Lux Mundi: A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation, / 10th Edition, 1890

by Unknown

PREFACE TO THE TENTH EDITION.

I.

There are two things which may fairly be regretted in regard to the criticisms—often the very kind and encouraging criticisms—which, this book has received. There is, first, the disproportionate attention which has been given to some twenty pages on the subject of the inspiration of Holy Scripture, an attention so disproportionate as to defeat the object which the writers had in view in assigning to that subject its place in the general treatment of the work of the Holy Spirit—the object, namely, of giving it its proper context in the whole body of Christian truth: and there is, secondly, the fact that we have not generally succeeded in gaining the attention of our critics to the point of view from which these 'studies' were written, and the purpose they were intended to serve.

Our purpose was 'to succour a distressed faith' by endeavouring to bring the Christian Creed into its right relation to the modern growth of knowledge, scientific, historical, critical; and to the modern problems of politics and ethics[3]. We were writing as for Christians, but as for Christians perplexed by new knowledge which they are required to assimilate and new problems with which they are required to deal. What is needed to help men in such perplexity is not compromise, for compromise generally means tampering with principle, but readjustment, or fresh correlation, of the things of faith and the things of knowledge. In detail this will, no doubt, involve concessions, and that on both sides, because both sides have been liable to make mistakes[4]; but in the main what is to be looked for is a reconciliation which shall at once set the scientific and critical movement, so far as it is simply scientific and critical, free from the peril of irreligion, and the religious movement free from the imputation of hostility to new knowledge—as free as any movement can be, which is intensely concerned to nourish and develop what is permanent and unchanging in human life. Such a reconciliation has more than once been effected in the past, though never without a preliminary period of antagonism[5]; our confidence that it will be effected anew in the future lies partly in the fact that we see it already taking place in some minds which seem to us to represent the best life and thought of our time both scientific and religious. One such at least[6] we knew and have lost, though only from present intercourse, in Aubrey Moore. Nobody could know him and think of him as 'compromising' either his faith or his science. He lived primarily and with deepest interest in his religious life and theological study, but he lived also with intense reality in the life of science. And the debt we owe to him, over and above the debt under which his personal character lays us for ever, is that of having let us see how the two lives of faith and of science can melt into one. He felt indeed and wrestled with the difficulties of adjustment. He had not, as it seemed to us, nearly finished his work in this respect. But he had done enough for our encouragement: enough to help us to believe that the best minds of the future are to be neither religious minds defying scientific advance, nor scientific minds denying religion, but minds in which religion interprets and is interpreted by science, in which faith and enquiry subsist together and reinforce one another. The reason why he should have been so soon taken from us and from the Church on earth—taken when 'our need was the sorest'—lies in the impenetrable mysteries of God. 'Si dolemus ablatum, non tamen obliviscimur quod datus fuit, et gratias agimus quod habere illum meruimus.... Pusillus corde eram et confortabat me; piger et negligens, et excitabat me[7].'

II.

It seems to us that a due regard to the point of view from which these studies were written would have obviated some of the criticisms upon them. For instance, it would have explained why we forbore to enter upon the questions which may be raised as to the seat and methods of Church authority. It was because these questions do not arise practically till the work has been done to which we were attempting to minister. When a man is once reassured that his faith in Christ is capable of rational justification, he begins naturally to enquire what exactly the Christian religion involves in this or that detail, and how its manifestly authoritative character, as a Divine Revelation, is to find expression: but these enquiries hardly begin till the preliminary reassurance has been gained.

The moral authority of Christianity, of Christian lives and characters, does indeed exercise a determining influence on the promotion and recovery of faith; but men do not often either win a hold on the creed for the first time, or recover it where it has been lost or impaired, because the theological authority of the Church enables them to take it on trust. The very grounds of that authority are for the moment too much in question to admit of the proper amount of deference being given to it. Thus it seemed to us better in this volume to be content with general statements as to the principle of Church authority[8], leaving out its detailed discussion as unsuitable to our present purpose.

Of course, however, we were conscious all the time that we were ourselves amenable to the bar of authority and were bound to feel sure that nothing we were saying was transgressing the laws which the Catholic Church has laid down. We should indeed be unanimous in disclaiming any desire to have 'license to say what we please' in our position as Church teachers. All meaning would be taken out of the effort and hope this book represents if we could not believe that we were speaking as the Church would have us speak. As the essay on Inspiration has been chiefly called in question on the ground of authority, the author of it must be allowed to plead that he did assure himself he was saying nothing which the Church in her past action had not left him free to say, while for the future he does earnestly desire in due course, and after due enquiry, an action of Church authority on the relation of modern critical methods to the doctrine of Inspiration; and further he believes that the Anglican churches, holding as they do so conspicuous a place in traditional reverence for the Scriptures, while they are so free on the other hand from the obscurantist fear of historical enquiry, are more likely than any other part of the Church to arrive at determinations on the subject such as will be of material service to the whole of Christendom. But for the present there can be no doubt the subject is not ripe for any official or formal determinations.

III.

It seems to us also that some of the criticisms on the treatment of Inspiration in Essay VIII, which shall be presently dealt with, have been due to the same forgetfulness of the writer's aim, and of the general aim of the whole book. Our traditional belief in the Bible is at the present time confronted with a body of critical literature which claims to overthrow a great many of the accepted opinions about the Old Testament Scriptures. The criticism is at least grave and important enough to claim attention, to necessitate that we should come to a more or less clear understanding of the relation in which our faith stands towards it. The writer of the essay did not write as a biblical critic but as a theological student and teacher, bound to give a candid consideration to a criticism which bears directly upon the sacred books of our religion. His object was not to discuss and determine questions of biblical criticism, but to explain, as it appears to him, the relation which theology is to take up towards them. And he wrote 'in the mind of those who have felt the trouble in the air:' he wrote to succour a faith distressed by the problems criticism is raising. That faith is very widely distressed by them, and that not merely in academic circles, does not admit of question. Nor did it seem to him to admit of question that the best way to deal with this distress was not to attempt to solve problems, which, because of the immense area over which discussion ranges, do not admit of ready solutions; but to attempt to state the main conclusions criticism is claiming to have arrived at, as the critics themselves would have us state them; to show that our Christian faith is not vitally affected by them; and so to divert an anxious mind from problems which it cannot solve, at least at present, and fix it on the central truths of our religion, helping it to feel how, if it be once grounded on these central truths, the issue of the critical discussion can be awaited, with keen interest indeed, but without alarm. But this assurance of mind in face of the critical controversy is only possible if we see that the critical positions are in fact compatible with the real inspiration of Holy Scripture. Now the best way to give reassurance on this point seemed to be for the writer to make it plain that he himself felt the great force and appeal of the critical case, and that his conviction that the real Inspiration of the Old Testament was unaffected by it, did not depend upon its being underrated. Had the main purpose of the writer been to help to determine critical positions, he would have been bound to write both at greater length and also with more exactness and discrimination. But on the other hand, the purpose of reassurance would have had less chance of being successfully accomplished—as in some cases we have reason to believe with thankfulness that it has been accomplished or assisted—if the writer had been more reluctant to accept, at least hypothetically, what are claimed as critical results. We all know by experience that freedom and happiness in our attitude as Christians towards problems not easily solved, or even easily brought to crucial tests, are most readily secured if we can feel that our faith is, at the last resort, independent of the exact solution arrived at. Thus our object was to give to anxious enquirers, of whom there are surely an immense number most deserving of any help which can be given them, a freedom in regard to Old Testament problems as wide as the Catholic faith seemed to warrant.