CANON MASON'S MANUAL OF THEOLOGY.* As we did not review
this valuable book on the appearance of the first edition,—fortunately, perhaps, as it has gained a good deal by revision,—and as nothing is more neces- sary now than for those who hold the Christian faith to understand that that faith cannot be really and honestly held without grasping firmly a very considerable number of dogmatic truths such as often seem to repel modern thought much more than it would be repelled by any vague belief in unfathomable mysteries which makes no such de- mand, but retreats into the shadow of the infinite the moment it is confronted with any seeming contradiction,—we welcome heartily Canon Mason's attempt to place the higher truths of the Christian theology in a lucid and yet far from an arid form before us. Yet we think that he might have added to the value of a very valuable book by a preliminary chapter on the meaning of the word " science " as applied to theology, and the sources from which that science is derived. There is no more serious difficulty before theologians at the present time than the very modified view which has gradually developed itself in all Churches, and especially in our own Church, as to the inspiration of Scripture. We have been compelled to recognise that Scrip- ture is not infallible on either historical or scientific points,— nay, that one book of Scripture sometimes seems to suggest different dogmatic inferences from another book; so that it is a matter of the highest importance in weighing the teaching of revelation, to keep in view exactly what the writer of each book felt that he was under special guidance to teach, and what he was, on the contrary, saying as an obiter dictum that might express merely his own more or less uncertain inference from the body of his teaching. To illustrate what we mean from the book before us, has Canon Mason really the same sort of conviction that God has revealed to us that we shall eventually govern and preside over the class of beings whom the Bible calls angels, that he has as to the double nature of Christ, or the triune personality of God ? In making this statement as to man's future rule over the angels, he quotes St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, vi., 2 and 3, which both the Authorised and the Revised Version translate thus :—" Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world is judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know ye not that we shall judge angels ? how much more things that pertain to this life ?" Surely this is very uncertain ground on which to build up dogmatic theology. St. Paul is pressing the obligation of Christians to decide Christian disputes amongst themselves, and on Christian principles, instead of submitting them to the heathen tribunals, which applied principles so different from those to which Christians were committed; and he urged that Christian principles were sufficiently deep and searching to measure right and wrong, not only in matters affecting only man, but even in matters affecting beings of far higher powers and gifts than any that man exerts ; just as he had said in another Epistle that "though we or an angel from heaven should preach unto you any gospel other than that which we • The Faith of the Gospel : a Manual of Christian Doctrine. By Arthur James Mason, B.D. Second Edition, Revised. London : Rivingtons.
preached unto you, let him be anathema." That, we take it, is a case in which St. Paul held that men should judge angels. But to infer from it that in the future world angels are to be placed under man's government, seems to us to be transforming a mere a fortiori argument into a prophecy of a far-reaching order of things, which St. Paul had no sort of intention of putting forward. That Christian principles are quite equal to laying down that even an angelic message is false or an angelic temptation evil, is one thing, and that Christians are in future to govern beings of far greater power than theirs, and probably in most cases of quite as great or greater holiness, is quite another thing. We should never press St. Paul's evident belief that the earthly order of things was near its end into the service of theology ; and we doubt whether Canon Mason is wise in pressing the scattered and often casual references to angels which are to be found in Scripture, into the service of dogmatic theology, as he does in his section on angels and elsewhere. We should say that the tendency even of the best and most honest exegetical criticism of the last few years, not only in our own Church, but amongst the Roman Catholics, has been to make men lighten greatly the stress they lay on what may be called incidental remarks in Scripture; while it has also been to in- crease the weight attached to those passages on which the Church at once laid a strong hold, and which she embodied in the
spiritual life of her sacraments and liturgies. Now, can it be said that the Church ever laid strong hold of this far from explicit obiter dictum of St. Paul's, that men will govern angels? Was that re.ally even part of the stuff of which the Christian reve- lation was made,—of the stuff which made Christian doctrine a living thing, and turned the Christian Church into what has been finely called " the missionary of nations, the associate of history, the patron of art, the vanquisher of the sword" P Is it not rather one of the incidental remarks of which we ought only to take the moral drift as inspired, and not the literal proposi-
tion which it may seem to imply ?—the moral drift being that Christian teaching is so deep and peremptory, that even if the being who disputed it were one of angelic power and intellect, a Christian ought to have the confidence in his teaching needful to condemn as unworthy the doubts which even a member of such an order of beings might sanction. To build upon a remark of this kind a dogmatic assertion that we shall one day be set over the angels, seems to us a very dangerous straining of vague textual suggestions not adapted to further the general purposes of revelation, and which were never appropriated by the Church for that end.
