1. Complete Uniformity of Belief and Statement Impossible.—It is impossible, for, in the first place, it is difficult, in any case, to tell our real inner creed. Some of its most important articles are quite certain to be implicit and unconfessed, even to ourselves. The only important creed, in the case of the individual, is that which finds its expression in life. There are assumptions implied in deeds and spirit; and the spirit of a man throws more light on his real creed than his formal statements do. His doctrines may be radical, his spirit thoroughly constructive, or vice versa. If all thought tends to pass into act, as modern psychology insists, we have a right to urge that those articles of a man's creed which find expression in living, are for him the really important articles. The will has a creed, as well as the intellect, and the real creed is the creed of life rather than of lips; it is wrought out, rather than thought out. And this real, inner, living creed probably no man can state with accuracy even in his own case. And if he is ever able even approximately to do so, it will be at the end, rather than at the beginning, of his life's work and experience.
Moreover, complete uniformity of belief and statement is impossible, for, even exactly the same words cannot mean the same to different individuals, for they are interpreted out of a different experience; they cannot mean precisely the same thing, even to the same individual, at different times, for his interpreting experience, too, is a changing thing. We need sometimes to remind ourselves that there is never any literal transfer of thought from mind to mind, still less from statement to mind; all thinking of even the most passive kind has an element of creation in it, for terms must be interpreted, and the interpretation is inevitably limited by previous experience. Sabatier[91] is quite right, therefore, in asserting that credal statements must change their meaning just as words change. But it is to be noted that this principle means not only that unalterable doctrine, in this sense, is impossible between the generations; but also that identical doctrine is impossible in the same generation.
Out of the different experiences, too, grow the different points of view and the different emphases. And these different points of view, and the different distribution of emphasis, give the same creed very different meanings for different men. It is as impossible to avoid this, as it is to avoid change and individuality. It is true of a man's creed as of his environment, that the only effective portions are those to which he attends—those which he emphasizes, not those to which he gives a bare assent; and this varying attention and emphasis cannot be the same in different individuals. The only logical outcome of a thorough-going attempt to reach an identical creed is the church of one member.
2. Complete Uniformity of Belief and Statement Undesirable.—But complete uniformity of belief and statement is not only impossible; it is undesirable. For, in the first place, it is only by these differing but supplementary finite expressions that we can approximate to the infinite truth. Like Leibnitz's mirrors in the market-place, it is only by combining the points of view of all that a complete representation is possible. We need one another here, as elsewhere; we need the fellowship of the church, and of the whole church; the strictly individual view must be fragmentary. Our message needs the supplement of the messages of others; through each member God has something unique to say. They without us, we without them, are not to be made perfect. We need to share, in such measure as is possible, the experiences of others; but this is possible only through vital contact.
Moreover, we are not to forget how truth comes—not by surrender of convictions, not by the silence of each, but by each standing earnestly for the truth which is given to him, in a union of conviction and charity. For only he who has convictions can be tolerant, as only he who has fears can be courageous.
Once more, we cannot and must not simply repeat each other. Nothing is so fatal to spiritual life as dishonesty. To attempt an identical creed involves something of such untrue repetition of the experience of others. For, as Herrmann has said, doctrines are an expression of life already present, and are of value only so; they are not themselves a condition of life. If the doctrines we profess are not the honest expression of a real life in us, they are a hindrance, not a help. "Conscious untruth tends to drive from Christ."
For every one of these reasons, now, it is positively undesirable to forbid varying theories or to check the varied expressions of Christian faith, whether in accordance or not with certain standard formulas. A growing life requires a growing expression, which must be justified by its history, not dogmatically by reference to some supposed fixed standard of doctrine in the past. The very meaning and health of Christian fellowship demand that we should welcome and encourage the honest expression of the varied manifestations of the One Spirit, that we may be the more certain to get the whole truth, the whole life which God intends. We are members one of another, in doctrine as in life.
It becomes increasingly clear, thus, where the real Christian unity is, and where the common grounds of Christian belief must be sought. The real unity of Christians is in their common life, in the common experience, in the possession of the common personal self-revelation of God in Christ, in the inworking of the One Spirit. It is the meaning of this one central Christian experience, which we strive to express in our doctrinal statements. Our expressions must vary; the life, the personal relation to God, is one. The best analogy we have of the case lies in what the same great friend means to different persons. Our creeds are at best poor and partial expressions of the meaning for us of the divine friendship, of God's self-revelation to us. It is, then, precisely in our Christian experience and in that personal relation to God revealed in Christ which makes a man a Christian at all, that all the common grounds of Christian belief lie.
The solution of Christian unity here, that is, is not by increasing abstraction, but by frank concreteness; not by false simplicity, but by living fullness; not by relation to propositions, but by relation to facts; not by emphasis on natural religion, but by emphasis on historical religion; not by bringing nature into prominence, but human nature; not by relation to things, but by relation to persons, to the one great world fact, the one person, to Christ. "I am the Way." The Christian faith is faith in a person; the Christian confession of faith is confession of Christ. And if we are really in earnest with this word Christian, we already have our basis of unity in our personal relation to Christ, our common Lord. But that personal relation to God in Christ is always more than a credal statement can express, though we may never cease to attempt such expression; and for the sake of the larger realization, by ourselves and by the church, of the meaning of the personal relation to Christ, we must welcome every honest expression of his Christian life by another. Altogether, we shall at best but dimly shadow forth its full meaning.
And such a concrete relation to the personal Christ is a far better test of genuine Christian faith than any creed, whether more or less elaborate, since in the personal relation character inevitably comes out; and any test that allows even for the moment the ignoring of the ethical, cannot remain even intellectually adequate, for Christian doctrine looks always and certainly to life. Even if one is thinking only of the correct intellectual expression of the common Christian life—the maintenance of orthodoxy, so far as that is possible to us—it should be remembered that the most conservative of all influences is love of a person, and, by no means, subscription to a set of propositions. Would Christ so think? Would he so speak?—these are questions far more certain to keep Christian thinking true, than any intellectual test of man's devising.