Philosophy and Religion / Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge

by Hastings Rashdall

What are we to make of all that vast structure, of the elaboration and complication of which the Constantinopolitan Creed which we miscall Nicene and even the so-called Athanasian Creed give very little idea to those who do not also know something of the Councils, the Fathers, and the Schoolmen? Has it all a modern meaning? Can it be translated into terms of our modern thought and speech? For I suppose it hardly needs demonstration—that such {172} translation is necessary, if it be possible. I doubt whether any man in this audience who has not made a special study of the subject, will get up and say that the meaning of such terms as 'substance,' 'essence,' 'nature,' 'hypostasis,' 'person,' 'eternal generation,' 'procession,' 'hypostatic union,' and the like is at once evident to him by the light of nature and an ordinary modern education. And those who know most about the matter will most fully realize the difficulty of saying exactly what was meant by such phrases at this or that particular moment or by this or that particular thinker. A thorough discussion of this subject from the point of view of one who acknowledges the supreme claims of Christ upon the modern mind, and is yet willing fairly to examine the traditional Creed in the light of modern philosophical culture, is a task which very much needs to be undertaken. I doubt if it has been satisfactorily performed yet. Even if I possessed a tithe of the learning necessary for that task, I could obviously not undertake it now. But a few remarks on the subject may be of use for the guidance of our personal religious life in this matter:

(1) I should like once more to emphasize the fact that the really important thing, from the point of view of the spiritual life of the individual soul, is our personal attitude towards our Lord himself and his teaching, and not the phrases in which we express {173} it. A man who believes what Christ taught about God's Fatherhood, about human brotherhood and human duty, about sin, the need for repentance, the Father's readiness to forgive, the value of Prayer, the certainty of Immortality—the man who finds the ideal of his life in the character of Jesus, and strives by the help which he has supplied to think of God and feel towards God as he did, to imitate him in his life, to live (like him) in communion with the Father and in the hope of Immortality—he is a Christian, and a Christian in the fullest sense of the word. He will find in that faith all that is necessary (to use the old phrase) for salvation—for personal goodness and personal Religion. And such a man will be saved, and saved through Christ; even though he has never heard of the Creeds, or deliberately rejects many of the formulae which the Church or the Churches have 'built upon' that one foundation.

(2) At the same time, if we believe in the supreme importance of Christ for the world, for the religious life of the Church and of the individual, it is surely convenient to have some language in which to express our sense of that importance. The actual personal attitude towards Christ is the essential thing: but as a means towards that attitude it is of importance to express what Christ has actually been to others, and what he ought to be to ourselves. Children {174} and adults alike require to have the claims of Christ presented to them before they can verify them by their own experience: and this requires articulate language of some kind. Religion can only be handed down, diffused, propagated by an organized society: and a religious society must have some means of handing on its religious ideas. It is possible to hold that under other conditions a different set of terms might have expressed the truth as well as those which have actually been enshrined in the New Testament, the Liturgies, and the Creeds. But the phrases which have been actually adopted surely have a strong presumption in their favour, even if it were merely through the difficulty of changing them, and the importance of unity, continuity, corporate life. It is easier to explain, or even if need be, alter in some measure the meaning of an accepted formula than to introduce a new one. Religious development has at all times taken place largely in this way. Our Lord himself entirely transformed the meaning of God's Fatherhood, Messiahship, the Kingdom of God, the people of God, the true Israel. At all events we should endeavour to discover the maximum of truth that any traditional formula can be made to yield before we discard it in favour of a new one. If we want to worship and to work with Christ's Church, we must do our best to give the maximum of meaning {175} to the language in which it expresses its faith and its devotion.

