The last and much the most important division of the arguments based
upon History against the Catholic claim is, in general, the argument
that the Church cannot be the divine thing it claims to be because it
is in its essence demonstrably man-made: it is in its essence, and can
be proved by History to be, of human institution, betraying all those
characteristic illusions which man conjures up and imposes upon himself
in all his efforts to reach out to the unknowable and unattainable of
his desire.
This--by far the most serious historical form of attack upon the
Faith--falls into two distinct branches, which I will call for the sake
of brevity (without pretence to the full accuracy of the terms and
certainly with no intention of using them abusively) the _Protestant_
and the _Pagan_. I mean by the _Protestant_ argument that argument
against the Faith drawn from History which maintains that the Church
has suffered fundamental corruption and has lost some presupposed
original character through the increasing delusions of the human mind.
I call the _Pagan_ or purely Sceptical argument that which denies, on
the testimony of History, that there ever has been a divine Church at
all, or any clear revelation of divine things to men at any time or in
however simple a form, and proposes to prove that all the doctrine of
the Church is of man’s own making.
These two I will take successively, maintaining the order I have
throughout, to wit, attending to the least important before approaching
the more important.
I take it that in the times in which we live the Protestant objection,
even in its vaguest form, is the less formidable. I shall take it
first. I shall conclude with what is, in my own judgment, far the most
formidable attack at this moment, and likely to become still more
formidable in the near future, the Pagan or purely Sceptical attack:
the argument from History that _all_ religion is man-made, that the
Catholic Church must be included in the category of man-made things,
and that therefore the Catholic Church has no claim to Divine Authority.
(a) _The Protestant argument from History._
Throughout the story of the Catholic Church, i.e. during all the last
nineteen hundred years,[5] there have continued recurrent protests
against this or that doctrine: recurrent affirmations that some other
doctrine, contrary to the authoritative definition, is true, and that
the authoritative definition is itself false. From these denials and
affirmations have proceeded what are called, in Catholic terminology,
the various heresies.
But towards the end of the Middle Ages these protests gathered together
in a new form, which was essentially an appeal to History, and to
their general character was applied the term “Protestant.” We need not
quarrel over the term or its derivation. It has been, by universal
agreement, applied during the last four hundred years.
The Protestant challenge to the Catholic Faith is essentially a
challenge based upon History. It proposes to show by historical
evidence that whereas there was some original body of true revelation,
this has been distorted, corrupted and overlaid, and that the Catholic
Church with its perpetual accretions of doctrine, ritual and office is
more and more divergent from, or even contrary to, the divine original
thus presupposed.
The Protestant argument still exists even when it is put in its most
vague and tenuous modern form. Even those who say, as do so many to-day
(believing themselves to be pure sceptics), “I accept the mission of
Jesus Christ as salutary to mankind and as containing eternal verities,
which it is essential that man for his good should know; but I reject
all supernatural statements in connection with this mission,” are still
essentially Protestants.[6] They presuppose some original nucleus,
however restricted on content and in time, which they postulate as good
and true.
The most extreme case--and to-day the most common one--the case of the
man who says he takes the four canonical Gospels, and these alone;
that he rejects Pauline theology as a corruption, a man-made thing
proceeding from the man Paul; that he rejects in the Gospels themselves
every element which affirms or implies the miraculous powers of Jesus
Christ, His claim to divinity, His Resurrection and the rest, is still
a Protestant case. He affirms that the Sermon on the Mount (to which
he is oddly attached) and sundry general propositions upon humility,
charity and other Catholic virtues, are good: and in saying that they
are good he is saying that they are true. His quarrel is not with the
whole Catholic scheme, but with everything in the Catholic scheme
beyond what he has chosen for himself out of the mass of Catholic
teaching.[7]
Now let us put down at the beginning of the debate one common element
upon which all should be agreed: there _has_ been development; and in
so far as development involves change, there has been in that sense,
and in that alone, change. What is more, the development continues, and
in so far as the word “change” may be applied to development, change
continues.[8]
The definitions of the Council of Trent are immensely more elaborate
than the Apostles’ Creed; the Apostles’ Creed (probably dating from the
earliest origins of the Church though it does, and at the latest, in
its essentials, a second-century Roman form) has more exact definition
in it than the Gospel; the ritual of the Mass is not identical in every
place; it is not identical through time. The Liturgy at once expanded
and crystallised as the generations proceeded. Even within the brief
space of a few centuries it is possible to point to portions of the
Roman Mass (to take but one form) which began as voluntary or optional
prayers and which became incorporated in the regular structure of
the Sacrifice. One might even say that certain slight additions of
quite recent origin may, in the near future, follow the same course.
The bishop, the priest and the deacon of the original Church formed
a far simpler body than does the vast organisation of the Hierarchy
to-day, and new special worships of this saint or that, new shrines,
and all the rest continually arise. The argument in no way turns upon
either side (for men of intelligence or information) on so obvious and
elementary a truth as that such development exists. It is common ground
upon which both must proceed. Where they differ is upon the point
whether or no such development has introduced a fundamental change of
character into the Catholic Church with the passage of the centuries.
