinds. Thus the
Holy Spirit comes not so much to supply the absence
of Christ as to accomplish His presence in the world
as its Saviour and New Life.
This is the developed doctrine which we find in
St. Paul's Epistles, and with substantially the same
implications in St. John. 1 But doubtless, like
St. Paul's doctrine about Christ's person, it was not
realized at once.
All the whole matter of the New Testament referring to the
Holy Spirit is carefully and fully analysed by Dr. Swete in The
Holy Spirit in the New Testament.
TEACHING IN THE GOSPELS III
The Synoptic Gospels tell us a good deal about
the Holy Spirit in Christ, 1 and they all of them
reproduce the assurance of John the Baptist that it
was to be the function of * Him who was to come * to
baptize men with the Spirit. But, as has been re-
marked, they say singularly little about any prepara-
tion given by Christ to His disciples for the reception
of the great gift. St. Luke, however, jn the beginning
of the Acts represents our Lord as referring to
teaching about the Holy Spirit which He had given
them. " Wait," said He, " for the promise of the
Father, which ye heard from me : for John indeed
baptized with water ; but ye shall be baptized with
the Holy Ghost not many days hence." a This
interprets the saying recorded at the end of Luke's
Gospel, " Behold, I send forth the promise of my
Father upon you : but tarry ye in the city, till ye be
clothed with power from on high/* 3 This ** promise
of my Father " this gift of " power from on high "
is the Holy Spirit. We cannot but think of the
words ascribed to our Lord in the Fourth Gospel,
"The Helper, even the Holy Spirit, whom the
Father will send in my name.'* 4
It is, I think, very difficult to imagine that our
Lord did not give His disciples some such preparatory
teaching about the gift of the Holy Spirit as is
conveyed in His last discourses before His passion
according to St. John. And the teaching of these
discourses is at once so original, so profound, and so
singularly well adapted to the situation of the moment,
that we are led to believe that it is not an imaginative
construction by the evangelist, but a real memory*
The Holy Spirit really brought to his remembrance
all that Jesus said to them. 5 Still, it would not
appear that the full meaning of the Spirit's presence,
1 See above, pp. 10 f, 8 Acts i. 4, 5.
8 Luke sxiv. 49. 4 John adv. 26*
6 John xiv, 28.
112 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH
any more than the full meaning of the person of
their Master, 1 was realized by the first disciples or
by the Apostles immediately after Pentecost. I do
not indeed think that it is true to say that in the
Acts the gift of the Spirit is associated in any exclusive
sense with the extraordinary gifts of fc tongues * and
prophesying, or with the miraculous in general. 8 It
is true that St. Luke lays stress on the wonderful
signs which marked the sudden arrival of the Spirit
on, or just before, the day of Pentecost, 3 and on the
similar signs which marked the first bestowal of the
gift upon the Gentiles, Cornelius and his companions,
and again on the twelve men who had been disciples
of John the Baptist and were now led on into the
faith of Christ. 4 And he delights to recount the
miracles of healing wrought by the apostles. But
also courage in speaking the word, and wisdom, and
faith, and large-hearted goodness are associated with
the Spirit's presence, 5 and He is recognized not only
as the inspirer of the prophets of old, but also as
the present and personal guide and helper of indi-
viduals, and of the assemblies of the Church, in all
their ways.
Nevertheless it is to St. Paul that we owe in the
first instance, as the theology of the person of Christ,
so also the theology of the Spirit. From him first
1 See Belief in Christ, pp. 76 fl
2 I think Harnack, for instance, is unfair when he says (Luke the
Physician, p. 141 (Williams & ISTorgate) : " We cannot repress the
suspicion that with him (Luke) everything is concentrated in the
magical efficacy of the Name of Christ. . . . Miraculous healing is
the essential function, and forms the test, of the new religion."
Dr. Anderson Scott remarks that this was a tendency which appears
specially in the early stages of the Acts and diminishes as it pro-
ceeds. See his essay in The Spirit (ed. Streeter), p. 131. Later
the emphasis comes to be rather on prophetic insight and guidance
as the characteristic marks of the Spirit's presence.
3 See Appended Kote A, p. 148, on the Pentecostal gift as de-
scribed in Acts.
< Acts iL 4, x. 46, xix. 6.
8 Acts iv. 31, vi. 3, 5, xi. 24.
THE FAITH BEFORE ST. PAUL 118
we get that subtle and profound conception of the
Holy Spirit as distinct I can only say personally
distinct from the ascended Christ, while yet so
intimately one with Him that His presence involves
the presence of Christ, so that " in the Spirit "
means also " in Christ." * We cannot speak with
any confidence as to how precisely this conception
was formed in St. Paul's mind. I suppose that the
actual experience of the Church, before St. Paul
came on the scene, had given the apostles and their
companions an intense sense, as of the personal
Christ now glorified in the heavens, so also of the
personal Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, guiding them
from within. I suppose also that from the first they
must have realized that the Holy Spirit was something
more than the substitute for a now absent Christ.
We cannot regard it as doubtful that in " the breaking
of bread " they had from the first repeated the
words, " Take, eat, this is my body," " Drink ye
all of this, this is my blood," and had known them-
selves to be sharers together in Christ. It may have
been by an internal revelation that St. Paul's subtle
theology of the Spirit in His relation to Christ came
to form itself in his mind. But it is the same theology
that we find in St. John's Gospel, especially but not
only 2 in those last discourses spoken by Christ
immediately before His passion. There, too, the
Spirit is distinguished sharply from Christ Himself
as " another Helper," but also so intimately involved
with Him and with the Father that His coming is
the coming back of Christ and the presence of the
Father. And I continually find myself asking
whether such words of Christ as "He will give you
another Helper," " The Helper, even the Holy Spirit,
* See Belief in Christ, pp. 237-40 and 253 f. I should wish to
emphasize what is there said of the distinction of the Holy Spirit
from the glorified Christ in St. Paul's conception.
8 For we must not forget iii. 5-8, vi. 63, vii. 39, xx. 22.
THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH
whom the Father will send in my name," " I will
send you another Helper," " I will come unto you,"
" We will come unto you " (i.e. the Father and I),
were not already in the memory of the Church even
before St. Paul's activity began.
And this intimate theology of the Spirit brought to
the front in St. Paul's teaching the central moral
purpose of His coming and presence in the Church and
in all its members. As has been said, there is no
doubt in the Acts a tendency, though not an exclusive
tendency, to emphasize the action of the Holy Spirit
in connexion with extraordinary or miraculous
gifts. St. Paul recognizes these among the endow-
ments of the Spirit, but depreciates them by com-
parison with those we should call moral and normal.
All that we identify with the humanity of Jesus
enlightenment, sonsMp, moral liberty, self-control,
love, the consecration and sanctification of body as
well as spirit all this it is the function of the Spirit
to bring to be enwrought into the texture of our
sin-defiled nature. All the " knowledge " which St.
Paul so passionately prays for for Ms converts is
relative to this practical end. It is not philosophical
or speculative endowments that he desires. The
work and purpose of the Spirit coincides absolutely
with the work and purpose of Christ. St. Paul does
not identify the Spirit with the ascended Christ, 1
but Christ comes to us only through the Spirit, and
to be " in the Spirit " is to be " in Christ."
Superficially considered, such a conception of the
Spirit's work would be compatible with regarding the
gift of the Spirit as a gift to separate individuals.
And it is for St. Paul a glorious truth that the Holy
Spirit's presence does deepen and intensify the
sense of individuality and the value and responsibility
of the individual. But it is a sure sign of shallow
thinking to put individuality in man into antithesis
1 See Belief in Christ, pp. 253 ff.
ST. PAUL'S THEOLOGY 115
to Ms corporate and social life. Tyranny, it is true,
depresses individuality, but corporate life intensifies
it. Certainly the gift of the Spirit in St. Paul's
teaching is a gift to the * holy community * ; and
the life of the individual recipient of the Spirit is not
otherwise conceived of than as that of a " member "
which lives by its incorporation in " the body.'*
If the bodies of individual Christians are " temples
of the Holy Spirit," it is because they belong to the
greater temple which is the Church. 1 We shall see
that St. Paul has a vivid sense of the sacraments
as means of grace to the individual, but an equally
vivid sense that they are social ceremonies by which
the individual is bound to the Church. So the
principle is established that fellowship with God is
not otherwise to be won or maintained than in the
fellowship of men, and by faithful recognition of the
obligations of membership. The Christian ethic, as
St. Paul expounds it, is a predominantly social ethic ;
and the most characteristic expression of the meaning
of life in the Spirit is with him to be found in the
words * love ' or c communion,' which means sharing
together the " communion of the Holy Ghost." a
We shall come back upon these thoughts shortly.
But we must delay for a little in order to consider
how far St. Paul's theology of the Spirit is also that
of the other New Testament writers ; and first of
St. John. 8
Modern critical writers on the New Testament are*
1 I Cor. vl 19, iii. 16-17.
2 It must not be forgotten that though St. Paul speaks of the
gift of the Spirit to the Church and its members as already abun-
dant, yet it is only a pledge or foretaste of a greater abundance
in a world yet to come. 2 Cor, i. 22, v. 5; Eph. i. 13-14.
8 Like other people I have recurrent difficulties about the
authorship of the Fourth Gospel, but on the whole I am always
forced back upon the belief that John the son of Zebedee must
be, in the real sense, the author of it and of the Epistles which bear
his name. And the historical value of the Fourth Gospel seems to
me always increasingly certain.
116 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH
I cannot but think, too much intent on discerning
and emphasizing differences between the writers of
the New Testament, and ignoring substantial iden-
tities, 1 while at the same time they emphasize super-
ficial similarities of language between the Christian
and the pagan writers, ignoringprofounder differences.
Thus it is true that, in the last discourses of our Lord
to His disciples as reported by St. John, the Holy
Spirit whom they are to expect is described as " the
Spirit of truth," and the fruit of His coming is to be
an accurate recollection and clear understanding of
their Lord's words, and a vigorous witness to Him a ;
and that in the Epistles of St. John it is still this true
and trustworthy knowledge which is emphasized as
the result of the Holy Spirit's unction * ; but it has
to be remembered that the discourses of our Lord
were addressed to the disciples at a moment when
they were, and were confessing themselves to be,
utterly bewildered in their mind as to the meaning
of their experiences and of the words of the Master. 1
What they needed above all was the assurance that,
when He was gone, they would understand His
meaning and be able to deliver their message to
the world. It has to be remembered also that the
Spirit is elsewhere in this Gospel described by our
Lord as the Spirit of regeneration or a new life,
and as the life-giver, and as the living water of
eternal life, and the power enabling the Twelve
to continue the apostolate of Christ. 8 And in
the discourse following the Last Supper, in spite
of the special references to the Holy Spirit as the
Spirit of truth, something more general is implied
in the term " the Paraclete " (or Helper), in whose
1 I find myself as I read some modern critical or hypercritical
books murmuring the words of the son of Sirach, " There is an
exquisite subtilty, and the same is not just."
See xiv. 17, 26, xv. 26-7, xvi. 7 f.
8 1 John ii. 20, 27. * John xiiL 36, xiv. 1, 5, 8, 22.
8 ii. 5-8, vi. 63, vii. 38-9, xx. 22-3.
ST. JOHN AND THE REST 117
coming Christ is to come back to them. This leads
us to think that all that is implied in the figure of the
vine ("Because I live, ye shall live also," "Abide
in me, and I in you**) is to be realized by the coming
of the Holy Spirit to abide in them. And as regards
St. John's First Epistle, if it is only the witness of
the Spirit to Jesus that is actually spoken of, and the
secure perception of truth conveyed by His anointing
a reminder which the intellectual disturbances of
the time made specially opportune yet it is
gratuitous to suppose that St. John was unconscious
of the connexion of " eternal life " in all its aspects
with the Holy Spirit. What a man says in a par-
ticular letter is not all he has in his mind, but what
the circumstances of the moment require.
St. Peter in his First Epistle speaks of the Spirit
of Christ specially as the Spirit of ancient prophecy
and the inspirer of the Gospel message. 1 But he
also calls Him generally "the Spirit of the Glory 5>
(Christ) and the Spirit of sanctification, 2 and when he
speaks of the diverse * charismata * bestowed on
members of the Church, he doubtless would have us
recognize them as gifts of the Spirit.*
In the Epistle to the Hebrews, once more, there is
very little about the Holy Spirit, but what there is
implies much. The writer affirms His inspiration of
the writers of the Old Testament, and His concern in
the details of the ritual law that was essential to
his argument; but also among the privileges of
Christians he mentions " having been made partakers
of holy spirit/* and he speaks of apostasy from
Christ as an insulting of the Spirit of grace, and he
alludes to the variety of the Spirit's gifts. 4
i 1 Pet. i. II, 12. 2 iv. 14, i 2. 3 iv. 10 f.
* Heb. iii. 7, ix. 8, vi. 4, x. 29, ii. 4. In the Epistle of Jude
(ver, 20) we have the remarkable expression " praying in holy
spirit," and in St. James (iv, 6) probably "the Spirit which God
made to dwell in us." In the Apocalypse our thoughts are directed
almost wholly to the Holy Spirit as the inspirer of prophets.
118 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH
It is thus in St. Paul, St. Luke, and St. John that
we specially find the Gospel of the Spirit. But we
must be on our guard against supposing that rareness
of mention in the other writers necessarily implies
either ignorance or disparagement. It is something
difficult to account for, almost all down the history
of the Church, that the Holy Spirit is comparatively
little spoken of except at a few moments of contro-
versy. This strikes us especially in the theology of
the Middle Ages ; and yet if we think of the three
hymns Veni sancte spiritus, Veni creator spiritus, and
Nunc sancte nobis spiritus (the hymn for the third
hour), and of their influence, we shall berestrained from
supposing that the comparative silence in the region
of theology means an ignoring of the supreme gift
in the spiritual life. So the fact that we have only
passing allusions to the Holy Spirit's action by the
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews and by St.
Peter and St. Jude should not suggest to us
that their belief was different from St. Paul's and
St. John's.
II
The compass of this book will not allow of our
pursuing the teaching of the Church concerning the
Holy Spirit down the centuries. I must almost con-
tent myself with what has been already briefly said
in the volume on Belief in Christ, under the heading
of the origin and development of the doctrine of
the Holy Trinity. 1 And I yield to this necessity
with the less reluctance because Dr. Swete has given
a full and, as far as I can judge, an impartial account
of the history of opinion and definition on this subject
in his treatise on The Holy Spirit in the Ancient
Church.* But there are certain points in the develop-
ment of the doctrine which may be noted. The
credit for its formulation lies especially with the
1 Chap. viii. Macmillan, 1912.
LATER THEOLOGY 119
Cappadocians of the fourth century, Basil and Ms
brother Gregory of Nyssa, and perhaps principally
Gregory of Nazianzus. In the fifth of his great
theological orations (A.B. 380) that on the Holy
Spirit the last-named Father gives a gloomy view
of the confusion which had prevailed on this subject
within the Church. " Of the wise men among us
some considered the Spirit as an activity, some as a
creature, some as God ; and some have not known
which of these opinions to choose, in reverence, as
they say, for Scripture, as if it made no clear declara-
tion." 1 This, we can venture to say, with the
writings of the earlier centuries in our hands, gives
an exaggerated impression. Nevertheless, confusion
there certainly was, and, more markedly even, than
confusion, there w r as an ignoring of the importance
of the subject, due to the preoccupation of men's
minds with the controversies about the person of
Christ. Gregory pathetically remarks that people
have been * 4 nauseated " by the controversies on this
latter subject and left without any taste for embarking
on any other. 2 " Nevertheless," he adds, " with the
Spirit's help the argument shall run and God
shall be glorified." And we cannot but feel that the
definition which was so largely due to Gregory,
according to which the Holy Spirit was determined
to be both personal and essential to the being of the
one God, was the definition which " the simple and
untechnical language of Holy Scripture " (as Basil
beautifully calls it) really requires. But about this
something more must be said when we come to speak
about the development of Christian doctrine. Here
I confine myself to noting in the briefest way some
points in the theology of the Fathers of the fourth
century to whom (with the earlier Origen) we owe
the definition.
The first is their extreme unwillingness to go
i Orat. TheoL, v, 5. * Of, efe, 2*
9
120 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH
outside the language and spirit of Scripture in
theological definition. They at least are quite free
from inteliectualism, or the love of definition for its
own sake. Thus "It is impossible/ 3 says Athanasius,
" for created beings, and especially for us men, to
speak adequately about things which transcend
language. And this being so, it is specially audacious
to devise on these subjects newer and unscriptural l
terms."
Secondly, their profound sense of the practical
value of belief both in the personality and in the
Godhead of the Holy Spirit. They keep their argu-
ments close to the common experience of Christians.
Thirdly, their refusal to limit the action of the
Holy Spirit (or of the Word) within the barriers of
the Church. Wherever God acts, they insist, it is
through His Word and by His Spirit.
Fourthly, the equipoise they successfully maintain
between the conceptions of unity and variety as
evidences of the Spirit's presence in the Church.
Their doctrine is of course the common Catholic
doctrine about the unity of the Church and the
sin of schism, but they really deserve the title of
Broad Churchmen. They love to insist on the
variety which characterizes the work of the Spirit/
who is the giver of life as in nature, so in the super-
natural life of the Church. He is set to nourish
and not to suppress individuality. His presence is
marked more by exuberance of vitality than by
monotony or uniformity.
Ill
We must return to our records of the origins of
Christianity, especially to examine as carefully as
1 Athan,, Ep. L 9 ad Serap., 17. The words are irapct, rds
vapd, as Lightfoot said (on Gal. i. 8), may mean. " contrary to " or
" besides.** And in the particular case it is difficult to decide pre-
cisely which is meant. The latter meaning would appear to con*
demn the
SPIRITUAL RELIGION 121
possible the conception of sacraments which we find
there. But though it should appear that the sacra-
ments are viewed as ordained instruments and recog-
nized channels for the action of the Spirit, yet it
certainly also appears that " the life in the Spirit "
was not a life of special occasions only, such as the
administration of sacraments, but was the whole of
life, lived under a new impulse and in a new power.
Christians are to "walk in the Spirit.* 3 This is
what gave to the earliest Christian life its peculiar
characteristic of joy "joy in the Holy Spirit. 51
" Be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but
be filled with the Spirit, . . . singing and making
melody with your heart to the Lord/*
It was the presence of the Holy Spirit in the
Church and all its members which was to make prac-
ticable a perpetually prayerful mind " praying in the
Holy Spirit." That Holy Spirit, as St. Paul reminds
the Roman Christians, is Himself, in His own person,
the constant intercessor " according to God " ; and,
though our intercessions are blind and weak, behind
them, to sustain them and to interpret them to God,
is the Spirit who perfectly understands the divine
purpose. 1 Here indeed is a ground of encouragement
in whatever depth of adversity. So it came about
that thankfulness and joy become the notes of life
in the Spirit. If we pass a generation or two down
below the apostolic age, we still find the emphasis
on these notes. Thus the prophet Hermas in his
Shepherd writes ;
" Put off grief from thyself, for it is the sister of doubt
and all ill-temper. . . . Dost thou not understand that
grief is the most evil of all the spirits, and most to be
dreaded by the servants of God, and more than all spirits
it destroys man and obliterates the Holy Spirit? Put
off, therefore, grief from thyself and do not vex the Holy
Spirit which dwells in thee. . . . Clothe thyself in the
i Bom. viii. 26 ff.
122 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH
gladness which always has favour with God and is accept-
able to Him, and delight thyself in it ; for every glad-
hearted man does and thinks good things and despises
grief." *
And there is hardly a period of Christian history
where illustrations of the same temper could not
easily be found.
Further, this sense of the presence and activity of
the Holy Spirit in the Church was quickened and made
enthusiastic by meetings such as those of which St.
Paul gives us such a vivid picture at Corinth where
the " gifts " had special exercise and indeed showed
signs of running riot. Let me quote Duchesne 2 :
" If the Church took over en Uoc all the religious services
of the Synagogue, it added thereto one or two new ele-
ments. ... I refer to the Supper, or sacred repast, and
the spiritual exercises.
" After the Eucharist, 3 certain inspired persons began
to preach and to make manifest before the assembly the
presence of the Spirit which animated them. The
prophets, the eestatics, the speakers with tongues, the
interpreters, the supernatural healers, absorbed at this
time the attention of the faithful. There was, as it were,
a liturgy of the Holy Spirit after the liturgy of Christ,
a true liturgy with a real presence and communion.
The inspiration could be felt it sent a thrill through
the organs of certain privileged persons, but the whole
assembly was moved, edified, and even more or less
ravished by it and transported into the divine sphere of
the Paraclete/ 1
I think exception might be taken to certain details
of this picturesque account as that it makes " preach-
ing " more prominent than St. Paul's words, which
are practically our only authority, 4 would warrant.
St. Paul seems to complain of the lack of it. It
* Hermas, Pastor, Hand, x, 1> 3.
a See Christian Worship, pp. 481 (S.P.C.K.)
3 I do not know what the authority is for these words.
< 1 Cor. xiv.
THE GIFTS AT CORINTH 128
was ecstatic " tongues " a kind of unintelligent and
unintelligible thanksgiving or prayer that was
more in evidence. Also Duchesne seems to assume
that the scene described at Corinth would have been
found in the churches generally. But St. Paul does
not suggest this, though it may be true. He does
not say, in seeking to introduce more order into these
assemblies, as he does in the matter of marriage,
" And so ordain I in all the churches/* * Nor does he
suggest that there was public healing of the sick on
these occasions. Nevertheless this enthusiastic culti-
vation of ecstatic gifts in a public assembly of the
Church, this " liturgy of the Spirit/ 5 was a very
highly valued part of public worship at Corinth and
very likely elsewhere. That it was easily liable to
abuse is apparent, St. Paul's intimation, " The rest
will I set in order when I come/ 3 given in connexion
with scandals at the love-feast and eucharist, may
- have struck a chill into the hearts of some enthusiasts ;
and we do not know how soon these spiritual exercises
were " regulated away " like the love-feasts. No
doubt in the second century the excesses of the
Montanist enthusiasts bred in the Church a deeper
repulsion from ecstatic spiritual gifts. Nevertheless
the Corinthian meetings afforded an opportunity for
unofficial persons to exercise spiritual gifts. We
cannot help wondering whether the ordinary excuses
for officialism were not allowed too lightly to abolish
them. We recall the revivalist meetings and free
prayer meetings which before and after the Reforma-
tion the Church has frowned upon, but which, with
all their admitted excesses and absurdities, have
nourished and exhibited a real and intense spirituality.
We assent to St. Paul's demand that such manifesta-
tions of the Spirit should be kept within the bounds
of Church order, but it is difficult to restrain the
feeling that in one form or another they ought never
i I Cor, viL 17
124 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH
to have been abandoned, and that a good deal of
the freedom of the Spirit was lost, when they ceased
to hold their place among the methods of the Church,
and only officials of the Church could lead the public
worship.
IV
It does not seem to me to admit of question that
St. Paul, in his earlier Epistles, and in the Epistle
to the Ephesians, and (if we may quote them as St.
Paul's in substance, if not in words) in the Epistles
to Timothy and Titus, shows himself a genuine
sacramentalist. 1 It is a poor plea that St. Paul
does not say much about sacraments, when what
there is is so plain in the sense it conveys. That
comparatively little is said about them means prob-
ably that there was no controversy about them.
Nor can we admit in the light of St. Paul's plain
statements about the efficacy of baptism that the
words " Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach
the Gospel " are intended to disparage baptism by
the side of preaching. They mean no more necessarily
than that St. Paul regarded baptism as something
to be left to his companions, or later to the local
presbyters. And he sees a positive advantage in
this arrangement, because it hindered the false
impression from arising that he was founding a sect
of adherents to himself " Lest any man should say
that ye were baptized in my name.'* But let us
consider his sacramental teaching positively.
1. The language he used about baptism is quite
plain in its implications. The rite viewed externally
1 Let us use this word to express one who believes in spiritual
gifts being really bestowed through the external forms ; and keep
4 * Sacramentarian " to its proper historical use as another name
for those who, in opposition to Luther, held a merely symbolical
view of the eucharist Carlstadt, Bucer, and Zwingli. " Sacra-
mentarian" means the opposite of "sacramentalist." If this
distinction .is not observed, books about the Reformation become
misleading.
HOLY BAPTISM 125
is symbolical. The going down into the water and
being immersed in it and rising out of it is an acted
representation of life through death, the dying to an
old life and being buried and rising again to the new
life ; but it is more than a symbol. It effects what
it symbolizes. It is the transference of a man into
a new spiritual sphere. It is baptism " into Christ **
or " into the one body " the Church, which St. Paul
calls the body of Christ, or even Christ Himself, the
Christ consisting both of the head and the body.
And it is the Spirit who effects this transference
" By one Spirit were we all baptized into one body " ;
and the spiritual effect is regarded as following always
on the outward action " All we who were baptized,"
" as many of you as were baptized into Christ did
[then and there] put on Christ." l In the Ephesians
St. Paul regards the " one baptism," which he
enumerates among the bonds of unity, as a cleansing
applicable to the Church as a whole, and he seems to
distinguish the matter of baptism, i.e. the water, from
what is later called " the form," or accompanying
words " having cleansed it by the washing of water
with the word." 2 The idea of the effect of baptism
* Rom. vi. 3 ; 1 Cor. xii. 12, 13 ; Gal. iii. 27 Col. ii. 12. We should
note that in writing to the Bomans, whom he had never visited,
St. Paul assumes that they must as a matter of course understand
what baptism means. " Are ye ignorant " means " Ye cannot
surely be ignorant."
a Eph. iv. 5, v. 26 : see Dr. Armitage Robinson in loco : "It
is plain that the phrase & p^art indicates some solemn utterance
by the accompaniment of which the washing of water is made to
be no ordinary bath, but the sacrament of baptism." And he
continues : "In the earliest times, however, baptism appears to
have been administered * in the name of Jesus Christ ' (Acts ii. 38,
x. 48, cl viii. 12) or * the Lord Jesus ' (Acts viii. 16, xix. 6). And
on the use of the single formula St. Paul's argument in 1 Cor. i. 13
seems to be based. ... It is probable then that the ffina. here
referred to is the solemn mention of the name of the Lard Jesus
Christ in connexion with the rite of baptism either as the con-
. _. . .. i disagreement.
fairly convincing that at the beginning only the single name was
126 HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH
conveyed in these phrases is the same as that conveyed
in the Epistle to Titus " according to Ms mercy he
saved us, through the washing of regeneration and
renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he poured out
upon us richly, through Jesus Christ our Saviour. 5 ' 1
Incorporation into Christ or His body, the being
invested in -a new spiritual nature which is Christ,
" cleansing " from defilement mediated by washing,
a new birth into a new spiritual status all these
phrases convey the same idea, and the process thus
variously described is assigned to the same agent,
the Holy Spirit, with the same external rite as its
instrument. There is then in baptism an outward
and visible sign and an inward and spiritual gift, and
the two appear to be inseparably connected. The
same conception of baptism as a spiritually effective
rite is suggested by St. Peter's strong phrase " Baptism
(as the reflection of Christ's descent into Hades) now
also saves you," * though the words which follow are
ambiguous, and by the phrase of the Epistle to the
Hebrews s " Having our hearts sprinkled from an
evil conscience, and our body washed with pure
water. "
In the Acts also baptism is regarded as effecting
used. Down to the time of the Schoolmen this view prevailed,
see S. Thomas Aq., Sum. Th. t 3*, qu. 66, a. 6. It would appear
(see Dr. Brightman in his essay on " the terms of communion " in
TheEarly History of the Church and the Ministry, pp. 344-5 : Maomillan,
1918) that in the Roman Church for some centuries there was no
baptismal formula pronounced by the ministrant, but only the
threefold question of the ministrant, " Dost thou believe," etc.,
followed by the threefold reply, " I belie ve," and the threefold
affusion. The Church by its "binding" and "loosing" power
later settled the precise conditions of valid baptism.
1 Tit. iii. 6; ci 1 Cor. vi. 11 : "Ye were washed, ye were sancti-
fied, ye were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in
the Spirit of our God.'*
a For the reading and meaning see Dr. Bernard's Sttudm Sacra,
pp. 26 fi 3 . (Hodder & Stoughton). I think the words
els Bete are probably suggested by Ezek. xx 1, 3 (LXX.
to " enquire of God " ; cl xiv. 7,
8 Heb. x. 22.
EX OPERE QPERATO 127
the great transition from the world of sin to the
world of righteousness . So Cornelius is represented
as explaining its meaning to Saul on his conversion.
" Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins,
calling on his name " (the name of Jesus). 1 And
from the beginning the emphasis is on absolution or
being set free. " Repent, and be baptized every one
of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission
of your sins ; and ye shall receive the Holy Spirit-" s
That is, baptism is represented from the moment after
Pentecost as an ordinance which the Apostles are
commissioned to require, its efficacy lying in abso-
lution and cleansing from sin, and in opening the
door to the gift of the Spirit, which, however, is
specially connected in the Acts with the following
rite of the laying on of hands. And in interpreting
the phrases in the Acts and the Epistles we recall of
course the words in our Lord's discourse with Nico-
demus in the Fourth Gospel, " Verily, verily, I say
unto thee, Except a man be born anew " (or " from
above "), " he cannot see the kingdom of God. . . .
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be
born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into
the kingdom of God." -
Modern critics, then, such as would assimilate the
Church to the mysteries, are quite right in affirming
that St. Paul (and the other New Testament writers)
believed in baptism as acting ex opere operato,* if by
that is meant simply that he believed a real change
of spiritual status to be wrought in all cases through
the visible rite. In this we must agree with Dr.
Kirsopp Lake against Dr. Kennedy * ; but when he
goes on to suggest that " the attitude which regarded
Christianity as a c mystery religion * inevitably
must have led men to exaggerate and misinterpret
i Acts xxii. 16. 3 Acts it 38.
8 See Dr. K. Lake, The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, p. 385.
-See St. Paul and the Mystery Edigions, pp. 232 1
128 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH
the Pauline doctrine of freedom, to regard the
cleansing from sin gained by the Christian as giving
him permission henceforth to do as he liked without
incurring guilt, and to consider baptism as an opus
operatum which secured his admission into the
kingdom apart from the character of his future
conduct," he is going beyond his evidence. There
was a perilous tendency to antinomianism among
the Gentile converts, as was natural enough con-
sidering their antecedents. But the evidence of St.
Paul's language in combating their grievous error
would indicate that it was excused by an appeal to
the doctrine of free forgiveness greatly misunderstood,
or to the triumph of grace over law, or to c liberty,*
rather than by any appeal to the efficacy of the
sacraments. 1
Some of the later books of the New Testament are
heavy with anxiety caused by the spread of an im-
moral idea of religion, coupled with a false asceticism,
and worthless speculations about the unknowable
and unprofitable. Such a spirit the mysteries would
have nourished. But the Church would have none
of it ; and it succeeded in weathering the storm, and
on the whole maintaining for centuries a splendid
level both of personal and social morality. It was
true to the heritage of ideas which it had derived
from the prophets of Israel that religion and morality
were strictly indissoluble and that there was no
fellowship with God possible except by the way of
righteousness. At a certain moment of controversy
with the Judaizers, St. Paul used language which
might easily be perverted. But about his real
meaning there is no mistake. He was as sound on
the on'e end of religion as St. James. In the process
of redemption, faith, which opens our hearts to the
promises of God and commits our whole life to His
i Rom. vi. 1, 15: cf. 1 Cor. vi. 12, x. 23, " All things are lawful
for me " ; cf. 2 Pot. ii. 19, ** Promising them liberty."
ST. JOHN ON REGENERATION 129
will, has a supremely important place : so has
baptism, which actually and spiritually introduces us
into the covenant of grace and the fellowship of the
Spirit ; but both alike are relative to the one end.
Three times St. Paul states the essentials of religion
from three different points of view in controversy
with the Judaists, " Neither circumcision/ 5 he says,
" availeth anything, nor uncircunicision ; but faith
working through love." " Circumcision/' he says
again, " is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing,
but a new creature." Finally, u Circumcision is
nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing ; but the keep-
ing of the commandments of God. 95 * Faith, and the
recreative act of God, in which baptism holds its
great place, are essentials as means; but there is
only one essential end, which is actual conformity
with God in character and conduct.
When we turn from St. Paul to St. John we find
that to him the gift of regeneration is so indissolubly
associated with the life of practical goodness into
which it serves to admit men, that he speaks as if
regeneration and complete moral victory were one
and the same thing. " Whosoever is begotten of
God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him :
and he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God/'
" Whosoever is begotten of God overcometh the
world." * Elsewhere, even in the immediate context
of these words, he shows that sin is sadly possible
in Christians s ; but he is unwilling even to speak of
regeneration except as seen in its proper fruits.
The early discipline, and the early ceremonies of
baptism, must have impressed deeply upon every
convert the moral meaning of being baptized ; and
there is no subject on which the Christian writers
appear to draw on a more profound spiritual experi-
ence. But the Christian rites were, of course,
* Gal, v. 0, vi. 15; 1 Cor. vii. 19.
a 1 John Hi. 9, v. 4. 3 v. 16, i, 8.
130 HOLY SPIRIT IN CHURCH
designed for adult converts ; and when Christianity
became a matter of course, and infant baptism the
almost universal rule, it ran a great risk of losing
its moral power by being treated almost as a charm*
I must say a word therefore on the baptism of Infants.
It is probable that the Church from the beginning
took over from the Jews the practice of baptizing the
children of proselytes " the little proselytes " with
their parents. 1 The phrases in Acts xvi. about both
Lydia and the jailer at Philippi " he was baptized,
he and all his," " she and her household " suggest
it. Our Lord's words " Suffer the little children to
come unto rne " would have encouraged the practice
then, as in later ages. St. Paul appears to address
children as already " in the Lord " (Eph, vi. I), and,
since he speaks of the children of two parents, only
one of whom had become Christian, as " holy " (or
consecrated to God 1 Cor. vii. 14), he would probably
think of them as fit subjects for baptism. Neverthe-
less this would have been because the allegiance to
Christ of the parent or parents provided a pledge
that the child would be educated in the principles of
Christ. All the moral circumstances of baptism in
early days sharply differentiated it from a charm.
It involved for the adults a most definite choice, and
such a separation from the old life as made the choice
a real adventure of faith. And all the early lore
about baptism, and the early ritual, emphasize the
element of solemn and deliberate choice the " dying
to live." This situation continued on the whole for
some three centuries. Thus the homes of Christians
would have been for their children normally nurseries
of faith. The real disaster happened when Chris-
tianity became the established religion and baptism
became really indiscriminate. " Baptism doth repre-
sent unto us our profession " it is the profession of
* See Taylor's Teaching of tJie Twelve Apostles, pp. 55-8 f and
Sabatier's La Didache, pp. 84-8.
LAYING ON OF HANDS IBl
discipleship ; and it seems to me that no departure
from the principles of Christ has been so serious as that
which allowed membership of the Church to become
a matter of course. But upon this we must return.
2. Our aim is to make it plain that the sacramental
principle was acknowledged in the Church from the
beginning, and to indicate the solemn rites in which
the principle was recognized. One of these was the
laying on of hands. We should gather from the
Acts that baptism prepared for the gift of the Holy
Spirit, but the laying on of the hands of the apostles
was the normal instrument of its bestowal. 1 It has
recently 2 been suggested that the narrative in Acts
viii. may be interpreted as a kind of experiment,
made because the Samaritan Christians had not, as a
consequence of their baptism, showed the signs of
the possession of the Spirit which were expected
the speaking with tongues. But if this had been in
the mind of the writer, he would surely have made it
more evident. And it is quite inapplicable to the
narrative in chap. xix. I think it must be admitted
that St. Luke intends us to understand that the normal
ceremony of initiation was baptism followed by the
laying on of hands, and that it was so from the
beginning. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, when the
writer is enumerating the elements of the first teaching
of converts, he speaks of the " teaching of baptisms,
and the laying on of hands." And they were joined
together in the early Christian tradition s ; the rite
1 Acts ii. 38, viii. 17-18, xix. 6. Br. Chase, Confirmation in
the Apostolic Age, p. 34, says : " The imposition of hands after
baptism is represented as the natural act of the apostles after
baptism. No explanation of the origin of the practice is
given. . , . Short of an express statement to that effect, we could
have no more convincing proof the apostles were following a com-
mand which they had received from the Lord Himself."
3 In The Acts (Clarendon Bible), p. 160.
3 Tertull., de Bapt., 6: " Not that we receive the Holy Spirit in
the waters, but cleansed in the waters, we are prepared for the
Holy Spirit. . . . Then fche hand is laid on us, by benediction
invoking and inviting the Holy Spirit."
132 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH
of baptism, as commonly spoken of, included the
laying on of hands. And though the words of Christ,
according to St. John, attach the action of the
Holy Spirit to baptism with water, and St. Paul's
words confirm this " By one Spirit were we all
baptized into one body " yet to the laying on of
hands was attached that full indwelling of the Spirit
which equipped each " member " to play Ms part
in the royal and priestly body.
There is no mention of what we call " confirma-
tion ** in the New Testament except in the Acts and
the Hebrews * ; but it is suggested by St. Paul's
habit of referring to the reception of the Holy Spirit
as having occurred at a definite moment of the
convert's life. 8 Certainly it is St. Paul's teaching
that the Spirit was from a definite moment in their
lives lodged in their heart and body, and he never
suggests that Christians should ask for the Spirit
as if they did not already permanently possess
Him.
The laying on of hands was hardly regarded in
early days as a second sacrament rather it was
regarded as the completion of baptism ; and in the
tradition of the early centuries it was restricted to
the bishop.
3. For the interpretation given to the eucharist in
the earliest days of the Church we depend mainly
upon a few passages in St. Paul's First Epistle to the
Corinthians, for special abuses, which arose at Corinth
alone, caused him to write about what elsewhere he
1 Unless we agree with Chase in interpreting 2 Tim. i. 6 of con-
firmation. See below, p. 143, n. 1.
* See Chase, op. cit., pp. 52 and 150, and Swete, The Holy Spirit
in the N.T., pp. 202, 204. The latter interprets Gal. iii. 5, " He
therefore that supplies to you the Spirit and works miracles among
you," of the apostolic minister, rather than of God, pp. 202-3.
Cf. Acts xi. 17, ace. to the Bezan text, " Who was I that I should
withstand God, that 1 should not give them the Holy Spirit when they
believed on him ? " But I doubt if these additional words can be
authentic.
THE HOLY EUCHARIST 133
can take for granted. Nothing can make us feel the
insecurity of the " argument from silence/ 5 or of the
habit of measuring the importance of a subject by
the number of references to it, more than the acci-
dental way in which St. Paul is led to refer to the
original teaching which he had given at Corinth,
and which no doubt he gave in all the churches
of his foundation, about both the institution of the
eucharist at the Last Supper and the meaning of the
rite. Up to a certain point these references are very
explicit, and they are most suggestive. They put in
the most startling contrast the remarkably domestic
and, as we may say, casual character of the cele-
bration with the awful spiritual realities enshrined
In it. Here you have a vivid glimpse of " the
breaking of the bread," the common meal of fellow-
ship, or " agap&," as it was later called, for which the
Christians met daily or at the opening hours of the
First Day, i.e. our Saturday evening. It was a quite
natural meal, intended to express brotherhood, but
capable of being misused, as it actually was at Corinth,
to the strangely contrary ends of class distinction
and excess. But to such a meal so unguarded in
its circumstances was attached the commemoration
of Christ in the bread broken and the wine cup
blessed, which He Himself had appended to the
Paschal meal. And the strange words which He had
then spoken, " This is my body," " This is my
blood," St. Paul would have us interpret with a
tremendous realism.
The body of Christ, offered for them in sacrifice,
and the blood outpoured is really present under the
humble forms of bread and wine. It is present to
be their spiritual food. The cup which they bless is
a sharing together in the blood, and the bread which
they break is a sharing together in the body of
Christ. The one bread and the one cup are the
symbols and the instruments of their unity. But
THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH
prior to reception the heavenly realities must be by
their faith recognized as present. To fail to " discern
the body " l is to fall under judgement. To eat the
bread or drink the cup unworthily is to be guilty of
the body and blood of the Lord. And those who have
been content with taking the bread and drinking the
cup without discernment of the unseen reality have
been in fact punished with sickness and sometimes
with death. 2
The particular phrases which St. Paul uses have
been scrutinized with more strictness than human
language, quite unscholastic human language, will
bear. I think we need to trust more than critics and
theologians are apt to do to the general impression
they make on our imagination. St. Paul's language,
I think, gives us a vivid impression of the " breaking
of the bread " as it was practised at Corinth, and
shows us a fraternal meal easily liable to abuse not
such as we should naturally associate with anything
specially sacred. Then into the middle of this scene
he introduces the most tremendous spiritual presences.
The earthly and the heavenly, the natural and the
supernatural, are brought into the most startling
proximity. This is sacramentalism indeed. Here
we are presented with an institution of Christ for
His Church in which, with a divine boldness, the
highest things are offered to us under the most
familiar earthly forms and conditions. In the
subsequent history of the Church we begin to see
very soon different schools of interpretation of the
words of Christ forming themselves, and later in
history controversy has raged about them again and
again. But it does not seem to me open to question
that St. Paul takes it for granted that there was a
1 In the context I cannot conceive that " the body ** can mean
anything but Christ's own body, which is put in conjunction with
His *< blood " (or life).
* 1 Cor. xi 20 fi% x. 16 ft.
THE SACRAMENT OF FELLOWSHIP 185
real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the
elements blessed in the eucharist, such as should
strike his converts with an awful dread of a careless
approach to them.
No doubt steps were taken by St. Paul to make
impossible the particular scandals he was confronted
with. We know that very soon the eucharist proper
was separated from the love-feast. But for a long
time, especially, it would appear, in the Church of
Rome, the natural basis of the sacrament in a fra-
ternal meal remained evident. In an Ordo of the
eighth century we have a description of the single
Mass celebrated in Rome on the Sunday by the bishop
for his assembled flock. What would have struck us,
if we could have been present, would have been what
followed the solemn reading of the Gospel the
gathering from the assembled multitude of their
offerings, a great store of bread and wine, and " the
spreading of the table-cloth " on the altar to receive
the oblations ; then when the eucharistic prayer
had been said by the bishop and the gifts in great
part consecrated, we should have seen them returned
to the whole congregation which had offered them,
in bags and flagons, now made to be the divine food
which was to sanctify them as one people in Christ. 1
Surely we may say that St. Paul would approve of
no ritual of the Christian sacrifice which did not
leave its social nature apparent. ct We, the many, are
one bread, one body : for we are all partakers of the
one bread."
With the sacrament of ordination I am to deal
immediately. What I am seeking to do in these
pages is only to make evident that the Church from
its origin was unmistakably and deeply sacramental
1 I have described the service in more detail in Reservation (by
the Bishops o Oxford and Chelmsford: Robert Scott, 1917). I
would refer also to The Body of Christ (John Murray), where I have
dealt with eucharistic doctrine more at length.
10
186 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH
that it certainly believed in divine gifts ministered
through earthly rites ; and I have illustrated this
from the three instances of baptism, confirmation,
and the eueharist. Harnack, in his brilliant work
on The Expansion of Christianity* describes, and in
part parodies, the sacramental religion of the early
Church. Then he adds, " Ab initio sic non erat is the
protest that will be entered. * From the beginning
it was not so. 5 Perhaps. But one must go far back
to find that beginning, so far back that this extremely
brief period now eludes our search entirely." It is
true that it entirely eludes our search ; but the
question is whether we have any justification for
believing that it ever existed. 2
The outward unity of the Church, the body of
Christ, as it appears in the New Testament and in
the subsequent history of the Church, was guarded
against the disruptive tendencies of humanity
especially by three bonds : first, by the authority of
the common faith or word of God, of which we are
to speak in the chapters which follow ; secondly, by
the need to seek the gifts of God in the sacraments of
the society ; thirdly, by the obligation of adherence
to the apostolic ministry.
Elsewhere * I have sought to examine at length
the grounds for holding (1) that the principle of the
apostolic succession in the ministry of the Church
was one of its most uncontested principles from the
middle of the second century downwards ; (2) that
1 Engl. trans., i. 293.
2 On the "seven sacraments," see Appended Note B, p. 149.
8 I.e. in The Church and the Ministry (Longmans), published in
188S and recently republished after careful revision by Professor
C. H. Turner. The Professor has also recently embodied the con-
clusions of his historical studies in a little tract, which can be read
in a quarter of an hour, on The Apostolic Succession (among " The
Congress Books/' No. 33),
THE APOSTOLIC MINISTRY 187
the books of the New Testament and the indications
of the sub-apostolic age supply the justification for
this principle. The controversy on the subject covers
a very wide field and I cannot here repeat the argu-
ment. I can only ask that it be considered, as is
not, I fear, often done, as a whole. Here I shall only
concern myself with the evidence supplied by the
documents of the apostolic and sub-apostolic period,
and I shall seek to indicate the chief points on which
any enquirer must make up his mind, at the same
time showing the answer to which it seems to me the
evidence points.
I. The root question is whether, prior to all
development suggested, or rendered necessary, by
circumstances, the Church does appear, even before
Pentecost, as a body already equipped with officers
holding pastoral authority by Christ's appointment
in the persons of the apostles. Those who oppose
this position are apt to refer to the great authority
of Dr. Hort. But we must not allow ourselves to be
enslaved to any single scholar or group of scholars,
however eminent. We must seek to exercise our
free judgement. Like Dr. Mason, 1 1 find the section
of Dr. Hort's posthumously published work on The
Christian Ecclesia which deals with this subject
quite unconvincing, 2 nothing else than an over-subtle
scholar's paradox. As we have seen, 3 St. Paul
certainly believed that authority, which must be
called official, had been given by God to the Apostles,
and to himself among them. He claims this authority
not only in the churches of his foundation, but in the
Roman Church, which he had never visited. And
the same impression is made on our minds by the
narrative of the Acts. That such authority was
1 See Sarly History of the Church and the Ministry, p. 41.
* See The, Church and the Hini&try, Appended Note M.
8 See above, p. 68 ; for the Roman church, see Rom. i. 1, 6, xi. 13,
xv. 15 f. ; for the Acts, above, p. 47.
138 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH
solemnly and deliberately granted by our Lord is
stated in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John,
and is implied in St. Mark and St. Luke. x The Church
from Clement of Rome downwards accepted the fact
as obvious ; and I think the evidence constrains us
to assent.
2. We have to ask ourselves whether the existence
of such officers in the Christian society, believed to
have been appointed by divine authority, and put
in trust of the " mysteries of God " and not of
doctrine only, but of the ministry of grace as a whole 2
does not involve the principle of a priesthood,
whether the Greek word Mereus is used for them or
no. The ideas attached to the particular word,
whether among Jews or Greeks, might very naturally
have made the Christian Church somewhat slow to
adopt it. But is not the principle there ? It is
indeed protected against abuse by certain safeguards :
by the fullest recognition of the equal freedom of
approach to God belonging to all those who share
the same Spirit ; by the openness to all alike of the
divine 'mysteries/ and the absence of any idea
of a c reserved * doctrine ; by the moral teaching
which should have made it impossible to regard any
sacraments administered by priests as charms which
could be beneficial without moral response ; and by
the important share in the discipline and worship of
the Church assigned to all its members. Let us say
that the priesthood of the Christian ministry is a
representative, not a vicarious priesthood. Still, in
the persons of the Apostles, it has its powers not
from the people, bu from God. Men must, it seems,
normally seek the gift of the Holy Ghost from
1 See above, pp. 45 ff.
* 2 Cor. iii. 6 and Bom. i. 11. We notice that in Rom. xv. 15
St. Paul justifies Ms ** bold " tone to the Romans by the nature of
his office. Dr. Mofiat translates his words, " I have written to
you with a certain freedom, in virtue of my divine commission as a
priest of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the service of God's Gospel."
SACERDOTALISM 189
apostolic hands ; and the ct stewardship 5 * of these
officers, granted them by Christ, gave them powers
of " binding " and " loosing/ 5 " absolving ** and
" retaining sins " with a divine sanction, which could
not be ignored, and which appear at the last resort
to inhere in their special office, though they seek to
exercise them in union with the whole body of the
faithful. Thus this is the question Does not the
spiritual life of the members of Christ appear in
the New Testament as in manifold ways dependent
upon their adherence to the Apostles and those who
shared their ministry with them ? If this is so, is it
not the case that we cannot repudiate sacerdotalism^
but only certain forms of it or abuses of it ? 1
3. The apostles had a certain function as witnesses
and founders which necessarily died with them ; but
St. Paul plainly regards his pastoral office as one to
be perpetuated, and so presumably did the others.
1 There is nothing in the New Testament which gives any indi-
cation as to who might or who might not preside at the eueharist.
The eueharist was instituted apparently in the presence of the
Twelve only (Mark xiv. 17), and was entrusted to them in the words
*' Do this [celebrate this rite] in remembrance of me." And it
was a symbol or instrument of the unity of the Church such as would
naturally be in the hands of the officers of the Church. So in
Clement, at the end of the first century, it is the traditional func-
tion of the presbyter-bishops to "offer the gifts" ; and by Ignatius
it is said, " Let that be esteemed a valid eueharist which is cele-
brated by the bishop or someone to whom he has intrusted it."
And in the Didache the election of " bishops and deacons " is made
apparently specially with a view to the celebration of the " pure
sacrifice " of the Church, in the absence 01" the apostles and pro-
phets. And in Justin Martyr the *' president of the brethren **
celebrates.* Dr. Hamilton (People of God, bk. ii, chap. vi, pp.
110 .) works out the evidence for the connexion of mon-episcopacy
with the ' presidency ' of the eueharist. But there is nothing
about the matter in the New Testament. Nothing seems to me
more certain than that as regards matters of order in the Church
there can be no agreement except on the basis of the belief that
the legislative ordering of the Church, as it came about in course
of time, has a divine sanction in proportion to its unanimity and
constancy.
* Clem., c. 44; Ignat., ad Smyrn., 8 ; Did.,xv 9 l; Justin, Apo L
i, 65.
140 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH
And we see the process beginning especially in the
Acts and the Pastoral Epistles . We see local church
officers, the seven, the presbyter-bishops, the deacons,
being appointed. And whether they are elected for
their office by the people or designated by prophets, 1
they are in any case appointed 2 by the apostles, or
later by apostolic delegates themselves appointed
by the apostles, like Timothy and Titus (Tit, i. 5). 8
Towards the end of the first century Clement of
Rome gives us in the simplest manner a history
of the Christian ministry down to his own time. 4
" Christ," he says, " is from God and the Apostles
from Christ ; all took place in both cases in order
by the will of God. . . . Preaching then in country and
town they appointed their firstfruits, when they had
tested them in the Spirit, for bishops [i.e. presbyter-
bishops] and deacons of those who were about to
become believers." Then he adds that " Our
apostles knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that
there would be contention about the title to the
episcopate. Therefore on this account, having
received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed the
aforesaid [presbyter-bishops and deacons], and subse-
quently gave an additional injunction, that, if they
fell asleep, other approved men should succeed to
their ministry." And the next sentence appears
clearly to interpret this " additional injunction " :
" They, then, who were appointed by those [apostles]
or subsequently by other distinguished men with the
consent of the whole flock,, etc." The additional
injunction then was the provision that, after the
death of the first generation of local clergy (when
* Acts vi. 3, 5, xiiu 2 ; 1 Tim, i. 18. Aets vi, 3, 6, xiv. 23.
8 Only in the Didach do we get mention of " election " without
mention of any other kind of appointment. But the Didache is
a manual for the local church, and the ordination, if ordination
there was, would have lain with the superior order of apostles
or prophets of whom the book speaks. See The Church and the
Ministry, pp. 251-2.
* On Clement, see The Church and the Ministry, pp. 273 f.
THE SUB-APOSTOLIC MINISTRY 141
the apostles also presumably would have gone),
there should be other distinguished men who, not
arbitrarily, but with the consent of the whole flock,
should appoint their successors. Timothy and Titus
appear to be examples of this class of c distinguished
men 3 or notables.
