THE NEW MODERNISM
By Dr. W. B. SELBIE
THIS title is not a tautology. It implies that there is an old Modernism and that it is not a mere contradiction in terms. That there is nothing new under the sun means no more than that even the newest things in time become old. So the strictures of the Bull Pascendi Gregis first uttered in 1907 have passed into the limbo of far-off forgotten things. The Modernism then condemned was no more than a slight upheaval in the Roman Church connected with the names of Loisy and Tyrrell. Authority made short work of it so far as Rome was concerned. But the spirit of Modernism is indestructible and survives. The movement in the Roman Church was only a ripple caused by a far deeper disturbance outside. Biblical criticism in the hands of men like Wellhausen and Harnack had done its work only too well. It certainly removed mountains of difficulty from the path of the honest enquirer, but it raised as many questions as it solved, and left him with a reduced Christianity and a gospel singularly devoid of dynamic. Pre-War Liberal Protestantism had a real task to accomplish, but was too negative and critical to have any permanent effect, and is felt today to be spiritually bankrupt.
It is not surprising that there should be a strong reaction against it, but it is surprising that the reaction should be as much Modernist as obscurantist. About the fundamentalist reaction there is nothing new. Intel- lectual conservatism is a comfortable and attractive pose. To rest on constituted authority, tradition and the consensus omnium, to meet every suggestion of change with a " For God's sake do not stir there " may be an easy way out but it leads nowhere. It is little more than a funk-hole in a day of crisis. The New Modernism does not trouble itself much with religions of crisis whether their high priest be called Barth or Hitler or Marx. Its real enemy is that pre-War theological liberalism with its atmosphere of bourgeois complacency and its practical expression in capitalism and laissez faire. Our younger Modernists delight in pointing out that this so-called Liberalism never really had the courage of its convictions and never achieved the dignity of a disinterested search after truth. Hence their demand on the one hand. for a realist theology and on the other for a religion which will not only meet the needs of the individual but bring about that social reconstruction which our age imperatively requires.
Two things arc implicit here. In the first place the search alter truth must be disinterested and regardless of consequences. The Christian religion need never be afraid of the truth. What it may well fear is those half truths, or truths with reservations, which have so often done duty in the past. When one considers the immense ingenuity and misplaced learning that have been expended in bolstering up catholic truth on the one hand and Protestant truth on the other, one may well ask eni bon°. Truth with blinkers on is a spectacle for Gods and men and is sure to be found out in the long run. The nemesis of the older liberalism with► its naïve dependence on historical critic•isni was a barren intel- lectualism, a religion logically four square but impotent and ineffective. Men overlooked the obvious fact that all truth is many-sided and religious truth more than most.
Biblical criticism and research into origins arc ent irely necessary and must be carried out on strictly scientific lines. But they are not ends in themselves nor do they tell the whole story. If we have learnt anything fron► the psychology of religion, it is that religion is an expression of man's whole personality. In every religious act, attitude, or opinion, the whole man is concerned. Emotion, intellect and will, each in due proportion co-operate. When the proportion is wrong, everything is wrong. The older Modernists took refuge in an over- intellectualised presentation of Christianity. They were at pains to reconcile it with science and to strip from it the accretions of a false philosophy. Their successors, while equally determined to get at the truth of things, have a wider view of the meaning of religious truth and arc more concerned with its fruit in action than with its accurate expression. They have no use for a cloistered and academic theology, or for a religion which, makes saints but is careless of the common weal.
This brings us to our second point. The new Moder/limn is nothing if not socially-minded. It feels deeply the challenge of Communism and recognises that Com- munists are doing what Christians profess to do and ought to do, but do not. Its disciples have no sympathy with the humanist and materialist philosophy. on which Marxism is founded. They know that man cannot live by bread alone, and that he has needs, aspirations and . ideals which only religion can fulfil. They believe that Christianity is the best religion available because it is the most effective in making men and remaking • society. But they argue, with Mr. Chesterton, that it - has never yet been really tried. Its worst enemies arc not atheism, Communism, and the like, but those pseudo-Christianities which drug men with an other- . worldly idealism and suffer them to live comfortable lives with their eyes shut and their cars closed to the shame and pain and injustice of existing social conditions.
The new Modernists, in other words, stand for a realist religion. They recognise the force of the hunger motive and would not exclude it. But they believe also in the love motive as at once more Christian and more potent and far more likely to bring in a new heaven and a new earth. They admit the importance of the economic aspect of human life, but they will not admit that it is the only aspect or even the most essential one. They cannot accept that suppression of the individual . which is common to all forms both. of Communism and Nationalism. If the old Protestant individualism is dead, it is only because it has given way before a more Christian individualism which regards the individual always in the light of his relationship with others. It is impossible to isolate the individual from society, or society from the individual. There is a sense, therefore, in which the main principles of Christianity are implied in Communism. The trouble is that Christians are too often content to preach their principles without attempt- ing to apply them, and it is the application that counts.
What is needed, then, is a synthesis of modern Chris- tianity and modern Communism. Such a synthesis as Professor Macmurray says " would transform Christian practice in a way that would make it much more nearly the expression of its own professed ideals : and it would transform communist theory in a way that would much more adequately express the actual nature of the form of practical life that it seeks to realise." If our new Modernists can show us the way to some such consum- mation as this, they will deserve well of their nation and of mankind.
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