THE NEW THEOLOGY.

Waiapu Church Times, Volume I, Issue 2, 1 August 1907, Page 3

THE NEW THEOLOGY.

Let us try to investigate this new teaching as follows :— l. Its content : (a) negative ; (b) positive. 2. Its sources : (a) external; (b) internal. 3. Its failure : as to (a) basis ; (b) criterion ; (c) content. 1. Content.— What is the " New Theology " ? It is only fair to remark at once that nothing is to be 'Irawn from the name ; as so often, it is a mere label, all responsibility for which is disclaimed by the exponents of this teaching. (a) Negative. — The charge of vagueness cannot be brought against the negative side of the New Theology ; m every variety of phraseology the Bible doctrines of the Fall, of Sin, of the Atonement, and of the Incarnation are uncompromisingly rejected, the Bible ceases to be an inspired authority m the sense that any more deference is to be paid to it than to be paid to the productions of the New Theology, and as a matter of course the final judgment and the rejection of the wilfully impenitent disappear. What then is left ? THE TRUE IMMANENCE OF GOD. (b) Positive.— No one can have heard or read anything of the New Theology without continually meeting with the phrase " Immanence of God." This, we are told, is the starting point, that is, that for the general idea of a God transcending humanity, we must make a substitute a God Who is m the world of humanity, Who, indeed, is one with man, and yet we are forbidden to identify this with Pantheism. Now, no real Christian disbelieves the Immanence of God ; " Christ m you the hope of glory" is the very core of St. Paul's teaching, and the abiding presence of God is no less the main lesson which St. John has to inculcate. But there is a deep gulf between this and the other : to St. Paul or St. John the natural or carnal man is hopelessly remote from God, the same Lord Who came

to make possible for man this intimate communion with God is care-, ful to make it perfectly clear that this communion is only possible to redeemed, regenerate man ; prior to new birth into the Kingdom of God, far from being a son of God, man is, according to the Lord himself, a child of the' devil, however potentially capable of being translated from death unto life. To the new theologian this is unmeaning ; there .is no such division of mankind into saved and unsaved, and it is not a question merely of our inability to mark the dividing line . between them— there is no dividing line ; all men, even the worst, are m their way manifestations of God, and all men are m their own way working out their own atonement. If it is complained that this is all very vague, the answer is that it is ho more vague that the teaching of which it is a summary. The least ingenuous part of it all is that while the ordinary meaning of words like immanence, atonement, Christ, judgment, is abandoned, the words themselves are retained, and while no doubt the teaching is thereby commended to those wholisten to it, confusion of language is added to the already abundant confusion of thought. 2. Sources.— One naturally asks the question : Where does this come from ? What are its sources ? A sufficient and instructive answer is to be found m the teaching itself. As is usual, they are twofold: first there are the causes externa] to the teaching, revulsion from other teaching ; second, there is its own internal basis upon which whatever there is of a positive nature is grounded. (a) External.— (l) The New Theology claims to be a recoil from false, or partial, presentations of doctrine ; the Atonement is assailed on the ground of its immoral teaching, sin is denied as involving God iri injustice and so forth. No one, I suppose, will venture to hold a brief for every method _of presenting these doctrines, . even where there is unmistakable evidence of a graTsp of the truth ; it is not to

be doubted that Christianity has suffered, and does suffer, -more from its friends than its foes, and God has been at times represented m a manner little suggestive of the One Who so loved the world. But is it fair to gauge the truth of a doctrine by abnormal expositions of it ? Moreover, Sin and Atonement as described by the promulgators of the New Theology, would be repudiated by any average Christian; it is as easy as it is worthless to misrepresent and so to demolish the position of one's opponent. ALLEGED FAILURE OF CHRISTIANITY. (2) The alleged failure of Christianity as we know it is much to the fore, especially on the part of those who, without going so far as to accept thei new teaching, yet demand a sympathetic hearing for it. This is an old charge, and needs no more than the old answer. Is the treachery of Judas evidence of the failure of Christ ? Would the fact, if it were a fact, that only onefifth of th© population of London is attached to any religious organisation point incontestibly to the failure of the Gospel ? Granted that such a state of things were even largely due to our remissness, should that be charged to the Gospel ? Moreover, let it ever be borne m mind that of the four-fifths said to be habitually outside the Churches comparatively few can be described as people who have tried the old theology and found it wanting ; sheer apathy and carelessness, for which they are responsible, are the cause of their position. Finally, it is pertinent to ask whether the addition of one more to the GOO or 700 sects of Christendom is at all likely to reach the unreached ; it is far more reasonable to suppose that the adherents of the New Theology are drawn from the " camp-followers " of the various religious bodies already existing. (b) Internal.— the actual source of ..these opinions would not be difficult to discover, even if there were not the many references to the socalled scientific method, and its application to Holy Scripture. It is hardly necessary to say that the science whose support is claimed is absolutely undefined ; but it is, of course, our old friend Evolution, not as a working hypothesis m the domain of biology, and as such affording a useful interpretation of biological phenomena, but as a theory of the universe, organic and inorganic, mental and material. It is strange to see how, m spite of the growing repudiation of this application of a biological theory, drawn largely as it is from the phenomena of reproduction, to spheres where there is no such support m observed phenomena, it yet passes for scientific, not with really

