The Task of Liberal Theology

The Churchmen’s Union was inaugurated at the Church House, Westminster, on October 31st, 1898, for the advancement of Liberal religious thought. The members of the Council of this Union are well-known and representative clergymen and laymen belonging to the Church of England. They state that among the chief objects of the Union are the following: —

To maintain the right and duty of the Church to restate her belief from time to time as required by the progressive revelation of the Holy Spirit. And to give all support in their power to those who are honestly and loyally endeavoring to vindicate the truth of Christianity by the light of scholarship and research, and while paying due regard to continuity, to work for such changes in the formularies and practices in the Church of England as from time to time are made necessary by the needs and knowledge of the day.

In furtherance of these objects a Quarterly Review, The Liberal Churchman, was started in November, 1904. The brief prospectus which was issued with the Review puts the objects of the Union in still clearer light. I transcribe it in its entirety.

The Liberal Churchman has been established in order to widen and develop the religious life of the community by advocating and ventilating the claims and principles of liberal religious thought within the Church of England and among English-speaking people as a whole. The object of liberal religious thought is to emancipate the Christian religion from a rigid subservience to the literal forms and theories in which it has been historically expressed and explained; and to re-express and explain the essential facts of the Christian faith in the terms of contemporary thought. There is no dislike to the principle of doctrinal forms; but there is a dislike to the assumption that doctrinal forms which were coined in bygone ages under a totally different set of ecclesiastical, social, and mental conditions are, and must always be, the best and the only forms for commending the Christian conception of life to the mind and conscience of the present time. The religious, moral, and intellectual temper of the modern Christian community has outgrown many of these forms; it does not find itself adequately expressed in them, and it is becoming more and more impatient of the rigid subservience which it is too often asked to accord to them by the official exponents of the Christian creed. It is hoped that the objects of The Liberal Churchman will commend themselves to those who feel that the traditional presentation of Christian truth is no longer adapted to meet the intellectual, ethical, and religious needs of the modern mind.

In the opening article of the Review, Dr. Morrison, the President of the Union, explains its object at greater length, and under the title— The Task of Liberal Theology, develops what is said in the prospectus.

This clearly defined object of the Churchmen’s Union has the sympathy of many earnest and intelligent men of our time. Thus, Mr. W. A. Pickard-Cambridge begins an article in the Hibbert Journal for January, 1905, with this sentence: — Most open-minded laymen probably view with unqualified satisfaction the desire recently evinced on the part of the more progressive clergy of the Established Church to restate upon a basis of rational criticism the received dogmas of Christianity.¹

¹ Page 253.

Sir Oliver Lodge has more than once of late tried his hand at a restatement or re-interpretation of Christian doctrine. The following is the first paragraph of an article by this distinguished scientist in the Hibbert Journal for April, 1904, entitled, Suggestions towards the re-interpretation of Christian Doctrine.

Now that religion is becoming so much more real, is being born again in the spirit of modern criticism and scientific knowledge, may it not be well to ask whether the formal statement of some of the doctrines which we have inherited from medieval and still earlier times cannot be wisely and inoffensively modified? There is usually some sort of forced sense in which almost any statement can be judged to have in it an element of truth, especially a statement which embodies the beliefs of many generations. But when the element of truth is quite other than had been supposed, and when the original statement has to be tortured in order to display it, it may be time to consider whether without harm its mode of expression can‘ be reconsidered and re-drafted—to the ultimate benefit indeed of that religion of truth and clearness which we all seek to attain.²

² Page 461.

More than one of the papers read at the Church Congress, held last autumn in Liverpool, were contributions towards the same object of restatement and re-interpretation of dogma.

This also constitutes one of the main objects which Liberal Catholics of our time have in view. Professor Mivart in the Nineteenth Century for January, 1900, attempted to prove that as a matter of fact, through the labors of Catholic theologians in the past, there had been a process of gradual restatement of Catholic doctrine; he concluded his article in these words : —

My aim has been to strengthen Catholicity, and to that end I have enumerated the most striking modifications in the belief of Catholics I could find, to show how many and great changes the Catholic body can undergo without injury to its vitality.³

³ Page 72.

