5. The Fatherhood Of God in Church History
CHAPTER V THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD IN CHURCH HISTORY THE Fatherhood of God, as we have seen, was the characteristic revelation of the New Testament, and determined the whole teaching of our Lord and of His chief apostles as to the relationship and dealings of God with men in Christ. This revelation was, moreover, the completion of the religion of the Old Testament, from which, for the reasons given in the previous chapter, it is nevertheless absent. But when we trace the course of theological thought in the Christian Church, all is different. Its history is that of the gradual vanishing away, first from the thought, then from the heart, of the Church of the apprehension of God’s Father hood, and the substitution of other conceptions for it, until recent changes in religious thought have brought the promise of its restoration ere long, in Reformed theology and religion, to the supreme position rightfully belonging to it. The study of the gradual changes on this subject which came to pass in the thought of the Church is most interesting and important. Many influences were at work, as we shall presently discover. At the outset, the doctrine of the universal Fatherhood of God is clearly taught by the greatest and most representative Fathers of the Church, though, for reasons which will by and by appear, it was not wrought out in any clear and consistent account of His dealings with man kind. But, as time went on, two great influences operated to supersede the doctrine of God’s Fatherhood by that of His sovereignty. The first was due to the, perhaps inevitably, defective treatment of the great Christological problems which were dealt with in the fourth century. In establishing, as was most necessary, the truly Divine relationship of the Son of God towards the Father, and by consequence towards the world, the universal significance for mankind of that unique relationship was to some extent obscured, in the teaching even of Athanasius himself.
And, in the second place, the theological inheritance handed over by the East to the West was at oncetransformed by the genius of Augustine; owing in the main, to the peculiarity of his religious experience, to his philosophical doctrine of the Divine will, to the legal presuppositions which he had received from the Latin African Fathers, and to the political analogies which were suggested to him by Catholic organisation, Eoman imperialism, and Old Testament history as idealised in the New Testament. Henceforth the doctrine of Divine sovereignty was complete in its principal features.
It altered from time to time in its details and in the analogies by which it was set forth. By some it was set forth in all the rigour of absolutism; by others it was treated as conditional. But, in the long-run, the effect upon religion was the same. God, who is the hope of men in the Old Testament and their Father in the New, was removed by the thought of men, in the darker times and moods of the Middle Ages, to an infinite distance, while the saints and the officers of the Church filled the foreground of His court, and discharged, by delegation, His functions for Him. Or, where God was not thus trifled with, He became for the majority the object of abject dread, which was fostered by ecclesiastical teachers, both for the promotion of religion as then under stood, and for the aggrandisement of the Church. A remedy for this dread was brought to men in the newly found gospel of the Reformation, and in the personal assurance of salvation given to those who experienced the reality of justification by faith. The fatherliness, rather than the Fatherhood, of God was fully set forth by Luther, and was the very root of all his practical religion. Calvin also made frequent mention of the paternal love of God, and emphasised the adoption of believers. But even here Augustine prevailed, to the damage of theology, if not of religion, and prevailed by reason of the depth and permanent import of his religion. Their spiritual needs drove Luther and Calvin across the dreary regions of the later scholasticism, not only to the New Testament, but to Augustine. They especially Calvin rejected his Catholicism; they adopted his general doctrine of the Divine will in its relation to the human, of the helpless condition of mankind, and of the distinction between nature and grace. Hence Calvin reasserted the Augustinian doctrine of the Divine sovereignty, and in an austerer and more repellent form, both because the Catholicism which masked it to some extent in Augustine had beenremoved, and because Calvin’s teaching of the personal assurance of final election given to believers was absent from Augustine; because, also, Calvin’s doctrine of the reprobation of the rest of mankind had additional features of harshness and arbitrariness. The Socinian teaching bore only indirectly upon the Fatherhood of God. Its dogmatic definitions set forth His relationship to mankind in terms of sovereignty as exclusively as did the theology of the evangelical teachers. But its polemic against the Calvinist doctrine of election and repro bation, and also against the overstrained doctrine of satisfaction, which held Christ to have suffered upon the cross the exact equivalent of the eternal torments remitted to the elect, brought into strong relief the benevolence of God, and to some extent utilised for this purpose the teaching of our Lord as to the fatherly love of God. With the growth of naturalist explanations of the person and nature of Christ, it eventually became a matter of course to treat our Lord’s filial relationship to God as typical of that in which men generally stood to Him, and hence to make the universal Fatherhood of God the source of His benevolence. This last, however, represents a later development of thought than is to be found in Socinus and his immediate followers.
Thus matters stood till the rise of Arminianism, and subsequently the Methodist movement in England revived the influence upon men’s minds and hearts of God’s universal mercy, and, so far as Methodism was concerned, made the presence of the “ Spirit of adoption, crying in our hearts, Abba, Father,” the distinctive note of the justified as never before. But the practical aim of the great Methodists, and their absorbing concern in salvation as a process and experience, kept them from recasting the highest theological conceptions by the help of their spiritual experience and their universal sympathy. The time had not come for such a task, nor were they the men to accomplish it. They took the higher theological conceptions current in their time as they found them, though filling them with a new evangelical meaning and warmth.
It fell to later teachers of the nineteenth century, in their conflict with Calvinism to Erskine of Linlathen, M Leod Campbell, Maurice, Kingsley, and others to reassert in its fulness the truth and supremacy of the Divine Father hood, and to bring it into the foreground as shaping the main tendencies of our present theology.
Even by them the work was not thoroughly carried out. Their treatment of the Fatherhood was not sufficientlyprofound or comprehensive to save and support all that was true in preceding theology. The marks and limitations of a counter-statement are on the teaching of all of them. But they have at least brought the Fatherhood of God, for British theology and religion, into the position to which the New Testament and the nature of things entitle it. It remains only to unfold its meaning and its relation to Christ and to mankind more completely, as giving the key to all the truth, in order to bring about a transformation as momentous as that wrought by Augustine, but with results altogether beneficial. This general sketch is sufficient to prove, in times when many are inclined to doubt it, the immense influence not only of spiritual life upon formal theology, but equally of formal theology upon spiritual life. The loss during the Middle Ages of the sense that God is the source and object of a fellow ship of love to which all men are called in Christ, is due to the substitution of the doctrine of His sovereignty for that of His Fatherhood, more than to any other single cause. It may be answered that the spiritual condition which renounced the Divine Fatherhood was incapable of profiting by it, and would surely have corrupted it. And of multitudes this may be true. But who can estimate the effect upon European religion had the greatest saints and thinkers learned from the authoritative teachers of the Church, and in their turn set forth in all its fulness, the truth that God is our Father?
What has heen said already, marks out the range of our present inquiry. We must endeavour to trace in detail the way in which the changes we have surveyed were brought about, and to delineate the successive views of the relationship in which God stands to men. We must also indicate, where possible, the effect upon religious life and on general theological teaching which these changes brought about. The latter part of our inquiry, however, must of necessity be brief, for to deal with it fully would be to write a complete history of Christian theology from the standpoint of the ruling ideas of God’srelationship to men. In some periods even a brief indication is difficult, owing either to the unsystematic or internally inconsistent nature of the theology, or to the imperfect development of its parts. But the broad outlines will become clear. Our investigation will naturally fall into the following sections, corresponding either to distinct periods or to different stages or tendencies:
I. The teaching of the primitive Church to the end of the Gnostic controversies.
II. The modifications introduced by the Christology of the great teachers of Alexandria, and particularly by Athanasius.
III. The transformation in the West brought about by Augustine, and the preparation for it in Latin Christianity.
IV. The developments during the mediaeval period, andparticularly in Scholasticism, with the causes giving rise to them.
V. The theology of the Reformers.
VI. The influence of the reaction against Calvinism and of Methodism.
VII. The theological changes of the nineteenth century.
These may be conveniently grouped in three sections: the first dealing with the transformation of the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, and the substitution of the doctrine of the Divine sovereignty for it; the second with the mediaeval doctrine of Divine sovereignty; and the third with the recovery of the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God.
We may enter upon our inquiry, as thus marked out, without further preface.
FIKST SECTION. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD, AND THE SUBSTITUTION OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY FOR IT I. THE TEACHING OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH TO THE END OF THE GNOSTIC CONTROVERSIES
It will be better to omit Clement of Alexandria from this head, and Origen, dealing with them in connexion with the Church of Alexandria; and also Tertullian, considering his influence in connexion with the teaching of Augustine. The conditions prevailing throughout the greater part of the first age of Christianity forbid us to expect a formally complete and systematic theology. Life always goes before the interpretation of life; action before reflexion. The first concern of catholic Christianity, after the departure of the apostles, was to secure at once for the two were inseparably bound up together practical fidelity in the Christian life, and the organisation of the Church, as the sphere in which, the guide and the support by which, that life could be lived out in a hostile world. This task absorbed the energies of the leaders of the Church. There was neither leisure, occasion, nor material as yet for great Church thinkers to arise. Their premature presence would have caused the Church to be conceived as a philosophical school, instead of as the home in which Christian life is fostered and equipped for service in the world. Only when the materials acquired by the corporate experience of Christians had become rich and manifold, and when conflict with the world had entered upon the intellectual stage, had the season for great theologians arrived. The Church was then driven, in the first place, to meditate upon the contents of the faith, in order to its successful vindication against unbelievers and its safeguarding against heresies. In this way it was eventually led to form positive systems of theological thought, for the satisfaction of the reflective reason of its own members.
Previously all was fragmentary. Letters or treatises were called forth by passing practical needs, to answer hasty and superficial objections, or to dispel stubborn but shallow prejudices, whether of the people or of rulers.
Moreover, it is important to remember that the early Churches and their teachers were guided by a more or less complete apostolical tradition, but not by complete, still less by widely diffused, collections of the New Testament writings.
Some early teachers, such as Ignatius, show their familiarity with large portions of the New Testament, but to a consider able extent the biblical studies of the earliest writers were devoted to demonstrating how perfectly the Christian facts fulfilled the predictions of the Old Testament; an undertaking which of necessity laid stress upon the presentation of God given in the Old Testament, rather than on that contained in the New.
Again, the more thorough attempts of the Apologists aimed at showing, at one and the same time, how rational was the Christian faith, and how irrational the prevailing heathenism. In order to succeed, they were obliged to find some common ground of reason between themselves and those before whom their plea was urged. And this was generally secured by first ranging on their side the great philosophers, especially Plato, in the polemic against the popular religion; by further showing how extensive an agreement existed be tween the philosophers of the past and the Christians as to the nature of God; and, finally, by establishing that, wherein they differed, the Christians had a larger measure of truth and reason than the philosophers. 1 But such a task involved not only differentiation, but also approximation, and both in the one and in the other there was some peril to the complete unfolding of the entire Christian truth.
1 See, for example, Justin Martyr’s discussion of the resemblance between the teaching of Plato’s Timccus and that of Moses as to the existence of God.
“ For Moses said He who is, and Plato That which is, “ etc. This resem blance he explains by the fact that Plato visited Egypt, and there, in Justin’s opinion, heard of the Mosaic teaching. Justin, Hortatory Address to the Greeks, cap. xxii.
And, lastly, life was largely conceived by the Christians from the standpoint of the kingdom of Christ, with the sense of His Kingship in the heavens, the regard for His laws upon earth, the eschatological hopes of His speedy triumph over the world which that kingdom meant for them. And this again caused, to some extent, a deflexion from a theology giving full expression to the teaching of the New Testament.
Yet, when all this has been allowed for, the fact becomes the more striking that with the representative Church teachers of the first two centuries the Fatherhood of God had a promi nence which has never been given to it since, until the nineteenth century. And there are two connected features about this promi nence. In the first place, the Fatherhood is supreme; is the relationship by which creation, the moral attributes of God, and His dealings with mankind are explained. 1 And, in the second place, the Fatherhood is consistently treated as universal. A series of quotations will suffice to establish both these assertions. It is necessary to give them with considerable fulness in order to show clearly how influential was this conception during the first ages, in contrast with those which came after. In his Epistle, Clement of Eome says, “ The all-merciful and beneficent Father has bowels [of compassion] towards those that fear Him, and kindly and lovingly bestows His favours upon those who come to Him with a simple mind.” 2 And again he exclaims, “ How blessed and wonderful, beloved, are the gifts of God! The Creator and Father of all worlds, the Most Holy, alone knows their amount and their beauty. Let us therefore earnestly strive to be found in the number of those that wait for Him, in order that we may share in His promised gifts.” 3
1 In the case of the more philosophical Apologists, the influence of Plato is to be recognised as well as that of the New Testament, especially where God is called Father and Fashioner of the universe. See Plato, Timceus, i. 28 C.
2 Ep. Clement R. cap. xxiii. See also cap. xxix.
3 Ibid. cap. xxxv. The writer of the Epistle of Barnabas, quoting the prophetic denunciations of the empty ritualism of Jerusalem, says, with less evidently universal extension, “ We ought therefore, being possessed of understanding, to perceive the gracious intention of our Father; for He speaks to us, desirous that we, not going astray like them, should ask how we may approach Him. 1 Here, obviously, the spiritual sacrifices of the gospel are held to be in keeping with the Fatherhood of God.
Ignatius speaks continually of “ the Father “ throughout his Epistles, and brings God, under that name, into closest relations with the spiritual life. But the Fatherhood, in his use, is certainly in its primary meaning relative to our Lord, and its extension to men is, at least, not made clear. 2 The Epistle to Diognetus gives a peculiarly evangelical account of the fatherliness of God, as furnishing the clue to all His dealings with mankind. The following passage is characteristic, and must be cited at length. “ But when our wickedness had reached its height, and it had been clearly shown that its reward, punishment and death, was impending over us, and when the time had come which God had before appointed for manifesting His own kindness and power, how the one love of God, through exceeding regard for men, did not regard us with hatred, nor thrust us away, nor remember our iniquity against us, but showed great long-suffering, and bore with us, He Himself took on Him the burden of our iniquities, He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for them that are mortal. Having therefore convinced us in the former time that our nature was unable to attain to life, and having now revealed the Saviour, who is able to save even those things which it was formerly impossible to save, by both these facts He desired to lead us to trust in His kindness, to esteem Him our Nourisher, Father, Teacher, Counsellor, Healer, our 1 Epistle of Barnabas, cap. ii. The Latin omits the word “not” before “going astray.”
2 The same is true of the Epistle of Polycarp; see cap. xii.
Wisdom, Light, Honour, Glory, Power, and Life, so that we should not be anxious concerning clothing and food.
“ If you also desire [to possess] this faith, you likewise shall receive first of all the knowledge of the Father. For God has loved mankind, on whose account He made the world, to whom He rendered subject all the things that are in it, to whom He gave reason and understanding, to whom alone He imparted the privilege of looking upwards to Himself, whom He formed after His own image, to whom He sent His only-begotten Son, to whom He has promised a kingdom in heaven, and will give it to those who have loved Him.” i
Justin Martyr, dealing in his First Apology with the charges made against Christians, says, “ Hence are we called Atheists. And we confess that we are Atheists, so far as gods of this sort are concerned, but not with respect to the most true God, the Father of righteousness and temperance and the other virtues, who is free from all impurity. But both Him and the Son who came forth from Him and taught us these things, and all the host of the other good angels who follow and are made like to Him, and the prophetic Spirit, we worship and adore, knowing them in reason and in truth, and declaring without grudging to everyone who wishes to learn, as we have been taught.” 2 This passage is of great interest, because, while the Trinitarian form of it shows that “ the Father “ is relative to the Son and to the Spirit, an ethical and universal application is given to His Fatherhood, as “ the Father of righteousness and temperance and the other virtues.”
So, later on, Justin speaks of God as “ the Father of all and the Euler.” 3
Similarly, in his Second Apology the same writer, speaking of “ the Father of all,” says, “ These words, Father, and God, and Creator, and Lord, and Master, are not names, but appellations derived from His good deeds and functions.” 4 Finally, Justin’s discussion of the resemblance and difference between the doctrine taught by Moses and that to be found in Plato’s Timceus, shows how closely the truth that God is 1 Ad Diognetum, caps, ix, x. 2 Justin, First Apology, cap. vi.
First Apology, cap. xii. 4 Second Apology, cap. vi. the Creator, and not merely the Artificer, of the universe, is, for Justin, bound up with His Fatherhood. 1
Associating in the same way the Fatherhood of God with His relationship to the universe, Athenagoras, in explaining why Christians do not sacrifice, declares, “ The Framer and Father of this universe does not need blood, nor the odour of burnt-offerings, nor the fragrance of flowers and incense, forasmuch as He is Himself perfect fragrance, needing nothing either within or without; but the noblest sacrifice to Him is for us to know who stretched out and vaulted the heavens, and fixed the earth in its place like a centre; who gathered the water into seas, and divided the light from the darkness; who adorned the sky with stars, and made the earth to bring forth seed of every kind; who made animals and fashioned man.” 2
Two similar passages may be quoted from Tatian’s Address to the Greeks. He says, “ Our God did not begin to be in time; He alone is without beginning, and He Himself is the beginning of all things. God is a Spirit, not pervading matter, but the maker of material spirits and of the forms that are in matter; He is invisible, impalpable, being Himself the Father of both sensible and insensible things. Him we know from His creation, and apprehend His invisible power by His works.” 3 Later on, in describing the free education given by the Christians to all classes, Tatian speaks of “ the Father of immortality,” and adds, “ for the things which come from God surpass the requital of earthly gifts “; thus explaining the bounty of the gifts of God by His Fatherhood, and finding therein a standard of generosity for the ministers of the Church, who are the more inclined to it by remembering how priceless are the gifts dispensed by them. 4 With Iremeus the great Church Father of the close of the second century we enter upon a region of far pro- 1 See Justin, Hortatory Address to the Greeks, caps, xx.-xxxiii.
2 Athenagoras, cap. xiii.
3 Tatian, Address to the Greeks, cap. iv. 4 Ibid. cap. xxxii. founder and more systematic thought. We shall soon see that his importance for the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God is unique. And the reason is not far to seek. He was the Christian teacher who dealt in detail and exhaustively with the Gnostic heresies, at once controverting them, and expounding in reference to them the Christian doctrine of God as it had never been unfolded before.
We have here a typical instance of the service which seriously minded heresy, so called, 1 is always constrained to render to the catholic truth of Christ. The worthier forms of heresy always arise, because some, probably hitherto neglected, needs of the human spirit manifest themselves in an exaggerated and disproportionate form, and satisfy them selves either by an exaggeration and dislocation of those aspects of Christian truth which minister to them, or by importing into Christianity from without those elements which are craved for, and in which it is supposed to come short. No such heresy is ever overcome by mere opposition, still less by ecclesiastical discipline. It lives till an expression of Christian truth, wrought out in controversy, but rising out of it and becoming independent of it, takes complete and living form, satisfying all that is legitimate in the demands made on it, and thereby ensuring the ultimate falling away and perishing of that which is irrational and untrue.
Such a process requires for its accomplishment not merely an authoritative and faithful counter-statement of the Christian truth, as previously declared, but a new reflexion upon its meaning and principles, in the light of the new thought and the newly developed need. And thus there can be no absolute finality in any exposition or vindication of the Christian faith, so long as the human mind continues to grow, and, at least superficially, to change. That it necessitated a deeper reflexion upon and a fuller unfolding of the contents of Christian theology was the great service rendered to the world by Gnosticism in its
1 The qualification so called “ is used because error in theology, even when it leads to the strongest protest against accepted orthodoxy, may have little or nothing of that spirit of self-assertion which is charged against it in the term various forms. It is impossible and needless here to attempt any full account of the leading forms of Gnosticism which represented the first attempt to create a complete religious philosophy of the universe and of history. While the resulting systems, strangely and incongruously compounded of Christian, Platonic, and Oriental elements, strike us, at first sight, as in some respects almost incomprehensible and in others as absurd, yet beneath the surface are to be discovered, in many directions, the germs of profound truth; none the less spiritually true because they are disguised in the, to us, impossible forms of personification, due to logical abstraction combined with a mythologising imagination. Generally speaking, Gnostic speculations raised every question concerning the nature of God, His relationships to the universe, to Christ, to mankind, and concerning the significance of Christ, for the life and salvation of men. And thus the refutation of Gnosticism demanded a comprehensive treatment, up to the level reached in the controversy, of all the highest subjects concerned with theology and with spiritual life.
Although it is needless to attempt here any complete exposition of Gnostic teaching, some detailed account must be given of the system of Valentinus, if we are to understand its effect upon Ireneeus, especially in regard to the Fatherhood of God.
Valentinus explained the genesis of the universe by means of a supposed series of Emanations, called ^Eons, his whole system representing a crude form of what would now be termed transcendental Idealism. The ^Eons, which exist in pairs, represent in reality metaphysical abstractions, endowed with life, activity, and the power of producing life. The names of the principal ^Eons are Buthos (the Abyss), Nous, Truth, the Logos, Life, Wis 1:1-16 The sum of the./Eons constituted the Pleroma, the complete whole of those principles by which the universe was explained to reason. The ultimate principle was Buthos, which would now be termed “ the Unknown and the Unknowable.” This principle
1 There is no need to encumber this statement by giving an exhaustive account of the extremely complicated series of JEons and their history. was mated with “ Ennoia,” the conception of the mind of Buthos. From the union of these two ultimates all existence proceeds. But for Valentinus the material world was evil. It represented a blending of spirituality (to which it owed whatever reality and rationality belonged to it) with materiality. Hence its existence could only be explained by a spiritual fall in the Pleroma itself. The lowest placed of the ^Eons, Wisdom (Sophia), had presumptuously sought to know Buthos, whom only the firstborn Nous or Monogenes could comprehend, and through this unlawful desire had fallen; the existing universe, in which the spiritual is confused by the material, being the result. By an elaborate process of emanation the Demiourgos, or Artificer, was produced, who, while outside the Pleroma, acted as the instrument of Buthos in ordering the natural world. There is, obviously, here a blending of Platonism including its failure to recognise the personality of God, and its doctrine of the relations between the ideal and the sensible worlds with the Oriental belief in emanations and the feeling that material existence in itself was evil. The results, then, of the system of Valentinus are, that there is no personal God, absolute and supreme; that the “fulness” of what, seen in personal unity and perfection, would be God, is divided among a cluster and hierarchy of partial and abstract principles; that the impulse to what answers to creation is treated as being, in the main, evil and not good, as representing pride and not grace; and that the resultant universe is evil, although the evil bound up with its materiality is partially redeemed by the presence in it of spiritual and rational principles; even these latter, however, being deteriorated both by their premundane fall and by their consequent admixture with matter. This summary account of the speculation of Valentinus will serve to make immediately clear what was the nature of the task laid upon Irenaeus in the exposition and defence of Christian truth given in his great work, Against Heresies.
He was constrained (1) To assert the personality and absoluteness of God;
(2) To set forth His infinite perfection, as uniting in Himself all the fulness (Pleroma) of Divine attributes;
(3) To insist upon His direct and sovereign activity throughout the universe; while recognising the truth, contained in Gnostic idealism, that that activity is not mechanical, but vital and immanent;
(4) To make good that the creation and ordering of the world was the manifestation of the most glorious and gracious love;
(5) And hence to show that the universe is substantially not evil, but good. And what conception of God, in His relationship to the world and in His character as manifested in that relationship, is so perfectly fitted to give, in one word, full expression to all these truths as that of “ the Father “? Hence Irenceus is the teacher, above all others, of the Fatherhood of God.
He was assisted to this general solution, and to a satis factory statement of it, by three circumstances. In the first place, Valentinus called his first principle Buthos, Father, as being the originating factor of ideal existence. This naturally almost constrained Iremeus, if indeed he needed such influence, to make use of the characteristic revelation of the Fatherhood of God contained in the New Testament. In the second place, Irenseus wrote before the great controversies as to the true Divinity of our Lord, and His relation to the Father. He thus escaped those tendencies which, as we shall shortly see, in safeguarding the unique relationship of the Son to the Father, incidentally obscured the fatherly relation of God in Christ to mankind. Moreover, the fact that the usage of his time, and the necessities of the controversy, caused Irenseus commonly to select the name Logos, and not Son, to describe our Lord’s relationship to the Father, still further enabled him to treat the Fatherhood of God as directly and universally manifested to the world; the Logos being the expression and Agent of that Fatherhood. That this prevailing use of the name Logos, however, had its disadvantages as well as its advantages for our subject, we shall presently see. But at least it served to emphasise the direct relationship of the Father to the world.
And, in the third place, the doctrine of Marcion, that there were two Divine beings a God of justice and a God of mercy forced Irenseus to think out an adequate notion of fatherhood, showing conclusively that it must embrace justice and judgment as well as grace and mercy. A few quotations may be given, illustrating the use which Ireiiffius made of the Fatherhood of God, and especially his conception of it, though such a selection must fail adequately to exhibit what the student of Irenseus will at once discover, that this universal Fatherhood is the key to every part of his arguments. At the outset of his reply to Valentinus, Irenseus lays down: “ It is proper, then, that I should begin with the first and most important head, that is, God the Creator, who made the heaven and the earth, and all things that are therein (whom these men blasphemously style the fruit of a defect), 1 and to demonstrate that there is nothing either above Him or after Him; nor that, influenced by anyone, but of His own free will, He created all things, since He is the only God, the only Lord, the only Creator, the only Father, alone containing all things, and Himself commanding all things into existence. For how can there be any other fulness, or principle, or power, or God, above Him, since it is matter of necessity that God, the Pleroma (Fulness) of all these, should contain all things in His immensity, and should be contained by no one? But if there is anything beyond Him, He is not then the Pleroma of all, nor does He contain all.” 2 With a more practically religious application Irenseus lays down: “ For faith, which has respect to our Master, endures unchangeably, assuring us that there is but one true God, and that we should truly love Him for ever, seeing that He alone is our Father; while we hope ever to be receiving more and more from God, and to learn from Him because He is good, and possesses boundless riches, a kingdom without end, and instruction that can never be exhausted.” 3 The following may be taken as summing up the belief of 1 i.e. the Demiourgos of Valentinus.
2 Adv. ffcer. bk. ii. cap. 1. See also I.e. ii. cap. 9.
3 Ibid. ii. 28.
Irenreus: “ But there is one only God, the Creator He who is above every principality, and power, and dominion, and virtue: He is Father, He is God, He the Founder, He the Maker, He the Creator, who made those things by Himself, that is, through His Word and His Wisdom heaven and earth, and the seas, and all things that are in them: He is just, He is good; He it is who formed man, who planted Paradise, who made the world, who gave rise to the Flood, who saved Noah; He is the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of the living: He it is whom the Law proclaims, whom the prophets preach, whom Christ reveals, whom the apostles make known to us, and in whom the Church believes. He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; through His Word, who is His Son, through Him He is revealed and manifested to all to whom He is revealed; for those [only] know Him to whom the Son has revealed Him. But the Son, eternally coexisting with the Father from of old, yea from the beginning, always reveals the Father to angels, archangels, powers, virtues, and all to whom He wills that God should be revealed.”: The very important passage as to what is included in the conception of Fatherhood must be quoted in full. Irenaeus says that the nobler Gentiles were “ convinced that they should call the Maker of this universe the Father, who exercises a providence over all things, and arranges the affairs of our world. Again, that they 2 might remove the rebuking and judicial power from the Father, reckoning that as unworthy of God, and thinking that they had found out a God both without anger and [merely] good, they have alleged that one [God] judges, but that another saves, uncon sciously taking away the intelligence and justice of both deities. For if the judicial one is not also good to bestow favours upon the deserving, and to direct reproofs against those requiring them, he will appear neither a just nor a wise judge. On the other hand, the good God, if he is merely good, and not one who tests those upon whom he shall send his goodness, will be out of the range of justice and goodness, and his goodness will seem imperfect as not 1 Adv. Hear. ii. 30. - Namely, the Marcionites. saving all; [for it should do so], if not accompanied with judgment.
“ Marcion therefore, himself, by dividing God into two, maintaining one to be good and the other judicial, does in fact, on both sides, put an end to Deity. For he that is the judicial one, if he be not good, is not God, because he from whom goodness is absent is no God at all; and again, he who is good, if he has no judicial power, suffers the same [loss] as the former by being deprived of his character of Deity. And how can they call the Father of all wise if they do not assign to Him a judicial faculty? For if He is wise, He is also one who tests [others]; but the judicial power belongs to him who tests, and justice follows the judicial faculty that it may reach a just conclusion; justice calls forth judgment, and judgment, when it is executed with justice, will pass on to wisdom. Therefore the Father will excel in wisdom all human and angelic wisdom, because He is Lord, and Judge, and the Just One, and Euler over all. For He is good, and merciful, and patient, and saves whom He ought; nor does goodness desert Him in the exercise of justice, nor is His wisdom lessened; for He saves those whom He should save, and judges those worthy of judgment.
Neither does He show Himself unmercifully just, for His goodness, no doubt, goes on before, and takes precedency.
“ The God, therefore, who does benevolently cause His sun to rise upon all, and sends His rain upon the just and unjust, shall judge those who, enjoying His equally distributed kindness, have led lives not corresponding to the dignity of His bounty; but who have spent their days in wantonness and luxury in opposition to His benevolence, and have, more over, even blasphemed Him who has conferred so great benefits upon them.” 1
We are constrained to exclaim, Would that such a conception of the Fatherhood of God could have been consistently wrought out and maintained throughout the centuries that followed Irenoeus! How different would then have been the course of Christian theology!
