Erskine (of
Linlathen)
378 sq.
Pleiderer - Development of Theology in Germany since Kant
It is probable that strictly critical
research may make often another use than the author himself would wish of the learned materials which his book supplies ; where he finds confirmation of the historical character of a narrative in the New Testament, or of a discourse in the Fourth Gospel, others may discern rather the source of the literary origin of the narrative or the discourse in question. But in any case, the good service the author has rendered should be thankfully acknowledged ; by laborious studies, pursued through many years, in out-of-the-way Jewish lite rature, he has collected an extremely rich and useful mass of materials bearing upon primitive Christian history.
Samuel Davidson's Introduction to the Study of the New Testament (2 vols. , 1868), presents noteworthy evidence of
the progress of historical criticism in England since the begin ning of the sixth decade. In the first edition (1848-51) the author had maintained the genuineness of the whole of the New Testament writings, not excepting even 2 Peter, against all the objections of criticism. He then published an Intro duction to the Old Testament (1862-3), in which the stand point of the apologist was abandoned, and the intermediate position of Ewald was taken (e. g. the Pentateuch not by Moses, but not completed until the reign of Josiah, the Priestly Legislation preceding the Prophets). Six years later, the author having in the meantime resigned his position as theological professor in the Lancashire Independent College, and acquired full freedom to prosecute his critical studies,
appeared the second edition of his Introduction to the New
? ? ? ? 394 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Blt IV.
Testament, entirely rewritten, in which the standpoint of the Tubingen school was taken with almost too little reservation. The counterwork to it is the strictly apologetic Introduction of Salmon, which appears to enjoy well-nigh the rank of an authority in orthodox circles.
The latter is the case with the Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, by Westcott, now Bishop of Durham, the English Tischendorf. This work, which appeared in six editions between 1851 and 1881, belongs to that class of
apologies which, by their learning, an air of superiority towards the main arguments of the critics, and occasional minor concessions on secondary points, are accustomed to make a great impression, and really perform the service above referred to, of retarding the progressive theological spirit of an age. The best part of the book is the introductory chapters on the Jewish religion, and particularly the Messianic faith of the century immediately preceding our era. But with regard to the Gospels, the author holds that their contents are in complete harmony, or that only unessential differences in the form of narrative are to be met with. These are to be explained by the varied individuality of the writers, in whom the Divine image of the Saviour was reflected in diverse but mutually complementary forms. For the Gospels are all Divine in the highest sense, because they are in the highest sense human. The spirit in the Evangelists searched into the deep things of God, and led them to realise the mysteries of the Faith, as finite ideas, and not in their infinite essence.
This is such language as we have long been accustomed to hear from Neander ; instead of getting intelligible answers to definite questions, we have to listen to the mystical phrases of devotional literature, which appeal to the emotions and presentiment (Ahnung), where, from the nature of the case, the intellect alone is qualified to speak. Westcott's lectures, entitled The Historic Faith (1882), have the same apologetic purpose, being an historical and dogmatic exposition of the Apostles' Creed.
But influential as these and similar apologetic works (they are essentially so much alike that it does not seem necessary to give a list of their titles) may be for the present moment, they cannot arrest the stream of time. 1 This we may, finally,
1 The papers on the results of recent criticism of the Old Testament, read
? ? ? ? Ch. II ] PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY. 395
assure ourselves of by a glance at three important works of the last three lustra, with which our survey of English theo logy may conclude.
The anonymous work, Supernatural Religion. An In quiry into the Reality of Divine Revelation (3 vols. , 1874- 1879, in seven editions) seeks, with the aid of an acute and
scientifically trained intellect and extensive historical learning, to overthrow the popular view of Christianity as a religion transcending the human reason and based upon supernatural institutions and miracles. With a view to this, the belief in miracles is first examined in general, its untenability being shown less from metaphysical than epistemological considera tions and analogies from experience, and the origin of the belief is explained from psychological and temporal conditions. When the proof from miracles has been thus in general de prived of its force, positively by the immutability of the order of nature, and negatively by the unreliability of human obser vation and testimony, the Christian legend of miracles is next submitted to trial by a detailed examination of the evidential value of the Biblical documents -- the Gospels and the Acts.
From an examination of the testimony of the Fathers the author finds that not one of the canonical Gospels is connected by direct testimony with the men to whom they are tradition ally ascribed, and that the later, in itself valueless, tradition is divided by a long interval of profound silence from the period of its alleged authorship ; the canonical Gospels continue to be anonymous documents until the end of the second century, without evidential value with regard to the miracles which they record. The internal evidence confirms this result of the external ; to say nothing of minor discrepancies which run through the first three Gospels, it is impossible to bring
the accounts of the Synoptists into harmony with the Fourth Gospel ; they annul mutually the force of their testimony. Like the Gospels, the Acts is a legendary composition of a late date, and cannot be regarded as a sober historical narrative, which renders the reality of the numerous miracles it reports
at the Church Congress, at Manchester, in 1888, by Dr. Perowne, the Dean of Peterborough, Professor Cheyne, of Oxford, and Mr. J. M. Wilson, the Head-master of Clifton College, supply one of many proofs of this. Mrs. Ward, the author of Robert Elsmere, very justly regards the debate on these papers as " The glorification of criticism. " See her striking article on " The New Reformation " in the Nineteenth Century for March, 1889.
