Outspoken Essays

by William Ralph Inge

'The will (he says) cannot make that true which in itself is not true. But it can make that a fact relatively to our mind and action which is not a fact relative to our understanding.... It rests with each of us by an act of will to create the sort of world to which we shall accommodate our thought and action. ....It does not follow that harmony of faith with the truths of reason and facts of experience is the best or essential condition of its credibility.... Abstractions (he refers to the world as known to science) are simple only because they are barren forms created by the mind itself. Faith and doubt have a common element in the deep sense of the insufficiency of the human mind to grasp ultimate truths.... The world given to our outward senses is shadowy and dreamy, except so far as we ascribe to it some of the characteristics of will and spirit.... The world of appearance is simply subordinate to the real world of our will and affections.'

Because the 'abstract' sciences cannot and do not attempt to reach ultimate truth, it is assumed that they are altogether 'barren forms,' This is the error of much Oriental mysticism, which denies all value to what it regards as the lower categories. In his later writings Mr. Tyrrell objects to being classed with the American and English pragmatists—the school of Mr. William James. But the doctrine of these passages is ultra-pragmatist. The will, which is illegitimately stretched to include feeling,[80] is treated as the creator as well as the discerner of reality. The 'world of appearance' is plastic in its grasp. It is this metaphysical pragmatism which is really serviceable to Modernism. If the categories of the understanding can be so disparaged as to be allowed no independent truth, value, or importance, all collisions between faith and fact may be avoided by discrediting in advance any conclusions at which science may arrive. Assertions about 'brute fact' which are scientifically false may thus not be untrue when taken out of the scientific plane, because outside that plane they are harmless word-pictures, soap-bubbles blown off by the poetical creativeness of faith Any assertion about fact which commends itself to the will and affections and which is proved by experience to furnish nutriment to the spiritual life, may be adhered to without scruple. It is not only useful, but true, in the only sense in which truth can be predicated of anything in the higher sphere.

The obvious criticism on this notion of religious truth as purely moral and practical is that it is itself abstract and one-sided. The universe as it appears to discursive thought, with its vast system of seemingly uniform laws, which operate without much consideration for our wishes or feelings, must be at least an image of the real universe. We cannot accept the irreconcilable dualism between the will-world and the world of phenomena which the philosophical Modernists assume. The dualism, or rather the contradiction, is not in the nature of things, nor in the constitution of our minds, but in the consciousness of the unhappy men who are trying to combine two wholly incompatible theories. On the critical side they are pure rationalists, much as they dislike the name. They claim, as we have seen, to have advanced to philosophy through criticism. But the Modernist critics start with very well-defined presuppositions. They ridicule the notion that 'God is a personage in history'; they assume that for the historian 'He cannot be found anywhere'; that He is as though He did not exist. On the strength of this presupposition, and for no other reason, they proceed to rule out, without further investigation, all alleged instances of divine intervention in history. Unhampered by any of the misgivings which predispose the ordinary believer to conservatism, they follow the rationalist argument to its logical conclusions with startling ruthlessness. And then, when the whole edifice of historical religion seems to have been overthrown to the very foundations, they turn round suddenly and say that all their critical labours mean nothing for faith, and that we may go on repeating the old formulas as if nothing had happened. The Modernists pour scorn on the scholastic 'faculty-psychology,' which resolves human personality into a syndicate of partially independent agents; but, in truth, their attempt to blow hot and cold with the same mouth seems to have involved them in a more disastrous self-disruption than has been witnessed in the history of thought since the fall of the Nominalists. In a sceptical and disillusioned age their disparagement of 'intellectualism' or rather of discursive thought in all its operations, might find a response. But in the twentieth century the science which, as critics, they follow so unswervingly will not submit to be bowed out of the room as soon as matters of faith come into question. Our contemporaries believe that matters of fact are important, and they insist, with ever-increasing emphasis, that they shall not be called upon to believe, as part of their religious faith, anything which as a matter of fact, is not true. The Modernist critic, when pressed on this side, says that it is natural for faith to represent its ideas in the form of historical facts, and that it is this inevitable tendency which causes the difficulties between religion and science. A sane criticism will allow that this is very largely true, but will not, we are convinced, be constrained to believe with M. Loisy that the historical original of the Christian Redeemer was the poor deluded enthusiast whom he portrays in 'Les Évangiles Synoptiques.'