(3) We must insist strongly upon the thoroughly human character of Christ's own consciousness. Jesus did not—so I believe the critical study of the Gospels leads us to think—himself claim to be God, or to be Son of God in any sense but that of Messiahship. He claimed to speak with authority: he claimed a divine mission: he claimed to be a Revealer of divine truth. The fourth Gospel has been of infinite service to spiritual Christianity. It has given the world a due sense of the spiritual importance of Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Perhaps Christianity could hardly have expanded into a universal Religion without that Gospel. But we cannot regard all that the Johannine Christ says about himself as the ipsissima verba of Jesus. The picture is idealized in accordance with the writer's own conceptions, though after all its Theology is very much simpler than the later Theology which has grown out of it permits most people to see. We must not let these discourses blind us to the human character of Christ's consciousness. And this real humanity must carry with it the recognition of the thoroughly human limitations of his knowledge. The Bishop of Birmingham has prepared the way for the union of a really historical view of Christ's life with a reasonable interpretation of the Catholic {176} doctrine about him, by reviving the ancient view as to the limitation of his intellectual knowledge;[2] but the principle must be carried in some ways further than the Bishop himself would be prepared to go. The accepted Christology must be distinctly recognized as the Church's reflection and comment upon Christ's work and its value, not as the actual teaching of the Master about himself.

(4) It must likewise be recognized that the language in which the Church expressed this attitude towards Christ was borrowed from Greek Metaphysics, particularly from Plato and Neo-Platonism in the patristic period, and from Aristotle in the Middle Ages. And we cannot completely separate language from thought. It was not merely Greek technical phrases but Greek ways of thinking which were imported into Catholic Christianity. And the language, the categories, the ideas of Greek Philosophy were to some extent different from those of modern times. The most Platonically-minded thinker of modern times does not really think exactly as Plato thought: the most Catholic-minded thinker of modern times, if he has also breathed the atmosphere of modern Science and modern Culture, cannot really think exactly as Athanasius or Basil thought. I {177} do not suppose that any modern mind can think itself back into exactly the state of mind which an ancient Father was in, when he used the term Logos. This central idea of the Logos is not a category of modern thought. We cannot really think of a Being who is as distinct from the Father as he is represented as being in some of the patristic utterances—I say advisedly some, for widely different modes of thought are found in Fathers of equal authority—and yet so far one with him that we can say 'One God, one spiritual Being, and not two.' Nor are we under any obligation to accept these formulae as representing profound mysteries which we cannot understand: they were simply pieces of metaphysical thinking, some of them valuable and successful pieces of thinking, others less so. We must use them as helps, not as fetters to our thought. But, though we cannot think ourselves back into exactly the same intellectual condition as a fourth- or fifth-century Father, there is no reason why we should not recognize the fundamental truth of the religious idea which he was trying to express. A modern Philosopher would probably express that thought somewhat in this manner. 'The whole world is a revelation of God in a sense, and still more so is the human mind: all through the ages God has gone on revealing Himself more and more in human consciousness, especially through the prophets and other {178} exceptionally inspired men. The fullest and completest revelation of Himself was made once for all in the person and teaching of Jesus, in whom we recognize a revelation of God adequate to all our spiritual needs, when developed and interpreted by the continued presence of God's Spirit in the world and particularly in the Church which grew out of the little company of Jesus' friends.'

(5) I do not think at the present day even quite orthodox people are much concerned about the technicalities of the conciliar Theology, or even about the niceties of the Athanasian Creed. They are even a little suspicious sometimes that much talk about the doctrine of the Logos is only intended to evade a plain answer to the supreme question of the Divinity of Christ. You will expect me perhaps to say something about that question. I would first observe that the popular term 'divinity of Christ' is apt to give a somewhat misleading impression of what the orthodox teaching on the subject really is. For one thing, it is apt to suggest the idea of a pre-existent human consciousness of Jesus, which would be contrary to Catholic teaching. The Logos—the eternal Son or Reason of God—pre-existed; but not the man Jesus Christ who was born at a particular moment of history, and who is still, according to Catholic Theology, a distinct human soul perfectly and for ever united with the Word. {179} And then again, it is apt to suggest the heretical idea that the whole Trinity was incarnate in Christ, and not merely the Word. Orthodox Theology does not teach that God the Father became incarnate in Christ, and suffered upon the Cross. And lastly, the constant iteration of the phrase 'Divinity of Christ' tends to the concealment of the other half of the Catholic doctrine—the real humanity of Christ. To speak of the God-manhood of Christ or the indwelling of God in Christ would be a truer representation even of the strictest orthodox doctrine, apart from all modern re-interpretations. But even so, when all this is borne in mind, it may be asked, What is the real meaning of saying that a man was also God? I would answer, 'Whether it is possible to give a modern, intelligible, philosophically defensible meaning to the idea of Christ's Divinity depends entirely upon the question what we conceive to be the true relation between Humanity in general and God.' If (as I have attempted to show) we are justified in thinking of all human consciousness as constituting a partial reproduction of the divine Mind; if we are justified in thinking of human Reason, and particularly of the human Conscience, as constituting in some measure and in some sense a revelation by means of which we can rise to a contemplation of the divine nature; if Personality (as we know it in man) is the highest category within our knowledge; then {180} there is a real meaning in talking of one particular man being also divine; of the divine Reason or Logos as dwelling after a unique, exceptional, pre-eminent manner in him.

