';:;,*> v -\

THE GREi^D A1*D THE NEW TESTAMENT
F.H. CHASE

•*-•• .--"-

'¥^ILE-¥]HIH¥]EISSinnf-

DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

THE CREED AND THE
NEW TESTAMENT

BEING AN EXAMINATION OF CANON GLAZEBROOK'S
"THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT"

BY
FREDERIC HENRY CHASE
D.D., Hon. D.D. (Oxon. and T.C.D.)
BISHOP OF ELY
SOMETIME NORRISIAN PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY CAMBRIDGE

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1920
Price 2s, Qd. net.

THE CREED AND THE NEW
TESTAMENT

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA . MADRAS
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK . BOSTON CHICAGO
DALLAS . SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO

THE CREED AND THE
NEW TESTAMENT

BEING AN EXAMINATION OF CANON GLAZEBROOK'S
"THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT"

BY
FREDERIC HENRY CHASE
D.D., Hon. D.D. (Oxon. and TX.D.)
BISHOP OF ELY
SOMETIME NORRISIAN PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY CAMBRIDGE

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1920

COPYRIGHT

PREFACE
When I read Canon Glazebrook's " The Letter and the
Spirit," written as an answer to my httle volume " Belief and
Cree~d," I most unwillingly came to the conclusion that it was
rny duty to publish a reply. This course seemed due to the
importance and the seriousness of the subject under discussion.
Friends whom I consulted were of the same opinion. It was
plainly impossible for me within reasonable limits to criticize
everything in the Canon's book which called for criticism. But
it was clear to me that, if I followed what appeared to me to be
the high road of the Canon's argument and examined those
matters which there presented themselves, I should deal with
the main issues and should be able to shew the character of the
Canon's defence of the position which, as a representative up
holder of the so-called modernist " claim," he had taken up
in regard to the Creed. This plan I have tried to carry out in
the following pages. I do not propose to continue the discussion
further. In this pamphlet, then, I have examined the Canon's apologia
for his position as to the historical clauses of the Creed. I have
been obliged to bring out clearly on what kind of reasoning and
on what kind of scholarship this apologia is, built up. The
task has been an intensely distasteful one. As to the character
of the Canon's representations of what I wrote in "Belief and
Creed," I prefer to leave the verdict on this to the judgment of
my readers. But I am anxious to say — and I say it with all
sincerity — that in " The Letter and the Spirit " the Canon has
done himself a grave injustice. I am sure that many who know
him will agree with me in this.
On the great questions at issue as to the so-called " symbolical
interpretation" of the Creed I spoke at length in "Belief and

6 PREFACE
Creed." I do not wish to change or to modify anything I there
wrote. Indeed my conviction as to the erroneousness of these
opinions and as to their danger in many directions is strongly
confirmed by the advocacy put forward on their behalf. No
one can have a deeper sympathy than I have with those who in
these difficult days are in perplexity or doubt. And I am indeed
far from thinking that there is a clear and immediate answer
to every question which confronts us. But I venture to give
expression to my conviction that our hope of intellectual and
spiritual progress lies in the careful and accurate study of the
New Testament historically interpreted, and in our adhesion
to the great facts to which the New Testament bears witness
and on which the Christian Church was built. If under the
influence of a criticism arbitrary and often singularly unscientific
we recede from this position, our Christianity will soon cease to
be in any real sense an historic faith ; and it will pass either into
a lifeless rationalism with a Christ normal both in his earthly
history and in his moral character, or, if it retains an element
of mysticism, into a vague and unsatisfying theosophy.
I have to thank Canon Glazebrook for courteously sending
me a copy of " The Letter and the Spirit " when it came out
in January last. I had much hoped that this pamphlet would
have appeared sooner. But the spring and the early summer
were full of engagements diocesan and central. Five weeks in
July and August had to be wholly devoted to the absorbing
work of the Lambeth Conference. I have been obliged therefore
to correct the proof-sheets as a holiday-task away from mv
books ; and I fear that, earnestly as I desire to be accurate,
in these circumstances some errors may have escaped my
notice. Presteign, WALESf 4th September, 1920.

Note.
For the sake of brevity I have referred to my " Belief and Creed " as
1 B.C." and to Canon Glazebrook's " The Letter and the Spirit " as " L.S."

THE CREED AND THE NEW
TESTAMENT CHAPTER I
THE CLAUSES OF THE APOSTLES ' CREED
In " The Faith of a Modern Churchman " (p. 77 /.) the
Canon wrote as follows : — " Some clauses in the Apostles'
Creed, which were unquestionably believed by the early
Church to be literal statements of fact, are now re
garded by Churchmen of all schools as purely symbolical ;
because modern knowledge has made their literal truth
inconceivable to educated men. . . . The clauses in
question are as follows : —
' He descended into hell.
He ascended into heaven,
And sitteth at the right hand of God.
The resurrection of the flesh.' "
He then asked : " Are these the only clauses which
may be or ought to be interpreted symbolically ? The
claim is being made in the case of two others — ' Born
of the Virgin Mary,' and ' He rose again from the dead.' "
In " B.C." (pp. 37-54) I considered the four articles
in the reverse order (beginning with " the resurrection
of the flesh ") and I shewed, as I believe, that the
analogy between them and the two articles as to the

8 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
Birth and the Resurrection of our Lord does not bear
investigation. In " L.S." (pp. 20-40) Canon Glazebrook
challenges my arguments, and I must as briefly as I can
review what he has written.
(I.) " The resurrection of the flesh." I take the
main questions which the Canon raises in " L.S.",
pp. 20-27.
(i) ' In " B.C." (p. 38) I almost parenthetically
remarked that " it may be questioned whether St. Paul
would have felt that, in this connexion, there is that
sharp distinction between ' flesh ' and ' body ' which is
often drawn " ; and I then referred to the sequence of
the two words in 1 Cor. xv. 35-40. The Canon in " L.S."
(p. 21) answers thus : " To argue from such a highly
poetical use in a single passage that ' flesh ' and ' body '
are seriously to be treated as synonyms is to show httle
appreciation of St. Paul's style." I call attention to
three points, (a) I do not agree with the Canon that
to employ the word " body " in relation to ears of corn
is " a highly poetical use." Nor was St. Paul " highly
poetical " when he spoke of the flesh of men, beasts,
birds, fishes, (b) It is important to remember that when
he wrote this passage, both these words (" body " and
" flesh ") were necessarily prominent in St. Paul's mind.
(c) Other passages occur in St. Paul's writings in which
it is clear that he uses the two words as closely related
in sense; see 1 Cor. vi. 16 (ev o-Sifia . . . ek o-dp/ca fiiav) ;
2 Cor. iv. 10/. (tvaieal r) far) rov 'Ir/trod iv t& o-m/xaTl r/fi&v
(bavepcoOi) . . . 'iva /cat r) far) tow 'lvaov <f>avep<odf) iv Trj
9vr)ry a-ap/el i}/*<5i>) ; Eph. v. 28 /. (t<z iavr&v aw/jara . . - ttjv
eavTov (rdp/ca).
(ii) In " The Faith of a Modern Churchman " (p. 78)
the Canon asserted that the clause about " the resurrec
tion of the flesh " " contradicts the teaching of St.
Paul " (i.e., the words " Flesh and blood cannot inherit
the kingdom of God "). I made the obvious reply
("B.C.," p. 39/.) that, according to the teaching of

THE CLAUSES OF THE APOSTLES' CREED 9
St. Paul (1 Cor. xv. 50-52 ; comp. Phil. iii. 21), the
Resurrection necessarily involves a " change " — " We
shall all [the dead and those alive at the Advent] be
changed " — whereby that which had been natural will
become spiritual ; and that St. Paul would have had no
difficulty in speaking of the resurrection of the flesh
because he looked forward to the flesh being " changed,"
transfigured, made spiritual. I concluded therefore
" that a study of St. Paul's actual words shews that
there is no contradiction between his teaching and the
article of the Creed — ' the resurrection of the flesh
(" B.C.," p. 40). 1 I can quite understand the Canon
not answering this argument ; but it seems to me a
misuse of language to say that it and the argument
of which I now go on to speak are " so unsubstantial that
there is hardly a definite point to lay hold of " ("L.S."
p. 20). (iii) Further, I argued (" B.C.," p. 40) that " we
may speak of the Resurrection in regard to that which
is raised a parte ante or a parte post, somewhat as we may
speak, e.g., of the accession of Richard Duke of Gloucester,
or of the accession of King Richard the Third. We may
speak, that is, of the resurrection of the seed or of the
resurrection of the ear of wheat ; of the resurrection of
the flesh or of the resurrection of the spiritual body.
The important point is to observe that St. Paul asserts
the Resurrection to be in its very nature a crisis of
change." The Canon rejoins thus (" L.S.," p. 21) : " Still
more surprising is the contention that because ' we may
speak of the accession of Richard Duke of Gloucester or
of the accession of King Richard the Third,' we may
therefore speak indifferently ' of the resurrection of the
flesh or of the resurrection of the spiritual body.' In the
one case there is a new name for a person who is un-
1 Compare Augustine de. Fide et Symbolo, 24 " Et ideo non carnis resur-
rectioni contradicit illud quod ait, Caro et sanguis regnum Dei non posside-
bunt, sed quale futurum sit quod nunc caro et sanguis est pradieat,"

10 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
changed, and whose accession depends upon his remaining
unchanged ; in the other case, if we may believe St.
Paul, there are two objects which, though intimately
connected, belong to different spheres of being." Then,
using a favourite epithet of his (cf. p. 42), he describes
the parallel drawn as " positively grotesque." In the
first place, I must point out that the Canon changes
my cautiously expressed illustration (" somewhat as ")
into a professedly decisive argument (" because . . .
therefore "). In reahty the illustration might be omitted
and the argument would remain the same. In the
second place, St. Paul, as we read his mind in 1 Cor. xv,
would have repudiated the idea that the body before
and the body after the resurrection are " two objects."
He would have said : " There is ' one object,' but in
the resurrection it is transfigured." I would ask the
Canon to observe that I interpret the phrase " the
resurrection of the flesh " in precisely the same way as
every one necessarily interprets the phrase " the
resurrection of the dead " (i.e., a parte ante). This is
a point, I venture to think, of importance.
(iv) Considerations of space forbid my writing at
length on what the Canon says (" L.S.," pp. 22-27) in
regard to the teaching of Irenaeus and of Origen. As
to Irenaeus, the Canon overlooks the significance
of the following words, which he quotes from
Irenaeus (v. 7, 2 ed. Massuet) : " For these are animal
bodies, that is, partaking of animal life ; and when they
lose it, they suffer death ; then rising through the power
of the Spirit they become spiritual bodies, endowed by the
Spirit with never-ending life." The words which I have
italicized clearly shew that Irenaeus is in accord
with the teaching of St. Paul. As to Origen, that
Father in his treatise against Celsus (v. 18) said that
" the resurrection of the flesh had indeed been preached
in the churches but had been more clearly understood
by the wise (avveTwriptov)." The Canon takes "the

THE CLAUSES OF THE APOSTLES' CREED 11
wise " to mean " the small band of modernists which
Origen represented " (" L.S.," p. 26). By thus reading
back the phraseology of the twentieth century into a
treatise of the third century the Canon completely
confuses the issue. In reality, as is abundantly clear
from the context, Origen, when he speaks of " the wise,"
meant thoughtful Christians who with himself believed,
not that after the resurrection men would " live in the
actual flesh " in which they had lived before, but that
in the resurrection the flesh would " undergo a change
for the better," the very behef to which St. Paul gives
expression in 1 Cor. xv. 50j^.
No one questions that there were many in the early
centuries who took a grossly material view of the
resurrection ( see " B.C.," p. 147). But I submit that
I have shewn that the phrase " the resurrection of the
flesh " has a natural meaning absolutely consistent with
St. Paul's teaching. To say that the phrase taken in a
sense which St. Paul would have repudiated with horror
was " beheved by the early Church to be a literal state
ment of fact " is a parody of the truth.
(II) " Sitteth at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty." The Canon, in "The Faith of a Modern
Churchman " (p. 77 /.), made the statement that this
clause, which, he said, " ascribes a human body to God
the Father," was one of the clauses which " were un
questionably beheved by the early Church to be literal
statements of fact." This statement was necessary for
the use which he made of this clause in his defence of
the " symbolical interpretation " of other clauses of the
Creed. He now however (" L.S.," p. 27) "pleads
guilty to an inaccuracy." " For the sake of brevity,"
he says, " I apphed a single phrase — ' were unquestion
ably believed by the early Church to be literal statements
of fact ' — to four clauses of the Creed. In the full
sense, however, the phrase only apphes to three, while

12 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
of the fourth it should rather be said that ' sitteth at the
right hand ' was beheved by many (or most) in the
early Church to be a literal statement of fact." The
statement as amended gives indeed a feeble support
to the Canon's proposition. But can the amended
form be maintained ?
'in " B.C.," p. 41 /., I wrote : " I maintain that
among Christians there has always been so clear and
so all but universal a belief that God is incorporeal that
no sane Christian has ever been tempted to suppose
that [this] clause of the Creed . . . implies that God
the Father has a human body. I venture to say that
a Christian who taught that God has a human body,
whether in ancient or in modern times, would have
incurred the censure of his fellow Christians." For this
position I gave ample evidence. The Canon spends all
his force in trying to shew that the words " no sane
Christian " in the above extract are untrue. Obviously
I did not use the word " sane " in a medical sense.. By
a " sane Christian " I meant a reasonable Christian, a
Christian who is not a fanatic. The Canon continues
(" L.S.," p. 28) : " A universal negative is sufficiently
refuted by a single positive instance. I will furnish
three instances." These I will now consider.
(i) The first instance is the " simple ascetics "
mentioned in a passage I quoted from Socrates' " His
tory." The Canon asks : " Must we really deny that
the simple ascetics were sane Christians ? " The clear
answer, I beheve, given by history is that these " simple
ascetics " near Alexandria were conspicuously fanatics.1
(ii) " At any rate I venture to assert that Monnica,
the mother of St. Augustine, was a sane Christian. If
1 Bright, " The Age of the Fathers," i. p. 132 : " For the average monk
there were temptations haunting the ' wilderness,' such as spiritual pride,
intolerance corresponding to ignorance, moods of weariness and disgust
(afterwards called acedia), astounding hardness towards his relatives,
and a disposition to bitterness, or even insolence, in his dealings with the
outer world — not to mention the risk of delirious imaginations produced
by silence or solitude." Comp. ii. pp. 52/.

THE CLAUSES OF THE APOSTLES' CREED 13
we may beheve her son's testimony, she was a model
of intelligent piety. She did her best to instruct her
wayward son in the true faith ; and he lived much at
home under her influence until he was at least twenty-
one years of age." So the Canon writes (" L.S.," p. 28).
Augustine at the age of eighteen was puzzled, by the
Manichaeans when they asked him whether God was
limited by a bodily form. . It was not till he was about
thirty-three years old that he learned from St. Ambrose
at Milan that the Church did not teach that God had a
bodily form. But the passages which give us this
information, and from which the Canon quotes some
important extracts, do not in any way imply that
his mother, Monnica, taught Augustine a materialized
doctrine of God. If she did, Augustine spoke of what
he learned from his mother with painful truculence,
calling it " carnahum cogitationum figmenta " (Conf.
vi. 3). Indeed that Monnica held this doctrine is a pure
assumption on the Canon's part. In our own days, a
son whom a good Christian mother had instructed
might well be wholly unable, when he went up to the
University, to answer agnostic arguments. I must add
that I could not desire a stronger support for my position
that in ancient times " a Christian who taught that
God has a human body would have incurred the censure
of his fellow Christians " than some words of Augustine
(Conf. vi. 11), quoted by the Canon : " A great hope
dawned. The Catholic faith does not teach what I
thought, and what I vainly charged against it. Those
who have thus been taught hold it a sin (nefas) to
beheve that God is bounded by the shape of a human
body." i
1 The Latin is : " Magna spes oborta est. Non docet catholica fides,
quod putabamus. . . . Nefas habent docti ejus credere deum figura
humani corporis terminatum." The " docti ejus " (lit. its taught ones)
refers back to the preceding " docet catholica fides," and means those who
had received instruction for baptism. This is entirely borne out by
Conf. vi. 3 : "I learned that the words ' man was made in Thy
image ' were not understood by Thy spiritual sons (whom by grace Thou

14 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
(iii) Origen. The Canon writes : " These two passages
[i.e., from the Preface and the First Chapter of the.
First Book of Origen's " de Principiis "], especially the
words which are printed in itahcs, make it quite plain
that in Origen's time the materialistic conception of
God's nature was widespread even among Greek-speaking
Christians, and was by no means limited to the ignorant
and unphilosophical " (" L.S.," p. 32). Again (p. 31) :
It " appears from its whole tone [i.e., of the first chapter]
how serious Origen thought the need to be of refuting
.the materialists."
There are two points to which I desire to call
attention, (a) The " de Principiis " of Origen is a
systematic treatise on Christian doctrine. The first
chapter is " concerning God " ; the second " concerning
Christ " ; the third " concerning the Holy Spirit." Of
necessity in the first chapter Origen deals with the nature
of God and with the question whether God is a material
being. From the fact therefore that he treats of this
subject we cannot infer that materialistic views about
God were widespread ; nor have I noticed any words
in that chapter which imply that Origen thought that
the need of refuting the materiahst was a specially
pressing one. The discussion is calm and philosophical.
(b) It is still more important that we should inquire
of what character these materialistic views which Origen
combated were. Let us look at the opening words of
the chapter : " Some will make the very Scriptures the
reason for asserting that God is a body. They do so,
because they find that in Moses it is written ' Our God
hast regenerated of the Catholic mother) as signifying that Thou art
limited by the form of a human body." The " docti ejus " therefore are
not the learned, but the ordinary members of the Church. Hence the
translation used by the Canon falls into a curious blunder when it renders
" docti ejus " by " her doctors," and the Canon accepts, and argues from,
this blunder when he writes : " Though the more highly instructed
Christians (docti) did not ascribe a material human body to God, by
Monnica's circle the belief was so completely taken for granted that, etc."
" L.S.," p. 30).

THE CLAUSES OF THE APOSTLES' CREED 15
is a consuming fire ' ; and in the Gospel according to
John ' God is spirit ' (breath). . . . Now I think that
we must make this answer to those who, because God is
spirit (breath), hold God to be a body. It is the custom
of Scripture, when it wishes to indicate anything clean
contrary to this gross and sohd body of ours to call it
spirit (breath)." He then characteristically discusses
2 Cor. hi. 6. Now clearly those who argued that God
is a material being because Scripture calls Him spirit
(breath) differed toto ccelo from those who taught that
God had a human form, hands, and feet. Again, in a
later passage (§ 7) Origen deals with those who thought
that the mind or soul is " a body . " After an argument to
shew the mind's superiority to our whole material
nature, he continues (for brevity's sake I condense) :
" Here is a further confirmation. To each bodily sense
some sensible existence is made subject ; to the sense
of hearing, for example, sound. Now that the mind is
superior to all the senses is obvious. Is it not then
ridiculous that to these lower senses existences are made
subject, while the higher sense, the mind, is but an
addition to, or a companion of, our bodies ? Those who
assert this 1 certainly do so to the disparagement of
that better existence which is in them [i.e., the mind]
nay, they do wrong to God Himself, since they imagine
that He can be apprehended by a bodily nature [i.e.
the mind], so that according to their view He is a body,
and is that which may be apprehended or perceived by
a body [i.e., the mind]." The argument, it will be seen,
is that, if the mind is a body, then God, who is appre
hended by the mind, is a body. This is indeed far
removed from the coarse materialism of the ascetics.2
1 At this point the passage begins which is quoted by the Canon.
2 The conception of God's nature which Origen criticised may be
illustrated by Lucretius, v. 148 ff. -.
" Tenvis enim natura deum longeque remota
Sensibus ab nostris animi vix mente videtur."
Comp. Cicero de natura Deorum, e.g., ii. 23, 59 : " Epicurus monogrammos
[unsubstantial] Deos et nihil agentes commentus est."

