one point, which it is comparatively easy to represent as the
necessary answer of a truthful conscience to a question which is
forced upon it by the plainest evidence;--but are there not a great
many Christian doctrines besides? What of the rest of them,--'all the
articles of the Christian faith,' as the Catechism says? I have
ventured to speak at length upon this one, not because it is easier to
handle conveniently than the others, but because it directly carries,
if it does not contain, everything. It is not only that this is in
itself so tremendous a dogma, that no one who affirms this can
possibly quarrel any longer with the principle of dogmatic definition,
but that this so inevitably involves all the other propositions of the
Creed, that no one, whose conscience has accepted this, will find it
easy to separate between it and the whole Christian faith.
The Christian Creed consists of three parts only; and all three are,
'Belief in God.' 'I believe in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost' is, in brief, the whole Christian Creed. Its shortest
expression is in three words (which three words are but one), 'Holy,
Holy, Holy.' The definitions of the Apostles', of the Nicene, and of
the Athanasian Creeds, none of them really travel outside of this.
Take, for example, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Intellectually it
is, of course, antecedent to the doctrine of the Incarnation and the
Atonement. But it will be observed that it is made known to us not
antecedently, but as a consequence of our previous conviction of the
Incarnation. Moreover, when it is made known, it is made known rather
incidentally than directly. Even though it is, when revealed and
apprehended, the inclusive sum of our faith, yet there is, in the
revelation, no formal unfolding of it, as of a mysterious truth set to
challenge our express contemplation and worship. There is nothing here
to be found in the least corresponding with the explicit challenge,
'Whom say ye that I am?' or 'On this rock will I build My Church;' but
rather indirectly, so far as our contemplation of the Incarnation, and
its abiding consequences, requires for its own necessary
interpretation to our understanding, that we should have some insight
into the mystery of the distinction of Persons in the Godhead, so far,
and in reference to that purpose, the mystery of the Holy Trinity
grows gradually into clearness of revelation to our consciousness. It
is clear that any distinctness of conception whatever as to the
meaning of Incarnation would be impossible, without some revelation of
mutual relations between the Sender and the Sent, the Immutable and
the Incarnate, the Father and the Son. If it is less clear from the
first, it is surely not less certain, that any conception we may have
of the relation so revealed between the Father and the Son, would be
fainter by far, and less intelligible than it is, if it were not for
that which our Lord Jesus Christ has told us as to the office and
nature of the Holy Spirit; if with our growing conception of
distinctness and relation as between the Sender and the Sent, we had
not also some added conception of that Blessed Spirit of Holiness,
Who, emanating from both, is the Spirit of both alike, and is thereby
also the very bond of perfectness of Love whereby both are united in
One; and whereby, further, all spirits in whom God's presence dwells,
are united, so far, in a real oneness of spirit with one another and
with God. And it is quite certain, that whether we seem to anyone to
be right or no in treating this revelation of the Holy Ghost as a
necessary, if incidental, part of what we had need to be taught of the
revelation of the Father and the Son, in order to make Incarnation
properly intelligible; it is altogether essential for that other
purpose, in connection with which the revelation is more immediately
made, that is, for any understanding on our part of the abiding work
of God in His Church, after the Resurrection and Ascension. 'The holy
Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the Forgiveness of sins, the
Resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting;' these are not
miscellaneous items thrown in at the end of the Creed after the
doctrine of the Holy Trinity is finished, but they are essential parts
of the understanding of the doctrine of the Holy Ghost: and on the
other hand, without the revelation of the Person and work of the Holy
Ghost, these doctrines, practical though they be, and vital for
practice,--no less indeed than the very essence and meaning of the
work of the Incarnation from the day of Ascension forwards, that is to
say the whole historical effect and fruit of the Incarnation,--would
be evacuated of all living meaning, and would become for us only the
empty phrases of a far-away baseless yearning, which even now (apart
from the life of the Holy Spirit informing us) they are ever too ready
to become.
It is hoped that even such brief statements may at least serve to
indicate how it is true that the whole of our Christian creed, even
those parts which seem most separable from it, or antecedent to it,
are for us really contained in the one crucial doctrine of the
Incarnation, that is, of the eternal Godhead of the Man Christ Jesus.