We cannot trace with certainty the apparently
different processes by which the transition was
effected between the state of things described by
Clement and that of later Church history. Clement,
we have seen, presents a state of things In which
there was at Corinth a local ministry of presbyter-
bishops and deacons subordinated, in respect of the
appointment of their successors, to certain men of
distinction, not presumably belonging to any one
city. We know that, not twenty years later, Ignatius
of Antioch can speak of the threefold local ministry
of bishop, presbyters, and deacons as (1) an apostolic
institution, (2) necessary to the constitution of a
church, (3) of world- wide acceptance. 1 At the
moment of his writing this last point may have been
an exaggeration ; but it very speedily became true.
And whatever was the precise method of transition
in particular cases, it seems to me that there is no
good reason to doubt that it came about on the
principle of succession, i.e. that the elected officers of
the churches had always received their commission,
in whatever grade, from those who in the generation
previous had held from apostles s in the first instance
not only the authority themselves to minister, but
the authority also to appoint others to the ministry.
This is what is meant by the phrase 4 ordination from
above/ by contradistinction from mere election by
the members of the Church (* from below ').
1 On Ignatius, see The Church and the Ministry, p. 258.
* It must be recognized that the term "* apostles '* covered not
only the Twelve but Paul and Barnabas, and Andronicus and
Junias, and others unknown who were held to have received their
commission from Christ Himself
142 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH
I think the only occasion for scruple in maintaining
this position lies in the problem of the prophets.
There were in the Church * prophets 3 and c teachers *
more or less closely associated with apostles, and
of these we should suppose that the prophets at
least were persons who were accepted simply because
there was a divine gift of inspiration recognized in
them ; and the narrative in the Acts xiii., coupled
with the DidacM, would suggest that they were recog-
nized as priests for ministry as well as prophets for
admonition. This may have been the case; but
when the question is that of the perpetuation of the
ministry, the only document which suggests any
continuance of this kind of authority in the prophets
is the DidacM ; and, if that is a genuine document of
the sub-apostolic age (as I believe), it represents a
group of churches outside the main stream of Church
life ; and the highly dubious character of the prophets
there described shows the wisdom of the Church at
large in refusing to recognize them in any other
capacity than as preachers, like Hernias.
4. The method of appointment to a church office
is described in 2 Tim. i. 6, in an unmistakably sacra-
mental phrase, " For this cause I put thee in remem-
brance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is
in thee through the laying on of my hands.' 5 1 There
is no like phrase in St. Paul's c undisputed * Epistles,
nor in the Acts, as concerns ordination to pastoral
office, but if you gather the references in the New
1 I cannot doubt that this refers to ordination and ik>t to con-
firmation, as Dr. Chase would have us believe. I think mention
of the spirit of ffufpfoiffpos (see Swete, Holy Spirit in the N.T.,
p. 245-6) and the whole character of the context indicate this,
o also Dr. Mason and Dr. Parry. It has been usual to couple
together 2 Tim, i. 6 with 1 Tim. iv. 14, and to suppose that
Timothy was ordained through prophecy, indicating the divine
approval, by (&d) the laying on of St. Paul's hand accompanied
with (fj^ra) the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. This
seems to make a little too much depend on the particular preposi-
tions used in different epistles. I should have thought both &a
and /t^ra could describe the act of ordination ; and St. Pau] in
ORDINATION SACRAMENTAL 148
Testament, so incidental in their occurrence, to the
laying on of hands as the method of admission to
Church office/ is it not unreasonable to question
that it was the regular method the more so as it
seems to have passed over to the Church from the
Jews, and in the Old Testament appears as a symbol
of transmission from one to another of authority or
status or guilt ? And it would surely have carried
with it the same kind of sacramental implication
as the laying on of hands in confirmation. Un-
doubtedly in St. Paul's view, the " teachers/ 9
4i helps," and " governments," whom he mentions
among Christ's gifts to the Church, were as much
44 charismatic," as much empowered for their func-
tion by a gift of the Spirit, as apostles or prophets
or workers of miracles. 2 It was the Holy Spirit
made men presbyter-bishops (Acts xx. 28).
5. In Church history we constantly find the Church
exercising its function of " binding " and " loosing **
in matters which concern the ministry. We witness
the careful delimitation of the specific functions of
each order of ministers and the admission of the
validity of baptism by laymen. We witness the
decision accepted at last fully in the West- of the
validity of ordinations as well as baptisms con-
ferred in heretical and separated bodies of Christians.
Again, we have a controversy never perhaps decided
as to whether the undoubted distinction of bishops
and presbyters in the Church tradition was originally
one passage emphasizes his own pre-eminent part in the action,
and in the other associates himself (like St. Peter) with the whole
presbyterate. Harnack (Law and Constitution, p. 26) is very
emphatic on the sacramental character of ordination from the
first : *' That the laying on of hands was regarded as conferring
the charisma necessary to the office is obvious from the passages
in Timofcny, and it is improbable that these express only a later
idea. The laying on of hands was thus certainly sacramental."
1 Besides 2 Tim. i. 6, see Acts vi. 6, xiii. 3 (appointment for
a particular mission), 1 Tim. iv. 14 and v. 22.
* See Dr. Armitage Robinson's excellent essay in The Early
History, pp. 60 ff .
144 HOLY IN THE CHURCH
of divine or only of ecclesiastical authority. But
there are two assumptions which appear always to
be taken for granted in these controversies : (I) that
when Christ founded or refounded the Church He
instituted a ministry in the persons of the apostles
which was to be continued down the course of history
by a process of sacramental ordination so that this
continuous ministry was, so to speak, the backbone
of the Church and the visible instrument of its
coherence and continuity ; and (2) that the settle-
ment of questions of order lay with the Church*
which had been granted the power of legislation in
matters of discipline with a divine sanction.
Nothing seems to me more certain than that the
New Testament documents give no decisive indication
of the precise form the ministry was to take. But
the actual peace and cohesion of the Church in each
generation depends on there being decisive regulation
on the subject of the functions of the different orders
of ministers. If so, unity is in fact only possible if
we accept the authority of the Church in such
practical matters as claiming the obedience of indi-
vidual churchmen or sections of churchmen, unless
indeed it could be shown that there was anything in
their ordinances antagonistic to the spirit of the New
Testament.
VI
The object of this chapter has been to give a general
view of the Religion of the Spirit as it is presented
to us in the documents of the New Testament ; and
it has been specially directed to show that as in
Jesus Christ the Word took flesh, so, when the
Holy Spirit came from the ascended Christ to per-
petuate His work in the world, for Him too, in
another sense, a ct body was prepared " which was
the Church, the reformed Israel. Thus there was
IDEA OF THE INVISIBLE CHURCH 145
not from the beginning any distinction between
membership of Christ and membership of His
" body." And the body which St. Paul speaks of in
a strain of such glorious exultation in the Epistle to
the Ephesians is no other than the actual historical
Church with all its imperfections the beginnings of
which are recorded in the Acts, and which found its
bonds of unity in the common faith, the sacraments
of fellowship, and the authority of the apostolic
ministry.
Sometimes it appears as if it were hardly necessary
to argue this point any longer. Luther's contention,
so long prevalent in Protestantism, that the Church,
of which such lofty things are spoken by Paul, was
not any visible body, in which the evil is mingled
with the good, like the church at Corinth, but the
invisible company of the elect, who may or may not
be members of any visible church and whose names
are known only to God this doctrine appears to-day
almost to have vanished. 1
Perhaps its place is taken by Sohm's theory, which
would distinguish a moment in the life of the early
Church a moment which is marked more or less
distinctly by the Epistle of Clement when the
Catholic idea of the Church, with its official concep-
tion of the ministry and legal conception of an
authoritative law, overwhelmed the earlier " religious
or charismatic " conception. The theory is stated
and criticized by Harnack in an appendix to his
Constitution and Law of the Church, where he points
out that official authority already belongs to an
apostle in St. Paul's Epistles, and the idea of a
binding law is already present there, as also in the
canon of the Jerusalem Council, The idea of an
1 See above, Appended Note B, p. 32; and on "the heavenly
Jerusalem," see Appended Note C to this chapter. See also
Essays on Christian Unity (Clarke, 1923), by Dr. William Robinson,
the Principal of Overdale College, chap, iii, a book wMch is surely
a hopeful sign in the movement towards reunion.
146 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHURCH
" officer " and a " law ** is already present in the
original conception of the Church as the true Israel. 1
We may take it for truth, then, that as represented
in the New Testament, the New Covenant, like the
Old, is with the community, not with separated
individuals, and that Christianity from the beginning
was the religion of a sacramental Church. The
bearing of this consideration on the circumstances
of the present day we must seek to consider later.
In conclusion, I will content myself with enumerat-
ing very briefly the leading considerations which
commend sacramentalism to our understanding.
1. The principle that spiritual values and forces
are mediated through material processes is a principle
that runs through nature as a whole. I have already
illustrated this by reference to the sexual method
by which a spiritual (human) personality is brought
into being. But it admits of much wider illustration.
Truth and beauty and goodness are spiritual values
and forces. But all of them within our experience
arise and become effective only under material forms.
And human life in all its forms of fellowship is full
of natural sacraments, such as the lover's kiss and
the friend's handshake and the soldier's flag, which
both express and kindle the respective feeling.
2. The whole history of religions or religion, as
recent investigation unfolds it to us, tends to empha-
size the principle that religion is first of all a group
consciousness or tribal consciousness, and that
individual religion develops later and under its
shelter. And the tribal character of religion every-
where expresses itself in what may be called in a
broad sense * sacramental * forms.
0. Within the Christian religion the Incarnation is
1 I hope Dr. Armitage Bobinson's essay on "The Primitive
Ministry" in The Marly History of the Church and Ministry will
put an end to the vogue of distinguishing *' charismatic " from
official. In the New Testament the local officers are certainly
regarded as " charismatic."
THE SACRAMENTAL PRINCIPLE JUSTIFIED 147
the central fact but that is the mediation of the
spiritual, the divine presence and grace, through the
flesh* The method of the Spirit in the Church and
the sacraments is thus properly called an extension
of the principle and fact of the Incarnation.
4. The sacraments are social ceremonies ; and the
mediation of spiritual gifts through sacraments of
the society presents itself therefore as the divinely
chosen means by which our fellowship in the life of
God is tied to our membership in the appointed
human brotherhood. We cannot become united to
God in isolation or in a merely self-chosen society.
5. By the sacraments the highest gifts are made
equally accessible to persons of all stages of culture.
Spiritual things are hard of intellectual comprehen-
sion. In an intellectual form only the intellectual
few could assimilate them. But experience shows
that the youngest and the least educated can by
simplicity of faith appreciate and assimilate spiritual
gifts embodied in symbolical rites, such as washing,
and receiving the blessing of the hand, and feeding
on bread and wine.
*6. Emotion is an extraordinarily powerful force in
religion, and the uneducated are even more emo-
tionally susceptible than the educated. But emotion
is also variable and delusive. We are enthusiastic
and cold, elated and depressed, by turns, and we know
not why. In two ways the religion of Christ would
direct our attention away from our emotions. Partly
by making our acts, that is our will, the test of
genuineness, and not our feelings. Partly also by the
institution of sacraments. By sacraments, spiritual
gifts, such as regeneration and reception of the Spirit
and absolution, and communion with God in Christ,
are imparted to us objectively, in outward acts and
signs. We are assured by a divine guarantee that
at a certain moment we were made members of
Christ and did receive the Spirit, and were set free
148 HOLY SPIRIT IN CHURCH
from sin and did receive Christ Himself to be our
spiritual food ; and the injunction given us is ad-
dressed to our wills, not to our emotions. We are
bidden to act as sons of God and sharers in Christ,
knowing by an outward sign that we are so. Our
reliance is to be on the word and act of God, while
the joy of responsive emotion comes or goes.
APPENDED NOTE A (see p. 112)
THE GIFT OF TONGUES AS REPRESENTED IN ACTS II
The conception of the gift of tongues in Acts ii. appears
at first sight to be in marked conflict with the conception
to which 1 Cor. xiv. 2-34 would lead us. In the first
passage it appears to be a gift of speaking foreign lan-
guages (ver. II). In the latter it is a non-rational kind
of utterance, alike unintelligible to the speaker and his
audience hardly what we should call a language at all,
But the difference must not be exaggerated. The idea
that Acts ii* describes what we commonly call a gift of
using foreign languages, such as would be available for
preaching, is not borne out in the text. Like St. Paul,
St. Luke apparently describes the tongues as an utter-
ance addressed to God (I Cor. xiv. 2, 15-17; Acts ii. 11).
Also he describes it as a simultaneous utterance, and an
utterance which could be mockingly described as the
senseless clamour of a group of drunken men (ver. 18).
There is no suggestion in the Acts that " tongues " were
used for preaching. On the other hand, St. Paul (1 Cor.
xiv, 21) compares the " tongues " to a foreign language,
the unintelligible language of strangers. There seem to
be two alternative conclusions about the matter : either
that the phenomenon of the day of Pentecost was really
special something like the gift of tongues as St. Paul
describes it, combined with the gift of " interpretation "
in the mind of the foreign hearers, so that they heard,
or seemed to hear, the combined ecstatic shouts of praise,
each in his own language wherein he was born ; or
that the account which St. Luke received and reported
SEVEN SACRAMENTS 149
was not accurate In detail. We should be ready for
either conclusion, but we have no sufficient grounds for
deciding between them.
APPENDED NOTE B (see p. 136)
THE ENUMERATION OF SEVEN SACRAMENTS
Besides baptism, the laying on of hands in confirma-
tion and in ordination, and the eucharist, do we discover
In the New Testament any other sacraments, i.e. sacred
rites of the community believed to carry a divine gift
with them ? Not, I suppose, in the strict sense. But
the judgement and absolution of the Church, the remitting
and retaining of sins, was sacramental in the sense that,
though we do not hear of any outward rite in which it
was expressed (as later by the laying on of hands upon
the penitent in absolution), the judgement and the absolu-
tion were human acts which were believed to carry with
them a divine power by the appointment of Christ,
And unction as described by St. James was an outward
ceremony by which a gift, though it was physical rather
than spiritual, the gift of healing, was mediated. This
could be described as sacramental in a sense. Finally,
marriage, though there was no ecclesiastical ceremony
at first attached to it, because the mutual pledge carried
with it a divine sanction, might also be so described.
Thus was made up the list of the seven sacraments by
w r hich the life of the Christian was surrounded from the
cradle to the grave.
The enumeration of seven sacraments we first find
in Gregory of Bergamo (twelfth cent.), but his list is made
up of baptism, confirmation, the eucharist, ordination,
marriage, Holy Scripture, and the taking an oath.
There was no tradition of seven sacraments. It is Peter
Lombard in the next century who gives us the seven with
which we are familiar. No doubt we must maintain the
pre-eminence of baptism, completed in confirmation, and
the eucharist, and place ordination next to them ; but
the other three, though they fail to correspond to the
stricter definition, may well be admitted as sacraments.
150 THE HOLY SPIRIT IN CHURCH
APPENDED NOTE C (see p. 145)
THE HEAVENLY JERUSALEM
The nearest approach to a doctrine of an invisible
Church to be found in the New Testament is the idea of
44 the heavenly Jerusalem" (Gal. iv. 26; Heb. xii. 22;
Apoc. iii. 12 and xxl). In the Apocalypse it is represented
as existing in heaven, but it is to be manifested on earth
at the consummation. I suppose this is equivalent to
saying it is the predestined consummation. But in
the Epistle to the Galatians we are already members of
it. It is already " our mother " (St. Paul appears to be
quoting Ps. 1XXXVI. [LXX], Mifnyp Scwov, epet avdpamos)* So
in the Epistle to the Hebrews we are already " come
to " it. I suppose the idea is that of the Church as
having its ground where Christ is " in the heavenlies,"
and where the angels and the spirits of just men made
perfect are. In this sense the Church is heavenly and
invisible, but the visible churches on earth are the earthly
limbs of the heavenly body or the earthly representatives
of the heavenly society, substantially one with it.
CHAPTER V
THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH
WE have had the opportunity of reading many books*
written from different points of view, on authority
and its function in society generally, and particu-
larly in the maintenance of religion, which certainly
presents itself in history not merely as an intuition
of the individual, but as a social tradition. 1 And
these books will satisfy most men on two points
that, on the one hand, authority must play a great
and even predominant part in the maintenance of
society, and of the heritage of truth in general,
and of religion in particular, so that it is folly to
seek to disparage authority on account of its errors
and crimes, as if we could in any sense do without
it ; but that, on the other hand, authority or tradi-
tion, alike in religion and in every other department
of human life, is always liable to become conven-
tional, one-sided, narrow, and tyrannical, and needs
constant correction by the action of the individual
conscience and reason, and by the voiceof the prophets,
awakening, discovering, protesting, and demand-
ing revision ; also that the authority of conscience,
when a man has done his best to open his conscience
to the light, must be recognized at the last resort
as supreme for him. 2 He ct can do no other, 35 Thus
1 One of the best of recent books for opening our mind to the
idea of authority and the questions arising therefrom is Authority
in Religion, by 3. H. Leckie (Clark, 1009). It is written from
the standpoint of a Presbyterian.
a It will be remembered how strenuously Cardinal JNewman
vindicated the legitimacy of this principle by Boman Catholic
152 THE AUTHORITY OF CHURCH
the traditionalist and the protestant, the conserva-
tive and the radical, the disciplinarian and the pro-
phet, are each needed in the world and in the Church 5
and each in due measure have their gift from God.
So far, perhaps, we shall find common agreement.
But this agreement on general principles in their
abstract form is found to give us very little satis-
faction. For it is not in the abstract region that
our difficulties lie, but in their particular application,
whether what is in question is authority constraining
us to action or authority constraining us to belief.
Thus, for example, Greek literature has left us
two classical pictures of incomparable power, the
one of obedience, the other of disobedience to the
authority of the state or ruler, both of which com-
mand our almost unhesitating admiration. The one
is Plato's picture of Socrates, in the Crito y in prison
and under unjust sentence of immediate death,
earnestly implored by a venerable friend to avail
himself at the last minute of an opportunity of
escape, and steadfastly refusing, because, though the
State is just now doing him wrong, yet it is his
parent and his master, and he has entered into a cove-
nant of obedience to it, and he will not meet wrong
with wrong or break his covenant to save his life.
The other is Sophocles* picture of Antigone protest-
ing in face of the Ruler that she ought to obey God
rather than man the law of the gods which bids
her bury her brother rather than the command of man
which prohibits it. I say we give a whole-hearted
assent both to Socrates' refusal of disobedience
and Antigone's refusal of obedience to the normal
authority. But we still find ourselves tortured and
unenlightened, in particular cases, where the diffi-
standards in his Letter to the DuTce of Norfolk, pp. 55-66 (Pickering,
1875), ending up with the words, " Certainly, if I am obliged to
bring religion into after-dinner toasts ... I shall drink to the
Pope, if you please still, to conscience first, and to the Pope
afterwards.'*
SOURCE OF PERPLEXITY 153
culty is to find out which principle ought to be
applied. Thus, during the history of the Traetarian
or Catholic movement in the Church of England,
how many a clergyman, commanded by Ms bishop
to abstain from doing or teaching this or that, which
the principles of the Church, as he has come to
understand them, appear to enjoin or permit, has
been tormented by the difficulty of satisfying- his
conscience whether in this case to refuse obedience
to his normal ruler would be wilfulness and party
spirit, or whether he must stand stoutly for the
higher principle and defy his ruler, saying, like the
apostles confronted by their normal ecclesiastical
authorities, ** We ought to obey God rather than
men." The difficulty lies not in the general prin-
ciples, but in their balance and application.
Again, in cases where authority is asserted in
order to constrain a man to belief when he is barely
told that "the Church teaches "this or that doctrine,
which his private judgement tells him is lacking in
evidence, which makes no appeal to his conscience,
and for which he finds no support in the New Testa-
ment he may have no doubt about the authority
of the Church in general or the duty of the indi-
vidual to reverence it, but he may still want to
know in what sense " the Church " can be truly said
to teach this particular doctrine, and also whether
the authority of the Church, whether the catholic or
the local Church, is of such a nature that it has the
right to express itself in this peremptory and un-
qualified form.
For there is, especially in discussions concerning
religion, and not only among people who value the
name of Catholic, a great tendency to identify
authority with absolute authority. People so often
seem to take it for granted that they have to choose
between a state of religious anarchy and an authority
which is peremptory with regard to conduct and
154 AUTHORITY OF CHURCH
belief alike. And so much of the talk about authority
is vitiated by a lack of clearness in our ideal of
authority.
I think, however, that those who believe the Chris-
tian religion to be in some real sense divine and
such belief at this stage of our argument we take for
granted will find their greatest assistance in solving
the perplexing questions which arise as to the nature
and limits of authority in religion, not in abstract
argument, but in watching the authority of the
Church as it comes into being in the prophets of the
Old Testament, and as it finds its culmination and
centre in our Lord and its development in the ad-
ministration of the apostles and in the early and
undivided Church. Of course we shall be challenged
to show why the principles of the early Church
should be held to be regulative for succeeding ages.
For the appeal to the primitive Church appears not
to be in favour to-day. We shall try to meet this
challenge later on. 1 But at least in Christ and His
apostles, Christians of all kinds acknowledge some-
thing formative for all ages ; and if we can note
certain marked characteristics in their idea and
exercise of authority we shall have gained solid ground
on which to stand.
The authority of the Church is as old as the Church
that is to say, it goes back behind the New Testa-
ment to the Old ; and its ground is the word of the
Lord. The assumption on which it is based is that
God, the sovereign ruler of men, can make His mind
and will known to men, and has done so through His
prophets. This is the word of the Lord given in
many parts and many manners, which it was the
1 See below, chap, vii, on the theory of development as applied
to Christian doctrine and institutions, and chap, viii on the
authority of Scripture; cf. pp*
WORD OF GOD PRIMARILY 155
function of the Church of the Old Covenant to keep
in memory and to obey, and of the authorities of
the Church to uphold and interpret. " What was
the advantage of the Jew (over the Gentile) ?
Much every way. First, that to them were intrusted
the oracles of God. 9 ' * And this self-revelation of God
was essentially dogmatic ; that is to say, it was pre-
sented not by way of argument or as a conclusion of
reasoning, but as the word of God, not to be gainsaid.
And the next point that we notice about it is that it
was primarily moral a challenge to the conscience of
men and a strict requirement that they should con-
form their life, social and individual, to its demands.
It involved indeed intellectual propositions about
God as that there was only one God, one object
of worship, one almighty creator and sustainer of
all that is, and one ultimate judge of all rational
beings ; and that this one God has moral character
that He is righteous and good in such sense that
no ritual service of Him has in His sight any value
whatever, if it be not also moral service the con-
formity of human life to His justice, goodness, purity,
and truth. It involved also certain propositions
about man's nature as that he is a free and respon-
sible being ; and that he is sinful and needs to be
redeemed ; and certain propositions concerning the
purpose of God as that He has a glorious purpose
for men which is ultimately to find world-wide
accomplishment, but which at present has Israel for
its channel and lays upon them special privileges
and special obligations. * These dogmas are constantly
1 Bom. iii. 1, 2.
2 It is very well worthy of notice that these fundamental doc-
trines, which are implied in the message of God to Israel and which
pass from Israel to the Catholic Church, are, intellectually speaking,
the most difficult dogmas. I cannot doubt that so long as men
continue to believe that God is one and the Creator of all that
is, and that God is love, and that man is really free and responsible,
they will not in the long run find much difficulty about what are
called the "specifically Christian** doctrines. On the contrary*
156 AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH
and more and more clearly implied in the progressive
self-revelation of God in the Old Testament. Never-
theless they are always given by way of supplying
the motive for what remains the primary appeal
the appeal to men to live a certain kind of life and
to conform their private and common conduct to a
certain moral requirement.
All this " word of God " our Lord, when He came
"not to destroy, but to fulfil," accepts and takes for
granted, and makes it the foundation on which He
builds. Accordingly He accepts and recognizes the
authority of the ancient Church of which He was a
member. He is even recorded to have said, " The
scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses 5 seat : all things
therefore whatsoever they bid you, these do and
observe : but do not ye after their works ; for they
say, and do not." 1 Nevertheless, His recognition of
the authority of the contemporary Church and the
recognition of it which He claimed from His disciples
was very far from being unconditional. He revised
the substance of the old law ; and that He alone
could do that was not within the competence of the
successors of Moses. But what they ought to have
attended to was that their authority reposed upon
"the word of God/' and ought to have been kept
true to its norm. In their precepts about the
Sabbath, and their religious requirements generally, 2
they had forgotten its great principles. In their zeal
for detail, and for the maintenance of their own
th dogmas of the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Holy Trinity,
the Church, the sacraments, and life eternal are really the neces-
sary intellectual corollaries, supports, and justifications of the funda-
mental doctrines that we inherit from Israel. It is very suggestive
that St. Peter should describe the purpose of the atoning death
and resurrection of Christ as being "that your faith and hope
might be in God" (I Pet. i. 21). The most important articles
of faith must not be confused with those that have been most
disputed, or the subject of ecclesiastical definitions.
1 Matt, xxiii 2, 3. This saying, as reported, must be inter-
preted in the light of xv. 1-14.
a See Matt, aauu 1-13, xv. 1-14.
OUR LORD SCRIBES 157
dignity, they had neglected "the weightier matters
of the law, judgement, mercy,, and faith/ 3 They had
made the word of God of none effect by their tradi-
tion. They had looked to precedent and not to
moral principle. It is for this reason that they fell
under His scathing condemnation.
I cannot but think that in Christian history the
maintenance of ecclesiastical authority has in general
given very much less attention than was its due to
our Lord's startling attitude towards the existing
ecclesiastical authority, the legitimacy of which He
recognized. It is not merely that He criticizes the
lives of the persons who hold the authority. It is
that He criticizes the nature of the authority they
thought it their business to exercise they ignored
the ground of all true authority in the word of God,
which is above all else the expression of a moral will
Certainly Christ re-established in the renewed Israel
which is the Church the legislative and judicial
authority which He criticized, and entrusted it afresh
to constituted officers, and gave it a fresh spiritual
sanction. These points have been argued already.
No doubt also He promised to be with His Church
all the days and endowed it with the Spirit, so that
the first council of the Church dared to ascribe its
decision to the Holy Spirit co-operating with them.
But I see nowhere any ground for believing that the
officers under the New Covenant would be protected
from error, if they should behave like the officers of
the Old. 1
But let us advance from the Old Covenant to the
New. The Inaugurator of the New Covenant speaks
with more than prophetic authority. Sometimes
indeed He argued ; and we shall come back upon
our Lord's use of argument. But in the main cer-
tainly He did not argue. He affirmed as one who
1 See, on the. infallibility of the Church, the Appended Note
p. 205.
158 AUTHORITY OF CHURCH
had a right to affirm infallibly. Sometimes, as we
shall see, He gave men glimpses into divine mysteries
which became the basis of Church doctrines. But
there can be no question that in the main His teaching
was moral. He presented a way of life to men's
hearts and wills. The critical matter in His eyes is
the opening of their hearts to the light and the
surrender of their wills to obey. The constant
assumption is that " he that willeth to do God's will,
shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God." l
Thus when the Church of the New Covenant went
out into the world, the first name for it was " The
Way. 55 * Its primary function was to exhibit among
men a new way of life a new kind of fellowship
with God realized in a new kind of fellowship of men.
People talk disparagingly of a " merely ethical
gospel,' 9 and contrast it with the Gospel of the New
Testament. Quite rightly. The new law for the
Church was warmed and inspired by a gospel about
God and redemption about Father and Son and
Spirit which made It something very different from
a mere code of ethics. But nevertheless it was
primarily as a way of life to be lived by a com-
munity, claiming to be both the true Israel and the
New Humanity, that the religion of Christ went out
into the world and converted men. The bulk of
the New Testament is ethical teaching. It describes
and enforces "the Way." Even in the most
doctrinal epistles this will be found to be surprisingly
true. 1
NoWjthis primacy of the moral appeal in the message
of the Church has been lamentably forgotten or its
nature lamentably distorted. I suppose it was on
1 John viL 17.
2 See Acts ix. 2 men of the Way ; xix. 9, 23 ; xxiv. 22 ; cf .
ii. 28 the ways of life ; xvi. 17 the way of salvation ; Luke xx.
21 the way of God; John xiv. 6, ** I am the Way " * 2 Pet. ii. 21
the way of righteousness
* See Appended Note, p. 183.
TO RESTORE MORAL CLAIM 150
the whole kept well In view so long as the Church
was so unpopular a body that it cost men much to
declare themselves Christians. So long the situation
of the Church guaranteed the moral seriousness of
its members.
But various causes combined to imperil this
supremacy of the moral claim. Theological con-
troversy, fascinating and absorbing the Greek intel-
lect, tended to give the Church the appearance of a
great society primarily claiming assent to theological
propositions, precisely formulated and balanced.
Also the new position of the Church as the religion
of the Empire brought with it an enormous peril.
Henceforth it cost men nothing to profess the Chris-
tian name. Nay, after a short interval it cost them
very much to profess anything else. Hence the
average standard of living in the Church declined with
astonishing rapidity. The " standard of the saints "
survived in religious houses and elsewhere. But the
average moral level of Church membership be-
came deplorably low " secular and grovelling/ 5 as
Frederick Denison Maurice called it. And the
Church for long ages has acquiesced in this double
standard : an ideal for saints and a requirement for
men of the world of all classes a minimum of
conformity necessary for salvation. But it is hardly
possible to imagine anything more contrary to the
moral claim of our Lord than this kind of com-
promise on the largest scale with the spirit of the
world.
Let us recall the scathing estimate of the average
moral standard of English churchmen given by
William Law in the opening chapters of The Serious
Call. In particular we discern in the compromise
two main surrenders to the spirit of the world :
first, that it recognized a distinction between dis-
reputable sins, which are offensive to society, and
respectable sins, which must be taken for granted,
160 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH
sucli as pride, love of money, exclusiveness, and un-
eharitableness ; whereas in our Lord's eyes the latter
are at least as incompatible with the Kingdom of
God as fornication or violence. Secondly, it allowed
the Christian moral aim to become a process of
selfish soul-saving, and abandoned or threw into the
shade the claim of brotherhood and the equal spiritual
worth of all human souls the claim of the Kingdom
which was the central motive of original Christianity.
Thus the vast organization of modern industrial
society grew up almost without protest from the
Church on a basis which can only be described as
frankly ant i- Christian, and the accepted relations of
nations, in what still called itself Christendom, hardly
retained a trace of Christian principle. 1
The seriousness of this declension in the moral
standard and witness of Christendom it is impossible
to exaggerate. But I think the situation in the
world of to-day gives the Church an opportunity
of repentance and constitutes a call of almost unex-
ampled urgency. The tendencies of contemporary
thought and feeling are largely anti- Christian ; and
the hostility is almost more marked towards the
Christian moral standards than towards its theology.
On the other hand, a very large number of the best
people of all classes are feeling that nothing can save
our civilization or their own souls except those very
principles of self-control and brotherhood for which
Christianity stands. Thus I believe that the most
pressing call upon the Church to-day is to remember
that its authority and mission rest simply upon the
word of God, and that this is first of all the challenge
to a new life 2* difficult but glorious life. It is called
to direct its chief attention to making the Christian
doctrine of the Kingdom of God again understood,
1 What is here very briefly sketched is treated at greater length
in an " Essex Hall Lecture " Christianity Applied to the Life of
Men and Nations (Lindsey Press, 1920).
THE WAY AND THE TRUTH 101
and summoning men with a fresh understanding to
live the life. It will be a very difficult task. But
only so can we hope to get men to understand the
truth about the authority of the Church ; for this
doctrinal and sacramental authority is strictly
relative to its moral and social miss ion. And only
by giving this the first place in importance does
there seem to me to be much hope of restoring the
understanding of what the Church is for.
II
But the " word of the life " " the life that is life
indeed " 1 "with which the Church was entrusted was
a message rooted in and depending upon a certain
doctrine concerning God and human nature and
destiny. Such doctrine is the ground and explana-
tion of the life to be lived, alike in the Old Testament
and in the New, as it has been the purpose of the
volumes preceding this to show. 2 Nor could it have
been otherwise. The rule of life in Buddhism, aim-
ing as it does at an escape from life itself, is quite
consistent with positive atheism or indifference to
the existence of God. But the whole idea of the
Christian life is that of active correspondence with
a God, believed in as essentially love, and as
having shown His love in the redemption of the
world. The life draws its motives and its support
from this theological doctrine, and could not subsist
if its motives and its support were gone.
And alike in the Old Testament and the New the
doctrine concerning God's will and nature is not
presented as a conclusion from reasoning, but as a
positive revelation and self-disclosure of God a
word of God which commends itself to the conscience
of men, but is to be received in faith. There can be
* I John i. 1; 1 Tim, vi. 19.
8 See, for instance, Belief in Christ, p. 315.
162 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH
no question about that either In the Old Testament
or the New. Thus the religion of Christ is in its
very essence an authoritative religion based upon the
word of God, and the Church is authoritative because
it is the commissioned carrier of the message.
What we have now to do is to look a little more
closely at the nature of the authority which the
New Covenant claims for its message ; and first at
our Lord's use of authority.
Certainly our Lord teaches with authority and
with the note of infallibility. He certainly regarded
men as in a pitiable position if they have not trust-
worthy spiritual guides. They are as " sheep not
having a shepherd/' or " blind men led by the
blind.' 9 And in training the Twelve He is training
them to understand and deliver His Gospel that
is assuredly an authoritative message. In our Lord's
judgement, mankind cannot do without religious
authority to guide and enlighten them. Only the
word of God can set them or keep them on the right
way.
Also He lays great stress on the childlike temper
which knows how to trust and believe. This accounts
for His language about the privileged classes for
privilege generally means pride and self-sufficiency.
So He saw in wealth an obstacle to belief, and also
in learning. They minister to self-sufficiency. And
'our Lord's religion is to be a religion for common
men who feel the burden of life and know their need
of help and guidance. This He deliberately makes
a matter of thanksgiving. "He rejoiced in the
Holy Spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord
of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these
things from the wise and understanding, and didst
reveal them unto babes : yea. Father ; for so it was
well-pleasing in thy sight." *
1 Some modem critics who dispute the attribution to our Lord
of this saying of Luke x. 21-2, and the addition to it in the parallel
OUR LORD'S USE OF AUTHORITY 16S
But we must not forget who " the wise and under-
standing *' of our Lord's day and country were.
" Woe unto you lawyers ! " He said, " for ye
took away the key of knowledge : ye entered not in
yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hin-
dered." x The "wise and understanding" of our
Lord's time were in fact bigoted traditionalists. If
true learning means openness to the light, whenceso-
ever it comes, certainly they were no learners. And
our Lord constantly warns men against moral and
intellectual obsession, and insists on the love of the
light. We remember that great leaders in science,
like Francis Bacon and Pasteur, have loved to insist,
like our Lord, on the necessity for the childlike mind,
because it is docile and free from obsession ; so that
we must not misunderstand our Lord's seeming
depreciation of learning and wisdom. It is the wis-
dam of self-sufficiency that is the enemy.
We note that when our Lord argues with opponents
and questioners, He shows a singular desire to stimu-
late thought and enquiry. As has been already
remarked, we have several striking examples in His
recorded arguments of His seeking to impart no
positive teaching, but only to make men feel the
obligation of consistency with their own professed
principles. 2 And, above all, it would seem that our
Lord, as conspicuously as Socrates, though by a
different method, was at pains to stimulate thought
in common men like the Twelve, such as are without
any special education, and believed in their capacity
to think freely and truly. .
The word of God, which He taught, might indeed
passage of St. Matthew, are disposed to find the origin of it in
Eeclus. li. This is strange. For the supposed author of the saying
must have had deep powers of spiritual intuition and would hardly
have gathered this depreciation of "wisdom" from a book in
praise of wisdom, and the sort of wisdom of which the artisan is
incapable (xxxviii. 24 xxxix. 11).
* Luke xi. 52. 2 See Belief in Ghfist t pp. 186 ff.
104 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH
sound at first hearing paradoxical and impracticable ;
but He seemed to assure men that if they would 5
listen in a candid, open-minded spirit they would
" recognize the truth as a friend " by the light that
was in them. We cannot imagine our Lord giving
a dogmatic lesson about the Trinity or about any
subject remote from the conscience and thoughts
of His hearers, and forcing it upon their acceptance
by a miraculous proof. When, later, the doctrine of
the Trinity came to the Church, it came, as we have
seen, as something which in the course of their ex-
perience had emerged into light. It became evident
as a doctrine because it was the interpretation of
experience. And in our Lord's teaching the faith
on which He makes so profound a claim is not by
any means passive acceptance, but the movement of
an inward guidance towards the light.
There can be no mistake about this. Though He saw
so plainly men's need of religious authority, though
His nearest disciples and friends were so spiritually
dull, and though He seemed to have in Himself a
fount of spiritual knowledge, yet He very rarely
uses the dogmatic method of imparting mysteries;
People, including His disciples, are constantly ask-
ing Him plain questions, and He so rarely gave them
plain answers. Sometimes He replies with another
question to make them think. 1 He behaves as one
who dreads to dwarf or crush the minds of His
disciples by dogmatic words, and strives by every
means to stimulate and develop their thinking.
This is the point of His teaching by proverbs and
parables, which express spiritual truth in a challeng-
ing and provoking form, never so as to satisfy a ques-
tioning spirit. It was characteristic of our Lord
that He should have left His disciples to reach their
own conclusion as to the secret of His person
i See Luke xiil 23, xxl. 7, John xiii. 36, xiv. 5, 22, xvi 19
and with His adversaries, Luke xx. 2.
ST. PAUL'S MESSAGE WORD OF GOD 165
" Who say ye that I am ? " And If Peter and John
are really the authors of the Epistles which bear
their names, 1 as the evidence justifies us in believing,
they are certainly classical instances of plain men
trained to realize the deep things of God> not in the
main by dogmatic dictation, but by the leadings of
a wonderful experience which a divine Teacher had
helped them to interpret.
It must be admitted that there is in the Fourth
Gospel more of the dogmatic method than in the
Synoptists. There you have more positive and
plain disclosures made by our Lord of divine mys-
teries, as about regeneration, and about Himself
as the Christ and as the Bread of Life, and about
His pre-existence. I have argued that such disclo-
sures must have been really made in some form by
our Lord, if we are to account for the confident
beliefs of the Church. But as to the manner of our
Lord's teaching, I think we cannot doubt that it is
more truly represented by the Synoptists than by
St. John. Nevertheless, in his Gospel also we find
the complaint that He does not teach plainly enough.
" How long dost thou hold us in suspense ? If
thou be the Christ, tell us plainly." 2
III
We shall find the study of St. Paul's conception
and use of authority give us a good deal of illumina-
tion. There is no doubt that to him the Church is
simply based upon a message of authority, and the
apostles and later ministers of the Church are the
carriers of it. Thus he writes, " When ye received
from us the word of the message, even the word of
God, ye accepted it not as the word of men, but, as
it is in truth, the word of God." 3 We can see a
1 I refer to the first Epistles of Peter and John.
* John x. 24. 3 I Thess. ii 13.
106 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH
certain change of emphasis in St. Paul's message,
as, for instance, about the immediate coming of
Christ. But in its main substance there is no evi-
dence of change. He found himself entrusted with
a divine message about God the Father, and His
only Son, who was incarnate in the fullness of time,
Jesus Christ, and lived as man, and died a sacrifice
for our sins, and was raised the third day from the
dead, and ascended into heaven, and is to come as
the final judge in the day of the Lord ; and about
the Holy Spirit and the Church and the sacraments,
and our resurrection. Of all this, and of the moral
ideal and standard in which it was to find expres-
sion, St. Paul was set in charge. And though he
was the first to give the message intellectual consist-
ency, the elements of it were ready to his hand * ;
and, as we have seen, there appears to have been no
controversy among the leaders about his interpreta-
tion or formulation of the message. This was the
authoritative " tradition ** or " teaching whereunto
men were delivered," * and there was no other.
Thus there is no room to doubt that for St. Paul
the basis of the mission of the Church is a message
of divine authority committed to it, and especially
to the apostles. There can, again, be no room to
doubt his conviction that the apostles, and he among
them, were endowed with disciplinary authority as
rulers. 8 Also he is convinced that only by such an
1 Such, I mean, as these : the tradition of the words of the Lord
about His divine sonship (see Belief in Christ, pp. 86 f.) ; the
belief in His resurrection, ascension, etc and in the efficacy of
His sacrifice " for our sins " ; the belief in the Holy Spirit, in the
Church as the New Israel, in the spiritual cleansing and absolu-
tion conveyed in baptism, and the gift of the Spirit to the members
of the Church conveyed in the laying on of hands ; the belief
concerning the eucharist conveyed in the formulated tradition ;
the belief in the apostolic commission and authority ; the beliefs
about the resurrection of the dead and judgement to come. All
these materials and elements of belief were in the Church before
St. Paul.
8 Bom. vi. 17. 8 See above, p. 68.
ST. PAUL'S USE OF AUTHORITY 167
authoritative message could the spiritual needs of
men be met. The 4t wise men " Jewish or Greek
might mock at the message ; but St. Paul, like Ms
Master, exults in the triumph of the divine folly
over human wisdom. I need not quote the very
familiar words. The summary of them is in the
thought Cfc Seeing that in the wise providence of
God the world through its philosophy could reach
no sufficient knowledge of God, it was God's good
pleasure through the preaching that the 6 wise men *
inock at to save them that believe. 35 *
Certainly, then, St. Paul would not have us put
" the religion of the Spirit " into contrast with " the
religions of authority." The primary work of the
Spirit had been to inspire men to speak the word of
God, and the word of God had reached finality in
Jesus Christ. The religion of the Spirit was based
upon this authoritative message. Moreover, the re-
ligion of the Spirit was membership in a society which
had authoritative rulers. Both in matters of doc-
trine and in matters of conduct St. Paul would have
the members of the Church recognize that they are
under authority. Where he sees wilfulness and
individualism, such as would break up the common
life, he speaks very sharply. " We have no such
custom, neither the churches of God.' 5 "What?
was it from you that the word of God went forth ?
or came it unto you alone ? " When he sees grave
sin, such as would annul the moral witness of the
Church, he makes an uncompromising demand for
the excommunication of the offender. " Put away
from among yourselves the wicked person." Nay,
he himself intervenes to do it in the name of Christ/
The examples shown us of the exercise of discipline
are chiefly in cases of moral conduct and church
practice. But where St. Paul detects a new teaching
which is fundamentally destructive, as in the case
1 I Cor. i. 21. I Cor. xi. 16, adv. 36, and v 13.
12
168 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH
of the Galatian Judaizers, he speaks with a like
sharpness and decision. " Though we, or an angel
from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other
than that which we preached unto you, let him be
anathema. As we have said before, so say I now
again, If any man preacheth unto you any Gospel
other than that which ye received, let him be ana-
thema." I St. Paul, then, is a strong authoritarian,
and the cc spirit of discipline " in the Pastoral Epistles
Is certainly no good argument against St. Paul's
authorship. Nevertheless this is only half the truth.
1. To St. Paul, authoritative action is tolerable
only at the last resort. He has a dread of legislation
and w r hat he calls " dogmas," that is, ordinances. 8
He would have the life in the Spirit show itself in
free and loving obedience without external regula-
tion. He dreads ordinances as leading to legalism. 3
He is also very tolerant of minor differences among
Christians. One has his mind in this way and another
in that. " Let each man be fully persuaded in his
own mind," and let the Church learn to tolerate
differences in matters which are not vital. " Receive
ye one another [with all your differences], as Christ
also received you." *
2. Moreover he is far from suggesting an oppo-
sition between faith and the free exercise of reason.
There is awisdom of the world, indeed, which stumbles
at the doctrine of the Cross and can only come to
naught. But when once the soul is grounded in the
faith in Jesus Christ he would have it in all cases
grow up into a full rational understanding. " We
received . . . the Spirit which is of God ; that we
might know the things that are freely given to us
by God." " In mind be ye grown-up men." 5 Like
his Master, St. Paul has the greatest respect for the
average man's intelligence if he is spiritually minded,
* Gal. i. 8-9. 2 Col. ii. 16-23. * Gal. v. I
4 Rom. xiv. 5-xv. 7. s 1 Cor. ii. 12, xiv. 20,
ST. PAUL'S MODERATION 169
Nothing can be further from his mind than to praise
the passive acceptance of dogma. tc Quench not the
spirit; despise not prophesyings ; prove all things.* 5 *
His Epistles are full of a generous attempt to make
every convert in the churches of his foundation
understand the mind of God and the meaning of his
religion. " Teaching every man in all wisdom, that
we may present every man. perfect in Christ," i.e. full-
grown or fully initiated. He would have a joyous
sense of freedom in the truth possess the Church,
and not a breath of obscurantism could blow from
his quarter. ** He that is spiritual judgeth all
things, and he himself is judged of no man." *
3. He is always anxious to represent the whole body
of the Church, and not only its officers, as the organ
of the Spirit. It is misleading to describe the Church
as St. Paul represents it as a democracy, because it
Is much more manifestly a theocracy. * It looks up for
its authority to Christ and the Spirit, and it has a
positive revelation which controls it. But it is true
that the early churches cultivated a democratic
spirit, under St. Paul's guidance. At the last resort
he claims authority to declare the Gospel, and to
excommunicate a scandalous moral offender, ap-
parently even if the church will not do so for itself.
But he uses all Ms efforts to carry the churches with
him theologically, and to get all the members of the
church to act together in excommunicating and in
absolving. 4 He can write epistles to pastors* but
almost all his correspondence is with churches. All
* 1 Thess. v. 19.
8 Col. i 28, el ver. 9; Phil. i. 9; Eph. i. 17 ft; I Cor. IL 45.
8 I do not say that a democracy might not be this. But if
it were to believe that God had given it a divine law for its action
and a divine revelation for its political guidance, it would cease
to be a democracy in the ordinary sense, like the Puritan
colonies in New England (see the history of The Founding of
New England, by fraslow Adams). I mean by a democracy a
society of men who believe that they have to find their way by
consulting the general will and following it.
* So w should gather from 1 Cor. v,, 2 Cor, ii. 8-11.
170 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH
are to participate in the theology and In the dis-
cipline of the society ; and he cultivates the repre-
sentative spirit (see 1 Cor, xvi. 3-4, 2 Cor. viii. 19).
And in the next generation this democratic spirit
is seen in Clement's Epistle and downwards through
Cyprian, though in a diminishing degree preserved,
however, in a measure in the right of the people
to elect their bishops. 1
An examination of St. John's Epistles would lead
to very much the same conclusions as we have
reached about St. Paul. He, too, views the Church
as existing to maintain a once-for-all given standard
of truth, which centres in the doctrine of the incar-
nation. There can be no toleration of any false
teaching which contradicts this. " Let that abide in
you which ye heard from the beginning. If that
which ye heard from the beginning abide in you,
ye also shall abide in the Son, and in the Father." 2
44 Whosoever goeth onward and abideth not in the
teaching of Christ, hath not God : he that abideth in
the teaching, the same hath both the Father and the
Son. If any man cometh unto you, and bringeth
not the teaching, receive him not into your house,
and give him no greeting : for he that giveth him
greeting partaketh in his evil works. 3 ' 3 The false
teaching alluded to is apparently an early form of
Gnosticism, preached by Cerinthus, which was a
substantial denial of the real incarnation. What is
enjoined by St. John is practical excommunication,
which would no doubt have become formal. But
St. John's ideal of authority, like St. Paul's, would
have it encourage and guide, not suppress, active
intelligence and spiritual independence. * 6 Ye have
an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all
things. . . . The anointing which ye received of him
1 See Backhands essay " Position of the Laity in the Early
Church," in Reform in the Church of England (Murray).
a I John ii. 24. z 2 John 9.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE TRADITION 171
abideth in you, and ye need not that any one teach
you/ 5 *
Both St. John and St. Paul appear to have a
robust confidence that the good man the spiritual
man w ji} come to a right conclusion. They do not
seem to be vexed with our problem, that so many
good and spiritual men, as we must judge them to
be, come to what we must also judge to be the wrong
conclusion. 2 They seem to assume that genuine
goodness and acceptance of the truth even in this
world will be found together. On the whole, we may
suppose that, under our different circumstances,
they would have said that good men who cannot
believe, but find themselves bound to engage in
active teaching of what contradicts the faith, must
indeed pass out of the communion of the Church ;
but while in this sense the Church judges them,
beyond this it must leave them to the judgement of
God, who alone can make known the counsels of the
heart, and who, we know, condemns only the proud
will and the mind and works of darkness.
IV
When we pass out of the apostolic age into the
age of the Fathers we find no change in the view of
authority. The Church exists to exhibit a life and
to maintain a tradition of doctrine on which the life
depends. The tradition is what has been held from
the beginning. The content of the tradition as given
us by Origen and implied in Irenaeus is substantially
the same. It is of obligation upon all Christians to
accept it. " That alone is to be believed as truth
which disagrees in nothing from the ecclesiastical
and apostolical tradition " ; but those who have the
* 1 John ii. 20, 27.
2 See Dr. Pollock (Bishop of Norwich), Good Men ttriihvut Faith
(S.P.C.KJ.
172 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH
special gifts of wisdom and knowledge must seek to
understand the reason of the things believed the
"how "and the "why." 1
This tradition of course existed long before the
canonization of the books of the New Testament ;
but as that canonization took place it seems to have
been universally taken for granted that, while the
tradition was needed to Interpret the Scriptures,
they, on the other hand, supplied the standard by
which the doctrinal authority of the Church was
limited, and by which its action was to be judged.
The tradition was to be found in the Scriptures in
its most authoritative form ; and the principle of the
Church of England, that "whatsoever is not read
therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be
required of any man, that it should be believed as an
article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary
to salvation, 5 * would, as far as we can judge, have
commanded the cordial assent of the Fathers. Thus
while in matters of discipline the Church could act
freely, and give injunctions of binding force as circum-
stances required on its own authority, in matters of
faith it could do nothing except declare and defend
what had been held from the beginning. This is an
exceedingly important principle, and it is the best
safeguard against the tyranny of authority.
St. Athanasius states the matter very plainly in
speaking about the Council of Nicaea, noting the
difference in the formula used by the Council when
settling the Paschal controversy and that used by
them with regard to the question of faith. " With
reference to Easter/ 5 he says, " such and such things
were determined, and at such a date, for at that time
it was determined that all should obey a certain
rule ; but with reference to the faith they wrote
not * such and such things were determined/ but
"thus the Catholic Church believes/ And they
1 Origen, de Princip,, lib. i, Praef. 2, 3.
THE GREEK FATHERS ITS
added immediately the statement of their faith, to
show that their judgement was not new but apostolic,
and that what they wrote was not any discovery of
theirs, but was what the apostles taught. 9 * Else-
where he insists that " in the Holy Scriptures alone
is the instruction of religion announced to which
let no man add, from which let no man detract
which are sufficient in themselves for the enunciation
of the truth." He also would have us recognize
that a " point of view " is necessary in reading and
interpreting Scripture, and this point of view should
be the mind of the Church. But he would not have
demurred to his contemporary, Cyril of Jerusalem,
saying to his catechumens, "Do not believe me simply,
unless you receive from Holy Scripture the proof
of what I say " ; " Keep that faith only which the
Church is now giving you, and which is certificated
out of the whole of Scripture," 1
In a previous volume I have given reasons for
thinking that the doctrinal definitions of the
ecumenical councils were really justified by the
necessities of defending the faith as St. Paul and
1 Athan,, de Synodia 5, adv. Gentes init., and Fragm. Fest. Ep.
xxxix; Cyril, Catech., iv, 17, 33, v, 12. I have given other quota-
tions and references in Roman Catholic Claims, chaps, iii and iv
(Longmans). Dr. Mason says : " I do not know of one article of
belief which is asserted by the Fathers to be derived from tradition
outside of the canon of Scripture. " I hav never seen even one
passage in any of the Fathers which contradicts this. There is a
passage in St. Basil, de Spir. Sanct., cap. xxvii, 66, which looks as
if it were going to ; but when he comes to specify the " dogmata 9 *
which are derived from unwritten tradition, they are all customs
or ritual forms signing the cross, turning to the east, ceremonies
of baptism, the form of the Creed. And as to matters of faith he
makes the usual statement in de Fide, o. 1. " It is a manifest
falling from the faith, and a proof of arrogancy, either to reject any
of those things that are written, or to bring in any of those things
that are not written.' * There is a passage in St. Chrysostom's
Horn, iv in 2 Thess. (on 2 Thess. ii. 2) in which he says tradition
is enough without Scripture. But it is a very brief passage which
demands elucidation. And without contradicting his usual and
plainly expressed teaching, he could not mean to affirm this of
truths of the faith.