? /. '
? ? ? $9*5 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
incredible. The testimony of the Apostle Paul as to the resurrection of Christ remains then to be considered. A close examination of his evidence shows that, so far as it con cerns the earlier events, it rests upon indefinite hearsay and does not agree with the accounts of the Gospels, whilst the Apostle's own experience, in view of his peculiar and highly nervous temperament, must be looked upon as a subjective vision, as are also most probably the appearances to the excited disciples of Jesus. Accordingly the proof of the re surrection and ascension must be pronounced as absolutely and hopelessly insufficient. The examination of the historical sources has therefore confirmed the view of the improbability of miracles formed upon general grounds.
So far the author of this interesting book stands upon firm historical ground, and it will be difficult to upset his main position. But when he proceeds to draw the inference that the claim of Christianity to Divine revelation has no better foundation than the like claim made by other religions, he is advancing no longer an historical but a philosophical opinion, which is not by any means the necessary consequence of his critical results, but is based upon an inadequate estimate of the distinctive properties of Christianity as an ethical religion, and upon a superficial, external, dualistic idea of revelation. The defect of the work Supernatural Religion, as of Strauss's Leben Jesu, is that it employs destructive criticism ex clusively, and neglects to make clear, or even so much as to indicate, what is the lasting moral and spiritual truth that lies at the basis of the supernatural legends and dogmas. But while this is beyond doubt a very serious defect, it is equally certain, on the other hand, that the work of negative or destructive criticism must everywhere be first done as the conditio sine qua non of the positive or constructive task of a better understanding of the historical religion. And as the author himself describes his labours as but the negative pre paration for positive construction,1 we are not justified in judging them by any other standard ; and within the limits which he proposed to himself, the value of his contribution to
the end in view cannot be called in question.
Naturally, a work of this kind attracted great attention
1 Preface, p. lxxvii, " Under such circumstances, destructive must precede constructive criticism. "
? ? ? ? Ch. II. ] PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY.
397
wherever the English language is spoken. Never before had such a systematic attack, based upon solid learning, been made in English upon the external evidences of the Christian religion, which still continue to hold a foremost place, not merely in the popular, but also in the theological apologetics of England (Mansel, Newman, Mozley). It may, undoubtedly, be taken as a sign of the times that this book, in the first year
of its publication, passed through six editions, and that the periodical press of all parties gave long extracts from and reviews of which were for the most part, as appears from Lightfoot's complaint, of a favourable and even laudatory nature. The answer which Lightfoot, the late Bishop of
Durham, offered in the name of orthodoxy in a series of articles in the Contemporary Review, subsequently published as book, extraordinarily weak. Instead of calmly sur rendering the outworks and establishing the claim of the Christian religion to be a revelation (which was called in question) by an appeal to its spiritual nature and its position in the whole course of history, by which means the solely
negative standpoint of the author of Supernatural Religion would have been successfully impugned, the short-sighted scholar found nothing better to do than to submit the author's examination of references in the Fathers to the Gospels to petty criticism while, even all the Bishop's deductions were correct, the general result of the author's inquiries would not be in any way altered. not surprising that in his reply to Bishop Lightfoot, which has recently appeared, the author not only adheres to his historical positions as not upset, but that he also repeats his general conclusions in form of more pronounced antagonism. For his refutation, needed really other means than Bishop Lightfoot had at his command
required free, profound, and far-seeing philosophical and historical defence of Christianity, as the growingly perfect stage of the religious development of humanity.
And to such a defence the last decade has made in the highest degree valuable contributions in the works of Robert son Smith and Edwin Hatch, which, though they belong to very different departments, are closely allied by common, genuinely scientific method, an unprejudiced and acute criticism of authorities, and a fine insight into the conditions and causes of historical development. In 1881 and 1882 Robertson
Smith published two series of lectures, the one on The Old
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it a
if is
It
a
is
it,
it,
? 398 THEOLOGY IN* GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
Testament in the Jewish Church, and the other on The Pro phets of Israel and their Place in History, which, together with the author's articles in the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, hold a place amongst the best things that have been written on the religion of the Old Testament. He considers that the historical documents of our religion must be treated according to the same principles as are applied with such " valuable results to the other sources of ancient history. The timidity which shrinks from this frankness, lest the untrained student may make a wrong use of the knowledge put into his hands," as Robertson Smith truly remarks, " wholly out"of place in Protestant Churches," which ought to regard as religious as well as an historical gain to learn to read every part of the Bible in its original and natural sense. Much unnecessary exacerbation of dogmatic controversy would be avoided theologians were always alive to the fact that the supreme truths of religion were first promulgated and first became a living power in forms that
are far simpler than the simplest system of modern dogma. " The revelation recorded in the Bible had history which was " subject to the laws of human nature, and limited by the universal rule that every permanent spiritual and moral re lation must grow up by slow degrees and obey a principle of internal development. " This application of the idea of de velopment to the history of the religion of the Bible so far from detracting from its character as revelation that, as Robertson Smith admirably shows, the best way of proving
to show historically the unity and the consistent progress through centuries of the development of the religion of the Bible. " If the religion of Israel and Christ answers these tests, the miraculous circumstances of its promulgation need not be used as the first proof of its truth, but must rather be regarded as the inseparable accompaniments of a revelation which bears the historical stamp of reality. " Without en dangering, therefore, religious faith in the truth of the religion of the Bible, free discussion of the details of historical criticism may be fearlessly conceded. Of this freedom, Robertson
Smith himself makes use without any reservation. He confesses in the preface to his lectures on the Prophets his adoption of the main positions of the newer school of criticism, represented by Wellhausen, that the priestly legislation did not precede but follow the prophets, that the latter were
? ? ? it is
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PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY.
