ALONE WITH GOD     

Suggested Solutions

There is no objection to a man's believing any Christian creed he thinks reasonable. And the creeds are certainly useful to the student of theology; and possibly some of them may be useful to the private Christian as devout attempts to explain the ineffable mystery of life and of God. The harm arises when they become official division makers between Christ's people.

At this point a word ought to be said in regard to the possibility of getting away from divisive creeds. The argument is made that it is foolish and absurd to expect to get away from creeds. Every group of people has its unwritten creed; and even every thinking individual has his personal creed. How vain then to think of escaping creeds by laying aside the great historic creeds of the church.

This argument overlooks a serious point. It is admitted that each thoughtful person has a creed of his own. I admit that I have my own creed, in its way, and on some points, as definite as the historic creeds of the churches.

But my personal creed is not a division maker. No other Christian in the world is compelled to sign it in order to have fellowship with me. It is inclusive, and not exclusive. Again, my creed is capable of change. I can sit down with a devout Christian man; and after a few words of prayer we can discuss the Christian faith; and I may arise from that conference with my creed slightly amended. It is doubtless then a better creed; but I did not have to violate a solemn oath to change it a bit; neither did I become a heretic. But many persons are tied up so tightly to official creeds that if they change their own personal creed they have violated a solemn oath. This puts them in a difficult position; for if a man has taken an oath not to believe the truth when he hears it he will take good care not to hear it; but if he should hear it, sometimes he is compelled to believe it in spite of his oath.

Thus it may be seen that there is a world of difference between an official creed, the standard of faith of a denominational corporation, and the private, personal creed of the individual Christian.

The same thing may be said of the unwritten creed of a group of Christians, or a movement. If this creed becomes so hard and narrow that it patently excludes true Christians from fellowship, it is obviously a bad thing. Although even then it can never possess the power to create division that an official creed possesses; because it is always a living and growing thing, capable of responding to the divine guidance of the living Christ in the church. It can broaden with the increase of knowledge.

The apostolic church unquestionably had an unwritten creed. It was the living and growing faith of the church. But this creed never caused division until it narrowed and hardened in the course of centuries into the official, written creed of a human corporation.

Bearing in mind then that we are condemning written denominational creeds, let us notice some of the reasons why spiritual Christians should drop them and carry on church work without them.

No creed written by uninspired pen holds or can be made to hold all the truth. We ought rather to imitate the liberal example and doctrine of John Robinson, minister of the Puritan Church in Leyden, Holland, from which the Pilgrims emigrated to Massachusetts.

The little church had spent the whole night in prayer before sending a picked representation out across the sea to plant an outpost of civilization and Christian idealism on the bleak shores of the savage continent of America. The pastor was not to go then, and died before his plans of going were carried out; but he addressed them at the last moment with words of such wisdom that they ought to be graven on the memory of all spiritual Christians everywhere.

Robinson solemnly charged them "before God and his blessed angels to follow him no farther than he followed Christ . . . " He assured them that "the Lord had more truth and light to break forth out of his holy Word. "

This is the attitude of a humble and intelligent Christian; and while many humble and intelligent Christians do in fact acknowledge adherence to the denominational creeds, yet they can scarce deny that there is a certain inconsistency in tying one's faith down to the narrow limits set by ancient dogmatic theologians who flourished in ages of deepest superstition and ignorance. The Christian spirit is the open-minded attitude of an alert and questioning child; and we ought not to set any unnecessary obstacles before us in our eager attempts to pursue the truth in the school of the great Teacher.

Suppose the children in some school should get together and sign a document asserting that the moon was bigger than the North Star (which it certainly seems to be). Suppose that they made adherence to this creed a test of their faithfulness and loyalty to each other. Would not their teacher have much trouble in convincing those children that the North Star is perhaps more than a million times larger than the moon; and only seems smaller because it is farther away?

