Philosophy and Religion Part 6

(1) I should like once more to emphasize the fact that the really important thing, from the point of view of the spiritual life of the individual soul, is our personal att.i.tude towards our Lord himself and his teaching, and not the phrases in which we express {173} it. A man who believes what Christ taught about G.o.d's Fatherhood, about human brotherhood and human duty, about sin, the need for repentance, the Father's readiness to forgive, the value of Prayer, the certainty of Immortality--the man who finds the ideal of his life in the character of Jesus, and strives by the help which he has supplied to think of G.o.d and feel towards G.o.d as he did, to imitate him in his life, to live (like him) in communion with the Father and in the hope of Immortality--he is a Christian, and a Christian in the fullest sense of the word. He will find in that faith all that is necessary (to use the old phrase) for salvation--for personal goodness and personal Religion.

And such a man will be saved, and saved through Christ; even though he has never heard of the Creeds, or deliberately rejects many of the formulae which the Church or the Churches have 'built upon' that one foundation.

(2) At the same time, if we believe in the supreme importance of Christ for the world, for the religious life of the Church and of the individual, it is surely convenient to have some language in which to express our sense of that importance. The actual personal att.i.tude towards Christ is the essential thing: but as a means towards that att.i.tude it is of importance to express what Christ has actually been to others, and what he ought to be to ourselves. Children {174} and adults alike require to have the claims of Christ presented to them before they can verify them by their own experience: and this requires articulate language of some kind. Religion can only be handed down, diffused, propagated by an organized society: and a religious society must have some means of handing on its religious ideas. It is possible to hold that under other conditions a different set of terms might have expressed the truth as well as those which have actually been enshrined in the New Testament, the Liturgies, and the Creeds. But the phrases which have been actually adopted surely have a strong presumption in their favour, even if it were merely through the difficulty of changing them, and the importance of unity, continuity, corporate life. It is easier to explain, or even if need be, alter in some measure the meaning of an accepted formula than to introduce a new one. Religious development has at all times taken place largely in this way. Our Lord himself entirely transformed the meaning of G.o.d's Fatherhood, Messiahs.h.i.+p, the Kingdom of G.o.d, the people of G.o.d, the true Israel.

At all events we should endeavour to discover the maximum of truth that any traditional formula can be made to yield before we discard it in favour of a new one. If we want to wors.h.i.+p and to work with Christ's Church, we must do our best to give the maximum of meaning {175} to the language in which it expresses its faith and its devotion.

(3) We must insist strongly upon the thoroughly human character of Christ's own consciousness. Jesus did not--so I believe the critical study of the Gospels leads us to think--himself claim to be G.o.d, or to be Son of G.o.d in any sense but that of Messiahs.h.i.+p. He claimed to speak with authority: he claimed a divine mission: he claimed to be a Revealer of divine truth. The fourth Gospel has been of infinite service to spiritual Christianity. It has given the world a due sense of the spiritual importance of Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Perhaps Christianity could hardly have expanded into a universal Religion without that Gospel. But we cannot regard all that the Johannine Christ says about himself as the _ipsissima verba_ of Jesus.

The picture is idealized in accordance with the writer's own conceptions, though after all its Theology is very much simpler than the later Theology which has grown out of it permits most people to see. We must not let these discourses blind us to the human character of Christ's consciousness. And this real humanity must carry with it the recognition of the thoroughly human limitations of his knowledge.

The Bishop of Birmingham has prepared the way for the union of a really historical view of Christ's life with a reasonable interpretation of the Catholic {176} doctrine about him, by reviving the ancient view as to the limitation of his intellectual knowledge;[2] but the principle must be carried in some ways further than the Bishop himself would be prepared to go. The accepted Christology must be distinctly recognized as the Church's reflection and comment upon Christ's work and its value, not as the actual teaching of the Master about himself.

