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God the Holy Ghost is the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, equal to God the Father and God the Son, and of one essence with Them (see pp. 12835).
Yet we find in the devotional and theological life of the Church a remarkable neglect of God the Holy Ghost. For instance, there are in the Prayer Book only three direct addresses to the Holy Ghost; the second "Lord, have mercy upon us" in what is called the Lesser Litany; the collect for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (which is not used every year); and the hymn "Come, Holy Ghost", with its alternative, in the Ordinal. Nor is this neglect confined to the Anglican Communion. The popular Latin devotion known as the Divine Praises contains no reference to the Holy Ghost, but goes straight from the Son to the Blessed Virgin. A friend of mine searched all the leading theological book shops of Paris for a book on the doctrine of the Holy Ghost, under the guidance of an eminent French theologian, but without success.
The neglect of any truth by the Church usually leads to the rise of sects which make that truth their chief doctrine. Sects have been formed which have given to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit the chief, perhaps the only, place in their teaching, and combined it with the practice of "speaking with tongues", emotional and unintelligible utterance. Apart from this the result of the neglect of the Holy Spirit within the Church has been disastrous. The endless disputes about the Eucharist and the sacraments in general might have been avoided if it had always been remembered that all sacramental action is brought about by the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Ghost is God, and therefore He is everywhere. But He is also present in a special way with those who are united with Him both as individuals and corporately in the Church. Both
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parts of this truth are to be kept in mind: His universal presence, and His special presence in the Church.
The Holy Ghost is shown to us in a rising scale: in Nature; in Man; in Man redeemed; supremely in the Incarnate Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.
He is shown forth in the order and the beauty of the material world, for it was created through Him. The wonderful order of the universe, in which stars and electrons obey the same rules and are alike "the army of unalterable law",1 presents to us the guiding power of the Holy Ghost. The marvelous beauty which appears in almost all natural objects, from mountains and sunsets to the smallest flowers, displays to us the infinite beauty of God the Holy Ghost who delights in beauty because it resembles Himself. Wherever we see either order or beauty in the natural world or in things made by man, we recognize the handiwork of God the Holy Ghost. This is the truth recognized by St. Patrick when he wrote:
"I bind unto myself today the virtues of the star-lit heaven,
The glorious sun,s life-giving ray, the whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightening free, the whirling wind,s tempestuous shocks.
The stable earth, the deep salt sea, around the old eternal rocks."2
The Seer of the Revelation saw among the worshipers in the court of Heaven the four living creatures, representing the powers of nature, as the twenty-four elders represented the powers of grace.3 (Rev. 4:4-11.)
But above and beyond the material world, both organic and inorganic, we see God the Holy Ghost displayed in the truth and beauty of the works of the mind of man; in literature, art, and music; in scientific skill. We recognize the power of the Holy Ghost in all great poetry and philosophy; wherever there is beauty, wherever there is order, wherever there is truth, it comes from Him. It is He who guides the statesman and the explorer, the surgeon and the chemist; there is no work or thought of man which is in any way good, or true, or beautiful, that is not His gift (Wisdom 7:17-20).
1
George Meredith.2
St. Patrick,s Breastplate, translated by Mrs. Alexander, English Hymnal, 212.3
See also Psalm 104; Job 38; The Song of The Three Children (Benedicite); etc.
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We see the power and the wisdom of God the Holy Ghost in all that is true and good in the heathen religions. Zoroaster and the Buddha, Socrates and Plato, Virgil and the Stoics, though they did not know Him, were His instruments. The Church has recognized this by sometimes placing pictures of Socrates and Plato in the porch of the churches; and there is a beautiful legend of St. Cadoc the Wise, a Welsh saint of the sixth century who, when a monk had thrown his Virgil into the sea declaring that the author was undoubtedly in hell, heard a far off voice repeating, "Cease not to pray for me; I will ever sing the mercies of the Savior."1
Nevertheless, the manifestation of the Holy Spirit through the writers of the Old Testament is unique. Isaiah and Jeremiah were inspired in a sense in which Aeschylus and Plato were not. We see that inspiration given first to Moses, the earliest leader of the Hebrews of whom we can say with certainty that he separated Israel from the other nations. The inspiration becomes clearer in the great writing prophets from Amos onwards, and in the psalmists, sages, and apocalyptic writers whose work found its climax in the Son of God.
It was the Holy Ghost through whose power Jesus Christ was born (St. Luke 1:35; St. Matt. 1:20). He is not the Father of Jesus Christ, but He gave power to His Mother to conceive, though she was a virgin. We hear of Him next at our Lord,s baptism. He descended upon Him to give to His manhood all that was needed for His public ministry, and the visible sign of this descent was the dove (St. Mark 1:9-10).
Our Lord warned His disciples that blasphemy against the Holy Ghost that is, the deliberate sin against conscience was the unpardonable sin (St. Mark 3:29). As long as we are by our own fault so completely self-deceived that we cannot repent, we cannot be forgiven; for we have shut God the Holy Ghost out of our hearts.
The special work of the Holy Ghost in the order of grace began at Pentecost (Acts 2:1). We find a foreshadowing of it in St. John 20:22.
1
Virgil,s Fourth Eclogue was regarded, not without reason, as a prophecy of Christ.
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Our Lord promised that the Holy Ghost would shortly be sent upon the apostles, that they might be His witnesses (Acts 1:8; cf. St. John 5:26). On the day of Pentecost He came upon them, with the visible appearance of tongues of fire upon their heads, which was the birthday of the Church of the New Covenant. Throughout the Acts of the Apostles the leaders of the Church are seen working consciously under the direction of the Holy Ghost (Acts 3:31, 6:10, 7:51, 8:17, 10:44, 13:2, 4; 15:28, 16:6-7, 19:6, 20:23, 28, etc.), and their conduct was completely changed in a very short time. St. Peter, who had only a few weeks before denied his Master to a maidservant, now stood up before the very council which had condemned his Master to death, and said, "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). And the other apostles, who had fled when their Master was arrested and had afterwards shut the doors for fear, became equally courageous. Wisdom as well as courage had been given to them. Just before the Ascension they had asked whether our Lord was now going to set up an earthly kingdom (Acts 1:6), but they never made that mistake again. Nothing in the New Testament is more striking than the contrast between the apostles in the Gospels, timid, foolish, and quarrelsome, and the apostles in the Acts, bold, wise, and united. It was the descent of the Holy Ghost that made the difference.
The work of the Holy Ghost which began at Pentecost is still going on. He is the true Vicar or representative of Christ, God working in and among mankind, illuminating and sanctifying (that is, giving light and holiness to) all who will accept Him. He has three principal means of acting among men.
The first is the conscience, which all men possess but which is, or should be, very much more sensitive in those who have been admitted into the Church than in those outside.
The second is the Bible, which is available to all who can read it, but which can be fully understood only by those who can verify, by their own experience of life in the Christian community, the truths which it teaches.
The third is the Church, the society of those upon whom the Holy Ghost fell at Pentecost (not only the apostles but the whole body of disciples, male and female). They are, ideally, living by the power of
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the Holy Ghost and are therefore able to make full use both of the Bible which He has inspired and of the conscience which He has enlightened.
The first means by which the Holy Ghost began to work among men was the Church. The Children of Israel were the chosen people with which God had made His covenant. When the Word of God became man, He completed the Old Covenant and set up the New Covenant in its place. The Children of Israel through their supreme council, the Sanhedrin, rejected Him; and from that moment they ceased to be the Chosen People. The apostles and the other disciples who were all members of the Church of the Old Covenant now became the remnant of Israel foretold by Isaiah (Isa. 6:13, 10:22), with the Anointed King of Israel, the Messiah or Christ, at their head. He sent to them the Holy Ghost as Joel had foretold (Joel 2:28; Acts 2:16). Under His direction they became the organized people of God governed by the apostles and their associates. The Church of the New Covenant differed from the Church of the Old Covenant in two ways. It was not confined to one nation but was thrown open to members of all nations on equal terms. Therefore it came to be called "Catholic", or universal. And it was not governed by a code of laws like that attributed to Moses. It was bound, indeed, by moral laws even stricter than those of Israel (St. Matt. 5:20), but the civil and ceremonial laws of Israel were no longer binding. This was finally settled by the Council at Jerusalem whose proceedings are described for us in Acts 15.
It follows that the universal Church, which St. Paul calls the Body of Christ (I Cor. 12:13, 27) and the Bride of Christ (Eph 5:23; cf. Rev. 19:9, 21:2), is visible that is, her members are admitted by an external ceremony, their names are known, and they are organized like any other society with officers, and rules, and powers of discipline. This is everywhere assumed by the New Testament, which knows nothing of disciples who are not admitted into the visible society by baptism. "Are ye ignorant," says St. Paul, "that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His
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death?" (Rom. 6:3). St. Paul himself after his conversion had to be baptized (Acts 9:18). So did Cornelius and his companions even after they had received the Holy Ghost (Acts 10:48). As the Congregation of Israel was a visible society, so the Christian Church, which is the Congregation of Israel reformed (Phil. 3:3), is a visible society with known membership (I Cor. 5:12; etc.), and officers (Acts 5:13, 6:2), and rules (I Cor. 7:17; Acts 15:28), and powers of discipline (I Cor. 5:13; I Tim. 1:20; etc.).
The history of the Church confirms the evidence of the New Testament. No one before the sixteenth century, except some small sects and a few unorthodox scholars, believed that the Church was anything else than the visible Church composed of the baptized. (Whether she includes all the baptized is another question which will be discussed later.) But when the Church during the Middle Ages became full of corruptions and abuses, and when all attempts to reform her seemed to have failed, it was very tempting to ardent reformers to teach that the true Church, the Body and the Bride of Christ, is not the visible society with all its corruptions, but the invisible company of the elect whose names are known only to God. This was the teaching of Calvin who held that though local churches are visible, the universal Church is invisible.1 Wherever the influence of Calvin has penetrated, people are unwilling to regard the universal Church as a visible society.
