Creed and the creeds, their function in religion : being the Bampton lectures of 1911.

Front matter

^iiSICk L SEU^

Division

Bampton lectures

Preface

The title under which these lectures were written and delivered may seem insufficient for them as published. For the enquiry proposed into the religious value of formularies of belief and the credal principle which underlies them, became on its way something larger — the search for a ground of the soul’s spiritual en¬ deavour which should be neither church tradition nor private conscience, but should be both and more than both. Its scope was no longer to reconcile two members of the religious fact — authority and reason, church and believer; but to comprehend in one two regions of universal fact — religion and nature, life in the Spirit and life in the world. The continuity of all existence, the oneness of things holy and things common, things present and things to come, life in the Spirit and life in the world, — this one creation of the One God seemed to open to the view, and the closed folds of the sacred and the secular to throw their fences down : the walls of space and time were rolled apart. 4 Our eyes behold a far-stretching land.’ Across the equal plain thus expanded lie the roads which, we surmise, will lead us, taught by the principle taken in

X

PREFACE our quest for guide, to some rallying-point of Faith’s scattered and disharmonised defenders; and to some meeting-point, where they that call themselves Faith’s adversaries, and are not, shall discover themselves her allies.

It may be only another instance of that illusion of Greatness, which seizes every age and every student of his own age ; but to this student of our time it does seem that the time is great. It is in travail with a birth, magnum incrementum , a new vision of Faith and of the Fortune of Man; a vision to which creeds and their interpretations, in common with all human ‘forms of sound words,5 are more inadequate than in our humility already we confess them.

For the churchmen of to-day this travail-hour, as all such hours, inspires hopes for the Church or else fears, according to the temperament and the ‘ measure of faith.5 It may be that, in the total consciousness of our communion, the pulse of fear beats at this moment louder than the pulse of hope. The more is the reason that, if for any one the happier note is the more insis¬ tent on the ear, he should make report of what he hears himself.

At a new beginning long ago when ‘ builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, they sang together giving thanks unto the Lord, for his mercy endureth for ever towards Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord. But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers wept with a loud voice, and many shouted aloud

PREFACE xi for joy : so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping.’

In that intermingling of a Church’s cries let this voice add one slender echo to the joy.

J. H. S.

August, 1911.

These lectures were delivered, with some necessary abbreviation, as they are here printed.

Part I An Instrument Of Research

I

PAGE

I. Is man saved by his creed ? - 3

II. What is it to be saved ? Existing metaphors to

express Salvation . 6

III. A new metaphor, which is an old, — Life - 9

What is Life ? A mutual self-adaptation of

organism and environment - - - - 11

IV. This hypothesis tested . 12

(а) Interchange of substance at the beginnings

of organic life - - - - - 13

(б) Reciprocity in plant life - - - 14

(c) In animal life - - - - - 15

V. ( d ) In the social and moral life, where the name

of Life is Sacrifice - . 16

Which must be a mutual Sacrifice - - - 18

VI. The hypothesis tested in the Intellectual life of

The Imaginative life - - - - - - 19

Artistic creation of sculptor and of poet a reci¬ procity of two Wills . 20

Life then in all forms is the mutual self -giving of organism and environment, of soul and God

XIV

PAGE

VII. A last witness — the Instinct of Self-devotion - 24

An Old Testament type of the Sacrifice which is

Life . 25

II

Salvation, then, is best expressible by the meta¬ phor of Life, which is the mutual adaptation of an organism and its environment 29

I. This adaptation is an interchange of being or ‘ selfhood,’ and at the level of the human consciousness is Sacrifice 30

II. How Creed ministers to this Life - - - 31

Creed as an Utterance of the inward faith, a ‘ confession with the mouth ’ (St. Paul).

Creed also an instrument for defining faith by a

‘ form of sound words ’ - - - - - 32

III. 4 Utterance ’ and 6 Definition ’ are not ex¬

clusive names of Creed, but complementary ; by uttering we make definite 34

Utterance by a creed is the religious counterpart of the act of Knowing, or the relation between Subject and Object ----- 34

IV. But Believing is more than Knowing, and Creed

is the utterance not of thought only, but of the whole personal experience - - - - 36

V. Creed makes for men’s salvation because con¬ fession is the action of one term, the human, in that reciprocal relation which is life 39

The Confession of Peter . 39

Was the giving of self, which is half the act of life - xv

PAGB

VI. And was answered by the divine self -giving - 40

l ; VII. [A question] . 44

VIII. Peter’s faith-story is that of all believers. Our

belief in the Resurrection 44

In uttering this belief by a creed we make a sacri¬ fice of

IX. (1) Our Thoughts ----- 46

X. (2) Our Affections 48

XI. (3) Our Will - . 50

XII. The confession of the Creed, ‘ I believe in the Resurrection of the Dead,’ is an act of self¬ giving. If it is met by a self-giving of God, so that life results, the creed is true 50

III The tale of the belief in Immortality continued - 57

Does this belief receive the divine answer which

is the proof that it is true ? - - - - 58

[A caution. The immediate aim of this enquiry is to test, in the instance of the belief in a Resurrection, an Organum of religious research] 58

I. The signs by which fife in the soul can be verified - 59

An illustration from physical vitality, as measur¬ able by the three signs of Extension in time, Extension in space, and Intensity 59

II. These measures applied to the life which accom¬ panies a belief in the Survival of Man 61

(i) Life in the Rational nature.