Several of Mivart’s instances of change of Catholic belief in the past certainly belong to matters of faith, but he regarded them as mere preludes to still greater changes in the future. In explanation of the reasons why he wrote his article he says: —

I am convinced that the great changes herein referred to are but preludes to far greater changes in the future— changes which will be most salutary, if duly foreseen and prepared for. They will take place surely sooner or later, as a new generation of mankind is sure anyhow to succeed the present one. But just as the certainty of that fact does not make the function of the accoucheur less useful, so the sure advent of new conceptions and beliefs does not render useless the work of those who would prepare for and facilitate their safe delivery into the world of ideas.⁴

⁴ Ib., p. 71.

And so Mivart’s object was to facilitate the restatement, and re-interpretation of Catholic dogma by showing how in his view of history the process had been continually going on in the past.

Similarly the writer or writers who under the pseudonym Voces Catholicæ wrote on the Abbé Loisy and the Catholic Reform Movement in the Contemporary Review for March, 1903, claim as the chief merit of the French exegete the successful restatement by him of worn out Catholic beliefs in the terms of modern historical criticism.

On one side, they write, are the formulas, avowedly drawn up for our intellect, yet shaped by old-world men whose mental equipment, so far as it was dependent upon acquired knowledge, was utterly unlike our own; and on the other side is the modern scientific spirit pressing violently against the barriers raised by those formulas and panting for an outlet into the region of light and life. M. Loisy claims to have found an issue which leads not beyond the pale of Catholic faith, but only to its calm and salubrious heights. Placing the definitions of Councils and Popes in the full light of historic experience he virtually says: We owe to them the same degree of respect and credence which we display to the words of the Saviour; and this we can continue to pay without refusing to science what is admitted to be her due. If the course of events, against which it is folly to argue, compels us to deepen, to spiritualize the words of Jesus which the Church for ages construed literally, and if we can—because we must— carry out the process without failing in our duty to God or our neighbor, what is there to show that the dogmas fashioned by men are less plastic? It is impossible to rebut the argument—which is but one of many—and it would be suicidal arbitrarily to condemn the conclusion without first providing some other means of adapting a structure built by the ancients to the wholly different needs of a new generation.

Long before M. Loisy came forward critics had eagerly thrown themselves upon salient facts in Church history; which, turn them how one might, would not dovetail with the dangerous claim to immutability advanced by certain theologians for the dogmas of the Church. Exposed to the fierce light of science, which they were never meant to endure, many of those old-world propositions seemed to shrivel up and harden, to the grave detriment of their religious contents. The French theologian is the first to show how by reverently approaching the formulas of past ages, which were admirable presentments of Christian doctrine as reflected in the minds of Christians of those generations, we can take over the fundamental and comprehensive truths which they embodied, without vainly straining to view them from a standing point which has receded from us forever. Far from loosening our hold on the substance of Jesus’ teachings, this needful process of spiritualization imparts to them a firm cohesion and harmonizes them with ideas of a scientific order from which it is impossible to withhold our assent.⁵

⁵ Pages 401-402.

In spite of what this writer says about the claim of Loisy to be a pioneer in the field of the re-interpretation of dogma, it is well known that he took this idea with much else from the French Protestant minister, A. Sabatier. Indeed, A. Sabatier seems to have been the common source from which English Protestants and liberal Catholics alike have largely drawn. For many years Sabatier was the recognized leader of a certain school of theology in France, and the Abbé Loisy is said to have attended his lectures in Paris. A very slight acquaintance with Sabatier’s writings will convince the reader of the justice of his claim to have led the way in the restatement of Christian dogma. I need do no more here than give a short extract from an article which he contributed to the Contemporary Review for November, 1899, on Christian Dogma and the Christian Life.

Hence it becomes an incontestable truth that no theologian of our day repeats and professes the dogmas of the great councils in the same sense they had for those who saw their birth or origin. Every one accommodates them, more or less consciously, to his own use, translates them into his language, takes or leaves portions as it pleases him; in a word, re-thinks them in his mind, and in rethinking them, interprets and transforms them! Well, modern theology invites us simply to do with reflexion and truthfulness that which we all do more or less and which we cannot help doing. And do we not see that far from being the death of dogma, this faculty of transformation by a new exegesis is the only way by which dogma can be rejuvenated and revived, the only way for us to reap its internal or spiritual substance, the Christian reality by which our religious life can and ought to be nourished? Shall we hesitate resolutely to enter on this path? 6

In another passage of their article in the Contemporary Review for March, 1903, Voces Catholicæ admit that Loisy is not original.

