DR. SANDAY'S REPLY TO THE BISHOP OF OXFORD.*

TM: publication of Dr. Sunday's reply to the Bishop of Oxford's recent Open Letter is an event. Its effects will be far-reaching. The Bishop of Oxford wrote on the " Basis of Anglican Fellowship," and dealt with the tendencies of modern criticism as well as with Church discipline. In his reply Dr. Sanday concerns himself wholly with modern criticism—in other words, with what is known as Modernism. Dr. Sanday goes considerably further in his acceptance of Modernist conclusions than he has gone before in his published writings. Many who bare not followed the criticism of the day may be surprised and pained at his con- clusions, but we venture to say that no man of fair judgment will read them without an intense admiration for his honesty, courage, and sincerity. It is to be remembered that, if Dr. Sanday overturns the traditional faith of many, he makes faith possible for quite as many others. We say the " tradi- tional faith," for, of course, the ultimate purpose of Dr. Sanday is not to destroy faith in any effectual sense, but only to draw attention to the unessential character—as he conceives it—of a large part of the miraculous framework of Christianity in the form in which it has been commonly accepted. Bishop Gore wrote of the conclusions of such men as Dr. Sanday as being based "on a mistaken view of natural law, and on something much less than a Christian belief in God." But it is worse than useless, it is a monstrous error, to try to banish men from the ministry who believe in Christianity as ardently as Bishop Gore himself, because their historical research compels them to certain conclusions. They may be wrong. In this review we have no intention of maintaining that Dr. Sanday is necessarily right. What we do maintain is that he obviously believes what he has written with all his mind and heart, and that a man who is honest with himself and his readers is of ten thousand times more value to the Church than some smug conformer to the view of authority who conceals his real opinions. It will be time enough to banish Dr. Sanday if ever he renounces Christianity. As it is, he professes himself a most profoundly convinced Christian. Hard-and-fast tests have always been subse- quently deplored, and been found to be an embarrassment, whenever they have been imposed on the clergy. We most sincerely hope that they will never be imposed on those who are called Modernists. The right spirit is that of the Connell of the Churchmen's Union. In its recent petition to the Arch- bishop of Canterbury the Council used on this subject of Modernism words which could not be bettered. We quote three of the clauses:— "(III.) We regard it as a matter of grave importance that the Clergy should be encouraged. to study and discuss reverently and freely the critical and historical problems which are forced upon the modern student of the Old and New Testaments, to publish the result of their studies, and to face the task of interpreting and restating the traditional doctrines of Christianity in such ways as may be demanded by newly discovered truth.

(IV.) While asserting without reserve our belief in the Incar- nation and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ we submit that a wide liberty of belief should be allowed with regard to the mode and attendant circumstances of both.

(V.) We believe that real study, thought and discussion will be discouraged if clergymen, who, in matters not affecting the essential truth of Christianity, arrive at conclusions which are opposed to traditional or momentarily dominant opinions are to be removed from their offices or denounced as dishonest for retain. rug them. We venture to recall to your Lordships the dictum

of ArchbishoE Temple, the conclusions are prescribed, the study is precluded.'

• Bishop Gore's Challsageto Criticism: a Reply to the Bishop of Geforcri (ripen Letter on the Basis of dagliocat Fellowship. By W. Sanolay, D.D., Louisa:wog Co, N. int.) . We can most nearly do justice to Dr. Sunday's remarkable pamphlet by summarizing his argument. First of all, be points out that a Christian does not, or ought not to, take his views directly from the Creeds. The Creeds are "summaries of Scripture which derive their authority in the last resort from Scripture." But as a critical view of Scripture is admissible, it follows that there is room for a "corrected interpretation" of the Creeds. Directly we examine the wording of the Creeds we see the need for a critical inter- pretation of them. This is particularly true because the lapse of time since the Creeds were written has made the intellectual context different. Bishop Gore himself admits that some of the language of the Creeds is symbolical. For instance, when we say "He descended into Hell," we do not really believe that there is any such thing as "up" or " down " in the universe. No man to-day thinks of Hell as a hollow place under the ground. Similarly, when we speak of "ascending" into Heaven and sitting "on the right hand of God," we are using symbolical language. It is surely, then, an almost impossible task to say exactly where the symbolism of Scripture (which is translated into the Creeds) begins and ends. Dr Gore seems to think he knows. What Dr. Sanday asks for is full liberty to believe in this matter just what historical and critical research enables him to believe.