(4) It must likewise be recognized that the language in which the Church expressed this att.i.tude towards Christ was borrowed from Greek Metaphysics, particularly from Plato and Neo-Platonism in the patristic period, and from Aristotle in the Middle Ages. And we cannot completely separate language from thought. It was not merely Greek technical phrases but Greek ways of thinking which were imported into Catholic Christianity. And the language, the categories, the ideas of Greek Philosophy were to some extent different from those of modern times. The most Platonically-minded thinker of modern times does not really think exactly as Plato thought: the most Catholic-minded thinker of modern times, if he has also breathed the atmosphere of modern Science and modern Culture, cannot really think exactly as Athanasius or Basil thought. I {177} do not suppose that any modern mind can think itself back into exactly the state of mind which an ancient Father was in, when he used the term Logos. This central idea of the Logos is not a category of modern thought. We cannot really think of a Being who is as distinct from the Father as he is represented as being in some of the patristic utterances--I say advisedly some, for widely different modes of thought are found in Fathers of equal authority--and yet so far one with him that we can say 'One G.o.d, one spiritual Being, and not two.' Nor are we under any obligation to accept these formulae as representing profound mysteries which we cannot understand: they were simply pieces of metaphysical thinking, some of them valuable and successful pieces of thinking, others less so. We must use them as helps, not as fetters to our thought. But, though we cannot think ourselves back into exactly the same intellectual condition as a fourth- or fifth-century Father, there is no reason why we should not recognize the fundamental truth of the religious idea which he was trying to express. A modern Philosopher would probably express that thought somewhat in this manner. 'The whole world is a revelation of G.o.d in a sense, and still more so is the human mind: all through the ages G.o.d has gone on revealing Himself more and more in human consciousness, especially through the prophets and other {178} exceptionally inspired men. The fullest and completest revelation of Himself was made once for all in the person and teaching of Jesus, in whom we recognize a revelation of G.o.d adequate to all our spiritual needs, when developed and interpreted by the continued presence of G.o.d's Spirit in the world and particularly in the Church which grew out of the little company of Jesus' friends.'

(5) I do not think at the present day even quite orthodox people are much concerned about the technicalities of the conciliar Theology, or even about the niceties of the Athanasian Creed. They are even a little suspicious sometimes that much talk about the doctrine of the Logos is only intended to evade a plain answer to the supreme question of the Divinity of Christ. You will expect me perhaps to say something about that question. I would first observe that the popular term 'divinity of Christ' is apt to give a somewhat misleading impression of what the orthodox teaching on the subject really is. For one thing, it is apt to suggest the idea of a pre-existent human consciousness of Jesus, which would be contrary to Catholic teaching. The Logos--the eternal Son or Reason of G.o.d--pre-existed; but not the man Jesus Christ who was born at a particular moment of history, and who is still, according to Catholic Theology, a distinct human soul perfectly and for ever united with the Word. {179} And then again, it is apt to suggest the heretical idea that the whole Trinity was incarnate in Christ, and not merely the Word. Orthodox Theology does not teach that G.o.d the Father became incarnate in Christ, and suffered upon the Cross. And lastly, the constant iteration of the phrase 'Divinity of Christ' tends to the concealment of the other half of the Catholic doctrine--the real humanity of Christ. To speak of the G.o.d-manhood of Christ or the indwelling of G.o.d in Christ would be a truer representation even of the strictest orthodox doctrine, apart from all modern re-interpretations.

But even so, when all this is borne in mind, it may be asked, What is the real meaning of saying that a man was also G.o.d? I would answer, 'Whether it is possible to give a modern, intelligible, philosophically defensible meaning to the idea of Christ's Divinity depends entirely upon the question what we conceive to be the true relation between Humanity in general and G.o.d.' If (as I have attempted to show) we are justified in thinking of all human consciousness as const.i.tuting a partial reproduction of the divine Mind; if we are justified in thinking of human Reason, and particularly of the human Conscience, as const.i.tuting in some measure and in some sense a revelation by means of which we can rise to a contemplation of the divine nature; if Personality (as we know it in man) is the highest category within our knowledge; then {180} there is a real meaning in talking of one particular man being also divine; of the divine Reason or Logos as dwelling after a unique, exceptional, pre-eminent manner in him.

As Dr. Edward Caird has remarked, all the metaphysical questions which were formerly discussed as to the relation between the divine and the human nature in Christ, are now being discussed again in reference to the relation of Humanity in general to G.o.d. We cannot say intelligibly that G.o.d dwells in Christ, unless we have already recognized that in a sense G.o.d dwells and reveals Himself in Humanity at large, and in each particular human soul. But I fully recognize that, if this is all that is meant by the expression 'divinity of Christ,' that doctrine would be evacuated of nearly all that makes it precious to the hearts of Christian people. And therefore it is all-important that we should go on to insist that men do not reveal G.o.d equally. The more developed intellect reveals G.o.d more completely than that of the child or the savage: and (far more important from a religious point of view), the higher and more developed moral consciousness reveals Him more than the lower, and above all the actually better man reveals G.o.d more than the worse man. Now, if in the life, teaching, and character of Christ--in his moral and religious consciousness, and in the life and character which {181} so completely expressed and ill.u.s.trated that consciousness--we can discover the highest revelation of the divine nature, we can surely attach a real meaning to the language of the Creeds which singles him out from all the men that ever lived as the one in whom the ideal relation of man to G.o.d is most completely realized. If G.o.d can only be known as revealed in Humanity, and Christ is the highest representative of Humanity, we can very significantly say 'Christ is _the_ Son of G.o.d, very G.o.d of very G.o.d, of one substance with the Father,' though the phrase undoubtedly belongs to a philosophical dialect which we do not habitually use.

