ANGUS CASE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 208, 3 September 1934, Page 11

ANGUS CASE.

"TREMENDOUS ISSUE."

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. WORLD-WIDE PROBLEM. "The Angus case presents the greatest difficulty since the foundation of the' Church in Australia. It is no use saying it is not serious. It is," said Dr. the Rev. R. G. Maclntyre, one of the most eminent Presbyterian divines of Australia, in addressing members of the Auckland Presbytery after a luncheon at the Y.M.C.A. this afternoon. Hearrived this morning by the Niagara, en route to Sydney. "It is a pity that such tremendous issues have to be dealt with by so comparatively small a Church," he added. The problem of the Trinity was a worldwide problem in ecclesiastics; but what ho regretted was that it sjiould have come so early to Australia. It was bound to come to the Dominion, too. he added. On the case there were two extreme views, one of extreme fundamentalism, the other of extreme modernism. The latter, he said, left nothing of the essential and vital things of the faith, without which Christianity would be nothing. "I have felt that I have no message left," he said, "unless I felt that He whose messenger I am was not only a Saviour, but a Divine Saviour, in whom we see not only a reflection of God, but God Himself." With neither extremes was he in agreement. He was in the difficult position of the via media, a thankle->? position, "because you get the bricks from both sides." What he had wanted was a clear decision from the Church, but no decision was given. The cas.> had dragged on and on, and participants in the debate had told him that they had read more theology in the past ten months than in the past ten years. "I wanted a clear decision," he reiterated, "and then I would have known where, my Church stood. As it is now, it does not know where it stands itself." An appeal had been lodged with the Judicial Commission, an appellant Court which could sit at any time, and from whose decision there was no appeal. That Court would meet about the 18th or 19th of this month. Some very difficult problems would arise then, he said, and would have to be faced—problems not only ecclesiastical, but of church law and procedure.