174 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH
St. John expounded it. 1 And something more will
be said about this when we come to speak about the
development of doctrine ; but we should notice that,
at least in the beginning, the Church cannot be charged
with any love of dogmatizing. They believed that
their duty of maintaining the ground of faith forced
them to frame these conciliar definitions. Knowing all
that we know about the blessing which the dogmatic
formulas have proved, we may be loath to call them
"necessary evils " ; but that phrase does not mis-
represent the mind of the fourth-century Church
towards them. And the theologians accepted very
gladly the limitation on the action of authority
involved in the appeal to Scripture. Indeed it is
most noticeable how little in days of very sharp
controversy the Fathers refer to the then recent
dogmatic decisions, as if they of themselves sufficed
to settle the matter and no more need be said.
Athanasius in particular in his voluminous writings
about Arianism rarely mentions the action of the
Council of Nicaea. All his argument is out of Scrip-
ture ; and the same may be said for most of the
Fathers. Their canons of interpreting Scripture
are not indeed always ours, and their arguments on
particular texts we often cannot accept. But on
the whole, I contend, they were profoundly right*
The Arian, or the Apollinarian, or the " Nestorian,"
or the Monophysite Christ is certainly not the
Christ of the New Testament ; and the Christ of
the Nicene Creed is. And no one who recognizes
how often the tendency of theological feeling and
speculation inside the Church lay in a Monophysite
direction, or at least in the direction of explaining
away our Lord's real humanity, can fail to feel that
the balancing and impartial action of the Councils,
putting equal emphasis on the complete reality of
both His Godhead and His manhood, suggests, in
* Belie/ in Christ, pp. 217-22.
THE LIBERAL TEMPER 175
spite of all the human infirmities which the history
of the Councils shows in painful evidence, a real
action of the Holy Spirit guiding the common mind
of the Church.
The authority of the Church, then, was conceived
of as a strictly limited authority ; and as in the
New Testament, it is an authority which seeks to
stimulate and guide, not to drug or to suppress the
judgement of the mass of churchmen. No doubt the
victory of orthodoxy, as it came to be accepted, was
due in great part to the insight of individual theo-
logians and bishops, like St. Athanasius and St. Cyril
and St. Leo. But the action of the mass of the bishops
at least in the East was so vacillating and, uncertain
through long years of controversy, that it was truly
remarked that the victory was won over the bishops
by the steadfastness of the laity. And certainly the
theologians and preachers of the fourth century did
their best to make them understand the nature of
the issue. They show the same robust faith as St.
Paul and St. John in the capacity of the ordinary
man for the understanding of his creed. Their
popular sermons as well as their theological writings
are one long appeal to reason and to Scripture, while
even the mention of the authority of the dogmatic
decisions is rare. Certainly they regard it as the
function of authority to stimulate enquiry, and not
suppress it.
One other point deserves notice. The man of
an enquiring mind would have found in the early
Church a very liberal temper of toleration. From
time to time an overbold spirit backed by a
strenuous will might promulgate some theory which
was felt to be so destructive of the foundations of
the Christian faith that the Church was called upon to
condemn it as heretical. And certainly the opinions
condemned as heresies were very capital heresies.
But meanwhile the school of Alexandria in the third
176 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH
century was producing a type of theology very dif-
ferent in tone from that of the Africans ; and the
difference of tone showed itself in opinions surprisingly
different for instance, about the destiny of the lost,
or the meaning of the body of Christ in the
eucharist. Later, Alexandria and Antioch and
Africa and Rome nourished very distinctive types of
doctrine among theologians who were pillars of
orthodoxy, and differences of opinion are sometimes
marked. We notice that Jerome and Augustine, of
whom we should not have expected it, frankly
approve such tolerance of differences. Thus they
recall an occasion, very well known in history, when
Rome, represented by Stephen, its bishop, affirmed
the validity of baptism administered by heretics,
while Africa, headed by Cyprian, with other churches,
vehemently denied it ; but while Rome would have
excommunicated those who held and acted upon the
latter opinion, Cyprian and his friends declined to
contemplate any such course. They demanded
toleration salvo jure communionis diversa sentire.
And, though this involved on their side the accept-
ance as members of the Christian Church of persons
who, in their theory, had never really been baptized,
still Cyprian was ready to insist on mutual respect
between rival traditions. And Jerome and Augustine
recall all this " perseverantissima tolerantia " with
emphatic commendation. " All these," writes Au-
gustine, " Catholic unity embraces in her motherly
breast, bearing each others' burdens in turn, and
endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the
bond of peace, until the Lord should reveal to one
or the other of them, if in any point they think
otherwise than as they should," * Thus I say the
lover of freedom in the Church of the first four
1 For Cyprian, see Diet, of Christ. Biog., where quotations are
collected. For Augustine, see de Bapt., ii, 3-6. For Jerome, adv.
Lucif^ 25. The matter is treated at rather greater length in
Roman Catholic Claims, chap, viii, pp. 134 1
WESTERN UTTERANCES 177
centuries, though he would have found certain broad
limits laid down, in passing beyond which he would
pass out of the communion of the Church, would
have been left with plenty of room to move within
those limits and no prevailing desire to curtail Ms
liberty.
No doubt there was another note heard from time
to time which was destined to prevail especially in
the West. Thus while Origen would find in the
tradition a stimulus to free enquiry, Tertullian lays
it down that belief in Christ and acceptance of the
Gospel brings curiosity and enquiry to an end. " All
the delay of seeking and finding thou hast terminated
by believing." * The enquiring mind is apparently
to be quenched. Belief should exclude enquiry.
Two centuries later, when papal authority was rapidly
developing, we find Innocent I, occupied with
the case of Pelagius, speaking of the " secret trea-
sury " (arcana) of divine truth, which apparently
renders the Roman pontiff an oracle from which
other bishops must receive decisions as certainly
divine. 4 Here is a conception of a central shrine of
divine truth which can act rapidly to determine con-
troversies in startling contrast to the notion of a
diffused tradition which must be collected from all
the churches ; and can only laboriously find full
expression by the cumbrous machinery of a General
Council ; and must then wait for the general reception
of the Council before its title to ecumenical authority
can be recognized ; and must further be prepared
to stand the challenge of an appeal to Scripture.
Here is a contrast suggested, pregnant with very
important consequences, and calculated to raise the
question whether the authority provided by Christ
1 De Praescr., cc. 7-10.
8 Ep. xxx, ad Numid., P.L., xx, 582 Q. In the Breviary, lesson yi
for the festival of the Immaculate Conception, the dogma is said
to have been proclaimed by Pius IX, ** supremo suo et infallibili
oraculo."
178 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH
for His Church is a rapid and peremptory authority,
a living voice of God, capable of perpetual disclo-
sures and decisions, or the slow-moving authority of
a diffused corporate witness to a voice once uttered,
living indeed in power and application, but in sub-
stance final and never to be repeated. And, once
more, half a century later, we find Leo the Great
asserting that "the faith which is one and simple
does not admit of variety " the sort of utterance
which represents a passion for uniformity, as thor-
ough as possible. Such utterances, though they tend
to different points, are alike one another in express-
ing a spirit which was to fashion an ideal of authority
widely different from that which we have been con-
sidering. It is the Romanist and especially the
Jesuit ideal. And we must proceed to consider it.
On the other hand, we shall have also to take account
of the ideal of authority which, by reaction from
Rome, established itself as Protestant orthodoxy,
showing itself sometimes in a form as autocratic and
absolute as papalism, but grounding its authority
on the Bible and the Bible only, and making Chris-
tianity the religion of the book. These developments
will occupy us in the next three chapters. But we
must pause, before going forward, to summarize the
kind of conclusion about the nature of the authority
of the Church which we have gathered from the New
Testament and the records of the early centuries of
the Church's life, especially under the influence of
the Greek Fathers.
First, then, we found that the Church inherited
from the prophets and from the Lord the sense that
true religion is a life to be lived. The stress is on
" the way " the way of holiness and brotherhood.
And there is nothing secret about it. It is to be
lived in the eyes of men, and it is by the witness of
the life that men are to be won for the truth. So
the Lord had said, " Ye are the salt of the earth. . . .
SUMMARY 1T9
Ye are the light of the world. A city set on a hill
cannot be hid. . . . Let your light shine before men,
that they may see your good works, and glorify your
Father which is in heaven."
Dr. Brightman l has recently given us a singularly
careful account of the instruction given to cate-
chumens in the early centuries of the Church and of
the moral discipline into which they were initiated.
The required abstinence from idolatry, from blood-
shedding, and from fornication closed to the Christian
many professions, and when he was admitted to
instruction he was not left in any doubt as to the
meaning of 'the way.' And so long as professing
the Christian name was a dangerous adventure, there
is no doubt that our Lord's great words about the
function of the Church were on the whole richly
fulfilled. The salt did not lose its savour. As has
been said already, the meaning of Church authority
in doctrinal matters can never be understood till it
is the life and not the doctrine which is put into the
first place.
2, But the life is based upon a word or message of
God ; and the message declares not only the life which
is to be lived, but also the reasons for living it. It is
a message about God and His redemptive acts, and
about the nature and destiny of man, and about the
divine provision made for realizing the good life.
And all this has come to men not as a conclusion of
their own reasoning, but as a revelation from Gk>d
a divine self-disclosure ; and of this authoritative
message or word of God the Church is set in charge ;
and the convert won to the Church and desiring to
live " the life which is life indeed " must accept the
message in childlike faith, not as the word of men
but as the word of God on authority.
3. But authority is of many different kinds*
i See Ms essay on " Terms of Communion " in The
of the Church and Ministry," pp. 320 ff.
ISO THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH
There Is the authority of the despot which seeks to
subdue and to crush ; and there is the authority of a
parent which seeks to quicken and to educate. And
the authority of the Church should be of the latter
kind. We took note how the infallible Master was
exceedingly reserved in dogmatic teaching. He did
indeed ask for whole-hearted self-devotion and faith
in Himself and His word, and He could take for
granted the faith of the Jew in the true God and in
human destiny. But for the rest He plainly meant
His disciples to learn for themselves from their ex-
perience of Him and to catch the truth from hints
and parables. He certainly was not a teacher who
thought that the best way for men was to have a
plain statement of truth dictated to them on authority
and a plain answer given to their questions.
Circumstances were changed after His death and
resurrection and the coming of the Spirit. Thence-
forth the Name of God has become the Name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ; and
the incarnation of the Son and His sacrificial death
and His glory and future coming, and the ministry
of the Spirit in the Church, and the purpose of the
sacraments all this, as the background of " the word
of life," constituted the Gospel which the Church was
to deliver. It was the word of God ; and though,
it may be, the only profession at first asked of the
converts was the profession that " Jesus is Lord/'
yet in fact we find that St. Paul presupposes a full
acquaintance with the Gospel in those he writes to.
They had all been instructed in these articles of the
faith. And St. Paul is fully conscious that this
faith must be maintained, and at the last resort he
is 'ready to say of anyone who would undermine it,
" Let him be anathema " ; nevertheless, as we have
seen, with St. Paul too the main stress is on the life
to be lived, and on the faith which surrenders itself
to God in Christ, and on reliance in the power and
THE ENEMIES OF AUTHORITY 181
guidance of the Spirit. His conception of authority
plainly disposes him to encourage liberty and to make
light of differences which do not break the fellowship
or undermine the faith. And he means belief to
grow into understanding ; and he seeks the co-opera-
tion of all the members of the Church in the fulfilment
of a common vocation. He would have authority
quicken and stimulate thought and liberate action ;
and he is afraid of 4C ordinances " as tending to
legalismu
And we caught the note of the same spirit in the
early Church, especially under the influence of the
Greek Fathers. They conceive of the doctrinal
authority of the Church as a restricted thing re-
stricted by Scripture. If it has to lay down dogmatic
limits, they must be justified by the necessity for
defending the central faith. And their Church was
a broad Church which tolerated many differences of
minor belief and varieties of practice* And intel-
lectually life in the Church was a highly stimulating
atmosphere in which enquiry was not quenched and
there was plenty of room to move. So it was down
at least to the fifth century. The Church says to
the convert, You must accept the message as the
word of God on faith ; but your faith should grow
into understanding. It will make you intellectually
as well as morally free.
If this be the true method, it has two enemies.
The first is the temper which treats all acceptance
of truth on authority as degrading; and in par-
ticular appears to deprecate in religion the very^idea
of a divine word to be received in faith a divine
message such as can be expressed in true propositions
and embodied in historic facts. It would apparently
interpret intellectual liberty to mean that each man
must start for himself to discover what he can about
God and human destiny. No doubt the excessive
dogmatism of the Church, especially at certain periods.
182 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH
has stimulated such, a temper by reaction. But if
Christianity is to mean anything at all resembling
what it meant at the beginning and has meant in
history, it must be rooted and grounded in the recog-
nition of a word of God to be received in faith by all
alike with the trustfulness of a child. Knowing what
we know about the eccentricity of the human mind,
we know that only the recognition of the authority
of revelation could have generated a coherent
Church.
And the principle of authority must be recognized
as lying at the root of all stable human progress.
Plato and Hegel may over-emphasize authority and
underrate initiative. But they are great masters of
education. They are surely right in recognizing that
there is a heritage of truth, theoretical and practical,
which each generation of children must begin by
accepting in faith. Reverence, as Goethe was fond
of pointing out, is the first quality requisite for learn-
ing. The power of mental initiative, the power of
original contribution, which each individual has in
him and which it is the function of education to
liberate, is strengthened, not weakened, by reverent
docility at the start. Hegel was right, I think, in
saying to his youthful students that they would
injure their capacity for original thinking by prema-
ture criticism. In the world of religion in our day
it is both ludicrous and lamentable to see how men
and women go utterly astray because they give
themselves freely to the criticism of religion without
any serious attempt to ascertain what, in its best
form and as a coherent whole, that religion means.
The first requisite is concentration of mind to receive
and appreciate and use. The most fruitful criticism
is based upon the sympathetic understanding which
can only come from within the faith.
Nevertheless, the best evidence that the mes-
sage of the Church is really the word of God lies
THE EPISTLES PRIMARILY ETHICAL 183
in its being able to liberate and satisfy the reason
which is God's original gift to man.
Thus the other enemy of true authority is that
conception of it which identifies it with absolutism
and faith with passive acceptance, which would
find the essential mark of authority in its peremptori-
ness and declare that faith is the enemy and not
the mother of free enquiry and criticism. And it is
to this kind of authoritarianism that we must now
turn our attention.
APPENDED NOTE (see p. 158)
THE TEACHING OF THE EPISTLES PRIMARILY MORAL
No one could doubt this in the case of the Epistles of
Peter and James ; nor in those of St. John* though he
insists on the coherence of character and creed. We
constantly are exhorted to strenuousness in defending
the Creed by the words of St. Jude, " Exhorting you to
contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to
the saints " ; but we have to notice that the contents
of his epistle would lead us to believe that the internal
foes whom he summons men to resist are enemies of
Christian moral principle, rather than devisers of new
doctrine. And I think it is true to say that St. Paul's
strenuousness in maintaining doctrine is always con-
ditioned very definitely by its bearing on the life of the
Church, social and individual. There is very little
speculative interest in theology to be found in St. Paul.
He is quite content to recognize that intellectually we
46 know in part," u we see but in a mirror or a riddle * 3 ;
but we know enough for the practical needs of the life
to be lived. The life is the primary aim of the Gospel.
To recognize this is not to depreciate dogma, but to
appreciate it.
18
CHAPTER VI
AUTHORITY IN ROMAN THEQKY
WE have been looking attentively at the idea of
authority as we find it in the Church of the early
centuries, and especially in that part of it which
spoke Greek ; and we have noted especially two of
its characteristics. First, that it is a strictly limited
authority, limited especially by the appeal to Scrip-
ture nothing, it appears, is to be promulgated either
in substance contrary to or beyond " what is written."
Secondly, that authority was not thought of as
suppressing enquiry, but as encouraging it, even
within the region of its own decisions. The appeal is
constantly to the " open Bible " and to reason.
But no one can take a general survey of Church
history without becoming conscious that a very
much more unrestricted and peremptory conception
of authority has become prevalent, particularly
within the wide scope of the Roman communion,
and still more particularly under the influence of the
society which since the beginning of the Counter-
Reformation has so largely moulded the Roman
Church the Society of Jesus. It is to this idea of
authority that we must now pay attention.
Those who maintain this conception would not, I
suppose, demur to our putting forward the life to be
lived as the primary purpose of the dogmatic message,
though in fact they have tended to present the life
as a matter of individual conduct to be rewarded with
salvation in another world, to an extent which seri-
ously distorts the original Christian idea of " the
184
THE ADVANTAGE CLAIMED FOR IT 185
life " and the cc way 93 ; but they would contend that
the more absolute the dogmatic law the more
completely It is placed aloft beyond criticism or
discussion the more easily and quickly can the
Individual devote himself to the practical saving of
Ms soul. I do not want to forget this argument. I
know how much It Impresses many in our generation,
wearied with constant discussions and contradictions
In the world of contemporary religion. I remember
how much one In the last generation whom many of
us regarded with great veneration Richard Holt
Button, of The Spectator used to feel it. He could
not accept the Roman claim. Yet he used to press
upon us Anglicans his sense that no type of religion
was so successful as the Roman In providing a stead-
fast and tranquil background for the spiritual life.
And we have read lately a good many lives of French-
men of intellectual distinction Charles de Foucauld
was only the last of many who have passed almost
at a bound from intellectual and moral licence to a
totally uncritical acceptance of Roman authority In
its extremest form, and therein found their peace. 1
With this plea in mind, then, let us understand the
idea. Briefly, it is that one who is outside the
Church, and is yet conscious of its attraction, should
exercise his free and critical judgement upon its
claim until he is convinced of its divine mission,
but that free enquiry Is only legitimate up to the
threshold of faith. The basis of faith once gained
and the act of faith once made, reason, in the sense
of the critical judgement, must, within the sphere of
what Is of faith, abdicate. You cannot criticize
God's word without impiety! And while this
1 I return to tills plea for the spiritual value of absolutism below,
pp. 225 ft,
186 AUTHORITY IN ROMAN THEORY
abdication is required of any person converted from
outside from the moment of Ms con version, * one
brought up in the faith should throughout maintain
this critically passive attitude of mind. For the
dogma of the Church entrusted to the hierarchy is
God's word* The hierarchy is the ecdesia docens.
And the attitude of the body of the faithful, the
ecdesia discern, must be that of unquestioning
acceptance. The famous rule of St. Ignatius of
Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, " To make sure
of being right in all things, we ought always to hold
by the principle that the white which I see I would
believe to be black if the hierarchical Church were
so to rule it " 2 was seriously framed and must be
taken seriously.
I hope and I suppose that there are many Roman
Catholics who would not assent to this idea of faith
as blindly submissive. Indeed, the principle of
which I have quoted an expression from Father
Woodlock is opposed to that of the great Schoolmen,
as I shall seek to indicate* But it appears to be
the prevalent principle in the Roman communion
to-day. It is the same principle which lies behind
the familiar Roman Catholic statement that all de-
clared articles of faith present the same claim of
certainty, and that " the infallibility of the Pope
and the Godhead of Christ rest exactly on the same
authority. " * The same proposition would of course
1 Cf. Pr. Woodlocfc, S.X, Constantinople, Canterbury, and Borne,
p. 3 (Longmans) : " The Catholic theory of the use of the reason
in religion is this, A man uses his reason, his private judge-
ment, to reach the Church as the mouthpiece of God's message.
Once that is found, he uses his reason, not to criticize and reject,
but to understand and assimilate what doctrinal authority pro-
poses to him as God's truth. 5 *
2 I have taken the translation from Father Bickaby's most
useful edition of the Spiritual Exercises, p* 223 (Burns & Gates).
s I am glad to read the Rev. Father AL Janssens' criticism of
this statement, quoted in Viscount Halifax's Further Considerations^
p 58 (Mowbray). But it is certainly commonly made by Roman
divines in England.
THE PEREMPTORINESS 187
be maintained about the immaculate conception of
Mary and the resurrection of our Lord. It means
that the basis of faith is the absolute authority of
the Church, irrespective of every appeal to the
evidence of history or of tradition. 1 will cite a
popular statement recently reported from a Roman
Catholic mission in Birmingham as an instance of
this claim of absolute authority :
" The Roman Catholic Church claimed absolute exclu-
sive truth ; she dared to say that all the others were
wrong. Did the Catholic or the Protestant Churches
make the truth quite clear ? The Protestant Churches
obviously did not. . . . Three hundred millions, people
of every nation, would affirm that the Catholic Church
made the truth quite clear. They would say, & Our
Holy Mother, the Catholic Church, by the living voice
of St. Peter and his successors, gifted with infallible
utterance by Christ Himself, speaks clearly to each of
us the absolute truth of God. That living voice never
wavers, never quibbles, never hesitates. It cannot ; for
it is the voice of the God of Absolute Truth, speaking
through His chosen instrument, the One, Holy, Catholic,
and Apostolic Church.* " l
I quote this popular statement because it srtikes
the sort of note with which we are made familiar in
England.
Now, how do we stand in face of this claim that we
must regard the teaching authority of the Church as
peremptory and without appeal, and in face of the plea
that this sort of authority best suits human nature ?
We have recognized to the full that the religion of
Christ is for all men and not specially for learned
men ; and certainly the mass of men have neither
the leisure nor the knowledge requisite for submitting
i A statement by the Bev, Owen Francis Dudley, " of the Koman
Catholic Missionary Society,' 1 quoted from a Birmingham awning
paper of November 5, 1923,
188 AUTHORITY IN ROMAN THEORY
the teaching of the Church to critical and historical
verification. If they too can pass from simply accept-
ing the faith on authority to personal conviction, it
must toe in the main by a process of moral verifica-
tion verification in life and spiritual experience.
But the gift of cc wisdom 5> and the gift of " know-
ledge " are among the gifts of the Spirit of God, as
well as the gift of "faith/' 1 They constitute the
vocation of the scholar and that must be recognized
in the Church, not for bis own sake only, but for the
sake of the whole body.
Surely nothing is more certain in history generally,
and in Church history in particular, than that every
tradition, entrusted to an authoritative body, tends,
if left to itself, to deteriorate under the pressure of
popular demands and for lack of self-criticism in
the teaching body. So the authoritative teaching in
Israel had deteriorated when our Lord came on
earth. And as has been noted, there is no reason
to believe that the Church of the New Covenant
was exempted from this peril any more than the
Church of the Old. It had no divine guarantee
given to it which can be interpreted as meaning that
it could neglect the means of self-enlightenment and
still be secure against mistake, 8 What is needed is
the free action within the body of the Church of the
spirit of wisdom and the spirit of knowledge ; and
to secure that is the vocation of the scholar.
And the vocation of a scholar requires that he
should think freely. It is mocking him to tell him
to investigate and form judgements of truth, and at
the same time to dictate to him what those judgements
are to be. He must be free to go where the argu-
ment, duly weighed, leads him. It is all the better
that he should be saturated from his childhood
upwards in the Church tradition, or, if not that,
* 1 Cor. xii. 8, 9.
a See Appended Note A on the Infallibility of the Church, p. 205.
APPEAL OF FATHERS TO REASON 189
should at least have had time to learn by experience
within the Church the meaning of its creed and
worship and sacraments. It is only from within, or
by a rare gift of sympathy from without, that the
real meaning of any institution or tradition can be
learned. The devout Catholic need be no more
prejudiced, in the false sense, than the rationalist.
But he must be prepared to receive light from every
quarter, however hostile, and to follow the light. He
must not " reason in fetters." The test of the truth
of the tradition is that it can bear the whole light.
If his thought leads him plainly and finally outside
the Christian Creed, of course he must cease to hold
the office of a Church teacher. Freedom for thinking
has no connexion with freedom to violate one's
engagements. He must no doubt take the risk of
such an event. Anyway, the Church must sanction
free enquiry praying earnestly for its scholars that
their faith fail not. If such freedom is refused
inside the Church, it will assert itself outside ; and
that way lies revolution or schism.
In the days of the Fathers, from Origen to Augus-
tine, the world of intellect was dominated in the
main by a phase of Platonic philosophy. And into
this world of philosophy the leaders of Christian
thought advanced with bold freedom, and, on the
whole, successfully established a synthesis between
the tradition and the higher thought of their age.
When in the dawn of the Renaissance l a revived
Aristotelianism seemed so threatening to faith that
there were those who, like the great St. Bernard,
1 In the really dark age which intervened between the age
of the Fathers, when the spirit of Greek philosophy still lived
on, and the intellectual renaissance of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries there is a tendency, alien to what is to be found
in the Fathers, to regard the intellect with something more than
suspicion. Thus in the controversy with Berengar the belief in
transubstantiation, not yet modified by the Schoolmen, is glorified
for its irrationality. The more the faith violates the testimony
of the senses, the more merit it has. See Dissert., p. 260.
190 AUTHORITY IN ROMAN THEORY
denounced the new logic as Impious, nevertheless the
liberty of reason asserted itself again, and a new
synthesis established itself of which St. Thomas
Aquinas was the master- builder.
There were differences between the positions main-
tained by different founders of scholasticism. St.
Anselm, for example, following Scotus Erigena,
seems to claim that everything that is believed on
authority can be established on an independent basis
by the reason. He gives this full interpretation to
Credo ut intelligam. But St. Thomas is much
more cautious. 1 He recognizes that reason cannot
demonstrate (for example) the truth that God is the
absolute Creator or the truth of Trinity in Unity ;
but reason can show the necessity for God's self-
revelation, and recognize its reality ; and while
revelation must needs cover the ground of reason
and transcend it, it must not contradict it ; nay,
more, reason should find within its own materials
intimations, at least, of what is revealed. Thus revela-
tion must satisfy reason. 2 There were then differ-
ences between the founders of scholasticism. But all
were agreed upon the position that the dogma of
the Church was not an obstruction to the free action
of the reason, but a stimulus to it, and that revealed
truth cannot be contrary to the conclusions of
reason.
But neither the Fathers nor the Schoolmen had to
face an intellectual world in which empirical science
and historical criticism had become the dominant
factors. The great St. Thomas, for example, in his
treatment of his authorities is utterly uncritical. He
appears to have no sense of what historical criticism
1 See the admirable work of I>r. Philip Wieksteed, Reactions be-
tween Dogma and Philosophy, illustrated from the works of St.
Thomas Aq., eapp. i, ii (Williams & Norgate, 1920),
a See Appended Note, p. 334, on the nationality of the Christian
Belief in God.
NECESSITY OF FREE THOUGHT 191
means. 1 And to bring the faith to be at home in
our modern intellectual world may be a harder task
even than that set to Fathers and Schoolmen. Never-
theless, it is the task that is set us, if we believe the
faith to be the truth. And there is no way to effect
a new synthesis of faith and knowledge except by
thought and examination which are both Christian
and free. And this is for the sake of all. Not only
is it the only way to avoid, or to recover from, a
disastrous divorce between religion and knowledge ;
but it is also needed for the sake of the average man
and woman. Half the attendants at our churches
to-day are enfeebled in the spiritual life because they
entertain a suspicion that what they hear from the
pulpit is not true and will not bear sifting. Nothing
will remove this pressing uneasiness except the
widely spread conviction that the scholars of the
Church are facing the light and the Church is eager
to learn from them. We must refuse, then, any
conception of faith such as would restrict or lay
in fetters the free thought of its scholars.
There is also another consideration which it is
important to have in view. Part of the teaching of
the Roman Church is pronounced to be de fide. It
is infallibly defined. Such, for example, are, I believe,
the dogmas of the immaculate conception of Mary
1 It is interesting to note that when a certain catena of passages
from the Greek Fathers, intended to convince the Greeks that
they ought to snbmit to Borne, came into the hands of Urban IV,
he submitted it to St. Thomas Aquinas. Among the passages
quoted many supposed to be from St. Chrysostom, St. Cyril,
etc. were, as all now admit, forgeries. Now Thomas was acute
enough in detecting certain theological inaccuracies in some of
these passages, but he was quite without the spirit of historical
criticism, which would have caused him, as it caused the scholars
of the Benaissance, at once to detect that the supposed testimonies
to the papal monarchy were glaring forgeries. So St. Thomas
incorporated these forgeries into the structure of his defence of
the papal claim, and they remained there to deceive students down
to Sir Thomas More. See The Pope and the Council, by Janus,
pp. 264 f., and Denny, Papalum, pp. IMff.
192 AUTHORITY IN ROMAN THEORY
and the infallibility of the Pope, and transubstantia-
tion. All these dogmas present peculiar and, as it
seems to me, insuperable difficulties to the historical
student. He is accustomed in the Creed to find
facts of history propounded as articles of faith the
virginal conception, and death and resurrection and
ascension of Christ. But in the New Testament
these facts are very studiously and Insistently pre-
sented as guaranteed by sufficient testimony of
competent witnesses. This is apparent in the preface
to St. Luke's Gospel, and the statement of requisites
for the office of the Twelve (Acts i. 21, 22), and St.
Paul's statement concerning the evidence of the
appearances of the risen Christ. There is nothing
propounded to be believed as a fact of history except
on adequate testimony. And who, one asks, can
resist the testimony to our Lord's resurrection, except
under the influence of that sort of rationalism which
refuses the miraculous a priori ? But here in the
doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary
there is propounded to be believed as a fact by the
faithful, with exactly the same confidence as the
resurrection of Christ, something which has no
shadow of historical evidence, which was demon-
strably not an element in the tradition of the Church
from the beginning, which was repudiated when it
came into notice by many of the greatest mediaeval
saints and theologians, and which is only supported
by the sort of logic which all historians know to be
utterly untrustworthy, that is, a priori argument as
to what must have happened or ought to have hap-
pened. We should indeed think and speak of the
Blessed Virgin with a profound reverence and devo-
tion ; but to put the immaculate conception of
Mary 1 side by side with the resurrection of Christ,
1 The corporal assumption of Mary is, I believe, not " of faith "
in the Roman communion, but it is celebrated as a " Double of
the First Class," with the same liturgical honours as the commemora-
tions of the birth and ascension of Christ.
ROMAN DOGMAS UNHISTORICAL
as entitled to an identical faith, as a fact, Is to
remove the act of faith altogether from Its standing-
ground In historical testimony.
The historical difficulty which attaches to the
dogma of the infallibility of the Pope Is well known.
It appears to conflict with some certain facts of
history ; as, even more certainly, does the affirmation
which accompanies it, that in asserting the dogma
the Vatican Council was only " faithfully adhering
to the tradition received from the first beginnings
of the Christian faith." *
The dogma of transubstantiation Is also involved
not only In metaphysical but In historical difficulties,
because It conflicts with an important current of
Church tradition which affirmed the permanent
reality of the bread and wine a tradition not only
important by the weight of the names which affirm
it s but still more important because It is grounded on
the same principle which prompted the Church's
repeated insistence upon our Lord's real humanity*
the principle that the supernatural does not destroy
the natural substance or nature, but only elevates it
to a higher plane ; while, on the other hand, the
dogma of transubstantiation Is closely allied with a
deeply monophysite tendency In the Church.*
I have cited these instances of de fide dogmas In the
Roman Church as having implicit in them the claim
that authority shall supersede history or do without
it. But also it must be remembered that of the
" authoritative " teaching of the Roman Church only
a small part is strictly claimed as infallible. " A
Catholic obedience is tried,'* says Father Rickaby, 3
" not by the supreme infallible decisions of papal
and conciliar authority in matters of faith and
morals : such high Infallible utterances are rare . . , ;
but obedience is tried by proceedings and declarations,
1 See Roman Catholic Claims, chaps, v-vii.
8 See Dissertations, iii, 3 Op. cit, t p. 229.
1W AUTHORITY IN ROMAN THEORY
not infallible, yet authoritative." For example*
Pope Leo XIII in 1893 Issued an encyclical on ct the
study of Holy Scripture,' 5 addressed especially to
ecclesiastics, in which, the fullest and most extreme
definition possible is given of the nature and scope
of the inspiration of the writers of the books of the
Bible. The efforts of Newman and others to show
that the doctrine of inspiration might be given a
more restricted sense, and be rendered compatible
with the more certain conclusions of criticism, are
utterly disregarded. In the most stringent sense
God is declared to be the author of everything in the
authentic text of the Bible, not only statements
affecting faith and morals, but statements on every
subject. To deny the infallibility or historical truth
of any of its statements is to ascribe falsehood to
God. 1 Now, this assertion of verbal inspiration in its
most stringent sense as the doctrine of the Church,
although the Pope is obviously intending to define
the meaning of inspiration for the benefit of the
teachers and students of the Church, and to exclude
any other meaning, is, I suppose, not reckoned as
infallible. There are signs that it is already being
ignored. Perhaps in thirty years 5 time it will be as
completely superseded as a much earlier pope 5 s
definition of the matter and form of ordination. 1
But the more we reflect on the matter, the more
perilous do these not strictly infallible but authori-
tative utterances seem to be. There is a whole mass
of theological utterances which the Roman Catholic
student knows are not strictly the word of God
which may turn out not to be true which yet he
must not contradict, and which it is " temerarious "
to doubt or at least call into question. The par-
1 This amazing encyclical is quoted in Roman Catholic Claims
(10th and later editions), chap. xi.
2 Eugenius IV in 1439 in his Decretum de Unione Armeniorum.
See Roman Catholic Claims, chap, ix, p. 149 ; and The Church and
the Ministry, p. 79, ru L
PRONOUNCEMENTS NOT INFALLIBLE 195
ticular encyclical referred to had, it seems to us
Anglicans, a disastrous effect on the study of Holy
Scripture in the Roman Church. It still makes us
feel that some eminent Roman Catholic critics and
commentators are writings not as they would if they
were free to express their judgement, but as they
dare. This attempt strictly to prohibit free thought
among Church students of the Bible over a long
period of time by the dogmatic action of authority,
backed by its disciplinary resources, when all the time
it is admitted that the prohibitory dogma may turn
out to be mistaken, seems to us an amazing perversion
of authority.
No one can survey the course of European thought
since the Roman authority became the dominant
factor in Western religion without seeing that it lias
been on many points, and not chiefly in virtue of
decrees for which infallibility is claimed, the great
misleader of Europe, It was so in the sanction
given over long ages to the principle of persecution
for heresy persecution involving torture and death
which was flat contrary to the mind of the earlier
Church, and is inexpressibly repugnant to the mind
of Jesus. It was so in the claim implicit in the
condemnation of Galileo, that the Church and the
Bible have authority in matters of science, and that
inductive reasoning from the observation of nature
cannot be free when it appears to conflict with
statements in the Bible. More recently, as just
remarked, it has been so in its attitude towards
historical criticism as applied to the Bible. In all
these cases the authority of the Church, in Roman
hands, did generate, and has kept alive on the vastest
scale, a revolt of intellect and even more of properly
Christian feeling, against the very idea of authority
in religion ; and we are bound to confess that, if
the Roman idea of authority is the only idea, the
revolt has been legitimate.
190 AUTHORITY IN ROMAN THEORY
It is quite true that Protestant bodies have also
sanctioned persecution. Anyone who reads the
history candidly written of the founding of New
England l will be obliged to recognize in the Puritan
fathers a conception of ecclesiastical authority, and
of the duty of persecuting heresy even to torture and
death, which is as formidable as anything which can
be laid to the charge of Rome. But it was short-
lived, because it was incompatible with the whole
spirit of the movement in which it occurred. Ortho-
dox Protestantism again has from time to time
sought to condemn and penalize free enquiry ; but
here also its own principles have forced it for very
shame to repent. Its faults can never be on the
side of over-emphasis on authority. And it must
be admitted that by many centuries Rome led the
way in these disastrous tendencies. And my point
is that it is not only, or perhaps chiefly, by its pro-
nouncements for \vhich infallibility is claimed that
Rome has been in certain respects the misleader of
Europe, but by that far larger body of authoritative
pronouncements which stifle criticism and resistance,
but which after the lapse of time may turn out to
have been confessedly mistaken.
II
The next point to be noticed in the Romanist
conception of authority is that it appears in effect
to give a new meaning to tradition. The " living
voice " of the Church which, of course, means the
Church of the Roman obedience represents what
the tradition has come to be, and can express itself
in an " irreformable " dogma, which may in words
declare itself to have been received by tradition from
the very beginnings of the Christian religion, but which
1 This has been admirably done by James Truslow Adams in.
Ms Founding of New England ('* Atlantic Monthly" Press, 1920).
VINCENT OF LERINS 197
in fact pays no real attention either to the silence of
Scripture or to the actual facts about the tradition
in its earlier stages.
As has been shown, 1 the Fathers did really regard
the authority of the Church in matters of doctrine
as limited by the appeal to Scripture. The appeal
was to Scripture no doubt as interpreted by the
Church tradition. But the function of the Church
tradition was to interpret* not to add to, " what was
written/* and tradition meant the tradition as patent
from the beginning. This ancient idea of Church
authority was admirably explained in the little work
of Vincent of Lerins written A.D. 434 Adversm
profanes omnium novitates haercticorum commonifonum
which became the classic on the subject. Here
the function of tradition is limited to interpreting
Scripture, and it is not regarded as an additional
source of doctrine ; and a famous phrase defines
authentic tradition to be what has been held in the
Church "ubique," "semper," and "ab omnibus"
that is, in all parts of the Church, as opposed to
any one particular Church; always, as opposed to
only in recent ages ; and by all, i.e. by the general
body of the Church, as opposed to the private opinion
of particular teachers. It is made quite plain by
Vincent that the appeal to antiquity is an additional
test, over and above the appeal to general consent. 8
Now we shall have to discuss the reasonableness of
combining the appeal to Scripture with the appeal
to tradition, and also the reasonableness of erecting
the Scriptures as a final standard of the doctrine of
the Christian religion. This will be our business in
a future chapter. 5 We shall also have to discuss the
bearing of development on this theory of tradition
immediately. All that I ask at present is that it
* See above, pp. 172-3. .,
a This is acknowledged by Cardinal Franzelin to be Vincent a
meaning but is by him repudiated. See Moman Catholic Vlaim,
chap, iii, p. 58. * Chap, viii
198 AUTHORITY IN ROMAN THEORY
should be recognized what a vast difference there is
between a theory of the Church which makes it a
continuous -and living witness to a once-spoken voice
& " faith once for all delivered " and one which
makes it, in effect, a continuous organ of divine
revelation. If the former theory is the truth, the
authority of the Church is a very restricted authority.
For instance, it cannot make the immaculate con-
ception of Mary an article of faith because no one
can reasonably claim for it ancient tradition or scrip-
tural sanction. Or again, it cannot get to know, or
become authorized to require of the faithful, more
concerning purgatory than the ancient Church knew
or than is to be found in Scripture.
Plainly in St. Augustine's day there was no tradi-
tion about a purgatory in the intermediate state for
the imperfect. St. Augustine tended strongly to
believe it, as I suppose we almost all of us must do,
on grounds of reason. But it has no real grounds in
Scripture, 1 which is, in fact, totally silent on the
subject. St. Augustine finally can only say in his
latest work, " I will not dispute it ; for it may
perhaps be true." 2 Three centuries later the au-
thority of St. Gregory's Dialogues, full of tremendous
ghost stories, gives the doctrine unlimited vogue.
Gregory quite admits that his vivid teaching is depen-
dent on the new information contained in the visions
he records. 3 The approaching end of the world, he
1 The text so often quoted, 1 Cor. iii. 15, has nothing to do with
it. It concerns not the purging of character but the testing of
work, and that by the fire of the last day.
8 t>e Oiv. t xxi, 26. Dr. A, J. Mason in his Purgatory (Longmans)
has given the best account of the development of the doctrine.
3 See Mason, op. cit , p. 43, The passage of chief importance is
in St. Gregory's Dialogi, iv, 39-40. Peter, Gregory's submissive
disciple, asks why in these last times so many things about souls
are becoming clear which were unknown before, " so that by
manifest revelations and disclosures the world to come appears
to invade us and open itself to us " ; and Gregory replies it is like
the dawning light before the sun rises the clouds of this disappear-
ing world are shot through with rays of the light that is to be.
THE DOCTRINE OF PURGATORY 199
thinks, has been the occasion of these enlightening
visions. We have thus been allowed to know more
than our fathers. But the ancient Church would not
admit any new revelation as an addition to the word
of God. * What an immense difference it would have
made if, instead of using the doctrine of purgatory
as one of the keystones of its system, with results so
disastrous in many ways, the Church had main-
tained its ancient reticence ! It could not deny that
there might there even must be a purgatory.
But it had no authority to proclaim It as part of its
message, and still less any authority over it. There
was no original tradition of a purgatory and nothing
about it in the word of God.
I say, then, that no one can dispute the importance
of the ancient rule of faith in restricting the authority
of the Church and keeping the conscience of men free
from additional burdens. There is something in-
fallible f in the Church, which is the original Gospel,
proclaimed by the apostles, and recorded in the
New Testament. The Church is endowed with the
Spirit of truth in order to realize, to propagate, and
to defend this faith and to explicate its meaning,
But it cannot add to it. Where Scripture gives no
information (for "we know in part and we prophesy
in part " only), the Church must be content to remain
silent till the day dawns of greater light. Meanwhile
men of discernment may enquire and speculate and
suggest pious opinions. But the Church can make
no new article of faith. In that category, as Vincent
constantly insists in various phrases, what is really
new is certainly false. 5
1 This is still the official position of the Roman Church, thongfe
it is manifestly violated in practice.
2 Appended Note A, p. 205, on the Infallibility of the Church,
s No one interested in the subject ought to be content without
reading Vincent of Lerins's luminous little book. No doubt,
though he does not mention the name of the great Augustine, h
has him in his mind, alongside of Origen and Xertullian whom ha
does name, as an instance of one who had not only done brilliant;
200 AUTHORITY IN ROMAN THEORY
The history of the alteration by the Church of the
West of its ancient rule of faith is fairly plain. The
first five centuries were days of general enlightenment
and there were a multitude of Church teachers and
an intelligent public. By the beginning of the
seventh century things had changed. In the West at
least Gregory the Great stood almost alone. As we
have seen, in respect to the after-world he did not
hold to the ancient rule. He admitted new teaching
based on fresh disclosures. And his word became
law for the dark ages. When we reach the period
of the controversy concerning Berengar and transub-
stantiation (eleventh century), the distinction between
the authority of Scripture and every other kind of
authority appears to have vanished* 1 Neither Beren-
gar nor his adversaries appear to be conscious of it.
The appeal is to authorities of various kinds, and
they are all called "authentic scriptures." Two
centuries later, in St. Thomas Aquinas, what the
modern student finds most baffling is the total
absence of any criticism of his authorities. His
argument in particular cases manifestly depends not
only on the subtlety of his reasoning, which is seldom
at fault, but on the relative value of the different
authorities to which he defers. And of these we find
no reasoned estimate. Meanwhile the actual teach-
ing of the Church had reached such a point that it
must make its appeal to an " unwritten tradition, 51
additional to Scripture, if it were to be justified.
Practically, though perhaps not theoretically, St.
Thomas adds tradition to Scripture, as a source of
doctrine, and tradition, as I have said, treated quite
uncritically. At the fourth session of the Council
of Trent (1546) the written books of Scripture and the
service to the Church, but had also " tried " it by promulgating
ideas (the conception of absolute predestination, etc.) which were
neither according to antiquity nor consent, but which enthusiastic
disciples would fasten upon the Church a obligatory doctrine.
1 See Dissert., p. 250
TRADITION AND SCRIPTURE 201
" unwritten " traditions, whether received by the
apostles from the mouth of Christ Himself, or
dictated to them by the Holy Spirit, were for-
mally put upon the same level of authority, in
respect of matters of faith as well as of discipline,
with the books of Scripture. 1 This was a serious
alteration of the ancient rule. But it makes little
difference in fact if tradition is interpreted, as Vin-
cent insists that it must, in the sense that nothing
belongs to tradition which cannot be shown to have
been held in the Church from the beginning and
universally. Still, in the Creed of Pope Pius IV,
who brought the Council of Trent to a conclusion,
the Scriptures are to be interpreted not 4t otherwise
than according to \juada] the unanimous consent of
the Fathers/' 2 Bollinger pleaded his oath to this
Creed as preventing him from assenting to the Vati-
can decree concerning the infallibility of the Pope.
But in the decrees of the Vatican Council there is a
notable difference from the Creed of Pope Pins.
There it is forbidden to interpret Scripture " contrary
to the unanimous consent of the Fathers." J There
may, apparently, be additions to their unanimous
teaching, if they do not amount to contradictions.
Cardinal Franzelin, also, as we have just seen, rejects
the restraint which Vincent would impose on dogmatic
novelties. And, in fact, without the abandonment
of the restrictions of Vincent certain Roman dogmas
are plainly disqualified. But here we touch the
question of the meaning of " development/* which
will be the subject of the next chapter.
Ill
The third point to notice in the Romanist con-
ception of authority is that it involves centraliza-
1 Denzinger, Enchiridion, Ixxxi.
* Op. cit., Ixxxii. a Op. cit., Ixxxix.
202 IN ROMAN
tion. 1 In the early conception of authority there is
no centralization. Cyprian seems at one moment
of his life to proclaim an unrestricted independence
among bishops, though he can hardly have meant
this in its full sense. Augustine corrects this exag-
gerated estimate by bringing the individual bishop
under the authority of the Council of Bishops, and
finally of the General Council. But the idea of the
General Council was that its predominant authorita-
tiveness depended upon the fact that in it all the
streams of tradition in all the different churches of
the world were represented, and could check one
another. 2 Thus its decision represented the con-
sentient witness of all parts of the Christian world.
And again the conclusion reached was dependent
for its final authority upon the acceptance of the
conciliar decision by the churches, when the bishops
had returned to their sees and promulgated it. Thus
the conception of the General Council suggests no
1 It Involves centralization in a double sense in the sens
xgud in the text, and in the sense that within the Roman Church
the authority is (I believe) restricted to the ecclesia docens. In
the New Testament the Church officers have a special function as
teachers, but the Church as a whole is felt to be " the pillar and
ground of the truth," The whole Church is appealed to in moments
of controversy. This tradition is maintained in. the Church of the
Fathers, And still the Eastern Orthodox Church maintains it,
repudiating the Roman distinction between the ecclesia docens
and the ecclesia discen. The hierarchy in the Roman Church,
which is the eccfesto (2ocen*, " consists of the Sovereign Pontiff, who
is assisted by the Sacred College of Cardinals, and by several sacred
congregations . . . ; of the patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops ;
of the apostolic delegates, vicars, and prefects ; and of certain
abbots and prelates," The ordinary parish priest does not, I
believe, belong to it.
s It is noteworthy that when Ironaeus assigns a special import-
ance to the Roman Church in maintaining the tradition, it is be-
cause its pre-eminence brought Christian men from all parts of the
world to it; so that tradition there was not merely local but
ecumenical, because the tradition was there maintained by men
from all parts. This is the undoubted meaning of the famous
phrase (Iren, c. Haen, iii, 3). See references in Roman Catholic
Cfowfttf, pp. 97-8. Rome after the fifth century quite lost this
distinction and became for many centuries strangely isolated.
OF AUTOCRACY 20$
centralized authority, but, on the contrary, a common
tradition or authority universally diffused,
needing to be laboriously collected. But the
mind demanded something more easily effective' a
central authority at Home and, as It soon appeared s
a spiritual monarchy. In the developed papacy it is
regularly assumed that monarchy is the form of
government most to be desired, as in temporal
things so in spiritual. Xo doubt this follows from a
certain conception of effectiveness. But it is bought
at a great price s and it has inflicted on Christendom
deplorable losses. First, in that it has tended to
narrowness. It has emphasized the virtue of obedi-
ence at the expense of liberty and diversity and
reverence for truth qualities for which the earlier
and more really catholic idea of authority allowed
ample scope. This has been especially apparent
since the Counter-Reformation* and since the influence
of the Jesuits became dominant, alike in respect of
doctrine and of discipline* Secondly, it has involved
violence to history and has tended to schism. The
Papal Monarchy makes claims on history which
history fairly interpreted wholly refuses to verify.
The Greek-speaking Church, holding fast to an earlier
conception of authority, has consistently^ in its official
utterances, and in the opinion of almost all its
theologians, repudiated the papal claim, and on
wholly valid grounds. 1 The more and more insis-
tent pressure of those claims on the part of Rome
meant schism in the long run.
And lastly, what is the most serious point of all,
the facts of history being what they are 3 the main-
tenance of the Roman claim has involved a constant
perversion of truth. This is an awful charge. But
it has been pressed home by two of the most learned
of modern historians who were themselves shining
1 Appended Note B, " The Constant Repudiation by the East of
the Roman Claim, 5 ' p. 207.
204 AUTHORITY IN ROMAN THEORY
lights of the Roman Church. Von Dolllnger and
Acton. The one was excommunicated, the other
lived and died in the communion of Rome. But he
did not mince Ms words in charging with treason to
the truth the maintainers of the later Roman claim.
Certainly as one reads the record of forged documents
and misquotations which have been used to support
the Papal claim, it seems an inevitable conclusion
that an assertion of authority which has needed so
much falsehood to support it in the past, and still
needs so much distortion of fact in its histories^
cannot be wholly of God* 1
But as I write such words there rises before me
the vision of the glories and sanctities of the Roman
Church, as conspicuous in modern as in ancient days.
Certainly God is with them and His Spirit is powerful
among them. But the Roman Church claims to be
the whole Church. Whereas it seems to me to be
written on the face of history that, for all its glory
and strength and beauty, it is a one-sided develop-
ment* It is not the whole. As to the combination
in one communion of so much excellence with so
much defect, and of so much truth with so much
treason to truth, I shall have something to say at
a later stage. 2
* I think Denny's Papalism (Rivington) is fairly unanswer-
able. It suffers through following the lines of the encyclical of
Leo XIII, Salis Cognitum, which is not widely read to-day. But
this enables the author to cover the whole ground of debate. Also
following the encyclical, he says little about the theory of deve-
lopment. He assumes the Roman theory to be what officially it
is that the doctrine of the Vatican Council has always been in
substance the doctrine of the Church. Though he occasionally
shown an unwillingness to admit points in the Roman case which
h had better have admitted, his case on the whole is (as I have
said) fairly unanswerable. Our other strongest book is Father
Fuller's Primitwe Saints and the See of Eome (Longmans).
2 See below, p. 357.
THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE 205
APPENDED NOTE A (see p. 190)
THE INFALLIBILITY OF CHURCH
There is something deep in human nature which
for an infallible refuge. It has been found in conscience,
and in Scripture, and in the Church, and in the Pope.
But as soon as you begin to cross-question the authority
of these diverse seats of infallibility, in each case, though
in various degrees, you find a grave necessity for dis-
crimination. The suggested authority is infallible only
when it speaks under such and such conditions. And
the difficulty is to distinguish when these conditions are
fulfilled. Conscience may* and sometimes does, simply
convey the voice of God to the soul. But it may be
perverted by ignorance or invincible prejudice or social
tradition or individual wilfulness, so as to convey a guid-
ance which is very far from being divine. Scripture,
again, is the record of a real word of God in the different
stages of its delivery, and the Word of God is infallible.
Here is something which in its main lines is clearly dis-
tinguishable. But Scripture contains much that is im-
perfect in its earlier stages, for the divine education of
mankind was gradual, and what was right for ancient
Israel would not be right for us. Also the record of
the divine message is given in a literature which contains
historical records of very different historical values and
statements of a quasi-scientific character which are not
according to the facts as we know them. The word of
God is infallible, but you cannot call the books which
convey it to us infallible without disaster.