However this may be—and it must remain a matter of opinion—the very serious question arises, whether it is really natural for faith to represent its ideas in the form of historical facts when it knows that these facts have no historical basis. The writers with whom we are dealing evidently think it is natural and inevitable, and we must assume that they speak from their own spiritual experience. But this state of mind does not seem to be a very common one. Those who believe in the divinity of Christ, but not in His supernatural birth and bodily resurrection, do not, as a rule, make those miracles the subject of their meditations, but find their spiritual sustenance in communion with the 'Christ who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Those who regard Jesus only as a prophet sent by God to reveal the Father, generally pray only to the God whom He revealed, and cherish the memory of Jesus with no other feelings than supreme gratitude and veneration. Those, lastly, who worship in God only the Great Unknown who makes for righteousness, find myths and anthropomorphic symbols merely disturbing in such devotions as they are still able to practise. In dealing with convinced Voluntarists it is perhaps not disrespectful to suggest that the difficult position in which they find themselves has produced a peculiar activity of the will, such as is seldom found under normal conditions.

We pass to the position of the Modernists in the Roman Catholic Church. It is well known that the advisers of Pius X have committed the Papacy to a wholesale condemnation of the new movement. The reasons for this condemnation are thus summed up by a distinguished ecclesiastic of that Church[81]:

'Why has the Pope condemned the Modernists? (1) Because the Modernists have denied that the divine facts related in the Gospel are historically true. (2) Because they have denied that Christ for most of His life knew that He was God, and that He ever knew that He was the Saviour of the world. (3) Because they have denied the divine sanction and the perpetuity of the great dogmas which enter into the Christian creed. (4) Because they have denied that Christ Himself personally ever founded the Church or instituted the Sacraments. (5) Because they deny and subvert the divine constitution of the Church, by teaching that the Pope and the bishops derive their powers, not directly from Christ and His Apostles, but from the Christian people.'

The official condemnation is contained in two documents—the decree of the Holy Inquisition, 'Lamentabili sane exitu,' July 3, 1907, and the Encyclical, 'Pascendi dominici gregis,' September 8, 1907. These pronouncements are intended for Catholics; and their tone is that of authoritative denunciation rather than of argument. In the main, the summary which they give of Modernist doctrines is as fair as could be expected from a judge who is passing sentence; but the papal theologians have not always resisted the temptation to arouse prejudice by misrepresenting the views which they condemn. We have not space to analyse these documents, nor is it necessary to do so. It will be more to the purpose to consider whether, in spite of their official condemnation, the Modernists are likely in the future to make good their footing in the Roman Church.

Even before the Encyclical the Modernists had used very bold language about the authority of the Church.

'The visible Church (writes Mr. Tyrrell in his "Much-abused Letter") is but a means, a way, a creature, to be used where it helps, to be left where it hinders.... Who have taught us that the consensus of theologians cannot err, but the theologians themselves? Mortal, fallible, ignorant men like ourselves! ... Their present domination is but a passing episode in the Church's history.... May not history repeat itself? [as in the transition from Judaism to Christianity]. Is God's arm shortened that He should not again out of the very stones raise up seed to Abraham? May not Catholicism, like Judaism, have to die in order that it may live again in a greater and grander form? Has not every organism got its limits of development, after which it must decay and be content to survive in its progeny? Wine-skins stretch, but only within measure; for there comes at last a bursting-point when new ones must be provided.'

In a note he explains: 'The Church of the Catacombs became the Church of the Vatican; who can tell what the Church of the Vatican may not turn into?'