399
therefore not the interpreters of a religion which had been previously fixed in the Law, but were the original representa tives of the ethical idea of God which was developed along with and out of the national history of Israel. To show this
in detail, is the noble design of his excellent lectures on the Prophets.
Simultaneously with Robertson Smith's lectures on the history of the religion of the Old Testament appeared the Bampton Lectures of the late Dr. Edwin Hatch, on The Organisation of the Early Christian Churclies (1881). In
the opening lecture the author gives a very instructive account of the historical method which ought to be followed in the inquiry before him. The first thing to test the docu ments as to their origin, their temporal and local surroundings, and the value of what they say. When the facts have thus been ascertained, the inquiry must proceed to the considera tion of the probable causes of the facts. Here careful attention must be paid to the difficulty arising from the fact that the same words do not always bear the same meaning, but alter with the development of the institution designated (e. g. eirl(TKOTro<s). The history of the past can never be pro perly understood when series of historical facts interpreted by its modern form and meaning we have to begin at the beginning, and trace the new elements step by step through succeeding centuries. To understand this process of develop ment, needful also to consider the resemblances which exist between Christian and non-Christian institutions, in order that similar phenomena may be referred to the same causes. Nor may the historian be deterred from such an inference by the supposition of the supernatural character of the Church. For the formation of the Church has been effected by God according to the same laws by which the life of human society generally produced. The divinity which clings to the Holy Catholic Church the divinity of order. " not outside the universe of Law, but within it.
It Divine as the solar system Divine, because both the one and the other are expressions and results of those vast laws of the Divine economy by which the physical and the moral world alike move their movement and live their life. " It then shown in detail how the Christian communities were organised at first after the analogy of the Jewish synedrion and the Gentile associations, borrowing from them both the
? ? ? is
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it
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is
;
is
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a
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? 400 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1 82 5. [Bk. IV.
presbytery, or council of " old men," and the executive organs of self-government -- the bishop and the deacons. The bishop, at first only the president of the administrative body, gradually became of greater importance, in proportion as the need of an authoritative organ for preserving the unity of doctrine and of discipline arose. But all the time the right to teach and administer the sacraments still belonged to all members of the Churches in common ; the right of the priority of the clergy was as yet not exclusive. When the bishops laid claim to the exclusive possession of this right, the claim was energetically disputed by the Montanists, who maintained the superiority of individual gifts of the Spirit to official rule. Nor was ordination at first anything more than appointment to an ecclesiastical office, of the same kind as any appointment to a civil office, without implying the idea of the communica tion of exclusive spiritual powers. The clergy did not become a separate class before the fourth century, and then partly in consequence of the grant of special privileges from the State to ecclesiastical dignitaries, partly also from the growth of the influence of the analogy between the Christian and Mosaic dispensations, whereby Christian ministers became priests. The connexion between the individual Churches was also at first loose and voluntary ; it was under the influence and after the pattern of the State, again, that the organisation of the confederation of the Churches was brought about.
Hatch then raises the question, whether the organisation, thus effected, of the Christian communities into one general Church can be justly identified with the ideal Church of the New Testament, the "body of Christ. " He denies this, and establishes his position with great acuteness. The unity of the Church, he shows, was in the earliest period only " a common
relation to a common ideal and a common hope. " In the second period, the age of conflict with heretics, "the idea of definite belief as a basis of union dominated over that of a holy life " ; Christians were to be held together by their possession of the only true tradition of Christian teaching. In the third period was added insistence on Catholic order, without which dogma seemed to have no guarantee of permanence. " It was held not to be enough for a man to be living a good life, and to hold the Catholic faith, and to belong to a Christian association ; that association must be part of a larger confederation, and thesumofsuch confederations constituted theCatholicChurch. "
? ? ? ? Ch. II. ] PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY. 4OI
This is the permanent form of the idea of Catholic unity since the fourth century. It is true, it was not universally accepted; the Donatists were not to be convinced of the value of an outward unity which lacked inward purity and sanctity. They were put down with the aid of the State ; but the question they raised was not thereby solved, but still retains its full significance : the question whether external organisation constitutes the Church ? And Hatch answers the question in a truly Protestant spirit : " Subtler, deeper, diviner, than anything of which external things can be either the symbol or the bond is that inner reality or essence of union -- that inter penetrating community of thought and character--which St.
