The Restatement of Theology

ONE who reads the theological books of the past twelve months finds that a great number of them are engaged in discussing the restatement of theology. This is, indeed, one of the oldest of debates. Arius and Athanasius represented the opposing sides of it. The Council of Trent and the Westminster Assembly of Divines were busy with it. But the contention turns to-day upon a new point. The present proposition is not to substitute a new creed for an old one, but to change the emphasis of interest from a theological system to a theological method.

The previous arguments have been for and against a system, but the men who are just now doing the most interesting work in theology are not occupied in the defense or in the demolition of any particular body of results. Their whole desire is to know the truth of God, and the point of variance is in the question whether the student is to be free to find whatever truth he can, or is to be forbidden to find any truth which is out of accord with the accepted system. This is plainly a more radical difference than that which arises in the discussion of any single article of the creed, for it is a debate between the claims of authority on the one side and of reason on the other. It involves the entire process of theological study, and the place of theology in the curriculum of learning. Shall the teacher of theology hear recitations or shall he give lectures? Shall he depend on a text-book or shall he verify and increase the knowledge of the past by his own research ? The restatement of theology, as at present debated, implies not so much a proposition or series of propositions, as a privilege. It is a question of method. Thus the latest Bampton Lecturer, in his book, The Reproach of the Gospel,¹ says that if the restatement of the creeds means “an official recasting of dogma in the language of the twentieth century, then such a scheme might be summarily dismissed as impossible; all would end in a cloud of new controversy, and confusion worse confounded.” But if this means “that our conception of God must develop with the mental and moral growth of each succeeding generation, the process is not only desirable but inevitable.”

It is to be regretted that almost all the new books are written by the advocates of change. The old text is revised to read, “the new is better.” The conservatives, indeed, are busy with their pens, but they are writing denominational tracts, or letters to ecclesiastical newspapers, or little books issued by publishing houses which have a rather limited constituency. This situation has two unfortunate results: it increases the misunderstanding between the reflective and the unreflective classes, and it impels the believers in things-as-they-are to substitute the superficial argument of compulsion for the convincing argument of reason.

The new books are in substantial agreement in deploring the misunderstanding between the reflective and the unreflective classes. A good many of them are written in the endeavor to recall the scholar, the philosopher, the man of letters, to his old place in the fraternity of the faithful people. They invite him back, however, on somewhat new conditions. They tell him that a great number of sermons have been preached since last he went to church, and that they are better now than they used to be. They assure him that not only has the doctrine of evolution been commonly accepted, but that to it has been added the doctrine of the immanence of God, and that all doctrines are interpreted and valued according to the principle of the pragmatic philosophy. And this means a great change. For the doctrine that God is in the world, as interpreted, for example, by Professor Bowne in The Immanence of God,² makes the natural as divine as the supernatural. God, then, is in the ordinary processes of nature, in the green hills as in the volcano, in the journey of the modern traveler through the Suez Canal as in the journey of the people of Israel across the Red Sea. God is in all history, in the slow progress of nations as well as in dramatic battles; and in all thought, assisting not only the prophet but the student. The old notion that God makes himself known only by the intervention of miracle passes away and leaves us free to examine the miraculous, and even in this and that instance to deny it, without feeling that we are thereby dismissing God. Also the principle of valuing doctrine according to its result in conduct, as set forth, for example, by Professor James in his Pragmatism,³ makes great changes in the perspective of theology. The most important thing in life, according to this philosophy, is conduct, action, pragma. And the most important truths for us are those which actually affect our lives the most. Other, lesser propositions, may be equally true, but not of equal “cash value.” These the wise religious teacher will set in the background, and by this distribution of truths will practically make a restatement of theology.

Unhappily, however, while the progressive brethren are thus enlarging upon the doctrine of immanence and the method of pragmatism, and are gaining the acceptance of the reflective, the brethren of the conservative side are teaching the great body of the people that these doctrines are not only untrue but pernicious ; while they are apparently making no serious attempt to commend their position, on either its positive or its negative side, to persons of learning and cultivation. That is, the progressives, being writers of books, are saying one thing to the reflective classes; the conservatives, being writers of tracts, are saying another thing to the unreflective classes.