Thus Irenreus made good that the Fatherhood of God 1 Adv. ffccr. iii. 25. involves the perfect indwelling in Him of all perfection, of all life, with the spiritual, rational, and moral principles of its existence; that it involves the giving forth of this fulness in and towards creation through the Logos, in such wise that the Father is directly and absolutely supreme. He has further established that as the creation is brought into being by reason of the fatherly love of God, so it is ordered and guided to the ends of that fatherly love, and that this will be verified on examination of His dealings with mankind, provided that an adequate notion of the meaning of father hood is entertained.
Certain qualifications must, however, now be made. In his account of Fatherhood, Iremeus laid the main stress upon creatorship, and upon what may be called the natural and universal relationships springing out of a creation motived by love. He was, in a measure, constrained to this by the controversies he was engaged in, which turned on the personality and the attributes of God, upon His creatorship, His government of the world, His revelation given to mankind, and their redemption from evil. But the prominence of these universal and objective elements threw into the back ground those spiritual and moral qualities of Fatherhood which are manifested in the personal and intimate communion with sons. And corresponding to, indeed increasing, this weakness, is the imperfect treatment of the sonship which answers to the Divine Fatherhood; not so much in regard to the means by which that sonship is brought about, as in respect of its spiritual characteristics. It is true that nowhere can we find more emphatic and constant reference to the “ adoption of sons “ as the characteristic gift to believers in Christ than in Irenreus. His thought is dominated by the great saying of St. Paul: “ Ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15). But the way in which the conception of sonship is carried out is unsatisfactory. Iremeus proceeds, again under the stress of controversy, to appropriate to the sons of God the Gnostic epithets, “ the pure,” “ the spiritual,” “ those living unto God,” and the like; thus turning aside, as did Athanasius later on under different influences, from setting forth sonship in terms of the relations of sons to God, and describing it rather by means of the intrinsic qualities and characteristics of those receiving the Spirit of God.
Moreover, when he delineates the life of sonship Godwards, he generally passes into a description which, while profoundly spiritual, just misses the features of sonship. Thus, in a fine passage, he discusses the object for which God created man. He says, “ Thus also service rendered to God does indeed profit God nothing, nor has God need of human obedience; but He grants to those who follow and serve Him, life and incorruption and eternal glory, bestowing benefit upon those who serve Him because they do serve Him, and on His followers because they do follow Him: but does not receive any benefit from them; for He is rich, perfect, and in need of nothing. But for this reason does God demand service from men, in order that, since He is good and merciful, He may benefit those who continue in His service. Forasmuch as God is in want of nothing, so much does man stand in need of fellowship with God. For this is the glory of man, to continue and remain permanently in God’s service.” 1
God is the infinite source of goodness and blessedness, who, wanting nothing in Himself, is constrained by His love to impart Himself to His creatures according to their spiritual > capacities. Men have the capacity, and therefore the need, to receive God’s fulness. But the condition of their receiving this fulness lies in their service to the Divine commands; a putting which, though true, is expressed in terms of sovereignty and obedience rather than in those of Fatherhood and sonship. And this imperfection of treatment, which might be further illustrated, is closely bound up with the defects of the Christology of Irenaeus. It is true that the title Son of God is frequently on his lips, but it was as the Logos that Jrenaeus interpreted our Lord’s relation to the Father. And the predominance of this conception inevitably suggests the expression of thought, the utterance of will, rather than the fellowship of love. It was impossible, therefore, that the 1 Adv. ffccr. iv. 14. incarnation, redemption, the relationship of Christ to men, could be wrought out in terms of His Sonship when that was not the determinative conception of His relationship to the Father. It would he a most interesting occupation to pursue this subject through the whole of the teaching of Irenreus as to the Incarnation and redemption. But, by doing so, we should be led too far afield from what is essential to our present subject. It should, however, be pointed out that his emphasis on the Fatherhood of God enabled Irenseus to escape from the undue stress afterwards laid upon the element of knowledge contained in salvation as compared with fellow ship and obedience a one-sidedness arising from Platonic in fluences on Christian theology.
We may conclude by saying that the study of the noble attempt of Irenreus to make the Fatherhood of God the key stone of theological doctrine, when account is taken of its shortcomings and of the subsequent fading of this truth from theology, shows conclusively that only an adequate realisation of sonship can make the conception of Fatherhood adequate or effectually safeguard it; and that while that realisation must in theology be theoretic, yet it depends for its possibility, its completeness, and its permanence upon the prevalence of the filial consciousness in the practical religious experience of Christians. Owing to imperfect spiritual conditions, this prevalence did not exist even in the times of Iremeus, still less in later and mediaeval Christianity. Hence with the growing loss of the spirit of sonship the Fatherhood of God lost its place in Christian theology, and the noble effort of Irenaeus remained a promise unfulfilled.
II. THE MODIFICATIONS INTRODUCED BY THE CHRISTOLOGY OF THE GREAT TEACHERS OF ALEXANDRIA, AND PARTICULARLY BY ATHANASIUS
We pass now to consider the influence of the great Church teachers of Alexandria the most rational, the broadest, and, in a sense, the most spiritual and modern of all the Christian Fathers. In considering consecutively the teaching of Clement of Alexandria, of Origen, and of Athanasius, we shall see how strikingly the course of thought and controversy in the Church affected the inherited doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, to which, nevertheless, they most earnestly clung.
But, first of all, a few words must be said about the general intellectual conditions of the Church of Alexandria as they bear upon our special subject; and, in the next place, a short account must be given of those elements of Greek philosophy which moulded the teaching of the Greek Fathers as to the relationship of God to the world, and, through them, that of Augustine and the Church of the West.
1. The Christianity of Alexandria was profoundly affected by the peculiarity of its environment. The city was, in the earlier centuries of the Christian era, the intellectual head quarters of the world; the meeting-place of the representatives of the various schools of Greek philosophy in its most recent phases, of the more catholic Judaism, and of Oriental ten dencies of religion and life seeking to commend themselves to the Western mind. The predominance of the Greeks, with their eager and receptive intelligence, secured the full influence of this environment upon the higher thought, and fostered at once a prevailingly intellectual temper, mutual approximations of thought, and eclectic systems, which endeavoured from their different standpoints to appropriate and use, in their explanation of the universe, all that was best in rival religious schools. This sympathetic and eclectic spirit of necessity took possession of the. Christian Church as it rose to influence in Alexandria. The temper of the city produced an intellectual spirit in the great Christian leaders.
It obliged them to maintain and extend their hold upon the life of the city, not so much by earnest preaching (still less by the methods of mere ecclesiastical dogmatism and authority), as -by teaching, which recognised and satisfied the reason of inquirers, converts, or disputants. While this is not a complete account of the causes which resulted in the celebrated Catechetical school, it is sufficient to indicate both the conditions which made it the characteristic exponent of the Christianity of Alexandria and the spirit in which its in struction was carried on. But these general tendencies caused not merely that Christian faith should be buttressed in believers, and defended against unbelievers by intellectual considerations, and in an irenical rather than a controversial spirit: they further brought it about that, for the edification and satisfaction of the spiritual life of believers within the Church, faith must be perfected in reason; satisfied by a presentation of Christian truth, which unfolded its spiritual, theological, and philo sophical grounds; affording a rationale of religious belief by giving to thought a comprehensive account of the mutual relations of God, man, the world. And there was a further and far-reaching consequence. The intellectual temper affected the whole nature of religion, and went far to determine the view taken of the special office of the Redeemer. God was, above all, manifested in an adequate revelation to the spiritual faculties; religious life had its typical expression and its final goal in spiritual knowledge; and Christ was, before all else (especially in Clement), teacher and revealer. The question of His nature tended largely to turn on the conditions necessary to the completeness of His revelation. It will thus be seen that the whole teaching of the school went to destroy the supremacy of love as the key to religion, and to substitute that of knowledge save so far as, on the side of God, it is the desire of Him who loves to make Himself known to the object of His love; and, on the side of man, love rejoices in reverent, and eventually ecstatic, contemplation of Him who is loved. This spirit is predominant in Clement; is present, but modified by his strenuous morality, in Origen; and exerts a powerful influence over Athanasius, though qualified, especially in his later writings, by the emphasis he lays on life, and therefore on redemption. The stress laid upon revelation and knowledge as the predominant elements of the religious relationship could not but affect the doctrine of the Father hood of God.
2. Further, the influence of Greek, and especially of Platonic, philosophy upon the Alexandrian Fathers, and through them upon the theological thought of the West, is of immense importance for our subject. That influence is very naturally explained. Men of reflective mind cannot avoid expressing and justifying their faith by reference to and in terms of the most congenial philosophy of their times. Especially must this be the case in an intellectual atmosphere like that of Alexandria. Still more, if such men have been philosophers before they were believers, and if they are compelled continually, as a condition of the progress of the Church, to utter and justify their faith in terms of philosophy, for the sake of philosophers. And this being generally the case, the idealism of Plato, especially the point of contact between his doctrine of the relation of the ideal to the sensible world, when modified by Stoicism, and the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, how ever great and vital were the differences between them, accounted for the influence of his philosophy upon the Christian Fathers. And this recourse to Plato was facilitated by the fact that in the Timceus the work by which he chiefly influenced Christian teachers there was found an explanation of the world which could easily be translated in terms of Christian theism, and was currently supposed to teach it explicitly, though with some shortcomings.
Some account must therefore be given of those elements of Plato’s teaching which exerted an influence upon Christian teaching as to the relationship of God to the world, and especially of the form which those elements took in the Timceus. The central doctrine of Plato concerns the independent existence of the world of ideals and its relations to the world of sensible things. Only the briefest summary of this can be given, without raising any of the philosophical questions in volved. His was the first attempt to fix the relations between the objects of thought and the objects of experience, between the world of the intelligible and that of the sensible. At that stage, general concepts, the attainment of which by exact methods of definition had been the great aim of Socrates, seemed to have a higher reality than the individual to whom they were presented, or than the concrete experience in which they were first of all embodied for and perceived by man. The problem of knowledge was therefore not that of the individual intelligence, of the relation of the thinker to his thoughts, of the percipient to his perceptions. It was that of the general relation of the intelligible, supposed to have an existence independent both of individual consciousness and of the perceptible universe, to the material world, presented to the senses.
Generalisation and definition led to classification and to the formation of concepts representing the common and distinctive qualities universally present in each member of the class. For Plato the sum-total of all these concepts formed the real,substantial, changeless universe the world of the Ideas. What ever reality belongs to the world of sense-experience it possesses by participation in these archetypal Ideas. For example, particular men are real, just in so far as the Idea of manhood inheres in them. But, at best, their existence is dependent and confused; while the result of mere sense-perception is only opinion, and never knowledge. Supreme over the other Ideas Plato placed the idea of the Good, thus securing that his first principle of Being should represent the supremacy of ethical ends throughout the universe, asserted by the ethical faculty in man. Thus the spiritual and ethical character of Plato’s system is secured, though the supreme Good is for him an Idea (an ideal-real), not a person. The great problem for Plato was to explain, not the existence of the world of Ideas, which appeared to him evidently self-existent, but the way in which they came into their present relations with the lower world of sensible existence. As to this his account varied from time to time, and is never free from difficulty and obscurity. Sometimes the mystery is left unaccounted for, sometimes the Ideas are themselves endowed by him with creative power. But in the Timceus Plato brings upon the scene the Divine Artificer (Jq/uois/yyo?) l to supply the creative and world-ordering power in which the Ideas, as such, appeared to be lacking. To find the exact meaning of Plato’s doctrine of the Artificer, and of his relations to the Ideas, is a task beset with 1 The vovs jSao-iXeJs of the Philebus, 26 E-28 E. See Archer Hind, Introduction to the Timceus, p. 39, etc. difficulty, owing to his habit of clothing metaphysical abstractions in mythological forms. It may suffice for us that the form in which he presented the matter lent itself easily, perhaps naturally, to a theistic interpretation; that the world, according to his doctrine, results from the action of the Artificer in bringing the Ideas into formative relations to the formless substrate (vTroSo^rj) which is identified with empty space, receptive of all forms, though possessing none, 1 and that Plato calls the Artificer “ the Maker and Father of this [created], All.” 2
It will be easily seen that the whole of this explanation of the universe the Ideal World with the Idea of the Good at its head, the Artificer standing apparently between it and the created world, that world as created, organised, vitalised, and ruled by Ideas which gave to its formless substrate (little more than the Nothing out of which all things were created) positive existence leant itself easily to the Christian doctrine of God, as manifesting Himself in thought and action by the Logos, and of the world as existing by the creation of God through the Logos, who, by His own universal indwelling, implanted throughout it reason, wisdom, truth, and life.
Under some aspects this interpretation might support a doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, considered as the living source of life, as impressing His own spiritual and ethical attributes upon creation, and as immanent throughout it by His Logos. But equally it might be expressed in terms of the Divine sovereignty; for the ideal is absolutely supreme over the visible world, and the Artificer is the Maker of all temporal existence. That sovereignty, both transcendent and immanent, makes the Divine at once substance, life, and law r of the All which comes into existence by it.
Two additional facts must be brought out. Firstly, Plato was the author of the great distinction between eternity and time which passed into Christian theology, and profoundly influenced the thought of the Greek Fathers, of Augustine, 1 See Archer Hind, Timceus, note on p. 170.
2 In the Philebus this substrate is termed the &irei.pov. See Archer Hind’s in troductory Essay in his edition of the Timccus. rbv ftev o$v TTOITJTTJU /ecu ira-r^pa rovSe TOV iravrbs eupe^vretpyov /ecu evpbvra. et y iravTas ddvvarov yew, Tima US, v. 28 C.
Boethius, and, through them, of the Schoolmen, as to the contrast between the life of God and that of created beings, and as to the goal of blessedness to which earthly discipline is intended to bring the saints. He says: “ First, then, in my judgment this distinction must be made. What is that which is eternally and has no becoming, and again what is that which conies to be but is never? The one is comprehensible by thought with the aid of reason, ever changeless; the other opinable by opinion with the aid of reasonless sensation, be coming and perishing, never truly existent. Now all that comes to be must needs be brought into being by some cause; for it is impossible for anything without a cause to attain to birth.” l Later on we find: “ For whereas days and nights and months and years were not before the universe was created, he then devised the generation of them along with the fashioning of the universe. Now all these are portions of time, and was and shall be are forms of time that have come to be, although we wrongly ascribe them unawares to the eternal essence. For we say that it was and is and shall be, but in verity is alone belongs to it; and was and shall be it is meet should be applied only to Becoming, which moves in time; for these are motions.” 2
Secondly, Plato held the view, at least in his later period, that evil is not positively existent, but is the negation of existence. He lays down the principle in the Timccus: “ Now it neither has been nor is permitted to the most perfect to do aught but what is most fair.” 3 Evil arises from imperfect participation in the Ideas, which form the types of all particular existences. Hence evil is a defect, and not a positive quality. 4 Speaking generally, there are no Ideas of evil in Plato, although, since particular existences may resemble one another in their divergence from the Idea, there are classnames for evil qualities. For Plato the world, in so far as it has being, is good. This doctrine of the negativity of evil is closely connected, as we shall shortly see, with subsequent 1 Timccus, v. 27 D-28 A. “ Ibid. x. 37 E-38 A.
“ de/Ais 8 OVT r)v OVT tart ru> dptfTtp dpdv a\\o iriv TO KaXXiffTOv, Timccus, vi. 30 A.
4 Sec Archer Hind, Timccus, pp. 25, 26.
Christian doctrine as to the relations of God to the world.
Finally, the importance given by Platonism to knowledge, as the means and essence of salvation, gave its prevailingly intellectual view to Greek theology. The goal of life is the vision of God; the fitness for it is acquired through the process by which faith rises to become knowledge.
Such were the leading elements of the Platonic philosophy, which were now to exercise almost incalculable influence upon the development of Christian theology. A word must be added as to the influence of Stoicism. For the Stoics, universal reason, the Divine Logos, is the ultimate explanation of the world, the human soul being part of that universal reason. By a blending of this doctrine with Platonism, it becomes easy to regard the Logos as the home of the Ideas. This was done by Philo, 1 who further treated the Logos as intermediate between God and the universe, being at once immanent in both. The Stoic Logos-doctrine, as thus modified by Platonism and by Jewish Monotheism, was brought into contact with the doctrine of St. John, and secured the transference to Christian theology of Plato’s conception of the relation of the Ideal to the sensible world.
Again, the Stoic insistence on rational order in the universe, and on rational law as of the nature of man, and on both as due to the constitutive presence of the Divine Logos, met with ready acceptance by Christian theism, andsubsequently became markedly characteristic of the theology of Augustine.
We may now pass on to consider the teaching of the Alexandrian Fathers, and to trace the changes which they brought about in respect to the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God.
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA The teaching of the Fatherhood of God, and of salvation as the reconciliation of “ disobedient children to their Father,” 2 1 See Kaftan, The Truth of the Christian Religion (Eng. trans.), i. 56.
- Exhortation to the, Greeks, cap. i. so pervades the teaching of Clement that it is impossible to do justice to it by isolated quotations. Let one fine passage suffice. It is representative of many, and expresses Clement’s characteristic view of the gospel; of its source, method, and result; and of the catholicity of its ground and end. He says in his Exhortation to the Greeks: “ The union of many in one, issuing in the production of Divine harmony out of a medley of sounds and division, becomes one symphony following one choir-leader and teacher, the Word, reaching and resting in the same truth, and crying, Abba, Father.
This, the true utterance of His children, God accepts with gracious welcome the first-fruits He receives from them.” l The intellectual and educative view of Christianity which Clement took, from causes which have been already explained, led him to set forth our Lord above all in the light of the Instructor (Trai&aycoyos) of mankind; and this is the title of the second of his theological writings. This office belongs of right to our Lord as the Logos, whose “ rational creatures “men are. 2 This creative relationship of the Logos to man kind is consummated in His incarnation for our redemption.
It at once gives to the Logos His eternal relationship to and office for the race, founds the universalism of His gospel in the constitution of human nature as such, and, by means of the name Logos, stamps upon the work of salvation the prevailing feature of the revelation and apprehension of Divine truth. The following quotation gives Clement’s view of the relation of the Logos to God, and again of the Logos to mankind: “ For the image of God is His Word, the genuine Son of Mind, the Divine Word, the archetypal light of light; and the image of the Word is the true man, the mind which is in man, who is therefore said to have been made in the image and likeness of God, assimilated to the Divine Word in the affections of the soul, and therefore rational.”
Thus, as against Gnosticism, Clement taught that the results attained by the “ elect,” the “ spiritual,” the “ be- 1 Exhortation to the Greeks, cap. ix.
2 TOV 0eoO Abyov ra \o~yiKa TrXcicr/xara 77/u.ets, Exhortation to the Greeks, cap. i.
3 Exhortation to the Gentiles, cap. x. lievers,” the true “ Gnostics,” were but the consummation of possibilities universally present in the race. With char acteristically Greek spirit, though more profoundly, he treats sin as due above all to ignorance, though arising from disordered spiritual conditions, and is as confident of the freedom and capacity of all men to will the good, as Augustine was afterwards convinced of their inability. This universalism of Clement, arising from the inner relationship of man to the Logos, from which comes alike the possibility and the method of his salvation, is strikingly illustrated by two noble passages in his Exhortation to the Greeks. Protesting against the Homeric stories of the immoralities of the gods, he says, “ We are they who bear about with us, in this living and moving image of our human nature, the Likeness of God a Likeness which dwells with us, takes counsel with us, associates with us, is a guest with us, feels for us.” 1 And again, later on, he says, “ But it is truth which cries, The light shall shine forth from the darkness. Let the light then shine in the hidden part of man, that is, the heart; and let the beams of knowledge arise to reveal and irradiate the hidden inner man, the disciple of the light, the familiar friend and fellow-heir of Christ; especially now that w r e have come to know the most precious and venerable name of the good Father, who to a pious and good child gives gentle counsels, and commands what is salutary for His child.” 2
One short passage may be selected as giving a complete account of Clement’s doctrine of salvation. He says, in the Pccdagogue: “ Being baptized, we are illuminated; illuminated, we become sons; being made sons, we are made perfect; being made perfect, we are made immortal.” 3 This, as summing up the process, must be put side by side with the description of the Instructor as the Author of salvation. We are told: “But our Pedagogue is the holy God Jesus, the Word who is the guide of all humanity. The loving God Himself is our Pedagogue.” 4 1 Exhortation to the Greeks, cap. iv.
2 Exhortation to the Gentiles, cap. xi.
3 Pcedagoguc, i. 6. In the above account, baptism, according to the Catholic view, is the initiatory and grace - conveying sacrament of Christian life; but its blessing is not so much that ofregeneration, 1 as that of illumination, by which is meant that it brings into vitalising spiritual contact with the Logos, who gives living illumination in the truth of the relations in which men stand to God. Thus the spiritual illumination leads to sonship, because it enables us to apprehend as our own, to enter into, and conform ourselves to, the position of sonship, determined for us by the Fatherhood of God. Entering upon this our true position, the process of perfection is in augurated, which is eventually consummated by immortality.
Thus, in Clement’s teaching, revelation, spiritually appre hended, and not atonement, is the way of reconciliation, because sin is conceived of as springing out of error, rather than as an act of responsible and wilful transgression, in volving, above all things, guilt.
Hence, as has been said before, an intellectual view not only of the means, but of the end, and of the blessedness of salvation. The knowledge of God, with the stress upon its intellectual element, namely, spiritual apprehension and contemplation, is most prominent, 2 though in the pursuit of this knowledge love is the animating spirit.
We may perhaps say that the Platonic ideal of the purifying and uplifting of the soul to behold the true and archetypal reality lives again in Clement, but that with him it is lit up and warmed by the love which goes forth to a personal God, the home of all perfection, who is seen in the grace and condescension of Fatherhood as revealed by Christ.
One additional word must be said on this matter. The emphasis laid by Clement on perfected knowledge, and upon that knowledge as conveyed by the indwelling Word and Wisdom of God, while it led to the development of his doctrine of the prophetic office of Christ, conduced also to the setting forth of salvation, rather by means of the truth inwardly revealed by the Word, than by means of the love of the Father awakening man’s loving response. As knowledge is 1 Though Clement treated it as a “washing.”
2 See Exhortation to the Greeks, caps, x, xi. pre-eminently the mark of perfected salvation, so also our relation to the Logos, bearing the truth to us, is moreperfectly wrought out than that to the Father in Christ, shedding abroad His love in our hearts. And thus we have in Clement the first appearance, and in a special form, in Alexandrian theology, of Christological teaching, which by its limitations began to weaken the influence of the Fatherhood of God, working by love and filling us with the corresponding consciousness of sons. We shall soon see how this tendency grew in the later stages of Alexandrian theology. In conclusion, it is to be noted that in Clement there is to be found for the first time that Greek conception of salvation as “ deification “ which we shall have to consider more care fully in its bearing on our subject, when we reach the teaching of Athanasius. Thus Clement lays down: “ The Word of God became man, that thou mayest learn from man how man may become God.” l
ORIGEN
We may now proceed to consider the effect of the teaching of Origen on our subject. It is impossible here to enter into the general features of Origen’s theology; and super fluous to speak of his great genius, or of that fearless courage of thought the spring of which was his magnificent faith in the gospel, as being supreme and universal truth, and as giving the key to the whole history and meaning of the universe.
But, so far as the Fatherhood of God is concerned, it may perhaps truly be said that he did disservice to it rather than service, as the following summary will show:
1. Everywhere in his great constructive work, De Principiis (Tlepl Apxwv), Origen assumes or asserts the universal Fatherhood of God. There is no need either to prove or to illustrate this fact by quotations.
2. Further, in his use of the conception of Fatherhood, Origen did a striking and lasting service to the doctrine of the Divinity of our Lord. He it was who showed that eternal Fatherhood implies as its correlate an equally eternal Sonship, : Exhortation to the Greeks, cap. i. and by this means explained the relationship of the Father to the Son as that of eternal, timeless, and therefore change less, generation. The relationship is thus vital to the life of the Godhead; it never came into existence, nor can it ever pass out of existence. 1
3. But throughout Origen conceived this relationship and this eternal act of generation in terms of wisdom, and not of love. The Son of God is the Father’s personal Reason, Wisdom, Word, by whom He is made known and is active throughout the universe. Hence his prevailing view is rational or intellectual, concerning only the conditions under which the Divine reason exists and accomplishes its ends towards and in the universe. The Logos is therefore the principle of reason, present to God, present to and constituting the universe, in which He manifests God’s mind and realises His will. The only effect here of the conception of God’s Fatherhood is to secure that His reason shall be His Son, and not a mere attribute.
4. Again, Origen lays down that all men derive their being from the Father in so far as they exist, their rationality from participation in the Son, their holiness from the agency of the Holy Spirit.
He says: “ God the Father bestows upon all, existence, and participation in Christ; in respect of His being the Word of reason, renders them rational beings. From which it follows that they are deserving either of praise or blame, because capable of virtue and vice. On this account, there fore, is the grace of the Holy Ghost present, that those beings which are not holy in their essence may be rendered holy by participating in it. Seeing then that, firstly, they derive their existence from God the Father; secondly, their rational nature from the Word; thirdly, their holiness from the Holy Spirit, those who have been previously sanctified by the Holy Spirit are again made capable of receiving Christ, in respect that He is the righteousness of God; and those who have earned advancement to this grade by the sanctification of the Holy Spirit will nevertheless obtain the gift of wisdom according to the power and working of the Spirit of God.” 2 1 See De Principiis, i. 2 (2). 2 DC Principiis, i. 3 (8).
There is some uncertainty, as a careful study of the context will show, as to the dividing line between the work of the Son and that of the Spirit, but the circle of those who are influenced by the Spirit is at present narrower than the circles of those who receive their existence from the Father and their rationality from the Son; though Origen taught that God, in His wisdom and love, purposes ultimately to redeem the whole world of spirits, and the quotation just given shows that the work of the Spirit leads men to a fuller participation in Christ.
5. That which determined God to the work of creation was His goodness.
Origen says: “ We have frequently shown, by those declarations which we are able to produce from the Holy Scriptures, that God, the Creator of all things, is good and just and all-powerful. When He in the beginning created those beings which He desired to create, i.e. rational natures, He had no other reason for creating them than on account of Himself, i.e His own goodness.” l
6. Hence almost the only use of the relationship of Fatherhood made by Origen is to treat it, towards the Son, as the eternal going forth in and communion with personal Wisdom; towards man, as creatorship, motived by infinite goodness. The Father is the substance of all finite existence, which comes into being by His will; just as the Son is the principle of all rationality.
Two consequences at once arise. Firstly, participation in the Son is treated as the means of the enjoyment of rationality, together with the moral qualities which should accompany and support rationality not as man’s entrance into sonship.
And, secondly, religion is explained in its origin, development, and consummation in the blessed life, with practically no reference to the fellowship of love with the Father. True, in the passages above quoted we are told that the Divine purpose is, “ that those whom He has created may beunceasingly and inseparably present with Him who is “; but Origen continues characteristically and in truly Platonic 1 De Principiis, ii. 9. spirit to describe this blessedness as being “ to behold the holy and the blessed life.” Everywhere, from Origen’s theology though not from his heart, love, except in its intellectual and moral elements, is absent, and thereby his doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, though universally present and supremely influential in his writings, has lost all its gracious tenderness, and much of its religious worth.
7. In conclusion, this loss is partly occasioned and partly completed by the lack of any real significance, in Origen’s doctrine of salvation, of the humanity of Christ.
Origen’s account of the fall of man as taking place by the individual unfaithfulness of souls in a previous existence; of the one perfectly holy soul, which clave to the Logos and hence was counted worthy of the perfect indwelling of the Logos, brought about by the Incarnation, 1 together with his general account of salvation as by participation in the eternal (preincarnate) Logos, shows that neither the Incarnation nor the Sonship of the Divine-human Christ had found their true place in his conception either of spiritual relationships or of redemption. For all these reasons, the conclusion is forced that Origen obscured, rather than illustrated, the meaning of the Fatherhood upon which he laid such stress; and this injury became permanent in Greek theology.
ATHANASIUS This is not the place to enter into the Arian controversy, upon which well-nigh the whole strength of Athanasius was spent. Our concern is simply with the bearing of his theology upon the Fatherhood of God; and in that respect we shall soon discover that his unparalleled services to the doctrine of our Lord’s true Divinity were at once based upon the conception of the Fatherhood of God, and yet, by the accidental peculiarities of his treatment, put that Fatherhood at a greater distance from mankind than had been the case up to his time. The following general statement must suffice to make the general nature of his influence clear, 1 De Principi-is, ii. 6 (3).
1. In the first place, the whole strength of the polemic of Athanasius against Arianism depends upon his serious and systematic investigation of the relationship of Fatherhood and Sonship as between the first and second Persons in the holy Trinity. In his later and main theological writings he completely escapes from the influence of Origen in this respect, and treats our Lord’s Divinity as determined by the intrinsic meaning of His Sonship, and not by the fact of His being the Wisdom or Word of the Father. 1 The whole question is argued in a twofold way: first, by an examination of the New Testament statements as to the Sonship of our Lord, showing that the sacred writers teach His eternal and truly Divine Sonship; and, secondly, by a philosophical inquiry, based upon these statements and assisted by the Platonism of Alexandrian Chris tianity, into what is involved as to His true Divinity in our Lord’s eternal Sonship as the “ only-begotten “ of the Father,
2. But the Fatherhood and Sonship thus investigated are, perhaps almost of necessity, treated far more impressively in their metaphysical than in their spiritual or moral aspects; though thereby not only is the teaching of the New Testament departed from, but possibly, as we may some day come to see, the surest proof of our Lord’s Divinity is missed.
