Chapter 15

And on what principles are such liberties taken with our authorities? What is the criterion by which it is decided that Christ said, 'I am a king,' but not 'My kingdom is not of this world'? Why must the resurrection have been only a subjective hallucination in the minds of the disciples? To these questions there is a plain answer. The non-intervention of God in history is an axiom with the Modernists. 'L'historien,' says M. Loisy, 'n'a pas à s'inspirer de l'agnosticisme pour écarter Dieu de l'histoire; il ne l'y rencontre jamais.'[75] It would be more accurate to say that, whenever the meeting takes place, 'the historian' gives the Other the cut direct.

But now comes in the peculiar philosophy by which the Modernists claim to rehabilitate themselves as loyal and orthodox Catholics, and to turn the flank of the rationalist position, which they have seemed to occupy themselves. The reaction against Absolutism in philosophy has long since established itself in Germany and France. In England and Scotland the battle still rages; in America the rebound has been so violent that an extreme form of anti-intellectualism is now the dominant fashion in philosophy. It would have been easy to predict--and in fact the prediction was made--that the new world-construction in terms of will and action, which disparages speculative or theoretical truth and gives the primacy to what Kant called the practical reason, would be eagerly welcomed by Christian apologists, hard-pressed by the discoveries of science and biblical criticism. Protestants, in fact, had recourse to this method of apologetic before the Modernist movement arose. The Ritschlian theology in Germany (in spite of its 'static' view of revelation), and the _Symbolo-fidéisme_ of Sabatier and Ménégoz, have many affinities with the position of Tyrrell, Laberthonnière, and Le Roy.

It is exceedingly difficult to compress into a few pages a fair and intelligible statement of a _Weltansicht_ which affects the whole conception of reality, and which has many ramifications. There is an additional difficulty in the fact that few of the Modernists are more than amateurs in philosophy. They are quick to see the strategic possibilities of a theory which separates faith and knowledge, and declares that truths of faith can never come into collision with truths of fact, because they 'belong to different orders.' It suits them to follow the pragmatists in talking about 'freely chosen beliefs,' and 'voluntary certainty '; Mr. Tyrrell even maintains that 'the great mass of our beliefs are reversible, and depend for their stability on the action or permission of the will.' But philosophy is for them mainly a controversial weapon. It gives them the means of justifying their position as Catholics who wish to remain loyal to their Church and her formularies, but no longer believe in the miracles which the Church has always regarded as matters of fact. Nevertheless, an attempt must be made to explain a point of view which, to the plain man, is very strange and unfamiliar.

Two words are constantly in the mouth of Modernist controversialists in speaking of their opponents. The adherents of the traditional theology are 'intellectualists,' and their conception of reality is 'static.' The meaning of the latter charge may perhaps be best explained from Laberthonnière's brilliantly written essay, 'Le Réalisme Chrétien et l'Idéalisme Grec.' The Greeks, he says, were insatiable in their desire to _see_, like children. Blessedness, for them, consisted in a complete vision of reality; and, since thought is the highest kind of vision, salvation was conceived of by them as the unbroken contemplation of the perfectly true, good, and beautiful. Hence arose the philosophy of 'concepts'; they idealised nature by considering it _sub specie æternitatis_. Reality resided in the unchanging ideas; the mutable, the particular, the individual was for them an embarrassment, a 'scandal of thought.' The sage always tries to escape from the moving world of becoming into the static world of being. But an ideal world, so conceived, can only be an abstraction, an impoverishment of reality. Such an idealism gives us neither a science of origins nor a science of ends. Greek wisdom sought eternity and forgot time; it sought that which never dies, and found that which never lives.

'An abstract doctrine, like that of Greek philosophy or of Spinoza, consists always in substituting for reality, by simplification, ideas or concepts which they think statically in their logical relations, regarding them at the same time as adequate representations and as essences immovably defined.'[76]

Hellenised Christianity, proceeds our critic, regarded the incarnation statically, as a fact in past history. But the real Christ is an object of faith. 'He introduces into us the principles of that which we ought to be. That which He reveals, He makes in revealing it.' In other words, Christ, and the God whom He reveals, are a power or force rather than a fact. 'A God who has nothing to become has nothing to do.' God is not the idea of ideas, but the being of beings and the life of our life. He is not a supreme notion, but a supreme life and an immanent action. He is not the 'unmoved mover,' but He is in the movement itself as its principle and end. While the Greeks conceived the world _sub specie æternitatis_, God is conceived by modern thought _sub specie temporis_. God's eternity is not a sort of arrested time in which there is no more life; it is, on the contrary, the maximum of life.

