The present religious crisis

Front matter

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i UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

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Contents

Chapter Page

I. The Crisis 7

II. Dogmatic Theology 12

Chapter I. The Crisis

Dr. Gerhard Uhlhorn, a leading evangelical divine of Germany, affirms that *' since the first days of the church, when she had to defend her faith against heathen calumny and heathen science, the attacks upon Christianity and the church have never been so manifold and so powerful as at the present time. The contest is no longer upon single questions, such as whether this or that conception of Christianity is the more correct, but the very existence of Christianity is at stake." ^ Indeed, says Professor Christlieb, likewise of Germany : " Whether you visit the lecture-rooms of professors, or the council-chambers of the municipality, or the workshop of the artisan, everywhere — in all places of private or social gathering — you hear the same tale: the old faith is now obsolete." ^

Canon Liddon thus speaks for England : " The vast majority of our countrymen still shrink with sincere dread from any thing like an explicit rejection of Christianity. Yet no one who hears what goes on in daily conversation, and who is moderately conversant with the tone of some of the leading organs of public opinion, can doubt the existence of a wide-spread unsettlement of religious belief. People have a notion that the present is, in the hackneyed phrase, *a transition period,' and that they ought to be keeping pace with the general movement." 3

Professor Macpherson thus depicts the state of things in Scotland: *'A11 religious questions seem to be at present once more thrown into the crucible, to undergo a fiery trial. Not merely the truths of revealed religion, but those truths which constitute what is termed natural religion, are subjected to this trial." 4 ''It is also a characteristic of our times, that this contest respecting the foundation of religious belief is not confined, as it used generally to be, within certain circles of speculative men. All classes in society are taking part in it. The press, now so powerful in its influence, has involved rich and poor, learned and unlearned, in this great conflict." 5

Pressense, speaking for France, declares that a formidable crisis has there commenced alike in the history of Catholicism and of Protestantism, and that nothing will check it. There is not a single

THE CRISIS. 9

religious party, he says, which does not feel the need either of confirmation or transformation. All the churches are passing through a time of crisis. Aspiration toward the church of the future is becoming more general and more ardent." ^

In a private letter to the author. Professor J. F. Astie thus speaks for Switzerland : "In America, the theology of the past is still powerful. With us, orthodoxy has lost the control. At the utmost the old theology is here without hold, except upon such minds as are at once narrow and fanatical. May you never know in the United States the sad condition in which we are here ; for we are here suspended between a past which cannot be restored, and a future which cannot be born. May you not have, as we have had, a theological and ecclesiastical revolution, but rather a religious evolution which is at once calm and peaceful."

But that we are, at least in some initial way, beginning to pass here in America, either through an agitated theological revolution, or through a comparatively calm and peaceful religious evolution, is patent on the surface. Modern unbelief, in one form or another, constitutes to-day one of the uppermost topics of our nation and our times. Our pulpits, according to the modern or mediaeval attainments of their respective occupants, make it one of the most prominent subjects either of their discuslO THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS.

sions, or their declamations, or their semi-imprecatory supplications. It pervades all departments of our domestic literature, whether secular or religious. It is being discussed by us, now in our private conversations, now in our social gatherings, now in our lyceums or club-rooms. Special professorships and lectureships are devoted to its demolition. Our popular platform orators find it to their pecuniary profit to promulge it.

Nor is the radical religious revolution which is to-day sweeping, or beginning to sweep, over this, in common with all other Christian countries, either a mere matter of the moment, or due to any temporary or evanescent causes. Adam Storey Farrar, in his Bampton Lectures for 1862, puts it down as the fourth great historical crisis of the Christian faith, and finds himself obliged to treat of it in connection with the development of modern thought in three nations for two centuries. These are, first, English Deism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ; secondly, French Infidelity in the eighteenth century ; and, thirdly, German Rationalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 7

The present religious crisis, then, has already been in progress for more than two hundred years, and has gathered up into itself all the motion and momentum imparted to great religious epochs by international scholarship and thought. Nor can it

THE CRISIS. II

be doubtful that the underlying causes which have thus far imparted to it this persistent vitality will continue to increase in volume, and to push the crisis forward until every one of its profoundest problems, which is capable of a solution, has eventually been settled, and settled to the satisfaction of every cultured mind.

In Germany, where its development has been the most complete, its results have been the most disastrous to all the traditional conceptions of Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant. And elsewhere throughout Christendom, in proportion as its influences extend, almost in that proportion do the like results obtain, or threaten to obtain.