This is the most important and far-reaching difference that separates Christians today. We reject the doctrine that the universal Church is invisible as contrary to Scripture, to history, and to reason; for the Church is an organized society, but a company whose names are known only to God is not an organized society and therefore cannot be compared to the human body as St. Paul compares the Church (I Cor. 12:12).
When we speak of the Church, we mean the visible universal Church with all her faults and corruptions, which is only invisible because she includes the dead as well as the living, but in this world is visible and not invisible. There is no such thing in this world as an invisible Church. It is a contradiction in terms.
The Church is the chief sphere of the influence of God the Holy
1 A. Dakin, Calvinism, p. 100; A. M. Fairbairn in Cambridge Modern History, vol. 2, p. 368.
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Ghost. It is for this reason that we venerate the Church and regard her as the Divine Society, different in kind from all other societies, yet obeying the same laws of human organization which they obey. She is not simply a society for preaching and teaching, whose purpose is fulfilled when men have received the Gospel and learned the Faith. She is necessary to the Christian life at every stage because the Holy Ghost works through her and in her in a unique way. But this does not mean that the work of the Holy Ghost is limited to the Church. As has already been shown, He allows no man and no part even of inanimate nature to be entirely without Him. In particular He produces wonderful results of His grace among Christians who are outside the Church, results which often put the Church herself to shame and which in some ways the Church is unable to equal. There is indeed a fellowship between all the servants of Christ. We call it Christendom, but many belong to Christendom who do not belong to the Church.
Nevertheless the work of the Holy Ghost is very seriously hindered by the divisions of Christians, both by the separation of many Christians from the Church, and by quarrels within the Church. It is hard to say which hinders His work more. Defects in faith and practice, especially those which have separated Christians into different camps, make us marvel at the extent to which God the Holy Ghost can make use of those who suffer from them. The success, for instance, of the work of the Society of Friends (who have a special devotion to God the Holy Ghost), without any sacraments at all, does not lead us to conclude that the sacraments are unnecessary, but rather, that if God does such wonderful works through the Friends without sacraments, He might do yet greater works if they possessed the sacraments and were united with the Church.
The first way in which the Holy Ghost works through the Church is by filling her members with mutual love. Constitutional bonds are of little use without love. The Church never had (until the development of the papacy, and then only partly) any permanent central authority on earth; and to this day the Orthodox Eastern Communion, and the Anglican Communion also, are kept together
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without any permanent central authority by mutual love working through the consciousness of a common faith.
The second way in which the Holy Ghost works through the Church is by bestowing loyalty upon the great mass of her members. Every baptized member of the Church is responsible for bearing witness to the truth which he or she has received, and in every age multitudes have carried out this trust even through the greatest dangers and difficulties. Thus, in the prolonged struggle against Arianism it was the steadfast belief of the great mass of the faithful in the Godhead of their Savior that made the victory of St. Athanasius possible. St. Hilary of Poitiers, himself a bishop, said that "the ears of the people were more holy than the hearts of the bishops". The Eastern churches have often had this experience. For instance, after the "false union" of 1439 when the Emperor and Patriarch of Constantinople betrayed the Orthodox faith for the promise of help against the Turks, the Orthodox people at once rejected the bargain they had made, at the cost of the loss of their independence and centuries of slavery. The Roman and Anglican communions have had it too. The mission in Japan, which was founded by St. Francis Xavier, was deprived of all its clergy by the Government and was completely cut off from outside help; but the faithful laity, without any sacraments except baptism, without even a Bible, and threatened with the most frightful tortures if any one of them were known to be a Christian, kept their faith for 200 years until in the nineteenth century fresh priests from Europe were allowed to enter the country. In the English Church a large number of the laity remained faithful during the Great Rebellion when the services of the Church were forbidden for many years; and during the Four Years, War the African Christians in the mainland part of the diocese of Zanzibar remained faithful though they were deprived of all their clergy and told that they would never see them again.
The third way in which the Holy Ghost directs the Church is by the formal decrees of bishops in synod defining matters of faith. In the early days of the Church she was governed by meetings of bishops called synods or councils. The bishops of a province met in synod every year, and the ordinary government was done by provincial
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synods. A synod of all the bishops in the world (or rather, of the Roman Empire, for such synods were called together by the emperor, and bishops from the "barbarian" lands outside the empire were not always invited) was only summoned to deal with some special crisis threatening the peace of the whole Church. Each bishop was supposed to represent his diocese by which he had been elected. The function of the synod was partly to bear witness to the faith and partly to make rules of discipline. When any new teaching or theory was put forward, the synod was called upon to decide whether it was in accordance with the traditional faith, each bishop bearing witness to the traditions of his own diocese. If the bishops from all parts of the world from Spain to Syria were agreed, their agreement was a strong proof that the decision on which they were agreed was in accordance with the teaching handed down from the Apostles. But though the agreement of a large number of bishops carried great weight, it was not final until it had been accepted by the whole Church everywhere.
As we have seen (p. 86), six General or Ecumenical Councils or Synods are accepted by the Anglican Communion (and by all Christians in the West who attach any value to Councils). The Seventh Council, the Second of Nicea (787), is accepted by the Orthodox and the Roman Communions, though the latter did not fully recognize it until the sixteenth century. The Roman Communion adds a large number of later Councils of which the most important are the Fourth Lateran (1215), the Council of Trent (1545-63), and the Vatican Council (1870). The Coptic and Armenian Churches and some other Eastern Churches in communion with them only recognize the first three Councils (see p. 86).
The Roman Communion appears to hold that what makes a Council "general" or "ecumenical" and its decisions not only binding but infallible and irreformable is its confirmation by the Pope. But in the early centuries this was not the test of a genuine ecumenical Council, and it has never been accepted by anyone outside the Roman Communion.
The Anglican Communion holds (Article 21 written with reference to Trent) that the decrees of a General Council on matters of faith are only to be regarded as necessary dogmas when they can be proved from Scripture. If it be asked who is to decide whether the decrees of a Council can be proved from Scripture, we can only reply that this is for the whole Church, clergy and laity throughout the world, to decide; and that in the case of the first six Councils the whole
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Church has decided. (The refusal of the Armenian and other churches to accept the fourth and sixth Councils, and of the Assyrian Church to accept the fifth Council, seems to be due to misunderstanding and not to any real denial of the truth for which those Councils stood (see pp. 70, 87, 97).
So the dogmatic decrees of the Councils are permanently binding when they have been confirmed by the whole Church as being in accordance with Scripture and reason. We believe that such decrees have been proclaimed with the help of God the Holy Ghost. He cannot contradict Himself. What He has taught us in Scripture, by the voice of the Church, and by reason must be consistent with itself. If a council claiming to represent the whole Church has declared what cannot be proved from Scripture to be necessary to salvation, that council,s claim is not true. There have been many councils, summoned as representing the whole Church and claiming to be ecumenical, the decisions of which the Church has not confirmed.
God has promised the "the gates of hell shall not prevail" against His church (St. Matt. 16:18) that is, that the Church shall never fall utterly from the truth (as she would have if, for instance, she had followed Arius), or cease to be the home of the faithful and the school of saints. He has promised that the Holy Ghost would always be with her (St. John 14:16: cf. St. Matt. 28:20), but He has not promised that she should always listen to the Holy Ghost.
It has often been the experience of the Church that synods "forasmuch as they be an assembly of men, whereof all be not governed with the spirit and word of God, may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God" (Article 21). These words were written while the Council of Trent was sitting. We do not recognize that council as a General Council, for it has never been accepted by the Eastern or the Anglican churches, none of which were represented in it; nor as a free council, for it was controlled by the Pope,s legates and the large Spanish and Italian majority; nor as an orthodox council, for many of its decrees cannot be proved by Holy Scripture, and some are even contrary to Holy Scripture.
The Church is indefectible that is, she cannot wholly fail or fall permanently into error which would destroy the foundations of the
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Christian religion; but she is not infallible or secure from making mistakes. No one can be sure, before a Council is summoned, however fully representative that council may be, that what it will say will be true. Councils, as experience has often shown, may easily be led astray by expert politicians. Their members do not always listen to the voice of God. No human being or assembly of human beings is free from all possibility of error. Even when they are completely sincere, they are subject to the limitations of the age in which they live.
We are nowhere promised that bishops or any other men, even when assembled in a council, shall be secured by God from the possibility of error; and without such a promise we cannot believe that they are. The opinion has been very widely held that a General Council, assembled as such and ratified by the Pope, cannot err. It was held by all the members of the Councils of Trent and of the Vatican, with the result that the bishops of the Roman Communion to which these councils were confined at once accepted their decrees as final.1 But this destroyed the value of "subsequent consent" which depends upon the freedom of the Church as a whole to criticize, and if necessary to reject, the decrees of a council claiming to be general or ecumenical.
We conclude, then, that the Church is indefectible (FN"8ZH) but not infallible, and that no council can be reckoned as ecumenical or its decrees as irreformable until it has been accepted by the whole Church as teaching only what can be proved from Scripture.2
There are some local councils the decrees of which have been universally accepted. Such were the Council of Carthage (397) which completed the Canon of Scripture, and the Council of Orange (528) which gave the final decision about free will.
Many modern divines believe that no expression of religious truth can be permanent; and that since every age sees truth under its own limitations, no decision of any Council can be binding on later ages. No doubt it is true that every expression of human belief is subject to the limitations of time, language, etc. But we believe that God can and does enable men to express what He has taught them about Himself in such a way as to be true for all later generations. Otherwise no controversy would ever be closed, and the authority of the
1
A few of the minority bishops at the Vatican Council held out for some years, but Strossmayer alone held out till his death.2
This is exactly the teaching of Archbishop Laud (Conference with Fisher, 33: see More and Cross, Anglicanism, p. 188).
