nr"" '4l/givetke/eSaoiiy7^'y I I /<" th* folding cf a. Colhz' '» PrrCobnf' iLmaKAisy YALE DIVINITY SCHOOL LIBRARY Library or T;he Rev. Clifton H. Brewer BOOKS BY CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D. Published bt CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Church Unity. Svo, net ... . $2.50 The Book of Psalms. (International Criti cal Commentary.) 2 vols. Cr. 8vo, net 6.00 The Ethical Teaching of Jesus. 12mo. net 1.50 New Light on the Life of Jesus. 12mo, net 1.20 The Incarnation of the Lord. Svo. net . 1.50 General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scripture. Svo, net .... 3.00 The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch. Cr. 8vo . 2.50 The Messiah of the Apostles. Cr. Svo . 3.00 The Messiah of the Gospels. Cr. 8vo . 2.00 The Bible, the Church and the Reason. Cr. 8vo 1.75 American Presbyterianism. Cr. Svo . 3.00 CHURCH UNITY CHURCH UNITY STUDIES OF ITS MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEMS BY CHARLES AUGUSTUS BRIGGS, D.D., D.Litt. GRADUATE PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA AND SYMBOLICS IN THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1909 Copyright, 1909, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Published September, 1909 WILLIAM REED HUNTINGTON, D.D., LL.D. THE CHIEF EXPONENT OP CHURCH UNITY IN AMERICA THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED IN GRATITUDE AND LOVE PREFACE For twenty-five years and more the author has laboured in behalf of Church Unity, and has made numerous ad dresses on the subject, before Roman Catholics in America, France and in Rome; before Protestant bodies of many differ ent denominations in different countries; and everywhere he has been welcomed with sympathetic attention. He has also written a large number of articles on the subject in reviews, magazines, and journals of various kinds, both at home and abroad. He has conversed on the subject with many of the ablest theologians and chief dignitaries of the several Christian Churches. For four years he has been lecturing in the Union Theological Seminary upon the new discipline of Christian Irenics. Many have urged him, from time to time, to gather his papers together in a volume for their wider and more lasting in fluence; but he has refrained because he wished to make a thorough investigation of three most difficult questions: Infallibility, the Sacramental System, and the Validity of Orders. After many years of study this has been accom plished; and there is no further reason for delaying the publi cation of the book. A number of articles, published in various periodicals during- the past twenty-five years, have been used. But these have all been carefully revised, and put in their proper order in the volume. At least one-half of the material of this book has not been previously published. The plan of VU1 PREFACE the volume is to give a series of studies of the chief problems of Church Unity. This plan involves a certain amount of repetition here and there of minor questions. But such repetition is more formal than real; for these questions are considered from different points of view, which in fact puts them in different lights and relations. The volume is an earnest effort to solve the hard problems of Church Unity, and to reconcile the various parties to the controversies which distract Christendom. There is an ever increasing number, who are weary of these fruitless contro versies and are eager to see their way to a better understand ing of the real issues. It is the hope of the author to encourage such, and above all to stimulate young men of courage and goodwill, to undertake this work of Christian Irenics, and to share in the study of its hard problems. May this volume, with all its defects, do something to ad vance the reunion of Christendom, a cause dear to the heart of Jesus, and to men of goodwill in all ages and nations and denominations of Christians. CONTENTS PAGE I. CHRISTIAN IRENICS 1 Its Tasks 4 Its Spirit 11 II. BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OP THE CHURCH ... 23 The Term Church 24 The Kingdom of God 33 Other Biblical Terms for Church 37 III. CATHOLIC— THE NAME AND THE THING . . 46 The Term Catholic 46 Catholicity and Apostolicity 50 Catholicity and Orthodoxy 55 Catholic and Roman 57 The Ethical Principle of Catholicity .... 61 The Religious Principle of Catholicity ... 64 Geographical Unity and Catholicity .... 66 The Catholic Reaction 69 IV. THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE 73 Church and State 74 The Historic Episcopate as a Term of Union . 79 Grounds of Opposition to Episcopacy .... 82 Advantages of the Historic Episcopate ... 93 V. VALIDITY OF ORDERS 102 The Apostolic Commission 102 The Presbyter Bishops 105 The Validity of Anglican Orders 110 The Validity of Presbyterian Orders .... 127 What Is Order? 145 Order and Sacrament 148 ix X CONTENTS PAGE Function and Jurisdiction 152 Restoration of the Episcopate 159 Recognition of Orders 161 VI. ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION 169 Territorial Jurisdiction 176 Subject-Matter of Jurisdiction 181 Jurisdiction of Persons 193 VII. THE REAL AND THE IDEAL IN THE PAPACY . . 201 The Biblical Basis of the Papacy 202 The Historic Right of the Papacy 205 Primacy of the Pope and Its Limitations . . 207 VIII. INFALLIBILITY, TRUE AND FALSE 221 Infallibility of the Reason 223 Infallibility of the Church 226 Infallibility of the Bible 236 Apostolic Tradition 241 The Threefold Infallibility 243 IX. THE SACRAMENTAL SYSTEM 246 The Number of the Sacraments 246 The Five Minor Sacraments 250 The Relation of the Divine Grace in the Sac raments to the Persons of the Holy Triniit 258 Sacramental Grace 258 The Sacramental Work of the Holy Spirit . 261 The Sacramental Presence of Christ .... 263 The Relation of the Grace Conferred to the Elements Through Which It Is Conferred 266 The Conversion of the Elements 266 The Eucharistic Sacrifice 272 Dramatic Representation 278 The Body of Christ 280 Christophanic Presence 289 Effects of the Sacraments Uror. Those Who Use Them 294 CONTENTS XI PAGE The Ecstatic State 295 The Preservation of Body and Soul .... 297 X. CHURCH AND CREED 299 The Apostles' Creed 299 The Nicene Creed 301 Symbols of Faith 306 Revision of Symbols 308 XI. THE THEOLOGICAL CRISIS, ESPECIALLY IN AMERICA 315 The Advance of the Church 316 The Real Issues 319 The Seat of Authority in Religion 321 Holy Scripture 323 Inerrancy 328 The Bible as a Means of Grace 332 Last Things 334 The Middle State 335 Redemption After Death 341 Salvation of Infants and Heathen .... 345 Progressive Sanctification After Death . . . 350 The Lost 360 The Christ 363 The Gain 364 XII. THE INSTITUTIONAL CRISIS IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 366 The Decision of the Archbishops as to the Three Ceremonies 366 The Anglo-Catholic and Puritan Parties . . 368 Reservation of the Sacrament 370 The Principle of Uniformity 374 Failure of the Acts of Uniformity 376 The Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Disci pline 385 Regulated Liberty of Worship 388 Xli ^ CONTENTS PAGE XIII. THE ENCYCLICAL AGAINST MODERNISM . . 393 The Syllabus 394 The Encyclical 395 The Modernists 397 Mediaevalism 402 The New Inquisition 405 XIV. THE GREAT OBSTACLE IN THE WAY OF A RE UNION OF CHRISTENDOM 410 The Papal Dominion Not Absolute .... 410 The Threefold Cord of Unity 412 Unlimited Jurisdiction Condemned by History 413 The Right of Reformation and Revolution. . 