they are one to which, in the name of truth, he is heartily welcome.
And perhaps, under the same high sanction we may add what will look,
to some minds, like another. We claimed some time since that the Creed
must be, to Christians, rather a complete and conclusive than a
partial or a tentative statement of truth. Yet there is one sense in
which we may own that even the definitions of the Creeds may
themselves be called relative and temporary. For we must not claim for
phrases of earthly coinage a more than earthly and relative
completeness. The Creeds are temporary, in that they are a complete
and sufficient statement of truth only for time. And therefore they
are only quite perfectly adequate to express those truths which have
their place in time. But we, in respect of truths which transcend
time, if we cannot as yet be freed from the trammels and limits of
earthly thought and expression, yet can recognise at least the fact,
that we are, even in our Creeds, still labouring within those
trammels. We may have ground for believing the Creeds of the Church to
be the most perfectly balanced and harmonious expression of the truth
whereof our earthly knowledge is, or will be, capable. Yet when we
struggle, as in the language of the Athanasian Creed, to express the
relations which have been exhibited to us in the eternal Godhead
through the use of the words 'Person' and 'Substance,' or ὑπόσταστς
and οὐσία; or when we thus profess our belief in the Person of the
Holy Ghost, 'The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son: neither
made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding,' need we fear to own
that the instruments which, perforce, we make use of upon earth, even
in the Creeds of the Church, are necessarily imperfect instruments;
the power of conception imperfect; the power of phrase and imagery
imperfect also; and that their sufficiency of truth (though not their
correctness meanwhile) is so far temporary that it is limited to earth
and to time; and that, in the perfect light and knowledge of the
presence of God, the perfectest knowledge represented by them will be
superseded and absorbed, while the glosses and materialisms with
which, in various ways, we may have been unconsciously clothing them
to our own imaginations, will be--not superseded only but corrected,
and, it may be, reproved? Moreover, if the truths represented in the
Creeds are wider and deeper than our conceptions of them, we can admit
that there may possibly be particulars in which, even now, the
experience of spiritual life may deepen and enlarge the meaning, to
us, of our Creeds; as, for instance, the words heaven and hell may
present to us ideas differing, in the direction of more correctness,
from those which they presented to some of our forefathers. It is not
that the Creeds will be some day corrected. It is not that we shall
see hereafter how false they were, but how far the best conceptions
which they opened to us,--the best, that is, that our earthly
faculties were capable of, lagged in their clumsiness behind the
perfect apprehension of the truths which they had, nevertheless, not
untruly represented; but which we then shall have power to see and
know as they are. The truth which is dimly imaged for us in the
Creeds, will never belie, but will infinitely transcend, what their
words represented on earth.
But it will very naturally be asked by what right we speak thus of the
Creeds. In the very moment of admitting, in one sense, their
incompleteness and want of finality, by what right do we lay down
still that they are final and complete to the end of time; that is,
perhaps, through ages of human advance, of which we may have now no
conception at all? Such a question does not apply to the strictly
historical statements which constitute the foundation of our creed,
but to those interpretations of historical fact, and to those
assertions about the Divine Being and its relations, which necessarily
transcend time and experience. And after all, perhaps, the answer is
not difficult. We have to consider, first, that for the very reason
that these beliefs do absolutely transcend time and experience,
therefore no human development which belongs merely to time and
experience, can, in itself, displace or improve upon them; and
secondly, that our knowledge of these truths is really derived from a
Divine revelation, which took place, as we believe, within time and
experience. We may say, indeed, that the statements of this Divine
revelation are corroborated to us, by such elements of thought as our
reason (which we believe to be also in its reality Divine) is able to
supply. It remains, however, that they can only really be proved or
disproved, by arguments which go to prove or disprove the truth of the
historical Incarnation, and of the revelations which it contains.