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Church to bind and to loose, to declare what is true and what is not (St. Matt. 16:19, 18:18) would be useless.
The fourth way in which God the Holy Ghost works through the Church is by bestowing His power or grace on her members as individuals. This is done chiefly by means of the sacraments. The Holy Ghost is the agent of all sacraments. It is He who baptizes, He who confirms, He who ordains, He who makes the bread and wine to become the Body and Blood of Christ by means of the human minister of the sacrament. Confirmation is particularly the sacrament of the giving of the Holy Ghost. In Ordination also, the Holy Ghost gives Himself to the candidates to whom it is said "Receive the Holy Ghost". But God the Holy Ghost bestows His power on members of the Church by many non-sacramental ways as well: by preaching, by prayer in all its forms, by meditation, mystical experience, etc., and by the performance of works of charity, for he who helps his neighbor in body or soul, and he who shows his love for him in any way, is not only the means of bringing the Holy Ghost to his neighbor, but still more the means of bringing Him to himself. It is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35).
"Who giveth himself with his alms, feeds three
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me."
The second means by which God the Holy Ghost works among men is the Bible. As we have seen (Chapter 35), the Bible is the record of God,s revelation to men. God the Holy Ghost gave that revelation and bestowed upon the writers of the Bible the special assistance which we call inspiration.
But we must not say that we accept the Christian doctrines because they are taught in the Bible, and that we believe the Bible to be inspired, and therefore true, because the inspiration of the Bible is one of the doctrines of Christianity. For this is "arguing in a circle".
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We use the Bible in two ways which are quite distinct from each other. First, we use it as a historical record that is, we use certain parts of it as historical records, particularly the Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistles of St. Paul, with some of the books of the Old Testament. As a collection which includes historical records, the Bible must be criticized like any other book. We believe that the account of the origin of the Christian religion given in the New Testament is on the whole true; that the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles record what really happened, though they may not be perfectly accurate in every detail. If they were not good evidence, we should not cease to be Christians; but we should have to be content with much weaker evidence than we now have.
Second, we use the Bible as the inspired record of God,s revelation. We prove the doctrines of our faith from it, and we reject the claim of any doctrine to be necessary unless it can be proved from Scripture. But this use of Scripture is confined to those who already accept the Christian religion in general.
If we are asked why we believe a fundamental Christian truth (for instance, that there is one God, or that Jesus Christ was crucified), we must not say, "Because the Bible says so, and the Bible is inspired"; for we shall then be asked why we believe that the Bible is inspired, and we shall not have any convincing answer. We must reply to the first question by saying, "For many reasons all leading us to the same conclusion, one of which is that the revelation to the prophets and the story of Jesus Christ, judged by ordinary historical criticism, are true. We believe that Jesus Christ was crucified, as we believe that Julius Caesar was murdered, on historical evidence, but not only on historical evidence. Other kinds of evidence confirm that belief. Our belief in the inspiration of Scripture is part of our belief in Christianity, not the basis of it" (see p. 209).
But if we are discussing with fellow Christians some question which is in dispute among Christians (such as the visibility of the Church, or the papal claims), then we are justified in appealing to Scripture as the inspired and unique record of revelation, for this is accepted by all genuine Christians.
The Bible is not a single book but a library of books differing widely from each other. The oldest part of it is more than a
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thousand years earlier than the latest part of it. The writer of the Song of Deborah was not much less primitive than a Zulu warrior under Chaka. St. Luke was a highly civilized, scientific man. Isaiah and Jeremiah were deeply pious. The Preacher (who wrote Ecclesiastes) was a sceptic. Ezekiel and the writers of Leviticus and Chronicles were ritualists. Some of the prophets were very puritan. Even in the New Testament we have already observed the great difference between St. Paul and St. James. The authors of Hebrews and Revelation were not at all like either, or like one another. As we have already seen, there are many degrees of inspiration in the Bible. We see it at its lowest, perhaps, in Esther in which the name of God is not once mentioned; at its highest in the Gospel according to St. John.
But in spite of all the differences between the different books, there is a profound unity which runs through them all. The God of whom they tell us is everywhere the same. We see this unity most clearly if we compare the Bible with other books; with the works of the great classical authors, Aeschylus, Plato, Lucretius, or Virgil; with the Apocryphal Gospels; or with the Koran. (The last books show that the difference is not racial. Muhammad and St. Paul were both Semites, but what a difference there is between them!)
As we have seen, the Canon, or list of books reckoned as inspired, was drawn up by the Church and is accepted by all Christians.
We have already laid down what Inspiration is. Let us now observe what it is not.
It is not verbal. The words of Scripture were not dictated by God to the writers. There is a human as well as a Divine element in the books. The authors were limited by their age and by their race (some more than others) (p. 215).
It is not intended to teach natural science, nor is the history in the Bible always accurate. The parts of it that really matter are true history, such as the story of our Lord,s birth, and life, and death, and resurrection, and the events that followed. Much of the Old Testament also is trustworthy history, and some of it has been
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confirmed by archaeological research. But some is legend, and some, though historical, is not related accurately (to see this, compare the accounts of the same events in Kings and in Chronicles). Defense of the accuracy of Old Testament history is not necessarily defense of the Christian religion. It would not matter to our faith if the Books of Joshua and Judges were entirely legendary. Actually they contain a great deal of true history, but its importance is historical rather than religious. In matters of science (astronomy, for instance, or ethnology) the writers, ideas are those of their own age. The blue sky above us is not a solid roof with stars attached to it as they seem to have thought. The Canaanites were Semites, not Hamites (Gen. 9:18), though it pleased the Israelites to think otherwise. Dates and figures of all kinds in the Old Testament are particularly untrustworthy. The question, what is historically true and what is not, is the province of Biblical criticism. No doubt a very radical Biblical criticism, especially of the New Testament, would make the historical basis of Christianity very weak. But such criticism is not supported by reason, especially as the authors of it have in most if not all cases been men who were not believing or orthodox Christians, and therefore had a prejudice against the evidence for revelation and miracles. Biblical criticism is not the business of this book, which takes for granted that the New Testament is on the whole sound history, and that the historical basis of Christianity is true. It is not intended for those who think otherwise. Assuming that the evidence for the historical basis of Christianity is good, and is supported by other kinds of evidence, we accept the Christian religion as being what it claims to be the truth about God and man. The inspiration of Scripture in the sense already laid down is a necessary part of the Christian religion and is accepted by all kinds of Christians. If we can show that a particular doctrine is taught in Scripture and has always been held by the Church to be necessary as well as true and scriptural (for not all that is scriptural or even true is necessary), we accept it as being so; and if not, we do not accept it as being so. The defense of Holy Scripture itself is the function of apologetics, not of dogmatics.
Inspiration does not give us a rigid set of rules of worship and conduct. The Hebrew system of laws is not binding on Christians. Its moral principles which have indeed been extended by the Sermon on the Mount (St. Matt. 5-7) are maintained, but
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not its civil or ritual provisions (Article 7). Casuistry1 is necessary, but no system of casuistry can be universal or permanent; and the devisers of casuistic rules must be continually subject to free criticism, for they are always in danger of the abuses condemned by our Lord (St. Mark 7:9 ff.; St. Matt. 23:16). On the other hand, the Puritans held that nothing was lawful, whether in conduct or in worship, that was not expressly mentioned in Scripture. It was for this reason that they objected to the use of the surplice, the ring in marriage, and the sign of the cross in baptism. Hooker,s Ecclesiastical Polity was in part written to refute this absurd notion.
All Christians have the right and the duty of reading the Bible for themselves. The rule forbidding the unrestricted use of Scripture by the laity which was so strongly resisted at the time of the Reformation was really one of the methods of despotism, and is applied by all despotic governments to books which they do not want their subjects to read. The assertion that the laity ought to read the Bible and ought not to be prevented from doing so because of its obscurity was, however, one of the 101 propositions condemned by the famous Bull Unigenitus (1713) which nearly brought about a schism in the French Church (see p. 164).
But the privilege of reading the Bible, like every other religious privilege, carries responsibility with it. Whoever reads the Bible must read it with devotion, reverence, and humility, and must do his best to learn the meaning of it with the aid of all that the Church can give him. "No Scripture is of private interpretation" (II Peter 1:20). No one has the right to interpret the Bible in a manner peculiar to himself unless he has at least studied what the best commentators have written. It is the function of the Church to interpret the Bible. "The Church hath authority in controversies of faith" (Article 20). Modern research has thrown an immense amount of light on the Bible. We know a great deal which was not known to the Fathers or the divines of the Reformation period, but in matters of doctrine the interpretation of the Fathers must never be neglected because they bear witness to the living tradition of the Church before the Church was divided and before the invasion of the barbarians. The great increase of knowledge which all students of the Bible have now at their disposal makes more absurd than ever the theory that ignorant people are justified in making their own
1
Casuistry is the application of moral principles to particular cases.
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religion out of their own ideas of the meaning of the Bible. The old maxim is even more true than formerly: "The Church to teach, the Bible to prove."
How do we know that the Bible is inspired? First, by the formal authority of the Church which is supported by the experience of so many millions of Christians in all ages and lands.
Second, because the Bible differs from the sacred books of other religions as Christianity differs from those religions themselves. Christianity is founded on historical facts, and part of the function of the Bible is to record those historical facts. A man might worship Heracles or Krishna without believing that he ever existed; but if Jesus Christ had never existed, or had not been what Christians believe Him to be, Christianity could not exist.