416 A Constitutionalised Papacy 421 XV. THE PASSING AND THE COMING CHRISTIANITY 426 Passing Protestantism 428 The Mediating Modernism 435 The Coming Catholicism 442 INDEX 453 CHURCH UNITY CHURCH UNITY CHRISTIAN IRENICS Christian Irenics is that theological discipline which aims to reconcile the discordant elements of Christianity, and to organize them in peace and concord, in the unity of Christ's Church. It is one of those new theological disciplines which have sprung up in recent times on the border-lines of the older theological disciplines, and which refuse to be classi fied under any of them, unless they are so enlarged as to in volve a reconstruction of Theological Encyclopedia. Chris tian Irenics is indeed the culminating discipline to which all others contribute their noblest results, the apex of the pyramid of Christian theology, to which all the lines of Christian scholarship and Christian life tend, and in which ultimately they find their highest end and perfection. Christian Irenics is usually classed with Symbolics — that theological discipline which studies the official expression of the faith of the Church as it is stereotyped in symbols — that is, Creeds, Confessions of Faith and Catechisms. From this point of view, Irenics takes the material given by Sym bolics, holds forth the consensus of Christianity as the basis of peace and unity already attained, and then studies the dissensus in order to find even there the pathway to com plete and perfect peace and unity. It is thus the antithesis to Polemics. Polemics takes its stand upon one symbol or group of symbols, representing one particular denomination of Chris tians, or school of theology, and makes war upon everything 2 CHURCH UNITY that differs from that. It aims to overcome and destroy all dissent from that one particular dissensus. On the contrary, Irenics refuses to regard any one of the particular denominational or school statements as final; it rather seeks to discover the truth and right in all this dis sensus, and to eliminate them from error and wrong; and then to detect the lines of development which lead on to more comprehensive statements in which dissensus may eventually be transformed into consensus. Accordingly, Irenics cannot be attached to Symbolics as a section of Symbolics or as a mode of using Symbolics. It is much more comprehensive. If it finds Symbolics a convenient base on which to begin its work, it soon outgrows Symbolics and expands on all sides. It is evident that the peace of the Church cannot be effected within the sphere of Christian symbols alone, since in some respects the severer problems are in the sphere of Church government and worship. Liturgies and ecclesiastical canons, therefore, demand historic and comparative study, and irenic use, as well as creeds, confessions and catechisms. Polemics and Irenics thus far have the same reach. It is not sufficient that there should be peace here and war there. Polemics is war all along the line of institution, faith and morals. Irenics is peace-making over the whole field of theology. But Polemics has its limitations. It battles for the denom inational or sectarian institution and dogma as the indubi table and the final statement, and with a determination to destroy all that is discordant therewith. It has little, if any, interest in the historical origin of those institutions or dog mas. It is regarded as disloyal to subject them to any kind of criticism. It is counted as downright treason to propose new and better statements. Irenics, on the contrary, searches all the statements thor oughly. It must know exactly how they came into historic being; for only so can it determine how much of them was the genuine and necessary product of Christianity, and how CHRISTIAN irenics 6 much was due to human frailty and ignorance, or to un christian motives and influences. It must study the history of the statements in their use in the Church; for only so can one go back of the traditional interpretation that usually drifts from the original sense through change in the meaning of the words, the unconscious adaptation of old terms to new situations, and the continuous reconstruction of dogma in the treatises of the theologian and the homilies of the pulpit. Irenics is not content with these discordant state ments as they are. It cannot say: This one is altogether true; the others are altogether false. It must put them all alike into the fires of criticism, testing them in every way, to eliminate the dross of error from the golden truth, con fident that truth is indestructible and imperishable. It tests them by Holy Scripture, by the Reason, by Christian experience, as well as by the decisions of the Church in their original sense. Above all, Irenics looks to the future. Its right to live and work is the confidence that the present dissensus of Christendom will not endure, that those who disagree from us are not ordinarily dishonest or wicked, but rather that the statements which we cherish are not sufficiently clear, evident and convincing; do not adequately express the truth; do not yet fully contain it; but urge to reinvestigation, re vision, new and better statements of the faith of the Church. Thus Irenics uses all other theological disciplines. It grasps the past, the present and the future in its compre hensive vision. Its ideal is the loftiest and the noblest. It is sure that the discord and division of Christianity are temporary and transitional. It has unflinching confidence that in the "dispensation of the fulness of the times" God will "sum up all things in Christ"1 and that Christ's prayer to the Father for his disciples will surely be realised, that "they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us."2 1 Eph. i. 10. * John xvii. 21. CHURCH unity I. ITS TASKS (1) The first task of Irenics is to determine the essentials of Christianity; that which originally gave Christianity the right to exist as a new religion in the world; that which has remained permanent in all its evolutions; that which is to be found wherever and whenever and in whomsoever Chris tianity exists. This essence of Christianity is to be deter mined by the elimination of all that is local, temporal and formal from that which is universal. Here Irenics and the science of religion come into contact and healthful rivalry; for the science of religion seeks the essence of Christianity .by the elimination from it of all that it has in common with other religions. Irenics seeks this same essence by the elimination of all that is special and peculiar to the several types of Christianity. This effort is funda mental to Irenics; for, unless we have correctly defined the essence of Christianity, we may mistake the limits of Christianity. (2) The second task of Irenics is to determine what is Catholic. That is Catholic which is semper, vbique, et ab omnibus; it is more comprehensive than the essence of Christianity. The essence is not only original to Christian ity; but it is that without which Christianity does not ex ist, and it distinguishes Christianity from other religions. The Catholic is that which Christianity stands for as an organised institution, as the Church of Christ in the midst of the world. Christianity may exist, and in fact did exist, with all that is essential, without Catholicity; but Catholicity is an inevitable development of Christianity. It is that which is common to Christianity when it has become ma