Again, the function of the Church is to convey the
message of God which is infallible, and it has authority
to interpret it and proclaim it as true. There are certain
occasions the Ecumenical Councils when the Church
has squarely faced a question definitely raised, and has
definitely answered it after full consideration, and in a
representative assembly, and the answer has been ac-
cepted so widely and continuously that you may truly
say, This is the voice of the Catholic Church; this you
can rely upon with the same confidence which inspired
the first church at Jerusalem to say, ** It seemed good to
208 IN ROMAN
the Holy Ghost and to us." And in spite of the disagree-
able moral impression which some of the Genera! Councils
leave upon our minds, I believe the claim to be justified.
And we ought to feel the same sort of reliance upon
the diffused witness of the Church in proportion as it is
really unanimous- ubique, semper, ab omnibus* and
can make a legitimate appeal to Holy Scripture.
But what average human nature is apt to want is a
much more general infallibility. Yet in fact " the
voice of the Church," even before the Church was
divided, has been through its ordinary mouthpieces very
far from infallible. Not even the warmest defender of
the infallibility of the Church or of the Pope can fail
to recognize such serious limitations to the infallibility
in which he desires to believe as to deprive it largely
of its practical value. The fact is that when men cry
out for an infallible voice they are generally crying out
for something which, in the large sense in which they
want it, it does not appear to be the will of God we
should have. There is a word of God which is utterly
trustworthy of which the Church is the carrier ; and it
has divinely given authority to teach it and to interpret
It; and its great central utterances where it speaks
with fullest unanimity we can rely upon with a whole-
hearted confidence. But in view of the facts of history
we had better be careful in talking about the infallibility
of the Church. Christ is the truth, and the Holy Spirit
Is the Spirit of Jesus and the Spirit of truth, and in-
fallible. And because He is in the Church there is some-
thing there infallible, 1 But indefectibility and God-given
authority are, in general, better words to use concerning
the Church.
1 St. Thomas tells us that to say " I believe in the Church " is
permissible only because " our faith is referred to the Holy Spirit
who sanctifies the Church, so that the sense is 'I believe in the
Holy Spirit who sanctifies the Church.* But it is better, and in
accordance with the more usual practice, to omit the word * in *
and say only * I believe [that] the Holy Catholic Church [exists],*
Credo sanctam ecclesiam Catholicam." So also Bufinus and
Augustine. In fact,, however, the Eastern Creeds,, including the
<e Hicene " and some Western Creeds, certainly contain the efc or
"in" before the mention of the Church. And where the preposi-
tion was not repeated, it was commonly understood. See Church
<md Ministry, p. 14, n. 2.
207
APPENDED NOTE B (see p. 203)
CONSTANT REPUDIATION BY EAST OF
ROMAN CLAIM
It appears in history that the Greek-speaking Church
never regarded it as part of the faith that it had received
that the Bishop of Rome has by ditine right any special
position ia the Church. We Anglicans have always
appealed, in vindication of this statement, specially to
the formal utterances of Eastern Councils reckoned as
ecumenical the third canon of Constantinople the
twenty-eighth of Chalcedon. (See
p. 102 .) Romans reply that the latter the most explicit
canon was not accepted by Rome and that the Easterns
must therefore have admitted that it was not valid.
But this is not the case. Whatever polite and concilia-
tory language they thought it wise to use to the powerful
pontiff at Rome, the canon remained in their eyes valid,
and was explicitly reaffirmed in the Council at the
Trullo (can. xxxvi). Cf. Duehesne, Origins du Culte
cfirMien, p. 24 : * 4 Leur voix * J (i.e. Leo's voice and his
successors') " fat pea ecoutee : on leur accorda sans
doute des satisfactions, mais de pure ceremonie."
Certainly Eastern theologians recognize a leadership of
Peter among the apostles, as we all do. Chrysostora is
quoted as going beyond this ; but on investigation * it
seems to be doubtful whether he recognizes any authority
in Peter peculiar to him ; and of course Antioeh, where
Chrysostom was teaching, was, like Rome, a u see of Peter/*
and may have loved to recognize Ms primacy in a some-
what fuller sense than other churches. What is quite
certain is that neither Chrysostom nor the other Eastern
doctors recognized the persistence of the Petrine privilege
(whatever it was) in the Roman bishops. When St.
Chrysostom, for instance 9 speaks of our Lord as having
intrusted His sheep u to Peter and those who came after
him " (de SacerdoL, ii, cap. i, 88), it is of all the bishops
he is plainly speaking.
1 See Benny's Papalism, pp. 80 H
CHAPTER VII
THE TESTS OF LEGITIMATE DEVELOPMENT
THOSE who assent to the course of thought pursued
in this volume find themselves maintaining an idea
of the authority of the Church which is both con-
servative and moderate. It is conservative because
it postulates not only that the Christ is the final
word of God's self-revelation to men, but also that
the apostolic preaching, which was the source of the
Church tradition, gave the true and final interpreta-
tion of the person of Christ and of the mission of
the Spirit, and that their preaching finds its adequate
record in the books of the New Testament. It is a
moderate view of the authority of the Church because*
while it would bid us hold that it was the duty of
the Church to propagate, defend, and interpret the
teaching of the New Testament, it would deny that
it had authority to add to it, or at any rate to claim
acceptance as part of the faith for anything either
contrary to or over and above "what had been
written/* In the next chapter the question of the
legitimacy and reasonableness of this claim for
Scripture will come up for discussion. But we have
also found that the greatest of the Christian Churches
the Roman communion in a measure in theory
and much more completely in fact repudiates this
moderate canon of Church authority. It adds
tradition to Scripture as an equal source of knowledge
about the contents of the revelation, and in effect
claims that " tradition " means what at any period
208
NEWMAN'S
the Roman Church has come to hold, whatever the
records of the past may say.
It is to account for the difference between the
present teaching of the Roman Church and the
original tradition that appeal has been to the
idea of development. The present Roman tradition,
It is contended, represents not simply the original
tradition, but the proper development of the original
tradition. The principle had been appealed to in
one sense by the famous Jesuit Petau, or Petavius,
the antagonist of Bishop Bull in the seventeenth
century ; and In a rather different sense by Mohler
in his Symbolik, published In 1832. But for England
and America the idea gained a quite new Importance
by the publication In 1845 l of Newman's brilliant
essay on The Development of Christian Doctrine. New-
man In this essay finds in the Idea of development
the instrument for bridging over for his own mind
and conscience the interval between the present
doctrine of the Roman Church and that of the early
Church, in the study of which he had so long been
immersed. 2 And he gives the Idea an extension
which sounds, as one first reads it, startlingly
* modern/ or even 4 modernist.' " Christianity,"
he said, " though represented in prophecy as a king-
1 Fourteen years before diaries Darwin published his Origin
of Species by means of Natural Selection. The controversy about
Newman's book is remarkable as showing what ideas about deve-
lopment were not current when he wrote : see especially Mozley's
Theory of Development, written in reply to Newman, pp. 3 fi.
(Rivington, first published 1847).
* (X Acton's Correspondence (ed. Figgis and Laurence, 1917),
i, p. 77. Acton is accounting for the suspicion of Newman enter-
tained at Rome, and he writes: " J'arrive & croire qu'on le soup-
9pimait & cause du Developpement qui eiait, en effet, une revolu-
con version, jusqu'& ce qu'il Feut decouverte* Car en Angleterr
coznme en Amerique, elle etait tonte nouvelb, et on sentait
qu'elle renversait Fancienne defensive Catholique en faisant droit
& sea adversaires."
210 OF DEVELOPMENT
dom s came into the world as an Idea rather than an
Institution, and lias had to wrap Itself in clothing^
and fit itself with armour of Its own providing, and
form the Instruments and methods for Its own pros-
perity and welfare." * The amount of change In-
volved In development was Illustrated in some
startling arguments as when it was suggested that
one effect of the Arian controversy was that 44 it
discovered a new sphere, If we may so speak, In the
realms of light, to which the Church had not yet
assigned Its Inhabitant/' This *' new sphere " was
the position which Ariamsm had imagined for the
Son that of a creature, but a creature Invested
with divine attributes. This had been adjudged by
the Church to be a sphere too low for the Son. But
it was left vacant, and in course of time Mary the
Mother could be found to fill It. " I am not," wrote
Newman, " stating conclusions which were drawn
out in the controversy, but premises which were laid
broad and deep. It was then . . . determined that
to exalt a creature was no recognition of its divinity."
Indeed the conclusion suggested was not drawn out in
the controversy ! for all the Fathers had argued that
the Arian Christ, as a being who was a creature
and yet was to be worshipped, involved an idola-
trous and, for Christians, for ever impossible con-
ception.
Of course Newman's whole argument for develop-
ment was made to depend upon the existence of
an Infallible authority to preside over and judge of
developments. Nevertheless, the argument was
startling enough. It stirred against itself not only
Anglican controversialists, 2 but indignant Romans, 3
scandalized at what seemed the abandonment of
1 p, 1 1 6. See also the passage quoted irt Oliver Quick's Liberalism,
Modemum and Tradition, pp. 27 E.
a The ablest answer, brilliant as the essay itself, was J. B.
Mozley's already alluded to.
8 See Mozley, op. cit, 9 pp. 215 f.
211
the whole tradition of Roman apology, It served Its
primary purpose in building a bridge for the
himself with many others to the
communion. But in later years he would to
have retreated from his first position, and lie
which reaffirms the traditional view :
4% First of aU 9 and in as few words as possible, and
ex cautela, every Catholic holds that the Chris-
tian dogmas were in the Church from the time of the
apostles ; that they were ever in their substance what
they are now; that they existed before the formulas
were publicly adopted, in which as time went on they
were defined and recorded," 1
It was the extremer doctrine of the essay which
caught the attention of the world and fascinated the
imagination of many, and we will return upon the
idea of development, doctrinal and general, in its
larger sense. But first let us take the idea stated
in the last quotation from Newman, which practically
represents the old view of tradition, and which is
still the official language of the Roman Church ; and
we will seek to answer two questions: (I) does it
really cover the action of the Church of the first
centuries in formulating the Creeds and the decisions
of the Ecumenical Councils ? and (2) does it cover
the later action of the Church of Rome ?
(1) The answer to the first question is with a certain
qualification in the affirmative. In the earliest period
of the Church, before St. Paul's conversion, it does not
appear as if the Church had any other thought in
its mind except that of the divine glory of the exalted
* Tracts Theol. and Meet, p. 287. " After siatteen years," wrote
"Lord Acton in 1890, "spent in the Church of Borne, Newman was
inclined to guard and narrow his theory of development,"
212 OF LEGITIMATE DEVELOPMENT
Christ, and the power of the Divine Spirit bestowed
upon them. It does not appear to have yet asked
Itself theological questions about Christ or about the
Spirit. When then 1 affirm Newman's later words,
I must lay stress upon the phrase " from the time
of the apostles *' as explaining what is meant by
"ever." I mean that the doctrine of St. Paul and
St. John is really in substance the doctrine of the
Nlcene Creed, neither more nor less, and really
the only doctrine which interprets the Christ of the
Gospels. And if the Church was really set in the
world to maintain the teaching of the New Testament
about His divine sonship and His incarnation and
His indisputably real manhood, it had no choice but
to condemn the theories of His person which it did
in fact condemn ; and we know no better formulas
to protect the essential truth than the words the
Church selected to be used. 1 Thus I think the claim
of the Fathers of the Councils that they were simply
protecting the apostolic teaching is a true claim ;
and though early apologists and theologians had, as
was to be expected, in their first attempts to explain
their beliefs, used language such as was repudiated in
later days, yet the tradition, as Origen stated, had
always really ascribed to Christ both Godhead and
manhood.
When we pass from the doctrine of the Incarnation
to that of the Trinity, we are still entitled to maintain
that in the New Testament the name of the one God
had already become the threefold name of the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit, each personal,
distinct, and co-inherent ; and in spite of the am-
biguity of such writers as Hernias, Justin Martyr,
and even Irenaeus about the Holy Spirit, there was
always behind them the tradition of the threefold
See Appended Note on Dr. Mackintosh's criticisms of the phrase-
ology of the Councils, p. 228. On development within the New
Testament, see a criticism of Dr. McNeile, p. 278.
OF 213
name of God, as It appears in St. Matt, xxviii. I, 1
and in Clement's formula for the " living God "
("As God liveth, and the Lord Jesus Christ liveth,
and the Holy Spirit }5 ) and In Origen's statement of
the tradition that " the Holy Ghost is associated In
honour and dignity with the Father and the Son."
It is true, then, that the definition of the Trinity did
only give distinctness and explicitness to the con-
ception already implicit in the apostolic teaching. 1
(2) On the other hand, there was demonstrably
nothing implicit in that tradition to the effect that
the primacy of Peter among the apostles was in-
herited by divine right by the Bishop of Rome still
less that he was endowed with monarchical authority
or infallibility. Such a doctrine was there neither in
terms nor "in substance." 8 The Greek-speaking
* Which, whether it be an authentic word of Christ or no, certainly
represents the Trinitarian belief of the Church to which the
Palestinian editor of the First Gospel belonged, not much af tor the
destruction of Jerusalem.
2 Th decree of the second Council of Nieaea* which ia claimed
as ecumenical, rests on a different basis, as it concerns a practice
{the veneration of images) rather than a doctrine. See below, p. 201.
a I have already (p. 186) referred to Fr. Janssens* criticism of a
statement of Fr. Woodlock's. It contains a very interesting dis-
tinction between the "fundamental" doctrines of the Christian faith
(meaning, I suppose, the doctrines of the Deity of Christ and the
Incarnation and the Holy Trinity, and perhaps the doctrines of
the sacraments in general and the ministry and the resurrection
but h does not specify what doctrines are included in the term)
which ** do not admit of real development '* and others, such as the
infallibility of the Pope, which do. Of the fundamental dogma of
the deity of Christ, he says : "It has always been explicitly held.
There was no development in the doctrine, but only in its termin-
ology.** And of fundamentals in general : ** Quod non fuit ab
initio doctom et universaliter ereditum non pertinet ad Chris-
tianae fidei fundamental* But of the infallibility of the Pope
(a non-fundamental doctrine, therefore) he writes : " 4 It has ad-
mitted of a true development, a real doctrinal progress. It has
been held but implicitly in the first three centuries and has been
doubted afterwards, even until the time of the Vatican Council."
I should venture to criticize this statement. I should have thought
that of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity it was true to say that
it was held only implicitly in the apostolic or sub-apostolic times
and became explicit. But of the infallibility that it was neither
explicitly nor implicitly held in th early centuries.
214 OF DEVELOPMENT
Church neither recognized this as tradition nor ever
came to acknowledge it as a legitimate claim. Nor
does Scripture suggest it* This is as certain as
history can make it. So* again, there was no tradi-
tion about a purgatory in the intermediate state and
really nothing in Scripture about it. Again, though
the Church always believed that the bread and wine
in the eucharist became the body and blood of
Christ in some real sense, there was nothing in Scrip-
ture or tradition to suggest that the substance of
bread and wine ceased to exist by the consecration
of the elements, and on the other hand, there was
a strong tradition in the contrary sense. Finally,
there was nothing even remotely suggesting that
Mary was Immaculately conceived. Accordingly it
is a certain conclusion that, if all that the Church
has the right to do is to make explicit in language
what has always been substantially present in the
tradition from the days of the apostles, the Eoman
dogma concerning transubstantiation, and the dogma
affirming purgatory under anathema, and the dogma
of the Immaculate Conception, and the dogma con-
cerning the Bishop of Rome, are as dogmas certainly
illegitimate.
II
It is the feeling that the justification of the Roman
dogmas needs something more than the traditional
formula which has made Newman's earlier and much
freer conception of development very popular among
those who are looking Romewards and among some
Roman Catholic exponents of doctrine. But also,
and much more widely, the general prevalence of the
idea of development has reinforced Newman's con-
ception, often in a sense quite antagonistic to Ms
own. German writers of Dogmengeschichte and
French modernists have accepted it as a matter of
NEWMAN'S 215
course. Also It is quite that the principle of
development must be applied not only to the doctrines
of the Clmreh but to its institutions as
a whole. So we will turn back to the freer concep-
tion of development as Xewman first suggested it,
in order to see if he can help us* or we can help our-
selves, towards some adequate conception of develop-
ment, both in Church doctrine and more generally
in the Church as an institution ; and also whether
we can discover the test or tests which would seein
to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate develop-
ments. And we will take this latter point first.
For Newman was not content simply to accept
the infallibility of the defining authority as rendering
all further argument unnecessary. He seeks to
establish tests by which to discriminate legitimate
"development" from "corruption. 53 They are the
"preservation of the type or idea," " continuity of
principle," " power of assimilation," " early antici-
pation," "logical sequence/ 5 "preservative addi-
tion/* u chronic continuance." Now one of the
most effective points in Mozley's reply to Newman is
that he calls our attention to the slight consideration
paid by Newman to one of the most characteristic
features in developments all the world over, by which
institutions may radically change their character in
the course of time for good and all, viz. one-sided
exaggeration of some tendency or feature which was
always present in the system, but which had been
balanced originally by other tendencies or features
which in course of time were suppressed or ceased to
act. So it was that the Roman State passed from
being a republic to being an autocratic monarchy.
Similarly no one would question that in the West the
development of the Papacy as a doctrine and as an
institution was a real development, which exhibited
unmistakable continuity of principle since the days
of Damasus, and power of assimilation, and which
15
210 TESTS OF LEGITIMATE DEVELOPMENT
had early anticipations going back to the second
century, and which was in logical sequence ; and
could claim that its 4i addition " to the original idea
of Christianity was " preservative ** of the idea as
entertained at Rome, and that it showed, step after
step, u chronic continuance/* Newman triumphantly
asks where in the Roman development you can find
a point at which it breaks with the past either as
doctrine or as institution. Very likely nowhere.
Neither can you in the process by which historical
institutions or ideas have generally developed.
There are, of course, revolutions and chasms in his-
tory. But they are apt to lead to reactions* The
most permanent transformations are apt to come
gradually. And the result of the actual development
may prove to be a one-sided accentuation of some
feature or idea at the expense of others, which again
in total result may be deterioration, not progress,
Without any manifest break or violent change the
last state of an institution or doctrine may become
worse than the first simply in virtue of this one-sided-
ness of development, seriously altering and corrupting
the original 6C type." Nothing, in fact, would seem
to be more indisputable than that the Roman develop-
ment of Christianity was a one-sided exaggeration,
congenial to the old imperial spirit of Rome, of the
element of regimental and official authority in the
Church ; and that it was accomplished by the gradual
repudiation and supersession of all the restraints
upon the action of authority which the ideas and
institutions of the early Church supplied. Such
restraints were the requirement laid on dogmatic
authority to justify itself by the appeal to Scripture ;
and the assertion of the fundamental identity of the
episcopal authority in all bishops ; and the consequent
subordination of all individual bishops or provinces
of bishops to the General Council ; and the refusal
of the idea of physical force or state compulsion as
217
an instrument in propagating the truth ; and the
recognition of the democratic element in Church
government ; and the freedom of appeal to Scripture
and reason on the part of all Christians. All
were unmistakably principles of the early Church
which in the Roman system were gradually superseded
and denied, and in effect dropped out. So authority
developed towards autocracy.
It is also evident that during the dark age which
followed the break-up of the Western Empire, and
the Middle Ages In which society reconstituted itself,
the Church maintained its hold on the people by
large concessions to popular appetites in religion,
with little or no regard to scriptural sanction. Pur-
gatory was a popular doctrine, softening the terror
of hell ; again, it was popular to soften the terror
of purgatory by extending into the unseen world
the Church's power of remitting penalties or granting
indulgences* and for this purpose the doctrine of the
treasury of merits which the Church could dispense
was established* Again, there was a popular demand
for intercessors, powerful In heaven and more lenient
than the awful judge Jesus Christ could be believed
to be, and It was allowed to prevail. To all these
popular appetites the Church showed Itself charitable
indeed. But the result would have astonished the
Fathers of the Church ; and the type of religion which
came to prevail could not be called scriptural.
The time came when the Roman Church was full
of glaring scandals ; and the Reformation became a
revolution which deprived the Church of the Roman
obedience of many of Its fairest provinces. Arrested
under the blow, the Roman Church reformed and
recovered itself in what is called the Counter-Re-
formation. It reformed itself in respect of many of
those moral scandals which had chiefly provoked the
revolution. But the Counter- Reformation in its results
intensified dogmatic autocracy and regimentation, and
218 TESTS OF DEVELOPMENT
left the springs of popular superstition as open as ever.
On the whole, it is impossible not to judge the Roman
Church, with all its wonderful powers and spiritual
glories, to be a one-sided development of the Chris-
tianity of the New Testament and the early Church,
in which multitudes of men and women and those of
the best, who would have been surely amongst the
most whole-hearted of the disciples of Jesus, can
find no home. In regard to them the very things in
which the Roman Church glories as the instruments
of its effectiveness have been really its hindrances.
There are a great many people in every age or
country, and in some ages and countries the great
majority, who are prepared readily enough to accept
their religion absolutely on authority, without enquiry
and without any obvious horror of superstition, if
only the authority will give them a fair guarantee of
salvation in the world to come and of consolation in
the troubles of this life and, it must be added, in
the case of the majority, without making any very
exacting moral demand* But there are some in
every age, and in our generation and country they
are the majority of good religious people, who are
quite incapable of this sort of blind submission,
without what would seem to them an act of treason
against the light. They are people who, in the
spirit of the Reformation, will accept nothing but
what can be shown them to be really the teaching
of the New Testament and there is still a great,
though mostly inarticulate, multitude of such people ;
or they are honest students who must "test all
things " with all the powers of their mind and by the
freest enquiry they can give ; or they are people to
whom dogmas are not attractive, but who are aflame
for the building of the Kingdom of God, and whom
the spectacle of injustice and needless suffering in
human life stirs as with the call of a trumpet ; or
they are ordinary sensible Englishmen with a horror
BE 819
of superstition. To multitudes of such and
women the Roman Church, as it stands, is utterly
remote and impossible ; yet, with the best of them,
we feel, as 1 have said, that they would have
among the most ready disciples of our Lord of
the apostles, and they would have at in
the primitive Church, carried along by its moral
enthusiasm and the spirit of brotherhood*
This one-sidedness or narrowness in some directions
is no argument against the Roman Church as a
and glorious part of the Church Catholic. For every
part of the Church has its lamentably manifest limita-
tions. But it is a very strong reason for refusing to
recognize the Roman Church as the whole Church.
For surely it is self-evident that if the love and the
claim of God are perfectly disclosed in our Lord, the
Church which is His body must be exclusive indeed
where He would have been exclusive, but inclusive
where He would have been inclusive. It cannot be
intended that it should be narrowed as it comes
down the ages, or present obstacles where there
were originally none. All parts of the Church alike
have in fact created needless and formidable obstacles
and scandals for good souls, whether by toleration of
abuses or in other ways. But they can repent and
reform themselves. The Roman Church of the
Counter-Reformation did gallantly set itself to reform
certain moral abuses in its system which scandalized
the conscience of men before the Reformation, and
played a large part in provoking the protest which
produced schism. But the Roman Church appears
to have worked the intellectual obstacles into its
dogmatic system ; they have been made " irreform-
able " ; and it has thus made itself incapable of
cc receiving " some of those whom Christ would cer-
tainly have received. It is a one-sided development
which has made itself exclusive.
220 OF LEGITIMATE DEVELOPMENT
III
Without further reference to Newman's essay, let
us go back upon this postulate that any develop-
ment in the doctrine or practice of the Church which
narrows it, so that it is no longer a home for men of
goodwill who in its earlier days would readily have
found a home in it, is thereby marked as a spurious
development.
It is remarkable that In the discussion of " develop-
ment " in connexion with the Catholic religion two
mistakes have been commonly made. It has been
assumed that development is the same thing as
progress a mistake to which the early enthusiasts
for development in all departments were very prone.
But we know it is a profound mistake. Every
institution develops ; but the development whether
by intensification or by assimilation may be for the
worse and not for the better ; or in some respects
for the better and in others for the worse, as appears
to have been the case with the Roman Church. But
also another mistake has been made. Attention has
been almost concentrated on the development of
doctrine. Now of course in any Christian Church the
doctrine it teaches is an important part of the whole
spiritual structure ; but by the development of the
Church we ought to mean something much wider
and deeper than the intensification and amplification
of doctrines by a sort of logical process. The Church
was set in the world to develop, not mainly by
amplification of doctrines, nor by the increasing
provision of plain answers to plain questions, which
perhaps ought never to have been asked or answered,
but by demonstrating its power to become the truly
catholic home of all races and kinds of men. All
sorts of human faculties and dispositions and personal
needs are capable of being enriched and sanctified
221
and met and harmonized by the Holy Spirit* And It
is only by such gradual penetration of the darkness
by the light that the treasures of wisdom know-
lodge which Me hid in Christ who is the light of the
whole world and not merely of a section of it can
be progressively appropriated* and Christ Himself
brought to fulfilment in His manifestation on earth*
TMs expansive function the Church Catholic was
to fulfil, not primarily as a teacher of doctrine* but
by the exhibition of a life the corporate life of a
community which by its moral attractiveness and
power was to impress and win men and convert
them to the acceptance of its message. And it is
fairly obvious that if the Church is to fulfil this
function effectively, while there must be something
which must be called essential catholicity something
which alone entitles any society to be reckoned a
part of the Catholic Church of Christ, and which it
must always assert and maintain the Church needs
also to have as free a power of adjustment and
mobility as is consistent with real continuity. It
went out into a world which proved to be a very
changing world. There was first the world of the
Greco-Roman Empire, and in this the Greek-speaking
Church, with all its faults, showed its power and won
its glory. Then, to take account only of the West,
there was the world dominated by the barbarian
invaders the dark age and the renascent world of
mediaeval feudalism. Then was the glory of the
Roman Church with its Benedictine monasticism and
its papal authority. Something of Christ had been
really manifested in the world order. There succeeded
the period of the modern nations, armed against one
another in successive rivalries ; and the world of
modern industrialism, almost cynically repudiating
the control of Christian principles ; and the world
of inductive science and criticism claiming absolute
emancipation from ecclesiastical authority ; and the
222 OF LEGITIMATE DEVELOPMENT
world of modern individualism with its startling
contrasts of wealth and destitution. No one can
say that in this new world of many aspects Christ
has been manifested in His Church. On the whole,
the Church has devoted itself to private soul-saving
and works of mercy, which are parts, but not the
whole of its work. In the international world its
voice has hardly made itself heard effectively as a
moral authority at all. The attempt in the fifteenth
century to resuscitate the General Council as a super-
national authority, and as supreme over the central
papacy, proved a failure ; and its failure was in
great part the cause of the protest which rent
the fabric of the Western Church. And Erasmus*
Complaint of Peace remained unattended to. Again,
the failure of the Church to make intelligible and
effective the principle of brotherhood in modern
industrialism is conspicuous. It has seemed to have
no courage for the fray. Its most decisive action was
a negative one its abandonment of the antiquated
prohibition of usury, the place of which ought to
have been taken by some positive assertion of moral
principle. Face to face with the claim of science it
took a disastrous line towards Galileo, asserting that
a conclusion of science could not be right because
the Bible said otherwise as if it were a function
of the Bible to control science on its own field ; and,
in the same field, the like mistakes have been fre-
quently made. Thoughtful people have been asking
whether Christianity has failed ; and more thoughtful
people have been replying that it is we who have
failed to apply the Christianity of Christ. But if
we go to the root of the matter, we find it has been
that the Church in all its forms has lacked mobility.
A religion claiming to be permanent and universal,
and appealing to the permanent and universal ele-
ments and needs in man, but at the same time set in
a changing world, presents a special problem. For
223
In eacli more or less and civilization
permanent religion becomes Incrusted with
manent intellectual assumptions social institu-
tions from which, when the of the wheel comes,
and the ideas and institutions are seen to be
it can only be disentangled with immense friction
and difficulty. And in each new age the prophets of
the renascence are intoxicated with the new learning
and lamentably unconscious how much they
the old. To turn the hearts of the fathers to the
children and the hearts of the children to
fathers is a hard task. It needs a deep wisdom to
teach the Church, to bring forth out of her treasures
things new and old. But it is evident that to deal
with such a situation the Church must ask for the
maximum of positive mobility that is compatible
with real continuity ; and that in this relatively
mobile self- adjustment lies the principle of true de-
velopment not in the accumulation of dogmas.
But if this has been apparent in Europe, it has
been even more apparent in the efforts of the Church
since the sixteenth century to convert the heathen
world. The efforts of early Jesuit missionaries to
accommodate Christianity to the Eastern atmosphere
were not, I suppose, fortunate, and they were perhaps
justly condemned by the Roman authorities. But
they showed a true instinct. And if to-day we con-
template the world of missions in the East, there is
one lamentation everywhere heard that we dragged
our Western developments and Western controversies
and Western ritual and Western ideas of organiza-
tion and efficiency into an alien atmosphere. These
things do not belong to essential Catholicism* We
should have sought to start again much further back.
We have lacked mobility,
What essential Catholicism is in respect of doctrine
and in respect of order is a question which, in part,
an attempt has been made to answer in these volumes
224 TESTS OF LEGITIMATE DEVELOPMENT
and to which we shall shortly return ; but can we
not agree that in any case it falls far short of that
highly Western complex of organization, dogma,
ceremony, and controversy which we sought to
impart to the East and to acclimatize there ? It
would have been much wiser to convey a simpler
message and leave it to fructify and develop on
Eastern soil as an indigenous growth. We have
shown a lack of mobility.
And may we not assert the general proposition that,
while some things are essentials of Catholic Chris-
tianity, the smaller the requirements to be carried
over from one epoch to another and one race to
another, the better ? May we not assent to the pro-
position of Erasmus, " Let the essentials of the faith
be limited to the fewest articles possible " ? I
And if this is so, is there any technical test of the
legitimacy of a doctrinal development so important
as the requirement that what it asserts shall be
really found implicit at least in Scripture specially
of course in the New Testament ? This test recog-
nizes the danger of extending the dogmatic require-
ment, and the necessity of its restriction, as the very
condition of Catholic breadth ; and it provides the
effective safeguard against the peril. We cannot
readily conceive that the requirements which our
Lord makes on men in these later ages through His
Church should be substantially different in emphasis
or stricter than His earlier requirements, or His
appeal become narrower in its range as the ages pass.
Surely all those whom Christ would have welcomed
ought to be welcomed now ; those whom Christ would
have refused, as they were, ought to be refused
now. And to embody this principle negatively and
positively, nothing is so serviceable as to reiterate
1 ** Quae pertinent ad fidem, quam paucissimis articulis ab-
solvanttir." See JSrasmus the Reformer, by Mr. Elliott Binns
(Methuen, 1923).
VALUE OF TO 225
insist upon the primitive principle that no
doctrine can be made into a dogmatic requirement of
the Church, except what is really found implicitly at
least in the New Testament with its positive accom-
paniment that the Scriptures must be an book
for all the faithful, and the teaching of the Church,
public and private, must be so permeated with
Scripture, that what is unscriptural in spirit shall
pass into instinctive reprobation. The Church ought
to embark upon every new age or new region in " the
power of the Spirit," expecting to find there much
that is properly human and needs to be encouraged,
and much that is properly inhuman and false and
wicked and needs to be reproved. And the touch-
stone of fidelity to the Spirit, the touchstone for true
discrimination, is boldly be it said in the New
Testament and nowhere else.
I have been seeking in these last chapters to
present two contrasted types of authority the
Roman and the ancient' and to show reasons for
preferring the latter. Now I must go on to
contrast the ancient Catholic ideal with that of
orthodox Protestantism, which, asserting the au-
thority of "the Bible and the Bible only," would
ignore the authority of tradition in the Church,
After that I must endeavour to work out the old ideal
in its modern application. But before the present
subject is left behind, I want to go back upon the
plea, which is so often appealingly made on behalf of
Rome, that its peremptory idea of authority, backed
by its effective regimental discipline, is what is best
for the needs of the plain man. We of the Church
of England often hear the complaint that, in our day
of mental confusion and conflicting voices, and with
our certainly scandalous lack of discipline, there is
no certainty to be found by anxious souls except in
the Church of Rome.
Whatever limited apologia can be made for the
226 TESTS OF LEGITIMATE DEVELOPMENT
Church of England shall be made later. Here I am
only concerned with the plea that the particular
kind of authority which is represented in the Church
of Rome is what the ordinary good man needs to lift
Mm out of the strife of tongues. But there are so
many kinds of " plain men 5 * and their requirements
are so different* One of those most commonly met
since the war is the man who is altogether c offended *
because God did not stop the war, or more largely,
because a world, which is in so many ways godless
and repulsive to our moral sense, is allowed to con-
tinue triumphant, as it seems, over the Kingdom of
Heaven, or perhaps because in his own case God has
seemed so cruel and unjust. Such men cannot bear
the trial of Job, or believe in a " God who hideth
himself/' or " endure as seeing him who is invisible."
So they reject, or bitterly criticize, the Christian
faith as a whole.
Then there are others, and they also are a large
crowd, whose complaint is not of the faith in its
fundamentals, but of the Church because it is so
untrue to Christ. Why has it not spoken up for
justice ? Why does it cringe to wealth ? Why has
it not protested with a unanimous voice against this
or that plain outrage upon brotherhood ? There is
no satisfactory answer to these questions ; for the
answer that, throughout the Church, the purpose for
which it is in the world has been in part forgotten or
the sense of it distorted, and that we have to strive
to restore in the Church the fuller sense of its voca-
tion, is not satisfactory either to indignant com-
plainants or to anyone to whom the honour of the
Church is dear. Nevertheless we must refuse to lose
the vision of the Church, as it stands in the purpose
of Christ, even though in actual fact the divine image
ia her is sadly dimmed, and the divine life, as St.
Augustine says, frost-bound. Here, too, we must
endure as " seeing him who is invisible." The trial
221
of our endurance in different ways to different
people through trials, or the
silences of God In the great world, or
the faults of the Church everywhere. But to
of these types of distressed souls does the
Church make any special appeal.
No doubt the Roman Church does make a special
to the particular disposition which craves
simply the authoritative voice, and wants, in passive
acceptance, to get rid of all personal responsibility
for the truth. But I fancy this kind of spirit would
have found our Lord a great trial when He on
earth, showing such reserve in providing plain answers
to plain questions and leaving His would-be disciples
so much to do for themselves. I fancy it would have
found more satisfaction with the dogmatic Pharisee.
Certainly in the early centuries of the Church in the
East such a spirit would have found approximately
the same trials as it does among ourselves to-day ;
for the theological confusion was appalling, and the
decisions of bishops in council were bewildering in
their contradictions ; and indeed the bishops seemed
to have lost all steadfastness, and to bend before the
contrary winds of imperial tempers ; and there were
rival bishops in a number of sees ; and an insufferable
strife of tongues. No one who wished to say bitter
things of the Church of England could find more
bitter things than St. Basil and St. Hilary said truly
of the Church of their time. 1 And they had no idea
of any " way out " by centralizing authority and
making it absolute. In fact, as historians have per-
ceived, the "way out 3 * was found in the main
through the faithfulness of the laity, who persisted,
on the whole, in holding fast both to the Godhead of
Christ and to His manhood, though their vision also
was distorted by the partisan loyalties of rival cities.
1 See for quotations Roman Catholic daims 9 Appended Not,
iii, p. 212.
228 TESTS OF LEGITIMATE DEVELOPMENT
Nevertheless the Church did emerge and the Catholic
faith did subsist. And in our time plain men have
no right to complain if a like trial befalls them.
The great leaders of the Eastern Church of old have
been reckoned ever since their age as the Doctors
of the Church ; and through their days of wild con-
fusion they argued from Scripture, and pointed to
tradition, and appealed to reason, and encouraged
to steadfastness ; and never showed any disposition
to seek a remedy in the claim of spiritual monarchy
which was already beginning to make itself heard
from Rome. We cannot choose for ourselves the
particular form in which the trial of our faith is to
make us perfect. It is a stern discipline for most of
us to learn to "test all things and hold fast that
which is good " and to become " in understanding
grown-up men ** and " spiritual men judging all
things and themselves judged of none " ; but this is
the apostolic ideal for the common Christian to aim
at. After all, the fundamental faith of the Church
and the New Testament is fairly plain ; and rooted
and grounded in that, we can devote ourselves to
living the life with courage and self-sacrifice, although
there may remain many not unimportant questions,
to find the answer to which we remain at a loss.
APPENDED NOTE (see p. 212)
DE, MACKINTOSH'S CKITICISM OF CHALCEDON
My excuse for returning at some length to the
subject of the Chalcedonian formula is that when I
wrote Belief in Christ I had not read Dr* H. R.
Mackintosh's work on The Doctrine of the Person of
Jesus Christ, 1 and while this book is a masterly
vindication of what is in the main the traditional
doctrine of Christ's person, the doctrine of the Nicene
1 In the " Intemat. Tlieol. Library," reft to 3rd edition.
THE OF 220
Creed, he finally pronounces the terms of the Cfaalee-
donian formula to be unacceptable to the modem
mind, and suggests the line on which they should be
remodelled. His theological standing gives so much
weight to Ms criticism that I am bound both to state
it and to examine it.
The formula of Chalcedon is in part a summary of
the decisions of the previous Councils, which came to
be reckoned as ecumenical, of which the first was
Nicaea. With regard to the Nicene decision^ then, we
find Dr. Mackintosh speaking with contempt of the
Arian Christology which it condemned. He identifies
himself with the statement that it is ** dogmatically
the most worthless of all the Chtistologics to be met
with in history" (p. 178).
And neither on the ground of this particular con-
troversy, nor anywhere else, will he tolerate any
criticism of the action of the Councils, or of the
writings of the theologians, on the pragmatist ground
that 4t metaphysical explanations " or attempts at a
" philosophical theory ? * of Christ's person are essen-
tially futile. " No escape then is possible, in this
field [i.e. the field of Christ's person] or any other,
from the obligation to think things out persistently
to the end " (p. 304). And further he gives a modified
approval to the term Homoousios. 4i With the New
Testament in our hands it is impossible not to
acquiesce in his [Athanasius*] main conclusion. Even
the word * consubstantial,' so fiercely assailed both
then and now, is but the assertion of the real deity
of Christ in terms of the philosophy by which it had
been denied " (p. 188). 1
It was the right word, he means, for those times,
but not for ours. For he suggests repeatedly that
we have left behind the philosophy which speaks in
* Cf. " Not less for us to-day faith In God means faith in Jama.
In this naive and experimental sense it is not too much to say that
the Godhead of Jesus is de fide for the Christian mind " (p. 288).
230 MACKINTOSH'S CRITICISM OF CHALCEDOX
terms of "substance.* 5 This Is so important an
argument, and, I believe, so mistaken, that I must
quote several of Dr. Mackintosh's statements of it.
After speaking of Greek sacramentalism as implying
a 4i quasi-physical change in our essential manhood/ 9
he remarks (p. 323) that by such a conception " we
are naturally led to define Christ's person in terms of
substance, not spirit. For reasons which are both
religious and psychological or philosophical, this is
out of touch with the modern mind. But we are
in accord with these great thinkers in the fundamental
conviction which inspired them. 55 Again (p. 334):
" Substance was simply the category by which
earlier thinkers strove to affirm the highest con-
ceivable degree of reality ; it was indeed their loftiest
notion of God Himself. . . . But we have put aside
the category substance, and construe the facts freshly
in terms of personality. On the accepted principle
of modern philosophy that there are degrees of
reality, a personal union ought to be regarded as
infinitely more real than a substantial one." AgakT
(p. 416): " Others have insisted that behind the will
and thought of Jesus stood a divine substance or
nature, of which will and thought are but attributes,
and which is somehow real apart from them. This,
however, . , . has no meaning except on the assump-
tion that substance as a category is higher than
subject or intelligent conscious will a view against
which the history of philosophy since Kant has been
one long and continuous protest. If we have learnt
anything from the modern criticism of categories, it
surely is that no category can be higher than person-
ality or self-consciousness. For us then the proper
inference is that the essential and noumenal divinity
of Christ the Son ought to be formulated in concep-
tions other than substance or nature and the like,
which really oppose the metaphysical aspect of
Sonship to the ethical." Finally (p. 421), he speaks
OF 281
of the as " the of not
in His will but in an
substance."
Now, I am far from denying that tills
conception of substance Is one \\hich
philosophy was liable to fall and which is to be
found among Greek theologians. You feel
tendency in the thought of Apollinarius St. Cyril
of Alexandria and in the Alonophysites and in John
Damascene and in later Greek mystics like Nicholas
Cabasilas. The Antiochenes, on the other hand,
orthodox unorthodox alike, were the from
it, and the Cappadocians, I suppose* on the whole.
But anyway, let Dr. Mackintosh repudiate with all
his force any such conception of God as is to
this charge of being unethical. Let us cling to
three great definitions or metaphors, ifc God is light,"
" God is love," "God is spirit. 59 But I think it can
be shown that Dr. Mackintosh's crusade against
category of substance is a disastrous crusade which
must be abandoned.
And., first, the Fathers used it simply to express
"real being." To say that God is the supreme
substance and Christ is of one substance with the
Father means simply that God is the supreme reality*
and that we say Christ is God in the sense that He
belongs essentially to this eternally real being and
not to that different kind of dependent being which
belongs to creatures. But all kinds of creatures
have real, though dependent, being. They are
* 4 substances ** of different kinds* and in the process
of the fourth and fifth centuries it was found so impor-
tant to distinguish one particular kind of substance,
viz. personality, from all others, that an old term,
hitherto used indistinguishably from mbstantia^ visj,
hypostans y was endowed with this special meaning
44 person," and henceforth hypostasis is a name for
a special kind of sufoMance* But it is really absurd
16
232 MACKINTOSH'S CRITICISM OF CHALCEDON
to suggest that the theology of the Councils admits
of i4 substance " being put into opposition to " per-
son/ 9 or that &t substantial " can be opposed to
"ethical/ 5 Person was a subdivision of substance,
having more content according to Boethius's famous
definition of person, ct naturae rationalis individua
substantial* This definition was only the summary
expression of the terminology on which the Church
had settled down. 1
It is very easy to exaggerate the extent to which the
Fathers of the Councils were acting philosophically.
They simply wanted to say that Christ is really and
fully God and really and completely man. The
relation of the Father and the Son is different from
the relation of one human being to another. Never-
theless there exist two kinds of reality God and
mankind ; and the Fathers were content to say that
Christ was consubstantial with God the Father as
eternal Son and consubstantial with us men in the
manhood which He assumed. They only used the
best word they could find to describe the real being
both of God and of man.
And as to the philosophical crusade against sub-
stance, Dr. Mackintosh must really be careful before
he joins it. For it certainly imperils his fundamental
position I think I should say it undermines it. The
authors of the crusade are pantheists like Spinoza, or
are of the Hegelian school* They will acknowledge
no substance but one, the Absolute* 2 That alone
has reality. All so-called lower " substances " are
more or less unreal. And the one thing that is
tc substantially real " the Absolute must somehow
contain in itself all the variety of the universe.
Thus the absolute cannot be personal, nor have a
1 On tlie history of the meanings assigned to otfoia, substantia,
$r&rra<m ; persona, etc.* see Professor Clement Webb, God and
Personality, lecture ii.
1 Or decline the idea of substance altogether.
OF 23S
will character. And the
of material objects is by all
Personality no more than material will
bear examination. It is not real. And the
Idea of a personal God, the Creator of real
and persons, distinct from Himself, although depend-
ent on Himself, Is gone. This is the philosophy
which, by the intolerable chaos which it produces
In the minds of men, stung its opponents Into
sarcasm from Hansel to Lord Balfour. 1 But I will
appeal to one who would by no means wish to be
regarded as an opponent of Hegelianisxn, Mr, (X J.
Shebbeare, and ask Dr. Mackintosh to read an article
of his In Mind,* in which he makes an urgent appeal
to philosophers on behalf of the Idea of substance
In the sense of real thing. It Is, in fact, necessary to
retain the Idea and the word, If there Is not to be a
hopeless conflict between philosophy and common
sense the kind of conflict In which philosophy
always at last becomes negligible. Philosophy must
Interpret common sense, not contradict it. Also it
Is of paramount necessity for Christianity, which
believes In God as the creator of persons and things
which are real, to Insist on retaining the category of
substance or "real thing." Thus If It be necessary
for the Church to affirm (as Dr. Mackintosh admits)
that in worshipping the Son and the Spirit it does
so only because they are really God integral to the
divine being I do not know how that could be
better affirmed than by the phrase comubsiaTitial,
all the more that now that phrase has behind it the
tradition and reverence of 1,600 years, and no one
could make any effective attempt to dislodge it
without stirring the most determined resistance and
producing a new and profound schism. Rather let
us proclaim to all the winds of heaven that by " sub-
stance " the Church means no more and no less than
1 See Belief in God, p. 222. Vol. xxxii, N.S., No. 127.
234 MACKINTOSH'S CRITICISM OP CHALCEDOX
ct real thing/ 9 so that when we speak of the Son and
of the Spirit as t4 of one substance " with the Father,
we mean that they belong to that one real being
which we call God ; and when we speak of Christ
as of one substance with us, we mean that He took
the real being of man, and is that real tiling, in all
respects, that a man is. Do not let us be hyper-
critical*
Passing now from Nicaea to Constantinople, we
find of course that Dr. Mackintosh is thoroughly
in accord with the rejection of the theory of Apol*
linarius, and of any theory that would maim or
render unreal the manhood of Christ. But I do not
think he is sufficiently impressed with the evidences
of a divine guidance of the Church, leading it through
all the period of the Councils to resist so firmly the
decidedly Monophysite tendency of Alexandria, and
to stand so jealously for the full reality, physical
and spiritual, of the manhood of Christ. 1 Surely he
should recognize that it was specially for the spiritual,
and therefore ethical, reality of the humanity of
Christ that they had to contend. Apollinarianism
and Monophysitism were content enough to leave to
Him a Mnd of quasi-human physical nature pene-
trated with the divine. What the Church demanded
was the recognition that the true manhood of Christ,
as indeed the true manhood of all of us, lies especially
* Luther is quoted (p. 232) as insisting "that the Scripture*
begin, very gently and lead us on to Christ as to a man, and then
to one who is Lord over all creatures, and after that to on who
is God. This is no doubt the method suggested by the Synoptic
uospels and the Acts. Dr. Mackintosh puts it in contrast to the
method of the Scholastics and many of the Fathers, But Luther's
idea is also St. ChrysostonxV " Why,'* he asks, " does St. Paul
(Bom. i. 3-4} not begin from the higher side ? [i.e. why does he
speak first of the human nature of Christ ?] Because Matthew, also
Luko and Mark, begin from the lower. One who would lead
others upwards must begin from below. And this was in fact
the divine method. First they saw Him [Christ] as man on the
earth, and then perceived Him to be God.** And other references
could be given to the same effect.
OF 235
la Its spirit, _ reason, and wllL the
Council devised no new term, as far as we
know, it it necessary to fix a term to
"all that properly belongs to manhood." k
there any better term to use for this purpose
" nature " ? St. Paul had used " " in practi-
cally this sense, and Chrysostom identifies the two
words. But " the form of God " might have had a
really materialistic meaning. Surely " nature *'
better ; and surely if we believe, in accordance
the fundamental requirements of common sense,
real objects exist in groups, distinguished by
of qualities, we must speak of them as having the
same nature.
This was the outcome of the second Council to
affirm of Christ the nature of man in all its
spiritual and ethical completeness and to repudiate
anything which denied this completeness.
The Church at this period exhibited no love of
dogmatizing. But it was driven to it by the neces-
sity for guarding the foundations of its religion.
Arius and Macedonius and Apollinarius really im-
posed upon it this necessity. It would have been
disastrous if the idea of Christ as a demigod, or of
His humanity as a truncated humanity, had been
tolerated, or if the Spirit had been regarded as a
creature. So again it became really necessary to
resist the tendencies of the Antiochene school, when
they came to a head in the doctrine called Nestorian.
Whatever may be said about Nestorius, Nestorianism
was a reality. And we have Dr. Mackintosh with us
in repudiating any conception which denies the
eternal existence of the person of the Son* who, at a
certain moment in time, became man.* The infant
1 See p. 450. ** In the K.T. the very signature of Christianity
is the faith that the Divine Son passed from glory to humitiatioii " ;
and p. 455* " In a verse like * though lie was rich, yet for your fc&s
he became poor,' there is surely little or no significance unlflw the
pre-existent One is a * person,* a 'self,' in the usual connotation, 1 *
236 MACKINTOSH'S CRITICISM OF CHALCEDON
child of Mary who grew to be the man Christ Jesus
was from the beginning of His human existence the
divine person who 4t impoverished himself " to
become like us and to be born of a woman. There is
no doubt that this is the doctrine of St. Paul and
St. John, and of the Nicene Creed. It is only this
that the formula of Ephesus was set to protect. Let
it be admitted that there were perils in Cyril's theo-
logy , as in fact soon appeared. Let us grant to the
full that the Incarnation involved such self-limita-
tion of the eternal Son as admitted of His becoming
the subject of real human growth, not in body only
but in mind ; but it was the same " person, 5 ' who
eternally was as Son with the Father, who, thus pre-
existing In the " form " of God, emptied Himself in
taking the " form " of man. 1
Then finally it became necessary at Chalcedon to
complete the work of the second Council and to
repudiate any theory which suggested that the
manhood was so absorbed into the Godhead as to
cease to be real,* Of course those who made the
suggestion had no doubt as to the real Godhead
of Jesus. Nor had the Fathers of Chalcedon.
He had the "form 59 or nature of God. That
belonged to Him essentially. But He took the
created nature of man. So in the unity of one
1 I do not think Dr. Mackintosh, is justified in saying roundly
that St. Paul in Phil. ii. " describes our Lord as having abandoned
the one mod of being (the divine 'form') for the other (the
human * form ')." St. Paul is certainly not a precise logician in
his us of terms. He speaks of Christ as ** pre-existing in the form
of God " and apparently as having the prerogatives which are de-
scribed as r& flvai t<ra 9e$, and then as having ** emptied Himself "
in taking the human ** form." But he does not say precisely of
what He emptied Himself. He did so so far as was necessary for
really becoming man that is all we can ascribe to St. Paul. He
certainly did not cease to be Son of God. And he speaks of
the cosmic functions of the Son (Col. i. 17, 18, and 1 Cor, viii. 6)
as if they were perpetual.
* And again later in the sixth Council to affirm that in the abiding
nature of man as it exists in Christ are included the human will
and the whole human activity.
OF THE 237
person there are two natures. That the
ology determined at Chalcedon. Dr.
not demur to the unity of the or to
the affirmation of the full and permanent
nature. But lie demurs to the affirmation of
natures in Christ. Not, indeed, that his
always points this way, " We cannot," he writes,
4t eliminate the duality. As it lias expressed :
"In several passages [of the Fourth Gospel] the
contrast is expressly marked between the
revelation of Jesus as Son of man and the true glory
of His divine nature. . . . The significance of the
name [Son of God] in all these verses lies in the sug-
gestion that the human nature of Christ was united
with a higher nature which was present in it even
now, and would at last become fully manifest.*
This note of contrast seems never to fail." 1 Here
Dr. Mackintosh approves of a quotation which
affirms the two natures in Christ. So again he
speaks of " the union of Godhead and manhood in
His person/ 5 8 And he writes with a certain cor-
diality of Chaleedon. 4t A clearly felt soteriological
interest is behind the careful phrases, and enables us
to interpret the whole as a combination of the vital
elements which faith has always insisted on combin-
ing in its view of Christ the Saviour. Thus the
reality and integrity of each nature, of Godhead
and of manhood, is upheld : the incarnation has not
issued in a being that is somehow neither divine jaor
human or either exclusively. . . . Thus the decisions
of Chaleedon may reasonably be viewed as a great
utterance of faith, aware of the wrong turnings that
theory may take so easily. They have been well
compared to buoys anchored along a difficult estuary,
on the right and left, to guide the ship of truth.
With the religion of the Creed accordingly we have
no quarrel. 3 ' 3
i p. 109. p. 428. * F. 213.