Paul speaks of as the ' unity of the Spirit' ! "
Hatch's book belongs, as is widely acknowledged, to the
best that have been written on the origins of our Church. If he had been spared to write the history of Church doctrine, after the same method as he has followed in his account of the organisation of the Church, what an instructive work that
? The unexpected and sudden death of this
would have been !
fine scholar must be regarded as a heavy loss not to Oxford only, but to Protestant theology generally ; yet we may hope that the seed sown by him will bear fruit far and wide. The place where Green and Hatch laboured and cast the light of philosophical and historical knowledge cannot fall back again into the night of the Middle Ages. The days of a Newman and a Pusey are for ever past for Oxford and for England.
G. T. DD
? ? ? Amraon 89.
Arnold, M. , 330 sq. , 390. Arnold, T. , 365 sq.
Bauer, Bruno, 226.
Baur, F. C, 224 sq. , 284 sq. Biedermann 137 sq.
Bleek 237.
Bredenkamp 275. Bretschneider 89.
Bruce, Alexander, 382. Budde 276.
Caird, John, 340 sq. Campbell 380 sq. Carlyle 311 sq.
Colenso 390.
Coleridge 308 sq. , 355. Curtiss 275.
Daub 132.
Davidson, S. , 393. Delitzsch 275.
De Wette 97 sq. , 227. Dillmann 275.
Dorner 156, 373. Duhm 276.
Edersheim, 393. Eichhorn 209, 227.
Erskine (of Linlathen) 378 sq. Ewald 237, 256.
Feuerbach 135. Fichte, J. G. , 57 sq. Finsler 275.
Flint 350 sq.
Froude, Hurrell, 356.
Gieseler 209, 284, Graf, H. , 258.
Green, T. H. , 344 sq.
Hagenbach 284. Hamilton, Sir \V. , 325.
Hampden 370.
Hare, Julius, 370, 372. Harnack 298.
Hase 205, 237, 282. Hatch 399 sq.
Hausrath 240.
Hegel 68 sq.
Herder 21 sq. , 210. Hilgenfeld 239.
Hofmann, C. von, 173 sq Holsten 240.
Holtzmann 240.
Hume 6 sq.
Jowett 386.
Kant 3 sq. , 32 sq. Kayser 258. Keble 356.
Keim 247.
Kingsley, C, 383 sq. Kittel 275.
Konig 275.
Kostlin 234.
Kuenen 259, 276. Kurtz 284.
Lange, J. P. , 170 sq. Lechler 237. Lightfoot (Bp. ) 397. Lipsius 195 sq.
Mackay 391.
Mansel 327.
Marheincke 131.
Martensen 164 sq.
Martineau 340, 352 sq. Maurice, F. D. , 328, 373 sq. Meyer 237.
Mill, James, 319.
INDEX.
? ? ? ? Mill, J. S. , 319 sq. Milman 370, 372. Miiller, Julius, 124.
Neander 219, 279 sq. Newman, F. W. , 317 sq. Newman, J. H. , 358, 361 sq. Niedner 284.
Nitzsch 123.
Noldeke 275.
Paulus 211. Pfleiderer 250. Planck 233, 277 sq. Pusey 358.
Renan 241.
Reuss 237, 261.
Riehm 275.
Ritschl, Alb. , 183 sq. , 235. Robertson, F. W. , 383, sq. Rohr 89.
Rothe 148 sq.
Ryssel 275.
Schelling 62 sq.
Schenkel 177 sq. , 246. Schleiermacher 44 sq. , 103 sq. , 209,
228. Schrader 275.
Schultz 275. Schwegler 233. Schweizer 125 sq. Seeley 333 sq. , 392. Seth 349.
INDEX. 40;
Sraend 276.
Smith, Robertson, 397. Spencer, Herbert, 336 sq. Spittler 277.
Stade 276.
Stanley, A. P. , 389.
Stirner, Max, 136.
Storr 86.
Strack 275.
Strauss 132, 213 sq. , 241 sq. Supernatural Religion, 395 sq.
Temple 388. Thirhvall 370, 372. Tieftrunk 87. Tulloch 332. Twesten 124.
Ullmann 123, 220.
Vatke 252 sq. Volkmar 239.
Wegscheider 89.
Weiss 237.
Weisse, C. H. , 145 sq. , 222, 226. Weizsacker, 238, 248 sq. Wellhausen 259, 263 sq. Westcott 394.
Whately 368 sq.
Wilberforce, R. J. , 359.
Wilke 222, 226.
