THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ^■{K'Hyt^a 
 
 n 
 
 A^ T 
 
 7
 
 FORM AND CONTENT 
 
 IN THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN TRADITION 
 
 A FRIENDLY DISCUSSION 
 
 BETWEEN 
 
 W. SAND AY, D.D. 
 
 LADY MARGARET PROFESSOR AND CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH 
 
 AND 
 
 K P. WILLIAMS, M.A. 
 
 CHAPLAIN-FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA 
 
 1916
 
 S213f 
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 It should be explained at the outset that the discussion 
 which follows is quite independent of another which 
 I believe will be pubUshed in the same external style and 
 at the same time. I happen to be personally a connecting 
 link between the two discussions, and the outward form 
 which they have assumed follows naturally from the 
 subject-matter. But the occasions which gave rise to 
 them are wholly distinct, and the fact that both give 
 expression to views opposed to mine must not be taken 
 to imply any further concert or alhance between my 
 critics. There are really three positions indicated, each 
 of which must stand upon its own merits. 
 
 The present discussion arose out of an article con- 
 tributed by me to The Modern Churchman for June 1915, 
 and I am indebted to the editor for permission to reprint 
 it. It had been read just before as an address at a meet- 
 ing of the Churchmen's Union. The article was written 
 for this meeting under some pressure, and I am afraid 
 rather less quietly than might have been wished. But 
 it seemed right to reprint it practically as it stood because 
 it was in this form that it lay before Mr. WiUiams ; and 
 there may perhaps be some increase in frankness and 
 clearness to set against the fault of over-emphasis. 
 The further course of the discussion will explain itseK. 
 
 We agreed between ourselves that, as the writer of the 
 concluding paper had the last word in the body of the 
 book, the writer of the Preface should have a limited right 
 of final reply, just to remove misunderstandings and to 
 wind up the discussion on any point that might need it. 
 I think I can promise not to abuse this privilege. 
 
 a 2
 
 iv Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 I can do so the more easily because, although Mr. 
 Williams has in one or two places rather misunderstood 
 me and in the course of his argument ascribed to me ideas 
 which I am far from holding, he has yet in the main repre- 
 sented my views with conspicuous fairness and often with 
 a lucidity for which I am specially grateful to him. I 
 often prefer his mode of statement to my own. In saying 
 this I ought perhaps to add that, where alternative views 
 are attributed to me (as e. g. on pp. 123, 128) it would, 
 I think, always be safe for the reader to assume that the 
 more moderate and reasonable view is that which I should 
 adopt. 
 
 I am sanguine that our discussion as a whole — whatever 
 may be its effect, or want of effect, upon opinion — will 
 have at least served the chief purpose for which it was 
 undertaken : that of making the two positions stand out 
 clearly before the public mind. Where this has been done, 
 it may be understood that I shall not make any further 
 comment simply for the sake of making comment. There 
 are, however, in the last paper just a few points that still 
 need clearing up in respect to (1) the nature of veracity 
 (§ I, pp. 119-21) ; (2) the historical method (§§ II, III, 
 pp. 121-5) ; (3) miracles (§§ IV-XVII, pp. 125-44) ; (4) 
 relativity of expression (§§ XVIII-XXVI, pp. 145-67). 
 To these I will now ask leave to address myself. 
 
 (1) (§ I, pp. 119-21). I was far from wishing to impute 
 to Mr. Williams any ' indifference to truth ' in the com- 
 mon acceptation of the term. The real difference between 
 us is a difference in the definition of truth, especially in 
 relation to authority. I think I understand Mr. WiUiams's 
 motive in the acceptance of authority ; and I should be 
 quite willing to give it a good name — such as ' loyalty ' or 
 the like. But I should not naturally, in my own use of
 
 Preface v 
 
 words, call the result obtained exactly ' truth ', because it 
 would not to my mind possess all the marks or criteria of 
 truth that I should consider necessary. It is well known 
 that the definition of truth is still a moot point among 
 philosophers. I suspect that I should not see eye to eye 
 with Mr. Williams in this respect. But I do not want to 
 assume that I am right and he is wrong. 
 
 (2) (§§ II, III, pp. 121-5). In regard to the application 
 of modern historical methods, I should wish to tone down 
 slightly some of the expressions that Mi*. WilUams has used 
 in the statement of my views ('a degree of efficiency 
 and certitude hitherto undreamed of ' ; ' complete boule- 
 versement of the traditional view ' ; ' mathematical 
 certainty '). Indeed I should imagine that he might, on 
 second thoughts, apply the same process with advantage 
 to the paragraphs in which he states his own position 
 (' entirely dispute ' ; ' jettison beliefs ' ; ' consciously 
 aim at producing a houleversement of New Testament 
 tradition '). These are just little exuberances of expres- 
 sion which I only deprecate because I do not wish to give 
 the idea that the results of modern methods are more 
 certain than they are. They profess only to be approxi- 
 mate and not exact. My main point is that the same 
 methods must be applied in precisely the same way to the 
 New Testament as to the Old. I do not propose to assume 
 that the result will necessarily be the same ; though I 
 believe that, where the conditions are similar, it is likely 
 to be. There are two further conditions, one telling one 
 way and the other the other. The first is that there will 
 be in the different cases different degrees of attestation — 
 which may be presumed to be on the whole in favour of 
 the New Testament tradition. But, to set against this, 
 is the fact that the New Testament writers and trans-
 
 vi Form and Content in Cliristian Tradition 
 
 mitters had the Old Testament before them and were 
 liable to be influenced by it in the direction of assimilating 
 the one set of narratives to the other. 
 
 I may at this point bring in a reference to what is said 
 on pp. 142-4. While admitting in general terms that the 
 attestation of the New Testament is in the main superior 
 to that of the Old, I am afraid I could not admit that it 
 was in any one of the disputed cases so superior as to be 
 decisive. It should be remembered that the points in 
 debate do not in any case cover the whole of a complex 
 incident ; they only affect particular features of it. And, 
 so far as these particular features are concerned, I should 
 certainly maintain that the evidence was insufficient to 
 establish them. That is a point to which I have given 
 some study, and I am not speaking at random. I have 
 said that the very best New Testament evidence — the 
 evidence of St. Paul's Epistles to the experiences of the 
 Apostle himself — is in none of these instances available. 
 Two of them depend on the witness of St, Luke alone, in 
 parts of his writings which do not possess the highest 
 authority. These — when applied, as I have just said, to 
 a detail and not to a whole incident — would not be enough 
 in themselves to sustain it even if it had been in itself 
 perfectly unexceptionable. Still less can they bear the 
 weight of the features for which they are alleged. No 
 doubt there is a graduated scale of documents. But there 
 is only one of the debated points for which the evidence 
 can be described as really strong. 
 
 This one point is in the Feeding of the Multitude, of 
 which we have two versions. But it should be remem- 
 bered that I only challenge a single detail in this incident. 
 That something like it happened, I have no doubt. I 
 quite believe that there was a meal, which was in some 
 way made a sacred meal. All that I doubt is that it
 
 Preface vii 
 
 satisfied the hunger of four or five thousand men. My 
 belief is that this one detail came in through the influence 
 of an Old Testament parallel. I allow that the narrative 
 must have assumed something very like its present shape 
 at a relatively early date — not later, I should say, than 
 the decade a.d. 50-60. But if we consider the mental 
 attitude of those by whom it was transmitted, that seems 
 to me quite possible. We have seen strange things rapidly 
 come to be believed in our own time. I will return to the 
 question of the clauses in the Creed before I have done. 
 
 (3) (§§ IV-XVII, pp. 125-44). At the outset of what 
 is said about Miracles there is a momentary lapse, not 
 only from accurate representation but (I must needs 
 think) from clearness of thinking. I wilHngly accept 
 the substitution of ' the laws of physics and chemistry ' 
 for ' the laws of matter and motion '. But it is a very 
 different thing to say that certain alleged events must 
 not ' contradict ' these laws and to say that they 
 must be wholly explicable by them. I should never have 
 dreamed of saying anything of the kind. It would be as 
 much opposed to my theory of the universe as it is to that 
 of Mr. Williams. I am relieved from the necessity of 
 dwelling upon this, because § VII is a complete and satis- 
 factory answer to § VI. I have nothing to add to it. 
 
 When I speak of a ' breach ' or ' contradiction ' of the 
 laws of physics and chemistry, I mean something incon- 
 sistent with those laws, something which treats them as 
 if they were not valid. The argument which Mi. Williams 
 directs against me in § IX is one that I have dealt with at 
 some length in another place. It happens that I made 
 use of the same illustration — the catching of a ball — ^to 
 illustrate the difEerence between what I believe to be 
 tenable and what is not. Incidentally, it illustrates also 
 what I mean by a cause supra naturam.
 
 viii Form and Content in Chiistian Tradition 
 
 There is no better example of such a cause than that 
 of personal initiative, the introduction of spirit and will. 
 The broad line which I took was that we have examples 
 all round us on the largest possible scale of the operation 
 of this kind of cause. We can see what kind of effect it 
 has upon the lower laws of matter and motion (or physics 
 and chemistry). I pointed out that these effects are 
 themselves in turn subject to laws, or rather to certain 
 regular limitations. The action of spirit or mind con- 
 stantly overrides, controls and deflects, the lower laws of 
 matter. But, while it does this, it never ' contradicts ' 
 them. The interaction of spirit and matter is a definite 
 sphere to itself. But it too is a cosmos and not a chaos. 
 It has laws of its own which are just as fixed in their way 
 as the lower laws of physics and chemistry. There is 
 always a special process of adjustment which prevents 
 any real breach in the order of nature. Nature (i. e. these 
 lower phenomena in nature) is controlled and regulated 
 by spirit ; but this very control is itself subject to rules 
 and limitations : naturae non nisi parendo imperatur. 
 Mind is superior to matter, but its superiority is exercised 
 constitutionally, and not despotically. Laws of the lower 
 order are overruled, but they are never violated. 
 
 This holds good for all the infinite variety of cases in 
 which there is contact and influence passing to and fro 
 from mind to matter and from matter to mind. The 
 human will exerts an astonishing amount of power in its 
 way ; but it never fails to respect the appropriate laws of 
 that with which it deals. And, as far as our experience 
 goes, what is true of the human will is equally true of the 
 Divine Will. It too, so far as we can see, works through 
 and in accordance with the laws which it has itself laid 
 down. But if it does so in the present, the presumption 
 is that it has done so equally in the past. Our contention
 
 Preface ix 
 
 is that the handful of alleged cases in which it is supposed 
 to have done otherwise is not enough to prove the con- 
 trary. This handful of alleged cases is far more easily 
 and naturally explained in other ways. 
 
 That, as Mr. Williams rightly sees, is the ground that 
 I wish really to take up. He quotes another example 
 (besides the cricket ball) to which I happen to have given 
 particular attention. The story of the Flood, he says, 
 has been definitely disproved. ' But nobody has ever 
 proved, or presumably ever will be able to prove (in the 
 sense of rigorously certain demonstration), that Elisha did 
 not make the iron to swim ' (p. 141). No ; the story of 
 Elisha and the axe-head has not been disproved ' in the 
 sense of rigorously certain demonstration '. But it is very 
 easily — and I cannot help thinking, satisfactorily — ex- 
 plained. It is well known that the waters of the Dead Sea 
 are so impregnated with salt that their specific gravity is 
 considerably higher than that of ordinary water. I do 
 not know whether iron will float in the Dead Sea or not ; 
 but in any case objects that would sink in other waters 
 would not sink in these. If a dweller on the central ridge 
 of Palestine had occasion to visit the shore of the Dead 
 Sea, he might easily see a phenomenon of this kind, and 
 (in Elisha's day) he would naturally regard it as a miracle. 
 There would thus arise a class of miracle of this kind ; and 
 the nameless author of the story (not to be identified with 
 the writer of the narrative, and perhaps not more than 
 half conscious of what he was doing) would have plenty 
 of precedent to fall back upon. The Leprosy of Gehazi 
 may, I believe, be explained in a very similar way. I have 
 myself heard a well-authenticated story of a sudden 
 mental shock, under certain pathological conditions, 
 causing a violent outbreak of eczema. An ancient, who 
 was also not an expert, would not distinguish this from
 
 X Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 leprosy. And if an incident of this kind happened, not 
 only would there be a miracle, but a class of miracles 
 would be set up that might be drawn upon indefinitely. 
 
 These are just instances of the old-fashioned rationalism, 
 which no doubt was invoked more often than it should 
 have been, but which certainly had in it a considerable 
 element of truth. We have learnt in these days not to 
 trust too much to any one mode of explanation. A wise 
 man will not dogmatize about the origin of every story 
 that comes to him. He will be content if he can see that 
 the explanation offered is reasonable and if he can deter- 
 mine the general type under which it will fall. 
 
 I may sum up my view of Miracles by saying that there 
 is a certain class of details (which I have described in a way 
 that I think will be recognizable, though others may 
 prefer to describe them differently) which I believe will 
 be found in the last resort to belong rather to the story 
 than to the ultimate facts which lie behmd the story ; and 
 the form which the story takes is determined by the ideas 
 current in the minds of the narrators. 
 
 (4) (§§ XVIII-XXVI, pp. 145-67). We have been con- 
 sidering and discussing the permanent and variable ele- 
 ments in the Christian Religion under the heading ' Form 
 and Content in the Christian Tradition '. But we have 
 not yet succeeded in reaching very much common ground. 
 We agree that there is a real distinction between Form and 
 Content ; but Mr. WiUiams seems to me to be inclined 
 to minimize this distinction, and I suppose that in like 
 manner I shall seem to him to magnify it. This holds 
 good especially in regard to what I have called the ' rela- 
 tivity of expression '. Mr. WiUiams seems to me not to do 
 justice to this, but rather to try to explain it away. He is 
 so anxious to make his forms unchangeable that he prac-
 
 Pi^eface xi 
 
 tically in many cases — and I think I may say in all the 
 disputed cases — confuses form and content altogether. 
 
 I should very much like to make one more attempt to 
 expound my views on this subject before I close. All our 
 other differences run up into this. 
 
 I sometimes wonder whether it would not be well to 
 revive the use of an old word, in a somewhat different 
 application from that which has been usual — the word 
 ' dispensation '. ' Period ' might serve the purpose ; but 
 it would bring out only the idea of limitation in time, 
 without that of the orderly and organized arrangement of 
 contents in time. If we look back over the history of 
 human thought from its first dawnings until now, we 
 might say that it has passed through a number of ' dispen- 
 sations ' — such as the prehistoric, the ethnic, that of the 
 Old Testament, that of the New Testament or of Christian 
 Origins, the patristic, the mediaeval or scholastic, the 
 modern. All this time man has been seeking after God, 
 and all this time God has been drawing towards Himself 
 and gradually enlightening the spirit of man. Whatever 
 we are able to describe or reconstruct in imagination of the 
 thought of the past has been the resultant of these two 
 operations — conscious and unconscious effort and aspira- 
 tion on the part of man and (we may well believe) a gracious 
 leading and assistance on the part of God. Of course 
 there has been no hard-and-fast line between the different 
 dispensations ; there have been no abrupt transitions, but 
 each has melted gradually into the next. For purposes 
 of thought they stand out with sufficient clearness ; and 
 yet there has been a continuous thread of assisted endea- 
 vour running through them. Age is linked to age ; and 
 yet, within each age as well as throughout the historic 
 process from first to last, the thought of man has always 
 been a whole. It has never really been so broken up into
 
 xii Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 compartments that any one compartment lost touch and 
 relation with the rest. Rather, there has been a constant 
 interplay ; each side of man's being has worked in with 
 every other. This applies to the highest of his faculties 
 as well as to the lowest ; it applies to his thoughts about 
 God as much as to his other interests in life — such as 
 literature and art and science, industry and commerce, 
 political and social relations. But in any given ' dispen- 
 sation ' man can only use the mental outfit that belongs 
 to him in his place in that dispensation ; his ideas are 
 derived from and proportioned to the particular stage that 
 he has reached in cultural development. His ideas about 
 God are no exception to the rule. In proportion as we 
 conceive of the true infinitude and wonder of the Being 
 of God we shall feel more and more the inadequacy of our 
 petty definitions. All these definitions have in them an 
 element that we must call x. They are always tentative 
 and approximate ; whatever else they may do, we are sure 
 that they will never exhaust the reality. 
 
 Because there has been in the course of history one 
 Great Manifestation of Godhead, that does not alter the 
 essential conditions. That Manifestation itself is rather 
 subject to them. From the first moment onwards it had 
 to be described in relative terms. It was not merely that 
 the words were relative, but all the subordinate complexes 
 of ideas were relative. This of necessity brought them 
 into contact with, and in part into limitation by, the other 
 ideas current at the time. As these changed, the whole 
 expression changed ; or at least so much of it changed as 
 belonged to the sphere of what is variable. The x element 
 remains what it is ; but it is always x — something that 
 transcends and eludes and is not co-extensive with the 
 definition. 
 
 This, I should contend, is true of all the disputed clauses
 
 Preface xiii 
 
 of the Creed. The Virgin Birth, the physical Resurrection 
 and physical Ascension, are all realistic expressions, 
 adapted to the thought of the time, of ineffable truths 
 which the thought of the time could not express in any 
 other way. To conceive of them realistically was natural 
 and right in the age in which they took shape. Speaking 
 for myself and for those who agree with me, I should say 
 that it was no longer natural and therefore no longer to be 
 enforced as right — ^to be taken, if we please, as a human 
 symbol for x, but not to be identified in any hard-and-fast 
 manner with it. That is why I deprecate the strong 
 insistence on what Mr. Williams calls 'facts '. If, instead 
 of ' facts ', he would speak of ' descriptions of facts ', 
 I should have less reason to differ from him. He is 
 working in a right direction when he leaves room for an 
 element of agnosticism. Perhaps a better name than 
 ' agnosticism ' would be ' a sense — a devout sense — of 
 mystery'. I can quite believe that Mr. Williams would 
 agree with me in this. For myself, as I have said, I do 
 not deny, and have no wish to deny. I would rather fall 
 back upon the parable : ' the servants say unto him. Wilt 
 thou then that we go and gather them- up ? But he saith 
 Nay ; lest haply while ye gather up the tares, ye root up 
 the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the 
 harvest.' I would not even, in this connexion, speak of 
 ' tares '. If I did, it would only be in order to distinguish 
 that which is transitory from that which is eternal. 
 ' When that which is perfect is come, then that which is 
 in part shall be done away.' 
 
 I know that I shall be thought of as an innovator, and 
 I know that there are many who — whatever I may do or 
 say — ^will not forgive me for what I have written in the 
 way of innovation. That cannot be helped. But I hope
 
 xiv Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 that they will not go away with an exaggerated idea of the 
 extent to which I am really innovating. As a spiritual 
 system, Christianity remains for me just precisely what it 
 has always been. There are not a few Christian beliefs 
 in my interpretation of which I may be held to be behind 
 the times. The Bible is still to me the highest authority 
 that I know. But it is true that I pin my faith not so 
 much to what the Bible says as to what I believe that it 
 means to say ; in other words, not so much to what it said 
 in the letter to those to whom it was first given as to what 
 it says in the spirit to us now. It is in the Bible considered 
 as history that the change is greatest. But, even here, 
 I would do no more than put that construction upon it 
 that I should do without hesitation if it had been a less 
 sacred book. Many will think that its sacredness pre- 
 cludes this. But it is just there — and I think, in prin- 
 ciple, only there — that I join issue with them. 
 
 W. Sanday. 
 June 1916. 
 
 PS. The reference in the first paragraph of this 
 Preface was to a similar Discussion between the Dean of 
 Christ Church and the writer, which was to have been 
 entitled Spirit, Matter, and Miracle, and which it was 
 hoped to publish along with the present volume. It was 
 the continuation of a debate opened by a pamphlet by the 
 Dean, in criticism of one of mine, published in the spring 
 of 1914. The Dean had very kindly agreed that, as in 
 the present case with Mr. Williams, we should each state 
 our case under the same cover. The scheme worked out 
 on similar lines, in three papers on each side ; and the first 
 paper was written in the month of July. Then suddenly 
 came the War, and the Dean, as Vice-Chancellor of the 
 University, was at once involved in a mass of new and
 
 Preface xv 
 
 very varied and onerous work. Yet in spite of this, the 
 discussion ran its somewhat intermittent course, and some 
 months ago was brought to a conclusion. But on looking 
 back over it we felt that it had lost so much of its original 
 interest, that the controversy out of which it arose had 
 been so far forgotten, and that the public mind was now 
 so deeply occupied with other things, that the best course 
 on the whole was to let our intention lapse and not go on 
 to publication. The same objections did not seem to lie 
 in the same degree to the other debate, which has been 
 spread over a shorter period of time and is more self- 
 contained, the paper out of which it arose being reprinted. 
 It must, however, be confessed that what was begun as 
 a pamphlet has grown practically into a book. 
 
 W. S.
 
 ON CONTINUITY OF THOUGHT 
 AND RELATIVITY OF EXPRESSION 
 
 There is the same problem in the world of thought and 
 in the world of external nature — the problem of recon- 
 ciling the elements of permanence and stability with the 
 elements of change. Since the days of Heraclitus it has 
 been seen that, from one point of view, all things are in 
 flux : as he penetratingly puts it, ' No man sets foot twice 
 in the same stream.' It is true that in another place he 
 admits that in one sense we may be said to do this, while 
 in another we do not.^ And our own poet Wordsworth, 
 using the same illustration, draws from it an opposite 
 moral. In one of his Duddon sonnets he rebukes himself 
 for dwelling too much on the transitoriness of life : 
 
 For, backward, Duddon, as I cast my eyes, 
 I see what was, and is, and will abide ; 
 Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide ; 
 The Form remains, the Function never dies. 
 
 It is true that the stream is flowing and its waters are for 
 no two seconds the same ; even its banks are crumbling, 
 and even in its bed silt is forming and pebbles are rolling 
 down. And yet, on a broader view, the stream continues; 
 it occupies the same place in the landscape, and irrigates 
 the same meadows. 
 
 The Form remains, the Function never dies. 
 It is so with the Christian Faith. There are the great 
 
 1 Ritter and Preller, § 26, Plat. Cratyl 402 A : 
 
 \iyii. TTOU 'HpciAcXetror on -nuvTa X^pft Kul olbiv fJifvei, Kai noTafiov pofj 
 aneiKd^av ra ovra Xe'-yei o)s 8\s is tov avTov Trorafiop ovk fly ifi3a'iris. 
 
 The other fragment has : 
 
 IIoTa^oitri rolaiv avToicnv i fi^alvofiiv re koX ovk e/z^aiVo/ief, eifxtv re koi 
 OVK fifitv. 
 
 Heraclitus was an astonishing person. 
 
 B
 
 2 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 truths about God and Christ ; there are the great broad 
 fundamental experiences of the Christian life. These are 
 permanent and unchangeable. And yet, the forms under 
 which we conceive of them must of necessity change, with 
 the changing apparatus of thought through which they 
 find expression. Every age has its own intellectual outfit. 
 It can but use the tools that it has. When it is using the 
 language of another age, it is like David in Saul's armour ; 
 it loses all its freedom and efficiency of motion. 
 
 Corresponding to these conditions there are two guiding 
 principles, which really run through all our study of the 
 Christian past, and should never be lost sight of. They 
 are complementary to each other. 
 
 On the one hand, there is the continuity of thought, in 
 conjunction with the identity of object. All Christian 
 endeavour in all the ages has been concentrated on God 
 and Christ. It has had for its aim to enrich and deepen 
 man's conception of Both (an orthodox thinker would say 
 of the Triune God) as the objects of his worship and 
 devotion. 
 
 This identity of object and continuity of aim and efiPort, 
 worked out in the fellowship of the corporate body through 
 the successive ages of Christian history, has been the 
 element of permanence and the bond and pledge of loyalty. 
 
 On the other hand, there is the principle which clearly 
 recognizes throughout this process the persistent relativity 
 of expression. This is, in like manner, the guarantee of 
 movement, of progress, of reality and freedom. 
 
 This latter principle of the ' relativity of expression ' is 
 as yet by no means fully understood. It is at least far 
 from being consistently grasped and acted upon. Indeed 
 there is one widespread theory which is diametrically 
 opposed to it. 
 
 This is the theory according to which the whole body of
 
 Dr. Sanday I 3 
 
 Christian doctrine is regarded as an ' unalterable deposit '.^ 
 But I must speak frankly and say that, for myself, I 
 believe that theory to be, root and branch, from first to 
 last, wholly untenable. It is in direct conflict with the ne- 
 cessity and nature of things, and with most certain facts. 
 
 It is commonly based on certain scriptural passages in 
 which the Christian Faith is spoken of as a ' deposit ' 
 {TrapadrJKr], 1 Tim. vi. 20, 2 Tim, i. 12-14), and especially 
 on that phrase in the Epistle of St. Jude (v. 3), ' the faith 
 once delivered unto the saints '. But no one has ever 
 proved, or can prove, that these expressions are a pro- 
 phetic anticipation of the whole body of Christian tradi- 
 tion, down to and beyond the Athanasian Creed. The 
 Christian faith at the time when the words were written 
 was a very much simpler and less complicated thing. 
 I know it will be said that the later developments were 
 implicitly contained in this earlier nucleus, as the oak is 
 contained in the acorn. But there is just this most 
 important difference that, whereas the original words 
 apply to that which is most permanent in the faith — I do 
 not say that even they are identical with it — the present- 
 day application of them is made to cover all that is most 
 relative in it. 
 
 One would have thought that the, perhaps at first sight, 
 somewhat ambiguous language of the Epistles would be 
 
 ^ Those who are acquainted with Mr. R. A. Knox's little tract, 
 Modernism : Two Vietvs of the Truth, will not miss the allusion. As 
 I am referring to this, I should wish to express my sincere gratitude 
 for the kindly words which occur in the course of it, more particularly 
 for the distinction which is drawn between some forms of French 
 Modernism and the English variety of the same opinions. It is quite 
 true that in this controversy, ' both sides believe passionately in the 
 existence of some kind of intellectual duty '. It is also a great pleasure 
 to read the following : ' I do not want here to make any imputations 
 of dishonesty or disingenuity about those who profess their belief in 
 these formulas in a different sense from that which I attach to them 
 myself. I am perfectly confident that their intentions are pure in the 
 sight of God.' 
 
 B 2
 
 4 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 sufficiently guarded from misunderstanding by the Parable 
 of the Talents in the Gospel. The Christian faith is 
 a talent to be traded with and used, and no doubt to be 
 somewhat worn, and even defaced, in using ; it was 
 certainly never meant to be wrapped up in a napkin. 
 
 But, apart from this, the ' deposit-theory ', in the form 
 in which it is employed, is to my mind neither more nor 
 less than a vast petitio principii. It is made to include 
 whatever its supporters wish it to include, and to exempt 
 them from the necessity of establishing their case on more 
 rigorous grounds. 
 
 I need not say to my present audience how impossible 
 it is to isolate a single department of knowledge, and to 
 regard it as immune from the influence of time and the 
 progress of thought. Those who speak of an ' unalterable 
 deposit ', are simply deceiving themselves. There is not, 
 and cannot be, any such thing in the world we live in. 
 I strongly suspect that, even while they use this language, 
 they are exemplifying the fact in their own persons. 
 
 We recall to mind those impressive lines of Matthew 
 Arnold's : 
 
 Below the surface stream, shallow and light, 
 Of what we say we feel — below the stream. 
 As light, of what we think we feel, there flows 
 With noiseless current strong, obscure and deep, 
 The central stream of what we feel indeed. ^ 
 
 Many people stop short at the surface level. They say 
 their Creeds on what they believe to be sufficient grounds, 
 and honestly think that, with that, their duty is done. 
 For such minds, the questions which others discuss openly 
 and consciously, are relegated to the region of the sub- 
 conscious. So far as such questions are entertained at all, 
 it is subconsciously and not consciously. The hatches 
 are shut down upon them. 
 
 However this may be, there can be no doubt that for 
 
 1 St. Paul and Protestantism, p. 83 ; compare Life and Letters of 
 Matthew Arnold ii, 29. I owe this second reference to a friend.
 
 Dr. Sanday 1 5 
 
 every one, some of the beliefs stored up in his mind are far 
 more living and active than others. The rest he holds in 
 a descending scale of tenacious vitality. Some of them 
 are like atrophied members of the human body ; for 
 practical purposes they are quite dead. The reason is 
 that the life-blood no longer flows through them ; they 
 are not assimilated ; they are so much waste matter. 
 The man says that he believes them and thinks that he 
 believes them (quite honestly) ; but he does not believe 
 them indeed. And it is only in its higher sense that I can 
 bring myself to use the word ' belief '. 
 
 One word is too often profaned 
 For me to profane it. 
 
 Truth is correspondence with reality, or with the best 
 conception we can form of reality. And the test of truth 
 is the extent of this correspondence. Truth imposed, or 
 truth that a man is compelled to say, is to me no truth 
 at all. 
 
 II 
 
 All this that I have been saying seems to me to be no 
 matter of speculation and theory, as to which there can be 
 discussion to decide whether it is right or wrong, but plain 
 statement of fact. It may of course be taken or left ; but 
 in my belief it ought to be taken. 
 
 Applying it to the history of Christianity, the different 
 phases of Christian doctrine are all so many attempts to 
 express some broad idea in the forms that appealed most 
 to the particular age to which they belonged. This ten- 
 dency appears from the very first and within the New 
 Testament itself. It could not be otherwise. There can 
 be no doubt that St. Paul's presentation of the doctrine 
 of the Atonement was determined largely by his Pharisaic 
 training. Behind it there lies a deep and intense con- 
 viction ; but the forms in which that conviction is ex- 
 pressed came from his surroundings. In the age which
 
 6 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 immediately followed, the metaphor of ' ransom ' was 
 most prominent. Anselm elaborated his views in con- 
 nexion with mediaeval juristic ideas of ' satisfaction ' ; 
 and so on. In other words, each of these phases in the 
 history of the doctrine was relative to the age through 
 which it was passing, and took its shape from the whole 
 body of thought prevailing at the time. It is easy to 
 prove this, and it has been abundantly proved — last, and 
 not least, in Dr. Rashdall's recent Bampton Lectures. 
 But, that does not the least mean, in my view of the 
 matter, that the doctrine of the Atonement is reduced to 
 nothing and finally disposed of. In all this working of 
 the human mind on the subject of the Atonement, there 
 were elements of permanence as well as elements that 
 were transitory and ephemeral. If we would see what 
 these are, I believe that our best course is to go back 
 behind the Christian era altogether, to Isaiah liii. and the 
 associated passages of the Old Testament. If I under- 
 stood him rightly, in those of his Lectures which I was 
 able to hear. Dr. Rashdall contented himself with referring 
 to these, and did not expound or apply them. But, from 
 my point of view, this is like putting on the stage the play 
 of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out. 
 
 The doctrine of the Atonement is to my mind a very 
 good example of the necessity for a balanced combination 
 of the principle of continuity of thought with relativity 
 of expression. And I would extend this principle all 
 round. I believe that it holds good equally well in the 
 more audacious departures of the present day. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I will take my courage in my hands and speak to you 
 for a moment about one of these audacious departures. 
 I am before you as a suspect, as one under a cloud, because 
 of the opinion which I have expressed on the subject of 
 the Virgin Birth. The opportunity seems to me suitable
 
 Dr. Sanday I 7 
 
 for saying exactly, or as exactly as I can, what I really 
 think on this subject. I am in a position to do so now 
 rather more maturely than when last I alluded to it. 
 
 I should be prepared, if I had the time, to enter into 
 full detail and to examine the evidence on the subject as 
 a whole. But that would be impossible on this occasion, 
 and I do not know when I shall be able to attempt it. 
 
 I said some time ago — I do not at the moment remember 
 where, but that does not matter — that I will not put, [or 
 be a party to putting] ' nots ' into the Creeds. Some 
 people may think that I have changed my mind ; but 
 I have not. I will not affirm everything in the Creeds — 
 but that is different. That is precisely where I draw the 
 line, and believe myself to be right in drawing the line. 
 It is also, if I am not mistaken, where our Bishops drew 
 the line in the joint resolutions which they issued last year. 
 I believe that they exercised a very wise discretion. 
 I speak for myself, and for my own confession of faith. 
 I do not doubt that there are some who will say that, 
 having gone so far, I ought to go the next step further ; 
 and some might hint that I drew back to save my skin. 
 So far as I know myself and my own motives, it is not to 
 save my skin. If I thought it the honest thing to say 
 a point-blank No, I do not think that I should hesitate to 
 say it. But I plead guilty to being one of those who 
 believe that truth lies in a nuance ; and this — the differ- 
 ence between not affirming and denying — is the precise 
 nuance in which I think it lies. The abstinence from (full) 
 affirmation is consistent with a great amount of partial 
 affirmation. 
 
 I will explain just what I believe to have been, and in 
 a manner to be, the real function of the clause in the Creed 
 about the Virgin Birth. 
 
 The Jews, as we know, used habitually to speak of 
 raising ' a fence or hedge round the Law '. We should 
 perhaps more naturally take a metaphor from fortifica- 
 tion, and speak of ' throwing up an outwork ' in front of
 
 8 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 our citadel. In either case the idea would be of keeping 
 the enemy at arm's length ; putting an additional obstacle 
 in his way, before he could begin to lay sap or mine to the 
 keep or centre of the position. If one may venture to 
 ascribe motives to the Almighty, that is why I beUeve Him 
 to have decreed that the full belief in the Virgin Birth 
 should prevail for so long. There are abundant analogies 
 for this in the authenticated history of mankind and, 
 more particularly, in the history of the reception and 
 interpretation of the Creeds. One of the greatest mis- 
 takes which men have made, and are still making, about 
 God, is in attributing to Him, in the ages of the past as 
 well as in the present, what I may venture to call a punc- 
 tilious determination of the wiU towards securing the 
 prevalence throughout the world of what we call ' literal ' 
 truth. All through the early ages of mankind ' poetical ' 
 truth has been the rule, and ' literal ' the exception. 
 This may be different from what we should expect. But 
 anyhow it is plain matter of fact, and we must not shut 
 our eyes to it. It is not for us to know the reasons for 
 this particular characteristic of the workings of Divine 
 Providence ; they are beyond us, and belong to those vast 
 rangings through time and space by which these workings 
 are governed. It may well be that ' the times of this 
 ignorance ', or of this latitude, are coming to an end. We 
 are not concerned with the future, but only with the past ; 
 and in regard to the past we must resign ourselves not to 
 know, or to know very imperfectly. Even we men, dull- 
 sighted and falhble as we are, can see a multitude of 
 reasons, short of its literal truth, for the prevalence of the 
 belief in the Virgin Birth ; it has been of immense and 
 prolonged benefit to mankind. Even at this day, it goes 
 hard to let it drop out of our range of vision ; and only 
 (what some of us think) imperious necessity compels us to 
 loosen our hold upon it. I should on all grounds, and in 
 particular out of piety towards the past, refuse to deny 
 the Virgin Birth. Those who will may think that I am
 
 Dr, Sanday I 9 
 
 splitting a hair in doing so. But I find myself able to 
 subsume the idea of the Virgin Birth under the yet larger 
 and more important idea of Supernatural Birth. I will 
 venture to express my meaning in a phrase : it all seems 
 to me to stand (sit venia verho) for the direct influx of Deity 
 into manhood. 
 
 We are prepared for such a conception by our belief in 
 Divine Immanence ; it is no strain upon us to conceive of 
 a supreme and unique act and form of this Immanence. 
 And, with all possible deference for my revered friend, 
 Dr. Swete, if we can conceive of it under a form that is in 
 accordance with nature, that is far easier for some of us 
 than to think of it under conditions that we should call 
 contra naturam. 
 
 Again, if I had time, I should be prepared to show that 
 this form of the conception was entirely congruous with 
 all the Old Testament analogies. The Jews — without any 
 exception, so far as I know — thought of divine intervention 
 in human births as something superadded to the natural 
 process, not as a mutilation of it. The idea of divine 
 fatherhood taking the place of human fatherhood, is 
 pagan and not Jewish. That is one of the puzzles attach- 
 ing to the stories of the Nativity in St. Matthew and 
 St. Luke. I am not sure that anything un-Jewish is 
 implied by the latter Evangelist. It is implied — or shall 
 I say, half -implied ? — by the former ; for there are traces, 
 not wholly obliterated, that the Genealogy which he 
 incorporated, originally ended 'Joseph begat Jesus'. 
 I doubt if the other idea arose actually in Palestine ; 
 I suspect that it came in somewhere on the outskirts, from 
 Syrian syncretism. 
 
 IV 
 
 We are met for counsel, and I would venture to expand 
 the main point of what I have just been saying into 
 a piece of more general advice or suggestion. I think 
 that we should all be on our guard against 'denials'.
 
 10 Form and Content in Christian IVadition 
 
 I do not think that a blank and unqualified denial — 
 putting a ' not ' into the Creed — is anywhere required 
 of us. 
 
 Incidentally I may observe — not as a motive, but as 
 a simple statement of fact — that by abstaining from 
 denials we make our own position as English Churchmen 
 impregnable. So long as we are on our guard against the 
 point-blank ' not ', no one can touch us. 
 
 This maybe worldly wisdom, but, to my thinking, it is 
 truth as well. And it is because it is truth that I com- 
 mend the advice to you. 
 
 Relative truth, it should be remembered, is still essen- 
 tially truth and not falsehood. For many long centuries 
 it may have been the best truth available. In any case, 
 it is what God has willed for a time, if not in permanence ; 
 and we can never think or speak of it otherwise. That 
 fact alone precludes the possibility of ' denial '. Relative 
 truth is not negatived but superseded. The nearest 
 analogy in nature is the way in which the snake sloughs its 
 skin. The old skin does not come off until the new skin 
 is fully formed. 
 
 There is another practical suggestion which I will make, 
 if you will allow me. Our object is to keep up the fullest 
 possible continuity with the past. Whatever the out- 
 side world may thmk of us, we are not disloyal ; we 
 are not indifferent to our inheritance. We too are 
 anxious that ' all our days ' — all the days of the Christian 
 Church — 
 
 should be 
 Bound each to each by natural piety. 
 
 Those of us who are students seek to attain this end 
 by an ever deepened study of the past. They undertake 
 that study in no cold, detached, dispassionate spirit. 
 They ' think upon the stones of Zion ' as rich with history.
 
 Dr. Sanday I 11 
 
 as the member of an ancient and illustrious family thinks 
 upon the stones of his ancestral home. 
 
