Phases of Faith; Or, Passages from the History of My Creed

by Francis William Newman

3. The assumed infallibility of the entire Scripture is a proved falsity, not merely as to physiology, and other scientific matters, but also as to morals: and it remains for farther inquiry how to discriminate the trustworthy from the untrustworthy within the limits of the Bible itself.

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When distinctly conscious, after long efforts to evade it, that this was and must henceforth be my position, I ruminated on the many auguries which had been made concerning me by frightened friends. "You will become a Socinian," had been said of me even at Oxford: "You will become an infidel," had since been added. My present results, I was aware, would seem a sadly triumphant confirmation to the clearsighted instinct of orthodoxy. But the animus of such prophecies had always made me indignant, and I could not admit that there was any merit in such clearsightedness. What! (used I to say,) will you shrink from truth, lest it lead to error? If following truth must bring us to Socinianism, let us by all means become Socinians, or anything else. Surely we do not love our doctrines more than the truth, but because they are the truth. Are we not exhorted to "prove all things, and hold fast that which is good?"—But to my discomfort, I generally found that this (to me so convincing) argument for feeling no alarm, only caused more and more alarm, and gloomier omens concerning me. On considering all this in leisurely retrospect, I began painfully to doubt, whether after all there is much love of truth even among those who have an undeniable strength of religious feeling. I questioned with myself, whether love of truth is not a virtue demanding a robust mental cultivation; whether mathematical or other abstract studies may not be practically needed for it. But no: for how then could it exist in some feminine natures? how in rude and unphilosophical times? On the whole, I rather concluded, that there is in nearly all English education a positive repressing of a young person's truthfulness; for I could distinctly see, that in my own case there was always need of defying authority and public opinion,—not to speak of more serious sacrifices,—if I was to follow truth. All society seemed so to hate novelties of thought, as to prefer the chances of error in the old.—Of course! why, how could it be otherwise, while Test Articles were maintained?

Yet surely if God is truth, none sincerely aspire to him, who dread to lose their present opinions in exchange for others truer.—I had not then read a sentence of Coleridge, which is to this effect: "If any one begins by loving Christianity more than the truth, he will proceed to love his Church more than Christianity, and will end by loving his own opinions better than either." A dim conception of this was in my mind; and I saw that the genuine love of God was essentially connected with loving truth as truth, and not truth as our own accustomed thought, truth as our old prejudice; and that the real saint can never be afraid to let God teach him one lesson more, or unteach him one more error. Then I rejoiced to feel how right and sound had been our principle, that no creed can possibly be used as the touchstone of spirituality: for man morally excels man, as far as creeds are concerned, not by assenting to true propositions, but by loving them because they are discerned to be true, and by possessing a faculty of discernment sharpened by the love of truth. Such are God's true apostles, differing enormously in attainment and elevation, but all born to ascend. For these to quarrel between themselves because they do not agree in opinions, is monstrous. Sentiment, surely, not opinion, is the bond of the Spirit; and as the love of God, so the love of truth is a high and sacred sentiment, in comparison to which our creeds are mean.

Well, I had been misjudged; I had been absurdly measured by other men's creed: but might I not have similarly misjudged others, since I had from early youth been under similar influences? How many of my seniors at Oxford I had virtually despised because they were not evangelical! Had I had opportunity of testing their spirituality? or had I the faculty of so doing? Had I not really condemned them as unspiritual, barely because of their creed? On trying to reproduce the past to my imagination, I could not condemn myself quite as sweepingly as I wished; but my heart smote me on account of one. I had a brother, with whose name all England was resounding for praise or blame: from his sympathies, through pure hatred of Popery, I had long since turned away. What was this but to judge him by his creed? True, his whole theory was nothing but Romanism transferred to England: but what then? I had studied with the deepest interest Mrs. Schimmelpenninck's account of the Portroyalists, and though I was aware that she exhibits only the bright side of her subject, yet the absolute excellencies of her nuns and priests showed that Romanism as such was not fatal to spirituality. They were persecuted: this did them good perhaps, or certainly exhibited their brightness. So too my brother surely was struggling after truth, fighting for freedom to his own heart and mind, against church articles and stagnancy of thought. For this he deserved both sympathy and love: but I, alas! had not known and seen his excellence. But now God had taught me more largeness by bitter sorrow working the peaceable fruit of righteousness; at last then I might admire my brother. I therefore wrote to him a letter of contrition. Some change, either in his mind or in his view of my position, had taken place; and I was happy to find him once more able, not only to feel fraternally, as he had always done, but to act also fraternally. Nevertheless, to this day it is to me a painfully unsolved mystery, how a mind can claim its freedom in order to establish bondage.