(6) Behind the doctrine of the Incarnation looms the still more technical doctrine of the Trinity. Yet after all, it is chiefly, I believe, as a sort of necessary background or presupposition to the idea of Christ's divine nature that modern religious people, not professionally interested in Theology, attach importance to that doctrine. They accept the doctrine in so far as it is implied by the teaching of Scripture and by the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity, but they are not much attached to the technicalities of the Athanasian Creed. The great objection to that Creed, apart from the d.a.m.natory clauses, is the certainty that it will be misunderstood by most of those who think they understand it at all. The {182} best thing we could do with the Athanasian Creed is to drop it altogether: the next best thing to it is to explain it, or at least so much of it as really interests the ordinary layman--the doctrine of three Persons in one G.o.d. And therefore it is important to insist in the strongest possible way that the word 'Person' which has most unfortunately come to be the technical term for what the Greeks more obscurely called the three _huostaseis_ in the G.o.dhead does not, and never did, mean what we commonly understand by Personality--whether in the language of ordinary life or of modern Philosophy. I do not deny that at certain periods Theology did tend to think of the Logos as a distinct being from the Father, a distinct consciousness with thoughts, will, desires, emotions not identical with those of G.o.d the Father. The distinction was at times pushed to a point which meant either sheer Tritheism, or something which is incapable of being distinctly realized in thought at all. But that is scarcely true of the Theology which was finally accepted either by East or West. This is most distinctly seen in the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas: and I would remind you that you cannot be more orthodox than St. Thomas--the source not only of the Theology professed by the Pope and taught in every Roman Seminary but of the Theology embodied in our own Articles. St. Thomas' explanation of the Trinity {183} is that G.o.d is at one and the same time Power or Cause[3] (Father), Wisdom (Son), Will (Holy Ghost); or, since the Will of G.o.d is always a loving Will, Love (Amor) is sometimes subst.i.tuted for Will (Voluntas) in explanation of the Holy Spirit.[4] How little {184} St. Thomas thought of the 'Persons' as separate consciousnesses, is best seen from his doctrine (taken from Augustine) that the love of the Father for the Son is the Holy Spirit. The love of one Being for himself or for another is not a Person in the natural, normal, modern sense of the word: and it would be quite unorthodox to attribute Personality to the Son in any other sense than that in which it is attributed to the Holy Ghost. I do not myself attach any great importance to these technical phrases. I do not {185} deny that the supremely important truth that G.o.d has received His fullest revelation in the historical Christ, and that He goes on revealing Himself in the hearts of men, might have been otherwise, more simply, to modern minds more intelligibly, expressed. There are detailed features of the patristic or the scholastic version of the doctrine which involve conceptions to which the most accomplished Professors of Theology would find it difficult or impossible to give a modern meaning. I do not know for instance that much would have been lost had Theology (with the all but canonical writers Clement of Rome and Hermas, with Ignatius, with Justin, with the philosophic Clement of Alexandria) continued to speak indifferently of the Word and the Spirit. Yet taken by itself this Thomist doctrine of the Trinity is one to which it is quite possible to give a perfectly rational meaning, and a meaning probably very much nearer to that which was really intended by its author than the meaning which is usually put upon the Trinitarian formula by popular religious thought. That G.o.d is Power, and Wisdom, and Love is simply the essence of Christian Theism--not the less true because few Unitarians would repudiate it.

(7) Once more let me briefly remind you that any claim for finality in the Christian Religion must be based on its power of perpetual development. {186} Belief in the continued work of the Holy Spirit in the Church is an essential element of the Catholic Faith. We need not, with the Ritschlian, contemptuously condemn the whole structure of Christian doctrine because undoubtedly it is a development of what was taught by Christ himself. Only, if we are to justify the development of the past, we must go on to a.s.sert the same right and duty of development in Ethics and in Theology for the Church of the future. In the pregnant phrase of Loisy, the development which the Church is most in need of at the present moment is precisely a development in the idea of development itself.