And this will compel us once more to recognise the simplicity of
Christian dogma. It does not mean a complicated system of arbitrary
definitions upon a great variety of subjects of religious speculation,
formulated one after another by human ingenuity, and imposed by human
despotism upon the consciences of the unthinking or the submissive; it
means rather the simple expression (guarded according to experience of
misconception) of the fundamental fact of the Incarnation, together
with such revelation as to the relations of the Divine Being, and the
wonder of His work amongst men, as is clearly lit up by the event of
the Incarnation itself, and is required for such apprehension of the
meaning and effects of the Incarnation, as Jesus Christ held to be
meet and necessary for us.
And so it is with all parts of Christian doctrine. If they would be
found to be necessarily contained in a full unfolding of the great
truth which the Creed so briefly and simply declares, then they really
are parts of our faith, because they are really involved in the
understanding of the threefold revelation to man of the Name of God,
which is the sum total of our faith. But if the Name of our God does
not contain them, they are not in our creed or our faith. Is there,
for example, a visible Church? Is there an Apostolic Ministry? The
answer depends on the inquiry as to what is revealed, first in
Scripture, and then in history, as to the method of the working of the
Spirit of Christ in the world. Did the Old Testament prefigure, in
action and in utterance, did the Incarnation require, did the Gospels
interpret or comment upon, did the Apostles organize or govern, any
definitely articulated society, with ceremonies or officers, rules or
discipline, of its own? Was this, the method of association and
membership, or was some other, the mode of the working of the Spirit
of the Christ among men? Is the work of Christ, in redeeming and
reconciling to God, is His present relation to the world, properly
intelligible, or not,--apart from the Church? Is the ministry of the
Church, or are the sacraments of the Church, to those who thoughtfully
read Scripture and history, a demonstrable part, or normal condition,
of the working of the Holy Ghost in the Church? If so, belief in them
is contained in my words, not only when I say, 'I believe in the holy
Catholic Church,' but also, though less plainly, when I say, 'I
believe in the Holy Ghost.' But if not, it is not contained. If they
are really separable from the Catholic Church, truly understood, or
from the understanding of the Holy Spirit and His work, then they are
no part of what any Christian need believe. But so far as the holy
Catholic Church,--so far as the orderly, covenanted work of the Holy
Spirit in the world,--involves and contains the idea of the ministry
or the sacraments, so far every Christian will know, just in
proportion as he knows the true meaning of his creed, that he is bound
to them. It is no part of my business to pursue the question of the
sacraments or the ministry further here.
It may be observed, perhaps, that the Creed contains no proposition
expressly about ourselves,--about the fall, for instance, or about
sin. Yet in and from the first word of the Creed, I of course am
present there: and as to formal propositions about myself, it may be
that they are not so much articles of belief, as, rather, conditions
of mind antecedent to belief, conditions of self-consciousness to
which belief fits and responds, and without which the Creed itself
would be unintelligible. But what is thus necessarily implied and
involved in the terms of the Creed, is after all substantially
contained in that Creed to which it is a condition of intelligibleness.
Of course my creed necessarily presupposes myself. I cannot believe at
all, except I am, and have a certain history and faculties. I cannot
believe in God as Father, as Almighty, as Creator, without implying
and including within that belief the fundamental facts of my nature
and relation to Him. I cannot believe in the Incarnation and the
Redemption, their meaning or their consequences, I cannot believe in
the Holy Spirit, or have any intelligent apprehension of His working,
except there be implied, as conditions of my consciousness necessary
to that intelligence, some apprehension of that which is meant by the
fall, some inalienable sense of evil, of sin, of the banishment from
God which is the fruit of sin, of the inherent contradiction to my
nature, the unnatural penalty and horror, which the banishment of sin
involves. So probation, judgment, heaven, hell, are beliefs which grow
by inevitable consequence out of the apprehension, once grasped, of
the nature and distinction of good and evil; they are necessary
corollaries from the full perception of the eternal rightness of
right, the eternal wrongness of wrong, the eternal separation and
contrast between right and wrong; in a word, from belief in God on the
part of man.
Perhaps this illustration may serve to shew how much, that is not
obvious in the letter, may nevertheless be really contained in man's
utterance of the Name of God.
