SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service
Theologian
THE BIBLE OR THE CHURCH
CHAPTER FOUR
Dr. Pusey's
Teaching
A THEORY, a legend, and a blunder - such, as we have seen,
are the pillars upon which rest the proud pretensions of the great Western
Church of Christendom. And the discovery may well lead us to distrust that
Church's teaching, and fearlessly to investigate the truth of every dogma for
which she claims our faith.
Now if these dogmas be true, they are
transcendental truths; and therefore it is idle to appeal to any human
experience or authority in their support. A Divine revelation alone can justify
our accepting them. Have we such a revelation? And will an appeal to it
convince us of their truth? To the first of these questions Christians of every
name and creed will reply in perfect Unison. But when we come to the second,
our suspicions will be aroused, not only by the fact that some of these
doctrines the Churches of the Reformation repudiate, but also by the reluctance
of those who champion them to permit an unfettered appeal to the authority on
which they are supposed to rest. The Church is to limit and control our access
to the Scriptures, either directly, in virtue of its own mystical authority -
one of the very points at issue - or else in - directly, by insisting that we
shall interpret the Scriptures in accordance with the writings of the
Fathers.
Scripture, we are told, is "reverenced as paramount." "The Old and
New Testaments are the fountain, the Catholic Fathers the channel, through
which it has flowed down to us. The contrast, then, in point of authority is
not between Holy Scripture and the Fathers, but between the Fathers and us."
They are not "equalled, much less preferred, to Holy Scripture, but only to
ourselves: i.e. the ancient to the modern, the waters near the fountain to the
troubled estuary rolled backward and forward by the varying tide of human
opinion, and rendered brackish by the continued contact with the bitter waters
of the world." '
This is the language of Dr. Pusey - a teacher than whom no
one has borne bolder testimony to the supreme authority and value of Holy
Scripture. In the preface to his Daniel The Prophet, he writes: "No book can be
written in behalf of the Bible like the Bible itself. Man's defences are man's
word; they may help to beat off attacks, they may draw out some portion of its
meaning. The Bible is God's Word, and through it God the Holy Ghost, who spake
it, speaks to the soul which closes not itself against it." That one who wrote
such words as these should seek to identify the Bible with the writings of men,
gives proof how well he knew that, apart from the writings of men, the Bible
would lend no sanction to the system with which his name is associated.
And
yet how plausible it is! It seems the perfection of reasonableness. The simple
reader might suppose that in regard to doctrine and practice the Fathers were
agreed. But the Fathers differed, and the Churches with which they were
severally connected differed; and their differences led to many a division,
many a feud. And so Dr. Pusey goes on to warn us that no one Father in
particular is to be accepted as our guide, and we are to follow them only so
far as their teaching was "universally received." "It is this only," he adds,
"which according to Vincentius' invaluable rule, was received 'by all, in all
Churches, and at all times,' which has the degree of evidence upon which we can
undoubtedly pronounce that it is Apostolic." More plausible still! But, in
fact, it is but dust flung into our eyes. If the "Catholic faith" is to be thus
limited to doctrines universally accepted, we shall jettison at once not only
certain Pagan superstitions which are "undoubtedly pronounced to be Apostolic;"
but also some of the great fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. And
who is to decide for us what is the residuum of mingled truth and error which
is to serve as a creed by which we shall mould our character and shape our
course in view of the solemnities of our existence? The most honoured of the
Fathers were men whose minds were impregnated by the superstitions of Pagan
religion, or the subtleties of Pagan philosophy: are we to assume that nineteen
centuries of the Christian religion have so enfeebled or depraved the intellect
of Christendom that we are less capable of understanding the Scriptures than
they were? They were "near the fountain" of Christianity, forsooth; yes, but
they were nearer still to the cesspool of paganism. And inquiry will show that
it is to the cesspool that we should attribute every perversion of the truth
which today defaces what is called the Christian religion.