But how can we tell (it may be asked), if we once admit that the development of Religion does not end with the teaching of Christ, where the development will stop? If we are to admit an indefinite possibility of growth and change, how do we know that Christianity itself will not one day be outgrown? If we once admit that the final appeal is to the religious consciousness of the present, we must acknowledge that it is not possible to demonstrate _a priori_ that the Christian Religion is the final, universal, or absolute Religion. All we can say is that we have no difficulty in recognizing that the development which has so far taken place, in so far as it is a development which we can approve and accept, seems to us a development which leaves the {187} Religion still essentially the Religion of Christ. In the whole structure of the modern Christian's religious belief, that which was contributed by Christ himself is incomparably the most important part--the basis of the whole structure. The essentials of Religion and Morality still seem to us to be contained in his teaching as they are contained nowhere else. All the rest that is included in an enlightened modern Christian's religious creed is either a direct working out of the principles already contained there, or (if it has come from other sources) it has been transformed in the process of adaptation. Nothing has been discovered in Religion and Morality which tends in any way to diminish the unique reverence which we feel for the person of Christ, the perfect sufficiency of his character to represent and incarnate for us the character of G.o.d. It is a completely gratuitous a.s.sumption to suppose that it will ever lose that sufficiency. Even in the development of Science, there comes a time when its fundamentals are virtually beyond the reach of reconsideration. Still more in practical life, mere unmotived, gratuitous possibilities may be disregarded. It weakens the hold of fundamental convictions upon the mind to be perpetually contemplating the possibility or probability of fundamental revision. We ought no doubt to keep the spiritual ear ever open that we may always be hearing what the Spirit saith unto {188} the Churches. But to look forward to a time when any better way will be discovered of thinking of G.o.d than Jesus' way of thinking of Him as a loving Father is as gratuitous as to contemplate the probability of something in human life at present unknown being discovered of greater value than Love. Until that discovery is made, our Religion will still remain the Religion of him who, by what he said and by what he was, taught the world to think of G.o.d as the supreme Love and the supreme Holiness, the source of all other love and all other holiness.

LITERATURE

The literature is here too vast to mention even the works of the very first importance: I can only select a very few books which have been useful to myself. The late Sir John Seeley's _Ecce h.o.m.o_ may be regarded as in the light of modern research a somewhat uncritical book, but it remains to my mind the most striking expression of the appeal which Christ makes to the Conscience of the modern world. It has proved a veritable fifth Gospel to many seekers after light. Bishop Moorhouse's little book, _The Teaching of Christ_, will serve as an introduction to the study of Christ's life and work. A more elaborate treatment of the subject, with which I am very much in sympathy, is Wendt's _Teaching of Jesus_. The ideal life of Christ perhaps remains to be written. Professor Sanday's Article on 'Jesus Christ' in Hastings' _Dictionary of the Bible_ may be mentioned as a good representative of moderate and scholarly Conservatism or Liberal Conservatism. Professor Oscar Holtzmann's _Life of Jesus_ is based on more radical, perhaps over-radical, criticism. Professor Harnack's {189} _What is Christianity?_ has become the typical expression of the Ritschlian att.i.tude. The ideas of extreme Roman Catholic 'Modernism'

may be gathered from Loisy's _l'evangile et l'eglise_ and _Autour d'un Pet.i.t Livre_. Professor Gardner's three books--_Exploratio Evangelica_, the shorter _An Historic View of the New Testament_, and _The Growth of Christianity_--may be especially commended to those who wish to satisfy themselves that a thorough-going recognition of the results of historical Criticism is compatible with a whole-hearted personal acceptance of Christianity. Dr. Fairbairn's _Philosophy of the Christian Religion_ and Bousset's _What is Religion?_ are especially valuable as vindications of the supreme position of Christianity combined with the fullest recognition of the measure of Revelation contained in all the great historical Religions. Allen's _Continuity of Christian Thought_ suggests what seems to me the right att.i.tude of the modern thinker towards traditional dogma, though the author's position is more decidedly 'Hegelian' than mine. I may also mention Professor Inge's contribution to _Contentio Veritatis_ on 'The Personal Christ,' and some of the Essays in _Lux Hominum_. Though I cannot always agree with him, I recognize the high value of the Bishop of Birmingham's Bampton Lectures on _The Divinity of Jesus Christ the Son of G.o.d_ and the accompanying volume of _Dissertations_.