A parallel will explain what I mean. Two men observe a tree. One says,
“It is an oak, in full vigour”; the other says, “No, it was of oaken
origin, but there has been grafted upon it another growth and the whole
is thus not only warped and transformed, but in my eyes diseased. It is
not an oak.”
The first man, who says, “It is a living oak consonant in all its
parts,” does not deny that the acorn is different from the mature tree:
the young sapling different in form from either the original acorn or
the tree as it now appears. He does not deny that in a hundred years
the form of the tree will seem to have changed still more; that in the
fifty years past it has changed. What he denies is that there has been
any change in that by which an oak is an oak. It is essentially the
thing which it has always been. That is his contention. Its growth is
normal to its nature, and in so far as growth involves change, such
change is the very proof of identity.
His opponent denies this. He says it was an oak once, long ago, but
other plants grafted on it have so changed its nature that it can be
called an oak no longer.
The appeal of the one is not to a supposed dead mechanical rigidity;
it is not an affirmation that he has before him an acorn rather than
an oak; it is to that principle of one-ness by which any thing is what
it is. The appeal of his opponent is not to the mere fact of change
(at least he must be very unintelligent if that process destroy in
his eyes all essential unity in the developing thing); it is rather
to the proposition that the changes were of a disfiguring and (to
borrow a foreign word) “denaturing” kind. The one says, “Here is the
same original organism, in full health and strength, growing and
vigorous before our eyes.” The other says, “These changes, which I can
substantiate by the consultation of old pictures and written records of
the thing, are a proof of disease and of corruption.”
It is therefore quite beside the mark for the opponents, upon
historical grounds, of some particular institution essential to the
Catholic Church--for instance, the Primacy of Peter--to prove by
elaborate reference to record that the Papal power under St. Clement
was embryonic compared with the Papal power under Innocent III. It is
quite beside the mark to bring forward, at too much pains, evidence on,
say, the doctrine of the Real Presence to prove that its definition in
the Council of Trent is far more elaborate, exclusive and exact than
the statement of it in Justin Martyr, fourteen hundred years earlier.
The point is that the one party to the controversy regards such
change--if you like to call it change--as an inevitable and salutary
phenomenon of life and a very proof of unity in character and time:
the other, as a phenomenon opposed to the true life of the thing and a
proof of its loss of identity with its original principle of life.
Now in my view there are two tests which one may apply to what I have
called the Protestant argument from History: two tests by which one may
discover that it rings false. And these I would tabulate as follows:
(1) The test of Innovation.
(2) The test of Critical Date.
By the test of Innovation I mean an historical examination to discover
whether orthodox doctrine--not points doubtful or still controversial
within the Catholic body, but defined truth--as propounded by the
Catholic Church upon any given matter, at any given moment, had the
character of an innovation, contrasting in essence with the development
of the past; or whether on the contrary it was the denial of such
doctrine, the counter-affirmation provoking such definition, which bore
this character of innovation and novelty. If the first view be the true
one, then the Catholic Church, false or true, has at least been in
all its life one personality consistent with its own essence, and the
successive definitions have all been in the line of tradition. But if
the opposing view be established, then indeed corruption and error and
therefore the absence of her Infallible Authority have been proved.
As to what I have called the test of Critical Date, I mean (what should
be surely an obvious truth) that if the story has been a process of
warping and corruption, there should be some discoverable stage at
which this deflection began, and if the fixing of this stage be not
only doubtful, but disputed in a hundred forms and set at widely
separated epochs, differing by centuries, then the objection is
ill-founded.
I would not be so pedantic and at the same time so logically weak as to
demand of my opponent the fixing of a particular instant in which he
discovers error originating. All such things, whether true developments
or corruptions, take place in time; none springs up apparent in a
single moment. All grow. But I do say that if a plain historical
phenomenon of corruption has taken place in this or that--for example,
the doctrine of the Eucharist--its inception must be observable within
at least a certain range of years, a generation at the most. Such is
the test of Critical Date.
I will now examine the matter by both these tests: Innovation and
Critical Date.
(1) As to the first test, it is historically true--and once again, a
very strange thing--that in every single case it is the protest against
orthodoxy which has had the character of an innovation, and never the
orthodox affirmation which has appeared as a novelty.
I will explain in a moment how an attempt might be made by our
opponents to get over even this difficulty; but at any rate, as far
as plain History is concerned, that remarkable fact which I have just
stated is true.
