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The Christian Life written by Thomas Arnold

T >> Thomas Arnold >> The Christian Life




1st. It is important to bear in mind the distinction which Coleridge
enforces so earnestly between the understanding and the reason. I do not
know whether Mr. Gladstone, in the passage quoted above, uses the word
"understanding" as synonymous with reason, or in that stricter sense in
which Coleridge employs it. But the writer of the Tract seems to allude
to the stricter sense, when he calls it a characteristic of rationalism
"to base its system upon personal experience, on the evidence of sense."
If this be the case, then it would seem that rationalism is the
appealing to the decision of the understanding in points where the
decision properly belongs not to the understanding, but to the reason.
This is a great fault, and one to which all persons who belong to the
sensualist school in philosophy, as opposed to the idealist school,
would be more or less addicted. But then, this fault consists not in an
over-estimating of man's intellectual nature generally, but in the
exalting one part of it unduly, to the injury of another part; in
deferring to the understanding, rather than to the reason.

2d. Faith and reason are often invidiously contrasted with each other,
as if they were commonly described in Scripture as antagonists; whereas
faith is more properly opposed to sight, or to lust, being, in fact, a
very high exercise of the pure reason; inasmuch as we believe truths
which our senses do not teach us, and which our passions would have us,
therefore, reject, because those truths are taught by Him in whom reason
recognises its own author, and the infallible source of all truth.

3d. It were better to oppose reason to passion than to faith; for it may
be safely said, that he who neglects his reason, so far as he does
neglect it, does not lead a life of faith afterwards, but a life of
passion. He does not draw nearer to God, but to the brutes, or rather to
the devils; for his passions cannot be the mere instinctive appetites of
the brute, but derive from the wreck of his intellectual powers, which
he cannot utterly destroy, just so much of a higher nature that they are
sins, and not instincts, belonging to the malignity of diabolic nature,
rather than to the mere negative evil of the nature of brutes.

4th. Faith may be described as reason leaning upon God. Without God,
reason is either overpowered by sense and understanding, and, in a
manner, overgrown, so that it cannot comprehend its proper truths; or,
being infinite, it cannot discover all the truths which concern it, and
therefore needs a farther revelation to enlighten it. But with God's
grace strengthening it to assert its supremacy over sense and
understanding, and communicating to it what of itself it could not have
discovered, it then having gained strength and light not its own, and
doing and seeing consciously by God's help, becomes properly faith.

5th. Faith without reason, is not properly faith, but mere power
worship; and power worship may be devil worship; for it is reason which
entertains the idea of God--an idea essentially made up of truth and
goodness, no less than of power. A sign of power exhibited to the senses
might, through them, dispose the whole man to acknowledge it as divine;
yet power in itself is not divine, it may be devilish. But when reason
recognises that, along with this power, there exist also wisdom and
goodness, then it perceives that here is God; and the worship which,
without reason, might have been idolatry, being now according to
reason is faith.

6th. If this were considered, men would be more careful of speaking
disparagingly of reason, seeing that it is the necessary condition of
the existence of faith. It is quite true, that when we have attained to
faith, it supersedes reason; we walk by sunlight, rather than by
moonlight; following the guidance of infinite reason, instead of finite.
But how are we to attain to faith? in other words, how can we
distinguish God's voice from the voice of evil? for we must distinguish
it to be God's voice before we can have faith in it. We distinguish it,
and can distinguish it no otherwise, by comparing it with that idea of
God which reason intuitively enjoins, the gift of reason being God's
original revelation of himself to man. Now, if the voice which comes to
us from the unseen world agree not with this idea, we have no choice but
to pronounce it not to be God's voice; for no signs of power, in
confirmation of it, can alone prove it to be God. God is not power only,
but power, and truth, and holiness; and the existence of even infinite
power, does not necessarily involve in it truth and holiness also; else
the notion of the world being governed by an evil being would be no more
than a contradiction in terms; and the horrible strife of the two
principles of Manicheism would be a mere matter of indifference; for if
power alone constitutes God, whichever principle triumphed over the
other, would become God by the very fact of its victory; and thus
triumphant evil would be good.

