Part 1

Produced by Al Haines.

CHURCH AND NATION

THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES FOR 1914-15

DELIVERED AT THE GENERAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK

BY

WILLIAM TEMPLE

HON. CHAPLAIN TO H.M. THE KING

_Rector of St. James's, Piccadilly, Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury Formerly Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, and Headmaster of Repton_

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1915

_COPYRIGHT_

TO MY MOTHER WHO FELL ASLEEP AS GOOD FRIDAY DAWNED APRIL 2, 1915

*PREFACE*

When I received and accepted the invitation to deliver the Paddock Lectures for the season 1914-1915, no one imagined that these years were destined to have the historical significance which they must now possess for all time. I was myself one of those who had allowed concern for social reform, and internal problems generally, to occupy my mind almost to the exclusion of foreign questions. I was prepared to stake a good deal upon what seemed to me the improbability of any outbreak of European war. For all who took this view the events of recent months have involved perhaps a greater re-shaping of fundamental notions than was required by people who had thought probable such a catastrophe as that in which we are now involved. I found it impossible to concentrate my mind upon any subject wholly unconnected with the war, while at the same time it would have been in the last degree unsuitable that in my lectures to American Theological Students I should deliver myself of such views as I had formed concerning the rights and wrongs of the war itself, or the questions at stake in it.

These lectures, therefore, represent an attempt to think out afresh the underlying problems which for a Christian are fundamental in regard not only to this war but to war in general--the place of Nationality in the scheme of Divine Providence and the duty of the Church in regard to the growth of nations.

But in a preface it may be permissible to say what would be inappropriate in the Lectures themselves, and first I would take this opportunity of reiterating certain convictions which have formed the basis of a series of pamphlets issued under the auspices of a Committee drawn from various Christian bodies and political parties, of which I have had the honour to be Editor:

1. That Great Britain was in August morally bound to declare war and is no less bound to carry the war to a decisive issue;

2. That the war is none the less an outcome and a revelation of the un-Christian principles which have dominated the life of Western Christendom and of which both the Church and the nations have need to repent;

3. That followers of Christ, as members of the Church, are linked to one another in a fellowship which transcends all divisions of nationality or race;

4. That the Christian duties of love and forgiveness are as binding in time of war as in time of peace;

5. That Christians are bound to recognise the insufficiency of mere compulsion for overcoming evil, and to place supreme reliance upon spiritual forces and in particular upon the power and method of the Cross;

6. That only in proportion as Christian principles dictate the terms of settlement will a real and lasting peace be secured;

7. That it is the duty of the Church to make an altogether new effort to realise and apply to all the relations of life its own positive ideal of brotherhood and fellowship;

8. That with God all things are possible.

These propositions were very carefully drafted by the Committee referred to above and entirely represent my own beliefs; but there is something more which I would add. The new Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Turkey is no accident; it is the combination of just those three Powers which openly and avowedly believe in oppression--that is, in the imposition by force of the standards accepted by one race upon people of another race. All nations have at one time or another practised oppression; certainly Great Britain is not free from the charge, and the history of Russia has many dark pages in this respect. But we can all claim that when we have been guilty of oppression it has been under the influence of fear, whether of revolution, anarchism, or some other force thought to be disruptive of the State. With our enemies this is not so. We all know about Turkey; it is the essentially Mohammedan power, and Mohammedanism is the religion of oppression; it believes in imposing its faith by means of the sword. The Austrian Empire consists of three divisions in each of which one race is imposing its manner of life upon another. In Austria-proper the Germans oppress the Czechs; in Galicia the Poles have, in some degree at least, oppressed the Ruthenes; in Hungary the Magyars have systematically and avowedly oppressed the Roumanians in the east, and the Croats in the south and west. Germany has shown her political faith by her conduct in Alsace-Lorraine, and still more in Poland. Nothing has yet appeared so illuminating with regard to what is at stake in this war, as Prince Buelow's chapter on Poland in his book, _Imperial Germany_; he describes what seems to us the most grinding oppression with obvious self-contentment and without a question of its righteousness; and there have been abundant signs that, at least, many people in Germany are willing to impose German Kultur by the sword as Mohammedans impose belief in their prophet.

