Introduction
Introduction Introduction The purpose of this book is not to decide the religious issue of the present day, but merely to present the issue as sharply and clearly as possible, in order that the reader may be aided in deciding it for himself. Presenting an issue sharply is indeed by no means a popular business at the present time; there are many who prefer to fight their intellectual battles in what Dr.
Francis L. Patton has aptly called a "condition of low visibil‐ ity."[1] Clear-cut definition of terms in religious matters, bold facing of the logical implications of religious views, is by many persons regarded as an impious proceeding. May it not dis‐ courage contribution to mission boards? May it not hinder the progress of consolidation, and produce a poor showing in columns of Church statistics? But with such persons we cannot possibly bring ourselves to agree. Light may seem at times to be an impertinent intruder, but it is always beneficial in the end. The type of religion which rejoices in the pious sound of traditional phrases, regardless of their meanings, or shrinks from "controversial" matters, will never stand amid the shocks of life. In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding; the really important things are the things about which men will fight.
In the sphere of religion, in particular, the present time is a time of conflict; the great redemptive religion which has al‐ ways been known as Christianity is battling against a totally di‐ verse type of religious belief, which is only the more destruct‐ ive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional
Christian terminology. This modern non-redemptive religion is called "modernism" or "liberalism." Both names are unsatis‐ factory; the latter, in particular, is question-begging. The move‐ ment designated as "liberalism" is regarded as "liberal" only by its friends; to its opponents it seems to involve a narrow ignor‐ ing of many relevant facts. And indeed the movement is so
Introduction various in its manifestations that one may almost despair of finding any common name which will apply to all its forms. But manifold as are the forms in which the movement appears, the root of the movement is one; the many varieties of modern lib‐ eral religion are rooted in naturalism--that is, in the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God (as distinguished from the ordinary course of nature) in connection with the ori‐ gin of Christianity. The word "naturalism" is here used in a sense somewhat different from its philosophical meaning. In this non-philosophical sense it describes with fair accuracy the real root of what is called, by what may turn out to be a de‐ gradation of an originally noble word, "liberal" religion.
The rise of this modern naturalistic liberalism has not come by chance, but has been occasioned by important changes which have recently taken place in the conditions of life. The past one hundred years have witnessed the beginning of a new era in human history, which may conceivably be regretted, but certainly cannot be ignored, by the most obstinate conservat‐ ism. The change is not something that lies beneath the surface and might be visible only to the discerning eye; on the con‐ trary it forces itself upon the attention of the plain man at a hundred points. Modern inventions and the industrialism that has been built upon them have given us in many respects a new world to live in; we can no more remove ourselves from that world than we can escape from the atmosphere that we breathe.
But such changes in the material conditions of life do not stand alone; they have been produced by mighty changes in the human mind, as in their turn they themselves give rise to further spiritual changes. The industrial world of today has been produced not by blind forces of nature but by the con‐ scious activity of the human spirit; it has been produced by the achievements of science. The outstanding feature of recent history is an enormous widening of human knowledge, which has gone hand in hand with such perfecting of the instrument of investigation that scarcely any limits can be assigned to fu‐ ture progress in the material realm.
Introduction The application of modern scientific methods is almost as broad as the universe in which we live. Though the most palp‐ able achievements are in the sphere of physics and chemistry, the sphere of human life cannot be isolated from the rest, and with the other sciences there has appeared, for example, a modern science of history, which, with psychology and soci‐ ology and the like, claims, even if it does not deserve, full equality with its sister sciences. No department of knowledge can maintain its isolation from the modern lust of scientific conquest; treaties of inviolability, though hallowed by all the sanctions of age-long tradition, are being flung ruthlessly to the winds.
In such an age, it is obvious that every inheritance from the past must be subject to searching criticism; and as a matter of fact some convictions of the human race have crumbled to pieces in the test. Indeed, dependence of any institution upon the past is now sometimes even regarded as furnishing a pre‐ sumption, not in favor of it, but against it. So many convictions have had to be abandoned that men have sometimes come to believe that all convictions must go.
If such an attitude be justifiable, then no institution is faced by a stronger hostile presumption than the institution of the Christian religion, for no institution has based itself more squarely upon the authority of a bygone age. We are not now inquiring whether such policy is wise or historically justifiable; in any case the fact itself is plain, that Christianity during many centuries has consistently appealed for the truth of its claims, not merely and not even primarily to current experi‐ ence, but to certain ancient books the most recent of which was written some nineteen hundred years ago. It is no wonder that that appeal is being criticized today; for the writers of the books in question were no doubt men of their own age, whose outlook upon the material world, judged by modern standards, must have been of the crudest and most elementary kind. Inev‐ itably the question arises whether the opinions of such men
Introduction can ever be normative for men of the present day; in other words, whether first-century religion can ever stand in com‐ pany with twentieth-century science.