16 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
In this chapter of Origen there is not a single word
about the doctrine that God has a body analogous to
the human body, or about those who held such a doctrine.
He does not deal with a gross and genuinely anthropo
morphic materialism, but with a philosophic and highly
subtle materialism. The chapter does not give any
support whatever to the Canon's position that " there
was a large body of Christians who beheved that God
the Father had a body such as is imphed in the phrase
' God created man in his own image ' (Gen. i. 27)." In
it this verse is not once referred to. I venture to say
that the Canon is mistaken about the scope of this
chapter of the " de Principiis."
To sum up : in the whole Church there were doubtless
during the early centuries some, in the aggregate many,
who held that God has a human body ; probably there
are some, in the aggregate many, who hold that view
to-day. But, as Augustine in the passage quoted above
tells us, the ordinary Christians who had received the
ordinary catechetical instruction of the Church con
demned this view as wicked (nefas). I submit, therefore,
that it is merely fantastic to maintain that there is any
analogy between a man saying of our Lord that He
" sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty "
without believing that God the Father Almighty has a
human body, and on the other hand a man saying of our
Lord that He " was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born
of the Virgin Mary," without beheving that our Lord
was born of a Virgin ; or again a man saying of our
Lord that " the third day He rose again from the dead,"
without believing that the Lord rose again from the
dead on the third day and that the Lord's resurrection
was a resurrection of the body. To urge and to re-urge
such an argument is an admission of the weakness of
the cause which it is used to support.
(iii) (iv). " He descended into hell." " He ascended
into heaven." I now, as in "B.C.," pp. 46jf., consider these

THE CLAUSES OF THE APOSTLES' CREED 17
two articles together. I shewed in " B.C.," as I believe,
that in contexts such as we are now considering, from
the present day back to the times when the Gospel of
St. John was written, the words " descend " and
" ascend " have been used in a figurative and mystical
sense. Such a use of these words, that is, was recognized
before, as well as after, the Copernican theory was
accepted. As the Canon does not allow my argument,
I will state it anew, reversing the order I observed in
" B.C.," and working backwards from later to the
earliest times.
(a) In our own days, when we accept the Copernican
theory of the universe, if we had to draw up a brief
statement of the essential ideas expressed in the clauses
under discussion, we should employ the same language
— " descend," " ascend " — as we actually find in the
Apostles' Creed. We say this with confidence when
we have before us such words as those which Canon
Glazebrook used in " The Faith of a Modern Churchman,"
p. 35 : " On the day of each man's death the judgment,
which began in his childhood, is completed. ... If the
sentence be not ' death,' the soul rises from earth in a
spiritual body." The itahcs are mine.
(&) The mystical and figurative use of " descend "
and " ascend " was fully recognized in the fourth
century. (a) As to the East : I take the two correla
tive clauses of the " Constantinopohtan " Creed —
KareXBovra ix r&v ovpavmv, dveXdovra eh to£i? ovpavov*
(descended from heaven, ascended into heaven). In
the incarnation there was no hteral and material descent
of the divine Son. The word " descended " is not
spatial. It follows that the correlative " ascended " is
not spatial either.
(b) As to the West : the following words of Rufinus
in his Commentary on the Creed of Aquileia are decisive
(§ 29) : " We speak of ' things below ' and of ' things

18 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
above ' (Interna et superna nobis dicuntur) ; for, shut
up in the narrow circumference of the body, we are
confined within the limits of the place which is appointed
to us. But to God, who is everywhere present and
nowhere absent, what is ' below ' (internum) or what is
' above ' (supernum) ? "
I beg my readers to note the significance of these
two quotations from documents belonging to that period
of the history of the Church which was characteristically
dogmatic. (c) Christian teachers have spoken of the Son while
incarnate on earth as being present with the Father in
heaven. Whether this mode of speech is right or wrong
is not now the question. The point is that the use of
such language puts it beyond doubt that such teachers,
and those who accepted their teaching, regarded the
Incarnation as manifested indeed under earthly conditions
but as ultimately transcending our common categories
of place and time. I quoted, as instances, words from
St. Thomas Aquinas's hymn for Corpus Christi,1 from
Leo, Cyril of Alexandria, and Augustine. The earhest
example of such language is found in the phrase which I
print in itahcs in the following quotation from St. John hi.
13 : " No man hath ascended into heaven, but he that
descended out of heaven, even the Son of man, which
is in heaven." The last words are probably a gloss.2
1 Verbum supernum prodiens, Nee Patris linquens dexteram (The
heavenly Word proceeding forth, Yet leaving not the Father's side).
a The Canon's criticism of what I wrote in B.C., pp. 49/., is as follows :
" He [the Bishop] very strangely brings forward this gloss, and the ex
aggerations of it which are found in St. Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria,
and Leo the Great, as indications of what St. John ought to have thought,
and therefore probably did think. ... To quote Fathers who wrote three
centuries later as proofs that though St. John did not write the phrase it
must have expressed his beliefs, is rather » startling anachronism "
(" L.S.," pp. 35/.). What I did write was this : " It matters not for my
present purpose whether the words ' which is in heaven ' are original or are
a gloss. If they are a gloss, the gloss goes back to the second century, and
is an example of early Christian modes of speech ; and certainly in this
form [with the gloss] the passage was widely and very generally read
throughout Christendom. So read, it helped men to think of the Incar
nation as manifested indeed in space, yet not as finally conditioned by

THE CLAUSES OF THE APOSTLES' CREED 19
But the fact that they are found in many old Latin MSS.
and in both the MSS. which give us old Syriac texts
shews that they go back well into the second
century. They thus present us with a very early type
of Christian thought ; and it was as containing them
that the fourth Gospel was commonly and widely read
in the Christian Church.
(d) When, putting aside all thought of this gloss, we
turn to the unquestioned words of John iii. 13, we see
that in them," to quote my words in " B.C.," p. 51,
" there is no thought of a journey from heaven to earth,
no thought of a descent through space. The language is J
plainly figurative (comp. vi. 33, 38, 41/., 50/., 58)."
For no one can point to a time when the Son in a
material, spatial, hteral sense " came down from
heaven " ; and since no one can do this, the words of
St. John in hi. 13 and in vi. 33, 38, 41/., 50/, 58 must be
figurative and mystical. No other interpretation is
possible. It is right that I should add a few words specifically
on the clause " He descended into hell (descendit ad
interna)." Exhaustively to discuss the clause is
an impossibility within reasonable limits. I am con
strained therefore to be brief. It is, of course, true that
many Christians in the past beheved, and that
doubtless many Christians in the present still beheve,
that this clause refers to a descent of our Saviour into
space, but as ultimately transcending our common categories of place and
time. We may instance thefollowing passages from Christian literature."
To speak gently, the Canon's version of what I said has no foundation
whatever. 1 The Canon's comment is this (L.S., p. 35) : " He [the Bishop] assumes
without proof, and I think without reason, that in the sixth chapter
' descend ' is plainly figurative ; and concludes that therefore in St. John
iii. 13, and in the Nicene Creed, ' descend ' is not spatial but mystical, and
consequently the correlative ' ascend ' is also mystical." How untrue this
criticism is to fact — i.e., to what I wrote — is clear from the quota
tion from " B.C." in the text. With St. John iii. 13 I simply compared
the passages from John vi„ referring to them in a bracket. With the
Canon's denial of the mystical sense of the terms " descend " " ascend " I
have dealt in the text.
C 2

20 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
what we call in Enghsh "the infernal regions," the
abode and kingdom of the devil. And if this were the
true significance and intention of the Creed, we do indeed
depart widely to-day in our use of the Creed from that
significance and that intention. But we ask : (i) Does
the word used (inferna, hell) properly express such an
idea ? (ii) Was such a descent the current belief of those
generations in whose time this article was taking shape ?
Most briefly I take these two points, (i) Like the
Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades, the words inferna
and (in early Enghsh) hell denote in the widest sense the
abode of the departed. As to inferna, the truth of this
observation appears from a review of the passages of the
Latin Bible in which the word infernum or inferna
occur, e.g., Gen. xxxvii. 35 (the words of Jacob)
Descendam ad filium meum lugens in infernum ;
Ps. cxxxviii. 8 Si descendero in infernum, ades. It is
needless to say that in the early centuries the distinction
which we should make between Old Testament and
New Testament doctrine was not thought of. As to
hell, Murray's " New Enghsh Dictionary " shews that
in early Enghsh the word had the same wide sense as
" inferna."1 (ii) As to the behef of the early generations2 in the
Christian Church see, e.g., the passages collected in
Bishop Lightfoot's note on Ignatius Magn.9. Dr.Bethune-
Baker ("The Faith of the Apostles' Creed," p. 124)
well summarizes this belief : " Thus, so far as ancient
testimony goes, we may indeed say that the primary
1 The first heading is " The abode of the dead ; the place of departed
spirits ; the infernal regions or ' lower world ' regarded as » place of
existence after death ; the grave ; Hades." The second heading is " The
infernal regions regarded as a place of torment ; the abode of devils and
condemned spirits ; the place or state of punishment of the wicked after
death." Under both headings quotations are given from early writers of
the ninth century and onward.
2 Dr. Swete (" The Apostles' Creed," p. 61) : " We shall perhaps not be
far wrong if we assign the clause to the end of the second century, or the
beginning of the third." It is first found in the Creed of Aquileia as given
to us at the end of the fourth century by Rufinus.

THE CLAUSES OF THE APOSTLES' CREED 21
intention of the clause in the Creed is to insist that our
Lord passed through all human experiences, that He
not only died a real death and was buried, but that
while His Body lay in the tomb, He Himself passed into
the place in which aU human beings are when Death
separates them from the earthly body." Interpreted
in this primitive sense this article exactly expresses the
belief to-day of those who hold the apostolic doctrine of
the Lord's resurrection.
I have now carefully re-examined these four articles of
the Apostles' Creed in the light of what Canon Glaze-
brook has written in " The Letter and the Spirit,"
pp. 20-40. I have given my reasons for re-affirming
with increased confidence that the analogy alleged to
exist between these four articles and the two articles
on the Virgin Birth and the Lord's resurrection on
the third day does not hold good, and that therefore
that supposed analogy cannot be pleaded to justify the
" claim " to interpret the two last-named articles
" symbolically."

CHAPTER II
THE VIRGIN BIRTH
1. The Genealogies. — In deahng with the Canon's
position that " both [narratives] include genealogies
which have no meaning unless Joseph was the actual
father of Jesus " (" The Faith of a Modern Churchman,"
p. 70), I pointed out (" B.C.," p. 60) that " their real
significance lay in this, that they guaranteed our Lord's
legal position as ' Son of David.' ' The Canon (" L.S.,"
p. 42) rejoins in these words : " The difficulty about
' examining ' [this argument], as I am challenged to do, is
that its grotesque implications can hardly be exposed
without the risk of being charged with irreverence. But
I must accept the risk, and point out the real meaning
of the argument. ' Our Lord took advantage of the
Jewish and Roman laws, which legitimated all children
born in wedlock (whether the husband was the real
father or not) in order to establish a claim to reverence
as the heir of the royal house.' ' But it will be observed
that I did not say a word as to our Lord Himself " estab
lishing a claim." In point of fact our Lord's relation
to the title " Son of David " is very remarkable. The
most that can be said is that He did not reject it.
There is nothing in the Gospels, so far as I know, to
shew that He attached to it any importance, or made
any claim to it. The only occasion on which, so far as
the Gospels tell us, He Himself alluded to it was when
He confronted the Scribes with the question about

THE VIRGIN BIRTH 23
Psalm ex. (Mark xii. 35 ff. || Matt., Luke). Dalman i
indeed goes so far as to say that by that question
" Jesus shewed that a Davidic descent, according to
the flesh, was not an essential attribute of the Messiah.
It follows, consequently, that it was in no sense the
question of derivation from David that caused Him
to turn to the subject of the Messiah." Undoubtedly
(so far as His recorded words are concerned) there was
on our Lord's part a certain reserve as to the position
of David's heir generally ascribed to Him, though the
evidence at our disposal does not warrant us in making
dogmatic assertions on the subject. On the other hand,
as I noticed (" B.C.," p. 61), " we probably do not
reahse how important a part the fact that Jesus was the
heir of the royal house played in His earthly hfe and in
determining the relation of the people to Him."
2. The Language of the New Testament. — The Canon
(" L.S.," p. 43) refers to three passages — Acts ii. 30, 32,
xiii. 23, Rom. i. 3 — and asks whether it is " possible
to find any form of words which could more definitely
express hteral descent in the ordinary course of genera
tion, excluding any recourse to a legal fiction, than
do the three phrases " in these three passages. In
regard to these phrases I caU attention to three points.
(i) It is admitted by all that the earhest Gospel preached
by the Apostles and their fellow-disciples did not include
the Virgin Birth of our Lord. Nor can any one say
at what date the story of the Virgin Birth became known
to the Apostles. We cannot tell whether it was known
to St. Paul when he wrote the Epistle to the Romans.
(h) It is beyond controversy that the two Evangehsts
who give us the narratives of the Lord's Virgin con
ception and birth, in closest connexion with these narra
tives lay stress on the Davidic descent of our Lord.
St. Matthew places the genealogy immediately before
the story of the Birth, and uses words which in the
1 " The Words of Jesus," Eng. tr., p. 319.

24 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
closest way link the two together — /3i/3\o? yeveo-em^ 'lyo-ov
Xpto-rov vlov AavelB vlov 'ASpad/j, (i. 1), tov 8e Ino-ov
ypio~Tov r) yiveo'is outo)? r)v (i. 18). bt. .Luke m tne very
announcement of the Virgin Birth includes the words
"the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of
his father David " (i. 32). Clearly then both (' the
Evangelists were wholly unconscious of any contra
diction between the Virgin Birth and the Lprd's
Davidic descent. To their minds our Lord, wonderfully
born of Joseph's wife, was in a pecuhar sense God's
gift to Joseph, the son of David. It was no ordfnary
human adoption. God Himself placed our Lord as
heir to the inheritance of a long hne of those who were
" of the seed of David," " the fruit of David's loins."
(iii) It was natural and inevitable that the ordinary
genealogical language and the .phraseology of the Old
Testament (e.g., Ps. cxxxii. 11) should be used of our
Lord's relation to the House of David by those who
we may suppose knew that the Lord's place in David's
hne was due to divine interposition.
3. The Evidence of the Gospel according to St. John. —
In " The Faith of a Modern Churchman " (p. 70) Canon
Glazebrook wrote thus : " The author of St. John's
Gospel was well acquainted with all the Synoptic
Gospels, and he omits all reference to this event [i.e.,
the Virgin Birth of pur Lord]. Can he have done so
for any reason except that he did not beheve it to be
a fact ? "
In reply, I pointed out (i) that "it is a most note
worthy characteristic of the fourth Gospel that it
almost entirely keeps clear of the matter recorded in
the Synoptic Gospels " (" B.C.," p. 66) ; (ii) that it is
reasonable to think that, if St. John had not believed
the Virgin Birth as narrated by St. Matthew and St. Luke
to be a fact, he would have corrected their error, as he
seems to have clone in other cases, by a statement of his
own, or by a word put into our Lord's mouth ; (iii) that

THE VIRGIN BIRTH 25
there are passages in the fourth Gospel in which, as I
shewed, St. John alludes to the Virgin Birth, and that
such indirect allusions are quite after St. John's manner ;
for, to take one example, he does not give an account of
the Ascension, but twice refers to that event (vi. 62,
xx. 17/).
The first of these passages is John i. 13 : " which
were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor
of the will of a man [or a husband], but of God." These
words stand immediately before the words, so simple
and so unique, " and the Word became flesh." I
argued that the phrase " nor of the will of a man [or
a husband ; dvSpos, comp. Lk. i. 34] but of God "
must have been meant by the Evangehst to carry back,
and could not but carry back, the minds of his readers
" to the history which St. Matthew and St. Luke give
of our Saviour's conception and birth apart from any
human fatherhood." " The spiritual generation of
believers is analogous to the physical generation of Him
on whom they beheve." Further, I also noted that the
very early so-called " Western " reading which changes
the plural into the singular " who was born [or begotten]
not ... of the will of a man, but of God " is a remark
able illustration how inevitably the original words
" directed men's thoughts to the Virgin Birth and how
accurately the words were felt to express the truth as
to the Virgin Birth " (" B.C.," pp. 68 ff., 203). I
submit that the original statement of my argument was
perfectly clear. The Canon, however, permits himself
¦to write thus : "He [the Bishop] argues that the copyist
who made this unreasonable alteration understood St.
John's real mind, and intended by the change to supply
a link between St. John's own words and the birth
narratives of St. Matthew and St. Luke. . . . The
copyist indicated that analogy by falsifying the text,
and so expressed the Evangehst 's true meaning ! Few
readers will care to pursue the subject further." The

26 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
Canon's method is so to parody what I wrote that he
represents me as talking sheer nonsense, and then to
say that my argument is not worth consideration.1
The argument, however, remains and serious students
will give attention to it.
Again, I pointed to two passages in St. John in which
our Lord is called " the son of Joseph " (i. 45, vi. 42 ; see
" B.C.," pp. 71 ff.). For the sake of brevity I refer now
only to the second of these (John vi. 42). Knowing
the birth stories of St. Matthew and St. Luke the
Evangehst must have been conscious that in the phrase
"the son of Joseph" he was setting down words of
critical moment. The simple fact that he put them
into the mouth of " the Jews," who in this Gospel are
represented as the enemies of all that was right and
true in regard to our Lord, is a clear proof that he himself
held that Jesus was not " the son of Joseph " ; in other
words, that he set the seal of his sanction on the narratives
of St. Matthew and St. Luke. It is important to
notice that the Canon passes over this argument in
silence and notices only the corroborative argument
which followed.
For I went on to point out (" B.C.," p. 12 ff.) that
in these two passages (i. 45, vi. 42) we have signal
instances of the irony of St. John. As an iUustration of
his irony I referred to vii. 41 f. " Some said, What, doth
the Christ come out of Galilee ? Hath not the scripture
said that the Christ cometh of the seed of David, and
from Bethlehem, the village- where David was ? " The
irony hes in this, that the reader who knows the story
of the birth at Bethlehem feels that, if the disputants
had only been acquainted with the simple facts so
familiar to himself, they would have been saved from
a great mistake. The Canon, however, writes thus
(" L.S.," p. 50) : " He [the Bishop] fails to observe
1 Compare a very similar case in regard to the Canon's criticism which
I pointed out above, p. 18 n.

