Page images
PDF
EPUB

one in which the primitive purity and simplicity of the Gospel becomes gradually corrupted.

This would be maintained by two different parties, in different ways. The orthodox Protestant would say: "The Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants!' We appeal from the Church to the Bible." The modern liberal religious thinker would say: "Christianity as Christ preached it is our religion!' We appeal

from the Church, and from the Bible itself, or parts of it, to Christ." It is desired to substitute "the spiritual religion of Christ for the speculative religion of Christendom."

Let us first examine the principle, Back to the Scriptures.

Newman, chiefly through his mother's influence, had been educated in a deep and sincere reverence for the Bible: this never left him, but it changed its form. He saw that it is plainly absurd to appeal to the Bible as an infallible source of doctrine. S. T. Coleridge said in his Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit: "How can infallible truth be infallibly conveyed in defective and

fallible expressions," such as all human language must necessarily be? It appears that Newman would have assented to this. In the Essay which we are speaking of, he shows how it is impossible to abide by the mere letter of the books, if only because we need to understand the letter-for instance in such a phrase as "the Word became Flesh" -and this gives rise to many further questions, especially as the structure of the books is so unsystematic and various, and their style so figurative and indirect. He shows that orthodox Protestantism is under a delusion when it supposes that all its doctrines are taught in the Bible, or even that they may be easily and plainly deduced from its words. In the Apologia he observes that what the mere Protestant does is to take “a large system of theology” and “apply it to Scripture"-read into the words of the book a system derived from, and given to him by, the historical development of Christianity, which he wishes to forsake.

Other questions

as Newman showssuch as the extent of the Canon and the

1 Ch. ii. §§ i. and ii.

E

limits of inspiration, cannot be settled by appeal to the Bible, for the prophets and apostles gave no decision about them. While thus objecting to the maxim of "The Bible and the Bible only," Newman would of course appeal to ecclesiastical tradition to settle such questions. But the breakdown and general abandonment of the traditional view as to the origin and composition of the Old Testament books, and the doubt as to some of those in the New Testament, have made the argument so strong that neither Protestant nor Catholic has any ground to stand upon from which to appeal to the Bible as infallible.

Lastly, Newman points out that to appeal to the Bible is not to escape the uncertainty of appealing to an authority which is growing; for within the Biblical religion itself there is a development through the prophets to Jesus, whose words are in their turn developed by the apostles: "the whole truth, or large portions of it, are told, yet only in their rudiments, or in miniature; and they are expanded and finished in their parts as the course of revelation proceeds." Similarly,

"in the apostolic teaching, no historical point can be found at which the growth of doctrine ceased." To recognise that growth involves not only expansion and completion of detail, but the dying away of old forms, would turn the statements just quoted into expressions of the modern view of evolution as regards Hebraism and Christianity. But Newman failed to see the importance of what we have called the "negative element" in development. Το this point we shall have to return immediately.

His conclusion is, that the Bible was never intended to teach doctrine but only to prove it, and that if we would learn doctrine we must have recourse to the formularies of the Church. This view, he had long before decided, was "self-evident to those who have at all examined the structure of Scripture." He says:

We are told that God has spoken. Where? In a book? We have tried it and it disappoints; it disappoints us, that most holy and blessed gift, not from fault of its own, but because it is used for a purpose for which it was not given. The Ethiopian's reply, when

[ocr errors]

St Philip asked him if he understood what he was reading, is the voice of Nature: How can I, unless some man shall guide me?" 1

But the distinction between " teaching " and "proving" doctrine from the Bible is not very clear. If it is true that any one can find in the words of the book any doctrine which he is determined to find there-and Newman seems implicitly to admit this, within limits—it is also true that by similar determination any doctrine can be proved from the book.

The other principle to which we referred was, "Back to Jesus." Against those who would maintain that the developments of ecclesiastical theology have been a series of "corruptions of Christianity," he adduces "notes" by which a true development may be distinguished from a corrupt growth:

The point to be ascertained is the unity and identity of the idea with itself through all stages of its development, from first to last; to guarantee this substantial unity, it must be seen to be one in type; one in its system of principles; one in its assimilative power towards externals; one in its logical consecutiveness; one in the witness of its earlier phases to its later; one

1 Essay on Development, ch. ii. § ii.

« PreviousContinue »