Most of the fruitful ideas [they write] with which his little volume teems have been in the air for some years past. They cannot, therefore, be said to be original. But they have been uttered by non-Catholic critics whose writings and names have remained hitherto unknown to the bulk of our co-religionists.

Any reader of Loisy who knows how constantly he refers to Protestant theologians and rationalistic 6 Page 737.

critics will corroborate this testimony that his views are not original. In this instance, as in so many others, the views of liberal Catholics are seen to be a more or less close approximation to those of heretics and rationalists. Since the condemnation of Loisy’s works by the Holy See there has been a lull in the activity of liberal Catholics, and the present seems to be a favorable opportunity for reviewing our position. Let us try to gain a clear idea of the crisis of Liberalism through which we have been passing. The process cannot fail to be useful to us.

And first of all let us pay a tribute to the vigilance of our bishops who betimes perceived the danger and faithfully fulfilled their office. In their joint Pastoral of 29th December, 1900, they say, after quoting the teaching of Leo XIII: —

Very different from this is the theory of progress or development excogitated in recent times, and approved by certain writers on the continent, and even in England. They make the progress of Christian doctrine to consist in real change. They argue that certain truths of revelation may become obsolete and die out; that, having served their time, higher truths will supplant them, in accordance with some real or fancied progress of natural science. They even suggest that higher perceptions in natural science will reduce mysteries to the level of natural phenomena; and that the development of Christian doctrine really means the reception into the deposit of faith of a number of extraneous truths, which will in course of time bring the Church into perfect conformity with modern ideas. There are even Catholics who imagine that they can save their orthodoxy by holding the creeds and definitions of faith, not according to the Church’s constant understanding of them, but according to their own. They profess to believe that the Church’s teaching may receive new light to illuminate it, so that the traditional sense, given by the Church to her formularies, shall give way to other meanings partially or wholly different. Against errors of this kind the Church, in the Vatican Council, has launched her formal anathema: ‘‘If any one shall say that it may ever be possible, with the progress of science, for a sense to be given to the doctrines proposed by the Church, other than that which the Church has understood and understands, let him be anathema.’’

So that the task which liberal theology sets itself is heretical, and this new heresy differs fundamentally in nothing from former heresies. Men imbued with modern subjective phenomenalism and the theories of evolution wish to apply their philosophical opinions to the interpretation of the doctrines of the Christian faith. This is precisely what St. Paul warned the Colossians against (ii. 8): “ Beware, lest any man cheat you by philosophy and vain deceit; according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ.”

A long catena of passages from the Fathers might be quoted to show the practice of heretics in all ages. One or two will be sufficient for my purpose. St. Athanasius writes : —

After adopting some impious principle as a canon, in accordance with this principle they proceed to corrupt all the sacred Scriptures.⁷

⁷ Orat. II., p. 176.

Faustinus in his treatise De Fide against the Arians (circ. 380) writes: — The Arian heresy when it makes its profession of faith confesses much in the same words indeed as we do but not in the same sense. For in the same words as we do, it proclaims God the Father and God the Son, and that by the Son all things were made by God the Father, and that the Son was begotten before time was. But although it agrees with us in using these words, nevertheless, by a sacrilegious interpretation of them it departs from the orthodox sense of the Catholic Church, calling God Father, but not in the sense that He begot the Son; making use of the word Son also, but meaning Son by adoption not by nature, in the sense that He was reckoned as such, not really begotten by the Father.⁸

⁸ Migne PP. Lat. xiii., p. 38.

