22. Hastings. Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics
Edited by James Hastings, M.A., D.D., with the Assistance of John A. Selbie, M.A., and other scholars. Vol. I: A-Art.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons; Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark. 1908. 1 he first volume of Dr. Hastings' new "Encyclopædia" makes a very T handsome appearance. The type and the column are apparently the same as in the "Dictionary of the Bible" and the "Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels"; and we are sorry to say we cannot commend this type, which seems to make a singularly severe demand upon the eyes. But by the omission of the ruling around the page and an increase in the width of the margin, and above all by a change in the paper, a much clearer and more attractive page is secured than in the earlier "Dictionaries." More is done also to render the use of the "Encyclopædia" convenient. The list of authors who have contributed to the volume contains an intimation of the articles written by each. This is an excellent innovation. A still more excellent
innovation is the printing of a page (p. xv.) of topic-headings, which do not occur in the "Encyclopædia," but the topics represented by which are treated under other heads. This will enable the reader to find "Aben Ezra," for example (under "Ibn Ezra"), or "Adventism" (under "Chiliasm"), or "Affinity" (under "Blood Relationship"), and not hastily conclude that the "Encyclopædia" has overlooked such topics. The articles are ordinarily, moreover, divided into numbered sections, with headings in black type; and sometimes a summary of their contents is given at the outset in a sort of "table of contents." These expedients place the substance of the articles more readily at the command of the reader.
The cosmopolitanism of scholarship is illustrated anew by the list of writers whom Dr. Hastings has called to his aid in the preparation of the matter of the volume. Nearly two hundred have been engaged on the work.
About a sixth of these are Americans (some thirty-three); about a tenth Germans (some twenty); something over a twelfth Frenchmen (some fourteen); while a few more are derived from still other foreign sources— two or three each are Dutchmen, Belgians, Finns, Scandinavians, Hindoos; and there are also Armenians, Japs, and even an Apache Indian. It belongs also to the emancipation of scholarship from conventional bonds that we meet in this list of presumable authorities on questions of religious and moral erudition such names as Mrs. Rhys Davids, Catherine Julia Gaskell,
Mary Alicia Owen, Mary Mills Patrick, Bertha Maud Horack Shambaugh, Florence Melian Stawell. Place aux dames! It is a principle Dr. Hastings seems to have acted on when he gave Miss Shambaugh twenty-one columns in which to tell about the "Amana Society"—a type of religious thought the influence of which is apparently confined within the narrow limits of eighteen hundred souls. Dr. Hastings in his Preface offers no doubt an explanation of this generous allotment of space to an insignificant
movement; but it is questionable if the explanation will not read to most of us more as an apology than as a justification.
The question of the proportionate distribution of space in a book like this is to be sure one of the most difficult which confronts an editor. It certainly is not a simple question. There are many other things which have to be considered besides the relative importance of the topics; and all judgments of the relative importance of the topics are not likely to agree.
For the critic to object to the editor's assignment of space commonly means little more, therefore, than that he and the editor think differently in the matter. Even so, however, it is not unfair to say that Dr. Hastings' assignments of space seem sometimes bewildering. There are few greater topics than Art, and there is a great deal that is very important said in the two great articles "Architecture," "Art," in this volume. But the volume, which covers nearly the whole of the letter A, has only nine hundred pages in it; and nearly one hundred ninety of these—about one-fifth of the whole
—are given to these two topics "Architecture" and "Art." In an "Encyclopædia" specifically of religion and ethics, that strikes us as excessive. This is not the only instance in which the special character of the "Encyclopædia" seems to be lost sight of. Here is an article—a most excellent article—for example, on "A Priori," extending to sixteen columns, much of it cast into fine type. There are applications of the a priori, no doubt, both to ethics and religion: but does the article itself, or the topic itself, fall naturally into either category? And here is an admirable article on "Aristotle, Aristotelianism," one of the shorter articles—shorter, though one of them is on "Arianism" and another on "Arminianism," both of which, if they do not deserve well of religion, yet loom large in the history of that religion which we call Christianity—which seem to keep
"Architecture" and "Art" from running into each other and absorbing the volume. Aristotelianism also has certainly played a great part in the history
of that same religion: but we hear nothing of that here, though, to be sure, we are bidden to look for "Scholasticism," where no doubt the story will be told. Aristotle, too, had an ethical system, which is very appropriately (and finely) outlined here, but not as if it were the main matter of concernment.