You may take the whole list, from Cerinthus, who was a contemporary
of the Apostles, down to Brigham Young and his Mormons, or to the
latest Modernist, and you find in every case without exception the
test working true. The heresiarch (as we Catholics call him) or the
reformer, or prophet, or whatever other flattering term you may like
to use in contra-distinction to heresiarch, appears as an innovator
to the generation whom he disturbs, or to which he appeals. His
doctrine comes as a _new_ doctrine, with all the shock and also all
the appeal of novelty. There is not any one case in the long story
of the Church where we can trace a steady protest against _any_ one
of her fundamental doctrines, a protest appearing at the origins
and increasing as the doctrine is more and more clearly defined. Nor
is there any one case of a definition of orthodox doctrine appearing
suddenly and with all the effect of an innovation. No doubt each
reformer makes the claim that he has rediscovered the old original
truth, long overlaid, but my point is that, when he and his doctrine
appear, it is _they_--not the things they oppose--which invariably
appear as sharp and, to most men, offensive novelties.
I have called that phenomenon in the story of the Catholic Church
remarkable; it is even startling. I know of no other society to which
this aspect of reform or re-action applies. If you will consider for
a moment the psychology of the affair, judging it by your personal
knowledge of the way in which your own mind works, and the minds of the
men about you, you will, I think, perceive its unique character.
After all, what happens in our minds with regard to any form of
degradation? For instance, what happens to-day with regard to a
misquotation in literature or a warping of function in politics?
The first misquotation takes place, and is challenged. The bad habit
grows, but it is still challenged here and there: the challenge is
maintained. Each time it is challenged the error is admitted, but
unfortunately spreads. Sometimes there comes at the end of the process
a violent re-action; literary men swarm together (as it were) and
insist upon the misquotation being driven out; and sometimes they
succeed.
Or again, as to the warping of a political institution. Representative
institutions were founded to be representative. People soon find out
that they are only imperfectly representative: that they tend to
represent the avarice or vanity of the individual delegates much more
than the mandate of those who sent them to the representative assembly.
What happens? Immediate protest; repeated protest; attempts at reform.
Sometimes the reform makes good, the fear of God is put into the
politicians, and the representative institution is purged and brought
up with a round turn, and compelled to do its duty.
You may take the whole range of human action in this respect, and you
will invariably find a process of this kind. It is common sense. Men do
not allow their conception of a thing to be deflected by falsehood or
laziness or illusion without sharply re-acting against that deflection.
All History is full of the corruption of institutions--and of men; but
all History is most emphatically _not full_--in fact, in all History
you will not find an example--of the corruption taking place without
its being noted and resisted.
Now here, in the case of Catholic doctrine, you have the singular fact
that the process is the other way about. There is no protest till after
the doctrine has become fixed. Take the case of the doctrine of the
Incarnation. Whether true or false, it is certainly present before
Cerinthus. The man who most violently combats Cerinthus’ statement
that Our Lord suffered as man and not as God is one of our Lord’s own
companions, St. John--a witness who had known Our Lord on earth, which
Cerinthus never had. That is no proof that the doctrine is true; but it
is proof of the historic fact that Apostolic society believed in the
doctrine and that the first heresy in the matter was an innovation.
Or take the doctrine of the Eucharist. For centuries the Real Presence
was accepted; in general terms, it is true, but accepted none the less.
You get it unmistakably from the Words of Institution right on for
a thousand years. You can argue against the _intention_ of the early
statements based upon the words of institution. You can say that those
who first alluded to the Eucharist did not intend the full doctrine of
later times. You can say that the Words of Institution in the Gospel
were only used by Our Founder metaphorically. You may say that the
famous description of the Mass in Justin Martyr nearly eighteen hundred
years ago did not connote the exact doctrine of Transubstantiation. You
may quote (as Cranmer did) passages from St. Augustine which permit the
special pleader to use them (if he leaves out the context and refuses
to mention other passages) as evidence of a subjective rather than an
objective Presence. But the plain historical fact remains that there
is not one single protest heard during all the centuries during which
the Christian Church did take the Real Presence for granted, and built
up round that accepted doctrine the whole mass of the Liturgy in East
and West. It remains true that you can find no resistance against this
universal attitude. Though there is metaphysical discussion, there is
not a case of a man saying, “The original doctrine was not that of
Real Presence: such doctrine is a corruption only just introduced, and
I protest against it.”
When the protest comes it is after thirty generations, at the end of
the Dark Ages; and it produces a violent effect of innovation, of
novelty.
I submit that no matter what particular defined doctrine in the
Catholic scheme you may select, you will find without exception
this most notable character attaching to it, that when denial of it
was made within the Christian community--as when Arius denied the
consubstantiality of the Son, or as when Nestorius denied the divine
motherhood of Our Lady--it had the effect of a stone thrown at a pane
of glass and breaking it: the startling effect of a shock; of something
quite unexpected and exceedingly and unpleasantly new.