III. But while the doctrines of the Church which her Creeds express
are thus as simple as they are profound, it is no doubt true that
there has grown up round about them a considerable body of theological
teaching, more or less complicated, which is really of the nature of
comment upon them, or explication of their nature and meaning. When we
speak of the dogmas of Christianity, it is right to distinguish, with
the clearest possible line of demarcation, between all this mass of
explanatory teaching (more or less authoritative as it may from time
to time appear to be) and the central truths themselves, which are our
real certainties. The doctrine itself is one thing: the theories
explicative of the doctrine are another. They may be of the highest
value in their own time and place; but they are not the immutable
principles of Church truth. To say this is not really to depreciate
the work of theological writers and teachers of different ages; but it
is to assign to their work its true position. The current mode of
explaining a doctrine in one age, and bringing it home by
illustrations to the imagination of men, may be discredited and
superseded in another. When the current mode of statement or
illustration begins to be more or less discredited, the minds of quiet
people are apt to be distressed. This is because very few of us can
distinguish between the truths themselves which we hold, and the
(often mistaken) modes of expression by which we seem to explain our
truths to ourselves. Even when our explanation is substantially true,
the doctrine is still a different thing from our explanation of it;
and if any imperfection is detected in our explanation of it, it is
not truth which suffers; it is only that truth is being distinguished
from our imperfect and unconscious glosses; and thereby in the end the
truth can only be served. Perhaps no illustration of this can be more
convincing than that which the history of the doctrine of Atonement
supplies. That Christ died upon the cross for us, that He offered
Himself as a sacrifice, and that we are redeemed through His blood,
this is a belief fundamental to Christianity; nor has the Church ever
wavered for an instant in her strong faith in this. But when we go
further, and come to the different illustrations that have been given
to make the precise nature of Atonement clear to human logic, when in
fact we enter upon the domain of explicative theories, we have not
only left the sure ground of the Creeds, and embarked upon views which
may or may not be correct, but we find, as a fact, that the modes of
thought which seemed adequately to explain the doctrine to the
conscience of some ages, have not only failed to satisfy, but have
actually shocked and offended, others. The teaching that God was
angry, but that Jesus, as a result of gentler mercy, and through His
innocent blood, appeased, by satisfying, the wrath of the Father, and
so reconciled God to us; the teaching that Satan had obtained a right
over man, but that Jesus, by giving up Himself, paid a splendid ransom
into the hands of Satan; the teaching that a debt was due from
humanity to God, and that Jesus, clothed as man, alone could deliver
man by discharging God's debt: these--be they popular blunderings, or
genuine efforts of Theology--may, in their times, have both helped and
wounded consciences; but whether they be to us as helps or hindrances,
it is of the utmost importance that we should discriminate them, or
others which may have succeeded to them as theories explanatory of the
Atonement, from our cardinal belief in the Atonement itself. We may
have rightly seen what is vicious in these statements, and we may have
greatly improved upon them, but however much more helpful our modes of
exposition may prove themselves to our own minds or those of our
hearers, we may only be repeating the old error, and leading the way
to fresh distresses in the future, if we confound our mode of
explanatory comment with the truth of the doctrine itself, and claim
that the mysterious fact of the Atonement means exactly that which is
our own best approach to a statement, in illustrative words, of what
it expresses to us.
But it may be asked, Are you not saying too much? Does not this seem
to mean that the doctrines themselves are little better than
unintelligible symbols, which need not indeed be changed for the
simple reason that they can be made to mean whatever is necessary to
suit the times? No, the truth of them does not change; and even the
changeful modes of presenting them are less changeful, after all, than
they seem. They cannot indefinitely vary; there is one thing which
unites them all, and that is the truth itself which lies behind them
all. The Atonement is a fact, whether I can adequately expound it or
no. The Atonement is a fact, which my attempted expositions do indeed
represent, more or less correctly, more or less clumsily, even when I
seem most to have failed. Much as they may seem to differ, and
inconsistent as they may appear with each other, yet not one of them
really represents untruth but truth. Imperfect images they may be, and
in respect of their imperfections, diverse and distorting; yet there
is not one of the theories of Atonement referred to above--not even
such as are now seen to contain most error--which did not, as
seriously held, represent and convey some real image of the truth. It
may be that the truth which they represented was conveyed in an
inexact way; and that afterwards, when attention was concentrated on
the points of inexactness, the statement became, and would have
become, more and more misleading; it was no longer then a possible
vehicle of truth; but what it had really conveyed to those to whom it
was living, was a real soul-enlightening image of the truth of the
Atonement. It was an imperfect image; it was even in part a distorted
image,--as everything that I see through my window is in part
distorted. But it was a real image of the real truth none the less.
Local and popular modes of exposition then are often as the medium
through which dogmatic truth is seen and apprehended,--not always,
certainly, without distortion. But the more catholic the truth, the
more it retains its identity of form, however remote from each other,
in place or time, the diverse types of mind which view and teach it,
so much the purer must it be from accidental or temporary
conditionings; so much the nearer, in rank, to a fundamental doctrine
of the Catholic Church.
