1909 349 Not long ago a writer, while reviewing a certain religious movement, made use of a striking metaphor. The religious movement in question, he remarked, especially when its relation to modern conditions was taken into account, reminded him of a phenomenon of nature occasionally observed an iceberg in mid-Atlantic. In speaking of the Church of Rome and its present troubles, as the reviewer did, he could recollect no more fitting parallel than this great grand iceberg, floating far south, far from its native arctic home, and melting away in an uncongenial climate. "The majestic frozen mass, detached from some arctic continent, not without a symmetry and beauty of its own, is, after all, but a fragment of a dead world. Ghost-like, a peril to mariners, it towers over the waves that wash its base, its peaks glitter in the sunlight, its cliffs reflect the blue of sea and sky. And all the while the process of undermining goes on; the frozen mass encounters kindlier currents; the temperature rises; a little sooner, a little later it may be, there can be but one end."
To many, perhaps, it will occur that a like figure of speech might in some measure apply to the matter spoken of in the above title. Just such another iceberg, a portion, perhaps, of the same floe, that ancient document, the Apostles' Creed, may seem to be. It does not belong to our time. Antiquity is claimed for it, and the claim, whatever it is worth, may be granted so far. It has floated down the centuries to us, a relic of the past, and appears among us today in surroundings far from congenial. The kindlier currents, the temperate zone of our present-day theology, might seem as little fitting, as disastrous eventually, to the one as to the other.
The whole question of creeds, articles, and confessions of faith is an interesting one. From a non-theological standpoint even, if in reality one can assume such detachment, it is so today. In that theological world where such unsettled conditions prevail at present, ideas are afloat in high quarters, and habits of thought are being engendered lower down which call attention to such documents in an altogether new way. These habits of thought spoken of beget an attitude which, at least to observers not immediately concerned, appears to be one of disloyalty to constitutional standards. The ideas abroad at all events must make it difficult for those who hold them to reconcile their retention with a reputation for orthodoxy. On the other hand, fast and far as these ideas seem in themselves likely to carry the honest and sincere, however mistaken, thinker, in many quarters, undeniably a certain measure of caution is observed in their application. And no doubt this moderation is imposed, if for one reason more than another, by the conserving influence of church standards of doctrine. That such formularies do prove a check is notorious; but they are not an insuperable barrier by any means. The modern speculative spirit, "free reverent inquiry," as it is called, is not seldom combined with not a little genius for evading unpleasant issues. The Scylla of "timid orthodoxy," and the Charybdis of pure rationalism can both be avoided by the skilful navigators at the wheel, and their ecclesiastical statesmanship or diplomacy can be depended upon to provide expedients for relieving tender consciences from any qualms as to the course being steered.
Now, when one reads and hears of the desperate shifts made by many to square their new beliefs, or hypotheses rather, with the articles under which their particular ecclesiastical bodies are chartered legally to conduct religious business, professions also to which they themselves, as a matter of personal conviction, may rightly be held, since they have voluntarily subscribed to them, one cannot but find some justice, as well as perhaps cynical humour, in the remark that the chief thing theologians have acquired under our modern conception of the sacred liberty of religious belief appears to be a wonderful capacity for intellectual "wriggling."
At the same time a more painful sentiment arises when one considers that this rationalistic movement is more than mere retrogression, more or less apologised for, from constitutional standards, more than mere surrender, piecemeal though it is, of the articles of a creed: there is evident and unabashed departure from the scripture revelation. The first, serious enough though it is, might be left to religious leaders, in touch with the modern spirit, themselves to settle, without calling for comment from ordinary Christians, who have learned their little all from Scripture, and would find theology, as one has said, a kind of Saul's armour. It may very truly be the case in fact, that, in intruding upon such a subject at all, plain people seem to presume over much. "Set them to judge who are of no account in the church," said the apostle in another connection, and it may be we are simply carrying into literal practice in another sphere his ironical injunction. Let it be so. The apparent absence of the "one wise man to decide," shall not that be our excuse?
What is painful, however, even to those who set little value by formal human confessions of faith, is that they cannot but recognise that, in general, the real ground on which creeds are being relinquished, the objectionable feature found in them is just exactly what truth they do contain. Without a doubt in all creeds there are things which fuller spiritual knowledge shows to be defective, if not erroneous. Blind veneration for antiquity puts false value upon these (for their time) wonderful manifestos of Christian belief, when it erects them into unchanging standards of faith; but the spirit which can with so little compunction, so little respect, throw them overboard as antiquated and worthless is far from praiseworthy. It is no question with us then of liberal or conservative theology, but of truth as a vital thing, of truth, as we might describe it, as the basis of faith and the sustenance of spiritual life, not to mention its general relation to men at large as the most important ingredient of the moral atmosphere. And theological systems, airtight compartments as they are, do not provide ideal conditions for either the conservation or the dissemination of the truth. Creeds are altogether suspicious things. Not that in a creed there is anything wrong in itself, if by it we mean merely the sum of that which we have learned from Scripture. Have we not all, in fact, some such creed, not necessarily explicit? And if able to state clearly the main distinctive lines of the truth we possess, not as setting limits thereby, it may be of no small help to ourselves in aiding us to organise our knowledge and rightly divide the word of truth.
Nor need it be doubted that in periods of church history, as remote in character as in time from our own, in the providence of God, a creed may have provided just such a medium of confessing the truth as seems necessary, if not indispensable, to the occasion. All this may he allowed without in any degree endorsing the popular idea of its true function. The truth is neither dependent upon a creed for its definite grasp and statement, nor obliged to be so embodied ere it is fit for the purpose of being a clear test. The former especially may be, in measure, a commendable practice today, the having and holding a clear idea or record of our convictions. But the inevitable evil of forms is apt to follow here also. The very process of giving the truth a form in the faulty expression of which alone we are capable, deducts from its truth and value. As one has said also, "Supposing everything was right that was there, it is like a made tree, instead of a growing tree." Any "declaration of the things most surely believed among us," also, however accredited by tradition, must in the last resort give way before the inspired record itself. "The faith once delivered unto the saints" should mark our boundaries, and constitute what alone we shall make ourselves answerable for. It is that also for which we are exhorted to contend.
In most cases today, unfortunately, the real subject of contention is something entirely different. There is, in fact, so much confusion about this whole matter of the relation between a church and its doctrine — that one cannot very clearly see what the controversy is. In one sense no doubt the issue at stake is still a simple one, is still the same. It is the old conflict between truth and error that is being waged. But when the question comes to be what the truth is for which we are to contend; how distinguish it from error; where precisely is the standard to which appeal can be made, we are met with different conceptions of what "the faith" can mean. That the word of God gives it in finality, reveals and states it in a form, in the form, most fitting for such appeal, is apparently not thought of. Is it not the case that, in Christian apologetics, the whole field over today from the Modernist controversy in the church of Rome to the smallest Presbyterian congregation belatedly discussing Higher Criticism from the conservative side the appeal invariably is, not to the scriptures, but to some one or other of those statements of Christian doctrine which have been drawn out at various times in the past? Add to this the fact that, while from the liberal side again there is the plea for a restatement in terms suited to modern thought, there are those also who (problem though they confess it to be), in the interests of supposed theological consistency which recent developments have shown to be of some importance legally, endeavour amicably to adjust the relation between their church and a confession they believe to be lying far astern of her life and thought. Some idea may then be had of how involved and intricate a matter this Of church and creed has become.
In this connection take Scottish Presbyterianism. It is well known that in the Scottish Establishment for at least the last twenty years the movement for creed relaxation and revision has been gathering force. This is not to be wondered at when the progress she has made on modern lines in the matter of doctrine is taken into account. There is certainly no more striking instance of the essentially revolutionary character of modern theological thought than in what has occurred within the last generation here, in its meeting with the strong, high Calvinism which is proverbially characteristic of the Church of Scotland. The Westminster Confession of Faith is, of course, that with which she is officially identified, each clergyman on ordination making profession of adherence to it in the words of a formula compiled for that express purpose. Now, it would seem an easy enough thing to substitute for the antiquated confession "a simple creed representing the best in theological thought as modified by modern contributions." But, as one has recently complained, under the Establishment they are "deprived of doctrinal autonomy." This want of the power of doctrinal initiative, much grieved over, has, up till now, been a serious check on the movement. "Advantage was taken of the abnormal political and ecclesiastical situation of 1905 to obtain from the State the right," not of altering the confession, but "of prescribing the formula of subscription" to it. This somewhat Jesuitical loophole, as some have thought it, is so far scarcely proving successful, and "as no alteration was thereby effected in the Act of 1690, on which the Establishment is based, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the relief supposed to be gained is only of a nominal nature." What else but nominal could the relief be in the nature of the case? A church has reason to be dissatisfied with that body of doctrine with which nominally it is identified. What then? Transform the nominal into the actual by revising the creed its teachers profess? Verily no; but rather substitute the nominal for the actual in the terms of their subscription to it. Whatever ingenuity the scheme may have to commend it, there is probably too strong a suspicion of careful juggling about it to give satisfactory relief to conscientious people. Apart from actual release from the doctrinal control of the State such as disestablishment would effect, it is difficult to see what can be done unless power to alter the Confession itself is secured. There is, of course, the further counsel of despair — "Would it not be better to still hold by the Confession of Faith, that if we have not uniformity of belief, we may at least have uniformity of make-believe?
How mercenary and political the whole thing is! Little love of truth for its own sake, or His who gave it, here. Yet surely these are all but plain lessons we may read today as to the question of creeds. Truth, after all, so little dwells in them in living power that their profession is no guarantee of adherence to, or affection for, it. As an asset of permanent value in Christianity also are they not seriously discounted by the fact that since at the best their inadequacy to present the truth of God worthily is apparent, and further that, even as they are, modern religious thought finds them so cumbersome as to regard attachment to them as an incubus, they are of but little use as a barrier against encroaching error? "The faith once delivered unto the saints" beyond question gives a surer standing ground and worthier deposit.
1909 366 Coming now from the general to the particular, What can be said, what is claimed, for the Apostles' Creed as to its worth and usefulness as a statement of Christian doctrine? And first there are those who in all seriousness take its title as being a true one, and accept it as really emanating from the apostles. As might be expected, in Rome, the great stronghold of tradition, this is the characteristic view. Absurd as the claim is, for history gives no countenance to, if not absolute contradiction of, its validity, teachers of the Roman Catholic faith have been very explicit in making it. Some have gone so far as to adopt not only the account of its composition by the apostles given by Rufinus; but also the later improvement on his improbable story — that which embellishes his fiction with a description in detail of the apostles, when assembled to compose the Creed, uttering each in succession one of its clauses, Peter offering this, John contributing that, James adding that, and so on. The general attitude, while perhaps scarcely going so far as this, has consistently been one of belief in its apostolic origin. Only of the Western Church, however, can this be said, for the Greek Church has been equally consistent in its scepticism of the tradition, and in its profession of ignorance of the early existence of such a creed. Further reference to its history is probably unnecessary, save perhaps to say that, if Calvin's hesitation in rejecting its apostolic origin is strange, Newman's description of it as the formal symbol which the apostles adopted and bequeathed to the church is not at all strange; while his assertion that "it has an evidence of its apostolic origin the same in kind with that for the scriptures," is equally without the least justification.
There are those again, who, while allowing that its true apostolic origin, in the sense of its being formally drawn up by the apostles, is untenable, regard the Creed as apostolic in the sense of its expressing clearly and succinctly the truth they taught, and of some value therefore as a bulwark of the faith. If so, it is surely unfortunate that such expression is so meagre as to he of little use for the purpose sought. Suppose that it were to be conceded for the moment that it is possible that the teaching of apostolic days, the common doctrine of the church, unformulated at first in documentary form, gradually took shape in this confession presumed to embody or give in summary whatever truth the early churches possessed. How far short it comes of primitive Christian doctrine as unfolded in the New Testament! Nay, mere inadequacy is not the only charge which may be brought against it. There is, even within such a limited field as its survey is concerned with, even upon such subjects as it does give a pronouncement, a want of harmony with scripture which is at once apparent. Thus in the case of creation, the Creed ascribes it exclusively to the Father, while the fact is that scripture never does so. Doubtless, the latter not infrequently presents the work as being that of God, i.e. God in the unity of His Being; but, as one has remarked, when the persons are distinguished it is never to the Father, but to the Son and to the Spirit, that creation is ascribed. Again, how little adequate it is as a barrier against error may be seen when one considers that neither of the Lord Jesus nor of the Holy Spirit is divinity categorically asserted. Arians have no hesitation in expressing themselves satisfied with it. Unitarians concur in its teachings. Either could very well accept it, and subscribe to it perhaps with less reluctance, preserving a better reputation for consistency than one who professes the fundamental doctrine of.the trinity of persons in the Godhead. This, on account of its indefinite, incomplete presentation of such a fundamental truth as the true deity of Son and Spirit!
Taking no more than these two instances of its faulty, unskilful delineation of scripture doctrine, what confidence can it inspire with regard to less elementary truths? What trust as to its efficacy as a test of orthodoxy can we repose in it today, when subtle errors as to the person of Christ and the word of God are so numerous? The fact is that of the three great Creeds which have been (it is claimed) successively evolved in the church's long conflict with error — the Apostles', the Nicene, and the Athanasian this is the most unsatisfactory, the one least entitled to respect, and is of the least use either as an outpost of the faith worthy to be garrisoned, or as a storehouse of the truth dispensing sustenance for the combat.
It is said, however, by some loathe to part with this ancient "essence of Christian dogma," that at the time of its formation, those elements which later Creeds defined were not in question, and its comparative silence on the topics is thus explained. That thus today, even, it is of use, if we fill out its apparent lacunae with those things which after all were incipient in it, as they were in the primitive faith to which it was the medium of expression. If, however, the Creed is only to be of value when issued in an edition interleaved with blank pages, we may justly be incredulous of its having any real worth in itself. And when the nature of some of the voluble comments which fill them is considered, many would prefer the blank page section dissociated from the ancient text, as we should then better know where we are. Modernism in doctrine would lose quite half its force if its modernity were frankly confessed. The attempt to associate it with what is ancient and venerable is what deceives many. The Presbyterian adoption of the Apostles' Creed as a convenient summary of the Christian faith, useful as a test or confession, according to the Westminster Confession, is, whether we concur in its estimate or not, one thing; the interpretation of apostolic testimony in the light of modern knowledge may prove quite another. The one is, as stated, an adoption; the other may be an adaptation. Not to prejudice the question from the very first, however, the use here made of the Creed in the way the Westminster divines suggested, may be considered a quite legitimate, and should certainly prove a very interesting one.
"This Creed is here annexed," declared the famous Westminster assembly, "not as though it were composed by the apostles, or ought to be esteemed canonical scripture, like the ten commandments or the Lord's Prayer, but because it is a brief sum of the Christian faith, agreeable to the word of God, and anciently received in the churches of Christ." The important point in this claim for the ancient document for us is what is said as to its agreeableness to the word of God. Its efficiency as a summary of Christian truth, needless to say, depends in the first place solely upon that. Any worth it may have in the way of defining doctrines would be quite counterbalanced by failure to comply with scripture. Equally, in any fresh elaboration of it now, what concerns us primarily is just this question of keeping in line with scripture. Taking it thus, then, as a summarising of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, subject to the consideration of its being "agreeable to the word of God," what of the first clause, "I believe in God the Father Almighty"?
This lies at the very threshold of Christianity. It affirms as a matter of faith that without which no movement of spiritual life is possible. "He that cometh to God must believe that He is." To bring such a primary truth as the existence of God therefore into the realm of matters which may be discussed is to descend to the very elementary. Yet as "all men have not faith," and the propagation of rationalistic theories is being so actively pursued today, due attention upon even this fundamental fact is not bestowed in vain. Excessive labouring of the point need not be desired, as much occupation controversially with the topic would be a mistake on the part of simple believers; yet seasonable witness to its truth from whatever quarter is surely matter for thankfulness. It is satisfactory to begin with too, when one finds this argument for the being or existence of God based upon ethical rather than upon rational ground. That is to say, that our true knowledge of God is, at bottom, not a matter of reason or intellectual conviction, but intuitive and spiritual. And this is so. The existence of God is not a mere deduction proved by certain facts in nature, or by the undeniable traces of His hand throughout the entire universe, moral and material alike. It is a fact in itself, of which, as natural men even, we are convinced in the innermost recesses of our hearts, apart altogether from demonstration to the mental faculties. Nature's wonders may combine to pour into man's ear their testimony to their great Originator. Man's own indelible intuitions, however, and the promptings of his conscience, bear witness of Him in the heart.
Is there not something like all this in that ancient confession of Job's? "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear," that may resemble the first; "but now mine eye seeth thee," answers in measure to the latter. Supreme beyond all, however, as a more excellent way, is God known (because thereby in grace revealed) through faith in His word. Faith it is that apprehends Him, and to faith alone is He truly revealed. Not at the same time, as it is truly remarked, that ours is an unreasonable or irrational belief. Manifest or demonstrated facts are not opposed to, but confirmatory of, it. Yet in the last resort, be the sum of external evidence what it may, the great fact of the spiritual world — God is is spiritually apprehended. It is in the soul and to the soul that the sense of God is borne witness of when faith is present; and where this is not so, the mere knowledge of His existence is, to put it at its highest, worthless. There is no need in all this to slight or overlook the value of the evidence so abundantly strewn abroad, not only of His existence, but also of His goodness. God has not left Himself without bright witness to both, in the face of the clouds of unbelief which man's forsaking of Him has superinduced. Of considerations then thought to bear testimony to Him we may note in detail (a) the witness of nature, (b) what is termed the universal religious sense.
Nature's witness to its great Originator is a fact both self-evident and attested by scripture. The strictly modified use of it made in scripture, however, is perhaps less given attention to than the deductions drawn from its phenomena by religious teachers enamoured of natural science. Modern natural theology considers its borders greatly enlarged, and its horizon vastly extended, by the undeniably great progress made in recent years in all manner of scientific research. More than ever now the kingdom of nature, its vastness and its minuteness alike, is laid open to the human intelligence, and with so rich a store of wonders untold to draw upon, it might be thought that their appeal to its testimony of the existence of a great First Cause ought to he invincible. Powerful in itself, no doubt, such witness is, whatever in its effect upon man it may prove. Our theologians, however, ought not to be too sure that the increased weight of testimony which modern discoveries give to nature will ensure deeper and more widespread conviction of God in men's hearts. Men in the past have shown a wonderful aptitude for arming themselves against unwelcome truth. And we must remember also that, if the range and power of the projectile have been increased, so also has the strength and resistance of the armour. For, proud of his phenomenal progress in all departments of knowledge, the man of the world today tends to divorce science from religion, and to leave and keep God altogether out of account in the realm of nature. No doubt the familiar ground which is gone over when we are reminded of the contemplation of nature's wonders leading us up to nature's God is correct in the abstract, and that, whether the ground taken be the inevitable connection in our mind between cause and effect (an inexorable law of thought, as it is called), or, the more fully developed argument from design of the celebrated Paley. But does it prove true, has it in the past proved true as a matter of fact? Allowing the validity of both the cosmological and the teleological arguments, as they are termed, are they sufficient, are they reinforced by all that modern natural science teaches?
1909 377 Today at any rate the proverbial "conflict between science and religion" comes in here. And it is not difficult to make out on which side men are prepared to range themselves. In any apparent issue between them there is certainly shown a tendency always to give science the benefit of the doubt. And all along there are assumptions made for a yet lisping science which are denied to the clear and mature tones of scripture's voice. How interesting to discover, for instance, that while we may have no unchallenged dogmas in religion, science may press an unproven theory upon us with all the authority of dogma, and few but are coerced or cajoled into bowing down to it!
Thus one would imagine now that to entertain the novel theory of evolution would be to consign to oblivion this great argument of design in nature. Yet here we are taught that this great discovery of the nineteenth century need not be thought to invalidate the evidence of design, for the divine purpose in view throughout the long age-lasting upward progress to nature's crowning product, man, is, if anything, the more evidenced thereby. Were it not better frankly to avow, if one could go no further, that if this truly epoch-making hypothesis be indeed confessed as a clearly established axiom of science — which is, however, even on its own ground, by no means the case — then that its account and that of scripture being so utterly at variance, the disparity between the two is evident and must be faced. Certainly, in the matter of man's origin, the difference is marked enough between nature's crowning product" and Adam created in God's image. As to which affords true evidence, not only of design, but of divine care and interest, where is the comparison? One must suppose it is all a question of the kind of God we are content to prove the existence of. If One to whom every one of us must give account of himself; One with whom we have to do; if a God whose goodness unfallen creation proclaimed, whose love has since been manifested, and whose grace is presently offered to all — a theory which delegates the production of all things, and man above all, to the progress of ages through the agency of natural selection, will be as little satisfying to us as the more ancient, and scarcely less worthy, idea of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. No; if God be the God we adore, the God whose word we believe (and what have we, even if nature's witness were increased tenfold, if we rest not there), our universe owes its being to Him, and man infinitely more so, in a far more direct manner than evolution would teach. "He spake and it was done. He commanded and it stood fast." "God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul."