7th. Reason, then, is the mean whereby we attain to faith, and escape
the devil worship of idolatry; but the understanding is not a necessary
condition of faith, and very often impedes it; for the understanding
having for its basis the reports of sense and experience, has no direct
way of arriving at things invisible, and rather shrinks back from that
world with which it is in no way familiar. It has a work to do in regard
to revelation, and an important work; but divine things not being its
proper matter, its work concerning them must be subordinate, and its
tendency is always to fall back from the invisible to the visible,--from
matters of faith to matters of experience. Its work, with respect to
revelation, is this--that it should inquire into the truth of the
outward signs of it; which outward signs being necessarily things
visible and sensible, fall within its province of judgment. Thus
understanding judges the external witnesses of a revelation: if miracles
be alleged, it is the business of understanding to ascertain the fact of
their occurrence; if a book claim to be the record of a revelation, it
belongs to the understanding to make out the origin of this book, the
time when it was written, who were its authors, and what is the first
and grammatical meaning of its language. Or, again, if any men profess
to be the depositaries of divine truth, by an extraordinary commission
from God, the understanding, being familiar with man's nature and
motives, can judge of their credibility--can see whether there are any
marks of folly in them, or of dishonesty, or whether they are at once
sensible and honest. And in all such matters, the prerogative of the
understanding to judge is not to be questioned; for all such points are
strictly within its dominion; and our Lord's words are of universal
application, that we should render to Caesar the things which are
Caesar's, no less than we should render to God the things that are God's.

Faith may exist, as I said, without the action of the understanding, but
never without that of the reason. It may exist independent of the
understanding, because faith in God is the natural result of the idea of
God: and that idea belongs to the reason, and the understanding is not
concerned with it. But when a special revelation has been given us,
through human instruments; when the understanding is called in to
certify the particular fact, that in such and such particular persons,
writings, or events, God has made himself manifest in an extraordinary
manner; it is the human instrumentality which requires the judgment of
the understanding; the bringing in of human characters, and sensible
facts, which are matters of sense and experience; and, therefore, it is
mere ignorance when Christians speak slightingly of the outward and
historical evidences of Christianity, and indulge in very misplaced
contempt for Paley and others who have worked out the historical proof
of it. Such persons may observe, if they will, that where the historical
evidence has not been listened to, there a belief in Christianity,
properly so called, is wanting. Living examples might, I think, be named
of men whose reason entirely acknowledges the internal proofs of a
divine origin which are contained in the Christian doctrines, but whose
understandings are not satisfied as to the facts of the Christian
history, and particularly as to the fact of our Lord's resurrection.
Such men are a remarkable contrast to those whose understandings are
fully satisfied of the historical truth of our Lord's resurrection, but
who are indifferent to, or actually deny, those doctrinal truths of
which another power than the understanding must be the warrant. It is
important to observe, therefore, that in a revelation involving, as an
essential part of it, certain historical facts, there is necessarily a
call for the judgment of the understanding, although in religious faith
simply the understanding may have no place.

8th. Now, then, the clearest notion which can be given of rationalism
would, I think, be this: that it is the abuse of the understanding in
subjects where the divine and the human, so to speak, are intermingled.
Of human things the understanding can judge, of divine things it
cannot;--and thus, where the two are mixed together, its inability to
judge of the one part makes it derange the proportions of both, and the
judgment of the whole is vitiated. For example, the understanding
examines a miraculous history; it judges truly of what I may call the
human part of the case; that is to say, of the rarity of miracles,--of
the fallibility of human testimony,--of the proneness of most minds to
exaggeration,--and of the critical arguments affecting the genuineness
or the date of the narrative itself. But it forgets the divine part,
namely, the power and providence of God, that He is really ever present
amongst us, and that the spiritual world, which exists invisibly all
around us, may conceivably, and by no means impossibly, exist, at some
times and to some persons, even visibly. These considerations, which the
understanding is ignorant of, would often modify our judgment as to the
human parts of the case. Things not impossible in themselves are
believed upon sufficient testimony; and with all the carelessness and
exaggeration of historians, the mass of history is notwithstanding
generally credible. Again, with regard to the history of the Old
Testament, our judgment of the human part in it requires to be
constantly modified by our consciousness of the divine part, or
otherwise it cannot fail to be rationalistic; that is, it will be the
judgment of the understanding only, unchecked by the reason. Gesenius'
Commentary on Isaiah is rationalistic, for it regards Isaiah merely as a
Jewish writer, zealously attached to the religion of his country, and
lamenting the decay of his nation, and anxiously looking for its future
restoration. No doubt Isaiah was all this, and therefore Gesenius'
Commentary is critically and historically very valuable; the human part
of Isaiah is nowhere better illustrated; but the divine part of the
prophecy of Isaiah is no less real, and the consciousness of its
existence should actually qualify our feelings and language even with
reference to the human part.

