The recovery and restatement of the gospel ...

Front matter

.; :r- ■ ^»|| j Hffiffii

FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER

E RECOVERY AND RESTATEMENT OF THE GOSPEL

Chapter II. The Obscuration of the Gospel in the Course of its Historical Development - - 19

I. The early transformation of Christianity - - 19

The ecclesiastical transformation - - - - 20

The theological transformation ... 27

II. From Origen to the Reformation 36

III. The obscuration of the gospel resulting from the

early transformation of Christianity - - 40

The radical character of the change - - - 40

The eclipse of the personal element in the gospel 47

The moral eclipse of the gospel ... $g

Chapter III. The Historical Recovery of the Gospel 67

I. The Lutheran Reformation - - - 68 II. The post-Reformation re-eclipse of the gospel - 73 The survival of Greco-Catholic dogmatics in Protestantism 73

The new emphasis placed upon theology - - 79 The formal principle of the Reformation displaces

the material principle in importance - - 81

The dogmatic system is read back into the Bible - 83

The new element in the post-Reformation eclipse 85 vii viii CONTENTS

PAGE

III. The nineteenth-century reformation - 89

The return to the Christian records 90

The popular reopening of the Bible - 95

The scientific reopening of the Bible 98

Chapter IV. The Recovered Gospel of the New Testament 113

I. Attitude of modern exegesis toward the New

Testament literature 113

II. The gospel of Jesus 117

Jesus of Nazareth the Mediator of salvation - 118

God the Heavenly Father the Author of salvation 122

The nature and conditions of salvation - - 123

1. Salvation as the kingdom of God - - 123

2. Salvation as eternal life - 129 III. Conclusions ------- 132

1. The New Testament terminology - - - 132

2. The true nature of the gospel - - - 135

Chapter I. The Gospel and Theology - - - 153

I. The nature of theological statement - - 154

II. The value of theological statement - - - 159

III. The right of theological restatement - - 170

IV. The need of theological restatement at the present

Chapter II. The Gospel Restated: A Suggested Theological System 185

I. The governing position of Jesus Christ in theology 187

1. Theology must be loyal to the thought of Jesus 187

2. Corollary: the place of the Bible in Christianity 187

3. Statement of the theme of theology - - 197 II. Jesus Christ the Mediator of eternal life - - 197

The mission of Jesus 197

The person of Christ 201

III. God the Author and Source of eternal life - 205

CONTENTS ix

PAGE

IV. Man the recipient of eternal life - - - 207

The origin and nature of man - - - 207

The origin and nature of sin - - - -211

V. The nature and conditions of eternal life - 213

The nature of eternal life 214

Entrance into eternal life - - - - 214

The continuance of life 218

The result and reward of eternal life - - 221

VI. Eternal life and the kingdom of God • - 222

The organic nature of the kingdom of God - 223

Relations within the kingdom of God - 223

The law of the kingdom .... 225

How the law of the kingdom is fulfilled - - 227

The progress and consummation of the kingdom 232

Chapter III. Conclusion 240

The change of center in theology - - - 240 The view advocated explains the situation, both

historically 244

and practically - - - - - - 247

Introduction

THE QUESTION STATED.

The purpose of the following pages is to show how the gospel of Jesus has become obscured during the course of its historical development, and that it is therefore necessary to go back of this in order to recover the gospel which he taught ; and further, that, inasmuch as the world's culture has radically changed during the centuries since Christianity received its first dogmatic expression, this recovered gospel needs restatement in terms of modern thought and life.

In asserting that the gospel has been obscured, no one would claim that it has ever been wholly lost. During even the darkest of the centuries it has still been a mighty power in the world. It has transformed lives and determined the destiny of nations. It has leavened society, influenced the movements of thought, and produced a civilization that is at least semi- Christian.

Yet there are good reasons for suspecting that a real obscuration has taken place. As thought is handed down from age to age it tends to become dead and stereotyped tradition. The new genxvi INTRODUCTION

eration attempts to appropriate the statements of the former time, but life has moved on and the old forms of expression no longer possess vital force. Again, when Christianity entered the world, it came into an alien and unfriendly environment. In process of time it was modified by these outside influences, and lost something of its original power. Yet again, the gospel came at first in the form of life and speech. It had to be reduced to writing and brought into relation to the world's thought. Then, as it came into contact with the nations, this original literature was translated into other languages. Thus the gospel has been subject to radical transplantings as it has been transferred from the soil of Jewish life and forms of thought to that of Greek, Roman, German, and English life and culture. It has been called upon to pass out of one civilization into an entirely different one, in coming from the ancient to the modern world. It would be strange, indeed, if this long and intricate process had not affected Christianity and caused later conceptions of the gospel to depart from the original. Hence, on a priori grounds alone, we should expect that, after eighteen hundred years of such a history, the gospel would have become obscured.