It is plain that we have here a one-sided emphasis on the dynamic aspect of reality no less fatal to sound philosophy than the exclusively static view which has been falsely attributed to the Greeks. A little clear thinking ought to be enough to convince anyone that the two aspects of reality which the Greeks called sthasist and khinêsist are correlative and necessary to each other. A God who is merely the principle of movement and change is an absurdity. Time is always hurling its own products into nothingness. Unless there is a being who can say, 'I am the Lord, I change not,' the 'sons of Jacob' cannot flatter themselves that they are 'not consumed.'[77] But Laberthonnière and his friends are not much concerned with the ultimate problems of metaphysics; what they desire is to shake themselves free from 'brute facts' in the past, to be at liberty to deny them as facts, while retaining them as representative ideas of faith. If reality is defined to consist only in life and action, it is a meaningless abstraction to snip off a moment in the process, and ask, 'Did it ever really take place?' This awkward question may therefore be ignored as meaningless and irrelevant, except from the 'abstract' standpoint of physical science.

The crusade against 'intellectualism' serves the same end. M. Le Roy and the other Christian pragmatists have returned to the Nominalism of Duns Scotus. The following words of Frassen, one of Scotus' disciples, might serve as a motto for the whole school:

'Theologia nostra non est scientia. Nullatenus speculativa est, sed simpliciter practica. Theologiae obiectum non est speculabile, sed operabile. Quidquid in Deo est practicum est respectu nostri.'

M. Le Roy also seems to know only these two categories. Whatever is not 'practical'--having an immediate and obvious bearing on conduct--is stigmatised as 'theoretical' or 'speculative.' But the whole field of scientific study lies outside this classification, which pretends to be exhaustive. Science has no 'practical' aim, in the narrow sense of that which may serve as a guide to moral action; nor does it deal with 'theoretical' or 'speculative' ideas, except provisionally, until they can be verified. The aim of science is to determine the laws which prevail in the physical universe; and its motive is that purely disinterested curiosity which is such an embarrassing phenomenon to pragmatists. And since the faith which lies behind natural science is at least as strong as any other faith now active in the world, it is useless to frame categories in such a way as to exclude the question, 'Did this or that occurrence, which is presented as an event in the physical order, actually happen, or not?' The question has a very definite meaning for the man of science, as it has for the man in the street. To call it 'theoretical' is ridiculous.

What M. Le Roy means by 'interpreting dogmas in the language of practical action' may be gathered from his own illustrations. The dogma, 'God is our Father,' does not define a 'theoretical relation' between Him and us. It signifies that we are to behave to Him as sons behave to their father. 'God is personal' means that we are to behave to Him as if He were a human person. 'Jesus is risen' means that we are to think of Him as if He were our contemporary. The dogma of the Real Presence means that we ought to have, in the presence of the consecrated Host, the same feelings which we should have had in the presence of the visible Christ. 'Let the dogmas be interpreted in this way, and no one will dispute them.'[78]

The same treatment of dogma is advocated in Mr. Tyrrell's very able book 'Lex Orandi.' The test of truth for a dogma is not its correspondence with phenomenal fact, but its 'prayer-value.' This writer, at any rate before his suspension by the Society of Jesus, to which he belonged, is less subversive in his treatment of history than the French critics whom we have quoted. Although in apologetics the criterion for the acceptance of dogmas must, he thinks, be a moral and practical one, he sometimes speaks as if the 'prayer-value' of an ostensibly historical proposition carried with it the necessity of its truth as matter of fact.

'Between the inward and the outward, the world of reality and the world of appearances, the relation is not merely one of symbolic correspondence. The distinction that is demanded by the dualism of our mind implies and presupposes a causal and dynamic unity of the two. We should look upon the outward world as being an effectual symbol of the inward, in consequence of its natural and causal connection therewith.'[79]

But Mr. Tyrrell does not seem to mean all that these sentences might imply. He speaks repeatedly, in the 'Lex Orandi,' of the 'will-world' as the only real world.