In short, the article is just what an article on "Aristotle, Aristotelianism" ought to be—in a general encyclopædia, or an encyclopædia of philosophy or of classical biography. It has no particular adjustment to this special
"Encyclopædia." And here is a good short article on "Anæsthesia"; we have profited from reading it—but we have looked in vain in it for any allusion to or connection with ethics or religion. The editor, it will be seen, has interpreted the scope of the "Encyclopædia" broadly. This has its advantages—and its disadvantages. We get much more in the book than the title gives us right to expect—much of which, perhaps, as it was not to be looked for in this "Encyclopædia," will possibly not be looked for in it. But, as a consequence, we get perhaps less than the title might lead us to expect
—the articles more properly falling in its special field being unduly compressed to make room for those which possibly might just as well be reserved for another place.
Among the topics which seem out of place in this "Encyclopædia" are those on the technical terms of evolutionary speculation—unless, indeed, we are to conceive "Evolution" a religion. Such articles are those on "Accommodation," "Adaptation"—even "Abiogenesis" (to which are given two articles of the same general import, with an additional cross-reference to yet a third, "Biogenesis," which must cover again much the same ground). Both authors who write on "Abiogenesis" would apparently commend it to us as the formula for the origin of life, Prof. J. A.
Thompson with caution and scientific hesitancy, Mr. Edward Clodd with bold assertiveness. Mr. Clodd does not indeed tell us, as another recent writer does, with unconscious repetition of the Greek myth, that the
atmosphere quickened the sea and begot life—and prove it, as the author in question does, by a chemical analysis of the alleged parents. "The elements contained in sea-water," we read in this remarkable statement, "are sodium, calcium, magnesium, potassium, chlorine, sulphur, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and iron. The composition of the air is nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon. The elements contained in living matter are these identical things. In the heavy carbonated air above, and in the solvent water on the land beneath, there lay in mobile contiguity the essential elements of living matter." "We see, then, for there is no other way out of it, that not only did the air and water at the beginning of things contain in contiguity the elements of living matter, but that these elements did naturally unite to form this living matter." Mr. Edward Clodd, on the contrary, contents himself with the broad declaration, as one "generally accepted by biologists," that "in its passage from the nebulous to the more or less solid state, our globe reached a temperature and general conditions which made possible the evolution of the organic from the inorganic." It would be interesting to know what this temperature was, and what were these
"general conditions." But though "the inter-relation between living and lifeless matter is a fundamental canon of the theory of Evolution, which recognizes no break in continuity," it has apparently no evidence for it as yet available, except the theory of evolution itself. This freedom of speculative construction is not confined, however, to evolutionary biology.
It has invaded history and archæology as well. How little the declarations of the Scriptures can stand against it may be observed from such articles as those on "Adam," "Antediluvians," "Ark." Prof. Kennett, who writes the last of these, thinks he knows what was in the Ark much better than so late a writer as the Deuteronomist. It was the brazenserpent! The Ark was originally the box in which a snake was kept, which the Israelites worshiped, and there was subsequently substituted for it "the bronze
seraph, or, to call it by the name by which it is generally known, the brazen serpent." It was, in a word, the shrine of the serpent—the god of fertility.
These be thy gods, O Israel! Fortunately, Prof. Kennett's pseudo-scientific speculations are no more authoritative than Mr. Clodd's: there is no more reason for believing that the Ark was the shrine of the serpent than that life is the product of "a certain temperature" and "certain general conditions."
It gives the reader an odd impression, we may remark in passing, to turn over a few pages and read the article "Adaptation" in close conjunction with these on "Abiogenesis." Evolution, we learn, is simply a process of "Adaptation." The fittest in every generation survives; that is to say, there is a constant progress towards more perfect adaptation. Why, then, one may well ask, has there not been a tolerable adaptation attained long ago? Or, remembering "Abiogenesis," we may rather ask, Why was there not a perfect adaptation from the beginning? If the living organism is in the first instance the spontaneous production of the "environment" it is inconceivable that it should not begin by being in perfect adaptation to it.