It follows from hence that we have a valid right to hold them not only
true, but final in their statement of truth for this present world,
exactly so far as we have a right to believe that our historical
revelation is, for time, a final one. Should there, indeed, be a
wholly fresh revelation, the amount of truth hitherto revealed might
be superseded; but nothing short of a revelation can supersede it. The
idea that any advance of human reason could be inconsistent with it,
involves for the Christian who believes human reason to be divinely
reflected and divinely implanted, nothing less than an unthinkable
contradiction. We may therefore believe it in any case to be final,
till the coming of a further revelation: and so far as there is
anything in the truth already revealed to us, which may warrant us in
feeling confident that there is no fresh revelation in store, within
the limits of time, by which the revelation of Jesus Christ will be
superseded, just so far and no further are we justified in claiming
for those clauses in the Creed, whose subject-matter transcends time
and experience, that they are the completest expressions of their
truths which can be reached in time.
IV. It may, perhaps, be a matter of prudence to refer for a moment to
what are called the 'damnatory clauses' of the Athanasian Creed;
though it would not be necessary to do so for the purpose of any
positive statement or explanation of Christian doctrine. These
clauses, however, to the positive statement add a negative. It is easy
to misunderstand them, and even, by misrepresenting, to make them
appear grotesque. But if the question be as to what they really mean,
they are, after all, to the Christian, an obvious and necessary
corollary of the Creed which is his life. There is but One God, and
One Heaven, and One Salvation; not a choice of alternative salvations,
or heavens, or gods. There is One Incarnation, One Cross, One Divine
restoring and exalting of humanity. There is One Spirit of God, One
Church--the fabric and the method of the working of the Spirit,--One
Spiritual Covenant with man. Man must have part in this One, or he has
part in none; for there is no other. Man must have knowledge of this
One, belief in this One; or there is none for him to believe in or to
know. God's covenant is with His Church on earth; and the statements
of the Creed are the representation in words of that knowledge of the
truth which the Church possesses, the possession of which is her life.
The Athanasian Creed is not addressed to outsiders, but to those who
are within the Church. For encouragement, or (if necessary) for
warning, it insists to them on the uniqueness of their faith. To have
hold on God is to have hold on Life. To revolt from God is to revolt
from Life. This is so, to those who have or ought to have learnt that
it is so, both in fact and in thought. Thus, in fact, to drop out of
communion with the Incarnation of Christ, is to drop out of communion
with the inner realities and possibilities of humanity. But the mind,
and its convictions and meanings, cannot wholly be separated from the
facts of the life. There comes, at least in most lives, a time when
the man's own allegiance to the facts is a necessary condition of his
identification with them. 'If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall
die in your sins.' There comes a point at which the mind's refusal of
the doctrines of religion is the man's revolt from the facts; and
_such_ a revolt is repudiation of the One revelation of God, the One
Incarnation, the One Salvation, the One Church or Covenant. This must
be broadly true, true in the abstract, as principle, unless truth and
falsehood, right and wrong, are fundamentally false distinctions, and
every man is to be equally good, and equally compelled to heaven. At
what point any individual person, or class of persons, does, or does
not, in the sight of the Judge who knows the whole inward history, and
tries the most secret motive, fall within the scope of this principle,
and incur the final condemnation of rebellion against the one light
and hope of all humanity, is another question altogether. Any such
application of the principle to the case of individuals belongs only
to God the Judge, and would be an arrogant impiety in any man. Even
when such a question may have to be determined ecclesiastically, the
ecclesiastical condemnation and sentence, though expressly
representing in shadow the eternal sentence, is none the less quite
distinct, and indeed in its ultimate motive even contrasted with it.