I myself who am writing this did, when I was a young man and very
imperfectly instructed, take for granted the opposite. I thought, for
instance, that the doctrine of the Trinity had very slowly arisen,
that an original ignorance of Our Lord’s full divinity was gradually
dispelled by the development of the doctrine; that the earlier the
evidence was, the less it would confirm the doctrine; and that Arius
was fighting a sort of rear-guard action: defending a cause which
had once been vigorous but was lapsing through the process of time. I
thought that; and I fancy most ordinary educated men who have not had
the leisure or desire to read the evidence in detail think something of
that sort with regard to the story of almost any one of the Christian
mysteries. For, after all, the process is exactly what one would
expect. One would expect any original statement in human affairs to be
commonplace and straightforward, and the supernatural interpretation of
it to come in by a process of accretion and illusion such as creates
the innumerable legends and myths of mankind: first the teacher is
a revered man, then vaguely thought to have something in him of the
divine, then to be some sort of divine being, and, lastly, a God.
It was when I came to read the evidence and look closely into the
matter for myself that I began to feel the surprise which I record here
and which any one of my readers will also feel if he will read the
actual evidence instead of guessing at what sounds most probable. The
evidence is clear that the Trinitarian doctrine, growing in definition,
was never put forward with novel and protested accretions. It was the
Arian challenge which was new and immediately resisted.
It is the same with the mystery of the sacrament. Let anyone who
believes the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist to have
grown up very gradually as a sort of legend or myth, an accretion
overlaying some originally straightforward and in no way mysterious
ceremony, read the words in which the earliest writers who refer to the
matter at all speak of it. Let him not only read the way in which they
speak of it, but the way in which they acted. When that young boy in
the streets of Pagan Rome allowed himself to be killed rather than show
to the profane What he carried veiled in his hands, it is evident that
he did not think it common bread. When we find in all the very earliest
evidence of Liturgy insistence upon and repetition of the mystery, it
gives us to think. I say again, for the twentieth time, as I have said
at so many other points in this debate, all this is not a proof of the
truth of the doctrine, but it is a proof that the historical process
with regard to the doctrine is not that of corruption and essential
change which our opponents have presumed it to be. It is a proof that,
true or false, the mystery of the sacrament now held was originally
held, and that the attack upon this doctrine, as upon any other, came
as a novelty.
I have said that even this phenomenon, unparalleled as it is in the
tale of human thought, was capable of explanation by an opponent. But I
think if we examine that explanation we shall find it to fail.
The explanation is as follows: You are dealing with a body of fervid
believers. As time proceeds the excesses, the delusions, the vagaries,
proceeding from their very enthusiasm, permeate their body insensibly,
and it is only when the process has gone a considerable length that,
with a shock, some strong and lucid brain confronts the deluded
with reality. Hence (it is said) the novelty of each heresy and the
startling effect produced by the first statement of each heretical
proposition. This is certainly true of abuses, as for instance the
abuse of image worship, when it came to such a pitch that men accepted
without question a mass of images, supposed to have appeared in some
miraculous fashion without human workmanship. And if it be true of
abuses which are recognised to be abuses by all, why should it not be
true of fundamental doctrines, considering the blind fervour of which
I have spoken and the natural consequences of such fervour?
My answer to that explanation is that the cases are not sufficiently
numerous to establish a rule. It is true that you do get some few
cases, very few, of abuses which proceed some way before they are
abolished. But they do not go on long without being pulled up, nor are
they so general and manifold as to militate against our judgment that,
almost in proportion to its importance, the doctrine or mystery, when
it is challenged, is challenged by a new force.
Moreover, there is this consideration. In the few cases where there is
the analogy of an admitted abuse somewhat tardily reformed, all in the
Church ultimately accept the reform. But this is not at all the case
with regard to the main orthodox doctrine--quite the other way.
In every historical case of abuse, whether it be the erroneous
acceptation of a false document (as in the case of the Donation)
or an abuse of excess, as in the case of the exaggeration of image
worship, the traditional forces of this Sacred Society admit the moral
or clerical error, and usually they begin to admit it in increasing
numbers from the moment of the first challenge. But in the case of
orthodox doctrine it is not so. It is just the contrary. It is the
doctrine that stands and the heresy which gradually dies out.
Of specific heresies which have attempted to maintain but a part of
truth while rejecting the rest, all without exception have gone through
a process of rapid growth, culmination and decay, and nearly all have
at last wholly faded. That is not true, of course, of pure scepticism.
That we shall always have with us, for it is native to the human mind.
A complete denial of the whole Catholic scheme, that is, a complete
rejection of all that is unfamiliar and does not repose upon evident
proof immediately acceptable to everyone; a denial of all mystery and
especially of specific doctrinal affirmation, is as natural to man as
breathing, for faith is of grace and is exceptional to Nature. But the
heresies, as distinguished from such general rationalist denial, never
have in them the vitality which continues to urge orthodox tradition.
That is historical fact; and it is an historical fact which should
give every man who is seriously examining these things grave food for
thought.
Take the example which is most familiar to the older members of the
present generation in English-speaking countries other than Ireland: I
mean, the attitude towards Holy Writ.
