Church Authority And Personal Responsibility:
A Letter Prom Aubrey De Vere To Sara Coleridge On The Catholic Philosophy Of The “Rule Of Faith,” Considered Especially With Reference To The Transcendental System Of S. T. Coleridge.[149]
A letter to me, printed in the Memoir of Sara Coleridge, and dated October 19, 1851, contains the following passage: “Viewing the Romish system as you do, my dear friend, I cannot regret that you think, as you do, of the compatibility of my father's scheme of philosophy therewith, assured, as I feel, that he had done that Papal system too much justice to believe in it as a divine institution” (vol. ii. p. 401). From my youth I had been an ardent student of Coleridge's philosophy, to the illustration of which his daughter, indifferent to her own literary fame, so faithfully devoted her great powers. That philosophy had largely inspired F. D. Maurice's remarkable work, The Kingdom of Christ; and I believed firmly that it was, at least as compared with the empirical philosophy of the last century, in harmony with Catholic teaching, rightly understood; and that the objections made against that teaching were such as a transcendentalist must regard as proceeding, not from any intuitions or ideas of the “reason,” but from the cavils of that notional understanding called by Coleridge “the faculty judging according to sense.” I have lately found a letter written by me to my lamented friend less than a fortnight after her letter quoted above, and about a fortnight before I made my submission to the Catholic Church. It may interest [pg 578] some of those who have read Sara Coleridge's letters, and who are enquirers as to the method proper for reaching solid conclusions in the domain of truth not scientific and discovered by man, but religious, and revealed to him.
It was my object to show that the Catholic “rule of faith” does not oppose, but alone adequately vindicates, some great principles with which it has been contrasted, e.g., personal action, the dependence of individual souls on divine grace, religious freedom, zeal for truth, the interior character of genuine piety, and the value of “internal evidences.” That “rule” has been stigmatized as a bondage. This is the illusion of those who, regarding the church from without, and under the influence of modern and national traditions, see but a part of her system, and have not compared it with other parts. The Catholic law of belief I endeavored to set forth as the only one consistent with a sound philosophy when treating of things supernatural, and as such beyond the method of induction and experiment, while it is also both primitive and Scriptural. I wished to show that it is the only means by which we can possess the revealed truth with certainty and at once in its fulness and its purity; and to illustrate it as not alone our gate of access to truth “spiritually discerned,” but the nurse and the protectress of our whole spiritual life, with all its redeemed affections; as opposed, not to personal action and responsibility, or to a will free and strong, because loyal, but to an unintelligent pride and to a feeble self-will, the slave of individual caprice; as the antagonist, not of what is transcendent and supernatural in religion, but of a religious philosophy in which the philosophy exalts itself against the religion, “running after” revelation to “take somewhat of it,” but not inheriting its blessing.
Twenty-three years have passed since my letter was written; and year after year has deepened in me the convictions which it expresses, or rather which it indicates in a fragmentary way, and possibly not with a technical accuracy. In the church I have found an ever-deepening peace, a freedom ever widening, a genuine and a fruitful method for theological thought, and a truth which brightens more and more into the perfect day. External to her fold, it is but too probable that I should long since have drifted into unbelief, though a reluctant and perhaps unconscious unbelief.
After some preliminary matter, referring to our earlier discussions, the letter continues as follows:
Divine faith is a theological virtue, the gift of God, which raises the spirit to believe and confess, with a knowledge absolutely certain, though obscure in kind, the whole truth which God has revealed to man. Such is the description which Roman Catholic writers give of a grace which cannot be defined. The knowledge of faith is as certain as that of mathematics, but wholly different in kind, including a moral and spiritual power, affecting (if it be living faith) the mind and will at once, as light and heat are united in the sunbeam, and containing, like the sunbeam, many other secret properties also. It far transcends the certainty of any one of our senses, each of which may deceive us. It is also essentially different from that intellectual vision which belongs to the kingdom of glory, not of grace or of nature. Its nearest analogon is human faith, through which we [pg 579] believe that we are the children of our reputed parents, and on which, and not on demonstration, the basis of human life is laid. But it differs essentially also from human faith. It is supernatural, not natural. It is certain, not uncertain. In its application to supernatural objects it is wholly independent of imagination or enthusiasm; and it brings us into real intercourse with objective truth. False religions rest on that which simulates divine faith, and may, even among Christians, so fill its place that the difference is not discernible to human eyes—a mixture of human faith with aspiration, imagination, and the other natural faculties. True religion carries with it the special faculty by which it is capable of being realized, and thus makes a revelation which they but seemed to make. But this faculty is not a natural one awakened, but a supernatural one bestowed, its ordinary antecedents being the corresponding moral virtues of humility and purity; and the exercise of human faith and other devout affections, themselves stimulated by a different and inferior kind of grace, bestowed on the whole family even of unregenerate man. Besides the antecedent conditions for receiving, other conditions are necessary for the realization and right application of the divine and illuminating grace. These conditions are not arbitrary, but spring from the necessities of our whole nature, both individual and corporate. They are ordinarily the individual co-operation of will, mind, and heart, and an attitude of willing submission to God, or the prophet through whom the objects of faith are propounded to us by him. This prophet was the Messiah himself while he walked on earth, and was the Apostolic College from the day of Pentecost. He continues to address us, in a manner equally distinct, through that church in whom, as catholic and yet one, the unity of the Apostolic College (one in union with Peter) still abides. That church is the body of Christ; and we are introduced at once into it and him through baptism. The visible rite corresponds with the invisible grace bestowed through it, just as the church itself is at once the spiritual kingdom of peace, and the visible “mountain of the Lord's house” elevated to the summit of the mountains, and as man himself, consists of soul and body.
