Creative Christianity; a study of the genius of the Christian faith

Foreword

DURING Easter Week of this year it was my privilege to deliver the Nathaniel W. Taylor Lectures at the Convocation of the Divinity School of Yale University. I wish hereby to express my thanks to the authorities of the University for the opportunity of setting forth some of my personal views before audiences of an extraordinary character and to my hearers for the patient and sympathetic manner in which they listened to my words. The lectures are here offered to the reading public in the form in which they were originally delivered, except for a slight expansion at a few points. The temptation to extend considerably the discussion of some of the subjects mentioned was very great, but such a course would have necessitated the recasting of the entire work and the substitution of an elaborate exposition of the theme for the merely suggestive treatment that is more natural in the case of lectures. Perchance I may be able at some future time to offer a more exhaustive discussion of important topics only touched upon at this time. It is proper, perhaps, that this foreword should mention some reasons for the designation of my theme : "Creative Christianity." While it is hoped that the lectures themselves make these plain, it may 7 be added here that the title was chosen because of the fitness of the descriptive term creative to set forth a distinguishing quality of the faith which Jesus Christ has given to the world. From its beginnings this faith has had its home in the hearts of the common people, its power in any land or age in which it has made a place for itself has always been in direct proportion to the strength of its hold on the people whose hands are hard with toil and whose minds are full of care, and the most effective means of its dissemination have always been found in the natural associations of the people with one another. That it should be the faith of the most intelligent, independent and enterprising nations of the world in our day is what one might expect when he discerns its genius. For it tends invariably to freedom and spontaneity of action and expression wherever it is found. Its progress among any people is marked by the lessening of external direction and control and the growth of inner confidence and self -affirmation. Not fixity of form but continuity of development mark its presence and tell its secret. Like a tree of life it has the self -perpetuating power of an inner vital principle and from time to time it sheds its temporary forms, as a tree sheds its leaves, to provide for its own larger self-unfolding.

Christianity is a historical faith. This is much more than to say that it is united both in its origin and its continuance to definite concrete fact rather than mere speculation, much more than to say that it persists through successive periods of time by means of the actual tangible forces that come into action in the life of humanity. It is also to say that its course is not truly separable from the action of the complex of forces that make up the career of any people who receive it, but it lives in their life. The story of Christianity is just the life-story of the people who are Christians. It is not a something in itself that may be attached to the personal life from without and, at will, detached again. It is in course of change constantly just as the life of humanity is always changing. The Christianity of today in any land is more than the Christianity of yesterday, just as the civil and social life of any people is more than it was yesterday.

The organizing genius of the Christian faith manifests itself in the reshaping of the forms of conduct or morality, the political affairs or civil constitution, the traditional theories of life or popular philosophy, and the manifestation of the spirit of reverence or worship current among any people. The faith becomes institutionalized in this way. It also becomes institutionalized in the churches which seek to be a direct embodiment of the Christian faith. These have their own forms of government, doctrine and worship, which commonly come to be viewed as essential to the faith itself. But there comes a time when these regulative provisions operate in the direction of restraining the freedom and initiative of the believers whose spiritual good was intended originally to be served by them. As a progressive people outgrows these "essential" forms their continued imposition becomes a tyranny or oppression that must be resisted and thrown off, if faith is still to continue. That which seemed at one time indispensable to the religious life of the people has to be set aside in the interest of that very life, and other forms more truly representative of their higher faith and more adequate to the fulfillment of its aims must take their place. This is, in substance, what occurred in the Protestant Reformation when national churches took the place of the imperial Roman Church, and again when the free churches arose in response to the larger life that came to many of those who had had their spiritual home in the national churches. In the creativity of the Christian faith lies its power to avert the danger of stagnation and death.

