ART. III. THE PLACE OF CHRIST IN MODERN THEOLOGY.

The Place of Christ in Modern Theology. By A. M. FAIRBAIRN, M.A., D.D., Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford; Gifford Lecturer in the University of Aberdeen; late Muir Lecturer in the University of Edinburgh. (London, 1893.)

THE main position of Dr. Fairbairn's new book may be briefly described. It is that the historical and critical studies of the present century, following on philosophical inquiries by which they have been not a little influenced, have led to a clearer conception of the actual life and teaching of our Lord, and that this recovery of the historical Christ necessitates a theology in which He is the central figure, which tests all doctrines by their relation to the Fatherhood of God, and which declares the Church to be neither an infallible teacher nor a body limited by any external conditions, but simply the invisible communion of holy souls.

We do not propose to follow Dr. Fairbairn through all the details of his learned work. We have read with the greatest interest much which it will be impossible for us to notice here. The perusal of his accounts of some of the systems of the great German philosophers, and of the influence which they exercised on the theology of Germany, has been to us a task of real pleasure. But we shall perhaps be wise if we refuse to turn aside to subjects so fascinating as, for instance, the indebtedness of Baur to Hegel, or Schleiermacher, or Strauss, and confine our attention to some crucial points in the theology of the volume.

I. We desire to comment, in the first place, on the undue importance which Dr. Fairbairn assigns to the influence of the environments of the Faith in the early centuries of the Church. He frequently writes as if Christianity was affected not only in method of expression but also in its doctrines themselves by the forces by which it was surrounded. When he speaks of philosophy and various polities and heathen religion as determining the 'forms' which 'the life' of the Christian society' assumed' (p. 62), or when he says that the 'formation' of the 'doctrines of the Godhead and the Incarnation' was due to the speculative genius of the Greek theologians' (p. 81), he evidently regards the truths themselves which the Creeds contain as having been gradually

worked out by the Church under influences of the most different kinds. It is in harmony with this view that he should look upon the sub-apostolic writers as the poorest of 'religious authorities' (p. 55), and should think it an open question whether the Nicene theology did more eminent service or disservice to the Christian conception of God' (p. 91). And at a later point he writes:

'The doctrine which conceives God as Lawgiver and Ruler had as the main or active agent in its formation the Latin Church. But the doctrine which conceives the Godhead as a Trinity, or a threefold distinction of Persons subsisting in a unity of essence, had as the active agent in its formation the Greek Church. Each Church, as we have seen, exercised its formative activity under different conditions, the plastic agency being Roman law and polity in the one case, and Greek philosophy in the other' (p. 388).

In opposition to such teaching, it is to be remembered that there was from the first a deposit of the Faith. Careful study of the Gospels shows the pains which our Lord took in the training of the Apostles. It was not a training in character only, important as that was. It was a training also in knowledge and in belief. They were to be fitted to be teachers. The training did not end with His death. It was part of the work of the interval between His Resurrection. and the Ascension that He should continue to teach. It was part of the promised work of the Divine Spirit that He should 'guide' them 'into all the truth.' Thus it is we find mention of a 'way' which could be expounded' and of definite truth which St. Paul had 'received,' of a 'pattern of sound words' and a 'deposit '5 committed by St. Paul to St. Timothy, of the faith' which St. Paul had kept.

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Early Christian writers confirm what the New Testament implies. To St. Clement of Rome it is one of the reasons why the clergy are to be obeyed that they are the successors of the Apostles, who received revealed truth. St. Ignatius refers repeatedly to the true doctrine which is in the possession of the Bishops of the Church. It is the 'word which. was delivered unto us from the beginning' which St. Polycarp regards as the safeguard from error." Irenæus knows of and appeals to a 'rule of the truth' which was found throughout the whole Church, which had been received from the Apostles and

St. Ignat. Eph. 3, 4; Magn. 13; Trall. 6, 7; Philad. 1-3.

• St. Polyc. 7.

must be accepted by those who wished to be in the Christian society. To suppose, as some seem to do, that the idea of a Christian tradition of central truth, first revealed and then handed down, is a growth of a later age, is to be false to all the evidence which the earliest writers afford.

Dr. Fairbairn describes with force, if without perfect accuracy, the differences in temper and habit and environment between Christians of the East and those of the West. Each such difference makes doctrinal agreement more significant. Widely separated Christians under greatly different influences believed alike because they inherited a tradition, and were taught to understand it by the Holy Ghost.

It is not, of course, to be denied that the terminology of the Church was enriched and modified as time went on. The words which express a truth accurately in one age will be inadequate to express the same truth under more subtle conditions of thought. To say what is both true and useful either a Church or an individual must speak in the language of the time. Nor again is it to be denied that inferences from central truths were more clearly seen and more fully expressed. It would have been a dead Church and not a Church living with the life of God and guided by the Holy Ghost which would have refused to assert the unity of the Person of our Lord because no such formula had been drawn up in an earlier age. But to express old truth in new terms, or to express what old truth really means and necessarily implies, is not to form a doctrine but to explain it."

