CATHOLICITY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12266, 9 May 1903, Page 1 (Supplement)

CATHOLICITY.

A REPLY

[BY SET. H. KELLY, M.A.]

Complaint is made by "R.J." that I have | been guilty of misleading people by failing to mention the perfervid support furnished to "bishops, presbyters, and deacons" by the Epistles of Ignatius. Without descending to the " tu quoque" style of argument I may be permitted to say that when ■'R.J." published such lengthy extracts from the Epistles, he ought, as an honest man, to have informed his readers that the statements of the so-called Ignatian letters on these points have thrown the gravest doubts upon their genuineness. The modern critical spirit has been, at work in this field, and the results may interest the public, and perhaps even add a little to the knowledge of unintentionally prejudiced persons. Of .he fifteen Epistles of Ignatius no less than eight are now universally rejected. The remaining seven exist in two forms, a longer and a shorter, and almost all critics allow that even the. shorter Epistles show bides of mteinolittion. Neander says: ** Even the shorter slid trustworthy edition is very much interpolated." And what is that feature in the Epistles which has led so many scholars to such a conclusion? Nothing less than their palpable anachronism on the subject of Church government, and their manifest disagreement with the teaching of the New Testament on this same theme. The veriest tyro in theology knows that the •words " bishop" and " presbyter" are used synonymously and indiscriminately in Scripture. Clement and Polycarp, the contemporaries of Ignatius, carefully follow apostolic usage in this matter, and the subsequent writers of the second century more or less continue it whereas Ignatius is credited with observing a destruction in the use of the terms bishop and presbyter, ; which began to appear only in the third century. Such considerations as these lead thoughtful and unbiassed men to the conclusion that those parts of the Epistles which insist with such strenuousuess on honouring a hierarchy which did not then exist, are without doubt to be set aside as manifestly sparious. We are prepared to test Ignatian and all other Epistles by the supremo standard of the teaching of Jesus. I used his definition of the Catholic Church as a brief and convenient setting of the beautiful saying of Jesus, Where two or three are gathered together in My name there am I in the midst of them." No decree of Pope or council can change 'a single letter of that thrilling promise. Happily the love of Christ can overleap all our creeds. Mr. Carr's comments raise questions of a kind too involved for treatment Tiere. The name " Catholic" has been stolen from the whole body of me faithful and claimed as the exclusive property of a section. When Mr. Carr declares that one can love, the Lord Jesus Christ without being a Catholic in the sense of Ignatius, 1 think he does not mean what he says. He may refuse to be called a Catholic, but his love for Christ, uniting him to all believers, makes him a Catholic whether he will no no. And when he urges that one need not proclaim himself a Protestant he is forgetful of the service rendered to literature and life by the use of mutually understood terms and phrases. He ought also to remember that words are ever changing their meaning, so that we must, unless it be otherwise stated, be taken as using words in their present-day sense. And because we use a word which is not in the Bible, in. order by mean« of it to summarise Bibleteaching, he ought not to accuse us of substituting human ideas and authority for i the Divine.

His reference to the Grand Union movement, while complimentary after a fashion, has a sting in its tail. He insinuates that in following the Calvinistic or Armenian creeds our Churches have been accepting other leading in addition to what God furnishes in His Word. If Mr. Carr had taken the trouble to read a little more Church history he would have learned that our acceptance of particular doctrines was not out of respect for either Calvin or Arminius, but because of our deep conviction that these doctrines were "Scriptural. It is just possible that these great historic schools had saints and students in them as wise in judgment and as loyal to Christ as any of the interpreters we can find to-day. It is the earnest prayer of both Presbyterians and Methodists that they may have in all things "the Divine leading only," but it does not follow that this prevents them using formulas to set forth in suitable language the teaching of xioly Scripture. And we wish again to emphasise our abiding conviction that the Holy Catholic Church is a vaster and grander company than any man has imagined, that its members are to be found in not merely every denomination in Christendom, but. far beyond the pale, and that no earthly organisation whatever has any authority for intervening between the soul and the Saviour.

"R.8.F." accuses me of quoting prejudiced history, but gives no proof of the prejudice. I quoted Queen Elizabeth and Laud on one point; would he say that was prejudiced history? When he proceeds to the assertion that the Catholic Church " was designated the One Holv Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church in the beginning of the second century" ho again makes- no attempt at proof, and lie must have extraordinary faith in the gullibility of the public if he expects them to swallow'the ipse dixit of an anonymous writer in the daily paper. It would be interesting to learn how Rome had become so dominant in the beginning of the second century as to have her name enshrined in the titular description of the true Church.

What "R.8.F." does is to furnish us with a new definition of Catholicity, and then show that the Romish Church alone answers to it. The proceeding is very clever, no doubt, but surely "R.8.F." had logic and humour enough to enjoy the proceeding. You can define a. vehicle as a four-wheeled conveyance and then prove quite easily that nothing else is a vehicle. He speaks of a Visible church united in faith, worship, and government; will it surprise him to be assured that scholars are now agreed "that the Church down to A.D. 200, or later, had no fixed or uniform constitution; the form of government was different in. different localities" (Harnack). He has the. hardihood to affirm that the Protestant faith was then unknown. Let him read the New Testament and he will find nothing else was known or even dreamt of. Like hini, I believe in the Holy Catholic Church: but. unlike him, I believe that Catholic and Roman are not synonymous. It is just as possible for a Christian writer of to-day to address a letter to the Catholic Church, meaning the whole company of the faithful, as it was for art apostle to do it. I do not propose to follow "R.8.F." into the vulgar personalities he has indulged in, but content myself with reminding him that when he stoops tc that he at Once parts with his honour and discredits his cause. Let us differ by the whole diameter of being, but let us be gentlemen. The abstract of the Douay Catechism says : " The Church is the congregation of all the faithful ijider Christ their invisible head and His vicar on earth the Pope." If. en? could put a full stop after the word head we would most willingly submit to the definition, but to acknowledge any man, however saintly, as the vicar of Christ on earth, and to confess that those who refuse this acknowledgment are not Catholic, and therefore outside the true Church, and to do all this with the history of the Popes in our minds, is a demand which makes honest men merely shrug their shoulders and smile.