But the real worth of such evidence from nature, apart altogether from such modifications of it as have been alluded to as now prevalent, its evidence undiluted, at what estimate shall we take it if what we may see of its weight with, and effect upon, men be the criterion by which we judge? Does nature lead to nature's God inevitably? certain as it is that it points there most truly. What does scripture say of its witness? The first chapter of Romans we may take in its later verses surely as giving an instance of how mankind may be affected by the testimony of creation. It is in no special sphere such as Judaism, remember, that this history of man's attitude towards the knowledge of God is traced; but out in the open, among men at large, the Gentiles. From verse 19 onwards we are shown wherein the "ungodliness" of the Gentiles, previously spoken of, consists. This ungodliness of men against which the wrath of God is revealed, what was it but simply an entire absence of the fear of God, where there was sufficient testimony existing to render such a thing inexcusable? The apostle, in reviewing this testimony, goes back to what is primary. The largest, the most general sphere is chosen first, creation, "that which may be known of God." Primitive as is its witness, creation is still full of manifestation of God. That which was "knowable" of God, from the testimony of created things, contained a voice for any listening ear, wherever or whenever found. "Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead [divinity], so that they are without excuse."
The works of God truly render eloquent testimony regarding their Author; and "that which may be known of Him," in respect of His Being and power, finds adequate expression there. His eternal power and divinity, invisible like all His attributes, apart from His disclosure of Himself, visible objects of striking character are eminently suited to proclaim. "The heavens," we read in Psalm 19, "declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork." Above man then appeared, and around Him were strewn, wonders great and innumerable to draw and fix his attention upon that supremely wise and powerful One to whom they silently pointed. That these did point somewhere the most darkened heathen has never escaped the conviction of. To say, however, that such have merely missed, through inadvertence, the right direction in which they might have been dimly seen to point, would be to misrepresent the case. Had the indications been obscure, some such excuse might be found possible, but it is not a mistaken reading of the evidence that we must lay to man's account, but the wholesale rejection of it. The language that "day unto day uttereth" is as little ambiguous as its "pouring forth" is meagre. The knowledge that "night unto night showeth" is no esoteric doctrine, but breathes its whisper in the ears of all. "There is no speech nor language, their voice is not heard." Not in articulate fashion; yet "their line is gone out through all the earth, and their sayings to the end of the world."
Such widespread, continuous, and eloquent testimony would seem to leave little room for either ignorance or mistake. Yet what are the facts of the case? Take man in the state he now is in of ignorance and darkness as to the knowledge of God. Take, on the other hand, the witness of nature to the Creator we have spoken of as of so great power and certainty. How are we to explain the lack of conviction wrought, the apparent unfruitfulness of this line of evidence? Is it not that the hearts of men have been so desirous after some alternative signification that they have wilfully disregarded its true indication? God they will not see it points to. Anyone or anything but Him they would willingly invest with the glory of such handiwork. They say unto God, "Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways." Yet even in face of this want of desire after God, these silent witnesses remain, to be accusers if nothing more; and the sum of their accusation here is that ungodly men are "without excuse."
And, taken in the mass, this is all the fruit the witness of nature has produced in man! There is no clearness lacking, no inherent weakness in, its testimony to a divine Creator. Rather might it seem an inference from which there was no escape. Yet the fact remains that, as the rule, man has not drawn that inference. Man being what he is, God is not in all his thoughts, however much creation seems to press Him upon his attention. Faith truly perceives creation to be His work, as Heb. 11:3 declares "Through faith we understand that the worlds were formed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." But were we left with the bare fact of nature's witness, not so much after all that "God is" as that "God must be," as the basis of appeal to men, we possess but little. Besides, at best, as has been said, to prove the existence of God is to descend to the very elementary.
On two occasions, noted in the Acts, the apostle Paul found it necessary to make primary truth such as this the subject of discourse. Acts 14:8-18, and 17:16-34 give the account of them. It is particularly interesting to us today to notice who the hearers respectively were of these similar addresses. The philosophic Athenians would no doubt consider themselves far removed from the ignorant Lystrians; but such is the debased and darkened state of the natural mind that each needed the same first lesson to be taught them. Both are, as many today need to be, "set to spell the alphabet of creation."
To refer now to the second of those, great evidences to the existence of one God and Father Almighty, the "universal sense of God," as it is called something corresponding to that term we must allow does exist. Account for it as we may, no fact in this world is more prominent or undeniable than the universal prevalence of religion. Religious beliefs and practices of some sort pervade the entire human family. Our lecturer correctly enough insists on this as remarkable. No community yet discovered, as he says, no people, however remote or secluded, but has its religion. The most barbarous and ignorant, and the most civilised and intellectual among the races of mankind, however widely severed in other respects, are alike in this, that there is that in them which prompts veneration of some higher power. It may be they worship they know not what; but still they worship. "To the unknown God" even they may raise their altar, and it may be difficult to say whether it is a "what" or a "whom" they "ignorantly reverence." The fact remains they do revere.
Patent to all as this is, there are not wanting those who would fain explain it away on rationalistic grounds. Of the frankly materialistic school there are still many with us. And it is these in particular against whom is directed a somewhat elaborate disquisition on the origin and roots of human religion. If we follow here, as we must so far, we shall do so on our own lines. The most convinced materialist, then, cannot deny the fact of man's seemingly essential religiousness, however he may attempt to explain it. They confess to having a task in hand in eradicating that idea so strangely prevalent in man, which postulates supernatural agency for phenomena which in any sense are obscure. It may also be conjectured how much of a problem they find it satisfactorily to account for what seems the universal impulse of men to so attribute such phenomena. The materialist, in fact, is involved in difficulty all round. His quest after the roots of religion in man's nature has hitherto been attended with scant success. The conflicting testimony from investigators in that field is notorious. From Hume to Herbert Spencer there has been nothing but diversity. Each part of man's nature, his intellectual, his emotional, his imaginative faculties, has in turn been singled out as the sphere in which religion takes its rise. An unclassified sentiment is really all that psychological analysis can as yet pronounce the religious instinct to be. We may not be so far off after all from seeing advanced in good earnest that sarcastic paraphrase of F. W. Newman's definition which the late J. N. Darby suggested — "a phrenological bump."
At present at all events the shallower species of materialists' favourite term, "superstition," does not approve itself to the more thoughtful; and, while carefully avoiding the term, all such seem unable altogether to escape some slight contamination of the theory of the innate consciousness in man of a power and personality higher than human. Thus Haeckel, while finding the crude beginnings of religion to spring "partly from the hereditary superstition of primate ancestors, partly from ancestor-worship, as well as from habits which have become traditional," concludes his formidable list with the very indefinite phrase, "and various emotional impulses." Yes, just somewhere in that latter region will be found the solution of the problem — Why is religion such a universal feature, so inseparable from man wherever found? Exploration, discovery, the progress of your ethnological study have but multiplied the instances of its occurrence, without solving the question of its origin. No solution seems possible but that which explains its unexceptional appearance and ineradicable nature, in the first place, by some inherent impulse in men, by an ingrained consciousness of a higher power.
Conjoined with this also, or a component part of the same instinct, there is the sense of moral accountability indelibly imprinted on the heart of every man. This is so plainly the case that no denial is possible. It is so realised to be part and parcel of our very nature as men to feel accountable for thoughts entertained and actions performed. We can understand no normal human being without it, and as matter of fact we find none. Man is essentially a moral creature, from the beginning was so. A consciousness of responsibility, dim it may be, or uncertain to whom it refers, pervades the mind of even the most benighted, however distorted his ideas of the unknown Supreme may be.
In every human soul, too, scripture testifies, since the fruit of the forbidden tree in Eden was partaken of, the voice of conscience makes itself heard. "Knowing good and evil describes the new moral outlook of man in his fallen state, come under the power of evil now, alas! though his "conscience bearing witness" as we read in Rom. 2:15 — not in regard to Jews, not in that sphere where the light of revealed-truth shone, but among "those of the nations," "the heathen." Instances of commendable ethics among the Gentiles, rare enough no doubt, were sometimes in evidence. This does not prove, however, "the law" to be "written on their hearts." It is "the work of the law" of which this is affirmed, conscience bearing corroborative witness therewith. The thoughts of accusation or extenuation that flit across such dark minds, show them capable, inherently so, of moral exercise, and evidence clearly enough the sense of moral accountability, and the witness of conscience to be, both of them, universal features. All this in its own way we must allow is testimony to the existence of God.
910 13 This widespread, universal religious sense (we can hardly term it the sense of God) which, even among the darkest heathen, crops up amidst the corrupt and desolate debris of their systems, is certainly to be regarded as something in the nature of a testimony to Him, who, while "in times past suffering all nations to walk in their own ways, nevertheless left not himself without witness" in their hearts.
We must guard, however, against certain ideas on this subject now beginning to be spread abroad. It will be no digression, either, to examine them here, as they really underlie much of the reasoning of this part of the lectures under review. These ideas are not at all of the frankly materialist school already alluded to, however akin in some respects. They emanate rather from a conception of religion as that primeval instinct in man which materialists deny; but an idea, at the same time, which distorts that fact, as well as many others, to suit a classification of religions imagined to be scientific. What is termed the science of Comparative Religion is one of those ideas of recent growth, which seem to believers of plain scriptural training to be quite as erroneous as their appearance is momentous. No doubt it is something imported from that quarter, which underlies the term "sense of God" in regular use in many quarters as a designation for the religious consciousness in heathendom. On that ground must be explained our quarrel with the phrase, which otherwise appears harmless enough. If what was meant by the "sense of God" were merely the dim consciousness of the existence of such an One in pagan hearts, all were well; but this is not at all so. A great change has come over the minds of many in regard to the relation of Christianity to other religions of the world. Whereas formerly the faiths of the world were divided simply into true and false — Judaism, where partially, and Christianity, where fully, God had revealed the truth, and Paganism, wherein (certain admirable ideas and features notwithstanding,) men grovelled in error and darkness now, a more detailed or complicated classification is attempted. A full survey of the various systems of religions, ancient and modern alike, throughout the world is being conducted on strictly modern philosophic principles, with due attention also to what psychology can teach as to their origin and phenomena.
The comparison of Christianity with previously existing systems, at least with those in proximity to which Christianity first appeared, so as to suggest comparison, is no new thing. Its relation to Judaism was a question early raised, and clearly settled also, while the apostles themselves were yet on the scene. No small part of Paul's particular mission was the setting free the new religion from the bonds of Jewish legalism; while a whole epistle, Hebrews, is given up to the elaboration of the comparison between the two systems. To another category altogether, however, belong the other religions and philosophies with which primitive Christianity came in contact, whether in Greece or Rome. Inspired Christian writings are comparatively reticent as to these, although some there are no doubt who read into New Testament scriptures the reiteration of their technical terms at least. For instance, that the language of the opening verses of John's Gospel, with its use of the "Logos," is reminiscent of the Greco-Oriental speculations of the Alexandrian Philo, or that moral terms in regular use among the Stoics make frequent appearance in Paul's epistles, or again that the noteworthy resemblance between Paul and Seneca, which forms the matter of one of Lightfoot's treatises, proves parallelism in their teachings.
Answer to all this was not at all difficult. For, if, as we believe, Christianity is the sole and sufficient answer to the deepest need of the human heart, that need which even pagan idolaters could not but feel, and which their philosophers could not meet but only falteringly express; if, as one has said, "Paganism brought nothing to Christianity but aspirations frustrated, and yearnings unsatisfied," is it at all to be wondered at if God, in revealing that which alone could satisfy these yearnings, condescended to use, as far as He could, the terms in which these aspirations were expressed? As the late Editor of "Bible Treasury" has said, "The truth is that God in His grace, who knew the bewilderment of man's mind, not dissipated but deepened by philosophy, etc., either anticipated or answered these unbelieving reveries by the revelation of the truth. … Christ, true God and perfect man, is the revelation of God, which sets aside the corrupt Gnostic, the self-complacent Stoic, and the dreaming Platonist. If inspiration employed their language, it was in pitiful condescension to impart the truth of God in Christ, which brings to naught their vain, self-righteous and false ideas. "*
{*Bible Treasury, Vol. 5., New Series, p. 255.}
At Athens, it will be remembered, "the city wholly given to idolatry," Paul saw an altar with the inscription, "To the unknown God," and forthwith made opportune use of the incident. "Whom ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you." In a way these Athenians are a representative class. "In all things too superstitious," "excessively reverent of divinities," yet so little satisfied with those they had, that "to tell or hear of something newer" was their characteristic occupation, learned and philosophic as they were, they may be taken as eminently representative of what religious aspirations directed by human philosophy amounted to, or could achieve, in Paganism at its best. In what measure then was the true God conceived of, or any genuine knowledge of Him reflected, in anything within the compass of their elaborate system. The only element wherein the faintest reference to Him appears was that melancholy inscription seized on by the apostle — "To the unknown God." God the Unknown, felt after, indeed, even by Athenian devotees of divinities many; God the Unknown, a sense of whose existence no worship of false deities could obliterate, no specious philosophy explain away; yea, even while under the charm of Greek eloquence at its best, "at the sound of cornet, flute and psaltery, and all kinds of music," they bowed themselves at shrine erected, or image set up, in this city surrendered to idol-worship, God the Unknown at the long last they still find it necessary to admit at least into their Pantheon. Consciousness of Him cannot be quite shut out, nor drowned in clamour of idolatrous liturgy, whether Stoic pipe or Epicurean sackbut. But how humiliating the confession. "To the unknown God." This then the final exemplification, the summing up of all that was best, most worthy, in heathen philosophers, Alexandrian, Epicurean, Stoic, Sceptic, or any other; for that was all, that vague ascription of the fag-end of their homage, "To the unknown God," which out of the ruins of their idol worship even they could construct!
Take then that strangely significant altar inscription as the symbol of anything in the way of truth or knowledge of God classical paganism ever showed. Is there much to constitute it a formidable rival of, anything to entitle its being regarded as a valuable contributor to, Christian thought and doctrine? Why, rather, what have they in common? May we not see also in Paul's use of the occasion, his reference to their abject confession, and to the obscure statement of one of "their own" poets, an apt illustration of what the Spirit of truth may have done in adopting, or adapting, the diction of their philosophy to serve His own ends in setting forth that which met their every question, and made foolish their every dream? As has been said, this answer to the suggestion of Christianity's relation to the religions of the past prompts itself readily, and proves sufficient. And, really, the assertion sometimes made today that "Christianity was at first a mere development of Judaism, and that it was by combining with elements borrowed from the religions and the philosophies of the ancient pagan world that it assumed its final form" is best answered, as it has been answered, by the statement that, "Were we to see in Christianity only a synthesis of all the anterior religions, we should have in Christ only a composite idol enshrined in the last of the pagodas."
But now we have a newer study of religions, from an entirely fresh and original standpoint. Conclusions similar to those appearing in the last quotation we no doubt find accepted in many cases under this novel method as well; but they are reached from a different direction, as the subject is approached in a rather different way. That is, the principle of differentiation between Christianity and other religions is sought in another and wider sphere. The comparison of Christian doctrine with the teachings of the older religions of which we have spoken would be regarded as only a partial application of the comparative method by adherents of the new school, and would have reserved for it the particular designation, "Comparative Theology, the remaining portions of the field of survey being the "Psychology of Religion" and the "History of Religions." Together forming a comprehensive scheme to be known as the "Science of Religions." Now under this pretentious title they profess to "seek to study religion not merely in particular aspects and ways, but in its unity and entirety, with a view to its comprehension in its essence and all essential relations. "Two things we must expect, then, from such as affect to take such philosophic views of that which is a serious enough matter for men at large their religion. 'These are, that any special claim as to Christianity must not be preferred at this early stage, it must go into the crucible with the rest, take its chance of emerging approved worthy of place, or of supreme place, in the illustrious society of the faiths of the world, when they are "unified and co-ordinated in a truly organic manner." And at the same time we must expect, from those who propose to probe so deep into the origin of this peculiar compound feeling called religion, this "process of mind," this inexhaustible field for psychological study, we must expect, let us remember, to hear much of man, his progress in ethical thought, and perception of the infinite, and very little of "the notion of a special revelation from God."
The meaning and significance of this recent development may best be understood by reference to an instance of its exposition. Thus, at the great Anglican Church Congress of 1908, the report of the section which was devoted to this subject gives clear expression to the great divergence from the older ideas, the more modern conception being widely entertained. In fact, if the several contributors to the discussion were in any sense representative, it may almost be said that the Anglican Church's imprimatur is assured to the new theory, so feeble was any protest, so meagre was the statement of what Scripture gives as the truth about idolatry. In the opening deliberation of "Section B" the issue was well defined. "The Congress had to consider whether they preferred to remain on the old lines, holding that one religion was true, and all the rest false, or whether they sympathised with the efforts made in most of the Congress papers to relate other religions to that which Christians held to be specially revealed." The general attitude of this important Congress was sufficiently manifested by such things as the continual, and in general depreciatory, reference to "the old ruthless doctrine which sharply separates Christianity from other religions"; as also it was by the constant claim "that now it is generally realised that much in Christianity belongs to the common stock of religion," and that "we perceive the Spirit's work in the higher aspirations of all races."
Whereunto this will grow, or what sort of influence such conceptions of other religions are likely to exert on Christian missionary efforts and methods, may be matter of conjecture. One thing certain about them is their novelty. But the change of attitude was in fact categorically asserted on the same occasion. From an accredited account of the proceedings of the Congress which then appeared, take this "As to the attitude which the church should adopt towards the non-Christian creeds and systems with which she finds herself in contact, the time has gone by when undiscriminating repudiation is indulged in … and, while the last traces of this habit of mind have not yet entirely vanished, the change during recent years has been great and salutary." Then, finally, "This attitude, conciliatory and adaptative, and not the implacable hostility of the Crusader or the Cromwellian trooper, was with satisfaction recognised as the predominant note in the discussion." Such was the finding of the experts of the Pan-Anglican Congress!
Now what does Scripture teach as to the religions of the world? Perhaps the consideration of how, according to Scripture, they one and all originated and developed might prove enlightening to many, if no further, certainly at least as to the radical divergence between its account and these modern ideas on the subject. The chapter in Romans already alluded to will furnish an example of what is the invariable testimony of the word as to the origin of what it at least does not scruple to call idolatry. Rom. 1, after adducing creation's testimony as "that which may be known of God," proceeds in verses 21-25 to consider man's treatment of such positive knowledge of God as he at one time undeniably possessed. "Because that when they knew God they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves; who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator who is blessed for ever. Amen."
"Because that, knowing," or, "having known," "God." This is a distinct advance upon nature's witness, being that knowledge of God on man's part, which may be termed traditional. He was thus positively known by men at as late a date as the day of Noah if, indeed, it be not precisely to that memorable post-diluvian morning that reference is here made, when we find Noah and his family all that was left of the human race upon the earth — surrounding their altar as worshippers of the one true God. Thus far at least have we to go back the stream of history ere we come upon the happy time when it could be said that men, as a class, "knew God." In the absence of any later occasion when it was true, this may be the occasion referred to, if, as seems likely, a definite point in history is in the apostle's mind.
1910 30 On the threshold of a new world, then, only one God was known, owned, or worshipped; only one form of religious belief existed. Whence have come the others? From development of that? or through degeneration from it? Is it progress or lapse that time has brought? Many, reasoning from the undoubted progress of the race in material things, and in the intellectual sphere also, imagine a similar progress to have taken place spiritually. The illustration of man groping his way from primitive ignorance through hideous nature-worship, and polytheism, to true knowledge of God, is a common, if erroneous one. The truth is, according to this chapter, that the progress is in exactly the reverse direction. "Knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful." That is to say, primarily He was known, conceived of objectively, present to the mind of man as existing and almighty. And such knowledge, remark, man is credited with, not as a deduction logically and laboriously arrived at, but as an assurance he is originally furnished with. The glorifying of Him, as such, however, men soon ceased to render, the experience of His continued goodness awakening no grateful response. Practical recognition of God was thus abandoned, and that right early. The process of His dethronement from their hearts was begun, little as they knew of how soon the vacancy thus created would be re-inhabited. A scheme for man's deception the enemy had prepared of which this was, in reality, the initial step. Thereafter the knowledge and remembrance of God gradually faded. Especially so when, "becoming vain in their reasonings, their undiscerning heart became darkened."
Under professions of wisdom they made rapid progress in their path of folly, until ultimately, become fools, "they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man," and, on the downgrade ever, "to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." Without going further on in the chapter, the latter verses of which corroborate and strengthen this witness of man's exchange of the truth of God for falsehood, and of the veneration and service of the creature rather than of "the Creator who is blessed for ever" such is the account the word of God gives of the origin of idolatry. How incompatible with it is what is here taught under the term "sense of God." Endowed with the significance the science of comparative religion attaches to it, it is misleading and erroneous, giving entirely false value to that consciousness of God which, confessedly, is rooted in every human heart. As a witness to Him, the presence of that intuitive sense is worthless if we so corrupt it. Correctly understood, in its own way it does bear testimony concerning the fact that God is, and however feebly it may supplement other and more important forms of evidence, its quota is neither to be neglected nor perverted.
