LITERATURE
The literature is here too vast to mention even the works of the very first importance: I can only select a very few books which have been useful to myself. The late Sir John Seeley's Ecce Homo may be regarded as in the light of modern research a somewhat uncritical book, but it remains to my mind the most striking expression of the appeal which Christ makes to the Conscience of the modern world. It has proved a veritable fifth Gospel to many seekers after light. Bishop Moorhouse's little book, The Teaching of Christ, will serve as an introduction to the study of Christ's life and work. A more elaborate treatment of the subject, with which I am very much in sympathy, is Wendt's Teaching of Jesus. The ideal life of Christ perhaps remains to be written. Professor Sanday's Article on 'Jesus Christ' in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible may be mentioned as a good representative of moderate and scholarly Conservatism or Liberal Conservatism. Professor Oscar Holtzmann's Life of Jesus is based on more radical, perhaps over-radical, criticism. Professor Harnack's {189} What is Christianity? has become the typical expression of the Ritschlian attitude. The ideas of extreme Roman Catholic 'Modernism' may be gathered from Loisy's l'Évangile et l'Église and Autour d'un Petit Livre. Professor Gardner's three books—Exploratio Evangelica, the shorter An Historic View of the New Testament, and The Growth of Christianity—may be especially commended to those who wish to satisfy themselves that a thorough-going recognition of the results of historical Criticism is compatible with a whole-hearted personal acceptance of Christianity. Dr. Fairbairn's Philosophy of the Christian Religion and Bousset's What is Religion? are especially valuable as vindications of the supreme position of Christianity combined with the fullest recognition of the measure of Revelation contained in all the great historical Religions. Allen's Continuity of Christian Thought suggests what seems to me the right attitude of the modern thinker towards traditional dogma, though the author's position is more decidedly 'Hegelian' than mine. I may also mention Professor Inge's contribution to Contentio Veritatis on 'The Personal Christ,' and some of the Essays in Lux Hominum. Though I cannot always agree with him, I recognize the high value of the Bishop of Birmingham's Bampton Lectures on The Divinity of Jesus Christ the Son of God and the accompanying volume of Dissertations.
[1] In their assertion of the necessity of Development, and of the religious community as the origin of Development, the teaching of the Abbe Loisy and the Roman Catholic Modernists seems to me to be complementary to that of the Kitschlians, though I do not always accept their rather destructive critical conclusions.
[2] In his Essay in Lux Mundi (1889). He has since developed his view in his Bampton Lectures on The Incarnation of the Son of God and a volume of Dissertations on Subjects connected with the Incarnation.
[3] I venture thus to translate 'Principium' (arche); in Abelard and his disciple Peter the Lombard, the famous Master of the Sentences, the word is 'Potentia' (L. I. Dist. xxxiv.): and St. Thomas himself (P. I. Q. xli. Art. 4) explains 'Principium' by 'Potentia generandi Filium.'
[4] Thus in Summa Theologica, Pars I. Q. xxxvii. Art. 1, the 'conclusio' is 'Amor, personaliter acceptus, proprium nomen est Spiritus sancti,' which is explained to mean that there are in the Godhead 'duse processiones: Una per modum intellectus, quae est processio Verbi; alia per modum voluntatis, quae est processio amoris.' So again (ibid. Q. xlv. Art. 7): 'In creaturis igitur rationalibus, in quibus est intellectus et voluntas, invenitur repraesentatio Trinitatis per modum imaginis, inquantum invenitur in eis Verbum conceptum, et amor procedens.' In a friendly review of my Essay in Contentio Veritatis, in which I endeavoured to expound in a modern form this doctrine, Dr. Sanday (Journal of Theological Studies, vol. iv., 1903) wrote: 'One of the passages that seem to me most open to criticism is that on the doctrine of the Trinity (p. 48). "Power, Wisdom, and Will" surely cannot be a sound trichotomy as applied either to human nature or Divine. Surely Power is an expression of Will and not co-ordinate with it. The common division, Power (or Will), Wisdom, and Love is more to the point. Yet Dr. Rashdall identifies the two triads by what I must needs think a looseness of reasoning.' The Margaret Professor of Divinity hardly seems to recognize that he is criticizing the Angelical Doctor and not myself. If Dr. Sanday had had the formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, the result, if less metaphysically subtle, might no doubt have proved more easily intelligible to the modern mind; but the 'identification' of which he complains happens to be part of the traditional doctrine, and I was endeavouring merely to make the best of it for modern Christians. I add St. Thomas' justification of it, which is substantially what I gave in Contentio Veritatis and have repeated above: 'Cum processiones divinas secundum aliquas actiones necesse est accipere, secundum bonitatem, et hujusmodi alia attributa, non accipiuntur aliae processiones, nisi Verbi et amoris, secundum quod Deus suam essentiam, veritatem et bonitatem intelligit et amat' (Q. xxvii. Art. 5). The source of the doctrine is to be found in St. Augustine, who habitually speaks of the Holy Spirit as Amor; but, when he refers to the 'Imago Trinitatia' in man the Spirit is represented sometimes by 'Amor,' sometimes by 'Voluntas' (de Trin., L. xiv. cap 7). The other two members of the human triad are with him 'Memoria' (or 'Mens') and 'Intelligentia.'
With regard to the difficulty of distinguishing Power from Will, I was perhaps to blame for not giving St. Thomas' own word 'Principium.' The word 'Principium' means the pege theoteos, the ultimate Cause or Source of Being: by 'Voluntas' St. Thomas means that actual putting forth of Power (in knowing and in loving the Word or Thought eternally begotten by God the Father) which is the Holy Ghost. I am far from saying that the details of St. Thomas' doctrine are not open to much criticism: a rough correspondence between his teaching and any view of God's Nature which can commend itself to a modern Philosopher is all that I endeavoured to point out. The modern thinker would no doubt with Dr. Sanday prefer the triad 'Power, Wisdom, Love,' or (I would suggest) 'Feeling, including Love as the highest form of Feeling.' The reason why St. Thomas will not accept such an interpretation is that his Aristotelianism (here not very consonant with the Jewish and Christian view of God) excludes all feeling or emotion from the divine nature; 'Love' has therefore to be identified with 'Will' and not with 'Feeling.' I cannot but think that the Professor might have taken a little more trouble to understand both St. Thomas and myself before accusing either of us of 'looseness of reasoning.'