However the question may be answered, it presents a seri‐ ous problem to the modern Church. Attempts are indeed some‐ times made to make the answer easier than at first sight it ap‐ pears to be. Religion, it is said, is so entirely separate from sci‐ ence, that the two, rightly defined, cannot possibly come into conflict. This attempt at separation, as it is hoped the following pages may show, is open to objections of the most serious kind.
But what must now be observed is that even if the separation is justifiable it cannot be effected without effort; the removal of the problem of religion and science itself constitutes a prob‐ lem. For, rightly or wrongly, religion during the centuries has as a matter of fact connected itself with a host of convictions, especially in the sphere of history, which may form the subject of scientific investigation; just as scientific investigators, on the other hand, have sometimes attached themselves, again rightly or wrongly, to conclusions which impinge upon the in‐ nermost domain of philosophy and of religion. For example, if any simple Christian of one hundred years ago, or even of today, were asked what would become of his religion if history should prove indubitably that no man called Jesus ever lived and died in the first century of our era, he would undoubtedly answer that his religion would fall away. Yet the investigation of events in the first century in Judea, just as much as in Italy or in Greece, belongs to the sphere of scientific history. In oth‐ er words, our simple Christian, whether rightly or wrongly, whether wisely or unwisely, has as a matter of fact connected his religion, in a way that to him seems indissoluble, with con‐ victions about which science also has a right to speak. If, then, those convictions, ostensibly religious, which belong to the sphere of science, are not really religious at all, the demon‐ stration of that fact is itself no trifling task. Even if the prob‐ lem of science and religion reduces itself to the problem of dis‐ entangling religion from pseudoscientific accretions, the seri‐ ousness of the problem is not thereby diminished. From every
Introduction point of view, therefore, the problem in question is the most serious concern of the Church. What is the relation between Christianity and modern culture; may Christianity be main‐ tained in a scientific age?
It is this problem which modern liberalism attempts to solve.
Admitting that scientific objections may arise against the par‐ ticularities of the Christian religion-- against the Christian doc‐ trines of the person of Christ, and of redemption through His death and resurrection--the liberal theologian seeks to rescue certain of the general principles of religion, of which these particularities are thought to be mere temporary symbols, and these general principles he regards as constituting "the es‐ sence of Christianity."
It may well be questioned, however, whether this method of defense will really prove to be efficacious; for after the apolo‐ gist has abandoned his outer defenses to the enemy and with‐ drawn into some inner citadel, he will probably discover that the enemy pursues him even there. Modern materialism, espe‐ cially in the realm of psychology, is not content with occupying the lower quarters of the Christian city, but pushes its way into all the higher reaches of life; it is just as much opposed to the philosophical idealism of the liberal preacher as to the Biblical doctrines that the liberal preacher has abandoned in the in‐ terests of peace. Mere concessiveness, therefore, will never succeed in avoiding the intellectual conflict. In the intellectual battle of the present day there can be no "peace without vic‐ tory"; one side or the other must win.
As a matter of fact, however, it may appear that the figure which has just been used is altogether misleading; it may ap‐ pear that what the liberal theologian has retained after abandoning to the enemy one Christian doctrine after another is not Christianity at all, but a religion which is so entirely dif‐ ferent from Christianity as to be long in a distinct category. It may appear further that the fears of the modern man as to Christianity were entirely ungrounded, and that in abandoning
Introduction the embattled walls of the city of God he has fled in needless panic into the open plains of a vague natural religion only to fall an easy victim to the enemy who ever lies in ambush there.