THE VIRGIN BIRTH 27
the much more important and significant example
which hes in the words ' of the seed of David.' The
Jews presumably did not know, what St. John expects
the reader to know well, that Jesus was in the full
sense of the seed of David (supra, pp. 42, 43). I lay
no stress upon this : for arguments of this subjective
kind, which have to be introduced (" B.C.," p. 72) with
We cannot suppose and Is to my mind a clear proof,
are of httle value. But it seems worth while just to
show how easily this kind of argument is turned against
its author." So far the Canon. There are two lines of
criticism mixed together here. I will take them separately.
(a) The Canon urges that the argument is subjective and
therefore of little value. The argument is subjective
only in that sense in which every argument is subjective.
The writer or speaker sets forth an argument which
convinces himself in the hope and behef that it will
convince others. Any one who will turn to the passage
in " B.C.," p. 72, will see that the words on which the
Canon lays stress are simply accidents of expression.
As a fact both phrases occur in quite another context !
(b) Again, the Canon urges that the argument from the
irony of St. John can in this passage be turned against
myself. The answer to his contention is not far to seek.
The readers of St. John were acquainted with St.
Matthew and St. Luke. When they read the words
" of the seed of David " in St. John, their minds would
at once go back to the clear and distinct recognition
of Jesus as the Son of " His father David " embedded
in the story of the Virgin Birth contained in St. Matthew
and St. Luke (see above, pp. 23/). In this matter there
is no irony in St. John, because the popular recognition
of Jesus as the Son of David, and, on the other hand,
the story ex hypothesi known to his readers, were in
complete accord.1
1 The position that a belief in the Virgin Birth is incompatible with a
belief that Jesus was " of the seed of David " was not the position of the
early Church. To Ignatius, for instance, who wrote a little later than

28 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
I am greatly obhged to a correspondent, who, after
the appearance of " Behef and Creed," called my
attention to an essay by the late Dr. Salmon of Dubhn
on " The Irony of St. John." This essay was new to me.1
Dr. Salmon describes this kind of irony much as I
have done (" B.C.," p. 72). " Nothing," he says (p. 58),
" is more dramatically effective than the exhibition of
such a contrast, when the character on the stage is
ignorant of something known to the spectators, and in
his ignorance uses expressions which have a reference
that the speaker does not dream of." Dr. Salmon
apphes the argument drawn from the irony of St. John
to the criticism of a certain position of Renan. " As for
John," Renan asserted (p. 55), " he knows nothing
of the journey to Bethlehem ; for him Jesus is simply
' of Nazareth ' or ' of Galilee,' on two occasions when it
would have been of the highest importance to make
mention of the birth at Bethlehem (see John i. 45, 46,
and vii. 41, 42)." Hence Dr. Salmon deals specially
with John vii. 41 /., the passage on which the Canon
wrote what I have quoted above. " Bearing in mind,"
Dr. Salmon says (p. 62), "these peculiarities of the style of
the fourth Gospel, we must pronounce a critic guilty of
downright stupidity who imagines that, because the
Evangehst records, without any attempt at reply, the
objection that Jesus could not be the Messiah because
he was not born at Bethlehem, he really meant his
St. John, the Virgin Birth and the Davidic sonship of our Lord were
both commonplaces. See Eph. xviii. : " Our God, Jesus the Christ,
was conceived in the womb by Mary according to a dispensation, of the
seed of David but also of the Holy Ghost." Smyr. i. : " Fully persuaded
as touching our Lord that He is truly of the race of David according to the
flesh, but Son of God by the divine will and power, truly born of a virgin "
Comp. Eph. vii., xix., xx.; Trail, ix. ; Rom. vii.
1 " The Reign of Law and other Sermons," by George Salmon, D D
1873. The Essay on " The Irony of St. John " is a note on Sermon III!
(pp. 54-68). The Essay is reprinted in a small volume of Dr. Salmon's
writings called "Evolution and other Papers," published by S P C K in
1906 (pp. 131-146). The subject is also referred to in Dr Salmon's
" Historical Introduction to the Study of the Books of the New Testament "
ed. 6, pp. 277 J.

THE VIRGIN BIRTH 29
readers to understand that the facts actually were as
these objectors assumed. Rather we have here a forcible
example of ' dialectic irony,' where the adversary's
opinion is treated with mock deference, while the reader
is expected to know that it is entitled to no real respect.
With sympathetic triumph the writer and his readers
watch the objectors staking the case against the Messiah-
ship of Jesus on an issue on which the verdict is sure to
go against them." I have never felt the smallest mis
giving as to the conclusiveness of my argument based
on the irony of St. John ; but I am thankful to know
that I have the support of so great a scholar and
thinker as Dr. Salmon. Dr. Salmon apphed the argu
ment to the question of our Lord's birthplace. I have
apphed it to the question of the Virgin Birth.
4. Possibility of Light from Science. — I insisted
(" B.C.," p. 78) that we are not entitled to have any
a priori ideas as to the way in which the Incarnation
must have been brought about, and I called attention
to the fact that it has seemed to generations of Christian
people congruous and reasonable that Jesus, being what
we beheve Him to be, should have been begotten " not
of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of
God." I then continued : " It may well be that the
study of the phenomena connected with heredity
will presently throw light on the problem of the entail of
moral character through the father's and the mother's
influence in the process of human generation, and that
we shall be able hereafter to consider from a scientific
point of view the relation between the Virgin conception
and the sinlessness of our Lord. But quite apart from such
speculations as to the light which future knowledge may
throw upon this article of the Creed, the behef of the
Church as to our Lord's conception and birth has in
the past commended itself, and does to-day commend
itself, to the reason and to the faith of myriads of
, thoughtful Christian people."

30 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
For the sake of clearness, I have quoted at length
what I wrote and I have itahcized certain expressions
to which I shah have to refer. The Canon criticized
this passage as follows (" L.S.," p. 51) : " As the Bishop
said at the beginning of his third chapter, most of the
arguments which he uses have been advanced before.
But he has put forward one which I beheve to be entirely
his own." After a reference to Bishop Gore, " who
first said that the Virgin Birth ' cut off the entail of
sin,' " the Canon continues : " But the Bishop of Ely
in transferring the thought from the sphere of law to
that of science is bold enough to anticipate a scientific
proof." The Canon referred what he calls " the Bishop's
argument " (" L.S.," p. 52) and " the scientific fore
cast " to Professor Punnett of Cambridge, from
whose reply he quotes at length.
The Canon has indeed disquieted himself in vain.
With great brevity I call attention to the following
points, (i) Professor Punnett writes : " The statement
that ' the Virgin Birth cuts off the entail of sin ' may
mean something mystically : scientifically it is non
sense." The Canon (I do not doubt inadvertently)
must have led the Professor to suppose that I used the
phrase "the Virgin Birth cuts off the entail of
sin." I did not use the phrase, and I should not use it.
(ii) I submit that the context shews that I used the
word " entail " — " the problem of the entail of moral
character " — in the non-legal figurative sense which is
recognised and is common (see Murray's Dictionary).
The word " transmission " expresses my meaning equally
well, (hi) I did not, as the Canon says, " anticipate a
scientific proof." The two words " anticipate " and
" proof " are both erroneous. The words which I
actually used belong to an altogether different category —
" it may well be," " will presently throw light on the
problem," " that we shall be able hereafter to consider
from a scientific point of view." (iv) My suggestion as

THE VIRGIN BIRTH 31
to the possibihty of science throwing light on these
questions was not an " argument," as the Canon says.
This is clear (a) from the context of the passage (see
above) ; (b) from the fact that I exphcitly used the
word " speculations " in regard to it. I must add that
I sincerely thank Professor Punnett for the very
interesting paragraphs which he took the trouble to
write on the case as it was presented to him. I am
unfortunately myself quite ignorant of scientific matters.
But I gather from the Professor's words that my very
modestly expressed hope that science may presently
throw hght on the problems under discussion is not at
ah impossible of fulfilment.
Before I pass from the subject of the Virgin Birth
there is one other matter of importance to which I
wish to call attention. The Canon more than once
(see " L.S.," pp. 5, 41, 51) refers to my phrase in regard
to the Virgin Birth, " the evidence is shght " (" B.C.,"
p. 78). I desire that these words should be read in
their context : " The evidence is shght. Ultimately,
the story, if true, must have rested on the word of the
Lord's Mother. But to estimate the force of the admis
sion just made we must ask the question — Can we, if
we assume the truth of the history, conceive of the
evidence being essentially different from what it is ?
We keep our birthdays ; we veil ah that concerns the
first beginning of our physical hfe in reverent silence.
It cannot have been otherwise in the Holy Family.
The evidence then is shght, but in a case of this nature
it could not be otherwise than shght."

CHAPTER III
THE RESURRECTION
I wish to preface this chapter by saying in fewest
words how intensely distasteful it is to me to write on
the subject of the Resurrection in connexion with
controversy. But I have no choice. It is necessary
for me to review some of the principal points in Canon
Glazebrook's treatment of this subject in " The Letter
and the Spirit." I also desire to reaffirm what I said in
" Behef and Creed " (pp. 34 ff.) as to " my own deep
sense of the hmitations under which we think and speak
in regard to " these things. I content myself with
quoting a few typical words : " For myself I greatly
shrink from speaking of these matters, especially in
the way of argument or controversy, lest I fall into a
precision or a definiteness which I know is beyond my
powers. I cannot present, and I do not wish to en
deavour to present, even to my own mind a picture of the
risen or the ascending Lord, or, as it were, to draw up
a programme of ' the last things.' ' Faith and not
sight ' is the essential characteristic of whatever vision
we are allowed here and now to attain to."
1. The Resurrection of our Lord.
I turn first to an important paragraph, much more
important than at first sight appears, about the passages
in the New Testament which give us the evidence as to
32

THE RESURRECTION 33
our Lord's resurrection. It will be found in " The Letter
and the Spirit," p. 56, and is as follows : " The fourth
chapter of B. and C. begins with some pages devoted
to an unfortunate blunder on my part, which I have
already (in the second edition of the manual) admitted
and regretted. By pure inadvertence I wrote ' that
Jesus appeared to several of His disciples after death
is a fact . . . attested ... by all four evangelists.'
Obviously I should have said three evangelists : for,
as every possessor of a Revised Version knows, the last
twelve verses of St. Mark's Gospel are not authentic.
And on a later page I made a reference to St. Mark's
narrative. The Bishop's criticism would have been
more effective if it had been more restrained in expres
sion. For no sensible reader will believe that I was
really ignorant of such a commonplace fact. The effect
produced by reading pages 84 and 156 reminds me of
certain chemical experiments of my youth." The itahcs
in the quotation are mine. If anyone will turn to
" B.C.," p. 82, he will find that I devoted one page to
the Canon's mistake in writing " all four " instead of
" three " Evangehsts, and that that page includes an
important statement as to what the genuine St. Mark
does record — " The genuine Gospel of St. Mark, there
fore, is a witness to the empty tomb " with further
details. On this mistake, which may fairly be considered
a shp, I did not make any comment at all. The two
following pages — " B.C.," pp. 83 / — (one of which is
taken up by a long quotation from " The Faith of a
Modern Churchman " in order that I might fully present
the Canon's statement in his own words) are given to
a kindred matter which is of the first importance. This
I must now explain.
I must develop the Canon's brief and cryptic sentence :
" And on a later page I made a reference to St. Mark's
narrative." This " reference to St. Mark's narrative "
will be found in " The Faith of a Modern Churchman," D

34 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
p. 28, and is as follows (the itahcs being mine) : " The
Judaising Christians, especially in Jerusalem, clung to
the old materiahstic view of the resurrection, and un
consciously moulded the tradition of our Lord's resurrec
tion into accordance with it.1 Comparing the simple
narrative of St. Mark with those of the later Gospels, we
can see that the additions all have the same tendency
to translate the spiritual into the material. Legendary
in their tone and inconsistent with each other, the
additions were readily accepted in the uncritical age
of which they were the natural growth." On this
notable passage I observed (" B.C.," p. 84) : (i) that
plainly here " the writer at least includes the appearances
of our Lord as supplying evidence as to the essential
character of His Resurrection " ; (h) that " the genuine
St. Mark does not contain any account of any appearance
of the risen Lord to any one." I then continued :
" Either, therefore, the writer is in textual criticism a
disciple of the late Dean Burgon (who maintained the
authenticity of the last twelve verses of St. Mark), or,
so far as the appearances of the risen Lord are concerned,
the standard according to which he claims to judge the
narratives of ' the later Gospels ' does not exist."
Further, it was with this error of the Canon among others
in my mind that in " B.C.," p. 156, I wrote as follows :
" I have also been forced to call attention to a neglect
of evidence and to mistakes of a quite unusual kind,
to errors, that is, which enter into the fabric of the
argument and entirely vitiate it. On the intellectual
side, therefore, in regard to the momentous subjects which
we have considered, the foundation of ' the faith of a
modern Churchman ' is not by this book well and truly
laid." Scholars — and others besides scholars — will judge
whether I spoke otherwise than with great restraint of
1 In " B.C.," p. 85, I said of this passage that " so far as I know, there
is not a shred of evidence for [this] assertion." The Canon does not respond
to my challenge. In " The Letter and the Spirit," so far as I can see, he
offers no evidence for this assertion which he had made.

THE RESURRECTION 35
a passage in which the trustwortluness of three of the
Gospels on a subject so momentous as the Resurrection
was gravely disparaged on the ground of a comparison
which neither the writer himself nor anyone else could
possibly have made, for the simple and decisive reason
that the alleged standard — " the simple narrative of
St. Mark " — does not exist.
I pass on now to the sequel. The Canon admitted —
he could not do otherwise than admit — the justice of my
criticism. This is plain ; for in the Errata which he
pubhshed after the appearance of " Behef and Creed "
the passage is rewritten. For the words " Comparing the
simple narrative of St. Mark with those of the later Gospels,
we can see that the additions," etc., there are substituted
the following : " Comparing the statement of St. Paul,
which was in all probability derived from St. Peter and
St. James, with those of the first, third, and fourth Gospels,
we can see that the additions," etc. What is then to be
said about this new standard of comparison ? If only
" the simple narrative of St. Mark " had existed, the
comparison of the narratives of the other Gospels
with it would have been wholly legitimate ; for the four
narratives would have been in pari materia. But this
is not so in the case of the new standard, i.e., 1 Cor
inthians xv. The Canon for obvious reasons cannot
speak of the narrative of St. Paul. He is forced to
introduce a new term and to speak of " the statement "
of St. Paul. But what is contained in the first, third,
and fourth Gospels is indubitably narratives. The
statement of St. Paul and the narratives of the three
Evangehsts are not in pari materia. The " statement "
of St. Paul consists of a very few words of introduction
— •" He died," " He was buried," " He hath been raised
the third day according to the scriptures" — and then of
a bare list of witnesses. It is evident that this " state
ment " is not a standard which with any semblance of
fairness can be used in estimating the character of the
D 2

36 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
detailed narratives of the three Evangehsts. A dis
paragement of the truth of the narratives in the three
Gospels on the ground of such a comparison is a flagrant
injustice. It is a sin against the first principles of
historical criticism. We might as reasonably condemn
the account of a particular battle given in a History of
the War because it contained details which did not
appear in a summary statement enumerating the
divisions engaged. I think that my readers will agree
with me that the Canon's attack on the trustworthiness
of the narratives of the Resurrection in the Gospels
ends in failure.
In regard to our Lord's resurrection there are two
points of great importance to which we must now give
attention. (1) " St. Paul," the Canon writes (" L.S.," p. 59),
" often speaks of the Resurrection of our Lord ; but
nowhere explains what he understands by the term."
It is, of course, true that St. Paul nowhere gives us a
description of any of our Lord's appearances. But
his words in 1 Corinthians xv., and in two later passages
of his writings, make clear to us what his conception
of our Lord's resurrection essentially was. I must be
forgiven for returning to a subject about which I spoke
at some length in " B.C.," pp. 133^. In 1 Cor. xv. 4
St. Paul among "the most important things"
(iv irpaTovi), which on the occasion of his visit he
had " dehvered " or " handed on " to the Corinthians,
included the burial of our Lord. This is the only
passage in the Epistles in which St. Paul directly
mentions the burial. On it, therefore, there rests a
special emphasis. The three momenta on which he
here insists are these : The Lord died ; The Lord was
buried ; The Lord hath been raised on the third day.
The necessary inference is that to St. Paul, who was
completely at one with the Apostles (1 Cor. xv. 11),
the Lord's resurrection was the reversal not only of the

THE RESURRECTION 37
Lord's death but also primarily of the Lord's burial.
In other words, St. Paul's belief about the Lord's
resurrection was essentially a belief in the resurrection
of the Lord's body and therefore in the empty grave.
" He was buried " ; " He hath been raised." And this
behef is the only behef consistent with what St. Paul
says in the rest of the chapter about the resurrection
of those who are " in Christ." Christ is " the first-
fruits " (vv. 20, 23), and in all essential things His
resurrection is the type of the resurrection of His
disciples. It is the bodies of the saints which shah
be hereafter raised ; and in the Resurrection their
bodies will be " changed " (vv. 35 — 52).
That the Apostle continued firmly in this behef
we have clear evidence, though its cogency is questioned
by Canon Glazebrook. The passages which give full
proof of the Apostle's steadfastness are Rom. vi. 3 /.,
Col. ii. 12. 1 For the sake of brevity I will quote the
latter only. The words are : " Having been buried
with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with
him through faith in the working of God, who raised
him from among the dead." 2 St. Paul describes
Baptism as including for the baptised two great spiritual
experiences which correspond respectively to the Lord's
burial and to the Lord's resurrection. The passage
entirely depends for its meaning on St. Paul still
holding that view of the resurrection which he held
when he wrote 1 Cor. xv., namely, that His resur
rection was the antithesis to, the undoing of,
His burial ; that is, that the body of our Lord was
raised.

1 See also Rom. viii. 11 (note on p. 67).
2 The passage is so important that I give the original : awTatpevTes a!)T$
iv r$ $wmi<xiija.Ti, iv § Kal trvvtrytpSnTe Sta rjjs niaretos tt)s ivepyeias tov 8eov rav
iyeipavros avrbv 4k vetcpuv. The correspondence between avvTatyiv-res and
auvtryepBirre is clearly emphasised by the kuI before the latter word.
Comp. for this Kai of correspondence, e.g., Rom. vi. 8 (el *yap aire06.voij.ev . .
ical avv^troiiev) ; 2 Cor. ix. 6 (<S airetpav <f>et5oft{vu>s (peiSo/j.e't'uis Kal Septo-ei).