Third, because the Bible satisfies the spiritual needs of all men, Asiatics and Africans as well as Europeans, and at the same time allows room for progress. It does not bind us to the ideas and standards of one age or one country. We now see many principles in the Bible which were not seen by our medieval ancestors slavery, religious persecution, aggressive war, are not consistent with the principles of the New Testament. As time goes on, future generations will probably see other things in the Bible which are now hidden from us. The Holy Ghost will only be able to make full use of the Bible in His work for mankind when all races of men shall have made it the foundation of their outlook on the world.
The two chief marks which distinguish man from the other animals are Conscience and Reason.
Conscience is the power to distinguish between right and wrong; in practice, the power to say, "This is what I ought to do, and that is what I ought not to do." It is not an emotion. It is not a determination of the will, for we often know that we ought to do something and yet determine not to do it.
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It is chiefly through the conscience that God the Holy Ghost addresses each of us. It is He that tells us what is right and what is wrong. But conscience is not itself the voice of God. It is one of the means by which we hear His voice.
Since we have no better means of knowing what is right and what is wrong than conscience, we ought always to obey it. But it is not always right. It is, so to speak, a delicate instrument and may easily be perverted. Our own wishes or inclinations may affect our conscience without our knowing it. If this happens, we cannot hear the voice of God rightly. We may come to take the voice of the flesh, or of the world, or even of the devil, for the voice of God.
Therefore our duty to obey our conscience requires us also to test our conscience. If what we sincerely believe to be right is found to be contrary to what the Bible teaches or contrary to what the Church teaches, it is at least extremely probable that our conscience has become perverted.
In such a case it is our duty to examine as closely as we can, with prayer, study of the Bible, and the teaching of the Church which is founded upon it, and the advice of the wisest and holiest teachers we can find, whether our conscience is rightly informed.
But when we have done this to the best of our power, we ought to obey our conscience. We are responsible to God for our own actions. We cannot hand over that responsibility to anyone, not even to the Church Universal. In the last resort conscience ought to be obeyed. If it is wrong, we may be sure that God will forgive us because we have done everything we could to find out His will.
Reason is the power of judgment. It is not the same as conscience. A man may have a very sensitive conscience combined with very feeble powers of reasoning, or very good judgment combined with a perverted conscience.
It is only by means of reason that we can decide whether anything is true. As Christians we expect God the Holy Ghost to guide our reason if we pray constantly for "a right judgment". Authority, so far from hindering the use of reason, is one of the chief materials that reason uses. If we want to find out whether a particular doctrine is true, we must find out what the Bible teaches; how the Church in all ages, and especially the part of it to which we belong, has interpreted the teaching of the Bible; what the best modern scholars have said about it (making due allowance for their special bias).
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If we have not time or ability to do all this, it is quite reasonable to follow the advice of the wisest teacher we can find, always bearing in mind that he may be wrong; and that if what he says is contrary to the Bible (or appears to be so), or to the teaching of the Church (which for us Anglican Churchmen is summed up in the Prayer Book), it is at least probable that he is mistaken.
The authority of the Church is chiefly used to condemn certain lines of thought, and so to prevent us from wasting our time on theories which have been shown to be false. There is nothing to prevent us from working out for ourselves the theories of the heretics of Sabellius, for instance, or Arius. But if we do, it is so unlikely that we shall come to any conclusion other than that of the Church, or that, if we do come to another conclusion, that we shall be right and the whole Church wrong, that for most of us such research is waste of time. Some scholars are called to examine the theories of the heretics, and to see whether there is anything of importance in them which the Church has neglected (for instance, the chapter on "Apollinarius" in Dr. G. L. Prestige,s Fathers and Heretics). But such work requires great learning and judgment. It is not for the untrained to undertake.
We cannot escape from the use of our judgment, and we are responsible for whatever use we make of it. The agnostic who gives up the search for truth as vain is doing so with his private judgment. The extreme Romanist who places his mind entirely under the authority of the Pope and refuses even to think a thought which the Pope does not sanction is using his private judgment by remaining in the Roman Communion, as the Anglican who rejects its teaching is using his. We cannot refuse to use our private judgment, for the very act of refusing and continuing to refuse is an act of private judgment.
What people mean when they attack private judgment is unlimited private judgment. In forming a judgment about anything, we seek, if we are wise, the help of those who know more about it than we do. As Christians we believe that God has given us the Church and the Bible for this purpose, and we allow them to control our judgment because it is in the highest degree unlikely that we know better than the Church and the Bible.
Many people have held that no man should be guided in matters
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of religion by any judgment but his own; that he should take his Bible and decide by what he finds there without any human guide; or that he should, without any Bible, trust any thought that rises to his mind in the certainty that it comes from God. These ideas have led to all sorts of fantastic and even disastrous results, especially when those who held them were as ignorant as they were sure they were right. It is such theories as these that are condemned when people condemn "private judgment". On the other hand, there are those who hold that the Bible, or the Church, or the Pope, is infallible, and that there is in them no human possibility of error. They believe, therefore, that by handing over to one of these authorities all responsibility for accepting the truth, they are freed from any danger of being mistaken. Now, it is right that the unlearned should trust those who know more than they do, and we are all unlearned about some things and to some extent about all things. But it is an error to suppose that any human being can be infallible. Neither the writers of the Bible, nor the Councils of the Church, nor the Bishops of Rome are secured against error. They may know more than we do, we may be right to trust them,1 but no one should be beyond the reach of criticism. As members of the Church we are bound to accept the decrees of the Church, but we shall accept them with much greater confidence if we know why we accept them, and if we do not accept them merely because "the Church says so", but because we have proved them for ourselves. "Now we believe," said the Samaritans to the woman who brought them to our Lord, "not because of thy speaking: for we have heard for ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Savior of the world" (St. John 4:42).
So we have Conscience, the Bible, and the Church to tell us what to do; Scripture, Tradition, and Reason to teach us what to believe. In all of them the Holy Ghost speaks to us, and He is infallible. It is our duty and our responsibility to listen to His voice and to prepare ourselves in every possible way to understand it rightly. To do this we must be quite sincere and pure in heart, which is extremely difficult because we often do not know by what motives we are acting and sincerely think that we are pure in heart when we
1
For reasons which will be given in Chapter 50, the Bishops of Rome do not deserve our trust. (See pp. 306317.)
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are far from being so. But sincerity is not enough. History shows that sincere, honest people whose conscience is not enlightened and whose reason is not good do immense harm. Queen Mary Tudor was the most devout and sincere member of her family, and she made conscience, not expediency, the basis of her policy; but she ruined her own cause by the foolish measures which she took and by doing what her conscience told her was right, but what we can now see, and even many of her subjects in her own day could see, was utterly wrong.
Since God is truth, He cannot contradict Himself. What He tells us through the Bible, through the Church, through our reason, and through our conscience, must be consistent with itself. If our means of knowing His will do not agree, we must have misunderstood Him; and it is our duty to find out how.
There is one way in which the Church has authority in a different sense from the Bible, reason, and conscience. She has the power of the Keys, the right to decide controversies of faith (St. Matt. 16:19; Acts 15:28; cf. Article 20). If as members of the Church we deny her dogmas or break her rules, we may be punished.1 If we find the doctrinal or moral rules of the Church contrary to reason or to conscience, a difficult problem may arise. This was what happened to many of the Reformers. If we find that our conscience will not allow us to do what the Church directs, or to avoid doing what the Church forbids, it is clearly our duty to examine, first, whether our conscience is rightly informed, and whether the grounds on which its judgment is based are sufficient; and second, whether we have rightly understood what the Church requires; for the Church is more likely to know what is right than we are. But if, after we have made every possible effort to reconcile our duty to the Church and our duty to our conscience, they are still not reconciled, we must obey our conscience and take the consequences; but we must not, even in that case, oppose or hinder the Church.
The course to be followed, if our reason appears to forbid us to believe what the Church teaches, is not quite the same. It is most unlikely that we are right and the Church wrong; even more unlikely than when it is our conscience that is not reconciled. We must therefore do everything in our power to reconcile our conclusions with the teaching of the Church; and if, after doing all that we can to reconcile them, we fail to do so, our best course will
1
But only with spiritual penalties: the Church can deprive us of the sacraments, but cannot fine us, imprison us, or put us to death.
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probably be to conclude that we have made some mistake which we are incapable of seeing, and therefore to keep silence as to this particular point; unless it is our duty to teach it, in which case we must consider whether we can honestly retain the position which requires us to teach it. In any case as long as anyone remains an official teacher he must not use that position to teach doctrines which he has not been given authority to teach.
On the other hand, the Church also has her duty in such a case. She has the authority to "bind and loose", to declare what is true and what is false; but she must also respect reason and conscience because the Holy Ghost often speaks through the reason and the conscience of particular persons. Since it is only in the Church that we can lead the life of the children of God, the Church must take the greatest care not to put any unnecessary stumbling block in the way of any of her members by insisting on his observance of what may be contrary to his conscience; on the other hand, she has to preserve the great mass of her members from false teaching, and therefore must strictly control everyone who is authorized to teach in her name. Those who are sincerely in doubt about her teaching or practice ought to be treated with sympathy. If Luther had been treated with more sympathy at the beginning, the Reformation might have taken a less revolutionary form. But sympathy with the doubters must not put stumbling blocks in the way of the great mass of the faithful. It has never been easy for the Church to deal with prophets, whether true or false. They must neither be stifled nor allowed to have everything their own way.
The English Church allows her members the free use of their reason. They are encouraged to think for themselves, and are at liberty to criticize all that the Church is and does. They have therefore much greater responsibility than those of whom uncritical obedience is required or who are obliged to observe the rules strictly. No one has any moral right to criticize unless he has given time and thought to what he is criticizing and has some knowledge of the subject, and unless he is humble enough to be aware of his own limitations. For criticism which is not based on knowledge and not accompanied by humility is not only worthless but sinful.