Moreover, the very fact that the controversy as to the Divinity of the Son turned upon the metaphysical meaning of His Sonship, tended in the system of Athanasius to restrict both the meaning and the manifestation of the Fatherhood of God unduly to the unique relationship between the Father and the Son.
Thus Athanasius lays down that the Father is such in His relationship to the Son, and not immediately to mankind; 2 even that God is to be called Father only as Father of His only-begotten Son, 3 and that our sonship comes to us through the incarnation of the Song of Solomon 4
All these statements are in a sense both true and important, but they needed to be accompanied by a fuller in vestigation as to what our Lord’s Sonship, as the incarnate 1 In his earlier writings, e.g. in the De Incarnation* Vtrbi, the influence of Origen remains.
2 Contra Arianos, Oratio i. 33, 34, a Ibid. ii. 2. < Ibid. i. 43. head of the race, meant both for the manifestation of God’s Fatherhood towards all men and as to the inherently filial constitution of all human nature in the Son. Through the lack of this, the very stress rightly laid on our Lord’s unique Sonship threw into the shade the full meaning of the sonship of men as based upon their creation in the Son and consum mated in their union with Him.
3. It is true that Athanasius lays greater stress than had yet been done by any other teachers, save Irenams and Clement, upon the sonship of Christians, and upon the making of sons as the great end of the Incarnation. In his earliest period he had treated the relationship of men to our Lord, as did Origen, from the point of view that men became rational creatures because of their participation in the Logos. 1 But, later on, he almost entirely abandoned this point of view, and substituted for it the statement that men became sons because of their participation in the Son.
He showed that it is the Son’s proper Divinity that enables Him to impart sonship to those entering into vital fellowship with Himself. 2 But,
4. It is in keeping with this that Athanasius distinctly treats the Creatorship of God as going before His Father hood, and not as the expression of it. Correspondingly, he lays down that men were creatures before they became sons, and treats sonship as a special gift coming to men through their redemption in the Logos. 3
Hence, firstly, the Fatherhood of God ceases to be the ultimate explanation of His creative activity, as it had been for Irenreus, Clement, and Origen. The sovereignty of God takes its place. And, secondly, the subsequent sonship of believers, on which so much stress is laid, becomes theirs, not because of the antecedent Fatherhood of the Father, but because of their inherence in the Son by faith, and therefore of their assimilation to His relationship to the Father.
Perhaps this latter may seem an unduly subtle distinction, but it undoubtedly, on closer thought, will be seen to co-operate with the former, and with the way in which God s 1 DC Incarnations Verbi, cap. 3. 3 See, e.g, DC Synod is, 51.
3 See Contra Arianos, Oratio ii. 59 - 2 Peter
Fatherhood has been restricted to the Son, to impair the fellowship of love, which is implied in the sonship of believers, having the “ Spirit crying in their heart, Abba, Father,” set forth in the New Testament.
5. And all may be explained by the fact that the human nature of our Lord does not assume, for Athanasius, its full importance. “ The man Christ Jesus “ is unduly overshadowed by the only-begotten Son and the eternal Logos, and there fore, among other things, the essentially filial constitution of humanity prior to the Incarnation, and as a condition of it, is not clearly grasped. The participation of rational natures in the Logos in order to be rational, of believers in the Divine redemptive Son of God in order to become sons, these truths are insisted on, but not the filial constitution of human nature in order that the Son of God may become manifest in it.
6. Lastly, in dwelling on sonship as the privilege of believers in the Son, Athanasius invariably goes on to consider it not in terms of fellowship with the Father, but of deification. The great saying, “ For He became man that we might be made gods,” l is characteristic of the whole teaching of Athanasius. 2 This conception, vague though great, is closely associated with the thought, pervading the writings of Athanasius, of our Lord as being the Redeemer by reason of His giving life in the first place, spiritual, eventually bodily and immortal to sinful men by the power of His resurrection. But, whatever may be the merits of the conception, its effect is to direct attention exclusively to the intrinsic qualities and the successive experiences on their way to perfection of the sons of God, and to turn it away from the consideration of the relationship in itself of sons to the Father, and its manifestation in the fellowship of love. This conception of deification as the meaning of sonship became characteristic of Eastern theology. It pervades the writings of the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzum, and Gregory of Nyssa. With its predominance the whole conception of sonship tended to become abstract and external, rather than religious and ethical.
1 De lucarnatione Verbi, cap. 54.
2 See, e.g, Contra Arianos, Oratio i. 39, ii. 70, iii. 19-22 y De Synodis, 51,
We may briefly sum up the thought of Athanasius by saying that for him the relationship of Fatherhood and Sonship, though once more brought into the forefront, tends to become restricted to the relationship of the Father to the Son, and to be exhibited in its metaphysical rather than in its spiritual aspects; that the Fatherhood towards mankind is obscured; that instead of showing that it operates in the Son, alike in the creation, the constitution, the redemption, and the consummation of mankind, the fundamental relation ship of God to men is held to be rather a gracious and immanent sovereignty of the Creator in and through the Son; and that man’s sonship is too exclusively set forth as the attainment to a Divine nature by the conquest of sin, and ultimately, through resurrection, of death, instead of as being the entrance into a Divine fellowship. In short, the Father is insufficiently manifested in and through the Son to men; and men are insufficiently brought, in the Son, to the Father. The results of this change upon Western theology we shall now go on to see.
III. THE TRANSFORMATION IN THE WEST BROUGHT ABOUT BY AUGUSTINE, AND THE PREPARATION FOR IT IN LATIN CHRISTIANITY For our present purpose, and indeed so far as all higher theological questions are concerned, the next great name to Athanasius is Augustine. He may be said to be the meeting ground of the East and the West; receiving the influence of Greek theology through Ambrose and Victorinus, of Latin through Tertullian and Cyprian, and by his religious genius profoundly modifying both. How he affected the Greek theology, received by him through Latin channels, on the question before us, will be the subject of our present inquiry, and will soon become manifest. But our first business must be to note, not only with reference to Augustine, but also with a view to the later stages of our history, some of the prevailing features of Latin Christianity, and to consider how they influenced and were influenced by Augustine. In passing from Eastern to Western Christianity we pass into another atmosphere, and the difference of religious thought and feeling had the most vital effect upon the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God. The Latin temper and genius moulded Christian development in the West at every point. The practical and external temper of the Eomans, their tendency either to a hard moralism or to a narrow and fettering superstition, gave the tone, in the long-run, to their Christianity. It became institutional, satisfied with external observances, at once morally self-satisfied and spiritually superstitious, expecting and submitting to the exercise of ecclesiastical authority. Its ecclesiastical leaders were adapted to the peculiarities of the people they led. The genius for organisation and rule, which had made Rome great, passed over to them, and with it the ideal, gradually wrought out, of a Catholic and Christian imperialism reigning in the spiritual world, as Eome had done in the temporal, and reigning by means of a sacerdotal hierarchy, so organised as to make authority at once ubiquitous and august, flexible and overwhelming. The great teachers of Christianity, who were almost always its ecclesiastical rulers, presented a Christian doctrine which was in keeping both with the temper of the people and with the practical ends of ecclesiasticism. To begin with, most of the great leaders, e.g. Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, had been Roman lawyers and administrators before they became ecclesiastics. Augustine himself was trained as an advocate. To such men it was natural not only to administer the Church in the spirit of Roman government, but, what is more important, to conceive the relations of God to man under the forms of public law. For example, Tertullian, the most influential theologian of the West before Augustine, 1 knows nothing of the Fatherhood of God, only mentions it in his controversy with Praxeas, in which his unsatisfactory doctrine of the Trinity, to which it is restricted, shows how little he understood it or knew how to use it. For him God is simply the Creator and Governor of the world. And he for the first time introduces terms of Roman law into Christian theology, to set forth the relations and 1 Irenseus, though living in the West, is not Western. dealings between God and men. For example, Tertulli;m imported the term satisfaction (satisfactio), with all its associations in Eoman law, to explain the Divine requirement and the result of repentance. The effect of this, not only on the subsequent doctrine of the Atonement, but also on the general conceptions held with regard to the relations of God to men, can hardly be exaggerated. These relations became at once hardened and externalised, while the requirements of the Euler and Judge, and their satisfaction by the act of the penitent, blotted out almost entirely the grace and mercy of “ God our Saviour.”
Owing to the prevalence of this temper, the creeds, wrought out in the East primarily to define and safeguard the truth and to satisfy the faith of Christians, became the Law of the West, little understood, rigidly and unintelligently expressed, and enforced by the powers of ecclesiastical authority. 1 Again and again throughout the history of theo logical thought in the West we shall find how adversely men’s insight into the relationship of God to mankind in Christ was affected, in one way or the other, by the exaggerated and exclusive influence of political and legal conceptions. But something more must be noted by way of introduction. Deeper influences were at work to transform men’s thoughts of God, and to set up a conception of His sovereignty which made religion a work of fear rather than of love. In the first place, there was the current superstition, and superstition is always deeply tinctured with the spirit of fear. In the next place, there were the almost overwhelming difficulties in the way of living out Christian morality, both by reason of the weakness of the converts and by reason of their social environment. These led to a one-sided emphasis on the coming judgment, and upon the judicial relationship of God to men. And, finally, the matter was affected in a higher realm by the spiritual experiences of some of the most influential teachers, notably Tertullian and Augustine.
These men combined with their Eoman training the perfervid African temperament, with its hot passions, its consequent strife between the flesh and the spirit, and its deep sense of 1 See, for example, the so-called Atlianasian Creed. the disease of sin. Naturally, therefore, God was presented to them and by them with His will and authority strongly marked an authority which at once uttered the condemnation of their sin and was the strength of their spirit the inward moderator of their turbulent impulses and passions.
Even the gospel came to Augustine in the decisive moment of his life by the quickening grace felt through the commandment, “ Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof “ (Ptom. xiii. 1 4); and throughout his subsequent course the same characteristic of his religious experience is manifest, as is shown, for example, by his noble and oft-repeated exclamation, “ Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.” l For all these reasons, it is not remarkable that in passing to the West we leave, for all practical purposes, the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God behind. Alike, the more superficial and the profounder conditions of Western religion replaced the thought of the Fatherhood of God by that of His sovereignty. This led to the introduction of legal considerations, which in their turn reacted upon the doctrine of the Divine sovereignty, fixing it, filling it out, and connecting it with the doctrine of the Church as the sphere and instrument of the earthly rule of God. And all this without check, except so far as modifications might be introduced here and there by the warmth of a more evangelical religion, as, for example, in the case of Augustine himself.
We come now to consider the doctrine on our subject of Augustine, the greatest teacher of the West, and the most influential on the supreme questions as to the relations of God to men. The study of his relation to the general tendencies of Western thought, just described, is intricate and difficult.
Like all epoch-making personalities, he absorbed the most various influences from the past and from the surrounding present. It was the defect of his genius, that it was so capacious as to hold together the most various and indeed incompatible tendencies of thought without successfully
1 “ Da quod jubcs, et jube quod vis,” Confessions, x. 40. The thought recurs elsewhere in his writings again and again, with only slight verbal alterations. transforming them, or ever seriously attempting to transform them, into a higher and consistent unity. The most striking personality, the most voluminous writer, the most manysided and influential teacher of the Western Church, he gave manifold and mighty impulses to all succeeding theological thought, powerfully influencing such divergent systems as those of scholasticism, of mediaeval ecclesiasticisni, and eventually of Calvin. On the side of what he received, while not unifying it, as has just been said, he in some parts modified it, in others passively accepted it, in others intensified it. Not to mention at present his inheritance from the East, as regards Western Christianity he modified its legalism by his intense and evangelical experience of religion, he found room for the law and customs of the prevailing Catholicism, while he intensified, to an unspeakable degree, the doctrine of the dread authority and power of God. The influences which shaped Augustine’s life and thought were manifold. First came that of the ordinary Catholicism, represented at its best by his mother, Monica. Then, during weary years, Manichrean influences laid hold of him, from which, indeed, owing to the effect upon him of his long conflict with strong passions, his thought never completely shook itself free. Subsequently, at the critical period of his life, came the influence on him of Ambrose, representingpronounced Western Catholicism enlarged by a knowledge of Greek theology, received through Basil the Great, and deepened by an evangelical spirit due to the depth of his own spiritual experience. Finally, Victorinus introduced Augustine to the main outlines of Platonism as reproduced in his own Latin teaching, for Augustine never gained any sufficient knowledge of Greek to become acquainted with Plato at first hand. The whole of Augustine’s thought was shaped by these four influences. But behind and above all such influences lay the spiritual passion of the man, his unceasing desire for the living God. The key to all his life is found in the ever-recurring thought of his Confessions: “ Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it find rest in Thee.” l “ Oh! for Thy mercies sake, tell me, Lord my God, what Thou art unto me. Say unto my soul, I am Thy salvation.” 2 Thus, whether Augustine is controverting Manichrean dualism by the aid of Platonic doctrine, or whether he is urging the absolute ruin and inability of sinful men against Pelagian optimism, or whether he is enforcing the authority of the Catholic Church and the life-giving power of her sacraments upon Donatist schismatics, in all he is moved by this deep spiritual passion. Every conclusion reached in his theology, it may almost be said, represents a victory, moral as well as intellectual, over the haunting besetments of sin. His restatements of theology, inconsistent in themselves, diverging into an unconditional philosophy on the one hand, and into ecclesiasticism on the other, are suffused by the glow and unified by the experience of a great spiritual nature, making Augustine in many respects the most remarkable religious personality between St. Paul and Luther. The three controversies above named, the Manichsean, the Pelagian, and the Donatist, 3 while the main occupation of Augustine’s thought and effort, all had their influence in substituting for the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God that conception of His sovereignty which he gave to subsequent ages, and in determining its outlines. Therefore, without digressing into the history or the meaning of the controversies themselves, we must trace the doctrine of God in His relationship to the world and to mankind which is successively presented to us in these three connexions, mentioning, in addition, some subsidiary causes which helped to determine the final result.
1. We must begin by examining the main outlines of the doctrine of God presented in the more philosophical works of Augustine. This doctrine was wrought out at first in his own inner conflict, afterwards by means of his public controversy, with Manichseism. It was moulded under the influence of the theology of Ambrose and the philosophy of Plato received at 1 Confessions, i. 1. 2 IMd. i. 5.
3 They are treated in this order, for the better exposition of our subject. second hand. It had its final expression, independent of controversy, in such dogmatic treatises as his work, On the Trinity.
Augustine came to apprehend God as the one absolute substance, the Summum ens, the eternal ground of all created reality. His doctrine is presented to us in the history of its making, in the Confessions, and more theoretically in his treatises, Concerning the Trinity and Concerning Free Will.
Founded upon a Christianised form of Platonism, it is the first Christian statement of the ontological argument as to the existence of God which has in more recent times and with minor differences been put forth by Anselm, Descartes, and by the German Transcendentalists. In a great passage of the Confessions l Augustine describes his gradual ascent by a truly Platonic method, combined with a psychological accuracy which was characteristically his own, 2 from outward bodies through the various faculties of the soul till he reaches its highest power, “ the reasoning faculty, to which what is received from the senses of the body is referred to be judged.” But at once he declares there was revealed within him the presence, in strong contrast with one another, of that creaturely faculty which becomes, and therefore changes in time, and that eternal, and therefore unchangeable, truth and being WHICH is. Clearly, as Augustine says, “ the unchangeable was to be preferred to the changeable,” by reason of being alone truly existent, supremely perfect, and the ground of all that of which the becoming, with its temporal changes, shows that its existence is derived and dependent. This superiority of that which is to that which becomes, and its relation to the latter as the ground of its existence, necessitates that the truly existent should eternally possess absolute perfection, and that that perfection should consist in the transcendent realisation of those spiritual and moral faculties the presence of which, though imperfect, in man is
1 Confessions, vii. 17; see also vii. 4, 10. Elsewhere he says, “ Domine cui esse et vivere non aliud atque aliud est; quia sunime esse atque summe vivere idipsum es,” Confessions, i. 10.
2 See Harnack, History of Doyma (Eng. trans.), v. 21, 106. his distinctive glory. Only by thus possessing spiritual perfection could God be in reality the supreme Being, the highest Good, which He is. A similar course of argument is pursued by Augustine in his treatise, Concerning Free Will. Man has three attributes, existence, life, and intelligence, of which the highest is intelligence; l nothing is higher than human reason, save a reason which is eternal and unchangeable, and this is God. 2 And this eternal and unchangeable reason, human reason perceives not by means of any instrumental faculty, but by itself; and, in perceiving it, at once is obliged to confess its own inferiority, and that the eternal and unchangeable reason is its God. 3 A similar ontological argument to establish that God is the supreme Good and the unchangeable Wisdom is to be found in Augustine’s work, Concerning Christian Doctrine. 4 “Indeed it may be said to underlie all his theistic discussions. 5
Augustine constantly speaks in Platonic language of the beauty of God, and of God as the “ beauty of all things beautiful.” G
What is more important, he magnifies the love of God “ truth who art eternity! “ he cries, “ and love who art truth! and eternity who art love! thou art my God, to Thee do I sigh night and day! “ 7 God creates because of His love. 8 And from this creative love proceeds the mercy which makes Him the helper of sinful men. The place which love takes in the religion of Augustine corresponds to his apprehension 1 De Liber o Arbitrio, ii. 3 - Deuteronomy
2 “Sed, quseso te, si non inveneris esse aliquid supra nostram rationcm, nisi quod aiternum atque incommutabile est, dubitabisne hunc Deum dicere? “DC Lib. Arb. ii. 6.
3 “ Quoe si nullo adhibito corporis instrument*) nequepertactum, nequepergustatum, nequeperolfactum, nequeperaures, nequeperoculos, nequeperalium sensum se inferiorem, sedperseipsam cernit seternum aliquid et incommutabile, simul et se ipsam inferiorem et ilium oportet Deum suum esse fateatur,” DC Lib. Arb. ii. 6.
4 De Doctrina Christiana, i. 7, 8. B See, e.g, De Trinitate, v. 2.
6 Confessions, iii. 10, “Mi Pater summe bone, pulchritude pulchrorum omnium.”
7 Ibid. vii. 16, “ reterna veritas et vera chattel et cara feternitas! “
8 See De Doclrina Christiana, vii, viii. of God as love. But, as regards God Himself, love is reached by a direct speculative method, prompted and determined by the needs of the heart, and not found in the facts of the gospel, as was the case with Luther. 1 Thus Augustine reaches his intellectual conception of God as absolute and eternal Being, supreme over and in all created existence; the home and source of all perfection; manifesting that perfection by means of the goodness which imparts it in and to the creation, and especially in the creation of those spiritual beings who are capable of entering into fellowship with His life and love, and whom He satisfies with it.
All creaturely existence, therefore, comes from parti cipation in the supreme and changeless existence, namely, God. Things are just so far as they partake of it, beginning with bare existence and rising through all the ranges of created being to the highest and fullest manifestations of finite perfection. And nothing exists which does not derive its existence from God; and equally that which does not derive its existence from God is nothing. Hence evil is nothing positive; is indeed the negation of positive existence. To speak of evil as existent is a contradiction in terms, for existence is good and not evil. All that is positive in the creatures is good, though the measure of it may be small, and where evil is found there is the actual privation of existence, or the good. And this privation is so entire in lost spirits, that the only positive quality left to them is bare existence, and even in them this is good. To sum up, all that is positive is good; it is so because the ground of its being is God, who is at once the Absolute Existence and the Highest Good. 2 By the adoption of this Platonic doctrine 3 Augustine emancipated himself theoretically from Manichreism, and set up what, if it had been consistently carried out, would have 1 See Harnack, History of Dogma (Eng. trans.), v. 87.
2 “Ergo si ornni bono privabuntur omnino nulla erunt, ergo quamdiu sunt, bona sunt, ergo qusecumque sunt, bona sunt.” See Confessions, vii. 18.
“Omnia vera sunt in quantum sunt,” vii. 21. See also iii. 12; Enchciridion, xi, xii, xiii, c, ci.; De Natura et Gratia, iii, xx.
3 See above on the Timceus. The same view was held previously by Origen; and subsequently, through Augustine, Boethius, and the pseudoDionysius, it became the common property of scholasticism. been a spiritual Monism, recognising only one substance and one will in the universe, at once transcendent and immanent throughout it, supreme over it, because in the most absolute sense its life. 1
Again, the relation between the supreme and perfect being, God, and the world of becoming, is that, to begin with, He is its Creator, that He made it out of nothing, and that, consequent upon creation, He is its Orderer according to that eternal law which is the highest reason. 2 The great passage in the Confessions, x. 9, well sets this forth, the climax of which, repeating the question successively addressed to and the answer given by all parts of the creation, ending with man, is: “I asked the whole frame of the world about my God; and it answered, I am not He, but He made me. “ Hence throughout it is the will of God which is most prominent, not His life. The universe is not an emanation, as the Platonic basis of Augustine’s doctrine might suggest, but the product of creation. Throughout it law prevails imposed by will, manifest in an order of which Augustine speaks as did the Stoics, and thinks substantially as we do now. But his peculiarity is the stress which he lays on will, though that will is a will of goodness, is equivalent to reason, and bestows beauty and life.
Hence, as immanent substance, creative will, supreme orderer of the universe and of the realm of finite spirits, God is set forth under the aspect of absolute sovereignty, and the whole stress is laid upon this.
It is true that God is the end of the creatures, the only satisfaction of spiritual beings. In Him, and in Him alone, they find satisfaction, life out of death, unity out of division and distraction, eternity beyond time, love making an end of strife. 3 But when Augustine pours out his heart in the
1 It is beyond our present scope to expound and criticise the whole system of Augustine. Were we to do so, we must discuss his doctrine of sin as arising from the presumptuous self-will of the creature, and criticise its incompatibility not only with the view of evil as negative, but also with Augustine’s doctrine of the absoluteness of the will of God.
2 “Creator et ordinator omnium rerum,” Confessions, i. 16. For the equi valence of the Divine Law and highest reason, see De Libero Arbitrio, i. 6.
3 See many passages in the Confessions. loftiest language of aspiration after and satisfaction in God, it is still the note of sovereignty which is struck. It is the supremacy of the highest Good, which commands and causes beings made for His fellowship unresting to seek it. “ Thou maclest us for Thyself; and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”
2. We must now pass on to consider how this general view of the relationship of God to the world and to mankind was strengthened by Augustine’s experience of redemption; an experience the results of which were dogmatically unfolded in the Pelagian controversy. Our sketch may be brief, partly because we are not at the moment concerned to criticise it, or to show the elements of inconsistency in it, and partly because the philosophy upon which it is based is simply that which we have been considering, carried forward to explain the problems alike of sin and of salvation. What is added to the teaching of Augustine as thinker, is his characteristic experience as saint.
There can be no extrerner contrast than the contrast between the religious temper of Augustine and that of Pelagius and his coadjutors. Pelagianism, whether represented by the moral earnestness of Pelagius or by the genial tolerance of human nature shown by Julian of Eclanum, has its root in optimism as to human nature, its present condition, its powers and innate possibilities, and in the conviction of the moralist, that the command thou shalt and the inward testimony thou oughtest necessarily involve thou canst. Human duty and human power mutually define one another. In such a view there is, generally speaking, a lack alike of the highest aspiration after holiness and of the deepest consciousness of sin. The religious spirit is wanting which is conscious that, if there is any good thing in us, it is because God of His mercy “ worketh in “us “ both to will and to do of His good pleasure “ (Php 2:13). The grace of God, for such a view, becomes almost entirely His constitution, at the outset, of a nature capable of so much, His revelation made to it, and the ordination of those influences of teaching and example which surround the succeeding generations of men as they are born into the world. 1 On the other side was Augustine, with his profound desire for fellowship with God, with his memory of the long years during which he had fruitlessly struggled against the unruly passions of the flesh, and, above all, with his continuous experience of the gift of Divine power, which had first come to him in an instant as he heard the, to him, mysterious and certainly providential voice, “ Tolle, lege,” and had opened his copy of St. Paul’s Epistles upon the saying, “ Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh.” 2 This great experience with the new and permanent moral power which came to him, after the weary struggles of years, by the direct influence of God, became the determinative consciousness of Augustine for the rest of his life. His whole doctrine of nature and grace, as elaborated in the Pelagian controversy, is his attempt to explain such an irresistible influence, and to set it forth as the law of God’s dealings with men in terms of that general philosophy the sources and nature of which we have already considered.
Augustine, first of Christian theologians, rigidly marked out the distinct realms of nature and grace. 3 For Augustine, sin, beginning in the abuse of free will owing to the spirit of pride, manifests itself especially in the lust of concupiscence, and has its results in an abject slavery to the flesh and a state of moral ruin in which God punishes sin by sin. 4 In this state of helplessness, free only to evil, man lies, the slave of sinfulness, 5 unless and until 1 See this view of grace as contained in the statements of Pelagius and Julian, and Augustine’s answers.
2 See Confessions, viii. 29.
3 See, generally, the anti-Pelagian writings.
4 As to sin being punished by sin, see, for example, De Natura et Gratia, xxii. In this last element is the first dogmatic utterance of that doctrine of retribution to which Dante gave such wonderful expression in the Inferno.
5 The growth of sinful habits is thus described: “ Qnippe exvoluntateperversa facta est libido: et dura servitur libidini, facta est consuetude; et dura consuetudini non resistitur facta est necessitas,” Confessions, viii. 10.
God, by the forth-putting of His grace, frees him and restores him to Himself. Grace is defined against Pelagius as that by which God bestows upon us and assists us with the power to do. 1 This grace is gratuitous, 2 proceeding unconditionally from the will of God. It gives expression to an eternal election, 3 Augustine’s understanding of which is based on his interpre tation of the teaching of St. Paul in Eom. ix. to xi. It is prevenient, 4 irresistible, and continuous, though there is no security in this life of final election, for grace may be withdrawn. 5 It is the source of all our good, for without it man is but a “ mass of perdition.” 6 Even our love of God is implanted in us by God. 7 The resources of grace are the explanation of God commanding us what with out Him we cannot perform. 8 It is all-sufficient, so that sinlessness may possibly be attained in this present life, for this depends entirely not upon us, but upon the particular will of God; and, where that is present, upon His unlimited power. 9 From first to last the whole weight rests upon the will of God, though that will is set forth as perfect in holiness and love. 10
Moreover, such a doctrine of grace founded on the will of God could not, philosophically, rest alone. If the condition of those who are in the course of salvation is what it is “Qua donat atque adjuvat ut agamus,” De Gratis Christi, i. 8. See ix. 3
“Gratia vero nisi gratis est, gratia non est,” Enckeiridion, 107. See also De Natura et Gratia, iv. 3 See, e.g, De Natura et Gratia, v. 4 See De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, xvi.
5 Herein, of course, Augustine differs from Calvin, who introduced into the Augustinian doctrine personal assurance of final salvation and an indefectibility of grace totally foreign to Augustine’s thought.
“ Massa perditionis.”
7 De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, xviii.
8 See De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, xvi. Hence the cry “Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis.”
9 See De Natura ct Gratia, xhi., xhii., xlviii.
10 We have no need here to consider the inconsistent introduction, under the pressure of controversy and of moral interests, of free will in a limited sense; or to discuss the recognition, which was more than a concession to popular Catholicism, of a doctrine of merits. See De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, vi. altogether by reason of the will of God, electing and saving whom He will, equally must the condition of those who continue in sin and are exposed to death be also due to His will. It is true that the original abuse of free will brought sin into the world, and death by sin; but the race, having become by that first sin helpless and ruined, a prey to sin and death, God’s will is equally done in their being left to destruction. For this position Augustine everywhere strongly contends. He finds a necessity for it in that God must be the “ Ordinator “ of all things, and therefore of sin. 1 The will that thus punishes is part of the Divine perfection, and Augustine finds beauty in it and goodness. Augustine’s doctrine masks the horror of this view of unconditional deliverance to perdition, by his teaching, already considered, that all evil is negative. What God gives, even to the lost, is continued existence, which is good. What they suffer is from privation of good; and this is negative, non-existent, and therefore uncaused, though it is also unremedied, by God.
Hence the Will, which explains the salvation of the elect, is only a special case of that universal Will which is the one ultimate and real force in the universe. The only word for such irresistible supremacy of will is not, of course, fatherhood, but sovereignty. The greatest problem of theology is to find room for the truth contained in this view, which has ever awakened a response from the profoundest religion, in a more satisfactory theory of God’s relationship to mankind, with the wider and more generous outlook which such a more satis factory theory can provide.
One supplementary word must be said. Augustine’s whole doctrine of the nature of sin and of holiness is in keeping with this ruling conception of the sovereignty of God. For him the essential spirit of sin is pride, manifesting itself in lawlessness; the essential spirit of holiness is humility, manifesting itself in obedience to the commandments of God. 2 It accords with this view that that which stands out above
1 Anselm admits this doctrine, and introduces it into his statement of the reasons for the Divine demand of satisfaction on account of sin. See Cur Deus Homo, i. 12.
