"in so far as the Creeds are statements of fact, they are properly subject to the testing and, perhaps, the revision of historical criticism. In so far as they are definitions of doctrine, they have no direct connection with historical science, and must stand for judgment at another tribunal." It is happily the case that there is nothing in the Creeds of Christendom which requires acceptance of the specific teaching of the Fourth Article; and it is not difficult to understand that the notion should suggest itself that the slender element of historical affirmation which enters into the statements of the Creeds with respect to our Lord's Resurrection might be exempted from the tests of historical science. But such exemption seemed to me plainly untenable, and therefore I took the two affirmations of the Creed which might seem absolutely secure-the "empty tomb" and the third day"—and showed that even they were not so unassailable as common apologetics assume, that with respect even to them the tradition of the Church might eventually be corrected by historical science, and that, in that event, the Faith of Christendom was none the less secure. But I was not designing a detailed discussion of the critical questions, nor pretending to have reached a conclusion with respect to them. An article does not provide sufficient elbow - room for an elaborate argument. It may well be the case that "the question between a Bible construed critically and a Bible construed uncritically is far more a difference of process than of results but even so, results of "" 1 1 Sanday, Bampton Lectures, p. 413. critical investigation have not the same character, or the same claim on our acceptance, or the same power over us as the results of religious conviction; and any confusion between the two, any attempt to clothe critical conclusions with the authority of Divine credenda, and to read into the necessarily provisional results of historical inquiry the vital and immutable character of Divine Truth, will surely draw in its train consequences hurtful to honest criticism, and not less hurtful to honest belief. "2 "Criticism," wrote Dr. Hort, "is not dangerous except when, as in so much Christian criticism, it is merely a tool for reaching a result not itself believed on that ground but on the ground of speculative postulates.' It will be an evil day for Christianity when of Biblical Criticism in the hands of Christians men shall be able to say, as was said of the Jesuit learning of the seventeenth century, that "it is a sham learning got up with great ingenuity in imitation of the genuine, in the service of the Church." No thoughtful and reverent Christian can really doubt that a profound infidelity underlies the suggestion that the Religion of Christ, the Truth Incarnate, has anything to fear from the progress, free, unhampered, continuous, of scientific research; yet no student of Christian History can be in any uncertainty as to the continual revision of theological thinking and statement which that progress has necessitated in the past, and cannot but necessitate in the future. 1 Hulsean Lectures, p. 177. xxx LETTER TO LORD BISHOP OF LONDON With the utmost respect for your Lordship's great office, and a deep regard and affection for your Lordship's person, I am, MY LORD BISHOP, Your faithful Servant, WESTMINSTER Abbey, June 7, 1904. H. HENSLEY HENSON. |