Two lines of criticism, then, are possible with respect to the liberal attempt at reconciling science and Christianity. Modern liberalism may be criticized (1) on the ground that it is un‐ christian and (2) on the ground that it is unscientific. We shall concern ourselves here chiefly with the former line of criti‐ cism; we shall be interested in showing that despite the liberal use of traditional phraseology modern liberalism not only is a different religion from Christianity but belongs in a totally dif‐ ferent class of religions. But in showing that the liberal at‐ tempt at rescuing Christianity is false we are not showing that there is no way of rescuing Christianity at all; on the contrary, it may appear incidentally, even in the present little book, that it is not the Christianity of the New Testament which is in con‐ flict with science, but the supposed Christianity of the modern liberal Church, and that the real city of God, and that city alone, has defenses which are capable of warding of the as‐ saults of modern unbelief. However, our immediate concern is with the other side of the problem; our principal concern just now is to show that the liberal attempt at reconciling Chris‐ tianity with modern science has really relinquished everything distinctive of Christianity, so that what remains is in essentials only that same indefinite type of religious aspiration which was in the world before Christianity came upon the scene. In trying to remove from Christianity everything that could possibly be objected to in the name of science, in trying to bribe off the en‐ emy by those concessions which the enemy most desires, the apologist has really abandoned what he started out to defend.
Here as in many other departments of life it appears that the things that are sometimes thought to be hardest to defend are also the things that are most worth defending. In maintaining that liberalism in the modern Church represents a return to an unchristian and sub-Christian form of the religious life, we are particularly anxious not to be misunderstood. "Unchristian" in such a connection is sometimes taken as a term of opprobrium.
Introduction We do not mean it at all as such. Socrates was not a Christian, neither was Goethe; yet we share to the full the respect with which their names are regarded. They tower immeasurably above the common run of men; if he that is least in the King‐ dom of Heaven is greater than they, he is certainly greater not by any inherent superiority, but by virtue of an undeserved privilege which ought to make him humble rather than con‐ temptuous. Such considerations, however, should not be al‐ lowed to obscure the vital importance of the question at issue.
If a condition could be conceived in which all the preaching of the Church should be controlled by the liberalism which in many quarters has already become preponderant, then, we be‐ lieve, Christianity would at last have perished from the earth and the gospel would have sounded forth for the last time. If so, it follows that the inquiry with which we are now con‐ cerned is immeasurably the most important of all those with which the Church has to deal. Vastly more important than all questions with regard to methods of preaching is the root question as to what it is that shall be preached. Many, no doubt, will turn in impatience from the inquiry--all those, namely, who have settled the question in, such a way that they cannot even conceive of its being reopened. Such, for example, are the pietists, of whom there are still many. "What," they say,
"is the need of argument in defense of the Bible? Is it not the Word of God, and does it not carry with it an immediate certi‐ tude of its truth which could only be obscured by defense? If science comes into contradiction with the Bible so much the worse for science!" For these persons we have the highest re‐ spect, for we believe that they are right in the main point; they have arrived by a direct and easy road at a conviction which for other men is attained only through intellectual struggle.
But we cannot reasonably expect them to be interested in what we have to say. Another class of uninterested persons is much more numerous. It consists of those who have definitely settled the question in the opposite way. By them this little book, if it ever comes into their hands, will soon be flung aside as only another attempt at defense of a position already hopelessly lost. There are still individuals, they will say, who believe that
Introduction the earth is flat; there are also individuals who defend the Christianity of the Church, miracles and atonement and all. In either case, it will be said, the phenomenon is interesting as a curious example of arrested development, but it is nothing more.
Such a closing of the question, however, whether it approve itself finally or no, is in its present form based upon a very im‐ perfect view of the situation; it is based upon a grossly exag‐ gerated estimate of the achievements of modern science. Sci‐ entific investigation, as has already been observed, has cer‐ tainly accomplished much; it has in many respects produced a new world. But there is another aspect of the picture which should not be ignored. The modern world represents in some respects an enormous improvement over the world in which our ancestors lived; but in other respects it exhibits a lament‐ able decline. The improvement appears in the physical condi‐ tions of life, but in the spiritual realm there is a corresponding loss. The loss is clearest, perhaps, in the realm of art. Despite the mighty revolution which has been produced in the external conditions of life, no great poet is now living to celebrate the change; humanity has suddenly become dumb. Gone, too, are the great painters and the great musicians and the great sculptors. The art that still subsists is largely imitative, and where it is not imitative it is usually bizarre. Even the appreci‐ ation of the glories of the past is gradually being lost, under the influence of a utilitarian education that concerns itself only with the production of physical well-being. The "Outline of His‐ tory" of Mr. H. G. Wells, with its contemptuous neglect of all the higher ranges of human life, is a thoroughly modern book.
