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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2024
In considering first the Second Part of the Report on Doctrine in the Church of England, we have deliberately postponed consideration of those sections which have aroused most discussion and which would seem to indicate trends and tendencies very different from those in the section on The Church and Sacraments. Before trying to form an estimate of the significance of the whole from the standpoint of those concerned with the fidelity of the Christian witness and with the prospects of Christian unity, we may, without attempting a full analysis, draw attention to some salient points raised in these other sections.
The first of the three main divisions of the Report covers The Doctrines of God and of Redemption. Herein the doctrine of the Triune God is confined within a page and a half, not of dogmatic or theological exposition, but of pure history of dogma. The question What do we mean by the word “God”? is answered exclusively in terms of purely natural theology without reference to Revelation; but it is found subsequently that the “Biblical conception [of the ‘Living God’] is greatly to be preferred,” for purely pragmatic reasons, to “the leading conceptions entertained by Greek philosophers and Indian sages.”
1 See Blackfriars, March 1938. (Corrigendum: The word Clergymen on p. 163, line 28, should read churchmen.)
2 cf. Rudolf Otto, The Kingdom of God and the Son of Man (Lutter-worth Press, 15s.). In saying this we do not intend to imply endorsement of the assumptions, methods and findings of Formgeschichte, but simply to indicate that, even if the most advanced conclusions of criticism be assumed, the Commission permits complete open-mindedness regarding the most indisputably authentic utterances and works of Christ. Dr. Otto's observations on pp. 375–6 of this work seem relevant: “for the theologian the charisma, together with the pneuma, as an anticipation of the eschatological order is an essential element of a community which is intended to be a church of the Nazarene. That this church has lost its charisma, that men look back to it as a thing of past times, that men make it and the inbreaking kingdom belonging to it trivial by allegories, does not show that this church is now on a higher level, but is a sign of its decay.”
3 “Here we have gone into greater detail, because it seemed to us that there is great confusion of thought on the subject, especially as regards the distinction marked technically by the terms Formal Sin and Material Sin, and because greater precision of thought than is common among either clergy or instructed laity is needed, if the increasing practice of spiritual consultation and direction is to be fruitful.” -Chairman's Introduction, p. II.
4 Italics ours. It is true, indeed, that many of the Greek Fathers speak of Adam's grace and communion with God before the Fall as “natural”; but it seems clear that they understand this, not as opposed to what the Latins came to call supernatural, but in the sense of native, as opposed to acquired or added. On this, and on the whole development of the Catholic theology of grace and nature and original sin, see A. Verrielle, Le surnaturel en nous et le péché orginel. It is high time for an English edition of this profound and constructive, but eminently readable, book.
5 It need not be denied that Catholic theologians have, in the past, too often attempted to account for the transmission of original sin in purely rational terms without reference to the revealed economy of salvation. But they have always understood that the doctrine of original sin in itself is (and can only be) a revealed truth; a subject which theology, grounded on and guided by faith, can alone deal with. Cf. A. Verrielle, op. cit.
6 More fundamental if only because its denial is a direct and explicit repudiation of the teaching of Scripture and Creeds; the former does not appear to have received explicit formulation in Tradition till considerably later. For a brief statement of the whole subject, Fr. C. C. Martindale's pamphlet, The Virgin Birth (Catholic Truth Society, 2d.) may be warmly recommended.
7 Those of the Commission “who hold that a full belief in the historical Incarnation is more consistent with the supposition that Our Lord's birth took place under the normal conditions of human generation,” need perhaps to be reminded that Catholic theology has always been at considerable pains to safeguard the truth that-in the words of Ratramnus whose reply to the pertissimi physiologi of his time seems still relevant-Our Lord's birth was a true nasci and not an erumpi. (cf. Seeberg. Domengesch. III. p. 71 sqq.) Any interpretation of the Virgin Birth which would destroy the reality of Our Lady's true motherhood would of course be heretical. Cf. St. Thomas's principle: “Ex parte matris, nativitas illa fuit naturalis; sed ex parte operationis Spiritus Sancti fuit miraculosa; unde beata Virgo est vera et naturalis mater Christi.” (Summa, III. xxxv, 4 ad 2.)
8 Cf. C. C. Martindale, op. cit. pp. 9, 10.
9 We regret the carelessness with which in the previous study (p. 173) we attriuted “misunderstandings” to this section on the Atonement. The “fear of anthropomorphic interpretations of satisfaction and placation” does not, in fact, occur in this section which, so far as it goes, provides a good if incomplete exposition of Catholic doctrine.
10 So Tyrrell: “What I feel is that their [the orthodox theologians’] instinct of hostility is right, though their reasons are wrong; but the cleft is even deeper than they dream. It is not, as they suppose, about this or that article of the creed that we differ; we accept it all; but it is the word credo; the sense of ‘true’ as applied to dogma; the whole value of revelation that is at stake.” (Letter to von Hügel, 30.9.1904) Barth, from the opposite point of view, recognises the same thing. (See especially his Der Begriff der Kirche in Die Theologie und die Kirche, Vol. II. pp. 24 sqq., and numerous passages in his Dogmatik).
11 The story of that development is brilliantly sketched by Barth's disciple, Emil Brunner, in the early chapters of his Philosophy of Religion from the Standpoint of Protestant Theology. (Nicholson and Watson.)
12 The Great Misunderstanding, by Denzil G. M. Patrick, Student World, No. II, 1937, p. 134
13 E.g. “The God of Redemption is not other than the God of Creation” (p. 79); “Through Our Lord's Resurrection the sovereignty of God has been vindicated in the material creation and not outside or apart from it.” (p. 85.) On this aspect of the Report, cf. the Editorial in the March issue of The Industrial Christian Fellowship Review.
14 œcumenica, Jan. 1938, p. 738. M. Gabriel Marcel is a Catholic exponent of an “existential philosophy” of Kierkegaardian inspiration. His meaning in the above quotation is therefore that it is precisely the doctrines of the Church and Sacraments that most immediately and profoundly affect our personal existence and outlook.
15 This point is too often overlooked by Anglo-Catholics who claim to base their acceptance of the validity of their sacraments on their personal “sacramental experience.” The validity of a sacrament necessarily transcends “experience”-to assert otherwise would be indeed to “overthrow the nature of a sacrament” -whereas the symbolism of the signum, and its co-relative “experience” may be independent of the realty of the effects signified.
16 Cf. The Sunday Pictorial:“Decent men and women want religious guidance in these dark days of doubt and insecurity. They need a Voice to obey. A Leader to follow. And the miserable retort to their prayer is a spate of specious contradictions, a Modern Bible of Bunk which asserts that even the original Book must now be swallowed with a pinch of salt.”
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