41st Fernley Lecture. By the Rev. W. W. Holdsworth, M.A. London: Charles H. Kelly. 1911.1
Mr. Holdsworth’s Fernley Lecture makes a book of excellent quality. If we cannot quite say that it brings a contribution to our knowledge of the great subject with which it deals, we must at least find it a thoughtful and readable discussion of this great subject in the light, and to some extent under the dominance, of modern views. Its subject is “The Christ of the Gospels.” But this subject is construed somewhat broadly. Mr. Holdsworth himself outlines the task he undertakes as follows (p. 18): “We are not concerned here with the efforts of the Church, nor with the degree of success it attained. Our investigation is with the Records upon which the Church has been built up. What is the doctrine of the Person of our Lord which is given to us in the New Testament? How did it come to find a place in those writings? The double question calls for at least an outline statement from the writings as a whole, and then for some measure of historical criticism of the Four Gospels. When we have thus considered the Records, it may be possible to build up from the writings such a statement of our Lord’s Person as will present Him once again to His Church as the one true object of her adoration; the God-Man, in fellowship with whom a man may find the very fullness of his life.”
We perceive that Mr. Holdsworth has a constructive purpose in view; his object is to reach a new statement of the doctrine of the Person of Christ which will “once again” present Him acceptably to the Church’s adoration. The phraseology suggests that he feels dissatisfied with the statements of this doctrine with which the Church has hitherto been compelled to content itself, as well as that he recognizes that in discarding them the Church has fallen away also from its proper attitude to its divine Lord; he hopes by a restatement to help the Church to recover its lost ground. The method by which he hopes to attain this object is a critical re-examination of the Evangelical records; thus he expects to obtain a basis for interpretation which will yield a truer view of the Person of the Lord than either the new or old views which have hitherto been prevalent. He quite properly, however, supposes that this new interpretation can be most hopefully made in the light of a general view of the teaching as to our Lord’s Person of the New Testament as a whole. Accordingly, after a short Introduction, he begins with a rapid survey of “The Christology of the New Testament,” which is very well done indeed, and shows a true historical sense, a clear expository talent, and a thoughtful mind. From this he passes to a somewhat lengthy discussion of what he calls “The Gospel Record,” that is, to a critical investigation of the origin and historical character of our Gospels. Here he does not appear to us to move with such sure step, and seems to speak more as a reporter of the views of others adopted by himself with scarcely sufficient basis of individual consideration. Finally, in four chapters entitled respectively “The Synoptic Jesus,” “The Johannine Christ,” “The Higher Synthesis—Jesus Christ,” and “The Gospel Message” he presents his constructive view of the Christ of the Gospels, and offers it as the solution of the difficulties created by modern conditions and as a new point of crystallization for the Church’s adoration of its Lord. Along with much that is strikingly said and winningly argued here, we cannot help thinking that Mr. Holdsworth is least successful in this part of his task. The conception he offers us of “the God-Man” is vague, and in danger of running off into a subjectivity which affords little support to faith.
Precisely what the view of Christ’s Person which Mr. Holdsworth would commend to us is, remains a little difficult to determine. He is constant in his affirmation of the true deity of Christ. And he does not always shun the language of the Chalcedonian Christology. He can speak of “incarnation” (p. 222) as if he were using the term in its historical sense; and indeed of the “incarnation” meaning “the union of two natures, human and divine” (p. 41). He can even employ the precise Chalcedonian affirmation and declare that it is the teaching of the Gospels and the sole firm foundation for faith. “If our faith is to have a sufficient objective we want exactly what is offered us in the Gospels—a true humanity and a complete divinity united in one Person” (p. 237). Yet he can speak of this same doctrine as creating “a fatal dualism” in our Lord’s Person (p. 211), and as “representing our Lord as governed by two distinct personalities which, if they do not conflict, at any rate alternate” (p. 138). He declares that “no explanation yet offered as to how perfect God and perfect man could attain to a unity of consciousness in one Person can be considered sufficient” (p. 210). Nothing but a “complete fusion” of the two natures would satisfy him: “It is possible that the Christian Church will never be able to frame a definition that will perfectly express the complete fusion of two natures, one human and one divine” (p. 194). Accordingly he can write such a passage as the following (p. 132): “We may even accept without fear of loss or compromise in that which has interpreted us to ourselves, and filled us with living hope, that to our Lord Himself the consciousness of a true humanity, simple and undivided, preceded the recognition within Himself of Deity. Nothing but confusion and vagueness of thought awaits us if we allow ourselves to think that the God He was came before His consciousness from the earliest days. The puerilities of the Apocryphal Gospels are a sufficient warning to us of the penalties which the Church will pay if any attempt be made to confuse or divide the complete Personality of our Lord by positing in Him a clear sense of inherent Deity from the first. We do not gain, but lose, when we thus divide the Person of Jesus.” This is surely a remarkable passage from any point of view: among the others, however, not least from a logical point of view. The assertion is distinct that our Lord was both God and man: the implication is express that in later life He was fully conscious of being both God and man: we are warned, nevertheless, not to suppose that he could have possessed this consciousness of being both man and God in early life: the reason assigned is that this would be to “divide the Person of Jesus.” Why, meanwhile, it should “confuse or divide the complete Personality of our Lord” to “posit in Him a clear sense of inherent Deity” “at the first,” any more than at the last, remains dark. Light begins to dawn only when we begin to suspect that Mr. Holdsworth does not intend his Chalcedonian language in a Chalcedonian sense. When he speaks of “the union of two natures, human and divine” in Christ, he does not seem to mean that these two natures are two distinct natures; he seems to mean that they are just one nature, which is both human and divine. He does not seem to mean that Christ has a human nature and a divine nature; he seems to mean that Christ has a nature which is both human and divine. And what he seems to mean in the passage before us is that this single nature, in reality as divine as it was human,—or divine because it was human—as it could not be perceived by others, so could not perceive itself, to be divine until it had reached its perfection of development. Perhaps it is even implied that it is not divine except in its perfect development. It is our Lord’s perfect humanity that is His deity.