We do not, of course, distinguish Catholic dogma from theological
literature, as though the one were bare facts, and the other all
explanations of the facts. But we may rightly confine the use of the
word 'dogma' to the fundamental facts, together with such explanation
of them as the Church has agreed, by universal instinct, or by
dogmatic decree endorsed through ecumenical acceptance, to be
essential to a reasonable apprehension of the facts.
It is the more important to guard with unfaltering clearness this
distinction between dogma on the one hand, and theological literature
on the other, because it is, no doubt, in the sphere of explanatory
theories and expressions, that most of those controversies find their
place, which distress quiet minds, and rouse hot battles of orthodoxy
between sincere Christian combatants. If it could be recognised at the
time how far the apparent innovators of successive generations were
really questioning not the doctrines themselves, but certain
traditional modes of thought and teaching which have wrongly adhered
to the doctrines, there would be fewer accusations of heterodoxy, and
less distress and perplexity amongst the orthodox. But it is natural
enough that this should not be perceived by the defenders, when the
innovators themselves are so often both blind and indifferent to it.
And it is just herein that the different innovators are apt to make
themselves indefensible. Too often they think that they are making
real advance upon the doctrines of the Church and her Creeds, and they
are elated, instead of being ashamed, at the thought. They make light
of loyalty, they despise the birthright of their Churchmanship, and
find their own self-exaltation in the very consciousness of offending
their brethren. This, whether done under provocation or no, is to
depart from the spirit of the Church of Christ, in temper and meaning
at least,--even though their work in the long run should prove (as it
must so far as there is truth in it) only to serve the interest and
work of the Church.
It is easier to see this in retrospect than in struggle. But perhaps
those who look back upon the struggles of the last generation within
the Church, will recognise that the orthodox thought of the present
day has been not a little cleared and served, not merely by the work
of orthodox defence, but in no small part by the work of the
'liberalizers' also. To say this, is by no means necessarily to acquit
the liberalizers, or to cast a slur upon those who fought against
them. Such condemnations or acquittals depend upon other
considerations, which do not concern us here. But putting wholly aside
as irrelevant all condemnation or acquittal of individuals, we may yet
acknowledge that the work done has in the end served the cause of the
truth and the Church. This is said, of course, of its real
intellectual outcome; certainly not of the unsettling of souls by the
way. And it is also to be noted that even when the fruit of their work
has been in a real sense, after all, accepted and incorporated, it is
hardly ever in the sense, and never quite with the results, which
they, so far as they had allowed themselves to be malcontents, had
supposed. But if whatever is good and true in their work becomes,
after all, an element in the consciousness of the Church, might not
the work itself have been done, all along, in perfect Church loyalty?
In so far as different earnest writers of a generation ago, or of
to-day, are really, whether consciously or not, making a contribution
to one of the great theological tasks of our time, in so far (that is)
as they are helping towards the correction of erroneous fancies of
popular theology,--helping, for instance, to modify that superstitious
over-statement about 'justification' which would really leave no
meaning in 'righteousness;' or to limit the grossness of the theory
often represented by the word 'imputation;' or to rebuke the nervous
selfishness of religionists whose one idea of the meaning of religion
was 'to be saved;' or to qualify the materialism or superstition of
ignorant sacramentalists; or to banish dogmatic realisms about hell,
or explications of atonement which malign God's Fatherhood; or the
freezing chill and paralysis of all life supposed before now to be
necessarily involved in the Apostolic words 'predestination' and
'election;' so far they are really, though it may be from the outside
and very indirectly, doing the work of the Church. But the pity of it
is that the men who do this kind of service are so apt to spoil it, by
overvaluing themselves and forgetting the loveliness and the power of
perfect subordination to the Church. We may own that Church people and
Church rulers have too often been the stumbling-block. It is they who
again and again have seemed to fight against everything, and by
intellectual apathy, and stern moral proscription of every form of
mental difficulty (wherein oftentimes are the birth-throes of
enlightenment) to drive living and growing intelligence out of the
Church. It is true that the greatest of Churchmen would, if the badge
of their work were submissiveness, have sometimes to wait awhile, and
bear delay, and wrong from inferior minds, with the patience of
humility. Yes; but that work of theirs, if it once were stamped with
this seal of patient submissiveness, would be a glory to the Church
for ever, like the work of her quiet confessors, the work of a
Scupoli, a Ken, or a Fénelon; instead of being, as it more often seems
to be, a great offending and perplexing of thousands of the very
consciences which deserve to be treated most tenderly, and therefore
also a wrong and a loss to the conscience and character of the writer.