The children have already signed a creed, and pledged their loyalty to each other never to allow themselves to learn anything such as that. If they have taken a pledge never to learn certain things, what is the use of their remaining in school ? And if Christians have taken a pledge never to learn anymore from Christ nor out of his Word, what is the use of their remaining in the school of Christ? As a matter of fact such a pledge is almost certain to hinder one in learning, and has doubtless caused some to be excluded from Christ's school, because they were more loyal to their schoolmates than they were to the Schoolmaster.

Perhaps a still worse fault of creeds is that they quite often, if not always, hold more than the truth. Now, in a case where the creed holds less than the truth many people are able to play a little game of hide and seek with their consciences. While admitting that they are bound to the dogmas of the creed, which are often pretty hard to swallow, they feel free, or at least allow themselves the freedom to go beyond the creed in matters which it does not touch.

But the creed makers were pretty clever men. If one reads their words carefully, and interprets them fairly and conscientiously, in their proper historical sense—which is the honest way to do—then the creeds will hardly fail to snare the spirit of a sensitive and intelligent man into a passive declaration of something which positively revolts his conscience and involves him passively in what is at least a theoretical departure from personal veracity.

Of course this is not a broadside accusation. Some people such as Gilbert Chesterton, for example, can apparently believe anything. We have no right to question the veracity of anybody who says that he believes any of the ancient creeds. I refer to those who admit that they do not believe them, and decry their doctrines, and yet stand committed to them by solemn covenant with their denomination. Neither do I question the personal sincerity and veracity of such people. I merely say that to vow allegiance to a given creed and openly or even secretly disbelieve it is at least a theoretical departure from veracity.

I shall not attempt to give any instances from the creeds which teach, in my judgment, more than the truth. I refrain lest I arouse unnecessary controversies over questions beyond the scope of the human mind to ferret out and evaluate. I merely refer to the wellknown fact that all the great confessional communions do in fact have vast numbers of communicants within them who privately reject in their own minds a large part of the creed they formally profess by reason of their allegiance to their denomination.

I shall not accuse these persons of deliberate hypocrisy and deceit; but I do think that any fairminded person must admit that there would be a gain in moral values if those people were not compelled—or would not allow themselves to be compelled—to profess formally, allegiance to a form of belief which they privately reject. For all such persons the creeds are bad because they contain too much.

A perfect creed never was written by uninspired men, I presume; but if such a creed were written, it would not serve the interest of Christian unity because there would be large numbers of persons who would reject it on account of misunderstanding or imperfect light, or lack of the requisite spiritual development.

An adherence to even such an ideally perfect creed would be a form of disloyalty to Christ as long as it served to separate his people from each other and cause divisions over the words of uninspired men.

How can any church make requirements for entrance therein more exacting than our Lord himself makes entrance into the kingdom of heaven, and into the immortal companionship of the saints in Paradise ?

Again I notice that a creed which seems perfect at one period of life becomes inadequate and false with the development of the Christian mind and soul in the doctrines of the gospel of Christ. As noted before, Dr. Dollinger was for years, during the nineteenth century, the ablest advocate of Roman Catholicism on the continent of Europe, or in the world; but the time came when the great mind of Dollinger outgrew the creed of the Church of Rome; and outgrew it so decidedly that there was no longer room for him in that communion.

Now, I am well aware that many scholars and philosophers are able, by certain interpretations which they can put upon the creeds, to remain peacefully within the Roman church; but at least Dollinger could not—he had to get out to save his soul.

This is an illustration of the strain which the creeds are apt to put upon the growing minds of the rising generation. The omnipotent Searcher of Hearts alone knows how much mental worry and strain has tormented[155] men's minds as they perceived new views of truth and found their growing souls transcending the narrow bounds of the ancient creeds. The church in unity will put no such handicaps on the young mind that starts out hopefully on the immortal search for truth. On the contrary it will place men in the school of Christ and direct them to follow him out beyond where the winds unravel and the stars dance, onward forever, while the eternal mystery in the heart of God beckons men into constantly deepening knowledge of and fellowship with the truth.