This unprecedented decline in literature and art is only one manifestation of a more far-reaching phenomenon; it is only one instance of that narrowing of the range of personality which has been going on in the modern world. The whole de‐ velopment of modern society has tended mightily toward the limitation of the realm of freedom for the individual man. The tendency is most clearly seen in socialism; a socialistic state would mean the reduction to a minimum of the sphere of indi‐
Introduction vidual choice. Labor and recreation, under a socialistic govern‐ ment, would both be prescribed, and individual liberty would be gone. But the same tendency exhibits itself today even in those communities where the name of socialism is most ab‐ horred. When once the majority has determined that a certain regime is beneficial, that regime without further hesitation is forced ruthlessly upon the individual man. It never seems to occur to modern legislatures that although "welfare" is good, forced welfare may be bad. In other words, utilitarianism is be‐ ing carried out to its logical conclusions; in the interests of physical well-being the great principles of liberty are being thrown ruthlessly to the winds.
The result is an unparalleled impoverishment of human life.
Personality can only be developed in the realm of individual choice. And that realm, in the modern state, is being slowly but steadily contracted. The tendency is making itself felt es‐ pecially in the sphere of education. The object of education, it is now assumed, is the production of the greatest happiness for the greatest number. But the greatest happiness for the greatest number, it is assumed further, can be defined only by the will of the majority. Idiosyncrasies in education, therefore, it is said, must be avoided, and the choice of schools must be taken away from the individual parent and placed in the hands of the state. The state then exercises its authority through the instruments that are ready to hand, and at once, therefore, the child is placed under the control of psychological experts, themselves without the slightest acquaintance with the higher realms of human life, who proceed to prevent any such ac‐ quaintance being gained by those who come under their care.
Such a result is being slightly delayed in America by the rem‐ nants of Anglo-Saxon individualism, but the signs of the times are all contrary to the maintenance of this halfway position; liberty is certainly held by but a precarious tenure when once its underlying principles have been lost. For a time it looked as though the utilitarianism which came into vogue in the middle of the nineteenth century would be a purely academic matter, without influence upon daily life. But such appearances have
Introduction proved to be deceptive. The dominant tendency, even in a country like America, which formerly prided itself on its free‐ dom from bureaucratic regulation of the details of life, is to‐ ward a drab utilitarianism in which all higher aspirations are to be lost.
Manifestations of such a tendency can easily be seen. In the state of Nebraska, for example, a law is now in force according to which no instruction in any school in the state, public or private, is to be given through the medium of a language other than English, and no language other than English is to be stud‐ ied even as a language until the child has passed an examina‐ tion before the county superintendent of education showing that the eighth grade has been passed.[2] In other words, no foreign language, apparently not even Latin or Greek, is to be studied until the child is too old to learn it well. It is in this way that modern collectivism deals with a kind of study which is absolutely essential to all genuine mental advance. The minds of the people of Nebraska, and of any other states where simil‐ ar laws prevail,[3] are to be kept by the power of the state in a permanent condition of arrested development.
It might seem as though with such laws obscurantism had reached its lowest possible depths. But there are depths lower still. In the state of Oregon, on Election Day, 1922, a law was passed by a referendum vote in accordance with which all chil‐ dren in the state are required to attend the public schools.
Christian schools and private schools, at least in the all-import‐ ant lower grades, are thus wiped out of existence. Such laws, which if the present temper of the people prevails will prob‐ ably soon be extended far beyond the bounds of one state,[4]]
[which will] mean of course the ultimate destruction of all real education. When one considers what the public schools of America in many places already are--their materialism, their discouragement of any sustained intellectual effort, their en‐ couragement of the dangerous pseudoscientific fads of experi‐ mental psychology--one can only be appalled by the thought of a commonwealth in which there is no escape from such a soulkilling system. But the principle of such laws and their ulti‐
Introduction mate tendency are far worse than the immediate results.[5] A public school system, in itself, is indeed of enormous benefit to the race. But it is of benefit only if it is kept healthy at every moment by the absolutely free possibility of the competition of private schools. A public school system, if it means the provid‐ ing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument of tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thought in the middle ages was combated by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective. Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them then to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist. Such a tyranny, supported as it is by a perverse technique used as the instrument in des‐ troying human souls, is certainly far more dangerous than the crude tyrannies of the past, which despite their weapons of fire and sword permitted thought at least to be free.
The truth is that the materialistic paternalism of the present day, if allowed to go on unchecked, will rapidly make of Amer‐ ica one huge "Main Street," where spiritual adventure will be discouraged and democracy will be regarded as consisting in the reduction of all mankind to the proportions of the narrow‐ est and least gifted of the citizens. God grant that there may come a reaction, and that the great principles of Anglo-Saxon liberty may be rediscovered before it is too late! But whatever solution be found for the educational and social problems of our own country, a lamentable condition must be detected in the world at large. It cannot be denied that great men are few or nonexistent, and that there has been a general contracting of the area of personal life. Material betterment has gone hand in hand with spiritual decline.