If we turn now to the great claims that Christianity makes, and reflect upon its com-

INTRODUCTION xvii

parative failure to vindicate them, we arrive at the same conclusion. Jesus Christ came into the world to save it. It remains unsaved. He came in order that on earth God's kingdom might come and his will be done as in heaven. God's will is not done on earth, nor is his kingdom triumphant. Making all possible allowance for the magnitude of the task, and giving full recognition to what has been accomplished, still something is radically wrong, that after nearly two thousand years the claims of the gospel have been fulfilled in so small a measure. The institutional life of the world remains almost untouched organically. What is at fault ? Are we mistaken in thinking that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself? Is not the gospel in reality the power of God unto salvation ? There are good reasons for suspecting that the difficulty lies, at least partially, in the fact that the gospel has been obscured and misconceived, and so has led to misdirected energy on the part of God's people.

The probability of an obscuration of the gospel, suggested by the above considerations, becomes a certainty when we compare modern Christianity with the Christianity of the New Testament. The one is characterized by formalism and intellectualism, the other by freedom and spiritual power. When a man once escapes xviii INTRODUCTION

from the persistent fiction that Protestantism, as a matter of course, is a perfect reproduction of New Testament Christianity, then the more he works his way into New Testament thought and the better he understands modern Christianity, the more clearly does he see the gulf between the two.

Moreover, as we follow back the history of Christianity we are able to discover just where and when and how this disastrous obscuration actually occurred, and in what it consists. It took place in the formative period of the first three centuries, and was a radical secularizing of the gospel. The institutional eclipse of the gospel during that time, resulting from the formation of the Catholic church, with its hierarchical priesthood and ecclesiastical salvation, is now generally recognized throughout the Protestant world. The great Reformation of the sixteenth century was directed against that error. The issue now hinges upon the question whether during the same period there occurred a theological eclipse which has persisted until the present time. Was the theological development of that formative period the legitimate unfolding of the gospel of Jesus, or did it transform the nature of that gospel by the introduction of new and incongruous elements ? In the early adjustment of Christianity to contemporary thought,

INTRODUCTION xix

accomplished in the formation of the first Christian theology, did the gospel become so identified with this theology as to be changed in essential character from a life of faith, affecting the whole nature of man, to assent to a body of philosophical knowledge, affecting chiefly his intellectual life ?

In other words, stated in present terms, the question is this : What is it to be a Christian? Does it consist in, or necessarily involve, the acceptance of the traditional dogmatic theology of the church, or does it consist solely in confident trust in Christ and loyal obedience to his will? What is Christianity in its essential nature ? A life of faith, or a creed ? Or is it a faith plus a creed ?

This problem is fundamental. The issue here is not the difficulty that one generation finds in entering into the thought of another, nor the difficulty of translating thought from one language to another. It lies deeper. It has to do, not with the outside or accidental aberrations of the gospel, but with its inner and essential nature. At the present time no other theological question can compare with this in importance. Either consciously or unconsciously it lies at the very heart of the modern theological ferment. There will be no peace, and there ought to be none, until a thorough investigation has xx INTRODUCTION

brought clearly to light the true nature of the gospel proclaimed by Christianity.

The answer to this question is not easily found. Our first thought would be to go directly to the written documents of the primitive period, as contained in the New Testament. But we soon discover that these also have had a history, which must be understood before their contents can be justly estimated. Moreover, they were written under definite historical conditions, which render them subject to the ordinary laws of historical and literary criticism. The records depend upon the historical events which precede them ; the history itself is primary. And this history is not isolated, but is most intimately related to the whole complex environment of the times. Thus is imposed the task of reproducing the history of New Testament times, in both its narrower and its wider circles, if we would rightly interpret the New Testament records.

A further difficulty exists in the fact that we are living in the intellectual and religious atmosphere that is itself the result of the hereditary complex of ideas formed by the long course of history that separates us from the New Testament times. We see the New Testament through this atmosphere ; and hence there is a strong tendency to read it in the light of its traditional

INTRODUCTION xxi

interpretation. But this is the theological interpretation, which is itself a part of the very obscuration that we are trying to locate. Later theological ideas, and new meanings acquired by words during the historical development of Christianity, are unconsciously reflected back into the Bible and attached to its language. The difficulty can be overcome only by getting outside of the traditional theological environment. Just as the scientist in his experiments makes allowance for the personal equation, so here we must reckon with this theological equation. We must work our way back to the New Testament, and learn to read it in the light of the age in which it was written.