ture, self-conscious, an organized institution, knowing what it stands for, and able to vindicate itself in institution and doctrine. This universality is not absolute: it is relative; for it excludes all those, whether as individuals or as or ganised communities, who cannot or will not know and CHRISTIAN irenics 5 maintain the common heritage, the sacred deposit of the Christian Church. It is necessary to determine the range of Catholicity, or else we may include within the field of Irenics those who have no rights in the Catholic Church, or exclude others from their rightful heritage, and so mis take the scope of our work. On the one hand, there are those who so extend the area of Catholicity as to include what is distinctively Roman or Anglican, and then exclude all others from the Catholic Church. On the other hand, there are those who value so little the Catholic heritage of the Church that they resent the use of the term for institu tions and doctrines of their own communion which are truly Catholic. A man or a communion may be Christian with out being Catholic, and they may be Catholic and yet fall far short of the ideal of Christ and Christianity. (3) The third task of Irenics is to determine the consensus of Christianity. This is much wider than Catholicity, and represents a subsequent stage of development. Consen sus involves the organisation of different types and parties within the Catholic Church. The consensus is the concord which the several types of Christianity have attained at a particular stage in its development. The consensus is to be distinguished from orthodoxy. That is orthodox which has been finally defined as right doctrine by the supreme authority of the Church. If we could limit orthodoxy to those authoritative determinations to which all bow, con sensus and orthodoxy would be co-extensive; but in fact orthodoxy as commonly used is particularistic, because all existing Church authorities, and all Church authorities that have been in the world for centuries, are particular and not universal jurisdictions. The Greek Church, which prides itself on its orthodoxy, is more comprehensive than others in this respect; for it limits orthodoxy to the determinations of doctrine by the primitive Councils before the division between the Eastern and Western Churches. But even these exclude several Oriental Churches. The only orthodoxy which corresponds 6 CHURCH UNITY witn consensus is that of the Nicene Creed. Hence the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral of unity declares it to be "the sufficient statement of the Christian Faith." The con sensus is thus more limited than orthodoxy. Eventually they will correspond; but not until the Church has learned much more of the truth than it possesses at the present time. The consensus becomes more comprehensive with the progress of the Church, and also more complex; so that we have to distinguish between the consensus of the whole Church at different periods of its history and the consensus of two or more particular Churches. Sometimes the con sensus expands; then again contracts; but, on the whole, the consensus enlarges with the progress of Christianity. So we have to distinguish between temporary consensus and permanent consensus; between entire consensus and partial consensus. There is a special consensus of the Greek and Oriental Churches: there is another special consensus of the Roman Church with them. There is a consensus of Protestantism, and there is a consensus of the Reformed Churches. All this consensus, the consensus of the entire Church and the consensus of particular Churches, has to be determined; for it indicates the unity and concord thus far attained, the stepping-stones for our advance into the more difficult realm of discord. The consensus of Christianity is vastly more important than the dissensus. No one, who has not studied it, can estimate how vast and magnificent it is when compared with the dissensus. It is like a mighty river, flowing on in majestic silence, whilst its surface is disturbed by erratic currents and noisy wavelets, stirred by mischievous or angry winds. It is the murmur of the ever-flowing stream as compared with the occasional croak ing of frogs upon its banks. Taking our stand upon the consensus of Christianity, we may thank God for the progress already made, and look forward with confidence toward a future of complete unity and perfect concord. (4) The fourth task of Irenics is the study of the dissensus, CHRISTIAN irenics / in order to find even there the truth which invokes concord and the error which promotes discord. In this field it is the exact and complete antithesis to Polemics. Polemics assumes that it has the truth already in possession, and that its duty is to defend that truth against all assaults, and attack all opposing statements. In the scholastic age of Protestantism, Polemic Theology was attached to Dogmatic Theology on the theory that the Confession of Faith gave the Christian Faith; and it was the duty of the dogmatic the ologian so to state its doctrines as to make them impreg nable in defence and invincible in attack. In theological schools which still adhere to the scholastic methods one may still find chairs of Polemic Theology. It is not surprising that such schools should oppose re vision of denominational standards and any kind of new dogmatic statement. It is their task to oppose new methods: new statements, new doctrines, everything that is new. They have already attained the final knowledge of the truth; they have nothing more to learn from Bible, Church or the progress of civilisation in the world. But Truth cannot be boxed up and put away for safe keeping. It is too large for any enclosure. It is too strong for any chains. It is too expansive for any measures. Truth appears to men at first afar off with gracious invita tion. Most men are content to gaze at her in the distance, conceive her in certain relations, and then go away with their photographic ideals and develop them in unchangeable ab stractions. Not so can one know the truth. He who would truly know her, must go up to her with courage and courtesy, follow her about wherever she goes, do her bidding as her faithful knight, run after her, climb after her, pursue her in the heights above, in the depths beneath, and never lose sight of her, for she will lead him a long race, testing him in every way before she gives herself to him as the bride of his soul. Truth is a sacred deposit, a holy tradition in the Church; but it is not to be laid away in a napkin to be re stored to the Lord exactly as it was received. If we are 8 CHURCH UNITY faithful servants, we will use it, and it will increase in our hands, and we shall transmit to our successors manifold gains. Truth is given to mankind only gradually. He has to learn it little by little in the progress of his education. So nations and races are educated step by step in the progress of the centuries. All institutions, all knowledge, all things living, all religions undergo this heavenly discipline; for the history of mankind is the divine education of our race. When Jesus promised his disciples that the Holy Spirit would lead them into all the truth, he did not mean that the Holy Spirit would lead the apostles into all the truth and leave that truth as an infallible deposit in the Church to which nothing could be added in knowledge and statement. The Holy Spirit did not guide the ante-Nicene Church until the