 Study undertaken in this spirit cannot be too sympa- 
 thetic. The mind that has a true sense of continuity will 
 always be seeking — not only to understand the formulae 
 which it is investigating, not only to enter, and to enter 
 fully, into the grounds on which they were based, but to 
 steep itself in the spirit which lay behind them ; it will 
 be always trying to catch something of the balance and 
 breadth of view which is distinctive of the decisions of the 
 Church Universal and which marks them off from the 
 narrower shibboleths of the sects. Because we in these 
 latter days are not able to adopt as our own the exact 
 expressions — iurare in verba — of the Old Masters, it by 
 no means follows that we shall not have a great reverence 
 for them ; that we shall not try to live again their life, 
 and to make the spirit, if not the letter, of their reasoning 
 a pattern for our own. 
 
 But the particular point of practical suggestion that 
 I would ask leave to make, is that we should not mix up 
 our study of the past with our attempts at definition and 
 formulation in the present. Ancient and modern are 
 better kept apart. We shall spoil our study of the ancient 
 if we are constantly intruding into it modern questions 
 and modern difficulties ; and we shall equally hamper the 
 free endeavour to express ourselves in the language of our 
 own day, if we burden ourselves with questions which 
 really belong to the older context and not to our own. 
 Let us look at the ancient world with the eyes of the 
 ancient world, and then at the modern with the eyes of 
 the modern. Let us try to think out each set of con- 
 clusions by itself before we attempt to combine them. 
 When we know accurately what the ancients thought and 
 why they thought it, we shall be better able to find 
 equivalents for their teaching in terms that are frankly 
 and genuinely modern.
 
 12 Form and Conte7it in CImstian IVadition 
 
 VI 
 
 It is a great mistake to suppose that we have any desire 
 ' to jettison the Creeds '. I do not say that we might not 
 like if we could — though of course we cannot — to redraft 
 them. Any such idea can at present be nothing more 
 than a pious aspiration. And yet it is, I hope and believe, 
 an aspiration with some substance in it. It may be 
 realized in that day — which our grandchildren may see, 
 if not our children — ' the Parliament of Man, the Federa- 
 tion of the World ', when the Churches are reunited. 
 
 We can conceive even now the lines on which we should 
 like to see the Creeds redrafted. We should like to see 
 them no longer what they largely are — so many negations 
 of heresy, but real constructive summaries of the faith 
 that is in us. In the meantime we look up to them as 
 great historic monuments, landmarks and beacons, which 
 still show us the way we should go, although they are 
 somewhat worn and weather-beaten. We always think 
 of them as what God has willed. They are clothed in 
 language that was natural and suitable at the time — and 
 not only so, but the product of deep and strenuous think- 
 ing. Even if we regard them as relative rather than 
 absolute, yet as relative they have the strongest claims 
 on our respectful attention. They are a constant re- 
 minder of the direction in which we should aim. 
 
 VII 
 
 The chief characteristic of our modern thinking about 
 the deepest things in the universe, is its greater simplicity. 
 The difference between ancient and modern methods all 
 points in this direction. We should never think now of 
 working out our beliefs with the minuteness aimed at in 
 the Early Creeds. The methods employed in their con- 
 struction lent themselves to minute definition. They were 
 more like the codifying of a body of law than a statement 
 of the foundations of true religion.
 
 Dr. Sunday I 13 
 
 In drawing up the Creeds, the ancients went upon 
 a number of assumptions that we can make no longer. 
 They assumed the strict inerrancy of all the Scriptures ; 
 they assumed the literal and equal accuracy of all the 
 narratives of the Old and New Testaments alike. They 
 had behind them a different Weltanschauung from ours. 
 They thought of the sky as a solid vault resting on pillars ; 
 they thought of the sun and moon and planets as fixed in 
 concentric spheres, which revolved within one another. 
 They believed that irregularities occurred in the order of 
 nature without any of the limitations that we should set 
 to them now. It is really out of the question that the 
 young men of the present day should be expected to 
 subscribe to every item in formulae constructed under 
 conditions such as these. 
 
 The principle which enables our young men to accept 
 the Creeds, is that which I have had in view throughout 
 this paper, the principle of the relativity of expression. 
 They believe that the Creeds are true, not so much in the 
 minute technical detail which was in men's minds at the 
 time when they were composed, as on broad spiritual 
 lines. They would not deny the technical details ; they 
 believe that they all had a certain relative Tightness in the 
 periods that understood and could assimilate them ; they 
 are perfectly ready to believe that the good Providence of 
 God presided over the whole evolution. But they, none 
 the less, believe that God has ' provided some better thing 
 for us, that they, without us, should not be made perfect '. 
 
 It does not really matter that all the living beliefs of the 
 present day cannot be put, or must be imperfectly put, 
 into words. A great deal may remain as a matter of 
 feeling rather than of words ; in the sense in which 
 Wordsworth wrote : 
 
 We feel that we are greater than we know. 
 
 The central belief of Christendom is itself an example 
 of this. All the terms in which it is described in the New
 
 14 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 Testament are themselves relative terms. They all have 
 their history, and they must be interpreted in accordance 
 with that history. Of course we must fill our minds with 
 this to the very best of our ability. It may not, in the 
 end, be easy to digest the result into a sentence. But we 
 shall most certainly go away saying to ourselves, ' My 
 Lord and my God.' 
 
 VIII 
 
 If the main result of modem thought as applied to the 
 subject-matter of the Creeds is a general tendency to- 
 wards simplification, that should remove from those who 
 are committed to it at least one of the accusations that are 
 often brought against them. We are told that Modernism 
 tends to place a gap between the learned and the simple. 
 Just the contrary. It tends to bring the learned and the 
 simple nearer together. Its whole effect ought to be to 
 induce the learned to formulate their beUefs in terms 
 which they can share whole-heartedly with the simple. 
 It is really the Traditionalists who do what they accuse us 
 of doing. They would bind upon the unlearned all the 
 technical apparatus of ancient tradition. Of course they 
 bind it upon themselves as well as upon others. But, to 
 say the truth, they do not succeed in binding it upon 
 either. The human spirit refuses to be bound in such 
 a way. As a matter of fact, they exemplify those lines 
 of Matthew Arnold's. They know what they say they 
 feel, and they know what they think they feel ; but they 
 do not know what they feel indeed. 
 
 What does the average worshipper reaUy make of the 
 Nicene and Athanasian Creeds ? What does he reaUy 
 make of many of the Psalms and Lessons ? There is 
 always enough left of which he can make something, but 
 in these parts of the services there must be always a great 
 deal that is simply unassimilated. 
 
 So far from setting a premium upon learning, the 
 tendency of the modernist is all the other way. He re-
 
 Dr. Sanday I 15 
 
 gards the Creeds as products of excessive intellectualism . 
 What he wants to do is to get out of the grooves of these 
 over-minute and sometimes sujierfiuous definitions. The 
 modernist seeks for his ideal quite at the other end of the 
 scale. He is moved to his depths by the sight of the 
 simple saint upon his knees. He would like to put into 
 his creed, 
 
 Except ye be converted, and become as little 
 children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom 
 of heaven. 
 
 All this does not prevent the man to whom is committed 
 the talent of learning from making such use of it as he 
 can. It is part of the obligation laid upon him. But he 
 would, none the less, join from his heart in St. Paul's 
 correction. 
 
 And yet show I unto you a more excellent way. 
 
 IX 
 
 One other consequence follows from this. The genuine 
 modernist, who has really taken in the principle of ' the 
 relativity of expression ', will have no false pedantry about 
 him in disparaging the value of either the thought or the 
 expression of previous ages. If he seeks to express his 
 own thought in the sincerest language he can find, it is 
 not from any petty ambition to be ' up to date '. He has 
 no Pharisaical feeling of superiority towards his next door 
 neighbour who remains at a less advanced stage. He is 
 concerned with his own duty, and he avoids comparisons 
 of this kind. He always respects the honest convictions 
 of another, even though they may be a little behind the 
 times. It is better to be behind the times than to be 
 puffed up with the conceit of theories half digested and 
 half understood. It is always safe advice to one who is 
 struggling out of one phase into another, not to be in too 
 great a hurry but to make sure of his ground, to proceed 
 pedetentim, by one step at a time.
 
 16 Form and Content in Chnstian Tradition 
 
 The great aim (as I have said in another place) of the 
 Modernist Quest is the unification of thought. There have 
 been times when the thought of an age has been com- 
 pletely unified. It was so in Clement of Alexandria and 
 Origen ; it was so in St. Thomas Aquinas and the School- 
 men. But from the Reformation onwards, with the 
 insistence upon verbal inspiration on the one side, and 
 with the development of the natural sciences and of a 
 purely lay philosophy on the other, there was for a long 
 time an increasing divergence between theology and 
 secular thinking. This began to be reduced as the critical 
 movement gradually made itself felt ; and various half 
 measures have been taken, and various half-way halting- 
 places have been erected. But only with the rise of 
 Modernism can it be said that the frank and full unifica- 
 tion of secular and religious thought has come to be faced 
 as a definite ideal. We may be sure that, once clearly 
 grasped, this ideal will not be let go again. 
 
 Until the beginning of Modernism, the Church of Christ 
 had been content to let unification go by the board. 
 There has always been one little corner of the globe that 
 has been exempted from the rules, a hortus inclusus to 
 which the methods and hypotheses applicable elsewhere 
 were held not to apply. We desire to make the methods 
 that we apply to it strictly homogeneous. We are con- 
 vinced that life in New Testament times was not conducted 
 as if in the atmosphere of a dark seance. We are con- 
 vinced that bodies in those days did not float in the air or 
 materialize and dematerialize at will. We have no doubt 
 in our own minds that, of the two hypotheses — that these 
 things really happened, and that they came to be thought 
 to have happened on the basis of widely prevalent ideas — 
 the latter is by far the more probable. The belief in this 
 enables us to throw open the doors of the dark chamber, 
 and to let in hght and air.
 
 Ih\ Sanday I 17 
 
 When Mr. Knox, in his easy-going manner, paraphrases 
 or parodies our view of the Descensus ad Inferos as mean- 
 ing that 
 
 Smce the people of the time [of Christ] were the sort 
 of people they were, that is just the sort of thing they 
 would have thought He did, 
 
 he is saying exactly what we really think ; and we have 
 practically no doubt that the explanation is the most 
 probable that can be given. And I am afraid I must reply 
 to another critic of mine that it is not a tenable view to 
 apply this kind of explanation to the Descensus and to 
 refuse to apply it to other clauses of the Creed. 
 
 I know that it will seem an audacious, and even a pre- 
 sumptuous thing to say, but I am almost as sure as I am 
 of anything that the view which I have just been pro- 
 pounding can be permanently maintained, and I greatly 
 doubt whether any other view can. 
 
 For myself, I have always said that I do not deny the 
 reality of miracle. What I contend for is that there are 
 in the nature of things (i. e. in the world as God has made 
 it) limitations to miracle of which the men of our Lord's 
 day were not aware, but of which we are aware now. 
 
 I must confess that, since the War began, it has ab- 
 sorbed all my thoughts, and I am behindhand with my 
 theological reading. I have not yet read either Dr. 
 Headlam's book or Dr. Illingworth's. I know that, when 
 I do read them, it will be with all respect. The writers 
 are sure to have stated with the greatest ability the view 
 opposed to mine. But I cannot think that they are likely 
 to lead me to change an opinion which it has taken me 
 a lifetime to form. 
 
 XI 
 
 I might stop here. But I am tempted to send out this 
 paper with an Envoi of a more personal kind. It has 
 been inevitable that I should take the line I have done, 
 and at this time of day it is not likely — indeed I may say 
 
 c
 
 18 Form and Content m Christian Tradition 
 
 it is impossible — that I should change it. I know that, 
 in consequence, many of my old friends look askance at 
 me. It is the sorrow of my declining years. It cannot 
 be helped, and I do not wish to complain. They think 
 that I have ceased to be true to the cause that I have had 
 at heart ever since I began to write. They are too kind 
 and too gentle to say this in words. They leave that to 
 those who do not know me. 
 
 There is nothing of which I wish to complain. But I 
 cannot help thinking that even my friends have shown 
 a certain slowness of understanding. The fault is very 
 probably mine. The present is indeed the first time that 
 I have succeeded (if I have succeeded) in stating my more 
 recent views as a connected whole. I know that the state- 
 ment is of the most summary kind ; but they are words 
 addressed to the wise, which wise men (if they care to do 
 so) can easily fill in for themselves. What I have said 
 may at least help to dissipate some of the ideas that are 
 still entertained about me. Those who are a little further 
 removed credit me with a number of j^resuppositions 
 which I should utterly repudiate. They think that I take 
 a mechanical view of the universe, and nothing could be 
 further from my mind. But there are two things that 
 even some of my nearest friends seem to me to have been 
 slow in seeing. They do not see that I myself regard my 
 own position within the Church of England as absolutely 
 loyal and absolutely inexpugnable. The force of associa- 
 tion is exceedingly strong, and it is difficult to place one- 
 self in the attitude of another whose premisses are different. 
 I know that I am ruiming up against the prejudices (as 
 I must needs call them, for they are not reasoned pro- 
 cesses), not only of the Traditionalist, but of the plain man. 
 If I cannot rest in either of these two positions, the reason 
 is that both seem to me untenable. But I wonder if this 
 paper will succeed in making my friends see things more 
 as I do. 
 
 And then, secondly, I do not think that they at all
 
 Dr. Sand ay I 19 
 
 appreciate the enormous strength of the position I am 
 defending, or the hope it holds out of winning thinking 
 men in the modern world to Christ. I cannot see that 
 any of them have allowed due weight to what I have 
 called ' the unification of thought '. The mind that has 
 no vision of this cannot do justice to the mind that is 
 guided by it. If we can bring Christianity into a system 
 of unified thought, I do not see what should prevent the 
 whole world from becoming Christian. 
 
 I must admit that what I have written has a double 
 edge to it. It is meant, primarily, for the Churchmen's 
 Union. But it is meant, hardly less, for my own friends 
 who do not go with me. It is meant as an invitation to 
 Christians to make common cause all round. If my 
 position is really as sound, from the point of view of 
 orthodox criticism, as I believe it to be, there ought to be 
 no impediment to our working together. If I am not 
 unorthodox — and I claim distinctly that I am not ; I 
 claim that I am only re-interpreting the Creeds, as they 
 must inevitably be re-interpreted ; if that is so, traditional 
 Churchmen should be able to work with me ; and, if with 
 me (perhaps with some little adjustment and explanation) 
 with the members of the Churchmen's Union as well. 
 It is hardly right for me to speak for them, as I am not a 
 member of the body, though in sympathy with it. But 
 I have little real doubt that the Churchmen's Union would 
 welcome the full co-operation of traditional Christians. 
 They would welcome it for their own sakes. They would 
 be glad to think that the Church of Christ has a Liberal 
 wing and a Conservative wing, and that each is necessary 
 to the other. They would rejoice to feel that the Conser- 
 vative wing was there, to state always the Conservative 
 side of each question as it came up as forcibly as possible. 
 As Liberals, they would like to have some guarantee that 
 the other side did not go by default. There are men on 
 the other side for whom I (for one) have the profoundest 
 respect. If they think I am wrong, I wish they would 
 
 t C 2
 
 20 Form and Content in Cliristian Tradition 
 
 try to convert me. But, if they do, they must show 
 a better understanding of my premisses than they have 
 allowed to appear hitherto. I would not ask them to 
 change their own views, although I believe them to be 
 untenable. But I would ask them to face the problem 
 whether, even from their own presuppositions, we cannot 
 all work together. If they can answer that question in 
 the affirmative, I see no reason why there should not really 
 be one flock and one Shepherd.
 
 MR. N. P. WILLIAMS'S FIRST LETTER 
 
 My dear Dr. Sand ay, — 
 
 I am venturing to send you herewith a few notes 
 on your paper ' Continuity of Thought and Relativity of 
 Expression'. My excuse for so doing is the fact that in 
 the paper you express the wish that ' those on the other 
 side ' would try to ' convert ' you. I am very far from 
 claiming competence for such a task, which, I imagine, 
 would require both learning and mental powers no less 
 than your own : but I can at least suggest the line which 
 ' the other side ' would be inclined to take as against some 
 of your contentions : and exchange of ideas between the 
 two ' sides ' can in any case do no harm. 
 
 I may, perhaps, say to begin with that I do not propose 
 to deal at all with one question which occupies a certain 
 amount of space in your paper — and that is the question 
 of ' loyalty ' to the Church of England. As things are, 
 I have not the slightest desire to question the (subjective) 
 hona fides of any one who feels that he can conscientiously 
 belong to that Church, And, in any case, the ' Church of 
 England ' aspect of the question is clearly of subordinate 
 importance, compared to the main issue as to what is true. 
 I shall therefore endeavour to discuss the question on 
 its merits, without any reference to the particular con- 
 ditions of Anglicanism. The word ' Church ' will occur 
 occasionally towards the end of my remarks, but this will 
 always mean the Church Catholic. 
 
 For the sake of clearness, I have ventured to cast these 
 notes into something like the shape of a review, which 
 I now subjoin. 
 
 After some general remarks on the philosophic problem 
 of identity and change, you begin by positing two prin- 
 ciples the recognition of which should govern all study of 
 the Christian past, namely, (a) the continuity of Christian
 
 22 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 thought, in conjunction with the identity of its object, 
 that is, God revealed in Christ, and (6) the relativity of its 
 expression. I have no fault to find with this setting out 
 of the subject for debate, and (in senses which I hope to 
 explain presently) I should be prepared to accept both 
 these principles. Perhaps I may be able to develop the 
 criticisms, which I shall venture to make upon your pre- 
 sentation of them, with the greatest clearness, if I begin 
 at once from the first point at which I find myself in dis- 
 agreement with your paper, that is, your denial that the 
 Christian Faith may rightfully be spoken of as an ' unal- 
 terable deposit' (p. 3). 
 
 II 
 
 I cannot help thinking that on this point you and Knox 
 (or at any rate you and — shall I say myself ? ) are rather 
 at cross-purposes. The reasonable Traditionalist (I 
 should say) is very far from claiming that our Lord 
 dictated the Nicene or Athanasian Creeds verbally as they 
 stand to the disciples during the Great Forty Days, or 
 that the precise and elaborate definitions of the fifth 
 century were explicitly present to the minds of primitive 
 Christians in the first. All that he maintains is that 
 Christianity is not a mere mode of feeling, but includes as 
 one of its constituent elements a definite body of ideas : 
 that these ideas have been revealed by God through Jesus 
 Christ, not merely excogitated by man from his own inner 
 consciousness : that the task of conserving these ideas 
 has been committed to the Christian Church ; and that it 
 is not competent for the Church to alter, suppress, or 
 mutilate these ideas in their essential nature, inasmuch 
 as they come to us on divine authority (though there is no 
 reason why the Church should not utilize all the concep- 
 tual instruments employed by the thought of each age as 
 it passes in order to the better and clearer formulation of 
 these ideas). But all this (I imagine, though I refrain
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams I 23 
 
 from speaking categorically) does not go beyond what you 
 say ^ or imply in your remarks on the first of your two 
 principles, that of the continuity of thought. I gather 
 that you would not deny that a Revelation did happen in 
 the first century of our era, and that there is such a thing 
 as a body of Christian ideas which it is our duty to hand 
 on to succeeding generations unimpaired. Of course, we 
 might differ as to what ideas really do belong to the 
 essential body of Christian truth and what not : but that 
 there is such a body (I imagine) we should be both agreed. 
 When Catholic theologians (at any rate those of modern 
 times and modern sympathies) speak of the ' deposit of 
 Faith ' as unalterable, I take them to mean unalterable 
 in its essential content (as, indeed, it must be if it really is 
 a divine message) rather than in its verbal, or even in its 
 conceptual form. Certainly I should not maintain the 
 ' unalterableness ' of the deposit in any sense which would 
 exclude Development as explained by Newman in his 
 Essay on the Development of Doctrine. On our view, 
 it is only of the essential content that ' unalterableness ' 
 can be predicated simpliciter, not of the verbal form in 
 which it is enshrined or the categories used to envisage it. 
 I do not deny that we should also predicate ' unalterable- 
 ness ' in a sense, and secundum quid, of the forms — but I 
 will discuss that presently. 
 
 As an instance of such an ' unalterable ' idea I would 
 suggest the general conception of Jesus Christ as Son of 
 God, in a sense in which no other man has been or can be, 
 by direct Filiation and not by Adoption, pre-existing 
 eternally in the bosom of the Father before His human 
 birth. Or; again, there is the idea of the Atonement, 
 which you yourself instance on p. 5 f. I am surely not 
 wrong in supposing that you would regard these two ideas 
 as being elements in a permanent trust committed to the 
 Christian Church, which, however much they may be 
 explained or elucidated, no succeeding generation would 
 be at liberty to explain away or to abolish.
 
 24 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 It would clear the ground, therefore, if we could agree 
 upon the following propositions : 
 
 I. In the Christian Faith as it has come down to us we 
 
 can distinguish between form and essential content. 
 
 II. The essential content (at least) is beyond the power 
 
 of man to alter, whatever may be said about the 
 form or expression. 
 
 But I need not labour the point further, because you 
 say yourself on p. If.: ' There are the great truths about 
 God and Christ : there are the great broad fundamental 
 experiences of the Christian life. These are pertnanent 
 and unchangeable ' (italics mine). This gives me all 
 I want at this stage of the argument. I hope that I am 
 not taking too optimistic a view of your remarks on the 
 ' continuity of thought ', in suggesting that the differences 
 which separate you from reasonable TraditionaUsts are 
 on this precise point differences of terminology rather 
 than of conception : but when I read passages like that 
 on p. 10 f. : 
 
 Whatever the outside world may think of us, we are 
 not disloyal ; we are not indifferent to our inheritance. 
 We too are anxious that ' all our days ' — all the days 
 of the Christian Church — 
 
 ' should be 
 Bound each to each by natural piety.' 
 
 Those of us who are students seek to attain this end 
 by an ever-deepened study of the past. They under- 
 take that study in no cold, detached, dispassionate 
 spirit. They ' think upon the stones of Zion ' as rich 
 with history, as the member of an ancient and illustri- 
 ous family thinks upon the stones of his ancestral home. 
 
 Study undertaken in this spirit cannot be too sym- 
 pathetic. The mind that has a true sense of continuity 
 will always be seeking — not only to understand the 
 formulae which it is investigating, not only to enter, 
 and to enter fully, into the grounds on which they were 
 based, but to steep itself in the spirit which lay behind 
 them ; it will be always trying to catch something of
 
 31r. N. P. Williams 1 25 
 
 the balance and breadth of view which is distinctive of 
 the decisions of the Church Universal and which marks 
 them ofE from the narrower shibboleths of the sects. 
 
 — couched in language of affecting beauty, which chimes 
 in exactly with my own thoughts and emotions on these 
 points, I am emboldened to hope that here, at least, the 
 difference is not one of vital principle. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I now come to a more difficult and contentious question, 
 that of the principle of relativity of expression. For the 
 sake of clearness, I will endeavour to formulate what I 
 conceive to be the gist of your argument in compendious 
 shape, so as to be able to put my finger upon the exact 
 point where we begin to diverge. If I am not mistaken, 
 it can be thrown into the form of three propositions and 
 a conclusion, viz. 
 
 1. At the beginning of Christianity, its essential ideas 
 
 were much more vague, fluid, and undefined in 
 outline than now. 
 
 2. In the course of centuries, certain technical forms 
 
 were imposed upon these originally rather vague 
 ideas. As the result of reflection and discussion, 
 they became hardened into theologumena, sharply- 
 defined concepts, and woven together into an 
 elaborate and interconnected system — that of 
 ecclesiastical and conciliar ' Orthodoxy '. 
 
 3. The ancient theologians, upon whom was laid the 
 
 task of fixing and defining the essential ideas of 
 
 Christianity, had to do the work with the best tools 
 
 and in the best environment and atmosphere at 
 
 their disposal. But 
 
 (a) the philosophical categories and modes of 
 
 thought, with which their minds were furnished, 
 
 were peculiar to the ancient world, and have 
 
 been long since outgrown by modern thought.
 
 26 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 And 
 (6) the Fathers, in their reflection upon the great 
 ideas of Christianity, started from an assumption 
 which we now know to be erroneous, viz. that 
 of the verbal inerrancy of the Scriptures, 
 And 
 (c) the ordered knowledge of the facts of the physical 
 world, which we call natural science, was prac- 
 tically a sealed book to them (p. 13, 11. 1-15). 
 
 CONCLUSION. Inasmuch, therefore, as the ancients 
 worked with tools and in an atmosphere which 
 would not be satisfactory to the modern mind, 
 their results must be expected a priori to be 
 tainted with the same unsatisfactoriness. ' It is 
 really out of the question that the young men of 
 the present day should be expected to subscribe to 
 every item in formulae constructed under con- 
 ditions such as these ' (p. 13, 11. 12-15). Conse- 
 quently, the detailed language of the Creeds and 
 Ecumenical Definitions may be said to be true, or 
 to have been true, relatively to the world of know- 
 ledge in M^hich, and the thought-forms with which 
 the ancients worked : but, relatively to the world 
 of modern knowledge, we can be certain, even 
 before having examined them, that they will prove 
 to be inadequate, and pro tanto untrue. Untrue, 
 that is, or only relatively true, in respect of their 
 detailed afiirmations, or of some of them : though 
 they may still be said to be broadly true, in the 
 sense that they are fairly successful attempts, 
 by persons who have considerable claims upon 
 our veneration, to formulate true ideas (p. 11, 
 11. 12-18). 
 
 I hope that the above is not an unfair summary of the 
 argument contained expressly or by implication in your
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams I 27 
 
 paper. It will now be easy for me to indicate the exact 
 points where I must part company with you. 
 
 Before, however, proceeding to do this, I should like to 
 note the fact that this argument is all of a purely a priori 
 or deductive nature. You do not, apparently, approach 
 the Creeds a posteriori, and say ' Behold, this, and this, 
 and this article of the Creeds have been shown by scientific 
 observation or historical research to be as a matter of fact 
 wrong ' ; you seem to say ' Things being what they are, 
 the Creeds must in the nature of the case be expected to 
 be wrong.' I do not complain of this ; the orthodox 
 theologian is the last person in the world to object to the 
 use of the deductive method in theology ; but it is inter- 
 esting to have it (apparently) admitted that the Modernist 
 campaign against the literal acceptation of the Creeds is 
 based, not so much upon ascertained facts, as upon con- 
 siderations of a priori probability. 
 
 However, I must not delay my examination of the 
 argument itself. 
 
 I do not wish to challenge Propositions 1 and 2, which 
 seem to me to correspond to facts. 
 
 Nor do I dispute the truth of the statements (6) and (c) 
 (referring to the Fathers' belief in ' verbal inspiration ' 
 and their ignorance of physical science) in Proposition 3. 
 But, 
 
 A. I should strenuously deny 3 {a) — viz. the statement 
 
 that the categories used by the Councils in formu- 
 lating the great ideas of the Faith were such as 
 have been outgrown by the modern world, 
 And, 
 
 B, Even if Propositions 1,2, and 3 were all true as they 
 
 stand, I should still deny that the Conclusion 
 necessarily followed from them. 
 
 I append a few remarks upon each of these positions.
 
 28 Form and Content in C/mstian Tradition 
 
 IV 
 
 With regard to Position A. To say all that there is to 
 be said on this point would require the dimensions of an 
 encyclopaedia, and I must perforce content myself with 
 a few very summary observations. It is commonly 
 asserted by Modernists that the categories and concepts 
 employed by the Fathers and the Councils in the work of 
 defining Orthodoxy are of bewildering complexity and 
 subtleness : that (to use your own words on p. 12), ' the 
 early Creeds ' aimed at working out Christian belief with 
 far more ' minuteness ' than we should now dream of : 
 that the acceptance of Catholic Orthodoxy involves bind- 
 ing upon oneseK a vast technical apparatus. I must beg 
 leave to dispute this entirely. The thought-forms of which 
 the Creeds and conciliar Definitions make use seem to me 
 to be quite reasonably few and simple — ova [a, cpvais, 
 vnocTTaa-LS, Trpoa-ooTrov, 6eXr]fia, kvipyeia, and the like. Per- 
 sonally I do not see how the Fathers, or anybody else, 
 could have got on with less, if they were going to define 
 anything at all. Moreover, I should maintain (these are 
 summary observations) that the categories mentioned 
 above are not peculiar to ancient thought, but are inherent 
 in the structure of human thought as such. In my 
 opinion, they are neither Platonic nor Aristotelian, neither 
 Stoic nor Cynic, but merely common-sense categories. 
 Has any modern logician really produced a better form of 
 thought than the copula, or a more helpful category than 
 that of Substance and Attribute (to which most of the 
 terms used in the controversies of the fourth, fifth, and 
 sixth centuries are really reducible) ? I know, of course, 
 that some Liberal historians of dogma accuse the Sub- 
 stance-Attribute category of being ' mechanical ', ' ma- 
 terialistic ', 'non-ethical', and ' sub -personal ' ; but, 
 again, I must say that these adjectives seem to me to be 
 mere question-begging epithets, and to be entirely desti- 
 tute of any logical weight. I am just as entitled to call it
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams I 29 
 
 * supra-personal ' in order to extol it, as the Liberal has 
 to call it ' sub-personal ' in order to depreciate it, I dare 
 say that from the point of view of a disciple of Bergson or 
 Bradley the category of Substance has not much to be said 
 for it — no more, from these same view-points, has the 
 idea of a personal God : yet you at least would hardly 
 describe the idea of a personal God as a worn-out category 
 peculiar to ancient thought. To sum up, it seems to me 
 that the forms of thought employed in the Creeds and 
 Definitions, although abstruse, as the height of the sub- 
 ject demands, are yet simple, clear, and such as will 
 remain valid for the normal human mind until the end of 
 time. I have never found any difficulty in explaining 
 the Chalcedonian doctrine of our Lord's Two Natures to 
 pupils or simple-minded parishioners. I will admit that 
 if the Fathers had embodied in the structure of the Creeds 
 such conceptions as Plato's Idea of the Good or Aristotle's 
 TTp5)Tov KLvovv oLKivqTov thc rcproach of containing out- 
 worn forms of thought might justly have been brought 
 against those formularies : but they didn't : and the fact 
 that they didn't, when they might easily have done so, 
 contains to my mind the strongest suggestion that their 
 reflections and decisions were controlled and guided by 
 the heavenly assistance of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 V 
 
 With regard to Position B (the non-cogency of the Con- 
 clusion), the whole argument, as I have ventured to for- 
 mulate it, seems to be substantially identical with what 
 you call the ' argument from the difference of times ' in 
 your pamphlet Bishop Gore's Challenge to Criticism : and 
 (if I remember rightly — I am quoting from memory) 
 you observed {in loc), ' Creeds constructed by ancient 
 thinkers cannot, in the nature of things, correspond to 
 the modern mind and its requirements.' (I fear that I 
 have not got the words right, but it was something hke
 
 30 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 that.) I must confess that when I read these words 
 I mentally pronounced the ' argument from the difference 
 of times ' to be a pure non sequitur. It seemed to me that 
 you might as well say, Because the men of the fifth 
 century believed twice two to be four, the modern mind 
 must necessarily take it to be five ; or that you would be 
 equally justified in pronouncing the Law of Gravitation 
 to be inexact or unsatisfactory because Newton knew 
 nothing of motor-cars or post-impressionism. Perhaps 
 it is unfair to comment in this way on an argument 
 expressed so summarily. But, even as set out in more 
 detailed shape in your paper, it seems to me to fall con- 
 siderably short of formal cogency^ — and that for the follow- 
 ing reasons. 
 
 In the first place, it leaves out of count the fact that it is 
 possible to arrive at true conclusions from false, or partially 
 false premisses. 
 
 It is doubtless true, as I have admitted above, that 
 most of the ancients (not all : Clement and Origen and 
 their school, if I mistake not, are exceptions) believed 
 in the verbal inerrancy of the Bible : but that does not 
 prove that their speculations, though based upon errone- 
 ous premisses, were not overruled by Divine Providence 
 so as to result in true conclusions. (This is of course what 
 the reasonable Traditionalist would say happened in the 
 case of St. Athanasius and Proverbs viii.) 
 
 Moreover, I cannot admit that the ignorance of the 
 ancients in the sphere of physical science necessarily 
 discounts the conclusions at which the Catholic Church 
 arrived in the sphere of religious ideas. Even if we 
 regard the Creeds and conciliar Definitions as merely the 
 products of unassisted human brains, we have no right 
 to assume that ignorance or error in one department of 
 knowledge necessarily involves error in all other depart- 
 ments. This holds good within the sphere of natural 
 science itself : there have been many pioneers in one 
 branch, who have been privileged to throw Hght upon
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams I 31 
 
 many dark corners of the universe, but yet have held 
 totally erroneous and fantastic views in regard to other 
 branches of knowledge. And I should also distinguish 
 sharply, for these purposes, between dogmatic theology^ 
 on the one side, dealing with the contents of the specific 
 Christian revelation, and the Philosophy of Religion, on 
 the other, containing the speculations of unassisted human 
 reason on the data of the religious consciousness in general. 
 I dare say that the modern theologian, in so far as he has 
 access to the vast treasuries of observations and generaliza- 
 tions accumulated by modern Natural Science, is infi- 
 nitely better equipped for conducting the inquiries proper 
 to the Philosophy of Religion, than were the ancients : 
 but I should strongly dispute the suggestion that he is 
 in a better position than they were for formulating the 
 essential contents of the Christian deposit. If one is 
 discussing the mysteries of the Trinity or of the Incarna- 
 tion, it seems to me that it does not much matter whether 
 the universe is thought to be heliocentric or geocentric. 
 If it be admitted that God created heaven and earth, it 
 matters little whether the distance between the earth and 
 the stars be reckoned in hundreds or in trillions of miles. 
 I wish to speak with perfect openness, and therefore, at 
 the risk of somewhat weakening my argument on this 
 point, I will admit that there is one area in which the 
 spheres of dogma and of natural science do seem to 
 overlap, and in which erroneous conceptions of scientific 
 fact might vitiate and disturb trains of theological reason- 
 ing : and that is the subject of the Fall and of Original 
 Sin. A priori, I will concede that the Fathers (and, of 
 course, the New Testament writers no less) might well 
 have been seriously handicapped by their ignorance of 
 anthropology and biology in thinking out and clearing 
 up these presuppositions of Christian soteriology. But, 
 even in this particular area, it seems to me that you are 
 not entitled to claim more than a general a priori pro- 
 bability {not mathematical certainty) for the supposition
 
 32 Form and Content in Chnstian Tradition 
 
 that the early Church went totally or partially wrong : 
 you must always leave open the possibility that it may 
 have come to true conclusions from erroneous premisses.^ 
 ' Yes,' you may reply, ' but that is all that is claimed — 
 the general a priori probability that the conclusions of the 
 early Church were to a certain extent vitiated by the 
 erroneous character of some of its premisses. If we know 
 that a thinker has started from false premisses, it is surely 
 probable, even though it may not be rigorously certain, 
 that his conclusions are at least unreliable.' I might 
 object that certain phrases and turns of expression (' It is 
 really out of the question . . .' and so on) appear to 
 claim much more than general probability, little less in 
 fact than dogmatic certainty, for your conclusions. But 
 let that pass, I think that I should not be inclined to 
 challenge the last remark which I have ventured hypothe- 
 tically to attribute to you — viz. the proposition that the 
 Creeds and Ecumenical Definitions are 'probably inaccurate 
 or unsatisfactory — but for one great assumption, which 
 I have kept in the background until now, but which 
 seems to me to be the master-key to the whole contro- 
 versy. 
 
 VI 
 
 This great assumption is the belief in the immanent 
 personal presence of God the Holy Ghost in the Catholic 
 Church, working in and through the processes of its life, 
 overruling the turbulence and ambition of its leaders, 
 sifting out the categories which are of permanent value 
 and belong to the essential structure of human thought, 
 from the detritus of merely temporary and local thought- 
 forms, and inspiring the whole nexus oi dogmatic develop- 
 ment so intimately and pervasively that each doctrine, 
 as it took shape, assumed precisely that form which the 
 Holy Spirit foresaw would most perfectly preserve the 
 essential content till the end of time. I would suggest 
 1 Which, again, is what I believe happened.
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams I 33 
 
 that, for those who are able to make this assumption, the 
 ' argument from the assistance of the Holy Spirit ' more 
 than cancels any slight weight which I have allowed to 
 the ' argument from the difiference of times '. Of com*se, 
 all language about Grod and divine things is relative to 
 human conditions of thought : but the point is, that if we 
 can make this assumption of a Real Presence of the Spirit 
 in the Church, we shall be able to feel confidence that the 
 terms which the Councils, under His inspiration, adopted, 
 are, although relative, relative to human thought uber- 
 haupt — not to any one temporary or local phase of it : 
 in other words, that they not merely were the best terms 
 for the Graeco-Roman world of the fifth century, but that 
 they are the best terms which are ever likely to be hit upon 
 by human beings. 
 
 It will now be clear in what sense I should speak of the 
 verbal and conceptual forms, in which the authority of 
 the Church has enshrined the essential ideas of Chris- 
 tianity, as 'unalterable'. I do not assert that they are 
 ' unalterable ' in the sense of having always been there : 
 but I should say that, now that they are there, they are 
 unalterable for the future. This ' unalterability ' has, on 
 our view, two consequences. It means, first, that it is 
 not permissible to substitute other intellectual forms (the 
 verbal expression is after all a secondary matter) for those 
 which the Holy Spirit has once sanctioned, speaking 
 through His organ, the Church Universal : and it means, 
 secondly, that it is not permissible to discard these forms 
 in favour of a mere formless vagueness — to reject the clear 
 and precise apprehension of truth which God has given 
 us through His Spirit in the Church, and to relapse into 
 the original indefiniteness on the plea of returning more 
 nearly to the conditions of early Christianity or the inten- 
 tions of its Founder. These consequences may not be 
 welcome to the modern mind, but it cannot be denied 
 that they follow irresistibly from the assumption of that 
 peculiarly intense and vital presence of the Spirit in the 
 
 D
 
 34 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 Church which I have tried to describe above. I am 
 afraid that you may still pronounce the idea of a set of 
 unalterable forms, even understood in this sense, to be 
 a 'priori impossible (' contrary to the nature and necessity 
 of things ') ; but I would, with all respect, ask you to 
 consider whether the law of universal flux, which you 
 appear to postulate, applies to such things as the multi- 
 plication table, the laws of thought, or the axioms of 
 geometry : and, if it does, whether we are not landed in 
 the morass of subjectivism and solipsism, in which the 
 terms ' truth ' and ' fact ' become finally evacuated of all 
 meaning. 
 
