11 A NEW STUDY OF CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIAN 1,-GOSPEL AND CHURCH. IN history as in science, to state a problem fully would be to solve it. The difficulty is to state the problem in its entirety, to set forth all the factors which make up the fact to be explained. The difficulty becomes a practical impossibility when we come to deal with great spiritual productions or creations, whether individual or collective. After the most painstaking investigation of causes and conditions, antecedents and environment, an elusive X remains to baffle us. Failing to explain, we take refuge in phrases. We invoke the Zeitgeist, the creative force of genius, the power of personality. We drag in miracle and the supernatural. Mussolini, addressing the Fascisti just before their victorious march to Rome, reminded them that "in Rome took place the greatest miracle known to history, the transformation of an oriental religion, which we did not understand, into a universal religion, which, under another form, has taken over the Empire carried by the consular legions into the ends of the earth." But what may be pardonable in the political or ecclesiastical rhetorician, is not permissable to the historian or the philosopher, who seek rerum cognoscere causas. They cannot, in dealing with "things we do not understand" appeal to miracle and the supernatural. To do so is to degrade science to the level of Apologetics. The problem of the rise of Christianity may never be thoroughly solved. But the difficulty of the solution is increased by the way in which separate problems have been confused in one general problem. Historical and psychological questions of fact seem unimportant before the metaphysical question, which soon acquires the overpowering significance of a great cosmic drama. Even within the historical field, the problem of the rise and progress of Christianity is really a double problem. The problem of the growth and progress of organised and institutional Christianity, is not the same as the earlier problem of the transformation of the ethical idealism of Jesus into the mysticism and sacramentalism of primitive Christianity. The two problems, if not entirely separate are at least separable. Sir Henry Wotton found religion in Rome converted "from a rule of conscience into an instrument of state, and from the mistress of all sciences into a very handmaid of ambition." The position of Pope Pius IX. was not in essentials different from that of the great Pope Hildebrand. Writers like Chesterton and Belloc do their best to "lend an idealism to reaction," but the Roman system of ecclesiastical imperialism and theological absolutism is irreconcilable with the new social mind and the demands of the new society. "If anyone says that the Roman Pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself and come to terms with progress, with liberalism and with modern civilisation, let him be anathema." (Papal Syllabus, 1864.) It is not an easy task to treat religion and religious history from the standpoint of a scientific and impartial critical analysis. Passions and antagonisms come into play. A blind eye is turned on awkward facts and inconvenient texts. Evidence which would be dismissed without hesitation in other connections, is admitted without scruple, when the question is how to retain what is valuable for edification or hallowed by tradition. Even the most sympathetic of scientific critics is always liable to the charge, that he has, as an Anglican ecclesiastical historian puts it, "either overleapt or trampled underfoot those ancient boundaries by which the supernatural elements of Christianity were fenced from the intrusions of irreverent criticisms." The Roman Catholic Church, while in theory dependent on tradition, has in practice an effective answer to traditionalists. For an infallible Pope can make tradition. “La tradizione sono io," said Pope Pio Nono. The "Fundamentalists" of reactionary Protestantism are not in this happy position. They are chained to a traditional scheme of doctrine which is mediaeval in form and substance, and omits what was truly fundamental in the religion of Jesus, in whose teaching it would be difficult, if not impossible to find a single theological proposition.* The cry, Back to Jesus! was raised before, and with increasing insistence, during and after the Great War. The immense outpouring of religious and quasi-religious literature may be regarded as a response to the cry, articulate and inarticulate, which has arisen from the hearts of countless men and women in our troubled times. The response has taken many forms. Some of these forms furnish rich material for the student of religious pathology. Others, like George Moore's Brook Kerith, and Papini's Storia di Christo, may be regarded as samples of the literary tour de force. The Brook Kerith has a certain merit as a work of art, in spite of the fantastic figure which Moore's imagination has fashioned to misrepresent the great Apostle of the Gentiles. The Storia di Christo is written by one, who, as he tells us, had from childhood, a "repulsion for all faiths, churches, and forms of a spiritual bondage," but who finally like Newman, although not after a similar spiritual history, was *See Morgan Religion and Theology of Paul, p. 263. "Against the genuineness of the one distinctively theological saying, that of Matth. XI. 27ff. objections can be urged that to me at least seem decisive." prepared to accept everything, down to the latest miracle of the latest saint. The "poetry of the Gospel, divine idyll and divine tragedy" as he finely terms it, disappears under a treatment which combines the crudely, sometimes coarsely realistic, with the sickly sentimental. For "reasons of art," he alters the order of time and events, omits, rearranges and expands, where "materia dogmatica" is not affected thereby. "Every epoch," he tells us, "must rewrite its Gospel," but the Gospel Papini writes is a reconstruction in upto-date journalese, of the sacerdotal Christ of the Middle Ages. To the question, Where is the Risen Christ? he answers-"Christ is in the Gospels, in the apostolic tradition, and in the Church. Outside of these are darkness and silence." We are taken back to the lurid apocalyptic visions of the primitive Christian imagination. (And yet "every epoch must write its own Gospel"). "The reign. of Satan has now arrived at full maturity." "The world has only one religion, the worship of the Trinity of Wotan, Mammon, and Priapus." But from the "chaotic and slimy ocean of humanity" there emerges the Church, "the Church founded on the rock of Peter, the only church that deserves the name, the single and universal church, which speaks from Rome in the infallible words of the Vicar of Christ." The book is a bad mixture of piety and propaganda. Papini's attitude to any intelligent study of the Gospels is as ingenuously obscurantist as that of the most uncritical Protestant sectarian. "To try to distinguish