238 MACKINTOSH'S CRITICISM OF CHALCEDON
That, one might have hoped, was enough. But
Dr. Mackintosh cannot away with the phrase u the
two natures." It involves the idea of "two con-
sciousnesses and two wills. The New Testament
indicates nothing of the kind, nor indeed is it con-
gruous with an intelligible psychology." 1 "To
return thus to a theoretic duality of mental life in
our Lord, against which all modern Christology has
been a protest,, is surely to sin against light." s
And he speaks of breaking up Christ's single person
Into two unrelated halves, 3 and he complains that
64 nature is not an ethical word at all," * and he objects
to the idea of an " impersonal manhood."
Now, let it be granted that the phrase an " im-
personal manhood " is a very unfortunate one. It
does not occur in the definition of Chaleedon, What
It means is that there was no independent seat of
personality in the manhood of Jesus, but that it
found its personality in being taken by the Son. 8
That, I think, Dr. Mackintosh must admit. Christ
throughout was the Son who is God. " It is very
God Himself " which constitutes Jesus our Re-
deemer, And Jesus is not two persons. Human
nature, we recognize, is so akin to God that the Son
can take human nature and become the real ego
of the man, the real subject of all its affections and
actions. Thus the man Christ is supremely and
emphatically personal ; and Scripture calls Him not
only man but a man, 7 and postulates for Jesus,
whom we believe to be the Son incarnate, a proper
human development, spiritual and mental as well
* p. 470. * p. 482. ^ s p. 492.
* p. 214 : surely It is when applied to Grod and to man.
s TMs is what Leonting of Byzantium means by Ms phrase
enhypo$t(Z8ia, which became through John of Damascus the ortho-
dox phrase " enhypostasia," not " anhypostasia."
6 p. 411.
7 Acts ii 22 ; ** Jesus of Nazareth, a man (dvSpa) designated of
God/* etc.
380
as physical. the do not
present us the of a Christ two
juxta-posited natures, divine human,
in one now in another. That
in the theology of the fifth century, but it did not
enter into the definition of the Council.
We must view the definition of the Council as
its origin shows it to have been Dr.
recognizes it as having been), the outcome of
the necessary negations of Christ
would have destructive to the Christian
The result of these negations is a positive
within which the truth of Christian thought must Me*
To quote the simile which rightly pleased Dr. Mack-
intosh, it marks out the right channel by warning
Christians off perilous shoals and currents* But for
the positive conception we go to the Gospels,
we find a positive conception for which the dogmatic
boundaries leave room, but which the theology of the
period did not generally suggest a positive picture
which requires us to think of the eternal Son of
God, within the scope and period of His mortal life,
as living and acting under the limitations of a real
humanity and from the human point of view. About
that I have perhaps said enough in the second volume
of this series and elsewhere. Certainly in this respect
I find myself in sympathy with Dr. Mackintosh. But
that picture in the Gospels requires, so it seems to
me, the recognition, in the background, of the two
natures and the two wills. Here is a human will
obedient to the Father. But only a human will ?
No ; if so, there would have been no redemption.
It was " in eternal spirit " that Jesus offered Himself
to the Father. The person who willed and the will
of self-oblation by which He lived and died were
more than human, or they would not have been
redemptive. The dogma of the Council had for its
object to guard the reality of the human will ; but
240 MACKINTOSH'S CRITICISM OF CHALCEDON
it took the underlying reality of the divine will for
granted.
And the consciousness of Jesus, is it merely human ?
No ; there is another element in it. A superhuman
and divine consciousness shines out of the human
organ, the consciousness which qualifies Him to
say, " No man knoweththe Father save the Son/ 5 etc.,
and to speak with the inherent authority of God.
True it is we cannot realize as from within the
experience of Jesus in willing and knowing. We
must be largely agnostic* We cannot form a psy-
chology out of one example which we can only very
imperfectly understand. But of one thing we can
be sure. Here are fundamentally two natures, a
divine and a human two wills or consciousnesses,
a divine and a human ; and these " natures '* are
diverse : only by a supreme act of the divine sym-
pathy the divine has so emptied itself of divine
prerogatives as to be able to live and act in and
through a human nature and human faculties. 1
So there is, I feel convinced, no necessity why we
should discard the venerable terminology of the
Councils if I add, " until we have a better," I should
not be speaking in entire sincerity, for I do not
believe the better will be forthcoming. And I am
the more inclined thus to feel, because when Dr.
Mackintosh advances from criticism to reconstruc-
tion, I do not think he is successful. I have not
rarely found myself cross-questioned by an undoubted
believer in our Lord who was at the same time
1 Hot long ago at a meeting on behalf of reunion among Chris-
tians a well-known theologian of the Free Churches was heard to
exclaim that " Schleierxnacber had proved that a union of txvo
natures in one person was an impossibility 9> ; but we have much
less confidence to-day in priori logic than either the Greek Fathers
had or the Schoolmen or the German philosophers of a generation
or two back. The fact is that neither human nature by itself nor
divine nature by itself can account for the Christ of history. And
we all know that Schleiermacher's idea of God was much more
akin to Spinoza's than to St. Paul's.
HIS EXPLANATION 241
sincerely puzzled as to he or blie should
His person. And and 1 have
the definitions of the Councils, considered rightly
as primarily negative, of the greatest help. And 1
have found the puzzled mind thereby not satisfied,
as if it could know all about an impenetrable mystery,
but set at rest and made thankful, and able to
the Gospels with a fuller apprehension.
But I could not get this help from Dr. Mackintosh's
suggested terminology. The essence of personality,
lie insists, is will. 44 Whether it be in God or
it [the will] is the last home of essential being. 3 * It
is enough therefore that Christ should be one with
God in will (pp. 113 ) And this Is what the
Gospels disclose. The will of the Man ( Jesms Christ)
is identical with the will of God (p. 304). And to
affirm this is to affirm " In ethical terms, the highest
terms available, . . . His ontological unity with
God, in a sense genetically different from that which
is predieable of man as man/ 3 Now, what we read
of in the Gospels Is the human will of Jesus moving
in perfect unity with the will of the Father. Surely
the Council was right in affirming so strenuously
that He had a human will. But is this all ? Is all
we have to think of the human will of Jesus and
the will of the Father ? Dr. Mackintosh cannot,
does not, mean this. The human faculty of willing
in Jesus came into existence when He became man.
But there was another will-power, older than the
human being of Christ, the divine will of the eternal
Son the will of Him who, not yet incarnate, emptied
Himself, impoverished Himself, to be made man,
and to " learn obedience " under conditions of human
nature. True, this will of the eternal Son, when
incarnate, acts under conditions of the humanity,
and therefore of the human will-power which He
had assumed. But the will of Jesus is still the will
of the eternal Son, though acting in and through a
242 MACKINTOSH'S CRITICISM OF CHALCEDON
human will. Again, the consciousness of Jesus in
His human life is the consciousness of the Man ; but
behind it is an older consciousness that of the
eternal Son who has temporarily condescended to act
under conditions of a human mind. And I cannot
gain or keep a true thought of Jesus Christ unless
I have always in mind that the willing and knowing
and acting of the Han was not merely human, but
had for its substratum the willing and knowing and
acting of the eternal Son. I cannot get away from
the necessity for recognizing that fundamentally
there are here two wills, two consciousnesses, two
natures, though the greater will and consciousness
and nature are acting under the conditions of the
lesser, within the sphere of the incarnate and mortal
life.
To sum up : 1. It was necessary for the Church to
repudiate the teaching of certain heresiarchs, if it was
to retain the substance of its gospel ; and the primary
aim of the conciliar definitions is to say " no " to
these fundamental errors.
2. But in repudiating these errors the Church built
up a certain framework of thought within which the
current of men's thoughts and feelings about Christ
and the Holy Spirit should move. This framework
cannot be bettered that is to say, we cannot dis-
pense with the ideas of " substance," ct nature," and
"person/ 5 or deny that in Christ we worship one
person who, as incarnate, has fundamentally two
natures.
3. But for our positive conception of Christ we
are constantly to go back upon the Gospels ; and
the theology of the period of the Councils (as distinct
from the dogmatic definitions) has, like the theological
thinking of every period, its characteristic defects.
The study of the Gospels forces us to recognize that
in the Incarnate we have not two, simply juxta-
posited, natures and wills and consciousnesses ; but
FOR 24S
the Divine the of His
life so fully the limitations of as
to act under the conditions of
knowing. Still fundamentally we are
to recognize that what is presented to us is only
humanity and human energy, but is
divine energy, " eternal spirit/ 5 living
under the human conditions.
I cannot leave the consideration of Dr. Mackintosh's
work without again expressing my
for It in its drift and arguments. It is only on
a single point that I Iiave ventured to be critical.
1 have just read Dr. W A. "VTigram's
of the Monophysites (Faith Press, 1923), in which he
pleads very earnestly (chap, xiv) that the nominally
MoBOphysite Churches of to-day, who reject Eutyches
and affirm the permanent reality of two "sub-
stances/ 9 divine and human, in the incarnate persoB,
should not be required formally to accept the defini-
tion of Chaleedoii with its term " two natures," but
that the Orthodox Churches and ourselves should be
satisfied with their acceptances which they are
willing to give, of the Christological clauses of the
Quicunque Vult t wherein the sc two substances " are
affirmed and which are identical in meaning with
Chalcedon. I hope that this proposal will be in
the friendly spirit of Athanasius towards those who
tc mean what we mean, and dispute only about the
word" (de Synod., c. 41).
CHAPTER VIII
THE AUTHOBITY OF HOLY SCBIPTUEE
No doubt can be rightly raised that the Fathers of
the Christian Church did see in the Holy Scriptures
of the Old and New Testaments together " the
word of God >J documents, therefore, of unique
authority as the final testing-ground of doctrine,
theological and moral, for every age of the Church ;
and also there is no doubt that they justified the
assignment of this unique position to the Holy
Scriptures by claiming for their writers a plenary
inspiration of the Holy Spirit such as was claimed
for no others. 1 Of course it was some time before
the canon of the New Testament was settled. But
before that had occurred, the words of Christ and the
teaching of the Apostles had a final authority attri-
1 See on tMs above, p. 173, where a few quotations are given
and further references. But I may refer here to a luminous passage
in St. Augustine's de Bapt. c. Donat., i, 4 f., where he is arguing
with the Donatists who appealed in justification of their schism
to the authority of St. Cyprian. To this appeal Augustine makes
a threefold reply. First, he exalts the supreme authority of Scrip-
ture. ** Who is ignorant that the canonical Holy Scripture, both
of the Old and New Testaments, is contained within its own definite
boundaries, and is so superior to all later writings of bishops that
no doubt or discussion can arise whether anything written there
is true or right ? " Secondly, he declares the writings of individual
bishops to be subject to the criticism of others, whether individually
made or in councils, and he subjects local councils to " plenary "
or ecumenical, and earlier councils, even ecumenical, to later;
" for the earlier are often corrected by the later, when by some
evidence or experience [experimento rerum] what was hidden
comes to light and what was unknown to knowledge." Lastly,
he denies their right to appeal to Cyprian, who behaved so differ-
ently from them.
244
APPEALED TO FROM THE BEGINNING
buted to them ; and during the process of defining
the canon, the question whether any particular book
was to be included appears to have been generally
identified with the question whether it really was the
work of an apostle or of the companion of an apostle,,
whose name it bore or to whom it was attributed. 1
Thus it is a matter of constant assumption that the
standard of sound doctrine, to which the Church
must always conform, is to be found in the Old
Testament as supplying the foundation on which
the Church is built, and in the New Testament as
containing the teaching of the apostles, who were
commissioned to deliver the faith in its fullness once
for all.
But it is obviously a very different and a very
exciting question whether such a claim for Scripture
can be maintained to-day. And the question, if
we come to look at it closely, appears to be not one
but manifold: (1) Does the Bible, and especially
does the New Testament, contain in fact one con-
sistent doctrine ? (2) Can we reasonably maintain
the finality of the apostolic interpretation of Christ ?
(8) Can we deny that tradition, independently of
" Scripture," may have handed down their teaching
and be necessary to supplement it ? (4) Can we
still ascribe to the writers of the Bible such a unique
inspiration as the ancients did, and what is the
meaning of this inspiration ? (5) Is the position
reasonable which, affirming the finality and eomplete-
1 Thus the work of no later teacher, Clement or Ignatius or Hennas,
was admitted ; and the admission of the Epistle to the Hebrews meant
its attribution to St. Paul or to St. Barnabas or one of the apos-
tolic company. Eusebius seems to take it for granted that if the
apostle John did not write the Apocalypse, it would fall out of
the list of "acknowledged" books and be reckoned among the
" spurious " (JEccl. Hist., iii, 5); but see Sanday, Inspiration, p. 02,
who quotes an (unusual) opinion of Jerome that " it does not matter
who is the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, as in any case
it is the work of a church writer, and is daily read out in the
churches " (IBp. ad Dardanum, cxxix, P.L., xxiii, 1103).
240 THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
ness of the New Testament doctrine, still demands
that the tradition of the Church be appealed to to
interpret it ? These questions, obviously coming
from very different quarters 3 are all important, and
we must consider them all. If I do not include the
question about the limits of the canon it is because
in this book nothing is made to turn on whether
Ecclesiastes should be inside and Ecciesiasticus
outside, or whether 2 Peter is not wrongly included
as the work of St. Peter.
Is then the claim that the Bible is so consistent
in doctrine that it can be spoken of as conveying
to us one " word of God " in the different stages
of its delivery a really tenable claim to-day ? The
first volume of this series was largely occupied with
the contention that, whatever changes historical
science has recently rendered necessary in the con-
ception of the Old Testament, it has in no way
invalidated or even weakened its central claim to
be the record of a real self-disclosure made by the
living God to the people of Israel through the pro-
phets. There is there presented to us a progressive
and continuous doctrine about God and man, and a
continuous anticipation, in which lies the predictive
aspect of prophecy, 1 that the self-revelation of God
was to find one day a climax and fulfilment. It is
this prophetic doctrine alone which gives its special
value and meaning to the Old Testament. And it is
a matter of fact that Jesus of Nazareth presented
Himself to men finally as the Christ the consum-
1 We are not, as will be contended below, bound to accept all
the particular fulfilments of prophecy which the first Christians
discovered; but some modern authors repudiate their interpreta-
tion of prophecy in general, as I think, unreasonably. See above,
Appended Note A, p. 64.
IS ONE TEACHING THERE? 247
matlon of the Old Testament revelation and it is
upon the basis of the Old Testament that our Lord
and His apostles and the whole Christian Church
after Him have taken their stand, I will not labour
this point any more.
But leaving now the Old Testament for the New,
we find a number of modern critics denying the unity
of doctrine in the New Testament which the Church
has found there. Jesus Christ, it is suggested, never
did in historical fact make any claim to Godhead,
or to divine sonship, other than what belonged in
idea to Israel in the Old Testament, or than belongs
to every one of the sons of men, if he will have it
so. The passages in the Synoptic Gospels which
appear so plainly to imply a unique and essential
divine sonship are explained away, or regarded as
unauthentic, and the witness of the Fourth Gospel
to the divine claim of Jesus is denied any historical
value. The authority exercised by Christ is reduced
to the prophetic type. The phraseology of the in-
stitution of the eucharist, which implies a Christ who
is to impart His own sacrificed humanity to His
people and to be their spiritual food, is declared un-
authentic. The whole idea of the sacramental Church
is ascribed to the influence of the Hellenistic mysteries.
Then the belief of the first church at Jerusalem is
explained as purely the Jewish apocalyptic belief
transferred to Jesus. Even in St. Paul the con-
ception of the incarnation of an eternal Son is not
really to be found only the supposed Jewish con-
ception of the archetypal heavenly man or pre-exist-
ing Messiah, who is neither really divine nor solidly
human. Out of this Jewish imagination, coupled
with the conception of the Wisdom, of God, operative
in creation, St. Paul fashions his doctrine of Christ ;
who is to him always the glorified Christ and is
identified with the Spirit. There is not to be found
in St. Paul really the doctrine of a personal Spirit
17
248 THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
distinct from the Son. Only later in the Fourth
Gospel is there any real conception of the incarna-
tion of God in Jesus and of the personality of the
Spirit. Thus the New Testament contains not one
doctrine of Christ but three or four the purely
human or prophetic, the " adoptionist," the concep-
tion of the pre~existent man or Christ manifested
on earth, and the doctrine of incarnation properly
so called and not one doctrine of the Spirit of God,
but two. What has been central and fundamental
in the theology of the Church, the doctrine of the
Nicene Creed, is not in any way to be ascribed to
Jesus Himself, nor to His first disciples, nor even
really to St. Paul.
Now, in the second volume of this series and in
the earlier chapters of this volume an attempt has
been made to examine this set of ideas which of
course is presented by different critics in varying
versions and with varying emphasis, but with a
substantial identity of tendency with real freedom
of mind. And if any examination is to be free, we
must not allow ourselves at starting to be so much
impregnated with the atmosphere of current criticism
as to lose the power of thinking for ourselves.
Granted this freedom of mind, certain conclusions
seemed to be fairly certain : (I ) That no merely human
measure will fit the Christ of the Synoptic Gospels,
who certainly so presented Himself to His disciples
as to come to have for them really the * value ' of
God ; and who certainly from time to time spoke
of Himself as Son of God in some quite super-
human sense. (2) That St. Paul's testimony gives
to the account of the institution of the eucharist
historical value which cannot be ignored. (3) That
though it is true the disciples were at first, after
losing their risen Master from sight, so preoccupied
with His glory, and then with the presence of the
Spirit whom He had sent down upon them, as to feel
DR. J. M. WILSON'S WARNING 249
no necessity to give account of His person, yet they
treated Him, and called upon His name, as a pro-
perly divine being. (4) That when St. Paul inter-
preted His person, it was with a doctrine of the
incarnation of the pre-existent Son of God not of
a pre-existent Messiah or heavenly man a Son of
God whom He co-ordinates with God and even calls
God. (5) That this doctrine, afterwards confirmed
and fortified by the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews and the writer whom the Church has called
John the apostle, prevailed without rival and with-
out controversy there is no "adoptionist " or other
theory to be found in the New Testament. (6) That
the Spirit is not by St. Paul, any more than in
the Fourth Gospel, identified with Christ, though
He is inseparably united with Him. And (7) that
the institution of the Church and of certain sacra-
ments must historically be attributed to Christ Him-
self. On all these points I do not ask for an un-
hesitating or uncritical verdict, but for a verdict
in accordance with the evidence. And we have
good reason for insisting on the necessity of freeing
ourselves from contemporary prejudices. Dr. X M.
Wilson is a scholar whom we should not accuse of
undue conservatism, but after speaking, in a recent
book, of the effect on some writers of an a priori
conviction that the supernatural cannot be true, he
adds a warning which, I think, is needed. " It seems
to me that some critics, to whom it would be absurd
to attribute any such prepossessions, are so anxious
not to allow themselves to be prejudiced in the
opposite sense that they underestimate the obvious
and clear arguments." l
If the conclusions just summarized, without being
i The Acts of the Apostles, p. 33 (S.P.C.K., 1923). The general
warning quoted above is separable from its particular application
to Blass's view of the * Western ' text of the Acts. See also
Appended Note A on Dr. A. H. McNeile's New Testament Teachmg,
p. 278.
250 THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
re-argued, are sound, then we have answered our first
question. The Church was justified in appealing to
the New Testament as to a book of many authors,
presenting no doubt a variety of points of view and
distinctions of emphasis, but presenting also really
one doctrine, and not several one doctrine gradually
arrived at under the leadership of St. Paul, but
the only one which really interprets certain authentic
words of Christ and the whole impression He made
on His disciples.
II
In seeking to answer the second question as to the
reasonableness of ascribing finality to the apostolic
interpretation of Christ's person, as we find it in
St. Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews and in
St. John, we are still treading on ground already
traversed. 1 If Christ is rightly interpreted in these
documents if no different interpretation can do
justice to the fact of Christ then the Christ so
interpreted is essentially final. There can be no
conception of God fuller or eompleter, given under
the conditions of this world, than is given in Him in
whom the Word is made flesh, and no union of man-
hood with Godhead fuller than is given in Him in
whom "flesh/' that is, human nature in all its
faculties and progressive development, is the very
organ of God. The resistance to this idea of finality
comes from a desire to maintain a somewhat abstract
belief in evolution, which implies that the past can
never be the best. But we are learning that the
abstract idea of evolution must submit itself to the
facts. 2 It is a fact that the personality of Christ is
1 Belief in Christ, chap, vi, pp. 315-19.
a Of. Dr. H. B. Mackintosh, (The Person of Jeswi Christ, p, 309
(Edinburgh, 2nd ed., 1913) ; " If it be said the Gospel as involved
ia history must consent to be equally relative with other facts of
F. D. MAURICE ON FINALITY 251
so unique that nothing can account for it but the
belief that in the process of history, at a certain
moment and in a certain historical person, the
Absolute once for all manifested itself under condi-
tions of time. Here is something in history which
is supra-historical towards which and from which
all history, so far as it is religious history, must move
and in which it must find its centre. The belief that
this is so is what has been the strength of the Chris-
tian view of the world, AsF.D. Maurice said 1 : "A
clergyman " (let us say " a Christian "), " it seems
to me, should be better able than other men to cast
aside that which is merely accidental either in Ms
own character or in the character of the age to which
he belongs, and to apprehend that which is essential
and eternal. His acceptance of fixed creeds (it
would suffice to say * the apostolic interpretation of
Christ's person *), which belong as much to one
generation as another, and which have survived
amidst all changes and convulsions, should raise him
especially above the temptation to exalt the fashion
of his own time, or of any past one ; above the
affectation of the obsolete, above slavery to the
present, and above that strange mixture of both
which some display, who weep because the beautiful
visions of the past are departed, and admire them-
selves for being able to weep over them and dispense
with them."
Of course we must never forget that the apostolic
interpretation of Christ really quickens and inspires
the time series that it has to choose, in short, between historicity
and finality the answer is that this is pure assumption, and assump-
tion which must be changed if it conflicts with real phenomena.
It may well be even bad metaphysics." See also p. 356: "It
betrays a disabling bondage to a priori dogma, none the less hurtful
that it is unorthodox, when men approach a stupendous problem
with the tacit understanding that no results can be accepted which
fail to conform to a fixed standard.**
1 Preface to Kiagsley's drama The Sainfa Tragedy (1849), sea
Kingsley's Poems, p. xvii (Macmillan, 1902).
252 THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
religious development in mankind and does not
dispense -with it. It must take the whole of con-
verted humanity with all its variety of gifts to show
the full meaning of Him " in whom are hid all the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge " ; and only so
can Christ be fulfilled in the Church. Nevertheless
He is perfect and complete in His own person from
the first, and the interpretation of His person which
alone secures this must be final. 1 And it was so
regarded from the first. Clement of Rome and Igna-
tius of Antioch, in sub-apostolic days, already look
back upon the apostolic doctrine as formative and
authoritative, almost before the collection of the
canon of the New Testament was begun, just as
Athanasius and Augustine do when it was practically
settled. And in fact no one who is acquainted with
the New Testament books and then sets himself to
read those such as Hennas or Justin Martyr who
in the second century with the best intentions sought
to interpret Christ, can do so without feeling that he
has come down to a much lower level of under-
standing and surefootedness.
Ill
But a curious question remains whether the
ancient Church was right in elevating the written
books of the New Testament to a throne of solitary
supremacy. Plainly our Lord resolved to entrust
His gospel to men, not to written books, and He
Himself wrote nothing. Then, when the books of
the New Testament were written, many of them
appear to be markedly occasional, and none of them
1 I would refer to an illuminating article by the Rev. Richard
Hanson entitled " History and the Historic Jesus," in the Church
Quarterly of April 1923; see e.g. p. 100: " Christianity is the pro-
clamation of a presence in history which is at once historic in that
it appeared in time, and unhistoric in that it, by hypothesis,
dominates and controls and gives an absolute value to history."
UNWRITTEN TRADITION 253
shows the Intention of giving a connected account of
Christian doctrine. Why then, should not there be
valuable parts of the apostolic teaching which were
only handed down in * unwritten tradition ' ? This,
we know, is the theory of the Roman Church, which
regards the Scriptures as only the chief source of
the apostolic tradition. It requires supplementing by
what was unwritten. And this idea of an unwritten
tradition has in effect been used to render the whole
appeal to Scripture and antiquity null and void.
The living voice of the Church at any period, once
established, is tradition, and must be assumed to
have always been so. But this is to give to the idea
of tradition a sense akin to the Gnostic idea of a secret
tradition. The Fathers totally rejected this idea and
countered it with the idea of an open tradition secured
in the successions of the bishops. This tradition was
in fact only for a little while 4 unwritten.* It is
written down in detail by Origen and less explicitly
by Irenaeus. It was * unwritten * (agraphos) only
in the sense that it was not scripture (grapM). Thus
we do know what the Church * tradition * was from
the second century, and we can boldly say that there
was nothing of any doctrinal importance x in the
tradition, and especially nothing which there was
any tendency to make into a dogmatic requirement,
except what is in Scripture. The Fathers are quite
emphatic in giving to the tradition only an interpre-
tative value.
Perhaps we might be disposed to argue that
granted that in Christ was uttered really the final
word of God to man, which is to stand as His message
or Gospel through all ages it seems impossible to
imagine that God would not have " devised means "
to secure that the message should be delivered with
sufficient fullness and plainness by its first com-
1 See Appended Note B, p. 280, for an interpretation of tnis
qualification.
254 AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
missioned messengers and in such form that it should
be accessible for constant reference. But we distrust
such a priori arguments from the fitness of things.
It is better to be content with the facts ; and the
fact is that there is nothing of importance, as doctrine^
which can make a plausible claim to have been in
the original tradition which is not also, plainly implicit
at least, in the written books.
IV
Now there arises a very large question, which no
book attempting to treat of the Holy Spirit in the
Church can ignore what do we to-day believe about
the inspiration of those sacred books of the Old and
of the New Testament to which, as we have seen, th^
Church assigned so sovereign an authority ?
For the ascription by the Church of authority to
the books was, we know, due to, or accompanied by,
a belief that they were written under the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit, and that they brought with them
for this reason a divine guarantee of trustworthiness.
This root conviction has expressed itself in the doc-
trine that every book and every sentence of the Bible
is infallibly true a doctrine which has prevailed
alike among Catholics and Protestants. But the whole
historical and critical world has risen up in arms
against this conception and declared it impossible ;
and in describing at the beginning of these volumes
the root causes of present-day unsettlement in
matters of religious belief, I had of course to give
a very large place to this cause. 1 Now, the whole
purpose of these volumes has been to build up a
constructive doctrine of God and Christ and the
Holy Spirit in the Church without using the books
of the Bible except as historical documents. Nothing
has been said about them as if they were authorita-
i Belief m God, pp. 13 ff.
ITS INSPIRATION 255
tive, because the subjects of a plenary inspiration.
But we are now in a position from which the truth
of Christianity, and its authority as the word of God,
can be taken for granted. And its authoritativeness
is so inseparable from the belief in the inspiration
of Scripture that we must seek to determine what we
mean by it and how it is to affect us.
The belief of the Christian Church in inspiration
of course had its ground in the belief in the inspiration
of the Old Testament which they inherited from the
Jews. And this we are glad to find was primarily
a belief in the inspiration of prophets, including Moses
as the greatest and most creative of alL The evi-
dence of this is to be found in the fact that no book
was admitted into the Jewish canon which was
believed to have been written after the time when
the unbroken line of prophets ceased. 1 The value of
this idea as evidence is quite independent of whether
all the books of the Old Testament were in fact
written before the line of prophets ceased and the Jews
were left with only wise men. The idea is that the
prophet is the inspired man. And we can notice at
once that Philo's 2 identification of inspiration, in the
highest sense, with the annihilation or expulsion of
the human faculties of thought and reason so that
the inspired man is the purely passive instrument of
the Divine Spirit, which dictates through him
does not at all correspond to the facts about the
higher prophets of Israel and was never the view-
entertained by the Christian Church/ It was in
fact derived from Greece and not from Israel. Those
whom we name " the prophets " are occasionally
represented as falling into trances, but this is rare,
* For the evidence of this see Sanday, Inspiration, pp. 110 f.
(Longmans, 1893) surely an admirable book. The date suggested
for the last of the prophets is that of Artaxerxes Longimanus,
i.e. the date of the Book of Esther.
2 For quotations see Sanday, op. cit. 9 p. 72.
8 See Belief in God, p. 87, n. 3.
256 THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
and even so they retain to the full their consciousness
and individuality.
And the modern critical view of the Old Testament
would lead us to see in the prophetic teaching the
key to the whole* The traditional law of the cultus
of Jehovah and the whole social law, in their final
form, were permeated with the prophetic spirit. So
were the histories. So was the Wisdom literature.
So were the Psalms. It would appear that the Song
of Songs was only suffered to be within the canon
because it was interpreted mystically of God and His
Church as husband and wife, which is a recurrent
note of prophecy * ; and Ecclesiastes only because,
as the book stands, that doubting, pessimistic spirit
is led back finally to the fundamental Jewish loyalty.
" This is the end of the matter ; all hath been heard :
fear God, and keep his commandments ; for this is
the whole duty of man." The spirit of prophecy
thus permeates the whole literature of the Old Testa-
ment. That the prophets were really commissioned
messengers of the word of God and really " spoke as
they were moved by the Holy Spirit " we accept with
enthusiastic assent ; and every book of the Old
Testament, whether we accept the stricter Hebrew
canon, or include the books which appear in the
Greek Bible, which we call * apocryphal/ partakes
of the inspiration of the prophets in varying degrees.
We may boldly say that the doctrine of the inspira-
tion of the Old Testament stands as surely to-day
as of old, in spite of changed views as to the character
of the literature and the dates of its books. The
Old Testament is not the word of God in the sense
that everything there narrated as history is historic-
ally correct, or that we can isolate any particular
text and say, "This is an infallible utterance of
God " ; but it conveys to us, in a variety of books
of different kinds, one moral and spiritual message,
1 Hastings's Diet, of the Bible, iv, p. 589.
INSPIRATION AND INFALLIBILITY 257
really inspired by the Spirit of God, who both fit spake
by the prophets " and also penetrated through the
whole assemblage of books.
No doubt the Jewish rabbis of our Lord's time
held a strict doctrine of the infallibility of the sacred
books in all their details. And their exegesis was
already minute and, as we should feel, irrational and
intensely literalist. But one of the most impressive
facts about our Lord's teaching was that there was
nothing of this spirit in His appeal to Scripture.
We recognize there " the sovereign breadth of view
and deep penetration of insight by which the Founder
and Master of our faith was enabled to seize the
spirit of the Old Testament legislation and to ensure
that even the letter . . . shall be observed more
effectively than it had been by striking down to the
root of motive which the law could not reach." l
He is indeed recorded a to have taught His disciples
that "till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or
one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law,
till all things be accomplished," and to have bidden
them be strict Jews and not lax Jews, in preparation
for the Kingdom. But already the hour of accom-
plishment had struck. " The law and the prophets
were until John : from that time the gospel of the
Kingdom of God is preached/' And that gospel
was profoundly disturbing to the tradition. It did
not indeed destroy the law, but it fulfilled it by
transmuting it into a new energy of the Spirit,
which would proceed by a quite different method
from that of minute enactments. Nothing, I think,
is less justified on the whole than to represent our
Lord as accepting the current Jewish interpretation
of the meaning of inspiration, however true it is
that it returned in great measure upon the Church
in later days.
1 Sanday, op. cit., p. 411.
8 Matt. v. 18, 19; cf. Luke xvi. 17 and note the differences.
258 THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
It must be accepted as a fact that in dealing with
the books of Scripture our Lord used the language
and knowledge of the time, and showed, at least,
no signs of transcending it ; just as He showed no
signs of transcending the knowledge of nature which
belonged to His age or country. That He should
have done otherwise would have contradicted the
whole manifest intention of Divine providence that
men should only acquire for themselves by infinite
pains the knowledge which is within their grasp.
But I do not think it can be fairly urged that our
Lord fixed upon us, w r hether about nature or about
Jewish literature, the yoke of first-century knowledge.
His teaching about God and man and the Kingdom
of God is quite independent of any particular stage
of mental development and human science. There
must have been in our Lord's mind a world of
ordinary " knowledge " which He shared with His
contemporaries, by the use of which alone He could
speak intelligibly to them, which was part of the
furniture and limitation of His real humanity ; but
this He did not teach. The only teaching which He
gave, and gave with the note of infallible certitude,
was drawn from a profounder and eternal source*
On the only two occasions on which our Lord's argu-
ment appears to depend on either a question of
authorship or the verbal authority of a text, the
context makes it natural to suppose that He was
only impressing on a certain group of objectors the
duty of consistency in their arguments. 1 He was not
giving any positive teaching at all. 1
1 I am referring to Mark xii. 35 and John x. 34-6. I have
argued the matter in Belief in Christ, pp. 186-7, 191-3. See also
on both passages Sanday, op. 0it. 9 pp. 408-9, 417, 419, 483.
s Our Lord undoubtedly taught that the Old Testament Scrip-
tures anticipated a suffering and dying Christ. If it were th
case that no such prophesying can be found really in the Old Testa-
ment, it would be a very serious matter. But the case is not so :
see above* p. 64.
NEW TESTAMENT ON THE OLD 250
When we turn from our Lord's teaching to that of
the apostles and their companions, we are impressed
with their prophetic insight into the real meaning of
the Old Testament. Thus their moral teaching is
the real flower of Old Testament morality. And
St. Paul does really understand both the value of the
law and its limitations. It was a preparation for
the Spirit. It was to end in something not national
but catholic. The doctrine of redemption and glory
through humiliation, suffering* and death, which all
the New Testament writers ascribe to the Old Testa-
ment, was a real note in the prophetic teaching which
it was moral blindness to have overlooked. And the
Epistle to the Hebrews is right about the sacrificial
system. It was really essentially futile. " The blood
of bulls and of goats could not take away sin." But
it corresponded to something so deep in human need
that it demanded an equivalent on a higher spiritual
plane. Thus Christ really was the end of the law
and the Church of the New Covenant the fulfilment
of the Old. By comparison with the Rabbis the
understanding of the meaning of the inspiration of
the Old Testament shown by the New Testament
writers is as light to darkness.
And the general account which they give of its
inspiration is as acceptable to-day as it ever was.
" The gospel of God, which he promised afore by his
prophets in the holy scriptures/' "God, having of
old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by
divers portions and in divers manners." " To him
bear all the prophets witness." " Concerning which
salvation the prophets sought and searched diligently,
who prophesied of the grace which should come upon
you : searching what time or what manner of time
the Spirit of Christ which was in them did point
unto, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of
Christ, and the glories which should follow them." *
* Bom. i. 2; Heb. i. 1; Acts x 43; 1 Pet. 1. 10-1 L
260 THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
" No prophecy of scripture Is of private interpreta-
tion. For no prophecy ever came by the will of man :
but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy
Ghost." "The Holy Ghost this signifying, that
the way into the holy place hath not yet been made
manifest, while as the first tabernacle is yet standing ;
which is a parable for the time now present/ 5
** Whatsoever things were written aforetime were
written for our learning, that through patience and
through comfort of the scriptures we might have
hope." " Every scripture inspired of God is also
profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for
instruction which is in righteousness : that the man
of God may be complete, furnished completely unto
every good work." *
But when we pass from the general interpretation
of the Old Testament to the interpretation of par-
ticular texts by the first teachers of the Church,
there is something different which has to be said in
a considerable number of instances. Their minds
were full of the interpretations of prophecies " Thus
it must have been, for so it was foretold " ; thus it
happened "that the scripture might be fulfilled
which said " and we feel again and again that we
cannot recognize in the original text from the Old
Testament which is cited, any prophecy demanding
such a fulfilment. 2 We can cordially accept their
1 2Peti. 20-1; Heb. ix. 8; Bom. xv. 4; 2 Tim. iii. 16-17,
2 Such, instances are fairly frequent in St. Matthew, e.g. ii. 15-
18 ; and in him we find three or four cases where the supposed
prediction is apparently allowed to modify the details of the record
of fulfilment, e.g. Matt. xxi. 2 (the introduction of the ass beside
the colt), xxvii. 3-10 (the introduction of the precise sum given,
" thirty pieces of silver "), 34 (the gall). In Acts ii. 25 ft the
argument from tho psalm is very precise as to the mind of David
in writing it (cf. xiii. 35) and we cannot feel sure of the authorship,
or feel that the original justifies the assumption that the psalmist
is speaking in persona Me$aiae. Again, St. Paul's arguments from
particular texts, as in Gal. iii. 13 and 16, Bom. iii. 10-18 and
ix. 25, are, we feel, merely verbal and in no way borne out by the
original context. See Dr. Strong's Place of Scripture in the Church,
p. 38 (S.P.C.K., 1917).
THE NATURE OF INSPIRATION 261
general principle, viz. that the Old Testament as a
whole anticipates and demands a climax or fulfilment
in the future, and that this climax or fulfilment
is really found in Christ, but their 'method of argu-
ment from particular texts belongs to their time and
is quite superseded.
Here, however, we have passed from the inspira-
tion of the Old Testament to the inspiration of the
New Testament writers.
The most direct and definite claim to the plenary
inspiration of the prophet, both in general and in de-
tail, that is to be found in the New Testament, is that
of John, the Seer of the Apocalypse (whether he be
John the Evangelist or another) ; and I think that in
that wonderful book we do see as vividly as anywhere
the real effect of inspiration and its limits. John was
really inspired to read the signs of the times and to
see the meaning and issue of the conflict between
the Empire and the Church, and to deliver to the
terrified Christians the true message of encourage-
ment. The visions are none the less real visions of
God because the scenery is so plainly supplied by
the mental furniture of the seer. It is a real fore-
taste of what must be, because God is God ; but it
is very far from being " history written beforehand/*
and those who have sought to interpret its mystical
numbers in terms of historical years or temporal
duration have gone utterly astray. We have not
any reason to suppose that, if the seer, instead of
giving us his successive visions, had endeavoured in
cold prose to write down what he anticipated the
course of historical events would be, he would have
been found to be supernaturally enlightened, any
more than the older prophets, except as to the mean-
ing and issue of the struggle.
For the New Testament conception of the inspira-
tion of an apostle we turn to St. Paul. He, no
doubt, regarded the apostles, and the prophets who
262 THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
ranked with them or after them, as inspired. 1 Their
inspiration is the greatest of the gifts of the Holy
Spirit to the Church* Accordingly St. Paul regards
Ms message as a direct and personal revelation of
God, 2 though for the facts concerning Christ he appeals
not to revelation but to the tradition received, 3 and
sometimes he appeals to words of Christ as of final
authority. But we notice that he regards the
authoritative teaching as once for all received, so
that he had no authority to alter it or add to it. 4
If he received subsequent "revelations/' they were
" unutterable." 5 And while he clearly claims divine
authority for his message, and that of the apostles
generally, he claims no special inspiration to write,
and no infallibility for judgements expressed which
are not covered by his gospel or for which he has
no " word of the Lord " to rely upon. For instance,
in regard to marriage he distinguishes sharply be-
tween the word of the Lord pronouncing the indis-
solubility of the marriage bond, and his own opinion
on points of difficulty, which he gives not as the word
of God, but as the judgement of one who has been
found faithful, or " I think I also have the Spirit of
God." 6 In respect of women's headdress he claims
peremptorily that the discipline of the Church should
be accepted obediently. 7 But he would not claim
that a direct personal inspiration of God is to be
found in his arguments. Again, with regard to the
ministries to be allowed to women, St. Paul would
certainly claim that women must accept the discip-
line of the Church, whatever it is 8 ; and he would
claim that the subordination of women to men was
1 1 Cor. xii. 29. The point is tlie variety of spiritual gifts in. the
one body; ef. Eph. iv. 8-12.
2 Gal. i. 12. s 1 Cor. xv. 1-11, xi. 23 ff. * Gal. i. 8-9.
5 2 Cor. xii. 1-4 that is to say, they did not affect his message
to the Church.
1 Cor. vii. 10-12, 25, 40.
1 Cor. xi 2, 16, I Cor. xiv. 34-36.
THE FATHERS ON INSPIRATION 268
a divine law running through life as a whole. But
I see no reason to believe that he would have us
claim perpetuity for his particular enactments,
whether against the ordination of men twice- married
or teaching by women. Certainly he would claim
perpetuity for the principle that all alike, women and
men, must accept the discipline of the Church.
We are pleased to see that, like St. Paul, so the
apostles from the beginning, and the historians of
the New Testament, appeal for their facts not to
inspiration, but purely and simply to evidence, the
evidence of eye-witnesses. 1 And, if we may judge
from the indications of St. Luke's preface, and St.
John's manner of correcting tacitly mistakes in the
Synoptic tradition, there was no strict infallibility
assigned to the records, when they were written. 28
When we pass from the New Testament into the
records of the Church, we note two things. First,
that as the canon of the New Testament forms itself
by the selection of the Four Gospels, and the letters
of Paul, and then of the rest of the documents, the
same inspiration which was claimed for the Old Testa-
ment books was claimed, and rightly, for the New.
Inspiration under the New Covenant was indeed
something fuller and completer than inspiration
under the Old ; and the Church could not doubt,
any more than we can doubt, that a real inspiration
guided the Evangelists and the author of the Acts,
though they claimed only the best information.
But we note, secondly, that as for the Old Testament
so for the New, the Christian Church on ihe whole
took over from the Jewish schools an idea of inspira-
tion which made it coincident with infallibility and
completeness of knowledge. 8 Thus the tradition
1 Luke i. 1-3; Acts i. 1-3 and 21, 22; 1 John i. 1-2.
* But it is in the Fourth Gospel regarded as a special function
of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of the Twelve to quicken their
memory of the teaching of Jesus (John xiv. 26).
3 For quotations, eee Sanday, op. cit t , pp. 31 if.
18
264 THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
equating inspiration with infallibility is primitive in
the Christian Church and pre-Christian, in fact. This
is to us moderns utterly unacceptable. We are sure
that there is in the Old Testament, besides a great
deal of very good history, also a good deal of legend
and of " history as it ought to have been " ; and that
though the same Christ is presented in all the Gos-
pels, yet there are many divergences of detail, both
as regards the words and works of Christ, even among
the Synoptists, and no infallibility in their use of
Old Testament texts. By this we must stand.
And we would call attention to two points. First,
that there are a good many signs of the " modern "
spirit in individual Fathers and even in whole schools.
Thus there is a widespread belief that the early
chapters of Genesis were allegory or picture-writing
and not history. 1 Again, the depreciation of the
sacrificial system of the Jews has quite a tradition.
It is asserted to be something which God tolerated,
but did not ordain. It was in its origin pagan. 2
But this involves free handling of the record. 8 Again,
the principle of gradual development in the divine
education of man under the Old Covenant has a full
tradition behind it. The " moral difficulties of the
Old Testament " are to be explained in the light of
the fact that God was doing the best for the educa-
tion of a savage people, by leading them forward
gradually into the true way. 4 Even in the Gospels
St. Chrysostoin would have us accept the consolation
1 See Lux Mundi, p. 263, also p. xxv, n. 1.
a p. 241, n. 1 ; also Chrysostom on St. Matt. vi. 3.
3 In St. Jerome's preface to the Epistle to Philemon lie quotes
the opinion, of some who would refuse it a place in the canon on
the ground that everything which occurs in St. Paul's Epistles
was not written under inspiration, e.g. not " The cloak which I
left at Troas," etc., or " But withal prepare me a lodging," or
"Would that they that trouble you were cut off 31 (or "muti-
lated") just as the prophets do not always write under inspira-
tion, but sometimes as a homo communw. See Sanday, Inspira-
tion, pp. 43-4.
4 IMX Mundi, pp. 240-2.
THE MYSTICAL SENSE 265
that the discrepancies between them In detail only
enhance the value of their common witness to the
matters of chief Importance. 1
Also we need to notice that Origen makes It part
of the authoritative tradition of the Church that the
Scriptures, which were written by the agency of
the Spirit of God, " have two senses, the plain and
the hidden, whereof the latter can be known only to
those to whom is given the grace of the Holy Spirit
In the word of wisdom and knowledge."* And he
revelled In this belief in a mystical and allegorical
sense of Scripture, to the extent of delighting to
point out statements in the Old Testament which
could not be true in their literal sense and were only
meant to stimulate us to discern their spiritual
meaning. And though Origen's successors would
not commonly have been ready to admit that the
literal meaning could be untrue In fact, they used the
key of the mystical meaning in a way that we should
regard as totally arbitrary, to emancipate the Church
from " the letter " of the Old Testament.
As we read the Christian Fathers, then, we find
them to be men of very different intellectual statures
and tendencies ; and we feel that In our modern
controversies about the meaning and consequences of
inspiration they would have taken different sides :
that some of them, St. Chrysostorn for Instance,
would have welcomed modern criticism, and some of
them, for instance St. Leo, would have decisively
rejected it ; and that St. Augustine would have
accepted it as a matter of course before his conversion,
and hesitated long afterwards about it, and finally,
under the exigencies of controversy, rejected it.
But this is, of course, conjecture.
i In Matt. Horn, i, 2, P.O. Ivii, 16, 17, 18.
* De Princ., i, prol. The school of Antioch, however, did not,
or did but slightly, admit the legitimacy of recurrence to "the
bidden " meaning.
266 THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
The other point which we should wish to emphasize
is that, in spite of manifold provocations, in early
days the Church never formulated any binding dogma
on the subject of inspiration, nor even contemplated
such a course. Even up to the time of the Encyclical
of Leo XIII, Newman can plead that " The Councils
of Trent and of the Vatican tell us distinctly the
object and the promise of Scriptural inspiration.
They specify * faith and moral conduct ' as the drift
of that teaching which has the guarantee of inspira-
tion." It is with the doctrine of inspiration, as with
the doctrine of the Atonement, that different theories
have become dominant at different periods, and later
have been more or less completely rejected by the
common sense of the Church, and the old belief has
been none the less maintained, but in a sense which
has been providentially lef t quite undefined.
In many respects we are not at all the intellectual
superiors of our remote forefathers. In some we
are conspicuously inferior to the ancients of this or
that period. But in some we have made real and
immense advances. The science of history is one
of these latter departments. In spite of all the
extravagances and waywardnesses of some critics
and historians, in spite of the real or supposed
victories which tradition is said to have won over
criticism, there is no question about it that an
infinitely truer view of the length and scope and
stages of history, and of the various kinds of literature
in which the human spirit has expressed itself, is
possible for us than was possible for the men of two
centuries or less ago. 1 And just as it was fatal for
the Church to claim the power to lay a restraining
hand on the freedom of astronomical science, because
its results were disturbing to those who had been
taught to believe that all the statements of the Bible
on all sorts of subjects were infallibly true, so is it
1 See Belief in God, p. 13.
BELIEF IN INSPIRATION TO-DAY 267
fatal for the Church to claim to restrict the sphere
of historical criticism. It must be applied to the
history and documents of the Bible, Old Testament
and New, 1 as to all documents which claim to be
human history and human literature. What we have
a right to demand is that it shall be really historical
criticism, and not inspired by a dogmatic belief,
which has no claim to call itself historical science,
that there can have been no such events as are called
supernatural. But if we follow the course only of
legitimate criticism, it leads to many conclusions as
to sacred history and literature which are startling
and revolutionary, just as it does in history that we
call secular. We must welcome all the conclusions
which are apparently assured, and when we have
done so we find that a certain kind of belief about
the effect of inspiration which was possible to our
forefathers has become impossible for us. We must
admit more of gradualness, more of fallibility and
individuality in the human instruments, than used
to be admitted. But when all this has been done,
we dare to maintain that the grounds for believing
in a real inspiration by the Holy Spirit of God not
only of the prophets and apostles, but also of the
writers generally of the Old and New Testaments,
are not less strong than before. We have been led
by the evidence to limit the scope of the inspiration
to ct the things of faith and morals " ; and we have
1 Some of us, who claim to be Biblical critics and also believers
in the Christian Creed, are still annoyed by the imputation that we
are ready to apply criticism freely to the Old Testament but not
to the New (see G. C. Coulton, Five Centuries of Religion, p. II).
More than twenty years ago Dr. Driver and I repudiated this im-
putation, and I have done so since again and again. To make
it implies that free criticism is always destructive of real historicity.
But this is not so. As often it is constructive. It is so, I believe,
when it is allowed to be really free about the documents of the
New Testament. What is asked for the Gospels and Acts is only
what criticism vindicates for the account in the books of Samuel
and Kings of David's reign, viz. that it is good history. Criticism
applied to different periods and documents reaches different results*
268 THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
been led to recognize degrees of inspiration. We do
not find nearly so much of the inspiration of God
in Chronicles or Ecclesiastes or Esther as in the
prophets* But we do find the movement of the same
spirit in all the books. And the longer we put
ourselves to school in the books of the Bible the
more sure do we come to feel about the inspiration
of their writers.
Something has still to be said about the two dis-
tinguishable uses of the Bible as historical docu-
ments and as the books of inspired men ; but before
we come to this there is the last of the suggested
questions which has still to be met.
Is the position reasonable which, affirming the
finality and, in a sense, completeness of the New
Testament teaching about the meaning and content
of the Gospel message, still demands that the tradition
of the Church be relied upon to interpret both it and
the Old Testament ?
It has been commonly remarked that the shock of
modern criticism as applied to the Bible has been
felt much less among Catholics than among Protes-
tants. This cannot mean that the formal standards
of orthodoxy about Holy Scripture have been less
strict among the former. As we have seen, the
doctrine of Biblical inspiration as stated by Leo XIII
was of the severest and most rigid kind ; and in
the Church of England the Tractarian tradition was
as strict as the Evangelical. But Roman Catholics
in general have not had the Bible as an "open
book. 59 They have not been familiar with it as a
whole ; it has not constantly been read in their ears
in public worship in their own tongues ; it has not
been normal piety to read it. "Who reads the
Evangelists ? " is even to-day a question by which
THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH 260
the Italian Papini can rebut the objection that it
could not be necessary for him simply to retell the
story of Jesus, which is incomparably well told in
the original documents. Certainly then, though
among Roman Catholic students the strain has
probably been great, it has not been much felt among
the laity.
And generally it is true that a Catholic in the
sense of one who believes in the Church and the
divine authority of its Creed ought to have felt, and
has in fact felt, the strain of the New Criticism less
than the Protestant, whose traditional authority has
been " the Bible and the Bible only.* 5 For the power
of naked appeal to the infallible book chapter by
chapter and verse by verse was exactly what the
New Learning of our day has cut at the root. And
popular Protestantism was in fact thrown into the
deepest confusion. The mere appeal to the Book had
tended to level all its parts * ; and that upon the
highest level of value and certainty. To say that
man had developed out of the lower animals, or that
Moses did not give the Law as it stands in the Penta-
teuch, or that there are inaccuracies in the Gospels,
seemed to demolish the basis of faith. The Catholic
was plainly better off. His faith rested primarily
on the Creed of the Church. This gave him his
point of view. It lifted into high relief certain
events and ideas as the things to be believed.
Granted the assurance that these things were so,
he had still the solid ground under his feet, while
the discussion about Biblical inspiration and the
nature of the Old Testament books proceeded.
And the Catholic point of view is fundamentally
the true one. In a sense Christ may be said to
have left the Church with a book, but it was the
Old Testament, and this was confessedly imperfect
1 So it made the Puritans intensely Judaic. See Truslow Adams,
Founding of New England, p. 80.
270 THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
and superseded by the authority inherent in Himself.
" It was said to them of old time . . * but I say unto
you " ; " The law and the prophets were until John."
Thus the value of the Old Testament was chiefly
prophetic. It had proclaimed a certain doctrine
about God, and in various ways had prefigured and
predicted what God was to do in the good time
coming. Thus it " proved " that Jesus was the
Christ ; and it supplied the New Israel with a mass
of moral warnings and instructions. But henceforth
it could not be the final or central authority. " We
do wrong to the New Testament," said Augustine,
tc if we put the Old on the same level with it." The
final authority lay in the Lord Jesus. And He
had written nothing, but He had reinstituted the
divine society, the Church of God, and in the persons
of the apostles had equipped it with a body of
instructed men who were to be "his witnesses.' 5
Thus besides the Old Testament the Church had at
first no book, but only " the teaching of the apostles/ 9
as orally delivered, in their memories and hearts.