The Christian
turns to the Bible to hear in it the voice of his living Saviour and Master and
Lord, who, by the Holy Spirit, sent down from heaven to that very end, "speaks"
in and through that Word, "to the soul which closes not itself against it." But
the founder of this religious system is the dead Buddha of nineteen centuries
ago, the pure waters of whose teaching are now dissipated in "the troubled
estuary rolled backward and forward by the varying tide" of the opinions of the
Fathers, and "rendered brackish by the continued contact with the bitter
waters" of a corrupt and apostate Church.
Let those who thus appeal to the
Fathers hear the Fathers. No one among them is held in higher esteem than
Chrysostom. The most famous of the Greek Fathers, he has been canonised by the
Roman church; and both Greek and Roman Churches celebrate his festival. And
with abundant reason. For he lived a pure and floble life in an age when this
much-vaunted "primitive Church" was characterised by shame-less profligacy and
corruption. Here is Chrysostom's testimony to the Scriptures -
"And why
does he bid all Christians at that time to betake themselves to the Scriptures?
Because at that time, when heresy hath got possession of those Churches, there
can be no proof of true Christianity, nor any other refuge for Christians
wishing to know the true faith but the Divine Scriptures. For before it was
shown in many ways which was the Church of Christ, and which heathenism; but
now it is known in no way to those who wish to ascertain which is the true
Church of Christ, but only through the Scriptures. Why?
Because all those
things which are properly Christ's in the truth, those heresies have also in
their schism: Churches alike, the Holy Scripture alike, bishops alike, and the
other orders of clergy, baptism alike, the eucharist alike, and everything
else; nay, even Christ Himself. Therefore, if any one wishes to ascertain which
is the true Church of Christ, whence can he ascertain it, in the confusion
arising from so great a similitude, but only by the Scriptures? .
"Therefore the Lord, knowing that such a confusion of things would take place
in the last days, commands on that account, that the Christians who are in
Christianity, and desirous of availing themselves of the strength of the true
faith, should betake themselves to nothing else but the Scriptures; otherwise,
if they should look to other things they shall stumble and perish, not
understanding which is the true Church."
These were the words of the most
famous of the Greek Fathers: now let us hear the testimony of Augustine, the
most famous of the Latin Fathers. He says - "I declare unto you that the Holy
Scriptures which are called canonical, are the only books in the world to which
I have learned to pay such honour and reverence, that I most firmly believe
that none of their authors has committed any error therein. Other authors are
read by me with the persuasion that however they may excel in holiness and
learning, what they write is not true because they write it, but because they
can prove it to be true either by Scripture or reason."
In "all things that
pertain to life and godliness" the words of Holy Writ are so simple and clear
that a little child can grasp their meaning. Thus the apostle could write to
Timothy, "From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures which are able to
make thee wise unto salvation." But who is to interpret the Fathers for us?
Rival schools of Christian thought appeal to them in support ortheir opposing
tenets; who, then, is to arbitrate between them? And by what standard? And why
should we turn from what is plain and simple to writings which are maze of
mingled heresy and truth? "Near the fountain!" These men talk as though the
apostles left behind them a pure and united Church, and the Ante-Nicene Fathers
had entered without a break upon the heritage. But what are the facts? "While
the apostles wrote, the actual state of the visible tendencies of things showed
too plainly what Church history would be." and the writer goes on to say - "I
know not how any man, in closing the Epistles, could expect to find the
subsequent history of the Church essentially different from what it is. In
those writings we seem, as it were, not to witness some passing storms which
clear the air, but to feel the whole atmosphere charged with the elements of
future tempest and death. Every moment the forces of evil show themselves more
plainly. They are encountered, but not dissipated. .