 The idea that dogmatic forms cannot be unalterable 
 because they are the products of a gradual evolution is so 
 common that I will venture to trespass on your patience 
 a little further in connexion with this particular point. 
 Take such an instance of a dogmatic form as the Homo- 
 ousion. I do not dream for a moment that the primitive 
 Church, as it stood on the morrow of Pentecost, used this 
 conception for describing our Lord's relation to the 
 Father : in fact, I do not suppose that it expended over 
 much thought on the exact metaphysical rationale of that 
 relation at all. But it does seem to me that it held, in 
 what we should call pictorial and imaginative form, the 
 very same general idea of the Divine Sonship of Christ 
 which was formulated three hundred years later by the 
 Nicene Fathers in the more precise, abstruse, and intel- 
 lectual terms of the Homoousion formula. One does not 
 of course blame them for not consciously holding the 
 precise conceptual form which was destined to emerge 
 three centuries later, any more than one blames TertuUian 
 for denying the Eternal Generation of the Son before the 
 Church had finally settled that this idea was a necessary 
 implicate of the belief in His full Divinity. But, if one 
 believes in the Spirit as governing the whole growth of 
 historic Christianity, in its three-fold structure, dogmatic, 
 institutional, and devotional, it follows that the process
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams I 35 
 
 of dogmatic development is irreversible ; its dii'ection 
 is ever forwards and not backwards, it must necessarily 
 be wrong and unnatural to go behind what has once been 
 fixed by divinely inspired authority — to attempt to put 
 the hands of the clock back by a return to the simpler 
 and vaguer faith of the Church's infancy, however attrac- 
 tive such a proposal may appear at first sight. In this 
 sense, it is a duty to be sophisticated. I cannot deny 
 myself the (somewhat malicious) satisfaction of observing 
 that from this point of view Modernism, at any rate Con- 
 tinental Modernism, with its cry of ' Zuriick zu Christus ' 
 (in the sense in which these words are commonly used, 
 that is, as meaning ' Los von der Kirche, los von Paulus ') 
 would naturally appear to merit the name of ' reaction ' 
 in its most literal application. 
 
 I should, on this ground, challenge the appropriateness 
 of your metaphor of the snake and its old and new skins 
 (p. 10). The Traditionalist would regard the dogmas 
 of the Faith, not as a superficial and periodically changing 
 integument, but as the connected system of vital organs 
 into which the originally simple substance of the embryo 
 has differentiated itself. In the first stages of its existence 
 the embryo is apparently a mere speck of protoplasm, 
 within which no organs can be detected, practically 
 homogeneous throughout ; but yet, even at that stage, it 
 contains the potentiality of brain, spinal cord, heart, and 
 lungs, which appear in the course of time, gradually 
 assuming definiteness and consistency, as the working out 
 of a divine idea which was always immanent in the germ. 
 But it does not follow that we can now dispense with 
 lungs because they took some time to develop : and an 
 attempt to return to primitive conditions by a radical 
 simplification of our internal economy would probably 
 prove a peculiarly disastrous experiment in anatomical 
 revision. 
 
 Of course, the fact that the outlines and mutual rela- 
 tions of the various organs are potentially fixed from the 
 
 D 2
 
 36 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 first, and actually fixed after a comparatively short period 
 of the body's existence, does not condemn it to petrifac- 
 tion or stagnation, or exclude the possibility of growth 
 and development — on the lines laid down by Nature. No 
 more does the immutability of the conceptual forms once 
 sanctioned by conciliar authority exclude the possibility 
 of a progression, to which no term need or can be set, in 
 the increasing apprehension of the full meaning of their 
 content. If the world lasts so long, future ages may well 
 see more Ecumenical Councils, fresh Creeds and Defini- 
 tions (I mean, of course, additional to, not contradictory 
 of, the old), and technical theological forms imposed upon 
 such Christian ideas as are still in the undefined and fluid 
 stage, such as that of the Atonement, or of the Inspiration 
 of the Scriptures. 
 
 VII 
 
 I gather from some words on p. 13 of your paper that 
 you would not altogether repudiate that conception of 
 the immanent Divine Spirit guiding the development of 
 Catholic doctrine which I have endeavoured (very imper- 
 fectly and cursorily) to set out above. These words are 
 ' . . . (Our young men) ^ are perfectly ready to believe 
 that the good Providence of God presided over the whole 
 evolution.' I welcome this observation, because I want 
 to find points of agreement rather than of difference 
 between us. And on this point it would appear that the 
 difference between the views which we severally take of 
 the Divine guidance of dogmatic evolution is one of degree 
 rather than of kind. I believe that the informing energies 
 of the Holy Spirit penetrated the whole process, as the 
 nerve-force of the body is present in all its functions, so 
 
 1 I am sure you will forgive my entering a respectful but firm protest 
 against the apparent assumption that all ' young men ' as such are 
 Modernists. I have had, and still have a large undergraduate acquaint- 
 ance, which has included many Agnostics, but only three Modernists, 
 of whom one has since become what I should call orthodox.
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams I 37 
 
 as to work out, in the Catholic doctrines, the nearest 
 approximation to absolute truth that the human mind is 
 capable of receiving : you, I gather, would conceive this 
 governing and directing activity in a much vaguer and 
 more attenuated sort of way, as keeping Christian doc- 
 trine, in a general sense, more or less on the right lines, 
 but by no means safeguarding it against considerable 
 errors in detail. But, if the difference is only one of 
 degree, the gulf between the two positions ought not to 
 be unbridgeable. 
 
 To sum up. It seems to me that the situation as 
 between the view represented in your paper and that 
 which I have endeavoured to set out might be roughly 
 sketched as follows : 
 
 A. The existence of a permanent body of Christian 
 
 truth. 
 
 Admitted by both sides} 
 
 B. The relativity of the forms in which this permanent 
 
 body was expressed by the early Creeds and 
 Councils, 
 
 I admit this in some measure, but to nothing 
 like the extent which you desire. 
 
 C. The conception of the Holy Spirit, as governing the 
 
 process whereby the permanent body of Christian 
 ideas was expressed in credal forms. 
 
 You admit this in some measure, but to 
 nothing like the extent which I desire. 
 
 Can the differences on points B and C be terminated, 
 and if so, how ? I believe that my position on point B — 
 viz. that the categories and forms in which the early 
 Church embodied the deposit of Christian truth are, as 
 a matter of mere fact, such as are inherent in the structure 
 of human thought and the common property of all ages 
 and countries ; and that, so far as they are relative, they 
 
 ^ I hope and believe that I am not unduly optimistic in setting this 
 down.
 
 38 Form and Content in Chistian Tradition 
 
 are relative to human thought as such and not to any 
 particular philosophical system — I believe that this posi- 
 tion can be amply defended by the ordinary weapons of 
 debate. But I should admit that my view on point C — 
 the belief in the Holy Spirit as guiding the process of 
 dogmatic evolution specifically and in detail, not vaguely 
 and in a general sense — rests upon an intuition. This 
 intuition, whereby the Holy Ghost is seen to be in the 
 Church, is (I should say) analogous to that sense of God 
 in nature which comes fleetingly at times to all, and is 
 possessed in fullest measure by the favoured few, poets, 
 prophets, and mystics. There is a certain sense of the 
 augustness, the sanctity, one might almost say the wor- 
 shipfulness, of the Church, which appears in the vision of 
 the Ecclesia in Hermas, or in such a phrase as that which 
 occurs in the old Leonine collect ' Ecclesiae tuae mirabile 
 sacramentum '. He who has this sense of the sacramental 
 character of the Church — who can see in the historic 
 Society the sacrament, or vehicle, or efficacious sign, of 
 the presence of the Holy Ghost — will not be likely to have 
 much difficulty in recognizing the majestic cadences of the 
 Creeds as the voice of God. The sins, ignorances, and 
 imperfections of the Councils which actually drew up the 
 Creeds and Definitions will be as irrelevant to him as the 
 dust which might settle on the bread of the Lord's Supper 
 would be to the devout communicant. The Reformation 
 in Northern Europe may have had some excellent results : 
 but (on my view) one of its most unfortunate results was 
 the complete or partial destruction of this sense of the 
 Church as the time-garment of the Christ-Spirit, the 
 mystical Body in which the Lord still lives, heals, and 
 suffers, as truly now in Paris, Moscow, or New York as 
 once in Galilee or on Calvary. There are not wanting 
 signs that this sense is slowly reviving in England, and 
 perhaps in Anglo-Saxon Christendom generally ; but its 
 re-creation, as the necessary basis for the re-union of all 
 who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, will be finally
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams I 39 
 
 effected by instruments and means belonging to an order 
 other than the purely intellectual. 
 
 There are many points of detail in your paper, upon 
 which I could say a great deal, if I had time and space. 
 The ' unification of thought ' is doubtless a splendid ideal : 
 but I do not see how reUgious and secular thought are to 
 be fused until secular thought itself shows some tendency 
 towards its own inner unification, and ceases to be a 
 jarring chaos of incompatible systems. Otherwise, with 
 what are you going to unify Christianity ? With Berg- 
 sonism ? or neo-Hegelianism ? or Spencerism ? or Prag- 
 matism ? or Pan-pneumatism ? But, though much has 
 necessarily been omitted, I have set down, I think, my 
 reflections on the most important questions raised by 
 your paper : and I trust that the length of this note has 
 not unduly tried your patience. 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 N. P. Williams.
 
 DR. SANDAY'S REPLY 
 
 My dear Williams, 
 
 I acknowledge warmly the perfect courtesy and 
 considerateness of your letter. I also very much appre- 
 ciate its great clearness and precision of statement. 
 These are qualities that should enable us to reach a better 
 understanding. It is not to be expected that we should 
 entirely agree ; but it will be much if we can reduce the 
 limits between which we seem to disagree. And for this 
 purpose your letter, if I may say so, seems likely to be 
 very helpful. 
 
 I will take your points in the order in which they arise, 
 and will add some further comments of my own at the end. 
 
 I am glad that we can come to terms upon the broad 
 principle of ' continuity and relativity ' ; and I am also 
 glad that, when you speak of the ' unalterableness ' of the 
 Christian Faith, you confine this to the essential content^ 
 as distinct from the form or expression. I may perhaps 
 be allowed to remind you of this later, if the occasion 
 should arise, as it possibly may. 
 
 II 
 
 It is only when we come to the question of ' relativity ' 
 that you begin to be conscious of divergence. And I may 
 say here at once that, apart from some small details which 
 would rather overstate my views, I can quite accept the 
 compendious paraphrase into which you throw them. 
 Here again I note the considerable measure of agreement. 
 This covers the propositions which you have numbered
 
 Dr. Sanday II 41 
 
 1, 2, 3b,c. The points that you would 'strenuously 
 deny ' are 3 a and the sequitur between the three proposi- 
 tions and the conclusion. 
 
 I will come to these in a moment ; but, before I do so, 
 I ought just to touch upon the points in your statement 
 which rather exaggerate me. 
 
 The form of modernism which I desire to defend is 
 distinctly a conservative and (if I may call it so), reverent 
 modernism. For my own part I dislike and deprecate 
 the language into which some modernists are apt to fall 
 that would dismiss impatiently the older forms of state- 
 ment as ' out of date ' and untenable. I would carefully 
 abstain from using several of the expressions which 3^ou 
 (not unnaturally) attribute to me. Such would be the 
 phrases, ' inadequate and jpro tanto untrue ', ' the Creeds 
 must in the nature of the case be expected to be wrong ', 
 ' the great ideas of the Faith were such as have been 
 outgrown by the modern world '. ' Untrue ' (even with 
 the qualification ' pro tanto untrue '), ' wrong ', ' outgrown ' 
 (in the sense of discarded), are all words that I should 
 avoid.^ The attitude of mind to which they correspond is 
 not mine ; and, even if it were, they would not be appro- 
 priate to the special purpose with which I am writing. 
 I shall have later to try to explain this more fully, and 
 will say no more about it at present. 
 
 What you say about ' a priori ' and ' a posteriori ' 
 objections, also needs a word of comment. I do not feel 
 myself tied down to one mode of reasoning rather than 
 another ; each has its place according to the context in 
 which it is used. The tendency of your own paper is 
 perhaps rather to lay stress upon the a priori side of things. 
 But this is another aspect of our discussion that will 
 come up again presently, and I will not dilate upon 
 it now. 
 
 1 For a fuller exposition of my views on this head, I may perhaps be 
 allowed to refer to an article entitled ' Relative Truth ' in The Modem 
 Churchman for October-November 1915.
 
 42 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 III 
 
 I note your remarks under your third head. They are 
 fresh and pointed and deserve full consideration. At the 
 same time, I do not feel that they are inconsistent with 
 the attitude that I should myself wish to adopt in regard 
 to the Creeds. I might describe that attitude in general 
 terms by saying that, where we propound to ourselves the 
 same questions that are raised by the Creeds, especially 
 so far as these questions relate to the metaphysical nature 
 of the Godhead, my own belief is that they are rightly 
 answered in the words of the Creeds. The difference in 
 regard to modern times, as I should put it, is, not that we 
 should answer the same questions differently, but that 
 we should be inchned to put rather different questions. 
 These are not for us the urgent questions that 
 
 rap and knock and enter in our soul, 
 
 whether we will or no. We do not challenge the old 
 answers ; we assent to them — only perhaps a little less 
 energetically inasmuch as they are less pressing and less 
 the subject of active controversy. 
 
 It may help the process of clearing up obscurities, if 
 I take an important example — the doctrine of the Holy 
 Trinity. If I ask how I can best make real to myself this 
 doctrine, I am inclined to reply that I can do so to the 
 best advantage by a study of its history, by observing how 
 as a matter of fact it gradually took shape in the thought 
 of the Early Church. The first impulse to the doctrine 
 was doubtless given by the necessity of distinguishing 
 between the Godhead in the heavens and the Godhead 
 upon earth. This gave rise to the bracketing together of 
 God the Father and Grod the Son, as in the salutations and 
 elsewhere in St. Paul's Epistles. Then gradually there 
 steals in the use of the triple formula (as in 2 Cor. xiii. 14, 
 1 Peter i. 2). We enter into the psychology of the 
 Apostolic writers, and try to follow the working of their 
 minds. Then, in like manner, when the Church begins to
 
 D7\ Sanday II 43 
 
 reflect and philosophize upon its beliefs, we take up a 
 treatise like that of Tertullian ' Against Praxeas ', and we 
 are not surprised to find that the most prominent idea is 
 that of what is called ' the economic Trinity ', the suc- 
 cessive ' dispensations ' of the Father, Son, and Holy 
 Spirit. We see how the Church was thus led on to ask if 
 these distinctive operations did not point to some ulterior 
 distinction of being, and to answer that presumably they 
 did. We are conscious that to this day we can give no 
 better answer ; though we hasten to add that, if we ven- 
 ture as far as this, we do so entirely in the spirit of the 
 most profound of the ancient theologians, more particu- 
 larly St. Augustine : cum quaeritur, quid tres, magna 
 prorsus inopia humanum laborat eloquium ; dictum est 
 tamen ' tres personae ', non ut illud dicer etur, sed ne taceretur 
 {De Trin. v. 9). 
 
 The modern Christian feels that he can follow the steps 
 in this process with the deepest respect ; he can adopt the 
 ancient language, and he is ready to fall back upon it as 
 the best that is available for him. But his instinct is all 
 for reticence, and he is glad to think that the pressure for 
 definition from without is less than it has been. The 
 doctrine of the Incarnation is just as urgent as ever it was. 
 The question. What think ye of Christ ? still demands 
 a prompt, clear, and decisive answer. But the further 
 corollaries from this doctrine are not so urgent. The 
 drift of thought is rather away from them, and tends to 
 concentrate itself more upon religious experience and 
 practice. Hence I do not think it is too much to say that 
 the speculative discussions of the past are more in the 
 background of men's minds than in the front of them. 
 
 IV 
 
 The truths of mathematics stand apart by themselves. 
 The whole system of mathematics is from first to last 
 a creation of the human mind. And what the mind 
 makes, the mind is thoroughly competent to handle. The
 
 44 Form aiid Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 subject-matter is both finite and definite. All that is to 
 be seen of it, the mind can see ; it can grasp it, above, 
 beneath, and around. There is no analogy from such 
 comprehension as this to the attitude of the soul towards 
 its God, feeling after Him if haply it may find Him. 
 There is all the difference in the world between truths that 
 are within the compass of the mind and truths that by the 
 nature of the case are beyond it. The study of a finite 
 object is one thing, and the study of an infinite object is 
 another. When all is said, the mind can only resign 
 itself to its limitations. 
 
 I am afraid it is a highly paradoxical and precarious 
 position to take up, ' that it is possible to arrive at true 
 conclusions from false, or partially false premisses '. 
 I allow that in appearance such failures of the mental 
 processes do sometimes happen. I allow that the working 
 of the logical machine is not infallible — that it is not safe 
 to assume that even from sound premisses the conclusions 
 that seem to follow will always be sound, and that truth 
 is sometimes arrived at by processes which seem to be 
 faulty. I allow that on these grounds a certain amount 
 of reserve and caution has to be exercised in the conduct 
 of life. But it is quite another thing to erect such excep- 
 tional cases into a law, and to act as though the opposite 
 assumption held good. 
 
 The rationale of these paradoxical instances appears to 
 be that all reasoning is not conscious ; that the sub- and 
 un-conscious processes embrace a wider range of data 
 than the conscious, and are thus sometimes able to correct 
 the more intense activities of conscious reasoning. The 
 seemingly imperfect connexion between premisses and 
 conclusion is often simply due to defective analysis. 
 
 In any case the fact remains that right processes are the 
 best, if not the only, guarantee we have for right results. 
 To revise and check our processes is the best way of arriv- 
 ing at truth. This is the normal method, and any other 
 is abnormal.
 
 Dr. Sanday II 45 
 
 We have the further encouragement of knowing that, 
 as a matter of fact, the processes of reasoning have steadily 
 been improved. In all branches of research advance has 
 been made. The world knows better than it did what 
 kinds of inference are to be trusted and what are not. 
 And this not only imposes on us the duty of going over 
 afresh the old lines of proof, but it also inspires us with 
 growing confidence in following out those trains of reason- 
 ing which experience has ratified. 
 
 I understand that, where rational verification fails, you 
 fall back on the assumption of a Divine presence and 
 influence — in your own words, ' the immanent personal 
 presence of God the Holy Ghost in the Catholic Church ' 
 — overruling all defective processes and educing truth 
 even out of that which is recognized as error. I am glad 
 to think that up to a certain point I can go with you 
 here. You are quite right in noticing that I spoke myself 
 of ' the good Providence of God presiding over the whole 
 evolution '. I not only spoke of this but desired, and 
 desire, to lay stress upon it. The belief in this is very 
 real with me. 
 
 I had a reason for adopting a rather different mode of 
 expression, though I do not wish to press it to the exclusion 
 of yours. I would rather take your more limited and 
 specific formula as included in mine. My reason for pre- 
 ferring the larger expression was because I wished to cover 
 the whole evolution, pre-Christian as well as Christian. 
 I was anxious to take in the whole of the Old Dispensa- 
 tion as well as of the New. Not only have I a strong 
 feeling that we ought to do this, but I also believe that we 
 strengthen our case considerably by doing so. 
 
 When all is said, the best proof of Divine intervention 
 and assistance in the spiritual education of the human 
 race is to be found within the four corners of the Bible.
 
 46 Form and Cojitent in Christian Tradition 
 
 No higher revelation of religious truth has ever been made, 
 or is likely ever to be made, than that which is contained 
 in the Life as well as in the Words of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 And in all the rest of human history, there are no signs of 
 God's presence and guidance which stand out so boldly as 
 those which cluster thickly round the double line of ascent 
 to and descent from Him. 
 
 Along these lines we come from time to time upon con- 
 centrated sayings which sum up in classical language the 
 most fundamental principles of religion. ' Hear, Israel : 
 the Lord our God is one Lord ; and thou shalt love the 
 Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, 
 and with all thy might ' ; ' Thou shalt love thy neighbour 
 as thyseK ' ; ' The Lord is slow to anger, and plenteous 
 in mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and 
 will by no means clear the guilty ' ; ' Like as a father 
 pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear 
 him ' ; ' This is the covenant that I will make with the 
 house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord ; I will 
 put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart will 
 I write it ; and I will be their God, and they shaU be my 
 people ' ; * The chastisement of our peace was upon him ; 
 and with his stripes we are healed '. 
 
 x\nd yet, even in this foundation-laying period in which 
 God seemed nearest to man and in which Divine action 
 upon the human mind appeared at its greatest intensity — 
 even then we can discern certain setbacks or limitations : 
 such as, almost to the end of the Old Testament period, 
 defective grasp upon a future life, a strict law of retalia- 
 tion, mistaken emphasis on the alleged correspondence 
 between sin and suffering, earthly prosperity and moral 
 desert, and from time to time a startling narrowness of 
 identification between the national cause of Israel and the 
 cause of God. 
 
 But if the pre-Christian stage of preparation, though in 
 many ways a time of intense inspiration, was subject to 
 drawbacks such as these, stiU less can it be said that the
 
 Dr. Sanday II 47 
 
 later periods of Church History have been exempt from 
 them. We may mark off three distinct stages : {a) the 
 period of the Undivided Church ; (6) the Middle Ages ; 
 (c) the great break-up of Christian Unity and its sequel. 
 Let us grant that, on the whole, a fairly optimistic view 
 is possible of the first of these stages ; however thick the 
 traces may be in it of ' all too human ' infirmities, theoreti- 
 cal and practical, it may be reasonable to detect a Divine 
 overruling in the broad formulation of Christian doctrine. 
 But, whatever allowance may be made for this, it must 
 be difficult to maintain as much for either of the periods 
 which followed. Ideal elements were not wanting in the 
 Middle Ages ; but the upshot of the period was such an 
 accumulation of abuses and corruptions as to call for 
 drastic reformation. And this reformation, in its turn, 
 so broke up the unity of the Church of Christ that com- 
 bined and effective action of the Church as a whole is no 
 longer possible. It must be regarded as suspended, until 
 the conditions are once again more favourable. 
 
 It is for these reasons and because of these drawbacks 
 that I am afraid I cannot follow you in the picture that 
 you draw of the present position of Christian Doctrine. 
 As a picture, it is beautiful and attractive. But my 
 feeHng about it is that it is all in the air ; it is out of touch 
 with the workaday world ; it is a work of the imagination, 
 an ' unsubstantial pageant ', neither verified nor capable 
 of verification. You yourself describe it as reached by an 
 ' intuition '. But does not that really mean ' assumed 
 without proof ' ? What assurance have we that it corre- 
 sponds to the reality ? 
 
 It seems to me that, so long as we keep to broad lines 
 and to general statements, a fair case may be made out 
 for tracing the hand of God in history, and for the belief 
 that the broad outlines of the Christian Creed are what He 
 would have them to be. But when the attempt is made 
 to go beyond this and to maintain that each minute detail 
 remains true in precisely the same sense in which it was
 
 48 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 held fourteen or fifteen or sixteen centuries ago, then I 
 must needs think that the contention goes beyond what 
 we have warrant for. I find it hard to reconcile with the 
 inevitable amount of change that I see going on in the 
 world around me. 
 
 I would venture to generalize a step further. There is, 
 as far as I can see, no exception to the law that ' we have 
 our treasure in earthen vessels ' ; in other words, that 
 Divine communications of every kind are mediated to 
 man through men, through human faculties, with all their 
 weaknesses and limitations adhering to them. Man is 
 privileged to co-operate with God ; He is auuepyh ©€ov. 
 But that never means that His own nature ceases to be 
 what it is. If it did, he would cease to be a free agent ; 
 he would be a passive instrument, and not an agent at all. 
 
 We see this in every field ; in the whole Christian life of 
 prayer and answers to prayer, in the life of individuals 
 singly and in the mass. The genuinely human element 
 may be increased or diminished, but it is never eliminated. 
 This means that a partial control from above of human 
 thought and action enters into the scheme of things, but 
 a complete control does not enter into it. I think I may 
 say, no control so complete as to satisfy the conditions 
 which your view would require. 
 
 VI 
 
 It is true that different parts of the Creed are on a rather 
 different footing. And I am not sure that we have not 
 to some extent been playing at cross purposes about it. 
 Your argument has had reference mainly to what I may 
 call the metaphysical or ontological aspects of the Creeds, 
 whereas I have had chiefly in mind the statements that 
 would come rather under the head of history. I gladly 
 admit that what you have said about the essential sim- 
 plicity of the ontological statements is much to the point 
 and well deserves to be borne in mind. I have said
 
 Dr. Sanday II 49 
 
 already that I do not wish to call in question any of these 
 statements. I do not think there is one to which I should 
 wish to offer anything that is in the nature of contra- 
 diction. I fully believe that, as far as I can judge, the 
 ultimate formulations accepted by the Church were 
 always in the right direction. It is just in this that I am 
 prepared to see Divine guidance and overruling. There 
 was, if we may say so, an instinct at work in the Church 
 which out of seemingly unpromising conditions and by 
 seemingly unpromising methods was found to lead in the 
 end to what we can recognize as right decisions. All that 
 I would wish to say by way of reserve is that the modern 
 mind has perhaps learnt to be still more on its guard 
 against the dangers of over-definition ; it is more aware 
 of its own limitations ; and it is specially reluctant to 
 venture too far in its affirmations about God. The famous 
 passage in Hooker {Eccl. Pol. I.ii. 2) stands out as a warn- 
 ing that the best divines of the Church of England have 
 always kept well before them. I do not think that there 
 is any danger of their not doing so in future. 
 
 It is otherwise with the historical statements embodied 
 in the Creeds. So far as these are historical, they are on 
 the same footing as all history. We do not write history 
 now in the same way in which it was written two centuries 
 ago. And if this holds good for the history of Greece and 
 Rome, it must also hold good for the history of Palestine. 
 We cannot mark off one small corner, and apply to it 
 different methods and principles from those which we 
 apply to all the rest. As a matter of fact, the history 
 of the Old Testament period has been, or is in process of 
 being, rewritten on these methods and principles. The 
 only remaining question is how far they are similarly 
 applicable to the New Testament period. And it seems to 
 me that we have no choice but to go forward frankly upon 
 the same Unes. 
 
 In the end what determines the interpretation of the 
 New Testament will determine also the interpretation of 
 
 £
 
 50 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 the Creeds. The New Testament supplies the data that 
 are worked up in the Creeds. It follows that, if there is 
 a progressive reinterpretation of the one, the same thing 
 must hold good of the other. 
 
 VII 
 
 It is here that the work of the modernist, and especially 
 of the modernist scholar, comes in. His supreme desire 
 and effort is to see things as they really are, and to make 
 his life and thought all of a piece. As it is, he has no 
 confidence that he is doing this. So long as he merely 
 reproduces the traditional story, he is haunted by a sense 
 that the ground beneath his feet is no more secure than it 
 is in the case of other traditional stories. He feels that 
 he must go behind this, and go behind it methodically and 
 systematically ; he must bring to bear upon it all the 
 resources of historical and critical experience. 
 
 That does not mean that he must pin himself down to 
 any particular set of conclusions. The search for truth 
 in these matters is certainly at the present time some way 
 from finality. The virtue is in the search, rather than (as 
 yet) in the results of the search. As we look back over 
 the investigations of the last fifty or sixty years, what they 
 seem to have done is to have turned a strong searchlight 
 fiirst upon this and then upon that point in the real 
 sequence of the New Testament history ; the points are 
 real points, and to have become conscious of them is 
 a genuine step in advance ; but it would be another thing 
 to say that up till now we have succeeded in setting them 
 all in their just proportions and correlating them exactly 
 with each other. The movement is a progressive move- 
 ment, and we must be content if we can make way by slow 
 degrees. 
 
 And yet, after all, these studies in which Christian 
 scholars have been employed, important as they are and 
 near as they are to the fountain-head, belong to the field
 
 Dr. Sanday II 51 
 
 of externals ; they have to do rather with expression than 
 with that which is expressed. They are not themselves the 
 full spiritual meaning, which comes to light through them. 
 The reason why these studies of which I have been speaking 
 are pursued so eagerly as they are is in the hope of disen- 
 gaging more and more of that full spiritual meaning. 
 
 And I myself beheve that this inner meaning will not 
 be found to be essentially different from what it has been 
 all along, I would not say that it exactly is, but it 
 certainly lies behind, the theology of St. Paul and St. John. 
 Even those first and greatest of all theologies require 
 some discrimination between form and content ; even 
 they embody features which are taken from the current 
 thought of the time ; even they involve a certain process 
 of translation and interpretation when we attempt to 
 express them in the forms most natural to ourselves. But 
 translation and interpretation are a different thing from 
 essential change. 
 
 I gladly accept your own expressive image (p. 35), 
 which becomes most expressive when we think of the 
 subject of it as human. The child, the boy, the youth, 
 the man, differ to some extent, though never wholly, in 
 outward physiognomy ; but the inner personality, the 
 vital organs, are one and the same. 
 
 I suppose that few philosophical problems are more 
 difficult than the precise definition of that which consti- 
 tutes identity. Your own conception of the identity of 
 Christian doctrine in the present and in the past implies 
 such a definition. But I am afraid I must ask for a 
 greater amount of latitude than you seem inclined to 
 grant. When you say that ' each doctrine, as it took 
 shape, assumed precisely that form which the Holy Spirit 
 foresaw would most perfectly preserve the essential 
 content till the end of time ' (p. 32 sup.), it seems to me 
 that you are claiming too much. You are not content 
 with assuming that the essential content remains the 
 same, but you go on to assert that the outward form or 
 
 £ 2
 
 52 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 expression must be equally immutable. I find it hard to 
 reconcile this language with what is implied in your own 
 analogies. Does it allow for the inevitable processes of 
 growth ? If the world were constructed on mechanical 
 principles — if the thoughts in men's minds were like coins 
 in a box — then, one could believe that what was handed 
 in at one point could be taken out in precisely the same 
 condition at another. But that is surely too simple a way 
 of looking at it. We have to do with living minds, and 
 with a succession of living minds. Under such conditions, 
 the more natural analogy is surely that of organic growth. 
 And the essential characteristic of organic growth is that 
 identity and change are perfectly balanced ; the single 
 particles are in perpetual flux, but the Hving being, the 
 person, remains always the same. We meet a friend, let 
 us say, after an interval o*f ten years, and we see at a 
 glance that he is at once the same and not the same ; it is 
 hard to tell where the likeness ends and the unlikeness 
 begins ; there is the subtlest possible identity, and yet 
 the subtlest possible difference, in every feature. The 
 proportions of Hkeness and unlikeness vary with the 
 individual. To one, the first words of one's greeting are, 
 ' I should hardly have known you ; ' to another, ' You 
 are not altered a bit.' And yet, in both cases alike, we 
 take up the thread of our common past as if it had never 
 been broken. 
 
 That is surely the law of life, th^ pattern on which life 
 is made and to which all its phases conform. The history 
 of Christian belief and Christian doctrine is no exception. 
 It seems to me that yOu are trying to stereotype both 
 beyond the point to which they can be or ought to be 
 stereotyped. 
 
 VIII 
 
 That is where — be it said with all respect — it seems to 
 me that you are wrong. This idea of an infaUible Church 
 with an unalterable body of doctrine : what better f ounda-
 
 Dr. Sanday II 53 
 
 tion has it in the last resort than that you would like to 
 think it true ? There have been and are many claimants 
 to infalhbility. But the previous question ought to be 
 asked : Is there any such thing as infalUbility among the 
 sons of men ? ' By their fruits ye shall know them.' 
 
 Does not the theory which you advocate presuppose an 
 idealized — and even a highly idealized — ^view of history ? 
 All idealism no doubt has its attractions. But, when I 
 think of this, I am reminded of an analogous case in the 
 Old Testament. The Book of Chronicles — we remember 
 that in the Hebrew it is a single book — is also very largely 
 in its essence an ideal construction. It is a rewriting of 
 Judaean history on certain definite principles. The 
 author is strongly impressed with one of the current 
 articles of Jewish belief, the strict correspondence of 
 outward prosperity with moral and religious desert, the 
 doctrine that the wicked are punished and the Tighteous 
 rewarded even in this life. The narrative is cut out to fit 
 this doctrine, just as a coat is cut to fit the wearer. Awk- 
 ward and intractable facts (like the sins of David and 
 Solomon) are studiously omitted ; and, where further 
 details are needed to make good the moral, they are duly 
 supplied. Then again, the author is also an enthusiast 
 for the fully developed ceremonial of his own day, and he 
 reads this back into the times of David and Solomon ; he 
 describes the great functions of their reigns as if they 
 had been conducted in accordance with the fullest later 
 standards ; and in other ways he is always levelling up 
 the earlier with the later usage and depicting things, not 
 as they actually were, but as he conceives that they ought 
 to have been. He is a good man, but with the goodness 
 of his own time, and he corrects the older authorities in 
 accordance with this. But, whatever else he may be, he 
 is not a trustworthy historian. 
 
 In sharp contrast with this book are two others — one 
 probably written a hundred years or so earlier, and the 
 other somewhat later — the Books of Job and Ecclesiastes.
 
 54 Form and Content in Ch?istian Tradition 
 
 As compared with the author of Chronicles, the authors 
 of both these books might be called reahsts. Their one 
 endeavour is to see things as they are. They will not go 
 on repeating the old phrases, unless they are sure that they 
 are true. The doctrine of the unfailing prosperity of the 
 righteous and penalizing of the wicked is a stumbling- 
 block to them. They see that it does not correspond to the 
 facts, and they will not represent things otherwise than 
 as they see them. They will not ' speak unrighteously 
 for God ' or ' talk deceitfully for him ' (Job xiii. 7). ' The 
 Preacher ' goes further still ; he is not only a realist 
 but a pessimist ; he does not shrink from saying what he 
 believes to be true, however paradoxical it may sound. 
 Yet his temper is austere and grave, and he is resigned 
 not to know more than is revealed to him. 
 
 It is not surprising that there should have been some 
 hesitation about admitting this last book within the Canon. 
 Yet I think that we have much reason to be glad that it 
 was admitted. It represents a type of mind and character 
 which deserves to be consecrated to God's service. We 
 may take it as an illustration of the truth that ' God 
 fulfils Himself in many ways '. 
 
 It is really for a further recognition of this truth that 
 I have been pleading. I do not take it amiss that you do 
 not see your way to grant me all that I have asked for. 
 In matters such as this rapprochements are not to be 
 forced. We must wait in patience until they come about 
 spontaneously and naturally. 
 
 Beheve me, 
 Always yours sincerely, 
 
 W. SANDAY.
 
 MR. N. P. WILLIAMS'S SECOND LETTER 
 
 My dear Dr. Sanday, 
 
 Permit me to thank you very sincerely for your 
 letter, and to express my gratification that we have been 
 able to discover so much common ground. I gather from 
 certain expressions in your letter that the extent to 
 which you would go with me is greater even than I had 
 hoped : and I am indeed glad that this is so. In this 
 paper I propose to examine the divergences that remain, 
 to reply to the criticisms which you have directed against 
 my position, and, if possible, to trace our remaining 
 divergences in respect of conclusions down to their 
 ultimate root in differences of fundamental assumptions. 
 The methods and canons of right reasoning are the same 
 for all : so also are the data of sense-experience : when, 
 therefore, two equally reasonable people (if I may with- 
 out presumption bracket myself with you in this way) 
 come to different conclusions in respect of the same 
 subject-matter, it must necessarily be because they are 
 using different axioms, or (as Plato would say) different 
 dpxou dvvTToOeTOL. All chains of proof depend ultimately 
 upon assumptions which themselves neither require nor 
 are capable of proof ; otherwise ratiocination of every 
 kind would, when analysed, dissolve away into an 
 infinite regress. It is therefore rigorously certain that 
 our differences can be reduced to differences of funda- 
 mental, unproved, and unprovable assumption ; and the 
 laying bare of these divergent dp^ai is the task which 
 I shall propose to myself in this paper. I could, of course, 
 did time and space permit, write a running commentary 
 upon the whole of your letter ; there are parts of it with 
 which I heartily agree, parts to which I assent with 
 rather less enthusiasm, or which I do not feel called upon
 
 56 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 seriously to challenge, though I might myself wish to 
 word them differently — and parts with which I must 
 needs disagree in toto. It will conduce both to brevity 
 and to clearness if I confine myself to the consideration 
 of these latter. 
 
 I think it is not unfair to say that your letter, on the 
 whole, vindicates the correctness of my diagnosis of the 
 situation as between the views which you have expressed 
 on the subject of the creeds and their authority, and those 
 which I have tried to expound. I expressed the opinion 
 (you will remember) that the fons et origo of the cleavage 
 between us was to be found in the divergent opinions 
 which we held as to the extent to which the guidance of 
 the Holy Spirit controlled (and presumably scUl controls) 
 the evolution of Christian dogma. And I suggested that, 
 whilst this idea was accepted by both of us, you did not 
 appear to admit it ' to anything like the extent which 
 I desired '. I am, of course, only too glad to learn that 
 this phrase was in your opinion over-strong. But I gather 
 from your subsequent remarks that there is a real diver- 
 gence, though not so great as I had feared — and that 
 this divergence is the fount, or one of the founts, of all 
 our subsequent differences. You say, indeed (on p. 45), 
 that you do not wish to challenge my phrase about ' the 
 immanent personal presence of God the Holy Ghost in 
 the Catholic Church ', and prefer to take the idea for 
 which it stands as included in your own more compre- 
 hensive conception of Divine Providence as presiding 
 over the whole course of Judaeo-Christian evolution. 
 But (without any wish to lay stress on points of difference, 
 and actuated merely by the desire to expose the logic of 
 the matter) I am constrained to observe that you almost 
 immediately take back with one hand a good deal of 
 what you seem to be giving me with the other. For 
 you bring against my view of Church authority in doctrinal
 
 Mr. N, P. Williams II 57 
 
 matters a number of criticisms, some of which, at least, 
 if they could be sustained, would, to my mind, have the 
 ejBPect of upsetting it altogether. My first task must, 
 therefore, be that of replying to these criticisms : when 
 that has been done, I may proceed to lay bare a second 
 difference of fundamental assumption, which, equally 
 with the first, seems to lie at the root of the schism be- 
 tween the Traditionalist and the Modernist tendencies in 
 Christian thought. 
 