The Church was the bearer of the authoritative
message, "the word of God." Gradually the books
were written which came to form the canon of the
New Testament. But for the most part they were
books written to meet some special need in some
particular church or individual member of the church.
They were none of them written to uninstructed or
unbaptized persons to give them their first under-
standing of the Christian faith. The " apostles*
teaching/' "the form of teaching whereunto ye
were delivered," is always presupposed. This we note
throughout the New Testament. The readers of the
different books are to be those who already hold and
understand the faith.
This is so with the narrative of the Gospels, as is
witnessed by St. Luke's preface " that thou mayest
know the certainty about the things in which thou
N.T. PRESUPPOSES TRADITION 271
wast informed '* (at the time of initiation into the
Christian religion). The circumstances of St. Mark's
composition of Ms Gospel indicate that the object
of his writing was to record an oft-told tale. So
St. John wrote the Fourth Gospel to confirm the
Church in the faith, and apparently to supplement,,
and in detail correct, an existing tradition. In the
Epistle which accompanied his Gospel, he reiterates
that it is " the word which ye heard " (when ye became
Christians) that he is writing. " Ye know all
tilings/ 1 " I have not written unto you because ye
know not the truth, but because ye know it/ 3 6C That
which ye heard from the beginning " is to abide in
them. So it is with St. James : " Ye know this, ray
beloved brethren." So it is with St. Jude : he
writes exhorting them "to contend earnestly for
the faith which was once for all delivered/* So St.
Paul refers constantly back to an original 44 tradition/*
a word delivered, which not even he, not even an angel
from God, can have authority to alter.
It is important to notice in studying the New
Testament what it is that those who are to read
or hear particular letters are supposed already to
have been taught and to know ; and in the case of
St. Paul's converts we can discover this with some
completeness, though so incidentally are the points
mentioned that we must not argue from his silence
on any particular point that it was not part of his
preliminary teaching. But these * elements,' or the
* tradition/ certainly comprised (1) a code of per-
sonal and social morality (1 Thess. iv. 1, 2, 9) ; (2)
some teaching about the name of God the Father,
the Lord Jesus, or the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and
the Incarnation of the Son and His present glory
and future coming knowledge of this * doctrine *
being plainly assumed ; (3) certain facts concerning
our Lord's human life His birth of a woman, His
death for our sins, resurrection and ascension, and
272 THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
His appearances after His resurrection in detail ;
(4) the meaning of the sacraments of baptism
(Rom. vi. 3) and the eucharist, the incidents of the
institution being given at length ; (5) the Church as
the New Israel and the Body of Christ and the sphere
of the Holy Spirit's action. This must not be taken
as an exhaustive list of points on which St. Paul
takes it for granted his converts have been already
instructed, St. Luke's preface would seem to indi-
cate that our Lord's birth of a virgin was already
in the tradition that is, among the things of which
Theophilus had been informed. In the more strictly
Jewish churches we cannot so easily judge the con-
tent of the first tradition. From the Epistle to the
Hebrews if we may assume that it was written to
a Hebrew church we learn that the first elementary
instruction concerned "repentance and faith, bap-
tisms and the laying on of hands, resurrection and
judgement." But the words which follow about
enlightenment and tasting of the heavenly gift, and
being made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and tasting
the good word of God and the powers of the age to
come, imply a fuller instruction than the list suggests.
Certainly the First Gospel must be taken as a docu-
ment written for Hebrew Christians, and when that
was written the threefold name of God c 'The
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost " which im-
plies a theology like St. Paul's and St. John's was
already associated with baptism by what was believed
to be the word of Christ.
Assuredly, then, from the time when the first
books of the New Testament were being written, it
was the practice of the Church to give its converts
fairly full instruction in faith and morals. The
Creed of the Church is considerably older than the
canon. And after the canon was formed, their
Creed gave the Christians their point of view 1 in
1 This is Athanasms* word, o-/co7r<5s.
THE NEED OF THE TRADITION 273
listening to and reading the books* If in result it
was agreed that " the Bible is to prove " the legitimacy
of the Church teaching i.e. is to be the final court
of appeal yet certainly it was the function of C4 the
Church to teach " in the first instance. The convert
after Ms baptism, and after the instruction which
he received as a catechumen, found himself a mem-
ber of a close fellowship saturated with a certain
moral and theological and sacramental tradition.
This tradition possessed him like an atmosphere,
and it was as possessed by this atmosphere that
he understood the Scriptures. This was the inevit-
able outcome of the method of Christ, who, writing
no books, and giving no order for any to be written,
founded a Church and instituted apostles to be the
carriers of His gospel into the world.
And just as long experience has made it evident
that the tradition needs the open Bible to keep it
pure, so certainly it has made it evident that the
Bible needs the guidance of the Church to introduce
it to its readers. I do not mean that intelligent indi-
viduals whether Greeks and Romans of old or
Indians and Japanese and Chinese of to-day have
not been enlightened and converted to Christ by
reading a New Testament all alone by themselves.
It has been so and it still is so. But on the whole
the isolated individual with the Bible is like the
eunuch of Candace. He lacks guidance. And we
have abundant experience to prove that the private
interpretation of the Bible becomes the source of
strange perverted doctrines based on misunderstood
texts, isolated from the general context. As surely
as history warrants us in saying that the books were
not written to give the first knowledge of Christ, but
presuppose " the tradition " accepted and known,
so experience warns us the books should still be kept
in their original context, as books interpreted by the
Church for whose members they were written*
27^ THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
And if the history of sectarianism teaches us this
lesson, so equally does the history of Biblical criticism
at the hands of critics who either disbelieve the re-
ligion or treat it as what it never can be a matter
purely for the speculative intellect : within their
area we note the way in which the passion for new
theories constantly prevails over the sober estimate
of evidence ; and we note also the extraordinary
differences in the conclusions reached by different
schools of criticism, and their rapid rise and fall.
No one, I think, can study the history of rationalistic
criticism without feeling that, though we owe it a
great debt for the questions it has stirred and the real
light it has constantly thrown on the problems, yet
this is not the way to find the truth about religion,
which, at its root, is still hid from the wise and under-
standing and revealed to the childlike. The Bible,
if it is to be understood, must still be read in the same
spirit in which it was written.
For the Christian religion is first of all a life based
on a teaching accepted as the word of God, and
constantly verified in an agelong and nearly world-
wide experience. No doubt its message and claim
must be constantly tested. For most men the test-
ing must be mainly practical. Put to account by
faith, the claim verifies itself as divine in moral and
spiritual experience. But it must also be tested
intellectually and in the field of critical history, and
to do this is the special vocation of the scholar. He
must do it with entire freedom, following the light
where it leads him. But he will be the better
equipped for enquiry, not the worse, because he
understands his subject-matter with the sort of
understanding that only faith, and the experience
based on faith, could ever have given him.
TWO USES OF SCRIPTURE 275
VI
To conclude, then, there are two uses of Scripture
which must be kept on the whole distinct. There
is the evidential use ; and for this purpose we must
treat the books of the Bible like any other books,
without any regard to inspiration. It is indeed
wholly illogical and out of order to introduce the
claim of Inspiration for the books of the New Testa-
ment before the faith in Christ is secured. And for
this purpose again we must treat the books, not as
collected into a canon of sacred scripture, but as
independent books, the date and character of which
it is the problem of criticism to fix. And all this must
be done freely nothing must be allowed to obscure
the possibility of divergent opinions in the different
authors, though (as has been said) it is true that the
student who understands the religion from within is
more likely to show a sane and balanced understand-
ing of the books than one to whom they are merely
as documents dug up by antiquarians out of the
Syrian sand. Still, in the evidential use of the books
the presuppositions of piety must not be allowed to
hinder the adoption of any conclusion which criticism
requires. The documents must be treated and esti-
mated solely on their historical value and as witnesses
to what the writers believed and had experienced,
But this is not their primary use. They grew up
within the Church as documents in which inspiration
that is, the action of the Spirit of God on the soul
of man is seen at its highest. They are set before
believing souls as documents of the highest spiritual
authority. Each Christian is challenged to put him-
self to school with book after book, with the sure
conviction that each one of the books has something
to teach him, some special aspect of truth which Ms
soul needs to mould it into the divine likeness. And
276 THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
tHs is the use of the Bible with which the preacher
is mostly concerned.
No doubt " evidential " lectures should be deli-
vered occasionally from the pulpit, and they should
be boldly based on a frank and free criticism. No
doubt also in the preacher's normal use of the Bible
he should have the conclusions of criticism in his
mind. He will not, in drawing rich lessons from
the early chapters of Genesis, imply that they are
historical accounts of particular incidents, because
he knows better. He will not quote the passage about
the Three Heavenly Witnesses, because he knows it
does not belong to the original text. He will not
quote St. Matt, xii. 40 or xxviii. 19 the formula of
the threefold name as words of our Lord if he
seriously doubts whether they are so. But he will
not obtrude his opinions. He will seek to preach
positively, not negatively, and almost always in view
of the object of preaching to show men " the way," .
and the truths which are the ground of the way,
and which assist us to follow it. And recognizing
how wide and deep the-function of " the Scriptures "
as " instruments of the spiritual life " was intended
to be, he will never be content to say merely " the
Church teaches " so and so, still less to emphasize
some fragments of Church teaching at the expense
of the balance of the whole, but he will teach fully
and richly out of Scripture as a man can do only if
it is for himself the very treasure-house of truth.
And when we are thinking of the Bible as the book
of the Church for the nourishment of the spiritual
life we need to bear in mind the canon that " the
Church may not so expound one place of Scripture,
that it be repugnant to another." In the practical
spiritual use of the Bible the Church has given this
maxim a rather powerful extension. I feel sure that
if we took the Epistle to the Hebrews as an isolated
book, we should say that when the author wrote that
NOT IN ISOLATED TEXTS 277
u as touching those who were once enlightened . .
and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them
again unto repentance/* he meant to deny the possi-
bility of repentance to deliberate apostates. But
the Church insisted on its being interpreted in view
of what is certainly the general sense for Scripture
that is 9 as not limiting the possibility of repentance
in any case, or the right of the Church to restore
any penitent. Again, St. Matthew twice appears to
admit an exception to the indissolubility of marriage
which St. Paul, St. Mark, and St. Luke do not con*
template ; and here again we find the Church canon-
izing St. Matthew, but generally " explaining away **
his exception. The fact that one of the Epistles and
one of the Gospels should admit something which
appears to be discrepant to the general sense of the
New Testament is a fact which has to be taken
account of ia our estimate of inspiration, as not
being equivalent to infallibility in detail. But con-
cerning the Church as a teaching body, entrusted
with a divine message, the maxim I have quoted, on
which the Church has generally insisted, is full of
right reason. It is the general sense of Scripture
which must govern the teaching, rather than any
isolated texts.
May I end this discussion of the authority of Holy
Scripture by quoting some sane, serious words about
the study of Scripture, words written by a Carthusian
monk Guigo of the abbey of Mont Dieu about
AJD. 1135 to his monastic brethren ?
" Moreover," lie writes, " you must get leisure for
definite reading at a definite hour. Reading left to
chance, and reading of passages at haphazard, does not
edify, but renders the mind unstable* And what is
lightly lodged there, lightly withdraws. But it must be
dwelt upon with faculties concentrated ; and the mind
needs to become accustomed to the study. For the
Scriptures require to be read in the same spirit in which
278 THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
they were written* 1 and can only so be understood.
Yon will never enter into the sense of Paul until by the
exercise of good intention in reading him and by assiduous
meditation you have imbibed his spirit. You will never
understand David till by actual experience the feelings
of his psalms have become yours. And so with the rest.
And in every scripture study is as different from mere
reading, as friendship is from entertaining a guest, and
social affection from an accidental salutation. ... If in
reading the reader seeks God, everything that he reads
co-operates with him to this end, and it captivates his
feeling and brings his whole sense of the passage into the
obedience of Christ. If, on the other hand, the feeling
of the reader declines upon some other end, it drags
everything with it. And he finds nothing so holy or
pious in Scripture as either by vainglory or a distorted
feeling or a corrupt understanding may not minister to
his harm or to vanity." 2
APPENDED NOTE A (see p. 249)
ON BB. A. H. MCNEILE'S " NEW TESTAMENT TEACHING IN
THE LIGHT OF ST. PAUL" 3
I have read Dr. A. H. McNeile's book with much
admiration and instruction on the whole ; but though
I have no doubt we believe alike, in total outcome, on
doctrinal matters, I have felt surprised and unconvinced
by many of his conclusions in detail. And I should like
to ask those who have read my volume on Belief in Christ
to read this book also and ask themselves such questions
as these : Do they feel satisfied with Dr. McNeile's method
of explaining, or as it seems to me explaining away,
Matt, xi. 27 (Luke x. 22) and Mark xiii. 32 (Matt. xxiv. 36)
on pp. 28 ff . ? Is it at all an adequate statement that to
1 This maxim, we see, is very much more ancient than the De
Imitations.
2 See at the end of St. Bernard's works, Guigonis, Ep. adfratres
de Monte Dei, i, xi. I was led to this interesting little book by a
reference of Dr. Strong's.
Cambridge Press, 1923.
DR. A. H. McNEILE 279
OUT Lord His Sonship to God " was Israel's moral sonship
represented and consummated in His own human per-
son " ? (p. SI). Again, admitting as Dr. McNeile does
that St. Paul and St. John believed in Christ as the pre-
existing Son of God (pp. SB and 274), how does he find
either room or need for the pre-existing Man (pp. 33 ,
265) of which I can find no trace in the New Testament
(see Belief in Christ, pp. 76, n. 2, 87 f., 115, 313) ? Is
not Dr. McNeile's explanation of St. Paul's use of IKCFCOO-CF
and c7rrwxWv quite unsatisfying (pp. 63 ff .) ? Is it not a
sign of arbitrariness, if out of the thirty-seven instances
of the title Son of Man in the Synoptic Gospels he must
discount eleven ; and amongst them all that fall before
Peter's confession (pp. 46-8) ? How is the statement
(p. 53) that KU/KOS is " nowhere in the New Testament
a theological term for Christ connoting divinity " (p. 53)
compatible with such a passage as Rom. x, 9-13 ? Or
what do such passages as Rom. xiv. 10 and 2 Cor. v. 10
imply but some sort of resurrection of the wicked (p. 120) ?
Again, is it true that " there is no other hint [in St. John's
Gospel, i.e. except xxL 22-3 j of a future Advent" ? The
statement seems to be implicitly contradicted on pp. 269,
so far as concerns the Gospel as it stands. It is quite
true that " Of the Ascension he [St. John] gives no
record " ; but there are frequent allusions, iii 13 (see
Belief in Christ, p. 115, n. 2), vi. 62, xx. 17; and I see
no justification for the statement that the traditional
belief was " even more difficult than the Resurrection to
place in line with St. John's Christian philosophy."
I have thought it right, though unwillingly, to call
attention to a number of points, which can easily be
added to, on which Dr. McNeile reaches conclusions the
opposite of mine, because it seems to me these are just
points on which his theory and mine of the developments
and bases of the doctrine of Christ's person can be com-
pared and tested in the judgement of my readers.
19
280 THE AUTHORITY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE
APPENDED NOTE B (see p. 253)
IS THERE ANYTHING OF DOCTRINAL IMPORTANCE IN THE
CHURCH TRADITION WHICH WAS NOT ALREADY CON-
TAINED IN SCRIPTURE ?
I can think of nothing doctrinally important in the
primitive tradition which is not already really implicit
or explicit in the New Testament. But the following
points may be regarded as partial exceptions.
1. The idea of Mary as " the second Eve." This was
widely taught in the second century (see Justin Martyr,
Dial, 100; Irenaeus, c. Haer., iii, xxii, 4, v, xix, 1,
Demonstr., 88 ; TertulL, de Came Chr. t 17) in a sense which
implied both a definite place for the Blessed Virgin in
the divine plan of redemption and a position of " advo-
cacy " for Eve. No doubt this doctrine may have an
alarming superstructure built upon it. But in itself it
seems to be based on scriptural facts ; and also there was
no movement to make it a dogmatic requirement.
2. The idea that the bread and wine of the eucharist
were, as first presented on the altar, quite apart from
what they were afterwards to become by consecration,
already a sacrifice. This idea appears to be universal
from Clement of Rome downwards. It may be, as
Justin held, intended by our Lord's words TOVTO Trotetre.
But in the event this idea or doctrine came to be quite
overshadowed by the greater thought of what the ele-
ments became by consecration.
It is also of interest to enquire whether any customs
of the Church, or anything in its practical legislation,
implied or required a doctrine as having authority, to
which Scripture does not allude. I do not think that
the sanction given to sacred images at the second Council
of Nicaea involves any such non-scriptural doctrine, nor
prayers for the dead, nor requests on the part of the
Church to be helped by the prayers of the saints, though
It led no doubt to perilous developments. 1 But there is
one piece of ecclesiastical legislation which does seem to
1 See below, pp. 291, 311, on these points.
VALIDITY OF SCHISMATICAL SACRAMENTS 281
involve a certain doctrine I mean the admission of the
validity of baptisms and ordinations and (by implica-
tion) eueharists in heretical and schlsmatical bodies.
On this the New Testament books are certainly quite silent.
44 Separated churches " are not in any way contemplated.
But the matter was one which had to be decided one way
or the other. Under St. Augustine's leadership the
more liberal view prevailed in the West. It became,
after considerable resistance, obligatory on the bishops to
act in a certain way. But there was no emphasis laid
on any implied doctrine, except on the doctrine that in
every sacrament it is the Holy Spirit who is the real
agent, and not the possibly sinful or heretical earthly
minister a doctrine which is certainly scriptural. In
the East the practice has never been fully received.
Certainly it remains true that nothing in the ancient
or undivided Church has ever been made an article of
faith (as distinct from a pious opinion or a religious
practice) which is not to be found plainly in Scripture.
CHAPTER IX
WHAT IS OF FAITH ?
MY readers and I have been seeking in these volumes
to pursue a long process of continuous reasoning ;
and those who, on the whole, have followed with
assent, or at least provisional assent, to the con-
clusions reached find themselves in this position
they believe that the conception of God which
dominates the Old Testament and which we owe to
the Hebrew prophets, and which reaches its fullest
expression through Jesus Christ and the mission of
the Holy Spirit, reposes upon a real self-disclosure
of God, which is to be received in faith as His word ;
which is more satisfying than anything which men
could have arrived at for themselves by the exercise
of their speculative reason, and fuller than anything
which can in any sense be called divine revelation
to be found elsewhere in the world. It is thus rightly,
from man's present point of view, described as a
supernatural revelation. But the supernatural does
not mean the unnatural. It is indeed but the
restoration and recovery of the deeper and truer
nature of man and of the universe. For what we
call the " word of God " proceeds from the same
fountain of truth and light as has given to man his
natural reason. It is the nature of man to seek to
know God and have fellowship with Him. There is
a movement of God from within man, which sin has
never obliterated, as well as a movement of God upon
him from above. And the supernatural revelation
comes therefore not to overwhelm and bewilder or
282
SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS 283
eclipse the natural reason, but to augment it and to
satisfy and to emancipate. Thus in accepting the
supernatural revelation we at the same time glorify
God our creator by refusing to ignore the claims of
reason in the largest sense, whether as shown in
philosophy or science or historical criticism, or in
the spiritual experience of mankind.
Further, we had been led to believe that "the grace
and truth " which " came by Jesus Christ 3J was not
cast abroad in the world without any preservative
organ or channel. It was committed to a society
which was to be the organ of the Spirit and the Body
of Christ. This society is the Old Israel, the old
people of God, reorganized by Christ ; but whereas
in the old Israel the self-disclosure of God was con-
fined to that one people, the New Israel is free and
open to all the world, a Catholic Church. Such a
Church is by its very nature destitute of those links
which bind nations and most human fellowships to-
gether, such as a common country or language or
racial tradition or common occupation ; but we
have found it to be provided from the beginning with
special links to preserve its continuity and cohesion
especially three : (1) The authority of an apostolic
ministry which perpetuated itself in various grades
and which everywhere was to be regarded with the
reverence due to divinely appointed " stewards of
the divine mysteries. 5 * (2) Certain sacraments of
fellowship in which all were bound to participate*
because they are the divinely given occasions and
instruments for the bestowal of specific divine gifts a
which all alike need, such as regeneration, and the
possession of the Spirit, and the indwelling of Christ.
(3) The common teaching or rule of faith or tradi-
tion, which was to be accepted by all the members
of the Church as the word of God. $g
Finally, we have been occupied in examining the
nature of the authority claimed by the Church for
284 WHAT IS OF FAITH?
its tradition, and for its officers as the responsible
exponents of its tradition ; and inasmuch as there
have risen into prominence in Church history vary-
ing estimates of its range and character, we have been
seeking to discriminate the true from the false or
exaggerated estimate of the authority of the Church ;
and in particular to vindicate a certain regulative
supremacy and finality which the ancient tradition
assigned to Scripture, as adequately embodying the
teaching of the apostles.
But now we may reasonably be asked another
question. What, according to you, is the content of
this authoritative tradition of which the Church is
set in charge what is " of faith " for those who
believe, as you would have them believe, in the
authority of the Catholic Church ? Some answer to
this question we require for our own peace of mind,
and because from all sides some further definition
of our position is demanded of us in a world as full
as our world is of intellectual questionings and con-
tending creeds. What then, more or less in detail,
do you understand by Catholicism considered as a
dogmatic or doctrinal system ? We intend to try
to meet this challenge by considerations as purely
objective and historical as possible, leaving aside
only for the moment l any consideration of the diffi-
culties which arise when we seek to apply our con-
clusions to the present circumstances of the world.
But before we set out on this rather formidable
enterprise there are one or two reminders which we
should do well to give ourselves at starting.
I. First, we must quite dispossess our minds of
the expectation that authority will best show its
divine origin by the assurance with which it can
answer all sorts of questions. The Christian religion
came into the world as a life to be lived, and not
primarily as a doctrine to be received. It came into
1 See chap, xj.
REVELATION INCOMPLETE 285
the world to exhibit the true life of sonship and
brotherhood to show men the real meaning of
humanity. It was, and still is, enabled to do this
in virtue of truths which it has been taught about
God and His purpose, and by a real and continuous
experience which only these truths can explain.
" The life " is based upon " the truth " ; and it is
the content of the " word of truth " which alone can
make faith sure, or hope vigorous, or love active.
And concerning all that is really needful for that moral
and practical purpose, there is no very serious ques-
tion as to what the Church is commissioned to teach.
But religious curiosity has not been at all satisfied
with that. It has wanted to know a great deal
about the unseen world and the state of the dead,
and the glory of the saints and of the Virgin Mother,
and about the manner of the sacramental presence,
and many other " secret things " ; and these questions
for which the ancient tradition had no answers
have received answers ' on authority ' by a process
of (somewhat miscalled) development. And there
can be no question, I think, that the drift of all this
additional teaching has been to satisfy curiosity
about the other world, at the expense of attention
to this. The Church has strangely forgotten its
function to establish a visible example of the King-
dom of God here and now in this world. And you
do not help to a right direction of the Church's
interest in this world by increasing the amount of
information supposed to be authoritative about the
other. And the growth of required dogma, involved
in answering questions to which the apostles had no
answer, has been to many noble and generous souls,
who are surely friends of Christ, a sore addition to
their intellectual burden. The tendency of such a
consideration is to make us wish to minimize rather
than to maximize the dogmatic requirements. We
must seek without evasion to interpret the faith as
286 WHAT IS OF FAITH?
authoritative tradition has handed it down. But
we shall pay great attention to the marked reserve of
the scriptural revelation. Assuredly, according to
that, "we know in part, and we prophesy in part/ 5
As with those who lived under the Old Covenant, so
still with us under the New, " The secret things belong
unto the Lord our God " and " the more part of his
works are hid."
2. We should never forget that the faith is the
faith of the great Church before it is the personal
conviction of an individual. No doubt the Church
has demanded of its candidates for baptism (or in
their name in the case of infants) a strong profession
of personal faith in the clauses of the Apostles' Creed,
" All this I steadfastly believe," 1 and a renewal of
this profession in the visitation of the sick. In the
case of the neophyte in baptism I suppose this means
that he has been taught the creed of the Church
and accepts it on its authority. In visitations of the
sick we know that the prescribed examination of the
sick man's faith causes, in not rare cases, such diffi-
culty that the priest must content himself with
something much less stringent " Lord, I believe :
help thou mine unbelief." a What is wanted is the
profession of the desire and intention of the individual
to unite himself to the faith of the Church. St.
Thomas Aquinas says :
"The confession of faith is made [traditur] in the
creed as in the person of the whole Church which is
united by faith. But the faith of the Church is an
instructed faith [fides formata] . , . and therefore the
1 This is the Anglican form ; but it is, in substance, the ancient
requirement. In the proposed revision of the Prayer Book an
alternative form is offered, according to which the minister asks :
*' Dost thou in [this child's] name profess the Christian faith ?
Answer : I do. Then shall be said by the Minister and Godparents
the Apostle^ Creed."
* Some provision is made in this sense in the revised form for
the Visitation of the Sick.
REQUIREMENTS ON THE CLERGY 287
confession of faith is made in the creed in terms suitable
to an instructed faith, so that, even if there are individuals
among the faithful who have not an instructed faith,
they should [at least] desire to reach it." 1
Further, the Church from time to time in its early
history made specific requirements, especially upon
its bishops, of adhesion to the doctrinal decisions of
the Councils, and in later times has required a
specific profession of personal faith from all those who
are to be appointed its officers. Such requirements
may be criticized in detail, 2 but it can hardly be
regarded as unreasonable that those who are required
to teach a particular creed should be required also
to express their personal adhesion to it. With those
exceptions the Church has made no inquisition into
men's private minds and no specific demand on the
laity. On the whole, I cannot help thinking that we
should make the purpose for which the Creed is
recited in public worship more evident if we were to
say it in the form in which the Council proclaimed
the Nicene Creed beginning not " I believe " but
" we believe," 8 which would mean, " This we acknow-
ledge to be the Catholic faith, to which through all
failures of faith we intend to unite ourselves/'
1 Summa TheoL, 2 a 2 ae , 9, 1, art. 9.
s In the case of the Anglican Church these requirements were
largely revised in 1865, and an excellent revision is now proposed
of the Declaration about Faith in the Scriptures, which it is pro-
posed should run : " Bishop : Do you unfeignedly believe all the
canonical Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments, as given
of God to convey to us in many parts and in divers manners the revela-
tion of Himself which is fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ ? Answer :
I do." The change proposed consists in the addition of the words
italicized.
3 It has often been said that, while in the Western Church the
Creed occurring in the services begins <k I believe," in the Eastern
Church it begins " We believe." But this is a mistake. In the
Eastern Orthodox Church also it begins "I believe" in the Liturgy
of St. James (Brightman's Liturgies, p. 42) and St. Mark (p. 124)
and St. Chrysostom (p. 383, cf. p. 320). In the Liturgy of the
Abyssinian Jacobites, however (p. 226), it is the plural ** We
believe" ; so also in that of the Nestorians (p, 270), and in that of
288 WHAT IS OF FAITH?
What, then, is the content of this Catholic faith ?
Its root lies in the doctrine concerning God and
man and the divine purpose for the world which we
owe to the Hebrew prophets. I shall seek in the
next chapter to emphasize the dominant importance
of this fundamental doctrine, on which our Lord
undoubtedly built and which controls the whole
Christian Creed. And the Church of the early cen-
turies gallantly contended for its distinctive features,
both as regards the divine nature and the freedom of
man, in its long struggle both to use and to correct
the principles and phrases of Greek philosophy. But
I think it cannot be denied that some of these prin-
ciples or assumptions such as the immutability and
impassibility of God were allowed rather seriously
to obscure the Old Testament conception of a God
who has limited Himself by the creation of free beings,
and accommodates Himself to a situation which sin
has introduced, quite contrary to His will, and con-
sents to struggle for man's good against man's re-
bellion, and to be afflicted in the afflictions of His
people a conception of God which, of course, reaches
its climax in the thought of the incarnation and
passion of Him who is "very God." We certainly
need a careful examination of the treatment by the
theologians of the divine attributes. 1 However, it is
the Armenians (p. 426), and in the Liturgy of the Syrian Jacobites
(p. 82) the priest is to say " We believe," and each of the faithful
" I believe." I suppose that in the service of baptism the con-
fession of faith made by the candidate was universally in the
singular, " I believe." See Brightman in Early History of the
Church <md Ministry, pp. 343 fit.
1 1 think also that, in the doctrine of human nature, the proposition
that the soul of man is in its essence incorruptible and so neces-
sarily immortal (St. Thomas, Summa (Theol., p. 1, qu. 75, art. 6 ;
** Respondeo dicendum, quod necesse est dicere, animam humanam,
quam dielmus intellect! vum principium, esse incorruptibilem ' *) is
derived from Greek philosophy and not from Scripture.
THE INCARNATION DEFINED 289
from the Bible chiefly that we are to learn about
God, and the metaphysical scruples of the theologians
have not been allowed in any way to affect the
Creeds and the dogmas of the Church. It is none
other than the God of Israel and the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ who is still our God.
For the revelation given to Israel received its
culmination in the Incarnation. And the faith of
the Church in God is the outcome of the whole process
of divine self-disclosure, by which the name of the
one God became the name of the Father, and of the
Son Jesus Christ and of the Holy Ghost. It was
through their experience of the man Christ Jesus
that the first disciples came to believe Him to be
Lord and God. But this belief in Jesus as the eternal
Son incarnate, and in the Spirit, whose presence
within men is God's presence and Christ's presence,
involved the belief in the Trinity in unity. The
doctrine of the Incarnation is explicit, but the doc-
trine of the Trinity is certainly implicit x in the New
Testament ; and both alike received explicit state-
ment in the Nicene Creed 2 and were protected by
four definitions of Ecumenical Councils, repudiating
four different attempts to explain the person of
1 I have lately read the deeply interesting and entertaining
record of The Travels of Fa-hsien in the excellent translation of
Professor H. A. Giles. But he writes a preface in which he speaks of
the Christian doctrine of the Trinity (p. vii), and he chooses to say
that " nothing was heard of it in the early centuries of the Church,
and it was first enunciated in detail as a mystery in the so-called
Athanasian Creed, of (?) fourth century A.D.," etc. It would be
hard to compress more mistakes into a single sentence. Any
history of doctrine would have enlightened Professor Giles as to the
facts. If a theologian were to make an equally ignorant state-
ment about (say) Buddhism, he would be justly chastised and his
reputation would suffer. But it appears that men of learning in
other departments are allowed to say what they please about
theology.
2 Surely it is pedantic to insist on speaking continually of the
expanded and modified Creed of Chalcedon as *' Nlcaeno-Constan-
tinopolitan " (which is very likely inaccurate) or by any other
periphrasis.
290 WHAT IS OF FAITH?
Christ which, were found to be fundamentally sub-
versive of the Christian faith.
Certainly the Catholic Church is committed in the
deepest sense to this Creed with its affirmations both
of facts and principles, and to these definitions. In
their appeal to the New Testament on behalf of their
definitions we must acknowledge that the Fathers are
abundantly justified. Certainly there is to be found
there the faith in the real deity of Christ, and in the
continuity and unity of His person, before and after
His incarnation, and in the full and permanent reality
of the humanity which He assumed and in which He
was glorified. No doubt the dogmas have been mis-
used ; but only in so far as it was forgotten that they
were primarily negative, and that for our positive
picture of the Christ we must constantly go back
to the Gospels. But as to this I believe enough has
been said elsewhere. 1
No doubt a good deal of human nature at its
worst is to be found in the history of these Ecumenical
Councils ; if there had been less of human sin at
work the definitions need not have involved such
serious and permanent schisms as did in fact result.
Nevertheless, nothing of substantial value for the
Church has emerged from Arianism or Nestorianism
or Monophysitism since they became organized in
separate churches, and nothing, we may thankfully
recognize, which was right in the theological inten-
tions of those who supported these heresies, or hesi-
tated to condemn them, has been in result excluded
from the Catholic faith. On the other hand, I think
it is impossible to consider how strong a tendency
there was inside the Church to reduce the meaning
of the " flesh " of Christ into a mere veil of a divine
theophany, or a mere medium for the sacramental
1 See Belie./ in Christ, chaps, vii and viii. Also above, Appended
Note, p. 228, where the objections of Dr. Mackintosh are con-
. sidered at length.
THE LATER COUNCILS 291
communication of God to man, without feeling that
the Holy Spirit of truth was overruling the Church
through all the period of the Councils, producing
that strong determination which the Church showed
to insist on the full reality and complete activity of
the manhood in Christ, in reason and will and spirit
as well as in body, and guiding the mind of the
Church to the production of a protective formula of
balanced antithesis. We recognize that the Fathers
might truly say, " It seemed good to the Holy Spirit
and to us."
II
I have spoken in the main about four Councils
Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon
because the fifth (second of Constantinople, A.D. 553),
which condemned certain writings of theologians long
dead who had fostered Nestorianism or condemned the
theology of St. Cyril, did not add anything to the
theological definition of Ephesus, and need not re-
ceive the attention of the 6 layman ' in technical
theology * ; and the sixth Council (third of Constanti-
nople, A.D. 680), which balanced the fifth, as Chalce-
don had balanced Ephesus, though its affirmation of
the reality of the human will and complete human
activity in our Lord (as well as the divine will and
divine activity) was really important, yet substantially
added nothing to the work of the second and fourth
Councils. So that for our present purpose we can
ignore them.
But something must be said about the seventh
council (second of Nicaea, A.D. 787). Its claim to be
called ecumenical has been seriously disputed, and by
such men among our theologians as William Palmer
and John Mason Neale but not convincingly, if it be
1 See, however, Appended Note, p. 315, on the fifth and
seventh Coxmcils.
292 WHAT IS OF FAITH?
judged by objective tests, for it was finally received
universally as ecumenical like the second Council.
The Eastern Orthodox Churches in particular hold
to it with even a fanatical devotion ; and I do not
think its conclusions need be rejected on the ground
that they are unscriptural. Its object was to vindi-
cate afresh the making and venerating of sacred
images (icons) against the imperial and military
iconoclasts. The theologians upon whom the Council
relied, of whom the greatest was St. John of Damas-
cus, were surely right in saying that the Incarnation
had introduced an important modification into the
sense of the second Commandment. It could not be
wrong to make artistic representations of the human
form and acts and sufferings of Jesus Christ. Such
pictures are "the books of the unlearned/' and for
all men are intended to serve as memorials of events
with which our redemption is bound up. And
similar memorials of the saints must be allowed, and
of angels (who have appeared as men). So the Council
affirmed. When the customary respect and venera-
tion is paid to the image, it is not paid to the
material object, but to its unseen prototype. And
adoration (latria) is to be given, not to any saints
nor to any image, even of Christ, but only to God as
He is in Himself. The Council was occupied in
vindicating a Church practice, passionately clung to,
rather than in establishing a theological principle.
But there is a theology involved and declared by the
Council, and I do not think it should offend us as
unreasonable or unscriptural. It would indeed
have been well if the Church had always sought to
keep the devotion of its people within the limits
prescribed by the Council. 1
Nevertheless in respect of devotional practice
the whole-hearted acceptance of the principle of
images and of paying them ceremonial homage, does
1 See Appended Note, p* 315.
THE VENERATION OF IMAGES 293
represent a change of attitude as compared to that
of earlier teachers of the Church. St. Augustine
could not have written as he did against the venera-
tion of images among the pagans, repudiating as a
subterfuge the distinction proffered between grades
of worship, 1 if the Church of his day had accepted
the principles of the second Nicene Council. There
was in fact a strenuous effort on the part of some
of the Fathers who were very familiar with pagan
idolatry against a tendency of human nature to
make and venerate images and pictures of holy
persons, which is not necessarily idolatry, but runs
easily into it ; but the tendency proved too strong
to be resisted, and what the second Nicene Council
sought to do was to approve the practice of making
and venerating images, with the enthusiasm of men
who had just been relieved from persecution for their
inherited religious customs, and at the same time to
safeguard it against running into idolatry. That
the barriers it raised did not prove wholly effective
does not condemn the Council. And there are very
few to-day who would condemn the making of
images of Christ or of the saints.
Ill
We have mentioned all the definitions which the
whole Church in ecumenical council has formulated
and made obligatory upon its teachers or in a less
direct sense upon all its members. But there is of
course a large body of coherent "articles of faith "
which have either never received definition at all, or
at any rate have never received definition of the like
ecumenical authority. Thus St. Paul taught the
Church very explicitly to believe that not only are
1 See Enarr. in Psalm cxiii, Serm. ii, 4-6 : *' Quis enim adorat
vel orat intuens simulacrum, qui non sic afficitur, ut ab so se
exaudiri putet, ab eo sibi proestari quod desiderat speret 2 "
204 WHAT IS OF FAITH?
individual men sinners, but that mankind as a whole,
all the children of Adam, are involved in sin, before
any actual sins of their own, inheriting anature biassed
towards evil and enslaved to evil, so that they need,
every one of them, not merely enlightenment and
encouragement, but a fundamental renewal of their
nature and redemption from bondage, which it is
the purpose of the free grace of God to give them in
Christ, transforming them from the old manhood to
the new. St. Paul is explicit about all this; and
the doctrine of " original sin " is implicit in the
Bible generally, and it is an underlying assumption
of theology, Eastern as well as Western, 1 though the
Easterns are more constantly occupied in asserting
man's remaining freedom. When the denials of
Pelagius forced the question to the front, Augustine
became the vindxcator-in-chief of the idea of man's
inherently sinful state, but he also startled the West
by his exaggerations of our depravity and helpless-
ness. What has a right to be called Catholic
teaching on the subject received moderate expression
at a small Council of Orange in 529, which, as con-
firmed by the Pope, became authoritative in the
West and also represents the doctrine of the East. In
the decrees of this Council original sin was emphatic-
ally dissociated from St. Augustine's terrible affirma-
tion of u the predestination of souls to evil by the
power of God, 9 ' which is condemned with horror ;
and the free will in man is declared to be " warped
and weakened," but not destroyed ; and it is not
suggested that the fault or defect of our nature is
itself guilt, which seems to be an especially personal
word. I have tried at an earlier stage of our dis-
cussion 2 to show how the doctrine can be freed
1 Thus Qrigen takes for granted that all men are fallen, even
when he relegates the fall to a previous state of existence. This
idea of a prenatal fall was his earlier, though apparently not his
final, teaching.
2 Belief in Christ, chap, ix.
ORIGINAL SIN, ATONEMENT, INSPIRATION 295
from the exaggerations and associations of gross
injustice which have been allowed to encrust it, and
can be expressed in terms which do not leave it
in collision with biological science. So freed and so
re-expressed I dare to say that the experience and
conscience of men respond to it and confirm it. Here
I am only concerned to maintain that it has behind
it the authority of Scripture and of the Catholic
tradition.
There are two other doctrines to be named which
have behind them the whole weight of Catholic
authority the Atonement made once for all for the
sins of men by the sacrifice of the cross, and the
inspiration of the writers of Scripture by the Spirit
of God. Both are barely alluded to in the Nicene
Creed in the words "crucified for us" and "I
believe in th.e Holy Ghost . . . who spake by the
prophets " ; but in spite of marked differences of
theory about the former which have prevailed in
different ages, and of considerable differences about
the second in the early centuries, nothing has been
done, either by ecumenical council or even by general
consent, to define either the one or the other. The
former has in the most emphatic sense the authority
of Scripture, and the enthusiastic assent of the
Christian world as a whole ; the latter has, for the
Old Testament the emphatic authority of the New,
and for the New Testament the belief of the Christian
Church from the beginning. The former has been,
like the doctrine of the Fall, even monstrously en-
cumbered with associations of injustice which have
revolted the consciences of good men ; and in ages
before the rise of historical criticism, the latter has
been given an extension of meaning and identified
with infallibility in a way which criticism has made
impossible for us. But, as has been said, the Church
has not defined their meaning, and they can be
disencumbered of features which are contrary to
20
296 WHAT IS OF FAITH?
our moral conscience or our reason without any real
loss of spiritual value* 1 So disencumbered they do
not, as I have argued already, present any real
obstacle to our intellects, while both of them in
Christian experience have received the widest and
deepest confirmation.
IV
It is certainly remarkable what doctrines were not
inserted in the Creeds. But it has to be remembered
that both the Nicene and Apostles 5 Creeds were
originally baptismal creeds, and the clauses were
expansions of the threefold name of God the name
of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost in
which baptism was conferred. This the faith in
the name was in a pre-eminent sense the Catholic
faith, and still in the Quicunque Vult (as in the Te
Deum and the Gloria in excelsis) this only is so pro-
claimed. The corollaries of this faith, about which
there was no dispute, could be taken for granted.
So it was that there is in the Creeds only the barest
allusion to the doctrines of the Atonement and the
inspiration of Scripture. So also, while I believe in
the Holy Ghost received expansion in I believe in
one holy catholic and apostolic church (which is the
organ of the Holy Spirit), or as in the early African
creed, I believe the remission of sins and eternal
life through the holy Church, nothing was said in
the Creeds about the sacraments except (in the
Nicene Creed) I acknowledge one baptism for the
remission of sins. That is all* And yet this
meagre mention of one sacrament, and the absence
of any attempt at authoritative definition of any
sacrament for more than a thousand years, stands
1 This has been argued earlier : see Belief in Christ, chap, x,
for the doctrine of the Atonement ; for the doctrine of the inspira-
tion of Scripture see in this volume, pp. 254 ft
BELIEF IN THE SACRAMENTS 297
In even startling contrast to the intensity of the
belief in their spiritual efficacy which possessed the
Church from the beginning. That the Church is
the home of the Spirit, and that membership in
Christ and all His rich gifts are imparted to men
in the sacraments of the Church, was their belief and
their experience, grounded, as we have seen, on the
apostolic teaching. l Thus they believed that baptism
was their new birth that by the action of the Holy
Spirit in that sacrament they passed into a new
spiritual status " in Christ,'* and their old sins were
washed away. Baptism was both " their grave and
their mother." They believed also that in the rite
of the laying on of the bishop's hand, in which
baptism was completed, there was imparted to each
individual the anointing of the Holy Spirit, which
gave him his full standing in the royal and priestly
body. There is no subject on which the early
teaching is richer and more spiritual than on the
subject of baptism ; and no part of the expressive
ritual of the Church was more full of meaning than
the rite of baptism. Nor during all the early period,
when to become a Christian was a dangerous adven-
ture, was there much peril of a mechanical or magical
idea of baptism. The moral requirement was un-
mistakable, and it was expressed in the current dread
of post-baptismal sin, which made men doubt whether
more than one absolution for gross sin after baptism
was even possible.
No doubt, when Christianity became the established
religion, baptism became largely a convention and
the belief in its efficacy largely non-moral. But this
was purely an abuse against which the language of
the rite of baptism, as of the New Testament, was
a continual protest. In fact it ought to be no more
possible to draw a contrast between the requirement
of baptism and the requirement of faith and con-
1 See above,, chap. iv.
298 WHAT IS OF FAITH?
version than to draw a contrast between food and
digestion. As the healings of Christ in the Gospels
required both the power which passed out from
Him and also the faith of the recipient to appro-
priate it, so in baptism, and in the sacraments
generally, the external rite embodies the power of
the Spirit and supplies the spiritual food ; but its
efficacy to effect the spiritual enrichment of the
soul of the recipient depends upon the faith of his
converted will. There is need of equal emphasis on
both factors.
About the doctrine of baptism there was not any
appreciable variety of opinion. But that was not
so about the doctrine of the eucharist. I am not
attempting here to write a history of theology, but
only to enumerate the " articles of the faith " as the
constant tradition of the Church presented them.
Elsewhere I have endeavoured to give a conspectus
of those different types of explanation of the eucharist
which we find in the ancient Church. 1 But behind
those different attempts at explanation there was
the constant realistic faith concerning it, which first
finds clear expression in St. Paul. Thus Justin
Martyr, in the middle of the second century, in the
" apology " for the Christians which he addressed
to the Emperor Antoninus Pius, writing of the
eucharistic feast of the Church, says :
" This food is called among us Eucharist, and no one
is allowed to partake of it unless he believes that what
we teach is true, and has been washed in the laver for
the remission of sins and for regeneration, and is living
as Christ enjoined. For we do not receive these things
as common bread or common drink, but just as Jesus
Christ our Saviour, by the word of God made flesh,
had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so we have been
1 The Body of Christ, pp. 59 f. (Murray). To this book I must
refer for a fuller discussion of all the questions concerning the
eucharist.
BELIEF IN SACRAMENTS 299
taught that the food over which thanks have been given
by the word of prayer which comes from Him, that food
from which our blood and flesh are by assimilation
nourished, is both the flesh and the blood of that Jesus
who was made flesh."
So Irenaeus writes : " The bread and the mixed cup,
receiving upon themselves the word of God, become
Eucharist, that is, the body and blood of Christ." l
That from the first was the faith of the Church about
its sacrifice and sacrament.
So also they believed in the sacramental efficacy
of the judgements of the Church upon the "mortal "
sins of its members, and of its absolutions, as carrying
with them the judgement and absolution of Christ.
This belief, founded on our Lord's words as St. Paul
interpreted them, was the basis of the Church system
of penance later called a sacrament through all
the variations in the use of it. Also they believed in
ordination as a sacrament ; that is, they believed
that through the laying on of the bishop's hands a
spiritual gift was really imparted, qualifying a person
for ministry in the various grades of office. Also they
believed in the indissolubility of marriage in a sense
that may be called sacramental, though after the
establishment of the Church the principle began to
be seriously compromised in the East. And finally,
the ceremony of anointing the sick with a view to
their recovery, enjoined by St. James, came to be
regarded as in some sort sacramentaL Thus,
though they did not for more than ten centuries talk
about seven sacraments, 2 yet all these rites of the
Church, environing the life of man with spiritual
blessings from the cradle to the grave, were regarded
as having in somewhat different senses a sacramental
power. But the rites first called " sacraments " (or
" mysteries " in Greek) were baptism with confirma-
1 For references see Body of Christ, pp. 4 ft, 81 1
* See above, Appended Note B, p. 149.
300 WHAT IS OF FAITH?
tion, and the eucharist, and sometimes ordination ;
and though there were no precise dogmatic defini-
tions, 1 as indeed there were no such denials as evoke
definition, the faith in sacraments, as ceremonies of
the Church which were instruments of divine gifts,
was universal and undisputed. It was inseparable
from the Catholic faith and life and it was rooted
in the New Testament.
When we say "I believe in one holy catholic
and apostolic church " we mean that we believe a
visible society, however full of human infirmity, is
yet the special organ of the Holy Spirit and of the
living Christ in the world. This belief I have sought
to vindicate as representing the real intention of our
Lord. But here I am only concerned to point out
one of its corollaries. A visible society which, be-
cause it is to be diffused throughout the world, lacks
all the links of fellowship which belong to a nation,
must have links of its own ; and one of the chief of
these w r as, in fact, a ministry, proceeding down the
generations by succession from the apostolic fount, and
taking shape in a hierarchy of bishops, presbyters,
and deacons in each local church. In the inter-
communion of the bishops was to be found the link
1 When I say there were no precise definitions I am speaking
of the early centuries or the undivided Church. The dogma of
transubstantiation was indeed a precise definition, but I have
already (briefly above, p. 193, more at length in Dissertations,
iii, " Transubstantiation and Nihilianism"), given the reasons which
seem to me convincing why we should not accept it as a dogma
or indeed as a true opinion. It was in the seventeenth century
accepted by the Orthodox Church, though in the case of th Russian
Church without the accompanying theory of substance and acci-
dents ; but it would appear to have been accepted half-heartedly
and certainly without following it out to its consequences. I
am led to believe that our not accepting it would be no bar to union
with the Orthodox Church, And the reasons for not accepting
it are fundamental.
THE APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION 801
of Catholic fellowship, and in their due succession
the guarantee of continuity. That the ministry of
the Church, so constituted, was, with extraordinary
unanimity over the whole Christian world, believed
to have divine authority, so that membership in the
Church could only be maintained by adhering to it,
is an undoubted fact of history from the middle of
the second century to the period of the Reformation.
Its authority ranks with the authority of Scripture
and the authority of the Creeds. This fundamental
law of order was equated in importance with the
fundamental rule of faith. If there is anything on
which the " binding " and " loosing " power granted
to the Church can be said to have been exercised it
is on the necessity of the episcopate. Those teachers
who, like Jerome, minimized the difference between
bishops and presbyters, as a matter of ecclesiastical
arrangement, yet did not doubt that authority had
in fact restricted to the bishops the power of grant-
ing the ministerial commission. If we take account of
the disruptive tendencies of human nature in ancient
as in modern times, we must confess that it was the
episcopate, and the principle of the apostolic succes-
sion, which saved the unity of the Church, so far as
it was saved.
As we have seen, Ignatius of Antioch at the be-
ginning of the second century t can proclaim the
threefold ministry to be (1) necessary to the con-
stitution of a church ; (2) an ordinance of the
apostles; and (8) as world -wide as the Church
itself. It would appear that in this last point he
was not quite well informed. There were churches
still without a monarchical bishop. And it is an
obscure matter exactly how the Church constitution,
as Ignatius describes it, developed out of the consti-
tution of the Church as it appears in the Acts and
the Pastoral Epistles. But there is really nothing
in the New Testament to support the idea that any
802 WHAT IS OF FAITH?
church had the right to elect and appoint its own
officers without the intervention of the apostles, or
those who held quasi-apostolic authority, like Timothy
and Titus, to ordain to the ministry with the laying
on of hands. Both the evidence and the probability
"are against it. Thus we have very sure grounds for
maintaining that our Lord constituted a ministry in
His Church in the persons of apostles ; that it acted
as a ministry intended to be self-perpetuating ; that
in fact it took shape in the threefold ministry known
to Church history without any signs of confusion or
controversy ; and that the authority of the Church
universal has been as deeply as possible committed
to the principle of the apostolic succession.
Elsewhere I have endeavoured at length to develop
the evidence. Here I would only say that there is
no subject on which it is more necessary to take a
wide view of the evidence as a whole, if one is to
avoid being misled.
VI
Now we have to consider a quite different part of
the Christian faith that which concerns the life
beyond. " I look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come." "I believe in
the resurrection of the body [flesh] and the life
eternal." There is no question raised that the
Catholic Church has held it to be essential to believe
that there is an immortal life beyond death, and that
this is not merely an immortality of the soul, but a
persistence of the whole human personality, body as
well as soul, of which the resurrection of Jesus Christ
supplied the prototype. There was, however, consider-
able ambiguity in the way in which this belief was
expressed. Had Christ been raised " in the flesh " ?
St. Paul apparently would say No : He was raised
in the body, but not in the flesh ; " flesh and blood
THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY 303
cannot inherit the Kingdom of God." That is to
say, he identifies " flesh " with the present corrup-
tible condition of the body. On the other hand,
St. John * appears to assume a Christ existing still
in flesh and blood, 2 though " the flesh " and " blood "
have now become "spirit and life." Ignatius, some
fifteen years after the appearance of the Fourth
Gospel, passionately affirms this. It is thus a ques-
tion of the definition of words whether we are to speak
of the glorified body or of the glorified flesh. But no
doubt can be entertained that, in days when, though
in some respects there was a high level of enlighten-
ment, there was crass ignorance of what we have
come to call " science," it was easy for men to assume
that what would happen at the resurrection would
be a recollection of the materials of our present body ;
and the expression " I believe in the resurrection of
the flesh " was, in fact, interpreted and insisted upon
in this sense. Even then, however, wiser men, such
as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, refused so gross an
idea ; and it is probably in deference to such, more
rational, opinion that the Nicene Creed when it was
enlarged did not contain the words " I expect the
resurrection of the flesh " (or even " I expect the
resurrection of the body "), but " I expect the resur-
rection of the dead."