"The fact which I
observe is not merely that these indications of the future are in the Epistles,
but that they increase as we approach the close, and after the doctrines of the
gospel have been fully wrought out, and the fulness of personal salvation and
the ideal character of the Church have been placed in the clearest light, the
shadows gather and deepen on the external history. The last words of St. Paul
in the second Epistle to Timothy, and those of St. Peter in his second Epistle,
with the Epistles of St. John and St. Jude, breathe the language of a time in
which. the tendencies of that history had distinctly shown themselves; and in
this respect these writings form a prelude and a passage to the Apocalypse." In
very truth those "last words" were wrung from men depressed by patent signs of
general apostasy. The same apostle who had exulted in the fact that "all they
which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus," lived to pen the sad
lament, "This thou knowest, that all they which are in 'Asia be turned away
from me." And then, taking a still wider view of the condition of the Church,
he indited the solemn forecast, "Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and
worse, deceiving and being deceived." And for more than a century before
Ireneus - the earliest of the Patristic theologians - appeared upon the scene,
the leaven had been working. That heresies should be the subject of the only
treatise we possess from his pen, may indicate the state into which the Church
had already passed. "Dogs," "evil workers," "the Concision," warned against
even in apostolic times, increased in number and in influence, as the
traditions of apostolic times lost their power in the Church. Such men were
ever at work - lowering the standard of Christian life, and corrupting the
purity and simplicity of the Christian faith and the Christian ordinances.
Error is a weed of rank and rapid growth. But it was not until more than a
century after Ireneus had gone to his rest, when the last and fiercest of the
persecutions had ended, and, with the advent of Constantine, the wolf of
paganism openly assumed the sheep's clothing of the Christian religion," that
the errors, which were in the very 'warp and woof of that religion, began to
ripen and spread unchecked; and ere another century had passed, the standard
even of outward morality in the professing Church sank to the level of that of
the heathen world.'
The Church of God is "built upon the foundation of the
apostles and prophets"; the Church of Christendom is built upon the foundation
of the Laiin Fathers. What the Apostle Paul was to the one, Augustine of Hippo
was to the other. Though inferior to Jerome in learning, he was practically the
founder of the Latin Church. The personal greatness of the man - beyond
question. His writings give proof of it. Throughout the Middle Ages their
authority was supreme, and their influence is felt to the present hour. And
though till recently his Confessions were known only to the theologian and the
student, the book now finds a place in thousands of English homes. But, as the
inspired apostle wrote, "God accepteth no man's person," so we may fearlessly
bring the teaching of Augustine to the test of Scripture.
Can any
spiritually intelligent Christian read the Confessions without being struck by
the ignorance it betokens of Christian doctrine? It reveals the experience of a
great and pure and earnest soul reaching out after God in the midst of mists
and darkness which the sunlight of Christianity would have dispelled. Intense
reverence for God, and desire to please Him - these are manifest in it
throughout. But it all savours of what the apostle describes as the effort to
be "made perfect in the flesh." Indeed it is startling to notice how little
there is of Christ in it all, even in the theology of it. It is possible of
course that men unknown to fame, of whom no record has come down to us, may
have been spiritually in advance of their ecclesiastical superiors. What is
true in our own day may have been true in the days of the Fathers. But if the
Patristic literature is to be our guide, the great truth of Grace disappeared
from the Church with the Apostles who were its heralds. And ignorance of grace
will go far to account for the differences which marked the systems of Greek
and Latin theology, and for the heresies by which the one and the other were
corrupted.
Before the law of gravitation was discovered, many problems in
astronomy were solved as clearly and accurately as they are today; but there
was no unity in the science, and much pertaining to it was incomprehensible.
And so, if Grace be unknown, various Christian doctrines may still be
understood, but the central principle which binds them together is wanting, and
there are elements not only of darkness, but even of seeming contradiction. The
truth of Grace having been lost, the doctrine of Divine wrath, eternal and
inexorable, against human sin, became overwhelming and intolerable; and the
theologies of the Fathers struggled to bridge over the chasm which separated
God from men. The Greek school, under the influence of the Neo-Platonism of
which Alexandria was the cradle and the home, leant toward the conception of a
deity "immanent" in the world, and especially in humanity. The incarnation, not
the cross, was to them the climax of the Divine revelation to men. But though a
climax it was not a crisis. It was rather the unfolding and display of the
principle on which the Supreme had been working throughout the ages. Thus it
was that God restored relations with the fallen race, alienated and lost by
sin. Thus was humanity redeemed; for the true emblem of Redemption was not the
Cross of Calvary, but the manger of Bethlehem. It was Paganism in a Christian
dress.'