As Dr. Edward Caird has remarked, all the metaphysical questions which were formerly discussed as to the relation between the divine and the human nature in Christ, are now being discussed again in reference to the relation of Humanity in general to God. We cannot say intelligibly that God dwells in Christ, unless we have already recognized that in a sense God dwells and reveals Himself in Humanity at large, and in each particular human soul. But I fully recognize that, if this is all that is meant by the expression 'divinity of Christ,' that doctrine would be evacuated of nearly all that makes it precious to the hearts of Christian people. And therefore it is all-important that we should go on to insist that men do not reveal God equally. The more developed intellect reveals God more completely than that of the child or the savage: and (far more important from a religious point of view), the higher and more developed moral consciousness reveals Him more than the lower, and above all the actually better man reveals God more than the worse man. Now, if in the life, teaching, and character of Christ—in his moral and religious consciousness, and in the life and character which {181} so completely expressed and illustrated that consciousness—we can discover the highest revelation of the divine nature, we can surely attach a real meaning to the language of the Creeds which singles him out from all the men that ever lived as the one in whom the ideal relation of man to God is most completely realized. If God can only be known as revealed in Humanity, and Christ is the highest representative of Humanity, we can very significantly say 'Christ is the Son of God, very God of very God, of one substance with the Father,' though the phrase undoubtedly belongs to a philosophical dialect which we do not habitually use.

(6) Behind the doctrine of the Incarnation looms the still more technical doctrine of the Trinity. Yet after all, it is chiefly, I believe, as a sort of necessary background or presupposition to the idea of Christ's divine nature that modern religious people, not professionally interested in Theology, attach importance to that doctrine. They accept the doctrine in so far as it is implied by the teaching of Scripture and by the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity, but they are not much attached to the technicalities of the Athanasian Creed. The great objection to that Creed, apart from the damnatory clauses, is the certainty that it will be misunderstood by most of those who think they understand it at all. The {182} best thing we could do with the Athanasian Creed is to drop it altogether: the next best thing to it is to explain it, or at least so much of it as really interests the ordinary layman—the doctrine of three Persons in one God. And therefore it is important to insist in the strongest possible way that the word 'Person' which has most unfortunately come to be the technical term for what the Greeks more obscurely called the three huostaseis in the Godhead does not, and never did, mean what we commonly understand by Personality—whether in the language of ordinary life or of modern Philosophy. I do not deny that at certain periods Theology did tend to think of the Logos as a distinct being from the Father, a distinct consciousness with thoughts, will, desires, emotions not identical with those of God the Father. The distinction was at times pushed to a point which meant either sheer Tritheism, or something which is incapable of being distinctly realized in thought at all. But that is scarcely true of the Theology which was finally accepted either by East or West. This is most distinctly seen in the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas: and I would remind you that you cannot be more orthodox than St. Thomas—the source not only of the Theology professed by the Pope and taught in every Roman Seminary but of the Theology embodied in our own Articles. St. Thomas' explanation of the Trinity {183} is that God is at one and the same time Power or Cause[3] (Father), Wisdom (Son), Will (Holy Ghost); or, since the Will of God is always a loving Will, Love (Amor) is sometimes substituted for Will (Voluntas) in explanation of the Holy Spirit.[4] How little {184} St. Thomas thought of the 'Persons' as separate consciousnesses, is best seen from his doctrine (taken from Augustine) that the love of the Father for the Son is the Holy Spirit. The love of one Being for himself or for another is not a Person in the natural, normal, modern sense of the word: and it would be quite unorthodox to attribute Personality to the Son in any other sense than that in which it is attributed to the Holy Ghost. I do not myself attach any great importance to these technical phrases. I do not {185} deny that the supremely important truth that God has received His fullest revelation in the historical Christ, and that He goes on revealing Himself in the hearts of men, might have been otherwise, more simply, to modern minds more intelligibly, expressed. There are detailed features of the patristic or the scholastic version of the doctrine which involve conceptions to which the most accomplished Professors of Theology would find it difficult or impossible to give a modern meaning. I do not know for instance that much would have been lost had Theology (with the all but canonical writers Clement of Rome and Hermas, with Ignatius, with Justin, with the philosophic Clement of Alexandria) continued to speak indifferently of the Word and the Spirit. Yet taken by itself this Thomist doctrine of the Trinity is one to which it is quite possible to give a perfectly rational meaning, and a meaning probably very much nearer to that which was really intended by its author than the meaning which is usually put upon the Trinitarian formula by popular religious thought. That God is Power, and Wisdom, and Love is simply the essence of Christian Theism—not the less true because few Unitarians would repudiate it.