Those who are authorized by the Church to preach and teach in her name have a much greater responsibility than that of ordinary members. The preacher and teacher must remember that he is not entitled to preach or to teach his own opinions, but only the doctrine of the Church. If he wishes to mention his own opinions, he must
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say that they are his own opinions. Even St. Paul could write, "To the rest say I, not the Lord" (I Cor. 7:12).
The preacher and teacher must be able to prove what he says from the Bible. In the Anglican Communion he is pledged to teach nothing as necessary to salvation which he cannot prove from the Bible. He must also be able to show that his interpretation of the Bible is confirmed by the Church. In the Anglican Communion he must show this from the Prayer Book, for it is the only handbook of the teaching of the Church to which most of his hearers have access. And he must be able to commend what the Church teaches and what the Bible teaches to the reason and the conscience of his hearers. Our Lord Himself did not disdain to do this. When He was asked, "Who is my neighbor?", He did not say, "Your neighbor is everyone you meet, even the Samaritan; the Bible says so, the Church says so, and I say so." But He told the story of the Good Samaritan, and His hearer was forced by his own conscience to admit, even against his will, that the Samaritan was his neighbor (St. Luke 10:36).
We cannot expect the Holy Ghost to guide our reason and our conscience unless we train ourselves with His help to obey Him. He does not guide those who are deliberately disobeying Him. It is the pure in heart who will see God (St. Matt. 5:9). The sinful and unrepentant cannot expect to know either what is right or what is true.
Pride is the gravest and most subtle of sins, and heresy is a form of pride. It is not heresy to think for ourselves. On the contrary, it is our duty, but it is a duty which we cannot fulfill without humility and some knowledge of our own limitations. It is sometimes necessary for some people to oppose the current teaching of the Church, or no reforms would ever be carried out; but no one should take upon him to act as a reformer unless he is absolutely convinced that it is God,s will that he should, and unless he has, as far as he can, laid aside every form of pride and personal ambition, and has given long and careful study to the subject. For the sin of heresy is not the holding or teaching of false doctrine, but the belief that one,s own opinion, because it is one,s own opinion, is more likely to be right than the teaching of the Church or of the best and wisest Christians in all ages and countries.
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We have discovered so much that our fathers did not know, that we are tempted to say, "We know better than our fathers". Sometimes we do, but we ought not to assume that we always do. They had not got all our advantages, but they had some advantages that we have not got. Our age, like every other age, has its limitations and its blind spots. This is one reason why history is important.
In order to know what we ought to believe, and what we ought to do, we must be quite sure that both right belief and right conduct are of supreme importance. We must seek the truth without any thought of self. We must aim at doing God,s will before everything else. If we do this, we may make mistakes, but they will be forgiven. "If any man willeth to do the will of God, he shall know the doctrine" (St. John 7:17).
We pass from the doctrine of the Holy Ghost to the doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church.
The Church is a society of men, visible and organic. By "visible" I mean that its members are known, that they are admitted by an outward rite, that they are bound by written rules, that they are subject to known officers. The Church is not the company of the elect whose names are known only to God. Nor is it a name for the sum of all those "who love the Lord Jesus"; for if it were, it could not be compared by St. Paul to a body. A body is organized. Each member has its own function, and all are subject to the head. It also has its definite limits. If the Church is a body, or is at all similar to a body, it must be an organized community; and it cannot be organized unless the names of the members are known. From the apostolic age till today the great majority of Christians have always held that the Church is a visible society. St. Paul and St. John certainly thought so. They knew who was a member and who was not (I Cor. 5:12-13, 12:12 ff.; I St. John 2:19, cf. I Tim. 1:20). Admission was by baptism only, and a member might be deprived of the privileges of his membership. Every local church
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has its officers. The universal Church also had officers, the Apostles. (See pp. 2246.)
There are two kinds of human society, the contractual society and the organic society. In a contractual society the bond of union is a contract between the members. A group of people join together for a certain purpose. It may be for playing golf or chess, or for selling a certain product, or for the propagation of particular opinions, or for the worship of God. They draw up their rules. They elect their president and secretary. And they can at any time dissolve the society as they formed it by mutual agreement. We are all familiar with this type of society, the distinguishing mark of which is that the members are prior to the society.
There is another kind of society the organic society with which also we are familiar. The commonest example of it is the family. We did not choose our family; we were born into it. We did not form it by holding a meeting and electing our father as president and our mother as secretary! We belong to it by birth. It has made us what we are, and nothing that we can ever be or do can dissolve it or make us cease to be members of it. A nation is a family on a larger scale. Its bond of unity is not contract (the old Whigs thought it was, but later research has shown that they were wrong). Its bond of unity is birth. An Englishman may acquire citizenship of another country by naturalization. He may repudiate his country or commit treason against it. But even if he does, nothing can alter the fact that by birth he is an Englishman. A nation includes not only all its present members, but all those who lived in past ages, and all those who are yet to be born. Its present members are trustees for the past and for the future. They cannot dissolve the nation as if it were a limited liability company.
Now, the Church is not a contractual society but an organic society. The members are not prior to the Church. The Church is prior to her members. The bond of union is not contract but birth; not indeed natural birth, but the new birth which is conveyed by baptism. A man cannot join the Church as he would join a golf club. If he wishes to become a Christian, he must fulfill the conditions of repentance and faith, pass through a period of instruction and of testing called the catechumenate and then be admitted to the Church by baptism. This is the gift of God, and is the first stage in the change of his whole nature. His life begins afresh. He
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is born again. What he becomes by baptism, he cannot cease to be. He may be a bad Christian. He may be excommunicated. He may betray his religion. But he cannot cease entirely to be a member of the Church or get rid of the effect of his baptism.
It may be said that the Church is founded upon a covenant and is therefore contractual. We reply that the Church is indeed founded upon a covenant, but not a covenant between its members. The covenant is a covenant between God and man. Man may break it, but God will not. As long as man is here in this world he may always return to his covenant relation with God, and his membership is entirely due to God,s gift, not to an agreement between him and God which he is free to break.
Because the Church is an organic society, she is more than a society. As in the family, as in the nation, so also in the Church there is an element of mystery, something that we cannot fully understand because it is life. And this mystery in the Church is not a mystery of nature but a mystery of Divine grace. In the words of Father Sarges Bulgakov, "The Church of Christ is not an institution. She is a new life with Christ and in Christ, directed by the Holy Spirit. The light of the Resurrection of Christ shines on the Church which is filled with the joy of the Resurrection, of triumph over death. The risen Lord lives with us, and our life in the Church is a life of mystery in Christ."1
The Church is not, as some have thought, a concession to fallen human nature. She is the environment for which man was created, and in which he is intended to live for ever and ever.
Our Lord is sometimes said to have founded the Church; but this is not strictly true, for the Church existed before His Incarnation. The Chosen People of Israel was the Church of the Old Covenant. According to tradition it began when God made a covenant with Abraham (see pp. 10, 224). The remnant of Israel, the little company which our Lord had gathered around Him, became the new Israel, the Church of the New Covenant; and He sent the Holy Ghost down upon them at Pentecost which is regarded as the birthday of the Church on her new foundation. All the writers of the New Testament assume that the Christian Church takes the place of Israel as the heir of all the promises made to the fathers. The old
1
L,Orthodoxie, p. 1.
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Israel, the Jewish people, is rejected, and is compared by St. Paul to Hagar, cast out from the inheritance (Gal. 4:21-31). It is the concision of mutilation (Phil. 3:2), while the Christian Church is the circumcision.
But the Church of the New Covenant, though she is the Church of the Old Covenant reconstituted, differs from it in several ways. The Church of the Old Covenant was "after the flesh". The Church of the New Covenant is "after the spirit". The former was confined to one nation. The latter is open to all nations. Above all the former was subject to the Law and was in process of education (Gal. 3:24-25). The latter is grown to manhood, united with Christ, and filled with His Spirit. Still, they are the same community, as the man is the same person as the boy that he used to be.
Having such an origin as this, the Church is not merely a visible, universal, and organic society, though there is no other such society which is universal. She is also the one community which is united with God by covenant, redeemed by the death and resurrection of the Word of God, and filled and guided in a special manner by God the Holy Ghost. There is, and can be, but one Church. Her relation to Christ is compared by St. Paul to marriage (Eph. 5:29), and she is called explicitly "the Lamb,s wife" in the Revelation (19:7, 20:9). For this reason she is referred to as feminine. Tertullian went so far as to say, "He cannot have God for his Father who has not the Church for his Mother", a phrase of which even Calvin approved. Certainly the New Testament knows nothing of any Christian disciple who is not a member of the visible Church. The background of the New Testament is Hebrew, and the People united with God by covenant is everywhere assumed.
The privileges of membership in the Church are precious beyond all reckoning. It is by admission to the Church that we become partakers of the benefits of Christ,s death, by union with His risen and glorified life; of the life in grace, maintained by the sacraments which the Church alone administers; and of all the blessings bestowed on those who have been adopted into the family of God and share the family life of His children.
The purpose of the Church is fourfold: to worship God; to proclaim the Gospel; to teach and maintain the Faith; to administer the means of grace. They may be called respectively, Liturgical, Missionary, Doctrinal, Pastoral.
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All things that God has made were made to worship Him. Above all, man was made to worship God freely. The Church was made by God to be the means by which man should be able to worship God perfectly. Man was made a social creature. Therefore his worship of God is social and corporate. Corporate worship finds its fullest form in the Holy Eucharist. The first purpose of the Church is to lead the choir of all created beings in the worship of God. In the vision of Heaven in the Revelation we find the throne of God surrounded by the four living creatures representing the powers of nature, and the four and twenty elders representing the Church (twelve for the Old Covenant, and twelve for the New), who "fall down before Him that sat on the throne, and worship Him that liveth for ever and ever" (Rev. 4:10).
