Outspoken Essays by William Ralph Inge

W >> William Ralph Inge >> Outspoken Essays

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

Chastity and indifference to death were the two qualities in Christians
which made the greatest impression on their neighbours. Galen is
especially interesting on the former topic. But we must add a third
characteristic--the cheerfulness and happiness which marked the early
Christian communities. 'Joy' as a moral quality is a Christian
invention, as a study of the usage of charha in Greek will show. Even in
Augustine's time the temper of the Christians, 'serena et non dissolute
hilaris' was one of the things which attracted him to the Church. The
secret of this happy social life was an intense realisation of
corporate unity among the members of the confraternity, which they
represented to themselves as a 'mystery'--a mystical union between the
Head and members of a 'body.' It is in this conception, and not in
ritual details, that we are justified in finding a real and deep
influence of the mystery-cults upon Christianity. The Catholic
conception of sacraments as bonds uniting religious communities, and as
channels of grace flowing from a corporate treasury, was as certainly
part of the Greek mystery-religion as it was foreign to Judaism. The
mysteries had their bad side, as might be expected in private and
half-secret societies; but their influence as a whole was certainly
good. The three chief characteristics of mystery-religion were, first,
rites of purification, both moral and ceremonial; second, the promise of
spiritual communion with some deity, who through them enters into his
worshippers; third, the hope of immortality, which the Greeks often
called 'deification,' and which was secured to those who were initiated.

It is useless to deny that St. Paul regarded Christianity as, at least
on one side, a mystery-religion. Why else should he have used a number
of technical terms which his readers would recognise at once as
belonging to the mysteries? Why else should he repeatedly use the word
'mystery' itself, applying it to doctrines distinctive of Christianity,
such as the resurrection with a 'spiritual body,' the relation of the
Jewish people to God, and, above all, the mystical union between Christ
and Christians? The great' mystery' is 'Christ in you, the hope of
glory' (Col i. 27). It was as a mystery-religion that Europe accepted
Christianity. Just as the Jewish Christians took with them the whole
framework of apocalyptic Messianism, and set the figure of Jesus within
it, so the Greeks took with them the whole scheme of the mysteries, with
their sacraments, their purifications and fasts, their idea of a
mystical brotherhood, and their doctrine of 'salvation' (soterhia is
essentially a mystery word) through membership in a divine society,
worshipping Christ as the patronal deity of their mysteries.

Historically, this type of Christianity was the origin of Catholicism,
both Western and Eastern; though it is only recently that this character
of the Pauline churches has been recognised. And students of the New
Testament have not yet realised the importance of the fact that St.
Paul, who was ready to fight to the death against the Judaising of
Christianity, was willing to take the first step, and a long one,
towards the Paganising of it. It does not appear that his personal
religion was of this type. He speaks with contempt of some doctrines and
practices of the Pagan mysteries, and will allow no _rapprochement_ with
what he regards as devil-worship. In this he remains a pure Hebrew. But
he does not appear to see any danger in allowing his Hellenistic
churches to assimilate the worship of Christ to the honours paid to the
gods of the mysteries, and to set their whole religion in this
framework, provided only that they have no part nor lot with those who
sit at 'the table of demons'--the sacramental love-feasts of the heathen
mysteries. The dangers which he does see, and against which he issues
warnings, are, besides Judaism, antinomianism and disorder on the one
hand, and dualistic asceticism on the other. He dislikes or mistrusts
'the speaking with tongues' (glossolalhia), which was the favourite
exhibition of religious enthusiasm at Corinth. (On this subject Prof.
Lake's excursus is the most instructive discussion that has yet
appeared. The 'Testament of Job' and the magical papyri show that
gibberish uttered in a state of spiritual excitement was supposed to be
the language of angels and spirits, understood by them and acting upon
them as a charm.) He urges his converts to do all things 'decently and
in order.' He is alarmed at signs of moral laxity on the part of
self-styled 'spiritual persons'--a great danger in all times of ecstatic
enthusiasm. He is also alive to the dangers connected with that kind of
asceticism which is based on theories of the impurity of the body--the
typical Oriental form of world-renunciation. But he does not appear to
have foreseen the unethical and polytheistic developments of sacramental
institutionalism. In this particular his Judaising opponents had a
little more justification than he is willing to allow them.