As for us who have become more or less inextricably involved in this onward religious movement, it certainly cannot be premature for us, on the one hand, to make the effort to discover, in so far as may be possible, whither we are tending ; and, on the other hand, to provide ourselves, in so far as we may be able, with at least some provisional religious beliefs and hopes, to take the place of those beliefs and hopes from which we have undoubtedly departed, and departed never to return.

Chapter II. Dogmatic Theology

In his Cunningham Lectures for 1873, Dr. Rainy confesses that he finds himself confronted in Scotland, not merely with heresy, but with heresy persistently professed, and such heresy as is subversive of what is fundamental in the current views of Christianity.^

Some specimens of this heresy may be found by the reader in the volume entitled " Scotch Sermons," issued in 1880. Thus, one of the contributors, the Rev. W. L. M 'Parian, professes to speak for a class which includes in it many of the religious teachers in all the churches. This writer, among other things, proceeds to exhibit some of the sections of scholastic theology which these religious teachers regard as specially untenable. These sections, he affirms, comprehend the following dogmas : i. The descent of man from the Adam of the Book of Genesis ; 2. The fall of that Adam from a state of original righteousness by eating the forbidden fruit ; 3. The imputation of Adam's guilt to all his posterity ;

4. The consequent death of all men in sin ; 5. The redemption in Christ of an election according to grace ; 6. The quickening in the elect of a new life ; 7. The eternal punishment and perdition of those who remain unregenerate.^

This single example suffices to illustrate, that, within the bosom of all the Protestant denominations, there exist to-day representative persons who have undero:one a more or less radical revolution of opinion concerning almost every dogmatic statement of doctrine which has come down to us from the dogma-making epochs. The creed cannot be named, which is so brief that some more or less considerable party in the Protestant churches does not to-day contend for its abridgment. The dogma cannot be instanced, which is so fundamental that some representative minority in the Protestant ranks does not to-day contend, either for its revision and restatement, or for its absolute abandonment.

Let us who are on the extreme wing of this progressive movement within the Protestant ranks declare our position, if possible, with even more distinctness. Our rupture with Protestantism does not relate to those mere minor matters of belief which divide Protestants into all their wearisome array of theological sects and cliques. All these sects and cliques combined could not to-day put forth any mere abstract and consensus of their belief so short that we would not cut it shorter, or so fundamental that we would not either greatly modify it, or reject it altogether.

To illustrate. We find in the Constitution of the Evangelical Alliance a brief summary of the consensus of the various evangelical or Protestant confessions of faith. The opening article — which we need alone to cite — is this : —

"• I. The divine inspiration, authority, and sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures."

Do we, the representative minority of religious revolutionists still classified with Protestants, and presumably in question, — do we accept of even this consensus }

If we do not, we may no longer deserve the name of Protestants ; we may no longer deserve in any traditional sense the broader name of Christians ; but do we accept of this consensus }

Before we give any decided and decisive answer on this point, it will be well to come to such an understanding with ourselves as to render it certain what sort of an answer we alone can give with entire mental rectitude, not to say with entire moral honesty.

And, in the first place, let us direct our attention to a portion of Article VI. of the Church of England. Here it is : *' Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation, so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church."

With this, so far as our present purpose is concerned, all the Protestant churches will substantially agree.

Over against this the Dogmatic Decrees of the late Vatican Council fulminate as follows: "All those things are to be believed with divine and Catholic faith, which are contained in the Word of God, written or handed down, and which the Church, either by a solemn judgment, or by her ordinary and universal magisterium, proposes for belief as having been divinely revealed." 3 ''And these books of the Old and New Testament are to be received as sacred and canonical in their integrity, with all their parts, as they are enumerated in the decree of the said Council." 4

The semi-scholarly reader will perceive, therefore, that Protestants, first of all, affirm that the Scriptures alone can furnish the Christian church with a divinely authoritative subject-matter for her dogmas. Catholics, on the other hand, allege that the written books of the Bible, and the unwritten traditions of the

Church, are equally of a divine authority in all matters of Christian belief, so long as those traditions are only duly proposed and sanctioned by the ruling powers of Rome. But, if the unwritten traditions of the Church be excluded from the problem, we begin at once to approximate to something like a consensus of opinion, even between the Catholics and Protestants. They both concur, that is to say, in the view that the Bible — the written Bible — is divinely authoritative in matters of religious belief, alike for Protestants and Catholics.

And yet they, of course, have their well-known traditional dispute concerning what the written Bible is. What sacred books together constitute the written Bible 1 The Catholics say that this was all settled by the sacred Synod of Trent, and that the apocryphal books of the Old Testament must be admitted in the canon. The Protestants contend quite as stoutly that these apocryphal books must not be admitted in the canon. But, if this further bone of contention about the canonical character or uncanonical character of the apocryphal books of the Old Testament be cast aside, we find the high contesting parties standing again almost peaceably together. In other words, while the Catholics will not concede that the Protestant Bible contains, in the Old Testament division, all the canonical books of the Holy Scriptures, they will not merely concede, but insist, that all the books which the Protestant Bible does contain are undoubtedly canonical.