9th. The fault, then, of rationalism appears to me to consist not so
much in what it has as in what it has not. The understanding has its
proper work to do with respect to the Bible, because the Bible consists
of human writings and contains a human history. Critical and historical
inquiries respecting it are, therefore, perfectly legitimate; it
contains matter which is within the province of the understanding, and
the understanding has God's warrant for doing that work which he
appointed it to do; only, let us remember, that the understanding cannot
ascend to things divine; that for these another faculty is
necessary,--reason or faith. If this faculty be living in us, then there
can be no rationalism; and what is called so is then no other than the
voice of Christian truth. Where a man's writings show that he is keenly
alive to the divine part of Scripture, that he sees God ever in it, and
regards it truly as his word, his judgments of the human part in it are
not likely to be rationalistic; and if his understanding decides
according to its own laws, upon points within its own province, while
his faith duly tempers it, and restrains it from venturing upon
another's dominion, the result will, in all probability, be such as
commonly attends the use of God's manifold gifts in their just
proportions,--it will image, after our imperfect measure, the holiness
of God and the truth of God.

It is very true, and should be acknowledged in the fullest manner, that
for the study of the highest moral and spiritual questions another
faculty than the understanding is wanting; and that without this faculty
the understanding alone cannot arrive at truth. But it is no less true,
that while there is, on the one side, a faculty higher than the
understanding, which is entitled to pronounce upon its defects; "for he
that is spiritual judgeth all things," ([Greek: auachriuei];) so there
is a clamour often raised against it, not from above, but from
below,--the clamour of mere shallowness and ignorance, and passion. Of
this sort is some of the outcry which is raised against rationalism. Men
do not leap, _per saltum mortalem_, from ordinary folly to divine
wisdom: and the foolish have no right to think that they are angels,
because they are not humanly wise. There is a deep and universal truth
in St. Paul's words, where he says, that Christians wish "not to be
unclothed but clothed upon, that mortality may be swallowed up of life."
Wisdom is gained, not by renouncing or despising the understanding, but
by adding to its perfect work the perfect work of reason, and of
reason's perfection, faith.

* * * * *

NOTE I. P. 331.

"_A famous example of this may be seen in the sixth chapter of St.
John,"_ &c.--The interpretation of this chapter, and particularly of the
part alluded to in the text, is of no small importance; for it is
remarkable, that the highest notions with respect to the presence of
our Lord in the Holy Communion are often grounded upon this passage in
St. John's Gospel, which yet, in the judgment of others, most decisively
repels them.

The whole question resolves itself into this--Are our Lord's words in
this place co-ordinate with the Holy Communion, or subordinate to it?
That is, do they and the communion alike point to some great truth
superior to them both: or do our Lord's words, in St. John, point to the
communion itself as their highest meaning?

The communion itself expresses a truth above itself by a symbolical
action; the words of our Lord, in St. John, are exactly the same with
that symbolic action; it is natural, therefore, to understand them not
as referring to it, but to the same[14] higher truth to which it refers
also: and the more so as the communion is not once mentioned by St. John
either in his Gospel or in his Epistles; but the idea which the
communion expresses appears to have been familiar to his mind; at least,
if we suppose that his mention of the blood and water flowing from our
Lord's side in his Gospel, and his allusion again to the same fact in
his Epistle, have reference in any degree to it, which seems to me
most probable.

