THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17909, 11 October 1921, Page 9

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST.

MODERN VIEWS DISCUSSED.

THEOLOGIANS DIFFER

WHAT IS ORTHODOXY? [FROM OTTB, OWN COEHESPONDZNT.] LONIX)N, Aug. 24. At the Modern Churchmen's Congress, at Cambridge, doubts were cast on many cherished beliefs of the strictly orthodox. The paper by the Rev. Hastings Rashdall, Dean of Carlisle, in particular, has caused widespread interest and criticism. He spoke on "Christ" as Logos and Son of God," and asked: What is the real meaning of the traditional language used in regard to the Divinity of Christ ? Three things are not, and cannot, be meant in ascribing Divinity to Christ. Ha did not claim it for Himself. He may have called Himself, or more probably allowed Himself to be called, the Messiah, or Son of God, iu a sense very remote from Jewish conception. His attitude to God was what He wished all men should adopt to (iod. The doctrine of His Divinity must be taken to express the Church's conception of what Jesus is, or should be, to His followers and to the world, not His own theory about Himself. Jesus had a humau soul as well as a human body. Many of the earlier Greek fathers thought of Him simply as the Logos of God residing in a human body. This was also held by Apollinaris, and was condemned hy Liter councils The dean said that it cannot be too strongly declared that Athanasius was an Apollinanari, and a great many people with orthodox views are under the influence of that heresy today, including the Bishop of Zanzibar— that fiery malleus hereticorum. It was equally unorthodox to suppose that the human soul of Christ pre-existed; what pre-existed was the Logos. Nor did the Divinity of Christ necessarily imply the Virgin Birth. Even if historically proved, it would not be a demonstration of Divinity, nor would its disproof throw any doubt on the Divinity. There was not an assertion of Christ's Divinity in the Synoptic narration of the Birth. The Revelation* of God in Humanity.

"If we once recognise that it is especially in the moral consciousness at its highest, and in lives which are most commonly dominated by it, that God is most completely revealed, then it becomes possible to accept the doctrine that in a single human life God is revealed more completely than in any other. If we believe that every human soul reveals, produces, incarnates God to some extent; if we believe that in the great ethical teachers of mankind, the great religious personalities, the founders, the reformers of all religions, God is more fully revealed than in other men, then it becomes possible to believe that in One Man the self-relation of God has been signal, supreme, unique ; that we are justified in thinking of God as like Christ, that the character and teaching of Christ contains the fullest disclosure both of the character of God himself and of His will for man; that is the true meaning for us of the doctrine of Christ's Divinity. Such is, at bqttom, the permanent meaning of that doctrine of the Logos and the Trinity in which this conviction clothed itself under the influence of Greek philosophical conceptions and terminology. Canon E. W. Barnes, of Westminster, suggested that beings who inhabit other planets progressed to such an extent that they possessed souls which would live for ever. Possibly, he said, the earth was but one of many worlds where life existed, and it might well be that on other planets the living cell had led to the evolution of animals very different from ourselves in physical structure, yet carrying spiritual consciousness. We had to "view the Incarnation in the light of such possibilities, and also to regard it not as an event which happened some four or five thousand years after the creation, but as a revelation vouchsafed to man after something like a million years of human existence. If life in other worlds had led to our spiritual understanding with our certainty that there were in the universe absolute values like goodness and truth, which indicated the nature of God, if such animals knew that they ought to be loyal to God and were hindered by manifold temptations, then we might affirm that thev were created, that they might become spirits capable of eternal life, and that some method had been provided for them of | realising their destiny.

The Question Of Miracles. Bishop Welldon, Dean of Durham, has been interviewed on the subject of the relations between psychotherapy and the Christian religion. "The Modern Churchir.en, who have been lately assembled at Cambridge," he said, "are a bodv of thoughtful and cultivated Christian" men whose opinions deserve great respect. They explain away at least a great part of the supernatural elements in Christianity, but do they all look upon our Lord as "a supernatural Being elevated above the limits of humanity, as being, in effect, the Son of God? If He was a man like other men, then it might be expected that His life would be like other men's Lives, ana! if He was a being higher than men, then I should expect His life to transcend the lives of other men. It is here that the question of miracles comes in. To my thinking the miracles of His healing the sick, or of feeding the hungry are insignificant as compared with His miracle of judging tie living and the dead at the Last Day. ''But I wish the modern Churchmen would say clearly whether they believe in our Lord's command over nature in HLs raising of the dead, and in His own resurrection. Nobody has vet fathomed the power of one man's mmd or spirit over another's. How much greater must be the power of the mind or spirit of a Divine being over that of a human being? Telepathy is, I suppose, an established fact. So is the will tc be healed as a conaition of healing. Tno words, 'Thy faith has healed thee.' are equivalent to this law of healing. I fully agree that the Church should keep her eyes open to all evidences in behalf of faith-healing or of psychotherapy. But ihat all preachers should be healers, too, is, I think, a more doubtful proposition. The greater the mystery of the universe the greater is the opportunity, as well as the necessity, of religion."