38 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
But the Canon will not allow this argument. He
refers to the matter in two places, viz., " L.S.," pp.
68 /., 122. (a) On p. 68 he writes : " The Bishop of
Ely, as far as I can discover, treats all such statements
[Rom. vi. 4 ; 2 Cor. v. 14 / ; Col. iii. 1, 3] as merely
metaphorical (e.g., B. and C, p. 122), and thereby
seriously vitiates his argument. For in St. Paul's
eyes they were no mere metaphors, but the expression
of an experience which was central in his own religious
life." It is a pleasure to agree with the Canon in his
statement of St. Paul's meaning ; but in what he says
of myself he is completely in error. My language was
quite plain and wholly excludes the view which the
Canon ascribes to me. In " B.C.," p. 122, I wrote :
" Here St." Paul describes Baptism as including for
the baptized spiritual realities which correspond to
the Lord's death and burial (comp. 1 Cor. xv. 3 /.,
Acts xiii. 29 /.), and, on the other hand, to His
Resurrection." And in " B.C.," p. 136, I repeated the
same phrase "two spiritual realities." (b) In " L.S.,"
p. 122, there occurs the following passage : " Another
argument (B. and C, p. 137) is so unsubstantial
that it is difficult to meet. When St. Paul describes
baptism as a mystical burial and resurrection he uses
the two correlative phrases ' buried with Him,' ' raised
with Him,' much as he does in Rom. vi. 3. The Bishop
claims that this demonstrates that St. Paul still beheved
bhat our Lord rose in the flesh. The contention is
only possible to one who ignores the mystical element
in St. Paul's epistles, which I have tried to describe in
my fourth chapter (supra, pp. 66-8). No reader who
thinks that description sound will be inchned to follow
the Bishop in this flight of exegetical imagination."
It is quite unnecessary for me to say that I recognise to
the full the mystical element in St. Paul's writings. But
I venture to think that the Canon is the victim of a
confusion of thought. He seems to assume that the

THE RESURRECTION 39
mystical element in St. Paul is a solvent which destroys
the historical character of the events of which it is the
spiritual interpretation. Let me illustrate my meaning.
In Gal. ii. 20 St. Paul says : " I have been crucified
With Christ " (Xpto-TO) avvearavpeo/juat,). Here St. Paul
expresses a deep mystical reality about himself. But
it is the outcome of an historical event which at a
definite time, in a definite place, in a definite
way actually took place. St. Paul could not
have said : " I have been crucified with Christ," if
Christ, like John the Baptist, had been beheaded. St.
Paul's mystical saying demonstrates his belief that as
a matter of simple historical fact Christ was crucified.
The case is precisely the same with the o-vvTacbevTe<;
(" buried with him ") and the awnyepdnre (" raised
with him ") of Col. ii. 12. These words, standing in
antithesis to each other, demonstrate St. Paul's belief
that as a matter of historical fact the Lord was
buried and that the Lord was raised, and that as a
matter of historical fact these were two correlative
events, His resurrection being a reversal of His burial.
It follows that St. Paul's conviction as to our Lord's
resurrection when he wrote the first Epistle to the
Corinthians was his unchanged conviction when he
wrote the Epistle to the Colossians. From first to last
St. Paul beheved in the resurrection of Christ's body
which had been buried.
(h) As to the " appearances " the Canon (" L.S.,"
pp. 121 /.) writes as follows : " I venture to doubt
whether the right conclusion has been drawn from St.
Paul's words. Obviously St. Paul meant his readers to
understand that the appearance to himself was of the
same nature as the other appearances which he mentions.
Now of his own experience we have three accounts in
the Acts (ix. 3-6, xxii. 6-9, xxvi. 13-15), whose differ
ences of detail emphasise the points in which they
agree. They ah mention a voice which the Apostle

40 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
heard, and a hght which shone from heaven. But
none of them suggests, or leaves room for, the sight of
a human form. In what sense, therefore, did St. Paul
use the word ' appeared ' (axpOv) ? Perhaps, hke
some other writers, he uses the word as a general term
to include various kinds of perception. At any rate,
it is hard to reconcile this language with the belief
that the stories which he had heard from Peter and
James involved such marked evidence of the presence
of a human body as we find forty or fifty years later in
the Gospels." So far Canon Glazebrook. It will be
noticed that he does not state with any clearness what
kind of perception he thinks is connoted by St. Paul's
word a>cj)di). We infer, however, from his words
that in his view what was seen was not a human form,
and that the perception was not that of bodily sight,
and that therefore what St. Paul meant was some kind
of spiritual apprehension of the presence of the living
But does such an interpretation satisfy the require
ments of St. Paul's words % I ask attention to
the following considerations, (i) The word a><f>8r)
itself does not suggest the Canon's interpretation.
It is the same word which St. Luke twice (Luke xxiv.
34, Acts xiii. 31) uses in reference to the risen Lord ;
and without controversy St. Luke describes by it the
perception of " the presence of a human body," changed
though the same, (ii) Is it reasonable to think that
St. Paul had in mind some kind of merely spiritual
apprehension when he wrote the words : " Then He
appeared to above five hundred brethren at once " ?
It is beyond any thing but captious dispute that, in
regard to the five hundred, St. Paul's word &$dr)
denotes the sight of the bodily eyes, (iii) I cannot help
thinking that the Canon has forgotten another passage
in the same Epistle (ix. 1): "Ami not free? Am
I not an Apostle? Have I not seen (iopatca)

THE RESURRECTION 41
Jesus Christ our Lord ? " When the word eopaica 1
is thus used simply and naturally, without anything
in the context to suggest that it is used in any but the
ordinary sense, is it not impossible to interpret it of
some spiritual apprehension or as denoting anything
but what St. Paul considered to be the sight of a human
form ? St. Paul believed with his whole soul that,
in the simple sense of that simple word, he had seen
the Lord, (iv) There is, indeed, nothing in the two
passages of 1 Corinthians (ix. 1, xv. 8) to compel us
to conclude that it was at his conversion that St. Paul
saw the Lord ; but it is natural to suppose that the
sight of the Lord was part of the Apostle's experience
at that crisis of his life. We ask, therefore, whether
there is any evidence to the contrary. The Canon
states his view of the case in the passage quoted above
(pp. 39/). In reference to his words, the first remark
I wish to make is that the story of the conversion
includes the visit of Ananias to Saul of Tarsus. What
ever authority St. Luke had for the earher part of the
narrative, that he had also for the later part. The
whole story is one. In the second place, I call attention
to the f ollowing words in the three accounts respectively :
" Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, who appeared
unto thee (6 o^Oek o-ot) in the way which thou
earnest " (ix. 17) ; " The God of our fathers hath
appointed thee ... to see the Righteous One (IBeiv
tov SUatov), and to hear a voice from his mouth "
(xxii. 14) ; "To this end have I appeared unto thee
(axbdriv o-ot), to appoint thee a minister and a
witness both of the things wherein thou hast seen me
(eZSe? fie), and of the things wherein I will appear
1 Precisely the same word is used in St. John's narrative (xx. 18, 25),
where the risen human form of the Lord is described as *een by Mary
Magdalene and afterwards by the ten Apostles. It may be added that in
"the simple narrative of St. Mark" (xvi. 7), after a reference to the
disciples' journey to Galilee, it is said : " There shall ye see (u\f/e<r8e)
him." It is impossible here to interpret the word in an unusual sense ;
the local reference itself excludes such a meaning.

42 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
(6<p0rjaofiai) unto thee" (xxvi. 16). Each account
speaks of a sight of Jesus granted to Saul of Tarsus
at his conversion. There is nothing in the context to
suggest that the words expressing sight are used in any
other than the ordinary sense. On the contrary,
words indisputably denoting bodily sight are used in
the context in two of the passages (xxii. 11, xxvi. 13).
Further, in one passage (xxii. 14), " seeing the Righteous
One " is put side by side with " hearing a voice from
his mouth," speaking in the Hebrew tongue (xxvi. 14) ;
and it is unreasonable to take the word " see "
in a figurative sense and the word " hear " in a literal
sense. Indeed, on the Canon's hypothesis, we have to
suppose not only that St. Paul in 1 Cor. xv. without
warning used the word expressing sight in an
unusual way, but that he did so also in 1 Cor. ix. 1,
and that St. Luke did so several times in his three
accounts of the conversion. An interpretation which
is highly improbable in a single case is seen to be im
possible when it has to be repeated again and again.
I sum up, therefore, in the words of Dr. Headlam x :
" St. Paul shared with the Early Church the behef that
the tomb had been found empty, and that the risen
Christ had appeared on various occasions to His dis
ciples. He had undoubtedly received information from
eye-witnesses. He believed that the appearances were
real, that Christ appeared in such a way that He might
be recognised. His body was spirituahzed and trans
formed, but it bore all the marks and characteristics of
His human body. It was not merely a vision."
From St. Paul I turn to the Gospels. The Gospels
in their narratives give us a presentation of the two
sides of the Lord's resurrection. The Lord was changed.
•The Lord* was the same.2 The Canon insists on the
2:,1 " The Miracles of the New Testament," p. 252.
2 See especially Bp. Westcott, " Revelation of the Risen Lord,"
pp. 7-10.

THE RESURRECTION 43
assertions in the Gospels that the Lord was the same ;
and these he regards as " additions " which " all have
the same tendency to translate the spiritual into the
material" ("Faith of a Modern Churchman," p. 28).
He ignores the equally important assertions in the
Gospels that the Lord was changed. He will not allow
that the Lord's body is described in the Gospels (to
use Dr. Headlam's phrase) as " spiritualized and trans
formed." He therefore compares my statements as to
the changed body with such texts from the Gospel
narratives as emphasize the sameness of the body,
and places " four typical texts side by side with four
characteristic sentences from the modern formula "
("L.S.," pp. 123/). It will, I think, be sufficient to
give two pairs of these contrasted statements.
" And they came and took hold " [The Resurrection] is the recon-
of His feet and worshipped Him." — ciliation of the antithesis which
St. Matt, xxviii. 9. exists for us between matter and
spirit" — B. and C, p. 138.
" See My hands and My feet, " In His resurrection the Father
that it is I Myself : handle Me and fashioned His body anew." —
see : for a spirit hath not flesh and B. and C, p. 138.
bones, as ye see Me having." —
St. Luke xxiv. 39. i
It will be obvious to all that, e.g., the following words
from St. Luke — " Their eyes were opened, and they
knew him ; and he vanished out of their sight . . .
And as they spake these things, he himself stood in
the midst of them " (xxiv. 31, 36) — are every whit
as much in contradiction with Matt, xxviii. 9, Luke
xxiv. 39, as are my words from " B.C.," p. 138, which
the Canon quotes. The fact is that the Gospels put
before us with equal clearness the two contrasted and
complementary aspects of our Lord's body after the
Resurrection. We must equally take account of both
of them if we would arrive at a true estimate of the
witness of the Gospels to our Lord's resurrection.
I have thus, however briefly, dealt with the several

44 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
arguments advanced by the Canon as to our Lord's
resurrection. My readers will judge if I have given
them a satisfactory answer. The details which we
have been discussing are of the first importance. But
there are some general considerations which decisively
confirm what has been said.
(i) The Christians of the first days were pre-eminently
truthful. It was by their moral qualities, shewn forth
in their daily hfe, that they won the unwilling respect
of their heathen neighbours. And among these moral
qualities honesty and truthfulness had a conspicuous
place. Moreover, towards Christ they felt the deepest
reverence of which the human heart is capable, and
the resurrection of Christ was the foundation of their
faith. It is impossible to suppose that they so sinned
against their fundamental principles that they invented
fables about their divine Master's resurrection just
in the same way as the heathen on every side of them
invented fables about their gods whom they despised.
(ii) The Canon is forgetful of the conditions under
which the Gospels were written and pubhshed. They
did not contain stories of the Resurrection suddenly
sprung upon the Church. There was first a preparatio
evangelica. The truth-speaking Christians of the earliest
days remembered and passed on what they themselves
had seen and heard of the risen Lord or what they had
received from the first witnesses. It was of such an
oral tradition as this that the Synoptic Gospels were
the outcome. And further, when they were first given
to the" world, these Gospels were surrounded by the
possessors of such an oral tradition. It is not for
nothing that St. Paul records that the risen Lord was
seen of " above five hundred brethren at once." It
is a most significant fact that the author of the third
Gospel was not only the friend and companion of St.
Paul (who had been in close fellowship with the primary
witnesses of the Resurrection), but was also personally

THE RESURRECTION 45
known to St. James and " all the elders " at Jerusalem
(Acts xxi, 17 ff).1 Published under such conditions
as these, if the Gospels had been seen to be wholly
untruthful in regard to the appearances of the risen
Lord, to give fables instead of facts, they would not
have been selected as authoritative narratives of the
Lord's life and death and resurrection ; they would not
have received, as they have received, the imprimatur
of the Christian society.2
(iii) If the " Resurrection " does not mean that the
Lord's body was raised from the grave or that His
disciples saw His " human form," if it is so attenuated
that it imphes little, if anything, more than that the
disciples had a spiritual conviction that their Master
(hke other good men) had survived death, does it account
for the stubborn fact of the genesis of the Christian
Church ? Is it reasonable to suppose that the preaching
of a " resurrection " so intangible and so vague would
have attracted multitudes of disciples in the face of
violence and obloquy, and have given the httle society
confidence, cohesion, and growth ? Above all, what
could have provided the initial impulse ? In the hours
which succeeded the Lord's death on the Cross and His
defeat so uniquely humiliating — " cursed is every one
that hangeth on a tree " — the disciples were plunged
in the deepest despair. Could the " Resurrection,"
if it were what we are asked to beheve that it was,
have roused them one and all and inspired them with
a triumphant vigour and hope, the results of which
have hved through the centuries and surround us
now ? I submit that, when we are asked to beheve
1 See my " Gospels in the Light of Historical Criticism," pp. 33 ff.
2 I wish to guard myself against misconception. "I do not claim
[for the Gospels] here any more than elsewhere the attribute of inerrancy.
It is possible that this or that detail in regard to events and in regard to
words spoken may conceivably be due to the moulding influence of oral
tradition or of ideas current at the time. But such an admission does not
in my judgment touch the essential nature of the Lord's resurrection as
we find it described in the Gospels " ("B.C.," pp. 139/.).

46 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
this, we are asked to beheve that a nuracle took place
which indeed was contrary to Nature.
2. The Resurrection of the " dead in Christ."
It is needless for me to point out how closely our
Lord's resurrection and the resurrection of the " dead in
Christ" are connected. Canon Glazebrook maintains
that " what St. Paul says of the resurrection in general
must have been intended to apply to the Lord's
resurrection."1 Hence it is necessary to ascertain
St. Paul's conception of the former.
The Canon's position as to St. Paul's teaching is as
follows : " There are, as many scholars believe, three
main stages in the development of St. Paul's beliefs
about the Resurrection. The first is represented by
the epistles to the Thessalonians ; the second by the
first epistle to the Corinthians ; the third by the second
epistle to the Corinthians, the epistle to the Romans,
and the epistle to the Phihppians " (" L.S.," p. 71 ;
compare " The Faith of a Modern Churchman," pp. 23/).
I will take the alleged three stages of St. Paul's belief
separately. (1) The first stage (1, 2 Thessalonians). It will
be remembered that in " The Faith of a Modern Church
man," pp. 25 /., the Canon maintained that, " when
[St. Paul] wrote to the Thessalonian Church, he took
for granted the popular Jewish behef in the resurrection
as the reconstitution of the earthly body of flesh. . . .
He began with the common Jewish behef that after
a few months or years of torpor 2 [' existence ' is sub
stituted in the Canon's Errata] in Sheol, the soul
would be restored to its ' natural body.' " My reply
(" B.C.," pp. 93 ff.) was twofold. I pointed to the
great principle that, especially when we are deahng
1 See " The Faith of a Modern Churchman," p. 24 ; " The Letter and the
Spirit," p. 59. I desire to call attention to my remarks on the Canon's
position in " B.C.," pp. 99 ff.
- See my criticism on " torpor " in " B.C." pp. 94/.

THE RESURRECTION 47
with a great epoch of revelation, we have no right to
ascribe to a teacher beliefs which he does not himself
expressly adopt because they are the beliefs of his
contemporaries or of those who had gone before him.
In the second place, I laid stress on the fact that St. Paul
does not say a single word to justify the ascription to
him of the two " popular Jewish beliefs " which the
Canon assumes that he held. As briefly as I can I must
review the Canon's defence of his position.
(a) The reign of the Messiah on earth. The Canon
(" L.S.," pp. 80/) refers to 2 Thess. i. 6-10, which " hap
pens to contain all the evidence on this particular
point." " As has been shown above," he continues,
'' the reign of the Messiah on earth is part of the back
ground of thought which was common to St. Paul and
his Jewish contemporaries, and without assuming it we
could attach no tolerable meaning to several of his
phrases." Undoubtedly the Apostle in regard to " the
revelation of the Lord Jesus " uses an earthly figure 1 —
" in flaming fire " — just as our Lord spoke of the un
quenchable fire and the undying worm (Mark ix. 48) ;
but I cannot see a single phrase in the passage which
imphes " the reign of Messiah on earth." If, then,
2 Thess. i. 6 ff. does not justify the chiliastic inference
which the Canon draws from it, we are thrown back
on the language of 1 Thess. iv. itself. Of this Bishop
Lightfoot writes 2 : "Of the final abode of His glorified
saints nothing is said here ; for the Apostle closes, as
soon as he fulfilled his purpose of satisfying his
Thessalonian readers that the dead will participate in
Christ's coming." — On the same passage Dr. G. Milhgan
has this comment : " The thought is that the ' raptured '
saints will be carried up into the ' air,' as the interspace
between heaven and earth, where they will meet the
1 On St. Paul's use of Old Testament and apocalyptic language,
see especially Dr. G. Milligan's words in the Preface to his Commentary
on these two Epistles (p. lxx).
2 " Notes on Epistles of St. Paul," p. 69.

48 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
descending Lord, and then either escort Him down to
the earth in accordance with Old Testament prophecy,
or more probably in keeping with the general context
accompany Him back to heaven." It is possible that
St. Paul believed in a reign of Christ on earth ; but he
does not hint at such a behef in the Epistles to Thes-
' salonica. (b) A much more important point is the question
whether St. Paul imphes " the reconstitution of the
earthly body of flesh " (" The Faith of a Modern Church
man," p. 25). " Does St. Paul," the Canon asks (" L.S.,"
p. 77), " when he writes to the Thessalonians, mean to
imply that their natural bodies are restored, or that they
are invested with ' spiritual bodies ' such as are
mentioned in 1 Cor. xv. ? There are strong reasons for
believing that, in this case, he conceived the natural
bodies to be restored." We will consider these " strong
reasons." (i) " Nothing is said of any change in the bodies of
the survivors : the living and the lately dead im
mediately form one group, without any distinction
being indicated : and they all move together to meet
the Lord" (" L.S.," p. 77). St. Paul's words are:
" The dead in Christ shall rise first : .then we that are
ahve, that are left, shall together with them be caught
up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air : and so
shall we ever be with the Lord." The Canon's language
" they all move together to meet the Lord " gives an
absolutely different picture of the scene from the
words " caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in
the air." Indeed St. Paul's phrases clearly suggest
some change in the bodies raised from the dead and in
those of the saints who are alive.
(ii) " The words of 1 Thess. v. 23 . . . seem to ex
clude the possibihty that St. Paul may be contemplating
any change in the bodies of the survivors " (" L.S.,"
p. 77). Again, "if there is a word in Greek which

THE RESURRECTION 49
excludes the idea of change it is oXoicXrjpov, which.
means entire, complete, like the Latin integer "
(" L.S.," p. 80). 1 So far the Canon. He has here
confused two quite distinct and quite different ideas —
the idea of entirety and the idea of unchangedness.
The first of these ideas is expressed by the word
6x6icXr)pov ; the second is necessary for the Canon's
argument but is in no way expressed by the Greek word.
Origen's famous Christological figure of the iron heated
red-hot is an illustration how what is " entire " may
yet be changed. Or (to take a homely illustration) a
man at forty is as 6x6/cXr)po<; as he was at fourteen ; but
undoubtedly he is changed. In the Resurrection St. Paul
beheved that the bodies which are raised will be
" entire " but wholly transfigured.
(hi) " Some six years later, St. Paul wrote to the
Corinthians, 'Behold, I tell [Xe'Y&>] you a mystery —
the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be
changed.' A mystery is something which has not been
previously told. If St. Paul had not revealed this to
the Corinthians, among whom he lived and taught for
a year and a half (Acts xviii. 11), but left them (as
appears from 1 Cor. xv.) to hold the Jewish behef, how
can we suppose that he made the revelation to the
Thessalonians a few months earher ? " (" L.S." p. 77/)
This argument is to me a surprising one. The common
place word Xiya does not suggest that what St. Paul
now spoke of he had never spoken of before. Nor
is that idea imphed in the word fivarrjptov. The
word mystery, writes Bishop Lightfoot on Col. i. 26,
" signifies simply ' a truth which was once hidden
but now is revealed,' ' a truth which without special
revelation would have been unknown.' " Thus it is
a " revealed secret " relatively not to the chronology
1 The words are : 5\6x\ripov v,uu>v to irvev/id xal i),tf/uxh Kal to a&jxa a^e^irrais
iv T7j Trapovffla tov Kvpiov 'lTjtrov XpiffTov T7]p7i9et7}. This is not the place to
discuss this remarkable sentence — three subjects and yet a singular verb
and a singular tertiary predicate. E

50 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
of the hfe of an individual man but to the epochs of
divine revelation. This is plain from St. Paul's words,
e.g., in Eph. iii. 4/ : " my understanding in the mystery
of Christ ; which in other generations was not made
known unto the sons of men, as it hath now been
revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets in the
spirit," A mystery did not cease to be a mystery
when one apostle or one prophet had once spoken of it.
The admission of the Gentiles into the Church is
designated a mystery* in the doxology of St. Paul's
Epistle to the Romans.1 Years afterwards it is still
spoken of as a mystery in the Epistles to the Colossians
and the Ephesians. The use of the word /ivtrr^ptov
therefore in 1 Cor. xv. 51 does not suggest that what
St. Paul said then he had not said before whether to
the Corinthians or to the Thessalonians or to others.
(iv) " Since St. Paul had been brought up as a
Pharisee, and avowed himself such towards the end
of his life, we may take into account some words of
Josephus written not very long after the fall of
Jerusalem." I give in a note 2 the passages as the
Canon quotes them, printing in itahcs the one clause
which refers to the bodies of those who are raised. I
think that all will agree with me that the second of
these passages has no bearing of any kind on the nature
of the resurrection body. In the former passage, how
ever, from the treatise on the Jewish War the use of the
word erepov (not dXXo) in the phrase «'s erepov o-wp.a (into
1 On the genuineness of the doxology see Hort in Lightfoot's " Biblical
Essays," pp. 324 J1.
2 " They think also that all souls are immortal, but that the souls of
good men only are removed into other bodies, while the souls of bad men
are punished with eternal punishment " (" Bell. Jud." bk. ii. 9 [a slip
for 8], §14). I add the Greek of the first clause : $vx4iv tc iraaav fiev
&<p8aprov, /xeTaftalveiv 5e els eTepov cutfia t^v tuv ayaBav p.6vy}v. " They also
believe that souls have an immortal power in them, and that there will
be under the earth rewards or punishments, according as we have lived
virtuously or viciously in this life ; and the latter souls are to be de
tained in an everlasting prison, but the former will have power to live
again " (" Antiquities," xviii. 1, §3).