1 Irenæus, C. Hær. I. i. 20, ii.

The admirable statement of St. Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium, xxii., xxiii., is well known. See especially § 55: Sed forsitan dicit aliquis: Nullusne ergo in Ecclesia Christi profectus habebitur religionis? Habeatur plane, et maximus. Nam quis ille est tam invidus hominibus, tam exosus Deo, qui istud prohibere conetur? Sed ita tamen ut vere profectus sit ille fidei, non permutatio. Siquidem ad profectum pertinet, ut in semetipsam unaquæque res amplificetur; ad permutationem vero, ut aliquid ex alio in aliud transvertatur. Crescat igitur oportet et multum vehementerque proficiat tam singulorum quam omnium, tam unius hominis quam totius Ecclesiæ, ætatum ac seculorum gradibus, intelligentia, scientia, sapientia, sed in suo dumtaxat genere, in eodem scilicet dogmate, eodem sensu eademque sententia ;' and § 58: 'Fas est etenim ut prisca illa cœlestis philosophiæ dogmata processu temporis excurentur, limentur, poliantur; sed nefas est ut commutentur, nefas ut detruncentur, ut mutilentur. Accipiant licet evidentiam, lucem, distinctionem; sed retineant necesse est plenitudinem, integritatem, proprietatem.' Cf. St. Aug., Conf. vii. 25, where, after stating the doctrine of the Incarnation and referring to some errors, he adds: Improbatio quippe hæreticorum facit eminere quid Ecclesia tua sentiat, et quid habeat sana doctrina.'

To allow for such a deposit of the Faith as we believe can be shown to have existed, the greater part of the first division of book i. of Christ in Modern Theology would have to be rewritten, and the rewriting of it might lead, we are disposed to think, to the necessity for no small alterations in other sections of the work.

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We must protest, moreover, against Dr. Fairbairn's treatment of authorities in the same part of his book. When he writes of the teaching of Tertullian, 'The Son once was not, is derivative, a portion of the Divine essence, “secundus a Deo constitutus (p. 83); 'To be this' (i.e. ""consortes substantiæ Patris," with whom He speaks "quasi cum ministris et arbitris ex unitate Trinitatis") the Son and the Spirit' 'were created, for Son and Spirit alike owe their being to the Father' (p. 99), he is doing a great injustice to a writer who, if impatience and self-will made him differ on some points from the Church, was with regard to many truths a prominent defender of the Faith. It can hardly be necessary to point out to Dr. Fairbairn that it does not follow that because the Son and the Spirit 'owe their being to the Father' therefore they were created,' or because the Son 'is derivative' therefore He once was not.' If he should think that the passages he refers to in the treatises against Hermogenes and Praxeas 1 prove his point, it would have been only fair to quote with some degree of fulness other emphatic words of Tertullian, as, for instance, where he says:

'The mystery of the oikovouía is still guarded, which distributes the Unity into the Trinity, placing in order the Three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three indeed, not in condition, but in degree; not in substance, but in form; not in power, but in aspect ; yet of one substance and one condition and one power, because one God.' 2

'The Word is always in the Father, as He says, “I am in the Father," and is always with God, as it is written, "And the Word was with God," and is never separated from the Father or other from the Father, because "I and the Father are one." This will be the poßoλn of the truth, the guardian of the unity whereby we say that the Son is derived from the Father but not separated from Him.' 3

1 Tert. Adv. Hermog. 3 ; Adv. Prax. 2, 3, 7, 9.

2 Tert. Adv. Prax. 2: Et nihilominus custodiatur οἰκονομίας sacramentum, quæ unitatem in trinitatem disponit, tres dirigens, patrem et filium et spiritum sanctum, tres autem, non statu, sed gradu; nec substantia, sed forma; nec potestate, sed specie; unius autem substantiæ et unius status et unius potestatis, quia unus Deus.'

3 Tert. Adv. Prax. 8: Sermo ergo et in patre semper, sicut dicit, Ego in patre, et apud Deum semper, sicut scriptum est, Et Sermo erat

No one who appreciates Tertullian's personal history will regard him as on all points a dependable writer, or will expect him at any time to use in every respect the exact language of the Nicene period. We do not think any who will really weigh his teaching will consider it fairly represented in Dr. Fairbairn's account.

Nor, after carefully thinking over the language of Justin Martyr about the Aóyos, can we regard the following passage as justly estimating his use of the word :

'Justin Martyr differs as much from John as from Athanasius ; his idea is inchoate, partly philosophical, partly theological; his Aóyos is a eos repos, created yet divine, appointed Creator by the will of God, existing wholly in Christ, partially or seminally in man; He is innate in all, and in Him all participate' (p. 85).

There were many questions present to the mind of Athanasius of which Justin can hardly have thought, and this would necessarily affect his language, but it is difficult, when his strong and variously expressed teaching of the full Divinity of the Son is borne in mind, to suppose he would have given any other answer to later questions than that the Aoyos was not a creature and that His essence was that of the Father and different from that of man. Justin had received the rule of the Faith, and he struggled to express in the old Platonic language the truth which was new to him.' If his phraseology differed at all from that of an earlier or later orthodoxy, it was not because the doctrine of the perfect Deity of the Word was being developed, but because different persons at different times were differently expressing the same truth.

Dr. Fairbairn's view on the subject we are discussing comes out clearly in a statement about the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. 'The Fathers,' he says, 'were slow in disapud Deum, et nunquam separatus a patre, aut alius a patre, quia, Ego et pater unum sumus. Hæc erit poßoλn veritatis, custos unitatis, qua prolatum dicimus filium a patre, sed non separatum.' To ascertain what Tertullian's opinion really was, this passage should be carefully compared with chapter ix. of the same treatise, especially with the statements, Ecce enim dico, alium esse patrem, et alium filium, et alium spiritum,' 'non tamen diversitate alium filium a patre, sed distributione, nec divisione alium, sed distinctione, quia non sit idem pater et filius, vel modulo alius ab alio.' It is a reasonable inference that, however awkwardly he may have written in some places, Tertullian's belief was that there are Three Persons in the Godhead of one substance and power and eternity. We are aware that Petavius (De Trinitate, I. v.) wrote severely of some treatises of Tertullian, but it was characteristic of that great theologian to make the most of any questionable language in the Fathers.

1 Cf. Canon H. S. Holland in Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography, iii. 574.