Nicene Creed was given as the final statement of the Christian faith, and then leave the Church to itself to work out the hardest problems of Christianity. He did not cease his guidance at the Reformation. He did not give his last word at the Synod of Dort, or in the Formula of Concord, or to the Westminster Assembly, or through the Book of Common Prayer, or at the Council of the Vatican. He has not left the Christian world in a chaos of discordant theologies with the alternative of submission to an infallible pontiff. There never was a time when the Holy Spirit was more needed by Christians than in our age, and there never has been a time when the Divine Spirit was so operative as in this age of transition. All things are heaving and tossing in the throes that will surely give birth to a nobler, grander Christianity. The Church of Rome recognised this when it stated the dogma of an infallible pontiff to guide the Church of the present and the future. However much formal error there may be in this dogma, it yet honours the divine Spirit as the present guide of the Church, speaking infallibly through its supreme head. It puts to shame that Protestant scholasti cism which has, so far as it could, pushed the Holy Spirit CHRISTIAN IRENICS 9 out of the Church by its insistence upon an irreformable system of dogma. An irreformable dogmatic statement in the present time, even if given by the Pope, is presumptively of more value than an irreformable dogmatic statement of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, pronounced by any as sembly of divines or the decisions of any council, however venerable. In fact, there can be no irreformable dogma in any age. All dogma is reformable, and must be reformed in the progress of the Church as she advances under the guidance of the Divine Spirit toward the ultimate, the all- comprehending and all-satisfying truth. It is necessary to distinguish between truth in itself and in its formal expression. Language is one of the noblest endowments of mankind, but it is not so noble as the mind. It is one thing for the mind to perceive the truth and to con ceive the truth; it is another thing to state it in speech and in writing. The statement in human speech can only be partial, inadequate and liable to misinterpretation. If it is necessary to have infallible dogma in stereotyped, irreform able credal statements, it is also necessary to have a stereo typed irreformable Christianity and also a stereotyped, irre formable language. A Christianity that lives and grows, outlives and outgrows all ancient statements. A creed stereotypes, once for all, the faith of those who constructed it. It is an invaluable historic document. But those who use it truly do not confine themselves to its words and sen tences; they study them in order to pass through the words, the sentences, the grammar, the logic, the rhetoric, to the inner sense, and so feed upon the substantial truth which they contain. We break through the shells to get at the precious kernels. We strip off the husks to get at the golden grain. We do not swallow the kernels in the shells or the grain in the husks. So we cannot feed upon the truth by merely appropriating the ancient dogmatic statements. We must break through the shells of these statements to the substantial verities. The statements are the shells, the husks, necessary to 10 CHURCH UNITY conserve the truth, necessary for its transmission and for its public utterance in worship; but they do not, they cannot, satisfy the soul. , These must be explained, their ancient terminology has to be translated into modern phrases ere they can give nourishment to Christian life. Those who insist upon verbal inspiration of the Holy Scripture or verbal subscription to Creeds feed on shells and husks whose product is a dyspeptic and diseased Christianity. No one knows the truth who only knows its verbal ex pression. A parrot may be taught that. But man has a mind to perceive and conceive what he utters, if he really knows it — this involves that he must digest it and reproduce it in forms of his own thinking and acting. He utters the words of the Creed, but they are no longer merely stereo typed words; they are illuminated and hallowed by the vital meaning given to them in Christian experience and Chris tian knowledge. And so the Creeds no longer mean ex actly what they meant to those who composed them, but have new meanings given by the conceptions of the present generation, which envelops the Creed with its own religious experience. We cannot use old forms profitably unless we give them new meanings. This adaptation satisfies in those historic documents where there is a consensus of Christianity, such as the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed; but it does not suffice where there is dissensus: it only makes the dissensus greater and the con fusion more confounded. We ought not to be surprised, therefore, that throughout Protestantism the Protestant Confessions of Faith have been generally cast aside as in adequate, and that the movement for revision and new creeds persists in spite of every obstacle and all resistance. It must be evident to any one who knows the currents of thought which have been working during our century, and which are now working still more powerfully, that in a very few years not a single Protestant Confession of Faith or Catechism will retain binding authority in any denomination. There CHRISTIAN IRENICS 11 is, in fact, no alternative between a rally on the Nicene Creed as proposed by the Chicago-Lambeth Conference or about those new statements of Faith which other communions are seeking. Therefore no discipline is so much needed as that of Irenics, which rises above all denominational partisan ship, and sectarian bigotry, and seeks solely and alone "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," for therein alone is peace and unity. II. ITS SPIRIT (1) Christian Irenics demands for its successful study, first of all, a courageous quest for the truth. Courage is re quired to rise above the prejudices of denominational or school theology. Few can do it; few will dare to do it; for the irenic theologian is charged at once with being unfaith ful to his party and treacherous to his companions in arms. Many men are incapable of understanding how one can be faithful to the Westminster Confession as an excellent ex pression of the system of doctrine taught in Holy Scripture, and yet think that it may be revised, or that better and more useful statements may be made. They forget that the West minster divines first tried to revise the Anglican Articles of Religion which they had subscribed; and then abandoned that effort and composed the Westminster Confession as a substitute for them. If the Westminster divines could honestly do that, certainly their descendants are not blame worthy in following their example, first trying in vain to re vise their Confession and now seeking a new statement. There are those who think it dishonest for a Presbyterian to be anywhere else than in a Presbyterian- denomination. They forget that Bishop Reynolds, one of the master spirits of the Westminster Assembly, and John Wallis, one of its clerks, led four-fifths of the Presbyterian pastors of England to abide in the Church of England, as did Cartwright and the Puritan fathers, regarding the unity of the Church of England as more important than their Presbyterian opinions. 