THE RESURRECTION 51
a different body) seems to me a clear indication that
Josephus held that according to the view he was de
scribing there would be a difference between the body
before and the body after the resurrection. Certainly
he does not suggest that according to the view in
question the body would be unchanged.
No one at all questions that St. Paul throughout
his writings early and late borrowed some of his phrase
ology, when speaking of the Resurrection, from current
Jewish apocalyptic literature. But there is not a
scrap of evidence which shews that, when he wrote
his earhest Epistles, he held those material views about
the resurrection which were held by some of the Jews
and which we know that he definitely repudiated in
1 Cor. xv. St. Paul, a Jew by birth and upbringing,
became a Christian. Henceforth his supreme law was
Christ and the teaching of Christ. On the question of
the Resurrection Christ had spoken plainly and de
cisively in words recorded by St. Mark (xii. 25 ; comp.
Luke xx. 34 ff.) : " When they shall rise from the
dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage ;
but are as angels in heaven." In these words Christ
Himself condemned the Jewish idea of " the recon
struction of the earthly body of the flesh " in the
Resurrection. It was Christ Himself who revealed the
" mystery " of the resurrection body — " as angels in
heaven." (2) The second supposed stage of the development
of St. Paul's beliefs as to the Resurrection is represented
by 1 Corinthians. In regard to this period there is
nothing which it is necessary that I should notice.
(3) The third supposed stage is represented by
2 Corinthians, the Epistles to the Romans and to the
Phihppians. About this stage the Canon in " The
Faith of a Modern Churchman " (p. 26) wrote as Mows :
" A little later [i.e., than 1 Corinthians] we see that the
expectation of a speedy Advent, and with it the thought
E 2

52 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
of Sheol, had passed away from his mind. He now
pictures the spiritual body as coming down from heaven
to clothe the soul in the hour of death. So that when the
aged apostle looked beyond his approaching death,
he saw himself not as a disembodied spirit, awaiting
the last judgment in the gloom of Sheol, but as clothed
in his body of glory and passing at once into the presence
of his Lord." The Canon now desires to revise the
words which I have above printed in itahcs. " The
phrase ' in the hour of death ' was ill-chosen and did
not really express my meaning. I should have written
either ' after a brief interval,' or perhaps ' on the third
day ' " (" L.S.," p. 61). I shah return to this emendation
later (pp. 62/). It is obvious that the Canon maintains
that in the few months which elapsed between the
writing of the first and the writing of the second letter
to Corinth St. Paul altogether changed his teaching as
to the nature of the resurrection of men ; and, con
sidering the emphatic way in which he had insisted
on the vital relation between the two (1 Cor. xv. 12 ff.),
we must add as to the nature of the resurrection of
Christ Himself.
In "B.C.," pp. 110/, I entered a caveat against
the ascription to St. Paul of such fickleness. The
following is the Canon's version of what I wrote (" L.S.,"
p. Ill) : " On pp. 109-111 of B. and C. there is
an argument which may be summarised thus : St.
Paul repudiated the charge of fickleness which was
made against him because he changed the date of his
intended visit to Corinth (2 Cor. i. 17). [A] He
solemnly affirmed to the Galatians that he was
speaking the truth about certain past events, and to
the Romans that his affection for his own people was
sincere (Gal. i. 20 ; Rom. ix. 1). In speaking to the
elders of Ephesus and in writing to the Corinthian
church, he declared that he had taught them in
sincerity and without reserve, as in the sight of God

THE RESURRECTION 53
(Acts xx. 20, 27 ; 2 Cor. ii. 17). Therefore it is im
possible that he can ever have changed his behef on
any religious subject. Can any one imagine a more
complete non sequitur ? " So far the Canon.1 I agree
with him. The non sequitur is a disgraceful non sequitur.
But the non sequitur lies not in what I wrote but in
what the Canon represents me as having written.
At the point in the Canon's summary where I have
placed the sign of an omission A I wrote (" B.C.,"
p. Ill) " And once more, if St. Paul had so altered his
convictions as to the Resurrection, would he not have
said so in words simple, clear, unmistakable ? Of all
Christian teachers none has ever been so insistent as St.
Paul as to his own sincerity and outspokenness." I
then quoted Acts xx. 20, 27, Gal. i. 20, Rom. ix. 1,
2 Cor. ii. 17. I at once added this twofold conclusion :
" I venture to say that, if St. Paul had changed his
witness as to the Resurrection in the way alleged in
" The Faith of a Modern Churchman," he would have
ceased to be an Apostle ; and that, if he had not said so
in ivords so plain that no one could doubt his meaning,
he ivould have ceased to be an honest man." I pass at
once from the very painful subject of the Canon's
" summary " of what I wrote, to say a few words on
St. Paul's attitude towards doctrinal consistency.2
1 The Canon has not noticed an important argument founded on
2 Cor. i. 18/. : "Moreover, with the most solemn form of asseveration —
' As God is faithful ' — the Apostle appeals to his constancy in the matter
of his message — " our word toward you is not yea and nay " ; and he
pleads his constancy in the matter of his message as the pledge of his
constancy in the matter of his plans. Is it conceivable that he would
have made this appeal, if he had been conscious that within the last six
months he had changed his mind as to his central doctrine, and as to the
fact which was the basis of his central doctrine ? " (" B.C.," p. 110).
2 There is a remarkable variation as to the Canon's versions of the
words which I used in this connexion. In "L.S." p. 81 he ascribes to me
the position that " St. Paul did not change his mind on any doctrinal
subject." In " L.S.," p. Ill, my assertion is made more comprehensive.
I am credited with saying : " It is impossible that he can ever have changed
his belief on any religious subject." But on an earlier page my luckless
words are stripped of any rag of limitation (" L.S.," p. 60) : " This
qualification can, of course, be of no account in the Bishop's estimation,

54 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
It was not as a seeker after the truth that St. Paul
either began or prosecuted his work as an Apostle.
With his whole soul he beheved that he had found the
truth, or rather that God had revealed the truth to
him. In his earhest Epistle he speaks of himself as
" approved of God to be intrusted with the Gospel "
(1 Thess. ii. 4). He was to be " accounted " as a
" steward of the revealed secrets of God " (1 Cor. iv. 1) ;
and he adds at once that " it is required in stewards
that a man be found faithful." Faithfulness to the
trust of the Gospel was his supreme duty. Let anyone
candidly read that letter in which St. Paul lays bare
the determining character of his apostleship, and he
can have no doubt as to St. Paul's conception of his
office as a teacher (Gal. i. ii.). The Gospel which he
taught was an unchangeable Gospel (Gal. i. 8). And
in later Epistles the Apostle urged on his friends the
steadfastness which he exemplified himself. Thus, for
instance, Col. i. 23 : "if so be that ye continue in the
faith, grounded and steadfast, and not moved away
(p,r) (ieTa/avov/j.evoi) from the hope of the Gospel
which ye heard " ; and again, Col. ii. 6 : " rooted and
builded up in him, and stabhshed in your faith, even as
ye were taught." Further, that in this unchangeable
Gospel St. Paul included the truths of redemption —
Christ's death and Christ's resurrection — his own words
in 1 Cor. xv. 1-11 are an absolute proof. And the
sentences which follow make it certain that St. Paul
regarded Christ's resurrection as the assurance and
as the type of the resurrection of those who are in
Him. If one of these was denied or perverted, the
other also was denied or perverted. It need not be
for he refuses to admit that there is any change or inconsistency in St.
Paul's opinions on any subject." What I actually said ("B.C.," p. 110)
was this : " With what vehemence would he have repudiated the charge
of fickleness not as to his journeys, but as to his leaching, and that on a
matter which he had already himself asserted to be fundamental
(1 Cor. xv. 1 ff.)" See also above p. 53 n. 1.

THE RESURRECTION 55
added that such an attitude on St. Paul's part did not
mean that his mind was motionless and that he ad
mitted into it no new ideas. If we compare the Epistles
of the Captivity with the two Epistles to the Thessa
lonians we are at once profoundly conscious that in the
later letters the current of the Apostle's thoughts
flowed in larger volume, more clear, more strong than in
the earher letters. I can quite understand that to some
the unchanging attitude of St. Paul as to the essential
basis of his teaching is a matter for contempt. But
his own words certify us that his attitude was un
changing. The two characteristics of St. Paul's mind,
a mind which has influenced mankind widely and deeply,
were stability and growth.
I turn now to the question of the interpretation of
2 Cor. v. 1-9. The Canon's interpretation is clear
from the words quoted above (pp. 51 /.). When our body
dies, we shall come into possession of a spiritual body.
The " Resurrection " therefore is connected not with the
Advent of the Lord, but with each several man's death.
On the other hand, I submit that the passage means :
" Should it so be that our body dies, yet even so we
possess, and shah stiff possess, a spiritual body laid up
in heaven." The occasion of the actual appropriation
of this spiritual body is here left undefined, though, in
consonance with ah St. Paul's teaching elsewhere, that
time will be at the Advent of the Lord and the resur
rection of the dead. Thus six months earher in 1 Cor. xv.
St. Paul had taught a resurrection of the body and he
had placed it at the coming of the Lord. Now, in
the Canon's view of St. Paul's teaching the so-called
resurrection is purely a spiritual resurrection and it
takes place at death " after a brief interval "
(" L.S.," p. 61).
It wih be convenient if I now consider (1) the
Canon's chief objections to my view ; (2) certain points
in the Canon's treatment of the passage of St. Paul in

56 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
" The Letter and the Spirit " ; (3) a phrase in the
passage itself which, I venture to think, confirms my
interpretation. (1) The Canon's chief objections are concerned with
points of grammar. I fear that I must be somewhat
technical. To my regret I am obliged shghtly to ab
breviate what the Canon has written (" L.S.," pp. \Q5ff.).
It will be noticed that in 2 Cor. v. 1 St: Paul wrote
" We have (exopev) a building from God." The
Canon points out (" L.S.," p. 105) that in our school
days " we were taught that . if a future condition is
expressed by iav with the subjunctive the sequel or
conclusion must be expressed by a future indicative."
Later on we were taught that " the future might be
replaced by a present, an optative with av} or some
other forms, provided always that they conveyed the same
future sense. Professor Goodwin (" Moods and Tenses,"
§§ 444, 445), after giving a number of examples of such
substitution, sums up thus : ' It will be seen that the
apodosis here may consist of any future expression.'
It follows that any phrase which is substituted for the
future indicative ' expresses future time, to denote
what will be the result, if the condition of the protasis
is fulfilled.' . . . Unless, therefore, there is some express
statement in the context which suggests an interval,
St. Paul's sentence must be understood to indicate that
the ' actual appropriation ' will follow without delay.
Far from finding any such suggestion in the context, we
read in the next three verses how St. Paul dreads the
thought of being left ' naked ' for ever so short a time.
The interpretation, therefore, which the Bishop attacks
appears to me to be required not only by the general
sense of the passage, but by the rules of Greek grammar."
So far the Canon. There is a strange confusion of
thought here. For the Canon does not perceive that
St. Paul's dread " of being left naked for ever so short
a time " is a proof that St. Paul did not expect that the

THE RESURRECTION 57
actual appropriation of the spiritual body would follow
without delay after death. If the Apostle had believed
that the actual appropriation would so follow, the
cause of his dread and his dread would have vanished.
Thus the verdict of the context is clear and emphatic.
It is indeed a melancholy reflection that St. Paul
had not the advantage in his early days, as the
Canon and I had,1 of studying the excellent manual of
the American Professor on the use of " Moods and
Tenses " in classical writers. The Apostle might have
been saved by its careful perusal from sometimes
offending the susceptibihties of classical scholars. But
St. Paul's grammar was not the grammar of Thucydides
or of Demosthenes. In regard to these hypothetical
sentences with idv Goodwin's fundamental principle
is " The apodosis denotes what will be the result, if the
condition of the protasis shall be fulfilled." Both the
protasis and the apodosis are concerned with the future.
And with this principle the Canon (see above) expresses
full agreement. What then are we to say of the
following sentence of St. Paul : vvv fap,ev idv u/xet?
o-TrJKere iv Kvplrp (l Thess. hi. 8) ? Here both the
protasis and the apodosis deal not with the future but
with the present ; and idv , as is the case in other
writers contemporary with St. Paul, is followed not by
the subjunctive but by the indicative.2 It is quite
clear therefore that Professor Goodwin guides his
followers astray when they apply his rules to the
" Moods and Tenses " of St. Paul.
Let us now turn to 2 Cor. v. 1 : oiSafiev yap on idv
r) iwCyetO'; r)fj,a>v oiic'ia too cricr)vov<s /earaXvOij, ol/co8o/j,r)v i/c
deov eypfiev ol/ciav dyetpOTrotrjTOV aicovtov ev rot? ovpavol<s.
In this sentence it is obvious that Professor Good
win's fundamental principle — " the apodosis denotes
1 My copy of Goodwin alas ! bears the date " July, 1873."
2 See Moulton and Milligan's " Vocabulary of the Greek Testament,"
p. 177. Compare 1 John v. 15.

58 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
what will be the result, if the condition of the protasis
shall be fulfilled " — is entirely set aside. For without
controversy what is stated in the apodosis (or quasi-
apodosis) holds good whether the condition of the
protasis is fulfilled or not. The existence of the
"building from God" does not in the least degree
depend upon the " earthly house " being " pulled
down." St. Paul already possessed it; and, if he
survived till the Return, he would, without the " earthly
house " being " pulled down," " put it on over the
earthly body." It must by this time have very clearly
appeared that it cannot be assumed that the rules of
classical Greek are vahd when St. Paul's Greek is con
cerned, and that the Canon's appeal to them against
me must be dismissed. But there is a further con
sideration which must not be lost sight of. In this
sentence of St. Paul the protasis hes among the things
which are seen and temporal, the apodosis among the
things which are unseen and eternal. The conditions of
interpretation therefore are not limited by mundane
analogies.1 As to these eternal and unseen mysteries,
St. Paul's meaning can only be rightly understood in the
hght of his teaching concerning them in other passages
of his writings.
The Canon has another grammatical criticism.2
He rejects my rendering and interpretation of vv. 2 /
" For verily in this we groan, longing to put on over it
[i.e., our body] our habitation which is from heaven ;
if so be that having put it on we shall not be found
naked " (" B.C.," p. 104 ; comp. p. 117). The Greek
of the last clause is et ye (v. I. et rrep) /cat ivh~vadp,evoi
ov yvfivol evpe6r)a6p,e6a. The Canon makes the following
1 The Canon gives in " L.S.," p. 106, one or two Greek sentences which
he thinks elucidate this sentence of St. Paul. I also venture to suggest
one which seems to me exactly parallel to it : offiafiev Sti iav wdaas to.s
vw&pfceis ij/j.oiv Tas imyetovs fapuaidafAev, Srjffavpov e/c Beov e^OfJ-ev ald>viov iv tois
ovpavois (For we know that, if we suffer the loss of all our earthly posses
sions, we have a treasure from God, eternal, in the heavens).
2 "The Letter and the Spirit," p. 104.

THE RESURRECTION 59
criticism : " It is difficult to believe that St. Paul
wrote anything so flat as the latter clause, which
simply means ' if indeed clothes prevent us from being
naked.' The result is attained by rendering et ye Kal
in a very questionable way, and treating ivhvaao-6ai
as a mere repetition of iwevSvo-aaOai, though much
has been made of the distinction between the two.
Dehtzsch, following the Vulgate, translates ' although
if we are (merely) clothed (with the spiritual body)
we shall not be found naked.' Thus rendered, the
sentence, instead of being a meaningless interruption,
adds a new thought which fits the context. What it
expresses is this. St. Paul, though he ardently desires
to receive the spiritual body while yet ahve (' be clothed
upon '), is satisfied that in any case he will not be left a
' naked ' spirit, because at death he will be ' clothed,' that
is, invested with the spiritual body." So far the Canon.
I ask attention to the following considerations.
(1) The answer to the Canon's remark that my
rendering simply means " if indeed clothes prevent
us from being naked " is obvious — " That all depends
upon the clothes." In other words, St. Paul's
sentence is not general but particular. He refers to
a special case in the unknown and unimaginable future.
(2) Dehtzsch's translation follows the old dictum, which
we learned as boys, that, while «al et means " even if,"
el Kal, means " although," but it neglects the fact that
in this sentence the particle (ye or -rrep) separates the
el from the «at and loses its force if et ye (trep) Kal is
represented by " although." (3) It will be noted that no
part of the verb ivSvo-aadai has been used in the previous
context to signify " to put on the spiritual body."
This being so, I venture to say that Dehtzsch's
translation of ivSvad/nevoi by " (merely) clothed (with
the spiritual body)," where the meaning wholly depends
on the words in brackets, is impossible. (4) The «ai,
as often after el , lays stress on the following word

60 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
In such cases it can only be represented by emphasis
in speaking and by itahcs in printing. Thus, e.g.,
Gal. iii. 4, et ye Kal e'tKy, where icai puts stress on
the e'tKy ¦ 1 Cor. vii. 21, dXX' el Kal Bwaaat iXevdepo<;
yeveodat, " But if thou canst become free " ; 2 Cor.
vii. 8, el Kal iXvirr/o-a vp,d<;, "If I did grieve you."
So here we must read " If so be that having put it on
(when we have put it on)." Again, in et ye or et trep
the particle emphasises the el and gives it a sort of
piquancy.1 The el ye or et rrep expresses a possible doubt,
about which it leaves the readers to decide, though in
truth they can decide it only in one way. Hence et ye
or el trep is a rhetorical equivalent to "since," "because."
(5) The idea of ivSvo-dfievot is obviously included in
iirevSvo-aaOat. We put on an extra wrap even if we
superimpose it on our ordinary dress. Here when the
thought contained in the double compound has once
been clearly expressed, there is no need to repeat
the double compound. To sum up, I submit that
the clause under discussion is an expression of
confidence — " Longing to put on over it [i.e., our body]
our habitation which is from heaven ; since, when we
have put it on, we shall not be found naked."
(2) I am sorry to have detained my readers so long
on matters of Greek grammar. I pass now to speak
of certain other points in the Canon's treatment of
2 Cor. v. 1-9, in " The Letter and the Spirit."
The Canon in " The Faith of a Modern Churchman "
(p. 26) represents St. Paul when he wrote the second
Epistle to Corinth as " picturing the spiritual body as
coming down from heaven to clothe the soul in the
hour of death." In " B.C.," pp. 113 /., I pointed out
how absolutely inexplicable under these conditions is
St. Paul's distress — " we groan " (v. 2), " we groan
1 Compare in St. Paul (i) for ei ye, Gal. iii. 4, Rom. v. 6, Col. i. 23,
Eph. iii. 2, iv. 21 ; (ii) for e'i irep, 2 Thess. i. 6, 1 Cor. viii. 5, xv. 15,
Rom. iii. 30, viii. 9, 17.