For these reasons, therefore, to decide what original Christianity was is not so simple and direct a task as it might seem. It involves a knowledge of the New Testament that will do justice to the historical environment in which it was written, and an understanding of the history of Christianity that will make possible a just estimate of the influence of the post-biblical development.

These are the two tasks that are being accomplished, respectively, in the sciences of modern biblical exegesis and church history. The one attempts to understand the New Testament as interpreted by the canons of historical criticism;

xxii INTRODUCTION

the other, by unveiling the later development, discovers what has been added to Christianity, and when and how these additions were effected. All the work in these departments has not yet been completed, but the main conclusions are well enough established so that they can be brought to bear upon the problem of the recovery of the gospel.

While we might begin with the conclusions of either of these sciences, there is a distinct advantage in considering the historical development first. To trace the progress of Christian thought prepares the mind for a more unprejudiced consideration of its beginnings, by disclosing the allowance that must be made for what we have called the theological equation. Yet these two, the study of New Testament teaching and the consideration of its development in history, cannot be kept entirely separate. We have to begin with something. We cannot really trace the stream backward, but must start tentatively at the source, follow it down, and then, with the new knowledge gained, go back and more fully explore the sources. The first of these tasks is attempted in chaps, ii and iii, the second in chap, iv ; while chap, i discusses the spirit that animates the entire modern religious movement.

The historical process described in these chapters is nowhere in a straight line. It is much

INTRODUCTION xxiii

involved, and the movement is sometimes wellnigh lost in the confusing interplay of forces and the multiplicity of details. If the matter seems presented more clearly in this discussion than in the history itself, it is because the logical significance of the movement is clearer than the chronological sequence of events.

The theme of Part I is, thus, the recovery of the Christian gospel. Part II deals with the problem of the restatement of that gospel in modern language. Much confusion is avoided by keeping the two questions distinct.

The necessity for this restatement of Christianity arises from the change in the world's culture. The right to make such a restatement lies in the fact that theology is only the human science of Christianity. It should be borne in mind that a new theology does not mean a new gospel. The dogmatic statement of Christianity is extra-biblical and post-biblical. It therefore has none of the divine sanction and authority attaching to the gospel itself. Theology, having been made by men, may be remade by other men. But the case is different with the gospel. What we are contending for is the old gospel — an older gospel, indeed, than the church has had for many centuries ; older than Calvin and Augustine; older than Athanasius and Origen ; even as old as Jesus Christ, its divine founder. Yet we also maintain that, if xxiv INTRODUCTION

the church is to have any dogmatic expression of this gospel at all, it should be in the terms of thought of the twentieth century, rather than of the fourth or the sixteenth. One of the greatest needs of our day is the old gospel expressed in a new theology.

A few words should be said concerning the limits of the discussion undertaken in the following pages. The task that the author has set for himself is not an apologetic one. No attempt is made to prove the finality of the Christian religion To make that proof would require a book along an entirely different line. Only two things are attempted: first, the recovery of primitive Christianity by a just estimate of the nature and extent of its obscuration during the course of history, and a study of the New Testament sources; and, second, the restatement of Christianity in terms of modern thought. So far as the main argument is concerned, there is no more certainty that primitive Christianity, even after it has been recovered, is the ultimate religion thanthatthirteenth-century or nineteenth-century Christianity is, or even Buddhism, or Confucianism, or any other religion. The whole apologetic problem lies beyond the limits of the present discussion.

Yet it cannot be denied that the author has

INTRODUCTION xxv

everywhere assumed that the original gospel of Jesus furnishes ultimate religious reality. At first thought this might be regarded as a fault in a scientific treatment of the subject. But several considerations are available for the defense of the discussion as it stands. The first is that which has already been suggested, namely, that the assumption referred to in no way invalidates the real contention of the book — that the gospel of Jesus was obscured during its historical development, is being gradually recovered through another historical process, and should now be restated in the language of modern life. In the second place, the conviction of the finality of the gospel is a part of the gospel itself, and has been ever since the days of Jesus. Every discussion must have some starting-point. The book finds this in the gospel of Jesus, and does not attempt to go back of that. It has a right, therefore, to make the same assumption that is everywhere bound up in that gospel. Indeed, to eliminate that assumption is impossible without depotentiating the gospel, and to prove it is unnecessary, inasmuch as that is not the purpose in view. And finally, it is this very presupposition of the intrinsic value of the gospel that makes the subject worth considering at all, and that gives it special interest at the present time. That which men regard as of no value may be obscured or comxxvi INTRODUCTION

pletely lost without causing solicitude. But the conviction of the gospel that it offers ultimate religious truth has been the cause of the whole historical process of Christianity in the world. This claim offers in itself adequate and most attractive material for an independent treatise, but the author has purposely passed it by and chosen the other subject, assuming throughout his own discussion the truth that would be the conclusion of the first — namely, that the uncorrupted gospel of Jesus furnishes ultimate religious reality.