(a) Does the belief persist in time ? * 61

(1 b ) Does the whole mind believe ? - - 62

b

XVI

PAGE

(ii) Life in the Emotional nature.

(а) Do the affections for the Dead survive ? 63

(б) Do they harmonise with the rest of the

affections ? . 64

(iii) Life in the Will.

(a) Do we will the Survival with all the will ? 65

(b) Can the will maintain its belief ? - 65

III. The third measure of life, Intensity. Can this

be measured by experience, or must we resort to Intuition, the organ of the mystics ? - - 67

IV. We must reconceive the World, and learn its unity

and continuity, using Imagination, a faculty deeper than Reason . 69

V. The organ by which the soul can know the

World beyond sense is Herself - - - 73

She knows the facts of the eternal world by being alive to them with all her self ; and among those facts she knows the Resurrection of the Dead 75

V] . A parable of Knowledge as a mode of Life ; and

the application - - - - - - 75

VII , This Knowledge is in part an experience by the

senses. There can be a science of faith 77

VIII. Can the Resurrection of the Dead be verified in part by such a science of research into the Spiritual ? . 78

IV

THE CREED OF THE RESURRECTION 1. Recapitulation.

The Soul has an organ of knowledge that is neither Sense-experience nor Intuition. This is her Self.

It knows the world by living to the world • 83

Images of this relation of Soul to World 84

XVII

II. Resumption of the argument for Immortality -

By help of an imaging of the world as one and continuous, the third sign of life in the soul, Intensity, can be discerned -

The personal being of a friend, surviving in the world beyond sense, is a fact attested by a conviction which has Intensity, the third measure of life. This conviction is not illusion.

It is a better informant than Intuition, since it appeals in part to the Senses -

III. The knowledge of a departed friend’s survival in

the world of spirit is of the same order as is the knowledge of a friend’s existence in the world of matter ------

For this latter is a knowledge of relations between him and ourself, of an action and reaction of the two personalities .

IV. The knowledge of a friend’s existence in the super-

sensuous region is like to this. We discover

relations between us .

(1) Of the Intelligence -

V. (2) Of the Affections .

VI. (3) Of the Will .

VII. The evidence then of the Resurrection of the Dead is the life received by the Soul when it makes communion or interchange with this fact in the eternal world — the survival of a friend -

This life of the soul which results from her contact with a spiritual reality is in part an experience of the senses, measurable in some degree even by others than ourself - - - - -

VIII. That a knowledge of the Eternal is gained through the Imagination is the old doctrine, approved by a traditional saying of Christ, that truth comes by the passion of Wonder -

PA OK

92 94

PAGE

IX. What then of Intuition ? Is it the sense of life experienced in that part of the personal being which is extended beyond the region of sense into the supersensuous ? And are Experience and Intuition one same knowledge in successive

Communion and full Communion - - - 101

X. The knowledge of the Resurrection of the Dead a

clue to the problem of the Resurrection of Jesus 102

XI. A study of a Witness’s faith - 104

John ‘ saw and believed ’ - - - - - 105

John believed and saw . 106

Part II The Instrument Applied

V

THE CREED-MAKING OF THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL

I. What is Creed when it is Creed of the Church ? Ill It is an utterance not of an individual faith, but

a corporate - . 112

That is, a means by which the Christian lives unto

God as a social being - - - - -113

Man’s life is dependent at all stages on Society,

and at the stage of Spirit on the Church - - 114

II. The theory of 4 Christianity without Creed ’ con¬ sidered . 115

The apology for dogmatic pronouncements as 4 defences of the faith ’ forced on the Church by heresies . 116

III. This attitude is faulty. Not polemic, but dialectic, is the more fruitful method of dealing with ques¬ tioners of the Church’s creed - - - - 117

For dialectic is a function of Life - - - 118 xix

PAGB

IV. In the 6 marriage of true minds ’ by dialectic we must regard less what a disputant says than what he thinks . 119

The Anti-dogmatist is combating not the defining of belief, but the faulty defining. The apologist of dogma should remember that the ‘definite¬ ness * necessary to faith must be not in the language of a catechism but in the mind of the catechumen . 119

V. These disputants may be brought together by the principle that Salvation is Life and Life of the Whole Man. Man cannot be saved in his mind alone, nor yet apart from his mind - - - 121

VI. Creed, the minister of Life, must itself be living.

What then if a living Creed have in it a dead member ? - -- -- -- 124

Shall we answer that a creed of the undivided Catholic Church cannot die, being the work of the Holy Spirit ? . 125

VII. What is Catholicity ?

The canon of Vincent examined - 126

VIII. Catholicity, as defined by this canon, proves to

be Life . 128

IX. In this truth lie answers to all the questions which

rise for the ‘ Catholic ’ Christian - - 130

And among these to the question whether a Par¬ ticular Church can reformulate a creed and

• remain Catholic in doing so - - - - 131

X. But can she remain ‘ Apostolic/ and a keeper

of the Tradition ? . 133

To keep the Tradition is to keep and convey not a doctrine but a life from Christ, as the Apostles

XX

PAGE

conveyed it. The instance of S. Peter and Cornelius . 133

XI. In the transmission of the faith Creed is an

agency. But there is a greater than Creed - 135