Williams, Rowland, 388.
Zeller, Ed. , 229 n. , 232.
? ? ? ? '*
Id
? ? ? ? ? <?
? ? /4
? ?
research may make often another use than the author himself would wish of the learned materials which his book supplies ; where he finds confirmation of the historical character of a narrative in the New Testament, or of a discourse in the Fourth Gospel, others may discern rather the source of the literary origin of the narrative or the discourse in question. But in any case, the good service the author has rendered should be thankfully acknowledged ; by laborious studies, pursued through many years, in out-of-the-way Jewish lite rature, he has collected an extremely rich and useful mass of materials bearing upon primitive Christian history.
Samuel Davidson's Introduction to the Study of the New Testament (2 vols. , 1868), presents noteworthy evidence of
the progress of historical criticism in England since the begin ning of the sixth decade. In the first edition (1848-51) the author had maintained the genuineness of the whole of the New Testament writings, not excepting even 2 Peter, against all the objections of criticism. He then published an Intro duction to the Old Testament (1862-3), in which the stand point of the apologist was abandoned, and the intermediate position of Ewald was taken (e. g. the Pentateuch not by Moses, but not completed until the reign of Josiah, the Priestly Legislation preceding the Prophets). Six years later, the author having in the meantime resigned his position as theological professor in the Lancashire Independent College, and acquired full freedom to prosecute his critical studies,
appeared the second edition of his Introduction to the New
? ? ? ? 394 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Blt IV.
Testament, entirely rewritten, in which the standpoint of the Tubingen school was taken with almost too little reservation. The counterwork to it is the strictly apologetic Introduction of Salmon, which appears to enjoy well-nigh the rank of an authority in orthodox circles.
The latter is the case with the Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, by Westcott, now Bishop of Durham, the English Tischendorf. This work, which appeared in six editions between 1851 and 1881, belongs to that class of
apologies which, by their learning, an air of superiority towards the main arguments of the critics, and occasional minor concessions on secondary points, are accustomed to make a great impression, and really perform the service above referred to, of retarding the progressive theological spirit of an age. The best part of the book is the introductory chapters on the Jewish religion, and particularly the Messianic faith of the century immediately preceding our era. But with regard to the Gospels, the author holds that their contents are in complete harmony, or that only unessential differences in the form of narrative are to be met with. These are to be explained by the varied individuality of the writers, in whom the Divine image of the Saviour was reflected in diverse but mutually complementary forms. For the Gospels are all Divine in the highest sense, because they are in the highest sense human. The spirit in the Evangelists searched into the deep things of God, and led them to realise the mysteries of the Faith, as finite ideas, and not in their infinite essence.
This is such language as we have long been accustomed to hear from Neander ; instead of getting intelligible answers to definite questions, we have to listen to the mystical phrases of devotional literature, which appeal to the emotions and presentiment (Ahnung), where, from the nature of the case, the intellect alone is qualified to speak. Westcott's lectures, entitled The Historic Faith (1882), have the same apologetic purpose, being an historical and dogmatic exposition of the Apostles' Creed.
But influential as these and similar apologetic works (they are essentially so much alike that it does not seem necessary to give a list of their titles) may be for the present moment, they cannot arrest the stream of time. 1 This we may, finally,
1 The papers on the results of recent criticism of the Old Testament, read
? ? ? ? Ch. II ] PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY. 395
assure ourselves of by a glance at three important works of the last three lustra, with which our survey of English theo logy may conclude.
The anonymous work, Supernatural Religion. An In quiry into the Reality of Divine Revelation (3 vols. , 1874- 1879, in seven editions) seeks, with the aid of an acute and
scientifically trained intellect and extensive historical learning, to overthrow the popular view of Christianity as a religion transcending the human reason and based upon supernatural institutions and miracles. With a view to this, the belief in miracles is first examined in general, its untenability being shown less from metaphysical than epistemological considera tions and analogies from experience, and the origin of the belief is explained from psychological and temporal conditions. When the proof from miracles has been thus in general de prived of its force, positively by the immutability of the order of nature, and negatively by the unreliability of human obser vation and testimony, the Christian legend of miracles is next submitted to trial by a detailed examination of the evidential value of the Biblical documents -- the Gospels and the Acts.
From an examination of the testimony of the Fathers the author finds that not one of the canonical Gospels is connected by direct testimony with the men to whom they are tradition ally ascribed, and that the later, in itself valueless, tradition is divided by a long interval of profound silence from the period of its alleged authorship ; the canonical Gospels continue to be anonymous documents until the end of the second century, without evidential value with regard to the miracles which they record. The internal evidence confirms this result of the external ; to say nothing of minor discrepancies which run through the first three Gospels, it is impossible to bring
the accounts of the Synoptists into harmony with the Fourth Gospel ; they annul mutually the force of their testimony. Like the Gospels, the Acts is a legendary composition of a late date, and cannot be regarded as a sober historical narrative, which renders the reality of the numerous miracles it reports
at the Church Congress, at Manchester, in 1888, by Dr. Perowne, the Dean of Peterborough, Professor Cheyne, of Oxford, and Mr. J. M. Wilson, the Head-master of Clifton College, supply one of many proofs of this. Mrs. Ward, the author of Robert Elsmere, very justly regards the debate on these papers as " The glorification of criticism. " See her striking article on " The New Reformation " in the Nineteenth Century for March, 1889.