2 See Confessions, iii. 16; De Natura ct Gratia, xlviii. all iii the incarnate Christ is the humility which led Him to take upon Himself the form of a servant and to humble Himself. 1 True, Augustine lays great stress upon both faith and love, but neither has the characteristically filial note of childlike and confident trust. The humility and service of absolute, loyal, and satisfied dependence is the dominant feature of perfected religion, as expounded by him the spirit of true subjects of Him who, in being infinite perfection is eternally King.
3. In the third place, we must consider, in relation to our subject, what may be called Augustine’s theological politics; in his mind closely connected with what has gone before.
Augustine’s belief as to the Church was elaborately set forth in the Donatist controversy, and its details need not occupy us here. What concerns us is the view given to the world in the City of God. We must glance at its conception, both on its positive side and also in its opposition to the existing order of the so-called secular world.
Augustine, as philosophical theologian and as sinner saved by grace, is also, in presence of the Catholic Church, with its world-wide organisation, with its episcopal and sacerdotal rulers, and with its sacraments, made the means of spiritual life to those who faithfully partake of them. 2 There were here the beginnings of a great Christian imperialism, the developments of which the idealism of Augustine did much to promote, and which grew by natural, and in the circumstances perhaps inevitable, processes till it became the papal empire of the Middle Ages. In the Church, Augustine found empirically the presence of God, the consciousness, in a time of surrounding decay, of abounding youth and strength, the sense of spiritual and intellectual security. Its influence was about him in the
1 Verax autera mediator quern secreta tua misericordia demonstrasti humilibus, et misisti ut ejus exemplo etiam ipsam discerent humilitatem, “ Confessions, x. 68.
2 The difficulties and inconsistencies of Augustine’s view of the sacraments in connexion with his doctrine of absolute predestination must not detain us here. The solution that the predestinating purpose of God is carried out by means of the Church and the sacraments is never given by Augustine. See Harnack, History of Dogma (Eng. trans.) v. 166, 167. tenderest and most sacred memories of his childhood, which haunted him during years of intellectual perplexity and moral strife. When tossed about in the storms of doubt and temptation through which he passed, it was the authority of the Church, uttered in the wise and gracious teaching of Ambrose, which first became to him the haven of intellectual rest. 1 To the end of his life he found assurance in the external attestation of the truth offered by the Church.
Thus, as Harnack says, “ Augustine first transformed the authority of the Church into a factor in religion.” 2 This conception and influence of authority as the safeguard of the truth and the guide of men, must in itself have tended to strengthen and develop the tendency to regard God primarily under the aspect of sovereignty. But a mind like Augustine’s could not leave the matter thus. The Catholic and authoritative Church, in itself part of the changing order of time, must be set in relation with the changeless order of eternity must indeed be seen as the temporal expression of that eternal and spiritual order. The conception of the “ Civitas Dei,” on its positive side, fulfils this requirement. There is an eternal city, Divine in its origin, heavenly in its nature, in which God is supreme and perfectly manifested, in which perfect spirits find eternal blessedness as citizens in humility and service. This eternal order is, so to speak, projected into time, is never absent from the world, is slowly and partially manifested through Old Testament history, and is completely revealed in the Christian Church.
History, from the creation of Adam, is the story of its development under Divine guidance by processes of selection, choosing one and leaving another, and in manifold strife with the powers of darkness. The City of God is the eternal order and fellowship of spiritual life, which manifests itself progressively in the Church on earth. That Church is at once the result and manifestation of, as also the preparation for, the eternal and heavenly state.
1 “Ex hoctamen quoque jam prseponens doctrinam catholicam, modestius ibi minimeque fallaciter sentiebam juberi ut crederetur quod non demonstrabatur,” Confessions, vi. 7. See this book generally.
2 Harnack, History of Dogma (Eng. trans.), v. 77. But Augustine sets this eternal City of God in contrast with the city of the world. This is his historical apologetic for Christianity. For him the City of God, and the city of the world represented by and embodied in imperial Eome, were face to face and contending for mastery. The Church was grow ing; the empire was crumbling, and the barbarians threatened the very existence of the city of Eome.
Whence and wherefore this downfall? Augustine explained it as the judgment of God, called down not only by existing superstitions and iniquities and by historic crimes, but, above all, by the essential principle of which these evils were the symptoms. Just as the eternal City of God realised the true spirit of humility and service, so Augustine found that imperial Eome was the earthly manifestation of the opposite principle of self-seeking, with its pride, super stition, and self-indulgence. It was as the embodiment of the spirit, by which angels had fallen, that Eome was doomed. And, as it sank to ruin, the City of God would appear, triumphant because inspired by humility, realising the victory of God’s order over the disorder of earth. Herein was wrought out the view, so influential at least over the monastic ideals of the Middle Ages, of the worthlessness of the visible order, and of the necessary warfare between the sacred and the secular. 1 The elements which went to the production of this grand imagery of the “ City of God “ were primarily Augus tine’s conception of the sovereignty of God, as the reality of which the Eoman emperor was the shadow; 2 his sense of the catholic fellowship in heaven and earth, which makes the true subjects of God a community, invested with the privi leges of Divine and heavenly citizenship; and, finally, the resemblance between the influence of the heavenly city throughout the universe indeed, but here below by means of the Churches throughout all the world, and that of the
1 Of course such a view cannot be consistently carried out even in thought, much less in practice. And therefore there are glimpses of another view in Augustine. See Harnack, History of Dogma (Eng. trans.), v. 92, 93.
2 We shall see, later on, how Dante spoke of “the Emperor of the Universe.” imperial city of the Seven Hills, which yet encircled and ruled the earth. The conception was suggested, shaped, and coloured by the scriptural account of the earthly Jerusalem, the ancient city of God, which was consummated in the Christian Church by St. Paul’s teaching as to the “ Jerusalem that is above, which is free, and is our mother” (Galatians 4:26), and by the apocalyptic vision of the New Jerusalem.
Augustine’s conception took hold upon the imagination of subsequent ages. And while it conveyed the notion of the brotherhood and fellowship of the saints, as manifested in the graduated order of a political community, still more did it tend to foster an imperial conception of God’s relation ship to men, and a political conception of the prerogatives and functions of the Church on earth. And these last two acted and reacted on one another, although they naturally alternated, the sense of the dread sovereignty of God and the belief of the delegated sovereignty of the Church, each, from time to time, in men’s minds throwing the other into the shade. In considering this, strictly speaking, political conception of the relationship of God to men, His position as Judge must not be left out of account. Thus, at every point of Augustine’s theology, the influential factors of it went to substitute for the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God a doctrine of His sovereignty, modelled upon the vision of Isaiah 6:1-13.
4. A subsidiary, but most important, theological in fluence in the same direction must be noticed. It consists in Augustine’s doctrine of the holy Trinity, with its results.
Augustine set himself to remove the last possibility of falling into any doctrine of subordinationism as to the relations of the Son and the Holy Spirit to the Father in the holy Trinity. In emphasising the absolute equality of the three Divine Persons in the Godhead, he asserted the triunity of all the Divine actions, without preserving any ceconomical distinctions in that triunity. All things were created by the holy Trinity; it was the holy Trinity, and not specially the Father, who sent Christ into the world. Even the three men who appeared to Abraham were the three Persons in the holy Trinity. 1
Thus Augustine takes pains to insist that the relations of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are entirely immanent in the Godhead Himself. They do not apply to the external manifestation of God in action, which is one.
Hence there were two results. Firstly, Fatherhood is no longer the clue to the actions of the Father, in the Son, and by the Spirit. It is true that from time to time Augustine speaks of God as Father, especially where passages of the New Testament force him to do so. 2 But the thought is inoperative in his theology. The triune action grows out of a sovereign and not a fatherly relationship. And, secondly, the significance for the world and for mankind of the Son, as the Logos constituting the nature of the humanity He was Himself to assume, is gone. The Sonship of our Lord in the holy Trinity declares no truth as to the sonship of men in and through Him.
Nay more, it does not even suffice to make His own eternal Sonship the guide to an interpretation of the incar nation of the Son of God and of His incarnate life. The life of the incarnate Christ is understood practically without reference to the eternal relationship of the Son in the holy Trinity. It is not even explained by the relationship of Sonship at all. Both the Incarnation and the incarnate life are seen simply as a continuous act of humility, condescending to manhood, to service, and to suffering, and not in the light of the life of sonship, with its obedience and trust.
Thus when Christ was no longer seen, above all else, to be the incarnate Son, casting by His Sonship a twofold light, revealing the Fatherhood of God and the sonship potential or realised of men, the conditions were complete for the substi- 1 See for this whole doctrine, especially Augustine, DC Trinitatc, i. 7, ii.
18, v. 2, ix.; Encheiridion, ix.
2 See, e.g, Confessions, viii. 6, ix. 9, x. 46. Once and again, however, passages occur where Fatherhood receives a fuller recognition. For example, Confessions, x. 6: “Parvulus sum sed vivit semper Pater meus, et idoneus est mihi tutor meus; idem ipse est enim qui genuit me et tuetur me: et tu ipse es omnia bona ruea, tu omnipotens qui meum es, et prius quam tecum sim.” tution in theology of the Divine sovereignty, with all its consequences, for the Fatherhood of God.
5. One influence alone could have checked thistransformation the influence of Augustine’s own personal religion. But just here its peculiarities had the opposite effect, and accelerated, instead of hindering, the change. To begin with, the experience of his intellectual and moral struggles, and his deliverance by God Himself, made him profoundly conscious of salvation as redemption from the power of evil. This peculiarly intense experience, together with the depth of his religious feeling, sent him above all to the Psalms, which give ideal expression to the consciousness of redemptive deliverance. And from them, as we have seen, 1 the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God is absent, while His sovereignty is magnified as the object both of worship and trust. Again, Augustine’s experience made him a close student of St. Paul, and led him to fasten upon just those portions of St. Paul’s theology which are commonly called forensic, and which create superficial though, as we have seen, 2 only superficial difficulties as to the supremacy and universality of the Fatherhood of God. Where these were above all seized upon, it was natural to treat the sovereignty, which is obvious, without regard to the Fatherhood, which is latent.
And, finally, Augustine never attained to that assurance of personal and permanent standing with God which is the mark of evangelical religion in the New Testament and since the Keformation. He is unresting in the quest of God; he is visited by the grace and love of God, and his heart responds with joy and love. But he neither asks nor obtains the filial assurance of present, full, and final acceptance with God.
Space prevents us from discussing the explanation: the fact remains. It is true, not only of Augustine, but of almost all mediaeval piety. It is both cause and effect of the disappearance from thought of the Fatherhood of God in Christ, with the gracious tenderness of Him who loves us with an everlasting love, and satisfies us with the assurance of His salvation.
1 Chapter IV. 2 Chapter III.
SECOND SECTION. THE MEDIAEVAL DOCTRINE OF Dl’T ~IXE SO VEREIGNTY With the theology of Augustine the Fatherhood of God had, as we have seen, passed entirely out of sight. It had been replaced by the conception of His sovereignty. This conception of His relationship to mankind ruled the theology of the Middle Ages.
It is true that, for the most part, the Divine sovereignty was not set forth with the rigour of Augustine, but, tempered by the conditionalism of the Eoman Church, with its vast machinery of means of grace. It had been so qualified even by Augustine, though the absolutism of His doctrine of God and the conditionalism of his Catholicism were, because incom patible, in only external connexion with one another. The Church found both his doctrine of the will of God and his doctrine of the utter ruin and helplessness of human nature impracticable as a working theory of human life ecclesiastically conditioned. Not till Calvin was it possible to adopt them without limitations, and to make them the foundation of theology and of Church life. Yet for the thousand years after Augustine, during which ecclesiastical politics were the supreme influence over the Christian world, the sovereignty of God was the only existing conception of His relationship to mankind. Indeed, while the development of the ecclesiasticopolitical system of the Church in some respects softened the sovereignty, and in others elaborated contrivances for screening men from it, yet it only confirmed the inability of theologians to conceive of any other relationship as existing, either instead of or alongside of, much less as supreme over, this Divine sovereignty.
We must proceed, therefore, to trace the influences throughout the Middle Ages which contributed both to strengthen the hold and to modify the expression of the doctrine of the sovereignty of God in Christian theology. Our survey may be brief, because it is almost entirely limited to the consideration of the view taken of this highest relation ship; because, also, it is only necessary to review the teaching of those few representative men who have summed up the characteristic teaching of their own times, and by so doing have been in the main current of Christian thought. We must consider, in order, how the conception of the sovereignty of God is affected or expressed by Christian politics and law, by scholastic philosophy, by practical piety, and by the poetry of Dante.
1. THE INFLUENCE OF POLITICS AND LAW
During the Middle Ages the outstanding characteristic is the development of authority, and particularly of the authority of the Church. A wonderful chain of causes contributed to the development and ascendency of the papal power in the Middle Ages. The history and its explanation lie beyond the scope of our present inquiry. A few words necessary to the understanding of our subject must suffice. The religious ideal which in spired and guided the movement was supplied by Augustine’s De Civitate Dei. The opportunity was provided by the withdrawal of the Eoman emperors to Constantinople. In the absence of the emperor, the most influential personality in the West was the Bishop of Eome. Henceforth the chair of Peter instead of the throne of Caesar was invested with the splendid and undying prestige of the imperial city. And this was growingly the case, as the sceptre was borne by ever feebler hands, and as such energies as were left to the emperors were more severely taxed by the growing perils of the East. The subsequent fiction of the Donatio Constantini the alleged cession by Constantino to the Eoman bishop of supreme authority in the West if a literal falsehood, represented a historical truth. And the occasion waspresented by the break-up of the old Eoman world; by the birth of the newly settled nationalities, and by the movements for their evangelisation. The call of God to convert and civilise barbarian Europe was heard, and a strong authority was necessary to influence and control the mind and morals of those who united the intellect of children with more than the passions of men. The result brought about was the combined effect of Christian truth and of advantageous civilisation. But these were welded together under the influence of Eome, and were made omnipotent by the awe which the great city never ceased to inspire even over those who had overthrown her material power.
Thus Catholic succeeded imperial Eome. The downfall of the empire, with its citizenship among all peoples, was followed by the rise of the Church, which transcended national particularism by the citizenship of catholic and spiritual fellowship. The predominant note of the Church became that of authority, held to be apostolic. And the development of that authority not only brought the priest face to face with each individual man, but from a mere primacy of influence built up a supremacy for the Bishop of Eome over all other bishops, and eventually made the Hildebrandine papacy a power before which kings, even the proudest, quailed. But the new-making of the European world, under the influence alike of the empire and of the Church of Eome, eventually raised the civil problem, and in a peculiar form. With the rise of national life in new vigour the necessity and the worth of the secular order of things once more asserted itself. It could neither be ignored nor despised. Augustine’s view suited an age of decay and downfall, but not one of renascent life and of social reconstruction. Neither the reality, the worth, nor the sanctity of the natural and political order would be denied. And the catholicity of the Church created a demand for internationalism in politics also, for a central point of unity in civil government, to counteract the centrifugal tendencies of the new nationalities. The traditions of ancient Eome, the reality of papal Eome, created a conviction not only that such a political unity was possible, but that it was normal. Hence the spirit of imperial Eome, still hovering over the world, the experience of Catholic Eome, and the uprising of national and international interests created an opportunity, and with the opportunity came the man, in Charlemagne. The foundation of the holy Eoman Empire, in A.D. 800, when Charles was crowned in Eome by the pope, was the result. As the pope was supreme over bishops, so henceforth, in theory, was the emperor to be supreme over kings. As the pope was the centre of unity for the whole world in things spiritual, so henceforth was the emperor to be in things temporal. Thus in later times Louis iv. proclaimed that he “ was guardian of the human race, of the Christian world; chosen by God to preside over the city and the world.” 1
It matters not for us that the ideal was never realised that the practical impotence of the empire justified the modern sarcasm that it was neither holy, nor Eoman, nor an empire. We are in the realm of ideals which lived in and for the faith of those who held them. And the men of the Middle Ages could as little do without the ideal as they could brook the reality. Such an institution might have had the utmost concrete reality, and yet have had little influence for thought or faith. The reverse is the truth. The existence of the empire was spiritual; it lived by faith, and therefore coloured the whole thought of men.
And, above all, the empire coloured religious thought; for it must needs be conceived as an ordinance of God, created for the well-being of secular, as the papacy for that of spiritual, life. The Divine sovereignty had its spiritual representative in the pope, its secular representative in the emperor. Thus the Archbishop of Mentz declared to the Emperor Conrad IL, “Thou hast reached the height of dignity; thou art the Vicar of Christ.” 2 The relations of these two Vicars of Christ were the subject of the most passionate controversy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Did the emperor hold his authority direct from God, or was it delegated to him by the pope?
We are not concerned with the course or with the political and ecclesiastical results of the dispute. But the discussion produced at the beginning of the fourteenth century the celebrated treatise of Dante, De Monarckia, in which he gave his political philosophy to the world.
1 “Gentis humanae, orbis Christian! custos, urbi et orbi a Deo electus praeesse,” Pfeffinger, Vitriarius illustratus, quoted by Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, 7th edition, p. 111.
2 “Ad summum dignitatis pervenisti; Vicarius es Christi,” Wippo, Vita Chuonradi (apud Pertz), c. 3, quoted by Bryce, Holy Eoman Empire, 7th edition, p. 110. To begin with: Dante establishes the necessity of a universal monarchy. He points out that the human race, as a community, is both a whole in regard to particular kingdoms and races which are its parts, and a part in regard to the whole universe. “ As, therefore, the subordinate parts of the human community answer well to it, so in its turn it is said to answer to its whole. Its parts answer well to it by means of one principle only, as can easily be gathered from what has been already said; therefore, also, it simply answers well to its universe, or to the Euler of it, who is God and Monarch, by means of one principle only, that is, one Euler (per unum principium tantum, scilicet unicum Principem). From which it follows that monarchy is necessary to the well-being of the world.” l It is the purpose of God that all things should resemble Him, so far as their nature is capable of so doing. And this is especially true of man, who was made after the “ image and likeness “ of God. “ Therefore the human race is constituted well, and in the best way, when it resembles God according to its power. But the human race resembles God in the highest degree when it is in the highest degree one; for the true reason of the one is in Him alone. On account of which it was written: Hear, Israel, the Lord thy God is one! “ 2 And the greatest measure of unity can only be secured among men by subjection to one ruler. It is needless to pursue the details of the argument, but the conclusion is that “ existence, unity, and goodness “ are bound up together in that order, that the more existence the more unity, the more unity the more goodness, and that the monarchy secures the maximum of all three. 3 The second Book furnishes a historical proof that the universal monarch can be none other than the Eoman emperor. The conquest by Eome of the whole world, and its reduction to unity under the empire, was the ordering of Divine Providence. To secure unity by conquest was, as Dante admits, a second-best method, but it was the only one available, where the world was divided into hostile parts. And the highest mark of God’s ordination and good pleasure is to be found in the fact that Christ was born when 1 DC Monarckia, i. 7. “ Ibid. i. 8. 3 Ibid. i. 15.
Augustus reigned as the first emperor, and that then the whole world was at peace. The third Book treats of the relations of the monarchy, as represented by the Koman emperor, to the papacy. Dante seeks to establish the conclusion that each stands in direct relationship to God, and that therefore the authority of each is distinct from and parallel to that of the other; the empire being charged with the temporal interests of mankind, the Church with the concerns of their eternal salvation. He uses the curious arguments of the Middle Ages in support of this contention; e.g. the bearing of the analogies of the sun and the moon, Levi and Judah, the two swords of Luke 22:38, are discussed. But, above all, he claims that the empire existed prior to the papacy, and therefore he argues that “ if the Church should possess the power of granting authority to the Eoman emperor, it must either have it from God, or from itself, or from some emperor, or from the universal assent of men, or at least of those of them who are paramount.” l And not one of these suppositions is correct. His final conclusion is that “ it is manifest that the authority of the temporal monarch, without any mediation, descends to him from the fount of universal authority; which fount indeed, united in the citadel of its own simplicity, flows into manifold channels out of the abundance of its goodness.” 2 The emperor, or monarch of the world, stands in immediate relations to the Euler of the Universe, who is God. 3
How deeply Dante mourned the papal aggression which destroyed the true independence of the empire is shown by his reference to it in the Divina Commedia.
1 “ Amplius, si Ecclesia virtutem haberet auctorizandi Romanum Principeni, aut haberet a Deo, aut a se, aut ab Imperatore aliquo ant ab universe mortalium adsensu, vel saltern exillis prrevalentium,” De Monarchia, iii. 14.
2 “ Sic ergo patet, quod auctoritas temporalis monarches sine ullo medio in ipsum defonte universalis auctoritatis descendit. Qui quidem fons, in arce sure simplicitatis unitus, in multiplices alveos influit exabundantia bonitatis,” De Monarchia, iii. 16.
3 “Ostensive probandum est, Imperatoremsive Mundi Monarcbam, immediate se habere adPrincipem universi, qui Deus est,” De Monarchia, iii. 16.
“ Rome,” he says, “ that turn d it unto good, Was wont to boast two suns, whose several beams Cast light on either way, the world’s and God s.
One since hath quench d the other; and the sword Is grafted on the crook; and so conjoin d, Each must perforce decline to worse, unawed By fear of other. If thou doubt me, mark The blade: each herb is judged of by its seed.” l It is clear, from all this, how powerful was the mutual influence of the theological and the political conception.
Authority on earth was fortified, because held to be the earthly vicegerent of the sovereignty of heaven. But, on the other hand, the prevalence of the imperial analogies reacted upon the conception of the relationship of God to men. It mat tered not, in this respect, in which way the dispute between the pope and the emperor was decided. The discussion brought into the foreground the conception of civil rule, by the might of will, expressed in law, and executed if necessary by force, even though that rule were held by the authorisation of the pope. The association with the Roman empire, and the belief that that empire was an ordinance of God prior to the existence of the Church, strengthened this impression. The imperial conception of earthly government, viewed as the secular expression of Divine authority, therefore led naturally, as the quotations from Dante have shown, to an imperial conception of the relationship of God to mankind. Thus it followed that Dante spoke of God as “ the Emperor of the Universe “; 2 and that, long after the ideal of the earthly emperor had paled away, that of the heavenly Emperor remained supreme.
1 “ Soleva Roma, che l buon mondo feo, Duo Soli aver, che 1 ima e 1 altra strada Facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo.
Lun1 altro ha spento, ed e giunta la spada Col pastorale: e Tun coll altro insieme Per viva forza mal convien che vada; Perocche giunti, 1 im1 altro non teme.
Se non mi credi, pon mente alia spiga, Ch ogni erba si conosceperlo seme.”
II Purgatorio, Canto xvi. The quotations of Dante given throughout in the text are from Gary’s translation.
2 Convito. See also the general conception of the Divina Commedia. And to this political influence must be added the effect of the legal spirit, which was characteristic of Eoman religion.
It had been so from the earliest times, as we have seen.
Latin theology had interpreted the relations of God to men and the work of salvation in terms of law, had turned the creed into law imposed by authority, while Latin religion over awed the conscience of those it influenced by reminding them of the Divine Judge. Throughout the period of moral decay which marked the fall of the empire, and of the rudimentary moral instruction of the new races rising to national life under the training of the Church, that insistence, if one-sided, was natural, and to a certain extent salutary. It left its mark, however, upon formal theology. And to this generally legal conception of the relationship of God to men was added in the Middle Ages the effect produced by the development of ecclesiastical law. When the Eoman law, upheld by the Eoman authority, failed owing to the break-up of the empire, and special caste laws took its place, the only semblance of a central authority and of a common law for Europe was supplied by the Church, whose overwhelming influence enabled the popes to some extent to fill the gap by their decisions on matters affecting the Church; and even beyond, for there are many points of contact between decisions as to moral law and administration in the interests of social order. The revival of legal studies and of the influence of Eoman law as codified by Justinian at the University of Bologna in the twelfth century, exercised an immense effect upon the Church. As civil law became once more systematic, and the conception of a universal law was revived, the law of the Church must follow suit. Hence the development of Canon Law in the thirteenth century under the auspices of Gregory ix. and by the efforts of Gratian, modelled after the pattern of the Corpus Juris Civilis. Thus the study of law passed into the life of the Church, and to be a leading ecclesiastic was above all to be a jurist.
Once more, the Church was armed for advance. The Christian nations united to fill the ranks of the great military orders for the protection of Christendom against the unbelievers. And in the spiritual sphere the great monastic orders, composed of men who had no citizenship save of Jerusalem above and of papal Rome below, made the idea of the City of God to live for piety, as it does in the great hymn of Bernard of Clugny.
Thus the whole development of thought in Church and State developed the conception of the monarchy of God. The idea of His sovereignty might be weakened by its representation through earthly Vicars in Church and State, but it remained the only conception left of the relationship in which God stood to mankind. It became so external for ecclesiastical and popular religion, that for the majority the spiritual conditions out of which the Divine sovereignty grows and which it serves passed entirely out of mind and heart. But, though the grounds of its absoluteness passed out of sight and its spiritual meaning was ignored, the conception as such stood alone; its sufficiency unquestioned, its simplicity secured by its externality and lack of truly spiritual content.
2. SCHOLASTICISM From the eleventh to the fourteenth century is the period of scholasticism, that is, of the sustained effort after the philosophical apprehension of the dogmas of the Church. The fundamental difference between the typical School men and Augustine, by whose thought they were profoundly influenced, may be said to be as follows. Augustine, a man of philosophical mind, was moved to set forth Christianity as he apprehended it, in forms deeply coloured by philosophy.
But, throughout, his object was entirely religious and practical, not philosophical. The Schoolmen, however, while for the most part men of high Christian character, were moved by an entirely intellectual impulse. Their object was to furnish an intellectual interpretation of Christianity, as understood by the Church, in terms of the philosophy they were familiar with, and by the help of that philosophy both to solve any difficulties felt within the Church in regard to the faith, and to refute any objections that might be urged against it from without. The general problem of the Schoolmen was, given the doctrines of faith (that is, the dogmas of the Church received with unquestioning assent), how to interpret them to, to support them by, or even to base them upon, the reason.
There was no question as yet of a possible divergence between the two. For the earlier Schoolmen, the spheres of faith and reason were coextensive, and the deliverances of the one and of the other identical. The later Schoolmen restricted, indeed, both the range and the power of reason; but, within the limits marked out for it, reason was always a consenting voice to the faith; only the Nominalists, with the later and more ecclesiastical Schoolmen, took up an attitude opposed to reason. And they did so, not because its decisions contradicted those of faith, or because they started with a contempt for the power of human reason as creaturely, but because their doctrine of God destroyed His rationality, and, by conse quence, the rationality of the universe. Since reason had not planned, reason could not interpret the universe. With these reservations, the general intellectual outlook of the Schoolmen upon Christianity was the same. Ample room, however, was left for subordinate differences; as, for example, for the celebrated controversy between the Realists and Nominalists as to the nature of Universals; or for that concerning the relations of faith and reason, as represented by the Credo ut intelligam of Anselm, and the rejoinder, Intelligo ut credam, of Abelard. But there are two differences which, for our subject, are of greatest importance. The first is that between the earlier and later Schoolmen, that is to say, between those whose philosophy was moulded by Plato and those who followed Aristotle, rediscovered by the help of the Arab philosophers. For the former period Anselm is of moment to our inquiry; for the latter, Thomas Aquinas. The other difference is between those who sought the key to the universe in the reason of God, and those who found it in His will. This last tendency is represented by Duns Scotus and by the Nominalists. We must briefly consider the three types in connexion with these three names. Into further detail it is unnecessary for our purpose to go.
(1) The Earlier Schoolmen Anselm The philosophy of the earlier Schoolmen was Platonic, was above all that of the Timceus, coming to them, not direct, but through Augustine, Boethius, and the pseudo-Dionysius. From the Platonic doctrine of the Ideas came the scholastic Realism. Its greatest recommendation was the rational support it seemed to give to the doctrine of the holy Trinity. And the result of the apparent coincidence between the greatest fact of theology and the highest truth of philosophy was, naturally, a confident belief in the power of the reason and the fearless submission of the mysteries of the faith to its speculation and discussion. But it is obvious that while, in one direction, Platonic idealism, or scholastic realism, lends itself readily to the service of Christian theism, in another it exposes that theism to an almost fatal danger. It is easy not only to use Platonic idealism in defence of the doctrine of the Trinity, but also to treat the Godhead as the eternal home of the Ideas, and to supply them, from the Godhead, not only with the principle of existence, but also with that creative activity with which Plato had found it so difficult to endow them. And, further, while the doctrine of the Trinity was a protection against pantheism, and secured the transcendence of God, it was easy on Platonic grounds to give the fullest expression to His immanence in creation, and therefore to His supremacy over it.
