Unscientific History
Tins book is the first volume of a series which is designed to embrace the entire history of the Church, and, since it deals with the Church in the New Testament, it may be tegarded as the text on which the rest will be comment ; at least, it can be taken as giving a clear indication of the tone and quality of the whole work. Those who are acquainted with Lebreton's writings on the Dogma of the Trinity will expect erudition, and in particular a wide know- ledge of the background of the Church in the first century, and both of these are here ; what perhaps they will not expect is a simple-mindedness which answers all historical questions as is best in accordance with the Roman dogmatic position. We are told in the Foreword that the aim of the authors and editors has been severely scientific, but we cannot admit that they have succeeded in their aim in the present instalment of their enterprise. The criticism of the sources is the first step in a scientific history. Here the Fourth Gospel is taken as being of equal historical value with St. Mark, the "special service" of St. Matthew is regarded as beyond question reliable, St. John is accepted as the author of the Apocalypse and the Gospel.
It may be that all these traditional judgements are correct ; but it is disconcerting to find a " scientific " historian taking them as correct without serious warning that the weight of independent scholarship is against them. The impression made upon the mind of one reader at least by this curious history is a strange one ; while one is reading the life of Jesus, based upon the attempt to make a mosaic of Synoptic and Fourth Gospel, one seems to be looking at a mediaeval illumination, stiff, motionless, and without perspective ; when the scene changes to the life of St. Paul, it is as if the illumination had become a cinematograph. The letters of the Apostle preserve him from becoming an ecclesiastical lay figure. There is a real problem which arises when we think critically about the Church in the first century ; it is how to bridge the gulf between the Gospel of St. Mark and, say, the theology and church of Irenaeus about the year 18o A.D. How did the Catholic Church grow out of that apocalyptic movement which began with the cry, "The Kingdom of God is at hand ! "? There is an answer to this question which is by no means incompatible with belief in the Catholic form of Christianity ; but it is not easy to have much patience with those who refuse to see that the problem exists. We must hope that the succeeding volumes of the series will exhibit no less learning and more scientific method.
It seems a pity that Roman Catholic writers should feel bound to quote the Bible in the wooden phrases of Douai when they have the A.V. and R.V. which could be amended, if they are supposed to err, and still remain living English. Is anything gained by sub- stituting "justice" for " righteousness " in familiar passages except to cause the ordinary English reader to feel that Roman Catholics
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