The two voices are bad enough, but the separation between the classes is not only increased but embittered by an endeavor on the part of the conservatives to silence the progressives. They are trying to bring about a uniformity of teaching, not by a better understanding, not by conciliation, nor even by arbitration, but by a process of ecclesiastical lock-out. This is a confession of weakness, and thus far is encouraging to liberal theologians. The man who is sure of the stability of his position will argue gladly and everlastingly; he will welcome all investigation, and will be satisfied to entrust his case to the decision of the common sense of public opinion. He will have no desire to strengthen his side by putting his neighbor to silence. That will be as repugnant to him as the foul endeavor of an athletic team to win a game by crippling their opponents. That this summons of the police and invocation of the ecclesiastical court is indeed a true sign of a sense of weakness, is confirmed by the prevailing minor key of the conservative voice, and by the general conservative agreement that things are going every day from bad to worse. The contrast in current literature between the depression of the conservatives and the cheerfulness of the progressives is both notable and significant.

The contrast is altogether warranted by the progress which is evident in the restatement of theology. That is, the method of free study has established itself beyond recall. That part of the debate which has regard to the parliamentary procedure of theologians is settled. The attempt to evade the rules of the game by processes of excommunication is as futile as the attempt of a soldier to protect himself against powder and shot by wearing chain armor. The effect of such evasion of debate, the use of force instead of reason, is only to array against orthodoxy the sympathies, and presently the convictions, of liberally educated people. There is at present an invincible distrust of a system which needs to be propped up after that manner. There is a general feeling that truth is able to stand alone.

How naturally and gradually the idea of ecclesiastical authority in doctrine grew among Christian people is shown by Mr. Durell in his book of citations from the early fathers, entitled, The Historic Church,⁴ At first, there was none of it. In the New Testament it has no place. St. Peter, afterwards taken as the apostle of authority, speaks with singular restraint and humility. Then the Montanists and the Gnostics came, and they compelled definition. The Montanists said, “Are not we laymen priests as well as you?” and thus necessitated a definition of the church. The Gnostics said, “What we say is true, what you say is false,” and the simplest mode of reply was to refer to church tradition. “Go to the Apostolic churches, and hear what they say. They have the truth which was committed by Christ to the apostles.” In the East, the fathers were fond of philosophical debate, and they argued the Nicene Creed, for and against, for fifty years. But in the West, men were imperfectly acquainted with metaphysics, and impatient of philosophy, and intent on doing things, and in the habit of commanding and obeying, and the convenient reference to tradition prevailed. It saved the trouble of laboriously thinking the thing out. This, however, while it contented the Latin mind, did not abidingly satisfy the very different temper of the Teuton. Hence the Reformation. Hence also the difference in point of view between Scholasticism and Modernism.

Of course, there are a lot of people to whom authority is absolutely necessary. And in this company most of us find ourselves at one time or another; one remembers Mr. Chesterton’s happy phrase — “The human race, to which so many of my readers belong.” But there is a great difference between authority as a free public utility and as a monopoly. We all use it and are glad to use it; but when any company of gentlemen announce that we must henceforth use their authority on pain of divers unpleasant consequences here or hereafter, we instinctively revolt, because we are made that way. This being the case, at least with the reflective classes, one is perplexed to see why a method of teaching which arouses inevitable dissent should not be given up for a method which produces a reasonable conviction of the truth. That the modern method is adapted to the maintenance of conservative positions is admirably shown by Dr. Orr in his vigorous discussion of the Virgin Birth of Christ.⁵ The demand for a restatement of this particular article of the creed has usually been made by men who have already rejected the supernatural, and has been refused by men who seem to have no understanding of the serious difficulties which are involved. In this futile debate, it is pleasant to find a champion of orthodoxy who, with neither fears nor tears, proceeds at once to state and defend his position with a good knowledge of the intellectual situation. There is a downright quality in Dr. Orr’s dialectic which sometimes carries conviction beyond the argument. Indeed, whatever weakness there is in it comes from a resolute purpose to defend his thesis at all points. The truth is that there are some points which are much more obscure than the argument allows. The reflective reader would prefer some recognition of these hard places, some confession that honest men are not wholly without reason in their incredulity. That would seem less like an appeal to a jury and more like a sympathetic study of a great mystery.