THE RESURRECTION 61
being burdened " (v. 4). For this intense distress is
caused by his dread of putting off the garment which
he now wears and of there being nothing to take its
place — the dread of " nakedness."
I am grateful to the Canon for completely con
firming my contention that his interpretation of
St. Paul is in direct contradiction to St. Paul's emphatic
words. For, without perceiving the force of his own
words, in " L.S.," p. 98, he rewrites what St. Paul
wrote. The passage runs thus : " It [i.e., this new
body] is a garment which will be brought to earth, either
to clothe the spirit after death, or to enwrap the body
and soul of the hving man at the Advent. Thus
' clothed ' or ' clothed upon,' St. Paul now sees himself
ready to pass into the presence of the Lord, because
he is one of those whom God has ' fore-ordained to be
conformed to the image of His Son ' (Rom. viii. 29).
Thus the fear, which used to oppress him, of a period
during which his spirit would be ' naked ' (2 Cor. v. 3)
is done away." The itahcs are mine. Here is a com
plete reversal of St. Paul's words. St. Paul did not
Write ia-Tevdfafiev (we used to groan) but ffrevd^o/Mev
(we groan, V. 2), ffrevd^ofiev f3apovp,evot (we groan
being burdened, v. 4). There could not be a more
decisive demonstration that the Canon's interpretation
of St. Paul is wholly at variance with St. Paul's own
clear and emphatic language.
In another passage, on the other hand, we may
conjecture that the Canon modified his phrase " in the
hour of death " because such an expectation on
St. Paul's part was irreconcilable with his words as
interpreted by the Canon. For if the Apostle thought
that the spiritual body would come down to clothe
his soul "in the hour of death," he must have felt
that there was no space left for this dreaded sense of
" nakedness." In " L.S.," pp. 61 /., the Canon writes as
follows : "I have to admit that in the sentence, ' He

62 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
now pictures the spiritual body as coming down from
heaven to clothe the soul in the hour of death,' the
phrase ' in the hour of death ' was ill-chosen and did
did not really express my meaning. I should have
written either ' after a brief interval ' or perhaps ' on
the third day.' A strong reason in favour of the latter
phrase is supplied by Bishop Westcott in his note on
St. John xi. 39 : ' Dead four days. The full significance
of the words appears from a passage of Bereshith R :
' It is a tradition of Ben Kuphra's 1 : the very height
of mourning is not until the third day. For three days
the spirit wanders about the sepulchre, expecting if it
may return into the body. But when it sees that the
form or aspect of the face is changed, then it hovers no
more, but leaves the body to itself.' . . . ' After three
days,' it is said elsewhere, 'the countenance is changed.'"
So far Dr. Westcott 's note.2 The Canon then continues :
" If this opinion was general among the Jews of the
first century, we may fairly assume (without any direct
statement on his part) that it was shared by St. Paul."
I confess that I greatly wish that it was not my
duty to criticise this paragraph. In the first place it is
only right to say that it is a serious thing for a writer
on a very grave subject to choose for his key phrase one
" which did not really express [his] meaning." Again,
it seems almost incredible that the Canon does not tell
us the reason why he abandons the phrase " in the hour
of death," and why he prefers to it the phrase " after
a brief interval " ; that he does not explain the meaning
of the latter phrase, or justify it either on general
grounds or by shewing, by reference to his writings, that
it is in harmony with St. Paul's mind. But the
attribution to St. Paul of the " opinion " contained in
the passage from the Rabbinical treatise " Bereshith
1 This is a slip for " Ben Kaphra's."
2 Dr. Westcott's note suggests that Martha (speaking before Christ's
death and resurrection) fell in with what may have been a common feeling.

THE RESURRECTION 63
Rabbah " x is even more extraordinary and even more
painful. I ask attention to the reasoning contained in
the Canon's words printed above : " If this opinion was
general among the Jews of the first century, we may
fairly assume (without any direct statement on his part)
that it was shared by St. Paul." The logic of this
sentence is astonishing. No one is safe from having
any degrading old wife's fable, generally current within
a few centuries of his life-time, attributed to him. And
on the strength of this reasoning St. Paul is credited
with an " opinion " which any godly Israelite who could
say the twenty-third Psalm from his heart would have
rejected with abhorrence. We compare it with the
prayer of the first martyr : " Lord Jesus, receive my
spirit " (Acts vii. 59) ; and with St. Paul's words :
" Our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, whether
we wake or sleep, we should hve together with him "
(1 Thess. v. 9 /.) ; " the desire to depart and be with
Christ ; for it is very far better " (Phil. i. 23).
(3) Lastly, I call attention to a phrase in the passage
(2 Cor. v. 1-9) which confirms my interpretation.
When in "B.C.," pp. 102 ff., I discussed the passage, I
confess to having made an omission. I did not take into
account the previous context, the consideration of
which greatly strengthens my position. Let us trace
St. Paul's thought from 2 Cor. iv. 7 onwards. The
Apostle contrasts the weakness which he found in himself,
a vessel to which God's treasure was entrusted, and the
power of God working through him. He is always being
handed over to death in order that the hfe of Jesus here
and now may be manifested in his mortal flesh. In
this faith he gives his message, assured that He who
1 This is " an exegetical Midrash on Genesis. . . In its original form it
was, according to tradition, composed by R. Hoshaiah, in the third century,
in Palestine. . . . According to Zunz it was edited in its present form
(mainly) in the sixth century, but later interpolations have been added "
(Oesterley and Box, " Religion and Worship of the Synagogue," ed. 2,
pp. 84/.).

64 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
raised up (o iyelpa*;) Jesus will raise up (iyepel)
him also so that he shares the resurrection of Jesus.
In view of this great truth and of this great hope the
Apostle does not faint. So far from this he recognises
that, while his outward physical self is continually
decaying, his inward spiritual self is being continually
renewed day by day. For his affliction, pressing but
lightly on him and lasting only for the present brief
moment, is working out in superabundant measure
an eternal burden, a burden of glory, while he fixes his
gaze not on the things that are seen but on those that
are unseen. The things unseen are alone worthy his
regard. They are eternal. The things seen are but for
a time. And of his part in the things eternal he is
assured by his conviction (otSap.ev) as to an axiomatic
truth. And this truth is that he already possesses
a building which is from God, a house not made with
human hands, eternal, laid up in heaven ; and should
it so be that his earthly house is pulled down, that
demohtion does not affect his possession of the eternal
heavenly building.
I hazard the above as a rough paraphrase of St.
Paul's words. And I call attention to three points, (i)
Note St. Paul's expectation of his part in the Resurrection
and the parallel which he draws between bis own resurrec
tion and that of Jesus Himself, (ii) The whole stress of
St. Paul's thought rests on his assured possession of an
eternal house laid up for him in heaven. The idea
that his possession of this home cannot be destroyed
by the death of his body is an added and secondary
thought, though characteristically St. Paul " goes off at
a tangent " to develop it. (iii) St. Paul writes : " We
know that, if the earthly house of our tabernacle be
pulled down, we have a building from God." This phrase
" we know " (olBafiev) is common in this group of
St. Paul's Epistles. It occurs in 1 Cor. viii. 1 (ironical), 4,
Rom. ii. 2, iii. 19, vii. 14, viii. 22, 28. A study

THE RESURRECTION 65
of these passages shews that with St. Paul at this time
it is a formula which introduces a statement of what is
a matter of common assured knowledge and is therefore.
axiomatic. The word " we know " (olBa^ev) therefore
of itself certifies us that in what follows St. Paul is not
making a communication which is novel and at variance
with what he had plainly and emphatically taught
these same correspondents some six months before.
Romans viii. II.1 The words are: "But if the
Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead
(iK veKp&v) dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus
from the dead (iK veKptbv) shah quicken also your
mortal bodies (faoirotr)o-et Kal tk dvr/Ta o-d>/j,ara vfiav)
through (or, according to another reading, because of) his
Spirit that dweUeth in you." The Canon writes thus
(" L.S.," pp. 107 /.) : "The conventional explanation
refers this to the resurrection, explaining that ' mortal '
means ' dead ' and ' quicken ' is an equivalent for
' raise.' To this explanation there are two fatal objec
tions. One is that mortal (OvrjTa) never means
' dead.' . . . The other is that, if it did, the clause
' through (or because of) His Spirit that dwelleth in you '
would have no meaning. For, according to St. Paul's
teaching, the Spirit dwells in the human spirit or in the
whole man, not in the dead body. ... I beheve the
true explanation to be this . . . The Spirit given to the
living man is a principle of hfe which secures that his
spirit either (adopting the Bishop's view of ivBvo-a-
o-dai 2) shah have power, when the body dies, to clothe
1 It must be remembered that in " The Faith of a Modern Churchman "
the Canon did not notice Rom. viii. 11, 23, and that he spoke of Phil. i. 23/.
as " the last utterance in which [St. Paul] touches upon the life to come "
(p. 26), thus ignoring the existence of Phil. iii. 10, 20 /. In " B.C. "
(pp. 122^.) I pointed out these serious omissions; and in "L.S." the
Canon has interpreted these four passages in the hope of bringing them
into conformity with his theory (which he had formulated apart from them)
as to St. Paul's changed view of the Resurrection.
2 I am quite ready to defend my view ; but as the matter is not of
primary importance here, I do not go into it. The words " shall have
power to clothe itself " do not express my view. F

66 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
itself in a spiritual body ; or (following the Vulgate)
shall be clothed in the spiritual body which is prepared
for it in heaven." The italics are mine. As briefly as
possible I make four criticisms, (i) In face of what the
Canon here writes, my readers will find it hard to
believe that in " B.C.," pp. 123 /., I dealt fully with the
phrase t<x Ovvrd o-dofiara vfiwv and that I did not
interpret it to mean " your dead bodies." Following
the guidance of that true scholar the late Dr. E. H.
Gifford in his note in the Speaker's Commentary I wrote
thus : " The fact is that St. Paul uses here the epithet
' mortal ' of the bodies of his friends not in relation to
the time of the Lord's return but quite simply and natur
ally in relation to the actual time when he wrote the
words — ' Your bodies now at this moment mortal.' "
(ii) It should be particularly noted that St. Paul
specially uses the verb faorroteiv in the sense of giving
life to what is dead ; see 1 Cor. xv. 22, 36 ; Rom. iv. 17 ;
Col. ii. 13 (o-vvefaoTToLrjo-ev, the spiritually dead),
Eph. ii. 5 ; comp. John V. 21 (iyeipei tow veKpoii<;
kuI faoirotel). The use of the verb1 therefore is a
strong confirmation of the ordinary and natural
interpretation of the passage. It is more than probable,
however, that St. Paul would. not have excluded those
ahve at the parousia from the scope of this passage as
he would have done had he used the phrase to veKpd
o-d>fiaTa vptov, (hi) The idea that the Holy Spirit
dwells in dead bodies is not in the remotest sense
implied in the ordinary interpretation. The divine
Spirit dwells in the human personahty in this life. That
indwelling is a pledge of the activity of the Spirit in
rebuilding the entire personality at the Resurrection.
(iv) What the Canon believes to be the. true explanation
is quoted above. It is a statement of the Canon's own
speculations, but in no sense is it an interpretation of
1 It should be observed that the usual rabbinic term for the Resurrection
is " the quickening of the dead," D<non n>nn ; see below, p. 80.

THE RESURRECTION 67
St. Paul's words. St. Paul writes : " He that raised
up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also x your
mortal bodies." In the Canon's " explanation " the
only thing that happens to the body is that it
dies. It is not "quickened." This objection to the
Canon's interpretation is fundamental and decisive.
Romans viii. 23. The words are : " Ourselves also
which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we our
selves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption,
to wit, the redemption of our body " (i.e., " from the
bondage of corruption," v. 21). The Canon (" L.S.,"
p. 108) writes thus : " The words ' we ourselves
groan . . .' are parallel to 2 Cor. v. 2 : 'In this
we groan . . .' For that reason, and because of the
context, it has nothing to do with the resurrection, but
expresses the hopes of those who expect to survive till the
Advent-." Again the itahcs are mine. I make three
remarks, (i) The fact that the phrase " we groan "
occurs both in Rom. viii. 23 and in 2 Cor. v. 2, 4 cannot
reasonably be taken to shew that the exact scope of
the two passages is the same. In both the word signifies
an intense yearning in the midst of present distresses
for help and deliverance in the great future. It may
be noticed that three verses further on (Rom. viii. 26),
as here in connexion with the indwelling Spirit, the figure
of groaning is again used ; but the two verses differ in
their reference, (h) The Canon thinks that the passage
expresses the hope of a section of Christian people —
" those who expect to survive till the Advent." As a
matter of fact St. Paul's language is general ; it embraces
all who had " the firstfruits of the Spirit." It cannot
be maintained that all those who then had " the first-
fruits of the Spirit " expected to survive till the Advent.
1 It is important to observe that the Kal (ko! ™ Svirra o-dfiara i/xciv)
brings the words " your mortal bodies " into close relation with the
" Christ Jesus " just before, and clearly shews that St. Paul held that
Christ's body was raised. A few authorities omit the Kal, which, however,
seems amply supported by MSS., versions, and Fathers.
F 2

68 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
To this aspect of the passage I shall return presently.
(iii) In " B.C.," p. 125, I called attention to the fact
that substantially what St. Paul says here he had already
said in 1 Cor. xv. 42 : " It is sown in corruption ; it is
raised in incorruption." This emancipation from " the
bondage of corruption " will be brought to pass " at the
reveahng of the sons of God " (v. 19) when " creation
itself also shall be dehvered from the bondage of
corruption." How this universal emancipation will be
accomphshed, and what it will be, we who are wholly
ignorant as to the final problems of creation and of life
and death need not fear to say that we do not know.
Philippians i. 21-23. The important words for our
present purpose are : " To me to hve is Christ, and to
die is gain. . . . having the desire to depart and be
with Christ ; for it is very far better." The Canon
truly says (" L.S.," p. 101) that St. Paul here " expressed
his confidence that for him to die was to be at once with
Christ." But that confidence does not in any sense
imply the expectation of being fitted for the presence
of Christ by a so-called resurrection in, or (as the Canon
wishes now to say) soon after, the hour of death. To
St. Paul every Christian is "in Christ." When he
" departs " and lays aside " the body of his humiliation,"
the spirit passes into a state in which the presence of
Christ is more vitally realised than is possible among
the things of earth and of time. He who in hfe is "in
Christ " in death is more truly than ever " with Christ."
But the perfect consummation, the restoration of the
complete personality, is reserved for the Resurrection at
the Advent. This interpretation of St. Paul's mind is,
I beheve, in full harmony with every passage in his
Epistles which alludes to the subject. It is consonant
with the prayer of St. Stephen (Acts vh. 59), the
preservation of which we probably owe to St. Paul,
with 1 Thess. v. 10, and with 2 Cor. v. 8.
Philippians iii. 10 / " That I may know him, and

THE RESURRECTION 69
the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his
sufferings, being made conformable unto his death ; if
by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from
among the dead " (el 7T&>? KaravTrjato elf rrjv i^avdaraatv rf)V
ixveKp&v). The Canon writes as follows ("L.S.," pp. 101/):
" In Phil. i. 21-24 St. Paul had expressed his confidence
that for him to die was to be at once with Christ. As
he wrote on he suffered a natural reaction of feeling.
The same distrust which once caused him to write ' Lest,
after I have preached to others, I myself should be
rejected ' (1 Cor. ix. 27) now suggested the doubt,
' What if, after all, the resurrection is not for me ? '
That doubt inspired the words ' if by any means I mav
attain unto the resurrection from the dead.' These
words may be explained in two ways. The resurrec
tion here meant may be the mystical resurrection in
this present hfe, which was described above (pp. 66,
67). That interpretation is strongly supported by the
words in Phil. hi. 10, ' becoming conformed to His
death ' (o-VftfMop(f)i£6fievo<; ra> OavaTtp avrov)) which can
hardly be explained as referring to hteral death,
for it would imply crucifixion. Or perhaps St. Paul,
like other Pharisees, regarded the resurrection of the body
as contingent, being reserved for those only who had
received the ' earnest of the Spirit.' In either case the
words represent a wave of despondency, which caused
the Apostle for a moment to doubt bis own ' election.'
But as to the mode of the resurrection they imply
nothing. The wave of despondency is soon succeeded by
a wave of hope. Suppose, after ah, he should survive
to witness the Advent, so that his living body would be
changed. That is the plain meaning of verses 20 and 21 :
' Our commonwealth ... the body of His glory.'
Neither of these passages — neither the fear of being
denied the resurrection for which he longed, nor the
hope of surviving so as not to need it — indicates any
withdrawal from the position which is taken up

70 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
in 2 Cor. v. and Phil. i. 23." The italics throughout
are mine.
I will endeavour to deal with the chief points in this
long but very important quotation, (i) We shall do well
to be vigilant when we read of successive " waves " of
emotion, under the influence of which the Apostle,
within the space of a few fines, expresses expectations
of his future quite divergent the one from the other.
And we shall be ah the more carefully on the watch
when we note that these " waves " are so timed as to
afford succour to an imperilled scheme of interpretation.
(ii) The first " wave " is a " wave of despondency."
St. Paul desponds of attaining to the resurrection, it is
said, because for a moment he doubts his own election ;
and his despondency finds expression in the el ttw?
(" if by any means "). But the words et 7rws do not
express despondency at all, but a definite though
chastened hope, here a hope chastened by humility.
That this is the meaning of el ¦ira><; becomes quite
plain when we look at the other passages in St. Paul's
Epistles in which the words occur — Rom. i. 10, xi. 14 ;
comp. Acts xxvii. 12. I venture therefore to say that the
Canon's interpretation of the passage is based on a
complete misapprehension, indeed on a reversal, of
St. Paul's meaning. There is some confusion later on
when we read of the " wave of despondency " being suc
ceeded (by the time the Apostle wrote Philippians iii.
20 /.) by a " wave of hope." For the hope is, we are
told, the hope of surviving to the Advent, whereas the
despondency is caused by St. Paul's sense that he is un
worthy of the Resurrection. Clearly therefore the hope is
not the correlative of the despondency, for the hope and
the despondency might co-exist in the Apostle's mind.
(iii) But what is the resurrection from among the dead
to which the Apostle desires to attain ? The Canon's
answer to this crucial question lacks distinctness.
(a) " The resurrection here meant," he says, " may be

THE RESURRECTION 71
the mystical resurrection in this present life " (see
above). But no instance is quoted in which
17 ij-avdarao-is (or dvdo-Tao-t<i) r/ e'« veKpcov means the
" mystical resurrection " ; for indeed such a use of the
words, I venture to say, is impossible. On the one
hand the article, here repeated before the e* veKpcov, is
decisive that the reference is to the well known and recog
nized resurrection from the dead. On the other hand
St. Paul does not use veKpol (dead) of the spiritually dead
without the addition of defining words, e.g., " in sins "
(Col. ii. 13, Eph. ii. I).1 Moreover, St. Paul habitually
connects the mystical resurrection (its effects to be gradu
ally wrought out) with the beginning of the Christian
hfe (Rom. vi. 4, Col. ii. 12 ; comp. Eph. ii. 5). Lastly,
the believer's spiritual relation to Christ's resurrection has
been already referred to by St. Paul — " that I may know
him and the power of his resurrection." I submit then
that we may dismiss the " spiritual " interpretation as
untenable, (b) The Canon continues : " Or perhaps
St. Paul, hke other Pharisees, regarded the resurrection
of the body as contingent." Here at first sight it seems
that the Canon accepts as possible what I believe to be
the true interpretation — the resurrection of the body.
But this is plainly inconsistent with his summing up,
which I now quote again, (c) " Neither of these passages
[Phil. ih. 11, 20 /.] . . . indicates any withdrawal from
the position taken up in 2 Cor. v. and Phil i. 23," i.e.,
as interpreted by the Canon. If St. Paul in Phil.
hi. 11 had in mind the resurrection of the body (in the
ordinary sense of the words) it would clearly indicate
such a withdrawal. It appears, therefore, that the
Canon interprets Phil. iii. 11 as pointing to a so-
called resurrection at the time of death. The
answer is obvious. The words which St. Paul uses
here are as emphatic and as plain as words can be.
1 The only apparent exception is in the Christian hymn which St. Paul
quotes in Eph. v. 14.