12 CHURCH UNITY They forget that Congregationalists and Presbyterians have been passing from the one denomination to the other for more than a century. These interchanges will become still more frequent when the denominational lines become thinner and the sectarian fences become lower. But those who identify Christianity with their sect or party will ever fight against such changes with zeal and determination. If it is difficult and dangerous to seek a reunion of Protes tants, how much more is it dangerous to venture upon a study which looks to the reunion of Protestantism with Rome and aims at nothing less than the unity of entire Christendom. The hereditary antagonism and dogmatic hostility of Prot estantism bursts into flame against such an effort. I under stand it well. Not a drop of blood in my veins but bounds with indignation against the wrongs suffered by my an cestors at the hands of Rome. Puritan and Huguenot, Dutch and German Reformed, all the strains in my blood cry out against priest and prelate. No man could have had a greater dogmatic hostility to Rome than I when the Vatican Council decreed papal infallibility. But, thank God, that hostility is all gone, and I now seek the reconcili ation of the Roman Catholic and the Protestant Churches. I am not unfaithful to my ancestors, or to my teachers, or to my Protestant position when I strive to rise above Protes tantism to a higher and more comprehensive position in which alone reconciliation and reunion can take place. Melanch- thon, the theologian of Germany, certainly had that hope, and laboured for its realisation; and other heroic men like Bucer, Calixtus, Grotius, Spinola and Leibnitz, and, I may add, Leo XIII, and also our own Schaff, in their generations, have continued to hope and labour with the conviction that, notwithstanding every obstacle and discouragement, recon ciliation would eventually be accomplished. All this is in the realm of external courage. But still greater courage is necessary to undertake to solve problems and difficulties which are generally regarded as insoluble. Many who would gladly labour for the reunion of Christen- CHRISTIAN IRENICS 13 dom regard it as visionary and impracticable, if not im possible, and so beyond the range of useful effort. It seems to most men presumptuous, foolhardy and peril ous. And yet these hard problems must be undertaken, if Irenics is to be a useful discipline. It is useless to begin un less we have already made up our minds to honest search for the truth in all this dissensus of Christianity. But if we have made this beginning, we ought not to hesitate to make that search thorough, and to carry it through with courage. What if the reconciling word has not yet been spoken; the ideal truth* which harmonises differences not yet discovered ? That is no good reason why we should not pursue the quest. We know that there is such a truth and word. We know that God's Holy Spirit will eventually guide to them. This generation has facilities of investigation not known, or only partially known, to the Fathers. Biblical Criticism has enabled us to see the Holy Scriptures in their historic origin and relations, and so has cast a flood of new light upon the Bible. Historical Criticism has given us a new Church History. Science and Philosophy have greatly enlarged and improved the area of knowledge and the meth ods of study. The inductive method is gradually transform ing the entire range of Theology. Every problem of Theol ogy has been put in new light. Search-lights of tremendous power sweep the entire field of history, disclosing a multi tude of facts unknown to the Fathers. Criticism uses X-rays which enable us to see through obstacles impenetrable to older scholars. The microscopic investigation of the in ductive method accumulates multitudes of truths entirely unknown to the men of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eigh teenth centuries. Irenics may use all these modern resources unknown to the Fathers, and use them without presumption, but with courage, for the successful solution of the most difficult problems, the removal of the discord and the construction of the concord of Christendom. 14 CHURCH UNITY Brave men have no fear of obstacles : they rejoice in diffi culties to be overcome. The true scholar is glad of hard problems. Has the theologian nothing to do but to work over the same questions that the fathers have solved once for all, transmitting a sacred deposit without usury? Such a task may suit quite well lazy priests and pedantic scholars, but not men of power and courage. Were it not for the enthusiasm for Christ and aspiration after God, which work mightily in the best of mankind, even under the most dis couraging circumstances, Traditionalism would have long since banished true men from the Church and reduced it to an asylum for drones and imbeciles. There are problems in theology which require the highest courage and ability for their solution. There are tasks to be done that require the courage of martyrdom. "Thank God, no paradise stands barred To entry, and I find it hard To be a Christian." » Brave scholars will eventually solve all problems, perform all tasks. It is certain that all truth will be discovered eventually — by others, if not by us. One after another difficulties disappear before courageous investigation. Every, problem solved is an encouragement to solve another and an exercise in its solution. The divine Spirit will eventually lead into all the truth. The dissensus of Christianity will be decomposed, and out of it a consensus will arise as spring time from the grave of winter. (2) Irenics, in the second place, demands sympathy. Irenics is the effort to discern the truth and state the recon ciling word that will remove discord. It is not sufficient that we abandon polemics on the basis of the particular statement in order to study other statements, for the state ments which we provisionally put aside are statements which are our own, which we have appropriated and made our 1 Browning in Easter Day (end). CHRISTIAN IRENICS 15 Christian experience. How can we study the other state ments impartially by looking at them merely from the out side as theoretical truth? — for theoretical truth can never compete with experimental truth. It is necessary for us to enter into the very heart of the statements of others in order to truly know them. This may be done by the power of human sympathy. Some men are incapable of this. They cannot truly state the views of an opponent; they surely, though often unconsciously, misrepresent him. Others are so sympathetic that if they provisionally put aside their own convictions they are in peril of assuming the convictions of those with whom they come into sympathy. Undoubtedly there is peril in the sympathetic study of other statements than our own. 