But, equally, it was difficult to establish consistently any measure of independence for the creature, or any full meaning for personality in man. Mankind, each individual man, was threatened with theoretic absorption in God, with the loss of that basis of independent, if delegated and limited, personal existence which is necessary if the relations between God and men are to have religious worth, or, indeed, any real significance. The tendency, moreover, is in leaving God as the sole Being of the universe to substitute a doctrine of emanation for that of creation. The result, strictly speaking, is fatal equally to God’s sovereignty as to His Father hood; for sovereignty in any real sense must be spiritual and moral involves, therefore, a free, if finite, human personality face to face with God. But perhaps, under such conditions, the conception of sovereignty is more natural than that of Fatherhood, at least for Western minds, in the sense that the Absolute has supreme control over His own life, and its evolution or manifestations. That quasi-sovereignty will be the naturalistic supremacy of force, or the logical all-sufficiency of an abstract definition, according as abstract will or abstract reason is more influential in the thinker’s mind. This general result of the Platonic idealism is seen in the theology of John Scotus Erigena. From this danger Anselm was saved by the sincerity of his Trinitarianism, and by the Augustinian expression which he gave to it. But his safety was gained at the cost of in consistency, and of a total lack of continuity and coherence between the various parts of his theology as a whole. And the general effect of his theology is, after an internal oscillation, to arrive at error of a precisely opposite kind. The philosophical theism of Anselm is set forth in his Monologion and Proslogion, in which he endeavours by inde pendent speculation to establish the being, the attributes, and the personal distinctions of the Godhead, and, in addition \ His general relations to the universe. Each treatise contains its own form of the ontological argument for which Anselm is celebrated; of the general position, namely, that the thought of God involves His existence. The main argument of the Proslogion is that the existence of God is given in the thought of Him as supreme perfection. For if He did not exist, another being might be conceived adding to all theperfections of the imaginary being that of existence. But, by hypothesis, God is supreme perfection. Thus it must be impossible to imagine a more perfect being. And therefore His perfection must include His existence. 1 In the Monologion Anselm starts with the ideas of the Good and of the Existent. By a process of logical abstraction he arrives at the conclusion that God is the supreme Good and the highest Existence, united and immanent, as the ground of existence, in all that is. This Summum Bonum and Ens Entium is simple and eternal. 2 1 Proslogion, cap. ii. 2 Monologion, cap. i. ct seq.
Up to this point Anselm is fully exposed to the danger described above in its more logical form; that is, of finding the whole essence or meaning of the universe, intellectually conceived, in the immanent God as its intellectual ground.
He escapes, however, by means of the doctrine of the Trinity set forth in terms supplied by Augustine. The God whose existence and goodness have been arrived at as above, exists necessarily in Trinity as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The Father is Memory (Memoria), the Son is Intelligence or the Word (Intellectus, Verlum), the Holy Spirit is Love (Amor). It needs little demonstration to show that God, as the supreme personality, which is meant by infinite perfection, must have all three. He must have memory, that is, He must be self-conscious, and be the eternal storehouse of His own experiences; He must have intelligence and the power to express it; and He must have love. What is not so obvious is the personification of these psychological abstractions, and their identification at a bound with the three Persons of the Godhead revealed in the gospel.
Yet it is in this way that Anselm saves himself from a doctrine of emanation, and particularly by the stress which he lays upon the Divine Word. For the “ Word “ raises at once the thought of mind, and even more of will, uttering itself in revelation and in command. And the Word must be spoken to someone, and in respect of something. There forethe thought of creation resumes its place, the creative will becomes prominent, and the created universe becomes something in a measure external to God and related to Him through the Word, who created and ordered it in Love. Hence the immanence of God, given by the ontological argument, is thrown into the background by the externality and independence of a universe created by His Word, and the Divine sovereignty, by the Word and through the Spirit, occupies the foreground. The Fatherhood of God in regard to the universe of course is impossible, seeing that the Father is such only in relation to the Son; His Fatherhood, moreover, means little more than that Self -consciousness (Memoria) is the condition of Intelligence and of self-revealing Will (Intellectus, Verlum), while Love comes last, if not least, in the sacred Triad. This sovereignty supplies the starting-point for the Cur Deus Homo. But again we meet with a manifest and most striking change. To begin with: the psychological interpretation of the Persons of the holy Trinity has vanished, and the ordinary conception of independent personal rela tionship has taken its place. And, secondly, the philosophical aspect of God’s sovereignty has vanished, save for an occasional gleam, and has become entirely inoperative. In its place is a sovereignty, frankly based upon the analogies of mediaeval feudalism. The Incarnation and death of Christ are explained as a satisfactio to God, a restoration to Him of that of which He had been robbed by sin, with an added compensation for the insult offered to Him by sin. All is under stood by means of human law familiar to Anselm by means of a conception of the Divine Majesty which simply moulds the claims of God upon, and His procedure towards man upon, those of ordinary earthly sovereignty, though with an occa sional gleam of profounder truth, supplied by a haunting remembrance of Augustine. 1
Thus in the CUT Deus Homo the theology of Anselm ends at the opposite extreme from its beginning. His ontology only saved itself from destroying the conception of any universe capable of personal relations with God, by means of a precarious use of the doctrine of the holy Trinity. But, in the end, under the influence of human analogies, pressed too far, God, the Son, mankind, have become so external to and independent of one another, that there is no possibility of setting each in vital relations to the others; that the soteriology is not only, in the last resort, unspiritual, but also accidental; and that the unique majesty of the Divine sovereignty sinks to the level, by being set forth under the forms, of feudal monarchy.
(2) The Later or Aristotelian Schoolmen Thomas Aquinas A great transformation of scholastic thought was brought about by the discovery of Aristotle through the Arab philoso- 1 I refer to the doctrine of the necessary “ordering” of sin by God. See Cur Deus Homo, i. 12. phers Averrhoes (Ibn Easchid) and Avicenna (Ibn Sina) At first the association of the Greek philosopher with Moham medan teachers, their use of him in support of their own theological tenets, and the difference of tone between him and the Platonic philosophy, hitherto supreme, created a prejudice against Aristotle, and he was banned by the Church. But eventually the very process of controverting the Aristotelian Arabs led to a better understanding of their master, and to the perception of the service which he could render to the polemic and dogmatic interests of the Christian religion. At length Aristotle, in his turn, became the supreme philosophical influence over mediaeval thought, with the result that Augustine fell ever more and more into the background till the Reformation. Indeed the influence of Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of the Aristotelian Schoolmen, over all subsequent theological thought has involved the downfall of Platonism, not only in Eoman Catholic theology, but for the most part among Protestant dogmatists and writers on Christian evidences. The significant exception must be made, that all the Reformers before the Reformation and the greatest Reformers of the sixteenth century notably Luther and Calvin revolted against Aristotle, and fell back naturally upon Augustine as second only to the Holy Scriptures. In one very important respect, which had, as we shall see, decisive consequences for theological thought, Aristotle became an authority for the Schoolmen in a sense that Plato had never been. The earlier Schoolmen had no immediate knowledge of Plato. He influenced them through the writings of Augustine and of the pseudo-Dionysius, and, in a subsidiary way, through the doctrine of the relation of God to the world, and of eternity to time, reproduced from the Timceus in the De Consolatione Philosophic^ of Boethius.
Thus Plato never reached them independently, but only as he had been absorbed into previous Christian or semi-Christian thought. But Aristotle was in the end enabled to speak to the later Schoolmen direct, and thus to supply to them a philosophy of the universe entirely distinct from, if in essentialparticulars corroborative of, their Christian theology. The result became apparent in the teaching of Albertus Magnus, and yet more so in that of his greater disciple and successor, Thomas Aquinas, with whom alone, on account of his completely representative position, we need here concern ourselves.
We must consider changes introduced or perfected and made current by the doctrine of Aquinas, so far as they relate to our immediate subject. In the first place, Aquinas gave final expression, following Albertus Magnus in the matter, to the distinction, which has ever since been generally received, between natural and revealed theology. 1
Natural religion is the doctrine of God, His existence, attributes, and relations to the universe, which is attainable by reason, according to a logical proof, even without a Divine revelation. That there is such a natural theology, what is its scope, and what are its contents, the philosophy of Aristotle plainly shows. In short, natural theology, as the science of God that can be established without revelation, is simply the doctrine of God which has been so established by Aristotle. Of such truth men had a double warrant the warrant of reason, establishing its conclusions by its own independent processes; and, in addition, that of the revelation contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, interpreted by the dogmas of the Church. 2 But the peculiar historical facts of Christianity and its peculiar dogmas for example, those of the holy Trinity and the Incarnation were altogether beyond the range of human reason, though not contrary to it. Reason was under obligation to accept these from authority, on the ground ofrevela -
1 Sumtna contra Gentiles, i, Procemium, cap. iii. The plea may be urged that St. Paul originated the distinction between natural and revealed theology when he said that the “invisible things of God” were “clearly seen” by the Gentile world, “even His eternal power and Godhead” (Romans 1:20). But in reality this is not so. St. Paul treats this knowledge as a preparatory revelation.
He says, “ God manifested it unto them “ (Romans 1:19).
2 Summa contra Gentiles, i, Procemium, cap. iv. tion, and, having accepted them, could never become competent to prove them. 1
Yet here reason had ancillary functions those, namely, of scientific definition, of examining and refuting objections, and of discrediting counter- doctrines diverging from the authoritative dogmas. 2 As to natural religion, reason works parallel to revelation; as to revealed, within the sphere of and in subordination to revelation. In the second place, Aquinas gave final expression to the henceforth received Eoman doctrine of human nature in relation to the knowledge and service of God. From the beginning it had been taught that man’s know ledge of God had been obscured and his power to serve God weakened by sin. But different views as to the degree of this depravation had been held from the spiritually-grounded opti mism of Clement of Alexandria, not to mention the humanism of Pelagius, to the Augustinian doctrine of the total inability of the nature which had become “ a mass of perdition.”
But, by a strange irony, the ecclesiastical and intellectual revolt against the impracticable pessimism of Augustine resulted in placing man at a greater natural distance from God than in the doctrine of Augustine. Augustine, with noble inconsistency, had read the secret of universal human capacity in his own spiritual experience, and had cried, “ Thou madest us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.” No introduction of theological qualifications can modify the glorious universalism of a Divine need and capacity as the root-fact of human nature, even though ruined by the Fall. In Aquinas the extreme gloom of the Augustinian doc trine of total ruin has gone. But so also has the splendour of Augustine’s conception of the essential meaning and worth of human nature. The following doctrine has taken its place.
God is unspeakable and above human knowledge. 3 This 1 Summa contra Gentiles, i, Prooemium, cap. v. 2 Ibid. cap. ix.
“Per hoc ergo quod homini deDeo aliqua proponuntur, quse rationem excedunt, firmatur in homine opinio, quod Deus sit aliquid supra id quod cogitari potest,” Summa contra Gentiles, i, Procemium, cap. v. See also cap. iii. fundamental position is adopted from pseudo-Dionysius and the neo-Platonists. And man has lost by the Fall the super natural and superhuman grace which made him a supernatural being, capable of fellowship with God. His general powers have no doubt been weakened by sin, but the really important change has been the loss of the “ superadded gift “ (donum super additum), which before the Fall lifted man into the supernatural sphere and enabled him to have communion with God. This gift redemption restores by means of the sacraments of the Church. Without it man is a merely natural being, competent, though with diminished power, for secular ends, but without spiritual capacities. He is not, indeed, ruined throughout, but is limited to that originally earthly environment for which alone he is naturally fitted and in which he is naturally satisfied.
It is obvious how this affects the Fatherhood of God.
Sin, as destroying man’s fellowship with God, was, according to the earlier doctrine, a deadly disease, striking at the very heart of human nature. All that produced spiritual in capacity was a fatal defect of human nature, which in its true and inmost constitution could only be explained in terms of its capacity for God. But with Aquinas all this has been changed. Fellowship with God is not in the truest sense natural to man, but is supernatural. Man, though unequal and indifferent to the knowledge and service of God, is man according to his original and natural capacity. Human nature can be adequately defined and can actually exist with out Godward capabilities, which are “ superadded.” Such a doctrine is incompatible with the Fatherhood of God and with the originally filial constitution of mankind, for which a life of fellowship must be, strictly speaking, natural and not supernatural. 1 Aquinas not only ignores the Fatherhood and dispenses with it, as did Augustine; he destroys it. Man, in capable of God by nature without the “ superadded gift,” may be the work of a Divine Artificer, the effect of an Aristotelian First Cause, but is not either potentially or really the child of God; since capacity for fellowship, and therefore incom-
1 Natural must here, of course, be interpreted as according to the nature of man, and not according to the nature of things. pleteness and degradation without it, is of the essence of sonship. In the third place, in Aquinas the Aristotelian Realism modified the general doctrine of the relationship of God to the world. The Schoolmen distinguished between universalia anterem, universalia in re, and universalia post rem; in other words, between the eternal ideals of things, their essence, and the generalisations as to them formed by the processes of definition and classification. Christian Platonism had, of course, laid the whole stress upon the first. Aquinas, following Aristotle, emphasised the second.
We have seen that Christian Platonism had had diffi culty from its standpoint in safeguarding individuality. The universalia anterem subsisted in God and drew from Him their creative power, which became the basis of external and creaturely reality. There was danger, therefore, of making God the only existence in the universe. But directly the centre was shifted to the universalia in re, or the doctrine of creaturely essence, the danger of the absorption of the finite in God was done away by setting up its externality to Him, and to some extent its independence. Things carry the secret of their being within them, and, though that being comes from God, His immanence is expressly done away with.
Aquinas lays down that God is in things not as form is in body or as a sailor is in a ship, but as a cause is in its effect. 1
Thus the externality and quasi-independence of things and persons is the starting-point with Aquinas, and the doc trine of God becomes for him that of the First and Sufficient Cause. The category of causality, indeed, becomes the key stone of theology. Aquinas brushes away the ontological argument of Anselm and goes on to establish the existence of God a posteriori, as the explanation of the world. Thus in the book “ De Deo,” having dismissed the ontological argument, he goes on to demonstrate in Aristotelian fashion that
1 “ Non sic est in rebus quasi aliquid rei, sed sicut rei causa, qure nullo modo suo effectui deest. Non enirn similiter esse dicimus formam in corpore et nautam in navi,” Summa contra Gentiles, i, De Deo, cap. 26. the movement of the world demands a Prime-mover, Himself unmoved; that the world as effect can only be explained by a First Cause; that, moreover, there being manifestly degrees of truth and existence, the highest must be God; that there being one order throughout the universe, there must be one Governor over the whole. 1
Having thus obtained his First Cause, conceived with Aristotle as actus purus, Aquinas proceeds to endow Him with those attributes which are necessary to explain the particular effect manifest in the universe and in man. God is one, personal, spiritual, and so forth; He possesses supremely goodness, truth, will, intelligence, love, and other spiritual and moral attributes. 2 This First Cause, in whom, according to the Christian revelation, love is supreme, produces a world of effects which are at once distinct from Him and yet like Him. They are distinct from God, because He is one and they are diverse; because, also, the cause must not be confused with the effect.
They are like Him, because the effect resembles its cause, and in a sense the cause is in the effect. 3 Thus Aquinas sets up a world as the outward effect of God, that world being crowned, apart from the angels, in man.
How, then, does God deal with men? He governs them by law; He uplifts them by grace, in order that they may fulfil law. 4 Thus, by the twofold action of law and grace, men are to reach the end marked out for them by God, namely, to know God, who is the supreme end of every intellectual substance. 5 Here, finally, the intellectualism of the Greeks, which Aquinas necessarily adopted, making the immediate intuition of God the highest end of the creature, conflicts with his doctrine of grace, which makes man naturally incapable of his true end, until raised to a higher level 1 Summa contra Gentiles, i, De Deo, cap. 13, “Rationes adprobandum Deum esse.”
2 Ibid. i. caps. 15-102. See also Summa Theologicc, Qusestio Prima.
3 Ibid. i. cap. 29.
4 Ibid. iii. caps. 111-163. See also Summa Theologies, Prinia Secundse, Qurestiones 90-114.
5 Hid. iii. cap. 25. by what is strictly the mechanical and accidental action of grace. Indeed, both in relation to law and grace, the over emphasis on God as Cause is apparent. Law is the external imposition of the commands of supreme will upon independent, and possibly refractory, natures with no sufficient answer to that law in their original spiritual constitution. 1 Grace is power, mechanical rather than vital, external and so acci dental; the last manifestation of God as supreme Cause, which shows its supremacy and its externality in nothing more conclusively than this, that by a last forth-putting of power God raises man above himself.
Every line of the theology of Aquinas has therefore gone, not only to make the Divine sovereignty the only conceivable relationship between God and man, but also to externalise and harden it. The emphasis on causality; the discovery of God, not first in the deliverances of human thought and consciousness where Augustine and Anselm found Him, but in the communicated movement of the universe; the destruction, by theory, of the power of human nature to find the presence of God given in and with itself; the use of causality, law, and grace, to set up a bridge between the otherwise severed natures of God and man, all these elements, so opposed to the more spiritual if less articulated theology of the past, have diminished the religious significance of the theology, and have impoverished the spiritual content of the relationship between God and man.
Substantially, the doctrine of Aquinas has held its ground ever since, not only in the official Eoman theology, but in what may be termed moderate Protestant dogmatics and Christian evidences, though it has been shaken off whenever religious fervour or spiritual idealism have arisen to claim their due.
(3) Duns Scotus The Nominalists As we have seen, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas limited the power of human reason, but they did not doubt the rationality of that which lay beyond its range. Reason 1 As natural beings, effects of the First Cause, their nature is on a lower plane than that of the Divine law. was the key of all things, though the reason of God and not of men. In other words, the nature of God was the ground of His action, and therefore the explanation of the nature of things. The universe had a necessary nature stamped upon it, because, as effect, it resembled the nature of its cause. And reason was on firm ground in seeking to know that nature, and in treating it as truth, although perfectly to reach and grasp it was beyond the power of the creaturely and finite. But Duns Scotus took an altogether different view. For him the will of God is the only explanation of the existence, nature, and history of the universe. God, as supreme Will, proposed to Himself certain ends. But, had He willed otherwise, both ends and means, or either of them, might have been altogether different. No reason can be sought beyond the will of God for His action. In particular, there is no recourse to the essential perfection of His nature, for this would limit the freedom of His will. The creation and the government of the world is the supreme example of the arbitrary “ Sic volo, sic jubeo; sitproratione voluntas.”
Hence the power of reason to interpret the world is gone; not because of any inherent imperfection in human reason, as such, but because reason, Divine equally with human, does not contain the secret of the purposes and acts of God. With the emphasis on the will of God passes away all reference to His nature. With the supersession of His nature, in order to exalt the absoluteness of His will, goes the destruction of all true rationality in the nature of things themselves. With the destruction of rationality in the universe goes the dethronement of reason in man. If he is to know how and what things are, he must simply be told. If an arbitrary will in the creature is not to set up its caprices in rebellion against the arbitrary but supreme will of the Creator, it must be schooled in submission and unquestioning obedience. The same general view was taken by the Nominalists, accentuated in their case by the fact that they swept away the Aristotelian doctrine of Essence, alike the Platonic universalia anterem and the Aristotelian universalia in re, and contended that the properties of things as enumerated in definitions were simply conceptual and derived from experience.
Hence the exaggeration by both Scotists and the later Nominalists of ecclesiastical authority. All knowledge of God, of man, or of the universe, being simply acquaintance with the fact of how God has happened to will, only the Church, as entrusted with the secret by God, can disclose it.
All the duties of godliness and morality being created by the bare acts of the Divine will, all that is required nay, all that can be given is a sufficient authority to announce what they are. Finally, the subjugation of the will being the whole meaning of religion, the more nakedly authoritative the ecclesiastical authority the more entirely it corresponds to and represents the will of God in heaven, and secures the ends of true religion on earth. At such a price was the needed protest made against the reign of theological abstractions, and against the too intellectual explanation of religion, which prevailed during the Scholastic period. The personality, the will, and the authority of God were now emphasised but by the sacrifice of His spiritual glory. The absoluteness of His sovereignty was declared, while the deep and living grounds of that absoluteness were destroyed. Faith had its issue no longer in understanding, but in servility; and an authority which reigned in heaven by the negation of reason was represented on earth by an authority which outraged the spiritual life, and secured by tyranny the ends of a priestcraft which grew the more exacting in proportion as it was accompanied by entire intellectual unbelief and utter worthlessness of moral life. Such was the spiritual judgment which fell on those who dethroned eternal truth in God and reason in religion.
3. THE THEOLOGY OF MEDIEVAL PIETY But there were many saints and many movements of deeply contemplative or of practical piety during the Middle Ages. What was the effect of these upon general theology?
How far and in what way did the experience and the aspirations of their piety transform the theological conceptions of these saintly men themselves? The general answer to the first question is, that these men and movements produced little or no purely theological result, partly because they never attained to preponderant influence, and partly because they never produced a personality who, to the ardours of spiritual aspiration and the tendencies of religious devotion, added the intellectual capacity of a great constructive theologian. This latter fact supplies, in part, the answer to the second question. But, in addition, mediaeval piety took, as we shall see, special forms, which in each typeprevented it from transforming the current doctrine of the relationship of God to men. A brief notice of several of the leading representatives of mediaeval piety will suffice to make this clear. In few saints of the Middle Ages is a deeper or a tenderer piety manifest than in Bernard of Clairvaux. Those who know him only by the hymn, “Jesus, the very thought of Thee,” 1 may be surprised to find that he was a great ecclesiastical statesman, the adviser of popes, a force in all political discussions which affected the Church, a great administrator and reformer of monastic life. In addition to all this he was a theological writer and controversialist, the unsparing opponent, in especial, of the rationalism of Abelard.
But, intellectually, Bernard was neither original nor profound. Moreover, his tender devotion did not master the intellectual instrument, nor was there that union between the two which would have enabled a great spiritual personality to transform the tenderness of his devotion into adequate forms of theological thought. His devotion went out rather to the personal and humanly manifested Jesus than to God as revealed in Christ. The ardours of his heart went out in devotion and humble obedience to the Jesus whom he loved, and to whom, in relation to the Church and to the faithful member of it, he applied the imagery and the sacred 1 Jesu, dulcis memoria. passion, sublimated from the Song of Solomon, as Bernard understood it.
Hence the force of Bernard’s piety spent itself upon the human Jesus; his intellect simply adopted and expounded the current theology, though he brought to it an added graciousness and tenderness from that spirit of love which was more fully expressed elsewhere.
Thus Bernard in his tract on loving God, De diligendo Deo, written to Haimeric, a cardinal of the Church, makes no mention whatever of the Fatherhood of God revealed by Christ. He says, “ You wish, therefore, to hear from me wherefore and how God is to be loved; and I answer, The cause of loving is God Himself, the measure is to love Him without measure.” * He is to be loved for two reasons, because of His own perfections, and because of His benefits to men. The reasons for loving God and for the measure of that love are summed up in Chapter VI. He, being so great, has loved us so much, being, as we are, so insignificant and so sinful. He who loves us is immensity, eternity, is love passing knowledge, and so forth. The love which is returned to such an object must be in keeping with the object, and therefore without measure. But the devotion of Bernard finds characteristic expression.
“ I love Thee,” he exclaims, “ Lord my strength, my foundation, my refuge and my liberator, and my whatever else desirable and lovable can be said, my God, my helper, I will love Thee for Thy gift and according to my measure, which is less than what belongs to Thee, but not less than my power; who, although I cannot love Thee as much as I ought, cannot love Thee beyond my power.” 2
Again, Bernard expatiates on the bond of love; but he does so, not by means of the Fatherly and filial relationship of the New Testament, but by the Aristotelian doctrine of causes. “ I said above,” he declares, “ the cause of loving
1 De diligendo Deo, cap. i, “Vultis ergo a me audire, quare et quomodo diligendus est Deus? et ego: Causa diligendi Deum Deus est, modus, sine modo diligere.”
2 Ibid. cap. vi.
God is God Himself. I said the truth: for He is both the efficient and the final cause. He Himself gives the occasion of love, creates the affection of love, and consummates the desire of love.” 1
Bernard passes on to discuss the four grades of love, beginning with the carnal love with which a man loves himself, passing to the selfish love of God, thence to the love of God on His own account, for the sake of His perfection, and rising at last to that highest love in which a man no longer loves himself at all except on account of God. 2 But throughout no filial note is struck. The relationship in which the God of love stands to the loving heart is never expressed. He is immense, infinite, loving, perfect. His love is enhanced in that it is manifested towards frail and sinful creatures as their Helper and Kedeemer. He is the end of their being; but why, and in what relationship, we are never told.
We pass to Francis of Assisi. The note of his religion is his gladsomeness in God; his assured confidence in His love and providential care. He is the “Joculator Dei.” But his holy rapture is incommuni cable.
And, further, the faith of Francis is associated with his devotion to poverty, his joy in casting off the burdens and conventions of worldly civilisation, and returning to live as a child of nature dependent upon God, or rather on the human charity which God inspires. And Francis is in love with the Crucified, and seeks to imitate Him by exultantly embracing His cross, and especially in its most shameful and humiliating aspects. This he effects by self -abasing ministry to the most repulsive forms of human suffering and to the most unworthy of moral outcasts, in the ecstatic desire for fellowship with and conformity to the Servant Jesus, who finds life in utmost service and sacrifice. The spirit of this practical religion also was humanly incommunicable, though its outward forms might be stereo typed in a new fashion of monastic life. Thus there is nothing more disappointing than the practical result of the 1 De diligcndo Deo, cap. vii, 2 IMd. caps, viii.-x. life of Francis, save as an abiding, though inimitable, ideal. The earliest Franciscanism broke the heart of its founder.
How much more would this have happened could the ecstatic saint have looked into the future and seen the Franciscans, busied indeed with external ministry, but still more occupied with theological strife, the most subservient tools of papal aggression, and through their purely practical spirit supplying a constant succession of thinkers, from Duns Scotus to the later Nominalists, who, as we have seen, magnified the papal authority, because, by theory, they despaired of Divine truth, and because, in heart, they had lost that immediate consciousness of the God of love which had made Francis so supremely great. But there were the Mystics. A detailed account of these, and of their different types, according as intellectual, moral, or emotional characteristics predominated, is hereunnecessary. In the more intellectual phase, knowledge is the supreme ideal, and man finds his goal is passing from the mediate or reasoning stage to that immediate or intuitive vision of God in which the believing spirit is, as it has been said, “ all eye.” In the more moral types, union with God is the end desired. And the way by which this end is attained may be represented in two different ways. It may be the result of the spiritual activity of the finite spirit reaching out to the Infinite, which is conceived to be quiescent, and hence abstract, and in the end indeterminate. Or the activity may be conceived as on the part of God, who seeks out the finite spirit of man, which becomes capable of receiving Him only so far as its own individual activity is completely renounced. 1 The noblest expression of this latter spirit is in the aspiration, “ I would fain be to the eternal Goodness what His own hand is to a man.” c < But whether the end sought is to become “ all eye “ for seeing God, or “all hand” for serving Him, equally the suppression of the finite personality makes any doctrine of personal relationships between God and man theoretically impossible. The same is true if it is the personality of God 1 See Dorner, History of Protestant Theology, bk. i. sec. ii. chap. i.
2 Theologia Germanica, cap. x. (Miss Winkworth’s translation). which is destroyed. In the latter case, God becomes in the end the mere instrument of man, the object of an intuition, which grows in the emotional sense of blessedness according to its emptiness. In the former, man is either the inactive witness or the unresisting instrument of God, and, according as he is the one or the other, God will be described in terms of sovereignty or in those of majesty; though, in either case, without the fulness attaching to these terms, when religion is conceived as demanding for its realisation the fullest and freest personality both in God and man.
Once more, there were the Reformers before the Reformation. But in regard to our subject their influence is scarcely noteworthy. Much of their effort was devoted to the reformation of practical abuses rather than to the reformation of theological thought. The restoration of the authority of Scripture, as against the traditions of the Church, was an object common to them all. In the case of Wyclif, this effort was conjoined with a predominant concern for practical duty and social reconstruction. With Huss, there was, on the other hand, a tendency to sympathise with the mystical tendencies of his times. The distinguishing feature of John Wessel, nearer to the Reformation, was the thoroughness of his rediscovery of the truth of justification by faith. In all of them the authority of the Augustinian theology superseded the influence of the later scholasticism. All these efforts therefore tended in the direction not only of practical religion, but of a deepening of theological thought, and of the reassertion of the authority of Scripture over it. But none attained to the influence of a complete transformation of theology, in the light of the gospel, as objectively set forth and as subjectively experienced.
4. THE “DIVINA COMMEDIA” OF DANTE Our survey of medieval theology would be incomplete without some examination of Dante’s great poem, the Divina Commedia, which, as it is a storehouse of historical information respecting Italian history in the Middle Ages, is, above all, the noblest expression of medieval theology and religion at their best. Dante is marvellous, not merely as one whose purely poetical gift is almost unrivalled, but because he is, besides being poet, a politician, historian, philosopher, theologian; because, above all, he is so supremely poet, that his Divine gift transcends, appropriates, inspires, and welds into a harmonious whole all that he aims at as politician, records as historian, thinks as philosopher, or believes as theologian. In each province his genius unfailingly selects the noblest thought open to a man of his age, unifies the whole, and throws over it the splendour of a poetry which has not only magnificence of form, but has the prophetic power of giving highest utterance to the truest and deepest faith and aspiration of his times. Thus he justifies the ways of God to men, as the greatest poets must, by simply declaring them.
Evidence of the manifold culture of Dante is to be found on every page of his great poem. He is steeped in the theology of Augustine, familiar with the writings of Thomas Aquinas, deeply influenced by the Aristotelian philosophy. The political concern which gave birth, as we have already seen, to the De Monarchia, has stamped its peculiar impress upon his conception of the relationship of God to men.