But however unchristian it may be to say that A or B will perish
everlastingly, the principle nevertheless is true, that the truth
which the Creed embodies, the truth of which Christ's Incarnation is
the pivot and centre, is _the only_ deliverance from everlasting
perishing; and that whole-hearted union and communion with this truth,
is that true state of Church life which alone has the certain seal of
the covenant of God. This broad truth it is, the necessary complement
of any holding of the Christian creed as true, which these clauses
affirm. If it be said, 'your Athanasian Creed is simple and trenchant;
it has no qualifications such as you admit'; our reply would be
threefold. First, the Creed is part of our heritage from the past, and
its phraseology is not our handiwork; but we know that the necessary
qualifications with which we understand its phraseology have been
generally recognised by the Church from which we inherit it. Secondly,
the _Quicunque vult_ is, strictly, not so much a creed as a canticle;
it has never been used as a test of Church communion; and it speaks,
on a point like this, as the _Te Deum_ would speak, in the language
not of judicial award but of devotional loyalty. Thirdly, the
qualifications with which we say that any generalisation about man's
responsibility for belief, whether in this 'canticle' or in scripture,
must necessarily be understood, are only such as all men apply to any
similar generalisation about responsibility for conduct. 'If ye
believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins,' is paralleled by
'They which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.' We
claim only to interpret the one as rationally as all men understand
the other.
It has seemed to be desirable, while insisting upon the claims of
dogma, not indeed in the name of allegiance to imposed authority, but
in the name of truth, and on the ground of its simple identity with
truth, to try to state, with the utmost possible plainness, whatever
could be truly admitted in the way of apparent qualification of those
claims. Truth is supreme, and eternal; and dogma, so far as it
coincides with truth, is, of course, all that truth is. For the
dogmatic position of the Church and her Creeds, we claim that it is
the true and simple expression upon earth of the highest truth that
is, or can be, known. But dogmatic theologians are not infallible, and
so far as the name of dogma has been claimed for mistaken presumption
or misleading statement of truth, so far may dogma have seemed to
fight against truth. The words, indeed, 'dogmatic' and 'dogmatism'
have acquired a bad reputation. But this is not the fault of dogma. A
dogmatist, in the invidious sense of the word, does not mean one who
studies dogma, but rather one who foolishly utters what are not dogmas
as if they were. The dogmatic temper is the temper of one who is
imperiously confident that he is right when he is not. That is to say,
the words dogma, dogmatic, dogmatize, etc., are commonly used of
something which is the mere abuse and travesty of their proper
meaning. It is hard that dogma itself should be prejudiced by this
caricaturing misuse of its name.
Meanwhile, if real charges be brought against any part of our dogmatic
creed, we are willing most honestly to examine into them. In so far as
they are made against current suppositions, which are separable from
our essential belief,--separable as, for example, we now see various
details of traditional belief about the first chapter of Genesis to be
separable--we join our critics in the examination with a mind as open
as they could desire. And it must, in simple candour, be admitted
further, that upon the appearance of any new form of thought,
Churchmen have not generally been quick of mind to discriminate the
essential from the non-essential, so as to receive at first, with any
openness of mind, what they had afterwards to admit that they might
have received from the first. But not even this admission must prevent
us from claiming, that when that to which exception is taken does
really belong to the essential truths of our creed, which to us are
more absolutely established certainties than anything in heaven and
earth besides, they must pardon us if, while we are still willing to
give the most candid hearing possible to everything that they have to
urge, we yet cannot, if we would, divest ourselves of the deepest
certainties of our existence;--cannot therefore pretend to argue with
more openness of mind than would scientific professors--say with a
champion who undertook to prove that the globe was flat, or that the
sun went round the earth. We are ready to listen to everything. We are
fully prepared to find that the champion may produce in evidence some
phenomena which we shall be unable to account for. We have found it
before; we are not unaccustomed to finding it (though, in good time,
the perplexity always unravels itself); and we shall be in no way
disconcerted if we find it again. But we cannot pretend meanwhile to
hold all the truth which our consciences have known in suspense.