One is tempted to wonder how Catholic priests and intelligent Catholic laymen could possibly suppose that the proposed restatement of Catholic dogma does not “lead beyond the pale of Catholic faith.” That the dogmas of the Faith are immutable, that all Catholics are bound to believe Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus; that in matters of faith Nil innovetur, nisi quod traditum est; Non nova, sed nove, Explodenda novitas, retinenda antiquitas; this belongs to the very rudiments of Catholic doctrine. The Catholic Church has always claimed to teach what she received from the apostles, that it is which constitutes the sacred deposit committed to her faithful keeping; if her claim is unfounded, if while professing to teach with divine authority the immutable divine truth entrusted to her keeping, she has all the while been stealthily accommodating and changing it to suit the fashions of the day, then is she indeed an impostor, her stupendous claims make her ridiculous, and the sooner she is shoveled out of the way the better.

But, say the liberal Catholics, there is no use arguing against facts, it is a fact that changes in dogma have taken place in the past, why should they not take place in the future?

This, of course, is the common Protestant and rationalistic objection against the immutability of Catholic dogma; if the liberal Catholic were as well read in the Catholic theology as in modern infidel literature, he would know how to answer the difficulty.

But, persists the liberal Catholic, in spite of the traditional answer of Catholic theologians to the difficulty — and here it is usual for him to introduce a sneer at scholasticism — it remains true that Catholic dogma has changed; LE pur si muove, as in a not dissimilar context asserted Galileo, that venerable confessor of the Faith, as Mivart called him.

One of the classical instances by which Loisy strives to show this, is the transition from the conception of the kingdom of God, as preached by the living Jesus, to that of the Catholic Church, brought about after the Resurrection of Our Lord. Loisy adopts the modern rationalistic view, according to which the Christ of history merely conceived of Himself as the Messias whom the Jews were expecting, whose office it was to preach repentance and thereby the forgiveness of sin, as the preparation for the immediate advent of His earthly but glorious kingdom. In the mind of Jesus there was no place and no need for the Christian Church, and He can only be said to be its founder inasmuch as He unwittingly sowed the seed from which the Church grew by the thought, labor, and adaptation of St. Paul and other great thinkers of the first two centuries of the Christian era. Then, of course, follows the conclusion — if there could be such restatement and re-interpretation of dogma in the first ages of Christianity, why should the process not continue on similar lines?

In answer to this I will quote the recent utterances of two non-Catholic writers. Mr. W. H. Mallock wrote in the Nineteenth Century for December, 1904: —

I will not pause to ask why that subjective experience, which was of no value in attesting the superhuman nature of Buddha, should be accepted as indubitable evidence of the superhuman nature of Christ. ... Nor does what I am going to say apply to neo-Anglicans only. It applies equally to men like Professors Harnack and Sabatier, and to liberal Catholics, such as the Abbé Loisy and Baron F. von Hügel. All these thinkers have come to the same conclusion, that if principles like the Bishop of Worcester’s are to be applied to the interpretation of the Gospels, our conception of the divine character of Christ must, in one respect at all events, undergo a profound change. We can no longer regard His incarnation of the Godhead as complete. We must regard Him, says the Bishop of Worcester, as ‘‘having refrained from the divine mode of consciousness’’ to such an extent that His knowledge, in many respects, was no better than an ignorant man’s. I do not know how far the Bishop may realize the scope of this admission; but, as other thinkers have shown, who are no less devout than he, it compels us to recognize that Christ was not only ignorant of many things, but was actually subject to very serious delusions—chief amongst these being the delusion that His own second coming would be immediate. Such being the case, as Baron F. von Hügel observes, the question has to be faced of how, under these conditions, Christ could have had any intention of founding an earthly Church.⁹

⁹ Page 920.

The Rev. Professor James Denney, of Glasgow, writes in the February number of the Expositor, 1905:—

He (Loisy) holds with that recent school of New Testament scholarship which lays the whole stress in the Gospels on the eschatological representation of the Kingdom. He rejects, unceremoniously, the idea that not what Jesus inherited is of value in Christianity, but only what is His own; nothing was more truly His own, nothing had greater value to Him than what He had inherited—the ancient revelation and the hopes it had inspired. He gets rid of the texts on which Harnack bases his spiritual conception of Christianity by methods which some will describe as exegetical and critical, others as the unscrupulous use of the rack and the knife. Perhaps it is enough to say that they are quite unconvincing.¹⁰

¹⁰ Page 115.

