3. View of Loisy.
The same verse may help us to form an estimate of the theory of M. Loisy. So far as ‘the theology of the Incarnation’ is meant to express the same thing, the phrase is certainly justified. And if M. Loisy intends it to be at the same time a paraphrase for the doctrine of the Logos, we can have no objection. At least the only objection we need have would be that he is using a vaguer and more general term, when he might use one that is both definite and characteristic. As a rule, one is more likely to get at the heart of a writer’s meaning by laying stress on the peculiar and individual elements in his teaching, and not on that which he shares with others.
But the question how far either M. Loisy or Dr. Grill has succeeded in defining the root-idea of the Gospel is after all only secondary. The real issue is not as to the accuracy of the definition, but as to the nature of the relation which is pre-supposed between the root-idea, the principle which covers the plan and object of the Gospel, and the narrative of which the main body of the Gospel consists. If I may speak for a moment of the leading idea, not of St. John but of M. Loisy, I am afraid that the tendency, if not the purpose, of his whole book is to convict the author of the Gospel of writing fiction where he professes to write fact. ‘The theology of the Incarnation’ is a euphemism which is meant to describe the Gospel as from end to end allegory and symbol, the product of an idea and not of reality.
M. Loisy, we all know, occupies a peculiar position. His criticism is radical and destructive, but he believes himself to bring back as faith what his criticism has destroyed. Few recent writers have left less of the Fourth Gospel standing as solid history; but at the same time he is a dutiful son of his Church, and what the Church accepts he also accepts as true. There can hardly be any doubt that the Church, as far back as we can trace its convictions, regarded the Fourth Gospel as strictly historical. If it had not done so, it is very questionable whether the Church itself would have taken the shape it did. There are many in these days who, if they followed M. Loisy as a critic, would find it very hard to follow him as a theologian. They are not a little perplexed to understand how he himself can reconcile the two trains of his thinking. That, however, is his own affair, with which outsiders are not concerned. But they are greatly concerned to know whether or not his criticism is sound. There is no doubt at all that the Fourth Gospel expresses the Evangelist’s ‘theology of the Incarnation.’ It expresses it, but is it the product of it? Has it no more substantial foundation than an idea? Is it history, or is it fiction? That is the great and vital question to which we must address ourselves more directly in the next lecture.