Nor can any Protestant body, no matter how supremely anti-Catholic, desire a more emphatic statement of the divine and infallible inspiration of the Scriptures than is presented in the Vatican Decrees. For those decrees explicitly affirm that both the Old and New Testaments contain revelation with no admixture of error, for the reason that, having been written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author. 5

But not only do Protestants and Catholics to-day concur in the view, first, that all the special books which together constitute the Protestant Bible are sacred and canonical, and, secondly, that these special books, taken in their integrity and with all their parts, present the traditional theological dogmatists with a subject-matter for their dogmas which is at once divinely inspired and therefore absolutely devoid of every kind of error. Catholics and Protestants have from the very outset held this view in common. It is indeed true, that, on the former point, neither the Protestant divines nor the Catholic divines would to-day regard some of the leading reformers and biblical scholars of the sixteenth century as supremely orthodox. Thus Luther denied the canonicity of the Book of Esther. He repudiated the apostolical authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, of the

General Epistles of James and Jude, and also of the Apocalypse. The Apocalypse in particular Luther placed very much on a parity with the Fourth Book of Esdras, — which latter book he talked of throwing into the Elbe. And to him the Epistle of James was but an epistle of straw.

Dr. Davidson, who is our authority for the above statements concerning Luther, likewise afifirms that Bodenstein of Carlstadt divided the biblical books into three classes, namely, those of the first, those of the second, and those of the third rank, in point of dignity and authority ; that Zwingli pronounced the Apocalypse to be uncanonical ; and that CEcolampadius would not permit either the Apocalypse, or James, or Jude, or Second Peter, or Second and Third John, to be compared with the other portions of the Scriptures.6

But all this is scarcely more than an individual development — an almost accidental feature — connected with the Reformation. The questioning of the canonicity of the books to-day composing the Protestant Bible did not then become general-, and did not, even so far as it progressed, meet with any thing like an ultimate and general Protestant acceptance. For whether we consult the Helvetic Confession, the Gallic Confession, the Belgic Confession, the Westminster Confession, the Confession revised and accepted by the Synod of Dordrecht, or consult

DOCfMATIC THEOLOGY. 1 9

the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, what do we discover ? We discover simply that the Reformation of the sixteenth century decided, in its aggregate and final outcome, as that outcome found expression in the sub-Reformation theology, that the Protestant churches would reject the apocryphal books contained in the Catholic canon of the Old Testament Scriptures, but would retain all the other books of the old Catholic Bible, as being truly sacred and canonical, and making up together their own Holy Scriptures.

As for the second point, we only need to cite by way of proof the following remark by Adam Storey Farrar : " The belief in a full inspiration was held from the earliest times, with the few exceptions observable in occasional remarks of Origen, Jerome, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Euthymius Zigabenus in the twelfth centruy." 7

Looked at, therefore, only with reference to the leading issues and controlling outcome, it was with regard, neither to the canonicity of the various books at present composing the Protestant Bible, nor to the divine and infallible inspiration of those books, that the Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century came to an open rupture with the Church of Rome. On both of these points they found themselves practically accordant with the views already existing in the Church of Rome. All they did was simply to accept and adopt both these points almost precisely as they found them in the Church of Rome, as being common postulates alike of Catholic and Protestant theology. And that they did this without any due examination of either the one postulate or the other, all modern biblicists are perfectly aware.

But since the sixteenth century, and especially during the present century, both these jDOStulates have been examined into with some degree of thoroughness, and still an increasingly profound and searching and scholarly examination of them continues to progress. As Strauss has it : ** The old Reformation had an advantage in this, that what then appeared intolerable appertained wholly to the doctrines and practices of the Church, while the Bible, and an ecclesiastical discipline simplified according to its dictates, provided what seemed a satisfactory substitute. The operation of sifting and separation was easy ; and, the Bible continuing an unquestioned treasure of revelation and salvation to the people, the crisis, though violent, was not dangerous. Now, on the contrary, that which then remained the stay of Protestants, the Bible itself, with its history and teaching, is called in question : the sifting process has now to be applied to its own pages. ^

What has been the result of this modern sifting of the traditional Catholic and Protestant views about the Scriptures ? Can we, who are more or less thoroughly conversant with the sifting process, any longer believe, for one thing, that all the books and portions of books which together constitute the Protestant Bible are canonical ? Can we any more believe all those books and portions of books are divinely inspired, and therefore utterly devoid of every sort of error ?

