THE TEMPORAL MISSION OF THE HOLY GHOST.
By Henry Edward Manning, D.D., Archbishop of Westminster. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
The Messrs. Appleton have again rendered a great service to the reading public, especially the Catholic portion of it, by republishing a standard work in English Catholic literature. The author of this work, Archbishop Manning, was formerly a dignified clergyman of the Established Church of England, and one of the leaders of the Oxford movement. He was the Archdeacon of Chichester, a position in the English Church next in rank to the episcopate, and conferring a quasi-episcopal dignity and jurisdiction. He is said to have possessed in the highest degree the confidence of the English government, and to have been the person most frequently consulted concerning political measures relating to the interests of the ecclesiastical establishment. The London Weekly Register states, on what it claims to be authentic information, that he was marked for promotion to the episcopal bench. But, far beyond the distinction conferred on him by hierarchical position, was the influence which he wielded by the simple force of his intellectual and moral superiority. His writings, especially a treatise [{569}] on "The Unity of the Church," raised him to the first rank as an advocate of the principles of the High-Church party. In the first stage of the Oxford movement, he was considered a more safe and judicious advocate of its principles than Dr. Pusey and Mr. Newman, and his name and opinions had more weight with the bishops and the superior clergy on account of the calm, moderate, and thoroughly ecclesiastical spirit and tone of his character and writings. After Mr. Newman's conversion, Archdeacon Manning succeeded in a great measure to his vacant throne, and held it for about six years. He led the second great movement from Oxford to Rome, and his conversion, which occurred in 1851, made nearly as great a sensation, on both sides of the Atlantic, as that of Mr. Newman had done in 1845. Six months after his reception into the Catholic Church he was ordained priest. Some time after he joined the "Oblates of St. Charles," a religious congregation founded by St. Charles Borromeo, and established a house in London, of which he was appointed the superior. He received also the appointment of provost of the Cathedral of Westminster and was decorated by the Holy Father with the title of a Roman prelate. During the thirteen years of his priesthood he has been most actively and zealously employed in laboring for the advancement of the Catholic faith, chiefly by preaching, writing books, and privately instructing converts from the educated classes, in which latter work he has been remarkably successful. It is probably for this reason that, in spite of his remarkable amenity of mind and character, and the extreme courtesy and gentleness which characterize his controversial writings, he has been regarded and spoken of by the English in so hostile a manner, and that his appointment to the see of Westminster seemed to awaken a feeling of resentment. The mind and character of Archbishop Manning are sure, however, to command, in the long run, the respect of all classes of men, however widely they may differ from him in their theological opinions; and although certain English susceptibilities may have been unpleasantly irritated by his elevation, yet the general verdict will agree that the Holy Father has placed a most worthy successor in the vacant chair of the illustrious Cardinal Wiseman.
In the book before us the author treats of the office of the Holy Ghost, as sent by the Father and the Son in the temporal order; that is, in the order established in time, through which the principal operation ab extra of the Blessed Trinity is accomplished, viz., the redemption of the human race. In a very interesting introduction he takes occasion to explain in part the motives of his conversion, by pointing out the connection between the Catholic doctrines which he held as an Anglican and their complements in the full system of Catholicism. In the body of the work he discusses the office of the Holy Ghost in relation to the Church, to Reason, to Holy Scripture, and to the Divine Tradition of the Faith. This includes a very wide scope of doctrine, embracing revelation, the medium through which revealed truths are proposed, explicated, and defined; the formation of Christian theology and philosophy; the relation of faith to science, and the whole subject of the inspiration and interpretation of Scripture.
If we may be allowed to express a modest opinion on the subject, we should say, that the principal merit of Dr. Manning, as a theological writer, lies in his ability to unfold the analogy of faith, and expose the inter-communion, so to speak, of the great truths of natural and revealed religion with one another. He shows pre-eminently in his writings that gift which is denominated in theology "the gift of intelligence;" that is, the gift by which the mind penetrates the interior essence of the doctrines of faith, and their interior relations. His exposition is in the highest degree luminous, and his style corresponds in this regard to his thought, so that his treatment of the great doctrines declared by the Church appears like a statement of self-evident propositions, or a geometrical demonstration in which the problem is proved by simply describing the figure. We have never read anything which has given us more satisfaction than his statement of the four grand fundamental propositions on which the entire fabric of the Catholic doctrine rests. It appears to our mind that in his statement of the nature of the evidence by which reason apprehends the [{570}] being of God, and the credibility of revelation, and afterward the real meaning and contents of the revelation, he has marked out the outlines of a sound and correct philosophy of religion, which is so much needed, and without which the antagonists of revelation cannot be adequately refuted on rational principles. We desire to quote one sentence, short but pregnant, in illustration of our meaning. After stating that he always uses the word "rationalism" in an ill sense, he proceeds to say:
"By rationalism, I do not mean the use of the reason in testing the evidence of a revelation alleged to be divine.