In other words this crucial instance of the apostolic restatement of Christian dogma, this undoubted result of modern criticism, this certain conclusion arrived at by the scientific historical method, is at best the opinion of a particular school of rationalistic scholars, arrived at by denying the authenticity of some texts in our authorities, by torturing others out of their obvious meaning, and by putting aside as unhistorical all supernatural phenomena like prophecies and miracles.

Again; in this question of the development of doctrine, it is all important to distinguish between what is of faith and what is merely theological speculation about the faith. And yet Mivart, in the article from which I quoted above, rides roughshod over this all important distinction.

As I am no theologian, he says, I cannot undertake the responsibility of defining what beliefs are, and what are not, de fide. To attempt to do that would, in the words of a learned Divine, only give rise to endless discussions. It is enough for me that a belief has been generally entertained, in order that I should include it within the scope of this article; for, as it seems to me, whatever has been so accepted, authority must have practically sanctioned, taught, or tolerated, at some time or other.¹¹

¹¹ Page 54.

A very remarkable confession of ignorance, which, if he had only known it, made him utterly incompetent to deal with so technical a subject.

The classical instance in this connection is the old belief that the earth was the stable center of the universe. Thus Mr. Mallock in the Nineteenth Century for December, 1904, writes : —

As Archdeacon Wilberforce has pointed out, in a passage already quoted by me, the probability of the Ascension, and even its meaning, depended on, and have passed away with, the old geocentric astronomy.¹²

¹² Page 919.

Voces Catholicæ, in the article in the Contemporary referred to above, quote the following from Loisy : —

The Church still daily repeats in the Symbol of the Apostles: He descended into Hell; He ascended into Heaven. For long ages these propositions have been taken literally. Generation after generation of Christians believed that hell, the sojourn of the damned, was underneath their feet, and that heaven, the abode of the elect, was above their heads. . . . Can it be laid down—in view of the transformation undergone by the apparent meaning of the formulas—that the theology of the future will not work out for itself an idea still more spiritual of their contents.¹³

¹³ Page 399.

The contention then is that for centuries Christians held as a dogma of faith, contained in the dogma of the Ascension, that heaven was situated above the spheres by which, according to the old astronomy, the earth was surrounded. This may have been the teaching of some theologians for anything that I know, but it certainly was never the teaching of the Church. To show that the Fathers and scholastic theologians were quite aware of the importance of distinguishing between what is of faith in such a question and what is merely scientific theory, it will be sufficient to quote a passage from Suarez, who, after giving the received theological explanation of the Ascension according to the old astronomy, adds the following noteworthy words: —

Let us conclude this disputation with the words of Augustine, who in the book On Faith and the Creed, chapter 6, speaks thus: We believe that He ascended into heaven; but where and how the Lord’s body is in heaven it is most curious and superfluous to inquire; it must only be believed that it is in heaven. For it does not belong to our frailty to examine the secrets of the heavens, but it belongs to our faith to think lofty and honorable things concerning the dignity of the Lord’s body.

14 De Incarnatione, disp. 51, sec. 1.

So that the dogma of the Ascension is not affected by the geocentric or heliocentric or any other astronomical theory; scientific theory merely affects the theological explanation of the dogma, which, of course, may vary; and this the Fathers and schoolmen knew just as well as we do.

The professed intention of liberal Catholics to interpret the faith in terms of modern scientific thought, and thus to make it more intelligible and more acceptable to educated minds of our time, is in itself legitimate and praiseworthy. But in executing this intention great care and an accurate knowledge not only of modern thought but of theology is absolutely required. Otherwise the result will be not Christian doctrine expressed in terms of modern thought, but something quite different. The attempts in this direction which have hitherto been made by liberal Catholics do not inspire one with a great idea of their theological equipment. Some of them, indeed, like Mivart, seem to glory in their ignorance of theology.

Furthermore, modern thought is a very complex phenomenon, it is something very much more than the belief in the heliocentric theory in astronomy. Experts loudly proclaim that the condition of modern philosophy is chaotic, and if one wished to try his hand at interpreting Christian doctrine in terms of some modern philosophy, there would be a large assortment for him to choose from. Loisy being, as he confesses, no philosopher, followed Sabatier in choosing Kantism as his vehicle for the restatement of Christian dogma. The choice was unfortunate. if Kant’s philosophy had been the final explanation of the world and of the nature of man, if it had even been a substantially true system of thought, something might have been said for the choice. This is notoriously not the case. As E. Caird, the Master of Balliol College, Oxford, and one of the chief authorities on Kant in this country, says in the Quarterly Review for October last: —

He (Kant) did not formulate a self-consistent system which any one could now accept; his whole philosophy may rather be regarded as a pathway of transition between two disparate views of the world and of man’s place in it.¹⁵

¹⁵ Page 436.

