RIGHTS AND LIMITS OF THEOLOGY.

 A remarkable unsigned article, entitled " The Rights and Limits of Theology,' appears in the October number of the "Quarterly Review."
Bold and outspoken as it is in itself, it derives additional significance from its publication in the venerable organ of English conservatism, and orthodoxy. This famous review has travelled very far since the time, 45 years ago, when it published Bishop Wilberforce's memorable diatribe against "The Origin of Species." The present article is avowedly inspired by Dr. Andrew D. White's "History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom," and is a straightforward attack on what the writer calls, "dogmatic theology," or the "dogmatic fallacy," which he describes as a pseudo science, because it treats prophetic enigmas and mysteries, that from their nature are ambiguous and incapable of exact determination, as principles of exactly determinable intellectual value, and argues from them accordingly. This dogmatic theology is a stereotyped system of doctrines that has been imposed upon the Christian world by the church ; any deviation from it has been regarded as heresy, and, wherever the church had power, it has visited that heresy with the severest penalties. The history of the growth of this system is known with tolerable certainty. In its origin Christianity was very different from what it afterwards became. As the reviewer says:—
 "It is all but impossible to imagine the Christ of the Synoptics, the advocate of the poor and simple against the intellectual tyranny of lawyers, scribes, and theologians, attaching the slightest religious value to the theologically correct formulation of the inscrutable mysteries prophetically symbolised by the Heavenly Father, the Son of Man, the Kingdom of God, &c., or making salvation to depend on any point of mere intellectual exactitude."
 At first the Christian revelation was apocalyptic, prophetic, visionary. Before long, however, a desire was felt to deduce scientific conclusions from prophetic enigmas, to discover philosophical systems in the revelation. A system resulted, compounded of prophetic utterances and philosophical theories and conceptions, which was put forward for universal acceptance as divinely revealed, as having the oracular authority of a prophecy and the minute accuracy of a scientific theology. "Here we have dogmatic theology full blown in all its hybrid enormity, i.e., a would-be science governed not by scientific but by a prophetic criterion." At the same time the notion of faith became perverted into that of theological orthodoxy. When once such a system was established and defended by the vast organisation of the church, it set itself in determined opposition to science. "The whole force of the Christian religion, with all its highest sanctions and motives, was thrown into the scale against the progress of knowledge, and thereby of civilisation." The history of the warfare of science with the church, which forms one of most interesting chapters in the annals of mankind, has been told by Draper, Lecky, and, more recently and systematically, by Dr. White. Few persons are entirely ignorant of the main outlines of the story, but, although the facts are beyond controversy, the church has always been reluctant to recognise them. The novelty is that the results of these investigations are at length accepted by what has hitherto been a leading organ of English orthodoxy.
 On one point exception may be taken to the conclusions of the reviewer. He considers that there is little to choose between Catholicism and Protestantism, at least in its extreme form, as far as hostility to science is concerned. This is hardly fair to the Protestant churches. The greater part of the old theology was taken over by the Reformers, who at first were not too well disposed towards secular knowledge. But as the Reformation progressed the value of science came to be recognised. There is nothing like the persecution of Galileo in the history of any of the reformed churches. Darwin's "Origin of Species " is, we believe, still on the Index Expurgatorius ; but the development theory is accepted by hundreds of Protestant divines. Some allowance should be made for the hesitation of the churches to accept new scientific discoveries. They merely share the attitude of the laity. Bishop Wilberforce, in his inept denunciation of Darwinism, only voiced the belief current at the moment of the vast majority of English-speaking people, who considered the development theory too absurd to be worthy of serious consideration, and were quite ignorant of the enormous quantity of evidence on which it stood. There is a point generally overlooked by the historians of the conflict between the church and science. The church, like the mass of the people, dislikes to have its time-honoured opinions disturbed. What made the unreformed organisation such a dangerous foe to knowledge and civilisation was not its opposition to scientific discoveries, but its persecution of men of science, its attempt to forcibly suppress all opinions that were believed to be in opposition to the dogmas of the church.
 As the Quarterly Reviewer remarks, this theology still holds the field. As declared in the creeds and in their orthodox theological extensions, the Christian revelation retains few relics of its original prophetic form of expression, and still fewer traces of influence from later workings of the prophetic spirit in the church. Its forms and phrases are those of a theology belonging to a bygone and all but obsolete system of thought. "It is not a living theology, that might be induced to relax its grasp, but a dead theology, whose roots are wrapped round those of the Gospel of Christ and forbid their expansion." But dead forms of thought must sooner or later crumble away. The growing protest against such a barren form as the Athanasian Creed shows that this process is already taking place. At the same time, as we are reminded by the reviewer, the discrediting of dogmatic theology is not the discrediting of revelation or even of theology in the true sense of the term. The churches will still retain their functions as guardians of prophetic or revealed truth, and, "liberated from all the entanglements of an indefensible claim to scientific inerrancy—a claim as obsolete as that to temporal or coercive jurisdiction— will recover their sorely compromised dignity and credit. Moreover, their doctrinal divisions, the bitterest fruits of the dogmatic fallacy, will cease to be regarded as differences of faith when the prophetic nature of dogmatic truth is more intelligently recognised." —Age.

Young Chronicle (NSW : 1902 - 1910; 1913 - 1915; 1924 - 1934; 1936 - 1940), Wednesday 29 November 1905, page 4