It is not to be successfully disputed that we are at the present day in the midst of a powerful movement, nurtured by a variety of spiritual tendencies current among intelligent people, looking to the remaking of the forms in which our Protestantism has traditionally expressed its inner life. Ecclesiastical and doctrinal reconstruction are particularly imperative if the multitudes of educated young people issuing from our schools and colleges are to find a congenial home in our Christian churches. Owing to the character of the training to which they have been subject all the way from the kindergarten to the university graduate school, the native cast of mind in which their religious life is to receive its moulding is so vastly different from that in which we and our fathers approached religious questions that, cost what it may to our feelings, we must make up our mind that their interpretation of the Christian faith, as of life in general, will be very different from that which was given to us by the fathers. The possibility of winning and holding these young people for the Christian faith depends very much on the frankness and courage with which those of us who are familiar and sympathetic with their training and perceive clearly the character of the questions they must face shortly, make up our minds to tell the whole truth, as we see it, plainly and kindly, leaving the outcome to the God of truth. For, be it remembered, these young people are to be the guides of the great masses of humanity in many lands in the days that are now coming so swiftly upon us, when all the peoples of the earth will mingle and seek a common leadership.

Two of the principal impediments to this higher and purer faith I must mention. One of these is the ancient Catholic inheritance of sacramentalism and the other is the early Protestant inheritance of legalism. These are often associated. Both tend to obscure the inwardness, directness and freedom of the soul's communion with its God and both produce the fruit of a morally sterile formalism and a bitter intolerance. Both must be firmly repudiated in the interest of a pure and puissant faith that is to be the faith of mankind.

Happy are those teachers of youth who see in the enquiring minds of the boys and girls who throng our places of learning the promise of a Christian faith higher than that which our fathers gave to us and destined to succeed in winning the allegiance of multitudes whom our faith failed to win! Tennyson's words in "Locksley Hall'' here come to mind :

"Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range,

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day;

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help me as when life begun;

O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set,

Ancient founts of inspiration well thro' all my fancy yet."

George Cross.

Rochester, New York, June 21, 1921.

CONTENTS Chapter I.

PAGE

The Method of the Study 17

Chapter IV. The Power of Cosmic Interpretation 130

A Study of the Genius of the Christian Faith. CHAPTER I.

LECTURE I. THE METHOD OF THE STUDY.

Brethren of the Christian Ministry and Friends :

IN the series of addresses which it is to be my privilege to bring to you this Easter Week I am to ask you to embark with me on a study of the genius of the Christian faith. To everyone who seeks to hold this faith intelligently and to communicate it to the minds and consciences of others this task of ours must present itself as permanently imperative, and the present juncture in human affairs makes the time particularly opportune. For the work of reconstituting the essential order of human life, now pressing so hard on the human power of initiative on a vast scale among many peoples, is bound to produce a profound effect on the religious life of men every where and particularly where their religion has such ecumenical relations as ours. Some of the most noteworthy influences at work in this direction may be indicated at the outset.

The great war which broke in upon the peace of mankind less than seven years ago seems to have precipitated upon the world a cataclysm of unparalleled magnitude. It was not alone the desolation of the lands where the war was waged or the destruction of the accumulated wealth of the peoples, not alone the hugeness of the forces engaged in battle or even the wastage of human life — appalling though it was — that made the cataclysm so terrible to think upon. Nor was it that thrones crumbled, governments and empires were crushed or rent in sunder; that economic systems were thrown into confusion and social bonds were disrupted; that customs and maxims that had long stood sentinel to guard humanity against the power of unrestrained passion lost their authority — though the extent to which this occurred has filled our minds at times with bewilderment and our hearts with foreboding.

More trying than all this can be to the souls of men is the disillusionment of the hopes of the millions of people who have borne the Christian name. Prior to the war the old pessimistic spirit that formerly prevailed among Christians when they looked worldward had mostly passed away and the spirit of optimism had came at last to prevail. The rapid spread of the Christian Gospel during the last hundred years, the forming of Christian communities in every land, the constituent relation which the Christian religion had come to hold toward all the great forces of modern civilization, the penetration of literature and education, science and art with its avowed principles, the institution by Christians of enterprises for the amelioration of human conditions everywhere — all these were allied in inspiring men with the vision of the rapid coming of the kingdom of heaven on earth. Our eyes were mostly closed to the signs of approaching strife and our ears to the subterranean rumblings that told of preparations for war and we could not believe that, even if the spirit of the beast and the bandit should arouse itself again, it would prove mighty enough to bring our noble structure down in ruins, until the breakdown suddenly came.