If this is true, and if the analysis in my lectures of the Christian function of the State and of the principles of the Kingdom of God is sound, then it becomes clear that this war is being fought to determine whether in the next period the Christian or the directly anti-Christian method shall have an increase of influence. The three most democratic of the great Western Powers--Great Britain, France, and Italy--in conjunction with Russia, which is after all profoundly democratic in its local life though imperially it is a military autocracy, are linked together in a natural union on behalf of freedom as they understand it, against an idea embodied and embattled which is in exact opposition to all they live for. It was therefore no surprise to find that all the citizens of the United States with whom I came in contact were quite definitely upon the side of the Allies in sympathy. To advocate war in the name of Christ is to adopt a position which looks self-contradictory and which certainly involves immense responsibility, and yet if our people can maintain the attitude of mind in which they entered on the war and can secure at the end a settlement harmonious with that frame of mind, I believe they will have served the Kingdom of God through fighting, better than it was possible to do at this moment in human history by any other means.

W.T.

Lecture II. in this series is almost identical with the pamphlet _Our Need of a Catholic Church_--No. 19 of _Papers for War Time_. In Lectures I. and III. I am under great obligation to Professor A. G. Hogg, though my position is not at all identical with his.

*CONTENTS*

LECTURE I

THE KINGDOM OF FREEDOM

LECTURE II

CHURCH AND STATE

LECTURE III

JUSTICE AND LIBERTY IN THE STATE

LECTURE IV

HOLINESS AND CATHOLICITY IN THE CHURCH

LECTURE V

THE CITIZENSHIP OF HEAVEN

LECTURE VI

GOD IN HISTORY

APPENDIX I

ON THE APOCALYPTIC CONSCIOUSNESS

APPENDIX II

ON MORAL AND SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY

APPENDIX III

ON JUSTICE AND EDUCATION

APPENDIX IV

ON ORDERS AND CATHOLICITY

APPENDIX V

ON PROVIDENCE IN HISTORY

*CHURCH AND NATION*

*LECTURE I*

THE KINGDOM OF FREEDOM

"And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness during forty days, being tempted of the Devil."--S. Luke iv. 1.

Our Lord, in accepting for Himself the title of the Messiah, or the Christ, claimed that it was His function to inaugurate upon earth the Kingdom of God. Whatever else might at that time be believed about the Messiah, this at least was universally held, that the Messiah, when He came, would inaugurate upon earth the Kingdom of God. That is the task of the Lord's ministry; that is the task to which we, as His followers, are pledged; and at this time when the civilisation, which for nearly two thousand years has been under the Christian influence, has culminated in as great a catastrophe as has ever beset any civilisation, Christian or Pagan, it is well for us to go back and ask, What are the fundamental principles of the Kingdom which Christ founded, what the method by which He founded it, and what are the principles and methods which He rejected?

There were various anticipations of the way in which the promised Christ would do His work; but broadly speaking there were two main types of expectation. There were those who supposed that the Messiah when He came, would rule in the manner of an earthly ruler, establishing righteousness by the ordinary methods of law and political authority, and this expectation undoubtedly derived some colour from the way in which Isaiah had envisaged the coming Christ:[#]

[#] Isaiah ix, 6, 7.

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful-Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no end _upon the throne of David_, and upon his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with judgment and with righteousness from henceforth, even for ever."

It is a king ruling upon the throne of David that is suggested; and while it is only the most foolish literalism which will say that the Prophet himself was committed to such a view, it was natural enough for those who read his writings to conceive of the Messiah as acting after that fashion.

The people went into captivity; and when they returned, it was not to any realised Kingdom of God upon earth, but rather to difficulties greater than had ever confronted them before, until at last Antiochus Epiphanes initiated the great persecution whose aim was to stamp out altogether the worship of Jehovah, setting up as he did in the very Temple Court at Jerusalem the altar of Zeus, on which swine were sacrificed--"the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not." Out of the fiery furnace of that persecution comes the glowing prophecy of Daniel. What is the answer which he conceives God as giving to the blasphemer Antiochus? It is nothing less than the divine judgment and the mission of the divine Deliverer:[#]

[#] Daniel vii, 9, 10, 13, 14.

"I beheld till thrones were placed and one that was ancient of days did sit: his raiment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, and the wheels thereof burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him; thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him; the judgment was set, and the books were opened.... I saw in the night visions, and, behold, there came with the clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed."

This conception of the Messiah, coming in the clouds of Heaven, establishing the Kingdom of God by so manifest an exhibition of the divine authority with which He is endowed, that all doubt and hesitation are quite impossible, is that which took the greatest hold upon the religious imagination of Israel, and particularly of that great body of people, the heirs of the tradition of the Maccabees, inheritors of the heroism which had stood out against the persecution, whom we know as the sect of the Pharisees--men who lived in the strength of a fellowship that had behind it the greatest religious tradition in all the world, but who, because they trusted more to their tradition than to the God who inspired it, were unable to recognise the still further call of God when it came to them. The literature of the period between the Old and the New Testament shows how wide and deep was the influence of Daniel's vision upon their Messianic hopes.

