Passing on to further clauses of the Creed, it would be tedious and serve no purpose, to comment on every item. It is sufficient to point out wherein to a simple mind modern theology appears to impose a novel reading of its teaching, or to call attention to what, in the light of scripture, seems a defective or erroneous apprehension of the truth it summarizes.
In passing from the first to the second clause “and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord” unfortunately, one is not likely by any means to be free from difficulty in regard to what is taught yet. Rather, in fact, do we here, in this second declaration of belief, enter upon more controversial ground than ever. Proverbially it is so, as ancient ecclesiastical history, for instance, attests. Here have the fiercest and most oft-recurring combats of the past been waged. Throughout whole centuries this has been the field of conflict, where error after error has assailed the faith of God’s elect, and in some measure of faithfulness has been met and repulsed. To-day it presents somewhat the appearance of a historic battlefield, scarred with the marks of ancient combat, and strewn with the relics of a conflict long since stilled. Here and there, it may be, one of the old-time weapons may be disinterred, or some rusted fragment of broken armor, perhaps, of no more than antiquarian interest now, however much practical importance, for attack or defense, each may have had to those engaged in battle then. By even more graphic testimony, perchance, the thickly strewn relics of the slain, or other personal traces of the combatants, the field is seen to have been not always one of peaceful pasturage; but, in days long since gone, of turbulent tumult and fierce fighting. In literal fact this is ground, this that is entered upon by the, statements concerning the person of Christ, where the prolonged strife of controversies not a few has not failed to leave unmistakeable traces, and marks that can never he erased.
If, in fact, there is one instance where anything at all may appear to be in the claim of theology to have fulfilled its province of construing to expert intelligence, or enforcing on popular attention, a revealed truth of Christianity, it is here. How far in such a case it may be allowed that there has been, in the controversy as to this fundamental doctrine of the Person of the Son of God, a practical bringing of it into prominence, an emphasizing and elaboration of it which would not otherwise have been forthcoming, may be a question. Provided the thought generally associated with such ideas—that the scriptures, if at all, supply only the undeveloped formula of such doctrines provided that unbelieving thought be emphatically ruled out, there may be something to be said for it in the sense of seeing here supplied, in rebuke if also in the interest of decayed spirituality and faith grown feeble, in the providence of God a means of “supplementing” revelation by practical and historical emphasis. However that may be, it is certainly undisputed fact that in the church’s past it is on this truth perhaps beyond all others that steady unremitting attention has been bestowed, successive creeds amplifying definitions of it, doubtless with a view as much to express more adequately fuller conceptions, as to guard more effectively against fresh errors. So that in the whole volume of church history there is probably no point of doctrine so frequently referred to, nor so voluminously treated, as the truth concerning the second Person of the Godhead defined in the clause “and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.”
Nor are we to suppose that this is a field from which conflict has vanished forever, or that very different, or less contentious, conditions prevail there now. Nay, is it not rather the case that so very much in debate just at present is the question of Christ’s Person that we may fairly claim to be in presence of a fresh and most remarkable renewal of the warfare? The “Christ Question,” as it has been entitled, is very much alive to-day. Just how many things have combined to give it such a resuscitation it may be hard to say; but there is certainly no theological question on which discussion is so common or so keen as concerning the mystery of His Person. It appears to many also that in this very reanimation of the question may lie the danger of a recrudescence of ancient maladies. The trend of thought at all events in many cases is not free from parallelism with old-time heresies. The very fact in itself of the subject engrossing so largely popular attention is significant, ominous we may say. And that this is the case is being recognized even by many presumably.. not directly affected. “Christology” says one, in an article to a leading secular review on “Evolution and the Church” — “Christology has become the problem of the church to-day, as, viewed from other standpoints, it was of the church from the fourth to the sixth century.” This is certainly so, and many will be inclined to add there is more than a suspicion of the re-appearance of questions as ancient as the first century in much that is being advanced. Nor need it really occasion surprise to see threatening, as we do to-day, a renewal of polemical warfare around this particular doctrine. For when has theology as such, apart from simple quotation of scripture itself, been able to give a completely satisfactory and final pronouncement on it? In spite of what is claimed for creeds and confessions, what can it offer to-day even?
It may not be out of place to quote here a warning the above witness sounds from his presumably impartial standpoint. Remarking how quickly theories succeed each other in popular favor, and successively pass away, “systems of thought are short-lived,” he says, “the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door and shall carry thee out.” Really, if such evanescent theories so little comply with the requirements of truth as the quotation suggests, the fate of Ananias and Sapphira is not the worst that could overtake them. Nor is this marked failure to reach satisfactory conclusions so very difficult to explain. For one thing the matter is, one may say, inherently mysterious. It is remarkable that full in the past as has been the scrutiny it has undergone, and elaborate as to-day the treatment of it theologically has become, all attempted definitions, ancient and modern alike, of doctrine as to Christ’s person, when they go beyond the exact language, of scripture itself, very quickly throw off any restrictions it would impose, and pass into the region of mere speculation and conjecture. So much so in fact that even from theologians themselves we may occasionally have what looks like an extorted confession of how elusive and mysterious they find the matter to be. “Definite theological statements,” continues the same writer, quoting Jowett, “respecting the relation of Christ to God or man are only figures of speech. They do not really pierce the clouds. No greater calamity has ever befallen the Christian church than the determination of some uncertain things which are beyond the sphere of Christian knowledge.” What is this but a proof of the truth of Christ’s own warning word, “No man knoweth the Son but the Father.” If it is complained, as it has been, that by applying this wholesale to such knowledge of His person as all Christology is concerned in defining, we are condemned to a hopeless agnosticism on a subject of utmost importance, it can only be replied that in such a matter it may very well be that we may meet with the unknowable as well as the unknown. Where we are incompetent to diagnose, and revelation does not cast its light, it may be questioned if “hopeless agnosticism” is the proper term; but even so, faith can not only resign to the inevitable mystery, but discern, a fitness and moral congruity also in the arrangement which retains in seclusion from man’s vulgar scrutiny the holy mystery of His wonderful person. Better so than indulging in metaphysical flights on such a theme.