PART I THE RECOVERY OF THE GOSPEL

Chapter I. The Modern Spirit And Its Search For Reality

The modern religious movement was not inaugurated by a priori probabilities respecting the obscuration of the gospel. Such considerations never would have shaken the church from its dogmatic slumber. The movement is due to the modern spirit, the Zeitgeist of our age, with its new historical sense and intense love of reality.

Nothing else is so characteristic of the modern world as this spirit, which, because it has found its clearest expression in the realm of natural science, we have come to call the scientific spirit. It is something new, due apparently to the emerging genius of the Germanic peoples, coming at last to maturity and awakening to activity after its long period of silent development. In the great Renaissance, that wonderful new birth of the fifteenth century, the world of thought was shaken as in the throes of a mighty travail, and brought forth this virile child. Thus in the twilight of the modern dawn a new spirit appeared which has been steadily extending its influence, and embodying itself in a new civilization.

The distinctive peculiarity of this spirit is its determination to get at the reality of things. For centuries men had been working over and combining into new forms the material of Greek and Roman thought. Instead of going to the world itself, and to current life, for the subject-matter of science and philosophy, they inquired what the ancients thought about the world and about life. The astronomy of Ptolemy, the philosophy of Aristotle, the theology of the church Fathers — these were the things that men were studying, rather than the realities back of them. But the new spirit awoke to the consciousness that it was living in a world of its own — a world of present existences. It therefore deserted the realm of words and opinions, traditions and theories, the far-away region beyond the stars, and has been giving its attention with irresistible energy to the actual world in which it finds itself, in the hope of ascertaining what this is and what it means.

I. THE MODERN SPIRIT AND MODERN CULTURE.

In this search for reality the new spirit first turned to the study of that which was nearest and most tangible — the world of nature. Here it worked out a new body of science, in harmony with the realities disclosed. The story is too familiar to require many words, One of the first and most significant discoveries was that in the heavens the center of the solar system is not the earth, but the sun, about which the earth and its sister-planets revolve. The whole ancient system of elaborate cycles and epicycles collapsed as the real heavens and earth appeared. Turning to the earth itself, the new temper entered a field especially congenial for its operations. The earth was found to be, not some vague and limitless plain with its four corners resting upon mysterious foundations, but a comparatively small globe of definite dimensions, which could be circumnavigated and mapped out. This discovery was a deathblow to numberless bogies and superstitions, and gave a great impetus to the growing determination to know the real world. As the work of exploration proceeded, new continents appeared, rising out of the mist and darkness that had hitherto enshrouded them. The oceans became the highway of life, and ships sailed to the remotest lands of earth in search of treasure and adventure and new homes for men. The new heavens and new earth thus discovered have become the subjects of the minutest and most painstaking investigation, as to their nature and the laws operating among their multitudinous elements. The result is the vast and intricate body of natural science which is perhaps the most characteristic creation of the modern spirit.

But while the new movement started with nature, and became assured of the soundness of its method in natural science, it did not stop here. It entered the realm of thought, and demanded there also a return to reality. It brought philosophy back from the realm of imaginative speculation and required of it the explanation, not of the hypothetical, but of the real; not the continuation and systematization of the thinking of the past, but the interpretation of present existence. Descartes, doubting everything that could be doubted, and starting over again with present reality in his noted dictum, cogito, ergo sum, gave expression to the genius of the new spirit, at the very birth of modern philosophy. Beginning thus with the present reality and the conscious ego, there have come into existence a new philosophy and psychology which are required to remember that even here, in the most abstract of all realms, where the constant tendency is toward the unreal and visionary, the business in hand is the explanation of the real world and real life.

In the field of art and literature, likewise, this love for reality manifests itself. After long copying of the ancient models, and continued use of subjects existing only in the imagination, modern art has returned to nature and to life for its most characteristic themes. Literature also manifests the same tendency toward realism. In writings of travel and description, we have, if not a new creation, at least a literature that is animated by an entirely different spirit from that of the ancients. The whole purpose and effort is to be faithful to what actually exists. In fiction, which certainly is a modern creation, there may seem to be an exception to this return to reality; for is not here displayed a peculiar delight in the "fictitious" and imaginative ? Yet fiction has as its object the portrayal of life in a way truer to inner reality than is possible in any other form of literature. It is therefore a true child of the modern spirit ; and the demand is strong today that it shall remain loyal to its mission by the faithful representation of life as it is.