The theology or the Latin Fathers, on the other hand, was governed
by the old Platonic conception of the "transcendent" Deity, a God far removed
from men; whose alienation, moreover, was rendered more terrible by the
doctrine of original sin. In their view the benefits of the work of Christ were
limited to a privileged few, and their system aimed at extending the number of
that minority, and mitigating for them the perils of their position. The simple
baptism of the New Testament - a public confession of Christ by those whom the
gospel had won to the ranks of His disciples - was remodelled on Pagan lines as
a mystical regeneration and cleansing from sin, bringing the sinner from under
the stormcloud of Divine wrath into the sphere where a mystically endowed
priesthood could minister to him further grace.
For in this theology Divine
sovereignty became sheer favouritism; election was degraded to mean no more
than immunity from wrath; and grace, instead of being, as in the New Testament,
the principle of the Divine action, and the characteristic of the Divine
attitude toward mankind, was regarded rather as a sort of spiritual
electricity, to be communicated to the favoured few by ordinances which owed
their validity to a sacerdotal class. The Church, which in their system meant
practically the clergy, was the mediator between an alienated and angry God,
and men depraved and doomed. The horrors of the system became further
alleviated by the figment of a purgatory, prayers and masses for the dead, the
invocation of saints, and all the superstitions which, to the present day,
characterise the religion of Christendom. Paganism, again, in a Christian
dress.
It is not that these conflicting views were taught thus plainly by
all the leaders of the rival schools of Christian thought. Far from it. But in
varying degrees the writings of all are tainted by them. Clement of Alexandria,
rival claimant with Ireneus to the title of father of Greek theology, and
Augustine of Hippo, so specially honoured by the Latin Church, are the most
pronounced exponents of them. Though the fame of Clement is eclipsed by that of
his brilliant disciple and successor as head of the Alexandrian catechetical
school,' he remains to the present hour the "patron saint" of "the sect of the
Sadducees." It was not till two centuries after his time that the Roman Church
was moulded by Augustine into the form it has ever since maintained. Of all the
errors that later centuries developed in her teaching there is scarcely one
that cannot be found in embryo in his writings.
"The Church to him," Dean
Farrar writes, "was an external establishment, subjected to the autocracy of
bishops, largely dependent on the opinion of Rome. It was a Church represented
almost exclusively by a sacerdotal caste, cut off by celibacy from ordinary
human interests, armed with fearful spiritual weapons, and possessing the sole
right to administer a grace which came magically through none but mechanical
channels. And this Church might, nay, was bound to, enforce the acceptance of
its own dogmas and customs even in minute details and in outward organization.
It was justified in enforcing unity by using the arm of the State to fetter
free consciences by cruel persecution.
And outside this Church, with its
many abuses, its few elect, its vast masses arbitrarily doomed to certain
destruction, its acknowledged multitudes of ambitious, greedy, ignorant and
unworthy priests - there was no salvation! Augustine substituted an organised
Church and a supernatural hierarchy for an ever-present Christ. To Augustine
more than to any one else is due the theory which is most prolific of the
abiding curse inflicted on many generations by an arrogant and usurping
priestcraft.
"The outward Church of Augustine was Judaic, not Christian.
The whole Epistle to the Hebrews is a protest against it. And all that was most
deplorable in this theology and ecciesiasticism became the most cherished
heritage of the Church of the Middle Ages in exact proportion to its narrowest
ignorance, its tyrannous ambition, its moral corruption, and its unscrupulous
cruelty."'
Farrar's Lives of the Fathers, vol. ii. 603.
Chapter Five
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