At His baptism, the Lord is called to begin His Messianic work; the voice which He heard from Heaven spoke words which were by all interpreters of the time believed to refer to the Messiah:--"Thou art my beloved son; in thee I am well pleased." The Messiah will be endowed with Divine authority and power. How shall He use it? And immediately the Lord goes into the wilderness to face the temptations that arose from precisely the conviction that His Messianic work is even now to begin.

The temptation has two sides to it--an inward and an outward. As regards Himself, what does the temptation mean? Let us remind ourselves that there was apparently no one with Him in this crisis; the story, as we have it, must come from Himself. It is His own account (of course in parable form, like so much else in His teaching) of the struggle of those early days. What is meant by the parable concerning the turning of stones into bread? Surely for Himself it is the temptation to use the power, with which us the Christ of Cod He is endowed, for the satisfaction of His own needs, and that in such a way as will do no kind of harm to anybody else. No one will be the worse for his satisfying His hunger in that way. It is a self-concern from which nobody can suffer; it is perfectly innocent and perfectly rational. But no! It is not for any selfish purpose, however harmless, that the power of God is given; selfishness in its most innocent form is set aside.

How shall He set about His work? Shall He fulfil that expectation which Isaiah's vision had fostered? He looks out on the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them, and He knows that they can be His, if He will fall down and worship the Prince of the power of this world. Shall He use worldly methods to convert the world to God? No; worldliness in its most attractive form is set aside.

Or shall He fulfil the expectation encouraged by the vision of the Son of Man in Daniel, appearing with the clouds of Heaven, descending upon Jerusalem up-borne by angels, giving that sign from Heaven which the Pharisees, who particularly adopted this view of the Messiah, were afterwards going to demand so frequently? From His answer we know that this is a temptation not only to give them a sign, but to secure it for Himself, for the answer is "Thou shalt not tempt,"--that is, Thou shalt not put to the proof--"the Lord thy God." The promise of God is to be trusted, not tested. The test comes as we obey the command and in that sense every act of faith is an experiment, but there must be no test cases to see whether God fulfils His promise. Infidelity in its most insidious form is set aside.

But there is an outward aspect also to the temptations. Shall He use His power to satisfy the bodily needs of men? Shall He exert a power parallel with that of political rulers, which will coerce their conduct without first winning their free allegiance? Shall He give such proof of divine authority that any doubt, intellectual or otherwise, becomes impossible? No; not any of these. And as He leaves the temptation vanquished, what He has set aside is precisely every method of controlling men's action without winning their hearts and wills. He has rejected coercion; He has decided to appeal to Freedom.

What is left? At first, only the commission to proclaim the Kingdom; and He comes proclaiming it. All through the early part of the ministry He moves from place to place preaching or proclaiming the Kingdom of God. He does not at present announce that He is King of that Kingdom; it is the Kingdom itself on which all attention is concentrated. He has indeed the power to do works of mercy, and when with that power He stands in the face of human need, He must for very love exert the power and satisfy the need; so people come crowding around Him, attracted by His wonder-working. But that is not what He desires. The disciples are excited about it; but He has gone out a long while before dawn, and is alone in prayer; and when St. Peter finds Him, and says "All men are seeking Thee," He does not say, "Then let us go to them," but, on the contrary, "Let us go into the villages that I may preach--that I may make my proclamation--there also."[#] As the deadness, the indifference, and hostility of the people gradually shows itself to be invincible, He gathers about Him those whose hearts have been touched, and from among them chooses twelve, "that they may be with Him."[#] They are to live in His company, catching His Spirit, learning to understand Him. With them He goes on two long journeys--north-west to Tyre and Sidon, and then north-east, to Caesarea Philippi; through all those journeys they are alone with their Master, moving through country outside the boundaries of the Jewish religion, and therefore free from controversy.

[#] S. Mark i, 35-38.

[#] S. MArk iii, 14.

At Caesarea Philippi He feels that the time is ripe, and asks them, "Who do men say that I am?" They mention the various conjectures ... Elijah; John the Baptist; one of the Prophets. "Who say ye that I am?" And St. Peter with a leap of inspired insight answers: "Thou art the Messiah."[#]

[#] S. Mark viii, 27-30.