ST. PAUL

There is something transitional about all St. Paul's teaching. We cannot
take him out of his historical setting, as so many of his commentators
in the nineteenth century tried to do. This is only another way of
saying that he was, to use his own expression, a wise master-builder,
not a detached thinker, an arm-chair philosopher. To the historian,
there must always be something astounding in the magnitude of the task
which he set himself, and in his enormous success. The future history of
the civilised world for two thousand years, perhaps for all time, was
determined by his missionary journeys and hurried writings. It is
impossible to guess what would have become of Christianity if he had
never lived; we cannot even be sure that the religion of Europe would be
called by the name of Christ. This stupendous achievement seems to have
been due to an almost unique practical insight into the essential
factors of a very difficult and complex situation. We watch him, with
breathless interest, steering the vessel which carried the Christian
Church and its fortunes through a narrow channel full of sunken rocks
and shoals. With unerring instinct he avoids them all, and brings the
ship, not into smooth water, but into the open sea, out of that perilous
strait. And so far was his masterly policy from mere opportunism, that
his correspondence has been 'Holy Scripture' for fifty generations of
Christians, and there has been no religious revival within Christianity
that has not been, on one side at least, a return to St. Paul.
Protestants have always felt their affinity with this institutionalist,
mystics with this disciplinarian. The reason, put shortly, is that St.
Paul understood what most Christians never realise, namely, that the
Gospel of Christ is not _a_ religion, but religion itself, in its most
universal and deepest significance.

INSTITUTIONALISM AND MYSTICISM

(1914)

It happens sometimes that two opposite tendencies flourish together,
deriving strength from a sense of the danger with which each is
threatened by the popularity of the other. Where the antagonism is not
absolute, each may gain by being compelled to recognise the strong
points in the rival position. In a serious controversy the right is
seldom or never all on one side; and in the normal course of events both
theories undergo some modification through the influence of their
opponents, until a compromise, not always logically defensible, brings
to an end the acute stage of the controversy. Such a tension of rival
movements is very apparent in the religious thought of our day. The
quickening of spiritual life in our generation has taken two forms,
which appear to be, and to a large extent are, sharply opposed to each
other. On the one side, there has been a great revival of mysticism.
Mysticism means an immediate communion, real or supposed, between the
human soul and the Soul of the World or the Divine Spirit. The
hypothesis on which it rests is that there is a real affinity between
the individual soul and the great immanent Spirit, who in Christian
theology is identified with the Logos-Christ. He was the instrument in
creation, and through the Incarnation and the gift of the Holy Spirit,
in which the Incarnation is continued, has entered into the most
intimate relation with the inner life of the believer. This revived
belief in the inspiration of the individual has immensely strengthened
the position of Christian apologists, who find their old fortifications
no longer tenable against the assaults of natural science and
historical criticism. It has given to faith a new independence, and has
vindicated for the spiritual life the right to stand on its own feet and
rest on its own evidence. Spiritual things, we now realise, are
spiritually discerned. The enlightened soul can see the invisible, and
live its true life in the suprasensible sphere. The primary evidence for
the truth of religion is religious experience, which in persons of
religious genius--those whom the Church calls saints and
prophets--includes a clear perception of an eternal world of truth,
beauty, and goodness, surrounding us and penetrating us at every point.
It is the unanimous testimony of these favoured spirits that the
obstacles in the way of realising this transcendental world are purely
subjective and to a large extent removable by the appropriate training
and discipline. Nor is there any serious discrepancy among them either
as to the nature of the vision which is the highest reward of human
effort, or as to the course of preparation which makes us able to
receive it. The Christian mystic must begin with the punctual and
conscientious discharge of his duties to society; he must next purify
his desires from all worldly and carnal lusts, for only the pure in
heart can see God; and he may thus fit himself for 'illumination'--the
stage in which the glory and beauty of the spiritual life, now clearly
discerned, are themselves the motive of action and the incentive to
contemplation; while the possibility of a yet more immediate and
ineffable vision of the Godhead is not denied, even in this life. There
is reason to think that this conception of religion appeals more and
more strongly to the younger generation to-day. It brings an intense
feeling of relief to many who have been distressed by being told that
religion is bound up with certain events in antiquity, the historicity
of which it is in some cases difficult to establish; with a cosmology
which has been definitely disproved; and with a philosophy which they
cannot make their own. It allows us what George Meredith calls 'the
rapture of the forward view.' It brings home to us the meaning of the
promise made by the Johannine Christ that there are many things as yet
hid from humanity which will in the future be revealed by the Spirit of
Truth. It encourages us to hope that for each individual who is trying
to live the right life the venture of faith will be progressively
justified in experience. It breaks down the denominational barriers
which divide men and women who worship the Father in spirit and in
truth--barriers which become more senseless in each generation, since
they no longer correspond even approximately with real differences of
belief or of religious temperament. It makes the whole world kin by
offering a pure religion which is substantially the same in all climates
and in all ages--a religion too divine to be fettered by any man-made
formulas, too nobly human to be readily acceptable to men in whom the
ape and tiger are still alive, but which finds a congenial home in the
purified spirit which is the 'throne of the Godhead.' Such is the type
of faith which is astir among us. It makes no imposing show in Church
conferences; it does not fill our churches and chapels; it has no
organisation, no propaganda; it is for the most part passively loyal,
without much enthusiasm, to the institutions among which it finds
itself. But in reality it has overleapt all barriers; it knows its true
spiritual kin; and amid the strifes and perplexities of a sad and
troublous time it can always recover its hope and confidence by
ascending in heart and mind to the heaven which is closer to it than
breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