scientific men, but .with would-be philosophy, to assume the applicability of the evolutionary hypothesis to all things m heaven and earth and under' the earth. (See Orr's "Image of God.") It is like the situation m the Roman Church, where the famous Decretals, upon which its claims were founded, are acknowledged to be forgeries, yet the superstructure still maintains its precarious existence. (3) Failure.— (a) A false basis : This has been already indicated ; the New Theology rests upon a discredited theory of the universe. That laws of growth m the sphere of organic development however well established by phenomena m that sphere, are to be predicated of the spiritual sphere, or indeed any other than that m which the induction can be made from observation, is monstrous ; unfortunately, the mind is easily captivated by the analogy : witness the contributions of Haeckel to the solution of the problems of the universe. But Haeckel is at least consistent ; he makes - no attempt to retain any notion of God, freewill or "immortality. The New Theology tries, on the old Gnostic lines, to make a selection, and m doing so seals its own fate as a reasonable system. The Incarnation, a revelation m the specific meaning of the word, and everything else which implies a Theophany, not to be interpreted m terms of physical science, must be abandoned ; yet the Resurrection is left, presumably because it cannot well bo got rid of. But whatever be the reason for its retention oh what principle is it retained, and yet the Incarnation rejected ? Not only is the basis a, crumbling one, but it is abandoned when it suits the purpose of the New Theology. A FALSE CRITERION. (b) A False Criterion.— Our last sentence leads to this most important weakness inherent m the system. With the history of the repeated failures of the Church to find an absolute standard m the Church itself, m an infallible Pontiff, or m any other artificial standard, we are not concerned to belittle individual judgment. But when, as m the New Theolocrv, the judgment of the individual is unblushingly put forward as the only criterion of truth, it is time to demur. Without going into the great question, of Holy Scripture as an objective standard, it is sufficient here to remark that every movement towards revival from the days of Josiah has been due to the rediscovery of the objective revelation, and that without some criterion for the mind to appraise itself by there can be nothing but chaos. - (c) A False Content.— The full exposition of this part of the subject

needs an article to itself ; but something must be said here. ' The New Theology is not a religion for humanity, it contradicts the history of our common spiritual experience. There are three essentials of a religion, established by the study of comparative religion. First, there is the recognition of a supernatural - ' Being or Beings, with whom it is desired to be on good terms, the desire varying from a mere fear of evil to a longing for fellowship ; second comes the sense of unfitness, culpable unfitness for that fellowship, the sense of sin ; and third, there is the attempt at at-one-ment, shown even m the awful human sacrifices which seem little suggestive of anything religious, but are nevertheless indicative of the reality of the need of a propitiation, if the holiness of the outraged Deity is not to be sacrificed to His love. Now, it is open to us to brand all humanity as deluded, with Haeckel and his school— there is at least some consistency m that course, though it amounts to intellectual and spiritual suicide, for if we cannot trust these universal intuitions, why trust anything - at all ?— but, m any. case, it is not open to us" to accept the first and to ignore the other two. The same man who craves for an immanent God craves for forgiveness m order to the realisation of that immanence, and for an atonement which shall assure to him the holiness of Him Whose indwelling he desires. Nothing less— and the New Theology has only much less to offer— will . meet the deep need of humanity. ' * -J.M.W.