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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
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 nee
