THE DEBTS OF THEOLOGY TO SECULAR MOVEMENTS.
AIR. LLEWELLYN DAVIES has taken for the subject of a very wise and interesting article in the " Contemporary Review " the debt which Theology owes to what is commonly called the World, or rather to movements which are entirely outside the theological sphere, and often beaded by men who have no belief whatever in theology. Mr. Davies shows that theology has been compelled by the movement in favour of ' Toleration' to set a much higher value on that perfect spiritual freedom which is a condition of all real allegiance to God, and so to elevate the cry for ' Toleration' into the demand for setting the heart at liberty; that the democratic movement has compelled theology to recon- sider the foundations of religious equality, and discover that Christ requires the rich and great to live for the sake of the poor multi- tude, and, indeed, to use their riches and power only as ministers to those who have neither riches nor power ; that the economic movement has compelled theology to recognize that there is a far higher spiritual service to be done by making men truly independent, i. e., masters of themselves, than by so helping them in their physical difficulties as to encourage them to lean on the generosity of others ; that the conceptions of-justice caused by a deeper understanding of human law have compelled theology to abandon its substitutional theory of atonement ; and finally, that the scientific movement has compelled theology to abandon its conception of God as showing himself solely or chiefly in rare and strange occurrences like miracles, and to retreat on the great declaration of St. Paul's faith in "one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in all."
This assertion of Mr. Davies's is profoundly true and very strik- ing. It is of no small importance that theologians should know that theology is just as apt to go astray if it attempt to interpret the mind of God without reference to the teaching of events and the signs of the times, as the world is apt to go astray if it attempt to interpret the teaching of events and the signs of the times without reference to the mind of God. But the essay will be very apt to give rise to a criticism of this kind ; If theology can only learn the true mind of God on subjects of this importance, under compulsion, as it were, from the world,—if some of its highest lessons are mere afterthoughts to which it has been compelled to come under penalty of losing all hold upon the world unless it could discover some spiritual principle which would harmonize with the "manifest destiny" of social movements,—how can it be said to be in any sense the organ of revelation? If the test of human science is to anticipate, it should be still more the test of divine science. A theology, a science of God, which has to be kept straight, and often to be set straight, by those who do not profess to derive their knowledge in any degree from divine sources, is apparently almost as much of an imposition, as a meteorology which only finds out after a hard winter is over that there was good reason for it, and which can always descant on the causes of a hurricane it had never predicted. Is there any sort of answer to this ?
We think there is, and to some extent Mr. Davies gives it when he points out that most of these conclusions now adopted by theology under pressure from the world, were anticipated in the Christian revelation, though the state of the world was then so little prepared for the complete application of these truths to quite new attitudes of the human mind, that they had been forgotten and neglected,—written, as it were, in a sort of invisible ink, which only the heat of unanticipated movements and conflicts would one day render legible, and even conspicuous. Thus our Lord's rebuke to his disciples when they asked him to call down fire on a Samaritan village, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of ; the Son of Mau is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them,' is at least a clear indication of what he would have said on persecu- tion,—persecution by miracle being at that time the only conceiv- able sort of persecution to which so insignificant and defenceless a sect could have had resort. The anticipation of the great demo- cratic principle that the rich and powerful must regard themselves as servants of the poor and weak is much more pronounced,— " He that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he that is chief as he that doth serve," being the great social doctrine both of the Gospels and Epistles. The economical teaching of ex- perience that you will generally injure the poor a great deal more by giving alms than by refusing them, is simply not in the Christian revelation at all ; but then it is only a lesson of experience, and not of principle, and the principle that the aim of your benevolence should be not to please, but really to serve, " not with eye-service, as menpleasers, but as the servants of Christ," is. Again, the true law of sacrifice which makes divine suffering the great remedy for sin, not by way of formal substitution, but as a proof both of the infinite love of God, and of the vastness of the disorder which all sin introduces into human society and relations, is not only antici- pated in the Christian revelation, but is there• in full strength. And finally, " the higher Pantheism" which, instead of obliterat- ing the will of man, only vivifies it by rendering it more pro- foundly sensible to the mysterious control of God over all the avenues by which that will is reached,—turning Nature itself into a mode of the supernatural,—is, as Mr. Davies says, the great doctrine of St. Paul.
