HUMANIST THEOLOGY.
WE never fully understood how great an influence Mr. Matthew Arnold's writings had exerted over the clergy of our Church till we read Canon Fremantle's article on "Theology under its Changed Conditions," in the last number of the Fortnightly Beview. A title which would have described the article much more accurately would have been, The Impending Transformation of Theology into a rationale of the Stream of Tendency, not ourselves, which makes for Righteousness.' For, as we understand him, Canon Fremantle does not so much insist on the changed conditions of theology, as insist that there is no such reality at all as theology, as distinct from religion. We have always regarded the difference as this,—that theology proceeds from God, and is a revelation from him to man of as much of his essence and character as man from time to time is able to receive; while religion, on the other hand, is an effort proceeding from man to picture the power above him as his own startled conscience, super. stitious fear, and capricious imagination render it easiest for man to conceive that power. Theology, as we under- stand it, controls these dark superstitions and abject fears and uneasy cravings for expiation, to which man is so much disposed to give himself up, by a constant insistence on the teaching of prophet after prophet among the Jews that God reauires repentance, justice, and mercy, ceasing to do evil, learning to do well, utter distrust of ceremonial observances, sacrifice of the will, not of costly offerings, purification of the heart, not ritual ablutions ; and, in abort, such a life as Isaiah delineated as that of the true Israel, the true servant of God, and which Christ manifested as that of the son alike of God and man. Canon Fremantle would certainly accept our position so far as to agree with us that the spiritual and moral elements of theology are far superior to all other elements. But he would certainly hesitate to regard these spiritual and moral elements as impressed upon us by revelation from above, as brought into clearness, and made to stand out against the dark background of ordinary human superstitions, by the very training of the Divine Spirit, for he explicitly warns us that we are to trace " the Divine as working through Nature and man ;" or if we endeavour to think of " a transcendental God,"—an endeavour which he evi- dently discourages,—to " take care not to represent him as a demiarge standing outside his work and putting in his hand here and there, a conception which has turned so many physicists into atheists," but "to speak of God as just and loving, since the Supreme Power ex hypothesi includes mankind, the leading portion of the world, with all its noblest ideals." That, unless we wholly misunderstand the Canon's drift, is a clear way of saying that the highest elements in humanity do not so much proceed out of, as constitute, the divine, and that so far from regarding God as having been from eternity infinitely more and better than it was possible for him to manifest to man, it is only as he is manifested in human goodness that we can acknowledge him at all. The difference between this trust in God as the infinite goodness controlling and correcting our hnman tendencies to per- verted superstition, and Canon Fremantle's immanent spirit who is to be worshipped as represented in " the leading portion of the world, with all its noblest ideals," is seen in still stronger light when we come to his warnings against assigning too much importance to the revelation of God in Christ. He insists on the " supremacy " of Christ, indeed, as the highest guide to what is divine; but he tells us that the fact that Christ "does not pretend to an absolute knowledge of God, will give a new and peculiar interest to the study of the life and influence of Christ,"—of course, thereby implicitly rejecting the Gospel and Epistles of St. John, and reducing to mere metaphor and enthusiasm very much of the language of St. Paul himself. In fact, as we understand this part of the Canon's essay, it is equivalent to an explicit rejection of Christ as an object of prayer and worship; unless, indeed, we take Canon Fremantle as disposed to exclude a "transcendental " God altogether, and to regard worship as addressed solely to the highest and most spiritual manifestations of human nature, in which case Christ, as being supreme among men, would be, of course, entitled to truer worship than any other human representative of the ideal life. But this is a sense in which worship seems to us utterly un- meaning, and to signify rather mere contemplation and admira- tion than true communion or entreaty. Farther, when we find the Canon proceeding to warn us against indulging in any "passionate certitude" of Christ's resurrection, and insisting that " the theologians of the future will substitute the words 'thrown out at a great subject' for the certitude and defini- tions of the past. Immortality will be to them a great back- ground of hope beyond the scene of present duty,"—we are at once aware that Christianity in its old sense is dissolved away into what we can only call at best a mildly stimulating atmo- sphere of feeling, and that theology, as a self-manifestation to man by God, has been absolutely exchanged for a more or less successful groping by man himself after the better elements in his own nature. Naturally, the whole theology of redemption, the teaching that God in his love sent his Son into the world to take away the sin of the world by the sacrifice of the Cross, vanishes into thin air at once under this doubly distilled and sublimated humanism, A theology which really proceeds from God, must grow; but the most remarkable of the elements in the teaching of the Gospels and the Epistles,— the lively faith in the sacrifice of Christ, in the Resurrection, in the gift of the Spirit, in the remission of sin,—are all regarded as far less trustworthy by the new theologians, than the teaching of the prophets themselves. As Canon Fremantle very logically says concerning "the theology of sin and redemption," "this is the department of theology in which a kind of ideal dogmatism has most interfered with truth." "The reconstruction which will be required will need great labour. But in no department will the results be more fruitful. They will bring theological ethics into closer alliance with general science and practice. They will enable Christian teachers to treat all men as brothers, and make Christianity the means by which the state of man generally may be ameliorated." Whether these reconstituted Christian ethics are to get rid of the very idea of,,-4% or not, Canon Fremantle gives us no hint. We are very far from assuming that he expects any such change. Very likely he does not. But if he did, he would hardly surprise us, considering the immense effort he has made to show that every other leading Christian doctrine will be either dissipated altogether, or represented as dissolving away into a blue haze of hope,—which, like distance, " lends enchant- ment to the view," though it ever retreats as we advance.