But on the other side we see a tendency, even more manifest if we look
for external signs, to emphasise the institutional side of religion,
that which prompts men and women to combine in sacred societies, to
cherish enthusiastic loyalties for the Church of their early education
or of their later choice, to find their chief satisfaction in acts of
corporate worship, and to subordinate their individual tastes and
beliefs to the common tradition and discipline of a historical body. It
is now about eighty years since this tendency began to manifest itself
as a new phenomenon in the Anglican Church. Since then, it has spread to
other organisations. It has prompted a new degree of denominational
loyalty in several Protestant bodies on the Continent, in America, and
in our own country; and it has arrested the decline of the Roman
Catholic Church in countries where the outlook seemed least hopeful from
the ecclesiastical point of view. Such a movement, so widespread and so
powerful in its results, is clearly a thing to be reckoned with by all
who desire to estimate rightly the signs of the times. It is a current
running in the opposite direction to the mystical tendency, which
regards unity as a spiritual, not a political ideal. Fortunately, the
theory of institutionalism has lately been defended and expounded by
several able writers belonging to different denominations; so that we
may hope, by comparing their utterances, to understand the attractions
of the theory and its meaning for those who so highly value it.

Aubrey Moore, writing in 1889, connected the Catholic revival with the
abandonment of atomism in natural philosophy and of Baconian
metaphysics. These were, he thought, the counterpart of individualism in
politics and Calvinism in religion. The adherents of mid-Victorian
science and philosophy were bewildered by the phenomenon of 'men in the
nineteenth century actually expressing a belief in a divine society and
a supernatural presence in our midst, a brotherhood in which men become
members of an organic whole by sharing in a common life, a service of
man which is the natural and spontaneous outcome of the service of
God.'[90] In the view of this learned and acute thinker, Catholicism, or
institutionalism, is destined to supplant Protestantism, as the organic
theory is destined to displace the atomic.

More recently Troeltsch, writing as a Protestant, has emphasised the
institutional side of religion in the most uncompromising way.

'One of the clearest results of all religious history and
religious psychology is that the essence of all religion is
not dogma and idea, but cultus and communion, the living
intercourse with the Deity--an intercourse of the entire
community, having its vital roots in religion and deriving
its ultimate power of thus uniting individuals, from its
faith in God.... Whatever the future may bring us, we cannot
expect a certainty and force of the knowledge of God and of
His redemptive power to subsist without communion and
cultus. And so long as a Christianity of any kind shall
subsist at all, it will be united with a cultus, and with
Christ holding a central position in the cultus.'[91]

From America, the last refuge of individualism, there has come a
pronouncement not less drastic. Professor Royce, the author of the
admirable metaphysical treatise entitled 'The World and the Individual,'
has recently published a double series of Hibbert Lectures on 'The
Problem of Christianity,' in which he affirms the institutionalist
theory with a surprising absence of qualification. The whole book is
dominated by one idea, advocated with a _naivete_ which would hardly
have been possible to a theologian--the idea that churchmanship is the
essential part of the Christian religion.

