029. CHRIST THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH

CHRIST THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH

Humanity, so we now propose to go back from externalism to Christ the Life of the Church. Humanity is not itself the church, although many recent theologians would almost identify the one with the other. And humanity is not itself Christ, although some would almost persuade us that there is no Christ but the gradually developing divine idea in human nature. Both of these views fail to take seriously the fact of sin. Sin is confounded with weakness or disease or ignorance, instead of being regarded as self-perversion. It is regarded as the result of heredity and environment, the survival of animal traits, the negative condition of progress, instead of being frankly recognized as willful violation of law and departure from God. In short, the blame of sin is laid upon the Creator. But sin comes not from the Creator,—it comes from the creature. It is not a manifestation of Christ, but of the individual will. It is self-chosen moral separation from Christ, the soul’s true life. But the Christ, from whom the soul cannot physically and naturally separate itself, still works within to enlighten the conscience and to renew the will. There is an original grace as well as an original sin. And Pfleiderer has well said in reply to Kant’s sole dependence upon the individual will: The Christian doctrine of redemption is that the moral liberation of the individual is not the effect of his own natural power, but the effect of the divine Spirit, who, from the beginning of human history, put forth his activity as the power educating to the good, and especially created for himself in the Christian community an organ for the education of the peoples and of individuals. This divine Spirit we would call Christ. The church is valuable as representing him; but when we hear the church spoken of as if it were the one organ through which Christ manifests himself, we see in this an externalism against which we feel called to protest. We would go back of the church to the life hid with Christ in God which the church only expresses. Not first the church and then Christ, but first Christ and then the church. Not church ordinances make men Christians, whether the water of baptism or the wine of the supper, but only the regenerating Spirit of Christ within the soul. Man can destroy himself, but life and holiness can come only from another and a higher than himself. While it takes only one to do evil, it takes two to do good. King Alfred a thousand years ago expressed it with laboring quaintness of phrase: "When the good things of this life are good, then they are good through the goodness of the good man that worketh good with them,—and he is good through God." And Oliver Wendell Holmes, with all his dislike for Calvinism, could write: Our midnight is thy smile withdrawn; Our noontide is thy gracious dawn; Our rainbow arch thy mercy’s sign;

All, save the clouds of sin, are thine.

Here are unconsciously proclaimed the doctrines of grace. And the God who cannot be tempted of evil and who tempteth no man, but who is the only source of redemption and of righteousness, is Jesus Christ Even Pfleiderer, with his exaggerated naturalism and idealism, can say: That the divine idea of man as "the son of his love,’ and of humanity as the kingdom of this Son of God, is the immanent final cause of all existence and development even in the prior world of nature. This has been the fundamental thought of the Christian gnosis since the apostolic age, and I think that no philosophy has yet been able to shake or to surpass this thought,— the corner-stone of an idealistic view of the world.¹

I am not now concerned to point out the exaggerations of which this doctrine is susceptible. It is possible to make ideal humanity rather than the divine Christ the center and source of redemption. It is possible to call the whole of humanity an Immanuel and Son of God and its whole history a continual incarnation of God, while at the same time denying the actual pre-existence and the essential deity of Jesus Christ, and refusing to give to him the divine name. But the power that works in universal humanity for good cannot be simply the power of an idea. It must be the power of a present living person, with his people according to his promise, even unto the end of the world. As it is possible to substitute for this present Christ a mere abstract and ideal conception, so it is possible to substitute for him a historical Christ, in the sense of a Christ of the past, a remembered Christ, who now exists only in the fancy or imagination of the believer, with no more present life and power than the ideal Christ of whom we have been speaking. What else, indeed, can the so-called historical Christ be but an imaginary Christ, when the history of that Christ in the Gospels is accounted mere legend and myth? Those who would take us back to this ideal Christ or to this historical Christ, in the senses in which they use these terms, ignore Christ’s exaltation and give us only the humbled Son of God. The Christ to whom I would go back is a different Christ from either of these. He is not simply a being of the past. He is Lord of the present and Judge of the future. He is the Eternal Word of God, the King of the Ages, the Prince of Life, the Worker of all Good, the same yesterday and to-day and forever. The militant church, filled with his Spirit and moving forward to the conquest of the world, is proof that he is risen from the dead, and that all power in heaven and earth is given into his hands. So from deism we go back to Christ the Life of Nature; from atomism to Christ the Life of Humanity; from externalism to Christ the Life of the Church. I would have you notice that I have not used the word substance, but the word life. It is a mark of progress in philosophy that it has outgrown the old scholastic terminology of substance and qualities, essence and accidents, and has gone back to the far simpler and more scriptural category of life and its powers. It is good to get back to Christ, for he is the Life. Christ has his representatives, indeed. Church and ministry, Bible and doctrine, are his servants. But the servants have sometimes taken the vineyard for themselves and have driven out the Lord. Church and ministry, Bible and doctrine, are not themselves Christ, and they cannot save. It is only Christ who is the Light, and they are worthy of reverence only because they reflect his light and lead to him. Just so far as they usurp his prerogative and claim for themselves the honor and the power that belong to him, they injure his cause and substitute a subtle idolatry for the worship of the true and living God. A large part of the unbelief of the present day has been caused by the unwarranted identification of these symbols and manifestations with Christ himself. Neither church nor ministry, Bible nor creed, is perfect. To discover imperfection in them is to prove that they are not in themselves divine. The remedy for unbelief is the frank confession that perfection lies not in these, but in him of whom they are the finite and incomplete representatives. So Tennyson:

They are but broken lights of Thee, And Thou, O Lord, art more than they. From all these means and agencies our Lord draws our thought to himself. "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life"—the Way and the Truth, because he is the Life. "I am the Resurrection and the Life"—the miracle and doctrine of the resurrection are possible, only because Christ is the Life.

What then is the relation of theology to Scripture on the one hand and to philosophy on the other? Some would say that no theology is valid which is based upon either. Others would make theology a mere form of philosophy. But the solution of this problem, as of every other, is found in Christ. The grain of truth in both these views is their protest against the elevation of media to the place of source, of means to the place of ends. The fault of current evangelical theory is that it treats Scripture as the original source of truth, instead of regarding it as the mere expression of Christ, who alone is the truth. The result is that we have had a double standard, and Scripture has been played against Christ and Christ against Scripture. There can be but one standard of truth or of right, even as there can be but one standard of commercial values. Not creed, but Christ; not conscience, but Christ; not Scripture, but Christ.

Now Christ is not shut up, for the expression of himself, to Scripture. Philosophy and science are expressions of him as well as Scripture. Our rational being is his work; his life pulsates through our mental processes; our ideals, our aspirations, our sympathies, just so far as they are just and true, are his voice. Because Christ is immanent in all men, their visions of truth and beauty and righteousness reveal him who from the beginning has been the light of the world. Sin has curtailed and perverted these sources of truth, and therefore Scripture furnishes a rectifying principle, and we test our conclusions by comparing them with the law and the testimony. But that is not to say that Scripture is itself the only and the perfect source of doctrine. Even Scripture is the incomplete manifestation of One who is greater than it,—even Christ, who alone is the wisdom and the truth of God.