Here heresy began by setting up the literal interpretation of Scripture
(and the personal judgment of the reader upon it) in opposition to the
authority of the Catholic Church. The Catholic tradition in the matter
was that (1) Scripture was the Word of God; but (2) given us not as a
record of science, or even History, so much as a witness to the Church
and particularly to the Incarnation; and (3) was only to be accepted in
the sense which the authority of the Catholic Church admitted.
As against that ancient Catholic attitude towards the Bible came, as a
novelty, the fierce affirmation of its absolute and literal authority
and of its being plainly interpretable for himself by every reader.
We are all witnesses to what has happened in that particular example.
The heresy, after nearly three hundred years of vigour, has gone to
pieces. The Bible outside the Catholic Church has lost authority. The
original Catholic position remains. Indeed, there is a comic irony in
noting that it is we Catholics to-day who are thought old-fashioned in
maintaining our respect for the text of Scripture and in being slow to
admit all the modern guess-work in derogation of it. So much for the
test of Innovation.
(2) I turn to the second test, the test of Critical Date.
If it be true that the Catholic Church is the warping and corruption of
an originally delivered truth, then that warping and corruption must
have had an origin.
I am walking by night along a road which is laid out upon the map for
miles due east and west; but after so walking for some time I begin to
notice by the stars that the road is bending. It turns more and more
southward. The map has misled me. In such a case I can, when daylight
returns, retrace my steps and I shall find the point of flexion. I may
not be able to establish it to a yard, nor even, if the process be at
first very gradual, to a quarter of a mile; but I shall at least be
able to say, “Up to this point it was dead straight, pointing west.
After this point (say, as much as a mile further on) it is clearly
bending south of west, and I find it bending more and more southward
as I proceed.” If not a point at least a section of flexion can be
established.
Now there is this remarkable historical fact about the process of the
Catholic Church--that its Protestant opponents, all agreeing in its
loss of direction, cannot agree as to when that loss began. There is
not and apparently cannot be any general conclusion upon so simple
an historical matter as to even the main historical section--first
century, second, third, fourth, eleventh--in which this point of
flexion lies. For one body of Protestant thought it is found in what
they call “Counter-Reformation” of the sixteenth century. It was then
that the Catholic Church went wrong, with its exaggeration of Papal
power, of Eucharistic ritual, its more mechanical organisation of the
Sacrament of Penance, and all the rest of it. In the fifteenth century
the Church of England, of France, of Castille were all (rightly) in
communion and their common authority was sound. By 1600 it was lost.
For another set of Protestants the change was the opening of the Middle
Ages--what is called the “Hildebrandine Movement” of 1050–85. Until
then Christendom was proceeding in consonance with its tradition.
The see of Peter had Primacy indeed, but had not developed a highly
detailed jurisdiction over a vast number of personal and national
affairs. The discipline of celibacy among the clergy in the West (so
they tell us) had been optional; its universal enforcement was a
corruption. The monastic institution had been free and sincere; it
slowly became, after that date, enslaved to the Papal power and to
Mammon, and was more and more a scandal of insincerity. Others would
find the point of departure in the ignorance and loss of material
powers which mark the entry into the Dark Ages. The fifth and sixth
centuries are the wide sections in which to seek the point of flexion
and of decline. Others are willing to accept as traditional and on
the right line the Christendom of Gregory the Great and St. Augustine
of England; but the ninth century is a breaking point and the tenth
a final collapse; by the time of Marozia the Church had clearly lost
an original character which it never recovered, and that new and
degraded thing, the mediaeval Church, had begun to appear. The Church
was never more the same. For some few of my own acquaintance the
dreadful moment is 1870; the right way was lost with the definition of
the Infallibility of the Pope. For others again it is the thirteenth
century, with its developing organisation for the repression of heresy
and its too strict definition of the sacrament. For a very great body
of men in the immediate past (now a smaller number) things began to
go wrong with the freedom of the Church under Constantine. Then did
lay and state corruptions, imitations or influences of the old Pagan
society, begin to thwart the divine scheme.
The most popular of the latest Protestant theories is that the thing
went wrong almost at once between Pentecost and the predication of St.
Paul, and that St. Paul was the author of the evil transformation into
a mystery religion of what had before been an ethical society upon the
suburban model. As their phrase goes, “Nothing can bridge the gulf
between the Gospels and the Pauline writings.” A lifetime ago the point
of flexion was put later. In the Protestant thesis of the mid-Victorian
day the corruption began about the end of the second century. St. Paul
was accepted, but already there was trouble beginning, as revealed in
the authentic epistles of St. Ignatius; and manifestly things were
becoming Catholic (and therefore corrupt) by the time of the African
Martyre, and were hopeless by the time of the Thirty Tyrants. For
these scholars the Catholic taint is the natural accompaniment of the
decline of civilisation after the Antonines.
Now I am not saying that because there is dispute upon the moment of
flexion in any directive scheme, because there are debate and diverse
opinion upon the point where an upright original began to go wrong,
that therefore one may conclude it never did go wrong. But I am free
to maintain that such enormous disparities of opinion, and such a
ceaseless shifting of it, would be impossible if a plain historical
process were at work.