If we should accordingly ask ourselves afresh whether we can accept any mere abstract, no matter how brief, any mere consensus, no matter how unanimous and fundamental, of the various evangelical or Protestant confessions of faith, what must we answer ? The indications are already becoming somewhat pronounced that we will be obliged to answer, that, with us, all further questions about the various Protestant confessions of faith are obsolete ; and that it is extremely doubtful whether we can even accept any mere abstract and consensus of those fundamental, traditional views about the Bible which Protestants and Catholics alike agree upon, and which are placed at the very basis of all Catholic and all Protestant dogmatic formulations of what they are pleased to call sometimes Christianity, and sometimes the true religion of the Bible.

Chapter III. The Validity Of The Biblical Canon

We have already adverted to the traditional dispute between Protestants and Catholics as it concerns the canonical or uncanonical character of the apocryphal books of the Old Testament. Leaving these parties to share their individual opinions on that subject, we will now proceed to examine very briefly into the validity of some of the leading reasons which the Protestants in particular have been in the habit of advancing in support of the canonicity of the several books composing the Protestant collection of the Holy Scriptures.

The chief argument which the older Protestant divines present for the canonicity of the Old Testament books, which they accept in common with the Catholics, consists in the allegation that all these books, and none others, received the explicit sanction of Jesus and his apostles. But among modern Protestant biblicists this line of argument must have a very modified value. Thus Professor W. Robertson Smith afifirms that neither the Book of Esther, nor that of Canticles, nor that of Ecclesiastes, is ever referred to in the New Testament.^ Moreover, Dr. Davidson frankly concedes that the New Testament writings betray a familiarity with the ideas and expressions of the apocryphal books, as James with those of Sirach, Hebrews with those of Second Maccabees, Romans with those of Wisdom, and Jude with those of Enoch. ^

Regarded from this point of view, therefore, modern Protestant biblical scholars would be compelled to admit that at least three of the non-apocryphal books — Esther, Canticles, and Ecclesiastes — must be excluded from the Old Testament canon, and that at least four of the apocryphal books — Sirach, Second Maccabees, Wisdom, and Enoch — must be included in such canon.

Again : The exact principle which guided the original collectors in the formation of the biblical canon is confessedly obscure. Still no one can question that authorship, or supposed authorship, had very much to do in deciding whether a particular book was to be accepted or rejected at the hands of such collectors. It is well known, for example, that, in the early ages of the Christian church, the New Testament writings were divided into two distinct classes. The first class was characterized as the Homologoumena, and the second class as the Atitilegoniena. The Homologoumena consisted of such books as were universally recognized ; the Antilegomena consisted of such books as were acknowledged in some parts of the church, but disputed in others. And, according to Professor W. Robertson Smith, the books in the first class were those of admitted and undoubted apostolical authority.3

But as early as the fifteenth century we find Erasmus denying the apostolical origin of the Epistle to the Hebrews, of Second Peter, and of the Apocalypse, but leaving the canonicity of these books unquestioned. 4 And in the sixteenth century Calvin draws a corresponding distinction between the canonicity and the apostolical origin of the Epistle to the Hebrews and of Second Peter. 5 And now, in the nineteenth century, something like a consensus of opinion is beginning to obtain among the modern, as distinguished from the traditional, Protestant biblical authorities, that, as Dr. Davidson observes, the canonicity of the books is a distinct question from their authenticity.^ Thus the general rule is laid down by the late Dean Stanley, that the authority or canonicity of a sacred book hardly ever depends on its particular date or name. For, says he, if for these purposes it was necessary that the writers should be known, nearly half the books of the Old Testament would at once be excluded from the canon.7 Nor need it scarcely be remarked, that, if authenticity should be made the standard of their canonicity, not a few of the New Testament books would share a corresponding fortune. For it is not merely true that in these days a very large percentage of the Old Testament writings are decided to belong neither to the authors nor the ages to which they are traditionally accredited : it is equally true that Professor W. Robertson Smith merely expresses a prevailing modern scholarly conclusion when he affirms that a considerable portion of the New Testament is made up of writings not directly apostolical.^

In a subsequent chapter we will discover, in the New Testament department of modern biblical criticism, what slender claims the Gospels in particular possess to having been written by the original apostles or disciples of Jesus, whose respective names they bear. Just here it will suffice, for the benefit of such readers as are not familiar with these subjects, to instance a few of the considerations in view of which so much of the Old Testament literature is to-day decided to be of a more or less unauthentic character.