One of the sights that were peculiarly distressing to true-hearted and simple-minded believers was the spectacle of nations professedly Christian ranging themselves on opposite sides in the conflict. Christian and non-Christian were thrown confusedly together, so that the struggle had not the appearance of a war of religions. Moreover, the outbreak of savagery in many quarters and the ill-success in coping with it seemed to indicate that the motives which we commonly associate with the Christian name had a far lighter hold on the hearts of men than the prevalence of Christian forms and organizations seemed to indicate. Consequently, many intelligent people have been found in all seriousness asking the question, Has Christianity failed?

It will not do to take this question lightly or minimize the difficulty of answering it. We may not regard it as a mere reaction consequent upon an unusual strain. Nor will it do to seek to evade the issue by replying, "Christianity has not been tried," and seek to back up the evasion by quoting some single utterance of scripture that sets forth a principle of the Christian life which no man absolutely fulfills. If Christianity has a history — as it assuredly has — then it is certain that Christianity has been tried these nearly nineteen hundred years. It must be frankly confessed that the Christianity of the most recent past did fail at the very point at which multitudes of us had hoped its power would prevail, that is, it failed to prevent the most hideous war in history. We do not forget the magnificent display of heroism and self-sacrifice by which the life — and death — of multitudes of those on whose shoulders the responsibility of rescuing humanity from an unspeakable calamity was glorified. And yet, notwithstanding it all, it is pretty evident that people generally do not feel as sure as once they felt that the Christian religion has brought human control over material forces sufficiently under the power of moral force to assure us that materialism is not now threatening to crush the power of the higher life.

It may be that other people will seek relief from the pressure of the question by reviving a conception of Christianity that, we supposed, Protestantism had outlived. It will be claimed, perchance, that the association or alliance of Christianity with community action, especially of a secular kind, is unnatural and unnecessary, that it was never intended to become integral to civilization because its home and its aims are found in another world, the world above. "It has not failed," they will say, "because it has brought to all who receive it an assurance of attaining to that home. Its original intent is being constantly fulfilled." Undoubtedly much scripture can be quoted as looking in that direction. We shall take further cognizance of this contention at a later stage of our study.

Others, again, somewhat likeminded with these, will seek to turn aside any implication of Christian failure by narrowing the issue to a single point. Such a saying as "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," may be quoted to remind us that no man who has met the condition here laid down for happiness will say that Christianity has failed to bring him the joy and strength he sought. Such words as these are doubtless of great significance and we thankfully acknowledge the comforting asurance that the Christian Gospel, as expressed in these words, has not failed to bring consolation and strength to multitudes whose minds have been profoundly exercised over international questions or other ecumenical problems. But, at the same time, it must be plain that to one who has taken the world of humanity into his heart and who views the struggles of great communities of men with one another and the upheavals that disrupt the ancient bonds of society as significant of the effort of the spirit that is at work in our race to bring the world to a better state, the question keeps coming home, " Why has not Christianity made this purity of heart a more common possession and a greater force in the world?" It seems to me pretty plain that all such must feel that the prevailing conditions at the present time call for a reconsideration of the whole aim and effective power of the Christian faith.

In addition to the facts I have mentioned there are many concurrent influences now bidding us reconsider the meaning of our Christian traditions. Some of these influences are not very familiar to the multitudes whose hands are too busy with toil or whose minds are too much occupied with the simple issues of everyday affairs to make it possible for them to become acquainted with the ways of the schools or the interests that affect most deeply the mind of the professional student. And yet the problems of the trained thinker have a way of percolating through to the thoughts of the more serious-minded among the toiling masses of men. These discover that the problems of the thinker are truly their problems too. So that, for their sake also, even apart from the issues raised by the war, a revision of the whole inherited exposition of the Christian faith is becoming daily a more pressing necessity. And this, I am sure, we shall see, is not to be regretted as if it were a mark of declining faith. It is rather, I trust, an indication that our faith is coming to have for us a more vital relation to the whole of life than it had for our fathers, It is not necessary in this place to do more than make a bare mention of the principal concurrent influences I have in mind.