We have taken exception to this passage, not because it is really important, but because it seems to us an illustration of the only defect in a book of great vigour,—namely, that it does not insist plainly enough that before we can say that any doctrine is of the substance of revelation, we must be sure both that it was explicitly taught with that intention by one of the great spiritual teachers of the Hebrew people, and also that the Church assimilated it and made effectual use of it in her daily efforts to sanctify and ennoble human life. But in the main, Canon Mason does embody in his dogmatic teaching only what has proved itself by a variety of tests to be not only of the very substance of the Gospel, but also of the very substance of the Church's life and power. The teaching, for instance, as to our Lord's divinity, and, to use the technical word, identity of substance with the Father and the Spirit, not only formed
the very core of one Gospel and of many Epistles, but, even by the testimony of the most decidedly non-Christian critics, has saved Christianity from becoming a mere form of idolatry. And nothing can be more admirable than the terse and lucid sections in which Canon Mason expounds the
difference between the doctrine of the Trinity and any approach to Tritheism, and, again, the difference between the doctrine of the two natures (divine and human) in Christ, and the errors which lost sight of the human nature in the divine, or allowed the divine nature to be eclipsed by the human. What could be terser or more effective than this exposition of the difference between the Trinity and Tritheism P-
" In order to be assured that the doctrine is not a mere figment —that it cannot be dismissed unheard—two of the passages of Holy Scripture which bear upon the point may be examined. We find our Lord bidding His disciples to baptise all nations into the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost' (S. Matt. xxviii., 19). It is obvious that He is not simply dictating a form of words to be used in the administration of Baptism. 'Into the Name,' He says, not in' it. He sums up, in this brief de- scription, the whole revelation which He came on earth to bring. That Name is the Gospel. Every spiritual privilege we enjoy is to be found in it. Our Baptism ushers us into it; for it puts us into a living connection with the God who is thus set forth, and who obviously wishes us to understand what the Name means. But we mark that our Lord does not speak of baptising men into the ` Names,' as if they were plural. They cannot be dissociated from each other. The Name is one. Now, we could hardly imagine that Christ would use such a phrase, with its pregnant assertion of the unity of the Name, if Father, Son, and Holy Ghost' repre- sented notions so separate as those of God, and a human prophet, and a sanctifying influence. He must needs, in that case, have at least used the plural, or, as He often did when He would imply a distinction (S. Matt. xvii., 27 ; S. John xx., 17), repeated the word : "baptizing them into the Name of the Father, and into the Name of the Son, and into the Name of the Holy Ghost.' By choosing without repetition to say the Name,' He teaches that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one. The revelation of each of the Three is the revelation of the other Two. They cannot be known apart. There are not three names of three separate beings ; but the name of the one God is, when written out full, a threefold Name Polytheism, of any form or kind, is only possible for men whose notions of what is meant by the word ' God' are entirely unlike ours. The Divine substance' is not, like creaturely substances,' a substance which admits of being found in modified forms in a number of different beings. Humanity, with its limitations and imperfections, though one and the same substance everywhere, yet appears in countless separate specimens, each of whom is a man. But the very notion of Deity is such that we cannot conceive of it as possessed by more than one being. Two or three or more beings of infinite perfection, but mutually exclusive, cannot co-exist ; for they must necessarily be limited by each other, which would be a contradiction in terms. Nothing of the kind is taught by the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. For the threefold personality of God does not contradict His unity in any way ; it shows the manner or condition of it. There are not three independent units side by side, on a level with each other, each almighty, each eternal, each finding in Himself the source of His own life. The unity between the three blessed Persons is not a similarity of character and qualities and powers, not a harmony of wills and purposes between three individuals belonging to the same species—three beings each of whom is a God. It is a true, though inexpressible, unity of Three Persons mutually depending upon each other and completing each other, indivisible, and in- capable of existence apart from one another. The life of all Three is one and the same life, and it has but one source, not three. The very titles by which They are known to us imply this. They are not proper names like those of heathen divinities, but titles of relationship, which involve each other, and would be meaningless alone. Fatherhood is impossible without sonship, and sonship without fatherhood ; a spirit (in the sense in which the word is applied to the Holy Ghost) is impossible without one whose spirit it is. The distinction between the Persons of the Trinity consists in this mutual relationship, and in that alone. God is one Being, who is Father, because He eternally finds Himself in a Son and Spirit, begotten of Him and proceeding from Him, not by a mere act of His will, but by the very necessity of His nature ; and yet not by the mere necessity of His nature, but by the act of His loving will. It is He that is in Them, and They are in Him. Instead of being mutually exclusive, the Three are in reality mutually inclusive, and contained in each other, though never confused together. The Father never loses His identity in the Son, nor the Son in the Father, nor the Spirit in either ; for if ever such a thing could imaginably take place, it would be the end of all the Three alike, since They only exist, as distinct persons, by virtue of Their relationship ;—but it is numerically one and the same infinite Being whom we adore, whether we adore Him in His primal and original self as Father, or in the Son who reveals Him, or in the Spirit who communicates Him. For this reason it is that we are cautioned not to speak of three almighty ones, or three eternal ones, or (according to the teaching of S. Ambrose) even of three holy ones, although each of the Three is holy and eternal and almighty ; because to speak in such a manner would imply only a likeness between three separate specimens of a class which might without absurdity be thought more numerous."
