§ 154. First Theorem.—No presentation of the Christian religion issuing from the Visible Church contains pure and perfect truth.

1. If it be the case that Scripture itself is not such a presentation issuing from the visible Church, but rather itself constituted the visible Church, Scripture does not so far come under the scope of our paragraph. But the objection might well be raised that the very principles which our paragraph affirms suggest that error will be at its minimum in all acts of ordination, and hence in the appointment of those persons in whose hands the duty is placed of purifying pre-existing ideas for the dissemination of Christian truth. If each of these persons, taken by himself, was exposed to error, then in the discharge of this duty the controlling power of the common Spirit must have manifested itself in the fact that wrong individual tendencies in the community cancelled each other out. This, however, would imply that every such tendency found its exact counterweight in some other. It is true that in the whole body all possible tendencies exist; but if the whole be divided by inner differences, the onesidedness of each part of the whole cannot find its corrective opposite within itself; each particular Church may err even in its official presentations of truth. But from this it does not follow that if there was a time when the Church was as yet undivided, the presentations then given were pure and perfect truth. For the tendencies which cancel each other are not all present in the Church at the same time; ages too can be onesided, in ways that can only be cancelled in a later age. Indeed, if we are bound to hold (and it is a position which alone can justify the existence of the Evangelical Church) that specially inspired individuals may exert on the whole body a reforming influence, and an influence which at first was ‘not. official, it at once follows that what has its seat in the official organization of the body is not the reforming power, but the need for reformation. This is a condition of things which may arise anywhere and may recur periodically, wherever and as long as the relation between the whole body and individuals varies between preponderating spontaneity and receptiveness on the one side or the other.

2. No definition of doctrine, then, even when arrived at with the most perfect community of feeling, can be regarded as irreformable and valid for all time. This is pre-eminently true of definitions which arose after controversy as presentations put forth by a larger or smaller majority, for controversy more than anything else rouses all those impulses that lead to error. Hence no one can be bound to acknowledge the contents of such presentations as Christian truth except in so far as they are the expression of his own religious consciousness, or commend themselves to him by their scriptural character. On the other hand, the revision of the Church’s public doctrine is a task in which every individual is bound to take a share, testing the established ideas and propositions in the measure of his power and the helps at his command; he has rights in this matter, in the exercise of which he must be left free. Still, through the whole course of this work there runs a natural agreement with regard to the principles on which, and the aims with which, error is to be counteracted; but even this agreement is a thing of gradual formation in each Church, and can only arise when the Church has come to self-consciousness. Hence we must always reflect with satisfaction that as regards the doctrines which had come to be matters of controversy, the incipient Evangelical Church declined to submit to the decisions of a General Council; but we can no longer approve of its having none the less accepted all the ecumenical Creeds; for these Creeds are but the product of similar Councils, which besides were due to divisions within the Church, and hence were not pre-eminently fitted for the ascertainment of truth. Similarly, it is a matter for satisfaction that the convictions then held were set forth in brief Confessions for the whole of Christendom, which was the first thing to give reforming influences acting on the whole body their assured place; but it is a matter of regret that by means of these very documents (as if they had been irreformable) an effort was subsequently made to hinder the performance of the very task to which they owed their birth.

§ 155. Second Theorem.—All errors that are generated in the Visible Church come to be removed by the truth which never ceases to work in it.

1. This paragraph is so closely connected with the previous one that, on the whole, no objection can reasonably be made to it. If, however grave it be, error is only attached to truth in the way just described, its influence within each organic part of the whole body must diminish in proportion as the Holy Spirit takes possession of the organism of thought; and error is restrained by two forces, prevalent in different degrees at different times: in the individual whose errors are peculiar to himself, it is restrained by the influence of public thought, which makes its pressure felt on him from every side, while in the mass of believers it is restrained by the influence of men of spiritual distinction, spreading clear views ever more widely. If it be thought, however, that in addition to such error in the truth, there exists in Christendom also absolute error from the truth, and that different methods must therefore be adopted for dealing with it, the matter really stands thus. Not merely may certain ideas issue from an imperfect faith in Christ—they may even be directed against other ideas that reveal a faith more perfect—yet none the less underlying them may be that truth which in the Church remains ever the same. On the other hand, conceptions and maxims which in no sense issue from the Christian consciousness, and of which accordingly it cannot be said that they constitute merely error in the truth, belong to Christendom only in so far as those who cherish them have become subject in other ways to the influence of the Christian Spirit, although as yet they are not definitely aware of the fact. For where no relation to the Spirit exists of any kind, there no part of the visible Church exists; and in that case the Church has to do with the wrong ideas of individuals only in so far as they offer a point of attachment for its self-expanding action. In the first case, however, even where there is absolutely no Christian truth on which it seems to rest, error is only a forerunner of such expansion, for it means that already a point exists from which the Christian consciousness may spread.