A group of our Modernists to-day have been press-
ing us with the prevalence in ecclesiastical writers
of the grosser view, and endeavouring to claim that
it has full Catholic authority, in order to discredit
authority altogether. But that is not just : we
must always scrutinize current theology in the light
* And St. Peter in Acts ii. 32.
a See 2 John 7. Christ is still to come in the flesh : see Westcott's
note. The permanence of the "flesh" and " blood" of Christ is
also assumed in some sense in John vi., and the flesh and blood
there spoken of are declared to be the flesh and blood of the ascended
and glorified Christ, and are therefore to be thought of as "spirit
and life" (ver. 62-3). St. Paul and St. John do not differ
substantially at all.
804 WHAT IS OF FAITH?
of the formally expressed doctrine (where such exists)
and of the New Testament. There were, we know,
two currents of explanation of the doctrine the
grosser and commoner, and the more refined. And
the Church inserted in its most authoritative Creed
the Nicene an expression which markedly does
not commit us to the common view, and justifies us
in taking the Western expression " I believe in the
resurrection of the flesh " in the sense in which, I
suppose, St. John would have adhered to it.
But it is even more important to appeal to the
New Testament, and especially to St. Paul, who alone
has expounded at length what he would have us
understand by the resurrection of the body, and has
expounded it in a sense which certainly does not
suggest the recollection of the material atoms.
St. Paul, then, does not attempt to analyse what
happens to the body after death or at the resurrec-
tion scientifically ; and he is not concerned (as we
shall see) with the " intermediate state " of the dis-
embodied soul at all ; but he contemplates in all
cases a transition from our present " natural " and
corruptible bodies to the condition of what he calls
the "spiritual body." This, no doubt, on the
pattern of our Lord's, he conceives of as material ;
but the materiality must be such as would be no
impediment to spirit : that is, we must suppose,
it is a refined sort of materiality, in which matter is
wholly the vehicle and subservient instrument of
spirit, as appears in the Gospels to have been the case
with our Lord's risen body. 1 St. Paul speaks quite
indefinitely, however. But he insists that in all
cases the transition from the natural to the spiritual
body will take place. " We shall not all sleep [die],
but we shall all be changed," 2 and he contemplates
three different cases of this transition : the case of
1 See Beliejin God, pp. 268-9, and the whole section pp. 262 ff.
8 1 Cor. xv. 51.
ST. PAUL'S CONCEPTION 305
our Lord, whose body saw no corruption, but was
transmuted within the period when He lay in the
grave ; the case of those who are to be alive at the
Coming, which he still hoped would be his own case,
for whom he contemplates using vague words, as
about a " mystery " a sudden transformation " in
a moment, in the twinkling of an eye " ; and the
case of those who have died and been buried, and
whose bodies have therefore presumably rotted in
the grave. And in their case the language he uses
does not at all suggest the recollection of material
particles, but, as in the case of the seed corn, the con-
tinuity of a vital principle clothed by God in a new
embodiment. So we will boldly, with St. Paul, hold
to the faith in " the resurrection of dead men " as
the Creed expresses it, or " the resurrection of the
body " as St. Paul suggests it, interpreting in this
sense the more Johannine phrase " the resurrection
of the flesh," without for the moment allowing
ourselves to be encumbered with notions derived
from a pre-scientific age, and without any claim
to understand by what exact method what we believe
in will be accomplished.
And we shall rejoice to recognize that in believing,
not in the immortality of a bare soul, but in the
resurrection of the whole person, we are in harmony
with the spirit of science. For science, in the true
sense, shows us such an intimate dependence of spirit
on body in man as to make the idea of purely dis-
embodied spirits very difficult. We have lost, or
ought to have lost, all the old Greek and Oriental
horror of the body as such. What we look for is the
perfecting of the whole creation for the fulfilment
of spiritual purpose, through whatever final catas-
trophe. " Nature itself also shall be delivered from
the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the
glory of the sons of God " ; and for these sons of
God what we look forward to is indeed a glory un-
806 WHAT IS OF FAITH?
imaginable, when He who is our Redeemer, at His
final coming or manifestation, shall have " fashioned
anew our bodies of humiliation that they may be
conformed to the body of his glory, according to the
working whereby he is able even to subject all
things unto himself." The figures in which His
coming is described to us are doubtless symbolic,
but its essential and moral meaning is unmistak-
able.
Almost all the Christian outlook upon the life to
come in the New Testament is directed to the great
end. We are assured of personal immortality in its
completest sense, but its completion is associated with
the Last Day, the Day of Resurrection and the world
to come. Generally the resurrection is spoken of in
the joyful sense in which it is to happen to those who
are "in Christ." But in our Lord's parable of the
Day of Judgement, and in the Fourth Gospel, and in
the Apocalypse we hear of a resurrection of those
who have rejected Christ and God, of the unjust as
well as the just, and St. Paul appears to anticipate
the same. 1 And if we are to give serious meaning
to the words of our Lord none the less awful because
figurative and of St Paul and St. John, we must
recognize a final assessment of all human lives, a
final judgement of God, and an awful possibility of
final and irretrievable condemnation. 2 Life is essen-
tially probation. Acts form habits and habits form
character and character tends to become fixed.
And there seems to be bound up with the reality of
responsibility the possibility that the personal will
may so identify itself with evil as to have lost at
the last the faculty for good, and to have become
finally incompatible with God. In such a case, to
1 St. Matt. xxv. 31 ff.; John v. 2S~9; Apoc. xx. 11 fi. ; Rom. ii.
5-16, xiv. 10 ; 2 COT. v. 10.
1 I have endeavoured to summarize conclusions and give refer-
ences on this tremendous subject in Expos, of Romans, vol. ii,
App C, p, 210.
THE DOCTRINE OF HELL 307
recall the tremendous words of Isaiah, the near
coming of the divine holiness has become intolerable
and elicits nothing but the cry, " Who among us shall
dwell with the devouring fire ? Who among us shall
dwell with everlasting burnings ? " 2 The considera-
tion of this horrible possibility of final ruin and
misery chills us to our very bones and is meant to
chill us. For my own part, I cannot understand
how anyone, who considers human nature broadly,
can doubt that in moments of almost irresistible
temptation, when yet we have time and will to
think, the thought of the infinite and timeless issues
of wilful sin the undying worm and the unquench-
able fire has, and is meant to have, an overpowering
effect upon us. tc Fear him," said our Lord, " who
after he has killed hath power to cast into hell ; yea,
I say unto you, Fear him," And the repudiation of
this sort of fear seems to me to be one of the silliest
features in modern religion.
The imagination of men from very early days
occupied itself in drawing gruesome pictures of hell,
which revolt us or make us laugh ; and doctrines
which condemned men to hell unbaptized infants, or
all the non-Christian world, or all the non-elect, or
all who, however sincerely, had reached heretical
conclusions in such indiscriminate fashion as to be
wholly contrary to justice, have discredited the
teaching about hell, so that the popular Christianity of
to-day appears almost to have "left it out." But
it is there in the authentic teaching of Christ and
in the innermost testimony of the enlightened con-
science. There is language in St. Paul about " eternal
destruction," and language which seems to identify
the ultimate issue of things with the absolute and
universal triumph of good when God shall be " all
in all " which has made some thoughtful men
conceive that the state of the lost may carry with it
1 Isa. xxxiii. H.
308 WHAT IS OF FAITH?
the ultimate dissolution of personality and personal
consciousness* For my own part, I thankfully
accept this as a possibility. " Eternal " does not
always mean " everlasting," and " eternal fire " is
only strictly interpreted in terms of everlasting time
in the images of the Apocalypse, 1 where temporal
images are almost always to be translated into non-
temporal ideas, if we are to understand them truly.
So I cherish this hope, finding the idea of actually
everlasting torment unthinkable.
But this is an uncertain interpretation. What is
of the greatest importance is that we should recall the
attention of men to the awful warnings of our Lord
as to the ultimate possibility of self-chosen ruin,
calling to mind at the same time that we know the
character of Him who is to judge the quick and
dead, and that we cannot associate with Him in-
justice or inconsiderateness, or any refusal to do the
best possible for every soul that He has created ; and,
for the rest, to acknowledge our ignorance and the
absence of any attempt on the part of the undivided
Church, in spite of a great deal of provocation, to
define authoritatively what is to be understood by
** eternal punishment. 3 ' 2
Certainly the belief in the ultimate judgements to
be passed on all human souls at the Last Day has a
tremendous effect on human life. That, however,
has come to seem far off, and meanwhile human
curiosity has largely exercised itself not on those
ultimate issues, but on the immediate future after
death. How is it with those I love, who have de-
1 Apoo. xx. 10.
8 It is certain that universalism which I hold to be really in-
compatible with the New Testament was very prevalent in the
East, and yet received no formal condemnation by any Council,
except in connexion with Origen's idea of pre-existence, which
was condemned at the Council which formulated the XV anathemas ;
but there was hardly any consideration given to conditional immor-
tality in any form.
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE 309
parted this life, here and now ? Do they know what
is happening to us on earth ? Can I speak to them
or in any way reach them ? And imperfect as they
were, are they not still under education and cleansing ?
And to all such questions there is in the New Testa-
ment and in the early tradition very little answer.
The blessed dead are in "Paradise," or in " Abra-
ham's bosom." These phrases, taken over by our
Lord from the later Jewish tradition, were retained
and loved by the early Church. Again, St. Paul
assures us they " have fallen asleep in Jesus/' and are
" the Lord's " as much as those who are alive, and are
" with Christ " in some " far better " sense than we
are in this world. 1 And their sleep is plainly not
unconsciousness. The " spirits of just men " have
been " made perfect," 2 though they still await their
consummation at the resurrection of the just. It
was in view of this consummation that St. Paul
prayed for his apparently dead friend Onesiphorus,
" The Lord grant unto him to find mercy of the Lord
in that day." 3 And the early Church prayed un-
hesitatingly and abundantly for the dead, but in a
sense which suggests always that rest and light and
peace and refreshment are the thoughts which were
associated with Paradise. As to the occupations
and interests of the departed we are told nothing.
If there is a providential purpose in the silence of
Scripture, it is plain that it is not intended for us to
have our minds preoccupied with the state of the
dead. Our main business is to be with the building
of the Kingdom in this world.
From very early times, however, as was natural,
men's minds were directed to the question whether,
imperfect as even good Christians are when they die,
the state of the dead must not be a state of being
purified, and whether purification must not be rela-
1 1 These, iv. 14 ; Bom. xiv. 8-9 Phil L 23.
1 Heb. xii. 23. 3 2 Tim. i. 16-18.
810 WHAT IS OF FAITH?
tively painful, 1 On this matter there was a good
deal of speculation, beginning with Clement of
Alexandria. A number of the Fathers from Clement
and Origen to Jerome and Gregory of Nyssa were
" universalists " that is, they hoped that all would
ultimately be saved and for them the idea of hell
was that of a shorter or longer cleansing by fire.
But this was certainly neither in Scripture nor in
tradition. The tradition, as Origen states it, was
simply that in the world to come the souls of men,
clothed in their spiritual bodies, will inherit eternal
life or suffer eternal punishment according to their
works. And there was a further speculation, based
(surely) on a misunderstanding of the phrase " saved
yet so as by fire," as to a cleansing of all alike in the
fire of the Great Day/ These were speculations.
And we cannot but speculate, It seems an inevitable
conclusion of reason that the intermediate state
must be somehow a state of cleansing, and cleansing
must be somehow painful. But the fact remains
that Scripture is silent on the subject and the
authoritative tradition of the Church. There were
those, on the other hand, who held that souls at
death are suddenly changed into the wholly good
or wholly evil. Augustine, as has been shown,
in whom the idea of a purgatory for the imperfect
in the intermediate state first clearly appears, plainly
knew that there was no tradition behind him. He
believes in purgatory, but he says "it is not in-
credible," it is a matter of " perhaps." l
I have said something about the way in which
1 Origen, de Princip. i, praef. 5. 8 See above, p. 198.
3 It must not be left out of sight that, though all the emphasis
in the New Testament is laid on the day of salvation being ** now "
and "the time" being "short," yet in 1 Pet. iii. 18 iv. 6, we
have an intimation, so far distinct, that waiting souls in the unseen
world, rebellious as they had been, could hear the gospel and
live. If it was possible in their case, may it not be so in that of
others ?
THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS 311
Gregory the Great, in the light of his blood-curdling
visions, laid the basis of the mediaeval Western belief
in purgatory, as a place where the temporal punish-
ment due to our forgiven sins has to be expiated in
torments ; and there was superimposed upon this
the doctrine that the power of the Church in dis-
pensing " the treasury of merits " could extend
"indulgences/ 5 that is, remissions of temporal pun-
ishment, even into the unseen world. These twin
doctrines had a portentous effect ; they altered the
whole character of the Church's outlook upon the
world of the faithful departed, and added enormously
to the idea of the Church's power with results which
we all know. But certainly neither in Scripture nor
in tradition is to be found the ground for either the
doctrine of purgatory or the doctrine of indulgences
applicable to the dead. 1 Accordingly they cannot be
part of the authoritative faith.
There are many things we should like to know,
which apparently the divine wisdom has not thought
it good that we should know. We cannot doubt
that the departed pray for us. If they are
conscious and in Christ, we feel it cannot be other-
wise. The great saints who have fought the Church's
battle and cared for her with all their souls cannot
forget her in their prayers in Paradise. Thus surely
the Church has most rightly prayed to God that we
might be helped by the intercession of the saints
and of the Virgin Mother ; and that such prayers were
left out of our service-books at the Reformation is
indeed lamentable. D ef ect is certainly no less culpable
than excess. And if the mediaeval cultus of the
saints was excessive, our neglect of their communion
1 There is an interesting article in Theology, No. 41, November
1023, by Mr. A. Lewis James, on "The Intermediate State." But
our best book, as I have said, is Dr. Arthur Mason's Purgatory* etc -
(Longmans). Even if we do not agree with all his opinions, we
find there all the most relevant passages from the Fathers carefully
translated and commented upon.
21
812 WHAT IS OF FAITH?
has been equally hard to pardon. There is, however^
no sign in the New Testament of the direct invocation
of saints and martyrs. A word to indicate that the
first Christians asked the prayers of Stephen and
James, the first martyrs, would have seemed natural.
But it is not there. There are early inscriptions on
tombs, such as " Gentianus, pray for us ; for we know
that thou art in Christ," which are instinctive and
touching, and invocation began to become a common
practice in the fourth century. It is surely not to
be condemned, provided we recognize that the
knowledge which could have authoritatively sanc-
tioned it is withheld from us. And though we should
delight to acknowledge the glory of the Virgin Mother
and the Saints, it must be owned that their cultus
in the Middle Ages was built up largely on a basis
of mythology and quite unhistorical imagination, 1
and admitted features of the pagan tradition with a
dangerous freedom. So much is admitted by all
careful scholars. We do not need to attempt to
lay natural piety in fetters ; but we do need to
preserve the type of New Testament devotion.
I should add that among the elements which
Origen enumerates, in his summary of the tradition
of doctrine received from the apostles, is the belief
in good and evil spirits and their influence upon men
" that every rational soul is a free agent, plotted
against by evil spirits and comforted by good angels,
but in no wise constrained." 2 This element in the
tradition certainly represents the teaching of the
apostles and of our Lord Himself, and there is no
rational ground for treating it with contempt.
1 Cf. Belief in God, p. 261. I cannot see any ground for believing
that the later habit of the Church to canonize certain persons aa
saints, thus anticipating the judgement of the Great Day is
within its legitimate functions. It is quite another thing to lei
natural gratitude and devotion mark out certain people as sainte,
and to desire to have their prayers,
3 Origen, as above, summarized.
CHURCH DISCIPLINE 318
Ai;d now I have perhaps sufficiently fulfilled my
task of enumerating, as Origen did long ago, the
items of the doctrinal tradition of the Catholic
Church, which it claimed to have received from the
apestles, and which are certainly confirmed in the
New Testament. Speculation in ancient days some-
times ranged widely beyond the limits of tradition ;
but we hold fast to the contention of the ancient
Church that nothing which was not in the original
tradition can be laid upon the faithful as a
dogmatic requirement. The function of the Church
with regard to the tradition is to defend it and to
explicate it, but not to add to it.
With regard to Church discipline in matters of
practice, with which we have not been directly con-
cerned, the case is different. Here the Church was
always believed to have a freer hand. It could legis-
late with a much greater freedom in view of the
requirements of the times ; and it could freely alter
or ignore the decisions of even ecumenical councils
where circumstances had changed or the earlier
decisions been found impracticable. So it was that
the prohibition of the translation of bishops from see
to see, and the prohibition of kneeling at Easter,
passed into desuetude. And we should cling to the
assertion of our Article that " Every particular or
national Church hath authority to ordain, change,
ar,d abolish, ceremonies or rites of the Church
ordained only by man's authority, so that all things
be done to edifying." Thus in fact the Anglican
Church not only allows a married clergy, contrary
to the previously attempted discipline of the Wes-
tern Church, but also, contrary to the ancient canons.
allows the clergy to marry after ordination, which, I
believe on the whole, was " done to edifying.' 1 Even
disciplinary rules enacted by the apostles need not
be regarded as permanently obligatory, such, for
instance, as St. Paul's regulation of women's dress
314 WHAT IS OF FAITH?
and his exclusion of the twice-married from the clergy.
And canonical legislation can pass into desuetude as
well as be formally abrogated. Nevertheless great
reverence is surely due to Catholic customs and
canons, in proportion to their universality. We
may respectfully ask whether it was not presump-
tuous on the part of both East and West to abandon
the apostolic rite of the laying on of the bishop's
hands in confirm ation, and equally presumptuous
on the part of the Western Church to abandon, con-
trary to what was plainly our Lord's own intention,
the administration of the chalice to the communi-
cants at the altar. And the general and needless
disregard of Catholic customs amongst ourselves has
surely been most culpable. But I will not pursue
the subject, which is not really that with which we
set out to occupy ourselves.
I conclude with two remarks : (1) In the con-
spectus which I have been seeking to give of the
doctrinal tradition as it was recognized of old, the
conclusion at which we arrived in a previous chapter
has been constantly taken for granted that it is a
mistaken idea of doctrinal development to suppose
that it consists, or ought to consist, in the gradual
accumulation of dogmas by a logical or quasi-logical
process of deduction. In substance the revelation
was once given and has never been augmented. The
thinkers and saints of the Church may ponder and
speculate, and pious opinions may be uttered and pass
into vogue. But as far as concerns the authoritative
revelation, what the ancients did not in substance
know cannot become part of it, nor what is not really
affirmed or implied in the New Testament. This,
we saw, is the safeguard of intellectual liberty for
the individual, and leaves the Church free to enter
each new age and country unencumbered by anything
except the original message. And the justification of
the appeal to antiquity lies also in this : the Church
LATER ECUMENICAL COUNCILS 315
started on its career, and maintained it for three
centuries or longer, in marked distinction from the
world or the State. After Church and State became
one, a fusion took place the effect of which is unmis-
takable. It is right we should call the early cen-
turies "the pure centuries," in the sense that in
them the current of Church life and teaching was
running substantially distinct.
(2) The Church has allowed a place of unique
authority to the General Councils. It has been often
said that " the authority of the Church diffusive is
no less binding than that of the Church collective." 1
But this is not quite the case. The authority of the
ecumenical councils has a pre-eminence, because there
a particular doctrine, which had already agitated the
Church and been very fully discussed, was brought
into distinct light, and the collective mind of the
Church was brought to bear upon it, in a sense which
gives their decisions an importance and precision
which uncontested tradition cannot quite reach.
APPENDED NOTE (see p. 291)
ON THE FIFTH AND SEVENTH GENERAL COUNCILS
The most handy volume to begin with for the study
of the General Councils is The Seven Ecumenical Councils
in the " Nicene and Antc-Nicene Fathers," by Dr. H. R.
Percival (Oxford : James Parker, 1920). No one reading
the documents and history concerning the fifth Council
will find them very edifying. But, as I have said, in
substance it added nothing to the definition of Ephesus,
while accepting Chalcedon. It only aimed at rehabilitat-
ing the theological reputation of St. Cyril.
The only doubtful question which arises out of it is
the question whether the great Origen was condemned
by the Council in a string of heretics. This is probable
but not certain. There are strong arguments against
1 I assented to this proposition in Eoman Catholic Claims, p. 55.
316 WHAT IS OF FAITH?
it (see op. cit, p. 814). Anyway, we must agree with
Hefele that " the XV anathematisms against Origen "
cannot be attributed to this Council. And, when we
read them, we shall feel that it is only a phantom of the
real Origen which was under the consideration of whatever
council issued them. The specific opinions then con-
demned there are few to-day who could be found to
maintain. And it is remarkable that Origen's opinions
concerning Holy Scripture are not noticed, nor is his
belief in the final restoration of all souls repudiated
except in connexion with his belief in their pre-existence,
before they became human beings.
The seventh Council is very explicit that God " wholly
and alone is to be worshipped and revered with adoration "
(p. 541) ; that icons are to be made only of Christ as He
appeared in the flesh, and of the angels who appeared
as men to men, and of the saints. All the misleading
pictures of the Holy Trinity as three men, or two men
and a dove, which are so sadly common in the West,
or of the Father as an old man, are apparently contrary
to the decrees of the Council. And as to the proper
attitude of Christians to the icons we read
44 To these should be given due salutation and honourable
reverence (aa'^afrfiov xal TI^TLK^V 7rpo<TKvvr)<riv), not indeed the
true worship of faith (AarpetW), which belongs only to the
divine nature ; but to these, as to the figure of the precious
and life-giving cross, and to the book of the Gospels, and to
the other holy objects, incense and lights may be presented
according to ancient pious custom. 1 For the honour which
is paid to the image passes on. to that which the image
represents, and he who reveres the image reveres in it the
subject represented " (p. 550).
1 This, as Bishop Basil of Ancyra said at the Council, was cus-
tomary also with images of the emperors, when they were sent to
cities or rural districts, in order to honour not the image but the
emperor himself (p. 535).
CHAPTER X
THE TEST OP RATIONAL COHERENCE
IN the last chapter I have sought, like Origen, simply
to enumerate the " articles of the faith " which
constitute Catholicism, considered as an intellectual
system, and I have endeavoured to proceed by purely
objective tests. These enumerated doctrines have
behind them in history the whole weight of Catholic
authority and of Scripture, as well as the wider
assent of Christian experience. But there are many
such articles of belief ; and the sensitive modern
spirit is apt at once to catch fire and protest with
vehemence that it is impossible to expect agreement
on so many theological propositions. It is in antici-
pation of such a protest that I now want to bring
into prominence a consideration which is reassuring
to our nervous critical reason viz. that the proposi-
tions enumerated turn out not to be really many,
but in principle one, so that in accepting one we
are accepting all, or at least in accepting the root
doctrine about God and man we are led on to feel
that the rest cohere indiscerptibly with it. This
idea of solidarity is of course conveyed by the term
"articles of the faith.'* For "article " means first
a little limb or joint, a component element in a
living whole, and in its transferred sense, as meaning
an element in an intellectual system, it retains the
notion of solidarity as between one element and an-
other. So Chrysostom says of the Christian faith
that, granted the Incarnation, all the rest " follows
in rational sequence." l
1 In Matt. Horn, ii, P.G. Ivii. 27, roi5rov $ yeva/Afrov, ra
/card \6yov Kal dKo\ov6ia,v ^Trerai.
317
818 THE TEST OF RATIONAL COHERENCE
Tills test of rational coherence, considered as an
evidence of truth, is of course subordinate to other
tests the test of experience, the test of historical
evidence for historical statements, the test of agree-
ment with the whole of our knowledge, and the test
of authority ; but it is in itself an important and
illuminating consideration which it is worth while to
pursue.
We must begin then with the idea of God which
the first volume of this series strove to vindicate. 1
When Christianity came out into the world it found,
as we saw, a monotheism of a kind in. occupation of
the minds of the intelligent. It was the Stoic panthe-
ism, the doctrine of the immanence of the divine
reason. Some doctrine of divine immanence Chris-
tianity, in the persons of St. Paul and St. John,
showed its readiness to assimilate, as indeed Judaism
had already claimed it for its own ; but only as sub-
sidiary to the doctrine of God which it inherited from
the Hebrew prophets. This is the conception of
God as not only in the world but over the world and
prior to it, in independent perfection, the absolute
creator of all that is, personal in the profoundest
sense and possessing definite character, being in
Himself essentially righteous and good. For this
distinctive doctrine of God, and not merely for some
kind of monotheism which might sound more
Christian than it really was the early apologists
found themselves constrained to struggle. They were
surely quite right. It is on this doctrine that Chris-
tianity as a whole depends. Granted this, the whole
follows in " rational sequence " ; and if this is not
adhered to, the whole fabric crumbles.
1 But see Appended Note, p. 334, " The Rationality of the Belief
In the Christian Doctrine of God,"
THE ROOT IDEAS OF GOD AND MAN 319
And there is bound up with this Biblical idea of
God a certain idea of man that rational man is not
part of God, nor essential to the being of God, but a
creature of God, absolutely dependent upon His
will ; so that, however great the distinction in
dignity may be between man and the irrational crea-
tion of which he is the crown, the distinction is not
comparable to that which lies between the only one
self-subsistent being, God the Creator, and every-
thing else that exists the creatures of His will
and love.
On the other hand, man has been highly exalted.
He was created in God's " image and likeness," that
is, a rational being with a limited but real freedom,
which God has allowed even to condition and restrict
the action of His own almightiness. He has placed
man in a sense as His vicegerent in the w r orld, and
has enabled him to co-operate in His divine purpose
the Kingdom of God. That is his great vocation.
But man's freedom is ambiguous it involves not
only the opportunity of correspondence but also the
opportunity of lawlessness or rebellion. And in fact
mankind has on the widest scale and with the utmost
universality so asserted his self-will against God's
will as violently to disorder the moral world, and,
superficially at least, the physical world which he in
a measure controls.
This idea of human nature is inseparable from the
Biblical conception of God. Both ideas are set
before us with majestic simplicity under symbolical
forms in the early chapters of Genesis, are continually
emphasized and developed in the tradition of pro-
phetic teaching, and form the foundation of our
Lord's teaching and of the New Testament. It
seems to me that the whole intellectual problem
of belief is summed up in the acceptance of this
doctrine of God and of man without which the Bible
goes for nothing. Granted this, all is in sequence.
320 THE TEST OF RATIONAL COHERENCE
I always experience a slight shiver when I read in
modern books about Christianity being essentially
Christocentric. It is true, no doubt, that God has
revealed Himself finally in Christ, but Christ always
points us beyond Himself to the Father to God ;
and faith in God did not begin with the historical
Christ ; and the object of Christ's manifestation,
when He came, was that in the fullest sense our
" faith and hope might be in God."
I say, then, grant the fundamental Biblical concep-
tion of God and man, and the whole Christian creed
follows, and makes its rational appeal to us as one
coherent unity. The appalling disorder of God's
creation which sin has introduced and dimly in
the background we discern forces of rebellion other
than human demands the redemptive action of
God. This again is an idea which pervades the Bible.
And the conception of redemption is that of a re- crea-
tive activity of God the activity of a Creator, free
to take action to prevent the ruin of His work. As
I have argued earlier, if God be simply the soul of
the world, the immanent spirit of its order, it may
be contended a priori (whatever that argument
would be worth) that the divine action cannot be any-
thing else than an inevitable development of this
natural order. But certainly no such argument can
hold if God is not only in the world but over it,
independent and personal, and free from every
restriction except what lies in His own perfection.
In a unique emergency He can, on the analogy of
every rational being, act uniquely. So it is that the
summary act of divine redemption in Christ is pre-
sented as miraculous as a re-creative act of God
vindicating His original purpose. " I will up, saith
the Lord." It is this conception of redemptive love
which makes the evidence for the miracles of the
Gospel intelligible and credible.
In this connexion I would call attention to a
CANON QUICK'S CRITICISM $21
criticism of my earlier argument which seems to me
both interesting and strange l :
" If Dr. Gore's work has one inherent defect ... it is
that he is over-ready to treat the claim of the historical
critics as merely what it professes to be, the claim of
impartial students of fact, and to suppose that when he
has met that claim, he has disposed of the whole
Modernist case. As a matter of fact, historical criticism
is always more or less a philosophy in disguise, and,
though Dr. Gore very truly points this out, he hardly
does justice to the philosophy in question. . . . Insisting
on the uniformity of the natural sequences which govern
events, it may reconcile the uniformity with belief in
God, by urging that God's method of action is the pene-
tration of what is natural and human from within, not
interference with it from without. A Christian interpre-
tation of the doctrine of immanence will go on to point
out that the method of penetration without intervention
is peculiarly consonant with the conception of God as
love, and of His supreme self-revelation as taking place
in and through a natural human life. But it must
hesitate to accept anything in the nature of a miracle
strictly so-called, because this seems to imply a direct
intervention from without upon the natural order, the
idea of which is alien to its religious philosophy."
And the writer goes on to intimate that the
Modernists' philosophy may be interpreted as more
congruous than any other with the conception of
God as essentially love.
" It can see the Godhead incarnate and supremely
revealed in the human goodness of Jesus Christ and
in the love which suffered, unsaved by any miraculous
intervention, upon Calvary, but not in an apparent
breach of the natural order of human birth, or in the
resuscitation of a dead body. . . . Such things, it
maintains, are alien both to the apparent constitution
of the world and to the method and character of love
pure and supreme."
1 Canon Oliver 0. Quick in the Quarterly Beview, October 1923,
p. 380.
822 THE TEST OF RATIONAL COHERENCE
Now, there are phrases in this interesting passage
which, I do not forget, expresses not the point of view
of the writer, but a point of view, different from his
own, which he is representing which would demand
detailed criticism. I deprecate the phrase " inter-
ference from without " because the miracles of the
Gospel are rather represented as the action of the
Holy Spirit working from within ; and the word
" resuscitation " is not at all the word to describe
the transformation in the case of Jesus of the natural
into the spiritual body. But I have reproduced the
passage not to criticize details. What I wish to
criticize is simply the main idea that the purely
immanental conception of the action of God is more
congruous than any other with the idea of His love.
And I write with feeling, because all my life has been
a struggle to believe that God the only God is love.
That is to me, as to many other men, not only
the governing dogma of the Christian religion, but the
only really difficult dogma. It has its source in the
Bible, and nowhere else is it affirmed with the same
courage of assurance. And in the Bible, I contend,
it is wholly bound up with the conception of God as
transcendent and sovereign, over and beyond nature.
There are marks of goodness in nature to which our
Lord and St. Paul call our attention, as signs of the
goodwill of " your Father which is in heaven," or of
the sovereign Creator. But it is not chiefly to them
that appeal is made. " Herein is love . . . that God
sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins,"
or " to be the saviour of the world." If we think of
our Lord's teaching in the parables about God's love,
we find it represented as something free and personal,
bound by no restrictive law the shepherd's prefer-
ence for the one sheep at the risk of the ninety and
nine, the father's preference for the prodigal son,
which provoked the rational remonstrance of the
elder brother. If we consider it, all His teaching
LOVE AND IMMANENCE 328
about God is found to be naively on the lines of the
sovereign Being, without the suggestion of immanence.
It is " your Father which is in heaven." If at the
great crisis He is not to be saved from death, it
is not that the Father could not or would not do
it, but that He Himself will not ask for it.
Then outside the Gospels, the New Testament
identifies the original assurance of the revelation of
God in Christ with the evidences of His resurrection.
Without this, it appears, no gospel of divine love
would have gone out into the world. This it was
" that marked Him out in power as the Son of God."
This gave the disciples their " assurance " of His
lordship. "If Christ has not been raised, your
faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins." " God
raised him from the dead and gave him glory ; so
that your faith and hope might be in God." Can it
be seriously contended that if the supposed event
was an illusion, the value of that assurance would
remain ? Also can it be doubted that, through the
whole New Testament, the conception of God's love
in Christ is wholly bound up with the conception
of God as coming forth in a great re- creative act,
from beyond the process of nature, in which the
miracles were a natural feature ?
Then leaving the ancient sources of witness, and
coming to our own day, surely it is just in respect of
God being love that the conception of the immanent
God God in the process of nature proves to be so
defective. I scrutinize great nature anxiously and
find it full of ambiguity. I cross-question the philo-
sophers of immanence and the poets of nature and
get no satisfaction. I do not say I could not retain
a hope that the great inscrutable power which works
in nature might turn out to be good. But I do say
that any confidence of faith depends on a belief in
the transcendence and liberty of God. It is such a
God we need as can come forth to re-create and renew
324 THE TEST OF RATIONAL COHERENCE
what sin has so deeply defaced and spoilt. It is
such a God as can do a new thing, because a desperate
situation demands it, and the " process of nature "
is inadequate to remedy it. And if the Christ is
this unique thing, the Divine Saviour come into the
world in our nature, it seems to me most natural
to believe that when sin murdered Him, God should
vindicate Him ; and that the birth of Him who was
not only man but the New Man, should have been
signalized by discontinuity as well as continuity
with the humanity out of w r hich He emerged. 1
II
Well, then, I contend that the fundamental Bibli-
cal conceptions of God and of man and of the result
of sin in disordering the world lead naturally on
to the belief in a divine act of redemption which has
miraculous accompaniments. Viewed in its total
effect, this redemptive activity of God is not contrary
to nature, but is the reconstitution of nature in its
proper relation to God, actually in the region of the
redeemed humanity and potentially in the whole
world. And it is not contrary to the idea of a
gradual development of divine purpose in the world.
Quite otherwise : what it has done is only to effect
the removal of what made the actual development
something even grotesquely unlike the divine purpose.
" Grace is not contrary to nature, but is rather
the restoration of nature." Nevertheless grace, the
personal action of divine love, postulates a God who
1 In answer to a note of Canon Quick's on p. 381, I would say
I thankfully believe that God is love as God is spirit and God is
light; and that we should hardly say God is justice or God is
power, ^because justice and power appear to be modes of action
or attributes of Him whose essence is "love" and ** spirit" and
"light." But I decline altogether to identify love with purely
"natural" processes. Love has always and specially the capacity
for doing something over and above the ordinary.
THE CATHOLIC IDEA OF INCARNATION 825
is not enslaved to His own ordered method, but can
act freely.
And the same Biblical conception of God leads us
on to approve the Catholic conception of the incarnate
person, Jesus Christ, as it gains expression in the
New Testament and as it finds definition in the
Creeds and Councils. Christ is the Word, or Son,
of God incarnate. Thus He is the mediator between
God and man but because He is both God and man.
There can be no middle term between the Creator
and the creature. There can be no demi-god. If
the Son, Jesus Christ, is to be worshipped as God,
and if by union with Him we are united to God,
then He must have come personally from beyond the
fathomless depth which in idea separates the one
creative nature from the creatures. He must belong
essentially to the one divine being. He must be of
one substance with the Father. That is the verdict
against Arius. And again, if He is as the Gospels
show Him to be truly and completely man, that
must be " not by confusion of substance, but by
unity of person," by the taking of manhood into
God. No conception of Christ as becoming God, or
as gaining for us the values of God because He Is
perfect man, is consistent with our root conception.
The nature of man, the creature, is godlike and can
therefore become the organ of God. But it can
never become the nature of God the Creator. The
two natures must remain in their fundamental dis-
tinction. What we welcome then is the conception
of God, who had made man in His own image, re-
maining God, but for our redemption taking unto
Himself our nature and living and acting and suffer-
ing, by a divine self -suppression, as man, so as to
redeem him from within. And no formula can be
found to guard the reality of Deity and the reality
of manhood in the unity of one person but the
Catholic formula.
326 THE TEST OF RATIONAL COHERENCE
So with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in Unity,
I have very often repeated the suggestion that in
the process of divine self-disclosure the doctrine of
the Trinity was " overheard rather than heard."
There was no moment of proclamation. In the pro-
cess of experiencing redemption men found them-
selves believing in God as Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost. So we find the idea of the Trinity implicit
in the New Testament, and, after delays and hesita-
tions and many bungling attempts at formulation,
made explicit to the mind of the Church. The
Church, one must acknowledge, though it believed
that the name of the One God had become the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,
as a matter of experienced fact, yet found it very
difficult to express the truth, even inadequately.
Nevertheless, however imperfectly it admits of being
expressed in human language, the conception of God
as subsisting in three ct persons " has proved to be
the only conception of God which can make us able
even remotely to conceive of God, as our fundamental
Biblical faith demands that we should conceive
of Him, as alive and personal, independently of
nature and prior to nature, and the creator of all
that is. For will and thought and love, which are
the essential qualities of personality, have no meaning
for us except in the relation of the individual subject
to another. Will and thought and love alike demand
an object. And the only way in which men have
found themselves able to think of God in Himself, as
eternally alive in the fullness of personal life, is by
welcoming the glimpse into His eternal Being which
the process of redemption has given them, and finding
there the reality of an eternal fellowship in which the
Father expresses Himself eternally in the Son and
in the Spirit, and finds the reciprocity which will
and thought and love demand. Only so can we
avoid the fatal weaknesses, intellectual and moral,
THE DAY OF THE LORD 327
of tlie conception of a God dependent upon nature
for self-expression and consciousness. 1
Once again, the Biblical conception of God seems
to lead inevitably to the anticipation of a " Last Day "
or " End of the World." No doubt the vision of the
End in the New Testament the great catastrophe
of nature, the rending sky, the angel-messengers, the
form of the Son of Man descending in majesty to
judge the world, the last trump, the multitudes of
humanity of all the ages gathering for judgement,
the opened books, the final verdict, and the localized
heaven and hell all this is symbolical. Apparently
we can only be taught in symbolical forms about
the things which lie outside our present possible
experience. But the symbols enshrine a necessary
truth the truth that God is to come into His own
at last in the whole creation, and the truth that it
is in the historical Jesus that He does come into
His own. God has a purpose in all history. That
is one of the great contributions to the thought of
humanity, which we owe to the Hebrew prophets.
This purpose has been flouted and thwarted by sin.
Nevertheless as God is God, so at last He must vindi-
cate Himself, and in Jesus is to be found not only
the central point in history, but its end.
Ill
In intimate coherence with the Biblical doctrine
of God is, as I have said, its doctrine about man.
It gives no place for foolish pride. Man is purely a
creature and, as such, absolutely dependent. But
the position of man is as far as possible from being
abject. He is made in the image of God. He is
destined for co-operation with God and for sonship.
God deals with man not as an arbitrary autocrat
1 See Belief in God, pp. 69 ., 148 E.
22
328 THE TEST OF RATIONAL COHERENCE
with a slave, but as a father with his children. " O
my people, what have I done unto thee ? and where-
in have I wearied thee ? testify against me."
" Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth
grapes, brought it forth wild grapes ? " Job's in-
dignant questioning of God, based on the deep-lying
assumption that, if he can only get to God, He will
listen to his reasonable and just plea, is treated as
meritorious, not as insolent. In our Lord's teaching
the tone is never autocratic it seems to be taken
for granted that, if only men are sincere and open-
hearted to the light, they will welcome what He says
as right and true. The true type of Christian authority
must, as we said, always make its appeal so as to
commend itself to the conscience and reason of men.
Personal responsibility and freedom, wherein lies
man's true dignity, is not to be destroyed. If souls
are to be finally lost, that is only because they have
used their divinely given prerogative of freedom to
harden themselves into an obstinate refusal of the
light. There is to be no absolute compulsion even
to save man from ruin. There is no imperious grace
or divine call which cannot be resisted. The para-
dox always remains in the theology that is really
Christian : " Work out your own salvation ; for it is
God who worketh in you, both to will and to do of
his good pleasure " ; or again, Accept the Church's
message as what it is in truth, the word of God who
cannot lie ; but accept it because your own heart
and conscience and reason tell you it is true.
The whole of Catholic theology at its best is full
of this two-sided conception of man as both an
absolutely dependent creature, and also a son and
not a slave.
There is another feature in the Biblical doctrine
about man in his relation to God which seems to me
fundamentally to determine our attitude in favour
of Catholic theology that is, its treatment of man as
CORPORATE SIN 329
individual, with the responsibility of an individual,
but also as social ; so that God deals with him not
as a man only but as man. As we know, it is only
gradually that the sense of individuality emerges in
the Old Testament ; but it does emerge decisively,
and the New Testament is full of the sense of the
individuality of men and of the responsibility and
equal spiritual worth of all individual men. But
the sense that mankind is also a social and corporate
unity is never weakened. Thus it is impossible to
read the New Testament and not feel the bearing of
this both on man's sin and on his redemption. Sin
lies in the will ; its seat and source is moral ; it
is man's fault, not his nature, and the secret of guilt
is not to be found in the material body. All this
tends to emphasize individual responsibility. We are
bound to say that only where individual knowledge
and responsibility begin does personal guilt begin.
Nevertheless, alike in the Old Testament and in the
New, behind the individual is the nation and the
race. It is mankind that is sinful, and every indi-
vidual is born into a sinful world. This double
aspect of man, individual and social, appears in the
moderate Catholic doctrine of original and racial
sin, which, I have contended, really corresponds with
the facts of experience * ; it also appears in the
doctrine of redemption. The redemption is cor-
porate. Christ is the new Man, the second Adam,
the head of a new race, which in purpose and in-
tention is to extend to all the world. So it is poten-
tially on behalf of the whole race, and effectively for
all who will believe in Him, that Christ acts as the
Redeemer. Thus our corporate redemption has its
root in the great representative act of sacrifice and
reparation to God by which the new covenant of
God with man is inaugurated. " He taketh away 39
(by expiation) " the sin of the world," and not merely
1 See Belief in Christ, chap. ix.
330 THE TEST OF RATIONAL COHERENCE
tlie sins of the individuals. He is " the propitiation
for the whole world." x So it is ideally that man-
kind is redeemed by Christ as a race ; and actually
the covenant is with the Church of the believers, and
in the doctrine of the Church and the sacraments is
found the sanction and the security of corporate
redemption. Corporately man is fallen and cor-
porately he is to be redeemed.
So it is, I think, that doctrines which look at first
sight as if they were detached propositions like the
teaching of heaven and hell, and the teaching about
original sin, and the doctrine of the virgin birth
and the vicarious atonement, and the doctrine of the
Church and the sacraments are seen all to cohere
with one another by having their common root in
the fundamental Biblical conception of man in him-
self and in his relation to God. The doctrine of hell
is a necessary corollary of his indestructible freedom ;
original sin is the expression of human solidarity ;
the fact of the virgin birth coheres with the fact of
Christ as the second Adam, the new man, both con-
tinuous and discontinuous with the old humanity ;
the vicarious reparation corresponds to the idea of
Christ as acting on behalf of all of us who are to
be reborn in Him ; the Church and the sacraments
express again the solidarity of man. Men are not
to be saved as individuals by themselves.
Once more the fundamental Biblical idea of
creation involves a high estimate of the physical
creation and the human body. Whatever God made
was " very good." The Oriental and Hellenistic
idea of matter as somehow evil, and of association
with the material body as the source of pollution
to the soul, is quite alien to the Bible. Sin is rebellion,
and its seat is in the will. Once the will is brought
back to its right relation to God, the whole body is
on the way of redemption. So when the thought of
1 John i. 29 ; 1 John ii. 2.
COHERENCE OF MODERNIST DOCTRINES 331
God's justice, and the sense of the fellowship with
God into which the individual soul is admitted, forced
the Jew forward to believe in life beyond the grave,
his faith took shape in a belief not in the immortality
of the bare soul, but in the resurrection of the body.
And the actual resurrection of Christ, in which this
faith in a corporal resurrection found its confirmation,
is regarded in the New Testament not only as the
pledge of the like destiny for men who are Christ's
brethren, but also as the pledge of a glorious future
for the material world as a whole. Again, in Christ's
person the Word, who is God, is made flesh. Thus
the dignity of the material nature is vindicated by
its becoming for ever the organ of Godhead ; and the
same great principle interprets the sacraments. In
them also material nature and the human body
receive their consecration, and the material is seen
as the organ of the spiritual.
There is a coherence and solidarity, then, in " the
articles of the faith," and one fundamental doctrine
of God and of man is the key to the whole Catholic
building. A Christian philosophy will start by the
vindication of these Biblical conceptions, and pro-
ceeding from this standing-ground, will be able to
exhibit the whole doctrinal and moral structure of
the faith as the harmonious expression of one or two
luminous principles.
IV
It is obvious, I think, that there is a similar co-
hesiveness among the characteristic doctrines which
we group under the name of " Modernism." The root
conception is again found in the doctrine of God but
now it is the idea of Gvd as immanent in the order
of the world which is allowed to dominate, either
absolutely to the point of denying His transcend-
ence, or only so far as to produce a marked reluctance
832 THE TEST OF RATIONAL COHERENCE
to appeal to it. The disclosure of God then is to be
found in the order of the universe ; anything which
seems to break in upon that order is found repellent.
Sin is either in principle denied by a doctrine of
determinism, which makes the idea of responsibility
and sin fundamentally a delusion, or it is minimized.
There is an inevitable upward tendency, as in the
world as a whole, so in the individual soul. Sins
are the mistakes or the delusions which experience
and enlightenment will overcome. What is wanted
is nothing else than more light and guidance. Jesus
Christ comes as the Light of the World, but He
comes purely in the natural order. The goal of the
world is the incarnation of God in humanity. It is a
gradual process of which Jesus is the foremost speci-
men. He is in truth a purely human personality
and non-miraculous. He is the noblest and most
perfect specimen of our race, the sinless son of man,
and therefore Son of God. He is divine just because
He is simply and perfectly human. What we need
from Him is a perfect example and a fresh inspiration.
We do not need vicarious sacrifice to make reconcilia-
tion for sin only the fuller evidence of divine love.
We ask to be shown the true way of human life and
to be stimulated to follow it. Christ is pre-eminently
Son of God and the Word made flesh, but so are all
men in a measure in their fundamental nature, and
are to become so more and more under the influence
of Christ. The Spirit of God which worked pre-
eminently in Him dwells also in a measure in all of
us. It is the universal spirit of humanity which He
stirs into consciousness. The corporal resurrection as
the first disciples believed in it was, no doubt, an
illusion ; but it was a symbol of the real resurrection,
which is the assurance of human immortality. The
story of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is
the symbol of a universal presence which we only need
to realize. Similarly the sacraments of the Church
CATHOLICISM AND MODERNISM 333
are symbols of fellowship, human and divine, by
which our faith and consciousness are quickened.
Again, the expectation of the Second Coming was an
illusion, bred of Jewish tradition, in the minds of
Christ Himself and His disciples, but it was also
symbol of the truth that the issue of human develop-
ment is to be the permeation of all institutions and
civilizations by the Spirit of Christ which is the
universal Spirit of God ; and the one God who is
manifested in the whole world as Father, and in
the correspondence of the human will as Son, and in
consciousness as Spirit, will be " all things in all."
We are all familiar with these ideas, expressed
separately, at this point and at that, by the theologians
who are solicitous that we should revise our creeds.
But in fact they constitute a sequence of ideas
dependent upon the substitution of the idea of
divine immanence God in nature, as the dominant
or exclusive conception of God for the idea of the
transcendent Creator, not as the only, but as the
controlling idea. All the ' Modernist * conceptions
which I have sought to set in consequential order
follow very closely the Biblical and Catholic concep-
tions and have a like sound. But really they repre-
sent much more closely the ideas which historical
Christianity combated and dispossessed, revised in
the light of the modern category of development.
It must be confessed that they depart very widely
from the historical Creed. The root of the divergence
lies in the conception of God which is made dominant ;
and the effect of the divergence is to derogate from
the sense of the liberty and majesty of God and the
heinousness of sin, on which, in the Catholic religion,
the appreciation of His love has been based. We must
hold to the ancient Creed, which has history and
experience on its side. But we must never allow
ourselves to forget that what has given the modern
reaction against the Creed of the Church its strength
334 THE TEST OF RATIONAL COHERENCE
has been in great measure the Church's own defects.
And like the Greek Fathers in their time and the
Schoolmen in theirs, we must see to it that nothing
which makes a legitimate appeal either to the reason
or the conscience or the aesthetic faculty of man is
allowed to seem alien to the world- wide scope of the
religion which calls itself Catholic.
APPENDED NOTE (see p. 318)
THE RATIONALITY OF THE BELIEF IN THE CHRISTIAN
DOCTRINE OF GOD
In Belief in God, after reviewing briefly the grounds
of Theism (pp. 46-61), I endeavoured (1) to show the
inadequacy, both intellectual and moral, of any belief
in God which represents Him as simply the immanent
Spirit of the universe and ultimately as much dependent
upon nature as nature is upon Him (see pp. 61-6 and
69-73) ; (2) to vindicate the idea of positive self-
revelation on the part of God as an idea which cannot
be rationally excluded (pp. 66-9 and 74-5) I think it
is extraordinary how little consideration the philosophers
are willing to give to it; (3) to give the reasons to my
mind the overwhelming reasons for believing that such
a revelation has actually been given, especially through
the Hebrew prophets and in Jesus Christ (pp. 75-109);
(4) to vindicate the intellectual results of this revelation
(pp. 111-32) as consistent with the whole of our know-
ledge (pp. 133-70, 230-51) ; (5) to call attention to the
moral power consequent upon the acceptance of the
Biblical faith.
Since the above volume was written I have been
criticized for taking too little into account the arguments
of the psychologists. But I think the argument of the
psychologists against the objective reality of God turns
out to be equally destructive of the objective reality of
all things and persons. And I do not think any argu-
ment is ultimately formidable which would undermine
our confidence that real things and persons exist inde-
RECENT LITERATURE 335
pendently of us, and are by us knowable. This is the
kind of realism involving no doubt in some sort a
fundamental act of faith which " common sense "
requires, and which philosophy must accept. This is
Lord Balfour's point in Theism and Thought. 1 On the
subject of the psychological argument I would refer to
a popularly written, but deep-thinking little volume, by
Mr. Balniforth, Is Christian Experience an Illusion?
(Student Christian Movement, 1923).
Since Belief in God was written I have found myself
much assisted by Professor E. W. Hobson's Gifford
Lectures, The Domain of Natural Science (Cambridge,
1923), which with rigid impartiality seeks to show us
what exactly the claim of natural science amounts to in
the interpretation of the universe. It seems to me to be
a valuable contribution to thought. Also I have been
greatly impressed by a book which has not received
sufficient notice, The Natural Theology of Evolution, by
J. N. Shearman (Allen & Unwin, 1915). Anyone who
is disposed to think that the doctrine of biological evolu-
tion has disposed of the " argument from design "
should read this book.
I fear I cannot agree with Dr. Arthur Robinson's
optimistic estimate of The Trend of Thought in Contem*
porary Philosophy (Longmans, 1922). It is hard to say
whether it has any decided trend. The idealism of
Bradley and the physical realism of Alexander appear
to be irreconcilable with one another and with the
Christian idea of God. And the " new psychology " is,
I suppose, inconsistent with all three. But certainly the
absence of agreement among the schools of philosophy,
and the marked tendency among the men of science to
regard it as outside their province to interpret the
meaning of nature and life as a whole, ought to give us
Christians courage to study and proclaim our message,
and show its power to interpret experience, and its
coherence with all that can claim to be called knowledge*
1 Gifiord Lectures (Hodder & Stougkton).
CHAPTER XI
PRESENT-DAY APPLICATION
WE have come to the end of a very long train of
thought. We began by considering the intellectual
and moral situation of to-day, especially as it appears
in the English-speaking countries. We found that
there has occurred, within the course of the last two
generations, a collapse, on a very large scale, of the
old religious tradition in all classes of our society.
The intellectual causes of this collapse we found to
be fairly easy to indicate. Equally obvious are the
social causes which have produced a widespread
alienation, both of " the workers," and of all those
who are convinced that our industrial and inter-
national life have been built up on rotten principles,
from " the Churches " which they identify with the
established order against which they are rebellious.
These intellectual and social movements have been
accompanied with a wave of moral rebelliousness,
fostered by the war, which has been " up against "
the Commandments as well as the Creed and the
Bible. And the result of these disintegrating influences
is apparent in a general condition of religious and
moral unsettlement, and an almost chaotic indi-
vidualism of belief or scepticism or blatant dis-
belief. Strongholds of tradition remain, reiterating
conservative formulas and warnings. But the area of
confusion is very wide, and it is reflected and fostered
in popular literature.
