Being a Consideration of Certain Tendencies in Modern Theology Illustrated by Reference to the Book called “Foundations.” By R. A. Knox. Second Impression. London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1913.1
Mr. Knox is a member of that coterie of young Oxford Fellows out of which come the “Seven Oxford Men” who wrote the Liberal Manifesto called “Foundations” (see the notice of it in this Review, xi. 1913, pp. 526–538). Not being of their way of thinking and, naturally, being aware of the approaching publication of the book, he greeted its birth with a brilliant satire, parodying Dryden’s “Absalom and Achitophel,” under the somewhat lurid title of “Absolute and Abitofhell.” There were those who thought that if the book was to be attacked at all, it would better be seriously attacked; a proposition the universal validity of which would not have been allowed, to be sure, by John Calvin, say, or Pierre Viret—though we are not sure that Mr. Knox would care to support himself on the judgments of precisely these great men. At any rate, having enjoyed his burst of laughter, Mr. Knox has turned to earnest remonstrance and has written this volume of criticism in which he traverses the main positions taken up by the authors of “Foundations.” He still, however, conceives himself to be engaged rather with the writers of “Foundations” than with their doctrines; or rather, perhaps we should say, he conceives himself to be engaged with their doctrines primarily not on their own account but as expressions of the personalities of their propounders. He insists that he is not writing a theological book: he is rather occupied, he suggests, in “a study in psychology” (p. vii.). What interests him particularly is the psychology—the “far more intricate psychology,” he says, than that of “the Prophets, or of the Apostles, or of the Fathers, or of the Schoolmen”—of “the modern theologian.” The most wonderful thing about our wonderful “modern theology” to Mr. Knox is, apparently, that there are people who can think that way.
Even the attitude of the Modern Theologian to his task seems to Mr. Knox an odd one. The Modern Theologian is apparently less concerned in the discovery of precisely what is true about Christianity, than in the ascertainment of how much can be made easily to pass as true among “modern men.” He seems oppressed by the mass of scientific opinion around him; but what daunts him is not so much the effect of this scientific opinion on his own faith, as “its effect on the faith of other people.” Therefore, there enters into all his work an apologetic tone which produces even “at times a cynical indifference to abstract truth.” “For we are not concerned, now, to find how we can represent truth most adequately, but how we can represent it most palatably. We ask of a doctrine, not, ‘Is it sound?,’ but, ‘Couldn’t we possibly manage to do without it?’; not, ‘Is it true?,’ but, ‘Can I induce Jones to see it in that light?’ ” (p. 9). Jones has been to College and has heard of Hegel. He is a good man: “anima naturaliter Christiana, and all that.” But when it comes to Christian doctrine, Jones has difficulties. Concessions are in order: it will not do to estrange Jones’s “modern mind”! Mr. Knox is outraged by such an attitude. “The great argument used now against any theological proposition,” he breaks out (pp. vii. f.), “is not, that it is untrue, or unthinkable, or unedifying, or unscriptural, or unorthodox, but simply, that the modern mind cannot accept it. It is the modern mind that accepts this, and rejects that, that expresses itself in terms of A rather than in terms of B, that thinks along these lines rather than along those, that shrinks, or ratifies, or demands. And after reading a few paragraphs of such ostensibly psychological discussion, I find myself sorely tempted to exclaim, in an equally psychological spirit: ‘If the modern mind has really got all these peculiar kinks about it, then, in Heaven’s name, let us trepan it.’ ”
Even this, however, is, according to Mr. Knox, not the worst of the matter in the case of the authors of “Foundations.” The Jones to whom they are so assiduous in adjusting their teaching is a “back number.” “In a word, our objection is, not that Jones is unreal, or unimportant, or unrepresentative, but that he is sixty” (p. 11). It was forty years ago that Jones went to College: and the strenuous efforts which the authors of “Foundations” are making “to convert our great-uncles” must strike the really “modern mind” as a sad anachronism. The world has moved in this generation: tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. This “modern mind” to fit it into the queer corners of which the authors of “Foundations” are so busy whittling down Christianity, always an impertinence, has become fairly non-existent. Jones has receded into the background; and his grandchildren are of a very different temper. They wish no “accommodations” of doctrine made for them. “I have never met (outside of Senior Common Rooms) any demand from questioners for restatement or accommodation of my beliefs to theirs: they want rather to know what the Church does say, in order to see whether they can accommodate their beliefs to mine” (p. 13). “Against all this complicated process I am convinced that the cry of the average man is, ‘Tell me what you do believe and always have believed … and then I will see about it’ ” (pp. 15–16). “The modern mind does not want pulp. It wants something that it can close its teeth on” (p. 18). “More dogma is wanted, pulpitfuls of it.” The actual mind of the day demands not quieting compromises but clearly-cut differentiations and consequent consistency of convictions.