72 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
I repeat what I wrote in " B.C." (p. 128) : " It is
luminously clear that, when he wrote them, St. Paul
looked forward to being numbered among the dead,
and to being afterwards raised from among the dead. It is
impossible that he should have spoken thus if he had
believed that his so-called resurrection would take place
in the hour of his death " or (to adopt the Canon's
revised phrase) " after a brief interval."
Philippians hi. 20 / This passage I interpret of the
resurrection of the body at the Advent, an interpretation
which we find in Irenaeus (see below), and which has been
generally, if not universahy, accepted. The Canon's
interpretation is given in " L.S.," p. 102 : " Suppose,
after all, he should survive to witness the Advent, so
that his living body would be changed. This is the plain
meaning of verses 20 and 21." The argument by which
he supports this interpretation will be found in " L.S.,"
p. 119 : "For the sake of any reader who is ignorant
of Greek it must be pointed out that ' fashion anew '
represents a Greek word (p-erao-xn^aTio-et) which has
only one possible meaning. It cannot mean ' re
constitute ' a dead body, but only ' transform ' a hving
one. Therefore, if words have any reliable meaning,
this passage describes the expectation of hving men
that they will survive to see Christ descend from heaven,
and that thereupon their hving bodies will be changed.
There is. nothing which suggests the resurrection of the
dead ; nothing which is even consistent with the
supposition that it is intended."
I have to deal with the Canon's lexical note on
psrao-xvp-aTifav. A reader of his words who is ignorant
of Greek may feel bound to accept his dictum. Those,
however, who know some Greek will desire themselves to
inquire further. They will note that the word means
" to transfigure," " to change," and that there is nothing
in the word itself to limit its apphcation either to
things or to persons, either to hving bodies or to dead

THE RESURRECTION 73
bodies. They will then discover that the actual usage
of the word is decisive. The word can be used of
inanimate things. See, e.g., Clem. Horn. xi. 12 (the
writer is speaking of the material of idols which could
have been made into vessels of dishonour) vvv Be oiBk
et? tovto xprjcrifievei, ore /jteTaa")^r)iJtaTi<TavTe<; trpoaKwelre :
Chrys. in Matth., ed. Field, 207 C (of " the whole world "),
736 A (of " creation "). Clement of Alexandria (Strom, v.
813, ed. Potter) uses the substantive p.eTao-xnaaTto-ao'i of
the changes of the moon.
Moreover, there is a passage in Aristotle (de Genera
tions et Corruptione, ii. 9) which seems to me to go as
near as is possible in a non-Christian writer to ihustrate
St. Paul's use of the word in Phil. ih. 21. Aristotle is
speaking of generation or production and he uses the
word /u.eTao-%fj/iaTifeti/ to denote the change involved
in generation or production. The passage runs thus :
et Be ttjv vXvv Tt? <f>rjcreie yevvav Bid rrjv Ktvrjcrtv, cjyvatKcorepov
/lev av Xiyoi tcov ovtoo Xeyovrcov to yap dXXoiovv Kal to
/j,eTacr)(r)fjLaTt,fav alrtcoTepov tc tov yevvav, Kal iv diraatv
eldtdaftev tovto Xeyeti/ to trotovv, d/iotta? ev Te rot? (pvcrei Kal iv
Tot? dvb Te^vr??, b civ f/ KtvijTtKov.1
Turning next to the passage itself the reader will
notice that St. Paul clearly defines his meaning. He
had in view that change whereby the body of our
humiliation becomes conformed to the body of Christ's
glory. There is nothing whatever in the language to
preclude that change taking place in the resurrection of
the dead. For the Apostle's language here is precisely
parahel to his language in 1 Cor. xv. 51 /., TravTes
aXXayrjaofieda . . . oi veKpol iyepOrjcrovTat, dcfiffapToi. If
further proof is needed that an educated man who wrote
and spoke Greek could use /ueTao-^^aTto-^d? of the change
involved in the resurrection, it is sufficient to quote the
following passage from Irenaeus v. 13, 3, ed. Mass.
1 On Aristotle's doctrine of generation, see Grote's " Aristotle," ii.
pp. 330 ff.

74 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
(part remains only in the Latin version) : " Quod igitur
est humihtatis corpus, quod transfigurabit Dominus
conformatum corpori gloriae suae ? Manifestum est
quoniam corpus quod ^est caro, quae et humihatur cadens
in terram. /ieTao-%?7/xaT4o-//,o? Be auT?}?, oti dvrjTv Kat
(j>6apT7) ovcra dddvaTO<; Kal dcf>6apTO<s yiveTat, ovk e'£ tStas
vTroardcreco<; dXXa, ««Ta ttjv tov Kvpiov ivepyeiav."
I have now shewn, I beheve, conclusively that there
is nothing in the passage itself which suggests that it
does not refer to the resurrection of the dead at the
Advent. It only remains that I should add that, with
the words of Philippians iii. 11 standing in the im
mediately preceding context, it is impossible to assign
to Philippians iii. 20 f. any other meaning.1
We have now considered separately all the passages
which belong to the supposed third period of St. Paul's
development of thought as to the Resurrection. And
we have seen that in these passages there is no indica
tion at all that St. Paul had changed his convictions as
to the Resurrection since he wrote 1 Corinthians xv.
But a connected study of the passages in Romans and
Philippians, as interpreted by the Canon, is instructive.
First there are the two passages in Romans viii.
within the compass of a dozen verses. The former of
these (Rom. viii. 11) is addressed to ah those whom the
letter may reach, and is therefore quite general. Here,
according to the Canon, the hope expressed is that
each, " when the body dies," shall receive a spiritual
body. The latter (Rom. vhi. 23) is equahy general.
It embraces within its scope St. Paul himself and all
whom the letter may reach — all who " have the firstfruits
of the Spirit." But here the hope expressed, according
to the Canon, is that all these will survive till the Advent.
Why, we ask, does St. Paul within a few moments so
1 This conclusion does not imply that St. Paul would have excluded
from the scope of the passage those who survive till the Advent. In this
regard this passage is closely parallel to 1 Cor. xv. 51 /.

THE RESURRECTION 75
completely change the prospect which he holds out to
the whole Christian body whom he addresses ? The
same question arises, in a slightly different form, in
regard to the two contiguous verses in Philippians iii.
In v. 11 St. Paul, in the Canon's view, desires, if only he
were worthy, to attain to a so-called resurrection at the
time of death. In vv. 20 /., in the Canon's view,'' we " —
St. Paul is included — have the assured hope of sur
viving till the Lord's Return. The difficulty of such an
entire change of expectation within a few moments in a
single passage is almost, if not quite, insuperable. But
the difficulty is much more than doubled when the same
phenomenon recurs in a second passage.
But the difficulties in which the Canon's interpreta
tion of St. Paul is involved do not end here. In a
fundamental passage of " The Faith of a Modern
Churchman " (p. 26) we are told that, when the third
period of St. Paul's " advancing faith " as to the Resurrec
tion began, " the expectation of a speedy Advent, and
with it the thought of Sheol, had passed away from his
mind." 1 We next turn to a passage in " L.S.," p. 96 :
" In such times [such times as those through which
St. Paul passed just before he wrote 2 Cor.] men's
minds move rapidly. In a brief space, and almost
unconsciously, St. Paul readjusted his view of the
future to fit the prospect that he would be dead and
buried long before the summons of the last trumpet
sounded, which he had expected to hear with his mortal
ears." Again, in " L.S.," p. 112, the same conclusion
as to St. Paul's expectation in the future is insisted on
and supported by arguments. " The eleventh chapter
of Romans," the Canon urges, " predicts that Israel will
be converted before the Advent, and that their con
version will in part result from the conversion of the
Gentile world. When 'the fulness of the Gentiles be
1 I ought to say that I am in general agreement with Canon Glazebrook
as to the fading away of St. Paul's expectation of survival till the parousia.

76 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
come in,' then ' all Israel shall be saved.' And the whole
process is part of the divine plan [xi. 32]. . . . Sanguine
as St. Paul undoubtedly was, who will venture to assert
that at the age of fifty or so he expected ah this process
to be completed in his own hfetime ? In Eph. i. 10,
probably written some five or six years later, the
prospect seems even more remote. The Advent is
included as part of ' a dispensation of the fulness of the
times, to sum up all things in Christ.' " So far the
Canon. What are we to say ? To use a convenient
colloquialism, the Canon cannot have it both ways.
He cannot maintain the theory, as he does consistently
all through, that St. Paul before he wrote the Second
Epistle to Corinth gave up the hope of being ahve at
the Lord's Return, and on the other hand ask us to
interpret Romans viii. 23 and Philippians ih. 20 / as
expressing St. Paul's confident hope that both his corres
pondents generally, the type of all contemporary Christian
people, and also he himself would survive tiU the Advent.
And we must observe that the passage in Philippians ih.
was written a short time before or after the Epistle to the
Ephesians ; and further that this interpretation of it,
now shewn to be weighted with such insuperable
difficulties, is yet necessary to the Canon's theory of the
third stage of St. Paul's " advancing faith " in regard
to the Resurrection.
It is necessary that I should deal with an important
question as to the use of the word Resurrection?- In
" B.C.," p. 153, I wrote : " The blunt question must be
asked and must be faced whether this [i.e. the Modernist]
use of the word ' Resurrection ' is morally defensible. . .
Through the centuries of the history of the Church the
Resurrection of Christ has meant, not that in the hour
1 In the following pages (p. 77 to p. 83) I have had the valuable help
of a very old friend, Canon Lukyn Williams, D.D., whose learning in
Rabbinical matters is well known. For this I owe him a great debt.
But I myself am alone responsible for all that I have here written.

THE RESURRECTION 77
of His death on the Cross His spirit proved to be immortal,
but that on the third day His body was raised from the
grave, the same but transfigured, and that therefore
no element of His humanity — body, soul, or spirit — ¦
continued under ' the bondage of corruption.' " The
Canon rejoins (" L.S.," p. 128) : " A sufficient answer
will, I think, be found on p. 113-15." It is necessary,
therefore, to consider the important note in " L.S.,"
pp. 113 ff., " On the Greek and Aramaic Words which
are rendered by ' Resurrection.' ' There are five main
points in it to which I desire to call attention.
(i) The Hebrew verb Dip commonly means to arise.
In a few passages it means to stand or to endure, e.g.,
Is. xl. 8, " The word of our God shah stand (LXX. ^evei)
for ever." x In the Bibhcal Aramaic of Daniel the
cognate adjective Qnp occurs twice in the sense
of " enduring " — in reference to (a) a kingdom, iv. 23
(Th. /level); (b) God, vi. 27 (Th. p-ivcov). Further,
" in the Targums (Onkelos as well as Jonathan) Dip 2
is used to translate in (Hebrew for ' hving ') not
only when it is predicated of God," e.g. Num. xiv.3 21, 28,
" but also when it refers to men," e.g. Deut. iv. 4.
The Canon then quotes a communication from Professor
Kennett : " Comparing these translations with the
Aramaic of Daniel, I have no doubt that the adjective
Dp was in our Lord's day equivalent to in" (Re
living). These interesting facts and inferences, I beheve,
may be accepted.
(ii) David Kimchi was born in 1160 a.d. and died in
1235. He commented on the Psalms. Ps. i. 5 reads
thus : " The wicked shaU not stand (iftp^) in the
judgement, nor sinners in the congregation of the
righteous." Kimchi, in the translation given by the
1 The Oxford Hebrew Lex. gives for this meaning 1 Sam. xiii. 14 (LXX.
o-t^o-etoi), Job viii. 15 (LXX. irro^lvji), Job xv. 29 (LXX. /xelvri).
3 This should be not the verb but the adjective (D>p).
3 This is the correction of a slip in " L.S.," p. 113 — " Num. v. 21, 28."

78 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
Canon, explains the verse thus : " He means to say that
in the day of judgment, i.e., in the day of death, there
will not be for them a resurrection (niDlpn)-" And
again : "In the case of the righteous, at their death,
there will be for them a resurrection : but in the case
of the wicked there will not be for them a resurrection,
but their soul will perish with the body in the day of death.
And he (the Psalmist) says ' in the congregation of the
righteous,' because when the righteous dies his soul
with the souls of the righteous ones enjoys fehcity in the
glory above." The Canon then continues : " Here it is
evident that by the word rendered ' resurrection '
Kimchi means the continued hfe of the spirit, and not
a rising of the body in any sense." 1
On the passage from Kimchi I ask attention to three
considerations, (i) Let us for the sake of argument
aUow that in the above extract the word translated
" resurrection " is rightly so translated. It is plainly
impossible to infer that the word used by Kimchi 1160-
1235 a.d. existed and had the sense of " resurrection "
when in the first century a.d. Christ spoke and the
Gospels were written, and not less impossible to infer
that the cognate verb (Dip) in the first century meant to
have part in the resurrection, (ii) The word piEpn iu
Kimchi 's comment takes up the word inpi (stand)
in the Psalm. Hence the conditions are satisfied if
Kimchi's substantive, which the Canon represents by
" resurrection," means " standing," " endurance " ; and
the context suggests that " endurance " signifies here
" endurance in hfe " (comp. Dan. vi. 27 above), (hi) But
does the substantive n»1pn itself mean " resurrection "
in the sense of " resurrection of the dead " ? Is there
1 In the volume lately published by S.P.C.K., "The Longer Com
mentary of R. David Kimchi on the First Book of Psalms," translated by
R. G. Finch^ B.D., the verse of the Psalm is rendered "Wicked men shall
not rise up," and the words in the Commentary are rendered " they shall
have no rising again," " the righteous, when they die, shall have a rising
again." Thus the use of the technical term "resurrection" is avoided.
Compare below, p. 79 (last sentence).

THE RESURRECTION 79
authority for this interpretation ? Buxtorf's " Lexicon
Chaldaicum, Talmudicum, et Rabbinicum " (1640),
col. 2001, gives no other passage where the word
occurs but the passage of Kimchi on Ps. i. In Levy's
" Chaldaisches Worterbuch fiber die Targumim" (1868 ;
ii. p. 550), two passages are quoted. One is from the
Targum of Onkelos on Lev. xxvi. 37 (see the passage)
on which the comment is : "And you shall have no
noipn — kein Bestehen " (no endurance). The other is
from the Jerusalem Targum on Gen. xv. 12, where the
words are (as given by Levy) : " The Persian Kingdom
shah f ah and to ah eternity shall have no nftlpn — kein
Aufstehen " (no rising again). Further, the phrase
nDlpn OTlb pN is used twice of Israel in the Midrash
Rabbah to Sh'moth (i.e. the Midrash on Exodus, §§ 31,
near middle, and 42, near beginning), in both of which
places it is rendered by Levy (" Neuhebraisches und
Chaldaisches Worterbuch," 1889, p. 662) : " keinen
Bestand haben " (have no permanence). M. Jastrow
indeed (" Dictionary of the Targumin, etc.," 1903, p.
1690), renders the first, " they [the Gentiles] said that
they [Israel] would not rise again, for the Lord has
rejected them " ; and the second " if I [Moses] leave
Israel (to their fate) and go down the mountain, there
will be no restoration for them for ever." But his
second version undoubtedly gives the right sense of his
first. Both lexicons also give the phrase rTOIpn pN>
which means a stone which, if worn by a woman with
child, shields her from abortion, and which suggests
preservation but appears to have no connotation of
resurrection. None of these authorities give any in
stance (independent of Kimchi on Ps. i.) of the word
nDlpn as meaning the resurrection of the dead. It will
be specially noticed that the phrase used by Kimchi of
the individual man is the same as that used of nations in
the passages cited in the lexicons — "there is — there
is not — for him or them a TTO^pPi-"

80 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
There seems therefore to be no evidence that the
word n^lpn had the technical sense of " resurrection "
(i.e. resurrection of the dead) ; and, unless it had this
technical sense, the Canon's argument fahs to the
ground. It is in this connexion an important fact that
the regular phrase for " the resurrection of the dead "
in Rabbinic writings is DVian n^nri (the making-alive,
the quickening, of the dead). These considerations justify
the conclusion that the passage from Kimchi on Ps. i.
has no bearing whatever on the language of our Lord
and of the writers of the New Testament.
(iii) The Canon (" L.S.," p. 114) writes: "Hatch's
Concordance to the LXX. shows that iyelpeadai and
dvio-Taadai are used to render Dip in ah its mean
ings." This is one of those general statements which
for practical purposes are useless. The question is
whether these two Greek verbs are used in the LXX. in
the sense of " to endure, abide," and especially with the
meaning " to abide in hfe.' Neither of these verbs is
employed in the passages where Dip seems to mean
" to endure " cited above, p. 77. I do not find, nor
should I expect to find, such a usage of iyeipeo-dai in
the LXX. As to dvlo-Tao-0ai} the nearest approach to
such a usage which I have noted is Ps. i. 5 (ovk
avao-Trjo-ovTai oi do-e/3et? iv Kpiaei), but there the meaning
is probably the hteral physical meaning " rise or stand
up." It is certain, I beheve, that no instance of either
of these verbs signifying continuance in hfe or survival
can be quoted from the Greek Old Testament.
(iv) Let us now turn to Mark xii. 26 (trepl Be t&v
veKp&v on iyeipovTai). The Canon writes thus : " Since
iyeipovTat undoubtedly represents some form of the
Aramaic word Dip, and oip in the time of our Lord
often meant the endurance or survival of the spirit, it is
at least possible that our Lord was speaking, not of any
bodily ' resurrection,' but of the survival or quickening
of the spirit." The italics are mine. It is said here