'The salvation of the individual man is determined by some
sort of membership in a certain spiritual community--a
religious community, and in its inmost nature a divine
community, in whose life the Christian virtues are to reach
their highest expression and the spirit of the Master is to
obtain its earthly fulfilment. In other words, there is a
certain universal and divine spiritual community. Membership
in that community is necessary to the salvation of man....
Such a community exists, is needed, and is an indispensable
means of salvation for the individual man, and is the
fitting realm wherein alone the kingdom of heaven which the
Master preached can find its expression, and wherein alone
the Christian virtues can be effectively preached.'[92]

These statements, which in vigour and rigour would satisfy the most
extreme curialist in the Society of Jesus, are not a little startling in
an American philosopher, who, as far as the present writer knows, does
not belong to any 'Catholic' Church. The thesis thus enunciated is the
argument of the whole book, in which 'loyalty to the beloved community'
is declared to be the characteristic Christian virtue. It is true that
the satisfaction of Professor Royce's Catholic readers is destined to be
damped in the second volume, where he forbids us to look for the ideal
divine community in any existing Church, and expresses his conviction
that great changes must come over the dogmatic teaching of Christianity.
But for our purpose the significant fact is that throughout the book he
insists that Christianity is essentially an institutional religion, the
most completely institutional of all religions. For Professor Royce to
be a Christian is to be a Churchman.

Our last witness shall be the learned Roman Catholic layman, Baron
Friedrich von Huegel, the deepest thinker, perhaps, of all living
theologians in this country. 'It is now ever increasingly clear to all
deep impartial students that religion has ever primarily expressed and
formed itself in cultus, in social organisation, social worship,
intercourse between soul and soul and between soul and God; and in
symbols and sacraments, in contacts between spirit and matter.' He
proceeds to discuss the strength and weakness of institutionalism in a
perfectly candid spirit, but with too particular reference to the
present conditions within the Roman Church to help us much in our more
general survey. He mentions the drawbacks of an official philosophy,
prescribed by authority; 'only in 1835 did the Congregation of the Index
withdraw heliocentric books from its list.' He emphasises the necessity
of historical dogmas, but admits that orthodoxy cherishes, along with
them, 'fact-like historical pictures' which 'cannot be taken as
directly, simply factual.' He vindicates the orthodoxy of religious
toleration, and refuses to consign all non-Catholics to perdition,
lamenting the tendency to identify absolutely the visible and invisible
Church, which prevails among 'some of the (now dominant) Italian and
German Jesuit Canonists.' Lastly, he boldly recommends the frank
abandonment of the Papal claim to exercise temporal power in Italy. This
is not so much a critique of institutionalism as the plea of a Liberal
Catholic that the logic of institutionalism should not be allowed to
override all other considerations. The Baron is, indeed, himself a
mystic, though also a strong believer in the necessity of institutional
religion.

We have then a considerable body of very competent opinion, that a man
cannot be a Christian unless he is a Churchman. To the mystic pure and
simple, such a statement seems monstrous. Did not even Augustine say, 'I
want to know God and my own soul; these two things, and no third
whatever'? What intermediary can there be, he will ask, between the soul
and God? What sacredness is there in an organisation? Is it not a matter
of common experience that the morality of an institution, a society, a
state, is inferior to that of the individuals who compose it? And is
organised Catholicism an exception to this rule? And yet we must admit
the glamour of the idea of a divine society. It arouses that _esprit de
corps_ which is the strongest appeal that can be made to some noble
minds. It calls for self-sacrifice and devoted labour in a cause which
is higher than private interest. It demands discipline and co-operation,
through which alone great things can be done on the field of history. It
holds out a prospect of really influencing the course of events. And if
there has been a historical Incarnation, it follows that God has
actually intervened on the stage of history, and that it is His will to
carry out some great and divine purpose in and by means of the course of
history. With this object, as the Catholic believes, He established an
institutional Church, pledged to the highest of all causes; and what
greater privilege can there be than to take part in this work, as a
soldier in the army of God in His long campaign against the spiritual
powers of evil? The Christian institutionalist is the servant of a grand
idea.