[1] In their a.s.sertion of the necessity of Development, and of the religious community as the origin of Development, the teaching of the Abbe Loisy and the Roman Catholic Modernists seems to me to be complementary to that of the Kitschlians, though I do not always accept their rather destructive critical conclusions.

[2] In his Essay in _Lux Mundi_ (1889). He has since developed his view in his Bampton Lectures on _The Incarnation of the Son of G.o.d_ and a volume of _Dissertations on Subjects connected with the Incarnation_.

[3] I venture thus to translate 'Principium' (_arche_); in Abelard and his disciple Peter the Lombard, the famous Master of the Sentences, the word is 'Potentia' (L. I. Dist. x.x.xiv.): and St. Thomas himself (P. I.

Q. xli. Art. 4) explains 'Principium' by 'Potentia generandi Filium.'

[4] Thus in _Summa Theologica_, Pars I. Q. x.x.xvii. Art. 1, the 'conclusio' is 'Amor, personaliter acceptus, proprium nomen est Spiritus sancti,' which is explained to mean that there are in the G.o.dhead 'duse processiones: Una per modum intellectus, quae est processio Verbi; alia per modum voluntatis, quae est processio amoris.'

So again (_ibid._ Q. xlv. Art. 7): 'In creaturis igitur rationalibus, in quibus est intellectus et voluntas, invenitur repraesentatio Trinitatis per modum imaginis, inquantum invenitur in eis Verb.u.m conceptum, et amor procedens.' In a friendly review of my Essay in _Contentio Veritatis_, in which I endeavoured to expound in a modern form this doctrine, Dr. Sanday (_Journal of Theological Studies_, vol.

iv., 1903) wrote: 'One of the pa.s.sages that seem to me most open to criticism is that on the doctrine of the Trinity (p. 48). "Power, Wisdom, and Will" surely cannot be a sound trichotomy as applied either to human nature or Divine. Surely Power is an expression of Will and not co-ordinate with it. The common division, Power (or Will), Wisdom, and Love is more to the point. Yet Dr. Rashdall identifies the two triads by what I must needs think a looseness of reasoning.' The Margaret Professor of Divinity hardly seems to recognize that he is criticizing the Angelical Doctor and not myself. If Dr. Sanday had had the formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, the result, if less metaphysically subtle, might no doubt have proved more easily intelligible to the modern mind; but the 'identification' of which he complains happens to be part of the traditional doctrine, and I was endeavouring merely to make the best of it for modern Christians. I add St. Thomas' justification of it, which is substantially what I gave in _Contentio Veritatis_ and have repeated above: 'c.u.m processiones divinas secundum aliquas actiones necesse est accipere, secundum bonitatem, et hujusmodi alia attributa, non accipiuntur aliae processiones, nisi Verbi et amoris, secundum quod Deus suam essentiam, veritatem et bonitatem intelligit et amat' (Q. xxvii. Art. 5). The source of the doctrine is to be found in St. Augustine, who habitually speaks of the Holy Spirit as Amor; but, when he refers to the 'Imago Trinitatia' in man the Spirit is represented sometimes by 'Amor,'

sometimes by 'Voluntas' (_de Trin._, L. xiv. cap 7). The other two members of the human triad are with him 'Memoria' (or 'Mens') and 'Intelligentia.'

With regard to the difficulty of distinguis.h.i.+ng Power from Will, I was perhaps to blame for not giving St. Thomas' own word 'Principium.' The word 'Principium' means the _pege theoteos_, the ultimate Cause or Source of Being: by 'Voluntas' St. Thomas means that actual putting forth of Power (in knowing and in loving the Word or Thought eternally begotten by G.o.d the Father) which is the Holy Ghost. I am far from saying that the details of St. Thomas' doctrine are not open to much criticism: a rough correspondence between his teaching and any view of G.o.d's Nature which can commend itself to a modern Philosopher is all that I endeavoured to point out. The modern thinker would no doubt with Dr. Sanday prefer the triad 'Power, Wisdom, Love,' or (I would suggest) 'Feeling, including Love as the highest form of Feeling.' The reason why St. Thomas will not accept such an interpretation is that his Aristotelianism (here not very consonant with the Jewish and Christian view of G.o.d) excludes all feeling or emotion from the divine nature; 'Love' has therefore to be identified with 'Will' and not with 'Feeling.' I cannot but think that the Professor might have taken a little more trouble to understand both St. Thomas and myself before accusing either of us of 'looseness of reasoning.'