336
THE RENASCENCE OF FAITH 337
The intellectual remedy for this confusion, if remedy
there be, must be sought nowhere so much as in the
deliberate reconstruction of belief from its founda-
tions, inspired by a fearless trust in real freedom of
thought. The signs of the times are adverse to any-
thing like the prospect of a mass-recovery of faith.
It must be a matter of individual recoveries or re-
assurances of faith, resulting in groups of men and
women, larger, more numerous, and more confident
than exist at present, who know what they believe
and why they believe, and can find a new power and
meaning in the old Creeds and institutions of the
Church. It is therefore at the reconstruction of
belief in individuals that these volumes were
aimed.
The natural starting-point for religious belief is
authority. Of those who to-day are deliberate
believers in the Christian religion the vast majority
have received it on authority, and, so far as they
have verified it, have verified it in practice. But
among those who are more or less educated and
interested in intellectual questions, the feature of the
day is that the insurgence of new knowledge along
the channels of natural science and historical criticism
has discredited religious authority, and generated a
profound suspicion that the grounds of belief have
been shaken or destroyed. Against such suspicion
an appeal to authority is in most cases of no use. The
violent changes from atheism and immorality to a
credulous and uncritical acceptance of Catholicism,
which appear to be common in France, are, if not
unknown, yet not familiar to us here. What is
familiar is a gradual change of mind in honest and
good men. To promote such a gradual movement
what is needed is that religious belief should vindicate
its reasonableness afresh, and its consistency with
the whole of knowledge and experience. Indeed,
if religious authority is to be true to its own best
838 PRESENT-DAY APPLICATION
traditions, its validity must be vindicated, not only
by showing its power to inspire and redeem human
life, but also by demonstrating its adequacy in the
court of reason and free enquiry ; as was done of
old, when it succeeded in making of Platonism the
instrument of its own theology, and later in con-
verting the revived Aristotelianism of the Middle
Ages. In the same spirit its task is now not only to
convert and sanctify souls, as it has always been
doing, but to show itself at home in the modern
world of science and criticism and sociology.
Thus we set ourselves to this task to seek to build
up a fabric of belief in God and in Jesus Christ with-
out any conscious appeal to authority, solely by
reference to rational and historical standards. In
Belief in God we investigated the grounds of theism
and found its philosophical foundations in the general
sense still unshaken. But the God whom philosophy
offers to our faith we discovered to be profoundly
unsatisfying to the demands of the soul of men.
We also saw that the belief in God on which our
Western civilization as well as our religious life has
been based was, in fact, directly derived from the
prophets of Israel and from Jesus Christ, and claimed
to be, not a conclusion drawn from the reasoning of
philosophers, but a gradual revelation or self-dis-
closure of God to man. We must not allow ourselves
to put revelation and reason in sharp contrast ; for
reason is confessedly the light of God within us.
But we found no justification for dismissing as
irrational the idea that the God after whom reason
gropes and whom it dimly discovers should be such
a being as can meet the aspirations of reason by
positive self-disclosure from His own side. And when
we studied the record of the prophets and of Jesus,
we found the conviction become irresistible that
here we really have, as nowhere else in the world,
the word of God*
BELIEF IN GOD AND IN CHRIST 339
This is the first challenge we addressed to those
who would think freely : Can you, trusting your own
best conscience and judgement., stand face to face
with the long line of prophets and with Jesus Christ,
and reject their claim to be the vehicles of a real
self-disclosure of God, as being at bottom only an
illusion ? Can you do this, having in view not only
the weight of their own testimony, but also the
profound difference which its acceptance has made
in the experience of innumerable men and the no
less profound difference which the withdrawal of
this faith would make ? For the moral effectiveness
added to life, over long periods and wide reaches, by
a particular belief cannot be left out of sight in the
estimate of its truth.
The question whether the very distinctive and
unique doctrine about God and man which we owe
to the prophets of Israel and to Jesus Christ must be
taken for truth is, in reality, the most fundamental
of all questions for religion, and the one on our
answer to which our answers to subsequent questions
will in the main depend. The Hebrew faith in God,
as intensely personal, as possessing moral character,
as being at the last resort eternal Love, as the
absolute Creator of all that is, prior to the universe
which He sustains by His presence in it, and the
judge of all free and rational spirits, we found to be
in no conflict with our knowledge as a whole, and to
be alone capable of interpreting and sustaining the
higher moral and spiritual experience of man. Thus
those who, on the whole, followed along with the
argument of our first volume accepted this faith,
provisionally at least, as a faith to be applied to
experience and put to account in life.
On the basis of this faith we set to work to answer
the question : What think ye of Christ ? Here we
found ourselves in the presence of so wide a con-
spiracy of our intellectuals, refusing dogmatically to
340 PRESENT-DAY APPLICATION
take Into consideration anything but a non-miraculous
and purely humanitarian conception of Christ, that
we were compelled to recall to mind the fallibility
of philosophers, and to stimulate afresh our resolution
to think freely. We saw reason to refuse the concep-
tions of a merely immanent God and a closed system
of nature, and vindicated for the Creator the freedom
to take fresh action to redeem a world which sin had
ruined. We took note that famous " critics," who
have biassed their criticism by a priori refusals of
the supernatural, are in consequence driven to treat
the Gospel evidence with great violence, and pro-
duce in effect strangely divergent pictures of the
historical Jesus. We sought with openness of mind
to trace the development of the first faith in Jesus
Christ, and we saw reason to believe that the faith
in the Incarnation, as St. Paul and St. John pro-
claim it, is the faith which corresponds to and inter-
prets the facts as a whole, as no other estimate of
His person can do ; and the faith of the Catholic
Church, as it found expression in the Creed and
Councils, we recognized as in substance neither more
nor less than the faith of St. Paul and St. John, only
now formulated in opposition to certain radically
hostile tendencies of thought. It is true that the
traditional faith has been at times associated with
uncritical history, and with an impossible theory of
the effect of inspiration, and with estimates of
Christ's Godhead which tended to efface His real
manhood, and with doctrines of redemption against
which our moral nature rebels. But we sought to
purge the idea of the Incarnate Person and His work
of all such associations, and to maintain a doctrine
of His person and work which is fully
in accord with the historical evidence, which is in no
respect an offence to our reason or conscience, and
which in its whole substance is just the faith of the
New Testament and the Church which has been
FAITH IN THE SPIRIT AND THE CHURCH 341
verified in an almost world-wide experience. This
was the aim of Belief in Christ.
It remained for us in this volume to confront
another claim of the critics that is, to separate the
doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Church, and the
doctrine of sacramental Catholicism, which is now
commonly acknowledged as the teaching of St. Paul
and St. John, from the teaching of Jesus Himself.
He, it is contended, had no idea of founding a church
or instituting sacraments. This position solidly
contradicts the assumption of the Acts and the
Epistles (chap. i). There is no more unconvincing
treatment of evidence, I think, than is to be found
in the denial that St. Paul's "tradition " about the
Last Supper was, like his tradition about the
resurrection of Christ, something which he had
"received" at his conversion "from the Lord"
as its source, but through the Church which delivered
it to him. It is true, we saw, that our Lord did not
found a new Church ; but all the evidence converges
to show that He refounded the old Church on a new
basis, and re-equipped it with officers in the persons
of the twelve apostles and with certain sacramental
rites of fellowship (chap. ii). And the suggestion that
" sacramentalism," as it appears in St. Paul's Epistles,
with the doctrine of salvation through the immanent
Spirit and glorified Christ, was something alien to
the historical Jesus and His Jewish disciples, and
was assimilated in the first Gentile churches from the
mystery religions of Paganism, we saw cause to
reject as violating both the evidence and the prin-
ciples of probability. We recognized in the mystery
religions an influence which contributed materially
to the spread of the gospel and the Church as part
of what older scholars called " the divine prepara-
tion " for the catholic gospel but the source of
the original doctrines and practices of the New Testa-
ment we found to lie unmistakably in the Jewish
342 PRESENT-DAY APPLICATION
tradition, and in the experiences through which the
first Christians had passed in the school of Jesus
Christ (chap. iii).
Having thus reached the conclusion of our recon-
structive argument, it remained for us to consider
what the acceptance of the faith not only in God the
Father, and in the Incarnate Son Jesus Christ, but
also in the Holy Spirit, and in the Church as the
temple of the Holy Spirit and the body of Christ
what this faith involves and means. Thus we
analysed the idea of the Church and of the sacra-
ments, as it is found in the Epistles and the Acts, and
we found there, unmistakably, the conception of the
one visible society as the only covenanted sphere of
Christ's redemption. Membership in Christ and
membership in the Church are represented as the
same thing in different aspects, inasmuch as union
with God is not otherwise offered to us than in
the fellowship of the believers. The principle of the
sacraments we saw to be that they are social cere-
monies, in which the grace of the Spirit is attached
at point after point to the community life. And the
unity of the community, the Catholic Church threat-
ened from the first by disruptive forces we found
to be secured by three main links : the apostolic
ministry to which all must adhere, the sacraments of
the society in which all must participate, and the
faith or " word of God " which all must hold in
common (chap. iv).
We then passed on to discuss the nature of the
authority of the Church (chap. v). The primary pur-
pose of the Church is to represent the Kingdom of
God in the world that is, to exhibit such a type of
human life, individual and social, as shall both
glorify God and be a moral attraction to mankind.
But this life draws its motives from a certain doctrine,
and the doctrine on which it is based proclaims itself
as a divine revelation a word of God. This word
THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH 843
of God as taught by the apostles constitutes the
tradition of the Church and is the basis of its authority.
We took note of the very conservative and moderate
character of this authority, as the ancient and
especially the Greek-speaking Church conceived it.
It was content to hand on and defend the original
tradition, and to make its appeal to the original
Scriptures now being gathered into a canon. It was
so confident of the scripturalness and reasonableness
of its tradition that it regularly sought to stimulate
enquiry by constant appeals to reason and Scripture ;
and it was very sparing in dogmatic requirements.
Then we contrasted with this the imperialist
conception of centralized authority, and the love of
uniformity and regimentation, which have more and
more characterized the Roman Church (chap. vi).
Doctrinally considered, we found that this spirit has
expressed itself in dogmas which are neither consistent
with history nor justified by the ancient canons of
tradition. The religion of the Roman Catholic Church
presents all the appearance of a one-sided develop-
ment of catholicity in the direction of autocracy, and
the Eastern Orthodox Church in rejecting its claim
has simply been abiding by the tradition. Then
(chap, vii) we examined the plea of development, in
the larger sense, by which alone the dogmatic claim
of Rome can justify itself, and we found in it really
a false idea of development. The true development
of the Church does not lie in the heightening and
extension of the dogmatic claim by a logical process,
which more and more tends to make the burden
upon the intellect intolerable and swamps the free-
dom of the spirit ; it lies rather in the constant self-
adaptation of the Church to new demands of new
races, new knowledge, new conditions of society.
For this sort of development the minimum rather
than the maximum of required dogma is for the
advantage of the Church. There is no doubt a
23
344 PRESENT-DAY APPLICATION
constant system of doctrine which constitutes Catho-
licism. But it is intolerable to suppose that the
Church should Become more burdensome to the
intelligence and narrower in its appeal as it goes down
the generations and widens out into the world.
Thus we would find our ideal in the minimum rather
than the maximum of dogmatic requirement.
Then (in chap, viii) we applied ourselves to the
authority of Scripture. We found that the appeal
to Scripture as supplying a final testing-ground of
legitimate doctrine is the main safeguard against the
tendency to multiply the dogmas which authority
would seek to impose upon the conscience. The
function of the Church is to teach the faith with
authority ; and the function of the " open Bible "
coupled with free enquiry is to preserve the faith
from illegitimate accretion. We found also that a
recognition of the unique inspiration of Scripture and
a profound reverence for it is compatible with the
critical treatment of the documents.
Then a summary was offered of the doctrines which
constitute Catholicism, estimated by the ancient
standards (chap. ix). And as a list of such numerous
articles of faith is alarming to our intellects, it was
shown (chap, x) that these articles, or little limbs of
the body of doctrine, are not really separable affirma-
tions, but depend with rational consistency upon the
affirmation of the central principles concerning God
and man which consitute the message of the prophets
and of Jesus our Lord, and which found their fulfil-
ment in the Incarnation of the Son and the mission
of His Spirit. One fundamental act of assent to this
word of God carries with it the general position of
orthodoxy.
THE APPEAL TO ANTIQUITY 845
II
Our argument has been largely historical. We
have been occupied in considering what the religion
of Christ has in fact been, as it is represented in
the New Testament and in the tradition of the Church
from the beginning. This appeal to our origins,
which is distasteful to the modern mind, saturated
in a popular philosophy of development which is
a misunderstanding of its scientific meaning, is
nevertheless essential to Christianity. It is involved
in the fundamental principle of the finality of the
Christ. 1 In Him we have the final expression of
God, or the Word of God, in terms of humanity, and
the final expression of humanity in union with God.
And this was found to imply, and does imply, a fixed
creed about God and man and redemption, to which
adequate expression was given in the New Testament.
The developments of Christianity will be rich and
manifold, as rich and manifold as are the capacities
of humanity in all its tribes and phases to bring out
into prominence its aspects and meanings ; but the
fundamental faith, with its positive implications of
idea and fact, must remain the same. In a changing
world it is yet in the main to the unchanging needs
of the human soul, in its aspirations after moral
freedom and eternal life, and in its struggles with sin
and suffering and death, and to the unchanging re-
quirements of human fellowship, that the catholic
gospel appeals. There is a " general heart of man,"
and therefore there can be a catholic and substan-
tially unchanging gospel. And there has been such
demonstrably in history. There is something in
Christendom, below all its divisions, which responds
to the test of " ubique, semper, db omnibus " in the
sense of its author, though the break-up of Western
i See Belief in Christ, pp.
340 PRESENT-DAY APPLICATION
Christendom at the Reformation has introduced, as
we shall recognize directly, a complication into the
appeal. Thus, in a religion which proclaims the
finality of Christ, the appeal to antiquity is inevitable.
Moreover, since the Church became the established
religion of whole nations, there has been an inextric-
able confusion between the standard and polity of
the Church and the traditional standards and political
tendencies of nations and races and classes. If we
want to understand the essence of Christianity we
must look at it, long and steadily, as it emerged from
Palestine and ran in a broadening stream, but sub-
stantially unconfused, into the great world of the
Roman Empire.
Thus we are unashamed in our appeal to antiquity
and Scripture. And those who, on the whole
though, it may be, only provisionally have accepted
the argument of these volumes, have in their minds
a clear understanding of what the Catholic Church
of Christ has meant ; and it is with this in our minds
that we turn back to the confusing spectacle of the
present day.
" Men's hearts are failing them for fear, and for
looking after those things that are coming on the
earth," and "there are many antichrists." Such is
no doubt the condition of things to-day. But in
the midst of all our social and international anxieties
there is, and that in many countries, a widespread
conviction that there is no redemption for human
nature whether socially or individually but in the
name of Jesus of Nazareth ; and there is a feeling
associated with this conviction that the cause of
Christ is infinitely weakened by our religious divi-
sions, in acquiescing in which for so long we have
"done despite unto the Spirit of grace." We do
well to pay heed to these two thoughts or emotions
CHRISTIANITY FIRST "THE WAY" 847
which, are widespread among the best men and women
belonging to very various religious traditions.
Now, I see no prospect of reunion among Christian
denominations on any wide scale within the measur-
able future. It may be that times of Antichrist lie
ahead of us, in which disaster and suffering and lone-
liness may drive Christians into unity. But whatever
the future holds, there is, it seems to me, one thing
which can be seriously undertaken at once, the im-
portance of which it is hard to exaggerate, that is,
the union of Christians in their various sections for
moral and social witness and service.
It is in this that our traditional Christianity has
been so lamentably and increasingly partial and one-
sided. Christianity is, first of all, " The Way." It is
a life a social life to be lived. It is as a life, rather
than a doctrine, that in the New Testament it makes
its tremendous and difficult claim upon men. The
doctrine is only the necessary background of the life.
There can be no question that our Lord intended His
Church to make its appeal to the world mainly by
the life which men saw it living. In this way His
disciples were to be the salt of the earth, the light
of the world, the city set on a hill. And when the
Church recovered herself from her first moral peril,
due to the vast invasion from the Gentile world, she
maintained her moral standard, her standard alike
of self-control and brotherhood, through the long
days when Christianity remained a dangerous ven-
ture. It was in the main as " The Way " that she
conquered.
" Established Christianity," whether in the civi-
lized Roman Empire or in half-barbarous tribes or
in modern nations the sort of Christianity which
claims to embrace the whole society, which it costs
men nothing to profess, and into which children are
practically baptized as a matter of course appears
to be as audacious a departure from the method of
348 PRESENT-DAY APPLICATION
Christ as can well be conceived. Whether it was a
venture made under the guidance of providence, or
the greatest of all the mistakes or corporate sins of
the Church, it is not for us to decide. 1 In imagina-
tion we ponder inevitably over the question of what
the history of the Church and the world would have
been if in the days of Constantino the Church, while
gratefully accepting from the Emperors full toleration,
had obstinately refused to accept the imperial power
as an instrument for propagating and maintaining
religion, had jealously maintained its independence
and its former standards of moral discipline, preferring
reality of profession to numbers ; and if later it had
altogether refused to baptize the Franks in platoons
in the suite of their chief, as if they were only just
changing their old hero gods for a better and stronger
one We can dream of the difference it would have
made in the history of the world and the Church,
but we can only dream. The facts were otherwise.
What price was paid for the assistance of the strong
arm of emperors and kings we know. Christianity
began to cost men nothing to profess ; or, rather, it
very soon cost them their life to profess anything else.
The difference in the average moral level of church
membership was immediately apparent. We see it
already in the sermons of Chrysostom in the East and
Augustine in the West. The average moral level
had become what it is to-day.
We must not refuse to recognize the glory of the
mediaeval conception of Christianity, or the work
which it did in the taming of the nations, or the
witness which it bore to the solidarity and brother-
hood of men and nations in the catholic society, or
the grandeur of the moral and social principles of
i But I find it very hard to doubt that the Church in fact un-
consciously succumbed just to that temptation which its Master
resisted when He refused to accept '* the kingdoms of the world
and the glory of them " at Satan's price
THE FAILURE OF THE CHURCH 349
the Schoolmen and moralists of the Church, or the
constant influence of the saints. Nevertheless, it
remains true that in fact the Church accepted, what
our Lord so systematically refused, a double stan-
dard, the standard for saints and the standard for
average sinners or conventional Christians ; and
the practical attention of the Church was to an extent
difficult to exaggerate, and more and more, directed
to saving individual souls, by getting them into
purgatory at their death and then redeeming them
from purgatory by powers it was supposed to possess,
though they had never made any serious attempt
to live the life which Christ prescribed to His
disciples.
Of the moral witness of the Church in our own
country we know the record : it is in many respects
an honourable record ; but in many respects it has
been startlingly deficient. It has been content, flatly
contrary to the spirit of our Lord, to draw a marked
distinction between respectable and disreputable sins
stigmatizing drunkenness and violence and forni-
cation, while it has practically condoned avarice
and the love of money, and contempt of social in-
feriors, and selfish luxury, and injustice as to which
* respectable ' sins we know the mind of our Master.
Politically it has been strangely content to be merely
nationalist and patriotic. It is pitiful, indeed, to
think of the extent to which nationalism has been
allowed to eat the heart out of the catholic religion,
not in England only, or Germany, but in the Orthodox
Churches ; and to mark how the greatest of inter-
national societies, the Roman Catholic Church, has
borne no witness in these last days no audible wit-
ness, at least against nationalist and militarist
excesses in France and Italy. It is pitiful to con-
trast the enthusiasm of the Church in many lands
for the great war with the feeble support it has given
to the cause of international peace.
350 PRESENT-DAY APPLICATION
I do not want to weary my readers by saying
constantly the same tilings. But I write under a
profound sense that the first duty of the Church to-
day, in all lands, and particularly in our own, is to
re-erect the ethical standard of Christianity not only
with regard to sexual relations and the control of
our passions, but also with regard to commercial
morality and the obligation of truth both in com-
merce and politics, to the right and (much more)
the duty of property and the sin of avarice, and to
the meaning of brotherhood and the equal spiritual
value of all human souls. On most of these sub-
jects we have had committees which have produced
reports. There is, however, still much to be done
by scholars and thinkers. And there is much more
to be done in reducing their conclusions to something
like a popular moral creed, and converting the con-
science of the Church to its acceptance. What we
have to remind ourselves of is that the Christ who is
to judge the world both the living and the dead is
the same Jesus of Nazareth who spoke the Sermon on
the Mount and the parables of judgement and mercy,
and that He does not change His character with the
changes in the Church's disposition.
I know that such a fundamental ethical reform
in the Church's teaching would be very unpopular
in many directions. It would encounter many
prejudices. It would alarm many vested interests.
What sort of restoration of moral discipline it might
lead the way to, I do not know. But I feel certain
of one thing that it, and it alone, would attract and
win a great body of men and women such as would
have Jbeen among the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth ;
that it would cut right across all our denominational
divisions ; that it might unite all the most real
friends of Christ in co-operative effort even at once,
while the long process is gone through of thinking
out afresh our theological principles ; and that it, and
THE ORTHODOX AND ROMAN CHURCHES 351
it alone, will make the world understand what the
Catholic Church is for.
Ill
I trust that the interpretation of Catholicism which
this volume has sought to give will be acceptable
to a considerable number of the theologians of the
Orthodox Churches, and will at least prove no obstacle
to the reunion with them for which we Anglicans
pray. If we can agree on the necessary doctrine, and
on the necessary conditions of valid ordination and
administration of sacraments, I hope it may prove
possible to be mutually tolerant of great diversities
of custom and ceremonial. We feel a profound
sympathy with the Orthodox Churches in their present
calamities, all the more that we know we have not
done what we ought to have done to avert them ;
and we venerate the spirit of martyrdom which they
have never ceased to display. But we recognize that
there is a long tradition of mutual alienation and
misunderstanding between us which only time and
friendly intercourse and much prayer can overcome.
We must not be impatient. What I trust is that
those who share the point of view which this book
has sought to express may look hopefully forward to
ultimate reunion between Orthodox and Anglican.
As we look toward the great Church of Rome, we
know that in the main we Englishmen owe to her
our Christianity, and we should delight to acknow-
ledge the primacy of the Bishop of Rome among the
churches of Christendom. As we read the record of
the separation of the sixteenth century we wonder
wistfully whether, if religion had not been so much
mixed up with politics and with the passions of
imperious monarchs, the separation need have
occurred or need have become inveterate. But
these are idle dreams ; and as things stand at pre-
PRESENT-DAY APPLICATION
sent no way towards reunion seems to be open.
Since the early sixteenth century the breach has
become wider and the obstacles larger and more
definitely fixed. We can but wait and pray, in
faithfulness to the truth as we see it,
I know that a great deal in this book will provoke
and distress English Free Churchmen and Scottish
Presbyterians and those of other lands who symbolize
with them. I desire to acknowledge ^ with all my
heart the wonderful and continuous evidences of the
work of tlie Spirit of God among them ; and to
express the gratitude which thousands among us feel
for theological and spiritual help received from
them. But I am sure that at the Reformation they
broke certain fundamental principles and laws of the
Catholic Church. There is very much in their spirit,
their traditions, and their institutions which the
Catholic Church needs, and which in a reunited Church
must be retained ; but there cannot, I am convinced,
be a reunited Church except on the basis of the
Catholic Creeds, and the acknowledgement of the
sacramental principle as well as the due administra-
tion of the sacraments, and the recognition of the
episcopal succession as the link of connexion and
continuity in the Catholic body. Here again, then,
unity seems a long way off, I do not know if any-
thing can heal the breaches, unless very evil times
force us together. But meanwhile the best prepara-
tion for future unity lies, I believe, in the detached
and disinterested study of our Christian origins and
in close fellowship for social service.
IV
And now I come finally to our own Anglican
communion. I confess that I cannot rank myself
among those who can speak of the Church of Eng-
land as "on the whole the most glorious church in
THE HOPE FOR ANGLICANISM S53
Christendom " or of her Book of Common Prayer
as " incomparable." I find that her history in many
of its aspects and characteristics makes me feel
ashamed and depressed. But if there is in history
the stamp of a divine providence on any society, it
is set on the Anglican Church. It was marked out
in the sixteenth century to hold together the ancient
Catholic tradition both in creed and order with the
appeal of the Reformation to the open Bible as the
final court of reference for Christians ; and so to
present a type of Catholicism which the world had
forgotten, which should have priests but not be priest-
ridden, and should accept the Catholic tradition but
keep it purged by the free use of reason and an all-
pervading scripturalness.
Those who hold this ideal for Anglicanism will
probably agree in certain determinations and desires.
I. That while we accept provisionally the situation
fixed for us in the * settlement 5 of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, and embodied in the Book of
Common Prayer, as being one under which it is
tolerable to live and work, we should insist on making
our constant appeal, not to the particular arrange-
ments and compromises of our Reformation, but to
the ancient Catholic tradition as verified in the New
Testament. The particular settlements arrived at in
the reigns of the Tudor sovereigns were manifestly
compromises conditioned by the determination to keep
together in a National Church under the headship
of the Crown the contending theological parties and
the silent, moderate, and conservative mass of the
nation. In detail the compromises had in them
sometimes much more of temporary policy than of
abiding principle. But the underlying principle was
never abandoned, and was brought to the front again
by Hooker and the seventeenth-century divines to
maintain the Catholic tradition conditioned by the
appeal to Scripture, and to exclude the Romanist
354 PRESENT-DAY APPLICATION
accretions which had imperilled the legitimate liberty
of national Churches, and rendered nugatory the
appeal to antiquity and Scripture.
2. To be true to this principle we need reforms in
our service-book, or if that is impossible without
doing violence to the Evangelical conscience, then, as
is now proposed, the recognition of alternative forms
within the existing rite, which shall give sufficient
expression, to undoubted features in the Catholic
tradition. Such would be the restoration of a
t canon 9 in the eucharist less meagre and more con-
formable with tradition ; and the recovery of public
prayers for the dead, and a fuller commemoration of
the saints, and prayers to God on the ancient mode}
that we may have the assistance of their interces-
sions ; and the alteration of the preface to the
Confirmation Service which obscures the sacramental
character of the rite. We shall also ask for the
removal of passages from the service-book which are
not really scriptural and which are a stumbling-block
to many men's consciences, like the phrase which
describes infants as " children of wrath " and the
text of the Three Heavenly Witnesses in one of the
Epistles. The full list of needed changes or additions
would be a fairly long one. Some of these reforms
it seems likely we shall have speedily granted. For
some of them we may have to wait. But we must not
cease to make our reasonable wishes known.
3. I am stating an opinion which I know to be
shared by many among us of different schools of
thought when I say that the Thirty-nine Articles of
Religion, while remaining in respect as an interesting
historical document, ought to cease to be regarded
in any sense as a theological standard. They belong
markedly to an epoch of controversy which has passed
away. They contain a number of expressions or
statements which are needlessly repellent to the
modern spirit, and others equally so to the Catholic
NECESSARY REFORMS 355
spirit ; and at many points they sought to serve
their pacific purpose by a vagueness of statement
which makes them both valueless and perplexing.
It is true that they are * patient ' of a tolerable
meaning by the help of a great deal of explanation ; it
is true also that since 1865 the assent which the clergy
are required to give to them is vague and general
the common talk of the clergy "signing the articles "
being simply a survival from the former period ;
but nothing, I think, is gained by their retention
which can be compared to the disadvantages of a
theological standard which has ceased to carry either
serious obligation or theological enlightenment. I
would have those who are being ordained required to
express their assent (not to the Thirty-nine Articles,
but) to the Nicene Creed, and the Book of Common
Prayer, and the Ordering of Bishops, Priests, and
Deacons ; and also, with a solemn sense of responsi-
bility, to give the required answers to the questions
in the Ordination Service which affirm the truth of
the Scriptures x and their position as the final testing-
ground of necessary doctrine.
4. Conditions are not favourable to trials for heresy ;
and even if our Church Courts were reconstituted
on tolerable lines, we should do well to shrink from,
them. But we sorely need a revival of the spirit of
what I would call a rational loyalty to accepted obliga-
tions. I dare say that in twenty years 5 time it will
have become evident that as regards the person of
our Lord the alternative is between a frank Uni-
tarianism on the one side and a frank adherence to
the Creeds both as regards facts and doctrine on
the other. Meanwhile, the claim of a few of our
Modernists to retain their positions as ministers of
the Church while they profess opinions which appear
to be quite inconsistent with the Creeds they recite
1 The question being modified by an explanatory addition as
now suggested : see above, p. 287, n. 2.
356 PRESENT-DAY APPLICATION
and the service-book which they use has undoubtedly
a very demoralizing effect. We have a few others
on the opposite flank of the Church who affirm appar-
ently the whole of the Roman teaching, excepting,
with a strange inconsistency, the central point of the
jurisdiction and authority of the Pope, which affects
so fundamentally our right to teach and administer
the sacraments. No doubt these relatively small
groups bulk too large in the public eye. But they
have generated among the laity a sense of the
hollowness of the formal professions of the clergy,
which makes them distrust our honesty. On the
Catholic side this suspiciousness is even more justified
by the apparent ignoring on the part of many of the
clergy of the solemn declaration, in virtue of which
alone they can be admitted to any clerical office
" In public prayers and administration of the sacra-
ments I will use the form in the said book [the Prayer
Book] prescribed and none other, except so far as
shall be ordered by lawful authority. 3 ' Let us give
the freest interpretation to the last exceptive clause,
and recognize that no clergyman can be blamed who
uses whatever dispensations from the obligation con-
tracted his bishop thinks himself entitled to give
him ; but let it be a definite and public dispensation,
so that all can be cognizant of it ; and, granted this
modification, the rites of the Prayer Book, whether
we like them or not, must be followed, with whatever
varieties of accompanying ceremony, as binding upon
us. ' Devotions ' of various kinds, and deviations
from the prescribed standard, more or less lawless,
do undoubtedly attract a number of people. We
should wish to go as far as possible in meeting spiri-
tual needs of different kinds. Nevertheless I ques-
tion whether what has been thus gained can be set
in comparison with what has been lost by the scandal
which seeming lawlessness is causing. There is no
doubt that there is among the laity a widespread
CORPORATE LOYALTY 357
questioning of clerical honesty which is doing the
most serious moral harm and which is due to what
they see or hear of in the most opposite sections of
the Church. What we need is a revived sense of
rational loyalty to that particular portion of the
Church we belong to, as well as to the great Church
Catholic which lies beyond. (And in matters of rite
and ceremony it is the particular Church to which
we specially owe obedience.) And we need even
more a deepened sense of the moral seriousness of
formal obligations contracted before God and man.
There appears to be a noxious form of party spirit
current among us, which emboldens us to stand by
one another in doing what, alone before God, we could
not justify.
5. I should be untrue to convictions which I share
with, I believe, only a few if I did not say, finally,
that, whatever is to be said in other ages and other
situations for established Churches, I believe the
existence of an Anglican Establishment to-day in our
country is inconsistent with the actual state of beliefs
in the nation, and a real disadvantage to religion on
the whole. And I cherish the belief, well-grounded, I
feel sure, that if we were disestablished, our internal
cohesiveness would prove to be surprisingly great,
The solid block of the Anglican communion means to
abide by its principles and will hold together.
It will have been evident that the writer of this
book is very much alive to the faulty character of all
parts of the Catholic Church. Certainly where he
says I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, he means
with St. Thomas,! believe in the Holy Spirit vivifying
the Church. For underlying all laxities, defects,
exaggerations, and unworthy accommodations to the
world, of which Church history is so lamentably full,
there is a divine movement, of which the Church
358 PRESENT-DAY APPLICATION
Catholic is the organ, which had its beginning in the
call of Abraham and the redemption of Israel, and
its consummation in our Lord and the mission of
His Spirit, and has had its development in all the
history of the Church. To the faith on which this
movement rests the saints of every generation and
country are the witnesses, and with it the moral and
spiritual hopes of humanity are bound up. There
are many of us who are at times tempted to dis-
loyalty or assailed by doubt. " Yea/' we cry with
the psalmist, u I had almost said even as they " the
adversaries and the sceptics : " but lo, then I should
have condemned the generation of thy children."
That is the true reply in all such temptations. I
cannot repudiate the fellowship of the children of
God, or forget the great cloud of witnesses who
watch how I play my part in the great conflict.
" It should seem
Impossible for me to fail so watched."
Nor, while we labour and pray for the restoration
of visible unity "the bond of peace" among the
divided sections of Christ's Church on earth, shall
we ever suffer ourselves to forget that the actual
principle of unity in the Church is the Holy Spirit ;
and though our divisions lamentably mar the exhi-
bition of that unity to the world, they are not deep
enough to extinguish it. For in spite of them, and
beneath them, He is at work binding all the members
of the one body who are still on earth into union with
their Lord in heaven and with the whole company
of the faithful in the heavenly places.
TABLE OF SUBJECTS
CHAPTER I. The Religion of the Spirit in the N.T. Call for
4 the religion of the Spirit,' pp. 12. Modern ideas of
its meaning as (1) universal ; (2) progressive ; (3) im-
material, 2-7. Bible doctrine admits universality in a
sense, but practically restricts the gift of the Spirit to
Israel, Christ, and the Church, 7-15. In N.T. universal
presence of Logos, 16-19, but (1) restricted gift of Holy
Spirit, 19-21. (2) Finality of the Christ, 21-2. (3)
Sacramental principle, 22-6. Extra ecclesiam nulla
salus explained by (1) insistence on principle of fellow-
ship, 27-8 ; (2) meaning of ' the salvation,' 28-31.
App. Note A on Borrowing from Hellenism, 31-2.
B on Idea of Invisible Church, 32-4.
CHAPTER II. Did Jesus Christ found the Church ? The ques-
tion stated, pp. 35-6. Objections of Schweitzer, Inge,
etc., 36-42. But the Church already in existence, 42-3.
Refounded by Christ, 44, and re-equipped with officers
(apostles), 4551, and sacraments of baptism, 52-4,
and the eucharist, 54-5. Meaning of the body and the
blood, 55-60. (1) Institutions " ordained by Christ
Himself" on earth, 60-1. (2) The Church and the
Kingdom, 61-2. (3) The appeal to common sense, 62-3.
(4) Natural and supernatural, 63-4.
App. Note A on The N.T. Interpretation of Prophecy,
64-5.
B on St. Peter and the Rest of the Apostles,
65-8.
C on The Authority of an Apostle, 68-70,
D on The Commission in St. John xx, 70-1.
CHAPTER III. Christianity and the Mystery Religions. The
question stated, pp. 72-6. The theory of The Golden
Bough, Loisy, etc., 76-81. Concessions, 81-4. Objec-
tions, 84-6. The doctrinal basis of Catholicism wholly
in Israel, 86-9 ; so its ethical basis, 89-91 ; its sacra-
mentalism also, 92-5 ; Hellenistic ideas of the * spiritual '
life, 95-7. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit in N.T.
comes from Israel, 97-100 ; so of inspiration, 100-1 .
24 359
360 TABLE OF SUBJECTS
Hellenism not properly ethical, 101-3. Common terms,
103-104. Conclusion, 104-5.
App. Note A on The Pagan Mysteries and the Eucharist,
105-7.
B on The Use of * Spirit ' in the Hermetic Books
107.
CHAPTER IV. The Holy Spirit in the Church. Where we
stand, pp. 108-10. The N.T. doctrine of the Spirit, 110.
Synoptic Gospels, 111 ; the Acts, 112 ; St. Paul, 112-15 ;
St. John, 116-17; the rest of N.T., 118. Teaching of
Fathers, 118-20. Life in the Spirit in the N.T., 120-4.
St. Paul's sacramentalism, 124. (1) Baptism, 124-31 ;
(2) Laying on of hands, 131-2 ; (3) the eucharist, 132-6.
The three bonds of unity for the Church, 136. The
apostolic succession, 136-42. Ordination sacramental,
142-8. The authority of the Church, 143-4. The Church
a visible institution, 144-6. The principle of sacra-
mentalism, 146-8.
App. Note A on The Gift of Tongues in Acts ii, 148-9.
B on The Enumeration of Seven Sacraments.
149.
C on The Heavenly Jerusalem, 150.
CHAPTER V. The Authority of the Church. The general idea
easy, pp. 151-2 ; the particular application difficult, 152-
154. Appeal to history for Christian idea of authority, 154 ;
in O.T., 154-7. Our Lord, 157 ; His primary appeal ethical,
158-61 ; but rooted in authoritative doctrine, 161-5.
Authority in St. Paul, 165-70 ; St. John, 170-1 ; the early
Church, 171-2. Doctrinal authority restricted, 172-7. A
different note heard in the West, 1 77-8 . Summary, 1 78-83 .
App. Note on The Teaching of the Epistles primarily
Moral, 183.
CHAPTER VL Authority in Roman Theory. The idea of * the
life,' pp. 184-5. (i) Absolute authority, 185-7 ; the
vocation of the scholar, 187-91 ; some de fide dogmas
which are unhistorical, 191-3 ; pronouncements which
are authoritative but not infallible, 193-5, and in fact
mistaken, 195-6. (ii) Unhistorical conception of tradi-
tion, 196-7 ; Vincent of Lerins, 197 ; tested in doctrine
of purgatory, etc., 198-201. (iii) Centralization of
authority, 201-4.
App. Note A on The Infallibility of the Church, 205-6.
B on The Constant Repudiation by the East
of the Papal Claims, 207.
TABLE OF SUBJECTS 361
CHAPTER VII. The Tests of Legitimate Development. The
moderate and conservative idea of authority, p. 208 ;
its inadequacy for the Romans. Newman's theory of
development, 208-10 ; partly retracted, 211 ; the
milder version justifies properly Catholic, but not later
Roman, dogmas, 211-14. The freer version. Newman's
suggested tests. One-sided exaggeration the real char-
acteristic of Rome. Its loss of comprehensiveness, 214
219 ; the true conception of development. The Church's
need of mobility to minimize, not maximize, the dog-
matic requirements, 219-24. The value of the appeal to
Scripture, 224-5. The need of the plain man, 225-8.
App. Note on Dr. H. R. Mackintosh's Criticism of
Chakedon, 228^3, and Dr. Wigram's
Appeal for the Monophy 'sites, 243.
CHAPTER VIII. The Authority of Holy Scripture. The problem
stated, 244-6. (1) The Bible does contain one consistent
word of God, 246-50. (2) The finality of the apostolic
interpretation of Christ, 250-2. (3) The completeness of
Scripture, 252-4. (4) The inspiration of Scripture the
present problem, 254-7 ; our Lord's treatment, 257-8 ;
the N.T. writers, 259-63 ; the Church, 263-5 ; nothing
denned, 266-8. (5) Tradition to interpret Scripture, 268-
274. (6) The two distinct uses of Scripture, 275-7.
Advice of Guigo of Mont Dieu, 277-8.
App. Note A on Dr. McNeile's " N.T. Teaching in the
Light of St. Paul," 278-9.
B on The Question of Elements of Doctrinal
Importance in the Church Tradition which
are not in Scripture^ 280-1.
CHAPTER IX. What is of Faith ? Conclusions so far reached,
pp. 282-4. What, then, is the doctrinal content of
Catholicism ? 284. Reminders : (1) the aim to minimize
rather than maximize the dogmatic requirements, 284-
286 ; (2) the faith corporate, 286-7. (i) The Jewish basis.
The doctrine of Christ's person and of the Holy Trinity.
Ecumenical definitions, 288-91. (ii) The later Councils,
Nicaea ii, 291-3. (iii) Original Sin, the Atonement, and
the Inspiration of Scripture, 293-6. (iv) The Sacraments,
296-300. (v) The principle of the authoritative min-
istry, 300-2 ; (vi) The resurrection of the body what
is of faith ? 302-6. Heaven and Hell the intermediate
state, 306-8. Unanswered questions, 308-11. The cultus
of the Saints, 311-12. Freedom as regards discipline,
362 TABLE OF SUBJECTS
313-14. The appeal to antiquity, 314-15, and the General
Councils, 315.
App. Note on The Fifth and Seventh Ecumenical
Councils, 315-16.
CHAPTEB X. The Test of Rational Coherence. A list of so
many articles of faith alarming : but all coherent. One
principle, not many, 317-18. The fundamental Jewish faith
about God and man and sin, 318-20 (Remarks on Canon
Quick's criticism, 320-4). It carries with it the Catholic
Creed about Christ's person and the Trinity, and about
miracles and the end of the world, 324-7, also about hell,
and original sin, and the second Adam and the virginal
conception of Christ, 327-30. Also the principle of the
Incarnation carries with it the principle of the Church
and sacraments and of the resurrection, 330-1. Similar
rational coherence in Modernist doctrines, 331-3 ; but
destructive of the scriptural and catholic faith, 833-4.
App. Note on The Rationality of Belief in the Christian
Doctrine of God, pp. 334-5.
CHAPTER XI. Summary and Present-day Application. Sum-
mary, pp. 336-44. The appeal to Scripture and antiquity
justified, 345-6. The present situation. The hope of
reunion, 346-7. The need to make the moral and social
appeal the primary appeal. This the chief need of the
moment. Union for this purpose possible at once, 347-
351. The account here given of fundamental Catholicism
in its bearing upon the Orthodox Churches, 351 ; on the
Church of Rome, 351-2 , the Free Churches, 352 ; the
Anglican Communion, 352. Its root principles, the
reforms it needs, 352-7. Belief in the Church in spite
of its defects in all its portions, 357-8.
INDEX OF NAMES
Acton (Lord), 204, 209 n, 211 n.
Acts (the), 12-14, 41, 53, 112,
126, 148
Adams, James Truslow, 169n.,
196 n., 269 n.
Adonis, 77, 81, 85
Aeschylus, 85
Amon (of Thebes), 88
Andronicus, 141 n.
Anselm (St.), 190
Antigone, 152
Aphrodite, 78
Apocalypse (the), 89, 150, 245 n.
Apostles (the), 45-7, 65-71,
137-41
Apollinarius, 231, 234, 235
Apuleius, 88, 90, 91, 94 n.,
101 n., 102
Aquinas (St. Thomas), 190,
191 n., 200, 206 n., 286
Aristotle, 88 n.
Arms, 229, 325
Askwith (Dr. E. H.), 65
Athanasius (St.), 120, 172, 173 n.,
174, 175
Attis, 78, 80, 81, 86
Augustine (St.), 18, 31, 66, 176,
189, 198, 199 n., 202, 226,
244 n., 265, 270, 281, 293,
294, 310
Aztecs (the), 77 n., 82
Bacon (Francis), 163
Badcock (F, J.), lln.
Balfour (Lord), 233, 335
Balmforth (Mr.), 335
Barnabas (St.), 141 n.
Basil (St.), 119, 173 n., 227
Bede (Venerable), 83
Bellona, 88
Berengar, 189 n., 200
Bernard (Dr.), 126 n.
Bernard (St.), 189
Bevan (Dr. Edwyn), 99 n., 105
Binns (Elliott), 224 n.
Boethius, 232
Box (Dr.), 47 n., 49 n.
Briggs (Dr.), 65
Brightman (Dr.), 126 n., 179,
287 n., 288 n.
Bull (Bishop), 209
Burney (Dr.), 11 n., 58 n.
Cabasilas (Nicholas), 231
Cavallera, In.
Ceres, 88
Cerinthus, 170
Chase (Dr.), 131 n., 132 n., 142 n.
Chrysostom (St.), 82, 173 n.,
191 n., 207, 234 n., 235, 264,
265, 317
Cicero, 7 7 n., 106
Clement (of Alexandria), 106, 310
Clement (of Rome), 139 n.,, 140,
141, 213, 252, 280
Coulton(G. C.), 267 n.
Cumont, 78 n., 9 In.
Cybele, 78
Cyprian (St.), 32, 176, 202, 244 n.
Cyril (St. of Jeras.), 173
Cyril (St. of Alex.), 231, 291, 315
Darwin (Charles), 209 n.
Davidson (A. B.), 73 n.
Demeter, 79, 88
Denny, 66 n,, 67, 68, 191 n.,
204 n., 207 n.
Denzinger, 201 n.
Diana, 88
DidacU, 139 n., 140 n., 142
Dionysius, 78, 79, 88, 105
Dollinger (von), 201, 204
363
364
INDEX OF NAMES
Driver (Dr.), 64, 267 n.
Duchesne (A.), 83 n., 122, 207
Dudley (Rev. Owen Francis),
187 n.
Ecumenical Councils, 289, 290,
315
Edersheim, 52 n*
Eleusis, 77 n., 79, 88
Erasmus, 222, 224
Erigena (Scotus), 190
Essenes (the), 73
Eugenius IV, 194 n.
Eusebius, 245 n.
Farnell (Dr.), 105
Foucauld (Charles de), 185
Franzelin (Card.), 197 n., 201
Frazer (Sir James), 76, 80-3,
105
Galileo, 222
Gardner (Dr. Percy), 78 n., 91 n.
Giles (Prof. H. A.), 289 n.
Goethe, 182
Gregory (of Bergamo), 149
Gregory (the Great), 198, 200,
311
Gregory (of Nazianzus), 119
Gregory (of Nyssa), 119, 303,
310
Guigo (a Carthusian monk), 277
Hamilton (Dr. H. P.), 45 n.,
139 n.
Hanson (Kev. Richard), 252 n.
Harnack (Dr.), 33, 43 n., 44 n.,
86, 112 n., 136, 143 n., 145
Hatch (Dr. Edwin), 96 n.
Headlam (Dr.), 45 n., 52 n.
Hebrews (Epistle to the), 117,
131, 150, 245 n., 272, 276
Hecate, 88
Hegel, 2, 182
Heracleitus, 18
Hermas, 121, 142, 212, 252
Hermetic (books), 96, 99 n., 107
Hilary (St.), 32, 227
Hobson (Prof. E. W.), 335
Holland (H. S.), 48 n.
Hooker (Richard), 353
Hort (Dr.), 33, 48, 71, 137
Hutton (Richard Holt), 185
Ignatius (St. of Antioch), 141,
252, 301, 303
Ignatius (St. of Loyola), 186
Inge (Dr.), 38 n., 39, 40, 99
Innocent I (Pope), 177
Irenaeus, 171, 202 n., 212, 253,
280, 299
Ishtar, 78
Isis, 78, 85, 88, 90
James (A. Lewis), 311 n.
James (St.), 20, 117 n., 271
Janssen(Rev. Father AL), 186n,,
213 n.
Janus, 191 n.
Jerome (St.), 176, 245 n., 264 n.,
301, 310
Jesus Christ, 10-11, 35 ff., 87,
108, 110, 238, 246, 270, 325,
332
John (the Baptist), 11, 44 n,,
52, 54, 93, 111
John (of Damascus, St.), 231,
238 n., 292
John (St.), 11, 21, 49, 58, 111,
115-17, 129, 165, 170, 261,
263, 271, 303
Jude (St.), 89, 183, 271
Junias, 141 n.
Juno, 88
Justin (St. Mart.), 18,32, 139 n.,
212, 252, 280, 298
Kant, 230
Kennedy (Dr. H. A. A.), 96 n.,
103 n., 104 n., 127
Kingsley (Rev. Charles), 251 n.
Lactantius, 32
Lake (Dr. Kirsopp), 5, 127
Law (William), 159
Leckie(J. H.), 151 n.
Leo (the Great), 175, 178, 265
Leo XIII (Pope), 1, 194, 204 n.,
266, 268
Leontius (of Byzantium), 238 n.
Lessing, 4n.
Lock (Dr.), 55 n.
INDEX OP NAMES
865
Loisy, (M.) 36, 81, 84, 91 n., 105
Luke (St.), 11, 12 n., 42, 44 n.,
51, 111, 263, 270
Luther, 32, 124 n., 145, 234 n.
Macedonius, 235
Mackintosh (Dr. H. R.), 212 n.,
228-43, 250 n.
McNeile (Dr. A. H.}, 32, 212 n.,
249 n., 278
Mansel (Dean), 233
Mark (St.), 51, 55, 271
Marmion (Abbot), 1 n.
Mary (Immaculate Conception
of), 187, 192
Mason (Dr. A. J.), 33, 71, 137,
142 n., 173 n., 198 n., 311 n.
Matthew (St.), 47-49, 71, 213
Maurice (F. D.), 159, 251
Milligan (Prof. G.), 43 n.
Min, 88
Minerva, 88
Mithras, 9 In.
Moffat (Dr. James), 69, 138 n.
Mohler, 209
More (Sir Thomas), 191 n.
Moulton (Prof. J. H.), 43 n.
Mozley (J. B.), 209 n., 210 n.,
215
JSTeale (John Mason), 291
Nestorius, 235, 290
Newman (Card.), 151 n., 194,
209-12, 214, 215, 266
Optatus, 32
Origen, 18, 32, 171, 172 n., 177,
189, 199 n., 212, 213, 253, 265,
294 n., 303, 310, 312,315
Orphics (the), 106
Osiris, 78, 80, 81, 84
Palmer (William), 291
Papini (Giovanni), 269
Parry (Dr.), 142 n.
Pasteur, 163
Paul (St.), 14-15, 21, 23, 27, 29,
40, 54, 67-70, 89, 93, 101-45
112-15, 122-35, 165-71, 180,
183, 211, 247, 261-3, 271, 293,
304
Pelagius,294
Percival (Dr. H. R.), 315
Persephone, 79, 85, 88
Petau (or Petavius), 209
Peter (Lombard), 149
Peter (St.), 10, 13, 20, 47-51,
65-8, 117, 165, 207, 213
Philo, 92, 99, 100, 255
Pius IV (Pope), 201
Pius IX, 177 n.
Plato, 152, 182
Plotinus, 99
Plutarch, 79 n., 85, 88, 107
Pluto, 79
Pollock (Dr.), 20 n., 171 n.
Proserpine, 88, 90
Pryke (Rev. W. Maurice), 64
Puller (Father), 68, 204 n.
Quick (Canon Oliver C.), 321 n.,
324 n.
Ra (of Heliopolis), 88
Rackham (R. B.), 13 n., 170 n.
RashdaU (Dr.), 38 n.
Reitzenstein, 76, 95, 96
Remigius, 21
Renan (E.), 12
Rickaby (Father), 186 n., 193
Robertson (A. T.), 10 n.
Robinson (Dr. Armitage), 103 n.,
125 n., 143 n., 146 n.
Robinson (Dr. Arthur), 335
Robinson (Dr. William), 145 n.
Rothe (Richard), 32
Russell (Bertrand), 81
Sabatier (Auguste), 5n.
Sabatier (P.), 12, 130 n.
Sanday (Dr.), 101 n., 245, 255 n.,
257 n., 258 n., 263 n., 264 n.
Saturn, 80, 85
Schleiermacher, 240 n.
Schweitzer (Alb.), 36, 37
Scott (Dr. Anderson), 112n.
Seeley (Sir J". R.), 63
Shearman (J. N.), 335
Shebbeare (C. J.), 233
Simeon, 10
Socrates, 18, 152, 163
366
INDEX OF NAMES
Sohm, 145
Sophocles, 152
Spinoza, 232
Stephen (St.), 42, 44
Stoics (the), 99
Streeter (Canon B. R), 3 n.
Strong (Dr.), 260 n.
Swete (Dr.), 15 n., 70 n., 110 n.,
118, 132 n,, 142 n.
Synesius, 88 n.
Tammuz, 77
Taylor, (Dr.) 48 n., 130 n.
Tertullian, 25 n., 91 n., 131 n.,
177, 199 n., 280
Timothy (St.), 140, 141, 142 n.
Titus (St.), 140, 141
Trent (Council of), 200
Turner (Prof. C. H.), 11 n., 136 m
Urban IV (Pope), 191 n.
Venus (of Paphos), 88
Victorinus (Afer), 32
Vincent (of Lerins), 197, 199-201
Webb (Prof. C.), 232 n.
Westcott (Dr.), 18 n., 70 n.
Wicksteed (Dr. Philip), 190 n.
Wigram (Dr. W. A.), 243
Wilson (Dr. J. M.), 249
Woodlock (Father), 186, 213 n.
Zagreus, 78/105
Zeno, 100
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