Dr. Sunday says that one of the determining stages of hie own thought was the conviction that it was impossible to draw any distinction between the Old Testament and the New Testament so far as the supernatural element is concerned. The writers of the New Testament wrote under the influence of the Old Testament, taking it for their model. The New Testament writers were thus, in a sense, the less independent. If one Testament requires a critical view of the miracles, so does the other. This is not, of course, to say that what is supernatural is precluded. We shall see now what Dr. Sunday's attitude is towards the supernatural. He says that the New Testament accounts of the Ascension are "just as much pure symbolism as that of the Session." Bishop Gore argues that when the miracles are such as involve an appeal to the senses they must be accepted as literal fact, while others may be explained as symbolical. Dr. Sunday cannot bring himself to allow this. "I do not," he says, "think that the evidence is sufficient to convince us that 'the physical eleva- tion' of the Lord's body really happened as an external, objective fact. . . . I have no difficulty in believing that the early Christians, with the assumptions of Enoch and Elijah as fixed points in their minds, quickly came to believe that a like event must have happened to our Lord."

At this point Dr. Sanday deprecates misinterpretation of what he has yet to say, and makes what we can only call touching appeal for tolerance:— "I know that to the end of the chapter it will be said, that miracles are denied, that nature-miracles are denied, that the Virgin Birth is denied, that the Resurrection is denied, that our Lord's infallibility is denied. It world not be candid of me if I were to pretend that there is not a foundation of truth—and in one instance a considerable foundation of literal (but I would sub- mit, only literal) truth—in each of these charges. But in every single case there is some important )imitation or qualification which ought to be borne in mind whenever the charge is repeated. To omit this is always to import an element of injustice. State- ments respecting others, and especially statements respecting the beliefs of others, should always be reproduced in the same mean- ing and with the same balance of context with which they were originally made. Notwithstanding this inevitable and perpetual liability to misrepresentation, I will try at least once to reduce the indictment which is brought against us to its proper dimensions. I say brought against us,' because I must begin by associating myself more definitely than I have hitherto done with the group of writers whom the Bishop has in his mind. It is only within the last two years—or rather through a process of thought spread over the last two years—that I have been led to go, or come to feel inclined to go, as far as some of them do. I am not sure that I still go quite as far. I ought perhaps to add that, if I know myself, I should say that the advance has been mainly duo to the development of my own thought, though it would be unfair not to admit that I may have been subconsciously influenced by younger writers like Professor Lake and Mr. J. M. Thompson. I have argued against them, and I found, and still find, not a little to criticize, especially in the attitude of Mr. Thompson. But still 'the dart sticks in the side' • and, when one has done arguing, one may still ask whether one has done full justice to all the facts under review. In regard to my brother professor on the founda- tion of the Lady Margaret at Cambridge, I had no idea, until I received his pamphlet, that he held the views he does."

Dr. Sanday then deals with the nature of miracles in geneial.

and, of course, faces the difficulty of the cardinal miracles of the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection :-

"In regard to the Birth of our Lord, I would say that I believe most emphatically in Ills Supernatural Birth ; but I cannot so easily bring myself to think that His Birth was (as I should regard it) unnatural. This is just a case where I think that the Gospels use symbolical language. I can endorse entirely the substantial meaning of that verse of St. Luke (i. 35): The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee wherefore also that which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God: This is deeply metaphorical and symbolical, and carries ns into regions where thought is baffled. I do not doubt that the Birth of our Lord was sanctified in every physical respect in the most perfect manner conceivable. The coming of the Only-begotten into the world could not but be attended by every circumstance of holiness. Whatever the Virgin Birth can spiritually mean for us is guaranteed by the fact that the Holy Babe was Divine. Is it not enough to affirm this with all our heart and soul, and be silent as to anything beyond? In like manner as to the Resurrection. The only question really at issue relates to a detail, the actual resuscitation of the dead body of the Lord from the tomb. The accounts that have come down to us seem to be too conflicting and confused to prove this. But they do seem to prove that in any case the detail is of less importance than is supposed. Because, whatever it was, the body which the disciples saw was not the natural human body that was laid in the grave. A natural human body does not pass through closed doors. Its identity would not escape recognition by intimate friends, either for a shorter time (as by Mary Magdalen) or for a longer time (as by the disciples on the way to Emmaus). No coherentand consistent view can be worked out as to the nature of the Risen Body. Various ideas were current at the time as to the manner and process of resurrection ; and this variety of ideas is reflected in the accounts that have come down to us. The central meaning of the Resurrection is just that expressed in the vision of the Apocalypse •I am the first and the last, and the Living one; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore' (Rev. i. 18). Is it not enough for us that the first disciples were convinced of this by signs which they could understand, by signs appropriate to the world of ideas in which they moved? "

