CREEDS AND AUTHORITY.

(BY REV. PROFESSOR MACINTYRE )

The question of authority in its various aspects continually emerges not only in the sphere of religion but also of morals and of social-political life. It may be that socially we are at the dawn of a new age when the reign of individualism will give place to some fairly complete form of socialism. If so authority will reassert itself over spheres of thought and action in ways which to-day would be reckoned intolerable bondage. It does, not follow however, that it will be so reckoned in the new psychological climate which is the necessary condition of the new socialism. In the sphere of morals individualism is ever more asserting itself in a variety of ways, some mildly harmless, others going the whole length of moral anarchism. To those who watch the ebb and flow of modern thought there is significance in the recrudescence of the philosophy of Nietzsche. In religion the same force has been operating for long. Individualism was very far from being the ideal of the leaders of the Reformation yet there was a principle of individualism at the root of the Protestant Reformation, a more dynamic principle than the early reformers seemed aware of. But the principle of individualism of that period owed more to the Renaissance movement than to the religious reformation which issued in Protestantism. A civilisation based on churchly authority has been steadily giving place to a civilisation based upon personal autonomy.

It is not necessarily irreligious, indeed its metaphysical basis is essentially spiritual, but it is resentful in all its aspects, moral, social, and religious of any external authority. There are not wanting those who profess to see in this whole movement signs of the dissolution of all the benefits which Christian civilisation has accumulated through many centuries. But the movement is not wholly destructive, for it has gained new principles and new ideals unknown to the men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is not a helpless scepticism plunging into darkness but a practical mastery of the world facing new duties and new responsibilities with a joyous confidence (whether well founded or not), and with visions of expansion to the outer bounds of existence. It marks not the end of things, but the beginning of great social and religious developments. Crudely conceived it often is and roughly assertive against the old order, unwisely impatient of all authority, which it identifies with that mechanical external authority against which it is a protest. Yet notwithstanding its aberrations, this autonomous individualism is so prevalent a temper of the modern mind, that it has to be taken seriously, and judged by its principle rather than by its temporary exaggerations. Rightly judged, it is a bold demand for freedom for absolute freedom. Not a freedom which knows no law, but a freedom whose law is inward and spiritual. This is the "climate" of modern thought, moral, social, and religious; and only in the patient and frank recognition of it can we truly appreciate "a people rightly struggling to be free." It is a thing which so great a man as Newman utterly failed to understand, and therefore was hopelessly out of sympathy with. That to experience truth is the only means of knowing truth was to him to lose all truth. There was to him no choice between the anarchy of individual notions and the rigidity of dogmas received from without. There was no way of keeping men to the truth, but by an external standard, demanding unquestioned obedience. This is the explanation of Newman's horror of "Liberalism" in whatever sphere it manifested itself.

We have drawn attention to the modern attitude to authority in its general applications, to show that its attitude in religion is only one aspect of a principle which affects the whole of life. There exists, of course, a loud, if not widespread, antagonism to religion, and all that it signifies in human life, but it would be to misread the actual situation to identify this brazen-throated antagonism with the revolt against external authority and the dogmatism of creeds. In reality it is not a revolt against authority, but a revolt against an authority which is mainly, if not wholly, objective. Christianity is presented as a Divine institution, objective and infallible, and what an infallible authority has given only an infallible authority can preserve. This it, essentially the Roman Catholic position, which finds its preservative infallible authority in the Pope as the Vicar of Christ on earth. An infallible revelation, it is argued would be practically useless apart from an infallible interpretation of it. The Church guarantees the truth, and, being able to guarantee it, it has the right, nay, the duty, of imposing it, demanding obedience by right of its assumed infallibility of interpretation. Now there are many souls, some tempest-tossed and distracted with doubt, some too indolent to gird up the loins of their mind, who thankfully take refuge under the shadow of an ecclesiastical authority, which is at least hoary with age and not decrepit in power. To others such subjection would be nothing less than intellectual suicide, and moreover, they feel compelled; on historical grounds, to question the character and the rights of the authority. This attitude constitutes Protestantism. But the Protestant Reformation was not wholly, or essentially, of this negative character. Its negations were the outcome of its affirmations. It was not so much a denial of authority as a transference of it. The Reformers were as insistent on authority as the Papal Church, but the seat of authority was transferred from Pope to Bible. Yet, in the interpretation of the Bible no anarchism of opinion was allowed. It is often assumed that early Protestantism stood for the right of private judgment. It would be more correct to say that it stood for the individual right of judgment. Servetus exercised the right of private judgment, and was burned in Geneva. The individual right of judgment which Protestantism asserted was the claim of the individual to have the Holy Spirit, and under that Divine guidance to he able to interpret revealed truth for himself. It was assumed that because of this Divine guidance a certain content of faith would be recognised by every believing heart, such content of faith becoming the permanent inheritance of the Church, confirmed anew in every age to the hearts of true disciples. This content of faith became the norm, or standard of judgment for every expressed opinion, and it was on this basis of judgment that Servetus was condemned.

The further step was to express this content of faith in dogmatic or creedal form. That is as inevitable as it is necessary, but the further step still, of giving to this creed a legislative effect, is at the root of much of the modern revolt against authority. To turn the creed into a legal instrument, to be imposed at the risk of being made an outcast from the Faith on non-acceptance is where freedom cries out against bondage. The existence of a formal creed as an expression of the Church's understanding of Revelation is one thing, and to tie that creed with chains to the living body of the Church is quite another thing. It is here that the stress of the present conflict lies for it is the assertion of freedom against an external authority. To meet that difficulty and to do right by freedom there is no call that the Church should tear up its creed, if it be its creed, or that it should not utter its belief in dogmatic form. The difficulty does not lie in the fact of the creed, but in the chains which bind the creed, the external authority which imposes it. Science as well as theology has its creed, but it has not sought to give to that creed a legislative effect. It has not turned it into a legal instrument. A creed the Church must have. It is natural to formulate that creed in definite language, and to issue it as the Church's understanding of the content of faith, but it can truly be said, though it may be news to many, that no Protestant Church (unless the use of the Athanasian creed in the Anglican Church be an exception) has ever so violated the rights of individual believers as to impose its creed as a condition of membership or a term of salvation.True faith, so far from being hostile to freedom, is impossible without it, and one may go further and say that there can be no such thing as genuine freedom without faith. A great teacher, at whose feet the present writer sat (the late Principal Rainy), has said: "There is a craving in many minds for something like a fixed external authority to ensure our fidelity to at least the essentials of the faith. There is no such authority and no such security. Our only security against apostacy is to be sought in faith in prayer, in the work of God. In the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, in the maintenance of fellowship with our living King. That is true of Churches even as of individuals. To place our trust elsewhere is itself an apostacy. "

Creeds we must, in the nature of things, have, and creeds have not only a subjective but also an objective authority. Yet this "external" authority ought not to be a compelling authority. In the words of the older theology, it is "auctoritas digni, " not "auctoritas imperii," and if this were only more clearly realised, men would not kick out so wildly against all formal expression of the Church's faith in creedal form.

 The Sydney Morning Herald 15 March 1913. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article15405224