The mystery finds no place in Dr. Campbell’s dealing with this doctrine in The New Theology.⁶ He restates it by elimination. He thinks that it is true, but that it never happened. The truth which it contains is that “the emergence of anything great and beautiful in human character and achievement is the work of the divine spirit within human limitations.” Thus the Virgin Birth, he says, is akin to the myth of the making of the world, and is repeated perennially in experience. “The spiritual birth described in the conversation between our Lord and Nicodemus as given in the third of John, is, properly speaking, a virgin birth. Every man who deliberately faces towards the highest, and feels himself reinforced by the spirit of God in so doing, is quickened from above; the divinely human Christ is born in him, the Word has become flesh and is manifested to the world.”

One hesitates to speak of Dr. Campbell’s work in any other terms than those of appreciation, partly because of the spiritual earnestness which is everywhere evident in it, and partly because his immediate neighbors are just now administering to him all the criticism which is really needed for his soul’s health. He says in the preface to his Christianity and the Social Order,⁷ “At the present moment I am in the position of having been quietly excluded from an active share in every Nonconformist organization with which I was formerly connected, with the exception of the City Temple itself.” But his dealing with the doctrine of the Virgin Birth explains in some measure the reason for this disapprobation. The constitution of the human mind is such that we are inclined to take plain hostility in better part than injurious fraternity. We prefer a straight denial of the creed to an acceptance of it which at the same time virtually contradicts its meaning. We greatly dislike to be comforted in our loss of a fact by the offer of a “truth” of the same name; and if the comfort is administered in an affectionate manner we greatly resent it. The psalmist who said, “ Let the righteous rather smite me friendly and reprove me,” hastened to add (in the Prayer-book version) “but let not their precious balms break my head.” Dr. Briggs, in his learned interpretation of the Psalms⁸ in the International Critical Commentary, says that this is not a good translation. Nevertheless, it expresses a state of mind which is common enough. Whether the psalmist intended it or not, there are precious balms which hurt more than clubs. We are of the same mind with the small child who said, “Mother, I don’t care how hard you scold me, if only you won’t put your arm around me.” Some of the disfavor with which Dr. Campbell’s work is received is due to the fact that while; he scolds us he puts his arm around us. Against that our souls revolt.

When Dr. Campbell’s books are set beside The Substance of the Faith⁹ by Sir Oliver Lodge, and Through Scylla and Charybdis¹⁰ by Father Tyrrell, we have the case against immutable orthodoxy stated from three quite different points of view, by a Protestant, by a Catholic, and by a man of science.

Bishop Gore, in The New Theology and the Old Religion¹¹ expresses a decided preference for the position of Sir Oliver Lodge as contrasted with that of Dr. Campbell. “The New Theology,” he says, “is of course to be differently estimated when it is proposed to us from the side of science, and when it is advocated by ministers of the Catholic creed, or of Nonconformist bodies who have been identified with the same fundamental belief.” In the latter cases “it represents abandonment, not progress. But, viewed as an advance from the side of science, I desire to give the warmest welcome to so spiritual a creed.”

Sir Oliver Lodge, Father Tyrrell, and Dr. Campbell agree that there is need of a restatement of theology. The relation of theology to religion is like the relation of biology to life. The task of the theologian is to set forth in an ordered way our best knowledge of God. But in this region two changes are in constant progress; there is, in the first place, a change in our manner of expression, so that each generation must be addressed in its own tongue wherein it is born, the old sermons becoming inevitably obsolete, even the best of them, and the old commentaries becoming hopelessly unreadable; and there is, in the second place, an increase in our knowledge of God, partly by better acquaintance with the manifestation of God in nature and in experience, partly by better understanding of the revelation of God in the Bible, as the study of the book goes on year after year, and partly by an indefinable but perceptible leading of divine influence which, age by age, brings humanity into the presence of new problems and assists in their solution.