2. But of course it is impossible for our paragraph to fix times and seasons; indeed, in the history of Christendom one can actually mark off important periods in which error grows and gains the upper hand, while truth is forced back. Yet such phenomena are more calculated to suggest a revision of our judgment on previous apparently favourable conditions than to justify the view (incompatible with belief in the Kingdom of Christ) that the truth had disappeared from the Church or been even partially lost. It all comes to this, that the progress of truth and the consequent removal of error within the Church visible takes either of two forms—one when the truth gradually destroys the opposed error, the other when the error which unconsciously has clung to the expression of real truth is, with all its effects, cut away from the truth; while the truth, although seeming to lose in power and influence, is purified and thereby exerts a completer influence.

Irrespectively of this, history often exhibits an apparent diminution of the domain of truth due to apostasy, usually under the pressure of external violence. But if the apostasy is more than apparent, it means that the Christianity rejected was itself merely apparent; for there is no conceivable point of contact between violence of any kind and living fellowship with Christ. Hence the Christian consciousness can never really be repressed in this way, much less wholly exterminated.

§ 156. Appendix to these two Doctrines.—The assertion that the true Church began with the beginning of the human race and remains one and the same on to the end of it, must not be taken as implying that the Christian Church properly so-called is in itself only part of a larger whole.

Augsburg Conf. vii.: ‘… that a holy Christian Church must ever be and abide … in which the Gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered in harmony with the Gospel.’—Apol. Conf. iv: At sic discernit Paulus ecclesiam a populo legis, quod ecclesia sit populus spiritualis… . In populo legis praeter promissionem de Christo habebat et carnale semen promissiones rerum corporalium… . Igitur illi tantum sunt populus juxta evangelium qui hanc promissionem spiritus accipiunt.—Expos. simpl. xvii.: Quando autem Deus ab initio salvos voluit fieri homines … oportet omnino semper fuisse, nunc esse et ad finem usque seculi futuram esse ecclesiam. —Haec aliter fuit instituta ante legem inter patriarchas, aliter sub Mose per legem, aliter a Christo per evangelium.—Agnoscimus hic tamen diversa fuisse tempora, diversa symbola promissi et exhibiti Messiae.—Conf. Scot. v.: Credimus Deum … omnibus aetatibus ecclesiam suam ab Adamo usque ad adventum Christi in carnem vocasse. —Conf. Belg. xxvii.: Credimus—unam ecclesiam catholicam… . Haec porro ecclesia et ab initio mundi fuit et usque ad eius finem perdurabit. 1. It is not merely the last-quoted Confessions on the Reformed side which definitely assert the unity of the Old Testament and the New Testament Church; the same is the case on the Lutheran side. Some people might infer the opposite from the language of the Augsburg Confession, but the same view as the Reformed is unmistakably expressed in the authentic explanation of that Confession—the Apology. Only in the Saxon Confession does Melanchthon appear in a more cautious mood; in his examples there he goes no further back than the birth of Christ. But he really does this intentionally; his inconsistency is only apparent, for, after all, Christ could not have exerted any redeeming influence on Simeon and Hannah and the others there named.⁴ But Melanchthon indubitably regards the faith of Simeon and the Messianic faith of earlier times as being of the same type. If this unity of the Church from the beginning were to be understood (as appears from one passage) in the sense that Christ was the same for the third period as Moses was for the second, our divergence from these credal statements would be even greater. But we appeal to what was said above on this subject.⁵ The one point we are concerned about is to define more exactly the difference between our paragraph and these credal passages. Both sides start from the position that the Church only exists where there is faith in Christ; the Confessions, however, assert that this Church has been in existence from the beginning of the world, whereas we hold that it only began with the personal action of Christ. The Confessions therefore must assume that faith in Christ existed before His personal action, but we make such faith conditional on, and derive it from, His personal action: this, then, is the first point we have to decide. But along with this goes the fact that, while we both start from the position that faith saves, the Confessions assert that the personal action of Christ is not necessary to effect human salvation, but we hold that the saving love of God did not become effective till Christ appeared; and the question arises whether, in point of fact, we have to choose between these positions, and on what principle in this instance the choice is to be arrived at. Now these paragraphs are not in themselves utterances of our immediate consciousness; also by its negative form our paragraph shows that it has been constructed simply in contrast to positions which we do not share; hence, in the comparison now to be undertaken, we can recognize no other criterion than agreement with what has already been established as the expression of our immediate consciousness.