 II 
 
 The first criticism which I will discuss is directed 
 against my admission that the fundamental postulate of 
 the Catholic system, viz. the belief in the guiding presence 
 of the Holy Spirit in the Church, or, more briefly, the 
 belief in the ' infallibility ' of the Church, rests frankly 
 upon an intuition. You ask ' Does not this mean, assumed 
 without proof ? ' To which I reply. Of course it does. 
 From the view-point of uncompromising orthodoxy, this 
 behef is the fundamental assumption, which must in the 
 nature of things be both unproved and unprovable, 
 because it is itself the prius which makes any kind of 
 proof possible — the apx^ dvairoSeLKros which is the neces- 
 sary presupposition of aU soHd and reliable dnoSei^Ls in 
 the domain of Christian doctrine. You are at liberty, 
 if you will — and are able — to disprove this fundamental 
 assumption of traditional dogmatic theology by showing 
 that the Church has laid down as of faith statements 
 which are now certainly known to be untrue : though 
 I cannot say that I have much fear of your being able 
 to do so. But I do not see that you can reasonably 
 object to what is admittedly put forward as an dpxv 
 dvaTToS^LKTos merely for heing dvairoSeLKros. You might 
 as well criticize the Laws of Thought, or the axioms 
 of geometry, for being ' assumed without proof ' — 
 which is exactly what they are. After all, the other 
 sciences are all based upon assumptions which in the
 
 58 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 last analysis are seen to be themselves incapable of 
 proof : otherwise (as I said above) all scientific demonstra- 
 tion, whether deductive or inductive, would be a chain 
 hanging from nothing, a ladder losing itself in the mists 
 of an infinite regress. The world may rest upon an 
 elephant, and the elephant upon a tortoise : but the 
 tortoise must be provided with a ttov (ttco which needs 
 no further support. This is most obviously clear in the 
 case of the deductive sciences, such as mathematics : 
 but it is really none the less true in the case of the empirical 
 sciences, which presuppose such utterly unprovable postu- 
 lates as the existence of an external world, and the 
 reliability of sense-perception. In the spheres of conduct 
 and of aesthetic feeling, the same is the case ; the scales 
 of moral and aesthetic values, which all reasoning about 
 the Good or the Beautiful necessarily presupposes, are 
 given us by the ethical and aesthetic senses respectively 
 — that is, by ethical and aesthetic ' intuition ' — and not 
 by ratiocination. Even in the practical life of every day, 
 we find ourselves at every turn acting upon principles 
 of which we are certain, though they cannot be proved : 
 which are given us by the Practical, and not by the Pure 
 Reason : we have to walk, in great measure, by faith 
 and not by sight. And if every other domain of human 
 thought, feeling, and action possesses and presupposes 
 its own fundamental and indemonstrable first principles, 
 why need it be thought a thing incredible that refigion 
 in general (and the Christian refigion in particular) should 
 possess its own dp^al dvanoSeiKTOL, as the starting-point 
 for all subsequent dnoSei^L^ ? You would not deny 
 (I imagine) that the great ideas of refigion in general 
 — God, Freedom, Immortafity — are matters of intuition 
 rather than of demonstration : you would hardly maintain 
 that the stock arguments for the existence of God have 
 been unaffected by Kant's destructive criticism, or that 
 the being and attributes of the Godhead can be ' proved ' 
 from the data of sense-experience as easily and certainly
 
 Mr. N, P. Williams II 59 
 
 as Paley supposed. For the believing soul, the reality 
 of a loving and all-merciful Father and Creator rests 
 primarily upon intuition, or spiritual experience, or the 
 Divine gift of Faith (they are all names for the same 
 ineffable interior sense of God's presence), and not upon 
 reasoning, whether deductive or inductive : and for the 
 vast majority of Christian believers this sense of the 
 reality of God is indissolubly knit up with the sense of 
 Him in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, and 
 of Christ in the Church and the Sacraments, healing, 
 restoring, sanctifying. I venture to claim that you 
 cannot, in logic, disparage the idea of ' intuition ' of 
 Divine things, without destroying the basal foundations 
 of rehgious conviction altogether. 
 
 You draw a contrast between my view, based frankly 
 on ' intuition ', and your own rather vaguer view of the 
 extent to which the Holy Spirit presided over the whole 
 course of Judaeo-Christian evolution, for which you 
 claim to find ' a real warrant in history '. You suggest, 
 a little further on, that I am going beyond the warrant 
 of history in pressing this Divine guidance, during the 
 Christian period, to the point of endowing the Christian 
 Church with ' infallibility '. I imagine that I should not 
 be representing your contention unfairly if I summarized 
 it as claiming that your view rests upon a scientific, or 
 more or less scientific, or exact, induction from the facts 
 of history, whereas mine rests upon an unverifiable 
 intuition. And you instance some of the great texts of 
 the Old Testament as proofs of the reality of this Divine 
 guidance, understood in a general sense. But I must 
 point out that your induction, if closely analysed, really 
 rests at every point upon an intuition at least as unveri- 
 fiable as mine — it is, in fact, a whole series of such in- 
 tuitions rather than an induction properly so called. An 
 example will explain what I mean. You quote the texts 
 ' The Lord is slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. . . .', 
 ' Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth
 
 60 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 them that fear him ' : and you claim them as proofs of 
 ' Divine intervention and assistance in the spiritual 
 education of the human race '. This argument, I imagine, 
 really amounts to the following — ' These great texts, 
 scattered at intervals throughout the pages of the Old 
 Testament, are manifestly Divine : we can, therefore, 
 infer from them that a Divine force must have been at 
 work behind and beneath the course of Israelitish history, 
 bearing it ever upwards until the Old Covenant culminated 
 in the New ; and the same induction can be made with 
 even greater certitude from the facts of the Gospels and 
 the subsequent history of Christendom.' Yes, but on 
 what does your premiss rest, viz. the proposition that 
 ' these great texts are manifestly Divine ' ? Is not this 
 proposition ' assumed without proof ', and does it not 
 frankly ' rest upon an intuition ' ? To put the question 
 in another way, how do you know that God, or the 
 Absolute Reality, or (to use Herbert Spencer's phrase) 
 ' the Infinite and Eternal Energy from which aU things 
 proceed ', is of the same moral nature as that commended 
 in these texts ? From the point of view of pure reason 
 and rigorous proof, the statements that ' The Lord is 
 plenteous in mercy ' and, fatherlike, ' pitieth them that 
 fear him ', are by no means self-evident. On the con- 
 trary, if I did not (through no merits of my own) possess 
 the intuition, or the ' gift of Faith ', I should be strongly 
 inclined — looking at the waste and futility of nature, 
 the ' vanity ' to which creation is manifestly subjected 
 on the one hand, and the tragedies of human history, 
 the immense catalogue of man's crimes, cruelties, and 
 sufferings, and the seas of blood and tears which are 
 drenching Europe at the present moment, on the other 
 — to conceive the ultimate Reality as a non-moral and 
 impersonal Absolute. It is useless to object ' But that 
 would be pure cynicism ' : we are, for the moment, 
 concerned simply with what can be proved : and from 
 the point of view of rigorous proof the cynic can make
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams II 61 
 
 out just as a good a case for an atheistic view of history 
 as you and I can for a theistic view. It is Faith, or 
 spiritual intuition, alone, which assures us that Gk)d is 
 Love : that the prophets of old, who discerned infinite 
 tenderness and fatherly affection and compassion at the 
 heart of the universe, were not deceived ; that the 
 tragedies of nature and of human history (in so far as 
 they are not directly due to the perverted will of man) 
 must be susceptible of some explanation transcending 
 our present faculties, some reconciliation with the infinite 
 power and goodness of the world's Creator. The first 
 stanza of ' In Memoriam ' contains the root of the whole 
 matter — 
 
 Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
 
 Whom we, that have not seen thy face. 
 By Faith, and Faith alone, embrace. 
 
 Believing where we cannot prove?- 
 
 I have said enough, I hope, to show, not merely that 
 you cannot justly make it a matter of reproach to me 
 that my view is frankly based upon an intuition, but 
 that your own, somewhat vaguer, view is equally based 
 upon intuition — and, indeed, upon the same intuition, 
 or an intuition of the same facts — only, as I should hold, 
 of a somewhat imperfect character. But I cannot forbear 
 
 ^ You will have gathered from the foregoing what kind of reply 
 I should give to your observation on p. 52, the rhetorical force of 
 which I fully recognize — ' This idea of an infallible Church with an 
 unalterable body of doctrine : what better foundation has it in the last 
 resort than that you would like to think it true ? ' If you will allow me, 
 for the sake of the argument, momentarily to assume a standpoint 
 which is not in reality mine, I might retort with another question — 
 ' This idea of a " personal God " — of an illimitable supra-mundane 
 Power, self-conscious, righteous, and loving, interfering in the affairs 
 of men, and shaping the course of human history towards some far-off 
 divine goal — what better foxmdation has it in the last resort than that 
 you would like to think it true ? ' I imagine that your reply to the latter 
 question would, mutatis mutandis, serve equally well as my reply to 
 the former.
 
 62 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 from driving this contention home by pointing out that 
 you have expressly admitted it in several places, only 
 using a different word to designate the very same mode 
 of spiritual activity which I have called ' intuition '. 
 That word is ' feeling '. I need only instance such 
 passages as (in your first paper) the quotation from 
 Matthew Arnold about the difference between ' what we 
 say we feel ' and ' what we think we feel ' and ' what 
 we feel indeed ', or the statement on p. 13, 'A great 
 deal [of the living beliefs of the present day] may remain 
 as a matter of feeling rather than of words.' It is surely 
 not unfair to claim that the difference between ' intui- 
 tion ' and ' feeling ' is, again, solely one of terminology. 
 By the word ' intuition ' I do not mean to suggest that 
 the indefinable faculty of spiritual apprehension, whereby 
 the soul is aware of God in Nature and in the Church, 
 is purely intellectual ; nor (I imagine) do you, by the 
 word ' feeling ', mean that this faculty is merely a func- 
 tion of the ' vegetal soul ' or of the nervous system. 
 I doubt whether it is necessary, for our present purposes, 
 or indeed ultimately possible, to define the nature of 
 ' Faith ' in terms of exact psychology ; probably it in- 
 volves the activity of every ' part ' of the soul (if Aristotle's 
 language may be employed for rough-and-ready expres- 
 sion), thought, will, and emotion alike. 
 
 But if this be so — if my ' intuition ' and your ' feeling ' 
 are substantially the same thing — it is possible to expose, 
 with great clearness, the root of the difference between 
 us. I have a peculiarly vital and intense apprehension, 
 or intuition, or sense, or feehng, of the presence of God 
 in Christ and Christ in the Church ; this enables me to 
 lay aside all further anxieties and worries, and to trust 
 absolutely to the formal decisions of the Church as being 
 the voice of God (of course, speaking, as explained in my 
 first letter, through human media and in human modes 
 of expression). You, on the other hand, have the same 
 sense or apprehension of God in the history of the Jewish
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams II 63 
 
 and Christian Churches ; only in a somewhat weakened 
 or attenuated form. Consequently, you are not able to 
 throw yourself, with absolute confidence, back upon the 
 Creeds and Ecumenical Definitions, as the nearest equiva- 
 lent to absolute truth at which the human mind is ever 
 likely to arrive : you cannot simply repose in the deliveries 
 of orthodox Christian tradition without more ado : you 
 require to be reassured at every turn, by a special and 
 separate ' intuition ' or ' feeling ', that each particular 
 article of the Creed really does correspond to absolute 
 reality — and, I gather, in a few cases (notably those of 
 the historical statements in the Creeds, of which more 
 presently) this special reassurance is not forthcoming. 
 A single intuition, which assures me of the truth of 
 Catholic Christianity as a whole, is enough for me ; 
 having once, so to speak, got inside the Catholic system, 
 I have nothing further to do (so far as the essentials of 
 faith are concerned) than to ascertain what, as a matter 
 of fact, are its contents. Having once taken the plunge, 
 I can commit myseK without hesitation to the broad 
 main stream of historic Christianity, and allow it to bear 
 me whithersoever it will. You, on the other hand, are 
 not prepared to take the plunge without reservations ; 
 you seem to desire, as it were, whilst immersing yourself 
 in the stream as much as possible, to keep one foot on 
 the bank. The Modernist may regard this as a safer 
 attitude, but it is certainly not so comfortable as mine ; 
 and, after all, * nothing venture, nothing have '. A Faith 
 which does not involve taking risks is no Faith at all. 
 
 To sum up. My reply to your first criticism may be 
 summarized as follows : 
 
 1. All chains of proof must start somewhere — they pre- 
 
 suppose indemonstrable dpxai which must neces- 
 sarily be given by immediate intuition and not by 
 ratiocination. 
 
 2. The great ideas of refigion — (jrod. Freedom, Immor- 
 
 tality — are conspicuous instances of such inde-
 
 64 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 monstrable dp^aL — ^the so-called ' proofs ' of their 
 reality are now generally regarded as inconclusive, 
 from the point of view of rigorous reasoning. 
 
 3. You yourself really seem to admit the principle of 
 
 ' intuition ' by the use which you make of the 
 term ' feeling '. 
 
 4. In fact, ' intuition ' or ' feeling ' seems to play an 
 
 even greater part in your system than it does in 
 mine : because / merely invoke the idea of ' in- 
 tuition ' at the beginning of things, to give me my 
 first principle — God in Christ and Christ in the 
 Church — the peg from which my chain of proof 
 is to hang : having obtained my dp^rj by means 
 of 'intuition ', I can then proceed by way of pure 
 ratiocination, or rather of mere inspection of the 
 facts ; I have only to inform myself as to what 
 the deliveries of orthodox tradition actually are. 
 Whereas you not merely invoke ' intuition ' or 
 ' feeling ' at the beginning of things, but keep on 
 invoking it all through ; not merely does your chain 
 depend from the peg of ' intuition ', but half of 
 its links appear to be ' intuitions ' as weU. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The second criticism with which I have to deal is 
 contained in the words ' Does not the theory which you 
 advocate presuppose an idealized and even a highly 
 idealized view of history ? ' You will forgive me if 
 I paraphrase this somewhat bluntly, and substitute for 
 ' an idealized view of history ' the words ' a view of 
 history which is, as a matter of fact, not strictly true — 
 which has been, whether consciously or unconsciously, 
 constructed in accordance with preconceived ideas and not 
 with facts ' ; because that, after all (if we are willing to 
 caU a spade a spade) is what the expression ' an idealized 
 view of history ' really means. And the comparison 
 which you institute between the view of early Christian
 
 3Ir. N. P. Williams II 65 
 
 history which you attribute to me and the view of early 
 Hebrew history which underlies the Book of Chronicles 
 bears out this interpretation of your words. But can 
 you substantiate this somewhat general indictment ? 
 To what historical proposition have I committed myself 
 which can be certainly shown to be untrue ? Let me 
 quote the sentence in which I endeavoured to summarize 
 the dpxn dvaTToSecKTos of traditional dogmatic theology : 
 
 ' That great assumption is the belief in the immanent 
 personal presence of God the Holy Ghost in the Catholic 
 Church, working in and through the processes of its life, 
 overruling the turbulence and ambition of its leaders, 
 sifting out the categories which are of permanent 
 value, and belong to the essential structure of human 
 thought, from the detritus of merely temporary and 
 local thought-forms, and inspiring the whole nexus of 
 dogmatic development so intimately and pervasively 
 that each doctrine, as it took shape, assumed precisely 
 that form which the Holy Spirit foresaw would most per- 
 fectly preserve the essential content till the end of time.' 
 
 You will observe that this hypothesis has reference 
 solely to what I may call the reverse, as opposed to the 
 obverse, side of the historical process — to the Divine 
 influences which were at work beneath the surface of the 
 stream of events, rather than to the events themselves 
 — ^to the hidden strings which moved the marionettes, 
 rather than to the marionettes or their movements. In 
 all sympathetic historical study — that is, in all study of 
 the past which professes to be more than a mere catalogu- 
 ing of desiccated names and dates — we can distinguish 
 clearly between (1) the process of ascertaining the facts, 
 and (2) the spiritual and moral evaluation of the facts 
 when ascertained. And my hypothesis belongs avowedly 
 to the latter sphere of thought and not to the former. 
 I desired, and desire, expressly to 'guard myself against 
 any suspicion of ' ideaUzing ' the actual brute facts. 
 I never pretended that Jerome and Cyril were conspicuous 
 for meekness and controversial good manners, that 
 
 F
 
 66 Form and Conteiit in Christian Tradition 
 
 empresses and court favourites had nothing to do (on 
 the earthly plane) with the triumph of those opinions 
 which eventually emerged with the stamp of ' orthodoxy ' 
 upon them, or that Ecumenical Councils were invariably 
 models of staid and decorous deportment. 
 
 All that my fundamental assumption commits me to is 
 the belief that the whole tangle of motives, good and 
 bad, which underlay the struggles between SabelUan and 
 Tritheist, or Alexandrine and Antiochene — the whole 
 complex of ideas and imaginations, true, half -true, or 
 false, mythical or historical, which filled the minds of 
 the ancient thinkers — was, as a matter of fact, so deftly 
 arranged and imperceptibly guided by the Holy Spirit 
 dwelling in the Church, that truth, or the nearest approxi- 
 mation to truth of which the human mind is capable, 
 emerged. I am only concerned to maintain that what 
 did come out of the crucible of doctrinal controversy 
 was what God willed should come out : I am under no 
 obligation, and have no wish, to make out the actual 
 chemists, their materials, or their methods, to have been 
 better than they were. 
 
 IV 
 
 This conception of the Holy Spirit guiding the cor- 
 porate mind of the Christian Ecclesia — in such a way 
 that (through whatever convulsions and struggles) exact 
 truth, or truth as exact as mortals can hope for, was in the 
 long run worked out — naturally leads me to the considera- 
 tion of the criticism which I will take next in order. It 
 is summarized in three sentences on p. 48 : 
 
 ' The genuinely human element ' (in the intercourse 
 of man and God) ' may be increased or diminished, but 
 it is never eliminated. This means that a partial con- 
 trol from above of human thought and action enters 
 into the scheme of things, but a complete control does 
 not enter into it. I think I may say, no control so 
 complete as to satisfy the conditions which your view 
 would require.'
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams 11 67 
 
 I may say at once that I entirely agree with the first 
 two of these sentences. My last section will have shown 
 you that I am very far from claiming that the ' genuinely 
 human element ' was ' eliminated ' from the history of the 
 evolution of dogma : very much the contrary : as I have 
 said, I fully admit its presence. I do not assert that the 
 ' control ' exerted by the Holy Spirit was ' complete ' in 
 the sense that the consciousnesses, or the personalities, 
 of the human agents concerned were temporarily sus- 
 pended. But the real point at issue comes in the third 
 sentence. I believe that, though the Divine control was 
 very far from being ' complete ' (in the sense of amounting 
 to Pythonic possession or obsession) and though it may 
 have been exerted through the most secret avenues and in 
 the most subtle and impalpable manner possible, there 
 was, nevertheless, just enough of it to preserve the Chris- 
 tian Church from laying down as of faith propositions 
 which were definitely false or misleading (and this is all 
 that ' infallibility ' — incapacity for deceiving or being 
 deceived — really means) : you, I gather, do not feel able 
 to postulate even so much ' control ' as would have this 
 effect. But why not ? 
 
 Apparently, because there are no other instances of such 
 Divine control exerted upon the minds of human beings 
 in order to the formulation of the contents of a Divine 
 revelation in the most perfect manner possible. But why 
 should we expect to find any other instances ? If Chris- 
 tianity really is God's final revelation of Himself to man- 
 kind — if it is never destined to be antiquated or superseded 
 — it must be regarded as a phenomenon unique in the 
 history of the human race, and it is, therefore, not to be 
 wondered at that it should present features which cannot 
 be paralleled in other religions. God spake noXv/xepm kol 
 TToXvTpoTTco? to thc Hebrcw fathers through the prophets — 
 imperfectly and fragmentarily, through human faculties, 
 with, as you justly observe, all their weaknesses and 
 
 F 2
 
 68 F(yrm and Content in Christian Ti'adition 
 
 limitations adhering to them ; but in these last days He 
 has spoken unto us by a Son ; and if we believe that Jesus 
 was, not merely ' the last and greatest of the Hebrew 
 prophets ', but the omnipotent Son of God Himself, it is, 
 surely, to be expected that the religion which He founded 
 should reflect on all its sides the uniqueness of His Person, 
 At any rate, it is not a priori incredible that the Incar- 
 nation should have made a difference, not merely to man's 
 moral, but to his mental possibilities : that the gift of 
 sanctifying grace to heal the disorders of the will should 
 have been accompanied by the gift of a clear and unwaver- 
 ing light to dispel the darkness of the intellect. It is, 
 therefore, no argument against the reality of a quality 
 alleged to belong to the Christian Church (in this instance, 
 that of ' infallibility ' in the formulation of revealed truth) 
 to urge that this quality did not belong to the Jewish 
 Church, or to any less perfect religious system. 
 
 Formally, these considerations seem to me to be a suffi- 
 cient answer to your criticism. I do not, of course, mean 
 that they prove, taken by themselves, that the Church 
 really is ' infalHble ', but merely that they cancel this 
 particular a priori objection to the hypothesis of its 
 ' infallibility '. But I am unwilling to leave the matter on 
 a merely ' formal ' basis, as I seem to see the possibility 
 of clearing away one or two misunderstandings which may 
 arise, or have arisen. 
 
 It may be objected that the degree of ' uniqueness ' 
 which I have above attributed to Christianity, drives 
 a wedge between the Old Covenant and the New, assumes 
 a gulf or discontinuity between them which is inherently 
 improbable. To this I would reply that I postulate, not 
 discontinuity, but only such a difference between the two 
 stages of God's revelation as is involved in the conception 
 of a real Incarnation of God intervening between them. 
 All else that was permanently true or valuable in Judaism 
 ran continuously on into Christianity, only transfigured 
 and raised to its highest possible power by its assumption
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams II 69 
 
 into the mystical life which the Redeemer lives in His 
 Church, the ' extension ' of His Incarnation. There 
 seems no reason, therefore, in the nature of things, why 
 the guidance of the Spirit, which had bestowed upon the 
 Jewish Church a vague and (so to speak) formless appre- 
 hension of some of the mysteries of the Divine Essence, 
 should not have been, at Pentecost, enormously increased 
 and intensified, in such a way as to guide the Christian 
 Church into ' all truth ' — all truth, that is, which the 
 human mind is capable of receiving and assimilating : nor 
 do I see any reason why God should not have made pro- 
 vision that the increased range of man's knowledge about 
 Himself should be accompanied by an increase of certainty 
 and precision in the intellectual apprehension and formu- 
 lation of that knowledge. Nor, to my mind, would this 
 involve any unnatural dislocation or inconcinnity in the 
 smooth and continuous working of the Divine oiKoyofxia. 
 Perhaps you will permit me a somewhat commonplace 
 illustration. There is no substantial discontinuity between 
 the flame of a gas-jet turned low, so that only a blue spark 
 hovers above the burner, and the contents of the room 
 are only dimly and in general outline discernible, and the 
 same flame turned high, so that the room is flooded with 
 light, and its contents are clearly seen. 
 
 It is possible, further, that I may still be supposed to 
 conceive the guidance exercised by the Holy Spirit over 
 the Church in a coarsely mechanistic manner : that my 
 references to the authority of Ecumenical Councils may 
 expose me to the suspicion of believing in that conception 
 of the inspiration of ecclesiastical authority which is 
 satirized in the somewhat blasphemous mot quoted by 
 Sarpi with reference to the Council of Trent (a mot which 
 reverence forbids me to repeat). It is therefore worth 
 while observing that, on the view that I am advocating, 
 it is the Church as a whole, the ' Spirit-bearing body ' as 
 a whole, which is the ultimate authority. The ecumeni- 
 city of Ecumenical Councils resides precisely in this, that
 
 70 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 theic formulations were subsequently accepted by the 
 whole Church. For instance, the first Council of Con- 
 stantinople, which taught that the Holy Spirit was a 
 distinct Hypostasis within the Godhead, and not a mere 
 impersonal effluence from it, could not and did not, 
 whilst it was sitting, claim to be Ecumenical in the sense 
 of being genuinely representative, in regard to its mem- 
 bership, of the whole Church : inasmuch as none but 
 Eastern bishops attended it. It became Ecumenical 
 through the universal acceptance of its decrees by the 
 Christian society in all its parts. There is, therefore, no 
 idea of a supernaturally-possessed body of men, or a 
 majority of them, miraculously hitting off the ideal 
 expression of the truth as it were in a moment ; there is 
 no Christian analogue to the Rabbinical figment of the 
 Bath Qol. The Catholic hypothesis merely asserts that 
 when rival thinkers or schools of thinkers (or, in some 
 cases, rival Councils) had, after years of debate, worked 
 out different forms for the embodiment of the same 
 content, the vast inarticulate consciousness of the Uni- 
 versal Church was slowly and gradually led, by the view- 
 less influence of the Holy Spirit dwelling within it, to 
 adopt that particular form which God knew to be, for 
 finite intellects, the best preservative of the content in 
 question.^ There is a sentence on p. 49 of your letter, 
 which , if I were allowed to apply it to all the clauses of the 
 Creeds, ' historical ' as well as ' ontological ', and to read 
 it with my own emphasis attached to particular words, 
 would represent very fairly what I mean. ' I fully be- 
 lieve ', you say, ' that, so far as I can judge, the ultimate 
 
 1 I may say at this point that I quite agree with your view, expressed 
 on p. 47, that since the Reformation (and indeed since the Great 
 Schism of 1054), owing to the loss of external unity, the normal action 
 of the Church must be regarded as ' suspended, untU the conditions 
 are once more favourable '. But this fact does not seem to me, in itself, 
 to cast any doubt upon the conclusions at which the Church arrived 
 before 1054, when it was able to act normally.
 
 Mr. N. P, Williams II 71 
 
 formulations accepted by the Church were always in the 
 right direction. It is just in this that I am prepared to 
 see Divine guidance and overruling. There was, if we 
 may say so, an instinct at work in the Church which out of 
 seemingly unpromising conditions and by seemingly un- 
 promising methods was found to lead in the end to what 
 we can recognize as right decisions.' Compare this with 
 the sentence which I have written above — ' I believe that 
 though the Divine control was far from being " complete " 
 . . . there was, nevertheless, just enough of it to preserve 
 the Christian Church from laying down as of faith pro- 
 positions which were definitely false or misleading.' I do 
 not think it is too much to claim that the difference 
 between the conceptions of ' Divine guidance ' expressed 
 in these two sentences is infinitesimal. The real question 
 at issue is whether this ' Divine guidance ' covers both the 
 ' historical ' and the ' ontological ' elements in traditional 
 orthodoxy : and of this, more presently. 
 
 V 
 
 Your fourth criticism is expressed in the following 
 words — ' (The picture that you draw of the present 
 position of Christian doctrine) as a picture, is beautiful and 
 attractive. But my feeUng about it is that it is all in the 
 air ; it is out of touch with the work-a-day world ; it is 
 a work of the imagination, an " unsubstantial pageant ", 
 neither verified nor capable of verification.' I will reply 
 as briefly as possible. 
 
 To the objection that my view is out of touch with the 
 work-a-day world it should be sufficient to reply that it 
 is, as a matter of fact, held by two -thirds of Christendom 
 at the present day. You have accused me above of main- 
 taining a ' highly paradoxical and precarious position ' in 
 pointing out, what is a commonplace of formal logic, that 
 it is possible to educe true conclusions from false premisses } 
 
 ^ I had not the smallest idea of ' erecting these exceptional cases into 
 a law ' (p. 44). It would indeed be sheer unreason to contend that
 
 72 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 I can only say that in my opinion it is a far more startling 
 paradox to contend that the Catholic view, which for 
 centuries has been, and still is, the stay and consolation 
 of countless millions of every age, social class, colour, race, 
 and language, is ' out of touch ' — and that a view which 
 is comparatively modern, and only held by scholars and 
 persons of trained intellect, is ' in touch ' — with ' the 
 work-a-day world '. On this point I am content to let the 
 facts speak for themselves. 
 
 As for the allegation that the Catholic hypothesis is 
 * neither verified nor capable of verification ', I am quite 
 willing to admit that complete intellectual verification is as 
 little to be looked for in the case of CathoKcism in par- 
 ticular, as it is in the case of Christianity or of Theism 
 in general. I think, indeed, that this hypothesis can 
 be very largely verified, even intellectually ; I should 
 certainly claim that it fits the facts of history at least as 
 closely and satisfactorily as, let us say, Harnack's ' secu- 
 larization-hjrpothesis '. But, in the case of reUgious 
 doctrines, the only kind of ' verification ' which can a£Eord 
 convincing proof, or proof which will be convincing to the 
 individual, is practical verification within the sphere of 
 the moral and religious fife. I will not pursue this subject 
 at length, because it is of such a profound and intimate 
 nature : but those who have striven to five the Christian 
 life on the lines which are common to the historic Churches 
 of East and West, persevering in the use of penance and 
 
 ' all faulty processes of reasoning result in true conclusions ', and 
 any one who acted on this principle would, no doubt, soon find himself 
 placed under restraint. I merely wished to point out the obvious fact 
 that ' some faulty processes have resulted in true conclusions ', and to 
 suggest that, in consequence, the conclusions reached by the primitive 
 Fathers cannot be condemned off-hand merely because some of their 
 premisses were erroneous. Of course, I did not suppose that this con- 
 tention established the truth of their conclusions : I relied for that upon 
 the assumption, which you afterw^ards proceed to discuss, of the ' im- 
 manent personal presence of God the Holy Ghost in the Catholic 
 Church'.
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams II 78 
 
 communion, and endeavouring to make the ' Communion 
 of Saints ' a living reality to themselves, will know what 
 I mean. 
 
 I do not think that the cogency of this interior verifica- 
 tion, for those who have experienced it, is disturbed by 
 the fact that grace can be and is given apart from the 
 historic Church and Sacraments : there is the principle 
 Deus non alUgatur mediis, sed homo, to cover this fact. 
 It may be objected ^ that such an experiential verification 
 can be claimed with as much justice by those who stand 
 apart, at varying degrees of distance, from the great 
 central structure of historic and sacramental Christianity : 
 that the Quaker and the Salvationist can claim that their 
 respective theological positions are guaranteed by their 
 extra- or non-sacramental experience. In a sense, I 
 should agree with this contention : that is, I should quite 
 admit that the Salvationist can legitimately point to his 
 spiritual experience as a solid justification of his positive 
 behefs, in the existence of God, the atoning efficacy of the 
 Precious Blood, and so on : but I should dispute his right 
 to use it as evidence for purely negative beliefs, as that 
 there is no visible Church, or that the sacraments are not 
 the normally necessary means of grace. The fact of his 
 receiving grace is indisputable : but he cannot prove that 
 this fact is not just as explicable on the basis of Deus non 
 alUgatur mediis as on the basis of nulla sunt media ordi- 
 Tuiria.^ The Salvationist's experience is good evidence, 
 so far as it goes (and so, for that matter, is the experience 
 of the non-Christian Theist, so far as it goes) : but I 
 venture to submit that the Catholic's experience, which 
 goes a long step further, is equally good evidence all 
 the way. 
 
 I am thus prepared to admit that the CathoUc system 
 begins with experience and ends with experience : it 
 
 1 As, for instance, by Prof. Kirsopp Lake in The Earlier Epistles 
 of St. Paul. 
 
 ' This phrase is a pseudo-scholastic coinage of my own.
 
 74 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 rests, in the first instance, upon ' intuition ', or the ' gift 
 of Faith ', and is verified by the consciousness of the 
 reception of grace. But, again, it seems to me that this 
 must necessarily be true of all Christianity, in whatever 
 form it be held, and indeed of all Rehgion as such. If 
 a religion could be discovered which could be fortified, 
 so to speak, round the whole of its periphery with an 
 absolutely complete system of objective and external 
 guarantees, it would not be a religion, but a science. 
 
 VI 
 
 It is not unfair, I think, to claim that the form which 
 these criticisms of yours have taken, together with the 
 replies which I have made to them, illustrates in various 
 ways and from various points of view the truth of what 
 I said in my first letter, and repeated at the beginning 
 of this, namely, that the difference between us is one of 
 degree, and not of kind. It aU turns upon the degree of 
 closeness and exactness with which we conceive the Holy 
 Spirit to have superintended the development of doctrine 
 during the second stage of Revelation, that which (roughly 
 speaking) began with Pentecost. And that again (I sug- 
 gested) is determined by the degree of intensity in which 
 we possess a certain fundamental intuition — the sense of 
 the Spirit in the Church. I suppose that the conservative 
 Modernist would say, from his point of view, that I had 
 this sense in a somewhat exaggerated form — that I 
 suffered, so to speak, from hyperaesthesia ; and I suppose 
 I should have to say, from my point of view, that he 
 possessed it in a sHghtly atrophied form — ^though I should 
 desire to guard myself, in the most expHcit and emphatic 
 manner possible, against the suspicion of even appearing 
 to claim any spiritual or moral superiority on this ground. 
 If the Traditionahst believes himseK to have a somewhat 
 clearer view of Divine truth than his Modernist brother, 
 he would attribute his possession of this privilege solely
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams II 75 
 
 to the mysterious predestination of God — ov tov OiXopro^, 
 ovSe TOV Tpeyovro^, dWa rod kXeovvros deov — and would 
 never dream of claiming credit for himself or assuming 
 an attitude of Pharisaical self-satisfaction. 
 
 However, this slight difference of intuition or assump- 
 tion would not matter, if the Creeds and other utterances 
 of Ecumenical authority contained none but propositions 
 of the kind which you have designated metaphysical — ■ 
 that is, dealing with the being and attributes of God as 
 He is in Himself. You say (p. 42) ' Where we propound 
 to ourselves the same questions that are raised by the 
 Creeds, especially so far as these questions relate to the 
 metaphysical nature of the Godhead, my own belief is that 
 they are rightly answered in the words of the Creeds ' ; 
 and, if this language had been meant to apply to all the 
 propositions in the Creeds, I should ask no more. If 
 a man agrees with me in accepting all the deliveries of 
 Ecumenical authority, I at least am not disposed (for 
 practical purposes) to catechize him too closely as to his 
 views about the inmost nature of that authority. If he 
 believes that the Church has not actually erred, I should 
 naturally refrain from raising the abstract question 
 whether it might conceivably have erred. But I am 
 afraid that this is not quite the case in the present instance. 
 You draw a distinction between the metaphysical and the 
 historical clauses of the Creeds — between those statements 
 which relate to the interior hfe of the Godhead as it is in 
 itself, and those which are concerned with the historical 
 incarnate life of the Son of God upon earth. (I quite 
 accept this distinction, which I had already drawn myself 
 in thought. I refrained, indeed, from raising it in my 
 first letter, in order to avoid what then seemed an unneces- 
 sary complication of the issue : but it is no longer possible 
 to avoid its consideration, as our remaining differences 
 hinge largely upon it.) And I understand you to contend 
 that, whilst the degree of Divine guidance which you are 
 willing to assume is sufficient to guarantee the (relative)
 
 ! 
 
 76 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 truth of, or at any rate to lend a high degree of probability 
 to, the ' metaphysical ' propositions of the Creeds, it is 
 not sufficient to afford a similar assurance in the case of 
 some of the ' historical ' propositions, if these are taken in 
 their traditional sense, i.e. in that sense which has been 
 attributed to them by the ' Church of the past '. These 
 propositions are, I suppose, those which affirm the Virginal 
 Conception and Birth of Christ, the Descensus ad inferos^ 
 the Resurrection, and the Ascension. You say that ' it is 
 impossible that the dead hand of bygone generations 
 should foreclose historical discussion at the present day'. 
 Now, before going any further, I feel compelled to 
 dispute the cogency of the argument which you found 
 upon the distinction between ' metaphysical ' and ' his- 
 torical ' propositions. I see no reason in the nature of 
 things why the Church should not have been Divinely 
 guided as well in the selection of ' historical ' as in that 
 of ' metaphysical ' propositions for embodiment in the 
 Creeds. The old Greek philosopher says jestingly ' if you 
 beheve the poets when they tell you of the existence of the 
 Gods, you must believe the poets when they tell you what 
 the Gods are Kke '. In other words, it would seem prima 
 facie that if you are going to trust rehgious authority 
 at all, you must trust it all in all, as well in the sphere 
 of history as in that of metaphysics — unless and until it 
 makes some pronouncement which can be certainly 
 shown to be untrue : in which case its supernatural claims 
 are at once stripped from it, and it stands revealed as 
 a pretence and a fraud. I know that you do not like the 
 principle of ' all or nothing ' as applied to matters of 
 religious behef, and I am quite willing to confess that it 
 has in the past been apphed in a highly unwise and regret- 
 table manner to matters which fall far short of funda- 
 mental importance — as, for instance, to the question of 
 the truth of certain historical statements in the Old 
 Testament : but when we come down to what is funda- 
 mental in the Christian Revelation (if we can ascertain
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams II 77 
 
 it), we cannot assert the right to pick and choose without 
 implicitly denying the idea of ' Revelation ' altogether. 
 At any rate, my view of the authority of the Church 
 (which, as I ventured to suggest just now, the criticisms 
 contained in your last letter do not seem to me to have 
 upset) forbids me to label some elements in the orthodox 
 tradition ' certainly true ' and others ' doubtful ', or ' less 
 \ certainly true ' ; and I should have thought that your 
 vaguer, or less rigid, view would have appKed equally to 
 both categories of propositions. Even assuming your 
 general position, I do not see what a priori ground there 
 is for asserting that the distinction in respect to subject- 
 matter (between ' metaphysical ' and ' historical ' pro- 
 positions) necessarily involves a distinction in respect to 
 certainty or vaHdity. Why should we suppose that an 
 ' historical ' proposition is more Kkely in the nature of 
 things to be untrue than a ' metaphysical ' proposition ? 
 Speaking of the ' metaphysical ' clauses, you say ' I fully 
 beheve that the ultimate formulations accepted by the 
 Church were always in the right direction ' — ' I do not 
 think there is one to which I should wish to offer anything 
 that is of the nature of contradiction ' — and so on ; and, 
 so far as a priori considerations are concerned, I do not 
 at present see why you should not (quite consistently with 
 your own assumptions) repose in this position with regard 
 to the ' historical ' clauses of the Creeds. 
 
 I do not, of course, forget that (whatever liberty the 
 Continental Modernist may claim for himself in this 
 matter) you at least only desire freedom ' to abstain from 
 full affirmation of ' the clauses in question, not freedom to 
 deny them, nor yet freedom to abstain altogether from 
 any degree of affirmation of them. I should like to say 
 that this position (although I do not share it) seems to me 
 a perfectly clear and inteUigible one, and I should not at 
 all agree with those who find it over-subtle or hairsplitting. 
 It seems, so far as I can gather, that it depends upon the 
 apphcation of the distinction between form and content
 
 78 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 which we have agreed to draw in respect of the ' meta- 
 physical ' clauses, to the historical clauses of the Creeds. 
 For instance, in the case of the clauses ' Conceived of the 
 Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary ' I understand you 
 to maintain that the content consists in the general idea 
 of a Supernatural Birth, a Birth which was more com- 
 pletely operated, permeated, and sanctified by the 
 heavenly influences of the Holy Spirit than any other 
 birth before or since : and that the /orm which has hitherto 
 been worn by this idea is that of a Birth in which a human 
 father had no share whatever. I suppose that you would 
 draw a similar distinction in the case of the other three 
 propositions enumerated above, viz. the Descensus ad 
 inferos, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. And in all 
 four cases, I gather, you would claim, whilst holding fast 
 to what you have defined as the content, liberty to relax 
 your grip upon the form, to the extent, at any rate, of 
 * abstaining from full affirmation '. 
 