'The will (he says) cannot make that true which in itself is not true. But it can make that a fact relatively to our mind and action which is not a fact relative to our understanding.... It rests with each of us by an act of will to create the sort of world to which we shall accommodate our thought and action. ....It does not follow that harmony of faith with the truths of reason and facts of experience is the best or essential condition of its credibility.... Abstractions (he refers to the world as known to science) are simple only because they are barren forms created by the mind itself. Faith and doubt have a common element in the deep sense of the insufficiency of the human mind to grasp ultimate truths.... The world given to our outward senses is shadowy and dreamy, except so far as we ascribe to it some of the characteristics of will and spirit.... The world of appearance is simply subordinate to the real world of our will and affections.'

Because the 'abstract' sciences cannot and do not attempt to reach ultimate truth, it is assumed that they are altogether 'barren forms,' This is the error of much Oriental mysticism, which denies all value to what it regards as the lower categories. In his later writings Mr. Tyrrell objects to being classed with the American and English pragmatists--the school of Mr. William James. But the doctrine of these passages is ultra-pragmatist. The will, which is illegitimately stretched to include feeling,[80] is treated as the creator as well as the discerner of reality. The 'world of appearance' is plastic in its grasp. It is this metaphysical pragmatism which is really serviceable to Modernism. If the categories of the understanding can be so disparaged as to be allowed no independent truth, value, or importance, all collisions between faith and fact may be avoided by discrediting in advance any conclusions at which science may arrive. Assertions about 'brute fact' which are scientifically false may thus not be untrue when taken out of the scientific plane, because outside that plane they are harmless word-pictures, soap-bubbles blown off by the poetical creativeness of faith Any assertion about fact which commends itself to the will and affections and which is proved by experience to furnish nutriment to the spiritual life, may be adhered to without scruple. It is not only useful, but true, in the only sense in which truth can be predicated of anything in the higher sphere.

The obvious criticism on this notion of religious truth as purely moral and practical is that it is itself abstract and one-sided. The universe as it appears to discursive thought, with its vast system of seemingly uniform laws, which operate without much consideration for our wishes or feelings, must be at least an image of the real universe. We cannot accept the irreconcilable dualism between the will-world and the world of phenomena which the philosophical Modernists assume. The dualism, or rather the contradiction, is not in the nature of things, nor in the constitution of our minds, but in the consciousness of the unhappy men who are trying to combine two wholly incompatible theories. On the critical side they are pure rationalists, much as they dislike the name. They claim, as we have seen, to have advanced to philosophy through criticism. But the Modernist critics start with very well-defined presuppositions. They ridicule the notion that 'God is a personage in history'; they assume that for the historian 'He cannot be found anywhere'; that He is as though He did not exist. On the strength of this presupposition, and for no other reason, they proceed to rule out, without further investigation, all alleged instances of divine intervention in history. Unhampered by any of the misgivings which predispose the ordinary believer to conservatism, they follow the rationalist argument to its logical conclusions with startling ruthlessness. And then, when the whole edifice of historical religion seems to have been overthrown to the very foundations, they turn round suddenly and say that all their critical labours mean nothing for faith, and that we may go on repeating the old formulas as if nothing had happened. The Modernists pour scorn on the scholastic 'faculty-psychology,' which resolves human personality into a syndicate of partially independent agents; but, in truth, their attempt to blow hot and cold with the same mouth seems to have involved them in a more disastrous self-disruption than has been witnessed in the history of thought since the fall of the Nominalists. In a sceptical and disillusioned age their disparagement of 'intellectualism' or rather of discursive thought in all its operations, might find a response. But in the twentieth century the science which, as critics, they follow so unswervingly will not submit to be bowed out of the room as soon as matters of faith come into question. Our contemporaries believe that matters of fact are important, and they insist, with ever-increasing emphasis, that they shall not be called upon to believe, as part of their religious faith, anything which as a matter of fact, is not true. The Modernist critic, when pressed on this side, says that it is natural for faith to represent its ideas in the form of historical facts, and that it is this inevitable tendency which causes the difficulties between religion and science. A sane criticism will allow that this is very largely true, but will not, we are convinced, be constrained to believe with M. Loisy that the historical original of the Christian Redeemer was the poor deluded enthusiast whom he portrays in 'Les Évangiles Synoptiques.'