The evidence to the existence of God having been pursued along these two lines, and the belief in Him affirmed in the words of the Creed shown to be quite a rational conclusion, the signatories of that document may now regard themselves as relieved from any aspersions of blind, unreasoning credulity in signing it. This is so great a matter today. Rational we must show ourselves to be, whatever else we are! Compromise we may to any extent in matters of faith and religion, if we can only keep the peace with science, and remain on good terms with carnal reasoning! In other words, that is to say that today all we learn, hold, or assert as spiritual truth we are ever to be prepared to submit to the searching, sifting analysis which prevailing materialistic rationalism today insists on its right to apply. No doubt much will have to give way, but a sufficiently flexible faith will find no difficulty in surrendering whatever is called in question, and no alarm need be felt, for a considerable residuum of unchallenged verities will always be found to emerge either untouched, or indeed enhanced in appearance from the process! Does it give no pause, no suspicion to such as reason thus that this residuum is ever a steadily decreasing one? That those who surrender whatever is cried down as irrational or unscientific constantly find science and rationalism encroaching further on their territory? So much so that treatises written "in relief of doubt" (should they not rather, in keeping with their real purpose, be entitled "in relief of faith"?) very soon are out of date from not conceding enough! There is a sad absence of backbone in our beliefs, a lack of sound hard kernel in our convictions today, else were we less susceptible to such influences. Is there not room for suspicion really that at bottom there is something essentially at fault in our whole modern attitude towards revealed truth? Not only in the case of theologians themselves, but in the far graver instance of christians generally as affected by them, would there not seem to be some element lacking, the want of which is leaving its mark over the whole field of common Christian belief and confession? Without yielding to unduly pessimistic impressions, there can be no doubt that today, alike in doctrinal expression and inward conviction, there is lack of that full assurance which accompanies true faith in God. In essaying either to state or to learn the truth we fear really to claim or expect certainty; we shrink from advancing much further than probability. When asked for "a reason for the hope that is within us," there is abundance of "meekness and fear" of a kind; but little preparation for giving a satisfactory "answer, always and to every one" who calls for our apologia.
As to what can he the cause of this cold hesitancy, does it require a very skilful diagnosis of present symptoms to discern what it is? Our times, we must remember, have witnessed the spread of education, and the advance of knowledge to an extent unprecedented before. Along with these blessings, however, it is to be feared we stand in danger now of the uprising of what can only be described as a flood of intellectual anarchy. When we recollect man's natural propensity to intellectual pride, how little it takes to puff up the carnal mind, it is not to be wondered at that the really marvellous progress presently being made in knowledge and science tends to overwhelm him with a sense of his own ability in that direction. Wherein the peril lies, however, is that in presence of this high regard for, almost worship of, intellectualism, the hold upon men of everything formerly held sacred, or valued as spiritual truth, appears to be endangered. Where everything is liable to be called in question there can be no real, no permanent certitude. And it is just this certitude in the realm of spiritual things, this sureness that cannot be gainsaid, indispensable for faith, that the spirit of the age is threatening to swamp. This again in large measure owes its origin to want of confidence on the part of christians themselves — to sheer unbelief in the written word as God's medium of communicating the truth to us. Doubtless the influence of speculative philosophy must not be forgotten — its influence on the popular conception of what the truth in itself really is, and whether from its essential nature it admits of being at any time finally standardised — this must certainly be allowed for as contributing to form the general lax attitude. But next to that, or in combination with it, the equally modern, and equally infidel science of Higher Criticism must be held accountable for the fall of temperature. For (to make but the briefest reference to this latter) there is ground for more than suspicion that the principal evil result of the methods of scripture study introduced by Higher Criticism may he anticipated not from attack in detail — the destructive criticism of the various portions of the Bible, or their piecemeal surrender resulting the evil rather is apparent in this general attitude towards Scripture induced by it. A general abatement of respect for Biblical authority (an even more serious thing than doubts as to any particular portion of it) has resulted, insomuch that what is now quite common is either uneasy distrust, or actual discredit of the Scriptures as God's full and final revelation. Truth, the truth, all profess to seek; but a common conception of the truth seems to be, not that it is identical with, or synchronises with, an unchangeable "faith once for all delivered," a divinely appointed standard, guaranteed by God Himself as its fixed and final expression; but that it is more or less a thing of flux and change, a thing still in process of development or discovery. Nay, is there not a tendency to relegate to the background altogether the very thought of a revelation from God? In any case this fact of revelation occupies now but a minor place in the scheme.
In this very respect the lecture under consideration is remarkable, and in nothing more characteristic of modern thought than in its omission of all mention of God's revelation as a source of evidence to Him. In Scripture, if anywhere, should it not be recognised, we have unique testimony to God, the great standing witness to His existence, to say nothing more? All that nature and human God-consciousness, "the antecedents of revelation" someone has termed them, all that these can communicate concerning God, all that reason and conscience can make known of Him, is not to be mentioned beside that knowledge of God which His word conveys to the believer. The fact of His existence, after all, is but a small thing to have demonstrated. Scripture does so unmistakably, but how much more! God is there made known, His nature, His character as far as Infinite can reveal itself to finite, shown forth in grace. All that concerns Him in relation to us, and all that has to do with man's responsibility to Him is made the subject of its testimony, not to mention greater and larger spheres. "He that cometh to God must believe that He is." So much, perhaps, might be gleaned from what "nature itself teaches"; but the further necessary conviction, "and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him," with what it implies, Scripture only could produce. We cannot go so far as to say that nature's witness to Him is but incidental and undesigned, or that it is absolutely incommunicative as to what His character is; but there is in no sense to be observed there the same full purpose of communication and revelation that is evident in Scripture. For the truth from God we will look in vain anywhere else. Taken in conjunction with that objective adumbration presented in Jesus Christ His only-begotten Son, whose declaration, "I am the truth" (John 14:6) can only he understood in the sense of objective display, and not to be severed either from the further fact that "the Spirit is the truth" (1 John 5:6), as signifying subjective power of apprehension, the Scriptures fill a unique, and indisputably important place in the divine scheme of revelation, being the descriptive record of that which God makes known. "Thy word is truth" (John 17:17). How gross a blunder then to omit this weighty consideration from the sum of Christian Evidences as epitomised in the Creed! Why should the Scripture be eliminated? Is it that the force and value of its testimony has deteriorated, is now discounted with men, in face of the questions regarding it recently raised? Is it fear of the charge of obscuration, of Bibliolatry, that has led to its omission? Whatever the cause, it surely is something of a novelty to have the evidences to the primary fact of God's existence enumerated, and His own revelation left out.
1910 45 Judging from the tone some apologists adopt, one cannot but conclude that their conception of Christian doctrine is that it is something in the nature of a derelict from ancient seas, drifted from its mediaeval anchorage and stranded now upon an inhospitable shore. Thankful we are to be if from the wreck we can obtain some fragments of its old-fashioned freight, and to be too aggressive even in that is matter for ridicule. It may be an unfounded suspicion, but something like that spirit seems to underlie this choice, presently under consideration, of the Apostles' Creed as a statement of christian faith. A poor salvage it must be that effects the rescue of only that. As it is natural, however, to value considerably above its inherent worth anything obtained under such circumstances, the ancient relic appears particularly valuable to some today. It is doubtless this that accounts for their reading into the various clauses of the Creed much that never could be read out of it.
Thus as to its opening announcement, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth," we would perhaps scarcely be prepared to credit it with the amplitude some put upon it. It affirms, we are told, belief not only in God, but in "the Father," and to this is given what is thought the value of the full christian revelation of God in relation to His people. This greater and higher conception of God as the Father, brought to man, as it is so far rightly said, by Jesus Christ and the revelation He brought, is taken as declared accepted by the signatories to the creed. This may be so in the case of those who take it as now expounded; but in its original dress it scarcely seems to wear that complexion. As commonly understood, the words "the Father Almighty" are taken simply as distinctive of the first Person in the Godhead, the Son, and the Holy Spirit following in due order. No doubt much is implicit in all of these — "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" — as also in the simple baptismal formula of Matt. 28:19, from which formula, by the way, many conceive the Apostles' Creed to have originated. As stated, the term "Father" is a relative one, involving the idea of sonship. But it is surely to over-amplify the ancient confession to read into it here all that the name "Father" involves when used as designative of His relation to us, "sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus." Sermonising upon the term, it may certainly be legitimate to draw attention to it as expressive of His relation to men; but reading it in its place and context in the creed, it would seem rather to define the manner in which the First Person of the Godhead stands related to the Second — "Jesus Christ His only Son."
Moreover there is a lack of precision in what is advanced as the particular truth expressed under this name of "Father" in its larger signification even. There seems to be confusion, or at all events lack of clear distinction between, two things quite separate and distinct, the natural man's relation to God, and the christian's. The term implying paternal relationship appears in scripture certainly applicable to both classes. "Adam which was [the son] of God" (Luke 3:38), instances the nature of the link in the one case; and of the God "in whom we live and move and have our being we are no doubt "the offspring," as elsewhere expressed; but the christian's relationship by faith in Christ Jesus, making it possible for him, having the Spirit of adoption, to cry "Abba Father," is a quite different and far transcending truth. This distinction may seem so evident as to make it unnecessary to be emphasised, yet here we are in presence of a marked failure to draw it, at any rate with anything like clearness. The universal fatherhood of God, as modernly conceived, was emphatically not the substance of Christ's revelation, and however true it may be that Philip's "show us the Father and it sufficeth us" voices the universally felt need of the human heart, and that Christ's answer, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father," is the christian revelation of God epitomised, and direct answer to that need, it is on another plane than that of nature, where this revelation is received, and this relationship enjoyed. "I have manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world." "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." Nothing is more common than this confusion of the divine fatherhood in relation to man generally with that to believers in particular, or rather the absorption of the one into the other.
Here again is an instance of failing to give its distinctive place to what the New Testament teaches. For, leaving aside the Old Testament, what can be clearer in the New than that, consequent on the accomplished redemption it proclaims, part of the blessing it announces as the distinctive portion of believers, is their participation, theirs peculiarly, in the place and position of children and sons of God. Not only in the nature of the link itself do the two relationships differ, the one true of all who to Him as their Creator owe their being; the other a spiritual birth-tie existing in virtue of a divine operation of grace in the soul of one who is born again, born of God; but all round, as to their essential nature, the plane upon which they are realised, and the position of privilege and responsibility into which they severally introduce, the two things are wide as the poles asunder.
And even when a measure of distinction is seen to be called for by what the New Testament adds, more particularly by what the Lord Jesus Himself proclaims, it is largely misconceived. As parallel in its reasoning with the lecture at this point, and slightly more explicit, take a recent attempt, in a handbook on the "Life and Teaching of Christ," to define what He teaches on the subject. Under the heading, "Subject matter of the teaching," "God the Father" is taken as title of the first item. "Every new religion," it is said, "begins in a new revelation of God, or in a new emphasis upon some hitherto half-understood aspect of the divine nature. Just as the starting-point of the religion of Israel was the new name of Yahveh given to God, so it is often claimed that the central point in the doctrine of Jesus is His conception of the fatherhood of God. There is, of course, nothing new in the idea. Jesus accepts a name for God which was already familiar; but fills it with a content and meaning of His own." What then is this new content and meaning given to the idea not in itself original? "He speaks to the disciples of My Father and yours, and teaches them to pray, Our Father which art in heaven. This means a considerable advance upon the old conception of a Fatherhood derived from the fact of creation or generation." Doubtless! In what then does it consist? "With Jesus the term 'Fatherhood' describes even something more than a relationship," etc. The idea seems to be that Christ's teaching carries the thought of God being Father beyond anything like the genetic sense it already had, and gives it rather an ethical significance. The Fatherliness of God rather than His Fathership is what is insisted on.
This elaboration of the idea of God's Fatherhood, remark, leaves it still on the old ground, on the same plane as formerly. It is in no sense a new relationship opened up. With Jesus the term "fatherhood" in the first place gives the essence or spirit which determines God's action and lies behind it all," either in redemption, as seen in the parable of the prodigal son, or in providence, as shown in the teaching of the Sermon on the mount. "The originality of His conception of the divine Fatherhood comes out in the stress which He lays upon the love of God. God is the Father of all men because He loves them." In the second place, "He presents us with a new conception of the natural attitude of the soul to God under the figure of the filial relationship, in which there is a fine blending of childlike trust and godly fear, especially illustrated in His teaching in regard to prayer." Finally, "It was not the least among the aims of the teaching of Jesus to bring home to men first the fact of this divine relationship, and then to show them the way to its fuller realisation." And is this all that is original in the "teaching of Jesus" on the topic of relationship with God? All that is to be learned from Him who, at the close of His ministry on earth, claimed as His peculiar prerogative, and accomplished mission, to have manifested the Father's name? Who spoke of an hour coming when anything enigmatic about His disclosures to His disciples should be a thing of the past, and He would show them plainly of the Father? And who could give, as sufficient answer to the request, "show us the Father," the declaration, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father"?
How short, how very far short of an adequate presentation of the full christian revelation this mere bringing into prominence of an unoriginal idea comes! How little apprehension of a new relationship with God through being born again spiritually, a relationship founded on the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, entered upon in association with the Son of God in resurrection, its basis essentially the possession of eternal life in Him, and God's sending forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying, "Abba Father." This, and no mere fuller realisation of filial relationship On the plane of nature, gives "the full range and meaning and significance of sonship." The confusion no doubt arises from the fact that in the revelation Christ brought there was undoubtedly that which had to say to men at large, as well as to those chosen out of the world as the special objects and recipients of His testimony. It is truly said, "While nature's testimony and conscience's witness evidence respectively God's eternal power and divinity, and His righteous and holy character, neither of them gave the revelation of the Father. It was reserved for the Lord Jesus Christ to make Him known to sinners as a God of love." Blessedly true it is that through Christ was shown the sovereign matchless love of God to a sinful world, the true unfolding of the Father's heart towards His prodigals in the far country, if so it may be taken; but even this in no wise exhausts the fulness of that revelation of the Father concerning which it is said "the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."
If it is a truly great and effective contrast that John draws in the statement, — "The law was given by Moses, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ," a contrast not less striking we may see between what we learn of that tie of relationship between God and the members of the human family, owned still in spite of their fallen state, and what "eternal ages shall declare" of "those who, with Thy Son, shall share A son's eternal place." It was of this wonderful place and portion, to be enjoyed consequent on redemption and the coming of the Spirit, that our blessed Lord spoke continually. The fourth Gospel, in particular, gives full testimony to it. In how rich measure, in chapters 14 to 17 especially, containing His last words to His own, have we that manifesting of the Father's name to the men given Him by the Father out of the world that He speaks of in His prayer (John 17:6). "I have made known to them thy name," He said in closing, "and will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them." The "declaring thy. name unto my brethren," as He did most unequivocally in resurrection "I ascend unto my Father and your Father, unto my God and your God" — was surely the primary instance at least of His going on to make the Father known.
All this is involved in "that new conception of God, which burst forth into one word, religion's ultimate, Abba, Father.'" It may very well be questioned, then, if the statement of the creed has accommodation for all that is wrapt up in that wondrous name of relationship, "the Father." More probably it was compiled, as it is by many recited, in much ignorance of this.
1910 61 Passing on to further clauses of the Creed, it would be tedious and serve no purpose, to comment on every item. It is sufficient to point out wherein to a simple mind modern theology appears to impose a novel reading of its teaching, or to call attention to what, in the light of scripture, seems a defective or erroneous apprehension of the truth it summarises.
In passing from the first to the second clause" and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord" — unfortunately, one is not likely by any means to be free from difficulty in regard to what is taught yet. Rather, in fact, do we here, in this second declaration of belief, enter upon more controversial ground than ever. Proverbially it is so, as ancient ecclesiastical history, for instance, attests. Here have the fiercest and most oft-recurring combats of the past been waged. Throughout whole centuries this has been the field of conflict, where error after error has assailed the faith of God's elect, and in some measure of faithfulness has been met and repulsed. Today it presents somewhat the appearance of a historic battlefield, scarred with the marks of ancient combat, and strewn with the relics of a conflict long since stilled. Here and there, it may be, one of the old-time weapons may be disinterred, or some rusted fragment of broken armour, perhaps, of no more than antiquarian interest now, however much practical importance, for attack or defence, each may have had to those engaged in battle then. By even more graphic testimony, perchance, the thickly strewn relics of the slain, or other personal traces of the combatants, the field is seen to have been not always one of peaceful pasturage; but, in days long since gone, of turbulent tumult and fierce fighting. In literal fact this is ground, this that is entered upon by the statements concerning the person of Christ, where the prolonged strife of controversies not a few has not failed to leave unmistakeable traces, and marks that can never be erased.
If, in fact, there is one instance where anything at all may appear to be in the claim of theology to have fulfilled its province of construing to expert intelligence, or enforcing on popular attention, a revealed truth of Christianity, it is here. How far in such a case it may be allowed that there has been, in the controversy as to this fundamental doctrine of the Person of the Son of God, a practical bringing of it into prominence, an emphasising and elaboration of it which would not otherwise have been forthcoming, may be a question. Provided the thought generally associated with such ideas that the scriptures, if at all, supply only the undeveloped formula of such doctrines — provided that unbelieving thought be emphatically ruled out, there may be something to be said for it in the sense of seeing here supplied, in rebuke if also in the interest of decayed spirituality and faith grown feeble, in the providence of God a means of "supplementing" revelation by practical and historical emphasis. However that may be, it is certainly undisputed fact that in the church's past it is on this truth perhaps beyond all others that steady unremitting attention has been bestowed, successive creeds amplifying definitions of it, doubtless with a view as much to express more adequately fuller conceptions, as to guard more effectively against fresh errors. So that in the whole volume of church history there is probably no point of doctrine so frequently referred to, nor so voluminously treated, as the truth concerning the second Person of the Godhead defined in the clause "and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord."
Nor are we to suppose that this is a field from which conflict has vanished for ever, or that very different, or less contentious, conditions prevail there now. Nay, is it not rather the case that so very much in debate just at present is the question of Christ's Person that we may fairly claim to be in presence of a fresh and most remarkable renewal of the warfare? The "Christ Question," as it has been entitled, is very much alive today. Just how many things have combined to give it such a resuscitation it may be hard to say; but there is certainly no theological question on which discussion is so common or so keen as concerning the mystery of His Person. It appears to many also that in this very reanimation of the question may lie the danger of a recrudescence of ancient maladies. The trend of thought at all events in many cases is not free from parallelism with old-time heresies. The very fact in itself of the subject engrossing so largely popular attention is significant, ominous we may say. And that this is the case is being recognised even by many presumably not directly affected. "Christology" says one, in an article to a leading secular review on "Evolution and the Church" — "Christology has become the problem of the church today, as, viewed from other standpoints, it was of the church from the fourth to the sixth century." This is certainly so, and many will be inclined to add there is more than a suspicion of the re-appearance of questions as ancient as the first century in much that is being advanced. Nor need it really occasion surprise to see threatening, as we do today, a renewal of polemical warfare around this particular doctrine. For when has theology as such, apart from simple quotation of scripture itself, been able to give a completely satisfactory and final pronouncement on it? In spite of what is claimed for creeds and confessions, what can it offer today even?
It may not be out of place to quote here a warning the above witness sounds from his presumably impartial standpoint. Remarking how quickly theories succeed each other in popular favour, and successively pass away, "systems of thought are short-lived," he says, "the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door and shall carry thee out." Really, if such evanescent theories so little comply with the requirements of truth as the quotation suggests, the fate of Ananias and Sapphira is not the worst that could overtake them. Nor is this marked failure to reach satisfactory conclusions so very difficult to explain. For one thing the matter is, one may say, inherently mysterious. It is remarkable that full in the past as has been the scrutiny it has undergone, and elaborate as today the treatment of it theologically has become, all attempted definitions, ancient and modern alike, of doctrine as to Christ's person, when they go beyond the exact language of scripture itself, very quickly throw off any restrictions it would impose, and pass into the region of mere speculation and conjecture. So much so in fact that even from theologians themselves we may occasionally have what looks like an extorted confession of how elusive and mysterious they find the matter to be. "Definite theological statements," continues the same writer, quoting Jowett, "respecting the relation of Christ to God or man are only figures of speech. They do not really pierce the clouds. No greater calamity has ever befallen the christian church than the determination of some uncertain things which are beyond the sphere of christian knowledge." What is this but a proof of the truth of Christ's own warning word, "No man knoweth the Son but the Father." If it is complained, as it has been, that by applying this wholesale to such knowledge of His person as all Christology is concerned in defining, we are condemned to a hopeless agnosticism on a subject of utmost importance, it can only be replied that in such a matter it may very well be that we may meet with are unknowable as well as the unknown. Where we are incompetent to diagnose, and revelation does not cast its light, it may be questioned if "hopeless agnosticism" is the proper term; but even so, faith can not only resign to the inevitable mystery, but discern a fitness and moral congruity also in the arrangement which retains in seclusion from man's vulgar scrutiny the holy mystery of His wonderful person. Better so than indulging in metaphysical flights on such a theme.
"No man knoweth the Son but the Father." We do well to start here. There is a warning note in our Lord's utterance it becomes us to hearken to. To pass beyond what is revealed is to enter a labyrinth where no wisdom of man can extricate us. We can understand how hopelessly men wander when they set out to explore this forbidden land, for that obscurity involves the whole matter we are informed here on the best of authority. Consequently they labour at their own charge who set out on such an expedition. Twentieth century thought no more than that of earlier days can solve the insoluble or he able to define the undefinable. So that in the strife now imminent, if not in progress, between the theorisings on this point of a New Theology, originating in nothing more stable than ever-changing conjecture, and the pronouncements of the older theology, basing themselves on creeds established and accepted for long, simple believers shall do well to repose the lightest of confidence in human thought as expressed in either; but arm themselves with, and withdraw themselves under that which can neither be superseded nor supplemented, the word of God.