in the Gospels, the certain from the probable, the historical from the legendary, the primitive from the dogmatic, is a hopelesss enterprise." "He who accepts the four Gospels must accept them in their entirety (tutti interi) syllable by syllable—or reject them from first to the last, and say— we know nothing." Very different is the work of Vittorio Macchioro, Professor in the Royal University of Naples, one of the latest and greatest of New Testament scholars. A summarised version of part of his more important work is, we understand, announced for publication in Germany, but his name is still practically unknown to English readers. Macchioro unites a breadth and depth of learning and an accurate scholarship to the skill of the trained expositor. His Italian style is a model of clearness and vigour. When he ventures on polemic, his dialectic is admirable, equally effective in defence and attack. But he is free from the pugnacity which unfortunately distinguishes so many biblical critics, who are "terrible fellows for fechtin."" Macchioro has been a contributor for many years to Italian Reviews and Academies, on subjects connected with religious arch aeology, but his more important works* are of recent date (192023), and are with two exceptions, devoted to studies of Orphism, and its relation as a Mystery Religion to Christianity. These very original and systematic studies show that Macchioro, besides being a master of scientific method, is possessed of rare powers of philosophical analysis and sympathetic insight. His great work on Orphism and Paulinism, including his treatises on Zagreus and Heraclitus, will be made the subject of another article in a later number of this Journal. In L'Evangelio (one of the two exceptions referred to above) Macchioro sets himself a twofold task, to answer the question-how are we to realise to ourselves the essence of Christian faith, or, in simpler words, how should we read the Gospels; and, what actual value can this faith have for the modern mind.** In reading the Gospels we must always bear in mind that the traditions therein. contained were of Judaic-Hellenistic origin, that is, the product of a mentality which identified the mythical with the actual, religion with history. Myth must not, however, be confused with legend. Legend is erroneous and false, whereas myth is the expression of those religious intuitions which in their very nature defy "rational" formulation. The more we try to find the historical Jesus in the Gospels the less likely we are to find him. The Gospels announce the Christ who is risen, the Messiah whose mission was comprehended by the world only after he had been crucified. Not the national Messiah of history, but the universal Messiah of the spirit, for as the historical Jesus was dead, so was dead also the Judaic Messiah. The Fourth Gospel is neither more nor less historical than the three Synoptics. The point of view is different, but the process by which Jesus appears in the Fourth Gospel as the Logos incarnate is identical with that through which he appears in Matthew as the revealed Messiah. He who can believe in the Son of God can very well believe in the Logos. The difference is not in the historical content but in the way in which the person of Jesus is represented. The representations are different because the religious experience is different. Theological formulation was simply the attempt to give rational expression to the confused intuition that God in Jesus had descended upon earth. This appears first in the Gospel according to Matthew, as the belief that God had sent his Messenger to *L'Evangelio, Florence, 1922; Teoria Generale della Religione come Esperienza, Rome. 1922; Zagreus, Studi sull 'Orfismo, Bari, 1920; Eraclito, Nuovo Studi sull' Orfismo, Bari, 1920; Orfismo e Paolinismo, Studi e Polemiche, Montevarchi, 1922. **From this on to the end of the article, the writer has refrained from mingling criticism with exposition. He has tried by translating, condensing, and paraphrasing, to present Macchioro's thought, adding as little as possible of his own. earth. In the second stage of Christian belief this representation is no longer felt as adequate, and God himself is thought to have descended upon earth, incarnate in Jesus. The historical fact thus becomes spiritual fact. The Passion which is a tragedy for the Jesus of the Synoptics, becomes a glorification for the Christ of the Fourth Gospel. The four gospels were made "canonical" in preference to gospels attributed to Peter and other apostles, not because of their superior authorship, but because they responded to the twofold need of the Christian faith which sees in Christ, Man and God, the historical and the spiritual Messiah. If we read the Gospels seeking there a man, we shall only find a dim figure, half mythical, half actual, something between the human and the divine. Behind the man that eludes us, rises the hero; behind the vanishing hero appears deity. But this nebulous vision is not the end. Little by little, with increasing familiarity with the Gospels, and with our own growth in spiritual experience, it becomes no longer a case of the myth being confused with truth, but of truth being revealed in the myth. We converse with Christ as with a living person, and we feel that he cannot be man, just because we do hold such converse with him. Then we understand why the Gospel contains the glad tidings. For they have regard not to an event of the dead past, but to an event which takes place every time we will it. It becomes the fundamental harmony of our souls, the theme on which is grounded the innumerable variations of our spirit, the synthesis of our life. The second section of L'Evangelio contains an eloquent contrast between Paganism and Christianity, which perhaps could only have been written by a proud inheritor of Latin civilisation. Paganism, the essence of which was Pessimism, and Christianity, the essence of which is Optimism, represent not two antagonistic and mutually destructive religions, but two antithetic movements (or "moments") of the human spirit. Paganism never dies, because it belongs to our very nature. We are pagans because we are of Adam's flesh, born with the sin of finitude inherent in our spirits. Christianity has vanquished the paganism of history by political, theological, and philosophical weapons, but it never will vanquish it completely in spirit, because it cannot extirpate our finitude, and change man into God. The old pagan man who sleeps in the depths of our spirits will continually revive, and find in Greece and Rome the justification of himself and of his right to live. To pass from Paganism to Christianity does not mean that we should eliminate from our culture all that is classical. Rather does it mean to illumine with the light of Christianity all that is classical and pagan in our spirits. Religion and culture should not be regarded as opposite or parallel pursuits in a divided life. We must rather seek to |