[Footnote 14: The common tendency to make the Christian sacraments an
ultimate end rather than a mean, is exhibited in the heading of the
tenth chapter of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, in our authorized
version, where we find the first verses described as stating, that "the
Jews' sacraments were types of ours." Whereas, so far is it from the
apostle's argument to represent our sacraments as the reality of which
the Jews' sacraments were the type, that he is describing theirs and
ours as co-ordinate with each other, and both alike subordinate to the
same truth; and he argues, that if the Jews, with their sacraments, did
notwithstanding lose the reality which those sacraments typified, so we
should take heed lest we, with our sacraments, should lose it also. The
erroneous heading is not given in the Geneva Bible, where we have, on
the contrary, the true observation; "the sacraments of the old fathers
were all one with ours, for they respected Christ only." It is true that
if no more were meant than that "the Jews' sacraments were like ours,"
there would be no reason to object to the expression; but apparently
more is meant, as the word type seems to imply that what it is compared
with is the reality, of which it is itself only the image; and one thing
cannot properly be called the type of another, when both are but types
of the same third thing. But the divines of James the First's reign and
of his son's, were to the reformers exactly what the so-called fathers
were to the apostles: the very same tendencies, growing up even in
Elizabeth's reign, becoming strengthened under the Stuart kings, and
fully developed in the nonjurors, which distinguish the divines of the
seventeenth century from those of the sixteenth, distinguish also the
church system from the gospel. There are many who readily acknowledge
this difference in the English church, while they would deny it in the
case of the ancient church. Indeed, it is not yet deemed prudent to avow
openly that they prefer the so-called fathers to the apostles, and
therefore they try to persuade themselves that both speak the same
language. And doubtless, if the Scriptures are to be interpreted
according to the rule of the writers of the third, and fourth, and fifth
centuries, the thing can easily be effected; as, by a similar process,
the Articles of the Church of England, if interpreted according to the
rule of the nonjurors and their successors, might be made to speak the
very sentiments which their authors designed to condemn.]

Our Lord repels the notion of a literal acceptation of his words, where
he says,--"It is the Spirit which profiteth, the flesh profiteth
nothing; the words which I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are
life." It seems impossible, therefore, to refer these words, which he
tells us expressly are Spirit and life, to any outward act of eating and
drinking as their highest truth and object.

But the words in the sixth chapter of St. John do highly illustrate the
institution and purpose of the communion, and especially the remarkable
words which our Lord used in instituting it. They show what infinite
importance he attached to that truth which he expressed both in
symbolical words and action under the same figure, of eating His body
and drinking His blood. But to suppose that that truth can only be
realized by one particular ritual action, so that the one great work of
a Christian is to receive the Lord's supper,--which it must be, if our
Lord's words in the sixth chapter of St. John refer to the
communion,--is so contrary to the whole character of our Lord's
teaching, and not least so in the very words so misinterpreted, that to
maintain such a doctrine, leading, as it does, to such manifold
superstitions, is actually to preach another Gospel than Christ's--to
bring in a mystical religion instead of a spiritual one,--to do worse
than to Judaize.

* * * * *

NOTE K. P. 345.

_"A set of persons, who wish to magnify the uncertainties of the
Scripture in order to recommend more plausibly the guidance of some
supposed authoritative interpreter of it."_--"The high church party," we
have been lately told, "take Holy Scripture for their guide, and, in the
interpretation of it, defer to the authority of primitive antiquity: the
low church party contend for the sufficiency of private judgment." It is
become of the greatest importance to see clearly, not what one party, or
another, may contend for, but what is the real truth, and what,
accordingly, is the duty of every Christian man to do in this matter.
The sermon to which this note refers, is an attempt to show that
Scripture is not hopelessly obscure or ambiguous; but it may not be
inexpedient here to consider a little, what are the objections to the
principle of the high church party; to clear away certain difficulties
which are supposed to beset the opposite principle; and to state, if
possible, what the truth of the whole question is.