? /. '
? ? ? $9*5 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
incredible. The testimony of the Apostle Paul as to the resurrection of Christ remains then to be considered. A close examination of his evidence shows that, so far as it con cerns the earlier events, it rests upon indefinite hearsay and does not agree with the accounts of the Gospels, whilst the Apostle's own experience, in view of his peculiar and highly nervous temperament, must be looked upon as a subjective vision, as are also most probably the appearances to the excited disciples of Jesus. Accordingly the proof of the re surrection and ascension must be pronounced as absolutely and hopelessly insufficient. The examination of the historical sources has therefore confirmed the view of the improbability of miracles formed upon general grounds.
So far the author of this interesting book stands upon firm historical ground, and it will be difficult to upset his main position. But when he proceeds to draw the inference that the claim of Christianity to Divine revelation has no better foundation than the like claim made by other religions, he is advancing no longer an historical but a philosophical opinion, which is not by any means the necessary consequence of his critical results, but is based upon an inadequate estimate of the distinctive properties of Christianity as an ethical religion, and upon a superficial, external, dualistic idea of revelation. The defect of the work Supernatural Religion, as of Strauss's Leben Jesu, is that it employs destructive criticism ex clusively, and neglects to make clear, or even so much as to indicate, what is the lasting moral and spiritual truth that lies at the basis of the supernatural legends and dogmas. But while this is beyond doubt a very serious defect, it is equally certain, on the other hand, that the work of negative or destructive criticism must everywhere be first done as the conditio sine qua non of the positive or constructive task of a better understanding of the historical religion. And as the author himself describes his labours as but the negative pre paration for positive construction,1 we are not justified in judging them by any other standard ; and within the limits which he proposed to himself, the value of his contribution to
the end in view cannot be called in question.
Naturally, a work of this kind attracted great attention
1 Preface, p. lxxvii, " Under such circumstances, destructive must precede constructive criticism. "
? ? ? ? Ch. II. ] PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY.
397
wherever the English language is spoken. Never before had such a systematic attack, based upon solid learning, been made in English upon the external evidences of the Christian religion, which still continue to hold a foremost place, not merely in the popular, but also in the theological apologetics of England (Mansel, Newman, Mozley). It may, undoubtedly, be taken as a sign of the times that this book, in the first year
of its publication, passed through six editions, and that the periodical press of all parties gave long extracts from and reviews of which were for the most part, as appears from Lightfoot's complaint, of a favourable and even laudatory nature. The answer which Lightfoot, the late Bishop of
Durham, offered in the name of orthodoxy in a series of articles in the Contemporary Review, subsequently published as book, extraordinarily weak. Instead of calmly sur rendering the outworks and establishing the claim of the Christian religion to be a revelation (which was called in question) by an appeal to its spiritual nature and its position in the whole course of history, by which means the solely
negative standpoint of the author of Supernatural Religion would have been successfully impugned, the short-sighted scholar found nothing better to do than to submit the author's examination of references in the Fathers to the Gospels to petty criticism while, even all the Bishop's deductions were correct, the general result of the author's inquiries would not be in any way altered. not surprising that in his reply to Bishop Lightfoot, which has recently appeared, the author not only adheres to his historical positions as not upset, but that he also repeats his general conclusions in form of more pronounced antagonism. For his refutation, needed really other means than Bishop Lightfoot had at his command
required free, profound, and far-seeing philosophical and historical defence of Christianity, as the growingly perfect stage of the religious development of humanity.
And to such a defence the last decade has made in the highest degree valuable contributions in the works of Robert son Smith and Edwin Hatch, which, though they belong to very different departments, are closely allied by common, genuinely scientific method, an unprejudiced and acute criticism of authorities, and a fine insight into the conditions and causes of historical development. In 1881 and 1882 Robertson
Smith published two series of lectures, the one on The Old
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a
;
; it
it a
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? 398 THEOLOGY IN* GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
Testament in the Jewish Church, and the other on The Pro phets of Israel and their Place in History, which, together with the author's articles in the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, hold a place amongst the best things that have been written on the religion of the Old Testament. He considers that the historical documents of our religion must be treated according to the same principles as are applied with such " valuable results to the other sources of ancient history. The timidity which shrinks from this frankness, lest the untrained student may make a wrong use of the knowledge put into his hands," as Robertson Smith truly remarks, " wholly out"of place in Protestant Churches," which ought to regard as religious as well as an historical gain to learn to read every part of the Bible in its original and natural sense. Much unnecessary exacerbation of dogmatic controversy would be avoided theologians were always alive to the fact that the supreme truths of religion were first promulgated and first became a living power in forms that
are far simpler than the simplest system of modern dogma. " The revelation recorded in the Bible had history which was " subject to the laws of human nature, and limited by the universal rule that every permanent spiritual and moral re lation must grow up by slow degrees and obey a principle of internal development. " This application of the idea of de velopment to the history of the religion of the Bible so far from detracting from its character as revelation that, as Robertson Smith admirably shows, the best way of proving
to show historically the unity and the consistent progress through centuries of the development of the religion of the Bible. " If the religion of Israel and Christ answers these tests, the miraculous circumstances of its promulgation need not be used as the first proof of its truth, but must rather be regarded as the inseparable accompaniments of a revelation which bears the historical stamp of reality. " Without en dangering, therefore, religious faith in the truth of the religion of the Bible, free discussion of the details of historical criticism may be fearlessly conceded. Of this freedom, Robertson
Smith himself makes use without any reservation. He confesses in the preface to his lectures on the Prophets his adoption of the main positions of the newer school of criticism, represented by Wellhausen, that the priestly legislation did not precede but follow the prophets, that the latter were
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PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY.
