CHRISTIAN HUMANISM
Six,—Prebendary Sanders' letter raises issues which have a practical bear- ing upon life lived in the modern intellectual climate. Yet one cannot help wondering what is the effect of such a letter upon the ordinary reader. It seems to suggest that our hold upon the facts which underlie the Christian faith is precarious, and dependent upon a "rational pneumatology " or such a theory of biblical revelation as would satisfy Dr. Raven or Prebendary Sanders. This I venture to doubt. I am not a fundamentalist in the Tennessee or any other sense. But I am convinced that the Scriptures contain in themselves a unique and adequate message of God's self-revelation, ,.though, of course, as the Prebendary says, all truth is part of such revelation. The cosmology which forms the Bible background may be out of date—bow could it be otherwise?—but what matters that if the essential revelation be true? As regards " credal definitions," someone has said—I think with more than verbal dexterity-- that what is needed is not the re-statement, but the reinstatement of our Christian creed.
While theologians are, to quote Addison, " dividing the world with their contests and disputes," men and nations are perishing from ignorance or neglect of the Christian faith. I speak from more than hearsay. I happen to be chairman of the board of the Christian Evidence Society. The questions we have to answer in Hyde Park and elsewhere are not all from atheists or even professed rationalists. They are largely from troubled folk whose faith has been wrecked by Christian disputants and doubters. Their troubles originate, not with Voltaire or Paine or Bradlaugh, but with present-day bishops who write books questioning the origins of the religion which they profess and arc pledged to uphold. How can those who are themselves imprisoned in Doubting Castle rescue those—and there are thousands of them who are sinking in the Slough of Despond?
—Yours faithfully, J. H. HiGGINSON. Craiglands, 36 Cavendish Road, Sutton, Surrey.
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