But men cannot worship God unless they know Him. Therefore the second purpose of the Church is to proclaim the Gospel to all men in accordance with our Lord,s command (St. Matt. 28:19; St. Luke 24:47; Acts 1:8). The Gospel is the good news that the Son of God has become man, and died, and risen again, to save us from the power of sin.
When men have accepted the Gospel, they have to be taught what that acceptance requires, what they must renounce, and believe, and do. So the third purpose of the Church is to teach the faith and its expression in conduct. She has been given authority "to bind and loose" (St. Matt. 16:19, 18:18) that is, to pronounce what is to be believed and what is not to be believed. In the exercise of this authority she keeps the Divine revelation; and in order to prevent it from being corrupted or perverted she sometimes defines it, condemning one-sided theories which would lead men astray. So we say that the Church "hath authority in controversies of faith", but her authority is limited. She may not add to or alter that which is revealed (Article 20).
Those who have accepted the Gospel and are learning the Faith (for none of us knows it so perfectly that he has no more to learn), require Grace. The fourth purpose of the Church is to administer
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the means of grace, both the sacraments and those which are not sacramental. It is the ministers of the Church to whom the sacraments are committed (I Cor. 4:1), but all members of the Church have some responsibility for the means of grace. It is, for instance, the duty of the laity to tell their priest the names of those who need any of the sacraments.
The clergy are the leaders of the Church in performing all these functions, but no one can lead unless he is followed. The laity have to take their part in the liturgy, and in every form of the worship of God (I Cor. 14:16); to proclaim the Gospel to those who have not accepted it, either themselves, or by those whom they support with prayers and gifts (St. Matt. 18:19);1 to teach the Faith, especially to children and young people, under the direction of the clergy; to assist in every possible way the administration of the sacraments to those who need them. For the "laity" are not simply "those who are not clergymen". They are the 8@H (laos), the Chosen People, who have their duties as well as the clergy, but not quite the same duties.
The members of the Church are the baptized. No one can be admitted to membership in any other way than by baptism. Confirmation is the completion of baptism. In ancient times as in the Eastern churches still, baptism and confirmation were always administered together. No one is a full member of the Church till he has been confirmed (Acts 19:2).
Only two exceptions to the rule that baptism is necessary to admission are recognized: the Baptism of Blood, and the Baptism of Desire. In the age of persecution if a catechumen that is, one in course of preparation for baptism suffered martyrdom, his martyrdom was reckoned as taking the place of baptism. This was called the Baptism of Blood. The principle was extended to the case of catechumens who, through no fault of their own, had died before they could receive baptism, even though their death had not been martyrdom. The classical case is that of the Emperor Valentinian II, the young pupil of St. Ambrose, who was murdered before he had been baptized (392). This was called the Baptism of Desire.
1 These words were probably addressed to "500 brethren at once" (St. Matt. 28:17; I Cor. 15:6).
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The question whether baptism outside the Church can be recognized by the Church when those who have received it wish to join her was first disputed in the third century. The original rule was that persons baptized outside the Church must be baptized again in order to be admitted into the Church. St. Cornelius of Rome held that if they had been baptized in the manner required by the Church, they must not be baptized again. The rule laid down by Cornelius has been in force since 314 throughout Western Christendom (see p. 332). But in Eastern Christendom the old rule is retained, modified by the principle of "economy". According to this principle the Church, as steward (oikonomos) of the mysteries of God, has the right to accept as sufficient for membership a baptism in which all the conditions usually considered necessary have not been fulfilled if, for the salvation of souls, she chooses to do so. In all cases of "economy" those who receive the privilege must be absolutely orthodox in faith. Those who would make "economy" an excuse for admitting the unorthodox do not understand the principle. "Economy" is a privilege, not a right; and it cannot create a precedent. It is Eastern and has no place in Anglican discipline.
The further question, whether baptism outside the Church admits to membership by itself, or only becomes active when the baptized person is formally admitted to the Church, is also disputed. The old theory, stated as if it were beyond doubt by William Palmer the Tractarian in his Treatise of the Church (3rd ed., vol. 2, p. 20), and strongly maintained by Darwell Stone and F. W. Puller in their pamphlet, Who are Members of the Church?, was that a person baptized outside the Church is in no sense a member of the Church; that his separated condition deprives his baptism of any value, external of internal, but that if he comes into communion with the Church, the baptism begins to have effect and must not be repeated.
On the other hand, the Lambeth Conference of 1920 laid down explicitly that every baptized person is a member of the Church, not a potential member but an actual member. Dr. Stone and Father Puller wrote their book to protest against this decision which has nevertheless become generally accepted in the Anglican Communion. Some Romanist writers also maintain that a person baptized outside the Church is really a member of the Church and has received all the benefits of baptism.
There are said to be sects which baptize in the name of the Holy
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Trinity, and yet do not believe in the Trinity, or (which is quite as bad) deny that the belief in the Trinity is of any importance. There are others which deny that baptism has any effect or is of any importance even though they practice it. Are we to say that persons baptized by these sects are members of the Catholic Church?
Certainly according to the traditional Western practice baptism performed by these sects is genuine baptism and cannot be repeated. Persons who have been baptized even in such conditions are entitled to be married and buried with the rites of the Church which they would not be if they were unbaptized. We must regard them as members of the Church in some sense. But they are not full members. They are not members in the same sense as those who have been baptized in the Church but not confirmed; and they are even less entitled to Communion.
It is not always possible to distinguish sharply between orthodox and unorthodox sects. As we shall see, the necessity of baptism is, in the modern world (though not in the ancient), one of the chief distinctions between the Church and almost all separated bodies. There are many people outside the Church and even inside her who do not know or care whether they are baptized or not. In the conditions of the English speaking world, while we must admit that baptism outside the Church conveys membership, it may be a very low degree of membership (and even baptism inside the Church, given in infancy for conventional or superstitious reasons and not completed by confirmation, may be little better). The case would be different if it could be shown that baptism had been given by a body which was orthodox in its doctrine of baptism and particular as to its administration.1
Membership of the Church attained by baptism and confirmation is retained by communion. No one is a member in the full sense unless he receives the Holy Communion three times in the year (according to the Anglican rule; in the Roman and Orthodox Communion, once a year).
Since the Eucharist can only be celebrated by the authority of some bishop (or person holding ordinary episcopal jurisdiction), it
1 There are devout and saintly Christians who are unbaptized or whose baptism is doubtful. They belong to Christendom but not to the Church.
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follows that every communicant belongs to the jurisdiction of some bishop. As one cannot belong to the University of Oxford without being a member of some college or quasi-college, as one cannot in most public schools belong to the school without belonging to some house or quasi-house, so one cannot belong to the Catholic Church in general without belonging to some particular diocese or quasi-diocese. (In the Roman Communion no man may be ordained outside the diocese in which he was born without the written permission of the bishop of that diocese.)
Membership of the Church cannot be wholly lost. The effect of baptism is indelible. A baptized person, even if excommunicated or apostate, can never be as if he had not been baptized. Even death does not destroy our membership. Unless we are condemned in the final Judgment, we shall remain members of the Church for ever and ever.
A universal society must have officers who are universally recognized. This is specially necessary when the society has no supreme authority which is obeyed everywhere. The Church was for many centuries composed of a large number of self-governing communities which had no permanent machinery for common action. General Councils, as we have seen, were only summoned in case of emergency. The Papacy was a late development and was never universally recognized.
From the very beginning the Twelve Apostles were the officers of the Church, and all authority was derived from them (Acts 5:13, 8:14) as it had been given to them by our Lord Himself (St. Luke 22:29).
Throughout the New Testament the apostles and others associated with them such as St. Paul, St. Barnabas, and St. James the Lord,s brother (Acts 14:15, 15:13; Gal. 1-2; II Cor. 11:5, 12:7) had the supreme authority in the Church. They appointed "elders" or priests and deacons to perform some of their duties. The "Seven" (Acts 6:3) are usually regarded as the first deacons. St. Clement (about 96) tells us that before their deaths the apostles appointed others to succeed them. St. Ignatius, about 115, knows no church which has not got the three orders of bishops, priests, and deacons, which have continued to this day in every part of the Church. There have always been other forms of ministry, prophets, teachers, etc., but the official ministry deriving its authority from
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the Apostles consists of bishops, priests, and deacons. No other was known before the sixteenth century when a new doctrine of the Church brought with it a new kind of ministry. But wherever the old doctrine that the universal Church is visible is still retained, there the apostolic ministry is retained with it.
Our Lord seems hardly ever to have spoken of the Church (St. Matt. 16:18 is the only instance in the Gospels, for in St. Matt. 18:17 it is the local church that is meant). He preferred to speak of the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven. They are the same thing, for the Jews often said "Heaven" to avoid using God,s Name.
The Kingdom of God as mentioned in the Gospels has several meanings. Sometimes it seems to be the Church. It is the Church that is like a net, containing good and bad fish (St. Matt. 13:47); the Church of which St. Peter was to be given the keys (St. Matt, 16:19); the Church which was placed under the Apostles as a kingdom (St. Luke 22:29), (I cannot accept the view that this passage is purely apocalyptic).
But there are other passages in which the meaning is vaguer. "Thy Kingdom come" means more than the spread of the visible Church. It is a prayer that all men may become entirely obedient to their Divine King. Many who belong to the Kingdom do not belong to the visible Church. The Kingdom of God appears to mean the sphere of the work of the Holy Ghost who works chiefly but not entirely through the Church.
But we must entirely reject the popular view that the Kingdom of God for which we pray is a future golden age or "millennium" in this world. Neither Scripture,1 nor tradition, nor reason gives us any basis for such a belief, which is nevertheless very commonly held and taught. Scripture warns us that the Christian life will always be beset with tribulation in this world. It is only in the world to come that tribulation is to cease (St. Matt. 5:11; St. Mark 10:30; St. John 15:20). According to ancient tradition the Second Coming
1 Rev. 20:4-6, whatever it means, cannot mean this. St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 20:6-13, teaches that it refers to the present age.