That church, inheriting a belief which it never invented or discovered, confesses Christ, and confesses also that she is Christ's representative on earth. She challenges individual faith, and proposes to it the one object of dogmatic belief. That one object is the whole Christian faith, as it has hitherto been, or ever may be, authentically defined. Whether it be believed implicitly, as by the peasant, or explicitly, as by the doctor, makes no difference whatever, relatively to faith, though it may affect edification, which needs a due proportion between our intellectual and moral gifts. In each case alike (1) the whole faith is held; (2) is held bonâ fide, as revealed by God; (3) is held wholly by supernatural faith; (4) affords thus a basis for the supernatural life of hope and charity. “Fundamentals,” as distinguished from “non-essentials,” there are none, i.e., objectively. All Christian truths are in each other by implication, as Adam's race was in the first parent. They are yet more transcendently in each other, for each [pg 580] contains all. To receive one by divine faith is to receive all. To deny one, when competently proposed to us by the authority which speaks in God's name, is to deny all, unless circumstances beyond our will have deceived our mind respecting that authority or its message. The whole objective faith will probably never be recognized, till in the kingdom of glory it flashes upon us in its unity. In the kingdom of grace (in via, not in patria) it is defined in proportion to the moral and intellectual needs of the church. It is defined, not as a science, but from necessity, and to meet the gainsaying of heresy. The endeavor of the church is to preserve the treasure confided to her. It cannot increase, but the knowledge of it must. Subjectively, the knowledge is progressive as man is progressive; but objectively it is unchanging as God is eternal. The whole, defined and undefined, is essential and one. The whole is needed for the race, that the race may retain Christ, its head. The knowledge of the whole is needed by each according to his circumstances. The entire belief of the entire truth, implicitly, is necessary for each individual. Ordinarily, and except in the case of involuntary error, that entire belief of the whole is realized through a submission (absolute but free, filial, and necessitated by all our Christian sympathies and spiritual affections, as well as by obedience) to her who is God's representative, visible, on earth.
The existence of that visible church is wholly irrespective of our needing an expositor of dogmatic faith. Its character is determined (1) by the character of God, whom it images alike in his unity and his plurality; (2) by the character of Christianity, which is communicated to the race, and to the individual in and with the body, so that nothing that he holds can be held singly, except what is perishable; and (3) by the character of man, who graduates in a certain order, and who, as a mixed being, is taught after a fashion that ever exalts the meek and raises the moral faculties above the intellectual in endless elevation, however high the latter may ascend. But among its other functions, the visible church has that of presenting to the infused habit of faith what otherwise it would seek for in vain, i.e., a dogmatic authority which, in act, it can rise to, cleave to, and live by. If Christ reigned visibly on earth, he would need no such representative. If Christ, as the Eternal Reason, inspired each man, as well as enlightening him, he need never have assumed flesh. If the Holy Ghost inspired each man as he did the prophets and apostles (instead of communicating to him the grace of faith, planting him in the church, feeding him with the Lord's body, quickening his devout affections, etc.), then there would be no need for the church, as a dogmatic authority, nor for the Holy Scriptures. If the Bible were a plain book; if the nature of truth were such that it could be divided into fundamental and non-essential; if one doctrine could be believed, while another, involved in it, is denied, then, perhaps, private judgment might extract from the Bible as much as an individual requires. Again, if supernatural faith were not requisite, but human faith, founded on evidence, and generating opinion, sufficed, then private judgment, availing itself of all human helps suggested by prudence, could [pg 581] build up on the Bible, on philosophy, on ecclesiastical traditions, and on the public opinion of the day, a certain scheme of thought on sacred subjects, round which the affections would cluster, to which devout associations would cling, which the understanding might formalize, imagination brighten, enthusiasm exult in, prudence recommend. But these are all suppositions, not realities. Private “inspiration” is known to be a fallacy. “Reason” cannot make reasonable men agree; and every one who has any portion in reason knows that what is disputed for ages is disputable, and that what is not truth to all cannot be truth absolute and certain, on the ground of reason, to any one. Uncertain opinion cannot be supernatural faith. Spiritual discernment cannot lead us to the finer appreciation of doctrine while we remain ignorant as to whether it be a particular doctrine or the opposite doctrine that challenges our faith.