Happily, in that which we are studying here, a great deal of historical theology is avoided by little or no reference to the doctrine of the Trinity. This is unusual in any exposition of the creed, for there is generally much stress laid upon this, and here, if anywhere, some elaboration of the truth would naturally be looked for. On this occasion, however, it is at once to the Son of God incarnate, the historic Jesus, to use the modern phrase, that we are directed. A great deal of what is said regarding the doctrine of the incarnation may be left aside, especially so from the fact that the attempt to show that it is not an unfamiliar idea to man, and to justify it as a credible doctrine leads to the use of the more or less technical language of philosophy. We cannot be expected to follow there; but it may be permitted to remark on the use of that rather novel principle which New Theology has given such prominence to — "the immanence of God." Trust it not; especially when applied to the incarnation. "A mere philosopheme, absolutely fatal to a gospel" is not an unfair description of it. To many under the spell of philosophic reasoning on this doctrine of divine immanence, instead of the great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh, "Christ Himself is," as a Roman Catholic has recently said, "resolved into a mere lay figure draped in a few attributes which have no other origin than the minds of those actuated by its baneful influence." There are those also who claim "with the help of the modern categories of immanence, evolution and personality, to construe more adequately than ancient theology, and still more adequately than New Theology," Christological doctrine. But in what does it result? Nothing but philosophical speculation, unsupported by scripture, where it is not indeed contradicted by it. This last, of course, may be of little consequence to those who hold that "the New Testament has left to dogmatic theology the task of thinking out, and construing to intelligence, such facts in regard to Christ as the apostles simply put side by side." But to those who accept the scriptures as something less nebulous, as God's revelation, in fact, of all we can know regarding the subject, all this shows with how great distrust the reasonings of philosophy on it must he regarded.
It is somewhat difficult, and becoming increasingly so, for plain christian people today to apprehend, or even to come on to common ground of thought at all with, many teachers who make this branch of theology their province. Not only because of the above mentioned tendency to run into mere philosophic speculation, but because the subject is approached in so radically different a fashion from what they are accustomed to. This is not confined to the truth of incarnation alone, but a specially prominent instance of it is seen there. In what is under review here, after sheaving in the first place, and apparently as the prime consideration in regard to it, that the incarnation is a rational and credible doctrine, the next step to be considered is put in the form of a question — "Admitting the above, what proof have we that Jesus Christ was such incarnation of God?" "To some," we are told, "the fact that the scriptures so teach is sufficient." Amply so, a simple believer would rejoin; his only cause for dissatisfaction being that this consideration was so long in being advanced, that it was not first and foremost, given precedence over any such special plea as the reasonableness of the doctrine on philosophic grounds. To show that a doctrine was scriptural, was in line with, based upon the testimony of, the scriptures, used to be the first task of any Christian apologist. It is made now to wait till the development of proof from other lines of evidence has been completed. And not only so, whether the line taken be the parallelism of other religions in showing that the thought of a god becoming incarnate was not an unfamiliar idea, or the exposition of it in terms reminiscent rather of philosophy than of theology; but as a witness to the great truth the scripture is also subordinated in value by the assumption underlying all this, almost in fact in so many words stated, that it is not enough to be convinced that it can he established on scriptural grounds that Jesus Christ was really "God manifest in the flesh." Considerations that shall appeal to those to whom the scripture is of little account, or who reject its witness, are thought worthy of first place.
No doubt there may he something in the plea, that it is at this point in the Creed where we part company with such as Jews and Mohammedans, who could very well adopt the first clause, concerning God the Father Almighty. But, since they do not accept the New Testament revelation, are we therefore to rule it out, or assign it second place in what constitutes the ground of our own faith and conviction? For surely in the recitation of a creed the object ostensibly aimed at is not primarily the gaining credence for its truths by unbelievers, but the statement or confession of one's own personal faith. In terms sufficiently distinctive, and otherwise suited to the apprehension of such, it may be sought to be given, the simplest and most decisive language being that which is adopted. But for that very reason would not what one would look for in the exposition of that creed precisely be the bringing out, in something like the order of their relative importance, the grounds of the faith we therein confess, on what, as their primary foundation, these our convictions are founded? Is it then the case that the intellectual rationality of the doctrine of the incarnation is our first reply when asked to show cause why we believe in it? We credit the fact because it is quite feasible, and not at all a preposterous idea intellectually!
1910 77 How cold and barren it all is, this being persuaded, granted even that it be fully persuaded, of the credibility, or philosophic certitude, of a truth such as this. That such a stupendous fact as God come down in love, the Word become flesh and dwelling among us, the eternal Son of God found in fashion as a man, in grace so profound, for purposes so great, and in a moral glory so beautiful, should, in a spirit that speaks of but little exercise of heart over it, be coolly observed, reasoned of, and assimilated into a system, somewhat after the manner of a scientific discovery, what does this argue in those who so discuss it? Is there not felt on the part of all who by His grace have been given to have a living interest in it, that in all this philosophising there is an entire overlooking (what seems to us a most strange overlooking) of the spiritual import and significance of the wonderful fact so discussed? And, to any who have the least consciousness of its vital concern for themselves, how momentous seems the omission! Pathetic, too, to assured believers it cannot but appear. These labouring philosophers, as, with never a lift of their headed brow to what is unclear to untutored minds, they bend over their task, how blindly they miss what we simple ones seize with alacrity! How callously they let slip, or leave out of consideration, that which alone we prize! How fatally they lose the force and value spiritually of the great and grand truth, when they attempt to equate it as a doctrine in philosophic terms! Oh, that its power, its grandeur, its sublimity would more fully penetrate our hearts!
"The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth." Is this merely the advent of a unique phenomenon upon the stage of life? a phenomenon so strange even that our whole system of philosophy must be ransacked for principles to explain it? Or is it altogether an intervention to descend to their terminology, of what, in this sense can only be called the non-phenomenal into the phenomenal world? "Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and, being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Is this something esoteric to philosophers, or calling for such preliminaries as have been indulged in ere it become intelligible to us? Do we need to rove so far afield for its significance, wondrous fact as it is? Is there not a shorter and surer way to its spiritual meaning somewhere in the line of its appeal to our hearts? Ah! were we more under the power of that appeal, the whole spirit in which it is approached, should it not be vastly different? Philosophic reasoning might bulk less largely in our thought of it, occupation with it be less critical than contemplative. But would we be losers thereby? In presence of the greatness of that conception, the infinite grandeur of it morally, it needs not surely to be pressed which is the attitude of mind best becoming us. But for real knowledge of it even, this truth of the incarnation of the Son of God, what its meaning, what its implications, what its adjustment to the scheme of things the region in which it must be studied most decidedly is the moral and spiritual and not the philosophic. As always in the discerning of the truth of God, whatever the subject, mere acuteness of natural intelligence avails nothing. Spiritual truth is communicated spiritually, and it is he that is spiritual that discerneth all things. And as to this great fact, "the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh," are we likely to find less true the operation of that principle?
Here, if anywhere, philosophy is at a discount, and spiritual vision is that which alone will reach tangible results. Received in faith, and contemplated spiritually, the hearings of it philosophically count for little, and are left behind as mere husk and shell. Oh! that the real kernel of it may be ours, that the great truth in all its range and beauty, as revealed in the word, may flood our souls with adoration of Him, who claims in this respect perhaps less our knowledge than our worship, who is "God over all, blessed for ever."
We are taken a little further on somewhat similar lines, though here there is a real substratum of truth underlying, when we are asked to remember that the very thought of a personally existent God involves the thought that He must express Himself. Further that, in the words of another, "in the being of God we see there is a Trinity which lays the foundation for the possibility of the incarnation of the Son." Again, that in none other but the Son of God come in flesh can this he, for revelation is only possible where spiritual kinship exists. All, in their place, considerations not to be slighted. And only now, after such preamble, are we led up to Scripture to consider its testimony. Witness there is there, clear, full, and, above all, plain. Testimony to the Lord Jesus Christ is its express purpose, and the mystery of His person, His divinity and humanity alike, are abundantly evidenced. The order in which the Creed takes it up, first the divinity then the humanity, is that which is observed in this exposition also. "And I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord." With this statement it leads off. The true and essential divinity, perhaps we had better say deity, of the Lord Jesus Christ is what is here first affirmed. And scripture makes it very apparent that nothing less is what it claims for Him.
This again, as it is very cogently remarked, not as a matter of a few proof texts here and there, which ingenuity of exegesis might essay to explain away, but woven into the very texture of the word. There is, of course, no lack of categorical statements of His deity; but the truth rests broad-based on even wider foundation than these supply. As has often been remarked, there are attributes ascribed, actions and utterances recorded, and incidental allusions made throughout the entire New Testament that are almost more positive affirmations of His Godhead than the most direct statements can be. It is to this testimony en masse, rather than to particular references, that attention is drawn, so that perforce we must follow on that line. It is something to be thankful for that insistence is so firm on the fact that the New Testament does present Christ's deity as an acknowledged truth. It is becoming so common now (we are warned) to speak of the orthodox confession of Christ's essential divinity as a doctrine developed to its present proportions at a period in church history more or less advanced, and not explicitly New Testament doctrine. We are frequently told that, if at all, it was only in a very rudimentary form that an intelligible Christology was held in primitive times! The claims of the writers, more particularly the earliest writers, of the New Testament, for Christ, were not of the same exorbitant nature as those orthodoxy makes now! Divinity, in esse, was an attribute assigned by later ages to Christ, it is said!
With the New Testament before us this should not be difficult to settle. But again fault must be found with the method by which it is done. As is so common, here again there is compromise. Instead of a clear firm stand being taken on what is the uniform, unvarying testimony of scripture, there is, as we shall see, an adoption in measure, a taking over in principle of the heterodox idea, and then the foisting upon scripture of this sense and meaning. This leads to the argument taking, at this juncture, a most surprising turn. We all know how development as a theory seems to have a peculiar charm for theologians today, amounting in fact almost to an obsession. In any sphere whatever it needs but to be suggested for them to see something in it. Who would suppose now that, after controverting the idea of the true faith of Christ (that estimate which postulates of His true divine nature — deity) being inconsistent with New Testament Christology, and a matter of development in times posterior to it, that then, in a modified form, the self-same idea of development should be taken over, and read into, New Testament Christology itself? As the note sounded throughout now is far from clear, it seems due at this stage to call attention to this its uncertain sound.
As a start, however, it is rightly emphasised that the great thing to get hold of is what conception of Himself, and of His relation to God, was left by Christ on the minds of His followers, His disciples, the apostles. Did He appear to them, to use two separate confessions of the same individual, "Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God," merely such? or, "the Christ, the Son of the living God"? Following in the wake of a recent writer on the subject, a sketch of New Testament Christology is here given. The theme is pursued along three lines of evidence the Epistles of Paul, the Synoptical Gospels, and the Gospel of John — the question being what impression the writers of each had retained of the nature and personality of Christ Jesus. In what respect do they severally manifest His admitted uniqueness to consist? On this head what is advanced is all very well, and, if left at that, might be a fair, though certainly far from a full, presentation of New Testament teaching, showing at least that the "historical valuation of Jesus" assigned in the Creed was not out of keeping with that entertained by His disciples.
But, from this point, both the writer quoted from, and our lecturer proceed now on that line of reasoning from which we have expressed dissent. Says the former, "In this harmonious account there are still not wanting clear marks of development. The Synoptists give the rudimentary form, in Paul's Epistles it is more fully developed, and in the Fourth Gospel it is complete. Then even within Paul's Epistles, and again within John's Gospel, signs of development are to be seen." "Jesus was Jesus at first. Jesus becomes more and more the Christ as we proceed. As a New Testament doctrine it is distinctly progressive." This is thought to involve no contradiction or disparagement. The explanation of this development certainly differs considerably. By the lecturer it is thought "to have something to do with the fact that the truth of Christ's divinity had to be forced upon the mind and attention of His Jewish disciples with their carnal conceptions of a Messiah," and this being only gradually accomplished, the developing Christology of the New Testament may be indicative of its progress. But by the writer referred to it is traced to "the influence of Gentile modes of thought and expression," and that idea, far from being found in any way objectionable, is held in reserve as a further consideration to explain the supposed progression in New Testament thought from the historic Jesus to the divine Christ. However explained, by both this development is affirmed, and regarded as indicating that as a primitive doctrine in the early church the truth of Christ's divinity was only progressively held, realised, and taught; that consequently, the earliest impression, or original valuation of Him was comparatively low.
Now as conducive to anything like clear thinking, a distinction is at this stage called for which seems here to be omitted. Two things which we must clearly distinguish between are the disciples of Christ simply as His earthly followers, and the same individuals, or such of them as were so used, in the capacity of New Testament writers. In regard to such a truth as His being God manifest in flesh, there is surely all the difference between the early glimmerings of faith in simple Galilean fishermen, and the truth as penned by apostles and teachers under the inspiration of the Spirit of God Himself. This last consideration by itself makes all the difference. If divinely inspired we believe these writings to be, they are whatever the human element — at once for us removed above the possibility of containing a developing Christology. What of Peter, Matthew, or John as to their several measures of conceiving how Jesus could be divine? It may be that in the time of their companying with Him prior to the cross, and (we must add) to Pentecost, such varying measures were true. And that many a shadow of unbelief momentarily dimmed the full assurance of their faith in Him we can well believe, and in fact are told of. But in what they wrote of Him subsequently, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, however true it be that the characteristics of each remain in what they relate of Him, we can never imagine variety in either the nature or the quality of their testimony to what He was to His Godhead. If it were merely a question of the development, during their earthly association with Him, of His disciples' conviction of His divinity, it would be another matter. Keeping in mind the distinction between faith and knowledge one would surely allow that there was progression there. But this is an assuming that such development of conviction appears, or is reproduced, in the portion of the word of God they were used by Him to pen, and on every ground this is erroneous and false.
1910 93 Now before proceeding to consider further this modified adoption of the theory of a developing Christology, let us notice briefly whereto this notion may lead, and to what lengths it is being pushed, by theologians less moderate in its application. We are all familiar with the cry so often heard today, "Back to Christ." What does it mean on the lips of theologians? A return to the simplicity and power of the truth as it is in Jesus? Alas! far from it. Here is an article by an accredited New Theology teacher on "The Christ Question," which illustrates clearly what is being echoed so widely. "Back to Christ" is his cry too, and the way in which he interprets that ambiguous motto is instructive, to say the least. The article is throughout a plea for distinguishing between what he calls the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. This in the interest of a theory he has that the latter is something in the nature of an ideal, "an ever-growing, ever-advancing, ever-expanding ideal," quite separate and separable from the real historic Jesus of Nazareth. In claiming that it is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the "Return to Jesus which is manifest in modern thought," he declares: —
"Jesus is understood today better than in any previous age. Like a fossil that has long lain embedded in the Silurian rocks, so the actual historic Jesus has been buried under mountains of Christological dogma. And perhaps the greatest service that has been rendered to religious thought within recent years has been the excavation of the real Jesus of history. To change the figure, as an artist removes the grime, the dust, the whitewash from some long lost but newly discovered ports ait, until the perfect likeness looks out again, and rewards his loving patience, so the labours of the truth-loving critic have at last re-discovered the lost likeness of the Prophet of Nazareth."
Now, in itself this may look like nothing but elegant rodomontade, but our theologians will discover, if they follow on, that here is one who simply carries on their identical idea of development to its legitimate issue, only, he is much more consistent and thorough-going in his application of it. They admit the principle of development and imagine that by confining it to the New Testament they save the situation. That is to say, they allow the whitewash, but deny the grime and the dust. They do not deny the fossilising (the figure is unhappily only a too fitting one for what has transformed living truth into cold dogma, from which all life has departed) but affirm the process of stratification only during the apostolic age. Possibly the later mountains of dogma do not appear to them to bury the truth, but to uplift and manifest it. But here is one who quite boldly takes their theory of the development of Christology in the New Testament, uses it to prove that ascriptions of deity to Christ are simply accretions on the original history, and roundly charges apostles with these practices of embellishing the simple truth, and overlaying it with dogma. After all, there is nothing like candour.
Notice how, in dealing with the New Testament evidence, the very same course is pursued as in the sketch indicated above Paul's Epistles, the Synoptical Gospels, and the Gospel of John.
"Paul," he says, "delivered Christianity from Jewish limitations, but at the same time he started the movement which took it away from its Galilean simplicity. The speculations of the Apostle concerning Christ became the starting point of theology… All the same it was a departure from the life and teaching of Jesus. What triumphed was not the religion of Jesus, but certain speculations about the Christ that resembled very little the Galilean Gospel."
Then as to the Synoptics. "They are not histories so much as ideals of Him which grew up in the hearts of His friends after a lifetime of loving reverence… They are all moulded and shaped by one great idea. Jesus was the Jewish Messiah … bearing evidence throughout of the influence of this atmosphere in the mythological accretions they add to the simple life of Jesus."
Finally, as to John's Gospel. "It is impossible for us to conceive of any single individual speaking as Jesus is represented as speaking in the Fourth Gospel — "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me." If ye knew me ye would know my Father also. I and my Father are one." But that is just the way the Gospel writer would naturally speak of the ideal and divine Christ, who was living in his mind and heart, the eternal word who had come down from heaven, the ideal man, the indwelling image of perfect manhood."
This is what it comes to at last — "the ideal man," "perfect manhood." With similar arguments our teachers expect to reinforce the doctrine of His "perfect Godhead." But it may be more than doubted if there is any such strengthening of the evidence as they look for in such a way of reasoning. There is grave risk in adopting such premises at all. Indeed this modern distinguishing of "Christ" from "Jesus" in this way, and tracing the development of what the Christ-like idea is thought to imply, is just one of those novel ideas on the subject which we have spoken of as fraught with peril.* We may recognise quite clearly where we are in the New Theology quoted from above. "Every spirit that confesseth not Jesus Christ come in the flesh is not of God." Thus the teaching under notice here more particularly seems to be deficient in its lack of giving that full value to apostolic testimony which is also impressed upon us. "We are of God," says the Apostle; "he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth us not. Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error." We are warned in this Scripture against giving ready credence to any and every thing advanced as spiritual truth. There is the activity of the spirit of error, as well as that of the Spirit of truth, to be taken account of in the sphere of religious thought, and as a means of distinguishing the one from the other we are supplied with two tests. The true confession of "Jesus Christ come in the flesh" is the one. The reception of the apostles' doctrine as of God, with all that that it implies, is the other. It certainly implies, this latter claim does, that what the apostles wrote they assuredly did under the full and unerring direction of the Spirit of God, else could not their teaching be so unequivocally associated with His name. "Hereby know we the Spirit of truth." How this can he reconciled with the thought of a slowly dawning consciousness thus late in their minds of Jesus their Master's divinity may be left to these apologists to explain. Certainly to a plain person it seems contradictory, and the teaching that affirms it derogatory in a measure both to that particular truth, and to the apostolic testimony regarding it.
{*A controversy, considerable in extent whatever its quality, has of late occupied the pages of a religio-philosophic review regarding this very theory of "Jesus" or "Christ." That, in fact, is the title given it, "Jesus or Christ?" Singularly barren of any value or interest intrinsically to believers, it is of immense importance when taken as an instance of what is being given out as Christology in many quarters, an indication of what men are prepared to answer now to the question, "What think ye of Christ?" In some instances it is no exaggeration to say that the apologies for orthodoxy are only a few degrees removed from the heterodoxy they seek to confute.}
Besides, let any ordinarily attentive reader of the New Testament say if this so-called development is really so self-evident as is affirmed. Taking as bare facts for the moment the two things the gradual compiling of the New Testament, book by book, and its references to Christ's Godhead or deity — it cannot be denied that these latter are both more numerous and fuller as time goes on; that, as a general rule, the later the book chronologically, the more ample the elaboration of Christ's relation to God. But does this of necessity imply that correspondingly primitive or developed phases of Christology were contemporaneous with these as the faith of the church? Does it not occur to any that the fuller treatment of a point may keep pace with the growing measure in which it is being denied or perverted? That is to say, that the chronological order of the books of the New Testament, as far as can be ascertained, and the fuller emphasising of the truth as to Christ's person, synchronise, go hand in hand, more by reason of the growing prevalence of anti-Christian doctrine than of anything else. There is a principle evident in the New Testament, which we are apt to give less weight to than we ought, and that is, that God in His wise providence allowed error of every shade and form to appear in the apostles' own days, while still the truth was being communicated through them. Like offences, it must needs be that heresies should come. We owe it to His wise ordering that the advent of the various germinant forms of error occurred in time for exposure and refutation from inspiration's pen, ere the canon closed. On this ground, then, we conclude that, if more frequent allusion to, or more forcible reiteration of Christ's Godhead is found in the later written portions of the New Testament, it is indicative really of another and more common form of development — that of error. Then, whatsoever the more frequent insistence on it latterly may be, the true deity of Christ is just as plain in the first as in the last of the New Testament writings, not to speak of the Old Testament, where this theory of development cannot apply. Christ, in fact, is the one great theme of scripture, and its testimony is unanimous and consistent throughout that He was nothing less than "God over all, blessed for ever."