Introduction Such a condition of the world ought to cause the choice between modernism and traditionalism, liberalism and conser‐ vatism, to be approached without any of the prejudice which is too often displayed. In view of the lamentable defects of mod‐ ern life, a type of religion certainly should not be commended simply because it is modern or condemned simply because it is old. On the contrary, the condition of mankind is such that one may well ask what it is that made the men of past generations so great and the men of the present generation so small. In the midst of all the material achievements of modern life, one may well ask the question whether in gaining the whole world we have not lost our own soul. Are we forever condemned to live the sordid life of utilitarianism? Or is there some lost secret which if rediscovered will restore to mankind something of the glories of the past?
Such a secret the writer of this little book would discover in the Christian religion. But the Christian religion which is meant is certainly not the religion of the modern liberal
Church, but a message of divine grace, almost forgotten now, as it was in the middle ages, but destined to burst forth once more in God's good time, in a new Reformation, and bring light and freedom to mankind. What that message is can be made clear, as is the case with all definition, only by way of exclu‐ sion, by way of contrast. In setting forth the current liberalism, now almost dominant in the Church, over against Christianity, we are animated, therefore, by no merely negative or polemic purpose; on the contrary, by showing what Christianity is not we hope to be able to show what Christianity is, in order that men may be led to turn from the weak and beggarly elements and have recourse again to the grace of God.
Introduction Notes 1. Francis L. Patton, in the introduction to William Hallock Johnson
The Christian Faith Under Modern Searchlight, [1916], p. 7.
2. See Laws, Resolutions and Memorials passed by the Legislature of the State of Nebraska at the Thirty-Seventh Session, 1919, Chapter
249, p. 1019.
3. Compare, for example, Legislative Acts of the General Assembly of Ohio, Vol. cviii, 1919, pp. 614f.; and Act, and Joint Resolutions of the General Assembly of Iowa, 1919, Chapter 198, p. 219.
4. In Michigan, a bill similar to the one now passed in Oregon re‐ cently received an enormous vote at a referendum, and an agitation looking at least in the same general direction is said to be continu‐ ing.
5. The evil principle is seen with special clearness in the so-called "Lusk Laws" in the state of New York. One of these refers to teach‐ ers in the public schools. The other provides that "No person, firm, corporation or society shall conduct, maintain or operate any school, institute, class or course of instruction in any subjects whatever without making application for and being granted a license from the university of the state of New York to so conduct, maintain or oper‐ ate such institute, school, class or course." It is further provided that "A school, institute, class or course licensed as provided in this sec‐ tion shall be subject to visitation by officers and employees of the university of the state of New York." See Laws of the State of New
York, 1921, Vol. III, Chapter 667, pp. 2049-2051. This law is so broadly worded that it could not possibly be enforced, even by the whole German army in its pre-war efficiency or by all the espionage system of the Czar. The exact measure of enforcement is left to the discretion of officials, and the citizens are placed in constant danger of that intolerable interference with private life which real enforce‐ ment of the provision about "courses of instruction in any subjects whatever" would mean. One of the exemptions is in principle partic‐ ularly bad. "Nor shall such license he required:' the law provides.
"By schools now or hereafter established and maintained by a reli‐ gious denomination or sect well recognized as such at the time this section takes effect." One can certainly rejoice that the existing churches are freed, for the time being, from the menace involved in the law. But in principle the limitation of the exemption to the exist‐ ing churches really runs counter to the fundamental idea of religious liberty; for it sets up a distinction between established religions and those that are not established. There was always tolerance for estab‐
Introduction lished religious bodies, even in the Roman Empire; but religious liberty consists in equal rights for religious bodies that are new. The other exemptions do not remove in the slightest the oppressive char‐ acter of the law. Bad as the law must be in its immediate effects, it is far more alarming in what it reveals about the temper of the people.
A people which tolerates such preposterous legislation upon the statute books is a people that has wandered far away from the prin‐ ciples of American liberty. True patriotism will not conceal the men‐ ace, but will rather seek to recall the citizens to those great prin‐ ciples for which our fathers, in America and in England, were willing to bleed and die. There are some encouraging indications that the Lusk Laws may soon be repealed. If they are repealed, they will still serve as a warning that only by constant watchfulness can liberty be preserved.