"Again, by rationalism I do not mean the perception of the harmony of the divine revelation with the human reason. It is no part of reason to believe that which is contrary to reason, and it is not rationalism to reject it. As reason is a divine gift equally with revelation—the one in nature, the other in grace—discord between them is impossible, and harmony an intrinsic necessity. To recognize this harmony is a normal and vital operation of the reason under the guidance of faith; and the grace of faith elicits an eminent act of the reason, its highest and noblest exercise in the fullest expansion of its powers." (Introd., p. 4.)
The eliciting of this eminent act of the reason to the utmost possible extent is at present the great desideratum in theology. It involves the exhibition of the intrinsic harmony between faith and science; that is, of the conformity of revelation, not only as to its extrinsic motives of credibility, but also as to the intrinsic credibility of its doctrines to reason. It appears to us that Dr. Manning appreciates the first half of the desideratum more perfectly than the second; and that, in regard to the second, he appreciates more completely what is necessary to convince Anglicans and Orthodox Protestants than what is requisite for rationalists, with whom the chief contest has to be carried on. The main drift of his reasonings goes to establish, in an admirable manner, that Christianity is credible, and that Catholicism is identical with Christianity. Orthodox Protestants already believe the first, and whatever difficulties they may have on the subject are easily answered by a lucid statement of the grand external proofs of that which they have been educated to accept as a first principle. Of the second, they can be convinced by the exposition of the analogy and harmony of the special Catholic dogmas which they have not been taught with those they already believe. Difficulties raised on the side of human science against the intrinsic credibility of revelation, they can easily dismiss by reverting to their first principle of the well-established verity of divine revelation, as resting on extrinsic evidence. Establish in their minds the infallible authority of the Church, and they are content to receive a doctrinal exposition of all that she teaches which is made by way of deduction from revealed principles, without seeking for a reconciliation of this exposition with the deductions of purely rational principles. This is no doubt a very sound and Christian method, and it were to be wished that all would be willing to follow it. Experience has shown, however, that those who have been brought up in the more advanced and rationalistic Protestantism, are with difficulty induced to adopt it. They exact an answer to the difficulties and objections lying in their minds against the intrinsic reasonableness of revealed doctrines, before they will attend to their extrinsic evidence. The exposition of this intrinsic conformity between revealed and rational principles forms for them a part of the requisite moral demonstration of the credibility of the Christian revelation. Nor is it altogether without reason that they require this. They are obliged to learn a great deal which a High-Church Anglican has already received from his early education. They have the same incapacity of apprehending correctly the most fundamental Catholic verities which the Anglican has of apprehending certain specific dogmas. Both must have these misapprehensions removed in the same way, only it is a shorter and more restricted process for the one than for the other. The account given by our illustrious author of his own interior history shows that the extrinsic proof of the claims of the Roman Church to supremacy over all portions of the Christian fold did not convince him before they were illuminated by the discovery of the intrinsic relation between this supremacy and the essential spiritual unity of the Church in [{571}] Christ. His mind demanded an apprehension of the rationale of strict, external, organized unity of administration under one ecclesiastical head. It was enough for him that this rationale was made evident from revealed principles, because he already possessed these principles as a part of his intellectual life. Those who have lost in great measure the Christian tradition, or who have never had, must find the rationale further back in their reason.
