[The Bishop of Gloucester is well known as a theologian
and New Testament scholar ; he was Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford from 1918 to 1923. Re speaks with authority on those aspects of the Faith which the present series attempts to cover.] IT is somewhat difficult to estimate the present position of the study of theology, for there are many cross- currents in modern thought. Let us take first the least satisfactory aspect. It is a widespread indifference. The old dogmatic opposition to religion and theology has to a large extent died out ; but in a large section of society there is a growing tendency to ignore such things. After all, spiritual things, it is held, are uncertain ; we cannot be sure what is true, or whether anything is true. On the other hand, the world is real, or seems to be so. It is also interesting. And so people's minds are completely occupied with the study of the world, and with making life—which is at any rate something certain and definite —as convenient and as comfortable as may be. Science —because of its practical value—and the improvement of life are sufficient of themselves to occupy the mind of an intelligent person, and he need not trouble any further.
There is a fundamental fallacy in all this argument, for even the proper use of this world depends upon spiritual values. We may pass on to our second point, the influence of modern thought on theology. Here, as has been said, the old negative attitude is largely vanishing. The idea that the world and life and human thought could be explained purely on mechanistic theories is less widely held, and certainly seems to a thoughtful person less tenable. We are bewildered by what the mathema- tician and the physicist and the chemist tell us about the structure of the Universe. But I think that we are less and less able to believe that it came into existence of its own, and has come to be what it is, without any reason or purpose behind phenomena. Still more is this true of life. A mechanistic evolution is giving way to an emergent evolution, and it is hard to explain the evolution of life except through its final end. The riddle of human life may be difficult to read, but few thinkers would feel justified in explaining it purely as the result of the accidental development of material things. Modern thought not only leaves room for but demands a theology, if we are to explain our experience.
How far the bewildering development of the. ideas which the physicist and the astronomer put before us regarding space and time are able to clarify our theological views may still be doubtful ; but the thoughtful Christian only feels how more exalted becomes his conception of God. The lesson which Isaiah and the Hebrew prophets taught, of Jehovah as God of the whole world, is repeated at the present day when the astronomer and the physicist remind us that the God whom we conceive must be God of the far-reaching Universe which his calculations and investigations have put before us. There may not be a logical difference, but the difference is one which appeals much to our imagination. And if the Universe is so mysterious, if it is so different in reality to anything which the eye can see or our senses convey to us, so far from science presenting us with a closed system of time and space where the spiritual can have no play, it is rather, that the wonderful universe suggests to us the supremacy of spirit, and the endless possibilities of a spirit world. And now we turn to theology proper. The fundamental difference which has been made in relation to modern thought is our altered view of the Bible. It is not that its authority is less ; it is that it is different. The- first stage of progress was made when correct philological methods took the place of the old habit of arguing from texts. The next stage—a fundamental one—was the introduction of the historical method of commentary. There was a time when theologians argued as if they had a perfectly certain and definite series of rules out of which, as from a legal code, they could build up their theological system. It never really worked, because people found that by using your texts in different ways you could build up a good many logical systems. But when it became clear that there was no exactness in the literary tradition ; that different sayings of our Lord, for example, were reported in somewhat different lan- guage ; then that these words were spoken in relation to a particular problem at the time, and must have their meaning interpreted in relation to the conditions in which they were used ; gradually we were thrown back from the spoken word to the mind of the speaker, from the particular instance to the underlying principles, from the letter to the spirit, from the rule of theology to the Divine Personality.
Our new method of theology will not be less but more orthodox than the old. We have now learnt that when our Lord founded the Christian Church He did not give it a creed and a code of rules and a constitution, but He gave it certain principles. He did not establish either Presbyterianism or Episcopacy, but He built up His Church on the principles of ministry and discipleship. He did not give us a code of conduct, but He taught us the great principles of righteousness and love and sacrifice. He did not give us a creed but a Gospel, and He founded the Church on Himself, " Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone." Now a personality as opposed to a code or a rule is something which is incalculable in its capa- cities. Even an ordinary human person has possibilities and conceptions which we cannot realize or fathom. But if the personality be Divine its potentialities are infinite.
We have, then, to construct the theology of the future not by building up a system out of a series of texts or rules, but by recognizing the two fundamental principles of the Gospel ; the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the fact that in His life and work He has revealed to us the Being and Nature of God, and the inspiration of the Christian Church by His Holy Spirit. If, then, the doctrine of the Church can no longer be looked upon as a fixed system of theology, if the life of the Church_ will be altered and varied to suit the changing conditions of human life, it is not because we do not believe in our Lord Jesus Christ and the revelation through Him ; it is because we do believe in it. If we find development in Christian theology, and look forward to more develop- ment, it is not because we doubt that the Holy Spirit has inspired the Church ; but because we believe that it not only has inspired it, but continues to do so. Theology adapted to the conditions of modern thought is not unorthodox ; it is the modern expression of a funda- mental orthodoxy.
A. C. GLOUCESTER.
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