The whole idea of Christ's true and essential divinity being a conception of Him reached by His disciples only after long reflection, and entertained or expressed with any measure of clearness only as the New Testament closed, appears puerile to the last degree once we bring in faith as the medium of their apprehension of Him. The truth as to His person, we may see from many instances, was impressed upon them from the very first moment of their spiritual contact with Him, and the nature of that impression points to faith as the means of their spiritual illumination. Faith is so different from the mere intellectual "conceptions" we hear so much of; and nowhere is this more apparent than here in this matter of what the disciples may have thought as to Christ's person. When we think of it all, the close and intimate intercourse between them and Himself; their daily observation of Him, His words and His ways; above all, their acquaintance with all the claims He made for Himself, and the calm conviction they had of these claims being valid, should we not speak less of their "conceptions" and more of their "conclusions"? Truly a blessed thing is faith! So sure of its ground, so clear of uncertainty! This by reason of being grounded on divine testimony. "To them it was given to believe on Him." When Peter confessed Him "Son of the living God," did not our Lord declare "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjonas." Had it been flesh and blood which revealed it unto him, we should indeed look for some such development as is spoken of; but faith, resulting from what "my Father in heaven has revealed," does not conform to such rules, or take so long to reach a conclusion. Does not our Lord Jesus Himself in His intercessory prayer (John 17) over and over again make clear that His own gathered round Him then had, whatever their failure, even ere this entertained true thought of His person and mission. "They have known," He says, "that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee." "They have known surely (of a truth)," He says again, "that I am come out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me." The cardinal distinction between the world and His own is, He declares that (while "the world hath not known thee"), "these have known that thou hast sent me." Was this knowledge rudimentary? a faint idea of some indefinable greatness in their illustrious Rabbi? Was such as this all the knowledge He predicted of them? "This is life eternal," He said, and that specifically was His gift to those whom the Father had given Him, "this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." Mark the association of personages, if the term may be allowed. There is co-ordination of Jesus Christ and the only true God implied here, it is sometimes said. There is, and it is expressed in such a way as betokens it the characteristic Christian revelation. A late and proportionately high revelation of Jesus, forsooth! Was this, or was it not, from the first the clear testimony concerning the Lord Jesus? Was this, or was it not, the confession of those with whom he companied when on earth? On one occasion, when He enquired of them, "Will ye also go away?" "Lord, to whom shall we go?" was their reply, "thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art the Holy One of God."
Where our divines err in this matter, it is to be feared, is in that common respect of reading into others' experience the circumstances of our own. The truth of God is to them largely a question of theology, Christology a branch of it, the true divinity of the Lord Jesus a doctrine to be gradually conceived, slowly reasoned out, and scientifically established. Consequently they imagine a like process in the early disciples and the writers of the New Testament. When shall they learn that there is such a thing in the spiritual realm as faith? such a thing as the certitude that comes from receiving divine testimony? such a thing that conviction is borne in upon the heart when God is realised as present and addressing men? Rudimentary Christology or not, was there nothing of this in those who followed the Lord when here on earth? or under the inspiration of God penned His truth for our guidance and instruction? Really now, could "God manifest in the flesh be the true character of Christ's incarnation, and men in spiritual contact with Him escape conviction of it immediate conviction of it? Nay, verily. For Jesus of Nazareth to be to them, while they had His presence, no more than Jesus of Nazareth, and the idea of His being the Christ a subsequent idealistic investiture of that historical figure with the draperies that Christological dogma spun round it, is a thing quite incredible in itself; and how much out of keeping with Scripture one need not say. Rather there do we see that Christ Jesus, the eternal Son of God, the Word made flesh, approved Himself such to the earliest glimmering of faith in His own, and won from them then, as He does from all true believers still, the voluntary confession, "My Lord and my God."
In fine, from all that the New Testament teaches about Him, whether it be the testimony of the Synoptists (thought to be the most rudimentary Christologists, but in reality quite sufficiently establishing who and what Christ really was): or that of Paul in his epistles (reckoned to give the doctrine in a more advanced stage of its evolution — really only presenting the same truth as to basis, but distinctly characterised, as might be expected by the witness of one to whom from heaven the Lord Jesus revealed Himself, and whose testimony consequently was of a heavenly and glorified Christ): or that of John in his Gospel (not the final form after the influence of Gentile modes of thought and expression had moulded it into symmetry, but the grand, full, four-square witness of the one whose province it particularly was in pursuance of that divine design impressed upon all the scriptures — to manifest Jesus as the only begotten Son of God) whichever of the writers be selected, from each will be found a testimony unvarying, and from all a witness uniform and complete; a record given which presents a life and teaching and character, a position and glory, and a personality and power absolutely incomprehensible on any other ground than that the One described is expressly what the creeds claims Him to be, "Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord."
1910 106 From what the Creed claims for Christ as a divine person we pass on to consider what it states concerning His humanity. "Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried." So is expressed in the Creed the origin, nature, and circumstances of our Lord's humanity. Now again as to the exposition. It is said that when we come now to speak of our Lord's humanity we are on ground more familiar, we are in a region where the human mind is less likely to be so entirely incapable of reasoning as concerning His divinity. The subject matter is more within our scope. There is at the same time a complaint made that hitherto christian thinkers have been too reticent on this matter of Christ's humanity, and that the difficulty of the subject is largely imaginary. As an encouragement to proceed, one thing we are told in this connection that while hitherto in the creed we have moved in the region of truth open only to spiritual intelligence, now we are on altogether different and lower ground. We arrive at that which makes no call upon anything higher than ordinary historical credence, and that therefore discussion here is both legitimate and expedient. The clause just recited differs from preceding ones in this respect that whereas they appeal to faith, this is a simple historical statement.
Now it is admitted that this portion of the creed, as it is said, is history, the particular clause of it where it trenches on historical ground. "Suffered under Pontius Pilate" is the distinctive mark of this special character of the clause. As has often been noted, this is the only time mark in the creed. Concerning it Pearson wrote: — "As the Son of God by His deliberate counsel was sent into the world to die in the fulness of time, so it concerns the church to know the time in which He died. Accordingly that we might be properly assured of the actions of our Saviour which He did and of His sufferings … in accordance with ancient methods of computation we learn that He suffered under Pontius Pilate.'" Now, that Jesus Christ passed across the stage of human history may be an event to be recorded in its annals as of supreme importance, and without a doubt it concerns the church, in proclaiming these facts to the world, great, marvellous, and momentous as they are, regarding Him whom it confesses as Saviour and Lord, to comply with all due requirements of evidence giving, and to set forth, in right order and sequence, supplying at the same time the date of, such great events. Yet it must surely be felt that, historical though this portion of the creed may be, it is scarcely as history that it counts. We can scarcely be said to have much evidence in Scripture that the Holy Spirit greatly concerns Himself with man's history as such — mere cosmical as distinguished from moral history, that is — and as far as Christ's place in that is concerned much more is made of it in many quarters than seems called for. The great fact historically in regard to Christ, it must be remembered, is that man, when He came to His own, received Him not. The great outstanding fact in the world's history is that it rejected Him. This discounts considerably any historical valuation of Him they may frame now. The Holy Spirit has come "to convict the world," not of His place in its history, but, "of sin, righteousness, and judgment. Of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged."
Then again, to return to the Creed, historical whether this portion of it be or not, it is certainly more than history it recounts, its several items more than mere events for which it demands intellectual credence. It is surely more than the admission of these occurrences — the birth, suffering, death, etc., of Jesus Christ — as historic facts that is asked from those who subscribe to the Creed. Why let the opportunity pass of pressing upon hearers their own intimate concern in these facts, that here is no mere otiose confession of their historicity; but acceptance of them as truths from God charged with all the importance and potency that all such truths possess. Why, even in a historical work recently, which we might well expect to give no more than a secular view, on "The conflict of religions in the early Roman Empire," the writer, who is, too, more or less Unitarian, after taking the matter up on this very ground, and speaking of "what exactly it was which happened in Palestine under the Emperor Tiberius," is constrained to admit that "men are scanning that today with the sense that it concerns them personally to know, that the answer has an immediate bearing upon their interests and practice. Jesus of Nazareth," he says, "does stand in the centre of human history, but also He brings God and man into a new relation and He is the personal concern of every one of us." Ali! there are many who can assign to Christ a correct and unique historical niche who have little place for Him in their hearts. These professions of belief in His sufferings and death are surely more than academic acceptance of bare historic facts. They must be if to prove of any value spiritually. We cannot take Jesus Christ historically; the thing is impossible. Nor can this clause of the creed be so absolutely differentiated from others which make their appeal to faith. The spiritual exercise involved in the reflective study of such facts, and in the true entertainment of such beliefs, is not less intense nor real than in the case of the others professed. How then can the ground taken be in any way lower or more accessible to the natural man's apprehension?
The assumption of our comparatively greater ability to understand Christ's humanity is reiterated now as a thing that is enhanced by modern equipment theologically for the task. It is affirmed, at the same time, that many still too little realise the truth and force of the "gospel of Christ's manhood." The lingering reluctance of many to admit the subject as fit matter for discussion at all is scoffed at as unreasonable timidity in presence of what we know now, and we are informed indeed that the predominant note in Christology has long been the human element in Christ's person. The real problem for many today, it is said, does not lie so much there, where modern religious thought can claim some acquaintance. That which constitutes their difficulty is to understand His essential divinity. That He who lived a veritable human life was at the same time very God. The opposite was the case, it is said, in early Christian times. It was the humanity, not the divinity, upon which emphasis came to he needed at a very early period. Their impression of His divinity became in turn so strong that they found it hard to realise His real humanity. An instance of this is found in Gnosticism, which, with its conception of the inherent evil of matter, found it necessary to maintain that Christ, whom they more or less clearly conceived of as in a sense divine, did not take unto Himself real human nature and form. So much was this the case that the menacing challenge of 1 John 4:2-3, was, in regard to them, amply justified. "Every spirit that confesseth Jesus Christ come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that confesseth not Jesus Christ come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world."
Whether this Docetic teaching alluded to owed its origin to an overpowering conviction of Christ's divinity naturally dominating the thoughts concerning Him of those who were in so close proximation to Him who spake as never man spake, and did among men the works which none other man did — whether this be so or not, the fact remains that such false ideas were early afloat, and that it was in face of them, in an incipient form at least, that the apostle uttered the above warning. note. "Jesus Christ come in flesh" is the true confession of Him, deity and humanity both real and true; and anything else John unhesitatingly regards as of Satanic origin and character. The time of fulness of manifestation and operation for that spirit of antichrist was not yet, but still future. A premonitory instance of its activity the apostle discerned this to be. How ominous is the reflection that it was precisely concerning this matter of the humanity of Christ that these went astray. Is there not then cause for apprehension lest, on these same sunken rocks where shipwreck of the faith on such a large scale in the past has occurred, we also should strike? It is no healthy feature of our time that this over-insistence on the humanity of Christ is the predominant note. The tendency to resolve everything into it is remarked by not a few. Thus Professor Orr, for instance, in his recent "Sidelights on Christian Doctrine" — "Many tendencies are at present in operation to weaken the doctrine of the incarnation speculative and evolutionary theories, doctrines of divine immanence, a pantheistic identification of God and man, above all, the powerful bent in the spirit of the age towards a non-supernatural interpretation of the facts and truths of religion. In all directions the attempt is being made to lower the doctrine of Christ to a more or less humanitarian level."
What if this materialistically inclined "spirit of the age" should be identified with this same "spirit of antichrist" of which our passage speaks. Does it not appear like it? In view of all the subtle questions abroad on the subject also may we not in this declaration concerning the simple confession of "Jesus Christ come in the flesh" read a warning of the innate tendency of human speculation to err on the subject, particularly when the mystery of the person of Christ, of how His humanity and divinity are related, is sought to be analysed metaphysically? One thing the passage makes plain at all events, the vital importance of true doctrine as to the person of Christ, and the decidedly antichristian nature of error on that score. Compared with present-day lukewarmness there is a seeming intolerance and illiberality about such a statement as that of John just quoted, when truth as to the person of Christ is in question, which some are not slow to condemn as one of "those sudden ebullitions of the fierce invective of bigotry characteristic of the beloved disciple. The difficulty would be to imagine the apostle adopting any less uncompromising attitude towards what assailed the true faith as to the One of whose divinity he was in a sense the special witness. To prove himself a "Boanerges" there was in no wise out of season. But in fact it is no mere question of John or Paul; scripture testimony is harmonious throughout, and we shall do well both to observe its unanimity and imitate its reserve. Why after all should any presume to go beyond it? Why should we consider human thought today better fitted to investigate, or more competent to declare exactly what occurred when the second Person of the Godhead entered the ranks of humanity, when "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us"?
In pursuance of the claim of increasing competency to dissect the human nature of Christ, this section of the Creed is gone on with. Taking the verbs of the five clauses — "conceived, born, suffered, died, and was buried" — the lecturer speaks of them as "expressing the humanity of Jesus in terms in the compass of which every normal human life was contained." Combining the two first, "conceived" and "born," and significantly omitting all but the mere verbs, "the reality of the humanity He assumed is shown by the fact that he entered life by the ordinary channel. It was a real and not a phantom body He took when born, real human life He lived, and a real human death He died." This is not at all satisfactory even in what it states; but in what it omits it is far from dealing fairly with the truth. If even the scriptures bearing upon it merely had been quoted, there would have been so far an exposition of this part of the Creed. So much at least we might surely expect, not to say that from a Presbyterian one might even look for some such attempt to define as his "shorter catechism" gives — "Christ the Son of God became man by taking to Himself a true body, and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and born of her, yet without sin." Instead of which we are led. to understand that Biblical criticism and other lines of study have raised difficulties which make it desirable to look for the elucidation of the truth regarding, and confirmation of the uniqueness of, Christ's humanity in other directions than what is called "the doctrine of the virgin birth." That is to say, what is related concerning His miraculous birth in Matthew and Luke's Gospels being under suspicion, grave and of substantial basis, either as to its being credible or authentic history, or as to genuineness of text, that particular line of evidence must be dropped.
Now what are the facts of the case here? The truth enunciated in that clause of the Creed, "Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary," had been objected to, and ridiculed, by opponents of Christianity for long. In the welter of unbelieving scepticism prevailing over Christendom at present, however, many professing Christian teachers, having fallen under the spell of infidel reasoning all round, naturally shrink now from exposing themselves to the ridicule of those whose good opinion they have come to respect, by firmly maintaining this apparently particularly vulnerable doctrine. The objections, remark, have not themselves greatly changed, nor gained in force from any new facts elicited, from Scripture or otherwise. What has changed is only the sphere where they can be entertained, and that again is solely due to the inoculation of modern Christian doctrine with infidel ideas. Does this seem too strong? What else can be said of those who find now of so much weight arguments that in days of more robust faith never would have counted?
Proceeding then to consider this very damaging modern attack on the "doctrine of the virgin birth," let us take an example from a work entitled, significantly enough, "Jesus, Seven Questions." There is no thought of attempting to meet the questions raised, or the objections urged. Let them be seventy times seven, and they still could be added to, and remain questions. One peculiarity about them all is that while to a mind that can entertain them at all they must be insuperable, to a plain believer there is absolutely nothing in them. The only reason for quoting them at all here is to show the stuff the bug-bears of theologians are made of, and perhaps at the same time serve to supply an instance of what Prof. Orr has spoken of as to characteristic tendencies of modern thought on the subject. This attack on the doctrine of the virgin birth is opened by an attempt to account for its origin as a doctrine. The unique and transcendent place Jesus Christ occupies in history is first emphasised as "accounting primarily for the feeling that the character of both His person and His entry into the world must have been unique." Then a familiar argument that "humanity" could not in the ordinary course have produced Jesus Christ, and that therefore a miraculous birth was necessary ere Jesus could have been in possession of the attributes He continually manifested" is met how? by arguing that "there is no accounting for the phenomenon of genius," and that "evolution does not exclude the occasional and unrepeated irruption of genius." Next, the silence of Paul, as well as of the Epistles in general, and of Mark's and John's Gospels regarding the virgin birth is mentioned as a discounting feature. Then, coming to the two passages which alone clearly teach it (Matt. 1:18-25, and Luke 1:34-35), the author raises the question as to whether at all they are historical and not rather poetical and legendary. The bulk of what both these Gospels record in connection with the nativity of Jesus is then gone over, and so valuated.
1910 125 Then, turning to another class of considerations — "certain passages in the Gospels themselves which are incompatible with the miraculous birth narrative" — we select one (Mark 3:21), "And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him, for they said, He is beside himself." Concerning this the remark is made, "Could Mary have thought for one moment that her eldest Son was mentally unhinged had she known what she must have known had the birth stories reposed on fact? The supposition is impossible, and the other Synoptists accordingly suppressed this highly disconcerting episode." No doubt, after this last pronouncement our confidence in the author as a textual, no less than as a historical critic will be greatly strengthened. That at any rate is what he next proceeds to, the textual examination of the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke. It would perhaps be out of place to follow there in detail; but the conclusion he comes to must be heard.
First, then, as to Matthew:
"(1) Matthew's Gospel in its opening chapters originally affirmed Jesus to be the Messiah, proving this by descent from David through Joseph, who was stated to have been his real father;
(2) at a somewhat later stage the verses (1:18-25) were inserted between ver. 17 and chap. 2:1, which certainly link on naturally to each other;
(3) and that then, this insertion having been made, 1:16 was altered to correspond."
Then as to Luke: "The upshot is that in Luke, as to Matthew,
(1) the original intention was to present Jesus as the descendant, through Joseph, of David;
(2) that Luke 1:34 represents a later interpolation whose tenor runs altogether counter to the Evangelist's original conception of Joseph and Mary as the parents of Jesus (Luke 2:27, 41);
(3) and that the words "as was supposed in the description of Jesus as the son of Joseph (3:23), were inserted with an obvious harmonising purpose."
That is to say, the two birth narratives are frankly legendary, the concoctions of a later age which found a necessity of making Christ's humanity differ in origin and character from that of men in general, and minute inspection of the text reveals where they have interpolated a story to that effect!
Having now disposed of that matter to his own satisfaction, the author turns next to meet some whom he mentions as sufficiently removed from stupid orthodoxy to be worthy of his attention. He acquits them of holding what to him is the very extreme view that "there must have been something physically and materially miraculous in the fundamental structure of our Lord's manhood"; but quarrels with them for allowing that "in His inmost essence there was that which amounts to a difference between Him and the race not in degree, but in kind." He will not have even that. That would mean an "unrepeated irruption" of another sort than he is prepared to admit, and, if not pressing for the doctrine of the miraculous birth of Christ, it still makes for something, as he sees, best explained by that fact. Entirely opposite is the case he affirms. It is simply in degree, not at all in kind, that the difference lies. "It is not that there is in His case an endowment to which all other beings are, and must be, strangers." It is not this that makes Him unique. Wherein then does it consist? "The truth of the incarnation" (we might wonder wherever within the four walls of the idea such a things as incarnation" can find room), it is said, "while quite independent of a supernatural birth, does involve a special relation between Jesus and God, and the consciousness of it on Jesus' part. This relation, not relationship at all in the usual sense, does not consist in a union of being, and personality, and essence; but in a perfect filial disposition, a closeness and intimacy of communion with God. His was a sonship or divinity, not of nature and substance, but simply of character."
As contributing to this uniqueness of Jesus, which is to serve as a substitute for His miraculous birth, the doctrine of divine immanence is then brought in, "of which the incarnate Son is to be regarded as the supreme and crowning instance. God is no absentee God, but immanent in creation. All are parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is and God the soul. We think it strictly legitimate to say that just as there is only one kind of light, whether candle or sun, and one kind of goodness, so there is only one kind of divinity — one divine Spirit pervading and transcending the universe, the same above all, and through all, and in all. Jesus was the highest illustration the world has seen of this divinity, this indwelling presence of God. God therefore did not come into the world when Jesus was born. He is immanent in humanity from the beginning. This is not to deny that Jesus is the Son of God; but to affirm it in a deeper and truer way, for this wider incarnation in humanity requires as its complement the special incarnation in Christ." And this pre-eminence "of degree not of kind" is to be the nature of our valuation of His supremacy, not any longer that "doctrine of an absolute supernatural person" which is "a legacy of mediaeval orthodoxy!"
This is a fair sample of the use made of "speculative and evolutionary theories, doctrines of divine immanence, pantheistic identification of God and man," etc., in new interpretations of the incarnation. It gives an instance too of the critical and other objections to the virgin birth which lead our lecturer to maintain silence upon it.
If there is reserve on the question of the birth of Christ, of how He entered the ranks of humanity, there is no lack of freedom in treating of what is thought to be involved in His assumption of human nature. The one led the lecturer practically to delete from this part of the Creed all but the indefinite, the mere verbs being retained. The other leads him to expatiate on matters concerning which the creed, wisely (may we not say) is silent. The question is asked, how far did Christ, in becoming man, become subject to human limitations? in what respects were the limited and circumscribed conditions incident to humanity imposed upon Him in becoming partaker of it? A hard question, a difficult question, this is confessed to be; but still claimed as legitimately arising from consideration of the fact itself.
Now it must be confessed this is a question that readily prompts itself. It is no new one, but a problem we have all met before. Has it not suggested itself to all of us many a time — what did it mean for the Son of God to become man? — for instance, as to such of His divine attributes as omniscience? How does His possession of this consist with the growing wisdom natural to, and distinctly predicated of, His developing manhood? He was from all eternity God, all wise, all seeing. He is seen as a man growing in wisdom as in stature. How are we to understand these things? How reconcile them? On what principle are they to be explained? Are we to look for light in the consideration of what He may have surrendered in becoming man, or of what He may have assumed in the way of limitation in the sphere of His mental or intellectual equipment? Is the New Testament presentation of Christ, can even the figure of the historical Jesus manifested in the Gospels, be left intact, if we make any such admissions? And this is but an instance, one out of many of the questions raised when Christ's coming in flesh is the subject — that the child born at Bethlehem, growing up at Nazareth, found in fashion as a man throughout, should at the same time be very God, omniscient, omnipotent, eternally God the Son! What mysteries are here!
In the attempt to adjust these things, is it at all to be wondered at that questions arise, that in fact we find ourselves face to face with the apparently inexplicable? Are they insoluble then? May it not be that in large measure they will ever remain so? After all, does our belief in the wonderful truth of "God manifest in the flesh" depend upon our ability to solve all the metaphysical problems it involves? Is it not rather a case where the words of another apply with particular cogency and force, "God allows many things to remain mysteries, partly, I believe, that He may in this way test the obedience of our minds; for He requires obedience of mind from us as much as He does obedience in action." Would that we could ever carry this thought with us in all our study. There is mystery surrounding the whole question of the relation of Christ's humanity to His deity. We cannot but be impressed with it.