A Jew, for instance, apprehends the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation as follows: "God is divided into three portions, one of which became inclosed in human flesh." A Unitarian will apprehend these doctrines, and others, such as original sin, atonement, etc., in some form almost equally repugnant to reason. Many Protestants apprehend the doctrine of the real presence to be that God is made a piece of bread, or that a piece of bread is made God. It is evident, according to the rule laid down by Dr. Manning in the passage above cited, that it is impossible for the human mind to assent to such irrational propositions on any extrinsic authority. Even supposing that a person admits the proofs of divine revelation and the authority of the Church to be irrefragable, he cannot submit to either while he believes that they require him to assent to such absurdities. Hence the necessity of exhibiting the Catholic dogmas in their analogy to the truths of reason, as a part of the evidence of their credibility. A large portion of nominal Christians are so completely imbued with rationalistic and sceptical notions, and so full of misconceptions of Catholic ideas, that they are persuaded of the validity of a thousand objections derived from reason, science, history, etc., against the Catholic religion. They cannot be reached by a line of argument which lays the principal stress on the extrinsic proof of the Christian revelation proposed by the Catholic Church, and rules out their objections and difficulties by the principle of the obedience due to legitimate authority. It seems to us, for this reason, requisite to make every effort to exhibit the interior conformity between faith and reason, theology and science, and to prove that faith is really "an eminent act of reason." All Catholics must agree in this general statement, for all the advocates of the Catholic religion have from the beginning of Christian literature aimed at this result. In regard to the method of doing it, however, there is some diversity of opinion. Dr. Newman, for instance, regards the progress of theological science as a movement from below upward, and from the circumference to the centre. That is, science is elaborated by the reflection of individual minds, especially the gifted and learned, on the dogmas of faith, under the supervision and subject to the judgment of authority. Dr. Manning, if we understand him correctly, regards the movement as one which proceeds in a reverse order; he represents the Church as proceeding in a more direct, positive, and magisterial manner; not by collecting the accumulated, elaborated, and clarified products of study, thought, reasoning, and meditation, and giving them her implied or express approbation, but by continually giving forth utterances of inspired wisdom received from a divine source. He apprehends that in adopting the other view, there is danger or subordinating the Ecclesia Docens to the Ecclesia Discens, and making reason a critic on divine revelation. Those who adopt the latter view have a tendency to elevate theological opinions and arguments which have gamed a wide acceptance to a species of authority binding on the mind and conscience, and limiting the freedom of investigation. They desire that all arguments on doctrine should follow the traditional track and merely emulate and elucidate what has been already taught by the great doctors of theology. They extend the sphere of authority and infallibility to the utmost possible limits, and many of them seek to extend the protecting aegis of the Church over philosophical systems. Those who adopt the other may often err in an opposite extreme. Yet, we think, they have a principle which is justified by sound reasons, and by the actual history of the formation of doctrine and theology in the Church. That principle is stated by Möhler in these words: "For a time even a conception of a dogma, or an opinion, may be tolerably general, without, however, becoming an integral portion of a dogma, or a dogma itself. There are here eternally changing individual forms of an universal principle which may serve . . . for mastering that universal principle by way of reflection [{572}] and speculation." (Symb. Introd., p. 11, London Edit.)
On this principle, they seek continually to scrutinize more deeply the inner essence of dogmatic truths, and to investigate its relation and conformity to the principles and deductions of philosophy and science. We think history shows that this is the way in which theology has actually advanced, and the Catholic Church herself attained more and more to that reflective consciousness of her own dogmas by which she is enabled to enunciate from time to time her solemn definitions. St. Thomas made an immense advance, beyond St. Augustine and the other fathers. The great Jesuit theologians, Bellarmine, Suarez, and Molina, struck out a new and bold path in theology. Take, for instance, the great doctrines of original sin, predestination, and efficacious grace. The conception of these dogmas, and the scientific explication of their contents, has been greatly modified in the process of time, and chiefly through the influence of a few original thinkers. These have generally met with a strong opposition from the established schools of theology, and the most strenuous efforts have been made to decry them as unorthodox and to procure their condemnation by authority. The names of Catharini, Sfondrati, and Molina will serve as a sufficient illustration. Yet, their method of stating Christian doctrine on important points has gained a great predominance in the Church, and the supreme authority has frequently intervened, not to enforce these opinions, but to protect those who hold and advocate them from censure. Not only theologians, but even teachers of natural science, have brought about great changes in current theological opinions. For instance, Galileo, and