Above all is his peculiar gift of reverential and ecstatic love, which shows itself not only in his unique devotion to Beatrice, but in his unfailing power to draw forth and to give full effect to those more spiritual elements of theology which, though never entirely banished, had long lain hid beneath a growing accumulation of metaphysical abstraction. The result is, that the Divina Commedia gives a view of the universe, especially of the relationship of God to mankind and of His dealings with men, the foundation of which is the spiritual philosophy of Augustine, modified at once by the political analogies of Dante’s own time, by the philosophy of Aristotle, and by the far-reaching consequences of securing a more effective primacy and a more far-reaching sway for the principle of Divine love. Divine love the heart of Augustine had indeed known to be supreme, but his intellect had practically overlaid it by the predominance of his doctrines of existence and cause, and therefore of the sovereign will of God. The following summary of the leading features of Dante’s theological teaching must suffice, illustrated by but a few of the many quotations by which each point could be illustrated.
1. In the first place, the universe, in its three divisions of paradise, purgatory, and hell, has been created, and is ruled by the infinite might of Him who is the “ Emperor of the Universe,” whose Godhead is celebrated throughout in terms of authority and power, and whose law, sustained by His power, is laid upon all creation from the highest to the lowest, insomuch that the souls in hell who transgress it are the striking witnesses to its inexorable reality. The creation of the universe by the holy Trinity, described in terms taken from Augustine, is set forth as the poet approaches the Inferno, and is true even of it “To rear me was the task of Power Divine, Supremest Wisdom, and Primeval Love.” x The sovereignty and almightiness of God are, once and again, given as the final explanation of what exists “So tis will d, Where will and power are one: ask thou no more.” 2 The Divine order which causes the universe to resemble God is impressed on all things “ Among themselves all things Have order; and from hence the form, which makes The universe resemble God.” 3
Even that which seems fortuitous, transferring advantages from one to another by mere caprice, is in reality ordained by God. Thus when Dante asks of Vergil 1 “Fecemi la Divina Potestate, La somma Sapienza, e l primo Am ore.” IS Inferno, Canto iii.
2 “ Caron, non ti crucciare, Vuolsi cosi cola dove si puote Song of Solomon 6 che si vuole, e piu non demandare.”
L Inferno, Canto iii, also Canto v.
“Le cose tutte quante Hann ordine tra loro: e questo e forma, Che 1 universo a Dio fa somigliante. “
II Paradiso, Canto i.
“ My guide! of thee this also would I learn; This Fortune, that thou speak st of, what it is, Whose talons grasp the blessings of the world.”
Vergil replies
“ O beings blind! what ignorance Besets you! Now my judgment hear and mark He, whose transcendent wisdom passes all, The heavens creating, gave them ruling powers To guide them; so that each part shines to each, Their light in equal distribution pour d. By similar appointment He ordained, Over the world’s bright images to rule, Superintendence of a guiding hand, And general Minister, which, at due time, May change the empty vantages of life From race to race, from one to other’s blood, Beyond prevention of man’s wisest care; Wherefore one nation rises into sway, Another languishes, e enas her will Decrees, from us concealed, as in the grass The serpent train, against her naught Avails your utmost wisdom. She with foresight plans, Judges, and carries on her reign, as theirs The other Powers divine.” 1
1 “Maestro, dissi lui, or mi di anche Questa Fortuna, di che tu mi tocche, Che e, che I ben del mondo ha si tra branche?
E quegli a me: creature sciocche, Quanta ignoranza e quella che v offende! Or vo che tu mia sentenza ne imbocche.
Colui lo cui saver tutto trascende, Feci li cieli, e die lor chi conduce Si ch ogni parte adogni parte splende, Distribuendo egualmente la luce, Similemente agli splendor mondani Ordin6 general ministra e duce, Che permutasse a tempo li ben vani Di gente in gente, e d uno in altro sanguine Oltre la difension desenni umani, Per ch una gente impera ed altra langue, Seguendo lo giudicio di costei, Ched e occulto, comin erba 1 angue, Vostro saver non ha contrasto a lei, Ella provvede, giudica, e persegue Suo regno, comeilloro gli altri Deo.”
L Inferno, Canto vii. This thought is taken from Augustine, as Gary shows by the quotation The declarations of the sovereignty of God are too numerous and uniform to need quotation. The Fatherhood of God is only mentioned once, and that in the paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer. And there it is important to note how entirely Fatherhood is translated into terms of supreme authority and power, despite the spirituality of the note which is struck
“ Thou Almighty Father! who dost make The heavens Thy dwelling, not in bounds confined, But that, with love intenser, there Thou view st Thy primal effluence; hallowed be Thy Name, Join each created being to extol Thy might; for worthy humblest thanks and praise Is Thy blessed Spirit. May Thy kingdom’s peace Come unto us; for we, unless it comes, With all our striving, thither tend in vain.” 1
2. But this sovereignty, declared in law and maintained by power, is above all based upon the manifold spiritualperfections of the Godhead; is therefore spiritual, so that God not only transcends the universe, but fills it with His presence.
God is immanent, though of His immanence there are degrees; and His immanence is described under the influence of the Aristotelian doctrine of cause and effect, and in accordance with the theological teaching of Aquinas. 2 The following passage, describing the relationship of the
“Noseas causas, qufe dicuntur fortuitse (unde etiam fortuna nomen accepit) non dicimus nullas, sed latentes, easque tribuimus, vel veri Dei vel quorumlibet spiritum voluntati,” De Civitate Dei, lib. v. What is fortuitous there is not, indeed, uncaused; but is due to a special Divine, or delegated, volition.
1 “0 Padre nostro, che ne cieli stai Non circoscritto, maperpiu amore Ch ai primi effetti di lassu tu hai:
Laudato sia 1 tuo nome e 1 tuo valore Da ogni creatura, come degno Di render grazie al tuo dolce vapore.
Vegna ver noi la pace del tuo regno Che noi adessa non potem da noi, S ella non vien, contutto 1 nostro ingegno.”
II Purgatorio, Canto xi.
It will be seen that the exigencies of metre have forced Gary to emphasise the thought of the Divine Power by introducing the epithet “ Almighty “ where Dante simply says “our.” But the essential thought is not altered thereby; from His heavenly dwelling-place God beholds the “effects” of His will, and every creature unites to praise His “might.”
2 See above, p. 219. spirits in paradise to God, gives Dante’s view of the essential relation of the Creator to the creatures, in proportion to the perfection of their being
“The fountain, at whose source these drink their beams, With light supplies them in as many modes, As there are splendours that it shines on; each According to the virtue it conceives, Differing in love and sweet affection.
Look then how lofty and how huge in breadth The eternal might, which, broken and dispersed Over such countless mirrors, yet remains Whole in itself and one, as at the first.” 1
Thus, again, this doctrine of the Divine immanence, of which yet there are degrees, is set forth in language which has reference to the argument of Aquinas (derived from Aris totle) as to the Prime Mover of the universe
“ His glory, by whose might all things are moved, Pierces the universe, and in one part Sheds more resplendence, elsewhere less.” 2 The transcendence of God and the spiritual idealism of His causality is as clearly set forth “Who painteth these,
Hath none to guide Him: of Himself He guides; And every line and texture of the nest Doth own from Him the virtue fashions it.” 3
1 “ La prima luce, che tutta la raia, Per tanti modi in essa si recepe, Quanti son gli splendori a clie’s appaia.
Onde, perocche all atto clie concepe Segue 1 affetto, d amor la dolcezza Diversamente in essa ferve e tepe.
Vedi 1 eccelso omai e la larghezza Dell eterno Valor, poscia che tanti Speculi fatti’s ha in che si spezza Uno raanendo in se, come davanti.”
II Paradiso, Canto xxix.
“ La gloria di Colui, che tutto muove, Per 1 universo penetra; e risplende In una parte piu, e meno al trove.”
11 Paradiso, Canto i.
“ Quei, che dipinge li, non ha chi 1 guidi; Ma esso guida: e da lui si rammenta Quella virtu, ch e formaperli nidi.”
II Paradiso, Canto xviii.
3. Thirdly, the supreme perfection in God, the source of creation, and the inspiring end of His government, is His love.
Again and again God is spoken of, or apostrophised, as Love.
Thus, for example “ If I were only what Thou didst create, Then newly, Love! by whom the heaven is ruled.” l
Again
“ The celestial Love, that spurns All envying in its bounty, in itself With such effulgence blazeth, as sends forth All beauteous things eternal.” 2 The passage goes on to explain how the degrees ofperfection to be found in creation are due to the degrees of immediateness in which different orders of created beings stand to Love, their source. In the same sense Dante exclaims “ There begin Thy wonder of the Almighty architect, Who loves His work so inwardly, His eye Doth ever watch it.” 3 The love which prompts God to create rests first upon the Divine ideal of the creation “That which dies not And that which can die, are but each the beam Of that idea, which our Sovereign Sire Engendereth loving; for that lively light, Which passeth from His splendour not disjoin d From Him, nor from His love triune with them, Doth through His bounty congregate itself, Mirrored as twere, in new existences, 1 “‘S io era sol di me quel die creasti Kovellamente, Amor, che 1 ciel govern!. “
IL Paradiso, Canto i.
“ La divina bonta, che da se sperne Ogni livore, ardendo in se sfavilla Si, che dispiega le bellezze eterne.”
II Paradiso, Canto vii.
3 “ E li comincia a vagheggiar nell arte Di quel Maestro, che dentro a se 1 ama Tanto, che mai da Leviticus 1 occhio non parte.”
11 Paradiso, Canto x.
Itself unalterable, and ever one.
Descending hence unto the lowest powers, Its energy so sinks, at last it makes But brief contingencies; for so I name Things generated, which the heavenly orbs Moving, with seed or without seed, produce.” 1 Thus when Dante, arrived at St. Peter in paradise, recites to him the Apostles Creed, he begins
“ I in one God believe; One sole eternal Godhead, of whose love All heaven is moved, Himself unmoved the while.” 2 So completely are the counsels of God determined by His love, that only perfected love can interpret them “ Brother! no eye of man not perfected, Nor fully ripened in the flame of love, May fathom this decree.” 3
4. Hence, because love is supreme in God and is the motive of creation, love is also the supreme and mightiest principle in man. The source of all man’s greatness, the possibility of all his ruin, is to be found in his capacity of love
1 “ Cio che non muore, e Song of Solomon 6 che pu6 morire, Non e se non splendour di quella idea, Che partorisce, amando,ilnostro Sire:
Che quella viva luce che si mea Dal suo lucente, che non si disuna Da lui, ne dall amor che in lor’s intrea, Per sua bontateilsuo raggiare aduna, Quasi specchiato, in nove sussistenze, Eternalmente rimanendosi una.
Quindi discende all ultimo potenze, Gul d atto in atto, tanto divenendo, Che piu. non fa che brevi contingenze, E queste contingenze essere intendo Le cose generate, che produce, Con seme e senza seme,ilciel movendo.”
II Paradiso, Canto xiii.
“ Credo in uno Dio Solo ed eterno, che tutto 1 ciel muove Non moto, conamoro e cou disio. “
II Paradiso, Canto xxiv.
3 “ Questo decreto, frate, sta sepulto Agli occhi demortali,ilcui ingegno Nella fiamma d amor non e adulto.”
II Paradiso, Canto vii.
“ Creator, nor created being, e er My Son, he thus began, was without love, Or natural, or the free spirits growth, Thou hast not that to learn. The natural still Is without error: but the other swerves, If on ill object bent, or through excess Of vigour, or defect. While e er it seeks The primal blessings, or with measure due The inferior, no delight that flows from it Partakes of ill. But let it warp to evil, Or with more ardour than behoves, or less, Pursue the good; the thing created then Works gainst its Maker. Hence thou must infer, That love is germin of each virtue in ye, And of each act no less that merits pain. “ 1 And God implants this highest power in man that He may satisfy it. Thus “Fervent love, And lively hope, with violence assail The kingdom of the heavens, and overcome The Will of the Most High; not in such sort As man prevails o er man; but conquers it, Because tis willing to be conquer d; still, Though conquer d, by its mercy, conquering.” 2 “ Ne Creator ne creature mai, Comincio ei figliuol, fu sanz amore, naturale, o d animo: e Titus 1 sai.
Lo naturale e sempre senza errore; Malachi 1 altro puote errarpermalo obietto,pertroppo, operpoco di vigore.
Mentre ch egli e ne primi ben diretto, E ne second! se stesso misura, Esser non pu6 cagion di mal diletto:
Ma quando al mal si torce, o conpiu cura, conmen che non dee, corre nel bene, Contra 1 Fattore adopra sua fattura.
Quinci comprender puoi, ch esser conviene.
Amor sementa in voi d ogni virtute, E d ogni operazion che merta pene.”
II Purgatorio, Canto xvii.
2 Regnum ccdorum violenza pate Da caldo amore, e da viva speranza, Che vince la divina volontate, Non a guisa che 1 uomo all uom sovranza;
Ma vince lei, perche vuol esser vinta:
E vinta vince consua beninanza.”
II Paradiso, Canto xx. The unity of law, life, and love is the dominant thought of Dante throughout. Love gives life, and conducts it to its end in the Divine love by means of law, which perfects all true life, repressing only the false.
5. Therefore, finally, the nature of man’s desting and the forces by which it is wrought out are spiritual.
Heaven is simply the blessedness coming from the full fruition of the Divine love, which satisfies the spirit that has been made perfect in love because it has loved supremely the supreme good. It is thus the natural and normal consum mation of the true life. The chastening and discipline of Purgatory is occasioned by the presence of Divine love in the hearts of those who are there imprisoned a love real yet imperfect, ever seeking and pressing on to its complete satis faction, suffering by the lack of it, and by the very reality of its spiritual passion becoming triumphant, through a steadily advancing purification, over the sinful imperfection which has come from the waywardness of love on earth and its inordinate dissipation among creaturely and unsatisfying objects.
Thus Dante says “ Other good
There is, where man finds not his happiness, It is not true fruition; not that blest Essence, of every good the branch and root. The love too lavishly bestowed on this, Along three circles over us, is mourn d.” l And the pains and penalties of Hell, described in the concrete imagery of poetic fancy, represent the final working out of spiritual laws. The dread retribution is the manifestation of Divine wrath, the sentence of infinite justice, carried out by Almighty power; but all these are spiritual and not arbitrary, work immanently and not by a merely external infliction. The punishment of God takes effect in and through a 1 “ Altro ben e, che non fa 1 uom felice; Non e felicita, non e la buona Essenzia d ogni buon frutto radice.
L amor, ch adesso troppo’s abbandona Di sovra a noi si piangepertre cerchi.”
11 Purgatorio, Canto xvii. spiritual nature, which, in turning from and finally renouncing the supreme Love, has outraged, distorted, and destroyed its own nature. Love it must, but it chose the creature in some particular form or aspect, instead of the Creator, with a passion so inordinate as to break forth in fatal revolt against God. In refusing God and choosing a particular good, it destroyed itself, missed its mark, and is tormented by means of that very diseased and sinful affection, whatever it may have been, which resulted from depraving love by an evil exercise of free choice. In the depths of hell is the most emphatic witness to the supremacy of love and to the awful responsibilities of free will. All are there through a perverted choice, which has ruined their nature. But all are tortured, because the love, which is the very essence of man’s nature, is still in them, hopelessly corrupted by wilful sin, yet retaining its infinity; cursed for ever by going forth with vacuous intensity towards objects now denied it, and returning on itself, no longer capable of desiring or of finding the all-perfect love by which alone it can be satisfied, but which yet it has for ever contemptuously spurned. So far as hell has different environments in the descending limbos which mark the differing degrees of enormity in deadly sins, they are but the necessary means of giving effect to this universal spiritual law.
Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell in their various forms are the inevitable outcome of men’s present life, although the will of the Divine sovereign ordains them. And differences of idiosyncrasy and capacity being subordinate, the decisive matter for each man is what he does with the power of love. The whole key to life, with its infinite and eternal issues, as Dante saw it, is given in the following lines:
“The soul created apt I To love, moves versatile which way soe er
Aught pleasing prompts her, soon as she is waked By pleasure into act. Of substance true Your apprehension forms its counterfeit; And, in you the ideal shape preventing, Attracts the soul’s regard. If she thus drawn, Incline toward it; love is that inclining And a new nature knit by pleasure in ye.
Then as the fire points up, and mounting seeks His birthplace and his lasting seat, e enthus Enters the captive soul into desire Which is a spiritual motion, that ne er rests Before enjoyment of the thing it loves.
Enough to show thee how the truth from those Is hidden, who aver all love a thing Praiseworthy in itself; although perhaps Its matter seem still good. Yet if the wax Be good, it follows not the impression must.
Grant them that from necessity arise All love that glows within you; to dismiss Or harbour it, the power is in yourselves.
Eemember Beatrice, in her style, Determinates free choice by eminence The noble virtue; if in talk with thee She touch upon that theme.” 1 Thus the sovereignty of God is, throughout, for Dante spiritual and vital, and not merely external. And it is “ L ammo, ch e create adamar presto, Ad ogni cosa e mobile che piace, Tosto che dal piacere in atto e desto.
Vostra apprensiva da esser verace Tragge intenzione, e dentro a voi la spiega, Si che 1 ammo adessa volger face:
E se rivolto in ver di lei si piega, Quel piegare e amor; quello e natur a, Cheperpiacer di nuovo in boi si lega.
Poi come 1 fuoco muovesi in altura, Per la sua forma, ch e nata a salire La dove piu in sua materia dura;
Colossians1 animo preso entra in disire, Ch e moto spiritale; e mai non posa, Fin che la cosa amatailfa gioire Or ti puote apparer quant e nascosa La veritade alia gente ch avvera Ciascuno amore in se laudabil cosa;
Perocche forse appar la sua matera Sempr esser buona ma non ciascun segno E buono, ancor che buona sia la cera.
Onde pognam che di necessitate Surga ogni amor, che dentro voi’s accende, Di ritenerlo e in voi la potestate.
La nobile virtu Beatrice intende Per lo libero arbitrio; e per6 guarda Che 1 abbi a mente,’s a parlar ten prende.”
11 Purgatorio, Canto xviii. founded in life, because its source is love. It is this which makes alike the glory and the inevitableness of the Divine dispensation. It is the secret of the universe, as revealed in Christianity, to one whose highest gift, among all his other great distinctions, is the gift of adoring love. The writings of Dante present to us, as has been already said, mediaeval theology and religion at their best. But may we not say that the spiritual splendour of Dante’s insight points the way back over the course which had been taken by theology for centuries before his time? Augustine, with a sense of the love of God unequalled among the great thinkers of the Church who succeeded him till we come to Dante, had yet so magnified the Divine will and authority that His Fatherhood had been altogether lost. Anselm, great and religious man though he was, had so treated the immanence of God that it became in his hands merely meta physical, worked out by a process of logical abstraction; and when he came practically to discuss the relations between God, mankind, and Christ, he had made them so purely external, and in reality accidental, save for one passage, the thought of which is borrowed from Augustine, 1 that the Atonement became a mere contrivance to save the honour of God from the insult of man, and God Himself from the reproach which would fall upon Him if His plan in regard to the world miscarried. 2 Aquinas had added to this external view what amounted to a mechanical doctrine of the spiritual nature in man, in the division which he set up between God in nature and in grace, between man as natural and man as made supernatural by the conferment of the “ superadded gift.” Now, in Dante, steeped though he was in the thought of these his great predecessors, from whom his own theology was learnt, is the great return to a doctrine of God and of the world conceived in terms of spirit, life, and, above all, love. As has been said, Dante never speaks of the Fatherhood of God except when he paraphrases the Lord’s Prayer, and in so doing replaces the Divine Fatherhood by sovereignty, albeit of love and grace. His conception of the sovereignty 1 Cur Deus Homo, i. 12. 2 Ibid. ii. 5. is, in outward form, peculiarly imperial. Yet beneath the surface his conception of the Godhead, and of His relation ship to the universe, is so profoundly fatherly, that it needs the restoration of the Fatherhood of God to its original supremacy adequately to account for the universe, as Dante saw it, in its source, its spiritual constitution and conditions, above all, in its final issue. A love which issued in authority in Augustine, an authority which eclipsed love in his successors, becomes in Dante an authority only to be explained by looking back afresh to its source, and finding that source to be spirit and life, and to be both, because, above all, supreme, universal, architectonic love. In passing on from the entrancing glory of this new revelation, we cannot refrain from asking what would have been the effect on subsequent Christian theology and life, if to the grandeur, depth, and amplitude of Dante’s conception of the relationship of God to a creation and history which are indivisibly one, because of the supremacy throughout of love, could have been added the expression of this highest truth in terms of that eternal and universal Fatherhood which is its only sufficient explanation; in terms also of a Christology more fully scriptural and accordant with Dante’s sense of the supremacy in the universe of the underlying love and the manifested Christ?
THIED SECTION. THE RECOVERY OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. THE REFORMATION AND MODERN PROTESTANT THEOLOGY
We enter now upon the final stage of our historical in quiry. We have to consider, first of all, the effect wrought by the Reformation upon the conceptions held as to the rela tionship of God to mankind, and then to trace the gradual transition to the view which has become prevalent in recent times, noting the most influential factors in promoting change. Our principal concern will be with the most influential teachers of theology, with their systematic thought, and with the religious influences which shaped it. But it is desirable, before speaking of individuals, to take a short survey of the general conditions which affected theological thought from the time of the Reformation to the end of the seventeenth century, the period in which dogmatic expression was given to the theology of the Reformation.
Such a survey will speedily reveal the fact of a profound change, not only in the spiritual experience of God enjoyed by believers in Christ, but also in the general doctrine of the spiritual relationships in and through which it is experi enced. It will also reveal the fact that, deep and far-reaching as was the change in the experience and theology of personal religion, there was by no means a corresponding change in the general theological conceptions by which the universal relations of God to men, and His dealings with them, are explained. The supreme force of the Reformation consisted in a direct and personal experience of the forgiveness of sins, of acceptance with God in and through Christ given to and laid hold of by the faith of the believer in Christ. Such a personal assurance of justification, of a sure standing before God, had hardly been sought or enjoyed since the times of the apostles. Both the need of such personal assurance and the bestowment of it, are intimately bound up with the dawn of that individualism which marks the most distinctive contrast between ancient and modern times. This new sense of justification before God, of acceptance with Him, and of intimate access to Him through Christ, awoke the exuberant joy and confidence of Luther, and brought a new peace and satisfaction to those of more equable emotional temperament than Luther. It was the motive force by which the whole fabric of mediaeval ecclesiasticism, superstition, and scholasticism was swept away.
It was inevitable that this new consciousness should again bring into prominence those teachings of Scripture which set forth the Fatherhood and fatherliness of God. The filial spirit of believers, awakened afresh, sought expression in dogmatic theology.
Thus the Fatherhood of God once more asserts its claims to recognition, and establishes more or less its position within the theology of Christian experience.
Yet even there incompletely. And outside the realm of personal religious experience hardly at all. The Fatherhood is not treated as the supreme guide to the dealings of God with men; nor is it conceived to be universal. In Calvinism, especially, the highest and determinant conception is that of the sovereignty of God, and this in a peculiarly rigorous form. The Augustinian doctrine is set forth with relentless logic, and without any of those modifications which were introduced by the influence of popular Catholicism upon Augustine. And as time went on, the awfulness, the severity, and indeed the arbitrariness, of the Divine authority were dwelt upon with uncompromising insistence by the successors of Calvin.
How was it that the new and gracious evangelical experience of God in Christ not only failed to effect an adequate transformation in the highest theological conceptions, but, on the contrary, introduced a new severity into them? And how was it that that new severity prevailed until comparatively recent times in the most widely influential Protestant theology? The main reasons appear to be as follows:
1. In the first place, their own religious experiences led the Reformers back past the Aristotelian and Nominalist scholasticism to the writings of Augustine. In his longing after God, in his consciousness of sin, in his doctrine of the helplessness of human nature, in his profound teaching as to grace and faith, they found what was in deepest agreement with their own consciousness. Augustine’s general philosophy of the relation of God to man in creation and salvation was felt to be a satisfactory rendering of the foundation truths of Pauline theology. The leading conceptions of Augustine seemed, notwithstanding their deficiencies, to satisfy alike the need of God which was felt by the Keformers, and the sense which was also characteristic of them, that, apart from a sovereign act of grace, they were unworthy of Him. Hence, naturally, followed the adoption of the general outlines of Augustine’s doctrine of the sovereignty of God, and this the more readily because the act of grace which satisfied their need of fellowship with God appeared, above all, as an act of sovereign conde scension.
2. And, secondly, the Reformers went beyond Augustine in this respect, that with them the chief subject of theological, as of religious, concern lay in the forgiveness of sins and its conditions, in justification by faith, and in the assurance of its possession. And the pardon of sins, taken in connexion with the term justification (the forensic meaning of which was pressed perhaps beyond its original sense), naturally appeared to be an act of sovereignty rightly so appeared, although that is not its complete explanation. This sovereign act, therefore, stood in the foreground, and was the starting-point from which they constructed the formal theology, which gave expression to their spiritual consciousness.
3. Again, the Bible was a newly found book, and its final authority was quickly substituted for the ecclesiastical authority which had been renounced. But the key to the right understanding of the Holy Scriptures was not fully grasped till recent times, namely, the understanding of the law of development governing revelation; the sense of the human limitations imposed upon it; and, above all, the full apprehension of the centrality and finality of Christ, enabling the earlier stages of revelation to be interpreted by means of the fulfilment in Christ, and not Christ in terms of these earlier stages. 1 Of course this defect is not present to the full extent in the foremost Reformers. Luther’s evangelical consciousness and his daring, running often to the extreme of rashness, led him to handle the Scriptures in the light of his own spiritual experience, as freely and fearlessly as he handled the utterances and traditions of ecclesiastical authority. The authority of the books of Scripture was for him determined by their spiritual worth, and that again was measured by the extent to which they contained what he felt to be the marrow of the gospel. The sense of proportion in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures was not wanting also in Calvin. But this can hardly 1 See Chapter IV. be said of the ordinary exegesis of the sixteenth and seven teenth centuries, which unreservedly read back into the Old Testament the truths contained in the New, and used, without any attempt at criticism, the governing ideas of the Old Testament to construe the New.
Thus nothing is more remarkable in Keformed and Puritan theology than the restoration of Old Testament forms of thought as governing the understanding of the New Testament dispensation. Not only did the patriarchs and leaders of the Old Testament take the place of the dispossessed saints of the Church, but the forms under which the dealings of God with them were presented were treated as the sufficient guide to His dealings with men in all times. In particular, the Old Testament conception of the Covenant was not only brought into undue and abstract prominence as the explanation of Old Testament religion itself, but the conception of the New Covenant, found in the Epistle to the Hebrews, was artificially elaborated and over - emphasised, till the whole history of the dealings of God with mankind was set forth, almost exclusively, under the form of a series of covenants; and, of course, in the Covenant the relationship upon which stress was laid was the sovereignty of Him who ordained it.
4. In the next place, the political influences which affected theological thought must not be overlooked. To begin with: the renunciation of the Papacy meant the rise of a new nationalism, and the prominence of the kingly office, not only as representative of the nation, but as the highest form of human authority.
3 And immediately men were left face to face with one supreme human authority, the nature, source, and limits of that authority needed to be fixed by discussion and political action, wherever the new spirit of individualism extended to the political sphere as in England and demanded civil liberty. The concentration of attention upon sovereignty as the supreme human relationship inevitably tended to bring about a similar prominence for sovereignty as the supreme relation ship of God to mankind. And this the more, where the demand for civil liberty was religious in its inspiration, and brought men into conflict with the earthly king. Their refusal to obey the command of the earthly authority was the reverse of lawless. The claim to be free was, in reality, the demand to be free from the tyranny of man, in order to obey the one absolute sovereign God. It was the categorical imperative of duty which was the inspiring motive. The inward sense of responsibility for obeying, at all costs, the unconditional commands of God brought into prominence the sovereignty of Him who thus enjoined them. The necessity of contending with the earthly sovereign for liberty to obey the heavenly, forced those who entered upon the conflict to insist upon the absolute sovereignty of Him whom they were constrained to obey, and upon civil and religious freedom as the conditions of such obedience. And this insistence upon the Divine sovereignty was not weakened by the subsequent fact, that, having secured liberty from the earthly sovereign, those who had won it came, for the most part, to a common agreement as to what was divinely enjoined upon faith and conduct, and proceeded in their turn to impose it as a law upon the conscience of the community.
5. And when this conflict passed into the stage of actual warfare, the revived knowledge of the Old Testament filled the imagination with sacred and heroic figures and struggles, which stirred the martial spirit, and were readily seen to be the analogies of the existing conditions. The Puritans were God’s Israel, and they, like their spiritual ancestors, were fighting with the Philistines or Moab, with Egypt or Assyria; the more so because of the general contrast in temper and morals between their own hosts and those against whom they fought. For these men, Jehovah was as much the God of battles as of old; and therefore, above all, He was King, and the gift of His Spirit was the inspiration of a faith which was evinced by uncompromising conflict, whether spiritual or military, with the world.
All these causes operated to hinder men from apprehending the Fatherhood of God as the supreme and determinative relationship in which He stands to men in Christ.
6. There appeared to be equally strong grounds for denying that Fatherhood to be universal. The men who were conscious of the newly found relationship to God in Christ stood apart, by this very consciousness, from the mass of their fellow-men. These neither knew nor cared for any of these things. The experiences of believers were their joy and strength; yet the world scoffed at them and persecuted them. They were marked, therefore, as being, and were conscious of being, an elect people. A great gulf parted them from the nonelect. But they were conscious, above all things, that their evangelical experience came to them direct from God. He had made them what they were. They had not chosen Him, but He had chosen them; and this by the forth-putting of irresistible grace. In all this the will of God had been sovereign. He had chosen to stand in a relation to them in which He had not chosen to stand to the rest of mankind, though the blame for this latter fact was laid upon men and not upon God.