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of Christ is to be preceded by the Antichrist who will inflict severer persecution than any that has been known before (see p. 447). This tradition does not encourage us to expect in this world
"The day in whose clear-shining light
All wrongs shall stand revealed,
When justice shall be throned in might
And every heart be healed."
English Hymnal, 504
Reason seems to suggest that the majority of mankind, or at least a large minority, will not accept the Gospel and its demands. They have not done so in the past, and there is no reason to suppose that they will do so in the future. The Christian life will always be a struggle in this world. It is only when this world has been brought to an end that God will be completely victorious, and it is for this that we pray when we say "Thy Kingdom come".
So far the word "Church" has been used to mean the universal visible Church, the Bride and the Body of Christ (Eph. 5:23; Rev. 19:7; I Cor. 12:13). But the word "church" is used in several other senses which must be distinguished from one another.
The second meaning of the word, which is also found in the New Testament, is a local organization of the universal Church. The ancient world was organized by cities. Therefore the Church also was organized by cities. Letters were written "to the church of God that is at Corinth" (I Cor. 1:2), "to the churches of Galatia" (Gal. 1:2), to "the seven churches that are in Asia" (Rev. 1:4). Each of these local churches was probably at first a single congregation. Later they included several congregations under one bishop, and such a local church came to be called a "diocese". The universal Church is made up of such local churches, and no one can
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be a member of the universal Church in the full sense of the word "member" without belonging to some local church. In modern times the world is organized by nations, and so to some extent is the Church. We are therefore justified in saying not only the Church of London, or Paris, or Sydney, but the Church of England, or France, or Australia because such national churches, though containing many dioceses, are local organizations of the universal Church.
(We may also speak of a building as a "church", but this does not concern us here. We do not find this meaning of the word in the New Testament.)
These two meanings of the word are correct and scriptural. I shall, as far as possible, only use the word in one of these two senses, employing a capital letter for the universal Church and a small letter for the local churches (except in proper names, as "the Church of England".)
But there are several other senses in which the word is commonly but incorrectly used.
Many people believe with Calvin that the universal Church is invisible, the company of the elect whose names are known only to God. This is an incorrect use of the word because it is not what the New Testament means or what most Christians in any age have meant by the word Church. If the Church were invisible, it could not be organized or compared to a body. No one could be admitted to it or expelled from it. Therefore the invisible company of the truly faithful is not to be called the Church. It has a real existence, but it is not what St. Paul calls the Body of Christ.1
But those who take this view also believe that the invisible "Church" expresses itself in local congregations, and that the sum of all such local congregations is the visible "Church". This is the second incorrect meaning of the word. For a great mass of totally independent groups differing widely in faith and order is not an
1 In this book it is called "Christendom". The phrase "soul of the Church" is not satisfactory.
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organized body. In the first centuries the Church, though she had no headquarters and no supreme organ of government, had one faith and one order. She was a society, not a loose federation, still less a chaos of competing sects.
The third incorrect meaning of the word is a "denomination" or independent religious society which may or may not have a historical connection with the ancient Church. Thus the "Church of Rome" (ecclesia Romana) ought to mean the diocese of Rome, which according to the Council of Trent is "mother and teacher of all churches". But as popularly used it means the whole body of Christians in communion with Rome. (Romanists believe that that body is the universal Church, and that there is strictly speaking no church outside it. Therefore they call it the Catholic Church, and since they believe that the Catholic Church must be Roman, the Catholic Roman Church. But those who do not accept this claim ought to speak of it not as the Roman Church but as the Roman Communion; for it is not the universal Church, and it is not a local church.) Again, we often hear of the Methodist Church meaning all Methodists in all countries. But the "People called Methodists", the society founded by John Wesley, is neither the universal Church nor a local church. Strictly speaking it is not a church but a connection or denomination. We may call the Anglican Communion or the Roman Communion a denomination. Each of them is made up of many local churches. Each of them is a part of the universal Church. But we must call them "Communions", not "churches". A Communion is a group of local churches in "full communion" with one another. There is no one "Anglican Church". The Anglican churches form the Anglican Communion.
The world is confronted today not by one great Church but by an immense and bewildering mass of denominations. It is not true (though some people think it is) that each of them claims to be the one true Church. There are only two which make that claim, the Roman and the Orthodox Communions. The situation is much more complex than that. Some of them hold the universal church to be visible, and others hold it to be invisible. Some are parts of the universal visible church, and some are independent societies. The easiest way to find out whether a particular denomination believes that the Church is visible or invisible is to ask whether it holds baptism to be absolutely necessary for membership or, merely at most, expedient.
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The Anglican definition of the Church (Article 19) is this: "The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the sacraments be duly administered according to Christ,s ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same." There is here no mention of an "invisible Church", and the necessity of sacraments duly administered must be understood in the light of the rule, rigidly observed throughout the Anglican Communion (as throughout Christendom before the Reformation), that the minister of the Eucharist must have been ordained by a bishop. "Faithful men" (fideles) was a technical term for the baptized. Nevertheless the Article is so worded that a moderate Calvinist could accept it, for the Articles date from precisely the period when Calvinist influence was greatest in the English Church.
A modern definition of the Church may be found in the Appeal to All Christian People, issued by the whole Anglican Episcopate at the Lambeth Conference of 1920 (p. 27), and renewed in the Conference of 1930: "We believe that it is God,s purpose to manifest this fellowship, so far as this world is concerned, in an outward, visible, and united society, holding one faith, having its own recognized officers using God-given means of grace, and inspiring all its members to the world-wide service of the Kingdom of God. This is what we mean by the Catholic Church." Elsewhere (p.10) the Church is identified with "the new and greater Israel".
It is clear, then, that the Anglican Communion uses the word Church in its proper historical sense.
The question which, out of all the various Christian communions, should be regarded as the true Church is a question which those who believe that the universal Church is a visible society cannot avoid; but it means nothing to those who believe that the universal Church is invisible and expresses itself wherever there is a congregation of professing Christians. If the Church is prior to her members, like a family or nation, we must be sure that we really belong to her. But if the members are prior to the Church, like the members of a club, it does not really matter which of the many visible organizations
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we belong to. We need a test to show us which is the true Church. Some have sought this test in the four "notes" of the Church proclaimed in the Nicene Creed; but, as we shall see, they do not give us a satisfactory test.
We declare in the Nicene Creed that we believe "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church" (the word "holy" which certainly belongs to the Creed was accidentally omitted from the Prayer Book, and its restoration was one of the most important reforms in the Revised Prayer Book of 1928).
The Church is one in essence that is, she would not be the Church if she were not one. She is one organically that is, she partakes of one life which goes right through her derived from her Head. As we have seen, she is an organic rather than a contractual society, a family or nation rather than a club. She is one internally, through she may be externally divided, as we shall see. She has one faith and one order. She recites the same Creed and lives by the same sacraments. But she is not one in the sense of having the same traditions or customs everywhere, nor in having a visible headquarters or a permanent governing body. She possesses that higher form of unity which consists in being a "society of societies", and each of the local churches of which she is composed has a life of its own and is not a mere department. This, as Dr. J. N. Figgis has shown, is in accordance with the natural development of human society (Churches in the Modern State).
The Church is holy since she is separated from the world and filled with the Holy Spirit. But there have been periods when the holiness of the Church has not been easy to see, and when the word holy applied to the Church could only be used in irony if compared with the standard of the Gospels. Nevertheless, the Church has usually been more holy than the heathen world, and even in the worst periods she has never failed to produce holy men and women such as St. Dunstan in the tenth century, Thomas à Kempis in the fifteenth, William Law in the eighteenth.
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The Church is Catholic that is, universal. She teaches the whole faith to the whole world. She omits no part of God,s revelation to man. She does not distort or pervert it. She adds to it nothing that does not belong to it. She is not confined to any nation, or race, or color, or class, or sex. All men and all women as Christians are equal. The Church of the Old Covenant was Hebrew. The Church of the New Covenant is Catholic and seeks to bring every human being into her fold. This does not mean that she is in fact working in every country. She was not the less Catholic on the day of Pentecost because she was confined to Jerusalem; and there are still some countries, such as Arabia, Afghanistan, Tibet, into which she has not penetrated, or from which she has been expelled (for there were once bishoprics in Arabia and Afghanistan).
But the word Catholic is often used in senses which are not strictly speaking correct. It does not mean "liberal" or "broad-minded". It does not mean indifferent to dogma or willing to accept anyone on his own terms. All human beings are welcomed into the Church if, but only if, they accept the conditions laid down. It does not mean "Roman Catholic". The Roman Communion is one part of the Catholic Church, not the whole. It does not mean "High Church". The name Catholic or Anglo-Catholic is in the Anglican Communion often applied to the party which emphasizes the universal rather than the national element in the life of the Church, but this is a popular, not a theological, sense of the word. For if the Anglican Communion is Catholic at all, it is Catholic throughout, and all its bishops and priests are Catholic bishops and priests. We may think that one school of thought is more Catholic that is, more conscious of its Catholic privileges, and more loyal to its Catholic duties than another, but we must not say that any member of the Church who is in full communion with her bishops is "not Catholic".
The Church is apostolic because she was originally planted by the apostles, because she proclaims the faith received from the apostles, and because she derives her authority from the apostles through their successors the bishops. "The apostles", says St. Clement of Rome, before the end of the first century, "appointed the first fruits of their labors, when they had proved them by the Spirit, as bishops and deacons of those who should believe ... and afterwards issued
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a direction (or continuance) that when these fell asleep other approved men should succeed to their ministry." It is a necessary mark of the Church that she should be continuous. Christianity is a historical religion, not only because it is founded on historical facts but because it must always keep a historical connection with them. The Church is said to possess "mission" from the apostles. Authority which is not derived from them is fundamentally different from the authority of which we read in the New Testament, for our Lord said, "As My Father sent Me, even so send I you" (St. John 20:21), and no other authority was recognized in the apostolic age.