'We run the risk of being won over by our opponents. No one should attempt it who has not so mastered the position of his own Church that it possesses him, and has become a part of his very nature. Then he may bravely undertake to enter the lines of his opponents and, by the free and full exercise of his Christian sympathy, endeavour to think as they think and feel as they feel, in their worship, in their doctrines and in their life. This sympathy must be free; that is, knowing his own convic tions thoroughly, he must yet be willing to yield them in whole or in part to any new truth. There must be no reser vation of prejudice, bigotry or timidity. Approaching the opponents with such open-mindedness under the white flag and with the olive branch, he will be received commonly as a friend and a brother, and he will thus in a measure think and feel with them, and the truth that they have will be recognised and eliminated from the error which envelops it. He will soon learn that there is more truth in common in the opposing statements than any one supposed ; that there is truth in possession of the opponent which he is glad to learn, and add to the truth which he had in possession before. He will learn with sadness that there is error and inadequacy enough, and insufficiency of statement on all sides. Such has been my experience. 16 CHURCH UNITY Early life among the Methodists gave me a sympathy with Arminianism, although I deliberately followed Calvinism. Four years of study in Germany enabled me to sympathise with Lutheranism. Many years of labour as a Presbyterian minister and Professor of Theology enabled me to understand thoroughly the doctrine, polity and worship of the Presby terian and other Reformed churches. Many vacations in England enabled me to overcome early prejudices against liturgy and ceremony in public worship. Several residences in Rome gave me the opportunity to enter into sympathy with Roman Catholic doctrine and worship. And so God's Holy Spirit has guided me through sympathetic study of all these divisions of Christendom to lose hostility to them, and to regard them with an irenic spirit, and with a determina tion to do all in my power to remove prejudices, misstate ments and misinterpretations and to labour for the reunion of them all in one organic whole, the one Church of Christ. It is impossible to understand and state with accuracy the theology of any other religious body than the one to which you belong, unless you have lived with them, and thought with them, and worshipped with them in sympathetic union. You may go to a great cathedral, admire its nave and its choir, its dome and its towers, its shapely windows and impressive gates; but no one really knows a cathedral until he has entered it with a throng of worshippers, taken part in its ceremonies and in its liturgy, and experienced that uplift of soul, that sublime unity in divine worship to which all the glories of architecture and sculpture, painting and ceremony, music and song contribute each its strain. So you cannot know any Church or denomination or sect merely from the outside. It always presents to the enemy its warlike, of fensive side; to the stranger its cold exterior, even if clothed with beauty and elegance. Only the friend is admitted to the warm, cheerful, happy interior, where there is peace and unity in the home life. No one can reconcile who is not a friend of both parties. Irenics must know thoroughly CHRISTIAN IRENICS 17 well, and in sympathetic friendship, all parties to the debate of Christianity, and all the various opinions to be harmo nised. (3) Another necessity for Irenics is comprehensiveness. If one would know anything thoroughly, he must know it within as well as without, and on all sides and from every point of view. One of the greatest gains in modern theology is the recognition that the several different temperaments of mankind must have each its own special phase of repre sentation in theology; that the historic differences in the Church are due in great measure to racial peculiarities and national idiosyncrasies. Nothing of importance can be ac complished in Biblical Theology unless we recognise the different types of thinking in the biblical authors. The problem in Irenics, as in Biblical Theology, is to reconcile these differences in a higher unity; is to recognise that the temple of Christian knowledge is built up of many sides, and these not always square; of many lines, and these not always straight; of infinite complexity and intricacy of design and execution. The great Architect of the universe has not constructed the temple of wisdom in which all mankind are to worship in such a simple and uniform way that any tyro can understand it and reproduce it. He has made it for the study, the admiration, the joy of the ages, and of the noblest and best of all the ages. Men often think they know the truth if they get a sight of it from one point of view, from one angle of vision, and they resent the statements of those who have seen it from other points of view and other angles; and so their knowledge, while true and correct so far as it goes, is imperfect, inadequate and incomplete. That is really in great measure the reason of the discord of Christian ity. The truth has been only partially discerned; it has not been seen in all its relations and proportions; it is not yet fully known. When one ascends the Gorner Grat, he looks up at Monte Rosa, brilliant with everlasting snow, from base to summit, a pure priest in that ancient sanctuary of God where nature 18 CHURCH UNITY rendered its worship ere man was born on the earth. And yet Monte Rosa does not impress him so powerfully as the massive Matterhorn or the shapely Weisshorn, and he can hardly accept the testimony that Monte Rosa is in fact the monarch of all. But if he go to the other side, de scend into Italy and view Monte Rosa from the lakes or Monte Generoso! Ah! then he will see that imperial moun tain rising up high above all others, the most majestic, the most commanding, the most glorious of that multitude of royal and princely snow peaks which extend in unbroken continuity far beyond the range of human vision. No one really knows Monte Rosa who has not seen it from the south. Monte Rosa is not the only thing which appears differently when viewed from the south of the Alps. There is such a thing as an ultramontane theology. No one knows Theology thoroughly, who has not studied it from the ultramontane side. We can know it thoroughly only by looking at it on all sides. Provincial theologies have been the bane of the Christian Church since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and even mediaeval peculiarities are persisted in and insisted upon still in some quarters now that we have entered the twen tieth century. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries every town in Europe was walled, and every citizen might be called to arms by a night alarm to defend his household. But now those walls have been levelled with the ground, or changed into gardens and parks. They no longer ex clude the stranger, but invite him. And yet in the Church the exclusive policy continues for all who cannot or will not subscribe to provincial conditions of membership. When one has abandoned the provincial point of view, and learned to look at the Church, its institutions and theology, from the point of view of the great world, he cannot regard it as of any serious consequence that he is excluded from a Lord's table which is reserved for Baptists alone; or that his piety is suspected because he cannot be a Methodist, or use the religious exercises of certain evangelists; he is not given CHRISTIAN IRENICS 19 over to Satan if he is regarded as a heretic because he will not subscribe to a dogma held by provincial Presbyterians; or if he is censured as schismatic because he refuses a cere mony peculiar to Anglo-Catholics. His hope of salvation is not blasted if he cannot in good conscience submit to a jurisdiction recognised by Roman Catholics only. The Church of Christ and Christian Theology, if they are to be truly Christian, must not exclude