It must be admitted, however, that in all these cases theology did not apprehend the true purport of revelation sufficiently well to interpret it rightly when the moment of trial came. Theology did persecute ; theology has not, on the whole, favoured the political influence of the masses ; theology was against political
economy ; theology invented an artificial and false " system " of atonement; theology proclaimed science impious. In fact, theology could not master her owd brief. What, then, has theology done for the world in these cases which the world could not have done for itself? How shall we call a science divine which had to be sent back to school by the world to learn to read its own lesson aright? The answer is suggested, we think, by asking' another,—How, if the Christian theology is divine when it teaches the existence of the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, could it fail to happen that the history of human life would do as much towards interpreting theology, as theology towards interpreting the meaning of human life ? If God reveals himself in man as well as to man, how could the secular world and its history help contributing a grand share to the explanation of God's true meaning? Revelation itself is always asserting that theologians are quite as sure, or rather more sure, to go wrong in their own line as other men in theirs. As Dr. Norman MacLeod said the other day in that fine sermon on "War and National Judgment," * which the Queen had the good sense to admire and command to be published, —there was never any favouritism shown in God's lessons either to the people who received the revelation, or to the class through whom especially they received it. " The priests,' they cried in God's name to the so-called religious people of the time, 'said not, Where is the Lord? and they that handle the law knew me not. The pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after the the things that do not profit,'"—surely a very distinct assertion indeed that the theologians were quite as sure to go wrong in interpreting the true meaning of God's revelation, as the world in discussing the true drift of his Providence. If there be any truth in revelation, the large secular human experience is as entirely pervaded by a divine guidance, though it be unconsci- ous or less conscious of it, as is the theological teaching, and neither can really understand or do its own work right, without the fall co-operation of the other. Unless the teacher tries to sympathize with the learner, and the learner tries to enter into the mind of the teacher, neither succeeds. The difficulties of the learner should give a new drift to the lessons of the teacher, and the explanations of the teacher should give a new drift to the inquiries of the learner. Revelation was in the main a record of the mind of God in rela- tion to a particular age, or succession of ages, and a particular people, and a particular condition of human morality and society. To divine what it would have to say in relation to a perfectly new class of moral and social conditions, was to solve a problem in which there were two distinct elements, the full appreciation of the new tendencies at work in human society, and the interpretation of the spiritual bearing of the former revelation on those tendencies. It seems perfectly clear that for both these elements to concur success- fully, the interpreters of revelation must enter fully into the' signs of the times,'—i.e., the signs of the divine agency in human history, while the people must enter into the divine character, the teaching of God as to himself. The growing necessity for ' toleration,' the increasing power of the democratic currents in modern society, the lessons of political economy, the moral bearing of popular justice, the drift of scientific discovery, are all as much divine helps to the true interpretation of theology, as theology is a divine help to the true interpretation of these secular facts.
Well but, it will be asked, if it be admitted that theology does need these external helps to prevent her from going astray, what is there of independent teaching that she can be said to contribute to the lesson of secular movements? If, in order to understand the sacredness of spiritual freedom, theology has to learn the com- mon-place lesson of 'toleration,' for instance, from the world, what can theology be said to teach to the world? Why just this, that before you can ensure even 'toleration' you must go much deeper than toleration, and get at a spiritual justification for toleration, which is only to be found in the discovery that no allegiance to Truth or God—is worth anything that is not really free and uncompelled. Religious persecution itself was founded on a higher spiritual basis than mere worldly toleration. Religious persecution did assert that if you could save the higher part of man at the ex- pense of mere bodily pain and loss, you were bound to do it. In practice, no doubt, that was the excuse for all sorts of cruelty. But in motive it was higher than the indifference of mere tolera- tion, which would never have got any real triumph without win- ning 'spiritual all iance,—the alliance of the conviction that the alle- giance of the spirit to God must be really free, or really worthless. So, again, the mere democratic principle as a doctrine of equal
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rights, would have been almost mischievous ; the enthusiasm it has gained has been derived from the religious principle that all men, —the rich and powerful especially,—owe to the " dim, common populations" the ministry of their lives. Theology transfigures the haggling acquisitive motive of the man who demands his fair share of the world's happiness, into the generous motive of the man who demands the right to give himself up to the ser- vice of those who are most miserable and helpless. And so in all the other instances, what theology contributes is a new, and deeper, and nobler motive for tendencies which the world tries to justify on vulgar grounds. Where the world calls for a mere modus vivendi, theology makes a demand on the heart which trans- forms the modus vivendi into a deeper principle of social harmony and disinterested duty. Falsely as theology has often interpreted the meaning of God, it has always aimed high, and blundered rather in the work of interpreting the human facts of life, than in its mo- tive. As we have said, even the doctrine of persecution was in theory a noble kind of error, far nobler than the doctrine of indiffer- ence and 'toleration.' The 'corruption of the higher' was, as usual, infinitely worse than ' the corruption of the lower.' Ecclesiastical persecution became a more venomous and hateful thing than Lacodicean indifference had it in its power to become. But not the less the theological contempt for bodily ease and pleasure in comparison with spiritual health, was of noble origin, and a fear- ful practical evil only because it was a mistake to suppose that spiritual health could ever be extracted out of attempts to terrify and bribe the conscience into actions which were not good unless they were free. After till, theology has done as much to keep the world from sinking into vulgar compromises with expediency, as the world has done to keep theology from cruelly trampling on the natural and the human, in its effort after the supernatural and divine.
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