Our faith in God through Jesus Christ : four apologetic addresses

Foreword

THE four addresses which follow were delivered at a conference held in Belfast during January 1922 by the Student Christian Movement and the Irish Christian Fellowship. In the form of answers to four common questions they attempt to outline and defend the Christian view of God, and to set forth the more obvious of its implications for life. Written as they were for a conference concerned very largely with Irish problems and affairs, they are, at points, decidedly topical in treatment ; but all such references will, I think, be found by the readers to be easily susceptible of translation into forms suitable to quite other environments. The aim of the writer throughout has been practical rather than theoretical, and these addresses are offered to the public, not as a considered statement of systematic apologetics, but as the attempt of an individual to deal positively, and untheologically, so far as possible, with some of the more persistent doubts in the general mental atmosphere of our day.

Belfast, January igzz

TO

MY PARENTS

Contents

Foreword

Question I : Is it Reasonable

Question II : Is it Necessary ?

Conclusion

In these addresses I have sought to show, in the first place, that it is reasonable to believe in God as Christ preached Him and believed on Him ; reasonable to believe that He is one, rather than to accept the so-called atheism or agnosticism, but the actual polytheism, of modern unbelief, with its acceptance of a multitude of unsystematised principles, values, powers, and the like ; reasonable to believe in His being. His personality. His goodness. His Fatherhood, His perfection and all-sufficiency, otherwise we discover our own actual or potential superiority to God, and invert our whole universe : and I have tried to point out in this connection the true relation between Christ and our faith in God, as making of Christ the mediator between God and man, the measure or interpreter of the unseen. I have sought, in the second place, to show^ that the conception of God given us by Christ satisfies, and is necessary to satisfy, our thought, our aspirations, our spiritual, moral and physical needs, necessary for health of body, mind and soul, and necessary to the best life as fulfilling the true ideals of the gentleman or the sportsman : and in this connection I have tried to make clear the issues between the true Christianity and that subtle paganism of our time w^hich so often masks itself behind vague popular phrases and powerful popular passions or sentiments. I have sought, in the third place, to show that this faith in God through Jesus Christ is effective in practical life, that it works when actually tested, whether by Christ Himself, or the apostolic community, or by the martyrs and saints of the ages, or by ordinary men and w^omen like ourselves ; but I have tried to emphasise the view that a true faith will not merely ask, but venture, and that only in venture will real satisfaction and assurance be found : and in this connection I have tried to point out that wrong ideas of God will not, and cannot, work, and how greatly we need to discriminate between the true and the false in our thought of God, testing all things by the mind that was in Christ. And, finally, I have sought to show that this conception of God, given in and through Christ, is enough, and more than enough, for us to proceed with as the solution of all our problems, being not only the best we know, but the best we can conceive. Its finality lies in its potential universality, and in the spirit of Jesus Christ through which it found, and finds, expression. Not the forms but the spirit abides, and continual restatement and missionary work are both essential to its true finality and its ultimate victory, and to its actual power in any age or environment. We must live our faith ; there is no alternative for a living Church.

And so we come back to our faith in God, and to the need of venture upon it in all spheres of human life. The great need of man individually and socially is God, not the name but the reality, the personal, loving, all-sufficient life behind all things, and seeking expression in them, above all in men and women. And to make this reality of God effective for man we must consciously accept it, venture upon it, and minister our gospel to the world as a living and tested fact. There I leave our study of these great things.

And now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever.

Amen.

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