any one that is Christ's, but must include and comprehend all that is really Chris tian. God so loved the world that he gave his Son for its salvation. Christ by his incarnation identified himself with the human race, and therefore the Church must be a truly oecumenical, a world-wide Church, welcoming all men of every nation and every race into her bosom. Christian Theology should be a theology which will not repel scholars, but attract them and satisfy them, and at the same time be so clear and evident in that which it holds forth as its Creed, that the entire race of man can sincerely believe, and hon estly appropriate it and practise it in their life and ex perience. (4) Irenics has the noblest of tasks, the highest ideals. These cannot be accomplished so soon as one hopes. The times are in God's hands. The goal may be distant, but it is sure; it is ever near as our final aim, our highest aspira tion, the beloved ideal. Therefore patience is essential to success in our work. Impatience impairs it, and imperils it. Think of the long-suffering and infinite patience of our God, with whom a thousand years are as a day or a watch in the night. If he were a polemic God, he would finish things in a day, exterminate a multitude of men in their wickedness and error for the salvation of an elect few possessed of truth and right. But he is an irenic God, and waits thousands of years to save not an elect few but the human race as a whole. He is slack to visit with vengeance because he is busy in redemption. With what wondrous patience Jesus Christ our Lord dealt with his disciples, and ever continues to deal with his Church! How she must 20 CHURCH UNITY grieve his soul with her weakness and folly, her backslidings and her apostasies, her fraternal strife and failure from his ideals! " Patience, why, 'tis the soul of peace. Of all The virtues 'tis the nearest kin to heaven. It makes men look like gods. The best of men Who e'er wore earth about Him was a sufferer; A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, The first. true gentleman that ever lived." * An angelic choir sang on the birthday of our Lord: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, among men in whom he is well pleased."2 And Jesus in his farewell dis courses said to his apostles: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you."3 Have these words been but mock eries through the Christian centuries? Nay; they give the Christian ideal. God and Christ and the holy angels calmly and with divine patience await the evolution of the centuries which shall give birth to the reunion of the Church, the peace of the world, the full salvation of mankind. Therefore patience is required of any truly Irenic Theology. The Church has not in fact overlooked its Irenic calling as the peacemaker of the world; but it has often blundered in its efforts. Unity has been sought in orthodox doctrine, in one supreme jurisdiction, in uniformity of worship, in a national religion; and intolerance to heresy, schism, dissent, has involved mankind in numberless religious wars and fraternal strifes. What matters it — the Inquisition in Rome, the Star Chamber in London, the fagot in Geneva, the prison at Leipzig, the whipping post at Salem, ostracism in Phila delphia? — they are only different forms, varying with time and circumstance, of the same intolerance which for centu ries has been the bane of Christianity. An eminent Puritan of the sixteenth century, in reply to a Roman Catholic divine, who charged Protestants with being persecutors like other heretics, said in 1580: "Nay — they punish none but filthy 1 Thomas Dekker. 2 Luke ii. 14. 3 John xiv. 27. CHRISTIAN IRENICS 21 idle idolaters and hypocrites."1 Such a spirit justifies the persecution of any religious opponent. Many generations of civil wars and religious controversy were necessary in Great Britain to bring about toleration of dissent from the national Churches. The United States was the first nation to try the experiment of religious equality at the expense of a national Church and a national religion. We are still in the experimental stage with it. Our century has shown great advances toward Church Unity. The German Re formed and Lutherans came together and constituted the Evangelical Church of Germany. The Anglican Church has proposed the Quadrilateral of unity to the Christian world. Leo XIII has written several irenical letters. "Come, let us reason together," he has said. And the Anglican archbishops and the Oriental patriarchs have reasoned with him. They have not yet found the basis of Unity; but they have greatly narrowed the lines of division, and Christian love has overflowed these lines. We must have patience still. The Fathers waited patiently for centuries while they made their mistaken efforts. Let us avoid their mistakes and continue their efforts. We may have long to wait; but not so long as they. We are nearer the goal. Great world-wide movements are now at work behind and beneath all human efforts. They are the im pulses of the Divine Spirit breaking up the crust of the exist ing divisions to fuse them into a new, greater and more glorious Christianity. They are the heart-beats of the Church of Christ, which is moved as never before by a sen sitiveness to all that transpires in her members, even in the humblest and feeblest and most despised parts, and by an inappeasable longing for the unity and harmony of the en tire organism of Christianity, and by a presage in holy love of the chosen of the Lord that her Bridegroom is near. (5) We may have gone thus far in Irenics with entire success, and with complete accuracy, but something is still needed to accomplish that concord and unity which is our dike's "Discovery," 1580, p. 313. 22 CHURCH UNITY final goal. A supreme motive, an invincible impulse is in dispensable for so great a work; nothing else, and nothing other than Christian love — that love which moved the Father to give His Son for the world; that love which moved the Son to die for our salvation; that love which seeks not its own, which is not easily provoked, which rises above faith and its doctrines, hope and its ambitions, which covers a multitude of sins, which sees with inerrant vision all that is good and true, and which organises them into a living, loving and glorious whole. Love is the great material principle of Irenics, which will as surely effect the Reunion of the Church as faith accomplished its Reformation II THE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH There are existing in the Church at the present time, as there have been for centuries, a number of varying specu lative theories about the Church. These theories are rep resented in a number of parties or schools. They all claim to adhere to the Biblical doctrine of the Church, and they are doubtless sincere in the claim. In fact, all of these parties and schools have unfolded the Biblical doctrine by logical deduction and practical application, and have used other sources than the Bible for this purpose. This is quite legitimate. The "Chicago-Lambeth Articles" state that the historical episcopate should "be locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of the Church"; but that is true also as to every other part of the doctrine of the Church. It should be in all respects locally and temporally adapted. Parties and schools are the instru ments in the hands of the divine Spirit for making experi ments in adaptation, in testing and