[211] S. Aug. de Magist. 38. t. i. p. 916.
[212] S. Thom. Aq. cont. Gent. iv. 13.
[213] Thomassin, Incarn. i. 15.
[214] Gelasian, quoted by Bright, Ancient Collects, p. 98.
VI.
THE INCARNATION AS THE BASIS OF DOGMA.
R. C. MOBERLY.
I. Many years ago, in undergraduate days, I was speaking once to a friend of my hope of beginning some little acquaintance with Theology. I well remember the air of nicely mingled civility and contemptuousness, with which my friend, wishing to sympathize, at once drew a distinction for me between speculative and dogmatic Theology, and assumed that I could not mean that the mere study of dogmatic Theology could have any sort of attractiveness. I do not think that I accepted his kindly overture; but it certainly made me consider more than once afterwards, whether the 'mere study of dogmatic Theology' could after all be so slavish and profitless an employment as had been implied. On the whole, however, I settled with myself that his condemnation, however obviously candid and even impressive, must nevertheless remain, so far as I was concerned, a surprise and an enigma. For what, after all, did the study of dogmatic Theology mean, but the study of those truths which the mind of Christ's Church upon earth has believed to be at once the most certain and the most important truths of man's history, nature and destiny, in this world and for ever?
It is impossible, however, not to feel that my friend, in his objection, represented what was, and is, a very widespread instinct against the study of dogma. Some think, for instance, that to practical men exactnesses of doctrinal statement, even if true, are immaterial. Others think that any exactness of doctrinal statement is convicted, by its mere exactness, of untruth; for that knowledge about things unseen can only be indefinite in character. If, indeed, religious knowledge is a process of evolution simply, if it means only a gradual development towards ever-increasing definiteness of religious supposition, then no doubt its exactness may be the condemnation of dogma. But then, no doubt, to make room for such a view, the whole fact of historical Christianity must be first displaced.
Is it put as an impossibility, that there cannot be any definite or certain Theology? Can there, then, be a Revelation? Can there be an Incarnation? Those only are consistent, who assert that all three are impossible, and who understand that in so doing they are limiting the possibilities, and therefore pro tanto questioning the reality of a Personal God. But if there be a Personal God, what are the adequate grounds on which it is nevertheless laid down that He cannot directly reveal Himself? Or, if He can reveal Himself, on what ground can the à priori assertion rest, that theological truth must be uncertain or indefinite? The Christian Church claims to have both definite and certain knowledge. These claims can never be met by any à priori judgment that such knowledge is impossible. Such a judgment is too slenderly based to bear the weight of argument. To argue from it would be to commit the very fault so often imputed to the dogmatist. It would be a flagrant instance of dogmatic assertion (and that for the most important of argumentative purposes) of what we could not possibly know.