Well, in what we cannot understand, can we not simply acquiesce in its mysteriousness, and see in that fact a God-given test of our obedience of faith? Is it not more wise than the futile endeavours so commonly made to solve it? "wiser," in Bellett's words, "than to pretend to test by the prism of human reasoning the light where God dwells"? Questions no doubt seem inevitably to arise as soon as we begin to consider or reflect on the great fact of Christ's incarnation. We need not be philosophers to feel their force, and it is remarkable how little philosophy has effected in the way of solution of the questions perplexing us all. But when quite at the end of ourselves as far as reasoning can take us, when baffled in our best endeavours to reach anything like rational conclusions on the subject, we can still, in that subjection of the mind to God which faith teaches, acknowledge the truth of the word, "No man knoweth the Son." That is a wise attitude which gives "a holy sensitive refusal to meddle, beyond one's measure and the standard of scripture, with what must ever be beyond us."
By all means, nevertheless, if difficulties can be relieved, subject to this consideration, let them be so. Wherein our dulness results from lack of attention to Scripture, more detailed exegesis, or a fuller emphasising of what their import is, can only be welcomed. But is it not a remarkable fact that all that has generally resulted from attempts to define, and theories to account for the wonderful truth has been but a deeper sinking into the morass upon which the unauthorised venture has been made? For the true nature of the venture has too often been no humble effort, in submission to the word, of meeting difficulties; but a vainglorious and pretentious essay, in the strength of merely human wisdom, of nullifying them, of reducing to commonplace intelligibility that which inherently is a great mystery.
Can we take as free from this charge the school of thought represented in what is being reviewed on this occasion? Among the many theories professing to explain as to Christ on earth the coexistence of different modes of being in the one personality, there is one of modern appearance which secures a large amount of favour with theologians today, known as Kenoticism. To many of us perchance the name may be all but unintelligible. We may share also in the objection of a critic from the other side who "finds no great assistance when homely English is exchanged for ambitious Greek, and scholars speak of Kenosis, and a Kenotic theory." But the school of thought so denominated, the set of ideas set out under that title, has so dominated the theological definitions as to Christ's person of recent years that it cannot be quite passed over. We owe it to the lectures under review also that, having taken up in each case what seem the original sources of their leading ideas, we give this very significant one also a passing consideration.
Kenoticism, as has been said, is a popular theory. This by reason probably of the way in which it seems to perplexed minds to relieve difficulties by bridging over the apparent disparity between the divinity and humanity of the incarnate Son. The great thing seems to be that, whatever else, we must endeavour to escape anything like the idea of dual personality. To this idea, it is said, many find that the mere, exclusive perusal of Scripture tends; and we need to be fortified against this false impression by some such definite constructive theory as Kenoticism supplies. Now it is remarkable, as F. W. Grant has said, how near to dual personality we must come to comply with all that Scripture presents as to Him. Yet, needless to add, it is something quite distinct and different from such a conception as the complete delineation of Him which Scripture presents. But this Kenotic theory, it is thought, more amply affords escape from trace of the idea of dual personality in Jesus Christ come in flesh.
At this point, however, some definition of the theory had better be given. The late F. W. Grant has given some attention to it, and shown that this modern phase of Christology is actually more of a survival than a discovery, being closely allied to the ancient Apollinarian heresy, in large measure, indeed, a mere "rounding out of the elder doctrine to any consistency." From his pages a definition of it might well be taken; but as a Presbyterian presentation of it is at hand (from a distinctly less sympathetic standpoint than the lecturer's, however), let us take it. Prof. Orr, in his "Sidelights on Christian Doctrine," thus introduces it: "There is another way which in modern times has been attempted of removing the difficulty of the two states of Christ's Being while on earth, viz., by affirming a complete surrender of all divine functions, and even of divine consciousness by the Son, during the period of His earthly humiliation. This is the so-called Kenotic theory of the incarnation. It is based on the statement in Phil. 2:6-7, that the Son, existing in the form of God 'voluntarily emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.' This is taken to mean that, during His earthly life, the Son ceased to exist in the form of God, even as respects His heavenly existence. The place of the Son in the life of the Godhead was for the time suspended. The Son gave up His glory, even His self-consciousness, and consented to be born as an unconscious babe in Bethlehem. He grew into the consciousness of His Godhead, as He grew into the knowledge of His Messianic dignity. Only after His resurrection and exaltation did He resume now in our humanity — the glory He before had with the Father."
A "kenosis" on the part of Christ in becoming man is, so far as the mere term goes, certainly a scriptural expression (Phil. 2:6-7). The word is derived from the Greek equivalent of what appears in the Authorised Version as "He made himself of no reputation," rendered in the Revised Version "emptied himself." It is very questionable if any extraordinary or subtle meaning was in the writer's mind when he used it. However, by diligent distillation a significance was extracted from it on which has been built up a complete theory of the human nature of Christ. As mere theology this may best be left to stand or fall on its merits. But when it comes to be a question of claiming the ekenose of Phil. 2:7, as scriptural basis of the theory, and when, reflexively, the passage is sought to be interpreted in the light of all that now attaches to the technical theological term "Kenosis," it is surely open to us to protest that this is not only an overstraining of the passage, but an illegitimate use of it.
The particular design of the opening verses of Phil. 2 is to impress not only by precept but by example the great lesson of self-abnegating love, the moral sweetness and beauty of that spirit which can assume, for the sake of serving others, the place of lowliness and self-sacrifice. "Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." To lowliness of mind and esteem for others, the opposite of that factious strife of self-seeking and vainglorious self-esteem which are so natural to us all, the apostle exhorts the Philippian saints. Ethically there could be nothing more beautiful, the proverbial counsel of perfection to such as we are, it might seem, yet is it nothing more than the characteristic Christian spirit in practical display. "Lowliness of mind," it has been said, is so characteristically a Christian virtue that even as to its etymology the term is practically unknown until it appears in New Testament phraseology. At least, if not exactly not to be met with before, it is never in its full content and meaning that classical writers use it. Its real force and significance could in fact only come out after Christ had come, only after He had exhibited that which it expressed. For where or when has appeared among men a spectacle to be compared with that which the apostle goes on to describe? Wherever was lowliness like this, where such self-renunciation, where such condescension, where such a filling of the servant's place in obedience to love? Without question an example absolutely unique.
1910 141 "Have this mind in you," said the writer, "which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being (subsisting) in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God." As subsisting in very form of God, eternally so we may say, we first see Him as we proceed to trace the course detailed here of Him. Equality with God then was for Him no prize to be grasped at, or possession to be tenaciously clutched, whichever of the two we understand to be here so emphatically negatived. Certain it is at all events He sought not to retain this place and estate of Godhead glory; but exchanged in wonderful grace the form of God for the form of a servant, coming in the likeness of men. And this surely in itself for Him is descent of no mean degree. When one considers all that it involves, without at all following out the metaphysics, but on quite another plane, a veritable kenosis it indeed is, a very real emptying of Himself. To be found in fashion as a man, beset with all that of sorrow and suffering accrues to the estate fallen man is in, sin itself excepted, He who in heavenly glory subsisted in the very form of God, does this imply no emptying of Himself? Lord of all, and equality with God no object of aspiration to Him, His assuming in love to us the bond-servant's form, though He was Son learning obedience by the things He suffered, yea, humbling Himself and becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, is all this not "kenosis" enough? Does it need that we amplify consideration of exactly in what respect limitations or altered conditions mentally and intellectually attached to the humanity He assumed? Is not all that, even if answerable at all, of but secondary importance, and foreign really as a matter of precise exegesis to the passage in its original setting? Pity it would indeed he if the wonderful power and pathos of its beautiful appeal were found to evaporate, the remarkable force and poignancy of its moving example to lose its potency, or the morally glorious exhibition of the grace and love of our blessed Saviour's course it contains, to melt away by such "botanising on a mother's grave."
But what is it then that we are told is involved in this kenosis, this self-emptying of the Son of God? For with them it is not simply the giving up of position, privileges, and honour that constitutes this. Such renunciation of these as is involved in His becoming man, great as was the surrender by Him who, rich in glory, for our sakes became poor, the simple relinquishing of these does not appear to exhaust the meaning of His kenosis. It is carried back beyond all this, and made to apply to a sphere of things, to the ordinary Christian, savouring more or less of the abstruse or occult. Much intricacy of thought, and ingenuity of conjecture, which could obtrude upon or emanate from no mind but that of a metaphysician, has been expended upon the subject. In the effort to construe more intelligibly to such the truth as to His person incarnate, the expression "He emptied Himself" has been much dwelt upon. In this is to be found, it is imagined, much more than any mere general statement of. His descending from glory on high to the condition of humiliation implied in His being found in fashion as a man. This kenotic process, it is affirmed, extended much further than either position or physical conditions. It took in, it is said, the much deeper sacrifice of powers and faculties. A field this is, this to which we are invited, where conjecture can find much room for play. The point of emphasis is that it was not merely in external or extraneous features that Christ's self-emptying took place, but in what may be called intrinsic ones. That is to say that in the act of becoming incarnate the Son of God so shut oft or reduced in potency all that pertained to His divine nature, that in the realm of mind and intellect no less than in physical qualities, all was of the human order. Superlative in degree perhaps; but indistinguishable in kind from that of ordinary men. Thus it is sometimes said, "Of what was it that Christ divested Himself in becoming man? Of everything pertaining to His deity, essential attributes alone excepted."
God He was they confess. God He remained, but with everything proper to Godhead in abeyance, all divine prerogatives absolutely renounced, and all the conditions and limitations of real humanity assumed. A sort of temporary depotentiation of His divine nature in, by, or for its contact with the humanity He took to Himself. "Deity can," they say, "without real self-impairment lay aside what belongs to it except essential attributes, and omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, are not these, but only expressions of free relation to the world he has made." Still another way to put it is to say that "He retained the ethical attributes of God while abandoning the physical." Accordingly, within a carefully defined list of prerogatives capable of being surrendered there has been an absolute kenosis, and among the abdicated attributes are to be found such as the above-mentioned — omnipotence and omniscience, but a short step being needed also, which many, alas, do not hesitate to take, to include the holiness, or inherent sinlessness proper to God. And in such limitations, physical, mental, or moral as the case may be, it is thought there may be found not only relief from the distracting problem of the relation of the divine to the human in His person incarnate; but fresh evidence also of the genuineness of His sympathy and the reality of His humanity.
Altogether does it not seem like what may be called intellectual tight-rope walking with metaphysics for a balancing-pole. On the Godhead, the manhood, and the unity of the Person alike, or in turn, one is in danger of losing balance. Even a modernist of the Roman communion can warn that "The whole doctrine of Christ's kenosis or self-emptying can be explained in a minimising way almost fatal to doctrine, and calculated to rob the incarnation of all its helpfulness by leaving the ordinary mind with something perilously near the phantasmal Christ of the Docetans." If an unbeliever sneers at their "limited God slowly emerging from imperfection and limitation," they have nothing but their theory to blame; although pity it is that they should give occasion for his scoff at the incarnation as "an absurd localisation of the Infinite, a differentiated moment in eternity, a limitation within the conditions of a fleeting human organism, of the omnipotent, omniscient, and perfect God." This from the very class the theory is best calculated to conciliate. Kenoticists speak of saving the divine in Jesus by not shattering His humanity through ascribing extravagances of powers and faculties to Him. It rather appears to be sacrificing the divine to accommodate those who make all of the human. And when they do venture forth on their narrow fine-spun theory, such as the above quoted, they show no hesitation in using these their concessions to push them ruthlessly from their slippery foothold. If the precipice will be encountered, the overbalancing need not surprise. Precarious at the best any theory that can be framed to explain the adjustment of the two natures in one person must be. This metaphysically-inclined conception of Christ Jesus as a sort of amalgam of a self-emptied, depotentiated divinity, and humanity raised to its highest power, inspires no more confidence than others.
Of Kenoticism as a theory to account for the relation between the two natures in the one person of Christ it may quite safely be predicted that it shall only have its day. The face of things is in fact undergoing a change even now, and this fashionable theory is now beginning to be tainted and tinctured with new and ever newer ideas. This is not the first attempt by any means to construe into intelligibility the question of how Christ could be God and man in one person, and to set out in rational fashion how the two natures were related. To take what are generally regarded as the most conspicuous points in the history of Christology, there was in Apollinarianism a sort of pruning away of the humanity of Christ, excluding a rational human soul, principally with the idea of maintaining intact the singleness of His personality. Nestorianism, again, brought the two natures into no more than sympathetic harmony with one another, and by holding them too far apart the person was no longer an irrefragible unity. Eutychianism, in the very opposite direction, merged the two natures into one compound, a confusion not at all counterbalanced by the singleness of personality still retained. The statement of the Council of Chalcedon propounds no theory; but merely asserts the unity of personality and duality of natures. Not so the next landmark, Lutheran doctrine, which by almost a deification of His humanity approximates to Eutychianism. After all these comes Kenoticism, with its attempt to adjust the relation between the two natures, as we have seen, by the idea of a kenosis or self-emptying on Christ's part in the sphere of His divinity, not in the relative way legitimately following from the scripture supplying the term, but in an absolute and universal fashion unsupported by it, and inconsistent with all that otherwise scripture reveals of Him.
This inconsistency is abundantly evident from comparison with the Gospels, to even the most superficial study of them. Take as an instance that element of the teaching which has to say to Christ's knowledge. The theory as it applies to this is that, in becoming man, "He laid aside the loud attributes of omnipotence and omniscience, and shared in these matters the limitations of our nature. Omniscience as to His mind was no more an attribute of the Man Christ Jesus than omnipresence as to His body." "We are in the habit," it is said, "of attributing, unconsciously perhaps, the divine mind to Christ, whereas, if any one thing is clear from the Gospels, it is that His knowledge and intelligence were of the ordinary human order:" Here at last we come to a question of plain facts, capable of being verified by reference to Scripture. Having now something definite to go upon, let us examine it. And first as to what is said of what Christ has laid aside. Is it the case that omniscience, or the knowledge of things divinely, was never manifested by the Man Christ Jesus? Does the Gospel record bear this out? Was it not on the contrary over and over again made apparent that such an attribute was really His, and was really there to flash out as occasion time and again called it into exercise? It was indeed precisely one of the ways in which at times He indicated that He was God. How frequently now during His ministry do we find simple souls, discovering themselves so fully read through by one penetrating glance of Him who discerned their inmost thoughts, impressed, in a way they could not have been by anything else, with the sense of who He really was.
One striking example of this comes to mind. In John 16 we learn that a certain statement of the Master's had occasioned no small cogitation and perplexity to His disciples. Among themselves, strictly so, they had discussed it, not as yet making Him aware of their trouble (vers. 17, 18). Yet into the privacy of their secret thoughts Christ had penetrated, manifesting thus the power of reading men's hearts, which is so clearly a divine prerogative. Knowing, in a most literal sense of the word divining, their still unexpressed difficulty, and that they were desirous to ask Him, He said unto them, "Do ye now enquire among yourselves of that I said? Explaining and amplifying His previous utterance, He so fully and correctly dealt with their unconfessed perplexity that at the close they were forced to exclaim, "Now we are sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee; by this we believe that thou camest forth from God."
Nor was this a solitary instance of His ability to discern things as well as truths beyond the range of merely human vision. How often it is apparent that His knowledge of men, their deeds, their thoughts, their hearts, was such as we can attribute only to the divine mind. He seemed to hear men thinking, as it is sometimes said. "Come see a man which told me all things that ever I did," said the woman of Samaria. "Is not this the Christ?" On how many occasions was such conviction of His deity wrought in men who came in contact with Him. Take but two, one from the beginning, the other from the close of John's Gospel. Nathaniel under the fig tree was known by Him, both as to his character and circumstances, and on hearing both described so accurately by One to whom such information could not possibly have been conveyed by the ordinary channels, he was constrained to ejaculate, "Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel." Thomas again, absent on the first occasion when, in spite of closed doors, the risen Lord appeared among His disciples, on the second occasion heard from the Saviour's lips the very words his unbelief had framed, and how was he forced to exclaim in ever-memorable words, "My Lord and my God! "
Ask such as these what opinion they would have of Christ's having laid aside His omniscience. Why, it was the discovery of this very fact, "Thou knowest all things," that so forcibly brought home to them conviction of who He really was. This it really was that, among the many ways in which His deity was often manifested, formed one of the most striking. The kind, no less than the scope, of the knowledge usually shown to be His, far from being an evidence of the extensive degree in which He had surrendered divine prerogatives, most clearly manifests His continued possession of such prerogatives in that very sphere. Knowledge such as He habitually displayed, consciousness of things others needed to have revealed, discernment of things no others could see, seem to argue in an inevitable way not the giving up, but the retention, back of all if in no other way, of full divine omniscience.
1910 156 Then, as to what is specifically alleged regarding the limitation of knowledge on Christ's part. This is to set out on what is certainly a bold undertaking. It would need, to justify it, both clear indication of its necessity for complying with the general presentation of Him in the Gospels, and verification of a very strong order when it descends to such particulars as proof texts. How little the first is true we have in measure, seen. Will the second prove any better? The Gospel testimony in its totality does not fit in with a Christ so kenoticised as to be bereft of all knowledge superhuman. Can proof of such limitation be supplied from single features of it? There are three references given to prove that Christ's knowledge and intelligence were of the ordinary human order. Mark 6:38, "How many loaves have ye?" The question was asked, it is said, "because He did not know!" His request for information was prompted by His need of it! And that thus we see that for ordinary knowledge of ordinary things He was restricted to our ordinary channels of information! Remembering what another of the Evangelists, an eye-witness of the miracle too, has told us, "This he said to prove him, for he himself knew what he would do," this is really too puerile to detain us.
John 11:34. The like may be said of, "Where have ye laid him?" — "asked because He was not aware and wished to be informed of where His friend's burying-place was." That He who was conscious of the fact of His friend Lazarus' death while still in the place where He stayed two days to allow it to occur in His absence, who timed His return to suit the circumstances, and who by His declaration at the beginning of this interesting course of events — "This sickness is not unto death but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby" — makes it evident how clearly He had precognition of the whole sad episode and its happy sequel. That He was dependent on ordinary means of information for this detail, really what can be said of this? An indication of His limited humanity found where every single feature might seem to declare Him God all-wise and all-powerful too! Could sympathetic interest in such a detail as the place of burial not prompt the question, without making such a call on imagination as to conceive Him who knew so much ignorant of this? Of these two supposed instances of Christ's being reduced to requesting information in the sense of needing it ere He was conscious of a fact, it is hard to say which is furthest from proving that to be the case. The answer to them is so obvious, and has been so often given, that it is really incomprehensible that they should still be advanced as proving limitation of knowledge!
The only real occasion of momentary difficulty presents itself in the third reference now to be alluded to (Mark 13:32). This is the great stronghold, invariably the proof text of all who assert limitation in our Lord's knowledge. Being out of His own mouth also, this apparent repudiation of any knowledge of a superior grade seems all the more forcible. As has been recently admitted, however, the fact that this is the only occasion when there is any approach to a confession of ignorance on Christ's part, and that even so it only refers to a single item not strictly cognate, leaves the contention somewhat inadequately supported. Solitary or not, however, the expression demands most careful consideration. For, on the face of it, it does occasion difficulty, this acknowledgment of ignorance, if such it be. If such indeed it be, for one of the first questions that readily prompt themselves immediately the difficulty is felt is Can this really be an absolute and unqualified disclaimer on the Lord's part of any light on the subject? Are we really to imagine Him personally and absolutely as much in the dark as, say, "men" or "angels," concerning what is spoken of? Consider for a moment how strange that would be. After all that Christ claimed to know, and professed to reveal as to the future, that just here the store of His knowledge should give out!
This same prophetic discourse of the Lord's, of which the verse forms a part is, remember, His emphatic reply to the request of His disciples for a sketch of the future. No mere disquisition on things moral, clothed in the imagery of Jewish Apocalyptic literature, is this; but given as true prophecy. And after all this opening out of what that future contains, particularly as given by Matthew in its fulness, the whole course of events evidently before the mind of the speaker right down to the consummation of the age, Himself filling no small but the chief role in them, after all this we are to imagine that Christ's knowledge of the future, as of everything else, was of the same limited kind as our own, because He avows for Himself, in the capacity in which He was then speaking, unacquaintance with the day and hour of His own return and the establishment of His kingdom! In this case, as in the others, reason from what in the passage itself is apparent as to what Christ does know, and the kenotic interpretation sought to be put upon it will not stand. Any idea of absolute limitation as to the order or nature of His intelligence is seen to be quite incompatible with both the kind and extent of the knowledge already displayed. Granted that, as their expression has it, a lacuna or blank in His eschatology here appears. What of that? Does it follow inevitably that personally and in an unqualified sense the Teacher Himself was in a state of complete ignorance regarding the detail needed to fill it out. It did not belong to the class of things He was to intimate: does it follow therefore that it was beyond the range of those things with which He was intimate?