 Perhaps I had better say at this point that in what 
 follows I shall be no longer engaged in defending my own 
 position — (that was stated in my first letter, and based 
 upon ' intuition ' : and, as I have said, it seems to me, on 
 the whole not to have been affected by the fire of criticism 
 which you have directed upon it) — I propose in the rest 
 of this paper to devote myself to attacking (of course in 
 a genial spirit) your position. 
 
 I should in the first place challenge the legitimacy of 
 the use which you make of the distinction between form 
 and content in regard to the ' historical ' clauses. In the 
 case of the ' metaphysical ' clauses, form and content 
 are not merely distinguishable, but, so to speak, detach- 
 able. For instance, the content of the Homoousion 
 clause — the general idea of Christ's Deity and Divine 
 Sonship — was for a long time held in and by the Church 
 apart from the actual thought-form of ' Identity of 
 Substance ' or ' Consubstantiality '. The content and 
 the form were not, in the beginning, indissolubly soldered
 
 Mr. N. P, Williams II 79 
 
 together : and I can quite well imagine a modern theo- 
 logian claiming to detach the content from the form in 
 which it has come down to us, and to hold the former 
 whilst dropping, or relaxing his grip upon, the latter : 
 and I should regard such a position as quite intelligible 
 (though not, of course, consistent with perfect loyalty 
 to Catholic teaching). But in the case of historical 
 propositions in general — and, therefore, of the historical 
 clauses of the Creeds in particular — I should contend 
 that form and content are distinguishable only, and not 
 detachable — like the concave and convex aspects of 
 a mathematical curve. Take such an historical pro- 
 position as the following — ' Charlotte Corday killed 
 Marat.' Obviously here form and content exactly 
 coincide, as in the case of a musical melody. They are 
 certainly not detachable, and I am inclined to doubt 
 whether they are really distinguishable. It follows, then, 
 that an historical proposition must be either taken or left 
 — and by ' taken ' I mean accepted, or assented to ; if 
 it is only partially affirmed, it is really ' left '. Or, again, 
 if only a modified form of it is accepted, it is really ' left ' ; 
 e. g, if an historian were to tell me that he accepted the 
 proposition instanced above in the sense that ' Charlotte 
 Corday was indirectly instrumental in procuring Marat's 
 death ', and still more if he were to interpret it as merely 
 meaning that in the long run the spirit of freedom triumphs 
 over tyranny, I should have to reply that he was not 
 really accepting, but merely substituting another state- 
 ment for, the statement proposed for his acceptance. 
 I am therefore constrained to contend that the historical 
 clauses of the Creeds cannot be placed in the same cate- 
 gory as the metaphysical clauses : the distinction between 
 form and content cannot usefully be applied to them : 
 they are either eternally true, and to be taken, or eternally 
 false, and to be left. There is no question of relative 
 truth, of the Holy Spirit gently steering the tumultuous 
 debates of contending theologians so as at last to educe
 
 I 
 
 80 Form and Cofitent in Christian Tradition 
 
 the perfect form for the embodiment of a hitherto un- 
 dejfined content : the conception of a gradual fixation 
 of what was Once fluid, a progressive definition of what 
 was once vague, cannot be applied to statements of 
 plain historical fact, or what is alleged to be historical 
 fact. The ' historical ' clauses of the Creeds — if they 
 are true — must thus represent an element of permanence, 
 of immobility, of absence of development, existing side 
 by side with the element of growth and efflorescence 
 which manifests itself in the ' metaphysical ' clauses. 
 They are the solid, unchanging rock, above which the 
 grove of ' metaphysical ' dogmas grows and flourishes. 
 
 I do not, therefore, object to your describing the kind 
 of continuity and identity, which I ascribe to the content 
 of the ' historical ' clauses, as a ' mechanical ' identity, 
 provided that the word ' mechanical ' is not used as 
 a question-begging epithet — i.e. provided that it is not 
 assumed that what is ' mechanical ' is somehow neces- 
 sarily wrong or untrue. Nor have I any wish to quarrel 
 with your simile of coins put into a box and taken out, 
 absolutely unchanged, after the lapse of many years : 
 I think it expresses quite admirably the kind of immobile 
 sameness, of unchanging identity, which must necessarily 
 be attributed to all true statements of historical fact, 
 whether such statements occur in the Creeds or not. 
 
 All this may appear, at first sight, lamentably hard, 
 and narrow, and rigid. But I would plead that after 
 all it is simply common sense. An event happens : it 
 happens in one way, and one only : having happened, 
 it becomes part of the irrevocable past, and cannot be 
 undone or altered or modified, even though some or 
 many of its more direct consequences may be counter- 
 acted by human agency. A past event cannot grow, or 
 develop, or evolve. 
 
 fiovov yap avrov koI Oebs (rT€picrK€TaL, 
 dyej/ijTa ttoi^Iv acrcr' &v fj TreTrpay/xeua. 
 
 (Agathon, ap. Arist. Eth. Nic. vi. 2. 6.) 
 
 I
 
 3Ir. N. P. Williams II 81 
 
 I am not sure that I should agree with the poet's limita- 
 tions of the power of God in this regard ; but certainly 
 man cannot make that not to have happened which 
 once has happened. No amount of research, of improve- 
 ment of historical methods, of sharpening of analytic 
 acumen, can change the past ; we may discover that 
 a historical proposition which we thought to be true was 
 in reality false, but we cannot tnake a proposition which 
 is objectively true to be false, or vice versa. Consequently, 
 true propositions about the past must necessarily be 
 immobile and unchanging : the proposition, ' Julius 
 Caesar was murdered by Brutus, Cassius, and their 
 friends,' was as true on March 16, 44 b. c. as it is to-day, 
 November 20, A. d. 1915; nor has there been a single 
 moment of time between these two points when it has 
 not been true. The lapse of time has neither added to, 
 nor taken away from, its unchanging truth : nor will it 
 be any less, or any more, true than it is to-day on 
 November 20, a. d. 3015 or 5015. Similarly the pro- 
 position, 'Alexander the Great was the son of Zeus and 
 Olympias,' is, and always has been from the first 
 moment of its formulation, and to the end of time always 
 will be, completely false. 
 
 Of course, a great many philosophical subtleties have 
 been raised, especially in recent thought, with regard 
 to the conception of ' fact ' in history : and if we were 
 engaged in a merely eristic controversy, you could doubt- 
 less make great play with them. But, as we are trjdng 
 in a friendly spirit to hammer out the truth, I imagine 
 that you will raise no objection to my use of the words 
 ' fact ', ' true ', and ' false ' in the plain man's sense, 
 without further refinements or definitions. 
 
 The general conclusion which seems to result from 
 the foregoing remarks may be expressed as follows : the 
 distinction between form and content in respect of the 
 historical clauses is a distinction in thought only : in 
 reality, the form and the content of these clauses are 
 
 6
 
 82 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 inseparable and indeed coincident. They are therefore 
 either true as they stand or false as they stand : and 
 the possibility of ' partial affirmation ' seems to be 
 excluded. I imagine that you would admit this in the 
 case of some at least of the historical clauses, viz. those 
 which affirm that our Lord died by crucifixion. The 
 clause, ' Crucifixus etiam pro nobis : sub Pontio Pilato 
 passus et sepultus est,' contains (should we not both 
 agree ?) a plain statement of (alleged) historical fact, 
 which must either be taken or left. There is no possibility 
 of detaching ' content ' from ' form ', and holding the 
 one whilst dropping the other. If a modern theologian, 
 as the result of his anthropological studies, were to 
 conclude that the whole account of the Crucifixion 
 is a form of the ' Rex Nemorensis ' story and that the 
 historical Jesus really lived to a ripe old age and died 
 a natural death, we should both surely say, ' Well, 
 that is your opinion, and (as this is a free country) 
 you have a perfect right to hold it : but I am afraid 
 that I cannot admit that you are a Christian, or that 
 you can honestly repeat those clauses of the Creeds, 
 which affirm the Crucifixion, in any sense whatever.' 
 To adopt any other attitude would be to dissolve his- 
 torical Christianity into a pleasing mirage, a picturesque 
 illusion, which might be useful as a poUtical instrument 
 for keeping the masses in order, but could never command 
 the allegiance of educated men. 
 
 VII 
 
 At this point I can imagine the ' conservative Moder- 
 nist ' interjecting, ' This is all very well : but it is aU 
 written from an a priori point of view, which may well 
 be as deceptive as many a priori arguments have proved 
 to be in the past. Look at the question for a moment 
 simply in the light of the present religious and scientific
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams II 83 
 
 situation. On the one hand, we can't simply affirm the 
 " historical ", or rather the " historical and miraculous " 
 clauses, simply as they stand : " imperious necessity ", 
 or " what some of us think imperious necessity " (p. 8) 
 compels us to " loosen our hold upon " the belief in the 
 Virgin Birth : "we are convinced that bodies " in New 
 Testament times " did not float in the air or materialize 
 and dematerialize at will " (p. 16), and therefore we 
 cannot accept the ideas of the Resurrection and the 
 Ascension in exactly that form in which the early Church 
 held them : we do not imagine that the spirits of the 
 departed are confined in a hollow cavern under the 
 ground, and we cannot therefore take the Descensus ad 
 inferos in its literal sense. On the one hand, we neither 
 can nor will give up the Christian Faith in toto, as you 
 would apparently have us do. We cannot repudiate our 
 deepest spiritual experience at the dictates of a cold 
 and relentless logic. There is therefore nothing else for 
 it. We cannot accept these things in their literal sense, 
 but we must accept them in some sense, so as not to 
 forfeit continuity with the past. We are compelled by 
 facts to find some way of holding the general ideas 
 which lie behind these clauses, whilst dropping the 
 literal sense : whether the distinction of " form " and 
 " content " be applicable or not, some such distinction — 
 the exact verbal phrase matters comparatively little — is 
 a practical necessity.' 
 
 VIII 
 
 My comments upon this series of contentions can, 
 I think, be compressed within a brief compass. 
 
 (1) You wiU notice that this argument, as I have 
 ventured to formulate it, speaks of ' the " historical ", 
 or rather the " historical and miraculous ", clauses '.^ I am 
 
 ^ Of course, ' miraculous clauses ' is a compendious expression for 
 ' clauses which affirm miracles '. 
 
 02
 
 84 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 emboldened to express the contention in this way by the 
 fact that (as I have assumed) you have no objection to 
 the acceptance of the Crucifixion-clause (which is certainly 
 ' historical ' and not ' metaphysical '), in its plain and 
 literal sense — in the same sense in which it was accepted 
 four hundred, eight hundred, sixteen hundred years ago. 
 But if I am right in this, a consequence of the utmost 
 importance results. It would seem that you object to 
 these four clauses precisely because they affirm miracles 
 — ^not because they are affirmations about events in past 
 time. In other words, your attitude on this subject is 
 determined by what I must be pardoned for calling anti- 
 miraculous presuppositions. And at this point I fear we 
 decisively part company. Take such a sentence as this : 
 ' We ' (that is, presumably, ' conservative Modernists ') 
 ' are convinced that bodies in [New Testament] days did 
 not float in the air or materialize and dematerialize at 
 will.' By this I imagine you mean that you are con- 
 vinced that bodies could not have floated — ^that it was 
 a priori and inherently impossible for them to float in 
 the air ; for it would be obviously impossible to demon- 
 strate a posteriori, by an exhaustive record of the move- 
 ments of all bodies during ' New Testament times ', that 
 none of them actually did perform this feat. We have 
 therefore to do with an a priori assumption, of the 
 impossibility of bodies floating in the air. Now I am 
 afraid I must say (a) that I am equally firmly convinced 
 that God has the power, and might well have the will, to 
 levitate bodies, whether in ' New Testament ' or in more 
 recent times : in other words, that I do believe in the 
 abstract possibility of such levitations : and (b) that 
 I think there is good a posteriori evidence for the occur- 
 rence of such events, not only in the first century, but 
 in every succeeding century down to the present day. 
 From the standpoint of my assumptions, I see no reason 
 to doubt the reality of these phenomena, not only in 
 the case of New Testament personages, but also in those
 
 Mr. N. F. Williams II 85 
 
 of (e. g.) St. Francis of Assisi and St. Gerard Majella. 
 So on this point I fear that we are hopelessly divided. 
 I suppose the same thing applies to the clauses affirming 
 the Miraculous Conception and Birth. You think that 
 ' imperious necessity ' forbids you to accept these clauses 
 in their plain and ordinary sense — in other words, you 
 feel it to be a priori impossible, or at any rate highly 
 improbable, that Jesus Christ was really born of the 
 body of a maiden, without the agency of a human father : 
 I have no such feeling, and am absolutely unconscious 
 of the existence of any such ' imperious necessity '. 
 For me, the supposition that Joseph was somehow 
 enabled to beget a child who was the Almighty Word 
 of God is a priori just as improbable as — I am inclined 
 to think, rather more improbable than — the supposition 
 that the Word of God was born as the child of a Virgin 
 Mother. And here, it seems to me, we have laid bare 
 another difference of fundamental assumption, of equal 
 importance with that which I have already discussed 
 in the first part of this paper. The question of exact 
 extent to which the Holy Spirit controlled the develop- 
 ment of (' metaphysical ') doctrine — and the question 
 of the abstract or a priori possibility of certain miracles 
 — those are the real points at issue. I have tried to set 
 down what I think on the first of these questions, and 
 I will not go over that ground again. As for the second, 
 I do not wish to trench upon the ground of your dis- 
 cussion with the Dean, and I will therefore content 
 myself with noting its existence : though I cannot 
 forbear from observing that I have yet to learn what 
 logical criterion you employ for discerning miracles 
 which you are willing to accept (miracles which you call 
 supra naturam) from those which ' imperious necessity ' 
 forbids you to accept (the class described as contra 
 naturam). Until some definition of the terms ' supra \ 
 ' contra ', and ' natura ' is produced, this distinction must 
 inevitably wear some appearance of arbitrariness. But
 
 86 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 these questions belong to your other symposium, and 
 I must resist the temptation to pursue them further. 
 
 (2) ' But ', you may say, ' what about the other argu- 
 ment against the literal acceptation of the " historical 
 and miraculous clauses " — the contention that two of 
 them, at least, presuppose a conception of the physical 
 universe which no sane man of modern times can possibly 
 hold ? Even supposing that we agree to differ about 
 the abstract possibility of such events as the Virginal 
 Birth and the Resurrection, is it not clear that the 
 clause affirming the Descensus ad inferos, taken in the 
 sense in which it was understood by its first formulators, 
 presupposes the idea of a Sheol or Hades locaUy situated 
 beneath the earth — and that the clause affirming the 
 Ascension, in the mind of the primitive Church, assumed 
 the idea of a geographical Heaven locally situated above 
 the vault of the sky ? If this is so, it follows that even 
 the most rigidly orthodox of modern theologians does 
 not, and cannot (without raising doubts as to his sanity), 
 accept the ideas of the Descensus and the Ascension in 
 the same sense as that in which they were accepted by 
 the primitive Church : and that at once disposes of the 
 " unalterability " which you attribute to the " historical " 
 clauses of the Creeds. If these two clauses cannot be 
 accepted in the same sense in which they were accepted 
 fourteen hundred years ago, it is obvious that the other 
 two need not. In the case of the Descensus and the 
 Ascension, the distinction between the permanent ideaf 
 content and the temporary and transitory form or husk 
 is forced upon us by the facts ; and if this method of 
 interpretation is necessary in the case of the Descensus 
 and the Ascension, it must be at least permissible in the 
 case of the Virginal birth and of the Resurrection.' 
 
 I should reply to this contention by disputing the 
 truth of what is apparently its major premiss — viz. the 
 assertion that the primitive Catholic Church, in defining 
 the Descensus and Ascension as parts of the essential
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams II 87 
 
 Deposit of Faith, meant to commit itself, and did commit 
 itself, to the hypotheses of a local and geographical 
 Heaven and Hades. As I have formulated it, this asser- 
 tion seems to me both unproved and unprovable. It is 
 doubtless quite possible — it may be probable — that many, 
 or most, primitive Christians did as a matter of fact 
 believe in the geocentric theory of the universe, and 
 thought of Heaven as a place locally situated above 
 their heads, and Hades, or Limbo, as locally situated 
 beneath their feet : but he who would infer from this 
 that the Church, as such, believed in and meant to teach 
 a geographical Heaven and Hell would seem to lay 
 himself open to the charge of committing the ' Fallacy 
 of Composition ' in a somewhat obvious form. So far 
 as I can see, the Chiu-ch, as distinct from individual 
 Fathers and theologians, always meant by the Descensus , 
 Resurrection, and Ascension exactly what an educated 
 modern Catholic means by them now, namely (a) that 
 our Lord, during the time which elapsed between His 
 Death on the Cross and His Resurrection, vouchsafed 
 to dwell, in respect of His Sacred Humanity, as a dis- 
 embodied human spirit, in the ' place ', or ' state ', or 
 ' sphere ' (human language is necessarily imperfect) of 
 departed human spirits ; that His human experience 
 included, not only the actual suffering of death, but the 
 experience of what comes after death : 
 
 (6) that on the third day after His death. He returned 
 in His disembodied human spirit, from the world of the 
 dead, and took active possession once more of the Body 
 which had meanwhile been lying in Joseph's new tomb : 
 that, clothed in this risen Body, He sojourned with His 
 Apostles, and instructed them in the things pertaining 
 to the kingdom of God ; and 
 
 (c) that after some time spent in this mysterious risen 
 life, He entered upon a condition of supreme glory and 
 power in the spiritual world, and definitely departed, so 
 far as His visible and physical presence was concerned.
 
 88 Form and Content i7i Christian Tradition 
 
 out of the plane of the material world — a spiritual event 
 which was sacramentally imaged forth in the sphere of 
 sense by the rising of His body in the air, before the 
 eyes of His adherents, until it was veiled from sight 
 by a cloud. No one will contend that primitive Christians 
 meant less than this by the Descensus, Resurrection, 
 and Ascension : and I know of no evidence that the 
 primitive Church, as such, meant more. 
 
 IX 
 
 It will now be clear what reply I should return to the 
 argument which you briefly develop on pp. 49, 50. You 
 say, 'the New Testament supphes the data which are 
 worked up in the Creeds. It follows that, if there is 
 a progressive reinterpretation of the one, the same 
 thing must hold good of the other.' I may perhaps be 
 permitted to expand this argument as follows : ' The 
 Creeds are summaries of doctrine collected out of Scrip- 
 ture, and have no independent authority of their own ; 
 any reinterpretation therefore of Scripture, the funda- 
 mental authority, must involve a reinterpretation of 
 the Creeds, which only possess a derived authority.' 
 I must point out that the position from which this 
 argument starts is one which those who think with me 
 would entirely repudiate. We do not believe that the 
 Creeds are merely summaries of, and dependent upon, 
 Scripture. Historically, the old Roman baptismal Creed 
 (if Dr. Burn is to be trusted), which was the germ of our 
 present ' Apostles' Creed ', is actually prior to the forma- 
 tion of a New Testament Canon ; it is certain at any 
 rate that the baptismal (and, later, the conciUar) Creeds, 
 the Canon of the New Testament, and the three-fold 
 ministry developed side by side in the Church from the 
 second century onwards, and I need not remind you 
 that the New Testament Canon was not definitively 
 closed until the Quini-Sextine Council, three hundred
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams II 89 
 
 years after the formulation of the Nicene and Niceno- 
 Constantinopolitan Symbols. Creed, Canon of Scriptm-e, 
 hierarchy — these (I should contend) are the triple out- 
 growth of the fundamental Deposit of Faith, as it 
 developed and fructified under the inspiration of the 
 Holy Spirit. The relation between Scripture and Creed 
 is thus collateral, not one of direct dependence or descent. 
 Both ahke are embodiments of the Deposit of fundamental 
 ideas ; the one pictures the Deposit as it was within 
 forty or fifty years of its promulgation, the other repre- 
 sents it as it was after three, four, and five centuries of 
 development had passed over it ; the one contains the 
 Deposit, still fluid and undefined on its ' metaphysical ' 
 side, in a collection of miscellaneous documents, no one 
 containing the whole, but each illustrating an aspect, or 
 aspects — the other enshrines it in clear-cut and finished 
 phrases, each standing for a technical conceptual form. 
 The New Testament is, so to speak, a sort of composite 
 photograph of the Church and Faith — the total fact of 
 Christianity — as they were in their infancy : and we 
 appeal to the New Testament in support of the Creeds, 
 not to prove them to ourselves (for they are already 
 sufficiently guaranteed by our fundamental postulate of 
 the infallibifity of the Church) but to prove them to 
 outsiders. The New Testament (on the Catholic view) 
 is, like the photograph which a traveller carries in his 
 passport, for purposes of identification ; he does not 
 carry the picture of himself as he was in order to prove 
 his own identity to himself, but in order to prove it to 
 others — customs and mifitary officials. So the Church, 
 wherever she goes, carries about with her the New 
 Testament, in order to prove to the inquiring outsider 
 that she, the Church of the twentieth century, of London, 
 Paris, and New York, is, in essence, the same Church, 
 teaching the same Faith, as the Church of the first 
 century, of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Ephesus. 
 
 The above is the sketchiest possible treatment of
 
 90 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 a great subject ; but I hope enough has been said to 
 indicate the main reason why your argument based 
 upon the alleged dependence of the Creeds upon Scrip- 
 ture has no cogency for us. Of course, I should not in 
 any case admit that it is necessary to impose a symbohc 
 reinterpretation upon the parts of Scripture which deal 
 with the four clauses in question. As I have said else- 
 where, I cannot, with the best will in the world, rid 
 myself of the impression that all, or at any rate most, 
 of the destructive criticism of these passages is, if closely 
 and candidly analysed, based upon a priori considera- 
 tions ; that it aU starts, in reality if not in appearance, 
 from the unexpressed assumption that God either could 
 not or would not have worked such wonders as the 
 Virginal Conception and the Resurrection as ordinarily 
 understood. I trust that I am not insensible to the 
 effect of genuine a posteriori evidence : and if at any 
 future time an ostrakon or a papjrrus leaf is unearthed 
 at Nazareth which proves beyond the shadow of a doubt 
 that Jesus was the son of Joseph, I shall be prepared 
 to take the consequences. I shaU frankly admit that 
 CathoHc Christianity has tumbled down with a crash, 
 and I shall proceed to look round for some other theory 
 of the universe. But I have a shrewd suspicion that no 
 such ostrakon or papyrus ever will emerge. 
 
 I am afraid that this letter has grown to an inordinate 
 length. But you will readily understand that loyalty 
 to my own position forbade me to leave any of your 
 points unanswered. And a satisfactory commentary must 
 necessarily be rather longer than the text upon which it is 
 based. May I, in conclusion, sum up in a few words the 
 stage which our argument seems to me to have reached ? 
 
 1. We both agree to distinguish between the ' meta- 
 physical ' and the ' historical ' clauses of the Creeds. 
 
 I
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams II 91 
 
 [By ' Creeds ' I presume we both mean all docu- 
 ments possessing Ecumenical authority.] 
 
 2. In respect of the ' metaphysical ' clauses we agree 
 
 to distinguish between ' form ' and ' content '. 
 
 3. We agree, further, that the ' content ', at least, of 
 
 these clauses is per se unalterable, inasmuch as it 
 comes to us by Revelation from God. 
 
 4. As to the ' form ', I maintain that it is per accidens 
 
 unalterable : that, although a particular content 
 may not always have been associated with a par- 
 ticular form, nevertheless, now that the association 
 has been set up by Church authority, it is not open 
 to individual behevers to dissolve it ; 
 
 You, on the other hand, are not prepared to 
 commit yourself even to a per accidens unaltera- 
 biUty of the ' form ' — but you say that, as a matter 
 of fact, you have no desire to alter it. So that 
 on this point, although we diverge in theory, we 
 appear to agree in practice. 
 
 5. When, however, we come to consider the ' historical ' 
 
 clauses, a much greater divergence appears. In 
 respect of these clauses, you maintain that ' form ' 
 and ' content ' are not only distinguishable but 
 also separable, and you desire to retain the latter 
 whilst dropping, or not firmly holding, the former ; 
 /, on the other hand, maintain that in these 
 clauses, as in aU (alleged) plain statements of his- 
 torical fact, ' form ' and ' content ' are absolutely 
 coincident, and that these clauses must therefore 
 be either taken or left : and, of course, my funda- 
 mental conviction of the inerrancy of orthodox 
 Christian tradition compels me to * take ' them. 
 
 6. The sUght divergence of view noted under (4) and 
 
 the considerable divergence noted under (5), are 
 both ultimately traceable to a difference in respect 
 of fundamental, unproved, and unprovable assump- 
 tions or axioms — ^to a difference in respect of apx"'
 
 II! 
 
 92 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 dvaTToSeiKToi. I start from the assumption of 
 the infalhbihty of the Church, and the a priori 
 possibility of certain miracles : you start from the 
 assumption of a providential guidance of the Church 
 which does not amount to ' infallibility ', and of 
 the a priori impossibility, or at any rate extreme 
 improbability, of these miracles. 
 7. I quite admit that my apxai are dvanoSeLKToi — 
 reached by intuition and not by ratiocination : but 
 I contend {a) that any dpxaC, especially in rehgious 
 matters, must necessarily be indemonstrable ; 
 (&) and that yours are just as much so as mine. 
 
 And there, for the present, I must leave it. In a general 
 sense, I still think that the difference between us is one 
 of degree, not of kind. So far as I can see, your position 
 is not exactly a ' New Theology ' ; it is in essence the 
 Old Theology, only with a large bite taken out of it. 
 And this fact seems to hold out considerable hopes of 
 eventual agreement, if not between j^ou and me, at any 
 rate between those who think with you and those who 
 think with me. But it has another consequence which 
 I feel bound to explain. Precisely because it is, not an 
 entirely new position, but (as I should hold) a somewhat 
 mutilated form of the old position, it seems to me entirely 
 destitute of the ' enormous strength ' which you claim 
 for it in your first paper. The old position in its entirety, 
 given the fundamental assumption of the ' infallibility ' 
 of the Church, does seem to me to be ' enormously strong % 
 and to be proof against all assaults ; and such an entirely 
 new position as that of Professor Troeltsch, which has 
 little, if anything, in common with historical Christianity, 
 also seems to me to be ' enormously strong '. If I may 
 develop the metaphor from trench warfare, hinted at 
 in your first paper (p. 7), it seems to me that there are 
 two possible poUcies. There is the poHcy of doggedly 
 holding the old line of fortifications as it has always
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams II 93 
 
 stood, with a full recognition of the fact that a breach 
 in the line means encirclement and destruction : this 
 is the policy of Traditionahsm. There is also the poUcy 
 of evacuating the old line altogether, and withdrawing 
 to a new and self-contained set of trenches further up 
 the hill : this would be the poUcy of Troeltsch. But 
 your poUcy appears to be that of surrendering three or 
 four ' traverses ' to the enemy, and yet endeavouring 
 to hold the rest of the hne — a poUcy which exposes you 
 at once to an enfilading fire, and (it seems to me) must 
 sooner or later involve withdrawal altogether, or else 
 encirclement. Of course, the practical course which 
 I should wish to advocate would be, not retirement to 
 the new hne, but reoccupation of the temporarily 
 abandoned ' traverses '. 
 
 In any case, permit me to apologize for the length of 
 this letter, and beheve me to be, 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 N. P. WILLIAMS.
 
 DR. SANDAY'S REJOINDER. 
 
 My dear Williams, 
 
 I am glad that you have given yourself full scope for 
 your reply. The result, I must needs think, will be equally 
 satisfactory on both sides of our argument. Those who 
 agree with you will see in your letter an unusually frank and 
 clear statement of the logical structure of their own posi- 
 tion ; and those who agree with me will have the advantage 
 of knowing, better (if I am not mistaken) than they have 
 ever known before,precisely what they have to reckon with. 
 
 You have been specially successful, if I may be allowed 
 to say so, in striking a balance between our opposing 
 views, in bringing out the extent of our agreement and 
 showing precisely at what point we begin to part company. 
 I do not think that I have ever been engaged in a contro- 
 versy in which I felt this so strongly. From this point 
 of view, I could be well content to leave our discussion 
 where it now stands. At the same time some new points 
 have come up, or at least present themselves with some- 
 what greater insistence. These points perhaps still need 
 a little further elucidation, which I will now try to offer. 
 When that has been done — so far at least as I am con- 
 cerned — our discussion may close. 
 
 The summaries that you give from time to time are 
 all that I could wish. It has only sometimes happened 
 that, in paraphrasing an argument or opinion of mine, 
 you have fallen into language which I could not altogether 
 endorse ; you have stated your point in a way that is 
 natural to yourself, but not quite equally natural to me. 
 
 This has happened specially in contexts in which you 
 are appeahng to authority. Authority plays a rather 
 different part in your scheme of beliefs and in mine. For 
 me, the ultimate standard of judgement is what I conceive
 
 Dr, Sunday III 95 
 
 to be truth. Authority has its weight ; but I could not 
 accept a thing purely upon authority, if I did not also 
 believe it to be true. With me, the idea of truth stands 
 behind everything else ; with you, if I am not mistaken, 
 the idea of authority sometimes takes precedence and 
 becomes a ground of acceptance independently of truth. 
 I might perhaps put it that, with you, certain propositions 
 are ' true because taught ', whereas with me they would 
 be ' taught because true '. 
 
 It may perhaps be worth while to state explicitly that, 
 whereas there are many different degrees of truth and 
 sincerity, the modernist (as I understand Modernism) aims 
 before all things at the highest kind of both ; he does not 
 think that he has attained to the highest truth or the high- 
 est sincerity until he can speak from personal conviction. 
 He may recognize degrees short of this, and acquiesce 
 in them provisionally ; but he always feels that his 
 acquiescence is provisional ; he has not yet attained to 
 the verite vraie, which is the crowning stage of all. 
 
 I do not mention this because I think that anything 
 of great importance in our present discussion turns upon 
 it. I do not remember that anything is involved that 
 goes beyond the question of wording. But, for complete 
 mutual understanding, it is perhaps as well to be quite 
 explicit. 
 
 I altogether welcome the general conclusion to which 
 you come that the differences between us are differences 
 of degree rather than of kind. You more than once express 
 pleasure and to some extent surprise at finding that this 
 is so (pp. 24, 36, 55, 56 ; cf . 71, 92, supra). And I should 
 myself be inclined to say that, if our discussion had no 
 other effect than to bring out this, it would not have 
 been in vain. 
 
 The points between us that appear still to need a little 
 further elucidation are these : 
 
 (1) The different footing of what we agree to call the 
 metaphysical and historical clauses of the Creed.
 
 I 
 
 96 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 (2) In connexion with this some further remarks should 
 
 be made on the subject of Miracle. 
 
 (3) The degree of enlightenment conferred upon the 
 
 Church by the operation of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 (4) The validity of the assumption on which your view 
 
 of this erdightenment rests. 
 To complete the survey there should be added 
 
 (5) some further consideration of the positive grounds 
 
 on which a reasoned view of this subject rests ; and 
 lastly, 
 
 (6) an attempt to indicate more precisely the place of 
 
 Relativity of Expression in the whole scheme. 
 It really is a connected and coherent scheme which 
 I desire to put forward ; and by it I am prepared either 
 to stand or fall. 
 
 II 
 
 When I drew a distinction between the metaphysical 
 and historical clauses of the Creeds and expressed my 
 intention of confining my claim for latitude of interpreta- 
 tion to the latter, I did not intend to do this on the ground 
 of any inherent difference between the two sets of clauses 
 in the nature of things. I do, as a matter of fact, beheve 
 that there is an element of relativity in all human expres- 
 sion, and therefore in both classes aUke. The same kind 
 of relativity is really apparent in each class : relativity 
 to the general structure of the human mind and to the 
 particular phase of its history to which the clauses of the 
 Creeds and the statements which they embody belong. 
 
 It is only in practice that a difference of treatment 
 becomes desirable. In my original paper (p. 12, supra) 
 I expressed the view that the ancients showed a tendency 
 to over-definition and that in modern times the demand 
 for such definition had become less than it was. I do not 
 deny that, if the right of criticism is pressed, it may be 
 necessary to examine closely the history and special 
 application of every metaphysical term that is used. But
 
 Dr. Sanday III 97 
 
 at the same time I bear in mind, what you have yourself 
 pointed out, the essential simplicity of these terms ; and, 
 beyond a general caution against over-refinement, I do 
 not find myself called upon to criticize. It might be other- 
 wise, if there were any generally accepted philosophical 
 system current to-day and not current in the early 
 centuries of the Christian Era. If there had been such 
 a system, it might be necessary to draw up a scheme of 
 equivalents and to translate the language of the past 
 into that of the present. But, in default of any such 
 generally accepted system, the necessity does not arise. 
 We are content to make the best use of the old language 
 that we can. 
 
 But this state of things does not hold good in the region 
 of history. History is more distinctly a progressive 
 science than philosophy. There is a greater amount of 
 general agreement as to the nature of the progress made 
 and as to the methods now in use as compared with 
 those employed in the past. The full application of 
 criticism to history is a product of comparatively modern 
 times. We should not I suppose be far wrong if we were 
 to regard it as characteristic — and increasingly character- 
 istic — of the last hundred and fifty years. 
 
 When I was a boy, we happened to have at home 
 a translation of the Histoire Ancienne of Charles Rollin 
 (1661-1741), which had a considerable vogue in its day. 
 I remember well how much I enjoyed the story of Cyrus, 
 King of Persia, as told by this writer. It was only many 
 years later that I discovered that this version of the story 
 was based upon Xenophon's Cyropaedia, which is now 
 known to be largely romance. That is just an example 
 of the difference between the way in which history was 
 written some two hundred years ago and the way in 
 which it is written now. Naturally, allowance has to be 
 made for this difference. Within the last hundred years 
 a complete revolution in the art of writing history has 
 taken place. And nowhere has this revolution been more 
 
 H
 
 98 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 marked than in the portion of history covered by the Bible. 
 The change of treatment came in first for the period 
 included in the Old Testament ; it is only by degrees that 
 it has been carried forward to the period included in the 
 New. 
 
 It is true that it would still be premature to speak of 
 an accepted version of New Testament history ; but we 
 may, within Hmits, speak of a version that would find 
 very wide acceptance of the history embraced by the Old 
 Testament. We are compelled to look ahead ; and I 
 confess that I do not think it too soon to let our general 
 view of the New Testament be affected by our general 
 view of the Old. It seems to me that this revision involves 
 a revised conception of many of the events recorded in 
 both the Testaments. We begin with the Old Testament ; 
 but I am very sure that it is quite impossible to begin and 
 end there. I have no doubt in my own mind that the 
 process begun in reference to the Old Testament must be 
 carried forward to the New. 
 
 The further consequence follows that, if the New Testa- 
 ment is affected, the Creeds must also be affected. By 
 that of course I do not mean the wording of the Creeds, 
 but the meaning that we attach to the words. It is here 
 that you and I diverge. I know that you regard the 
 Creeds as possessing an independent authority in them- 
 selves apart from the New Testament. I can grant 
 you that those by whom they were composed had access 
 to a rather wider Hterature than is contained within the 
 Canon. For instance, they had some Apocryphal Gospels 
 which have now been lost ; and they had also (at the time 
 of the composition of the nucleus of the Old Roman 
 Creed, which is the basis of our Apostles' Creed) a certain 
 amount of oral tradition, which was rapidly running dry. 
 But you would hardly say that this additional Hterature 
 and additional tradition contributed anything substantial 
 to what we still know from the New Testament. You 
 would hardly say that the Descent into Hades (which
 
 Dr. Sanday III 99 
 
 was of course a later insertion in the Apostles' Creed) or 
 the Ascension meant for the authors of the Creed any- 
 thing different from what they meant for the New Testa- 
 ment writers. 
 
 The modern historian is obliged to go behind both the 
 New Testament records and the Creeds. He asks himself 
 what really happened ; and then he finds that he has to 
 discount somewhat the tradition as it has come down to 
 him. You yourself do this to a certain extent (p. 87), 
 and I go rather further ; that is the difference between us. 
 
 Ill 
 
 At this point comes in the question of Miracles. I 
 naturally cannot attempt, and it is not necessary that 
 I should attempt, to go into the whole of this question. 
 But it may not be inappropriate for me to try to state 
 my view of the position in which the controversy seems 
 at the present time to stand. 
 
 1. I have never said, and never thought, that miracles 
 are impossible. If we take miracle in the sense of ' wonder ' 
 — an event outside the common order, and specially 
 connected with some great spiritual manifestation 
 emerging from that order — then, I am quite prepared to 
 say that there have been many well-attested miracles, 
 which have played a real and important part in the history 
 of the Christian rehgion. 
 
 It is only quite a small group of alleged miracles that 
 I feel called upon to challenge, and only a particular 
 aspect even of them. It was really in order to narrow the 
 ground to the consideration of this small group, that 
 I suggested the distinction between miracles supra 
 naturam and contra naturam. My object was not scientific 
 but practical. I thought that the distinction would 
 convey a sufficiently clear meaning to ordinary people. 
 By ' nature ' I meant what are commonly called ' the 
 laws of matter and motion '. I was willing to admit 
 
 H2
 
 100 Form and Content in Chnstian Tradition 
 
 every form of miracle that was consistent with the 
 recognition of these laws. I was quite prepared for the 
 presence in the miiverse of extraordinary forces, expressing 
 themselves in extraordinary phenomena. I do not doubt 
 at all that the pubHc ministry of our Lord and of the 
 Apostles was accompanied by such phenomena. By the 
 term supra naturam I intended to recognize their extra- 
 ordinary character ; I intended to mark them as the 
 fitting sign or effect of a Cause or Causes higher than 
 the ordinary. We have sufficient warrant for beHeving 
 that from time to time such causes have been at work 
 in the world ; and we regard them as culminating in the 
 activities of our Lord Jesus Christ and those whom He 
 chose to continue and carry on His mission. 
 
 But the well-attested wonders that may be regarded 
 as coming under this description have all had analogies 
 of some kind in the ordinary course of nature ; they have 
 been in harmonious relation to that course ; they have 
 never required a breach or contradiction of the natural 
 order. It is precisely here that we draw the line. Even the 
 alleged events that really imply such a breach or con- 
 tradiction are very few in number. They are so few as 
 to raise grave doubts whether they can be regarded as 
 strictly historical. 
 
 2. As a matter of fact, it is becoming increasingly 
 difficult for the modern mind to give full credence to 
 stories of this nature. That is the position of things 
 with which we have to deal. There is a reluctance to 
 believe, a sense of incongruity, a difficulty in harmonizing 
 all the details of these events with the regular course 
 of the universe as we see it. 
 
