THEOLOGY TO-DAY

Waihi Daily Telegraph, Volume XXVI, Issue 7908, 28 September 1929, Page 3

THEOLOGY TO-DAY

THE MEANING OF THE FALL OF MAN HONESTY OF BELIEF The Rev. T. Rhondda Williams, chairman of the Congregational Union, gave a striking address on “Christian Belief in the Modern World” at the annual assembly in London. . “We have got to realise,” he said, “that our traditional doctrines concerning Jesus, hammered out as they were in the early councils of the church, cannot be made current coin in the intellectual world of to-day. “It should be a truism that if the Christian churches are to serve the needs of the modern world they must know that world —its prevailing modes of thought, and methods of i life, and they must learn its language. „ “Official religion is practically using the dogmatic system of the prescientiflc world. It is using modes of thought and language that belong to the time when the, human race Was considered to have originated in Adam and Eve 6000 years ago, and the earth was the centre of the universe and only recently created. “This makes it impossible for a larger number of good people to attend services of a church that continues to : talk as if nothing had hap-

pened. . . . “If we take the genesis account ot Adam and Eve to be a legend, are we « still to go on talking HBou’t the Fall of Man without explaining that we mean something different from ,what used to be meant by that phrase. OLD THEOLOGY GONE “I have maintained for at least thirty-five years that the framework of the old theology has gone to pieces, and I feel sure that whatever the religion of the future will be it will hot be traditional Christianity. Indeed, traditional Christianity has already ceased to be the religion of a good many of our churches, and of a still larger number of our ministers. “It is the misfortune of the church that the creeds which still hold a formal place in most of them are tor the greater part impossible of belief to educated and intellectual men and W 0, The pulpit is suspected of trimming and' prevarication, and of something very near, if not quite, intellectual dishonesty. . f “The church has a great deal to learn from scientists in regard to_ reverence for truth. In church think, ing and speaking, there is far too much prudence, tactical car ®> worldly wisdom, too much playing for safety—these things have too often strangled the witness of the church to truth. “ ‘Safety first’ is a good motto foi motorists, bdt it is the damnation of the Christian ministry.”