Now, what we want seriously to ask is, whether it is manly or worth while to call this sort of thing theology at all. Theology means, of course, a real science of God. If we catch the meaning of Canon Fremantle, there is no such science, except as a very doubtful induction from the study of the highest human ideals. Of anything like a growing knowledge of God, which, after long centuries of exceptional emphasis in the special teaching of a single race, assumed something like solidity and absoluteness in the life and death of Christ, Canon Fremantle absolutely deprives us. He wants us to exchange the story of the Gospels for a string of noble moral traditions and legendary facts; to beware of the "passionate certitude" of the Apostles as a dangerous source of corruption; and to regard the theology of the Church as an unhappy crystallisation of faith into dogma. And yet he wants us to attach the greatest possible importance to the " new theology," and to use the old
words of worship,—with perhaps here and there a few omissions where clergymen happen to be sornpulons,—in the utterly blanched and faded meaning which the new theology assigns to the old words. Would it not be better to advocate a straight. forward repudiation of the old theology altogether, and the sub- stitution of Mr. Voysey's Theism, or if that be too " tran- scendental," some mystic form of Humanism, in its place? Can anything be less like a revelation of the mind of God to man than Canon Fremantle's "new theology P" And can there be greater injury to the interests even of the shadowy religion which Canon Fremantle calls "the new theology,"—in other words, the rationale of "a stream of tendency, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness,"—than to put it forward under the mask of Christianity in the sense in which that word has always hitherto been understood P Christ says :—" All things are de- livered unto me of my Father; and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father ; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Sonshall reveal him." Canon Fremantle says that Christ pretends to no absolute knowledge of God, and that there is no occasion to quarrel even with those "who think of the Supreme Power rather.after the analogy of force or law than according to the strict idea of personality, provided that the moral nature of man be held fast, and its supremacy acknowledged." St. Paul says :—" If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." Canon Fremantle in effect interposes := By no means ; indulge the hope, of course ; but if you throw out words at a great subject which call up a background of hope beyond the scene of present duty, you will do a great deal better than if you dwell with any passionate certitude on the subject of Christ's resurrection, for passionate certitude leads to great dangers and sources of corrup- tion.' St. Paul says :—" I will not dare to speak of any things save those which Christ wrought through me, for the obedience of the Gentiles, by word and deed, in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Holy Ghost" (Revised Version). Canon Fre- mantle says, on the contrary :—" Uniformity [the uniformity of Nature] is tested at every stage, and never fails. The idea that it can fail seems almost inconceivable. When the student turns to experience, he finds that violations of natural order which were supposed to take place in old times, now take place no more; that no such violations can be found in times and places where they can be verified." Well, Canon Fremantle's views are, of course, intelligible enough. A great deal may be said in defence of them. But can any conceivable refinement bring them within any approximate distance of the Christian teaching P What is the use of talking of these two utterly different religions,—religions wide as the Poles asunder,—as if they were one and the same P They are so different, that it is disloyalty to truth to express them in the same language. How can a man who holds Canon Fremantle's view join, say, in the prayer of the Litany : " By thine agony and bloody sweat, by thy cross and passion, by thy precious death and burial, by thy glorious resur- rection and ascension, and by the coming of the Holy Ghost, good Lord, deliver us," with any sort of reality of mind P Whatever the two religions are, they are utterly different, so different that the language of the one travesties the thought of the other. Would it not be far better to repudiate words which misrepresent, instead of representing, a belief such as Canon Fremantle sketches for no P To our minds, the willingness to let words mean almost anything between that which they would suggest to an ordinary hearer, and that which it would take an abstract philosophy to make intelligible at all, is unworthy of science, unworthy of religion, and unworthy of that outspoken sincerity which is at the bottom of all true science and of all true religion.
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