However this may be--and it must remain a matter of opinion--the very serious question arises, whether it is really natural for faith to represent its ideas in the form of historical facts when it knows that these facts have no historical basis. The writers with whom we are dealing evidently think it is natural and inevitable, and we must assume that they speak from their own spiritual experience. But this state of mind does not seem to be a very common one. Those who believe in the divinity of Christ, but not in His supernatural birth and bodily resurrection, do not, as a rule, make those miracles the subject of their meditations, but find their spiritual sustenance in communion with the 'Christ who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Those who regard Jesus only as a prophet sent by God to reveal the Father, generally pray only to the God whom He revealed, and cherish the memory of Jesus with no other feelings than supreme gratitude and veneration. Those, lastly, who worship in God only the Great Unknown who makes for righteousness, find myths and anthropomorphic symbols merely disturbing in such devotions as they are still able to practise. In dealing with convinced Voluntarists it is perhaps not disrespectful to suggest that the difficult position in which they find themselves has produced a peculiar activity of the will, such as is seldom found under normal conditions.

We pass to the position of the Modernists in the Roman Catholic Church. It is well known that the advisers of Pius X have committed the Papacy to a wholesale condemnation of the new movement. The reasons for this condemnation are thus summed up by a distinguished ecclesiastic of that Church[81]:

'Why has the Pope condemned the Modernists? (1) Because the Modernists have denied that the divine facts related in the Gospel are historically true. (2) Because they have denied that Christ for most of His life knew that He was God, and that He ever knew that He was the Saviour of the world. (3) Because they have denied the divine sanction and the perpetuity of the great dogmas which enter into the Christian creed. (4) Because they have denied that Christ Himself personally ever founded the Church or instituted the Sacraments. (5) Because they deny and subvert the divine constitution of the Church, by teaching that the Pope and the bishops derive their powers, not directly from Christ and His Apostles, but from the Christian people.'

The official condemnation is contained in two documents--the decree of the Holy Inquisition, 'Lamentabili sane exitu,' July 3, 1907, and the Encyclical, 'Pascendi dominici gregis,' September 8, 1907. These pronouncements are intended for Catholics; and their tone is that of authoritative denunciation rather than of argument. In the main, the summary which they give of Modernist doctrines is as fair as could be expected from a judge who is passing sentence; but the papal theologians have not always resisted the temptation to arouse prejudice by misrepresenting the views which they condemn. We have not space to analyse these documents, nor is it necessary to do so. It will be more to the purpose to consider whether, in spite of their official condemnation, the Modernists are likely in the future to make good their footing in the Roman Church.

Even before the Encyclical the Modernists had used very bold language about the authority of the Church.

'The visible Church (writes Mr. Tyrrell in his "Much-abused Letter") is but a means, a way, a creature, to be used where it helps, to be left where it hinders.... Who have taught us that the consensus of theologians cannot err, but the theologians themselves? Mortal, fallible, ignorant men like ourselves! ... Their present domination is but a passing episode in the Church's history.... May not history repeat itself? [as in the transition from Judaism to Christianity]. Is God's arm shortened that He should not again out of the very stones raise up seed to Abraham? May not Catholicism, like Judaism, have to die in order that it may live again in a greater and grander form? Has not every organism got its limits of development, after which it must decay and be content to survive in its progeny? Wine-skins stretch, but only within measure; for there comes at last a bursting-point when new ones must be provided.'

In a note he explains: 'The Church of the Catacombs became the Church of the Vatican; who can tell what the Church of the Vatican may not turn into?'

It is thus on a very elastic theory of development that the Modernists rely. 'The differences between the larval and final stages of many an insect are often far greater than those which separate kind from kind.' And so this Proteus of a Church, which has changed its form so completely since the Gospel was first preached in the subterranean galleries of Rome, may undergo another equally startling metamorphosis and come to believe in a God who never intervenes in history. We may here remind our readers of Newman's tests of true development, and mark the enormous difference.

Mr. Tyrrell's 'Much-abused Letter' reaches, perhaps, the high-water mark of Modernist claims. Not all the writers whom we have quoted would view with complacency the prospect of the Catholic Church dying to live again, or being content to live only in its progeny. The proverb about the new wine-skins is one of sinister augury in such a connection. If the Catholic Church is really in such an advanced stage of decay that it must die before it can live, why do those who grasp the situation wish to keep it alive? Are they not precisely pouring their new wine into old bottles? Mr. Tyrrell himself draws the parallel with Judaism in the first century. Paul, he says, 'did not feel that he had broken with Judaism,' But the Synagogue did feel that he had done so, and history proved that the Synagogue was right.