 I have myseK tried to analyse this widespread unwilling- 
 ness to believe, and to trace it to its roots. But my attempt 
 has been criticized. The Dean of Christ Church thinks 
 that I exaggerate the stringency of the behef in the uni- 
 formity of nature. Dr. A. C. Headlam regards me as 
 involved in the methods and presuppositions of mid-
 
 Dr. Sanday III 101 
 
 Victorian physics. It may be true that I approached the 
 subject from a standpoint that may be described as 
 mid- Victorian. I was not ignorant of the change that has 
 come over the modern scientific conception of matter. 
 But, so far as I could judge, it did not seem to me that 
 this change had made any difference to the essential 
 balance of the argument. I do not think it can be said 
 that the behef in the strict uniformity of nature is less 
 strong than it was. I take that behef as marking a deep- 
 rooted element in the constitution of nature as God has 
 willed it. Indeed, the evidence for this kind of regularity 
 is so overwhelming that I cannot help regarding the 
 will that finds expression in it as deeply rooted in the 
 character of God Himself. For this reason I myself 
 share in the praeiudicium or reluctance to accept anything 
 inconsistent with it of which I have spoken. Given two 
 hypotheses for explaining a particular narrative, that 
 which does not involve any breach of the regular order 
 has for me a strong presumption in its favour. I always 
 bear in mind the possibihty that a momentous act Uke 
 the Incarnation might well be supposed to have been 
 attended by special circumstances. But the special 
 circumstances alleged seem upon the face of them far 
 more likely to have been produced by a transitory phase 
 in man's ideas about God than by a real exception in 
 the mode of operation of God Himself. 
 
 3. I speak of this as an antecedent presumption. But 
 so far as I am myseK concerned, the reaUy determining 
 trains of argument have come from the side of history 
 and criticism or from that of psychology. Two such 
 processes of reasoning had been at work in my mind. 
 On the one hand, there was the approach to the New 
 Testament through the Old. On the other hand, there 
 was the direct study of the New Testament itself. These 
 processes converged upon the same result. If we iso- 
 lated that particular aspect of miracle which seemed to 
 raise the greatest difficulties, within this hmited sphere,
 
 f 
 
 102 Form a7id Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 just the worst of those difficulties seemed to dissolve 
 away. 
 
 There are, it is weU known, certain narratives of miracle 
 in the Old Testament, clustering especially round two 
 events or groups of events, the Exodus of Israel from 
 Egypt with the Wanderings in the Desert, and the activity 
 of the prophets EUjah and "Elisha. But in each of these 
 cases there was room for the apphcation of criticism. In 
 regard to the Exodus and Wanderings, there was an 
 interval that would have to be measured by centuries 
 between the events and the earhest record. In the narra- 
 tives of Elijah and EUsha, the interval was not so great 
 as this ; but still there was a substantial interval, a space 
 of time quite long enough to allow for the growth of 
 legend. A closer examination seemed to show that, 
 while there was a nucleus of history, there was an outside 
 fringe of folk-lore the details of which were fiUed in by 
 the popular imagination. In no single instance, through- 
 out the whole of the Old Testament, was there such 
 authentic first-hand testimony as could estabhsh the 
 presence of details which involved any real contradiction 
 of the laws of nature. Not only was there always time 
 for the accretion of such details, but in several of the 
 more noteworthy examples it seemed easy to see how 
 they might have arisen. 
 
 But if this general result of Old Testament criticism 
 held good, there remained only the miracles of the New 
 Testament. And these again fell into two classes, those 
 which did imply and those which did not imply any real 
 contradiction of natural laws. And there was further 
 to be observed a remarkable coincidence between this 
 distinction as to the nature of the miracles and a parallel 
 distinction as to the nature of the evidence on which the 
 accounts of them rested. The first-class evidence, that 
 of St. Paul's Epistles, was available only for the miracles 
 of the first order. Nowhere did this first-class testimony 
 extend to and cover the kind of details that were peculiar
 
 D7\ Sanday III 103 
 
 to the miracles of the second order. In other words, 
 the evidence for this smaller class of details everywhere 
 broke down ; there might be evidence enough to establish 
 the general truth of the event to which it referred, but 
 when it came to be applied to details — and especially 
 to these more questionable details — the evidence always 
 proved to be insufficient. 
 
 While this result seemed to emerge in the regular 
 course of documentary criticism, it was met and con- 
 firmed by another result which seemed to come out 
 upon the side of history. Whenever suspicious details 
 are found in our documents, the next question that has 
 to be asked is, how did they come there ? If they are not 
 inherent in the facts, the probability will be that they 
 came in through the process of transmission — that they 
 came in through the play of the popular imagination upon 
 the facts. The critic has then to seek for the kind of 
 stimuli that would naturally suggest such accretions. 
 He is not always called upon to do this ; but it strengthens 
 his case when he is able to do it. And it is not incumbent 
 upon him to lay his finger upon the precise cause which 
 led to any particular effect. It will be as much as can be 
 reasonably expected if he is able to point to some generic 
 tendency which might naturally give rise to the particular 
 effect that has to be accounted for. 
 
 It seems to me that not only a vera causa but a sufficient 
 cause for what we conceive to be adventitious details 
 in the Gospel narratives is supplied by a single broadly 
 operative cause, which may be described as the psychology 
 of the chain of witnesses and writers. The writer is the 
 last Hnk in the chain ; and he sets down what is in his 
 mind. But this content of his mind is the final resultant 
 of a process at several points in which there has been a 
 play of influences, more often unconscious than conscious, 
 which have gone to shape the form of the written narrative 
 as it ultimately appears. Among these shaping influences, 
 I strongly suspect that one of the most important has
 
 104 Form and Content in Christimi Tradition 
 
 been that derived from precedents and analogies supplied 
 by the Old Testament. In any case, the minds of the 
 successive witnesses and writers were fuU of these prece- 
 dents and analogies ; and, without knowing it, first one 
 and then another contributed a detail here and a detail 
 there which made up the total presentment of the picture 
 as we have it. 
 
 In due course it will be incumbent on scholars to plot 
 out a rough draft, susceptible of improvement and 
 gradually improved, of this reconstructed process as they 
 conceive of it. They start from the written document, 
 but work their way backwards as well as they can to 
 something approximately representing the original facts 
 so far as they can guess at them. The result must needs 
 be precarious ; no one will ever be able to say ' This 
 is what really happened ' ; the most that can be done 
 will be to sketch something like what we may believe 
 to have happened. But one tentative sketch may be 
 more like than another ; the success of the synthesis will 
 correspond to the success of the analysis. God will accept 
 what is offered to Him in an honest and true heart 
 according to the best of such powers as His servants can 
 dedicate to Him. 
 
 IV 
 
 That is what I may call the modernist's ideal. It is 
 modest, but it is quite sincere ; and it will have at least 
 the advantage of being all of a piece with any other 
 studies in which he may be engaged. If his proper pro- 
 vince is history, he wUl not have one measure for sacred 
 history and another for profane. There will be no close 
 compartments. He will move backwards and forwards 
 from the one ground to the other with ease and freedom. 
 
 You and I are both sensitive as to the relation in which 
 we stand to the great movements of thought which are 
 outside although they may include us. But we are 
 sensitive in different directions and with reference to
 
 Dr. Sanday III 105 
 
 different movements. You desire to subordinate yourself 
 to the great body of Catholic opinion, I should be sorry 
 to lose touch with this ; but at the same time its hold 
 upon me is secondary, rather than primary. I should 
 be even more sorry to lose touch with what I may call 
 the world of science. I profoundly beUeve that in neither 
 direction is any such sacrifice required of me. I pro- 
 foundly beheve that a presentation of Christianity is 
 possible which shall be at once in strict and full continuity 
 with the past and shall yet be in complete harmony with 
 the most assured results of progressive science in the 
 present — with progressive science on all its sides, not 
 only physiological and biological but historical, exegetical, 
 and (in a sound and sober sense) critical. All that I need 
 to cement this far-reaching harmony is a due allowance 
 for what I have called ' the difference of times ' in the 
 earlier statements of the Christian creed as compared with 
 the revised statement in which we take it to ourselves 
 to-day. I know that you challenge the phrase ; and I 
 know that it is challenged by those whom you would 
 claim as friends and alHes. But my contention is that 
 the phrase represents an absolutely certain fact which, 
 whether it is chailenged or not, cannot be avoided, but 
 must before long come to be recognized as a truism. 
 Every age has its own complete circle of ideas ; and any 
 single section of those ideas stands in relation to all the 
 rest, and must inevitably change as they change. As well 
 bid the stream stop running, or the tree and the plant 
 stop growing, as attempt to arrest and petrify the normal 
 progressive movements of the human mind. 
 
 Yet I perfectly admit that this solidarity in movement 
 — like the steady, irresistible advance of a glacier which 
 
 moveth all together if it move at all — 
 
 is only one-half of the truth. The other half is the idea 
 of fixity, stability, and permanence. In nature we see 
 a balance between these two great principles. And I do
 
 106 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 not doubt that there is a like balance in the world of thought 
 and beUef . My endeavour is to maintain an equihbrium 
 between the two sides. I would fain think that I do this 
 more consistently and satisfactorily than you do. It 
 seems to me that, on your view, the balance incHnes 
 too much on the side of permanence as compared with 
 that of change. All turns on those two unfortunate 
 expressions, ' infallibility ' and ' unalterability \^ which 
 you are so loth to let go. Both seem to me to conflict 
 with the analogy of nature. No such thing as a real and 
 strict infaUibiHty exists here below ; and no such thing 
 as real exemption from the law of flux and change can 
 be verifled in human experience. 
 
 You seek to estabhsh the idea of fixity by an appeal 
 to the comforting sense of security which it gives to those 
 who hold it. You describe yourself as floating along a 
 broad stream, the stream of orthodox Christian tradition 
 or CathoHc Christianity. You surrender yourself whoUy 
 to this stream, and you speak of the comfort which such 
 surrender brings. Whenever I come across this argument 
 from the comfortableness of the Cathohc system, I am 
 always reminded of that famous saying of Dr. Johnson's 
 about the Church of Rome : ' I would be a Papist if 
 I could ; I have fear enough ; but an obstinate rationaUty 
 prevents me.' The Church of Rome has its attractive 
 features, especially certain types of sainthness ; but much 
 that might be a temptation to others is no temptation to 
 me — for the reason alleged by Dr. Johnson. 
 
 I doubt if it is good for us to be too comfortable. It is 
 more bracing to feel that one stands foursquare to all the 
 winds that blow. And other sources may be foimd for 
 the exhilarating sense of being borne upon the breast 
 of buoyant waters. 
 
 No Christian need be devoid of the feeUng of comfort. 
 
 ^ The weakened sense which you attach to these terms on pp. 23, 33; 
 67 goes far to meet me. But I should have thought that it was 
 better to give up the words altogether.
 
 Dr. Sanday III 107 
 
 And I would submit that that feehng owes more to that 
 which is common to all forms of Christianity than it does 
 to the distinctive tenets of Catholicism — not to speak 
 of the uncertainty whether the assumptions on which 
 those tenets rest are well founded. 
 
 However, I do not forget that the cleavage between us 
 on this head may easily be exaggerated. I too believe, as 
 you beHeve, that the Church of Christ has been divinely 
 guided in its definitions of doctrine. It is only that 
 I cannot go with you in thinking that these definitions 
 shut out all possibility of change. I am content to leave 
 them as they are in their essential content ; I do but 
 reserve to myself a certain freedom of apprehension, 
 arising out of the relativity of outward forms. 
 
 When we speak of ' divine guidance ', we speak of what 
 is really a very mysterious thing. It is not so much a ruling 
 as an over-ruhng of a process carried out through the 
 agency of men. To be assured of its reality we have to 
 look at the process upon a sufficiently large scale. If 
 we take the history of the human race as a whole, we can 
 certainly see in it a wonderful advance, and we are 
 justified in beheving that that advance has been carried 
 out in pursuance of a great divine plan. We can go so 
 far as to map out the outHnes of this plan in broad steps 
 or stages. But we should be wrong if we were to suppose 
 that the forward movement was always regular and 
 continuous. If we took our sections upon a smaller 
 scale we should often be left in doubt whether there was 
 any forward movement at all. Human progress, especially 
 intellectual and spiritual progress, has always been sub- 
 ject to great fluctuations ; it has had its ups and downs, 
 its setbacks and retrogressions. At times the advance 
 has been rapid ; at other times it has been slow and 
 halting ; and again there have been times when there 
 would seem to have been more of retreat than advance ; 
 ground has been lost, and has had to be recovered again. 
 
 It is one thing to believe that there is a divine guidance
 
 108 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 in the course of events and another thing to believe that 
 we can single out any particular series of events and claim 
 that it represents the pure wdll of God without any 
 admixture of human frailty. If we could do this, the 
 world would not be the place of probation that it is. 
 
 If some hght is thrown upon the smaller movements 
 of mankind by comparing them with the larger, so also, 
 conversely, Hght is thrown upon the larger by a study 
 of the smaller, and even by a study of the reHgious history 
 of the individual in which the search-rays are directed 
 inwards and not outwards. The individual may be 
 aware that there have been divine influences at work in 
 him ; but the manner in which they work, and the way 
 in which they are blended with the subtler movements 
 of his own nature is beyond the power of any self-analysis 
 to disentangle. 
 
 The upshot of it aU is that, if I describe the process 
 spread out before me as one in which there are subtle 
 veins of divine guidance, elements of permanent and eternal 
 truth crossed and intermixed with elements of transitori- 
 ness and change, I can feel that I am describing or at- 
 tempting to describe something that I can really see ; 
 I can feel that there is a rough kind of correspondence 
 between the picture and the reahty. But, if I brought 
 in such terms as ' unalterable ' and ' infaUible ', I should 
 soon feel that my conscience ceased to bear witness with 
 me. I should soon find myself asking ' why unalterable ? ' 
 and ' how infallible ? ' 
 
 V 
 
 I know that you have a short and easy method which 
 disposes at one stroke of aU these perplexities. You 
 arrive per saltum at the perfect and final inerrancy of 
 the whole body of Church doctrine. And you claim to 
 have reached this by an original act of ' intuition ' . You 
 elevate your principle into an axiom which is prior to 
 any subsequent processes of reasoning. No wonder that
 
 Dr. Sanday III 109 
 
 you are happy and content and find all the subsequent 
 processes greatly simplified. They are really implicit 
 in the one great premiss, which you lay down as exempt 
 from all discussion. 
 
 Is not this method a little too easy and a little too 
 sweeping ? I agree with you that there are some pre- 
 suppositions which may be taken as axiomatic. The 
 behef in the existence of the external world is such 
 a pre-supposition. I would not dispute it if you main- 
 tain that the fundamental ideas of rehgion — God, Freedom, 
 and Immortahty — may be taken without proof, though 
 I cannot really regard them as independent of reason. 
 But I cannot in the least see that broad antecedent 
 principles such as these supply any sound analogy or 
 justification for the claim that you make to take on 
 trust an elaborate system, consisting of a great number 
 of distinct propositions, the origin and history of which 
 is known and in regard to which the process by which 
 they acquired authority can be retraced and tested. In 
 such a case as this the a priori method is surely quite 
 unsuitable. Logically, I can only regard your funda- 
 mental principle as a petitio principii on a large scale. 
 
 I must admit, however, that you make a skilful retort 
 upon me here. You counter my criticisms by maintain- 
 ing that my own vaguer behef in Providential guidance 
 and control, as seen especially in the Old Testament and 
 in the history of the Chosen People as the vehicle of Old 
 Testament rehgion, rests upon no better basis, but is 
 itself too assumed without proof. 
 
 The argument that I had used was an appeal to the 
 great texts of the Old Testament which stand out in 
 such a wonderful way as marking steps or stages in the 
 development of what we are in the habit of caUing 
 revealed rehgion. These great texts are the utterances 
 of the prophets and other rehgious leaders of Israel, 
 and they claim to be spoken by divine authority and 
 were as a matter of fact accepted as having divine
 
 110 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 authority behind them. You and I both believe that 
 they really had this authority, which we believe to have 
 been none the less divine because it came through human 
 media and was exercised under human conditions with- 
 out any apparent apparatus of logical proof. 
 
 I was not wholly unprepared for the construction 
 which you put upon this fact and the use that you make 
 of it. I had asked myself long ago what is the real 
 place of these authoritative sayings in the great divine 
 scheme of things. Have they any logical foothold, or 
 do they hang entirely in the air ? As they were first 
 uttered, they carried their own authority with them ; 
 they claimed to be spoken in the name of God, and they 
 were accepted as being really spoken in His name. You 
 are quite within your rights in pointing out that such 
 sayings as ' The Lord is slow to anger and plenteous in 
 mercy', 'Like as a father pitieth his children', are 
 by no means of the nature of direct induction from 
 observed facts. This is perfectly true ; and it is true 
 that, if we confined ourselves to direct induction from 
 such facts as came within our observation, we should 
 never arrive at the central truth that ' God is Love '. 
 
 But direct induction is not the only method of proof. 
 There is another method that is equally valid and equally 
 normal. In the case of induction, the facts are collected 
 and a definite conclusion is drawn from them ; the facts 
 come first and the conclusion comes last. But the 
 process may be inverted with equal vaHdity. We may 
 start with the conclusion, and then verify it by a number 
 of examples. This is the formal justification for many 
 of the behefs that occupy the place of first principles in 
 the Christian religion. That God is Love, is a principle 
 of this kind. It may be called an anticipated truth. It 
 is a truth that is not obvious at first sight ; but once 
 assumed, it may be verified indefinitely, until the strong 
 assurance is reached that it would be verified completely 
 if we were able to foUow the whole course of things.
 
 Dr. Sanday III 111 
 
 And this is the real reason why this alternative method 
 is so much more appropriate to the subject-matter than 
 that of direct induction. It must never be forgotten that 
 we men, as Bishop Butler used to say, find ourselves 
 stranded in the midst of ' a scheme imperfectly com- 
 prehended '. What we see around us and are capable 
 of studying directly, is only part of a much vaster whole. 
 The conclusions that we might be tempted to draw from 
 the little that we can see are subject to correction from 
 the context that is unseen. But God has revealed to us 
 enough, through the various modes of His operation, to 
 put us in the way of verifjdng many a truth that would 
 not be self-evident in its immediate context, but becomes 
 self-evident in its relation to the larger whole that has 
 been gradually built up by the religious experience of 
 the race, and especially of that portion of the human 
 race which He would seem to have chosen as typical 
 and representative of the race ; in other words, by the 
 rehgious experience of Christians. 
 
 I cannot therefore admit that the series of greater 
 truths which form as it were the underside of Christianity 
 are really devoid of proof or dependent upon a merely 
 unverified intuition. What we call ' intuition ' often 
 includes a great amount of sub-conscious and unconscious 
 reasoning ; and the intuition of which we have been 
 speaking is often largely of that Idnd. 
 
 I am quite willing to share with you the benefit of 
 these considerations. After all, we recognize that we 
 are largely agreed. And I am prepared to believe that 
 there may be a good deal of semi-conscious reasoning 
 included in the ' intuition ' on which you base your 
 own position. But you seem to me, if I may say so, to 
 make the mistake of claiming too much — more than can 
 be legitimately given. And the chief reason why I prefer 
 my position to yours, is because it does not do this. The 
 verification is more complete ; it seems to fit the whole 
 body of the phenomena much better.
 
 I 
 
 112 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 VI 
 
 I must not forget, however, that you meet me on this 
 ground. You urge — perhaps naturally — that the ques- 
 tion between us is a question as to facts, and that facts 
 are by the nature of the case unalterable. You take as 
 an instance the assassination of Marat by Charlotte 
 Corday. No lapse of time can alter this. It is either 
 true or false ; and if it is true, it is true for ever. And 
 then, you argue further, that the Virgin Birth and the 
 Resurrection are as much facts as the Crucifixion. We 
 raise no question about the Crucifixion ; and why should 
 we raise any about other clauses of the Creed that are 
 associated with it ? 
 
 Such reasoning has a plausible appearance at first 
 sight, but it will not bear examination. It is of course 
 true that we are concerned with facts, but our immediate 
 concern is with history, or the record of facts. The 
 ultimate facts do not change, but our subjective attitude 
 towards them may and does largely change. I have 
 already spoken of this, in speaking of history as a subject 
 of study. I instanced the case of the youth of Cyrus ; 
 I pointed out that the story of his youth is no longer 
 written on the basis of the Cyropaedia. That is a much 
 nearer analogy than the case of Charlotte Corday. 
 
 From the point of view of history — which is also the 
 point of view of beUef — there is a great difference between 
 facts. Some are perfectly simple and of the kind that, 
 as you rightly say, has to be ' taken or left '. They are 
 directly amenable to testimony, and the testimony 
 offered is ample and satisfactory. The Crucifixion is 
 a fact of this order, but not so the Virgin Birth or the 
 Resurrection. In both these cases, the portion of the 
 statement amenable to direct testimony is relatively 
 small ; the rest is made up of inference and conjecture. 
 The so-caUed fact is no longer a simple or hard fact, but 
 includes a large amount of speculation ; and to this
 
 Dr. Sanday III 113 
 
 speculative element the attitude of the twentieth century 
 is quite different from that of the first. In the meantime 
 there has sprung up a stricter criticism of documents 
 and the whole new science of Comparative ReHgion. It 
 is here that the difference comes in, and that the old 
 traditional verdicts have to be reviewed and tested. 
 There is nothing wanton or arbitrary in the process ; 
 it has become quite inevitable. 
 
 You will perhaps say that neither criticism nor com- 
 parative study present a clear enough verdict to upset 
 the old tradition. That is the real point at issue. I do 
 not say that they upset the whole of it, but only that 
 part which is most speculative. 
 
 If you tell me that even this speculative portion is 
 too important to have been left by God subject to doubt 
 and uncertainty, I should reply by an appeal to Bishop 
 Butler. I should submit that we never can know before- 
 hand what God will do and what He will not do. A priori 
 judgements of this kind are constantly being proved 
 wrong. 
 
 Our object is, not to lay down what we think ought 
 to be or what ought not, but to describe as truthfully 
 and exactly as possible what actually is. That is really 
 the sum and substance of any attempt at reconstruction 
 that I have tried to make myseK. I have done it in the 
 first instance for my own satisfaction under the gradual 
 pressure of the experience and thought of a lifetime. 
 And I have ventured to put so much of it as I have into 
 print in the hope that it might be helpful to others 
 whose experience and point of view at all resemble 
 my own. 
 
 I speak only for myself ; or — so far as I can in any 
 degree pretend to speak in the name of others besides 
 myself — we speak only for ourselves. It is really an 
 attempt to meet a new demand, corresponding to a com- 
 paratively advanced state of civilization. In old times 
 people have been content to say in general terms — very 
 
 I
 
 114 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 often in terms inherited from the past — what they 
 believed. But in these modern days, with the growing 
 sensitiveness of the intellectual conscience, they feel 
 under an obligation to say distinctly not only what they 
 believe but in what precise sense they believe it. This 
 does indeed perhaps open up a certain risk of collision 
 with some of those who under different conditions would 
 express their own beliefs differently. The remedy seems 
 to lie in the corresponding growth of a large degree of 
 mutual tolerance and respect for the opinions of others 
 on the part of all who agree to meet in common accep- 
 tance of the broadly worded confessions of the past. 
 
 VII 
 
 In all that I have just been saying the idea of Relative 
 Truth, or of the relative expression of Truth, is an essen- 
 tial part . The scheme of Divine Providence is a progressive 
 scheme. Truth has been implanted among us in the form 
 of germs, which have gone on growing and developing. 
 But the expression of truth at each successive stage 
 from the very first has been strictly related and pro- 
 portioned to the sum of intellectual development attained 
 at the time to which it belonged. It simply is so, and 
 has been so, and no amount of theoretic manipulation 
 on our part can make it otherwise. 
 
 There are indeed differences of degree according to 
 the nature of the subject-matter. Some religious truths 
 are capable of being expressed in a more permanent 
 form than others. When Israel had reached the stage 
 at which it was possible to formulate the moral duty of 
 man in that concise sentence, ' Thou shalt love the Lord 
 thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and 
 with all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thyself ', 
 that was the very climax of brevity and simplicity along 
 with richness of potential import. But there were other
 
 Dr. Sandaij III 115 
 
 truths that had to be conveyed more gradually and 
 embodied in more complex and subtler definitions. 
 
 Take as an example that central doctrine from which 
 we derive our very name of Christians. This name really 
 is for us an important and fundamental element in the 
 fabric of our beliefs. We are the ' people of the Messiah, 
 the Lord's Anointed '. There are those who tell us that 
 this idea of the Messiah and of divine anointing has 
 done its work and is obsolete, that it is a rag of Judaism 
 adhering to Christianity. It is wrong and unfilial to 
 speak thus, though the centre of gravity has somewhat 
 shifted and we fall back more naturally on other terms 
 to express the same thing. The test point is that the 
 conception of the Messiah certainly formed an integral 
 and important part of the consciousness of our Lord 
 Himself ; it had a living meaning for Him. He had 
 a real need of it to express to Himself the secret of His 
 own Being, and to convey that secret to the intelligence 
 of a part at least of the world around Him. The Christian 
 of to-day, when he seeks the highest sanction for his own 
 beliefs, goes reverently over the whole ground. He 
 looks reverently into the mirror of that Divine con- 
 sciousness, and he tries to apply to himself and assimilate 
 what he sees there. He is constantly paraphrasing for 
 his own use in various connexions the famous lines : 
 
 What that Word doth make it 
 That I believe and take it. 
 
 The emphasis may fall differently, but the intention is 
 throughout the same. 
 
 Another of the old fundamental conceptions comes 
 back to us ; and here again we have substantially the 
 same conditions. What the doctrine of the Messiah was 
 for our Lord Himself, that the philosophical doctrine of 
 the Logos was for the next and succeeding generations 
 of His disciples. For them this doctrine was full of 
 varied suggestiveness and help, though it would be too 
 
 12
 
 116 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 much to claim that it was an absolutely perfect and 
 final expression of the truth that it was intended to 
 convey. Different ages have in like manner made use 
 of different formulations and ideas, all subsidiary to the 
 same result, though none of them exactly coincided with 
 and exhausted that result. Down to this present time 
 it may be doubted whether either the Church of Christ 
 as a whole or any individual Christian, even the most 
 learned and the most philosophical, has really arrived 
 at an absolutely perfect expression for that which all 
 alike, both the Body and the members, have been 
 struggling both to express for themselves and to formu- 
 late for the use of others. They are still in the position 
 that they can afford to neglect or despise none of the 
 achievements of the past. Those achievements may 
 have been partial, and elements in them may have been 
 provisional and transitory, but they were all ingredients 
 — and valuable ingredients — in the manifold and multi- 
 form whole. We do not know what the future may have 
 in store for us. There may set in a period of greater 
 concentration and simplification of which some coming 
 generation or generations may reap the benefit. Our 
 duty is, in the meanwhile, to make the best use we can 
 of that which we have ourselves inherited from the past 
 and as good stewards to hand it on to our successors. 
 
 It will be seen from such a sketch as this why I and 
 those whoever they may be, whether many or few, who 
 agree with me, so strongly deprecate the whole idea of 
 denials. The Christian effort after the formulation of 
 divine truth must be taken as a whole in all its successive 
 historical phases. We need it as a whole, apprehended 
 in all its various degrees, if it is to take shape for us in 
 any sort of completeness. 
 
 In such a condition of things, denial is only too apt 
 to mean mutilation ; and the attitude of denial is just 
 the wrong, and not the right, attitude. Der Geist der 
 stets verneint is the spirit of Mephistopheles and not of 

 
 Dr. Sandmj III 117 
 
 the Christian. Our enemies and a few of our too-zealous 
 friends, through a mistake of judgement, try to inveigle 
 us into denials, but we steadily refuse to be either drawn 
 or driven into them. 
 
 To abstain from certain affirmations is an altogether 
 different thing. That may be only the response of 
 a sensitive conscience to the recognition of altered con- 
 ditions. It may be only an incident in the inevitable 
 process of adjustment. The particular detail that seems 
 to drop out may be abundantly compensated for by the 
 enlarged significance of some other detail which remains 
 behind. As I said just now, it may be nothing more 
 than a change of emphasis ; in other words, no change 
 of substance, but only a certain shifting in the play of 
 light and shade. 
 
 This, and not any other, is the kind of position which 
 I and those who think with me desire to defend. We 
 wish to be judged upon our merits, and not with refer- 
 ence to any one else. For that reason I would submit 
 to you that Troeltsch and his alUes may be left out of 
 the question. Their aims are not ours, and the Umits 
 within which we desire to work are not theirs. 
 
 The real ground on which we are prepared to be judged 
 is the ground of consistency with objective and verifiable 
 facts. We aim at taking the fullest possible account of 
 these, no matter from what side they come. Our range 
 is cathoHc. There is no form or kind of reality that we 
 consider alien to us, whether spiritual or material. We 
 only feel bound to apply rather strict tests as to what 
 is reality and what is not. Subject to these tests, we 
 aim at sacrificing neither the old to the new nor the 
 new to the old. Our theology is still, in all essentials, 
 the theology of St. Paul and St. John ; what they laid 
 stress upon, we also lay stress upon ; our view of the 
 spiritual world aspires to be, both in whole and parts, 
 fundamentally the same as theirs. We believe that this
 
 I 
 
 118 Forrn and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 view is firmly anchored in the innermost heart of things. 
 But at the same time we claim the right to express to 
 ourselves the ApostoHc teaching in the language that is 
 most natural to the century in which we live. Without 
 this right we should feel that our own assent to it was 
 forced and strained and not more than half sincere. 
 For us there is no dilemma ; because we maintain that 
 the two sides of our faith not only can be but have been 
 reconciled. All that we need to do is to set them frankly 
 side by side. We render to Caesar the things that are 
 Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's, as we 
 hope in just and due proportions, not forgetting that the 
 latter includes the former and that what we call Caesar 
 and all his 'works is but a form of the one great Divine 
 self-manifestation. 
 
 Yours very smcerely, 
 
 W. SANDAY.
 
 MR. N. P. WILLIAMS' CONCLUDING 
 LETTER 
 
 My dear Dr. Sanday, 
 
 The task which lies before me now is a somewhat 
 difficult one. I have to reply to the criticisms directed by 
 you in your last letter against my position, or such parts 
 of my position as you do not feel able to accept : and you 
 will no doubt expect me to reply to the best of my abiUty ; 
 but, on the other hand, my answer must be phrased in such 
 a way as not to place you under the necessity of sending 
 me yet another rejoinder, for so our correspondence might 
 be prolonged ad infinitum. Perhaps, however, I may 
 console myself with the reflection that (if this correspon- 
 dence is to be published) you will in reality have the last 
 word, as it will fall to you to write an Introduction ; and 
 this consideration will doubtless justify my writing with 
 rather more liberty than I might have otherwise felt able 
 to assume. 
 
 Before addressing myself to the consideration of the 
 cardinal points at issue between us, I should like to com- 
 ment briefly on your remarks with regard to ' authority ' 
 and ' truth ', contained in section I of your last letter 
 (p. 94). You say ' For me, the ultimate standard of 
 judgement is what I conceive to be Truth. Authority has 
 its weight ; but I could not accept a thing purely upon 
 authority, if I did not also beUeve it to be true. With me, 
 the idea of Truth stands behind everything else ; with you, 
 if I am not mistaken, the idea of Authority sometimes 
 takes precedence and becomes a ground of acceptance 
 independently of truth.' I hope you will not think that
 
 I 
 
 120 Form and Content in Chjistian Tradition 
 
 I am being unduly captious : but, to my mind, these 
 words sound as though you thought that / am not also 
 interested primarily in Truth. Obviously, one can only 
 ' accept ' a proposition because one beheves it to be ' true ' : 
 it would require quite inconceivable mental perversity to 
 ' accept ' a statement which one knew to be false, merely 
 because it was promulgated by authority. Of course, as 
 I have explained before, the fact that certain statements 
 are vouched for by ' Authority ' is, on our view, good 
 evidence for their truth ; but it is, in theory, conceivable 
 that this kind of evidence might be cancelled by abso- 
 lutely indubitable and irrefutable evidence provided by 
 the senses, or by some rigorous and exact chain of reason- 
 ing ; in which case, the statements in question would fall 
 to the ground, and the whole fabric of ' Authority ' with 
 them. As I have said before, I beUeve in the Virgin 
 Birth (a) because the Church and the Scriptures say that it 
 was so, (6) because it seems to me appropriate and con- 
 gruous to the idea of a Divine Incarnation that it should 
 have been so, and (c) because I know of no good reason 
 for disbelieving that it was so ; but if a papyrus were 
 discovered at Nazareth which proved, beyond the shadow 
 of a doubt, that our Lord was not born of a virgin, I should 
 at once and without hesitation abandon, not merely the 
 behef in the Virgin Birth, but all the rest of CathoUc 
 Christianity as well. Such a declaration as this ought, in 
 my opinion, to vindicate me and those who think with me 
 from any charge, or even suggestion, of indifference to 
 truth. When you say, ' The Modernist . . . aims above 
 all things at the highest kind of (truth and sincerity) : he 
 does not think that he has attained to the highest truth or 
 the highest sincerity until he can speak from personal 
 conviction,' you are affirming what I have never doubted : 
 it is, perhaps, not impertinent to add that the love of truth 
 and sincerity is not the Modernist's monopoly. The most 
 convinced TraditionaUst can heartily subscribe to the 
 maxim, Deus mendacio nostra non indiget. Of course the
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams III 121 
 
 point is a purely verbal one, for I do not suppose for 
 a moment that you really mean to accuse us of putting 
 the interests of authority first, and the interests of truth 
 second : but, as you say, ' for complete mutual under- 
 standing, it is as well to be quite explicit.' 
 
 II 
 
 The first point of importance which claims attention 
 is the question of ' modern methods of writing history ', 
 and the influence which they are entitled to exert upon 
 the form (as distinct from the content) of Christian 
 behefs at the present day. I understand you to contend 
 as follows : — 
 
 (1) Within the last hundred years a ' complete revolu- 
 tion ' has taken place in the art of writing history. The 
 methods of textual, literary, and historical criticism have 
 been improved, sharpened, and raised to a degree of 
 efficiency and certitude hitherto undreamed of. 
 
 (2) In many domains of history, the application of 
 these improved critical methods to the documentary 
 sources has resulted in a complete houleversement of the 
 traditional view. This has been conspicuously the case in 
 regard to the Old Testament. Many narratives contained 
 in the Old Testament Canon are now regarded as belonging 
 to the sphere of legend rather than to that of history ; and, 
 even in the case of those narratives which are recognized 
 as strictly historical, the whole perspective has been 
 altered, so that what the narratives represent as primitive 
 is now seen to be the product of later development, 
 projected by the imagination of the devout into the 
 past. 
 
 (3) It is therefore to be expected a priori that the 
 application of modern critical methods to the books of the 
 New Testament will have the same results as in the case 
 of the Old — that some narratives will be discovered to 
 be rather of the nature of poetical legend than of exact
 
 122 Form and Co7itent in Oiristian Tradition 
 
 history, and that in the case of the others the balance and 
 perspective of the historical scheme will be considerably 
 modified. 
 
 I am afraid that I must entirely dispute the cogency of 
 this argument. Because some ancient documents which 
 profess to be history have been discovered to be romance, 
 it does not follow that all will be. To quote your own 
 instance — it would clearly be fallacious to argue that 
 because Xenophon's Cyropaedia is largely romance, there- 
 fore Tacitus's hfe of Agricola must be expected a priori to 
 be largely romance. Because Herodotus is admittedly 
 full of legendary stories, it does not follow that Thucydides 
 must be expected to be full of legendary stories. I do not 
 suppose, of course, that you regard this part of your argu- 
 ment as constituting a rigorously exact syllogism, because 
 it would obviously involve an ' undistributed middle', viz. 
 the term ' ancient documents'. But even if you mean 
 (as I do not doubt that you do mean) only to claim for 
 your conclusion a general antecedent probability, and not 
 mathematical certainty, I fear that I cannot concede even 
 this. I cannot admit any cogency whatever in the con- 
 tention ' because some portions of the Old Testament are 
 admittedly poetry rather than history, it is therefore ante- 
 cedently probable that some portions of the New Testa- 
 ment are poetry rather than history '. It may be so : but 
 we shall only admit that it is so when compelled by the 
 best of objective and a posteriori evidence. And this it 
 seems to me that you fail to supply. In your last letter 
 you content yourself with stating, ' I confess that I do not 
 think it too soon to let our general view of the New Testa- 
 ment be affected by our general view of the Old ' . . , 
 (p. 98). 'I have no doubt in my own mind that the pro- 
 cess begun in reference to the Old Testament must be 
 carried forward to the New ' (ibid.) ; but the matter is 
 clearly not one that can be settled by an ipse dixit. We 
 (that is, those who think with me) are constrained to
 
 Mr. N. P. WilUavis III 123 
 
 demand that each document of the New Testament Canon 
 shall be judged on its merits and without prejudice ; and, 
 as I said in my last letter, if the result of a scientific and 
 dispassionate investigation is to disprove the historicity 
 of the events which they narrate, we are prepared to take 
 the consequences, and to jettison the beliefs which rest 
 upon these (alleged) events ; but we cannot acquiesce in 
 what we should naturally regard, from the point of view 
 of exact logic, as a quiet begging of the whole question 
 before it has been adequately discussed. 
 
 I must needs feel that a certain ambiguity lurks in the 
 sentence which I have just quoted, ' I have no doubt in my 
 own mind that the process begun in reference to the Old 
 Testament must be carried forward to the New ' (p. 98). 
 There is a sense in which I could heartily accept this 
 proposition and make it my own, and another sense in 
 which I should be compelled emphatically to disagree with 
 it. It all depends upon what you mean by ' the process 
 begun in reference to the Old Testament '. If you merely 
 mean that the same critical methods must be employed for 
 fixing the text of the New Testament, for determining the 
 sources of its narratives, and for evaluating the historical 
 character of these somrces, as have been employed in the 
 case of the Old Testament, I heartily agree : that is, with 
 the proviso that these critical methods shall be used with 
 the sanity and sobriety which distinguishes the work of 
 the best British scholars, such, for instance, as the late 
 Dr. Driver. I have no desire to warn off criticism, as such, 
 from the field of the New Testament. But if you mean 
 that ' the process begun in reference to the Old Testament ' 
 must be ' carried forward to the New ', in the sense that 
 criticism must consciously aim at producing a bouleverse- 
 ment of New Testament tradition similar to that which 
 has been undergone by Old Testament tradition, I must 
 beg leave to disagree. I have no objection to the same 
 processes being applied to the New Testament as have 
 been applied to the Old Testament : what I object to is
 
 124 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 the a priori assumption that the results of these pro- 
 cesses ought to be, or necessarily will be, similar in 
 both cases. 
 