those who followed him, have, by the force of scientific demonstration, compelled theologians to modify their interpretation of Scripture where it speaks of natural phenomena. Geology has caused a similar general change of the method of interpreting the Scriptural accounts, of the creation and the deluge. The old Swiss proverb is verified in the perpetual effort to discover the harmony between faith and science: "God gives us plenty of nuts to crack, but does not crack them for us." One of these hard nuts, not yet cracked, is the question concerning the extent of the influence of inspiration in preserving the sacred writers from error in matters of purely human knowledge. The well-known opinion of Holden on this subject, it appears to us, is a little too summarily condemned by our learned author. The opinions of Bellarmine and Lessius were severely censured in their time, but nevertheless are now acknowledged to be tenable and probable. We think the opinion of Holden deserves at least a very thorough examination and discussion before it is put under the ban. Dr. Manning admits that "it is evident that Holy Scripture does not contain a revelation of what are called physical sciences," and that "no system of chronology is laid down in the sacred books" (p. 165, Eng. Ed.) Nevertheless the sacred writers speak of physical phenomena and of chronological dates. The Holy Spirit allowed them to speak of the former in accordance with their own and the common opinion even, when that was erroneous. He has allowed their statements respecting the latter to fall into such inextricable confusion, through accidental or intentional alterations either in the Hebrew or Greek text, that we cannot tell with certainty what they intended to record on the subject. Does not this show that revelation was not intended to teach chronology? And if it was not, how does it militate against the Catholic doctrine of inspiration to maintain that the sacred writers were originally left to follow the best human authority they could find in chronology as well as in science? If the end of revelation did not require that an infallible system of dates should be preserved in the sacred text, why should it have been given at first? Why are minor historical facts, relating to the numbers who fell in particular battles, etc., within the cope of infallibility any more than matters of science and chronology? It appears to us, that until some authoritative decision is made, this question is open to discussion, and the opinion of Holden tenable without prejudice to orthodoxy. Very probably the distinguished author meant to express simply his judgment as to what is the sounder view of inspiration, without denying that the other is within the limits of orthodoxy. However this may be, this is the only instance in which there is any appearance of [{573}] severity toward those whose theological opinions on matters extra fidem differ from his own. It were to be wished that some other writers, who are disposed to censure their brethren severely and throw suspicion upon their loyalty to the Church, on account of theological differences, would imitate the admirable model placed before them by the illustrious chief of the English hierarchy. We commend to their attention the following extract from the London Weekly Register, which is a portion of an excellent and well written review of' Dr. Pusey's Eirenicon. When severely pressed by an able antagonist, one frequently finds himself driven to defend the Catholic cause upon the common, certain ground where all Catholics stand together, and to sink domestic controversies. This is very well; but the same language ought to be used toward opponents in these domestic controversies, when they are discussed inter nos, which is used respecting them when we are fighting the exterior enemy. If one takes certain ground because it is available against non-Catholics, he ought to allow other Catholics to stand upon that ground at all times in peace without having his fidelity to the Church called in question. We give the quotations now, without further comment, and leave the intelligent reader to make his own reflections on them:
"The greater part of the remainder of the volume is taken up with proving what most Catholics would be ready to admit, that many exaggerated things have been said by Catholic writers of name concerning the Pope's personal infallibility, on the prerogatives of the Blessed Virgin, and on many other subjects. No doubt, viewed from without, there is much matter for perplexity in this whole subject. We know that many persons, now Catholics, have been kept back from seeing the Church's claims on their absolute allegiance, because of the hold these exaggerated statements had obtained on their imagination, and the repugnance they felt to the aspect of doctrine thus presented. This, we think, has arisen partly from their having attributed to such statements an authority which they did not possess, and from their not distinguishing between matters of faith and matters of pious opinion. . . . . Catholics, on the other hand, . . know that the Church, while requiring unitas in necesaariis, is most free in conceding libertas in dubiis; . . . does not aim at creating a dead and soulless level of uniformity, but tolerates great liberty of opinion in matters of opinion," etc.
"Even though we might ourselves hold that what are commonly called the Ultramontane opinions are the more logical, the legitimate deduction from Scripture, the true development of patristic teaching; and however much we might wish for a union of all Christians on this basis, we should nevertheless hold most strongly, until otherwise taught, that a reunion on the principles of Bossuet would be better than perpetuated schism."
Archbishop Manning's work will, of course, take its place in our standard Catholic literature, and we earnestly recommend it to all our readers.