V. What was said just now about the Creeds will not, it is hoped,
appear to any minds to fail in the entire respect which is due to
them. Yet it makes it, perhaps, the more incumbent upon us to take
notice of another form of attack upon dogma, which connects itself
with an attitude about the Creeds, such as may seem at first sight to
be not wholly dissimilar; though presently all the foundations of
dogma are dissolved by it. But in point of fact, if we admit that what
the Creeds mean on earth, is less than what the same truths will mean
in heaven, or that there may be, even here, a clumsier, and a
completer, understanding of them; this is a position essentially
different from maintaining that what the Creeds both say and mean, is
not only less than, but (if strictly taken) inconsistent with, the
real truth; and that not in any transcendent sense, as celestial
beings, with wholly other faculties, may conceivably have power of
apprehending it in heaven, but as the more intelligent among us may,
and do, see it now. This is not only to admit that the Creeds are
built up, perforce, of materials which belong to this earth; but to
treat them as mere serviceable fictions for the teaching of the
uncivilized or the young. The deliberate unbeliever, indeed, assumes
that the Creeds mean what they say, and that the Church understands
the Creeds. Assuming this, he parts company with the Church, because
he holds that the statements of her Creeds are, in fact, fictitious.
But it may surprise us to find that there is another form of this view
of the fictitiousness of Creeds, and that here the critic speaks, not
at all in the character of an unbeliever, but rather in that of an
enlightened Churchman. All Christian truth, he says, is true. Even the
Creeds in a real sense represent the truth. But the Church's
understanding and expression of Christian truth in the Creeds, is,
none the less, strictly, a misrepresentation of the truth. Though the
truth of Christ lies behind the Church's Creeds, yet they have so
overlaid, and thereby, in strict speech, misstated it, that it is only
the patience of criticism, which cutting bravely adrift from the
authority of traditional interpretation, has succeeded in
discriminating between the Creeds and the meaning of the Creeds, and
behind what are practically the fictions of dogmatic Christianity, has
re-discovered the germs of Christian truth. Neither the facts of the
life of Jesus Christ, nor His teaching, nor His consciousness in
regard of Himself, were as we have been taught, but were something
different. He never thought nor taught of Himself as personally God,
nor did He perform any miracles, nor did He rise on the third day from
the dead. Whatever scriptures state these things explicitly, are
proved by that very fact to be glosses or errors. And yet, all the
while, everything is true spiritually. The record of the Incarnate
Life is true literally, it may be, at comparatively few points;
certainly not the story of the Birth; certainly not the story of the
Resurrection; certainly not any incident which involves, or any
expression which implies, miracle. But the Birth, the Resurrection,
the miracles, every one of them, represent, in the most splendid of
imaginative language and portraiture, essential spiritual truths. They
are fictions, but vivid representations, in fiction, of fact; splendid
truths, therefore, so long as they are understood to be literally
fictitious, but perversions of truth, if taken for truth of fact.
It is this conception which was set forth not long ago with a singular
power and persuasiveness by the author of _The Kernel and the Husk_.
The lofty level of thought, the restraint and felicity of language,
above all the deeply religious spirit of the author, invest his
arguments with a charm of unusual attractiveness. The arguments are
not such as it is wholly pleasant to see thus recommended. He deals in
detail, in the course of the volume, with much of the narrative of
Scripture, with the purpose of shewing how one by one the various
records, including of course the Birth and Resurrection, have grown to
their present form out of realities which contained no miracle, and
which therefore differed essentially from the historical scriptures
and faith of the Church.
It is no part of our task to enter upon such details. Nor is it
necessary. The struggle against such a theory of Christianity will not
be fought out on details. It may be conceded that many of the
miracles, taken singly, can easily be made to fall in with conjectural
theories as to a mythical origin, _if only the antecedent conviction_
against their reality as miracles _be cogent enough_ really to require
that the necessary force should be put upon the evidence. Some indeed
may lend themselves to the process with a facility which fairly
surprises us. Others seem still to be very obstinate, and force the
rationalizer into strange hypotheses. But after all, the real
question, through one and all, is not how easily this or that miracle
can be made, by squeezing of evidence, to square with a rationalizing
hypothesis; but what is the strength of the argument for the
rationalizing hypothesis itself, which is the warrant for squeezing
the evidence at all.
The Evangelists say that Jesus taught in the synagogue at Capernaum.