“No man knoweth the Son but the Father.” We do well to start here. There is a warning note in our Lord’s utterance it becomes us to hearken to. To pass beyond what is revealed is to enter a labyrinth where no wisdom of man can extricate us. We can understand how hopelessly men wander when they set out to explore this forbidden land, for that obscurity involves the whole matter we are informed here on the best of authority. Consequently they labor at their own charge who set out on such an expedition. Twentieth century thought no more than that of earlier days can solve the insoluble or be able to define the undefinable. So that in the strife now imminent, if not in progress, between the theorisings on this point of a New Theology, originating in nothing more stable than ever-changing conjecture, and the pronouncements of the older theology, basing themselves on creeds established and accepted for long, simple believers shall do well to repose the lightest of confidence in human thought as expressed in either; but arm themselves with, and withdraw themselves under that which can neither be superseded nor supplemented, the word of God.
Happily, in that which we are studying here, a great deal of historical theology is avoided by little or no reference to the doctrine of the Trinity. This is unusual in any exposition of the creed, for there is generally much stress laid upon this, and here, if anywhere, some elaboration of the truth would naturally be looked for. On this occasion, however, it is at once to the Son of God incarnate, the historic Jesus, to use the modern phrase, that we are directed. A great deal of what is said regarding the doctrine of the incarnation may be left aside, especially so from the fact that the attempt to show that it is not an unfamiliar idea to man, and to justify it as a credible doctrine leads to the use of the more or less technical language of philosophy. We cannot be expected to follow there; but it may be permitted to remark on the use of that rather novel principle which New Theology has given such prominence to— “the immanence of God.” Trust it not; especially when applied to the incarnation. “A mere philosopheme, absolutely fatal to a gospel” is not an unfair description of it. To many under the spell of philosophic reasoning on this doctrine of divine immanence, instead of the great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh, “Christ Himself is,” as a Roman Catholic has recently said, “resolved into a mere lay figure draped in a few attributes which have no other origin than the minds of those actuated by its baneful influence.”
There are those also who claim “with the help of the modern categories of immanence, evolution and personality, to construe more adequately than ancient theology, and still more adequately than New Theology,” Christological doctrine. But in what does it result? Nothing but philosophical speculation, unsupported by scripture, where it is not indeed contradicted by it. This last, of course, may be of little consequence to those who hold that “the New Testament has left to dogmatic theology the task of thinking out, and construing to intelligence, such facts in regard to Christ as the apostles simply put side by side.” But to those who accept the scriptures as something less nebulous, as God’s revelation, in fact, of all we can know regarding the subject, all this shows with how great distrust the reasonings of philosophy on it must be regarded.
It is somewhat difficult, and becoming increasingly so, for plain Christian people to-day to apprehend, or even to come on to common ground of thought at all with, many teachers who make this branch of theology their province. Not only because of the above mentioned tendency to run into mere philosophic speculation, but because the subject is approached in so radically different a fashion from what they are accustomed to. This is not confined to the truth of incarnation alone, but a specially prominent instance of it is seen there. In what is under review here, after sheaving in the first place, and apparently as the prime consideration in regard to it, that the incarnation is a rational and credible doctrine, the next step to be considered is put in the form of a question— “Admitting the above, what proof have we that Jesus Christ was such incarnation of God?” “To some,” we are told, “the fact that the scriptures so teach is sufficient.” Amply so, a simple believer would rejoin; his only cause for dissatisfaction being that this consideration was so long in being advanced, that it was not first and foremost, given precedence over any such special plea as the reasonableness of the doctrine on philosophic grounds. To show that a doctrine was scriptural, was in line with, based upon the testimony of, the scriptures, used to be the first task of any Christian apologist. It is made now to wait till the development of proof from other lines of evidence has been completed. And not only so, whether the line taken be the parallelism of other religions in sheaving that the thought of a god becoming incarnate was not an unfamiliar idea, or the exposition of it in terms reminiscent rather of philosophy than of theology; but as a witness to the great truth the scripture is also subordinated in value by the assumption underlying all this, almost in fact in so many words stated, that it is not enough to be convinced that it can be established on scriptural grounds that Jesus Christ was really “God manifest in the flesh.” Considerations that shall appeal to those to whom the scripture is of little account, or who reject its witness, are thought worthy of first place.
No doubt there may be something in the plea, that it is at this point in the Creed where we part company with such as Jews and Mohammedans, who could very well adopt the first clause, concerning God the Father Almighty. But, since they do not accept the New Testament revelation, are we therefore to rule it out, or assign it second place in what constitutes the ground of our own faith and conviction? For surely in the recitation of a creed the object ostensibly aimed at is not primarily the gaining credence for its truths by unbelievers, but the statement or confession of one’s own personal faith. In terms sufficiently distinctive, and otherwise suited to the apprehension of such, it may be sought to be given, the simplest and most decisive language being that which is adopted. But for that very reason would not what one would look for in the exposition of that creed precisely he the bringing out, in something like the order of their relative importance, the grounds of the faith we therein confess, on what, as their primary foundation, these our convictions are founded? Is it then the case that the intellectual rationality of the doctrine of the incarnation is our first reply when asked to show cause why we believe in it? We credit the fact because it is quite feasible, and not at all a preposterous idea intellectually!
(Continued from page 48)
J. T.
(To be continued)