 Ill 
 
 This point, again, that I have just been discussing is, 
 I suppose, only a verbal one. I do not imagine that you 
 wish to prescribe ' Liberal ' conclusions beforehand, to be 
 arrived at by the critic, any more than I should wish to 
 prescribe ' orthodox ' conclusions to the critic, as such. 
 Perhaps I might say a few words about the relation which, 
 in my view, the personal convictions of the critic ought to 
 bear to the exercise of his functions as critic, for the 
 purpose of clearing up any obscurities which may arise. 
 I approach the New Testament documents, being myself 
 already possessed of and beUeving in the CathoUc Faith. 
 If I am going to use the sacred text for devotional or 
 homiletic purposes, I keep my Faith well in the forefront 
 of my mind, and endeavour to relate every thought and 
 aspiration of the inspired writers to the eternal verities 
 which the Church has taught me. On the other hand, if 
 I am purposing to handle the documents, not as a Chris- 
 tian priest or preacher, but merely as a critical student, 
 I endeavour as far as I can to keep my Faith at the back 
 of my mind — to abstract my intellectual activities from 
 the influence of the Faith which I do as a matter of 
 fact hold — to judge questions of textual authenticity and 
 historical fact simply on the evidence, with as near an 
 approximation to unbiased impartiaUty as I can attain 
 to. Having arrived at my historical conclusions, I should 
 then compare them with the historical statements to 
 which the Faith commits me ; if the former were to appear 
 prima facie contradictory to the latter, I should retrace 
 my steps, and go over my chain of reasoning again, testing 
 each link, and endeavouring to find a weak place ; and if 
 I were to find that the contradiction could not by any 
 means be removed — that the historical statements of the
 
 3Ir. N. P. Williams III 125 
 
 Faith proved to be in opposition to absolutely certain 
 facts — then I should without hesitation renounce a Faith 
 which I had found to be untrue. 
 
 IV 
 
 I had not wished to be drawn into a discussion on the 
 subject of Miracles, as I have already expressed my 
 opinions on this question elsewhere. Moreover, I did not 
 wish to trespass on the ground of your debate with the 
 Dean of Christ Church. But the argument seems to have 
 drifted, by a sort of inevitable necessity, in that direction, 
 so that I am constrained to say a few words on the subject 
 before our correspondence closes. 
 
 Let me briefly resume the situation, as I understand it. 
 In my second letter (p. 85), I designated, as one of the two 
 root-differences which divide us, a divergence of opinion 
 as to the intrinsic possibility or probability of certain 
 miracles. I had gathered from your original paper that, 
 whilst not wishing to deny the possibility of ' miracle ' in 
 general, you had felt that an ' imperious necessity ' com- 
 pelled you to ' abstain from affirming ' two particular 
 miracles, namely, the alleged birth of Jesus Christ from 
 a maiden, and His alleged corporeal Resurrection from 
 the tomb. This ' imperious necessity ', you contend, is 
 rooted in the fact that these two wonders would be defi- 
 nitely contra, and not merely supra, naturam. I ventured 
 to hint (in my second letter) that I had really not an idea 
 as to what you meant by the words 'contra', 'supra', and 
 ' natura ', Perhaps I may now be permitted to examine 
 the reply contained in your last communication. 
 
 You say, in the first place, that your object in drawing 
 the distinction between supra naturam and contra naturam 
 miracles was ' not scientific, but practical ' — and that you 
 thought that the distinction ' would convey a sufficiently
 
 126 Form and Content in Christian IVadition 
 
 clear meaning to ordinary people '. I do not know whe- 
 ther those who think with me can claim to be ' ordinary 
 people ' : but I am afraid I must say that we are not to 
 be converted by language of a merely ' practical ' nature. 
 If we are to drop, or consider the possibihty of dropping, 
 beliefs on which our whole lives have hitherto been built, 
 we must be constrained thereto by the most indubitable 
 and undeniable facts, or by reasoning of an absolutely 
 stringent and rigorous character, based upon indubitable 
 facts. We can only be evicted from our trenches at the 
 point of the bayonet. 
 
 This, however, is merely by the way, and I must proceed 
 to consider the definition of ' nafura ' which you supply in 
 your last letter. You say ' By " nature " I meant what 
 are commonly called " the laws of matter and motion " ' 
 (p. 99) : and I presume that when, later on, you speak of 
 * the ordinary course of nature ' and ' the natural order ' 
 (p. 100), the word ' nature ' is meant to be understood in 
 the same sense. 
 
 When I read this definition (' nature = the laws of 
 matter and motion ') I seemed instantaneously to see 
 a whole train of impUcations flowing from it, which, 
 I imagine, you would be very loth to accept. In order, 
 however, to avoid any suspicion of an unfair use of your 
 words, I took the liberty of submitting this part of your 
 argument to a distinguished philosophical teacher in this 
 University, and asked him, 'What would you understand 
 by " the laws of matter and motion ? " ' He repUed, 
 ' I should naturally take this to mean " the laws of physics 
 and chemistry " ' ; and this was, as a matter of fact, the 
 meaning which I had at first sight attached to the phrase. 
 If, then, your language is to be taken at its face value, it 
 would seem that the laws of physics and chemistry con- 
 stitute the criterion whereby the credibihty of particular 
 miracles is to be judged. But, if this position is to be 
 taken as axiomatic, it must be pointed out that its conse- 
 quences are somewhat far-reaching. If capacity for being
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams III 127 
 
 explained by the laws of physics and chemistry is the 
 criterion for judging of the reality of ' miracles ', a fortiori 
 it must be the criterion for judging of the reality of all 
 alleged events whatsoever. Because a ' miracle ' (on your 
 showing) is merely a ' wonder ' (p. 99) which lies ' outside 
 the common order ' (ibid.) — that is, presumably, outside 
 the usual experience of mankind. But this simply means 
 that a ' miracle ' is a surprising event. Now the term 
 ' surprising ' is clearly a relative term : events may be 
 surprising to one man which are not surprising to another. 
 The passage of an aeroplane across the sky, which awakens 
 no amazement in the breast of a modern European, would 
 occasion the extremest surprise and astonishment to an 
 Andaman islander. Clearly, then, the ' surprisingness ' of 
 a miracle is not something inherent in the miracle ; it is 
 a ' separable accident ', which has nothing to do with the 
 TL Tfv eTvai of the miracle itself. 
 
 Consequently, if ' explicability by the laws of physics 
 and chemistry ' is the test of reality in the case of alleged 
 ' miracles ' or ' surprising ' events, it can only be because 
 it is the test of reality in the case of all alleged events 
 whatsoever. 
 
 VI 
 
 But when we have reached this point in the process 
 of tracing out the impHcations of your identification of 
 * nature ' with ' the laws of matter and motion ', it would 
 seem that we can no longer avoid conclusions which are 
 utterly fatal to, and destructive of, religion in general, and 
 the Christian religion in particular. For if the real is that, 
 and that only, which is expUcable by the laws of physics 
 and chemistry, what becomes of personaUty, thought, 
 rehgious experience, consciousness, and life itself ? They 
 are mere epiphenomena, mere aspects of physical and 
 chemical processes which presumably have no substantive 
 existence apart from those processes. We seem landed 
 in an iron materialism, in which^all modes of spiritual
 
 128 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 existence appear to be nothing but ways of describing 
 the blind, purposeless clash of coUiding atoms. The con- 
 ceptions of free self-determining personality and of a life 
 beyond the grave would seem to be decisively excluded : 
 how can the ' soul ', if it is merely a name for certain 
 aspects of a physico-chemical process, persist in isolation 
 when that process has come to end ? How can an ' aspect ' 
 survive the dissolution of the substantive reaHty whereof 
 it is an aspect ? 
 
 I am quite sure that you would repudiate such a me- 
 chanistic WeltanscJiauung as heartily as I should myself : 
 indeed, you have done so in your original paper (p. 18). 
 But it seems to be irresistibly imphed in the setting up 
 of the laws of physics and chemistry as the ultimate 
 criterion of reahty in respect of ' surprising events '. I 
 must therefore have been wrong in my prima facie assump- 
 tion that by your phrase ' the laws of matter and motion ' 
 you meant ' the laws of physics and chemistry '. But, if 
 this is so, I have not the least idea what you mean by 
 ' the laws of matter and motion', and am, therefore, just 
 as much in the dark as ever about the sense in which you 
 are using the word ' natura '. The fault is doubtless mine : 
 but I am afraid I must say that, in defining ' natura ' as 
 ' the laws of matter and motion ' you have (so far as I am 
 concerned) merely defined ignotum 'per ignotius. 
 
 VII 
 
 It is possible, however, that you might reply to this 
 argument as follows : — 
 
 ' Not so fast. It is perfectly true that by " the laws of 
 matter and motion " I meant the laws of physics and 
 chemistry, or the laws of physics only. But you are not 
 justified in assuming that I regard " complete expHca- 
 bihty by the laws of physics and chemistry " as the 
 criterion of reahty in the case of " surprising events ". 
 I did not say that " surprising events ", in order to be
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams III 129 
 
 accepted as having really happened, must prove that they 
 are susceptible of a complete explanation by these laws : 
 I merely said that they must not involve a breach of these 
 laws. It is quite possible for a phenomenon to be only 
 partially explicable in physical or chemical terms, without, 
 nevertheless, contradicting the well-ascertained laws of the 
 universe which are embodied in the sciences of physics and 
 chemistry.' But is it ? Let us briefly examine the mean- 
 ing of these terms ' breach ' and ' contradiction '. 
 
 VIII 
 
 I hope I shall not be suspected of purely verbal quib- 
 bling if I say that I am not at aU certain what is meant by 
 a ' breach ' or a ' contradiction ' of ' the laws of matter 
 and motion', for the purposes of rigorous reasoning. I 
 have suggested one possible meaning for the phrase ' an 
 event involving a " breach " of the laws of matter and 
 motion ' — namely, ' an event which is not completely 
 exphcable in terms of physics and chemistry ' : but, as 
 I have just said, this is evidently not your meaning. 
 I know well enough what is meant by a ' breach ' of the 
 laws of England : it means, roughly, disobedience to 
 a command of the Legislature. But I need not remind 
 you that ' the laws of nature ' are not ' laws ' in the 
 juridical sense : they are statements of what is, not of 
 what ought to be : they are existential propositions, not 
 commands or ' value- judgements '. Now a ' contradic- 
 tion ' of an existential proposition would presumably 
 mean what is known in formal logic as its ' contrary ', or 
 its 'contradictory'. For instance, the 'law of gravita- 
 tion ' states that ' All material bodies attract each other 
 with a force varying inversely as the square of the dis- 
 tance '. The contrary of this would be ' No material 
 bodies attract each other, &c. . . ', and the contradictory 
 would be ' Some material bodies do not attract each other, 
 &c. . . '. An event, therefore, which ' involved a breach 
 
 K
 
 I 
 
 130 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 of ' the law of gravitation, would be an event, belief in 
 which would commit us to the acceptance either of the 
 proposition ' No material bodies attract each other, &c.' 
 or of the proposition ' Some material bodies do not attract 
 each other'. Now I should contend that no such event 
 is recorded, either in Holy Scripture, or in the lives of the 
 saints, or even in the wildest records of hagiographical 
 imagination. I know of no alleged ' miracle ' which 
 necessarily involves a ' contradiction ', in this sense, of the 
 law of gravitation. 
 
 This may, perhaps, be regarded as a somewhat startling 
 assertion, in view of the innumerable stories of ' levita- 
 tion ' which occur in the Old Testament, the New Testa- 
 ment, and subsequent ecclesiastical history. But I must 
 repeat that no alleged instance of ' levitation ', in itself, and 
 necessarily, involves a ' breach ' or ' contradiction ' of the 
 law of gravitation. Perhaps a parable will help me to 
 explain what I mean. 
 
 IX 
 
 Suppose that I were to relate the following anecdote to 
 a Modernist theologian. ' The other day, I was present 
 at a cricket match, and witnessed a curious phenomenon. 
 Jones was batting. A slow ball came along : Jones 
 stepped out from his crease, and smote with all his might. 
 From the surface of his bat the ball soared away in a grace- 
 ful parabola : it reached the summit of its trajectory, and 
 dipped downward towards the earth. However, when it 
 arrived at a point about five feet from the ground, it 
 stopped dead, and remained suspended motionless in the 
 air.' If my supposed theologian was an exceptionally 
 unsuspicious person, he might perhaps retort ' Nonsense. 
 Your story is on the face of it untrue. " Imperious 
 necessity " compels me to reject it ; for the supposition 
 of a ball stopping dead in the air whilst falling towards the 
 earth would involve a breach or contradiction of the law 
 of gravitation — it would be contra naturam.' To which
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams III 131 
 
 I might reply ' Well, this event, of which you deny the 
 possibihty, certainly happened. As a matter of fact the 
 ball was caught by one of the fielding side. The law of 
 gravitation was not "broken" or repealed when " mid- 
 ofiE " caught the ball in its flight towards the earth : the 
 earth did not suddenly cease to exert the force of its 
 attraction upon the ball : what happened was that this 
 force was counteracted and neutralized by an opposing 
 force, exerted by the muscles of " mid-off's " hand upon 
 the surface of the ball : and this latter opposing force, 
 though it may be partially explicable in physical or 
 chemical terms, was set in motion by a purely spiritual 
 cause, namely, the will of Robinson to " catch " Jones 
 " out ".' There is, therefore, nothing inherently impos- 
 sible about the conception of a natural force being tem- 
 porarily neutralized or counteracted by other forces set in 
 motion by spiritual causes : it is a thing which happens 
 every day, which we ourselves are perpetually bringing to 
 pass in all our dealing with and handhng of the material 
 world, 
 
 ' Quite so,' perhaps you will say ; ' I quite admit that 
 the operation of natural forces can be suspended or inter- 
 fered with by spiritual causes, whether human or super- 
 human, and instances of such suspension or interference 
 are exactly what I mean by supra Tiaturam events. What 
 I deny is the possibility that natural forces could be, not 
 merely transcended or superseded, but actually abohshed 
 or annihilated, even though such abolition or annihilation 
 were alleged to have been merely temporary. Alleged 
 events of this nature are what I should describe as contra 
 naturam '. Let me for a moment consider this position. 
 
 Our Divine Saviour is said in the Gospels on one occa- 
 sion to have walked or moved, in His physical body, 
 across and above the surface of the Lake of Gennesaret : 
 and the same is recorded of several Christian saints in 
 later centuries, such as St. Hyacinth of Poland and St. 
 Raymund of Pennafort. I imagine that I should not be 
 
 K2
 
 132 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 acting unfairly if I were to assume that you would stamp 
 these alleged events without more ado as contra naturam. 
 But are they ? I am not, for the moment, discussing the 
 question whether they really happened : I am simply 
 concerned to inquire whether, if they happened, they 
 would have involved the (temporary) annihilation, or 
 merely the neutralization, of natural forces. And it is 
 clear (at any rate to my mind) that these alleged events 
 do not necessarily involve more than the counteraction 
 of natural forces by spiritual forces, or by other natural 
 forces set in motion by spiritual causes. Suppose, for the 
 moment, that our Lord did walk upon the waters : it 
 would not be necessary to assume that the force of the 
 earth's attraction ceased to exist so far as His Body was 
 concerned : it would be quite as easy to say that this force 
 was counteracted and neutralized by spiritual energies 
 belonging to the unseen world, or by natural forces set 
 in motion by such energies. The case would be exactly 
 analogous to that of the cricket ball, except that the 
 spiritual cause which neutrahzed the force of the earth's 
 attraction would be superhuman, and not merely human. 
 In other words, the alleged miracle of the walking upon 
 the water can quite reasonably be represented as supra 
 naturam. 
 
 But, if this is so, a consequence of considerable logical 
 importance foUows, which I will endeavour to explain. 
 
 In the foregoing discussion, I have taken the example of 
 the law of gravitation and the alleged miracles of levita- 
 tion, because these miracles were adduced by you in your 
 original paper as instances of contra naturam events which 
 could and should be dogmatically condemned a priori 
 (p. 16 : ' We are convinced that life in New Testament 
 times was not conducted as if in the atmosphere of a dark 
 seance. We are convinced that bodies in those days did 
 not float in the air or materiaHze and demateriaUze at 
 will '). But the same line of reasoning seems to hold good 
 with regard to all the alleged events which I understand 
 
 \
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams III 133 
 
 that you would stamp as contra naturam. Multiplications 
 of food, bilocations, resuscitations of the dead — all could 
 be represented as involving, not the ' contradiction ' of 
 natural laws, but their temporary supersession by super- 
 natural laws. So far as I know, there is no alleged wonder 
 recorded in Holy Scripture and the lives of the saints 
 which might not be explained, with a little ingenuity, as 
 involving — not the annihilation of natural forces, but 
 — their counteraction and neutralization by spiritual 
 forces, or by other natural forces set in motion by spiritual 
 causes. (Let me say again, in order to avoid misunder- 
 standing, that I am very far from asserting that all these 
 alleged wonders did actually happen : I am merely con- 
 tending in the abstract that the hypothesis of their having 
 happened would not necessarily and inherently involve 
 the hypothesis of a ' contradiction ' of ' the laws of 
 nature '.) Even the most fantastic products of hagio- 
 graphical fancy need not necessarily be described as 
 inherently contra naturam, for it could always be contended 
 by the hagiographer that the particular wonder proposed 
 by him for our acceptance was merely an instance of the 
 neutralization and not of the annihilation of natural forces. 
 I have no doubt that even ' Joshua's moon in Ajalon ', 
 or the flying house of Loretto, could be represented in this 
 way, were it worth anybody's while to do so. 
 
 If, then, the term ' contra ' is understood in the sense 
 which I have affixed to it, it would seem that there are 
 literally no alleged miracles, not even the most outrageous, 
 which can be pronounced at once and without more ado 
 as ' contra naturam ' {natura being understood as = the 
 laws of physics and chemistry). All alleged miracles, 
 it would seem, are only supra naturam, and the contra 
 naturam test seems to fall to the ground. On the other 
 hand, if my interpretation of the word contra is incorrect, 
 I am utterly at a loss to know what is the true interpre- 
 tation.
 
 
 134 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 X 
 
 Perhaps I may summarize the above criticism of yom* 
 position as follows : — 
 
 1. You object to alleged ' miracles ' which are ' contra, 
 
 and not merely supra ', naturam. 
 I inquire what you mean by these terms. 
 
 2. You reply that by natura you mean ' the laws of 
 
 matter and motion ' (but you omit to explain what 
 you mean by supra and contra — which is the real 
 point). 
 
 3. I naturally take ' the laws of matter and motion ' to 
 
 mean ' the laws of physics and chemistry ' — at 
 least, if the phrase does not mean this, I do not 
 know what it means. 
 
 4. Assuming, however, that this identification is correct 
 
 (' the laws of matter and motion = ' the laws of 
 physics and chemistry ' ) I am still not certain 
 what is meant by the preposition contra or the verb 
 ' to contradict ', in reference to ' natura ' or ' the 
 laws of matter and motion '. 
 
 5. The first idea that occurs to me is that by ' an alleged 
 
 event which contradicts the laws of matter and 
 motion (i. e. of physics and chemistry) ' you mean 
 an event which is not completely and exhaustively 
 exphcable in terms of those Laws. A httle con- 
 sideration, however, shows me that this cannot be 
 so, inasmuch as it would presuppose a thorough- 
 going Materialism which I am very sure that you 
 do not hold. 
 
 6. I must therefore conclude that by an alleged event 
 
 which ' contradicts ' the law specified above you 
 mean an event which could only have happened if 
 the natural forces, of which these laws are com- 
 pendious and more or less imperfect descriptions, 
 had been (temporarily) abolished or annihilated. 
 But I am then faced with the difficulty that no
 
 3fr. N. P. Williams III 135 
 
 alleged miracles, not even those which I should 
 hold to be most inconsistent with the revealed 
 character of God, seem to be in this sense contra 
 naturam : there is no alleged wonder, however 
 grotesque, which could not be represented as 
 involving, not the annihilation, but the neutraliza- 
 tion of natural forces. 
 7. It would seem to follow that the distinction between 
 supra naturam and contra naturam is solely a 
 difference of terminology : every alleged super- 
 human interference, and indeed every actual 
 human interference, with the operation of mechani- 
 cal laws, could equally well be described from one 
 point of view as supra and from another point of 
 view as contra nxituram. Consequently, if we are 
 willing to follow the argument whithersoever it 
 leads, the attempt to label some alleged miracles 
 as supra naturam and others as contra naturam 
 would appear to be purely arbitrary. 
 
 A few words may now be devoted to another possible 
 definition of ' contra naturam events ', which might be 
 inferred from your language on p. 100. Speaking of 
 ' well-attested ' and ' supra naturam events ' you say that 
 such events have all had ' analogies in the ordinary course 
 of nature ' ; it might, therefore, be concluded that you 
 would define ' contra naturam events ' as events which 
 have no analogies in the ordinary course of nature. But 
 what is an ' analogy ' ? As used in ordinary speech, the 
 term ' analogy ' is one of the vaguest words in the English 
 language. I doubt whether it can be taken to mean more 
 than a vague sort of resemblance or similarity. And again, 
 it would, I think, be difficult to quote an instance of an 
 alleged miracle for which an ' analogy ', in the sense of an 
 event bearing some sort of hazy resemblance or parallelism
 
 I 
 
 136 Form and Content in Christiaii Tradition 
 
 to it, could not be discovered in the ordinary course of 
 nature. If this kind of argument has any real value, it 
 would not be difficult to produce ' analogies ' from nature 
 to 'parthenogenesis and the production of new life out of 
 death. No doubt you remember the late Prof. Drum- 
 mond's Natural Law in the Spiritual World, which was 
 devoted to the development of just such an analogical 
 argument in favour of the Gospel miracles. I never could 
 discern very much weight in this contention, though it was 
 designed to support the conclusions which I should wish to 
 advocate ; nor do I find any more weight in it if it is 
 turned against those conclusions. Why should not the 
 Almighty, in the course of His extraordinary deaUngs with 
 mankind, perform actions to which no exact parallel can 
 be found in His ordinary operations in nature ? I entirely 
 agree with your observation on p. 101, ' The evidence for 
 this kind of regularity ' [i. e. what is commonly called the 
 ' uniformity of nature '] ' is so overwhelming that I cannot 
 help regarding the will that finds expression in it as deeply 
 rooted in the character of God Himself ' : but I see no 
 reason why this element in the character of God should 
 be held to exclude the possibUity of His possessing those 
 quahties which in human beings we should call originaUty, 
 the faculty of initiative, the power of making fresh depar- 
 tures. Stability of character and the power of initiative 
 are not incompatible in men ; why should they be thought 
 so in the case of God ? 
 
 XII 
 
 Perhaps you may think that I have devoted a dispro- 
 portionate amount of space to this particular question, 
 especially as (to judge from your language on p. 101) you 
 would not wish to rest the main weight of your argument 
 against the Gospel miracles upon a priori considerations. 
 But it seems to me that the ground would be cleared for 
 any future discussion if it could be agreed that the dis-
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams III 137 
 
 tinction between contra naturam and supra naturam 
 miracles is, as you say, ' popular, and not scientific ' : and 
 that consequently it would not be illegitimate to found 
 upon this distinction any argument adverse to the parti- 
 cular miracles which happened to have been labelled as 
 contra naturam. 
 
 XIII 
 
 For these reasons I am unable to find very much cogency 
 in the a priori part of your argument against the Gospel 
 miracles, understood in the traditional way. I quite 
 admit that as a matter of psychological fact the observed 
 regularity of nature does create in the normal human 
 mind a real praeiudicium (though, as I should contend, 
 a praeiudicium which should be frankly recognized as 
 provisional) against the historicity of any supposed events 
 which would involve the supersession of natural forces 
 by causes belonging to an alleged spiritual world ; but, 
 if we are wilHng to remember that 
 
 There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
 Than are dreamt of in your philosophy, 
 
 such a praeiudicium cannot be described as overwhelming, 
 or sufficient to condemn a particular miracle even before 
 the a posteriori evidence for it has been heard. I do not 
 think that any one would be justified (unless, indeed, he 
 started from avowedly materialistic and atheistic pre- 
 suppositions) in doing more than ' pencilling a note of 
 interrogation in the margin ' of the record of an alleged 
 event of this nature, and passing on. The only a priori 
 test which, in my opinion, can be reasonably employed to 
 condemn alleged miracles without more ado — which 
 justifies us in refusing even to consider the evidence for 
 them — is that of consonance with what we believe (on 
 other grounds) to be the character of God. You have said, 
 in another connexion, that ' we never can know before- 
 hand what God will do and what He will not do ' (p. 113) : 
 but is not this, perhaps, a little too sweeping ? We should
 
 138 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 both agree, I imagine, that He is not likely to work absurd, 
 trivial, or immoral miracles. It is this consideration 
 which justifies us in ruHng out of court at once such stories 
 as that of the Virgin taking the place of the runaway nun, 
 or the parrot, who, when pursued by a hawk, screamed 
 out ' Sancte Thoma or a 'pro nobis ', with the result that his 
 pursuer fell dead. For beUevers in the Christian God this 
 criterion approaches as nearly to absolute cogency as any 
 a priori test can : though of course there may be a large 
 field of alleged wonders, in regard to which we cannot feel 
 certain whether or not they are too trivial for Almighty 
 God to have worked. This last consideration would, how- 
 ever, not apply to the crucial miracles of the Gospel 
 (i. e. the Virgin Birth, Resurrection, and Ascension) which, 
 whether true or not, are clearly not trivial or unimportant. 
 
 I have said before that if I approached the considera- 
 tion of the Gospel miracles, believing generally in God, 
 but without any further presuppositions, I do not think 
 I should be justified in condemning them off-hand as 
 legends : what I should do would be ' to pencil a note of 
 interrogation in the margin, and pass on'. You may 
 say, ' But that is exactly what I am doing : I do not con- 
 demn, or deny, these miracles : I merely label them with 
 a query and devote myself to affirming the other parts of 
 the Christian creed which do not seem to require any such 
 labelling '. To which I may reply, quite frankly : ' Quite 
 so : I should do exactly the same, but for my fundamental 
 postulate of the " infalHbihty of the Church " ' — which 
 I will proceed to discuss presently. 
 
 Before doing this, however, I must devote a few Hues to 
 what you claim (on p. 101) as having been, for you, ' the 
 really determining trains of argument ' — namely, ' those 
 which have come from the side of history and criticism or 
 from that of psychology.' Perhaps I may be permitted, 
 for the sake of clearness and brevity, to employ once more 
 the method of first summarizing your contentions and 
 then commenting on them.
 
 Mr. N. P. Williamfi HI 139 
 
 XIV 
 
 If I understand it rightly, your argument runs as 
 follows : — 
 
 1. In the case of Old Testament miracles, there is no 
 
 ' authentic first-hand testimony ' for the reality of 
 details which would have involved ' a real contra- 
 diction of the laws of nature ' ; in other words, for 
 * contra naturam ' miracles. All the records which 
 we possess were written many years or centuries 
 after the events : and there is a strong probability 
 in the nature of things that legendary details would 
 creep in. The occurrence of ' contra naturam ' 
 miracles in Old Testament times is, therefore, not 
 proven. 
 
 2. A similar line of reasoning may be applied to the 
 
 miracles of the New Testament. ' The first-class 
 evidence, that of St. Paul's epistles, is available 
 only for miracles of the first order ' — i. e. supra 
 naturam miracles. In the case of alleged contra 
 naturam details, although the interval between the 
 occurrence of the facts and the composition of the 
 records was not so great as in the Old Testament, 
 there was nevertheless ample time for the growth 
 of legendary accretions, in the process of oral, and 
 even of literary, transmission of the narratives. 
 The occurrence of genuinely contra naturam 
 miracles in New Testament times, as in Old Testa- 
 ment times, is, accordingly, not proven. 
 
 3. If, however, the occurrence of contra naturam 
 
 miracles cannot be demonstrated either in the Old 
 or in the New Testaments, and if it is possible to 
 explain the narratives of them as due to the uncon- 
 scious operation of mythopoeic imagination, such 
 an explanation becomes invested with a high 
 degree of probability ; in fact ' we have no doubt 
 in our own minds that, of the two hypotheses —
 
 140 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 that these things really happened, and that they 
 came to be thought to have happened on the basis 
 of widely prevalent ideas — the latter is by far the 
 more probable ' (p. 16). 
 
 XV 
 
 The first and most obvious comment which I have to 
 make upon this reasoning is that it presupposes, all 
 through, the distinction between supra naturam and 
 contra naturam miracles which you claim to derive from 
 the a priori part of your argument. This distinction is 
 really the foundation-stone upon which the successive 
 tiers of your argument ultimately rest. But, as I have 
 explained just now, I am not able to accept this distinc- 
 tion. I cannot admit any difference, in respect of prin- 
 ciple, between the Healing of the Blind, the Raising of the 
 Dead, and Walking on the Sea. For me, there is only one 
 kind, or one ' order ', of alleged miracles. By a ' miracle ' 
 I mean an event which involves the counteraction or 
 neutralization of natural forces by causes belonging to the 
 spiritual world — an event which may be indifferently 
 described as contra or as supra nxituram. Consequently, 
 the chain of reasoning by which you justify your charac- 
 teristic position, i. e. that which permits you to accept 
 some miracles and reject others, has no cogency for me. 
 
 XVI 
 
 Suppose, however, that for ' contra naturam miracles ' 
 we substitute throughout your argument ' miracles in 
 general ' : even in this form the argument would in my 
 opinion still fall short of formal cogency. 
 
 Because the ' mythological hypothesis ' would still be 
 only an hypothesis, in a great many cases. In some, of 
 course, it has to be accepted, because the alternative 
 hypothesis (viz. that the alleged miracle really happened) 
 is, not merely unproved, but definitely disproved — as in
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams III 141 
 
 the case of the Flood story. But nobody has ever proved, 
 or presumably ever will be able to prove (in the sense of 
 rigorously certain demonstration), that Elisha did not 
 make the iron to swim. It may be the case that the 
 written evidence for this incident dates from a time long 
 after its alleged occurrence, and that the narrative looks 
 suspiciously Uke folk-lore : but the fact that it can be 
 explained mythologically does not prove, or demonstrate 
 mathematically, that it must be so explained. I might be 
 inclined to say, as a matter of subjective feehng and 
 instinct, that the mythological explanation was perhaps 
 the most probable : but, from the point of view of strictly 
 objective and rigorous reasoning, I should not feel justified 
 in dogmatically ruling out the other explanation, viz. that 
 the incident really happened. In other words, my 
 attitude would have to be one of strict agnosticism : 
 I should have, as I said before, to ' pencil a note of inter- 
 rogation in the margin, and pass on '. 
 
 And this, as a matter of fact, is the attitude which 
 I should desire to advocate with regard to the miracles 
 recorded in the Old Testament. A few, Uke the story of 
 a universal Flood, are definitely known to be unhistorical : 
 one or two others, like that of Jonah and the great fish, 
 occur in narratives which we now know were not meant 
 even by their authors to be taken as history : a few 
 more, Kke the story of EHjah calling down fire from 
 heaven upon Ahaziah's soldiery, seem definitely incon- 
 sistent with the character of God as we know it from 
 the New Testament. But of the rest, and particularly of 
 those miraculous narratives which cluster round the great 
 moments in the history of the Chosen People — the Exodus, 
 the Giving of the Law, and the Prophetic movement — 
 I should like to say this : I do not doubt that miracles in 
 general did occur during the period of the Old Testament 
 and especially at these crucial points in the development 
 of Israel's life : but I am not prepared to go to the stake 
 for the exact historicity of any one particular miraculous
 
 142 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 record precisely as it stands in the Old Testament. And 
 that represents the exact amount of weight which I should 
 attach to the consideration (of which I fully admit the 
 truth) that a long space of time intervened between the 
 occurrence of the events and the composition of the 
 records. A firm belief in miracles in general, and a disin- 
 chnation to commit myself to all the details of any one 
 miracle in particular — this appears to me to be an attitude 
 to take up with regard to the Old Testament which is both 
 reasonable in itseK and entirely loyal to the historical 
 connexion and continuity between the Jewish and Chris- 
 tian Ecclesiae. 
 
 You will thus see that the view which I should desire to 
 advocate with regard to the miracles of the Old Testament 
 is practically very similar to, if not theoretically identical 
 with, that which you hold with regard to certain miracles 
 of the New Testament : and you may ask, ' Why not 
 frankly go forward upon the same lines ' ? To which 
 I should reply, that the cases of the Old Testament 
 miracles and of the Gospel miracles are in two important 
 respects entirely dissimilar. 
 
 XVII 
 
 In the first place, the evidence for the lives and doings 
 of our Lord and His Apostles is infinitely better, and 
 nearer in time to the facts, than the evidence for the 
 doings of Moses and EUjah. I cannot stay to elaborate 
 this thesis, but I may venture to remind you of Mr. Addis's 
 essay in the Studies in the Syno'ptic Problem, in which this 
 fact is brought out with great vividness and cogency. 
 (I must observe, in passing, that — daring though it may 
 seem to challenge an opinion expressed by you on a matter 
 of New Testament criticism — I am not at all prepared to 
 confine the term ' first-class New Testament evidence ' 
 solely to the ' evidence of St. Paul's Epistles '. I must 
 needs claim the major portion of the Synoptic Gospels,
 
 Mr, N. P. Williams III 143 
 
 and the Acts of the Apostles, as ' first-class evidence ', not 
 to mention the narrative parts of the Fourth Gospel.) 
 I think it is not unreasonable to contend that, given the 
 a priori possibility of miracles, the probability of the 
 ' mythological explanation ' of any alleged miracles varies 
 in direct proportion to the distance between the facts and 
 the narratives. In other words — given the a priori pos- 
 sibiUty of miracles — the nearer the records are to the facts, 
 the less likely the mythological explanation becomes. 
 And, whilst I should not maintain that this consideration, 
 by itself, reduced the probability of the ' mythological 
 hypothesis ' in the case of New Testament miracles to 
 vanishing point, or ruled it out altogether, I do think that 
 it clears the ground very considerably for the ' historical 
 hypothesis ' (i. e. the hypothesis that the facts actually 
 happened as related). 
 
 Perhaps I may put it in this way. If I looked at the 
 Gospel miracles without presuppositions of any kind, 
 I might still feel unable to decide definitely between the 
 ' historical ' and the ' mythological ' hypotheses : I might 
 still be constrained, as I have said before, to remain in 
 a position of agnosticism, or suspended judgement. But 
 I should still feel that, inasmuch as the New Testament 
 records are very considerably nearer in time to the facts 
 which they relate than the Old Testament records, the 
 ' historical ' hypothesis had a much greater chance of 
 being true in the case of any one New Testament miracle 
 than in the case of any one Old Testament miracle. 
 
 Of course, I should not in any case place all the miracles 
 of the New Testament upon the same level, in regard to 
 their claims upon the belief of Christians. For it is the 
 case that, out of all the miracles recorded in the Bible, 
 three, and three only, are required by the Creeds — that is, 
 by the authority of the undivided Catholic Church — to be 
 ex animo believed and accepted. Given the following 
 assumptions (1) a belief in the Incarnation, (2) the a priori 
 possibihty of miracles — of which, as I have said, I can only
 
 144 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 recognize one kind, or order, (3) the ' first-class ' quality 
 of the main body of the Synoptic Gospels — I should say 
 that the ' historical explanation ' of the Walking on the 
 Sea became invested with a high degree of probability. 
 I should say that the ' mythological explanation ' of this 
 incident, whilst still barely possible, was distinctly otiose 
 and unnecessary. But I should not claim, even for this, 
 quite the same degree of absolute and utter certitude 
 which I should for the three crucial miracles — the Virgin 
 Birth, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. This claim is 
 grounded in the fact that these three wonders are rooted 
 in the very tissue of historic Christianity, as I conceive it ; 
 they are bone of its bone, and flesh of its flesh : the full 
 credit of the ' infaUibility of the Church ' has been irre- 
 trievably hypothecated on their truth. You will easily 
 understand that, when I place in one scale of the balance 
 what I must needs consider the extremely frail, conjec- 
 tural, subjective, and precarious reasons for accepting the 
 ' mythological explanation ' of these things, and in the 
 other scale my deep, passionate, and overwhelming con- 
 viction that God would not have allowed His Church to 
 require (in such an imperious and uncompromising manner) 
 from its members unfeigned assent to propositions which 
 were not, in the highest and most inclusive sense of the 
 word, true — it is the latter scale which descends, and the 
 former that ' kicks the beam '.
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams III 145 
 
 XVIII 
 
 It is pleasant to pass from the subject of Miracles, 
 upon which discussion seems to be interminable and the 
 possibility of agreement not yet within sight, to a region 
 in which the edges of the fissure that divides us seem to 
 have been driven fairly close together — namely, to that 
 of the divine guidance bestowed upon the Church in its 
 work of defining Christian doctrine. Let me begin this 
 part of my letter by putting together the points upon 
 which agreement seems to have been reached. 
 
 1. With regard to the ' metaphysical ' doctrines, 
 
 which, I suppose, constitute the greater portion 
 of the whole body of Church doctrine, we agree 
 to distinguish between ' content ' and ' form '. 
 
 2. We agree that the content in these cases is ' per- 
 
 manent and unchangeable ' (your own words, 
 used on p. 2). 
 
 3. We agree, further, that ' the Church of Christ has 
 
 been divinely guided in its definitions of doctrine ' 
 (your last letter, p. 107) — that is, presumably, in 
 selecting appropriate ' forms ' for the embodiment 
 of the contents in question. 
 
 4. Finally, we agree that, whether these ' forms ' are 
 
 ' unalterable ' or not, the question of their altera- 
 tion, or of the substitution of other forms for them, 
 does not now arise, inasmuch as there is no one 
 universally recognized philosophical system current 
 to-day and not current in the earher centuries of the 
 Christian era (my first letter, p. 39 ; your last, p. 97). 
 This seems to represent the exact extent of our agree- 
 ment, formulated in precise and prosaic statements. But 
 I should like to add, in estimating the balance between 
 agreement and divergence, a certain, less easily definable, 
 unity of aim and sympathy, which comes out in such 
 sentences as the following, which I quote from your last 
 letter : 
 
 ' I profoundly believe that a presentation of Christianity
 
 146 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 is possible which shall be at once in strict and full con- 
 tinuity with the past and shall yet be in complete 
 harmony with the most assured results of progressive 
 science in the present ' (p. 105). 
 
 ' I do not doubt that there is a like balance between 
 the ideas of permanence and of change in the world of 
 thought and behef. My aim is to maintain an equili- 
 brium between the two sides ' (p. 106), 
 
 * Our object is, not to lay down what we think ought 
 to be or what ought not, but to describe as truthfully 
 and exactly as possible what actually is ' (p. 113). 
 
