|
How We
Want Christian Unity
The record of the past induces to the conclusion that
written creeds and denominational organizations are very
poor instrumentalities for perpetuating the moods and
ideas of one age onward forever into the future. The Roman
Catholic Church is perhaps the strongest advocate of this
method of retaining the mental attitudes of a given age
throughout immemorial time; but scholars know that her
claim to be unchanging, while perhaps made in good faith,
is yet inaccurate.
Always the written creeds read the same, but forever
men interpret them differently. Perhaps they cannot change
the words, but they can and do put new meanings into them;
and not only new meanings, but new emphases.
The writings of the fathers of the Christian church are
skillfully and ably translated into English. Anyone who
can read at all is free to read them when he will. But as
a matter of fact not many people read them except
scholars. Scarcely anyone else really can read them; for
while they are translated into good English they refer to
a world of thought which has vanished away and can only be
reconstructed by the scholar.
Just so we build our little harbors of creed into which
the treasures of Christian thought must come; but the
mouths of our harbors fill up with the silt of antiquity
and our harbors stand vacant far inland from the sea. But
still the mighty tides of God yet ebb and flow through the
heart of the church, and on her mighty bosom the precious
freight of human hope and aspiration sails on to new
harbors that we wot not of.
When we turn to the creeds of Protestantism we find
scarcely one denomination which believes as it did one
hundred years ago. The old time Methodists believed in
sanctification as a second work of grace subsequent to
regeneration; and so they wrote it in their creeds. So it
stands yet in the creeds but it is not believed nor held
that way generally in the church today.
The clergy of the Presbyterian Church allow much more
liberty in the interpretation of predestination than the
Westminster Confession ever contemplated. Many Baptist
churches have had a Calvinistic creed quite as rigid as
the Westminster Confession; but that has not prevented the
growth of quite contrary opinions within their fold.
In fact there is no Protestant denomination that has a
written creed which does not have more or less of
modernists within its fold who hold doctrines
contradictory to or subversive of the tenets of their
creed.
Some of the famous schools of the East that have long
been leaders in Liberalism and Modernism were founded by
men who were the sternest of Fundamentalists. These
founders defended the future orthodoxy of their schools by
writing Fundamentalist creeds of the strongest description
and requiring the teachers to conform to them. And yet in
spite of these invincible creeds those schools became
hot beds of the most radical forms of Modernism.
The creeds were there, good and strong—and for the
most part just such creeds as I would write, if I wrote
any—but of what avail have they been' If the future
safety of the church depends upon the skillful
construction of denominational creeds, then is our case
hopeless indeed.
There is an illustration in history of a creedless
communion casting off heresy. The Congregational churches
of New England were comparatively creedless; and yet in
the latter part of the eighteenth century and the
beginning of the nineteenth they took a decided stand
against the S o c i n i a n i s m of the Unitarians and
finally separated completely from the latter. This seems
to be an indication of what would happen in case of
fundamental heresy in the Christian church in unity.
Doubtless a further illustration of this principle is
found in the fact that the apostolic church had no written
creed, as such—if we except the Holy Scriptures—and
yet that church vigorously sloughed off heresy, and
successfully transmitted to us the Christian faith which
we have today. This is the very faith which we quarrel
about two thousand years later, and vainly seek for creeds
and formulas which shall transmit it to posterity pure as
we hold it, never even faintly suspecting that the
scholars and saints which are to follow us might
conceivably understand that faith as well as ourselves
without consulting our denominational creeds. But it is as
certain as that the sun shines and water runs, if they get
rid of denominationalism and sectarianism they will prove
by that fact alone that they do understand the Christian
faith better than we do who have not escaped from these
dreadful snares so contrary to the essence of
Christianity.
If the coming generation do understand the Christian
faith better than we, how presumptuous of us it would be
to insist upon writing creeds for them which shall guard
and defend a faith which will be nearer the original than
our own!
The simple fact is that there never was any age except
the apostolic age that could dare to write a creed for the
Christian church without becoming guilty of audacious
presumption. The apostolic age —which knew Christianity
best, and therefore had the most right to do
so—refrained from writing a creed at a time when all
Christian history was before it. Why cannot we refrain
from this form of challenging our brethren at a time when
possibly the sands of the world's history are nearly run?
Really, however, the apostolic age did write a creed
—or had one written for it by the Holy Spirit—that
creed was the New Testament. We will give all assent to
that; but more we will not either yield or exact.
Perhaps it is an act of faith to launch out into the
sea of Christian unity, leaving the protecting shore walls
of creeds and denominational barriers; but it is an act
that will bring a larger freedom, a richer return for our
labor, and an even more secure protection for all the
treasures of the faith.
|
