Some Books on Religion
Dogma in History and Thought : Studies by Various Writers. Edited by W. R. Matthews, D.D. (Nisbet. 8s. 6d.) The Naturalness of Religion. By A. Barratt Brown, M.A., (Constable. 3s. 6d.)
Two contrary currents are discernible in the present move- ment of religious thought ; which, by analogy with the history of Victorian art, we might perhaps call the Impressionistic and the Pre-Raphaelite. The first loves large and rather hazy land- scapes, dwells much on "religious experience," is inclined to shy at religious traditions and formulations, and has in philosophy a marked tendency to monism. The second values crisp outline, precise form, traditional methods. It distinguishes background from foreground, the religious object from the atmosphere in which it is bathed. In philosophy it tends to dualism ; though all its adherents have not yet awakened to this fact. In that "reconstruction of dogma" of which we hear so much and see so little, the crucial battle will certainly be the one that is fought between these rival schools ; and the survival of Catholic Christianity as a recog- nizable creed is probably bound up with the fortunes of the second. A few years ago its position seemed a doubtful one. The religious naturalist then appeared to be having it all his own way ; and his philosophy, as Mr. Hanson observes in his profound and witty contribution to Dogma in History and Thought, was "eagerly embraced and laboriously applied to the exposition of the Christian faith by perhaps nine tenths of the professed theologians in the modern world." But lately a more genuine religious realism, and with it a new appreciation of the values conserved by dogmatic theology, has emerged ; and impressionistic Christianity, though now in course of being popularized in countless well-meaning booklets, appears to be losing its hold upon trained minds.
An important landmark in this return to definite form— with its resulting appreciation of the distinction between the " natural " and the "revealed "—is the publication of the series of brilliant lectures on Dogma delivered by members of King's College, London: This is a book which everyone who desires to keep abreast of the best and most living theological thought must read ; a task which is transformed into a pleasure by the uniform excellence of the writing. Here the insistence on the objective and "given" character of religion, and the frequent references to the conflict between a merely immanental and a genuinely incarnational philosophy, must strike every reader. It appears in Dr. Matthews' admir- able paper on the Nature of Dogma, in Dr. Bicknell's and Bishop Gore's emphasis on Christianity as rooted in specific happenings rather than in any system of ideas, and in Pro- fessor Relton's and Mr. Hanson's powerful justifications of dualism, as the essentially Christian view of Reality. It is true that Dr. Matthews and his colleagues do not always see eye to eye. The fixity of tradition on which Bishop Gore dwells in his essay on " Dogma in the Early Church" does not at first sight accommodate itself to the editor's view that " the faith once delivered to the saints was not a coherent and final system of doctrine, but a principle and a creative thought."
But all the writers bear implicit testimony in their various ways to the principle laid down by Dr. Bicknell: "If any one desires an undogmatic Christianity, he will not find it in any book of the New Testament." The reaction from the dimin- ished Christology of the last century seems to be complete. "Even the Jesus of St. Mark," says Dr. Bicknell, "is a super-
natural figure." The Faith lying behind both the New Tes- tament records, and the credal expression of it," says Pro- fessor Relton, "remain the same. It is something given.' . . . The Incarnation is the Supernatural inserting itself into the natural ; eternity expressed in the time-series." And the history of Christian Dogma is the history of man's effort to explain, and interpret in the language of succeeding epochs, this abiding and mysterious truth.
Dr. Franks, who contributes to this symposium. an inte- resting and highly erudite paper on "Dogma in Protestant Scholasticism" has made his own contribution to theology from another angle in three lectures delivered at King's College on the "Metaphysical Justification of Religion." Considering both the Ritschlian formula "theology without metaphysics," and the attempt of William James to justify religious experience without theology to be departures— though in opposite directions—from the narrow way of truth, he seeks to establish a philosophical scheme which shall har- monize theology and experience. In the concept of the Holy as the "one Transcendent Ground of the Universe . . . the Value of values whence the other values flow," and in the capacity of the religious mind for laying hold upon this Reality and interpreting the world in its light, he finds the justification for regarding religion as a genuine form of knowledge, mediating objective truth. Religion, thus con- ceived, is " natural " to the fully awakened human mind ; however " supernatural " its Object, its activities, and its results. It is this naturalness, this conviction that man is essentially a religious animal, and the attempt to study his religiousness from a standpoint which is both sympathetic and psychological, which inspires the excellent little book of Principal Barratt Brown and Professor Harvey. Espe- cially illuminating is their treatment of the nature of "belief," of prayer, and of corporate worship. In this section it is interesting to find two members of the Society of Friends dis- cussing with great care and appreciation those externals of religious practice which Quaker worship deliberately excludes : and drawing attention to the influence of physical and cere- monial acts in producing a corporate devotional consciousness. They find symbolic observances natural and wholesome, though liable to abuse ; since we easily "attach ourselves in emotion to the symbol and become gradually more insensitive to the Reality behind it "—a sentence which would have appealed to St. John of the Cross. It is from this angle that the authors develop their apologetic for Quaker" silence" as "one of the most potent, as it is the most austere, of symbols."
Among these new-corners, it is a pleasure to welcome the re- issue of an old friend in the late Mr. Clutton-Broek's Studies in Christianity. These beautiful essays retain all their charm and freshness, and should in their new dress make both a deep
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