Some wit is reported to have said that good German philosophies go to Oxford when they die; are liberal Catholics going to give them a third lease of life when they die at Oxford?

Loisy’s attempt to interpret Christian dogma in terms of the Kantian philosophy has ended in failure. The result is something which is certainly not Christian doctrine. This is very well brought out by the Rev. Professor Denney in the article from which I quoted above. He says: —

In order to subsist in the world at all Christianity had to become (according to Loisy) all that we see it to be. It had to develop dogmas, rites, institutions, devotions, disciplines; if it had not done so, it would have ceased to exist. Not the Church but Christianity would have ceased to exist. When it entered into the great world, the great world entered into it: why not? When people became Christians they brought their minds into Christianity, their habits of thought, to some extent their former modes of worship: and again Loisy would ask, why not? The point to remember is that there is no finality here; it is a process which is going on before our eyes, and it is not to be judged as a final result; its legitimacy merely turns on the question whether the process is one in which the element of Christian tradition keeps a determining place, so that through the process men are really kept in communication with Christ... . But the seriousness of the situation appears when we ask what kind of legitimation the Church with its rites, dogmas, and discipline, obtains in this way? It is a purely historical legitimation. It has a right to be, because it is there; but it is there only because it is in motion, only because it is passing away. There is no such thing in it as an immutable dogma, or a constitution or a ritual which has divine right, and therefore can never be changed. Christology, the doctrine of grace, the doctrine of the Church and the sacraments, all alike come under this law. They have a historical legitimacy, but it is only historical; their right to be can be frankly acknowledged because it is only a relative right, and implies the obligation sooner or later to cease to be. . . . The point of living interest in Loisy’s conception is that which is suggested by the words quoted above—‘‘the absolute character which dogma derives from its source, divine revelation.”’ One’s first impression is that in the name of history Loisy refuses to think about the absolute at all. To put it paradoxically, the only absolute he acknowledges is the absolute relativity of everything which has taken or can take a real place in history. Absolute and historical form a contradiction in terms. When Harnack speaks of the essence of Christianity as something independent of time and environment, or uses phrases like absolute religion, absolute Christianity, Loisy puts them ironically aside as describing entities that are not very likely to be found in history. Yet the absolute relativity of everything in history seems to leave us without any criterion whatever, either of Christianity or of truth; everything both is and is not, and whatever we can build on this basis it is not religion. 16 Pages 108-111.

A little further on Professor Denney adds: —

Even the Christology of Jesus has for M. Loisy no finality. You cannot go back to A. D. 29 or 30, and lift Christianity just as it was, and carry it across the centuries unchanged, and set it down in A. D. 1905; in A. D. 29 the mind of Christ about Himself and the Kingdom of God was a mind adapted to the time, and it has been in process of adaptation to succeeding times ever since. This is what legitimates, not any given Christology for all time, but all Christologies each for its own time; not any doctrine of the Church or of the Christian hope as an eternal truth, but all doctrines of the Church and all eschatologies which have appeared in Christian history, each for the period whose faith has produced it. 17

This is well and clearly put by a not unsympathetic writer, and it shows that Loisy’s attempt to interpret Christianity in terms of the doctrines of relativity and evolution is incompatible with the claim of the Church that she teaches the doctrine of Jesus Christ.

One with a competent knowledge of theology who desires to present that theology to the world in a form suited to the modern mind, must be imbued, if he would be successful, with a spirit of loyalty and devotion to the Holy See. There he will look for indications of the mind of the Church, who is ever being guided into all truth by the Holy Spirit Himself. Liberal Catholics are notoriously deficient in this spirit of loyalty and devotion to the Holy See, and this alone prevents us from expecting any solid results from their unbounded activity in the realm of theology.