There are, however, a few questions which we are bound to ask him.
First, is his idea of the Church Christian? Did the Founder of
Christianity contemplate or even implicitly sanction the establishment
of a semi-political international society, such as the Catholic Church
has actually been? Orthodox Catholicism maintains that He did. Modernism
admits that He did not, but adds that if He had known that the Messianic
expectation was illusory, and that the existing world-order was to
continue for thousands of years, He would certainly have wished that a
Catholic Church should exist. And, argues the Modernist, if it is a good
thing that a Catholic Church should exist, it is useless to quarrel with
the conditions under which alone it can maintain its existence. The
philosophical historian must admit that all the changes which the
Catholic Church has undergone--its concessions to Pagan superstition,
its secular power, its ruthless extirpation of rebels against its
authority, its steadily growing centralisation and autocracy--were
forced upon it in the struggle for existence. Those who wish that Church
history had been different are wishing the impossible, or wishing that
the Church had perished. But this argument is not valid as a defence of
a divine institution. It is rather a merciless exposure of what happens,
and must happen, to a great idea when it is enslaved by an institution
of its own creation. The political organisation which has grown up round
the idea ends by strangling it, and continues to fight for its own
preservation by the methods which govern the policy of all other
political organisations--force, fraud, and accommodation. There is
nothing in the political history of Catholicism which suggests in the
slightest degree that the spirit of Christ has been the guiding
principle in its councils. Its methods have, on the contrary, been more
cruel, more fraudulent, more unscrupulous, than those of most secular
powers. If the Founder of Christianity had appeared again on earth
during the so-called ages of faith, it is hardly possible to doubt that
He would, have been burnt alive or crucified again. What the Latin
Church preserved was not the religion of Christ, which lived on by its
inherent indestructibility, but parts of the Aristotelian and Platonic
philosophies, distorted and petrified by scholasticism, a vast quantity
of purely Pagan superstitions, and the _arcana imperii_ of Roman
Caesarism. The normal end of Scholasticism is a mummified philosophy of
authority, in which there are no problems to solve, but a great many
dead pundits to consult. The normal end of a policy which exploits the
superstitions of the peasant is a desperate warfare against education.
The normal end of Roman Imperialism is a sultanate like that of
Diocletian. It is difficult to find a proof of infallible and
supernatural wisdom in the evolution of which these are the last terms.
We read with the utmost sympathy and admiration Baron von Huegel's loyal
and reverent appeals to the authorities of his Church, that they may
draw out the strong and beneficent powers of institutionalism, and avoid
its insidious dangers. But it may be doubted whether such a policy is
possible. The future of Roman Catholicism is, I fear, with the
Ultramontanes. They, and not the Modernists, are in the line of
development which Catholicism as an institution has consistently
followed, and must continue to follow to the end. I can see no other
fate in store for the _soma_ of Catholicism; the germ-cells of true
Christianity live their own life within it, and are transmitted without
taint to those who are born of the Spirit.

We must further ask the institutionalist what are his grounds for
identifying the Church of God with the particular institution to which
he belongs. On the institutionalist hypothesis, it might have been
expected either that there would have been no divisions in Christendom,
or that all seceding bodies would have shown such manifest inferiority
in wisdom, morality, and sanctity, that the exclusive claims of the
Great Church would have been ratified at the bar of history. This is, in
fact, the claim which Roman Catholics make. But it can only be upheld by
writing history in the spirit of an advocate, or by giving a preference,
not in accordance with modern ethical views, to certain types of
character which are produced by the monastic life of the Catholic
'religious,' It is increasingly difficult to find, in the lives of those
who belong to any one denomination, proofs of marked superiority over
other Christians. Of course, we know little of the real character of our
neighbours as they appear in the eyes of God; but in considering a
theory which lays so much stress on history as Catholic institutionalism
does, we are bound to make use of such evidence as we have. And the
evidence does not support the theory that we cannot be Christians unless
we are Catholics. Nor does it even countenance the view that we cannot
be Christians unless we are enthusiastic members of _some_ religious
corporation. Professor Royce seems to have been carried away by the idea
which prompted him to write his book; but a little thought about the
characters of his acquaintances might have given him pause.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24