I. The objections to the principle of the high church party are these:
1st. Its extreme vagueness. What is primitive antiquity? and where is
its authority to be found? Does "primitive antiquity" mean the first
three centuries? or the first two? or the first five? or the first
seven? Does it include any of the general councils? or one of them? or
four? or six? Are Irenaeus and Tertullian the latest writers of
"primitive antiquity?" or does it end with Augustine? or does it
comprehend the venerable Bede? One writer has lately told us, that our
Reformers wished the people to be taught, "that, for almost seven
hundred years, the church was most pure." Are we, then, to hold that
"primitive antiquity" embraces a period of nearly seven centuries? Seven
centuries are considerably more than a third part of the whole duration
of the church, from its foundation to this hour: can the third part of a
nation's history be called its primitive antiquity? Is a tenet, or a
practice taught when Christianity had been more than six hundred years
in the world, to be called primitive? We know not, then, in the first
place, what length of time is signified by "primitive antiquity."

But let it signify any length of time we choose, I ask, next, where is
its authority to be found? In the decisions of the general councils? But
if we call the first four centuries "primitive antiquity," we find in
this period only two general councils; if we include the fifth century,
we get four; if we take in the sixth and seventh centuries, we have
then, in all, six general councils. Will the decisions of any, or all,
of these six councils furnish us with an authoritative interpretation of
Scripture? They give us the Nicene and the Constantinopolitan creeds;
they condemn various notions with respect to the person of our Lord, and
to some other points of belief; and they contain a variety of
regulations for the discipline and order of the church; but, with the
exception of some particular passages, there is no authority in the
creeds, or canons, or anathemas of those councils, for the
interpretation of Scripture; they leave its difficulties just where they
were before. It is but little then, which the first six general
councils will do towards providing the student of Scripture with an
infallible standard of interpretation.

Where, however, except in the councils, can we find any thing claiming
to be the voice of the church? Neither individual writers, nor yet all
the writers of the first seven centuries together, can properly be
called the church. They form, even altogether, but a limited number of
individuals, who, in different countries, and at different periods,
expressed, in writing, their own sentiments, but without any public
authority. Origen, one of the ablest and most learned of them all, was
anathematized by the second council of Constantinople; Tertullian was
heretical during a part of his life; Lactantius was taxed with
heterodoxy. How are we to know who were sound? And if sound generally,
that is to say, if they stand charged with no heretical error, yet it
does not follow that a man is infallible because he is not heretical;
and none of these writers have been distinguished like the five great
Roman lawyers whom the edict of Theodosius[15] selected from the mass,
and gave to their decisions a legal authority. Or again, if it be said
that the agreement of the great majority of them is to be regarded as
decisive, we answer, that as no individual amongst them is in himself an
authority legally, so neither can any number of them be so; and if a
moral authority only be meant, such as we naturally ascribe to the
concurring judgment of many eminent men, then this is a totally
different question, and is open to inquiry in every separate case; for
as, on the one hand, no one denies that such a concurring judgment is
_an_ authority, yet, on the other hand, it may be outweighed, either by
the worth of the few who differ from the judgment, or by the reason of
the case itself; and the concurring judgment of the majority may show no
more than the force of a general prejudice, which only a very few
individuals were sensible enough to resist.

[Footnote 15: Cod. Theodos. lib. i. tit. iv. The edict is issued in the
name of the emperors Theodosius (the younger) and Valentinian (the
younger), in the year A.D. 426.]

In fact, it would greatly help to clear this question if we understand
what we mean by allowing, or denying, the authority of the so-called
fathers. The term _authority_ is ambiguous, and according to the sense
in which I use it, I should either acknowledge it or deny it.--The
writers of the first four, or of the first seven centuries, have _an_
authority, just as the scholiasts and ancient commentators have: some of
them, and in some points, are of weight singly; the agreement of many
of thorn has much weight; the agreement of almost all of them would have
great weight. In this sense, I acknowledge their authority; and it would
be against all sound principles of criticism to deny it. But if, by
authority, is meant a _decisive_ authority, a judgment which may not be
questioned, then the claim of authority in such a case, for any man, or
set of men, is either a folly or a revelation. Such an authority is not
human, but divine: if any man pretends to possess it, let him show God's
clear warrant for his pretension, or he must be regarded as a deceiver
or a madman.