And certainly not less lucid and not less terse is the passage
in which Canon Mason discusses the mystery of the two natures in Christ, and warns us against the danger of fancying that by the taking up of the manhood into God is signified the merging of the humanity in the godhead :—
" It is, however, comparatively easy to imagine how the human nature could lend itself to receive the Divine. ` The very cause,' says Hooker, of His taking upon Him our nature was to change it, to better the quality, and to advance the condition thereof, although in no sort to abolish the substance which He took, nor to infuse into it the natural forces and properties of His Deity.' Far harder it is to reach any intellectual notion of the effect of the union upon His Divine nature. How was it accommodated to the conditions in which it appeared on earth ? How was it made to use a favourite word of S. Cyril's= bearable' to the inferior nature which it assumed ? Perhaps, if the nature which it assumed had been from the first in the full glory of its present heavenly maturity, the wonder would not have seemed so great ; but how could the Son of God become an embryo, a babe, a dying and a dead man ? One great saying of S. Paul's flashes upon the subject all the light which in this life we are likely to obtain. Exhorting the Philippians not to stand upon their rights, but voluntarily, for love's sake, to give them up to one another as not worth a contest, he adduces the example of Christ Jesus ; who, being originally in the form of God, deemed it not a prize to be clutched at to be' as He then was on an equality with God, but' by His own act emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondman, coming to be in the likeness of men' (Phil. ii., 6, 7). Round this central statement gather others of a less explicit nature. What infinite suggestiveness lies in the reserve of those similar words to the Corinthians : Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sakes He became poor, rich though He was, that ye by His poverty might be rich' (2 Cor., viii. 9) ! The Hebrews are
told that He was made a little'—or, 'for a little while lower than the angels' (Heb. ii., 9). More faintly still, the same thought is constantly implied wherever, instead of saying that our Lord
came,' or came into the world,' we are told that he came down (e.g., S. John vi., 38 ; Eph. iv., 9). The mystery comes in sight again when our Lord, in His last prayer, prays for the restitution of His original glory as of a thing of which He had for a time been dispossessed : Now glorify Thou Me, Father, with Thyself, with the glory which I had, before the world was, with Thee' (S. John xvii., 5). Perhaps the significance of these profound words has as yet hardly been so thoroughly explored in the Church as it might be, and the doctrine which they contain may be among the things which have yet to be worked out. Elaborate systems of Divinity are to be found which pass them over without ex- amination. We cannot, indeed, hope at present to penetrate deep into the mystery, because the conditions of the Divine conscious- ness lie so far beyond our apprehension; but it is possible that a more firm grasp of what has been revealed on the subject may help to dispel some confusions. Certainly any refusal to believe in the self-emptying of the Eternal Son, any attempt to minimise it and explain it away, seems to impair the completeness of the Incarnation. Without it, our Lord's earthly life assumes to us an aspect of unreality. If we avoid the danger of falling into the Eutychian error of attributing Divine omniscience to the human intelligence of the new-born Child of Mary, we are apt to fall into- the opposite error of Nestorianism, and to suppose that the new- born Child, with Its natural human ignorance, was not as yet really and truly the Word Himself, but only mysteriously annexed to the Word, while the Word Himself lived on somewhere else, outside, so to speak, of the human being which he had annexed : which would seem to reduce the earthly career of Jesus to an illusion,—the setting in motion of a human-looking thing, not the real living of a human life."
Indeed, the only fault we have to find with this volume is that at which we have already pointed,—that it does not sufficiently mark the danger of building dogmatic theology on isolated remarks of the Biblical writers, remarks which never received either the sanction conferred by the exercise of a great historical influence on ecclesiastical life, or the sanction of elaborate and explicit exposition to the Church.. The truer and larger view of inspiration requires a certain convergence of explicit teaching and of influential practice on a doctrine, before that doctrine can be fairly admitted as part of the essence of the Christian revelation. The section on inspiration should, in our opinion, be made the opening and the foundation of such a book as this, and should have laid down the criteria by which Christian doctrine may be tested,—early and explicit teaching being the first great criterion, and historic recognition and influence on the life of the Church a second and almost equally important criterion. This is the only part of Canon Mason's book with which we are to some extent dissatisfied. Otherwise it is a book as weighty as it is lucid, and in these days of vague and fluid sentiment, its clear dogmatic expositions are absolutely essential to the Christian life.
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