How could the environment produce an organism out of adaptation to itself? And starting thus in perfect adaptation to its environment, how could the living organism ever get out of this adaptation to the environment of which it is not only at the start but throughout merely the expression? From start to finish the "environment" is but the mold in which the organism is cast, and the cast surely must repeat the features of the mold. If the mold changes the cast changes with it, that is all: and it is not so much a question of "adaptation" which implies a certain independence of mold and cast, as of simple reproduction. The evolutionary idea here resembles very closely what we read of Alice in the Looking Glass, who, we remember, had to run with all her might just to keep standing still. And here another difficulty faces us. This living organism which is in the first instance the spontaneous product of its
environment and must therefore begin in perfect adaptation to its environment—of which it is indeed but the expression; and which continues ever but the product of its environment and should therefore steadily express its environment and change only as it changes that it may abide in complete adaptation to it—does nothing of the sort. On the contrary, it from the beginning spurns the slime (of which it is just the expression) and soars upwards and advances steadily to higher and higher things! That is what has happened. The law of development of organic forms has not been to ever closer and closer adaptation to the environment.
They began ("abiogenesis" being postulated) in perfect adaptation to the environment. The law of their development has been to ever fuller, richer, more elevated manifestations of what looks very much like a new thing with forces all its own, which struggles with its environment and conquers it; which ends, indeed, by adapting its environment to itself. This is not the behavior of crystals, say, which form themselves in pools of evaporating seawater; and dissolve again and reform afresh as the water is alternately diluted by the rain or wasted by the sun—but never stand over against the mother-water and insist on going their own way. It is all very puzzling—on the postulates of the thoroughgoing evolutionism of Mr. Clodd, which Mr.
Clodd tells us is the doctrine (unuttered or expressed, we may suppose) of all biologists.
Let us return, however, to our "Encyclopædia," which goes out of its way to teach these puzzling things. The mass of the articles, of course, are those which one would naturally look for in an "Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics," and so far as can be judged the vocabulary is very full. Nearly every name of importance in the history of religion and ethics will be found here, either the subject of a separate article or referred to in more general discussions: and if an index of names is supplied the "Encyclopædia" will be a very full guide to the leaders of religious and ethical thought. The major
topics of religious and ethical import are all treated: and, what is more noticeable, a place has been found for a wealth of minor topics—down even to such as "Accidie" and "Action Sermon." There are some unexpected omissions, however, among these minor topics: for example, our eye catches the heading "Accommodation," and in an "Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics" we naturally expect to find it a discussion of the ethics of so-called
"accommodation" in teaching. It proves to treat, however, only of evolutionary and psychological "accommodation." We wonder whether, when "Economy" comes to be dealt with, it will be only a "political" (or perhaps "household") economy, to the exclusion of ethical, that will be touched on?
We have been ourselves, naturally, interested particularly in the articles which deal with topics belonging to the history of the Christian religion, and especially to the history of Christian thought. There are many of these, some comprehensive and some more particular, and in the main they are sufficiently careful and full, although as a class they do not show a very firm grasp of either the substance or the development of doctrine. Two of them we have already mentioned, as among the shorter articles somewhat in danger of being crushed out of sight between the great articles,
"Architecture," "Art"—those on "Arianism" and "Arminianism." These are very fair samples of all of their class. "Arianism" is dealt with quite externally, in the main correctly enough, but without insight. No one could derive from the article any real comprehension of the place of Arianism in the history of Christian thought, or of the internal development of the doctrine. Arminianism, on the other hand, is, from the point of view of a convinced Arminian, very fairly presented. The article is rambling, not to say repetitious, and not very exact in its statements, but, on the whole, leaves on the mind a generally clear view of the nature of Arminianism. It opens, to be sure, with an amazing account of the Calvinistic doctrine of
the decree. Dr. Lindsay, in the article on "Amyraldism," had already spoken of this, if not wisely yet not altogether without prudence. But here we hear of the "decree of salvation" being "antecedent to the Fall" (not to the decree of the Fall); and of this being a party position, that is, Supralapsarian; while the characteristic of Infralapsarianism is the "connecting the Fall with the permission of God, instead of with His foreordination." Confusion could not easily be more confounded. Of course, no Calvinist imagines that a decree of God was made subsequent to any event in time; and all Calvinists hold that the Fall was permitted, and that it was also foreordained. The difference between Supralapsarianism and Infralapsarianism was (and is) merely whether in the order of thought the foreordination of the Fall
(which both teach) as a thing permitted to occur (which both teach) precedes or follows the foreordination of some men to life and some men to death (which both teach). Why will men persist in writing on such themes so mechanically that they do not even consider the meaning of the terms they employ? The language elsewhere in the article and that even in matters of the first significance is often very misleading. Thus, for example, we read:
"The Remonstrance is first negative, stating the five Calvinistic articles in order to reject them." "The five Calvinistic articles"—by no means. What was stated was five articles selected by the Remonstrants from the Calvinistic doctrinal sum, to be attacked by them. Proceeding, we read that the Synod of Dort "promulgated five heads of doctrines of its own." What was done by the Synod was to set forth clearly its own doctrine with respect to the five points of Calvinistic teaching brought into dispute by the Remonstrants. Not only are the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England claimed as almost Arminian, but it looks as if even the Lambeth
Articles were represented as substantially Arminian: at least the sentence referring to them (p. 811a, at bottom) is ambiguous. It is allowed that Arminianism has no definite theological distinctness, and yet Arminius is
ranged by the side of Athanasius and Augustine as one of the three greatest leaders in theological definition (p. 809a, top). Athanasius, it seems, has determined the doctrine of God; Augustine, the doctrine of man;
Arminius, the essential relations between God and man!
