Not long ago a writer, while reviewing a certain religious movement, made use of a striking metaphor. The religious movement in question, he remarked, especially when its relation to modern conditions was taken into account, reminded him of a phenomenon of nature occasionally observed—an iceberg in mid-Atlantic. In speaking of the Church of Rome and its present troubles, as the reviewer did, he could recollect no more fitting parallel than this great grand iceberg, floating far south, far from its native arctic home, and melting away in an uncongenial climate. “The majestic frozen mass, detached from some arctic continent, not without a symmetry and beauty of its own, is, after all, but a fragment of a dead world. Ghost-like, a peril to mariners, it towers over the waves that wash its base, its peaks glitter in the sunlight, its cliffs reflect the blue of sea and sky. And all the while the process of undermining goes on; the frozen mass encounters kindlier currents; the temperature rises; a little sooner, a little later it may be, there can be but one end.”
To many, perhaps, it will occur that a like figure of speech might in some measure apply to the matter spoken of in the above title. Just such another iceberg, a portion, perhaps, of the same floe, that ancient document, the Apostles' Creed, may seem to be. It does not belong to our time. Antiquity is claimed for it, and the claim, whatever it is, worth, may be granted so far. It has floated down the centuries to us, a relic of the past, and appears among us to-day in surroundings far from congenial. The kindlier currents, the temperate zone of our present-day theology, might seem as little fitting, as disastrous eventually, to the one as to the other.
The whole question of creeds, articles, and confessions of faith is an interesting one. From a non-theological standpoint even, if in reality one can assume such detachment, it is so to-day. In that theological world where such unsettled conditions prevail at present, ideas are afloat in high quarters, and habits of thought are being engendered lower down which call attention to such documents in an altogether new way. These habits of thought spoken of beget an attitude which, at least to observers not immediately concerned, appears to be one of disloyalty to constitutional standards. The ideas abroad at all events must make it difficult for those who hold them to reconcile their retention with a reputation for orthodoxy. On the other hand, fast and far as these ideas seem in themselves likely to carry the honest and sincere, however mistaken, thinker, in many quarters, undeniably a certain measure of caution is observed in their application. And no doubt this moderation is imposed, if for one reason more than another, by the conserving influence of church standards of doctrine. That such formularies do prove a check is notorious; but they are not an insuperable barrier by any means. The modern speculative spirit, “free reverent inquiry,” as it is called, is not seldom combined with not a little genius for evading unpleasant issues. The Scylla of “timid orthodoxy,” and the Charybdis of pure rationalism can both be avoided by the skilful navigators at the wheel, and their ecclesiastical statesmanship or diplomacy can be depended upon to provide expedients for relieving tender consciences from any qualms as to the course being steered.
Now, when one reads and hears of the desperate shifts made by many to square their new beliefs, or hypotheses rather, with the articles under which their particular ecclesiastical bodies are chartered legally to conduct religious business, professions also to which they themselves, as a matter of personal conviction, may rightly be held, since they have voluntarily subscribed to them, one cannot but find some justice, as well as perhaps cynical humor, in the remark that the chief thing theologians have acquired under our modern conception of the sacred liberty of religious belief appears to be a wonderful capacity for intellectual “wriggling.”
At the same time a more painful sentiment arises when one considers that this rationalistic movement is more than mere retrogression, more or less apologized for, from constitutional standards, more than mere surrender, piecemeal though it is, of the articles of a creed: there is evident and unabashed departure from the scripture revelation. The first, serious enough though it is, might be left to religious leaders, in touch with the modern spirit, themselves to settle, without calling for comment from ordinary Christians, who have learned their little all from Scripture, and would find theology, as one has said, a kind of Saul's armor. It may very truly be the case in fact, that, in intruding upon such a subject at all, plain people seem to presume over much. “Set them to judge who are of no account in the church,” said the apostle in another connection, and it may be we are simply carrying into literal practice in another sphere his ironical injunction. Let it be so. The apparent absence of the “one wise man to decide,” shall not that be our excuse?
What is painful, however, even to those who set little value by formal human confessions of faith, is that they cannot but recognize that, in general, the real ground on which creeds are being relinquished, the objectionable feature found in them is just exactly what truth they do contain. Without a doubt in all creeds there are things which fuller spiritual knowledge shows to be defective, if not erroneous. Blind veneration for antiquity puts false value upon these (for their time) wonderful manifestoes of Christian belief, when it erects them into unchanging standards of faith; but the spirit which can with so little compunction, so little respect, throw them overboard as antiquated and worthless is far from praiseworthy. It is no question with us then of liberal or conservative theology, but of truth as a vital thing, of truth, as we might describe it, as the basis of faith and the sustenance of spiritual life, not to mention its general relation to men at large as the most important ingredient of the moral atmosphere. And theological systems, air-tight compartments as they are, do not provide ideal conditions for either the conservation or the dissemination of the truth. Creeds are altogether suspicious things. Not that in a creed there is anything wrong in itself, if by it we mean merely the sum of that which we have learned from Scripture. Have we not all, in fact, some such creed, not necessarily explicit? And if able to state clearly the main distinctive lines of the truth we possess, not as setting limits thereby, it may be of no small help to ourselves in aiding us to organize our knowledge and rightly divide the word of truth.