The Lord recognises that this is the revelation of God to faith: "Blessed art thou, Simon, Son of Jonah; flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven."[#] Immediately that He has been thus spontaneously recognised, He begins to say what He had never said before: "The Son of Man must suffer." The Son of Man is the title of the Messiah in glory, as He was conceived in Daniel's vision and the Apocalyptic writings which drew their inspiration from it. "The Son of Man must suffer;" that is the great Messianic act; that is the way in which the Kingdom of God shall be founded. But it was not what St. Peter meant. "Peter took Him, and began to rebuke Him ... Be it far from Thee, Lord; this shall not be unto Thee." And our Lord recognises the voice of the tempter in the wilderness, who bade Him take thought for self.... "Get thee behind me, _Satan_, for thou thinkest not God's thoughts, but men's thoughts."[#]

[#] S. Matthew xvi, 17.

[#] S. Matthew xvi, 22, 23.

Just as, when once He was spontaneously recognised, He began to set forth the new conception of the Messiahship, "The Son of Man must suffer;" so too He immediately starts on that last journey to Jerusalem which culminates with the Cross. Arrived at Jerusalem, He arranges the triumphal entry. He carefully fulfils Zechariah's prophecy--thus claiming the Messiahship, and challenging the religious rulers. But the prophecy which He thus selects for deliberate fulfilment is one which represents the Messiah as a civil, not a military authority (for this is the meaning of the ass as distinguished from the horse), and as one who shall speak Peace to the nations.[#] It is the conception of the Messiah which in all the Old Testament has least suggestion of coercion and is therefore the nearest to His own.

[#] Zechariah ix, 9, 10.

But the primary purpose of the triumphal entry is no doubt to make His claim and issue His challenge. On the journey and after the entry itself He declares with increasing emphasis that the Kingdom of God is at hand; those who stood there should see it come with power; and as He stands before Caiaphas, He answers the question "Art Thou the Christ? with the words, I am, and from this time[#] there shall be the Son of Man seated on the right hand of power." Daniel's prophecy is here and now fulfilled. In the moment that love completes its sacrifice in death, the glory of God is fully made known and the power of His Kingdom is come; this is the Lord's own Apocalypse.[#]

[#] Different words in St. Matthew and St. Luke, but agreeing in sense, which sense the authorised version spoils.

[#] See Appendix I.: _The Apocalyptic Consciousness_.

So He had spoken on that last journey. "Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it is not so among you; but whosoever would become great among you shall be your minister, and whosoever shall be first among you shall be servant of all, for verily the Son of Man came"--(again the title of the Messiah in Glory)--"not to be ministered unto, but to minister; and to give His life a ransom for many."[#]

[#] S. Mark x, 42-45.

So, too, St. John records His saying that in precisely this way he would win His royalty--"I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."[#] The Cross was foreseen by the Lord to be what, as we look back, we know that it has been--the throne of His glory and His power; and the capacity to realise it as such is for St. Paul the touchstone of character, the test of election--"We preach a Messiah on a Cross--to Jews a scandal and to Gentiles an absurdity, but to the very people who are called, whether Jews or Greeks, a Messiah who is God's power and God's wisdom."[#]

[#] S. John xii, 32.

[#] 1 Cor. i, 23, 24.

Here then is the mode of God's power, and we know that it can be no other; for if God is truly King, He must be King of our hearts and wills, and not only of our conduct. There is only one way to win men's hearts and wills, that is by showing love; and there is only one way to show love, and that is by sacrifice, by doing or suffering what, apart from our love, we should not choose to do or suffer. Sacrifice is the Divine activity; Calvary is the mode of the Divine omnipotence. It is the actual Divine method and the ideal human method.

As we come to consider how far it has become also the actual human method, we are confronted at the outset by the sheer impossibility of our applying this method, just because we have not in ourselves the necessary love.

Our perfection, we are told, is to consist in just that quality which shows the Father's perfection, namely, that He is kind to the unthankful and evil, and makes His sun to rise on the evil and good and sends His rain on the just and on the unjust; and we are to be perfect in the way that He is perfect.[#]

[#] S. Matthew v, 43-48.

But until we reach that perfection we cannot imitate His action; for a man's act is not what He intends; nor is it the mere motion of his body; but it is the whole train of circumstances that he initiates. Christ in His perfect purity may stand before the woman taken in her sin and say, "Neither do I condemn thee," because there is no possibility that she will interpret His mercy as condonation of the sin; but if we said it, people would so interpret it, and usually quite rightly so.

Our problem then is so to guide our conduct that we come as near as we are capable of coming to the divine ideal that is set forth in Christ, and that we come perpetually closer and closer to it.