(7) Once more let me briefly remind you that any claim for finality in the Christian Religion must be based on its power of perpetual development. {186} Belief in the continued work of the Holy Spirit in the Church is an essential element of the Catholic Faith. We need not, with the Ritschlian, contemptuously condemn the whole structure of Christian doctrine because undoubtedly it is a development of what was taught by Christ himself. Only, if we are to justify the development of the past, we must go on to assert the same right and duty of development in Ethics and in Theology for the Church of the future. In the pregnant phrase of Loisy, the development which the Church is most in need of at the present moment is precisely a development in the idea of development itself.

But how can we tell (it may be asked), if we once admit that the development of Religion does not end with the teaching of Christ, where the development will stop? If we are to admit an indefinite possibility of growth and change, how do we know that Christianity itself will not one day be outgrown? If we once admit that the final appeal is to the religious consciousness of the present, we must acknowledge that it is not possible to demonstrate a priori that the Christian Religion is the final, universal, or absolute Religion. All we can say is that we have no difficulty in recognizing that the development which has so far taken place, in so far as it is a development which we can approve and accept, seems to us a development which leaves the {187} Religion still essentially the Religion of Christ. In the whole structure of the modern Christian's religious belief, that which was contributed by Christ himself is incomparably the most important part—the basis of the whole structure. The essentials of Religion and Morality still seem to us to be contained in his teaching as they are contained nowhere else. All the rest that is included in an enlightened modern Christian's religious creed is either a direct working out of the principles already contained there, or (if it has come from other sources) it has been transformed in the process of adaptation. Nothing has been discovered in Religion and Morality which tends in any way to diminish the unique reverence which we feel for the person of Christ, the perfect sufficiency of his character to represent and incarnate for us the character of God. It is a completely gratuitous assumption to suppose that it will ever lose that sufficiency. Even in the development of Science, there comes a time when its fundamentals are virtually beyond the reach of reconsideration. Still more in practical life, mere unmotived, gratuitous possibilities may be disregarded. It weakens the hold of fundamental convictions upon the mind to be perpetually contemplating the possibility or probability of fundamental revision. We ought no doubt to keep the spiritual ear ever open that we may always be hearing what the Spirit saith unto {188} the Churches. But to look forward to a time when any better way will be discovered of thinking of God than Jesus' way of thinking of Him as a loving Father is as gratuitous as to contemplate the probability of something in human life at present unknown being discovered of greater value than Love. Until that discovery is made, our Religion will still remain the Religion of him who, by what he said and by what he was, taught the world to think of God as the supreme Love and the supreme Holiness, the source of all other love and all other holiness.