CHAPTER XIII

DOCTRINE

A. THE FAITH OF THE CHURCH

We have now reviewed the theory of the ministry and the manner of worship which divide instead of unite the churches.

We have now to consider the doctrine of the church, and immediately we are met with the objection that here lies the insuperable barrier to the unity of Christian people. "Would it not be better," it is frequently said, "if the churches were to agree to dispense with doctrine, on which men can never agree, and unite in good-will and helpful works that would benefit mankind?" But the first question we should ask is: Is there as much difference as is commonly supposed between the churches on the subject of doctrine as there is on the ministry and manner of worship? I think quite the contrary is true. While on the question of discipline and worship the differences are acute, it will be found that the Greek, the Roman, and the various Protestant churches are, with one small exception, agreed that the fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion is the Trinity of the One God. We have not, then, to consider now, as previously, the question, Why should not the Episcopal Church abandon that which the large majority of our fellow Christians in this land have already abandoned? but, rather, Why should not all the churches in America follow the example of that small but nevertheless highly intelligent body of disciples who have cast aside as unreasonable the doctrine which the great majority still hold, and with them devote themselves to an increase in the knowledge of science and the improvement

of humanity in those matters which it is in their power to influence?

If this were a new movement in the history of the church, it might be supposed that at last the truth had been discovered, and that all we had to do was to follow it. But, as a matter of fact, it is very old. That is to say, it has been tried more than once in the history of the church, and the result has never been what its promoters fondly expected.

The Arian schism in the fourth century differs in many important respects from the later anti-Trinitarian movements; but it has this in common with them all, that it denied that Jesus Christ is the unique partaker of the divinity of the Father. The result of that opinion was tested when the Mohammedan invasion ravaged the churches of the East, northern Africa, and southern Europe. The Arian churches could not endure the fiery trial. Not that they were less devout or less courageous than the Catholics, but because, when it came to a question of life and death, it did not seem worth while to die for an opinion which after all did not affect, in their view, the essential of the faith, which was the unity of God. The Mohammedan believed that as truly as did the Catholic-perhaps more truly-therefore, the Arians did not fall martyrs to the faith, they were absorbed into Islam. It may be said that the same is true of the Eastern churches. Undoubtedly, but what is significant in the lapse of those churches is that Christ as a "living, breathing, feeling man" had given place to a phantom in which men could not trust when the test came. Apollinarianism led to the Monophysite heresy, and that in turn to the Monothilite. Whatever truth these heresies enshrined, and unquestionably they did stand for a vital truth, nevertheless the man Christ Jesus disappeared in a mist of speculation. Men will not die for a dogma but only for the faith. Much as we may dislike the phraseology of the so-called Athanasian creed,

*

it is nevertheless true, as has been finely said, that the "Quicunque vult" was the Marseillaise of the early French Church. The men who-not "rightly," as it is erroneously translated, but "firmly"-held the Catholic faith died that Europe might not become as Turkey. They died for Christ because they believed Christ to be as truly human as themselves and as divine as the Father.

The question now is not whether they were right or wrong; nor whether they were able to express their faith in a formula which meets our approval, but: Why did the church which had done so fine a missionary work in the conversion of the Barbarians, which saved Europe by making its invaders Christian and brought them to a condition where they were able to absorb the religion and civilization of Europe, fail, when the Catholics met the wave of the Saracen invasion like a rock? The dramatic check of the Barbarians by Pope Leo I has been the subject of picture and pen, but the obscure work of the early Arian missionaries which alone made the Barbarians responsive to the church's appeal has been forgotten.†

In the sixteenth century the Socinian current in the Reformation flood had elements which have enriched and purified the life of all the churches. But it was unable to satisfy the longing of the human soul for a gospel of redemption. Socinianism protested, and we believe rightly, against the Calvinistic doctrine that man was so far gone from "original righteousness" that nothing less than the sacrifice of the sinless Son of God could placate the wrath of his offended Father. We call this the Calvinistic doctrine of atonement, but indeed it was part of the damnosa hereditas which Protestantism had inherited from the mediæval church. A protest against the Protestant

* "Christ's Thought of God," J. M. Wilson.

† Attila, of course, was a Hun, that is, a heathen, but a very considerable part of the army which he led into Italy was nominally Christian. See Chapter II.

scholasticism was needed and the church should be grateful to Socinus for making it; but what Socinus and his followers overlooked was that the world cannot be saved by a protest, it must have a gospel of salvation. Whatever may or may not be necessary for redemption, it is redemption which the world needs. It was because it failed to lay hold of the truth that the holiness of God is the essential element in the divine nature that Socinianism became an arid intellectualism, and so failed to appeal to the conscience of the churches of the Reformation.

The Deistic movement of the eighteenth century refused to believe in the divinity of Jesus because the argument on which the church thought it necessary to base it-the power of working miracles-made no impression upon men like Hume, who were convinced that the finger of God had never touched this earth since the hand of God made man out of the dust of the ground and then left him to his own devices!

In its noblest and most spiritual form the anti-Trinitarian protest appeared in England and New England in the eighteenth century as Unitarianism. Who can estimate the debt the churches of every name owe to the men and women of the Unitarian faith? The Calvinistic churches had degraded Christ by making him a mere instrument for the placating of a God who was spiritually "muscle bound," and had not the power which every good man possesses of freely forgiving those who have done him wrong. Moreover, they failed to see that God's hatred of sin was not because of any offense to his divine majesty but because sin is the destruction of the divine life in God's child. It was the Unitarian Church which showed us the Father by revealing the Son as friend and example, making him appear before us as a "living, breathing, thinking man," in whose companionship we, like the disciples of old, could feel at home with God. At the time of the Unitarian revolt from what was called the Orthodox Church

in New England, the knowledge of God was expressed much in this way: "God is arbitrary Will; he can do what he pleases; and he did please to choose a certain number to be saved out of this world, but even there he was limited and in order to accomplish his purpose, it was necessary to subject his Son, the Sinless One, to an excruciating and shameful death in order that his own heart might be moved to love sinners." Now, inasmuch as the whole doctrine of the divinity of Christ was at that time based on the necessity of the vicarious punishment of the Son of God, when the moral revolt of the Unitarians against that doctrine, unworthy of God because unworthy of man, occurred, the divinity of Christ fell with it, because it was the only proof with which they were familiar. No one who knows the history of the churches in this land can doubt that every one of them owes a great debt to the Unitarian protest which literally brought Christ back into the church. As Dean Rashdall has said: "Modern Unitarianism was originally quite as much a protest against the traditional doctrine of the Atonement as against the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. The value of these protests must be acknowledged by all who feel how deeply the traditional views have libelled the view of God's character which finds expression in the teachings of Christ and in a truly Christian doctrine of the Incarnation."†

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It is popularly supposed that this libel originated with Calvin and was cast into its rigid form by Jonathan Edwards, but, as a matter of fact, Calvin, the great French lawyer, took part of the theory from Anselm, who in turn had borrowed from St. Augustine; so that the record of this doctrine is not to be found in Calvin's "Institutes," but rather in Anselm's "Cur Deus homo," the tract of St.

* I owe this to the late Prof. A. V. G. Allen, though I cannot at the moment verify the reference.

"The Idea of Atonement in Christian Theology," Hastings Rashdall, p. 43 (Macmillan & Co.).