 I must not stay to enlarge upon this point, but it may 
 be of interest to you, and assist in the process of mutual 
 understanding, if I say that I can heartily subscribe to 
 every word of these sentences. After all, our object is 
 certainly the same, namely, to present orthodox Chris- 
 tianity ^ to the modern world in an intellectual form 
 which will not involve unnecessary difficulties {some 
 difficulties it must always involve). But if our goal is 
 the same, and if our roads are identical for a good part 
 of the journey thither, there is considerable hope that 
 we may be able, sooner or later, to arrive at a working 
 agreement with regard to the remainder. 
 
 I must now proceed to say a final word about our 
 differences under this head. Before doing so, I should 
 like briefly to comment on one section of your last letter 
 (p. 106, line 14 ff.). My remark about the ' comfort ', 
 which may be derived from surrendering oneself to the 
 broad deep river of historical Christianity, was an dbite^ 
 dictum, not an argument. I should never dream of 
 attempting to base the truth of orthodoxy upon its 
 ' comfort '-producing qualities : though there may be 
 no harm in pointing them out by the way. Nor do I see 
 the precise application of your remarks about the Church 
 of Rome (ibid.). So far as I recollect, I had not made 
 
 '^ I am justified in using this expression by the fact that on p. 19 
 you ' distinctly claim ' not to be ' unorthodox '.
 
 3Ir. N. P. Williams III 147 
 
 any reference, direct or indirect, to that body. When I 
 spoke of 'orthodox', 'traditional', 'historical', or 
 ' Catholic ' Christianity, I meant the faith, practice, and 
 worship of the undivided Catholic Church of the first 
 thousand years, and nothing narrower or more limited. 
 These are, perhaps, not very important points, but they 
 are worth making for the sake of clearness. 
 
 XIX 
 
 I have now to say a final word about the points of 
 difference which still remain. And the first of these 
 will not, I hope, detain us long. It has to do with the 
 question of the ' unalterabihty ' of the forms in which 
 the ' metaphysical ' doctrines of the Church are at 
 present, and have been for the last fourteen or fifteen 
 centuries, clothed. The matter is not one of great prac- 
 tical importance, because (as noted above, in my list 
 of points of agreement) there is now no one universally 
 accepted philosophy into terms of which they could be 
 translated. It is, in fact, a purely theoretical and specu- 
 lative problem, which might be formulated as follows : 
 Supposing that at some period in the future, before 
 the end of the world, a single logical system is invented, 
 and becomes universally accepted, in which the category 
 of Substance and Attribute and the copula (see p. 28) 
 are definitely transcended and superseded : will it then 
 be permissible for Christian theologians to set about 
 the work of translating orthodox dogma from terms 
 of Substance, Attribute, Nature, and Person into terms 
 of this new logic, whatever it may be ? Of ^course, for 
 me the supposition is an impossible one, because, as 
 I have said before, the thought-forms, in which the 
 content of the Depositum Fideitwsbs^ enshrined ^^hy the 
 Catholic Church of the first millennium, seem to me to 
 be rooted in the structure of the human mind as such : 
 and I cannot conceive the possibility of their ever being 
 
 l2
 
 148 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 superseded, so long as we retain our present faculties, 
 constituted as they are. But, if I am to suppose, for 
 the sake of argument, that such a new logic was dis- 
 covered, and became universally and unquestioningly 
 accepted — I do not mind saying that, under those cir- 
 cumstances, I think that Christian theologians would 
 be justified in endeavouring to translate the ' meta- 
 physical ' parts of the Faith into such hypothetical new 
 terms : though I should add the proviso, firstly, that it 
 would be incumbent upon them to see that none of the 
 heavenly treasure was lost, in the process of transferring 
 it from one set of vessels to another — that is, to exercise 
 the most minute and jealous care to see that the essential 
 content of the Deposit was in no way impaired or dimin- 
 ished by the change of form : ^ and secondly, that, 
 until Ecumenical authority had had an opportunity of 
 pronouncing upon the results of their labours, the new 
 formulations would have to be regarded as purely specu- 
 lative and provisional, and that, meantime, the old 
 categories and the ancient creeds would have to be con- 
 sidered as holding the field. 
 
 Of course, this is a purely speculative, perhaps a 
 fantastic, supposition, which may never be realized at all, 
 which certainly no one now aHve upon this earth is 
 likely to see realized. But it may help the process of 
 mutual comprehension if I say that (in order to meet 
 you as far as I can) I am prepared to explain the term 
 ' unalterable ', as applied to the ' metaphysical ' parts 
 of the Creeds, in the following way : The ' metaphysical ' 
 doctrines are inherently and absolutely unalterable 
 (' permanent and unchangeable ') in respect of their 
 content ; in respect of their form, they are conditionally 
 unalterable, i. e, they cannot be altered unless and until 
 some instrument, more perfectly adapted for describing 
 
 ^ A proviso which has been conspicuously not fulfilled by most 
 modem attempts to translate the Doctrine of the Person of Christ 
 from terms of ' substance ' and ' nature ' into terms of ' value '.
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams III 149 
 
 the mutual relations of Reals, than was the old logic, 
 is discovered. And, even then, I should contend that 
 the Deposit of Faith could only be lawfully retranslated 
 into the new terms by the same authority which had 
 previously translated it into the old, viz., by that of 
 the Universal Church. But the discovery of such a new 
 logic is such an inconceivably remote contingency that 
 I do not feel it necessary for practical purposes always 
 to insert the adverb ' conditionally ' before the word 
 ' unalterable ', when referring to this subject : and I 
 still retain my private opinion that this contingency is 
 not merely inconceivably remote, but actually im- 
 possible. 
 
 On this point, therefore (if I am not being too opti- 
 mistic), I am incHned to think that our differences have 
 been reduced almost to vanishing point. Most doctrinal 
 controversies in the early Church were terminated by 
 the discovery of a formula which men of goodwill on 
 both sides could accept, though not always with a 
 minute and exact identity of meaning : I would suggest, 
 as such a ' Union ' formula, the following : ' The meta- 
 physical doctrines of the Church are strictly unalterable 
 as to their content : as to their form, they are unalter- 
 able for all practical purposes and so far as human pre- 
 vision can at present reach.' 
 
 XX 
 
 These considerations, however, do not apply to the 
 ' historical clauses ' of the Creeds. With regard to them, 
 I should contend that there are three, and only three, 
 legitimate mental attitudes, viz. : 
 
 1. Frank acceptance of them as they stand. 
 
 2. Frank rejection of them as they stand. 
 
 3. Pure agnosticism, or suspension of judgement. 
 The attitude of ' freedom of apprehension ', which you 
 
 claim to occupy, and which does not appear to be iden-
 
 150 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 tical with any one of the above three, I should maintain 
 to be inadmissible in their regard. It seems to me that 
 whatever ' freedom of apprehension ' may be permissible 
 in the case of the ' metaphysical ' dogmas arises out of 
 the fact that the content and the (present de facto) form 
 have not always been associated, and that the form is 
 relative to the structure of human thought. I dare say 
 that in regard to these doctrines there must always be 
 a small margin of variation in the individual apprehen- 
 sion and assimilation of them. But the class of proposi- 
 tions to which the ' historical clauses ' of the Creeds belong 
 seems to be one in which such a margin of variation can- 
 not, from the nature of things, be admitted : they must, 
 as I have said before, be either taken or left : and this 
 for the following reasons. 
 
 The historical clauses purport to be statements of 
 objective, external facts, occurring in the material or 
 phenomenal world — the world which we apprehend 
 through the medium of sense. There is no use in bUnk- 
 ing this fact. The clause affirming the Virgin Birth states 
 what purports to be a sheer physical fact — that the body 
 of Jesus Christ was conceived by Mary without the usual 
 physical antecedents. The article affirming the Resur- 
 rection states that the death of that Body on the Cross 
 was not followed by the usual physical consequents. 
 There can be no doubt that these clauses (purport to) 
 describe (alleged) events in the material world : for our 
 Lord's Body, whilst He lived on earth, certainly was part 
 of the material world. Now I should contend that no 
 proposition which purports to describe either a permanent 
 state of, or a change in, the material world, can reasonably 
 be styled ' relatively true ' or ' relatively false '. All such 
 propositions must, in the nature of things, be either abso- 
 lutely true — that is, true for everybody and true for God, 
 the all-seeing and all-wise — or absolutely false. Because 
 the material world itself is not ' relative '. It exists out- 
 side us and independently of us. It is not a mere picture
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams III 151 
 
 in our heads, or a state of our consciousness. And if the 
 material world exists independently of us and absolutely, 
 or in its own right, clearly also its various states, and the 
 changes that occur in it, are absolute, and not relative — 
 they are not created by us : they are what they are, 
 whether we are there to see or not. Consequently, there 
 is no element of ' relativity ' in such a statement as this, 
 'The earth goes round the sun'. This, we happen to 
 know, is ' absolutely ' true. The earth, ever since the 
 beginning of its separate existence, always has gone round 
 the sun : it was in actual fact going round the sun, even 
 when everybody believed that the sun was going round 
 the earth. Similarly, there is no element of relativity in 
 the contrary proposition, 'The sun goes round the earth'. 
 This, we should say, is ' absolutely ' — or quite indepen- 
 dently of our perceptions or preferences — false. I imagine 
 that even the wildest subjectivist would hardly assert 
 that the sun moved round the earth until the time of 
 Copernicus, and that the opposite has been the case ever 
 since. 
 
 There are, it is true, a certain number of affirmations 
 about the external world which might be described in 
 a certain sense as infected with relativity : and these are 
 affirmations in which the predicate has a numerical or 
 quantitative determination. For instance, we might say 
 that the proposition ' The London train leaves at 7.35 ' 
 was ' relatively true ', even though the fact might be that 
 it left at 7.33. We express the same idea in less philo- 
 sophical language when we say that a proposition, which 
 we know to be somewhat inexact or inaccurate, is ' near 
 enough '. I suppose the instance which I have given 
 above is said to be ' relatively true ' in the sense that it 
 is true, or practically satisfactory, for the purposes of 
 a man who is accustomed to allow himself at least ten 
 minutes' margin for catching trains ; but it is clear that 
 it would be false relatively to a man who made a point 
 of arriving at the station not more than one minute before
 
 152 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 the departure of his tram. But in any case it is obvious 
 that the clauses of the Creed which affirm the Virgin 
 Birth and the Resurrection have no element of ' rela- 
 tivity ' in them, in this sense. It would be absurd to say 
 that such a starthng assertion as that ' Jesus Christ had 
 no human father ' was ' inaccurate ' or ' inexact '. No 
 one would say that Dr. Cook's claims to have reached 
 the North Pole were ' inaccurate ', unless he were con- 
 sciously indulging in jocular meiosis. 
 
 I am therefore still constrained to contend that in the 
 case of the clauses affirming the Virgin Birth and Resur- 
 rection [a] form and content are coincident and insepar- 
 able, and that (b) even if, for the purposes of thought, we 
 distinguish them, there is no trace of relativity in the 
 form of these historical propositions, such as I have 
 admitted to exist in the case of the metaphysical propo- 
 sitions. It foUows, therefore, that, in regard to them, 
 the claim to ' freedom of apprehension ' or ' partial affir- 
 mation ' cannot be conceded ; as I said at the beginning 
 of this section, the only attitudes which I can recognize 
 as being logically legitimate are frank acceptance, frank 
 rejection, and frank agnosticism. And, on this point at 
 least, I think I can claim to have on my side whatever 
 weight may be supposed to attach to the opinion of the 
 ' plain man ' or the ' man in the street '. 
 
 XXI 
 
 Perhaps, after all, by ' freedom of apprehension ' you 
 really mean what I have called ' agnosticism ' — the atti- 
 tude of neither affirming nor denying. But I must point 
 out that, so far as its bearings on the question of the 
 ' infalUbihty ' or ' trustworthiness ' of the Church are 
 concerned, the thii'd attitude, that of ' agnosticism ', is 
 practically equivalent to the second, that of ' rejection '. 
 It is obvious that an attitude of ' agnosticism ' or ' sus- 
 pense of judgement ', in regard to what is imperiously
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams III 153 
 
 inculcated by a guide claiming to be ' infallible ', argues 
 a considerable degree of mistrust and absence of con- 
 fidence in the said guide. We are, therefore, brought 
 back to the second main point of difference under this 
 head, viz. whether or not the ' divine illumination ' which 
 we both admit to have been bestowed upon the Church 
 in the work of defining Christian doctrine was of such 
 a degree of intensity that it can reasonably be described 
 as endowing the Church with ' infalhbihty '. A few words 
 must now be devoted to this question. 
 
 XXII 
 
 And first, with regard to the grounds on which this 
 fundamental premiss of the ' infalhbility of the Church ' 
 rests. In my first letter (p. 38) I based it frankly upon 
 an ' intuition '. You, however, can only regard my claim 
 to possess this intuition as involving a ' petitio principii 
 on a large scale ' (p. 109). You had made this criticism 
 already in your second letter (on pp. 52, 53), and I had 
 retorted with a tu quoque, of which you candidly admit 
 the force (p. 109). I do not know that there is very much 
 more to be said on the subject, from the point of view 
 of pure logic. In regard to dependence upon unproved 
 and unprovable assumptions, we both, and all Christians 
 with us, are ' in the same boat ' ; nor does it seem to me 
 that the difference in the degree of definiteness with 
 which we hold what is in reaUty one and the same funda- 
 mental principle (cf. pp. 61, 63) constitutes a ground for 
 assuming one way of holding it to be vaHd, and the other 
 not. The pot has no right to reproach the kettle with 
 blackness, even though the kettle's integument may be 
 of a somewhat more definitely raven hue than its own. 
 Your remarks about ' anticipated truth ' and ' verifica- 
 tion' (p. 110) are, of course, from my point of view, unex- 
 ceptionable. In fact, it seems to amount to a statement, 
 in different words, of the principle which I ventured
 
 154 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 to expound on pp. 72, viz, that religious principles are 
 given in the first instance by ' intuition ' or the ' gift 
 of Faith ' (these are only names for the same ineffable 
 fact, viewed respectively from man's side and from God's), 
 and verified by the consciousness of the reception of 
 ' grace ', or spiritual help. For, how do you come by 
 your ' anticipated truths ', unless it be by direct, though 
 unanalysable, revelation from God — that is, by a flash of 
 divinely bestowed insight or intuition ? You would, I 
 imagine, hardly say that you had stumbled upon them 
 by pure accident, Hke Archimedes in his discovery of 
 hydrostatics : and you would hardly maintain, in view 
 of facts like the Messina earthquakes and the Titanic 
 disaster (not to mention the present war), that the ' veri- 
 fication ', even for such a proposition as ' God is love ', 
 was a matter of direct sensory observation. But it does 
 not seem unreasonable to assert that whatever guarantee 
 is afforded by ' intuition ' on the one hand and moral and 
 spiritual ' verification ' on the other can be claimed as 
 much by those parts of Cathohcism which are pecuHar 
 to it as by those which it has in common with orthodox 
 Protestantism ; and, indeed, you profess yourself willing 
 ' to share with ' me ' the benefit of these considerations ' : 
 so that, perhaps, no more need be said upon this section 
 of our argument. 
 
 XXIII 
 
 I welcome what you say in the footnote to p. 106 : 
 * The weakened sense which you attribute to these words 
 " infalHbihty ", " unalterability " goes far to meet me/ 
 despite the fact that in the text of your letter you describe 
 them as ' unfortunate '. I should not, indeed, have, my- 
 self, described this sense as a ' weakened sense ' : I am 
 not aware that any responsible person ever has attributed 
 any other sense to the word ' inf aUibihty ' than that of 
 ' incapacity for deceiving or being deceived ' : and I 
 should have supposed it self-evident that, so far as the
 
 J/r. N. P. Williams III 155 
 
 word ' unalterable ' is appHed to the Catholic Faith, it 
 is only applied simpliciter to the essential ' content ', as 
 distinguished from the ' form ' (cf. p. 23). However, we 
 need not waste time in discussing this question. I am 
 glad that I have succeeded in making clear to you exactly 
 what I mean by the ' unalterability of the Faith ' and 
 the ' infallibility of the Church '. But I very much regret 
 that I cannot see my way to obhge you by dropping these 
 terms, as you suggest in the footnote quoted above. No 
 doubt, the word ' infallibility ' tends to arouse many pre- 
 judices in the minds of some people : it calls up visions 
 of the Vatican Council of 1870, of Ultramontanism, In- 
 quisitors, and thumb-screws. But I am afraid I cannot 
 help that. It is sometimes necessary to adhere tena- 
 ciously to a particular word, despite its accidental un- 
 popularity, because it is the only word which really 
 expresses a particular meaning — as in the case of the 
 Homoousion. And so it is in the present instance. We 
 could not drop the word without appearing to disparage the 
 idea : for there is no other term which exactly expresses 
 what we mean. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 Perhaps, however, the process of replying to isolated 
 points is somewhat unsatisfactory. It will be simpler if, 
 at the cost of some prohxity, I venture to sketch the way 
 in which I arrive at my position as a whole, replying to 
 any further points of difference as they emerge in the 
 course of the discussion. 
 
 I find myself in need of a religion ; that is, of some 
 means of access to God, some means of obtaining help 
 from Him towards salvation from sin, and some rehable 
 information about Him. For various reasons, which I 
 need not go into here, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, 
 Bahaism, and so forth, do not satisfy me. Christianity, 
 therefore, holds the field, in default of other claimants. 
 But, I no sooner state to myself ' I must be a Christian ',
 
 156 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 than the question rises up in front of me, ' What is 
 Christianity ? ' And, at first sight, it would seem reason- 
 able to reply, ' Christianity is what the great majority 
 of those who profess and call themselves Christians 
 beheve it to be ' ; in other words, what I have desig- 
 nated as ' CathoUcism ' ; just as, if I were inquiring 
 ' What is Radicahsm ? ' it would be prima facie reason- 
 able to reply ' Radicalism is what all, or most, persons 
 who call themselves Radicals declare it to be '. 
 
 Let me insert at this point an anecdote which will 
 illustrate the prima facie reasonableness of this pro- 
 visional answer to the question. 
 
 I have a friend who is a devout and learned member 
 of the Jewish Church. Some time ago he had occasion 
 to pubHsh a pamphlet in which he addressed himself 
 especially to the consideration of the question ' What 
 is the essence of Judaism ? ' The course of his argument 
 compelled him to make use of analogies drawn from 
 Christianity, and in one section of his treatise he found 
 himself referring to the doctrine of the Real Presence as 
 ' one of the central doctrines of Christianity '. For 
 this, he was somewhat vehemently attacked by certain 
 Christian divines, who shall be nameless, on the ground 
 that the doctrine in question was not a central doctrine 
 of Christianity, but merely of one type, and that the 
 least enlightened and progressive type, of Christianity. 
 To which my friend, very reasonably in my opinion, 
 replied, ' Your special behefs and preferences, or those 
 of English Christians in particular, have nothing to do 
 with me ; no more have your views as to what con- 
 stitutes " progress ". I stand outside Christianity 
 altogether ; religiously, and to a certain extent socially, 
 my outlook and environment are cosmopolitan rather 
 than insular ; I therefore view Christendom as a whole, 
 in the character of a detached and dispassionate observer. 
 Moreover, I am not specially interested in its origins ; 
 for my purposes, I only need to take cognizance of the
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams III 157 
 
 state in which it is now, and has been for by far the 
 greater part of its history. Consequently, I feel myself 
 entitled to assume that " Christianity " is what the 
 vast majority of its adherents declare it to be ; and my 
 statement about " the Real Presence " was, therefore, 
 perfectly correct.' 
 
 It is, perhaps, not uncharitable to suppose that the 
 divines in question had, hitherto, tacitly assumed as 
 a matter of course that ' Christianity ' was mainly iden- 
 tical with Anglo-Saxon, or possibly with Teutonic Chris- 
 tianity, and that Christianity as it exists in other than 
 Teutonic countries was comparatively negligible. I need 
 not point out to you how intensely home, provincial, and 
 insular such a view appears, if formulated in express 
 terms. But, for any one who rejects it, as the philosopher, 
 the ' spectator of all time and all existence ', necessarily 
 must, the only attitude possible at the beginning of the 
 quest, would seem to be that of my Jewish friend, 'I 
 assume provisionally that " Christianity " is what the 
 overwhelming majority of Christians say that it is '. 
 
 I do not, of course, assert that this consideration pos- 
 sesses anything like absolute cogency ; its only value, so 
 far, is that it gives me an d<popfxi^ for my inquiry. Aristotle 
 {Top. 100 a 29) says that dialectical reasoning necessarily 
 starts from to. euSo^a, ' current opinions ', which he pro- 
 ceeds to define as the opinions held by ' all men ', ' the 
 majority of men ', or by ' the wise '. I do not think it is 
 too much to claim this proposition (' The presumption is 
 that " Christianity " in the strict sense = " Catholicism " ') 
 as an euSo^op, vouched for by a sufficient number of a-o(j)oi, 
 to serve as a starting-point for my research. 
 
 Perhaps this idea might be expressed in the following 
 way. Imagine a Martian, or some completely impartial 
 visitant from another world, studying the present state 
 of Christianity, in order to arrive at a comprehension of 
 its essential nature and meaning. Undoubtedly at first 
 sight the most massive and imposing fact which would
 
 158 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 force itself upon his attention would be the existence of 
 a great central block numbering some four hundred mil- 
 lions of people (that is, nearly four-fifths of the total 
 periphery of Christendom), which, with whatever cleav- 
 ages of external unity and diversities of rite and custom, 
 holds and beUeves in what is substantially the same con- 
 ception of the Christian religion. Throughout the whole 
 length and breadth of this block there runs a single three- 
 fold grain or structure — doctrinal, institutional, and sacra- 
 mental. The Nicene Creed, the great doctrines of the 
 Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement, the three- 
 fold ministry, the sacraments, the ' Communion of Saints ' : 
 these things are the same in Moscow as they are in Paris, 
 the same in Siberia as they are in Galway. He would 
 notice, on the other hand, when looking at what I may, 
 without disrespect, call the ' fringe ' which surrounds this 
 great central block, that the various comminuted frag- 
 ments, of which the fringe is made up, have all, at one 
 time or another, been broken off from the main block ; 
 and that they do not seem to have any one clearly essen- 
 tial principle binding them together, other than that of 
 their separation from it. He would notice, further, that 
 so far as they have any positive structure at aU, it is 
 identical with that of the main block, only cut down and 
 mutilated in varying degrees of completeness. Some 
 which lie close to the main block have the three-fold 
 grain very clearly marked : others have it less distinctly 
 visible, and in others it has been almost entirely obliter- 
 ated. Those which he farthest away, on the extreme 
 edge of the fringe (the schools of thought associated with 
 the names of Troeltsch and Jatho), seem to shade off into 
 and to be practically indistinguishable from the surround- 
 ing abyss of pure agnosticism. At first sight, then, it 
 seems probable that the central block really is what it 
 claims to be, namely, real or essential Christianity, and 
 that the fringe consists of defective, mutilated, or cut- 
 down versions of it.
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams III 159 
 
 If, however, I interrogate the various sections of the 
 fringe as to their own raison d'etre, I find that they all 
 return pretty much the same reply. All claim that the 
 great central block consists of a kernel of genuine Chris- 
 tianity, which has been coated over in the course of ages 
 with a thick crust of non-Christian accretions. I find, 
 indeed, that the non-CathoHc bodies are not at all unani- 
 mous in their repHes to the question, ' Which CathoHc 
 doctrines or practices belong to the kernel, and which to 
 the adventitious crust ? ' Some, for instance, would say 
 that such ideas as the Real Presence and Communion of 
 Saints belonged to the ' crust ', but that the doctrines 
 of the Trinity and the Incarnation belonged to the 
 * kernel '. Others would say that the whole three-fold 
 structure which I have noted above belonged to the 
 ' crust ', and that the ' kernel ' consisted merely of mono- 
 theism and morahty, or of morality only. Nor is there 
 any unanimity as to when the alleged process of ' accre- 
 tion ' began ; some place its beginning at the end of the 
 ' first six centuries ', some immediately after the fourth, 
 some after the first. I have, therefore, to look into his- 
 tory, to examine the origins of Christianity for myself, 
 and to form my own judgement as to whether or not 
 Cathohcism is real Christianity, or real Christianity plus 
 a ' crust ' of paganism. 
 
 I find, as a result of my historical investigations, that 
 Catholicism can be traced back, in essentials, at least to 
 the last quarter of the second century a.d. Beyond this 
 point, indeed, the evidence becomes fragmentary and 
 imperfect ; but, so far as I can pierce the mists which 
 involve the primitive beginnings of Christianity, I seem 
 to see the characteristic fines of Cathohcism running back 
 through Irenaeus, Polycarp, and Ignatius, into the apo- 
 stolic age and joining up there with the main tendencies 
 of the preaching of St. Paul and St. John. (I am speak- 
 ing, of course, in the most summary fashion, and have 
 not time or space to prove all these historical assertions
 
 160 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 here.) I need not remind you of what scholars Hke 
 Kirsopp Lake say about Pauline sacramentalism and 
 Johannine mysticism. But, even so, I am not yet out of 
 the wood. Even if it be admitted that Catholicism is 
 the legitimate continuation and development of Pauline 
 sacramentalism, it would not necessarily follow that it was 
 the legitimate development of authentic Christianity — 
 that is, of Christianity as taught by Christ. For there is 
 always the hypothesis, on which liberal Protestantism is 
 being more and more forced back, that St. Paul and 
 St. John (doubtless unconsciously and with the best of 
 motives) misrepresented the Founder of Christianity. I 
 have still to reckon with the theory which holds that 
 through the medium of St. Paul and his Gentile converts, 
 the characteristic ideas and usages of the Mystery ReH- 
 gions filtered into Christianity, and that the Apostle of 
 the Gentiles was the first great corrupter of the primitive 
 simpHcity of the Gospel. There seem, in short, to be 
 two possible hypotheses of the origin of Catholicism : 
 (1) that it really is what it claims to be, the legitimate 
 development and explication of a deposit committed by 
 Christ to his followers ; (2) that it is a vast mass of Graeco- 
 Roman accretion, waUing in and conceaHng from view 
 the original core of the Master's teaching, which is alleged 
 to have been nothing but monotheism and morahty, 
 contained in the fantastic and delusive forms of Jewish 
 apocalyptic. 
 
 From the purely intellectual point of view it seems to 
 me that either of these hypotheses will fit, or, at any rate, 
 can be made to fit, the facts ; and I do not know that on 
 purely intellectual grounds I should ever be able to 
 decide between them. Of course, the ' secularization- 
 hypothesis ' involves the rejection of certain parts of the 
 Gospels (that is, of the only evidence which we possess 
 for the life of Christ), as, for instance, the passages which 
 represent the Founder of Christianity as speaking of ' My 
 Church ', promising His Apostles that what they should
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams III 161 
 
 bind on earth should be bound in heaven, and requiring 
 the universal propagation of baptism : but the explana- 
 tion which it provides for the existence of these passages, 
 namely, that they are due to an unconscious coloration 
 of the facts, in the minds of the Evangelic writers, by the 
 incipient Catholicism of the Pauline school, is not in the 
 nature of things impossible ; a priori, I should say that 
 the * secularization-hypothesis ' was no less, and no more, 
 probable than the ' Deposit-hypothesis '. I find, in fact 
 (if I may be allowed the use of a profoundly conventional 
 metaphor), that I have come to the ' parting of the ways ', 
 and there is no signpost to tell me whether to turn to the 
 right hand or to the left. It is just at this point that 
 some unseen power seems to take hold of me and push me 
 forcibly down the left-hand road ; that is, the road of 
 identifjdng myself with, and committing myself to, the 
 great central mass of Christianity. This is what I meant by 
 the phrase ' intuition '. It is not necessary for me here to 
 discuss the exact nature of this 'intuition ', as a function 
 of the soul ; I have really nothing more to add to what 
 I said in my second letter (p. 62, 1. 20). I am now only 
 concerned to point out the exact place which it occupies 
 in the process whereby I arrive at my position. My 
 * intuition ' simply shows me, in a perfectly general sense, 
 that the left-hand road is to be taken ; in other words, 
 that the great secular development of Catholic Chris- 
 tianity really was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and that 
 ' historical ' or ' traditional ' Christianity — the Chris- 
 tianity of the great central block — is to be believed and 
 accepted. I look at the venerable fabric of the historic 
 Church and Faith, viewing it as an indissoluble whole, 
 cohering together in unity and simplicity : and, despite 
 the superficial disfigurements which man has been per- 
 mitted to inflict upon it (such as the breaches of visible 
 Church communion) and the adventitious growths which 
 deform some parts of it (such as the one-sided develop- 
 ment of the modern Papacy), I find myself saying ' Surely 
 
 M
 
 162 Form and Content in Christian Tradition 
 
 God is in this place : this is none other than the house 
 of God, and this is the gate of heaven '. 
 
 Of course, I quite admit that this ' intuition ', or ' cate- 
 gorical imperative ', constitutes a valid argument only 
 for me and others who are conscious of it. I cannot really 
 argue with any one who altogether repudiates possessing 
 it, nor do I pretend to be able to prove to such a one 
 that he ought to possess it. It is just the same in the 
 case of ethics, or aesthetics ; the man who possesses the 
 ethical or aesthetic sense could not argue with an opponent 
 who disclaimed its possession, because there would be no 
 common premisses from which the argument could start. 
 And this discussion in which we have been engaged has 
 only been rendered possible by the fact (as it seems to 
 me) that you do possess this ' intuition ' or ' categorical 
 imperative ', only, as I said on p. 74, in an imperfect or 
 weakened form. I cannot prove to you that you ought 
 to have this intuition in the same form in which I possess 
 it, any more than Aristotle could prove to the possessor 
 of an imperfect moral sense that he ought to have a per- 
 fect one.^ In the nature of the case, all that I can hope 
 to do is to show {a) that, given my premisses, my conclu- 
 sions irresistibly follow (which, I gather, you do not dis- 
 pute), and (6) that the objections sometimes raised against 
 these premisses are not insuperable or unanswerable. 
 And this, in the last resort, is all that any theologian, 
 whatever religious system he may be defending, can pre- 
 tend to accomplish. Were it otherwise — were it possible 
 to prove propositions about God and heavenly things by 
 direct induction from sense-observation, like the laws of 
 natural science, or by direct deduction from the necessary 
 laws of thought, like the truths of mathematics — there 
 would be no such thing as divisions of religious opinion, 
 on the one hand ; and there would be no room left for 
 the exercise of the virtue of Faith, on the other. 
 
 ^ The best argument that Aristotle can find for dealing with the 
 man who challenges fundamental moral principles is to inform him 
 that ho needs ' chastisement ' rather than ' demonstration '.
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams III 163 
 
 XXV 
 
 You will, no doubt, see from the foregoing what answer 
 I should give to the criticism contained in the foUowmg 
 words (p, 109 of your last letter) : ' I cannot in the least 
 see that broad antecedent principles such as these (the 
 ideas of God, Freedom, and Immortahty) supply any 
 sound analogy or justification for the claim that you 
 make to take on trust an elaborate system consistiug 
 of a great number of distinct propositions.' I suppose 
 your contention is, that there is no analogy from a simple 
 ' intuition ' which gives a simple, single proposition, such 
 as ' God exists ', to an alleged ' intuition ' which vouches 
 for an elaborate system consisting of many propositions. 
 But I must point out this : I do not claim to be able to 
 hold the whole body of CathoUc doctrine in the focus of 
 attention simultaneously, and to have a simultaneous 
 intuition of the truth of each and every particular member 
 of it. I merely claim to see by intuition the truth, or the 
 divinity, of ' historic Christianity ' — that is, the Chris- 
 tianity of the ' great central block ' — as an undifferen- 
 tiated whole. I do not pretend to have sixty separate 
 and synchronous intuitions assuring me that this, and 
 this, and this detail of CathoUcism is true. All I claim is 
 to know by intuition that CathoHcism in general is true. 
 I begin with the whole, and work down through the pro - 
 cess of reasoning and inquiry to the parts. It follows 
 that what I should put forward as being, for me, the 
 really chnching argument on the subject of, let us say, 
 the Virgin Birth, might be roughly summarized as foUows : 
 ' CathoHcism as a whole is true ; the Virgin Birth is an 
 integral part of CathoUcism ; therefore the Virgin Birth 
 is true.' No doubt it is just here that you will find the 
 petitio principii. You would, no doubt, contend that, by 
 assuming the truth of CathoHcism, I impHcitly assume 
 the truth of the Virgin Birth ; and am therefore begging 
 the precise question at issue. But I may remind you that
 
 164 Form and Content in Christian Iradition 
 
 this petitio principii, if such it is to be called, is one which 
 is implicit in the syllogism as such. The objections which 
 have been raised, on this score, by modern logicians 
 against the syllogism, as a form of reasoning, are well 
 known. The stock instance is something as foUows : We 
 wish, let us say, to prove that Socrates is mortal ; we 
 therefore reason as follows : ' All men are mortal ; now 
 Socrates is a man ; therefore, Socrates is mortal.' It is 
 urged, with good reason, that the conclusion is reaUy 
 impUcit in the major premiss. Therefore, it is contended, 
 syllogistic reasoning is a perpetual revolution in a circle, 
 which can never disclose to us any truth which we do not 
 know ah'eady. I imagine that the usual reply to this 
 difficulty would run somewhat in this manner : ' The 
 psychological process, of which the syllogism is the logical 
 formulation, is as follows : we have presented to us 
 a single homogeneous whole or unity, which may be 
 described as " humanity in general " ; and within it, but 
 indissolubly rooted in it, we distinguish two elements or 
 aspects, namely, " Socrates " and " Mortality ", which are 
 seen to cohere together in vktue of their own co-inherence 
 in the general mass of " humanity ".' Thus, aU syllo- 
 gistic reasoning is, in the last analysis, a process of inspec- 
 tion ; and this is the point which I tried to make on 
 page 64 in my second letter. ' Having obtained my 
 principle by means of intuition (i.e. that " orthodox 
 Christianity " is true) I can then proceed by way of 
 pure ratiocination, or rather of mere inspection of the facts. 
 I have only to inform myself as to what the truths of 
 orthodox tradition actually are.' When we ' deduce ' 
 a new truth from an old, what reaUy happens is that we 
 look, more attentively and minutely than we have ex 
 hypothesi hitherto done, at the old truth : and, for the 
 first time, discern the new truth contained or embedded 
 in it. And so it is in the present instance. We have 
 given to us, by Faith, the general belief that ' traditional 
 Christianity ' is the authentic Deposit of truth, com-
 
 Mr. N. P. Williams 111 165 
 
 niitted by our Lord to His Apostles, and faithfully pre- 
 served, according to the mind of God, by the Spirit- 
 bearing Church ; we then look more closely into the heart 
 of this great and venerable fact, ' traditional Christianity ', 
 to which we have in a general sense committed ourselves ; 
 and we find there, not only grace and help, but light and 
 truth, expressed in a system of doctrines, each and all of 
 which are guaranteed, for us, by their common co-inher- 
 ence in the total fact of ' Catholicism '. Whatever may 
 be thought of the general premiss from which it starts, 
 I do not think that this procedure can really be impugned 
 in respect of formal correctness. 
 
 Then, of course — when the behever has passed from 
 the stage of implicit faith, in which he merely believes, in 
 a general sense, that what the Church says is true, to that 
 of explicit Faith, in which he accepts each and every 
 detail of what is laid down as de fide — follows the process 
 of ' moral and spiritual verification ', whereby the ' anti- 
 cipated truth ', viz. that Catholic Christianity is to be 
 absolutely trusted, is found in a thousand ways to be the 
 key that fits into the lock of fife's myriad perplexities and 
 trials. But of this I have written above (p. 72), so that 
 I need not enlarge upon it now. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 At this point, then, our discussion may close. In 
 the nature of the case, it was not to be expected that 
 either of us should decisively refute, or convert, the 
 other ; but it is something that we have been able (as I 
 think we have) to trace our surface differences in regard 
 to certain beliefs down to divergences (happily, not very 
 great or permanently irremediable divergences) in respect 
 of fundamental and indemonstrable dp^at. If I look 
 back over the course of the debate, what seems to stand 
 out in strongest relief is the fact that we seem to have
 
 166 Form and Content in Christian Traditio7i 
 
 come much nearer to an agreement on the question of 
 the divine illumination bestowed on the Church by the 
 indweUing of the Holy Spirit, than on the question of 
 Miracles. Perhaps the reason for this is to be found in 
 the fact that rehgion unites, whereas philosophy divides. 
 Even in regard to the question of miracles, I can go with 
 you in all your positive statements — as, for instance, 
 when you say ' I was quite prepared for the presence in 
 the universe of extraordinary forces, expressing them- 
 selves in extraordinary phenomena. I do not doubt 
 at all that the pubUc ministry of our Lord and of the 
 Apostles was accompanied by such phenomena ' (p. 100). 
 It is only when you begin to philosophize upon miracles, 
 to raise the question of their metaphysical rationale, 
 and to formulate canons of conformity and noncon- 
 formity to ' the laws of matter and motion ' for deter- 
 mining their a priori possibility, that serious and radical 
 divergences begin to make themselves felt. I do not, of 
 course, suggest for a moment that it is wrong or un- 
 desirable to raise these philosophical questions in regard 
 to Miracles : I am merely pointing out the obvious fact 
 that, the deeper one plunges into the jungle of purely 
 intellectual speculation, the farther away one tends to 
 get from one's companions. Perhaps I may be permitted 
 to emphasize this one point in conclusion : I think that, 
 given an indefinite time for discussion, we might very 
 well arrive at an agreement, which was for all practical 
 purposes complete, on the abstract question of the 
 ' divine guidance of the Church ' in the definition, at 
 least, of the ' metaphysical ' doctrines. But (if I may 
 venture, without offence, to say so) I cannot conceive 
 myself ever under any circumstances accepting your 
 distinction between contra naturam and supra naturam 
 events, or admitting any reaUy final and conclusive test 
 of the a priori credibiHty of miracles other than that 
 of conformity to what we know by revelation of the 
 character of God.
 
 Mr. N. P. WilUams III 1G7 
 
 However, I do not wish to end upon the note of divided 
 opinion. I would rather conclude this letter, and our 
 correspondence, in the spirit of hope — hope that, sooner 
 or later, those who think with you will banish what I 
 must needs consider the vain and illusory fear of ' con- 
 tradicting scientific laws ', and will see their way clear 
 to taking just that little step forward which will bring 
 them into Une with the main army of orthodox Christians ; 
 so that all together may at length set forth with the 
 momentum of united millions, in the power of the ever- 
 lasting Gospel, conquering and to conquer. 
 
 BeUeve me to be. 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 N. P. Williams.
 
 PRINTED IN ENGLAND 
 AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Form L9-Series 444
 
 I uo ouu r ntHN MtblUNAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 001 11 
 
 5010 9 
 
 BR 
 
 121 
 
 S21