One of the clearest and most exhaustive expositions of this topic at large, existing in the English language, is that developed by Professor W. Robertson Smith, in his '' Lectures on the Old Testament in the Jewish Church."

Speaking with special reference to the Pentateuch,

Professor Smith, among other things, observes : ** The idea that Moses is author of the whole Pentateuch, except the last chapter of Deuteronomy, is derived from the old Jewish theory, in Josephus, that every leader of Israel wrote down, by divine authority, the events of his own time, so that the sacred history is like a day-book, constantly written up to date. No part of the Bible corresponds to this description, and the Pentateuch as little as any. For example, the last chapter of Deuteronomy, which, on the common theory, is a note added by Joshua to the work in which Moses had carried down the history till just before his death, cannot really have been written till after Joshua was dead and gone. For it speaks of the city of Dan. Now, Dan is the new name of Laish, which that town received after the conquest of the Danites in the age of the Judges, when Moses' grandson became priest of their idolatrous sanctuary. But, if the last chapter of Deuteronomy is not contemporary history, what is the proof that the rest of the book is so .? As a matter of fact, the Pentateuchal history was written [not in the wilderness, but] in the land of Canaan. ... In Hebrew the common phrase for westward is ' seaward,' and for southward, 'towards the Negeb.' The word Negeb, which primarily means parched land, is, in Hebrew, the proper name of the dry steppe district in the south of Judah. These expressions for west and south could only be formed within Palestine. Yet they are used in the Pentateuch, not only in the narrative, but in the Levitical description of the tabernacle in the wilderness (Exod. xxvii.).

But at Mount Sinai the sea did not lie to the west, and the Negeb was to the north. Moses could no more call the south side the Negeb side of the tabernacle than a Glasgow man could say that the sun set over Edinburgh. The answer attempted to this is, that the Hebrews might have adopted these phrases in patriarchal times, and never given them up in the ensuing four hundred and thirty years ; but that is nonsense. When a man says towards the sea, he means it. . . . Again; the Pentateuch displays an exact topographical knowledge of Palestine, but by no means so exact a knowledge of the wilderness of the wandering. The narrator knew the names of the places famous in the forty years' wandering ; but for Canaan he knew local details, and describes them with exactitude as they were in his own time (e.g., Gen. xii. 8, xxxiii. i8, XXXV. 19, 20). Accordingly, the patriarchal sites can still be set down on the map with definiteness ; but geographers are unable to assign with certainty the site of Mount Sinai, because the narrative has none of that topographical color which the story of an eye-witness is sure to possess. Once more: the Pentateuch cites as authorities poetical records which are not earlier than the time of Moses. One of these records is a book, — the Book of the Wars of Jehovah (Num. xxi. 14). Did Moses, writing contemporary history, find and cite a book already current, containing poetry on the wars of Jehovah and his people, which began in his own times ? Another poetical authority cited is a poem circulating among the MosJielim, or reciters of sarcastic verses (Num. xxi. 2J^ seq.). It refers to the victory over Sihon, which took place at the very end of the forty years' wandering. If Moses wrote the Pentateuch, what occasion could he have to authenticate his narrative by reference to these traditional depositaries of ancient poetry } " 9

Such, then, are a few of the considerations assigned by Professor W. Robertson Smith, in proof of the position, that, as a whole, the Pentateuch never could have been written by Moses in the wilderness, but must have been written by some subsequent author, or rather by some subsequent series of authors, in the land of Palestine. And as of the Pentateuch, so of most of the other books, alike of the Old and New Testament. The more rigidly the subject of their authenticity is inquired into, the more doubtful does their authenticity become.

It should be carefully noted, however, that it has all along been quite aside from the present writer's purpose to enter at length upon the full and formal discussion of the general subject of the authenticity or unauthenticity of the various biblical books. His design has been merely to permit Professor Smith, in the most summary manner possible, to place the ordinary reader, by an illustrative argument or two, on an understanding relation with modern biblical scholars on this question. The question itself has already been canvassed backward and forward, and over and over again. As the result of this discussion, biblical scholars have already become permanently divided into two well-defined classes, — the new and the old. Broadly speaking, the old continue to adhere to the opinion that the various biblical books belong to the authors and the ages to which they are traditionally referred. The new have reached the final conclusion that, exceptional instances aside, such is not the case.

Modern biblical scholars accordingly find themselves confronted with the following dilemma. Either they must admit that most of the books of both the Old and New Testament are not canonical ; or else they must insist, after the manner of Dr. Davidson, Dean Stanley, and Professor W. Robertson Smith, that the authenticity of these books is no proper, or at least no necessary, criterion of their canonicity.