399
therefore not the interpreters of a religion which had been previously fixed in the Law, but were the original representa tives of the ethical idea of God which was developed along with and out of the national history of Israel. To show this
in detail, is the noble design of his excellent lectures on the Prophets.
Simultaneously with Robertson Smith's lectures on the history of the religion of the Old Testament appeared the Bampton Lectures of the late Dr. Edwin Hatch, on The Organisation of the Early Christian Churclies (1881). In
the opening lecture the author gives a very instructive account of the historical method which ought to be followed in the inquiry before him. The first thing to test the docu ments as to their origin, their temporal and local surroundings, and the value of what they say. When the facts have thus been ascertained, the inquiry must proceed to the considera tion of the probable causes of the facts. Here careful attention must be paid to the difficulty arising from the fact that the same words do not always bear the same meaning, but alter with the development of the institution designated (e. g. eirl(TKOTro<s). The history of the past can never be pro perly understood when series of historical facts interpreted by its modern form and meaning we have to begin at the beginning, and trace the new elements step by step through succeeding centuries. To understand this process of develop ment, needful also to consider the resemblances which exist between Christian and non-Christian institutions, in order that similar phenomena may be referred to the same causes. Nor may the historian be deterred from such an inference by the supposition of the supernatural character of the Church. For the formation of the Church has been effected by God according to the same laws by which the life of human society generally produced. The divinity which clings to the Holy Catholic Church the divinity of order. " not outside the universe of Law, but within it.
It Divine as the solar system Divine, because both the one and the other are expressions and results of those vast laws of the Divine economy by which the physical and the moral world alike move their movement and live their life. " It then shown in detail how the Christian communities were organised at first after the analogy of the Jewish synedrion and the Gentile associations, borrowing from them both the
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? 400 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1 82 5. [Bk. IV.
presbytery, or council of " old men," and the executive organs of self-government -- the bishop and the deacons. The bishop, at first only the president of the administrative body, gradually became of greater importance, in proportion as the need of an authoritative organ for preserving the unity of doctrine and of discipline arose. But all the time the right to teach and administer the sacraments still belonged to all members of the Churches in common ; the right of the priority of the clergy was as yet not exclusive. When the bishops laid claim to the exclusive possession of this right, the claim was energetically disputed by the Montanists, who maintained the superiority of individual gifts of the Spirit to official rule. Nor was ordination at first anything more than appointment to an ecclesiastical office, of the same kind as any appointment to a civil office, without implying the idea of the communica tion of exclusive spiritual powers. The clergy did not become a separate class before the fourth century, and then partly in consequence of the grant of special privileges from the State to ecclesiastical dignitaries, partly also from the growth of the influence of the analogy between the Christian and Mosaic dispensations, whereby Christian ministers became priests. The connexion between the individual Churches was also at first loose and voluntary ; it was under the influence and after the pattern of the State, again, that the organisation of the confederation of the Churches was brought about.
Hatch then raises the question, whether the organisation, thus effected, of the Christian communities into one general Church can be justly identified with the ideal Church of the New Testament, the "body of Christ. " He denies this, and establishes his position with great acuteness. The unity of the Church, he shows, was in the earliest period only " a common
relation to a common ideal and a common hope. " In the second period, the age of conflict with heretics, "the idea of definite belief as a basis of union dominated over that of a holy life " ; Christians were to be held together by their possession of the only true tradition of Christian teaching. In the third period was added insistence on Catholic order, without which dogma seemed to have no guarantee of permanence. " It was held not to be enough for a man to be living a good life, and to hold the Catholic faith, and to belong to a Christian association ; that association must be part of a larger confederation, and thesumofsuch confederations constituted theCatholicChurch. "
? ? ? ? Ch. II. ] PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY. 4OI
This is the permanent form of the idea of Catholic unity since the fourth century. It is true, it was not universally accepted; the Donatists were not to be convinced of the value of an outward unity which lacked inward purity and sanctity. They were put down with the aid of the State ; but the question they raised was not thereby solved, but still retains its full significance : the question whether external organisation constitutes the Church ? And Hatch answers the question in a truly Protestant spirit : " Subtler, deeper, diviner, than anything of which external things can be either the symbol or the bond is that inner reality or essence of union -- that inter penetrating community of thought and character--which St.