Moreover, as to the condition of the non-elect, the will of God could not be inert. He must will at least the present spiritual consequences of their sin as truly as He willed the salvation of the elect. And no question could be asked as to this, for “ Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou formed me thus? “ Hence the ultimate reality with which men have to do is sovereign will: that sovereign will has decreed to confer sonship in Christ upon the elect, but not upon the non-elect. His Fatherhood is therefore, practically, a subordinate and also a select relationship towards a chosen few.
7. Finally, the Beforined theologians, for the most part, took over the Thomist distinction between natural and revealed religion, and made the former the starting-point of their theology.
Hence their general outlook was cosmological, and the first step was to establish the existence of a First and Sufficient Cause as personal Will for the natural creation. Of this creation man was the last term, and the Divine Maker and Orderer of the natural universe ordered the life of man by law. Only towards the elect did He, by a final act of will, institute, as we have seen, a fatherly relationship, though doubtless this would have been fulfilled towards all had not the fact of sin intervened. Thus the philosophy of God’s relationship to the universe and to the creation and government of man, reinforced the peculiar experience of sovereign and distinguishing mercy, in making will the key to all God’s relationships and dealings with mankind. 1
All these causes were at work to confine the new evangelical experience within the bounds of the old Augustinian conception of sovereignty, modified, of course, more or less by the conceptions which had in more recent times grown up around sovereignty. We pass on to consider the leading influences in the development of the theology prevalent from the Reformation to the nineteenth century. No new principle has arisen within Eoman and Greek Catholicism during that period; hence they may be excluded from our survey.
LUTHER
We begin, naturally, with Luther. What was the relation of his teaching to the Fatherhood of God, whether as the supreme relationship of God to believers in Christ, or as a universal relationship in Christ to mankind?
Luther was not, of course, a systematic theologian. In a peculiar degree his writings are throughout stamped with his temperament and with the spiritual experiences through which he had passed. The main sources of his theology were the writings of Augustine, to whom he had been driven from the “ Aristotelianism “ of his time, and, above all, St. Paul’s Epistles, especially those to the Eomans and Galatians. As to the spiritual experiences which shaped his theology, a word will suffice here. Two things, above all, Luther had been conscious in his earlier struggles of needing: redemption from sin and death, and a sense of personal acceptance with
1 This last feature is a point of contact with Scotist philosophy; but the Reformed theologians, while they magnified the absolute will of God, rested it upon the glory of His character.
God. The former depended, for him, upon the latter; for the sin which oppressed him, and the death which threatened him, were the manifestation of that wrath of God before which he trembled; to escape from which he had sacrificed his worldly prospects and entered the Augustinian cloister.
He needed, and eventually he found, the assurance of the forgiveness of sins through the gracious dealing of God with him in Christ; not as the final prize awarded to his own steadfast exertions, but as the gift of God, simply accepted by faith the starting-point from which all true service of God must begin. The hunger of heart after God, the sense of His accessibleness, the magnifying of faith, which characterise Augustine’s writings, made them a welcome guide to Luther. The Catholicism of Augustine was a suitable vehicle for conveying his influence to Luther, and did much to account for the conviction which marked Luther’s efforts, that he was simply endeavouring to restore the departed glories of the true and ancient Church life; although at the same time he wrought a transformation by insisting that it was the Word of God presented to faith which was the vital matter in the sacraments and ordinances of the Church. And Luther’s temperament, though his life had never been disfigured by the vices of Augustine’s early years, brought him into deepest sympathy with Augustine’s doctrine of the enslavement of the will by sin, and of the total inability for good of sinful human nature.
One feature he added which is not present in Augustine, namely, the earnest desire, already mentioned, for a Divine and personal assurance of the forgiveness of sins, and of justification before God, as the ground and condition of the safety and fellowship with God which he sought. Where Augustine asked and experienced a manifestation of the Divine power, uplifting him above the enslavement of the flesh into fellowship with God, Luther sought the same end in the more completely evangelical way of the declared mercy of God in Christ to him a sinner, freely forgiving his sins, and filling him with the joyous confidence and peace of an assured position in the presence of God. The similarity and the difference between these two great seekers after God enables us to express in a word the peculiarity of Luther’s theology. The general foundations of Luther’s theology are Augustinian, with the important difference, that where Augustine put grace, Luther put Christ; that where the former dwelt on the power of grace, the latter dwelt on the mercy of God in Christ. What Divine grace, as he interpreted the matter, did for Augustine in uplifting,transforming, and energising his otherwise helpless nature, and in thus enabling him to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, that Christ, appropriated by faith, did for Luther by the assurance of forgiveness, and by giving him, as a consequence, that consciousness of spiritual liberty which for Luther meant power.
God for Luther was as indispensable as He was the reverse for the current Catholicism, with its elaborate contrivances for supplying a religion not only without God, but as a barrier against God. For Luther religion was of value, in so far as it brought men to God, or rather as it brought God to men. For this is, beyond all, important in the teaching of Luther, that faith is not a human effort by which a man lifts himself to God, but is the means and power by which Christ manifests Himself to man, and lifts him, otherwise guilty and helpless, into the presence and life of God. But involved in this is a further and most important difference between Luther and Augustine. The God whom Luther sets forth is God as manifested and known in Jesus Christ, and in Him alone. Here is the peculiarity in some respects the strength, in others the weakness of Luther’s theology. He lays down in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians the canon, that “ speculation as to the majesty of God must be abstained from.” l “ But Christian and true theology, as I often admonished,” he says, “ does not treat of God in His majesty, as Moses and other doctrines do; it does not command us to scrutinise the nature of God, but to acknowledge His will set forth in Christ, whom He willed to take flesh, to be born, to die 1 “Canon observandus abstinendum esse a speculations majestatis,” Commentary on Galalians, i. on account of our sins; and that this should be preached to all nations.” l
He dwells upon this with frequent and emphatic reiteration. “ Nothing,” he asserts, “ is more dangerous, when we have to strive against the law, sin, and death with God, than that we should wander in our speculations in heaven, and should consider God Himself in His incomprehensible power, wisdom, and majesty, how He has created and governs the world.” 2
“ For God,” he continues, “ in His own nature, as He is immeasurable, incomprehensible, and infinite, so is He in tolerable to human nature.” 3 “ Begin, therefore, there, where Christ Himself began, namely, in the womb of the Virgin, in the manger, on the breasts of the Mother,” etc. 4 “ And thus,” he lays down, “when thou art concerned with justification, and disputest concerning finding God, who justifies or accepts sinners, where and how He is to be sought, then, in a word, know no God outside that man Christ Jesus “; or, as he puts it later on, “ beyond this incarnate and human God.” 5
Hence Luther loves, above all things, as all his writings and especially his hymns show, to dwell on the nearness, the graciousness, and, if the expression may be allowed, the homeliness of the “ incarnate and human God.” His protest against seeking to investigate the majesty of God and His
1 “Christiana autem et vera theologia, ut ssepe moneo non ingerit Deum in majestate, ut Moses et alire doctrinse, non jubet scrutari naturam Dei, sed agnoscere voluntatem ejus propositam in Christo, quern voluit assumere carnem, nasci, mori propter peccata nostra et hoc pnedicari in omnes gentes,” Commentary on Galatians, i.
2 “Quare nihil est periculosins, cum agendum est in agone contra legem peccatum et mortem cum Deo, quam nos vagari nostris speculationibus in crelo, et considerare Deum ipsum in sua incomprehensibili potentia, sapientia et majestate, quomodo creaverit et gubernet mundum,” Commentary on Gala tians, i.
3 “Nam Deus in sua natura, ut est immensurabilis, incomprehensibilis et infinitus, ita intolerabilis est humanse naturae,” Commentary an Galatians, i.
4 “Ibi igitur incipe, ubi Christus ipse incepit nempe, in utero Virginis, in praecipi, in uteribus matris,” Commentary on Galatians, i.
5 “ Itaque cum versaris in loco justificationis et disputas do invoniendo Deo qui justificat seu acceptat peccatores, ubi et quomodo is quserendus sit, turn prorsus nullum Deum scito extra istum hominem Jesum Christum... praeter hunc incarnatum et humanum Deum,” Commentary on Galatians, i. relations to the universe is aimed against the theology of Aquinas, which divided between natural and revealed theology, and began with the former. The limitation of Luther’s in junction to discussion concerning justification is more appar ent than real, for this is the one question which absorbs all his thoughts and interest.
It is easy to forecast what, as a matter of fact, results from all this for our subject. The God set before faith is for Luther identified with the Christ-child and the crucified man Jesus Christ. Here he reads all he is concerned to know, namely, the love and mercy, the gracious accessibility, the redemptive purpose of God. All other matters are for him inaccessible, unimportant, and uninteresting. In addition, God apart from the redeeming Christ is “intolerable to human nature,” represents the awful majesty of the Judge, from whom Luther shrank.
1. The graciousness and indeed fatherliness of God in Christ is not, for the most part, expressed by Luther strictly in terms of Fatherhood. The reconciled and reconciling God is not seen apart from the divinely-human Christ, and He is the lowly but almighty Redeemer. The graciousness of God is seen in the wonder of His redemptive action, in the sharing of our humble lot by the Babe of Bethlehem, in the smiting of our foe in the deadly encounter of Calvary, in His freeing us by the resurrection from our guilty dread and all our fears.
Naturally, in commenting on such passages as Galatians 4:1-7, Luther speaks of the Fatherhood of God; yet even there he turns rather to that portion of the passage which deals with redemption from the law, instead of dwelling on the Fatherhood of God as such.
2. Similarly, salvation is not conceived by Luther prevail ingly under the form of realised and completed sonship, but as redemption, forgiveness, acceptance, confidence, and freedom, especially this last. This is peculiarly striking in his exposition of Galatians 4:1-7, where “the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father,” is treated by St. Paul as the distinctive mark of believers in Christ. Luther speaks much here of the gift of the Spirit, of faith, of redemption, of freedom from the law of sin and death, of being heirs of God.
All these blessings cluster for him around the gift of the Spirit of adoption. He speaks of the filial cry of believers, but he gives no exposition of the meaning of sonship, as the form, above all others, which the Christian life assumes. The freedom, confidence, and sense of heirship, which are so vital to Luther’s experience and so closely consequent on sonship, engage his attention, rather than the nature of the relation ship, which is their source.
3. Still less has Luther any doctrine of the universal Fatherhood of God. Towards himself, apart from his faith in Christ the evidence of God’s mercy to him he thinks of God’s relationship as simply that of an angry Judge. And what he thinks as to the relationship of God towards himself apart from faith, he of necessity thinks as to His relationship to all the world. Indeed, men generally are for Luther in precisely the same position as the non-elect of Augustine. It is true he is occupied with the positive content of the gospel, with the Christ offered to faith, and not with thepredestinating grace of Augustine, or with the decrees of Calvin. But the ultimate fact is the same. That Christ is apprehended by living faith is the gift of God, the mark of Hispredestinating purpose. Where the faith is not produced, the predestination is absent. And where this is the case, God is Judge and not Father.
4. Finally, it is obvious, from what has been already said, that Luther did not seek to find the grounds of redemption in any foregoing relationship of God to mankind involved in creation, and bound up with the relationship of the Son on the one hand to the Father, and on the other to the human race. The fatherliness of God is identified with the manifestation of Christ in the flesh, rather than treated as the ground of it. And God’s gracious dealings with men in the Christ whom they apprehend and accept by a faith which He works within them, are seen as being simply in contrast with His relationships and dealings with the rest of mankind, and not as the fulfilment of a gracious relationship real in Christ for all mankind, though not universally fulfilled. Thus Christ may be said to be a limit, according to Luther’s teaching, as well as a revelation; and the great Reformer’s general influence is powerful in setting forth anew the substantial fatherliness of God, rather than the form of His Fatherhood.
CALVIN To those who have only a superficial acquaintance with the teachings of Calvin, it may be a surprise to find that no other writer of the Reformation makes such use of the Father hood of God as does Calvin. Throughout the Institutes the relationship of God to believers and their relationship to Him is set forth, above all, in terms of Fatherhood and sonship. For the first time, for ages, is this relationship taken seriously, as that in terms of which the spiritual life must be expressed. In the Institutes the knowledge of God is divided into two parts, namely, the knowledge of God as Creator, and the knowledge of God as Redeemer. 1
Under the former head Calvin shows that there is a universal idea of God in mankind, as is proved by the universality of religion; although this idea may be choked or corrupted by ignorance or wickedness. 2 Throughout this part of the subject Calvin reveals how deeply he has been influenced by the great Latin writers. In particular, he frequently cites the De Naturd Dear urn of Cicero, refers once and again to Ambrose, and makes extensive use of Augustine. Through the last he is led to the Timceus, and thus we are brought back once more in Calvin to the main stream of early Western theology.
Calvin dwells upon the fact that the invisible and incomprehensible God is made known by His works, and especially by His works in man. By these His government, power, eternity, and goodness are made manifest. 3 That which can be known of God naturally by this means, as well as that fuller knowledge of God which is accessible through His historic dealings with mankind, is yet most fully set forth in the Holy Scriptures, which are the best guide to the knowledge of God the Creator. 4 1 Institutes, I. De Cognitionc Dei Creatoris. II. De Cognitione Dei Redemptoris.
2 In8t. i. 3, 4. 3 Ibid. i. 5. 4 1M. i. 6.
Throughout this part of the subject there is both agreement and difference between Calvin and Aquinas. They agree in their distinction between natural and revealed religion, and in their treatment of natural religion as confirmed by revelation. They differ in that the philosophical basis of Aquinas is in Aristotle, whereas Calvin bases his theistic argument rather on Cicero and the Timceus. In setting forth the nature of the natural government of God, which is discernible, though imperfectly, by reason, even apart from revelation, Calvin lays great stress on “the fatherly love of God towards the human race.” 1 This is shown in that God provided the natural supplies for man’s needs before creating him. He goes on to say that “ through out the whole course of Providence, either the fatherly favour and beneficence of God, or His judicial severity, frequently shines out.” 2 The knowledge of this fatherly loving - kindness brings comfort to the believer. “ But when that light of the Divine Providence,” Calvin says, “ has once shone upon a pious man, now he is released and set free, not only from the extreme anxiety and fear which pressed upon him before, but even from all care, so that as he is rightly afraid of fortune, so he dares securely to trust himself to God. Here, I say, is his solace, that he understands that the heavenly Father so controls all things by His own power, so rules them by His imperial authority and will, so governs them by wisdom, that nothing happens except by His destination; that, moreover, he is received into His charge, committed to the care of angels, and that neither the harms of flood, nor of fire, nor of the sword can befall him, except so far as it has pleased God, the Sovereign, to give place to them.” 3 The book ends, however, with the severer side of Calvin’s teaching, with his exposition of the way in which God makes use of the deeds of wicked men, and bends their minds to carry out His judgments on themselves and others. In Book II, on the knowledge of God the Redeemer, Calvin undertakes to explain what human reason perceives 1 “ Paternus Dei Amor erga humanum genus,” Inst. i. 14 (2).
2 Ibid. i. 17 (1). a ibid. i. 17 (11). when men come to the kingdom of God and to spiritual enlightenment. He says that this latter “ consists above all in three things, to know God, His fatherly favour towards us in which our salvation is grounded, and the reason of a life which must be formed according to the rule of His law.” 1 This threefold knowledge is brought to men by the illumination of the Holy Spirit. The connexion of this life, which is filial in its conditions, with Christ as its source and consummation, is thus set forth.
“ Now since John teaches that life was from the beginning from Christ, and that the whole world has fallen away from it, it is necessary to return to that source, and therefore Christ, so far as He is the propitiator, asserts that He is the light. And, indeed, the heirship and inheritance does not belong to others than the Son of God. It is utterly out of keeping with this to regard any as in the place and rank of sons who have not been grafted into the body of the onlybegotten Son of God.” 2
Calvin’s definition of coming to the knowledge of God as our Father is as follows. “ The first step to piety is to recognise God to be our Father in order that He may watch over us, may govern and foster us, until He gathers us into the eternal inheritance of His kingdom. Hence that which we have just said becomes manifest, that the saving knowledge does not exist apart from Christ, and that therefore He was set forth from the beginning of the world to all the elect as the One to whom they should look and in whom their trust should rest.” 3
He goes on to say, further, that “ the evangelical procla mation is nothing else than to announce that by the fatherly indulgence of God sinners are justified apart from their own merit: and the whole sum of it is included in Christ.” 4
Again, Calvin goes on to contrast the servitude of the Old Testament religion with the Spirit of adoption spoken of in the New, citing Eom. viii. 15. His statement as to the election of believers in Christ is, “ The Father chose us in Christ before the creation of the 1 hist. ii. 2 (18). 2 Ibid. ii. 6 (1).
3 Ibid. ii. 6 (4). 4 Ibid. iii. 10 (4). world, that He might adopt us as His sons according to the purpose of His will, and now we are accepted in His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption through His blood.” 1
Again, he insists that St. Paul says, “ Now are we the sons of God, freely and with confidence to cry, Abba, Father.”
He proceeds to ask whether the holy fathers of the Old Testament were included among the sons of God. His answer is, that even they called Him Father by this right, namely, that they trusted in Christ. “ But because,” he says, “ since the only-begotten Son of God was brought into the world, the heavenly Father has become more clearly known, therefore Paul assigns this as if a privilege of the kingdom of Christ. This, however, must constantly be borne in mind, that never was God the Father either of angels or men, except in respect to the only-begotten Son; and especially those men whose iniquity renders them hateful to God are sons by a gratuitous adoption, whereas He is the Son by nature.” 2
There is a constant insistence upon the knowledge of God’s Fatherhood as the form of the spiritual life be stowed through and conditioned by the Son. A final quotation may be made from Calvin’s exposition of the Lord’s Prayer.
Having emphasised the fact that we can only call God Father in the name of Christ, he proceeds: “ And so He calls Himself our Father, and so He wills to be called by us: by the so great sweetness of this name taking away from us all distrust, since no greater affection of love can anywhere be found than in the Father. And so by no clearer evidence can His immense love towards us be witnessed than by this, that we are called the sons of God. But His love towards us is by so much the greater and more illustrious than all the love of our parents, as He surpasses all men in goodness and in compassion. So that if all the parents upon earth, stripped of all sense of paternal piety, should desert their sons, He will never be wanting to us, since He cannot deny Himself.” 3 These quotations amply demonstrate that in Calvin a 1 Jnst. ii. 12 (5). 2 Hid. ii. 14 (5). 3 Ibid. iii. 20 (36). note is struck which has not been heard since Irenseus.
But, indeed, the note of confidence is far more pathetic than in IrenaBus, since there is a far greater power in Calvin to appropriate for the use of life the individual reference of the fatherly love of God, just as there is a completer realisation of the Christian life as being in the form of sonship. The spiritual content of the evangelical life is for Calvin to be found in God’s Fatherhood and man’s sonship; both of these manifested in and conditioned by the only-begotten Son, set forth as the object of saving faith. That faith, again, for Calvin is the work of the Holy Spirit, and the gift of the Holy Spirit is the consequence and the proof of the electing decree of God. The genuineness of the truly filial consciousness is, moreover, made by Calvin the supreme test of election. By it a spurious piety can be distinguished from the true. He says: “ But as a deeply rooted persuasion of the fatherly love of God does not dwell in the reprobate, so they do not solidly love Him in return as sons, but are influenced by certain mercenary affection.” 1
It is, however, at this point that we pass from the world of spiritual consciousness to that larger sphere which embraces it. And here the matter is totally different. In the realm of the internal consciousness of salvation, spiritual experience is entirely moulded by trust in the fatherly love of God in Christ, and by the filial response to it. But Calvin is dominated by the love of law and by the sense of the supremacy of will. Hence he must needs ground this consciousness, so tender and evangelical, in a supreme will, as the source of his confidence. Moreover, like Luther, he is deeply impressed by the contrast between the regenerate and the unregenerate, and he traces back this contrast to the power of God in the former, and therefore to His will.
He goes back, as did all the Reformers, from the conditional philosophy of the Eoman ecclesiastics to the unconditional philosophy of Augustine, and to the Epistle to the Eomans read in the light of that philosophy. As the result of all
“ At quemadmodum radicitus non hseret in reprobis depaterno Dei amore persuasio: ita non solide cum redamant ut fihi, sed mercenario quodam affectu ducnntur,” Inst. iii. 2 (12). this there rises in the mind of Calvin the conception of the absolute decree of God, and this dominates all his theology, and is the background of all his spiritual consciousness. In some respects, indeed, he reproduces the inconsistencies and uncertainty of Augustine, as must needs be if the moral responsibility of man is in any sense to be maintained. But Calvin’s general view sets forth will, order, and sovereignty to be so supreme, that by rights there is no room for contin gency, or for the existence, anywhere or at any time, of any thing not absolutely determined by the Divine volition.
Hence the passage quoted above as to the trust of the pious man in the ordering of life by the paternal sovereignty of God has an almost stoical tone: it expresses calm unques tioning freedom from care in things great and small,proceeding from the belief that nothing will fall out of its appointed order. In all this the Augustinianism of Calvin is coloured by Cicero and the Latin Stoics. The consequence is, that while in Calvin’s doctrine the sphere of evangelical experience is shaped by love, yet that sphere is created within and dominated by a higher and larger realm, in which sovereign will is supreme. It is true that this view is not consistently held. God is a benevolent Father, if all men would but see this by faith. Those who have faith do invariably see this, and what they thus see is the truth. Those who do not see this, do not see the truth. But then, as the result of an original sin which has inevitably issued in their own individual transgression, they have not been elected or empowered to see this truth. And the difference between the man who is elected and empowered to see it and him who is not, and therefore cannot see it, depends entirely on the will of Him of whom no question must be asked, “ Why hast Thou formed me thus? “ Hence absolute and, indeed, arbitrary will is supreme, and determines the evangelical world in which the Fatherhood of God is experienced. The choice of those who are elected that they may be introduced to this world of love, may doubtless be interpreted in terms of love; but the rejection of the rest can only nominally be interpreted, except as the result of an absolute will, which, if the theory were completely logical, would be held to be the cause of man’s fall equally as of his creation and redemption. This will, at the least, exercises the sovereign right of refusing to redeem the non-elect; and not merely of refusing to redeem them, but of inflicting upon them eternal torments for a moral condition which they did not themselves cause, and from which only a (non-existent) election could have delivered them. Hence the contradiction in Calvin between supreme Fatherhood and absolute sover eignty, between the universal and the particular. Yet, as we have seen, Calvinism restored the Fatherhood of God to its right place within the sphere of Christian experience.
SOCINIANISM The third type of teaching on our subject to be considered in connexion with the rise of Protestantism is Socinianism. A study of its philosophical principles will reveal the fact, that while on the dogmatic side it is at the utmost extreme from the Eoman Catholicism of the sixteenth century, yet the philosophical basis of Socinianism is substantially that of the Nominalist philosophers who were in the ascendant within the Church at the time of Luther’s revolt. 1
Socinianism represents the religious aspect of the humanist movement, especially the Italian phase of that movement; for both the elder and the younger Socinus sprang from Italy, although their work was carried on in Poland, which at this period was in close intercourse and in deep sympathy with the new life stirring in Italy. The general influence of the Renaissance was strongest and most characteristic in Italy, of all the countries of Europe. On its positive side, the humanist spirit stood for the growing sense of the worth and interest of human life, regarded in its ordinary and worldly, as contrasted with its supernatural, relationships. Added to the study of the recovered classics, to the pursuit of the new learning, and to the joy in recent discoveries, in the opening up of new paths of human thought and inquiry, there was in Italy a sense of proprietorship in 1 See Harnack, History of Dogma (Eng. trans.), vii. 144. the old culture of paganism, and a desire to restore its ancient glories. Coupled with this, on the negative side, was thereaction against that ecclesiastical authority which had darkened and repressed human joy and made a virtue of an unrelenting and irrational asceticism. Finally, in Italy the temper of the movement was aesthetic. Literature, poetry, and art were the interests chiefly pursued.
Such a spirit, while it made for theological and ecclesi astical revolution, was adverse to profound reflexion upon the nature of God and His relationship to the world. It could do well enough with the shallower philosophy then current, while it threw off the restraints of the ecclesiastical authority which that philosophy served. Hence the Socinians adopted the Nominalist doctrine of God, with its emphasis on His will at the expense of His nature, while they rejected its doctrine of the Church. The movement was intellectual rather than religious; of the understanding rather than the reason. But, while rather a school than a Church, it was forced to organise itself ecclesiastically, and to find a confession of faith, or a declaration of theological conclusions, for its members. And the Eacovian Catechism was the result.
We are concerned now only with the Socinian doctrine of God in His relations to man, and with this as it bears on our immediate subject.
1. The Eacovian Catechism describes God as “ the supreme Lord of all things.” 1 It continues with the question: “ And whom do you denominate supreme? “ The answer is: “ Him who in His own right has dominion over all things, and is dependent upon no other being in the administration of His government.” His dominion is said to comprise “ a right and supreme authority to determine whatever He may choose (and He cannot choose what is in its own nature evil and unjust) in respect to those matters which no other authority can reach; such as are our thoughts, though concealed in the inmost recesses of our hearts; for which He can at pleasure ordain laws, and appoint rewards and punishments.” The Catechism proceeds: “ What are the things relating 1 “Supremus rerum omnium Dominus,” Rac. Cat. sec. iii. Of the Nature of God. to the nature of God the knowledge of which is necessary to salvation? They are the following first, that God is; secondly, that He is one only; thirdly, that He is eternal; and, fourthly, that He is perfectly just, wise, and powerful.” To know that God is, is defined as being “ to know and be firmly convinced that there actually exists a Being who possesses supreme dominion over all things.” And it is subsequently stated that the power of God “ extends to all things whatso ever, or that do not involve what is termed a contradiction.” l
2. It is because of this supreme and free sovereignty that God can and does forgive sins without the necessity of atonement, and indeed without any other conditions; any such conditions being impossible, because imposing fetters on the freedom of the Divine will. “ But as it is evident that God forgives and punishes sins whenever He deems fit, it appears that the mercy which commands to spare, and the justice which commands to destroy, do so exist in Him as that both are tempered by His will, and by the wisdom, the benignity, and holiness of His nature.” 2 That He has been pleased to forgive men, God reveals by the prophetic ministry of Jesus Christ.
3. Hence the whole stress is laid on the prophetic office of our Lord Jesus Christ in the work of salvation, although Socinus treated of His priestly and kingly offices in his work De Servatore Jesu Christo in deference to the threefold division current among the Keformed theologians. Yet the death of Christ concerns not His priestly, but His prophetic office, being the supreme witness to His doctrine, the most striking manifestation of His love, and the means of binding men most closely to Himself. Salvation conies to men by the impartation of the knowledge that God, who is free to punish or forgive as He will, wills to forgive. We accept this infor mation, and conduct our lives in accordance with it.
What bearing has all this upon the Fatherhood of God?
None, immediately. The Fatherhood of God is scarcely mentioned in the Racovian Catechism, and is treated as relative to our Lord Jesus Christ. The use elsewhere made 1 Rac. Gat. sec. iii.
2 Hid. sec. v. chap. viii. The Death of Christ. of it by Socinus is simply in the exposition of passages such as the Parable of the Prodigal Son, where the point involved is the unconditional forgiveness which demands no satisfaction on account of sin. The whole Socinian doctrine is based upon the sovereignty of God, understood as the unfettered exercise of supreme will, unhindered even by its own previous decisions a will which turns out to be, as Christ teaches us, loving and gracious, or perhaps, in the Socinian version of it, good-natured. Thus, as to the gift of eternal life, it is laid down that “ it is exceedingly credible that God will bestow it upon those who serve Him, as a reward eminently suited to His majesty, without which other blessings, though proceeding from God, are scarcely entitled to the name of a Divine recompense.” x It is true that the Catechism defines evangelical obedience as consisting in this, “ that after being adopted by God for His sons, and endued with a filial spirit, we conduct ourselves as becomes obedient children, doing with our whole heart and with all our strength those things which we know that our heavenly Father requires us to perform, and giving all heed not to offend Him in anything.” 2 But how little depth of meaning attaches to this is shown by a subsequent answer, which says, “ We read concerning believers, that power was given them to become the sons of God, that is, to become like God in immortality; although it is certain they were not to render themselves immortal, but that God, in respect to their immortality, would make them His sons.” a
Thus the doctrine of God’s Fatherhood is only present in an incidental way in the Socinian teaching, and is merely a synonym for that beneficent creatorship the existence of which was established by the worth of natural life, so highly estimated by the humanists. It stands in no illuminating relation to the nature either of God or of men.
Eventually, however, Socinianism as it passed into modern Unitarianism gave prominence to the Fatherhood of God, and to its universality in one particular respect. Its conception of the Fatherhood has not indeed, except in the case of a few 1 Rac. Cat. sec. v. chap. v. 2 Ibid. sec. v. chap. x.
3 Sec. vii. This is probably, with Socinus, the equivalent of the deification of the Greek Fathers. exceptional thinkers, become more profound. But the most characteristic fact of our Lord’s consciousness is manifestly His sense of the Fatherhood of God as the determining relationship of His own life. With the growth of purely naturalist doctrines of the Person of Christ, there has been less and less room for treating this relationship as essentially unique, and growing reason for conceiving it as typical of the relationship in which God stands naturally to all mankind.