It is by recognition of these changes that men came into that attitude towards theology which is called Modernism. The Modernist perceives in ecclesiastical history a record of doctrinal development. The gradual formation of doctrine regarding the atonement, the church, the eucharist, the scriptures, illustrates this order of normal change and consequent restatement. “For the exigences of this ceaselessly developing life, an unalterable theology,” says Father Tyrrell, “would be a strait-waistcoat, a Procrustean bed; every day it would become less helpful, and at last hurtful and fatal. The soul that is alive, and wants to live and grow, must have a congenial, intelligible idea of the world it would live in, and will therefore either adapt and interpret the current theologies to suit its requirements, or else break away from them altogether and make a home for itself.”

This, of course, involves the possibility of such a restatement of theology as is made by Dr. Campbell. He is addressing conservative people, shut up, as he thinks, in stout prisons of ignorance and prejudices. The first thing to do is to let them free, and in order to do this the prison doors must be opened. The prisoner being unwilling to draw the bolts himself and admit the rescuer, the rescuer must resort to battering-rams. But this is most unpleasant for the prisoner, who is very comfortable and satisfied with the prison. As the demolition proceeds, he foresees that presently the roof will descend upon his head. He regards these big blows not as the breaking of a jail, but as the ruin of a home. It is in this spirit that he hears Dr. Campbell say, “By the Deity we mean the all-controlling consciousness of the universe, as well as the infinite, unfathomable, and unknowable abyss of being beyond.” And again, “Jesus was God, but so are we. He was God because his life was the expression of divine love; we too are one with God in so far as our lives express the same thing.” And again, “It is quite a false idea to think of Jesus and no one else as the Son of God incarnate. We can rise toward Him by trusting, loving, and serving Him; and by so doing we shall demonstrate that we too are Christ, the eternal Son.” The problem of modern preaching has been defined as consisting in the difficulty of telling the truth without scaring your grandmother. During Dr. Campbell’s preaching the ushers are busy removing grandmothers in various conditions of collapse.

And this, cries the sensitive soul, is Modernism! this is the New Theology! But the reply is Yes and No. Modernism does indeed carry with it the possibility of such conclusions, but not of necessity. The restatement of theology, implying as it does the free play of the mind upon the materials of religious truth, involves entire liberty to try experiments, to discuss audacious propositions, and even to make serious mistakes. What then ? Shall we fall into panic fear? Shall we call on the arm of authority to put the questioner to silence? Shall we retire trembling behind the breastworks of excommunication ? Who is afraid? Who is in terror lest the mathematicians shall invalidate the multiplication table, or lest the geologists shall undermine the hills? Is not the actual procedure now in process not only the most dignified, the most reasonable, the most believing, but also the most effective method ? Dr. Campbell’s neighbors are showing their dissent by quietly leaving him off from Nonconformist committees, and the Bishop of Birmingham answers him in a book. This beats the major excommunication and the Encyclical Pascendi out of sight. It not only confirms the faith of hesitating persons, but it gives Dr. Campbell a chance to change his mind. And truth will be no worse for it. “Whoever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter ? Let her and Falsehood grapple.” And Milton’s next splendid sentence is worth remembering also: “Who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty; she needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious; those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power.”

Moreover, the New Theology as Dr. Campbell interprets it is not Modernism; it is but a passing eccentricity in a strong, discriminating, and in the main conservative, movement. Thus Sir Oliver Lodge, even, as one might say, from the outside, deals with the matters which Dr. Campbell is discussing in quite a different manner. “The most essential element in Christianity,” he says, “is its conception of a human God; of a God, in the first place, not apart from the universe, not outside of it and distinct from it, but immanent in it; yet not immanent only, but actually incarnate, incarnate in it and revealed in the Incarnation. The Christian idea of God is not that of a being outside of the universe, above its struggles and advances, looking on and taking no part in the process, solely exalted, beneficent, self-determined, and complete; no, it is also that of a God who loves, who yearns, who suffers, who keenly laments the rebellious and misguided activity of the free agents brought into being by Himself as part of Himself, who enters into the storm and conflict and is subject to conditions, as the soul of it all.”