2. As regards the first point, we have already shown⁶ that the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies does not constitute them grounds of faith for us, in the sense that we believe in Christ because He was foretold as that which He was later found to be; this could be no ground of faith in our evangelical sense. But this certainly does not make it impossible that before Christ appeared, promises as such might have become for men a ground of salvation. Given an acute sense of sin and of the need of redemption, this yearning might (if a Redeemer were promised) attach itself to the promise, and a presentiment might arise of the salvation of future ages in fellowship with Him—a presentiment which as sympathetic joy might in a sense overcome the feeling of personal unblessedness. Even granting so much, this was no more than a shadow-life, a dim premonition of the Christian Church, not the Christian Church itself. All we say is that the Church exists wherever there is faith, because faith is the complete appropriation of Christ and is, in addition, of an essentially fellowship-forming character. In the case in question, it is true, we can in a way admit the appropriation of Christ’s blessedness, not however the appropriation of His perfection. And this faith in the Messianic promises was never anywhere in the Old Testament a fellowship-forming thing; that the existing fellowship rested on the Law is obvious historical fact. Hence it is no adequate statement of the difference merely to concede that there was one kind of symbols so long as the Messiah was promised and another after He appeared; on the contrary, faith itself changed in kind, and in the time of the Law true New Testament faith was merely in the future.⁷ Indeed, the position conceded above is incapable of proof, namely, that Messianic promises in the Old Testament really contained the idea of a Redeemer in the sense that we along with the Protestant Confessions, accept, or that in this sense they offered a Redeemer to the consciousness of sin as we understand it. But if it is sought not merely to affirm all this, but actually in respect of the perfection of Christ as it works upon us and of the bond of brotherly love to identify faith before Christ appeared with faith as we know it, it will have to be admitted that the hearers of the promise were able to construct the idea of sinless perfection out of extremely imperfect indications, and not merely construct it but put it in action. And this, of course, leads to the position that the actual appearance of Christ was not necessary for our salvation, and that nothing more was requisite than that all the time the promise should be kept alive.

3. However little we may agree with this, it looks as if equally inconvenient consequences followed from our own position that men did not attain to salvation before Christ appeared. The inference, however, that the saving love of God only began with the appearance of Christ, we must forthwith qualify (as our principles demand) by saying that it was only the temporal manifestation of that love which then began. Put thus, there can be no objection to its acceptance; for it simply means that we and the whole human race find ourselves in the same case as even now every individual does who for the first time comes to enjoy redeeming love through becoming regenerate. In the same way, until the appearance of Christ humanity was in a condition of living under preparatory grace—the whole of humanity, and not merely that descending succession of persons through which we are led by the Jewish historical books, from Adam and the patriarchs to the founding of Mosaism. For this preparatory grace was manifested in every place where, and in the measure that, there were to be found the workings of the divine holiness and righteousness; and from this point of view we obtain that very equality between Jews and Gentiles which Paul took as his starting-point. This harmonizes more closely than may at first sight appear with the mode in which Paul relates Christ’s appearance to the promise and the faith of Abraham, when he argues that the preparatory divine grace was not manifested in a special or exclusive fashion in the statutory Law, but pre-eminently in the fact that monotheism should have had a place kept for it; and action so motivated is faith, which can equally well be regarded as obedience. It therefore was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness, because he now became the instrument of preparatory divine grace, and in this relation to future generations could through his faith be an object of the divine favour. In this sense, then, we may also accept a justification for Christ’s sake before Christ, analogous to blessedness in sympathy with the future; and thus scattered rudiments of the Church, although not the Church itself. But if for the position that from the beginning of the human race there has existed a true Church, there be substituted the position merely that from the beginning there has never been any source of salvation for men, or any ground of divine favour towards men, other than Christ—to this there can be no objection.

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Footnotes

1. 110, 3. ↩

2. 129 and 131. ↩

3. Acts 10¹⁴ 16⁷, Gal. 2¹¹. ↩

4. Repetit. Conf. (ed. Twesten), p. 164. ↩

5. 12, 2. ↩

6. 14, Postscript. ↩

7. Cf. Gal. 3²².²³. ↩