THE RESURRECTION 81
that often in the time of our Lord the Aramaic verb had
this sense. No single instance of this use is cited. No
proof whatever of this assertion1 is given. Canon
Kennett (quoted above) inferred from a comparison of
certain translations in the Targums with the Aramaic of
Daniel that " op was in our Lord's day equivalent to
in " [living]. But it must be noted (i) that he does not
suggest that this Aramaic adjective was then, if ever, used
of the survival of the soul after death ; (ii) that he does
not extend his inference to the meaning of verb Dip in
our Lord's time. Further, it must be remarked that the
comments (on, e.g., Deut. iv. 4 ; 2 Sam. xii, 22), quoted
from the Targums, in which the word Dp is used to
translate the Hebrew word for " hving," describe
persons surviving, body and soul, on earth. To sum up
then ; unless we make groundless assumptions, there is
no reason for giving a novel sense to the -^epl Be tS>v
veKpcov on iyeipovTat of St. Mark. Further, the context
is decisive. The Sadducees in their question presuppose
a bodily resurrection for the express purpose of deriding
it. If He had wished to do so, our Lord might
have rejected that presupposition. In fact our Lord
accepts the presupposition of his adversaries — " For
when they shah rise from among the dead " (v. 25)
— and then proceeds wholly to correct their conception
of its nature. To suppose that our Lord's words which
foUow — " And as touching the dead, that they are
raised " — teach a resurrection which is simply the
survival of the spirit after death makes our Lord con
tradict what He had just said, and entirely breaks up
the sequence of thought. If we may beheve the
evidence of Acts xxhi. 8 2 and of Josephus (Antiq. xviii.
1 Is it connected with the mistake I pointed out on p. 77, n. 2 ?
2 Acts loe. cit. : " The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither
angel, nor spirit." Josephus, Antiq. loe. cit. : " In the judgment of the
Sadducees reason shews that men's souls are destroyed with their
bodies " ; de Bell. Jud. loe. cit. -. " The Sadducees do away with the survival
of the soul and with punishments and requitals in Hades." G

82 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
i., 4, de Bell. Jud. ii. vih. 14), our Lord's use of Ex. hi. 6
met the Sadducees' denial that the spirits of men
survive death and thus removed their greatest argument
against the resurrection. Further, it must be care
fully noticed that in v. 24 (which is connected with
v. 27 by the irXavdo-de common to both) our Lord tells
the Sadducees that their error was twofold — they were
ignorant of "the Scriptures"; they were ignorant of "the
power of God." The witness of Scripture is dealt with in
v. 26. The consideration of "the power of God" cannot
be ignored ; it was implied by our Lord, if not asserted
in definite words which have fallen out in a compressed
report. He, hke the Apostle (Acts xxvi. 8), said
or imphed : " Why is it judged incredible with you if
God doth raise the dead ? "
(v) After deahng with the iyelpovTat of Mark
xii. 26, the Canon continues (the itahcs are mine) :
" If that conclusion be correct, we are bound to ask
the further question, 7s it not probable that Greek-
speaking Jews often used iyelpeaOai and dvlo-Tao-ffcu
to describe not a resurrection of the body, but the
preservation of the spirit and its emancipation
from Sheol, which is sometimes called the spiritual
resurrection ? The conception of Sheol as a prison
house beneath the earth would help to make such an
expression natural. If that be the case, the often
repeated phrases r}yep9rj iK veKpcov, rjyetpev avTov e'/c veKpcov,
may, at least sometimes, bear a different meaning
from that which is usuahy assigned to them." We
note here how hypothesis succeeds hypothesis.
But an even more remarkable phenomenon presents
itself to us in " L.S.," p. 128 (see above, p. 77) : " A
sufficient answer will, I think, be found on pages 113-15
[the note just considered] where it is shown that this
use of the word [i.e., the modernist use of the word
Resurrection] — or something very hke it — was common
among the Jews of the first century and for several

THE RESURRECTION 83
centuries afterwards, and that a very important saying
of our Lord can hardly be explained without assuming
that He endorsed it." The itahcs are mine. Here
ah the, hypotheses are ehminated, and it is boldly
stated that a conclusion based on legitimate argument
— " where it is shown " — has been reached. These two
passages are a remarkable example of the triumphant
progress towards a desired goal which may easily be
made by the simple expedient of reasoning on the basis
of hypotheses regarded as proved facts.
I submit therefore that the case for " the wider use
of the word ' resurrection,' to express the new hfe in
a spiritual body, without implying that the mortal
body is raised from the grave " being " in accordance
with very early usage, perhaps in Hebrew, certainly
in Aramaic and in Greek" ("L.S.," p. 113) crumbles
away on examination and comes to nothing.

G 2

CHAPTER IV
THE RESOLUTIONS OF THE BISHOPS
The last subject with which I have to deal is what
Canon Glazebrook calls "the question of Authority."
A brief statement of facts is needed to make the position
plain. In the early part of 1918 I read the Canon's
book, " The Faith of a Modern Churchman." It was,
as I pointed out in " B.C.," p. 2, strictly a representative
book ; and on p. 78 it put forward a " claim " that the
two clauses of the Apostles' Creed, " Born of the Virgin
Mary " and " The third day he rose again from the dead "
could legitimately be " interpreted symbolically." I
soon decided that I ought, as Bishop of the Diocese,
to take notice of this claim ; and for some few weeks I
hoped that I might be able to do so in a pamphlet
dealing with the Canon's arguments as well as with, his
conclusions. But a diocesan Bishop is not a man of
leisure ; and I found that I could not within reasonable
time carry out this purpose. Meanwhile my silence
might be misunderstood. Hence I pubhshed in the
Diocesan Gazette for May 1918 a letter to the Canon
containing the words : "I am unable to admit the
' claim ' which, as I understand you, you put forward
that the two clauses of the Apostles' Creed — ' Born of
the Virgin Mary ' and ' The third day he rose again from
the dead ' — can legitimately be ' interpreted symbolic
ally.' " I added : " That this position is not simply
that of an individual Bishop is clear from the following
84

THE RESOLUTIONS OF THE BISHOPS 85
facts." I then printed in full the Resolution in which
the Lambeth Conference of 1908 placed on record its
conviction that "the historical facts stated in the
Creeds are an essential part of the Faith of the Church,"
and pointed out that in April, 1914, the Upper House
of the Convocation of Canterbury " solemnly reaffirmed "
this Resolution. My letter appeared in the Times of
May 13. To this the Canon rephed in a letter pubhshed
in the Times of May 21, in which he dealt with the
Resolutions of the Lambeth Conference and of the
Upper House of Convocation. The questions connected
with both these Resolutions were further discussed by
me in " Behef and Creed " and by Canon Glazebrook
in " The Letter and the Spirit.'' I now desire as
briefly as I can to deal with four points.
(i) It was maintained in certain reviews of " Behef
and Creed " that I regarded the pronouncements of the
Bishops to which I referred as invested with something
hke infalhbihty. Nothing could have been more
moderate than the language I used in my letter of
April, 1918, in regard to the Episcopal Resolutions,
(quoted just above) ; and I need hardly say that I do
not consider any human pronouncement infallible.
But with most Church people I regard, as I have always
regarded, the official utterances of the Bishops, whether
in the Lambeth Conference or in Convocation, as giving
responsible guidance as to what are the doctrines and
the position of the Anglican Church.
(ii) In his letter printed in the Times of May 21,
1918, the Canon called attention to the fact there was
no definition given by the Lambeth Conference of 1908
as to what were " the historical facts stated in the
Creeds " which the Conference held to be " an essential
part of the Faith of the Church." There now come
into view two important facts. (1) The only question
between the Canon and myself was concerned, with the
articles of the Creed regarding the Virgin Birth and

86 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
the Lord's Resurrection on the third day. The very
raison d'etre of his letter therefore was to raise the
question whether the articles regarding the Virgin
Birth and the Lord's Resurrection on the third day had
a place among " the historical facts stated in the Creeds "
to which the Conference referred in their Resolution.
To raise that question was the purport not of any one
sentence in the letter of the Canon, but of the whole
letter. (2) The Canon's letter laid it down that the
two articles — " He descended into hell " and " He
ascended into heaven " — were explained by many
Bishops " to be symbols of spiritual truth " and were
not therefore regarded as " statements of fact." Very
well, then, I argued (" B.C.," p. 19 /.), suppose that
what it is the purport of your whole letter to shew to
be possible is the fact, and that the Virgin Birth and
the Resurrection of the Lord are not among "the
historical facts stated in the Creed," what historical
facts are left ? Only these, " Suffered under Pontius
Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried." It follows
that the Lambeth Conference solemnly passed a
Resolution to affirm the historical character of the events
connected with the Passion.
(iii) I have now to deal with a paragraph of the
Canon's which will be found in " L.S.," p. 148 : " The
Bishop of Ely thinks so well of the other Bishops that
he is confident that they agree with him. And he quotes
a number of documents which tend to show that such,
in fact, was their private opinion. But that is not the
point. I assumed throughout that, as individuals, most
of them held the views which he attributes to them.
What concerns me and the other memoriahsts is their
dehberate and corporate pronouncement. Therefore
the array of quotations, which fills a large space in the
first chapter of " B. and C." is not relevant. Instead
of being a wall of defence, as he supposes, it is reaUy no
more than a smoke-screen which serves to conceal,

THE RESOLUTIONS OF THE BISHOPS 87
from himself at least, his evasion of the real issue.
The main contention of my letter, therefore, remains
unchallenged." So the Canon wrote. It will be noticed that here the
issue is of the simplest possible character — matters of
fact in regard to which there is no ambiguity and no
difficulty of interpretation. There is nothing for it
but for me to say plainly that, when the Canon reads
" B.C.," p. 20 — p. 24, with ordinary care, he will see
that the statement of his which I have just transcribed
is not true to the facts. For in the first place, I did not
" quote a number of documents " ; I did not put forward
an " array of quotations." I gave two quotations, one
from each of two documents. In the second place, the
two documents from which I quoted did not express the
mere opinion of individuals but the judgment of the
Conference itself. I explained this quite clearly in
" B.C.," pp. 20 ff. I will now explain it again. I
wrote ("B.C.," p. 20) as foUows : "When we are
considering the meaning of an author in a certain passage,
it is well to enquire whether there is any other passage
in his writings in which he treats of the same subject.
Acting on this principle I call attention to . . ." (a)
The first document quoted. I continue the quotation :
" I cah attention to a highly significant paragraph in
the Encyclical Letter of the same Bishops who passed
the Resolution under discussion (" Official Report of
the Lambeth Conference of 1908," pp. 28 /".)." I now
add that this Encyclical Letter begins with the words :
" We, Archbishops, Bishops Metropohtan, and other
Bishops of the Holy Catholic Church in full communion
with the Church of England." This " we " of course
continues throughout the letter. The letter is " signed on
behalf of the Conference " by the President (the Arch
bishop of Canterbury), by the Registrar of the Con
ference, and by the three Secretaries. No document
emanating from the Lambeth Conference could con-

88 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
ceivably be more truly an official and corporate pro
nouncement of the Conference than this, (b) The
second document quoted. This document — " The Re
port of the Committee on the Faith and Modern
Thought " — held a unique position in the transactions
of the Conference. I carefully explained the matter
in " B.C.," pp. 22/ I will now explain it again. It is
expressly stated in the official Report of the Conference
(p. 68) that the Reports of Committees " must be taken
as having the authority only of the Committees by
whom they were respectively prepared and presented."
To this rule there was one exception. The first of the
" Resolutions formally adopted by the Conference " was
as follows : " The Conference commends to Christian
people and to all seekers after truth the Report of the
Committee on The Faith and Modern Thought, as a
faithful attempt to shew how that claim of our Lord Jesus
Christ, which the Church is set to present to each
generation, may, under the characteristic conditions
of our time, best command allegiance." It was from
this Report, which had thus received the formal im
primatur of the Conference, that I quoted a passage.
The two quotations, printed in full in " B.C.," pp. 21-24,1
amply confirm my interpretation of the Resolution of
the Conference.2
(iv) The Canon, to my real regret, is much annoyed
with me because I pointed out the seriousness of his
1 I content myself with quoting here the important words of the
Encyclical Letter : " We reaffirm the essential place of the historic facts
stated by the Creeds in the structure of our faith. Many in our day have
rashly denied the importance of these facts, but the ideas which these facts
have in part generated and have always expressed cannot be dissociated
from them. Without the historic Creeds the ideas would evaporate into
unsubstantial vagueness, and Christianity would be in danger of degener
ating into a nerveless altruism."
2 If the circumstances were not what they are, it would be amusing to
notice that, in the paragraph which immediately follows his parable of
the smoke-screen, the Canon quotes, as being decisive as to the interpreta
tion of a highly important sentence in the Resolution of Convocation, the
opinion of an individual, namely, an extract from Bishop Gore's speech
in the debate as reported in the Church Times.

THE RESOLUTIONS OF THE BISHOPS 89
omission of certain very important words of Convocation
in his reference to the Resolution of Convocation, and
he says that I made this " a ground for charging [him]
with dishonesty " ("L.S.," p. 149). I must state, there
fore, what are the facts. Convocation passed a Resolution
reaffirming the Resolutions of the Lambeth Conference.
It ran as follows, the words within square brackets
being those which I complained that the Canon ignored :
" These Resolutions we desire solemnly to reaffirm
[, and in accordance therewith we express our deliberate
judgment that the denial of any of the historical facts
stated in the Creeds goes beyond the limits of legitimate
interpretation, and gravely imperils that sincerity of
profession which is plainly incumbent on Ministers of
the Word and Sacraments]. At the same time recog
nising that our generation is called to face new problems
raised by historical criticism, we are anxious not to
lay unnecessary burdens upon consciences," etc. The
Canon in his letter wrote thus : " The bishops, in reply,
after reaffirming the Lambeth declaration, concluded
with these words : ' At the same time, recognising
that our generation . . .' " I pointed out that not
only were the omitted words momentous in themselves,
but that they were essential for the understanding of
the words which follow. Anyone reading the Canon's
summary would necessarily infer that the words " At the
same time recognising that," etc. were intended by the
Bishops to qualify the Lambeth Conference Resolution.
" They must, that is, have inferred that the Bishops
reaffirmed indeed the Lambeth Conference Resolution,
but at the same time by a rider weakened its force "
(" B.C.," p. 28). I think that I have now made it quite
clear why I called the Canon's omission " serious."
I desire at the close of this pamphlet to say a few
words as to my position in the whole controversy between
the Canon and myself. I take as my starting point

90 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
some words of the Canon in the Preface (p. vi.) to " The
Letter and the Spirit." Referring to my original letter
to him of April 26, 1918, he says : " I venture to think
that he made a mistake in sending his letter to the
press : for he thus converted a remonstrance into a
challenge. Any one who reads his letter will see that
I could not avoid making a pubhc reply." The Canon's
claim as to the interpretation of certain articles of the
Apostles' Creed was made pubhcly. It had a place
in a book pubhshed as an emphaticahy representative
book. I was Bishop of the Diocese in which the Canon
held preferment. A private remonstrance on my part
would have been meaningless. It was essential that
my letter, hke his claim, should be before the pubhc.
When I printed my letter in the Diocesan Gazette I
meant it to be pubhc property. As a member of the
Lambeth Conference in 1908 and as a member of Con
vocation in 1914 I had deliberately and solemnly given
my vote for a Resolution affirming that " the historical
facts stated in the Creeds are an essential part of the
Faith of the Church." I should indeed have been a
coward if, when a Clergyman holding office in the
Diocese of which I am Bishop publicly challenged
this position, I had held my peace or contented myself
with writing to him a private note of remonstrance.
I could not allow it to be said that I had twice joined
my brother Bishops in a definite and clear affirmation
of principle, and that I had then shrunk from applying
in a concrete case what I had had part in so solemnly
asserting. I held, to quote my own words (" B.C.,"
p. 182), that, " if the authorities of the Church of England
were to recognise as valid the ' claim ' ' symbolically '
to interpret the clauses of the Apostles' Creed as to
the Virgin Birth and as to the Resurrection of our
Lord on the third day, they would render false and
delusive the credentials which the Church of England
offers to Christendom." For the moment I was the

THE RESOLUTIONS OF THE BISHOPS 91
representative of " the authorities of the Church of
England." My action was with me simply a matter of
conscience. My duty, however intensely painful, was
in my judgment absolutely clear. Hence my pubhc
Letter to Canon Glazebrook, written deliberately and
with conviction
To write that, etter was a primary duty from which
there was no escape. But I thought, and I now think,
that there also rested on me a secondary duty. For on the
one hand I instinctively shrank from publicly challeng
ing conclusions and not pubhcly challenging the argu
ments on which those conclusions were based. On the
other hand, I was conscious that it was sometimes
said, and probably stih oftener thought, that those in
office rely on authority and not on argument. Since
therefore I had for many years given time and thought
to the grave questions at issue, I decided that it was
right that I should examine what Canon Glazebrook
had written in " The Faith of a Modern Churchman "
and pubhsh the results of my examination. A similar
sense of duty has compehed me to write this pamphlet.
Whatever may be the imperfections of my words, I
submit them to the judgment of my fellow Churchmen
and of my fellow Christians. I earnestly hope that they
may be used in the cause of truth.

INDEX

Aristotle, 73
Ascetics, the, 12
Augustine, St., 9 n., 13
avio-Taadai, 80 ff. B
Bereshith Rabbah, 62 /.
Bethune-Baker, Dr., 20/.
Body, Christ's, after the Resur
rection, 39 ff,. 42 ; of men, after
the Resurrection, 9 /. ; synonym
of flesh, 8
Burial of our Lord, 36/.
Buxtorf, Lexicon, 79

Flesh (as synonym of body), 8

G

Galatians, Epistle to the — (ii. 20), 39
Genealogies of Christ, 22
Goodwin, Professor, 56/.
Gospels, Resurrection of Christ,
42 ff.

H
Headlam, Dr., 42
Hell, 20

Colossians, Epistle to the — (ii. 12),
37 ff.
" Constantinopolitan " Creed, 17
Convocation of Canterbury (1914),
Mff-
Corinthians, First Epistle to the —
(ix. 1), 40/. ; (xv.), 35#., 39#.
Corinthians, Second Epistle to the —
(i. llff.), 52 /. ; (iv. Iff.), 63/. ;
(v. Iff.), 55 ff.

D
David, Son of, 22/^.
Descent into Hell, \9 ff.

Ignatius, 20, 27 n.
Inferna, 20
Irenaeus, 10
Irony of St. John, 26 ,

Jastrow, Lexicon, 79
John, St., Gospel according to —
(i. 13), 25; (iii. 13), 18/.;
(vi. 42), 26/; (vii. 41/.), 26
Josephus, 50 «., 81 n.

E
idv, 56
eytlpeaSai, 80 ff.
ei ye (e% itep), 60
etirais, 69
CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT

K
Kennett, Dr., 77
Kimchi, 77/.
Kal, after ei, 59/. :
spondenee,' 37 n.

of corre-

94 THE CREED AND THE NEW TESTAMENT

Lambeth Conference (1908), 85 jf.
Levy, Lexicon, 79
Lightfoot, Bp., 20, 47, 49
M
Mark, St., Gospel according to —
(xii. 25), 51 ; (xii. 26), 80 ff. ; (xvi.
7), 41 n. ; (xvi. 8), 33 ff.
Matthew, St., Gospel according to —
(i. 1, 18), 24
Milligan, Dr. G., 47 »., 57 n.
Monnica, 12/.
Moulton, Dr., 57 n.
Murray, New English Dictionary,
20, 30
ILtTaoxmaTiCeiv, 72 ff.
flVtTT'fiptOV, 49/.

0
Origen, 10/., 14 ff.
olhaficv, 64/.
S\6k\iipos, 49

Philippians, Epistle to the —
(i. 21-23), 68; (iii. 10/.), 68 #. ;
(iii. 20/.), 72 ff.

R
Resurrection of the flesh, 8ff.
Romans, Epistle to the — (i. 3), 23 ;
(viii. 11), 65ff. ; (viii. 23), 67
Rufinus, 17/.

S
Salmon, the late Dr., 28 /.

Thessalonians, First Epistle to the —
(iii. 8), 57; (iv. 13 ff.), 46 ff. ;
(v. 23), 48/.
Thessalonians, Second Epistle to
the— (i. 6 #), 47/.

Paul, St., saw " the Lord," 39 ff. ;
view of the Resurrection, 50 /. ;
consistency, 52 ff.

V

Virgin Birth, the, 22 JT.
nmpn> 78/-

printed in great britain by
Richard Clay and Sons, Limited,
brunswick street, stamford street, 8.b.
and bunpay, suffolk.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 05318 4223