Any degree of intimacy, it is said, any kind of knowledge beyond that which men or angels possess, Jesus emphatically disclaims, "knoweth no man, no not the angels, neither the Son!" Is that so? Are we absolutely bound to give the verse just that construction? Does it necessitate that we take the intelligence of the three several parties mentioned, all round and in its entirety, as having a common denominator, so to speak? That would indeed be a large inference. Even the isolated verse itself gives too slender a basis for it. Think of it as applied to men and angels. Is it open to us to argue that the angelic and human intelligences are of the same order, because their non-intelligence of a certain matter is here affirmed as a common feature? Why then are they so clearly distinguished? so particularised? — "no man, not the angels." Why again in the case of the latter is the negative so emphasised "no man, no, not the angels?" with the additional consideration also that the sphere of their activity (if the bearing of that on the scope of their knowledge is taken into account) so far transcends man's "no, not the angels which are in heaven"? Not much in common there really between the two orders of intelligences! It seems rather a case where, with quite a different, essentially different, denominator, in regard to a particular matter, and in a particular sense, a common numerator appears.
Only the more emphatically does that apply to "neither the Son." If the fact that here is a matter of which even angels in heaven have no cognisance is so exceptional as to need such emphasis, how carefully must he weighed the still more unprecedented "neither the Son." And if being classed with men in this proves nothing intrinsically in their case, how much less in the Son's. The ministers of prophecy in Old Testament times knew what it was to have to seek out — "searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify" in the revelation of which they were the vehicle. Are we to imagine Christ Himself in the same condition of requiring it to be revealed whereto His prophetic announcement applied? Thereafter, the sufferings and subsequent glory of the Messiah which these announced, with the resulting economy of blessing, gave occasion for desire on the angels' part to look into these things. Was the Messiah Himself in no better case than they when here in the capacity of Prophet He put Himself alongside them in disclaiming knowledge of a time-note in His eschatology?
To understand the Lord's assertion, the great matter first of all seems to be not to carry it beyond the matter concerning which He used it. It applies to something special. Where are we authorised to make it general? This disavowal of official cognisance of the precise date of the prophetic crisis is, by the Kenotics, regarded as an unqualified declaration of nescience, which is to be taken as applying wholesale and all round to the whole sphere of our Lord's consciousness. We are told, "It is the ascription of a real nescience, not of an ignorance operating in one part of His personality and not in the other, nor an ignorance simply assumed for a certain purpose while a real omniscience remained latent, nor yet the pseudo-ignorance which meant that, while He knew this thing as He knew all others, He had no commission from His. Father to communicate it to others."
Now, it may be quite legitimate for some to scoff that "a god-man, possessing at one and the same time two wills and two separate kinds of knowledge, and using now this and now that as occasion arises, is at once a figment of theologians and a contradiction in terms." But, for one who receives the account of the Gospels as inspired of God, the mysterious relation of divine and human, and the presence and activity of each in the sphere of His knowledge, as of all else in Christ's person, revealed there, cannot be so curtly dismissed for the mere lack of an adequate explanation as to either the inter-operation of, or the connecting link between, the two. The fictitiousness of the theological conception is of little account. To it being a contradiction in terms, one must demur, so long, at least as long as there are no proper terms present for it to contradict. What do we know of essence, personality, or consciousness as applicable to God incarnate to make positive assertions as to Him psychologically? In our own personality even are there not depths enough unsounded? How much more in the one Personality where mystery is superimposed on mystery.
There used to be a phrase in common use in this connection in Presbyterian circles. "Communicatio proprietatum" was the rather clumsy and pedantic name for a principle which in its measure is simple and clear enough. Its usage was somewhat as follows. The term was reserved for occasions when the usage of language about Christ was such as seemed to interchange the divine and human, such as to attribute to Christ as God actions or prerogatives proper only to His human nature, and vice versa. As the Confession of Faith had it, "Christ in the work of mediation acteth according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself; yet by reason of the unity of the Person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in scripture attributed to the Person denominated by the other nature." A scripture instance being the text, "Hereby perceive we the love [of God] because he laid down his life for us." Not that we can therefore say "God died"; but that that Person who laid down His life, and did so as man, was also God. It is easy to see how such a principle as this "communicatio proprietatum" is liable to abuse were it to be applied to actions, properties, or prerogatives of Christ where Scripture has not gone before us; but in itself it is a sounder and really much more intelligible system than this newer style of reasoning about His person makes for. Unlike the 'older principle, which might conceivably pass into over-subtlety of distinction, the characteristic feature of the modern theory is that of denying anything approaching the departmental, if so it might be called, in what Christ knew, said, or did, and resolving all assertions of His knowledge, speech, or action into absolute statements, true in the most unqualified way of the Lord Jesus in the unity of His person. We are on perilous ground here altogether; but as the quotation from Grant already alluded to has it, "The ways in which the Lord is presented to us in Scripture show how near to dual personality we have to come in any simple apprehension of its statements."
With the Gospels in our hand will it be claimed that Christ Jesus, even as incarnate, had, and manifested as occasion called for it, His own intrinsic essential knowledge of things, knowledge proper to a divine person, and differing in kind as much as in degree from our knowledge which is always derivative and limited, that at the back of everything this remained intact. As Prof. Orr says, "Behind all human conditionings are still present the undiminished resources of the Godhead. Omniscience, omnipotence, all other divine attributes, are there though not drawn upon save as the Father willed them to be." Omniscience, present though not drawn upon, quite meets the case of our verse here, "Neither the Son." The idea of absolute nescience, of an unqualified negation of knowledge cannot be entertained if He who made the statement is to remain for us true God as to His person. Become partaker of flesh and blood, He who would not draw upon His omnipotence in commanding the stones to be made bread for His sustenance as a man, would not either in this case fall back upon what in His omniscience He could not but be cognisant of; but observing in full measure the conditions proper to the humanity He has taken, "the times and seasons which the Father hath set within His own authority," are left there, and the prerogative of announcing or revealing them not usurped. In the capacity of Prophet the Son knows not officially of that day and hour.
Further, as the Son, still here in humiliation, though for the future all judgment committed unto Him, and as the God-appointed ruler in that kingdom reserved for Him till the arrival of this unrevealed day and hour, "neither the Son, but the Father" has a moral fitness and congruity all its own. For, in the working out of the divine purposes in regard to that kingdom, it is noteworthy that all is spoken of as carried into execution not by the Lord Jesus Himself; but by God the Father on His behalf. It is no question of Him asserting His disputed rights as divine; but of God the Father establishing Him in righteousness in that place of glory and honour He has so richly earned as man. To man it is, according to God's counsel, that the world to come is to be subjected. And it is as Son of man Christ is to receive the kingdom and reign. All the emphasis is upon His manhood. And, as Bellett would say, morally this is perfect too, for in that consideration there cannot but be remembrance of the humble, emptied condition He assumed in becoming man, the servant-form and servant-place He took for God's glory. Now Mark it is especially whose province it is to present the Son of God in His service, Christ as the true Servant. And in his Gospel alone, as has been often noticed, that last element in our verse, "neither the Son but the Father," is to be found. Are we not then to see in it just such an added moral touch as is suited to the presentation of Him which that Gospel was divinely designed to give, and find assistance in understanding it from that very fact? How strong and beautiful an expression of the true servant-character there is here then in this abnegation of concern as to what properly lies with the Father to make good. "The servant knoweth not what his lord doeth." It was more than the form of a servant Christ assumed in becoming man. The spirit and qualities proper to that position He showed forth to perfection in the humble path of dependence and obedience He trod. Fittingly from such a servant in such a path comes this disclaimer of knowledge of a matter not belonging to His sphere as such. The kingdom He is to receive in the capacity of a servant. Not by the right and title of what He was as God does He assume control, but on the ground of what He has done, and as the reward of all His toil in that unique path of obedience He trod is He invested by the Father with the administration of all things. All waits on the activity of God the Father for its establishment, and of such things even as the right hand and left hand place of honour in it Christ declares that they are not His to bestow, but are reserved for the Father's appointment. What wonder then if, of the day and hour of its advent, the One who chooses to consider Himself less Heir-apparent than Heir-appointed disavows the knowledge. "Not mine to give" in the one case said the Lord. "Not mine to know" in effect He says here. Entire moral perfection.
May we not consider that the objection founded on this verse is effectually disposed of by such considerations, or, if difficulty remains, that it may yield to further study on such lines? It does, at all events, appear futile to seek light on it, or elucidation of the profound and mysterious question of how divine and human knowledge are united and were related to each other in the person of Christ in the days of His flesh, along the line of metaphysics or psychology. How much worse to found on this verse, and in this way, a denial of their co-existence! It is quite conceivable that we may never come to know the nature of the connecting link between the divine and human in Christ's person. His own declaration, "No man knoweth the Son but the Father," would prepare us for this. Many theories have been constructed to account for the relation between the two, many attempts made to forge an intelligible link between them. It was but to be expected that from the surveillance of theologians this would not long be omitted. Where the word itself had, with its usual disregard for mere mental perplexities, confined its testimony to the bare fact of the two natures in one Person, Christ Jesus, God and man, without concerning itself with explanations of the nature of their relation, dogmatic theology, which considers itself to have been bequeathed the task of thinking out, and construing to intelligence, doctrines implicit in the New Testament, has over and over again essayed to explain such relation. It was characteristic of that working of the human mind upon divine things which we call theology to make the attempt. Yet, the ingenuity of the various conjectures notwithstanding, failure is stamped upon them all.
1910 173 But, as F. W. Grant has so well said, "We cannot fathom the Christ of God. We can realise how perfectly, divinely, on both sides He suits us, though we may be quite unable to put the two sides together. Dual personality would not suit us; but we want one who is both perfectly human and truly divine One who can sleep in the storm and rise and still the storm. Such a Saviour we have got, how good to know it — if we can see nothing besides His heart of love that unites the two together." "His heart of love uniting the two together" — a most blessed "conjunction medium" that, assuredly. If in no other way, certainly thus do we perceive them to be most truly united, as who cannot most surely testify who knows the blessed Saviour and has experience of His love. That love, which, sweetly as it suits our case, would have been in vain had He in whom it was manifested been anything less than God, no less truly depended upon Him being really and truly man that to us it might be made known. The power of the one, and the reality of the other were alike necessary, and in that love wherewith He loved us how truly both are present. By all the sweet familiarity of manhood has His approach been characterised, is it in anything less than the power of Godhead that He has drawn nigh?
Can we imagine Him undertaking in love to come upon the scene of man's sin and degradation, with the purpose of effecting our ransom and redemption from these, and as He stoops to the task, laying aside those very attributes by whose agency alone that could be accomplished? All those immeasurable resources of divine power and wisdom which were eternally His, was it not just then that they were most of all indispensable if He were to be, as He is, "mighty to save"? How could it be in anything like this sense that He who was rich has impoverished Himself that we might be made rich? Would not that be, humanly speaking, to defeat His own object? Beggared Himself of all divine prerogatives to take up a task that nothing but divine power could accomplish; in a path and by a way that nothing but divine wisdom could select and devise! Nay, love is wiser than that. We may be sure His voluntary impoverishment, great as it was, did not extend to matters such as these. The grace of our Lord Jesus, the riches of His glory, and the poverty to which He descended, were in themselves infinite enough, without imagining the first to imply such a kenoticism between the second and the third as really leaves the Blessed One who came in love to redeem us, shorn of that which alone could effect the purpose of His coming.
Of one thing all whom His love has reached and won may be assured — no dispossession or curtailment of the divine in His Person could the Blessed Lord have adopted which curtailed His power to deal effectively with our case; no limitation of humanity would He have entered which limited his ability to employ the fullest resources available on our behalf. And if in no other way can we explain how divine power and wisdom could be His, while still in all respects a true and real man, we can only say we can understand Him possessing and using divine attributes because He was also divine, and because of the divine love in His heart which was no less wonderful. They may tell us that such attributes as omnipotence and omniscience, being quite incompatible with any assumption of real human nature, must have been laid aside. But "must" is a strong word, and "must have been" has often to give way before "may have been," and there are cases where our rules do not apply. For are we now to say that only what of God was compatible with human nature retained its place, and was manifest in Christ? What then of this His love which Christ came to declare? Was divine love any less incompatible than divine power or divine wisdom? Was it laid aside, or in any way depotentiated or conditioned by, or for, contact with humanity?
It may be the New Testament nowhere says that "God is omnipotence," or, "God is omniscience"; but assuredly it does say that "God is love." And if divine love was not laid aside, but revealed in its fulness and strength in the Man Christ Jesus, where can the difficulty be in believing in the presence and activity in the Blessed Saviour Himself of its attendant power and perception, the omnipotence and omniscience of Deity? Oh, how poor, how incredibly poor our perception is of the glory of His person! Was He not God, eternally the Son of God, and now upon earth
"God manifest, God seen and heard,
The heaven's beloved One."
The image of the invisible God, the effulgence of His glory, the impress of His substance, the everlasting Word that in the beginning was, was with God, and was God, and now for us become the Word made flesh; all this and more He was, and is, and ever shall have the glory of being. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of an only begotten with the Father, full of g race and truth."
And now, in closing our study of this part of the Creed, were it not infinitely better to have observed that reticence on questions as to the Person of Christ which a spirit of true reverence would inculcate, which the example of the Scriptures would itself enjoin, and which all who are spiritually-minded feel when they approach the subject, not to mention that distinct pronouncement of His own concerning
"The higher mysteries of Thy fame
The creature's grasp transcend,
The Father only Thy blest name
Of Son can comprehend "
— "No man knoweth the Son but the Father."
From the Person of Christ the Creed passes to a not less important topic — His work. His work of atonement, that is to say, or what was effected by His death on the cross. Most singularly brief, however, is the consideration given to the subject in the exposition we are following. His passion and death, referred to in the clauses, "suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried," are rightly spoken of as facts that are central and vital to all that claims the name of Christianity. How truly this is so is abundantly evidenced from the large place given to it in primitive Christian teaching. In apostolic doctrine, as we have it in the epistles of the New Testament, to go no further, the cross is by far the most prominent feature. It is a fact not unworthy of mention, and certainly not unnoticed by hostile critics either, how completely, after His death, the attention, the emphasis, of scripture came to be placed upon that death as precisely the point of moment. Whether, having regard to the measure of attention it claimed even from the very first, we can speak of anything like a transference of emphasis or not from His life and ministry, certainly the cross, the death of Christ, holds and fills a place in early Christian doctrine almost supreme. It quite surpasses at any rate anything like the proportionate mention we should look for, if it were but an incident, granted even a striking incident, of His historical career. No, it was more than an incident. The unique and transcending place assigned to it in the apostolic scheme points to its having for them, as for soundness in the Christian faith it has still, crucial and unrivalled importance. Rapidly and early, and, we may say, undeviatingly and continuously since, Christian thought under divine guidance has come to be concentrated upon it as the foundation of its system, the fundamental item of its faith, has come to regard and esteem as the distinguishing or distinctive fact in regard to its Founder, not His life, not His miracles, not His teaching, but His death has come to glory in His cross as the feature which outstands in, the truth which characterises Christianity.
And there can really be no shifting of the focus of Christianity from this point without surrendering all that upon which it rests, and all that constitutes its power, its dynamic, its meaning as a gospel for sinful men. That such things as the suffering and death of Christ are of vital importance to Christianity as a religion there are few, perhaps even among merely nominal Christians even, but are prepared to admit. For it is universally realised that the cross is an integral part of its system of doctrine. And although varied may be the measures in which the truth of it is realised, as in some sense or other the procuring cause of our redemption, the death of Him who for us men and for our salvation underwent that dread ordeal, that is accepted by all who of His saving grace have had experience. It is felt and confessed by all as that upon which absolutely everything depends. Admit the divine purpose of redemption, or even the need of it for men, for us, and it is at once seen to stand or fall with the truth of a saving work effected by the suffering and death of the Redeemer.
As has been said, the consideration of the death of Christ, as to what it imports, is passed over lightly. Almost summarily dismissed in fact, rival theories of the atonement are mentioned as contending for place, and a safe line is sought to be taken by leaving all such aside, and accepting simply as a large general truth that Christ Jesus died for us. The fact is the great thing, it is said. The implications, the significance, of but lesser account. That is all very well; but it may be questioned if it will be found quite satisfactory, or possible even to draw the line at that. Real sin-burdened souls will look for some more definite evidence of the great sin question, of so much significance to them, having been dealt with therein. It is no academic question with them, and that Christ not only died for us, but that "He died for our sins according to the scriptures" will seem to betoken a relation between His death and the question of their sins that merits some more definite term than an implication. If in earnest indeed, the pardoned sinner cannot but be drawn on to consider how, by what means, in what manner, He has been cleared of His sins, and granted deliverance through the death of "the Lamb of God which beareth away the sin of the world." When we find also, on the back of what is said as to the acceptance of the fact of Christ's death, without attachment to any theory of atonement, a quite wanton scoff at the old Calvinistic ideas on the subject, dissatisfaction deepens.
1910 188 Precisely here again we enter the interesting territory where new and old in Presbyterian theology contrast so deeply. It is just at such points, where the strong tide of high Calvinism meets the freshening flood of New Theology ideas, that one cannot but be arrested. The surge and swell of contending thought are there so marked. One whom we have before quoted from, Prof. Orr, has some discernment of the true bearing of much that is now put forth; and on such reasoning regarding the atonement as has been instanced he has remarked, "Distinction is often made between fact and theory in the doctrine of atonement; but it is evident that an element of what is called theory, i.e. of doctrinal significance, attaches to even the simplest statements of scripture on this subject. It is not every conception of the cross that suits the full and varied representations given of it in scripture. The New Testament will not allow us to believe that everything remains vague and undetermined in the meaning we are to attach to Christ's doing and dying for our salvation." And another, not a Presbyterian, has spoken out thus: "It is sometimes said, There are several theories of the atonement, but we have to do with the fact, and not with our understanding of it! This frame of mind is the root of all that is most feeble and ominous in the teaching in our churches today." Then against the derision of such discarded ideas as the Calvinistic one of "Christ having rendered by His blood satisfaction to divine justice in the sense of quantative payment of a ransom," compare a remark of the same, "We cannot in any theology which is duly ethicised dispense with the word satisfaction. It was no satisfaction of a 'jus talionis' yet the sinner could only be saved by something that thus damned the sin." And still another, "There is room today for a truly forensic doctrine of the atonement. Christ has redeemed us not by a facile amnesty; but by making our sin His own in vicarious love, and hearing it in the face of the universe."
A "facile amnesty" it is to be feared is the too common conception of what has resulted from the death of Christ for us, with but little concern for the solemn fact that ere sins could at all be forgiven there were questions, long-outstanding questions, between God and our souls to be settled, as regards the heinousness of them in His sight, and the guilt of them lying upon us, and that for the necessary removal of both, a real true work of atonement, propitiatory and expiatory, had to be accomplished by the vicarious suffering and death of the "Lamb of God." A most remarkable confession was made by a young minister recently. "I have been urged," he wrote, "to make the cross of Christ the heart of my teaching, but I have the vaguest possible conception of what is meant by this and similar phrases. I can understand the cross as the transcendent symbol of the Christian life; as symbolising the death of the Christian to sin, but I fail to see the relation between the actual crucifixion on Calvary and the forgiveness of sins." Consider how momentous that confession is from an accredited preacher of the gospel. And is there not serious reflection awakened as to the theological system of which such as this is the product. Here is one who has just undergone a modern theological training, and is regarded as qualified to preach and teach the truth of God. And what is the attitude assumed towards this great, vital, central doctrine of atonement. The cross, unless symbolising the death of the Christian to sin (which is not atonement, but at best a sequel to it), has no such supreme importance attaching to it as to make it in any sense central to his teaching. No relation perceived between the death of Christ and the forgiveness of sin! A most strange confession! On what then is such forgiveness to be based? Or is it that there is no need for such a basis? Are we to imagine forgiveness of sins by God to be so light a matter as to need no such ground for its exercise as Scripture shows the death and blood of Christ to have provided. Really, if the state of mind disclosed does not indicate just such a conception as has been spoken of, of salvation as a sort of "facile amnesty" from sin, to be prevalent theology today, what else does it?
The real fact is, as Prof. Orr has pointed out, there is an ingrained aversion to the whole doctrine of an expiatory atonement in modern ideas. The principal cause, according to him, is that such presuppositions of the need and purpose of the atonement as, on the one hand, a sense of the character and holiness of God, and on the other of the gravity and guilt of sin, are totally lacking in present-day thought. A wrested mutilated doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, and the influence of a perverted evolutionary theory of man's origin, are respectively to be held accountable for much of this departure from Biblical teaching on what God is, how holy, how righteous, how abhorrent of sin; on the fact also that sin is sin — no element of the world process, or necessity of human development, but a thing in itself horrible, displeasing to God, laying the transgressor under God's just condemnation.
The inability to perceive any relation between the fact of Christ's death on the cross, and the forgiveness of sins instanced above, is, alas, if all were as frank in confessing it, only too prevalent today. That, ere forgiveness of sins could be, the holy sinless Son of God had to become our Sin-Bearer, and under the whole burden of the cross endure the wrath and judgment of God"who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree"; that by His blood and death the requirements of God's holiness should be met, and the whole question of sin as it affects Him be so perfectly settled that it can be said, "Once in the end of the age hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself," and He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world"; that henceforth in the gospel there is the divine tender of a relief from the penal consequences of sin absolute, universal, and final, as also "justification by His blood," and by God's grace "through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness not only for the passing over of the sins that are past, through his forbearance, but also that now at this time he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" — all this is fast becoming quite meaningless to, or entirely misapprehended by, those who have drifted away from the truth as to the expiatory and propitiatory atonement of our Redeemer.