When we consider, for instance, the popular monarchy of the English,
that is, the government of England by a king, aided indeed by other
powers, but having in his own hand the main force of the executive,
there may be some debate as to the moment in which these powers began
to fall off, until they reach the purely symbolic or nominal situation
in which they are to-day, when the king no longer governs at all but is
the neutral chief of society. I myself should put it as early as the
reign of Edward VI, and I should say it had become marked under the
elder Cecil at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign. It is more usual to
say that the great change came under Charles I, and certainly it was
clinched by the civil wars. There are even perhaps some who maintain
that monarchy was still in the main more powerful than any other
political factor until the Dutch invasion of 1688. But at any rate it
lies within these two lifetimes--1550 to 1690. No one will deny that
the process had begun in the latter half of the sixteenth century; no
one will deny that it was thoroughly accomplished before the end of the
seventeenth.
It is so with all other historical phenomena of the kind. You can
put within the limits of a lifetime, and not a very long lifetime,
the transformation and decline of the Roman Empire during the third
century. You can see clearly that feudalism was a living social system
under Henry III of England and even under Edward I, but that it was no
longer the spiritual motive of society after the Black Death. You may
take any process you like throughout History, and you will find this
to be true; not that you can always put your finger upon a particular
year or event, let alone a particular moment, but that you can say,
“Within this comparatively narrow limit of time the change takes
place, certainly the institution was living within its traditions and
in the direction determined by its originals as late as such and such a
moment; certainly after such and such a moment, not long subsequent, it
is as clearly failing to keep that original direction.”
But here, in the case of the Catholic Church, her opponents can say
nothing of the kind. If they could, not only would scholarship be
roughly agreed among our opponents as to the Critical Date, but we
ourselves should at last be agreed, as we are agreed with regard to
attack upon abuses, in the long run--though never with regard to the
attack on doctrine.
But there is no such agreement, and can be none; for the simple
reason that the Catholic Church has not thus warped or veered but has
remained herself. So by this second test I conclude that the historical
objection is false.
It seems to me that an impersonal observer, say some historical
student from the extreme Orient, to whom the whole Catholic scheme was
indifferent and who cared nothing whether the original institution of
the Catholic Church had failed (because he had no affection for that
institution and no belief in any of its doctrines nor any respect
for Jesus Christ nor any attachment to the idea even of a personal
God)--it seems to me, I say, that such a wholly neutral observer
would, upon the general historical evidence, decide that the Catholic
Church was founded with a certain directive nineteen hundred years
ago, to be correct, about the year 29, and had remained throughout
the successive centuries consonant with itself. I think he would say
of it what we may say with regard to many an ancient state, “Its
personality has survived, its soul is still the same, its essential
unity has not been lost.” He would add the qualification “yet”; he
would conclude, “The personality _yet_ survives; the continuous life
has not _yet_ been lost.” We of the Faith of course affirm--but not
upon historical evidence--that the word _yet_ does not apply; that it
shall remain to the consummation of the ages. But for the purposes of
the particular argument which I am here examining, that is neither here
nor there. I say that a mere historical examination with no reference
to the truth or falsehood of the Church’s claim will conclude that
that claim has been continuous from the beginning, and that the Thing
to-day is essentially what it was when the strict organisation,
the unique phenomenon, appeared in Syria under the principate of
Tiberius. There is nothing left contemporary with that still vigorous,
still well-favoured, ancient Thing. It has seen the disappearance of
everything in Europe save itself, and its spring still copiously flows.
(b) _The Sceptical or Pagan objection from History._
I have said that much the most important form of historical attack upon
the Catholic position, the most formidable, and to-day the most hardly
pressed, the most lively and the most universal, is the Pagan or purely
Sceptical, the definition of which I will here repeat.
It is maintained that the claim of the Catholic Church to Divine
Infallible Authority is baseless, because it is manifestly man-made.
The process of reasoning is as follows:
Man is to be discovered in history perpetually making gods, erecting
religious themes, constructing cosmogonies. It is in his nature thus
to project himself upon the universe and to take his imaginations for
realities. His gods are but large reflected images of himself; his
religious doctrines, from the petty myths of a small savage tribe to
the majestic fabric of Catholicism, are one and all upon the same
model. Each is false, for each differs from the rest; and all are
false, for all are compact of the same stuff as the others: a stuff
bearing plainly the marks of human emotion and human construction.
Now this prophet is deified, now that chief, now that other imaginary
figure, half legendary or perhaps wholly without historical existence;
and what is true of any one of these is true also of the Catholic
scheme. The deification of its Founder is an example of deification
like any other. Its elaborate theology is but a somewhat more developed
specimen of what men have done before us and will do after us--a
spinning of logical systems into the void on premises that are without
substantial basis. Its affirmations of the miraculous are of the same
legendary sort as those to be discovered in a thousand other forms;
its ritual can be proved to have cousinship in this point or in that
with many another ritual of sacrifice, expiation and the rest; the
very details of its liturgical life, the mere ornaments, the host of
practices, the great monastic institutions, the pretty small devotions
of light and ornament--all these are of one material. That material has
been exhaustively examined and is now historically known. A vast mass
of evidence has been accumulated and continues to accumulate. The more
it is co-ordinated the more clearly this conclusion appears.