And Bishop Gore says, “What we need is frankness of mind. In any settled period, the permanent faith becomes encrusted with more or less temporary elements, the gold becomes mixed with dross; and when a turn of the wheel of thought takes place we must have the intellectual courage to seek to dissociate the permanent from the impermanent, to draw distinctions between essential and accidental, to make concessions and seek readjustment.” There speaks the true Modernism.

Thus the restatement of theology as it is set forth in the writings of Father Tyrrell is for the most part an assertion of this intellectual liberty. It is not a body of novel dogmas, but a state of mind. It is “a movement, a process, a tendency, and not, like Scholasticism, a system — the term or ‘ arrest’ of a movement. It is a movement away from scholasticism in a variety of directions. But whereas in former years such movements have been in quest of some new position to be occupied as final and permanent, Modernism recognizes movement as itself a permanent condition, and seeks only to discover its laws and determine its direction. Growth is its governing category. In other words, it is an attempt to reconcile the essentials of Catholic faith with those indisputable results of historical criticism which are manifestly disastrous to the mediæval synthesis of scholastic theology. It does not demand a new theology, or no theology at all, but a moving, growing theology, — a theology carefully distinguished from the religious experience of which it is the ever imperfect, ever perfectible expression.”

This explanation at once defines Modernism and shows why the disciples of Scholasticism inveterately suspect it. Scholasticism holds to a formulation of theology made by philosophical and statistical minds in the Middle Ages. It differs from Modernism as Aristotle from Plato, or mechanics from art, or a canal from a river, or a plotted and planted garden from a forest, or a pile of boards from a tree. Some people, perhaps temperamental, are exclusively interested in one or the other of these aspects of life. Thus the ecclesiastic and the prophet look at the world from very different points of view. The ecclesiastic prefers truth in the form of boards built into neat houses, the prophet prefers truth in the form of living trees. The two come into contention only when one side proposes to turn all the trees into boards, or the other side proposes to abolish boards and return to the old fashion of living in caves in the midst Of the wild woods.

For example, Mr. Frederic Harrison, in The Creed of a Layman¹² and in The Philosophy of Common Sense,¹³ preaches a Human Faith which he finds answerable to his own spiritual needs as a “real, vital, sustaining, unfailing, and inseparable religion.” He believes in a Providence that enters into every side of daily life, and in an immortality “wherein our feeble span in the flesh will be continued as a living force till it is incorporated in the great Being which knows not death.” For this religion, he says, there is no need of church or ritual or priest, or even of clasped hands or bended knees. The blue roof of its universal sanctuary is inlaid with stars. But Father Tyrrell points out in twenty places that humanity needs more than this. The woods, indeed, for hermits, for mystics, for rare souls who respond to the inaudible influences of the Divine Spirit in the fragrance of the flowers; but for most of us, duller persons, houses and churches, which though they do shut out the sky, shut out also the wind and the rain.

They who believe that theology ought to be as frankly open to restatement as biology draw a distinction between theology and revelation. Revelation is a divine and certain disclosure of truth, whereby religion has a foundation other than the conjectures of philosophers. It is variously defined and limited as consisting generally of the Bible, or of the ecumenical creeds, or of the Deposit of Faith. But, however defined, it is the subject matter with which theology deals. The idea of the liberal theologian is that revelation and theology are related as the mind of man is related to the books of the psychologists. Let the psychologists study the mind with all the diligenee they may. Let them report what they discover, and submit their reports to the test of all honest criticism. Let them enjoy the common human privilege of making mistakes, and let them correct the errors one of another without heat or anxiety, and without fear lest truth suffer in the process. And let the theologians do likewise.