Unity, Holiness, Catholicity, and Apostolicity are called the Four Notes of the Church. But they are rather descriptions of the Church as she ought to be, and as she always is to some extent, than tests by which the true Church can be recognized.
Since the universal Church is visible and external, she can only be recognized by visible and external marks. There are many kinds of unity. A small narrow sect like the Novatianists of old may claim to be the universal Church because it is "one". Holiness is an internal mark. No one but God can say whether a society or a man is holy. Catholicity may mean different things and be claimed by communions with different principles. So may apostolicity. It is not possible simply by using these notes to say which is the true Church and which is not.
If we want to decide whether an existing society is the same as one which existed in the past or exists now in other places, we inquire whether it maintains the same principles, whether it can show historical continuity by the succession of its officers, and whether it is a mere intruder into territory occupied by what is undoubtedly the older society. If, for instance, we want to know whether a particular troop of scouts belongs to the Scout Movement, we ask whether it has a recognized scout master, and whether it is occupying territory which is its own and not another troop,s.
Applying this procedure to the Church, we say that that is a true church which possesses right faith, succession, and jurisdiction.
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The faith of the apostles must be maintained and taught. There must be nothing added or left out. The definitions of the Faith which the universal Church has found to be necessary must be observed. The sacraments must be accepted and used.
The different parts of the Church must confine themselves to their own territory in normal conditions. Anyone who secedes from the local church for insufficient reason, or presumes to officiate where he is not entitled to do so (again, in normal conditions), has no right to act in the name of the Church.
These are the external marks of a true church; but a church may possess them all and yet fail to fulfill its purpose. St. John the Baptist told the Jews that "God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham" (St. Luke 3:8); and the possession of faith, succession, and jurisdiction ought not to encourage complacency but, on the contrary, to carry with it a great and grave responsibility. For the Church in each place is the visible representative of our Lord; and if her members fail to fulfill their vocation which no one else, except by some special act of grace, can fulfill, they will be more severely punished than those who have less responsibility, less knowledge, and less grace (St. Luke 12:47-48).
The ancient Church laid the chief emphasis on the necessity of right faith which includes a true succession because no one who had the right faith about the ministry would be content to be without a ministry duly appointed and recognized. Jurisdiction is of less importance and is partly a matter of order and arrangement; but if it were ignored (as it was by some of the Celtic missionaries), the result would be chaos.
The official Anglican definition of the Church quoted above recognizes the necessity of right faith and succession. A congregation of faithful men (coetus fidelium) means, not those who are loyal in general, but those who have the right Faith (fideles). "The pure word of God preached" is the faith maintained and taught. "The
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sacraments duly administered with all things that are requisite to the same" includes the right minister, which is one of the necessary conditions of a duly administered sacrament. The right minister of the Eucharist, as the Ordinal and the invariable practice of the Anglican churches bear witness, is a priest ordained by a bishop. The ninth and tenth canons of the Church of England, passed in 1604, excommunicate those who separate from the Church of England, form "a new brotherhood", or "take unto them the name of another church"; and the English Church is most careful not to intrude into the jurisdiction of other churches, and to build churches in foreign countries only when they are necessary for Anglican Churchmen living in those countries or for those who have been converted to Christianity by Anglican missions.
The proper meaning of jurisdiction has not always been understood. The ancient rule was one bishop for one city. No bishop might officiate in another bishop,s diocese without leave. No priest or deacon might perform any official act without the license of the bishop of the diocese.
But the ancient Church was more uniform than the modern Church. Differences of nationality and language were few. In modern conditions it may be necessary to have different jurisdictions in the same city if there are Christians of different languages and rites. Thus in some Eastern countries there are churches of different rites Latin, Greek, Armenian, Maronite, etc. under different bishops, but all under the Pope. There is a Greek congregation and a Russian congregation in London under different bishops but both in full communion with Constantinople. There is an English chaplaincy and an American chaplaincy in Paris, a Swiss congregation and an English congregation at Berne under different bishops but both in full communion with Canterbury. Such arrangements are irregular, but sometimes they are expedient; and if both churches consent to them, there is no breach of order.
Jurisdiction cannot exist where there is not a right faith, and those who do not accept the faith of a particular church and therefore are not in communion with it cannot be under its jurisdiction. Therefore if a church has a right to exist at all, it has the right and the duty to provide for its members wherever they may be. Some of the Tractarians, particularly W. J. E. Bennett of Frome, held that jurisdiction was strictly territorial, and that the English Church had
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therefore no right to establish chaplaincies on the Continent. Such a position is so unpractical as to be absurd. Jurisdiction is over human beings, not over acres. We have to provide for our own people in foreign countries, but in doing so we avoid interfering with the work of other churches even though we are not in communion with them. We have never objected to the establishment of chaplaincies of foreign churches in England, provided that they do not interfere with the English Church. Even in a reunited Christendom such arrangements would be required because of the differences of language and rite, and because uneducated Christians usually need the services of their own countrymen. A foreign priest, however sympathetic, could do little for English sailors in a foreign port, and vice versa.
But all such arrangements are exceptional. The rule is that each local church has its own territory and may not intrude into the territory of others.1 Its members, clerical and lay, are at once admitted as full members on presenting their credentials when they enter the territory of another church. This rule assumes that the churches are in full communion with each other. As long as Christendom is divided, rules of jurisdiction can only be applied within each particular communion. It is not differences of jurisdiction that separate churches but differences of faith. If the differences of faith could be brought to an end, difficulties about jurisdiction could be settled by good will on both sides. But we cannot regard as faithful members of the Church those who break the rules of their own communion. Members of the Anglican churches, wherever in the world they are, are subject to the Anglican rules and to some Anglican bishop. At sea and in countries where there is no Anglican bishop, they belong to the diocese of London.
We have laid down the principle that the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, the Bride of Christ, is a visible organic society prior to her members (like a family or a nation), and that she may be known by these marks: right faith, succession from the apostles, and jurisdiction.
1 Every church has the right to preach the Gospel in countries where no church has been planted.
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We have now to apply this principle. There are many religious societies claiming the name of "church". Which of them is the true Church?
But it is not for us, like the builder of Tennyson,s "Palace of Art", "to sit as God, holding no form of creed, but contemplating all." We are not converts to Christianity seeking which of the different denominations we should join. If we were, we should not be in a position to decide, for the decision requires knowledge and experience which the new convert cannot possess. Probably few converts deliberately make their choice between the different Christians communions, as Vladimir of Russia is said to have done. They join that denomination with which they have come into contact.
We have been placed by the providence of God in the Anglican Communion for which we are profoundly thankful. We do not approach the claims of the Anglican Communion as outsiders but as members. As we are responsible for reciting the creeds, and therefore must be convinced of the truth of the creeds, so we are responsible for our membership of the Anglican Communion, and therefore must be convinced of the truth of the Anglican claims. Otherwise we shall not be able to defend our religion or to persuade others that it is true.
When inquiring whether a particular church possesses the right faith, we must judge by a test which is outside all the existing divisions. The right faith is what the apostles preached. The New Testament, therefore, must be our test. But since all the existing denominations accept the authority of the New Testament, we need some further test. We take the interpretation which the ancient Church gave to the New Testament before the divisions of Christendom began (not that we are bound to accept all the interpretations given by the ancient Church, but that any interpretation on which the ancient Church was agreed has a strong claim upon us). To this we add the conclusions of modern scholars because modern scholars have many instruments of interpretation which the Fathers had not got, such as the critical method and the study of Hebrew
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(most of the Fathers were totally ignorant of Hebrew and of the Hebrew background of the New Testament). Tradition and reason are necessary for the interpretation of Scripture.
What a church believes can only be decided by its official formularies including its liturgy which is of special importance, especially if it is in the mother tongue, because it is in constant use while other formularies may be relics of a past age known only to theologians. Neither practical abuses, nor popular superstitions, nor the false teaching of particular theologians (even if they are bishops) necessarily destroy the belief of a church, for these may be marks of weakness in discipline, not of error in doctrine. There is no church or communion in Christendom that has not suffered from grave abuses. Perhaps no Christian church was ever in such a corrupt state as the Church of Rome in the tenth century when it was too ignorant and too little interested in religion to fall into heresy. Yet no one says that it lost the right faith at that time.
The Church of England and the other Anglican churches which with her form the Anglican Communion possess no doctrine peculiar to themselves. They profess to maintain the teaching of Holy Scripture as interpreted by the Fathers and the Councils, and the creeds and sacraments of the ancient Church. They reject, it is true, most of the medieval developments of Latin Christendom.1 But these developments are not to be found in Scripture or in the earliest centuries of the Church. If it be said that we ought to accept the developed form of the Christian religion rather than its undeveloped form, we reply that the Christian religion has several developed forms of which the Anglican has at least as good a claim to be accepted as any other. (For this reason Rome is very shy of using the argument from development, especially since the appearance of Modernism.)
The Anglican Communion has been accused of rejecting the doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice and of the priesthood. In reality all that it has rejected is the medieval theory that the Sacrifice
1 The chief exception is the "Filioque" Clause. See pp. 1325.
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of Christ availed only for original sin and had to be supplemented by the Sacrifice of the Mass for the forgiveness of actual sin. This is the true meaning of Article 31. The Royal Supremacy and the other consequences of the peculiar relations of Church and State in England are not found in any of the other Anglican churches. Though they played a great part in the controversies of the English Reformation, they are only temporary and accidental in the life of the Anglican Communion and in any case have little to do with faith. The Anglican Communion cannot fairly be charged with rejecting any doctrine regarded as necessary by the ancient Church or with asserting any doctrine which the ancient Church rejected.
The