Paul speaks of as the ' unity of the Spirit' ! "
Hatch's book belongs, as is widely acknowledged, to the
best that have been written on the origins of our Church. If he had been spared to write the history of Church doctrine, after the same method as he has followed in his account of the organisation of the Church, what an instructive work that
? The unexpected and sudden death of this
would have been !
fine scholar must be regarded as a heavy loss not to Oxford only, but to Protestant theology generally ; yet we may hope that the seed sown by him will bear fruit far and wide. The place where Green and Hatch laboured and cast the light of philosophical and historical knowledge cannot fall back again into the night of the Middle Ages. The days of a Newman and a Pusey are for ever past for Oxford and for England.
G. T. DD
? ? ? Amraon 89.
Arnold, M. , 330 sq. , 390. Arnold, T. , 365 sq.
Bauer, Bruno, 226.
Baur, F. C, 224 sq. , 284 sq. Biedermann 137 sq.
Bleek 237.
Bredenkamp 275. Bretschneider 89.
Bruce, Alexander, 382. Budde 276.
Caird, John, 340 sq. Campbell 380 sq. Carlyle 311 sq.
Colenso 390.
Coleridge 308 sq. , 355. Curtiss 275.
Daub 132.
Davidson, S. , 393. Delitzsch 275.
De Wette 97 sq. , 227. Dillmann 275.
Dorner 156, 373. Duhm 276.
Edersheim, 393. Eichhorn 209, 227.
Erskine (of Linlathen) 378 sq. Ewald 237, 256.
Feuerbach 135. Fichte, J. G. , 57 sq. Finsler 275.
Flint 350 sq.
Froude, Hurrell, 356.
Gieseler 209, 284, Graf, H. , 258.
Green, T. H. , 344 sq.
Hagenbach 284. Hamilton, Sir \V. , 325.
Hampden 370.
Hare, Julius, 370, 372. Harnack 298.
Hase 205, 237, 282. Hatch 399 sq.
Hausrath 240.
Hegel 68 sq.
Herder 21 sq. , 210. Hilgenfeld 239.
Hofmann, C. von, 173 sq Holsten 240.
Holtzmann 240.
Hume 6 sq.
Jowett 386.
Kant 3 sq. , 32 sq. Kayser 258. Keble 356.
Keim 247.
Kingsley, C, 383 sq. Kittel 275.
Konig 275.
Kostlin 234.
Kuenen 259, 276. Kurtz 284.
Lange, J. P. , 170 sq. Lechler 237. Lightfoot (Bp. ) 397. Lipsius 195 sq.
Mackay 391.
Mansel 327.
Marheincke 131.
Martensen 164 sq.
Martineau 340, 352 sq. Maurice, F. D. , 328, 373 sq. Meyer 237.
Mill, James, 319.
INDEX.
? ? ? ? Mill, J. S. , 319 sq. Milman 370, 372. Miiller, Julius, 124.
Neander 219, 279 sq. Newman, F. W. , 317 sq. Newman, J. H. , 358, 361 sq. Niedner 284.
Nitzsch 123.
Noldeke 275.
Paulus 211. Pfleiderer 250. Planck 233, 277 sq. Pusey 358.
Renan 241.
Reuss 237, 261.
Riehm 275.
Ritschl, Alb. , 183 sq. , 235. Robertson, F. W. , 383, sq. Rohr 89.
Rothe 148 sq.
Ryssel 275.
Schelling 62 sq.
Schenkel 177 sq. , 246. Schleiermacher 44 sq. , 103 sq. , 209,
228. Schrader 275.
Schultz 275. Schwegler 233. Schweizer 125 sq. Seeley 333 sq. , 392. Seth 349.
INDEX. 40;
Sraend 276.
Smith, Robertson, 397. Spencer, Herbert, 336 sq. Spittler 277.
Stade 276.
Stanley, A. P. , 389.
Stirner, Max, 136.
Storr 86.
Strack 275.
Strauss 132, 213 sq. , 241 sq. Supernatural Religion, 395 sq.
Temple 388. Thirhvall 370, 372. Tieftrunk 87. Tulloch 332. Twesten 124.
Ullmann 123, 220.
Vatke 252 sq. Volkmar 239.
Wegscheider 89.
Weiss 237.
Weisse, C. H. , 145 sq. , 222, 226. Weizsacker, 238, 248 sq. Wellhausen 259, 263 sq. Westcott 394.
Whately 368 sq.
Wilberforce, R. J. , 359.
Wilke 222, 226.
Williams, Rowland, 388.
Zeller, Ed. , 229 n. , 232.
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