Firstly, then, there are the accepted methods and results of modern scientific research. The persistent interrogation of nature, the collating and organizing of her answers, the inductions and inferences drawn therefrom, with a seemingly pitiless disregard of the personal longings of the investigator or of any one else, have annulled the ancient Christian representations of this world, the worlds above and the worlds below, so that they have ceased to appear as a statement of discovered or revealed facts, and have become to us a series of merely symbolic representations of the movements of the inner spirit. This has forced an abandonment of the cosmography which is so closely interwoven with the biblical and long current Christian view of the relation which the world in which we now live bears to another world to which men go when they die that, to many persons, it seems difficult, if not impossible, to replace the ancient view with the modern except at the cost of undermining popular confidence in the truth of the faith that found at one time this ancient cosmography so congenial. Let us remember that the common school children are being trained in the new mode of conceiving the world and that they will carry it with them through every phase of their lives.

Secondly, there is the fundamental scientific and philosophic contention that that there can be no genuine knowledge of this universe in which we must live our life, except on the presupposition of the immanency, permanency and integrated unity of the forces and laws of the universe. This is now becoming a common maxim of the schools. In consequence, every one so trained must place a note of interrogation after all the biblical accounts of miracles. Now, when it is remembered that one of the great churches of Christendom relies on these accounts of miracles and the continuation of such miracles as the basis of its claims and almost the whole of the rest of Christendom from ancient times down almost, if not entirely, to our own time have believed that the great traditional doctrines of the faith repose on the reality of these miraculous events, the spiritual situation created thereby must seem fairly revolutionary. To many people the miracles have become a source of distress and not of consolation. In this way it has been brought about that the whole question of the reality and meaning of the supernatural must be faced anew.

Thirdly, we have to reckon with the rise and the growing influence of the modern science of history. Its conscience for facts is associated with a pitiless throwing into the discard of all the most beautiful, as well as the most repulsive, representations of events whose origin lies in the mere fancy or the native love of the dramatic. It is governed by the determination to discover, if possible, the meaning of human life by discerning the forces that operate immanently within it rather than trace its changes to interference from without. Naturally enough, it has brought into question the trustworthiness of many of those accounts which have seemed to multitudes of Christians indispensable to the assurance of the faith. In this way the origin of our faith and the relation particularly of Jesus Christ and the events of his life to it are brought once more under critical review. These difficulties must be met squarely.

Fourthly, since the days of John Locke scientific interest has been directed increasingly to the field of the inner life of men. In due time it has led to an examination of the nature and meaning of religion as a form of psychic action or experience. From an interest in the manner in which a religion was given to men our minds have been turned to the manner in which it rises in the human heart. Consequently, there has been a transfer of emphasis from its outer forms, its doctrines and its means of propagation to its inner character and its inherent worth to the natural life of men. In this way the inner affinity of Christianity with other faiths, as well as its distinction from them, has been set before our minds as of more significance than the manner in which it was ushered into the world. The modern Christian missionary movement, instead of opposing this tendency, has confirmed it. Evidently, then, today the interpreter of the Christian faith will concern himself more deeply with the manner in which the faith lives in his own soul and the souls of other men than with the forms in which it has been professedly set forth. He will view it in its inner relation to the whole of the processes of the mind in which it dwells rather than as something superadded to the life of men from without.

It is quite an inadequate estimate of the seriousness of the spiritual situation now confronting us to say that there must be a restatement of the Christian faith in terms of the thought of the present day. That indeed must be done, but much more. We must rediscover it, so to say, by living through its history afresh. It must not be assumed that there are available for our use any fixed standard tests for the final determination of what is truly Christian as distinct from that which claims to be Christian. When we turn to the liturgies, the creeds, the organizations and the personal and social customs which have been commonly taken as representative of the Christian faith we can find no fixed external standard by which we may decide how far they are Christian. They are important as showing some of the ways in which our religion came to expression in the past. These are not necessarily the most significant. Perchance we shall discover that the standard is to be found in the future rather than in the past. Perchance we shall see that that which is most truly

Christian is yet to be. It may be that its judgment day, like that which awaits each of us, is still to come.