Our author takes for granted that He did so. The Evangelists say that
Jesus miraculously multiplied loaves and fishes in the wilderness. Our
author takes for granted that He did not so. Now why this contrast?
Incidentally, indeed, it may be remarked that on the author's own
general method, this multiplication of loaves ought to be one of the
most certain facts in the life of Christ, as it is emphasized in every
Gospel. But this is by the way. The real ground of the contrast in the
treatment of the same evidence is a certain prior conviction with
which the evidence is approached. Now we are not contending that any
such sifting of evidence in the light of prior tests is inadmissible.
On the contrary, there is hardly anyone who does not, on a similar
principle, explain the differences (for example) in the accounts of
the title upon the Cross, or the difficulty as to whether Jesus healed
one blind man or two, on the way into, or out from, Jericho; but we do
say that the admissibleness of such a method of interpreting
absolutely depends upon the certainty of the correctness of the prior
conviction itself.
The various details of ingenuity, then, with which he explains away
particular incidents, are to us of quite subordinate interest.
Everything depends upon the cogency of the grounds for explaining away
at all. A large part of the book is occupied in explaining away the
facts of Christianity, as the Christian Church has hitherto understood
them; an explaining away which may be more or less necessary, more or
less satisfactory, if the premisses which require it are once
admitted; but which certainly is wholly unnecessary, and wholly
unsatisfactory, if those premisses are denied.
The prior conviction in the book in question is that miracles neither
do, nor did, happen in fact, and therefore that any narrative which
involves them is incredible. All the ingenuities of conjecture on
individual points become relevant subsequently to, and in reliance
upon, this underlying principle. Admit this, and they are forthwith
interesting and valuable. Deny this, and they lose their importance at
once. It is the pressure of this prior conviction which seems to give
life and force to a number of suggestions, about other stories, and
particularly about that of the Resurrection, which, apart from this
animating conviction, would be felt to be very lifeless; and to a
total experiment of subjective reconstruction, which, but for the
strength of the antecedent conviction, would have been impossible to
men of reverent thought and modest utterance. The teaching of the book
will therefore really be accepted or the reverse, precisely according
as the minds of its readers do, or do not, incline to admit the
hypothesis upon which it depends.
It is probable, indeed, that the author would demur to this statement,
at least when put so simply; on the ground that, though he avows the
conviction, yet he has reached the conviction itself by no _à priori_
road, but as the result of wide observation and unprejudiced scrutiny
of evidence. Now it is not at all meant to be asserted that the
conviction against miracle is itself reached merely by an _à priori_
method. No doubt it has, in fact, been arrived at, in those minds
which have fully arrived at it, not _à priori_, but as the result of a
great induction from experience; practically indeed, as it seems to
them, from experience as good as universal. The weight of the evidence
in this direction is neither denied nor forgotten. Yet even when it
most impresses us, of course it is obvious still to reply to ourselves
that however powerful this array of experience may appear so long as
there are no instances to the contrary, yet any one contrary instance
will break at once the cogency of the induction. The case of Jesus
Christ is put forward as being unique. Its uniqueness is not really
qualified by the fact that some others, among those nearest to
Himself, were by Him enabled--avowedly in _His_ power, not their
own,--to do acts which were impossible to other men. This is only a
wider extension of His unique power, not a qualification of it.
Against such a case, put forward on evidence definite and multiform,
and put forward as essentially unique, an argument from induction is
no argument at all. It is a misnomer to call the induction an
argument. The induction, in fact, is merely an observation that other
persons did not perform similar miracles; and that, if Jesus Christ
did so, He was unique. But this is no answer to the Christian
position. It is part of the position itself.
And so the matter must be referred for settlement to the evidence that
is actually forthcoming about Jesus Christ. But it is plain that the
inductive presumption against miracle, derived from experience of
other men, must not come in to warp or rule this evidence. It may be
present indeed as a sort of cross-examining counsel, as a
consideration requiring that the evidence should be most minutely
scrutinized, and suggesting all sorts of questions with a view to
this. But into the evidence itself, it cannot be permitted to intrude.