I might be mistaken, of course, but I am distinctly of the opinion that people who yearn and labor for Christian unity are the most tolerant of all persons in their various groups. They are not merely willing to get along with folk who thrust themselves upon them; but they are inclined to go out of their way to find Christian folk to agree with. And all intelligent workers in the case of Christian unity realize quite clearly that it is only by the practice of the warmest brotherly love that anything can ever be accomplished in this line.

The spiritual welfare of a Christian worker demands that he keep himself free from prejudice and ill will, and from wrathful strife about the technique of managing the business of the kingdom of Glod. If a brother does not wish to cooperate, if he rejects Christian companionship and fellowship, we must honor his personality and his rights as a man. We must be tolerant, and have patience to await Christ's time.

Just the same, the will of Christ for unity makes a tension on our consciences. It produces a steady pressure on our souls, urging us to be at one with our brethren through every means within our power. And when we see the creeds standing in the way of the realization of this blessed and holy ideal we deem it to be our privilege to point that fact out to all earnest Christians who likewise feel the pressure of our Lord's weighty words in behalf of unity bearing down upon their souls. Other folk who are not of the fellowship of Jesus can disregard our solicitation —it really means nothing to them. Christian people are also at full liberty to disregard it—if their own consciences will let them, in view of our Lord's clearly expressed will. In other words, we have no desire to push anything upon anybody, but merely to confer with those of every place and every faith who earnestly yearn and pray, " Thy kingdom come; thy will be done." Since they are of like precious faith with us, we are not intruding upon their personality when we discuss ways for the realization of the will of our Lord.

And to all such we can say confidently that, although it is to me a small matter if a brother holds a creed contrary to my own belief, yet for me it must be a very serious matter if I hold some denominational creed which automatically bars him off from brotherhood and fellowship with me—provided he is a Christian and in any sense desires such brotherly relations to exist between us.

This is the tragedy of the creeds, not merely that people see different and sometimes apparently (though not actually) contrasting aspects of the truth; for such a condition is temporarily inevitable until Christendom has been grounded into a deeper knowledge of the gospel. But the tragedy is that by unchanging creeds which neither grow broader nor decrease with time, Christian people should isolate themselves from one another hopelessly and fatally, making division permanent, and pledging their brethren of their particular denomination that they never will agree to perceive and accept the truths which their other brethren outside their particular denomination accept and hold.

It is as plain as a pikestaff that Christian unity cannot come in a thousand years in such a way as that.

We can never expect nor even ask all Christians to agree upon the uninspired words of a mere human creedmaker. It is a sin to divide from Christ's people over the words of a mere man. Therefore, the first step to Christian unity is to disengage oneself from the historic creeds completely, reverencing them as much as he wishes, believing them as much as he can, but receiving them as mere relics of Christian theological history, and not as standing walls of isolation.

Personally I am an old-fashioned Christian; and I very much suspect that I actually believe the historic creeds much more strongly than the majority of the ministers of the respective denominations; but I would consider it sinful to arm myself with one against my brethren. The will of Christ, the fellowship of all Christians, and the unity of the church are far more precious to me than any human creed ever written.

The creeds are quite the same thing in respect to peace in Christ's church as armaments are in respect of the peace of the world. They are the armament of the militant sectarianism of Christendom. The creeds were mostly written for purposes of conflict and with a view of defense against the supposedly false doctrines of other Christians.

And is it not strange that Christians who anxiously urge the governments of the world to disarm so as to foster the spirit of peace will not urge their communions to disarm, neither will they disarm themselves by dropping the provocative creeds which threaten—like bristling guns and powerful armament —the spiritual peace and unity of Christendom ?

The duty to accomplish this internal and spiritual disarmament is even more binding upon Christians than is the duty of literal disarmament upon civil governments; for there is room for debate upon the possible dangers of literal disarmament among civil governments which comprise worldly people of all [159] kinds, whereas there ought to be no danger in Christians laying down their arms and committing themselves without hesitation to the gentle ways of the Prince of Peace.

The first step to Christian unity is spiritual disarmament by the laying aside of the historic creeds. This is so simple and plain that it will eventually without doubt penetrate into the inner consciousness and operate upon the conscience of all Christian people.