That is the position we have to meet. That is the main historical
argument against the divine origin and authority of the Church of God.
Our fundamental answer to such a position is of course not historical
at all. It is the answer of faith; as though a man should say, “Yes,
this stone is a stone and there are multitudes of stones, but I believe
this particular stone to be a talisman.” Or as though he should say,
“Yes, this Man was a man, and there have been countless millions of
men; but this one Man, and this one Man only, was also God.” The
rational basis (not the positive proof) of such a reply is based upon
spiritual experience--upon our judgment after noting the world, its
reactions towards the Faith, and the effects of the Faith upon it,
that here if anywhere is the divine; a conclusion coupled with our
further judgment that somewhere there must be present upon earth the
visible action of the divine acting in corporate fashion through some
institution, some society, some body.
But this main argument does not concern the little essay which you are
reading. I am dealing only with the value of the historical argument
against the Faith, as I have put it, I think fairly, into the lips of
one of our typical, modern, well-read opponents.
Now what is our reply?
Our reply is that the generalisation is hasty and inaccurate, and that
the more you examine it the more you discover upon what a false and
superficial basis it reposes.
There is not a great number of religions, nor has there been in the
past a greater number, apparent to men of different nations and
temperaments, of which hotchpotch the Catholic Church is but one. There
is not a multitude of systems of theology falling under the one general
category “theologies,” of which the Catholic scheme is but a single
specimen. Upon the contrary, there is, and has been for these centuries
past, a social and religious phenomenon _unique and comparable to
nothing else_, called the Catholic Church. Its spirit, quality, voice,
personality is such that the line of cleavage does not lie between it
and pure scepticism, leaving on the one side _all_ religions (including
Catholicism) and on the other the free uncertain mind; the line of
cleavage lies between the Faith upon one side and all other human
opinions and moods upon the other. And this unique character of the
Catholic Church is as plain an historical truth as the astronomical
truth of the reverse rotation of Uranus is unique among the planets. It
claims what no other society has ever claimed. It affirms its Founder
to have been what no other society claims its founder to have been.
It functions as no other society has functioned: by an unsupported
authority, absolute in its affirmation.
It may indeed be granted that in pure theory at least there is an
equal alternative to the unique thing. One might say that, outside
the Catholic Church, the human mind can stand quite unattached,
examining all things by no criterion save common experience and the
deductive power of the intelligence. In pure theory there might be a
whole society of such detached (but also quite unrooted) minds with no
certitudes, no ethical predicates, living upon the void.
In practice that is not so. There is not one of us that can point to
any mind of his acquaintance, or to any mind appearing through the
pages of a book which occupies such a position. All without exception
betray an ethical theory of some kind, that is, doctrines which, though
the holder of them may refuse to formulate them, appear in his actions.
Every man is a theologian. Every man has his philosophy of the world.
And viewing man thus as he is, always a member of some group, we do
not discover as an historical phenomenon any group save that of the
Catholic Church which possesses the unique character of authority.
Conversely, we find in all other groups the well-known marks attached
to men in all forms of worship--rites, doctrines, disciplines: we find
in Catholicism similar phenomena; but we do _not_ find in any of the
other groups, into which men’s attempts at satisfying this religious
sense may fall, that particular mark in which Catholicism is quite
different from all the rest.
Let us turn to the historical evidence on the matter and see how
true this is, prefacing that examination by the reiterated remark
that such unique quality does not of itself and unsupported by other
considerations determine the mind to accept the authority of the Faith,
but remarking that it does provide a presumption stronger than our
modern world, even its small educated part, is generally aware of.
In the first place, is it true that there are a mass of religions
bearing for their chief characteristic that which is the chief
characteristic of the Catholic Church--a secure, unfailing and constant
affirmation of Infallible Authority?
No; it is not true. There have been many restricted, some (very few)
widespread religious systems; to-day there are two in especial--the
Buddhist, the Mohammedan, occur at once to mind; but not one of them
makes this particular Catholic affirmation. Mohammedan society, not
a new religion but essentially an offshoot and degradation of the
Christian, taking the Catholic doctrine and simplifying it to its
last rudiments (with the exception of all in it that demands faith in
mystery), is passionate for a certain way of life and intolerant of
others. It creates a very marked and special culture which no doubt
could claim in its own way to be historically unique, just as the
culture of the Chinese is historically unique. But Islam does not
come forward with the statement, “I am a society of divine foundation
possessed of the power to reply to question after question upon the
only things that really matter, to which questions man has never yet
of himself attained an answer.” It says indeed, “This is the way to
live; and in this way of living we are content. A disturbance of it
is odious to us, and we desire as much as we can to turn all others
into our own image--not only the religious, but the social habits of
men offend us where very different from our own.” But it does not and
cannot of its nature say, “Here alone through this defined organisation
is the voice of God perpetually speaking, settling controversies,
defining and re-defining in ever-expanding area of thought whatever
truths may be challenged.” It is alive, but it is not alive with a
life of development; and so far from presenting any organisation
through which its doctrine can be developed as well as affirmed,
it is specifically repugnant to such organisations. In a phrase,
Mohammedanism is essentially anti-clerical.
