SIR ROBERT STOUT AND DEAN RASHDALL

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 234, 29 June 1922, Page 5

SIR ROBERT STOUT AND DEAN RASHDALL

Sir. —The description of the views of Anglican Modernists, given by Sir Robert Stout, in his recent address at the Wellington Unitarian Church, is grossly inaccurate. When the Cliief Justice of New Zealand publicly discusses the highest of all themes, the public has a right to expect something more than a super- ' ficial handling of the subject, and, above all, it has a right to expect fairness and accuracy. Sir Robert Stout singles out the' views expressed by Dean Rashdall, at the Cambridge conference of Modern Churchmen, for special consideration. He is fully justified in doing so, for Dr. Rashdall has won world-wide distinction, both as philospher ajid theologian, and he was the dominating intellectual influence at the conference. But Sir Robert’s flagrant misrepresentation of the opinions of Dr. Rashdall is quite unexcusable. 1 Sir Robert Stout states that Dr. Rashdall asserted that Jesus was merely a man, distinguished by his unique knowledge of God ; that Christ was not God. These are very damaging opinions to put'into the mouth., or a man who holds a high - office in the Church of England; and these are the very opinions that Dr..Rashdall has publicly repudiated in the most \ emphatic manner. He has characterised as a libel a. report w. the "Daily Express,” which attnbuted to him the. statement that “Jesus Christ was, in truth, man in the fullest sense, and not God. Dr. Rashdall acepts and affirms the Athanasian declaration that Christ is “perfect God and perfect man.” In a letter to the newspapers protesting against the very misrepresentation which Sir Robert Stout has repeated, Dr. Rashdall asserts that the paper be read at the Cambridge Conference was an “assertion of the Catholic doctrine that our Lord is God and man. He declares that there is nothing, in his paper which “is not compatible with a full acceptance of the Catholic doctrine of the Divinity of Christ, and defined by the creeds and councils.” , i , Sir Robert Stout further accuses* Dr Rashdall of asserting that there is no Trinity . Such an accusation is' grossly inaccurate.. ..The. Catholic de ctrine of the Divinity of Christ, which Dr. Rashdall says he declares that Christ the Second Person of the Trinity. Dr. Rashdall makes his position nuite clear in a letter to the “Guardian, t n , w hlch he says: ‘lt is, not true that I have denied either the preexistent personality of the Lord, Jesus Christ—if by this is meant the pre-existence of the Second Person of the Holy Mnitv Whet I have denied is the preexistence of Christ’s human soul and that is denied by all Catholic theo l°ls it not amazing that an educated man like Sir Robert Stout who occupies a position , for which the hab t of accuracy in thought and speech is essential, should be capable of the flagrant inaccuracies , contained. in his address? Dr. Rashdall s plain and deliberate statement of his own opinions must be accepted. Now that Sir< Robert Stout* knows the truth, he is in honour bound to ™" e , ? St Auckland, Jhne 23.