Of course the critics of Dr. Sanday will point out that his affirmation about "every circumstance of holiness" in the birth of our Lord is only an affirmation, for which there is no more evidence than for other things. " Why affirm this more than anything else when there is no plain evidence ? " they will say. " When once you abandon the belief in the immaculate conception you abandon all. The fact that the Holy Babe was Divine,' to use Dr. Sanday's own words, depends upon the Virgin Birth. Thalia the proof of divinity. Take away the proof and you cannot talk of the 'fact.' In fine, Dr. Sanday's critical view makes belief ' scientifically ' more difficult for us than before." It is not our purpose here to offer judgment. All we ask is complete tolerance for those who find in Christianity so supreme a guide of life and so overwhelmingly noble a spiritual force that they cannot for a moment doubt its divine origin, even when, on critical grounds, they are compelled to regard the miraculous aspect of it as illustrative or accidental or decorative, but not as fundamental.

To explain Dr. Sanday's own view more precisely, we may say that he divides miracles into two classes : those that are supra naturant—" exceptional, extraordinary, testifying to the presence of higher spiritual forces"—and events, or alleged events, that are contra naturam, involving "some definite reversal of the natural physical order." He rejects the contra nature= miracles—e.g., the Feeding of the Five Thousand, which, he says, is derived from the stories of multiplied food in the Old Testament narratives of Elijah and Elisha. The supra naturant miracles—e.g., all those for which the plain and unquestionable evidence of St. Paul can be cited—are to be accepted as abundantly explicable " by the presence in the world of a unique Personality and by that wave of new spiritual force which flowed from it." In short, Dr. Sanday believes that God in revealing Himself to men allowed them to make use of forms that were understood by them and would most strongly appeal to them. The New Testament shaped itself on the Old Testament; the transition was made easy for man; but the miraculous element, so far as it is "against nature," is superseded. Dr. Sanday describes the situation by saying : "it is like a lame man laying aside his crutches." Lest we should be too inexact in this necessarily rough summary of Dr. Sanday's argument, let ns quote a few more sentences on the eardinal miracles of the Incarnation and the Resurrection, which as commonly understood are, of course,

contra naturarn

"Two things I would ask leave to do. I would ask leave to affirm once more my entire and strong belief in the central reality of the Supernatural Birth and the Supernatural Resurrection. No one believes in these things more strongly than I at least wish to believe in them. But also, at the cost of repetition, I must ask to be allowed to say again what I have said already. My excuse is that I know it is hopeless to escape a certain measure of mis- representation. I shall not complain of those who misrepresent me ; because I have already appealed to a Higher Power. But I must in candour add that, although I believe emphatically in a Supernatural Birth and a Supernatural Resurrection, and in all that follows from these beliefs, I know that is not all that the Church of the past has believed. I must not blink this fact. I hope that I believe all that the Church's faith has stood for ; but

I could not, as at present advised, commit myself to it as literal fact."

Dr. Sanday bolds that by Modernism the " total force of the central truth" of Christianity is not impaired. Others, who feel that, though they could sacrifice, say, the miracle of the barren fig tree, they cannot sacrifice the literal truth of the Incarnation without disbelieving in the whole of Christianity as uniquely divine, will disagree with him absolutely. All we feel it our duty to insist upon here is that Christianity lives by truth, and not by the suppression of truth. Dr. Sanday, when his conclusions are related to the question of Anglican Fellowship, stands for comprehension and tolerance; Bishop Gore for a sectarianism, intellectual as well as disciplinarian. For our part, we have no hesitation in Baying that in this matter our sympathies are unreservedly with Dr. Sanday. He does not rob our Lord of His divinity, but teaches us to look for that divinity, not in material signs and proofs, but in its true element—in that quickening spirit which is a greater miracle than any recorded, the spirit that has remade the world and placed the Kingdom of God within us.