If it be true of Mohammedanism (the chief historically active opponent
of the Faith) that it has not the peculiar marks which make the
Catholic Church different from any other society in the world, that
it has not some major quality by which all religions are distinct and
which is also the major quality of the Catholic Church, that statement
is still more true of Buddhism.
Buddhism never pretended to make, and does not make to-day, an
affirmation to be accepted corporately by the universal world. It
presents a certain philosophy--which I cannot but call the philosophy
of despair, and which is quite certainly a philosophy of negation. It
presents this gloom for acceptation by the individual mind. But it
claims no corporate rule; it affirms no divine authority: it enjoys
no functional power of excretion nor any of assimilation. You cannot
say of Buddhism, “Here is orthodoxy and the living tradition searching
out heresy and denouncing it, maintaining its life triumphantly by
insistence upon a personality of its own and by a corresponding power
of attack against whatever would diminish or threaten that life.”
If we turn from the great systems to the local worships we find another
character, wholly separate from that apparent in Catholicism: that
they do not pretend to certitude; they pretend to no more than the
satisfaction of emotion and to a corporation tradition. They have their
myths, but will readily accept them as myths or compare them unoffended
with the myths of others. They have their sanctities: but their
sanctities make no pretence at all to be universal. There was one, and
only one, historical phenomenon, which in this point did compare with
the Faith--the phenomenon of the Jewish religion; and that is precisely
why we Catholics call the Jewish religion the forerunner of our own and
the preparation of the world for its Incarnate God.
But is it not true that there are countless ceremonies and also major
doctrines, comparable to and some even nearly identical with those of
the Faith?
It is; and to that we answer that if there is to be such a thing as the
Faith on earth, it could not but be so. If men must worship, they will
worship in places. If men feel the pull of a religious emotion, at once
the sacramental idea must enter in. There cannot but be a connection
between the physical life of man and any religious system whatsoever,
true or false, with which he is inmixed. And so surely as the ministers
of the true religion will breathe and eat and walk upon their feet,
each as much as the ministers of the false, so surely you will find
in a true religion, if true religion there be, habits, practices,
doctrines, which (not all combined, but here one, there another) men
have groped for or arrived at in systems which attempted or adumbrated
the truth, but did not even claim to be the full truth.
It is not an historical argument against the divinity of this one
thing that it has the qualities which human things must have. Upon the
contrary, it is an argument in favour of its claim.
That the unique object here displayed, the Catholic Church, is divine
cannot on this account be affirmed; but it can be affirmed that if such
a unique object exist, then it will have these characters attaching to
it.
A man making a survey of what little is known of the old religious
experiments and perversions of mankind, and being asked, as a pure
hypothesis, “Suppose a divine society, corporate, distinct, highly
organised, and therefore of highly differentiated function, were to
arise on earth to bear witness to the Living God: suppose such a
thing for the sake of argument only, what, think you, would such a
body present by way of appearance, action and thought?” could not but
answer that it would have of necessity present within it not only vital
truths, but also practices discoverable wherever man had groped at or
half remembered a revelation.
This man, with no knowledge of such a society, but considering what
his fellow beings were, what the human mind is, what questions it
poses, what answers it demands, would reply: “In that society you would
discover the worship of a Creator, the affirmation that he had revealed
himself; a mysterious link between the divine and the human, comparable
to the link between the unthinking matter of our bodies and the living
essence within. It would have sacrifice and veneration combined. It
would sanctify objects, places, persons and rites; it would have
central institutions, and in proportion to its vitality a multitude of
lesser activities; it would have symbols which it would distinguish
from realities and forms of reality which it would attach to symbols;
for man without a soul is a corpse, and man without a body is a wraith.
This supposed society which you bid men imagine would certainly present
in their highest form such elements as History has also discovered,
disjointedly appearing, often perverted, often degraded, in the various
(and ineffective) spiritual experiments or lapses of mankind.”
Then, one might say to such a man, such a general scholar and observer
of the unique animal, man, at prayer, “Should there conceivably be
such a home upon the earth, how otherwise would you know it?” He could
but answer, “Its nature would be such that it would satisfy to the
full the demands of men; it would be unique so as to correspond to man
himself who is unique on earth, and it would grant him fulness and
repose.”
Such and such alone is the Catholic Church. If it be not what it claims
to be, then all is void.