For the peculiarities of Romanism I feel nothing, and I can pretend nothing, but contempt, hatred, disgust, or horror. But this system of falsehood, fraud, unscrupulous and unrelenting ambition, will never be destroyed, while Protestants keep up their insane anathemas against opinion. These are the outworks of the Romish citadel: until they are razed to the ground, the citadel will defy attack. If we are to blind our eyes, in order to accept an article of King Edward VI., or an argument of St. Paul's, why not blind them so far as to accept the Council of Trent? If we are to pronounce that a man "without doubt shall perish everlastingly," unless he believes the self-contradictions of the pseudo-Athanasian Creed, why should we shrink from a similar anathema on those who reject the self-contradictions of Transsubstantiation? If one man is cast out of God's favour for eliciting error while earnestly searching after truth, and another remains in favour by passively receiving the word of a Church, of a Priest, or of an Apostle, then to search for truth is dangerous; apathy is safer; then the soul does not come directly into contact with God and learn of him, but has to learn from, and unconvincedly submit to, some external authority. This is the germ of Romanism: its legitimate development makes us Pagans outright.

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But in what position was I now, towards the apostles? Could I admit their inspiration, when I no longer thought them infallible? Undoubtedly. What could be clearer on every hypothesis, than that they were inspired on and after the day of Pentecost, and yet remained ignorant and liable to mistake about the relation of the Gentiles to the Jews? The moderns have introduced into the idea of inspiration that of infallibility, to which either omniscience or dictation is essential. That there was no dictation, (said I,) is proved by the variety of style in the Scriptural writers; that they were not omniscient, is manifest. In truth, if human minds had not been left to them, how could they have argued persuasively? was not the superior success of their preaching to that of Christ, perhaps due to their sharing in the prejudices of their contemporaries? An orator is most persuasive, when he is lifted above his hearers on those points only on which he is to reform their notions. The apostles were not omniscient: granted: but it cannot hence be inferred that they did not know the message given them by God. Their knowledge however perfect, must yet in a human mind have coexisted with ignorance; and nothing (argued I) but a perpetual miracle could prevent ignorance from now and then exhibiting itself in some error. But hence to infer that they are not inspired, and are not messengers from God, is quite gratuitous. Who indeed imagines that John or Paul understood astronomy so well as Sir William Herschel? Those who believe that the apostles might err in human science, need not the less revere their moral and spiritual wisdom.

At the same time it became a matter of duty to me, if possible, to discriminate the authoritative from the unauthoritative in the Scripture, or at any rate avoid to accept and propagate as true that which is false, even if it be false only as science and not as religion. I unawares,—more perhaps from old habit than from distinct conviction,—started from the assumption that my fixed point of knowledge was to be found in the sensible or scientific, not in the moral. I still retained from my old Calvinistic doctrine a way of proceeding, as if purely moral judgment were my weak side, at least in criticizing the Scripture: so that I preferred never to appeal to direct moral and spiritual considerations, except in the most glaringly necessary cases. Thus, while I could not accept the panegyric on Jael, and on Abraham's intended sacrifice of his son, I did not venture unceremoniously to censure the extirpation of the Canaanites by Joshua: of which I barely said to myself, that it "certainly needed very strong proof" of the divine command to justify it. I still went so far in timidity as to hesitate to reject on internal evidence the account of heroes or giants begotten by angels, who, enticed by the love of women, left heaven for earth. The narrative in Gen. vi. had long appeared to me undoubtedly to bear this sense; and to have been so understood by Jude and Peter (2 Pet. ii.), as, I believe, it also was by the Jews and early Fathers. I did at length set it aside as incredible; not however from moral repugnance to it, (for I feared to trust the soundness of my instinct,) but because I had slid into a new rule of interpretation,—that I must not obtrude miracles on the Scripture narrative. The writers tell their story without showing any consciousness that it involves physiological difficulties. To invent a miracle in order to defend this, began to seem to me unwarrantable.

It had become notorious to the public, that Geologists rejected the idea of a universal deluge as physically impossible. Whence could the water come, to cover the highest mountains? Two replies were attempted: 1. The flood of Noah is not described as universal: 2. The flood was indeed universal, but the water was added and removed by miracle.—Neither reply however seemed to me valid. First, the language respecting the universality of the flood is as strong as any that could be written: moreover it is stated that the tops of the high hills were all covered, and after the water subsides, the ark settles on the mountains of Armenia. Now in Armenia, of necessity numerous peaks would be seen, unless the water covered them, and especially Ararat. But a flood that covered Ararat would overspread all the continents, and leave only a few summits above. If then the account in Genesis is to be received, the flood was universal. Secondly: the narrator represents the surplus water to have come from the clouds and perhaps from the sea, and again to drain back into the sea. Of a miraculous creation and destruction of water, he evidently does not dream.