Nor need it be doubted that in periods of church history, as remote in character as in time from our own, in the providence of God, a creed may have provided just such a medium of confessing the truth as seems necessary, if not indispensable, to the occasion. All this may be allowed without in any degree endorsing the popular idea of its true function. The truth is neither dependent upon a creed for its definite grasp and statement, nor obliged to be so embodied ere it is fit for the purpose of being a clear test. The former especially may be, in measure, a commendable practice today, the having and holding a clear idea or record of our convictions. But the inevitable evil of forms is apt to follow here also. The very process of giving the truth a form in the faulty expression of which alone we are capable, deducts from its truth and value. As one has said also, “Supposing everything was right that was there, it is like a made tree, instead of a growing tree.” Any “declaration of the things most surely believed among us,” also, however accredited by tradition, must in the last resort give way before the inspired record itself. “The faith once delivered unto the saints” should mark our boundaries, and constitute what alone we shall make ourselves answerable for. It is that also for which we are exhorted to contend.
In most cases to-day, unfortunately, the real subject of contention is something entirely different. There is, in fact, so much confusion about this whole matter-of the relation between a church and its doctrine-that one cannot very clearly see what the controversy is. In one sense no doubt the issue at stake is still a simple one, is still the same. It is the old conflict between truth and error that is being waged. But when the question comes to be what the truth is for which we are to contend; how distinguish it from error; where precisely is the standard to which appeal can be made, we are met with different conceptions of what “the faith” can mean. That the word of God gives it in finality, reveals and states it in a form, in the form, most fitting for such appeal, is apparently not thought of. Is it not the case that, in Christian apologetics, the whole field over to-day—from the Modernist controversy in the church of Rome to the smallest Presbyterian congregation belatedly discussing Higher Criticism—from the conservative side the appeal invariably is, not to the scriptures, but to some one or other of those statements of Christian doctrine which have been drawn out at various times in the past? Add to this the fact that, while from the liberal side again there is the plea for a restatement in terms suited to modern thought, there are those also who (problem though they confess it to be), in the interests of supposed theological consistency which recent developments have shown to be of some importance legally, endeavor amicably to adjust the relation between their church and a confession they believe to be lying far astern of her life and thought. Some idea may then be had of how involved and intricate a matter this of church and creed has become.
In this connection take Scottish Presbyterianism. It is well known that in the Scottish Establishment for at least the last twenty years the movement for creed relaxation and revision has been gathering force. This is not to be wondered at when the progress she has made on modern lines in the matter of doctrine is taken into account. There is certainly no more striking instance of the essentially revolutionary character of modern theological thought than in what has occurred within the last generation here, in its meeting with the strong, high Calvinism which is proverbially characteristic of the Church of Scotland. The Westminster Confession of Faith is, of course, that with which she is officially identified, each clergyman on ordination making profession of adherence to it in the words of a formula compiled for that express purpose. Now, it would seem an easy enough thing to substitute for the antiquated confession “a simple creed representing the best in theological thought as modified by modern contributions.” But, as one has recently complained, under the Establishment they are “deprived of doctrinal autonomy.” This want of the power of doctrinal initiative, much grieved over, has, up till now, been a serious check on the movement. “Advantage was taken of the abnormal political and ecclesiastical situation of 1905 to obtain from the State the right,” not of altering the confession, but “of prescribing the formula of subscription” to it. This somewhat Jesuitical loophole, as some have thought it, is so far scarcely proving successful, and “as no alteration was thereby effected in the Act of 1690, on which the Establishment is based, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the relief supposed to be gained is only of a nominal nature.” What else but nominal could the relief be in the nature of the case? A church has reason to be dissatisfied with that body of doctrine with which nominally it is identified. What then? Transform the nominal into the actual by revising the creed its teachers profess? Verily no; but rather substitute the nominal for the actual in the terms of their subscription to it. Whatever ingenuity the scheme may have to commend it, there is probably too strong a suspicion of careful juggling about it to give satisfactory relief to conscientious people. Apart from actual release from the doctrinal control of the State such as disestablishment would effect, it is difficult to see what can be done unless power to alter the Confession itself is secured. There is, of course, the further counsel of despair— “Would it not be better to still hold by the Confession of Faith, that if we have not uniformity of belief, we may at least have uniformity of make-believe?”
How mercenary and political the whole thing is! Little love of truth for its own sake, or His who gave it, here. Yet surely these are all but plain lessons we may read to-day as to the question of creeds. Truth, after all, so little dwells in them in living power that their profession is no guarantee of adherence to, or affection for, it. As an asset of permanent value in Christianity also are they not seriously discounted by the fact that since at the best their inadequacy to present the truth of God worthily is apparent, and further that, even as they are, modern religious thought finds them so cumbersome as to regard attachment to them as an incubus, they are of but little use as a barrier against encroaching error? “The faith once delivered unto the saints” beyond question gives a surer standing ground and worthier deposit.
[ J. T.]
(To be continued)