Restatements
The Resurrection of the Dead. By F. S. M. Bennett, Dean of. Chester. (Chapman and Hall. 5s.) IN that revival of interest in religious problems which is a marked feature of contemporary thought, perhaps no subject is more certain of securing attention than that of personal immortality : nor is there any problem which submits to more contradictory solutions. Some of these solutions conic from the most unexpected quarters. Thus, a distinguished ecclesiastic finds no reason for believing in the " natural im- mortality " of man ; whilst a thinker with no orthodox affinities as stoutly upholds the results of " psychic science." The Dean of Chester, in defending and restating the doctrine of condi- tional immortality, has with him a small but solid company of Christian thinkers, among whom he is almost certainly right in numbering St. Paul ; in fact, one of the most striking features of his deeply interesting book is his exposition of the true meaning of St. Paul's teaching on immortality, and the nature of that " eternal life " which the Gospel offers to men. He maintains that the New Testament assumes man to be capable of immortality, but not " immortable." The doctrine of the natural immortality of all souls cannot be found in the Bible : nor was it taught by the Church before the sixth century. On the other hand, super-natural immortality, the gift of eternal life as the peculiar privilege of " redeemed " souls, can be supported by Scripture. It means the restora- tion of man, who has " fallen " by divergence from the true path of his evolution, to that fullness of life for which he was destined in the Mind of God. This view can be harmonized not only with theology but with science. Whilst a Christian biologist must find increasing difficulty in retaining his belief in natural immortality, with its implied separation of " body " and " soul," he need, says Dean Bennett, " find nothing in • his biology to prevent his repeating whole-heartedly the last and most majestic phrases of the Nicene Creed "—those which affirm the conditional raising to immortality of " the body- soul, or, if you like it better, soul-body" of man. Biology and psychology concur in rejecting the notion of an immortal soul inhabiting a mortal body, which it simply vacates at death. " If the personal self-conscious organism, man (with the memories and affections which make him what he is), is to survive the grave, it must be by organic resurrection or not at all."
This, with all its difficulties, certainly seems to be the Pauline view ; nor is it difficult to show that the true altern- ative proposed in the Synoptics is between the eternalizing of a complete human personality and its entire destruction at death. The word translated " perdition " by our Revisers really means destruction ; the reference is to Gehenna, the place outside the walls where all the rubbish of Jerusalem was burnt. Such a doctrine eludes many of the stock difficulties associated with personal survival. It empties hell, without unduly crowding heaven ; and maintains the moral and spiritual values implicit in the idea of " judgment," whilst eliminating the elements of vindictiveness and eternal conscious loss. Whilst the Dean of Chester looks towards a future which shall establish more friendly relations between the findings of religion and of science, and fully disclose the meaning of tradi- tional Christianity, Mr. Tuckwell regards with profound pessimism the prospects of institutional religion. " Religious darkness," he says, " has settled over our land, deeper, we
believe, than anything ever known before in our history as a people." We are suffering from a national " dark night of the soul " ; a curious judgment, when we consider that theological writings, and discussions of religious themes, now obtain far greater attention than twenty years ago. Sure that orthodox Christianity is dead, and equally sure that religion is a necessity of the " rational mind," Mr. Tuckwell first examines the vital elements in the religion of the past—and especially in the Catholic tradition—in order to ascertain what the " rational cosmic faith" of the future must include. Relying for his facts mainly upon Loisy and Kirsopp Lake, he regards historic Christianity as a " Mystery Cult " ; whilst his own hopes for the future—as readers of Religion and Reality would expect—are deeply coloured with pantheism. But surely this temperamental bias carries him too far, when it leads him to describe the Catholic doctrine of the Mass as a response to the " unconscious pantheistic cravings " of humanity. It is rather the central religious intuition of a Transcendent, a " Wholly Other " over against the creature—in other words, the distinctness of God—which is the life blood of sacramental religion : and nothing less than this will long satisfy man's religious thirst. The " faith proposed by Mr. Tuckwell, which shall be free from all entanglements with history, from all irrelevant appeals to tradition and authority " and " grounded solidly on man's ever-growing knowledge of himself and his place in the universe " is, in fact, not so much a religion as the preparation for religion : and not the best of preparations at that. It must, he says, be " absolute ; but how this pure absolutism, if attainable, can serve the need of historically conditioned creatures, adapted at all points to the contingent, is not very clear. Those who have had to deal with souls whose " rational cosmic faith " has crumbled under the pressure of life, will look forward to its triumph with misgiving.
Nor will this misgiving be allayed by the suggestion that the Higher Pantheism of the future is already foreshadowed in the self-interested immanentism of American " Mind Cure ". and similar movements. Those who wish to study the results of this " rediscovery by the soul of the American people " of the ancient doctrine of the divinity of man, need only turn to Mr. Ferguson's lively and enthralling pages. There, among the herd of camels of every age, size, and shape proposed for the nutrition of those who cannot swallow gnats, they will fmd the queer cults which have developed from the premise that "the Infinite is really You." In Unity, with its army of typists, and mail-order department sending spiritual succour by return, or in New Thought, with its careful attention to the believer's financial needs, religious utilitarianisni seems to have reached its term. It may be credulous, but I hope that the faith of the future will be less unlovely than this.
EVELYN UNDERHILL
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