The article on "Abelard" is informing and appreciative—too appreciative. That on "Anselm" (by the same writer) is brief and sketchy, and in its remarks on the "Cur Deus Homo" is dominated by prejudice. No adequate understanding of the doctrine of Satisfaction is shown; though it is rightly denied that it owes its form to the influence of Teutonic law. The Atonement seems to have proved a thorny subject to the contributors to this "Encyclopædia." For example, the otherwise very excellent brief article on "Acceptilation" sharply criticizes Turretine for the phrase: "We admit no Socinian acceptilation." Turretine is, however, quite within his rights in this phrase: the Socinian doctrine of the Atonement, which holds that God forgives sinners their debt without any payment at all, being precisely described by the term "acceptilatio." It may be another matter whether
Socinus himself employs the term "acceptilatio" to describe his doctrine.
Grotius says he does (but not in chap. iii. of his "Defensio," as is here stated, but in chap. vi.), and the author of the article, following Crell, says he does not. We have not looked the matter up. But in any event Grotius does not misrepresent Socinus' meaning, but quite accurately defines the meaning of "acceptilatio" (Amsterdam edition of 1679, p. 320a)—telling us that "acceptilatio" is used even where no payment precedes, is opposed to some payment, and is figuratively defined as an imaginary payment. It would be difficult to catch Grotius napping in the matter of significance of lawterms, whatever we may think of his own doctrine of the Atonement. It is not the Socinian but the Scotist doctrine of the Atonement which is abusively described by the term "acceptilatio," as our author tells us, and
ought thereby have been saved from his mistaken criticism of Grotius and Turretine.
Among the best of the articles of the class we are speaking of is that on Thomas Aquinas, although its encomium is somewhat excessive. The same must be said of the estimate of Origen in the excellent comprehensive article on "Alexandrian Theology," by the side of which the equally excellent one on "Antiochene" must be placed. The article on the "Albigenses" is thoroughly good, and that on the "Anabaptists" is also very satisfactory. There are very few articles in this volume on specifically doctrinal points. Among them those on the "Anger" or "Wrath" of God and on "Annihilation" are perhaps the most outstanding. The former is, however, a carefully rather than profoundly thought article, though it has much in it that is suggestive. Among articles of another class, we have not been attracted to that on "Agnosticism"; and still less to that on "Absolute," which seems to us a little pretentious. The article on "Apologetics" does not appear to us to be quite adapted to its place in the "Encyclopædia." Most readers would expect to find in it an account of "Apologetics," its idea and place in the theological encyclopædia, method, history. Instead it is an attempt to outline a system of apologetics—an attempt sure to prove unsatisfactory, if for no other reason than the limitations of space.
A notice of a work of this kind as it passes from article to article may easily run to an inordinate length. We have probably said enough to suggest the general features of the volume before us. It is comprehensive, learned and, so far as we have been able to test it, interestingly written. It is to be followed by nine or eleven more, and it is already evident that the completed work will be a welcome and valuable addition to our encyclopædic literature.
1. 1 The Princeton Theological Review, vii. 1909, pp. 326–332. For review of vol. ii. cf. ibid., viii. 1910, pp. 271 ff.; vol. iii., ibid., ix. 1911, pp. 640 ff.; vol. iv., ibid., x. 1912, pp. 467 ff.; vol. v., ibid., xi. 1913, pp. 494 ff.; vol. vi., ibid., xii. 1914, pp. 502 ff.; vol. vii., ibid., xiii. 1915, pp. 275 ff.; vol. viii., ibid., xiv.
1916, pp. 649 ff.; vol. ix., ibid., xvi. 1918, pp. 110 ff.; vol. x., ibid., xvii.
1919, pp. 312 ff.