verifying theories, as the Church advances in her mission in this world. I shall not attempt to give the Church doctrine of the Church. The Church doctrine of the Church is defined in the Creeds, Liturgies and confessional books of the several organised communions in Christendom. This doc trine is based on Holy Scripture; but it is also based on tra ditions transmitted in historic succession from the teachings and institutions in the great apostolic sees of Rome, Alex andria, Ephesus, Antioch and Jerusalem. This doctrine is also a resultant of the logical unfolding of Biblical and traditional doctrine in its adaptation to different nations 23 24 CHURCH UNITY and epochs. All this Church doctrine may be implicitly involved in the doctrine of Holy Scripture, may be a legiti mate, logical deduction and practical application of Biblical material. But it is not Biblical doctrine. The Biblical doctrine is strictly limited to the express statements of Holy Scripture. To this express teaching I shall limit myself. The Biblical doctrine of the Church cannot be ascertained by a merely superficial citation of proof-texts from King James' Version, or even from the Greek Textus Receptus and the Massoretic text of the Old Testament; all of which contain later accretions and dislocations of Biblical material. I shall endeavour to give the Biblical doctrine as based on a rigorous and thorough criticism of the Biblical material. The New Testament Doctrine of the Church, like most New Testament doctrines, is built on Old Testament doctrine. Those who attempt to understand New Testament doctrine by itself alone may be compared to those who look at a beau tiful castle whose foundations, supporting hillsides and ad joining valleys are all shrouded in mist and cloud. We shall begin the study of the New Testament doctrine of the Church by presenting the Old Testament foundations. The New Testament doctrine of the Church was constructed by using the technical, historical terms, prepared by divine providence in the Old Testament dispensation. I. THE TERM CHURCH The most important term is iiocXno-ia, rendered by "church" in the English New Testament. The late Dr. Hort thinks that the words "church" and "congregation," both legiti mate renderings of iiacXvo-ia, have been so involved in later partisan conceptions that it is impracticable to attain the pure Biblical idea of eKKKvo-Ca without discarding them and transliterating by ecclesia itself.1 I agree with him as to the facts of the case. But this situation is a common one in Biblical Theology. The method which I have endeavoured 1 The Christian Ecclesia, p. 2. THE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH 25 to pursue, in all my use of technical Biblical terms in Bibli cal Theology, is a different one, namely, to purge the Biblical words of their later partisan bias and theoretic accretions, and set them in their genuine Biblical light and colour. Our battleships are not discarded when their bottoms have been fouled by tropical marine deposits. We put them in the dry-docks and clean them, and they become as power ful and useful as ever. 1. For the study of eicic\r)frla we get little light from classic Greek. Thayer-Grimm says: "Among the Greeks, from Thucydides down (it means), an assembly of the people convened at the public place of council for the purpose of deliberating." It is used in this sense, in the New Testa ment, only in Acts xik. 32, 39, 41. In the Greek ver sions, the Septuagint, Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, it translates usually the Hebrew ^Hj?. This Hebrew 7!"lj5 is, however, more comprehensive than eKicX-qa-la. It has the same fundamental meaning of "assembly," but this may be of an army, a crowd, a band of robbers, as well as a political and religious assembly. It also means the act of assembling and the body itself as assembled. In the Pen tateuch, the earliest part of the Old Testament translated in to Greek, 7i"lp is rendered by the Greek o-vvaymy-rj in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers. These are the chief passages in the Law where the Hebrew religious community, organised and meeting for worship, is described. Deuter onomy has a different usage; etacXwala is used for 7Hp in all passages (Deut. ix. 10; x..4; xviii. 16; xxiii. 1, 2, 3, 8; xxxi. 30) but one (v. 19 [22]), where avvaycoyrj is used. This shows for Deuteronomy the hand of another and later translator than for the other books of the Pentateuch. The phrase, iicKXneria Kvpiov (i. e., Yahweh), begins in Deut. xxiii. 1 (2), 2 (3), 3 (4), 8 (9). In the Prophets, the second layer of the canon, ?!"!p is ren dered by crvvayayr) in Jeremiah and Ezekiel often; in Isaiah the word is not used. But in the translation of the Minor Prophets eKKXr/a-ia is used in the two passages, Micah ii. 5; 26 CHURCH UNITY Joel ii. 16— the only ones in the collection using Wlp. In the prophetic histories in all passages the same translation by i/cicXno-ta is made. It is interesting to note, however, that GA gives eKKXrja-la in one passage, Ezek. xxxii. 3; Aquila in five passages, Ezek. xxiii. 47; xxvi. 7; xxxii. 3, 22, 23; and Theodotion in six passages, Ezek. xxiii. 47; xxvi. 7; xxvii. 27; xxxii. 3, 22, 23, showing an increasing tendency in later times to the use of i/ocXr/a-ia. This is confirmed by the trans lator of the chronicler, who in thirty-eight passages uses iiacXwo-ia for ^Hp. So also in the Psalter e«/c\j;o-/a is used eight times; in Proverbs once; in Job once; avvayayri is used only in Ps. xl. 11 (10), and Prov. xxi. 16, for special reasons. It is evident, therefore, that in the earlier translations of the Old Testament into Greek ?Hp was rendered by avvaymyf), in the later translated. by i/c/cXno-ta. We are thus at the very foundations of our study brought face to face with the fact that o-vvaywyr) was an older Greek term than kiacXnaia for Israel as an organized religious body, and so we should not be surprised that it has continued among the Jews to the present time. The collective Israel is now, as ever since the Pentateuch was translated into Greek, known as "the Synagogue." The collective Christianity has been known as "the Church," the earlier Christians preferring this term to "synagogue." The two terms are, indeed, synony mous terms, with little practical difference in meaning. More common in the Pentateuch than Sip is mj7, "con gregation, company assembled by appointment," used 115 times in the priest's code, and translated by yi). There are two passages in which Hip and bflp are used together (Exod. xii. 6; Numb. xiv. 5), translated in Greek by one word, crwayoayq. Probably these are conflations. We thus have in the Old Testament the use of HIP and TTIp, terms to indicate the entire religious community of Israel. These were rendered by " synagogue " and " church." 2^waywyr\ came first to have a local sense of a single com munity, and thus probably iiacXr)cria became more common THE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH 27 among the Greek Jews for Israel as a whole, although the Palestinian Jews adhered to the older word. It was natural, therefore, for Christians to use eKtcXvo-Ca by preference, which itself was also used for the local assembly as well as the whole body. This double sense of both words was established in the Old Testament. 2. The New Testament doctrine of the i/acXTjo-ia must be built on the teaching of Paul. There are only three cases in the Gospels in which the word eKKXv