PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIANITY

Southland Times, Issue 23408, 15 January 1938, Page 5

PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIANITY

REPORT ON ANGLICAN CHURCH DOCTRINE VIEWS BASED ON ANCIENT EVIDENCE LONDON, January 13. After 15 years’ study and discussion the Commission on Christian Doctrine, appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, published its report. The Commission’s task has been to discover the extent of the existing agreement within the Church of England and to investigate how far it is possible to remove or diminish the differences. The Commission does not agree on the subject of the Virgin Birth, some members holding full belief that the historical incarnation “is jnore consistent with the supposition that our Lord’s birth occurred under the normal conditions of human generation.” The Archbishop of York, however, affirms that he wholeheartedly accepts the birth from the Virgin Mother. The report, after consideration of the historical evidence regarding the Resurrection, says: “It ought to be affirmed that Jesus was veritably alert and victorious that He showed Himself to His Disciples and that the rising is to be understood as an event as real as the crucifixion itself.” The commission agrees in asserting that man as known to history has been under the influence of a bias towards evil, but does not believe that the process of human generation is sinful or that sin is conveyed to the offspring because of any sinfulness in this profindings are that the Bible is an inspired record of God’s self-revela-tions to man, but not all its parts are on the same spiritual level. The world is God’s creation, but there is abundant room for a variety of theories regarding its evolution. Belief in general of the resurrection of the body must be rejected but the soul or spirit will still have its appropriate organ of expression. . The commission was united in holding that the Church of England was still bound to resist the claims of contemporary papacy. “With regard to the Church of the future,” the commission stated, “some of us favour a reunion of Christendom with the centre in a primacy such as might be found in a papacy which had renounced certain of its present claims. Others anticipate union by a more federal type of constitution which would not need such primacy.”