I have spoken of crises in Christian history. These are always significant because they bring to light the character of the forces which have long been at work but whose presence was somewhat hidden. There are three that stand out pre-eminently : — The first of these occurred when the Christian Gospel passed out from the limitations to which it was subjected in the Jewish community into the great Graeco-Oriental world and came under the necessity of adaptation to the spiritual conditions prevalent in it. The second occurred when it passed the boundaries of that world westward and was compelled to seek adjustment to the needs of the halfcivilized but energetic peoples of western Europe. And the third great crisis occurred when it was confronted with the perplexing complex of influences that made the Protestant Revolution. In the first of these instances the danger lest the youthful faith be dissipated in the medley of traditions, customs, superstitions, myths, allegories and cosmic speculations that flooded the lands of the eastern Mediterranean, was met by the transformation of the original Gospel into a body of mysteries, or sacraments, as the indispensable media of the impartation of the divine life, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, the theoretical basis of these mysteries was laid in the creation of the Nicene Creed with its doctrine of three persons in one divine essence and of two natures in the one divine person, Jesus Christ. The second crisis was met by the elaboration of a perfected system of sacraments intended to minister to all the various spiritual needs of men, the perfection of a priestly order to whose hands the sacraments were committed, and the preparation of a system of rules for the regulation of the conduct of the individual and of a body of doctrines to satisfy his mind. In other words, the penitential system and the scholastic theology grew out of the second crisis. And the third crisis issued in the institution of national churches to serve the interests of both state and church, in the simplification of the traditional ceremonial to meet the desire of the common man to experience immediate personal communion with God, in the intellectual interpretation of the Christian religion in "Confessions of Faith," and in the erection of a final and sufficient standard of faith and practice in the Bible.

Our present interest in these three achievements lies in certain assumptions common to them all. They may be reduced to the three following : First : that with the coming of Jesus Christ into the world an original supernatural deposit was committed to men through a divine intervention in the natural and normal course of things in this world. To the Catholic, this supernatural deposit consists of a positive heavenly grace communicated through certain tangible or visible facts and forms, known as "mysteries" to the Greeks and "sacraments" to the Romans. To the Protestant the supernatural deposit is of "truth" or doctrines communicated to the spirit of man directly by God himself (but, to the Catholic, doctrines have a sacramental character — they are "mysteries," not necessarily to be understood but obediently accepted). Second: the bestowment of this deposit is inseparably connected with a series of facts, similarly of a supernatural order, the knowledge of which facts is preserved in the Christian tradition. With the Catholic, these supernatural facts continue to occur as an abiding testimony to the presence of sacramental power among men, but, with the Protestant these supernatural occurrences are no longer necessary, since the truth they attest is given once and forever. Third : these authoritative traditions are given in the canonical Scriptures (say the Protestants) or in the pronouncements of an official priestly order or in both (say the Catholics). The detailed development of these capital assumptions as they appear in the variant Catholic and Protestant theories need not detain us further. It is sufficient to have pointed out that the two chief divisions of Christendom hold these fundamental tenets in common.

It is scarcely necessary to point out that all three of these assumptions stand or fall together. The first in order is the first in importance according to the traditional interpretation. If it be not granted, the special interest in the other two falls away. All three have come increasingly under the criticism of Christian men of late. It is doubted whether any absolute external authority in matters of faith has been provided or is needed. Similarly, it is doubted whether the series of events recorded as occurring at the beginning of the Christian faith or at any stage of its progress are to be considered as supernatural in the sense commonly intended hitherto by that term. Similarly also, the question whether there was an original supernatural (i. e., in the sense just spoken of) deposit and, if so, what it was, is now open to perfectly free discussion without prejudice to the Christian character of him who raises the question. With the gradual disappearance of sacramentalism this assumption is coming to be seen as unnecessary and even as an obstacle to the progress of the Christian faith and to the permanency of its hold on the hearts of intelligent men. The history of Christian doctrine and practice has made it clear that both the formulations of Christian dogmas and confessions of faith and the establishment of sacraments were called forth by special circumstances and were meant to serve special purposes that no longer obtain among multitudes of Christian people. So much so is this the case that it is no longer necessary in such an assembly as this to argue the question in general. I may add that I do not think that the situation, as I have tried to describe it, is regrettable. So far from being significant of a spiritual decline or a loss of confidence in the divine worth and permanency of the Christian faith, it seems to be indicative of a growing clearness of the consciousness of our relation to God and an immediacy of the assurance of his favor that have led inevitably to the discarding of those artificial supports, as a sound man throws away the crutches which he found at one time necessary.