Hence in modern Unitarian thought the original restriction of the Divine Fatherhood to our Lord has been abandoned, and the Socinian sovereignty has been transmuted into the universal Fatherhood, without, however, any substantial alteration in the apprehension of the relationship of God to man kind being involved in the change.
AEMINIANISM
We pass to consider briefly some of the leading influences which have prepared the way for the theological transition of the nineteenth century. And, in the first place, Arminianism must be mentioned.
Speaking generally, Arminianism may be said to have occupied a middle place between Calvinism and Socinianism. For example, as concerns the great controversy respecting the need of atonement in order to the forgiveness of sins, the Arminians argued the necessity of an atonement, against the Socinians; but, as against the Calvinists, opposed the view that such an atonement must be a full discharge of the debt of sin.
Two great considerations governed the Arminian polemic against Calvinism, with its doctrine of the Divine sovereignty, of unconditional election, and of irresistible grace. The first was the concern to protect the freedom of man as the condition of his moral responsibility a matter difficult, to say the least of it, for Calvinism. In this respect the attitude of Arminianism was practically semi-Pelagian; the two facts of human responsibility and of the need of Divine grace being harmonised by treating grace rather as the necessary succour given to human free will in order to righteousness, than as the absolute and immediate cause of all human goodness.
But, in the next place, Arminianism represented the claim of human well-being on the Creator, who had of His own free act called men into existence. Calvinism had treated man as existing solely for the glory of God, and had not shrunk from declaring that sin having entered into the world, that glory would be most effectually served by leaving the majority of men in their sins to meet eternal punishment.
Arminianism went to the opposite extreme, and treated God as, on account of His love, existing to promote the well-being of all His creatures. For example, Grotius in his celebrated Defence of the Catholic Faith concerning the satisfaction of Christ, against Faustus Socinus, 1 says: “ But because among the attributes of God love of the human race stands first, therefore God, though He could justly punish the sins of all men by worthy and just punishment, that is, by eternal death, willed to spare those who believe on Jesus Christ. But when it was determined to spare them either by instituting or not some example against so many and great sins, He most wisely chose that way by which the greatest number of His attri butes might be manifested at the same time, namely, both His clemency and His severity, or hatred of sin, and His concern maintaining the law. 2 From the beginning to the end of this theology God is regarded exclusively as the ruler of the universe; the considerations by which His action is determined are govern mental; but the first of those considerations is concern for the well-being of those who are governed; and in order to that, a conspicuous example must at once manifest the character of God by showing His judgment of sin, and attract to Him the worship and love of those who are to be saved. Subject to this last necessity, satisfaction need not and should not be more than sufficient to maintain the Divine government. It is demanded, not by a Divine creditor, but by a ruler; it is a “ relaxation “ (relaxatio) and “ not a payment in full “ (solutio).
1 Defensio Fidei Catholicce desatisfactions Christi contra Faustum Socinum Senensem.
2 Defensio, cap. v.
Thus the exclusively governmental views of Arminianism expressly shut out the Fatherhood of God from view, as the highest relationship and the ultimate spring of His action towards mankind. Yet, indirectly, Arminianism laid stress upon considerations which tend in the long-run to bring the Divine Fatherhood into prominence. The respect for human nature and the integrity of man’s freedom, for mankind, for all men, as the object of the supreme concern of God, expresses a side of the truth which leads necessarily, in the end, to the Fatherhood of God as the relationship in which alone the glory of God and the salvation of man can be harmonised by being brought into vital union with one another.
LEIBNITZ A glance must be taken at the teaching of Leibnitz, who represents philosophical opposition to Calvinism during the eighteenth century. We are concerned especially with his Thdodicfo, or “ Essays on the Benevolence of God, the Liberty of Man, and the Origin of Evil.” The object of the work is to present a counterview to that of Augustine and Calvin as to the sovereignty of God and the independence of man, as to predestination and the rewards of sin; especially to present a view of the universe, its history and its issues, which should be as optimist as those of Augustine and Calvin were pessimist. According to the latter, the whole nature and issues of the universe were shaped by the character of God, were designed to manifest His glory, and were under the absolute rule of His will, though the fact of sin was more or less inconvenient to their general system of thought.
Leibnitz, on the other hand, takes an entirely opposite view. “ Our end,” he says, “ is to separate men from the false ideas which represent God to them as an absolute prince using despotic power, little likely to be loved and little worthy of being loved.” l “ God,” he lays down, “ is the prime reason of things; for those which are finite, as is all which we see and experiment upon, are but contingent, and have nothing in themselves which renders their existence 1 Thtodicte, pt. i. 6. necessary... It is necessary, then, to seek the reason for the existence of the world, which is the entire assemblage of contingent existences; and it is necessary to seek it in the substance which carries the reason of its existence in itself, and which, by consequence, is necessary and eternal. It is necessary also that this cause should be intelligent... His understanding is the source of essences, and His will is the origin of existences.” l This infinite and all -perfect intelligence saw eternally an infinite number of possible worlds of finite existences in relation to one another, which He could call into existence by His fiat. Of that infinite number of possible worlds, His goodness caused Him to choose the best and to create it. 2 But the very fact that the existences composing this best of possible worlds are finite, involves that physical and moral imperfections are bound up with their finitude; evil being for Leibnitz, as for Augustine, simply the negation of being. The creation of this world meant therefore the necessary existence of this evil, the magnitude, however, of which, as Leibnitz labours to prove, has been exaggerated. Each individual is free in the sense that no constraint is put upon him to do or not to do, except in so far as his nature is originally “inclined.” Each nature having been created by God as part of a harmonious whole, works out, according to this original inclination, its destiny, without interference from without; that desting having been seen and provided for from eternity by the perfect intelligence of God.
Here, then, the prevailing thought is, in a sense, that of the sovereignty of God. But that sovereignty is limited to the creation and sustentation of a world the conditions of which are not imposed by the nature of God, but by the possibilities inherent in an abstract nature of things, totally independent of the character and will of God. The bearing which the character of God has upon the result is simply that His goodness and wisdom determine Him to select that 1 Thdodicte, pt. i. 7.
2 Ibid. pt. i. 8. As to an imaginary world without sin, he says, “Mais je hie qu alorsilaurait ete meilleur, carilfaut savoir que tout est lie* dans chacun desmondes possibles,” i. 9. world which has most advantages and fewest disadvantages; in which, moreover, as an indispensable condition of His creating at all, the advantages vastly outweigh the disadvan tages. The Monadology to some extent supplements this view, not, indeed, by remedying that externality of God which is its greatest shortcoming, but by emphasising the spiritual nature of the finite existences created by God, and therefore, in a measure, their kinship with Him.
Such was the scheme by which Leibnitz removed the pressure of the Divine sovereignty, and the burden of the thought that God absolutely decrees suffering, from the optimists of the eighteenth century. Such men found in his system a welcome relief from the doctrines of Augustine, revived in Eoman Catholicism by the Jansenists and in Protestantism by Calvin. The influence of this teaching went undoubtedly to prepare the way for the return to prominence of the doctrine of Divine Fatherhood; but under stood only in the sense of a beneficent creatorship and providence, and of these, moreover, as limited by the necessary evils of finitude in the beings so created, by a beneficence which is concerned rather with the whole and with the balance, than with the individual.
METHODISM
Much profounder and more far-reaching has been the influence, for our subject, of Methodism. Methodism, while it sprang from the Anglican Church, and while Wesley himself belonged to the High Church section of it, had its theological roots in the old Calvinist Nonconformity, for both Wesley’s parents were of Nonconformist descent. Thus, so far as evangelical doctrine is concerned, the Methodist view of the fall and ruin of human nature by sin is substantially the Calvinist doctrine, though belief in the universality of saving grace modified the doctrine, so far as the total inability of human nature is concerned. Added to this influence was that of the serious and ascetic Churchmanship, represented by the Serious Call of William Law, and, above all, that of the Moravian pietists. Wesley’s own spiritual experience under these influences, and his logical faculty working on the Scriptures in the light of these experiences, are the explanation of his theological doctrines. That which stands foremost and most distinctive in the teaching of Methodism is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It was by the nature of this doctrine and the prominence given to it that Methodism was most clearly distinguished from ordinary English religion in the eighteenth century. The Anglicanism of that day had emerged from the ecclesiastical discussions of the previous century in the twofold form of Orthodoxy and Latitudinarianism, which were united in this respect that they abhorred, above all things, “ enthusiasm “ in religion, including under that term any professed consciousness of, or belief in, direct and immediate fellowship with God.
Manifestations of the Divine presence had undoubtedly been given to apostles and prophets at the first, but apparently largely for the establishment and authentication of a Church which was to enable men to dispense with such manifestations for the future. Naturally, therefore, the Anglican divines, with little or no sense of the spiritual constitution and needs of human nature, occupied themselves with discussions of the ancient evidences of Christianity and with discourses on the practical virtues of ordinary life. On the other hand, Calvinist Nonconformity had largely substituted confidence in the electing decrees of God for the evangelical content of its theological belief, and looked out upon the ignorance and sin of the multitude with apparent indifference. As against both these, Methodism emphasised, above all, that the gift of the Holy Spirit is a gift to all time; that He manifests Himself to all men individually, however obscure and sinful; that He is the only means, and the all-sufficient means, of their inward redemption from sin, through the mercy of God and the merits of Christ. But this new experience of and testimony to the work of the Holy Spirit needed to be justified to opponents by an appeal to the Holy Scriptures, the final authority not only for the Methodists, but for the parties to which they were opposed. It was the effort of Methodists to show that those whom they controverted had departed from the plain sense of the Scriptures, and failed to enter into the experiences which the Scriptures set forth as typical of Christian life. In demonstrating this, stress was necessarily laid on two elements of New Testament teaching. In the first place, the Spirit promised to believers for ever is “the Spirit of adoption, by which we cry, Abba, Father.” Adoption into the relationship of sonship, in which the Fatherhood of God is manifested, therefore assumed great prominence in Methodist theology.
And, in the second place, the saving work of Christ by the Spirit is, above all, that of regeneration, as a personal and vital experience given to those who “ believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” And if adoption means the introduction to the status of sons, regeneration, signifying the birth of a new nature, involves birth into the nature and life of sonship.
Hence, on the side both of adoption and of regeneration, the new emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit led of necessity to a new emphasis on the Fatherhood of God towards believers, and on sonship as the form of their new life.
Again, Methodism insisted much on “ the direct witness “of the Holy Spirit to our adoption as sons. By this doctrine it fulfilled the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith. The assurance of justification was to be found not merely in the declarations of Scripture, or in examining the nature of faith and finding it to be sufficient, or even in the allsufficiency of the object of faith, but in the direct, express, and personal witness of the Holy Spirit to the believer’s adoption. Thus the note of Methodist experience was that of an immediate and joyous certainty, a deep, and even exuberant, spiritual satisfaction, and all expressed in terms of filial consciousness; all, therefore, bringing into the foreground the Fatherhood, which is the correlate of sonship.
And, finally, Methodism testified in word and deed, still more in the faith that inspired its preaching, to the universality of the love of God, and of His will to save men through Christ. As against Calvinism, the Divine love was set forth as universal; as against the Laodicean spirit of the times, it was displayed in the intensity of its yearning compassion, in the wealth of its sacrifice, and in its individual regard. There, practically, the matter was left by the early Methodists. The leaders of the great movement were occupied with the directly practical work of preaching to all the gospel, which was meant for all, and which was meant to lift all to the life of sonship. They were not philosophers, nor was theirs a philosophical age. Their experience and their teaching went towards the remoulding of the doctrine of the relationship of God to mankind, and made that remoulding inevitable. Their work supplied both the necessity and the material. But the accomplishment waited for a season. The experience of Christian believers as characteristically filial, the love of God as supreme in Him and universal in its range, the position and nature of sons as intended for all, these were the great truths constantly proclaimed by the Methodist preachers. They have one presupposition, and only one, linking them all together, and eventually manifested by them all the universal Fatherhood of God as the explanation of His search after mankind and His gift to them, of the capacity of all men to be saved, and of the predominantly filial life of those who are saved; in whom the original purpose of God is realised, and therefore both as to its source and its nature explained. That presupposition, indeed, comes into sight once and again, especially in the Methodist hymnology. It was, how ever, for the most part a deduction waiting to be made, when the time was ripe for reflexion upon the meaning of the experiences revived in Methodism and of the fundamental truths by which its work was inspired. The Methodist experience of Fatherhood, the realisation of the universality of that love which would lead all men to sonship in Christ, carried with it the absolute necessity of treating the Father hood as the supreme relationship of God to men, because filial, and of treating it as universal, because it seeks all men for itself, and puts at the disposal of all the means of arriving at that sonship which is at once the mark of redemption and the condition of all real life. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
It has been during the nineteenth century that the presuppositions of the gospel, just spoken of, have come fully into sight, and that the Fatherhood of God has been restored to its prominence in theology; though, for the most part, with some defects of presentation, which have prevented its complete manifestation as the highest and all - embracing truth, able to find room for and to harmonise all aspects and interests of the truth as these have been perceived from age to age. The causes of this restored pre-eminence have been, in part, personal; but still more due to general tendencies of theo logical thinking, which no doubt have been exemplified, above all, in the teaching of the leading personalities, but have secured for that teaching a widely sympathetic response.
Chief among these personal influences may be mentioned Maurice and, on a more popular plane, Kingsley in England, Erskine of Linlathen and M Leod Campbell in Scotland. In the case of all these men, the most powerful imme diate cause stirring them into activity was Calvinism in the form of so-called Evangelicalism. One of the issues of the Methodist revival was the reawakening of the evangelical spirit in Calvinism, both within and without the Anglican Church. And this reawakening had a twofold effect. On the one hand, it was a powerful means of the deepening of the Christian life. On the other hand, this very deepening led many to the perception of the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the Calvinist view of the dealings of God with men, judged from the standpoint of what is involved in evangelical experience itself. It was not only that the evangelical testi mony to the love of God in Christ caused a revolt against the limitation of its saving purpose, which was intense in proportion to the realisation of the depth and intensity of the Divine love. In addition, the witness to the love of God made men impatient of what seemed the artificiality of the highly elaborated and carefully defined “ plan “ of salvation, which seemed to lack the spontaneity and naturalness of love.
Again, when the love of God was treated as the source of His redemptive action in Christ, it appeared necessary to go be hind the Fall and beneath the fact of sin to discern and set forth the original relations of the Godhead to mankind out of which redemption arose, and by which both the nature of sin and of redemption were determined. And, once more, the insistence on the love of God made it necessary to arrive at a more comprehensive and practicable religious philosophy of the whole of life than that which was current, despite their manifold philanthropic activities, among the Evangelicals.
It is unnecessary here to speak particularly of any of the teachers referred to, except Maurice, the most original and influential of them all, though attention must be called to the conspicuous service rendered by M Leod Campbell in his great attempt to rescue the Atonement from Calvinist and govern mental explanations, and to interpret it in terms of Father hood of the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son. The distinctive qualities which made the greatness of Frederick Denison Maurice were his profound spirituality, his high metaphysical faculty, to which a striking tribute was paid by so different a man as John Stuart Mill, and that strong faith in the “ light which lighteth every man,” which, combined with wide sympathies, led him to an eclecticism that sought to recognise and harmonise the elements of truth contained in all creeds and confessions, witnessed to by all sects and schools of thought. The character and theology of Maurice were moulded by many different and even widely contrasted influences. The son of a Unitarian minister of some position, whose whole family ultimately abandoned Unitarianism (most of them for Calvinist Nonconformity), Maurice to the end retained certain Unitarian influences, although he never failed to give strong expression to the revulsion which the Unitarian conception of God, of man, and of religion had aroused in him. The inability to exhibit sacrifice as of the very life of God because He is love, the denial of Divine intervention on behalf of men, involved ultimately in the denial of the Incarnation and of the miraculous, the absence of a sufficiently serious conception of ethical purpose in God, these elements, together with the optimist view of human nature and the inadequate account of faith in and fellowship with God, which have always characterised average Unitarianism, raised a revolt in Maurice’s mind, not only against the particular doctrines, but against the whole temper of Unitarianism. In the second place, Maurice, like the rest of his family, was brought under the influence of Calvinism. While his whole subsequent life was a protest against the exclusiveness and limitations of Calvinism, yet the Calvinist doctrine of the sovereignty of the will of God, in itself, in its moral significance, and in its application to history, especially to its more virile epochs and episodes, as the ultimate explanation of nature, man, and history, made a profound and permanent impression upon Maurice, and deeply coloured all his theo logical teaching. In the third place, Maurice was influenced by the writings of Coleridge, and, through Coleridge, became acquainted with some of the leading German thinkers, especially with Schelling and Schleiermacher.
Next in order came the yet deeper influence of Plato, to whose writings Maurice was introduced at Cambridge by Julius Hare. From Plato it was natural to pass to the teaching of those great Alexandrian Fathers whose doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation was so largely moulded by the philosophy of Plato.
Subsequently came the effect of the so-called Catholic movement. With this, as represented by Newman and Pusey, Maurice never had sympathy; but it had a decisive influence upon him, drawing his attention to and securing his belief in the Catholic Church as a historic, visible, and Divine institution, from the ideal of which particular branches, not ably the Eoman Catholic Church, had more or less fallen away. The stress laid by Maurice on the historic character of the Catholic Church was made the stronger by the fact that he was deeply interested, as were many of the more religious
I men of his day, in the personality and teaching of Edward Irving. Irving’s later claim, that the true Catholic Church had been reinstituted with new spiritual signs and restored apostles, on the one hand, deepened Maurice’s sense that such a Church must exist as an external witness to the spiritual constitution of humanity and to its oneness in Christ; and, on the other hand, strengthened his conviction that such a Church must be continuous in its existence, must go back in principle to the creation of man, must be finally revealed and fully equipped in Christ, and must continue in unbroken activity its historic witness to the spirituality and univer sality of Christianity, however marred by human superstitions and divisions.
Lastly, Maurice lived in the midst of the great national, economic, and social movements which led up to and sprang out of 1848. In that era of revolution and aspiration there was absorbing interest to a mind like Maurice s, while there was in it all, for him, increased need to find the presence of a living Will, of a Divine principle of truth, manifesting itself in outward events, and sufficiently comprehensive to include all the national and social movements which go to promote the fulness and perfection of human life in a universal order establishing righteousness upon earth.
Such were the ruling influences in Maurice’s view of life and in his theology. He started with such conception of the Fatherhood of God as he could find in Unitarianism. This did not satisfy him, because the Father, as represented by Unitarians, was not fatherly enough; because the Unitarian emphasis on second causes had barred out any adequatemanifestation of fatherly love; and because the Unitarian view of the nature of Christ diminished the value of the Divine gift to mankind in Him, and therefore the greatness of the love which was manifested in that gift. Maurice came to appre hend the unique relation of Christ to God and to mankind, and was led to embrace the theology of the Trinity and the Incarnation, to which, in his mind, the influences described above gave an Alexandrian colour. His deep spirituality, his yearning after God, filled Maurice with the sense of sin, experienced above all as a burthen of selfishness, from which he needed to be delivered in order that he might enter into that full life of God and man the principle of which is revealed in the sacrifice of Christ, into that life of self-sacrifice which is the bond of the spiritual order of human life. Added to this was the permanent realisation of that which he had at the first learned among the Unitarians, namely, the intrinsic goodness and worth, according to their degree of things natural, of the ordinary interests of human life.
Out of all this there came for Maurice the sense that love is supreme in God, and in God is the source of the universe, of man, and of history; love, realised in the eternal fellowship of the Trinity, manifest in the Incarnation and in the Sacrifice of the Cross. Above all, this love is revealed as a fatherly will, here the influence of Calvinism may be perceived, the authority for conscience, the abiding force in history, the underlying principle of the universe. This fatherly will manifested itself in a kingdom the origin of which on earth was, as was the case with Augustine’s City of God, simultaneous with the creation of man; a kingdom which became growingly manifest until it was consummated in Christ, and was revealed in the Catholic Church, with its creeds, sacraments, and worship, face to face with the worldempire of Eome. The Divine office of this Church is to give an everlasting witness to the unity of the human race in Christ the Son of God, to its calling to enter into the life of Divine sonship and universal brotherhood, and to the condition of that life as being the spirit of the Cross. 1
Thus, for Maurice, the truth of truths for every province of life is to be found, as he says in his Lectures on Social Morality, in “that theology which recognises a righteous will, a fatherly will, as the ground of us and of the universe.” 2 That sentence may be said to sum up Maurice’s religious philosophy, and to exhibit all the influences which, as has been shown, shaped it. The reference to the supremacy of a “righteous will” reminds us of Calvinism, while the mention of the “fatherly will” suggests the original Unitarianism, enriched by Maurice’s peculiarly strong appre hension of the doctrine of the Trinity. The phrase “ the ground of us “ carries us alike to German transcendentalism and to Platonic Christianity, while the addition “ and of the 1 See especially Maurice’s Kingdom of Christ.
2 Lectures on Social Morality, Lecture XX. universe” introduces the comprehensiveness which embraces nature, history,. and the so-called secular life in one spiritual whole. Salvation, finally, consists in the apprehension of the Divine will as righteous and fatherly, and therefore in loyal conformity to it as the ground of a life which can only be entered into by filial love and self-surrender. This emphasis on salvation as the apprehension of the truth revealed in the historic Christ, who is the witness to and the spiritual source of a life grounded in and patterned after His own, because He is the eternal Son of the Father, is the clearest sign of what may be called an Alexandrian tone of theology. This view, set forth with a somewhat indeterminate utterance, which was in sharp contrast to the formal definitions of current orthodoxy, seemed to a large proportion of the men of Maurice’s own time both incomprehensible and dangerous, although it has since then largely permeated the teaching of all schools of theological thought. The teaching had some of the defects popularly attributed to it. ^ It did too exclusively insist, as had Clement of Alexandria, upon salvation as hinging upon revelation, as wrought out there foreby an apprehension which, while both spiritual and moral, yet appears prevailingly intellectual. There were therefore some elements of religion to which insufficient justice was done, and this insufficiency was perhaps most strikingly manifest in Maurice’s dealing with the Atonement. The demand made upon man by God, although that demand may be seen to be in principle fatherly, was insufficiently made manifest, and the lack of this element affected the whole of Maurice’s theology. But, when these and all other necessary qualifications have been made, it yet remains true that Maurice’s has been perhaps the most far-reaching and noblest influence upon the doctrine of God in British theology in the nineteenth century. The causes, however, which have operated in the nine teenth century to restore the pre-eminence of the Fatherhood of God in Christian thought have been too universal to be explained by individual influence, and too positive and farreaching to be interpreted as merely a reaction against the harsher teaching of the past. This historical sketch may fitly end by a brief mention of the principal of these causes of theological change.
1. In the first place, the human element of the nature, life, and work of Christ has been brought into prominence. The human has been recognised as the manifestation, rather than as the limitation, still less the contradiction, of the Divine. And the growing study of the human in Christ has shown it to be typical, above all, of the true and ultimate relationship of humanity to God. The distinctive relationship of God to Christ must, because of Christ’s relationship to mankind, be the distinctive relationship in which God stands to man.
2. Under the influence of the modern recognition of the laws of development in nature and in history, a truer perspective of revelation has been found. The apprehension has been reached of the fact that the Old Testament is preparatory to Christ, in such wise that it is vitally prophetic of Him, and yet, because prophetic, throughout incomplete. The fulfilment must, in all respects, transcend the preparation, although the worth of that preparation its positive and permanent meaning is not thereby destroyed. Hence it is in the light of the fulfilment that the cause and nature of the preparation must be understood. Our conception of the relationship of God to man must be taken, primarily, from the fulfilment, and not from the preparation; and, secondarily, from the preparation in its connexion with the fulfilment, and therefore read in its light. This of course does not involve the unscientific reading back of the New Testament into the Old, but the recognition, in equal balance, of the positive truth and the relative incompleteness of the Old Testament; the holding of its truth in the light of and for the sake of the completely manifested truth in Christ. 1 Thus what may be called a Christocentric interpretation of revelation has accompanied the new emphasis on the typical character of the humanity of Christ.
3. In the next place, a more serious use of the doctrine of the holy Trinity has been made by the most distinctive 1 See Chapter IV. and influential theologians. Such have not been content to regard the doctrine as simply casting light either on the immanent relations of the Persons of the Godhead, or on the modes of His manifestation in the salvation of mankind.
They have looked to find the stamp of the triunity of God throughout the universe which manifests Him. In particular, they have used the fact of the Trinity to explain the nature and possibilities of the relationships of God to man; and they have done so the more confidently, because it was in and through human nature that the holy Trinity was revealed by the incarnation of our Lord. Thus the relationship of mankind, created in and for the Son, to God has been seen to be governed by the eternal relationship of the Son to the Father. The universal significance of that relationship, obscured as we have seen by Athanasius, has been restored to light. And to this restoration the influence of German transcendentalism whatever may be its defects has power fully contributed,
4. Further, it has become apparent that, in the interpretation of the ways of God with men, the starting-point must be the Creation, and not the Fall; God’s original purpose, and not the remedy for its miscarriage through sin; that the work of redemption is grounded in that of creation, and governed by it. The work of creation is explained in Christ, who is the positive fulfilment of man; and this fulfilment is in the essential form of perfected Sonship. Hence Father hood is demonstrated in Christ as being the original relationship which gave rise to the creation, and realises its aim in the consummation of mankind.
5. Meanwhile the most powerful tendency of theology, influenced by the new perception of the law of development as everywhere prevailing, has been to conceive God in less external and mechanical, in more immanent and vital, relations to nature and to man, than had previously seemed to be the case, at any rate since the influence of Aristotle succeeded that of Plato in Christian philosophy. And this vital relationship of God to mankind receives fullest and most natural expression in terms of the Fatherhood of God.
6. Again, the nineteenth century witnessed the reawakening of manifold aspirations political, social, economic, intellectual, and aesthetic, all of them recognised by enlightened Christian men to be, in principle, natural, necessary, and good. These movements in the practical sphere have claimed and received recognition in the higher philosophy and poetry. Theology has been forced to interpret them, and, in interpreting, to sanction them, by the light of the revelation of true manhood in Christ. A sense of the naturalness, goodness, oneness, and harmony of the comprehensive order of human life has by this means come to men; and they have become growingly convinced that there can be no bare opposition between the human and the Divine, between the natural and the spiritual; that the truly Christian must be heir to the whole of human life able to rule every part of it in harmony, for its perfecting in the service of God. Again, the freedom, naturalness, and wholeness of such a life can only be understood by means of the Fatherhood and the fatherliness of God.
7. Finally, the humaner and more sympathetic tone of thought which has marked the nineteenth century, and created ideals of brotherliness, of social service, of the education and redemption of all men, has of necessity exercised a profound influence on theology. It has meant the extension to all men, and to all the ends of life, of the idea of Christian brotherhood and the freeing of that idea from non- Christian restrictions. As man feels towards his neighbour, so he inevitably conceives God as feeling towards mankind. The manifold influences of modern life have taught the neighbourhood and brotherhood of all men. A new gentleness and sympathy have been awakened. And such brotherliness has of necessity found its source and its justification in the fatherliness of God. The source of what is truest and best in me must be in Him; therefore, if I am brotherly, how much more must He be fatherly! With the sense that this must be so, has come the eyesight toperceive, in Scripture and elsewhere, above all in Christ, that it is so.
While all this has been the case, it must not be forgotten that the so-called Oxford Movement represented, in its leading features, a reaction against these newer tendencies of thought and sympathy. It is unnecessary to speak here of its eccle siastical aspects. In theology and religious temper, however, it was an attempt to overcome liberal tendencies in religion, and to correct certain deficiencies of evangelicalism by reverting to antiquity under Eomanticist influence. But the Movement produced no great doctrine of God.
Indeed its uncritical resort to the witness of the primitive and undivided Church, under the guidance of the so-called Vincentian Canon, “ Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus,” prevented it from attaining a thoroughly consistent theology, whether original or revived. In its search after agreement, it was forced to overlook difference and to forgo both selection and criticism. Yet, on the whole, thepreoccupation of Newman and Pusey with the nature and conditions of justification, understood in a Roman sense, caused the influence of Western theology to predominate with them, and led therefore to the ascendency, once more, of the mediseval doctrine of the sovereignty of God. In later times the influence of Maurice has profoundly affected the theology of the leaders of the High Church party. The theological results of this modification have not yet been wrought out, though it has brought about an approximation to the spirit of the times which is in striking contrast to the temper of the Movement as originally inaugurated.
Doubtless this new spirit has had its dangers; the danger above all, perhaps, of sentinientalism in all the concerns of life. That sentinientalism has invaded theology, and has become the more marked by reason of its revolt against harsh or artificial dogmatism. In so far as such a sentimental spirit has prevailed, elements of spiritual and moral weakness have been apparent; the sovereignty of God and the righteous ends which He seeks and demands in the life of men have been obscured. Then whole tracts of theological thought have been abandoned as unnecessary or unpleasant, the essential truth of which should have been discerned and restated in terms of the newer and less inadequate thought.
Such a restatement is one of the great theological tasks set before the twentieth century; and with its accomplishment the Fatherhood of God will be set forth in worthier expression, and will be seen to be the relationship, above all others, which must determine all Christian thought that is true to the life and teaching of Christ, or that offers a guide to the purposes and dealings of God with mankind.