The expression given to it in the Westminster Confession, or the Shorter Catechism, may, as theological expressions, neither of them quite reach to adequacy — "The Lord Jesus, by His perfect obedience, and sacrifice of Himself, which He through the Eternal Spirit once offered up unto God hath fully satisfied the justice of His Father, and purchased reconciliation, etc.," or, "Christ executeth the office of a Priest in His once offering up of Himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God" — but they are surely preferable by far to the hazy, colourless, presentation of it given by the expositor of the Creed. This negation of all theories of the atonement, with professed adherence to the large and general truth of Christ's death as the means, in an unspecified way, of our salvation is not reassuring in itself. When, joined to it there is ridicule, as well as repudiation, of the very expression used in the Presbyterian Confession! what can one say? No wonder it is so far back, or as far down as to the Apostles' Creed such desire to go as the norm of faith necessary to Christianity. "Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried," is quite comprehensive enough for them.
It may certainly be the case, that all attempts in the past to interpret the doctrine, or to construe it theologically, have failed in adequacy, or erred essentially, and being found incapable of responding to broadening and deepening thought on the subject, have had to be left behind. Otherwise put, theological definitions have consistently failed to fill out the complete doctrine as Scripture gives it, however true it be that a certain side of truth was emphasised in each case. There were, for instance, the so-called Ransom Theory, which has long since been superseded, at least, in the form in which it was originally held; the Socinian view of atonement in keeping with their system, which to believers now is just as erroneous as it ever was; the Governmental Theory prevalent in pre-Reformation times, with no more permanency. And again from the Reformation onwards what is called the Substitutionary Theory has held the field, until recently, when, as we are having instanced now, it also is being repudiated.
A word on the nature of that repudiation and what is to replace the rejected scheme. It is only quite recently that this latter was called in question, but it is in quite a wholesale fashion that it is being surrendered now. Readers of the theological works of last century must be familiar with the great and long-drawn-out controversy on "the extent of the atonement" waged so earnestly by adherents of Calvinistic theology, Presbyterians (as Candlish and Cunningham) among the number. The whole basis of reasoning on both sides was, and could not be other than, this same Substitutionary theory of atonement. Whether the results of the atonement were universal, or limited to the elect, could not, it is evident, be a question, apart from the idea of Christ having assumed in that work the place of a Substitute to render satisfaction to divine justice for sinners. It is most remarkable, yet no more than a fact, that it is almost impossible to imagine that controversy in the same quarter today. The Substitutionary theory, as a theory, is being dropped as completely as the others. And what is now emerging as a successor to it? Something more satisfactory, more scriptural, something giving fuller value to those aspects of the sacrifice of which admittedly the theory was deficient? The tendency now rather is away from any thought of a sacrificial and expiatory interpretation of the death of Christ at all. Complaint is made of atonement being turned into a non-moral and superstitious transaction by the theory of Christ as our Substitute taking the place and judgment due to sinners, and the trend of theology now is to develop the doctrine on what is called its ethical side. That is to say, it is not the sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus that are regarded as in themselves, or intrinsically efficacious for the covering of sin; but rather the moral qualities displayed by Christ Jesus in the descent to death, the obedience to the will of God He rendered even unto death. "The sacrifice required by God," it is said, "was not that of so much pain, or even death itself, but a moral reparation in the offering of a great and perfect obedience."
The "transactional" theory of atonement, as it is called, with its insistence upon "satisfaction" in the old penal sense, is considered obsolete now. It is caricatured as some monstrous growth of fanatical puritan times, with a hard legal conception of God with His outraged righteousness, like some glorified Shylock, insisting upon and obtaining its pound of flesh. That from the suffering Saviour on the cross is wrung out a full measure of torment precisely equivalent to the desert of our sins, and that thus offended justice can now retire satiated and appeased by the blood of the victim! All this is derided as superstitious, and partaking too much of the nature of a material and non-moral transaction, to commend itself to Christian thought. It is a reversion, we are told, to the crude, semi-pagan ideas embodied in the Jewish ritual, and expressed in the sacrificial language of the Old Testament. Whereas, underlying the New Testament doctrine of atonement there is an altogether different conception of sacrifice. The express point of distinction, it is maintained, between the latter and the Old Testament ritual of sacrifice lies in this entire absence of a moral element in the sacrifices offered under the law. In regard to the sacrifice of Christ on the other hand, all the stress is laid upon the moral quality inherent in it. The thought of a purely objective expiation and external transaction is transcended, and the value and efficacy of His offering seen to lie in the holy obedience and submission to the will of God of which this was the crown and culmination. This, it is repeated, is the great truth which emerges in the New Testament as to atonement. Deeper than any mere expiation resulting or expiatory merit attaching, that in which the essence of Christ's sacrifice consists is "not in His suffering, not even His death in itself, but obedience completed in the surrender of His life to the will of God." It is explained that now, in the New Testament, if we revert to Old Testament terms at all, we must think of the sprinkling of the blood on the altar, signifying the presentation of the life to God, as the important matter, not the shedding of blood, signifying the death of the victim! It is not vicarious suffering, but representative submission that is the essential element in sacrifice!
For scripture evidence we are referred to the tenth of Hebrews. "It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Wherefore, when he cometh into the world he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me. In burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first that he may establish the second."
Here, it is said, in this passage, we have the whole matter epitomised. This verse sets the atonement of Christ in opposition to the sacrifices of the law, and treats it as superseding them. There is the distinct repudiation of the entire conception of sacrifice as expressed in Jewish ritual. The notion therein associated with the blood shedding of the victim as something in itself of atoning virtue is absent from the New Testament conception, and the principle of vicariousness attaching to a sacrificial death emphatically ruled out. The performing of the will of God on Christ's part and His submission to it His obedience is shown to be that in which true atonement lies.
The way in which the death of Christ under this theory (to complete our survey of it) becomes efficacious for us is not in the sense that it avails for us atoningly before God, as having borne our sins or as made propitiation for them. That is unnecessary, it is implied, for as Christ has revealed God's attitude, there is neither hint of, nor room for, the thought of Him needing to be propitiated, or His wrath appeased. It is on our side mainly, not on His, that the influence of Christ's death requires to be exerted. And on us accordingly all the moral influence of His perfect obedience and sinless penitence is brought to bear. By the sight of the loving Saviour in the tenderness of His compassion taking on Himself the burden of His children's [?] misdoing, and bearing on the cross the shame and misery of it in the face of the universe, we are broken down and drawn back from the far country of our sins to our unestranged Father's [?] ready welcome! Then as to the only aspect Godward they can understand it to possess, there is in that same perfect obedience and submission to death on the part of such a one as Christ Jesus, such a potency as to constitute it a complete and adequate moral reparation to God for all the sins humanity has been guilty, or is capable, of! "The impulse of divine holy love found its own level, its counterpart, its other self, in the perfect, sinless sacrifice of Jesus. That moral perfection, that moral equivalent to His perfect righteousness, which God craved and required in the creature, was realised in the Man Christ Jesus. In Jesus humanity was raised to the moral level of God. The total moral demand of God upon man was satisfied in man." From all this it may be seen what the "ethical" theory of the atonement amounts to.
1911 206 It may be recognised also that it is a theory to the production of which Scripture is called on to contribute but little. Its main concern for us being that contribution, we must again follow — remarking surely, however, how true Prof. Orr's statement would seem to be concerning the aversion of these modern theories to everything of the sacrificial and expiatory in Christ's death. It is abundantly evidenced from what we have quoted. It remains, however, that we consider briefly what is supposed to be Scripture evidence for it, and what measure of truth, if any, it makes a perverted use of. The Ransom and Substitutionary theories had both of them large elements of truth.
"The Son of man came not only to minister but "to give his life a ransom for many." And "Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." Nor indeed, whatever may be thought of the old Governmental Theory associated with the name of Anselm, can there be found absolutely no element of truth in this emphasising of the ethical or moral side of that atoning work of Christ, this "finding of the essence of Christ's sacrifice to consist in the yielding up of His holy will to the Father." "Sin," it is said, "has its essence in self-will, in the setting up of the human will against God, and Christ has retracted this root sin of humanity by offering up to God, under experience of suffering and death, the well-pleasing sacrifice of a will wholly obedient and self-surrendered." Whatever we may think of the expression, or whether this idea of the retraction
of the root-sin of humanity is at all a scriptural thought, we certainly learn from Rom. 5:19 that "as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many
be made righteous."
Not, of course, that Christ's work of atonement is at all the subject of Rom. 5:19, at least directly. Rather is it the larger, more general, question of the contrast of Adam and Christ in their respective headships, with the results accruing respectively to those ranged under such headships from the characteristic act with which the "one man" in each case is credited. That with which Adam is to be associated is the act of disobedience which proved so disastrous to the race. That which those who are Christ's ever look back to as the ground of their being constituted righteous is His perfect obedience. Not at all in the sense of His keeping the law for us throughout His life, needless to say for when in scripture is legal righteousness ever treated as vicarious? — but in that obedience "unto death, even the death of the cross," which so amply fulfilled the will of God. It is, as one has said, the burnt-offering aspect of Christ's work, the full sweet savour of that in which God was glorified. There was undoubtedly that in the sacrifice of Christ which had to say to the will of God flagrantly disobeyed, as well as to His character and honour vilely traduced by man's sin. And, as constituting part of the God-glorifying character of what was accomplished when Christ laid down His life, His obedience unto death, even the death of the cross, is not to be forgotten.
And thus also as to Heb. 10. That scripture is fastened on, and rightly so, as the great exposition of what is called the New Testament conception of sacrifice. Now does this differ, radically so, from what one would gather from the Old Testament on the subject? There need be no doubt as to what that latter is. Crude, semi-pagan, material, or whatever else it may be reviled as, there is undeniably a definite and consistent doctrine of sacrifice apparent throughout the Old Testament. And even the advocates of the new theory are forced to admit that the primary thought underlying the sacrificial language of ritual is just this of vicarious suffering and expiatory death. From Abel's more excellent sacrifice onward, the attention is directed always and unvaryingly to these as the essential element in the matter of atonement for sin. That is clear. What then of the claim that in the New Testament we come to something entirely different? On any right understanding of what it means for the Bible to be God's Word, inspired of Him, this of course would be an impossible idea, this divergence of teaching on the important question of sacrifice for sin. But apart from that, does what the New Testament scriptures teach contradict the older revelation?
Take this tenth of Hebrews as a case in point. That the atonement of Christ is set in contradistinction to, and is presented as superseding the sacrifices of the law is plain; but in what sense? Is it in that these gave, and could give no other than, a wholly erroneous and false idea of how God could be approached, or could remit sins, whereas Christian teaching expresses the truth entirely unknown to and never hinted at by them? Or is it not rather the case that just what gave them value, and to the writer of Hebrews justified this extended reference, was that, appointed by Jehovah as they were, these sacrifices and offerings prefigured, and should have been seen to point out, that which has been fulfilled, and reduced to reality by what Christ has done. What says the opening verse of the chapter. The law had "a shadow of good things to come," if not "the very image." That would seem to imply surely that between the two systems there is that which calls for comparison as well as that which provokes contrast. To stand in the relation of substance and shadow there must be a resemblance, at least in outline, which would be quite incompatible with divergent ideas of such a primary matter as atonement.
Then examine the phraseology of the passage throughout. If the intention was to reject in totality the Old Testament doctrine of sacrifice, and to put aside the whole theory of vicarious suffering as worthless, we should imagine language entirely different from what the Jewish ritual had made familiar to be applied to what the death of Christ had effected. Yet what do we find? Deliberate intention to rule out the possibility of entertaining such a thought seems to be stamped on the chapter. Where could a more explicit reiteration of the very phrases familiar to one brought up under the Old Testament ritual be found? As one has said, "Instead of carefully avoiding sacrificial terms, because sacrifice is the thing repudiated, it emphatically reproduces them. Offering thou wouldest not' — yes, but this is spoken with another sacrifice, another offering, the offering of the body of Christ' full in view." Of which sacrifice it is distinctly testified also that it avails in that very expiatory sense adumbrated by the sacrifices under the law. "But this man … offered one sacrifice for sins." "By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." "By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once."
Plainly that last, that "offering of the body of Christ once" is the point of the whole passage. "A body hast thou prepared me" certainly is brought in along with the thought of the sacrifices offered by the law being rejected; but it is not on the "body prepared" but on the "body offered" that the stress is laid and the vicariousness of atonement made to depend. While it is exactly what the trend of modern speculation threatens to obscure, this agrees perfectly with the uniform account of His death in scripture as an objective act of propitiation, in itself an efficacious ransom for sinners.
It is in light of all this also that we must hear His word, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God." The question with the new theory as to the interpretation of this verse has been narrowed down as follows by one writer — "Was this, as many now teach, a performing in a life of perfect general obedience, into which obedience we enter by the submission of our wills to God, was this the substitute for the sacrifices of the law? or was it the doing of the will of God in one specific and sacrificial act — was it His body offered as upon an altar? a body broken [?] and blood poured out like wine?" Beyond a doubt our blessed Lord's obedience, His doing the will of God, comes into view in this passage, and that not merely incidentally, but of distinct purpose and as quite in the line of its reasoning. We may say that in its scheme of doctrine there are two things of central importance presented — the will of God, and the work of Christ. And it is quite clear that as surely as He to perfection performed the latter, so did He in fulness the former.
But, if we are to distinguish, on which let it he asked, are the requisite taking away of sins, the purging of the worshippers, or the perfecting of the sanctified made precisely to depend as foundation or basis? The sacrificial work of Christ most undoubtedly. "He was once offered to bear the sins of many," and "He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." No doubt all is to he traced to the will of God as its origin. The source of all is there. Nor are we to reason that Christ's doing the will of God was simply His carrying that will into effect as regards our salvation. There is something far deeper than that in His, "Lo, I come to do thy will," even His personal and positive obedience thereto, wonderful beyond all as that is in itself when we remember who He was that rendered it. And again, who shall deny that this self-devotedness of the Son of God to His will formed the great element of value, the moral quality if you will in the acceptable sacrifice He offered?
Nor is this aspect neglected in the eminently typical ritual of the Old Testament. What else is it that is presented in the burning of the fat upon the altar so continually prescribed but the energy of a will devoted unto God, specially emphasised on one occasion at least as "the food of the offering made by fire unto Jehovah." And again, as has been said, what is it that is expressed in the burnt-offering if it be not this unreserved devotedness, and to death, His holy will entirely self-surrendered, and nothing but the will and glory of God in view as motive and end. This was par excellence "the offering of sweet savour," as it is in such devotedness of obedience unto death that God can have delight and find pleasure as that in which He has been glorified. "Christ hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour." And, as in Heb. 10. it is a question of an offering in which He can truly find pleasure and satisfaction, that aspect of the sacrifice is emphasised in which this is prominent: With what unmingled and infinite delight, may we not say, can God contemplate that offering of the body of Christ, when we remember that there and then, in presence of the declared failure of all that was offered under the law to give Him satisfaction, His own blessed Son, in the humanity He had assumed for that express purpose, accomplished all His will, and, in self-sacrificing devotedness in the place of death itself, not only satisfied, but glorified, Him perfectly even as to sin itself.
1911 222 If, as we cannot but believe, man's sin and rebellion, the self-will that constitutes its essence, must be not only painful and highly obnoxious to Him in itself, but in its most revolting feature, to speak as a man, a reflection, a shame, a dishonour on His own great Name in the face of His own great universe, how correspondingly great must he the pleasure He derives from the perfect sinless sacrifice of His own beloved Son — come, in the humanity prepared for Him, to do His will, even unto death! And, if we cannot speak of the root-sin of humanity being herein retracted, can we not say at least that the position has been retrieved, gloriously retrieved, as regards the apparent traducing of God's character through man's becoming partaker in that great and terrible revolt of evil so maliciously planned by the enemy? For if the enemy have plans, is God without plans also? Eternal counsels are His, and quite in the track of their working, we are assured, is all that has been accomplished here. The fall of man, the rebellion of the creature, the setting up of the human will against God, how terrible a spectacle! But the perfection and obedience of Jesus Christ, tested and manifested to the extreme limit of death itself, in its expression of devotedness and self-surrender to His will affords, according to these same divine counsels, a manifestation, a display bringing glory to God in surpassing measure. "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God."
It is right that we should remember what the old "transactional theory" may have in some measure obscured — that the suffering and sacrifice of Christ was no mere piece of bargaining! something in the nature of a quantative repayment! so much suffering for so much sin! nor only, as it truly was the case, that in being once offered He bare the sins of many; but that there and then was accomplished a work in and by which not only was the Son of man Himself glorified; but God also glorified in Him, and that through His perfect obedience who even of the laying down of His life did say, "This commandment have I received of my Father." And this emphatically enters into what constitutes that propitiatory character of the work which theories of the atonement so consistently ignore. But there must be no divorcing of the idea of the true expiatory nature of the Saviour's sufferings from this perfection of devotedness to God's will to make everything of intrinsic value to consist in the self-abnegation and obedience so strikingly culminated there.
Theories of the atonement come and go. Logical and exhaustive no doubt they have each appeared to their originators. But one and all they have foundered in the past, and none have succeeded in filling out the complete scripture doctrine on the subject. Where all have failed, that remains for us clear and consistent, higher and fuller than theory or creed can reach or express. Explained to us also there, solely yet sufficiently, as never in theological statement or creed, by the revealed character of God Himself, who in His great love would have us, delivered and cleansed from sin, brought to Himself in righteousness, to be holy and without blame before Him in love.
"Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried." Facts sure enough they are, and "necessary to everlasting salvation to believe"; but how bald, how bare the statement of them! How open to any possible construction, and therefore worthless as definition, of what the import and significance may be of that greatest, most vital of all truths the atoning work of our Redeemer! It was characteristic of the creeds to be vague and indefinite here, and indeed they are uniformly so. Sound enough in statement, as far as the statement goes as to Christ's death; but fatally omitting all mention of what that death signified and accomplished. Is it not also a little remarkable that as we advance, beginning with the Apostles' Creed, the statement becomes in the Nicene and Athanasian more and yet more meagre. "Suffered for our salvation" eventually suffices to define all that advancing formalism and ritualism cared to retain. As forgiveness of sins became clouded over with uncertainty, and justification by faith so completely dropped out, what else could the doctrine of full and perfect atonement by Christ's death be but ignored and recede into the background? Strange that modern infidelity should give indications of pursuing the same path. Christ's death, His sufferings, in some way or other availing for our salvation is as far as they can pledge themselves to go. How different from such a clear and definite statement of faith as the following: "From Scripture I learn that this Blessed One, the Lord Jesus Christ, died for all, having given Himself a ransom for all, that He has made propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world; that God being a righteous and holy God, the Son of man had to be lifted up upon the cross; that there He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, and was made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him … that He has obeyed even unto death, and wrought a perfect work upon the cross for us; … that as by one man's disobedience many were constituted sinners, so by the obedience of one many shall be constituted righteous; that we are sanctified or set apart to God by God the Father through the offering of Jesus Christ once for all."
In this study of the creed, were one to mark all that disapproves itself to the faith of plain people, reared on scripture teaching, and unlearned in, or unsophisticated by the lore of the schools, there should be no end. It is after all no wonder that, as one goes on, this exposition of Christian doctrine from the Presbyterian standpoint is found to fairly bristle with points of possible contention, or of unavoidable dispute. The influx of new thought, of the critical, dissolving, disintegrating spirit characteristic of our time is revolutionising, as intelligent observers have all along predicted it would, the whole theological system of this interesting section of Christendom. As the evidence and product of this, in their modern preaching and lecturing, how much there is that is new and of foreign sound about it all! And in the instance before us, are we not being constantly arrested by the novel and strange in the interpretation given to an enunciation of doctrines on which Presbyterians in their measure used to be sound enough We have seen it on the very elementary truth concerning the being of God, as to the question of the evidences to His existence. How the witness of nature to Him has been adulterated by the accommodation sought to be given to the hypothesis of evolution! How on the other hand the fact that among men such a thing as a universal religious sense, or God-consciousness exists has been so perverted in the interests of the so-called science of Comparative Religion as to give entirely false value to its witness! And with all this Revelation itself, as a testimony not only that God must be, but that He is, and may be known, left out of the sum of Christian evidences. While on the question of His Fatherhood, raised as a final item in connection with the first clause of the Creed, there is entire misapprehension both of the nature of the relationship, and of the plane upon which it is realised. Then, when we come to the second clause, speculation, modern philosophy, and theories of New Theology complexion have so leavened Christology that on both the deity and humanity of Christ very little that is really satisfactory can be gleaned. While again, on the contrary, it is just there, on the Person of Christ, that the malign influence of modern theology is most apparent. Nor is the great fundamental doctrine of Christ's atonement immune from the contagion of novel interpretation, the surrender of valuable elements of the truth being here very marked.
And, were one to go on, the exposition would reveal in almost each several clause as it is taken up, most remarkable departure not only from scripture truth, but from the standards of doctrine professed in Presbyterianism as well. The first is no doubt the most sorrowful feature; but the latter also to thoughtful observers is indicative of much that calls for serious reflection. "Amidst the breaking up of conventional modes of thought and the felt insufficiency of the common standards of orthodoxy, if superstition does not take the place of truth … there is especial danger of the mind becoming weary and indifferent in the march after what is vital, and so taking refuge in the question, What is truth? as if it allowed of no definite or sufficient answer. This state of mind, in degree, may infest the church, as well as become the prevalent folly of the world. "But know this, O doubter, that truth will never be truth to thee nor to thy soul, until it is translated into action. Truth appeals to thy conscience, to thine affections, to thy duty, with all the authority of the God of truth. At first it deals with thee about ruin or redemption. It next claims to be formative of thy motives, to be the guide of thine actions, the director of thy thoughts, the animator of thine hopes, the overseer of thy whole inner as well as thine outer life. Truth exists not for thee, if thou refuse to it thine obedience and thine heart." J.T.