Lux Mundi: A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation, / 10th Edition, 1890

by Unknown

PREFACE.

1. This volume is primarily due to a set of circumstances which exists no longer. The writers found themselves at Oxford together between the years 1875-1885, engaged in the common work of University education; and compelled for their own sake, no less than that of others, to attempt to put the Catholic faith into its right relation to modern intellectual and moral problems. Such common necessity and effort led to not infrequent meetings, in which a common body of thought and sentiment, and a common method of commending the faith to the acceptance of others, tended to form itself. We, who once enjoyed this happy companionship, are now for the most part separated. But at least some result of our temporary association remains, which it is hoped may justify and explain the present volume.

2. For this collection of essays represents an attempt on behalf of the Christian Creed in the way of explanation. We are sure that Jesus Christ is still and will continue to be the 'Light of the world.' We are sure that if men can rid themselves of prejudices and mistakes (for which, it must be said, the Church is often as responsible as they), and will look afresh at what the Christian faith really means, they will find that it is as adequate as ever to interpret life and knowledge in its several departments, and to impart not less intellectual than moral freedom. But we are conscious also that if the true meaning of the faith is to be made sufficiently conspicuous it needs disencumbering, reinterpreting, explaining. We can but quote in this sense a distinguished French writer who has often acted as an inspiration to many of us. Père Gratry felt painfully that the dogmas of the Church were but as an 'unknown tongue' to many of the best of his compatriots. 'It is not enough,' he said, 'to utter the mysteries of the Spirit, the great mysteries of Christianity, in formulas, true before God, but not understood of the people. The apostle and the prophet are precisely those who have the gift of interpreting these obscure and profound formulas for each man and each age. To translate into the common tongue the mysterious and sacred language ... to speak the word of God afresh in each age, in accordance with both the novelty of the age and the eternal antiquity of the truth, this is what S. Paul means by interpreting the unknown tongue. But to do this, the first condition is that a man should appreciate the times he lives in. "Hoc autem tempus quare non probatis[1]?"'

3. We have written then in this volume not as 'guessers at truth,' but as servants of the Catholic Creed and Church, aiming only at interpreting the faith we have received. On the other hand, we have written with the conviction that the epoch in which we live is one of profound transformation, intellectual and social, abounding in new needs, new points of view, new questions; and certain therefore to involve great changes in the outlying departments of theology, where it is linked on to other sciences, and to necessitate some general restatement of its claim and meaning.

This is to say that theology must take a new development. We grudge the name development, on the one hand, to anything which fails to preserve the type of the Christian Creed and the Christian Church; for development is not innovation, it is not heresy: on the other hand, we cannot recognise as the true 'development of Christian doctrine,' a movement which means merely an intensification of a current tendency from within, a narrowing and hardening of theology by simply giving it greater definiteness or multiplying its dogmas.

The real development of theology is rather the process in which the Church, standing firm in her old truths, enters into the apprehension of the new social and intellectual movements of each age: and because 'the truth makes her free' is able to assimilate all new material, to welcome and give its place to all new knowledge, to throw herself into the sanctification of each new social order, bringing forth out of her treasures things new and old, and shewing again and again her power of witnessing under changed conditions to the catholic capacity of her faith and life.

4. To such a development these studies attempt to be a contribution. They will be seen to cover, more or less, the area of the Christian faith in its natural order and sequence of parts, but the intention is not to offer complete theological treatises, or controversial defences of religious truths: it is rather to present positively the central ideas and principles of religion, in the light of contemporary thought and current problems. The only one of the essays in fact which has any degree of formal completeness, is that on Christian Ethics, a subject on which the absence of systematic books of a genuine English growth seems to justify a more detailed treatment.

5. The main omissions of which we are conscious are due to want of space. For instance, we should have been very glad to attempt a separate treatment of the subject of sin; though we hope the line that would be taken about it has been sufficiently indicated by more than one writer[2]. Again, we have left aside any detailed discussion of historical evidences; but it will be seen that our attempt has been so to present the principles of the Christian faith as to suggest the point of view from which evidences are intelligible, and from which they will, it is firmly believed, be found satisfactory. Once more, if we have not found room for a treatment of miracles, at least we hope that the Church's conception of God, as He manifests Himself in nature and in grace, which we have endeavoured to express, will at once acquit us of any belief in capricious 'violations of law;' and will also suggest a view of the world as disordered by sin and crying out for redemption, which will make it intelligible that 'miracles' should appear, not as violating law, but as a necessary element in its restoration as well as its completer exhibition; contrary, not to the fundamental order of the Divine working, but only to a superficial or mechanical view of it, or to a view which sin has distorted or preoccupation with physical science has unduly narrowed.

6. It only remains to explain that we have written not as mere individuals, but as ministers, under common conditions, of a common faith. This unity of conviction has enabled us freely to offer and accept mutual criticism and suggestion; so that without each of us professing such responsibility for work other than his own, as would have involved undue interference with individual method, we do desire this volume to be the expression of a common mind and a common hope.

C. G. Pusey House,
Michaelmas, 1889.

[1] Gratry, Henri Perreyve, Paris 1880, p. 162.

[2] See pp. 208-211, 292-3, 318-20, 475-6.