Another form of modern literature deserves special attention. The new Zeitgeist, while at first concerned chiefly about present reality, has been forced, in the effort to explain the present, to widen its scope and undertake the study of the past. This has given birth to a new science of history, very different in character from the ancient history-writing. Employing the same scientific method used in the study of nature and of present life, and animated by the same determination to get at the true state of things, the new study has done its utmost to reproduce the life of the past by an exhaustive scrutiny of the records that have survived. As little room as possible has been left for guesswork and for traditional interpretations, while everything has been judged by comparison with the records at first hand. The result, without question, is a clearer perception of the historical continuity of life and a better understanding of present conditions. The seeds of the present were sown in the past : the fruit is better estimated because of our knowledge of the seed and the conditions of its growth. Important everywhere in the world of thought, this truth has special significance here because of its bearing upon the matter discussed in the following pages. Present-day theological and institutional Christianity did not spring full-grown from the mind of God. The understanding of the past life of Christianity, gained by the new study of history, is of inestimable value as a factor in the recovery of the gospel. This fact will become apparent as the discussion proceeds.

After its search for reality in nature by means of the physical sciences ; in the realm of living beings through the biological sciences ; in the sphere of thought and action through psychology, philosophy, art, and literature ; and for the reality of the past through the sciences of archaeology and history — the modern spirit has now turned to the study of the corporate life of man with the same desire to know the real facts, and has given birth to sociology, the youngest of the sciences. The social relations of men, that have been left so long to the social instinct and to a limited religious sentiment, are now being investigated by the same scientific method elsewhere employed, and the facts and laws of community life are coming to light.

In the practical activities of the modern world, as well as in the search for truth, the nature of the new spirit reveals itself. Side by side with discovery has gone the utilization of the new knowledge for the enrichment of life. Geographical exploration has been followed by conquest and settlement, until nearly every habitable part of the earth is known and occupied. Discovery of the secrets of nature has been followed by the invention of mechanical contrivances for "harnessing the forces of nature" to do the world's work. Thus has been created a new world of affairs, in which the stage of activity has vastly widened, a new commerce of gigantic dimensions and influence has been built up, and new means of transportation and communication have so bound the world together that isolated life has given place to the closest io RECOVERY AND RESTATEMENT

industrial, social, and national interrelation and interdependence.

In all of these directions it is evident that a new force is at work in the modern world — a spirit that has no love for a priori speculations, that is impatient of words and suppositions and scholastic subtleties, that will take nothing upon the authority of the past, and that is not overreverent of the traditions of the Fathers ; but rather, with unquenchable thirst and incessant zeal and severe scientific method, is giving itself to the task of discovering the realities of the universe and of life, influenced more or less in all of this by the expectation of using this new knowledge for the enrichment of human life.

The activity of this spirit has changed the world's civilization. In its search for reality in the realms of nature and life during the last four hundred years the new energy has built up a culture distinctively its own. This civilization does not merely add to the old; it supersedes it. It contains elements that often necessitate a total break with ancient culture, because they are irreconcilable with it. These instances have been hinted at already, and do not need to be given in detail. They include an entirely different theory of astronomy and of the relation of material bodies to one another, a different attitude toward the material universe, a different theory of

OF THE GOSPEL n

knowledge, a new conception of the value of life, a new interdependence between men and nations. In short, the entire world-view has changed. Much that was an integral part of ancient culture has dropped out. It is not that this culture has been argued away, nor that the present conditions have been adjusted to it, but that it has of necessity passed into oblivion as the new and independent culture has taken its place. The fundamental character of the change as a whole is well illustrated in the realm of astronomy. When once it had become established beyond reasonable doubt that the sun, and not the earth, is the center of our planetary system, and that the mutual relations of material bodies are regulated by the universal law of gravitation, then the whole body of ancient astronomical culture sank out of modern life, as a thing with which we had no more concern, except for archaeological purposes. The world started de novo in astronomical science, and there was no attempt to combine the new culture with the old, or to reconcile the two. There was an absolute break, a radical revolution in thought. What is true in the case of astronomy is true, in general, of the ancient civilization. The modern world started afresh, and has developed a culture of its own, in harmony with its new conceptions of reality.