p. 7 | The Journal of Confederacy by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 8, 1913

The Journal of Confederacy

By C. M. S.

In the Constructive Quarterly, to which reference was made last week, Archbishop Platon, of the Russian (Greek Catholic) church, set forth the attitude of his church toward the idea and the movement for which that journal stands—the confederation of Christendom. He says:—

I greet with my whole heart your intention. I also warmly admire the very idea of your Quarterly, because I am quite sure that if it is seriously carried out, it will enable members of various religious confessions to become acquainted with the peculiarities of the latter, which will lead to mutual understanding, to intimate intercourse, and thus, God helping, will create a common ground, or conditions, under which or out of which will arise the possibility for all of us to talk about union in a serious way. . . .

There are some among us who pray for the union, yet do not believe in it, do not think it possible.

Yet there are people of a different kind, with whom you are acquainted, with whom you have conversed, whose opinions on this subject you know. These people, I am convinced, will give a warm greeting to the appearance of your Quarterly, as they will see in it the realization of a step toward the practical solution of the question of the union of the churches, the greatest of all the great questions of the world.

It is not natural for good Christians to be indifferent as to who among them believes and how they believe in Christ. You know what is the attitude of the Roman Catholics toward this question.

As to the Orthodox [his church], I may tell you that their overwhelming majority feel perfectly sure that all those who believe in Christ are bound to believe in him in the Orthodox way.

It is very evident that this archbishop of the Russian church is a firm believer in the idea that the church in power has the right to compel all to believe in Christ “in the Orthodox way.” His suggestion as to the attitude of the Roman Catholic toward the question of who believe and how they believe is an indication of the attitude of his own church and of what he approves in such matters. He would make no allowance for conscientious belief on the part of the individual; he would leave no way open for the exercise of individual faith according to the dictates of individual conscience; but “all those who believe in Christ are bound to believe in him in the Orthodox way.” The spirit of oppression of conscience to bring about uniformity of religion permeates the entire utterance of the archbishop. Uniformity of religious expression, and force to bring it about, are far more important in the estimation of the advocate of the union of religion and the state than is the formation of true Christian character in individuals. The union or confederacy of Christendom upon such a basis would be a calamity of the most serious nature to the individual, the church, and the government that became parties to the arrangement.

A Lutheran correspondent of the Constructive Quarterly, Herr Friederich Loofs, professor of church history in the University of Halle, attempts to bridge the gulf between Lutheranism and Catholicism. Referring to Luther’s proposition that we are justified by faith alone, sola fide, he asks: “Must we Lutherans give it up or modify it in order to be comprehensible to other Christians?” He answers: “By no means. We must make it comprehensible.” He then endeavors to show that what is called justificari sola fide (being justified by faith alone) was a doctrine that could easily find its basis in Catholic teaching in the days of Thomas Aquinas and Francis of Assisi, the founder of the Franciscan order. He hopes to be able to bring Catholic and Protestant together through the teachings of such recognized saints of the Catholic Church on the matter of justification by faith. He says: “There has long been evidence that true Protestant piety, resting upon sola fide, can feel at home in high-thinking Catholic piety. The converse has also happened.”

This is the bridge thrown over the chasm. Which will cross to the other? Speaking of the religious experience of St. Francis of Assisi, the writer says: “We evangelicals find in all this evidences of a piety which is allied to evangelical piety. Should it be impossible for a Catholic to pass similar judgment [as to evangelicals]?” It will not be Catholicism that will cross over the chasm to unite with Protestantism. Says Dr. Adrian Fortescue, the Catholic priest of St. Hugh’s, Letchworth, England, in the London Daily Express of Feb. 19, 1913: “We do not hope for a compromising adjustment between different faiths; we do not desire an external resumption of friendly relations between sects which agree to differ. We have but one solution—that the people who left us should come back.” This agrees perfectly with the editorial declaration quoted from the Western Watchman (Catholic) last week, to the effect that “peace, with the Catholic Church, postulates absolute submission.”

Much more might be quoted from the Constructive Quarterly to show that the federation of Christendom will come only by professed Protestantism turning away from Protestant principles and acknowledging, in some manner, the leadership of Rome; that it will never come by Romanism accommodating her teachings and dogmas and ritualism to the desires or plans of evangelical Protestantism.

But the one-sidedness of this movement toward the federation of Christendom is no more striking than is the attitude of the Constructive Quarterly (and the movement for which it stands) toward the Word of God. Dr. Shailer Matthews, the president of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, may be regarded as in a position to speak the dominant sentiment of the organization. In his article in the Constructive Quarterly he takes the position that American Protestantism, through the inner changes brought about by the higher criticism, holds the strategic position here “for performing those functions which are most loudly demanded of organized religion,” and declares that in our day “the real content of the gospel is being rethought in the terms and under the influence of evolution and democracy.”

The reconstruction of Biblical teachings along the line of evolution and the higher criticism seems to him of far greater importance than the Reformation. He denominates the Reformation as merely “the refurbishing of Latin theology,” and declares its work “almost trifling” as compared with what evolution and the higher criticism have accomplished for religion. None can deny that the higher critics have accomplished much; but that what they have accomplished is in the interest of the Redeemer’s kingdom is impossible of demonstration. The Protestantism of the Reformation stood for the Word of God and for justification by faith alone; but Dr. Matthews says:—

American Protestantism, in its constructive tendencies, is abandoning the formal legalistic principle of Protestantism as organized in the seventeenth century.

It can not be wondered at, therefore, that the delegates to the last Federal Council so quickly and so enthusiastically expunged the word Protestant from the

report of their committee. American Protestantism, as represented by the Federal Council, does not stand for the Bible, and the Bible only, as its rule of faith and practise. It has dethroned the Bible, so far as its own belief is concerned, and has bowed down to its own wisdom as its sufficient guide.

Dr. Matthews considers evolution as a necessary concomitant of this remodeled gospel. He says: “A man may now be known as an evolutionist without running the risk of being branded by his peers as an infidel.” But the truth is that this remodeled gospel is the most subtle form of infidelity. The livery of the true gospel has been purloined by its enemies to serve the purposes of the great adversary. That which destroys faith in the Word of God can lay no just claim to being God’s agent, and has no right to set itself forth as the true guide to the eternal inheritance. Dr. Matthews takes it for granted that practically all Protestantism has cast aside the Genesis record of creation. Thus he disposes of the divine record of that event:—

One seldom hears any discussion regarding the seven creative days. Protestants are coming to feel that, whatever interpretation may be placed upon the opening chapters of Genesis, the final word as to the origin of our solar system will not be uttered by the theologian, but by the astronomer, the physicist, and the chemist. . . . American Protestantism finds itself freed from many of those anxieties which disturbed it a half-century ago, when Mr. Ingersoll could be regarded as a veritable Antichrist.

The Bible being the Word of God, why may not the theologian utter the final word as to the origin of the solar system? May we not credit the divine Author of the Bible with having a definite knowledge of how the solar system came into existence? And if he has such knowledge and communicates it to man in his Word, may we not depend upon that as “the final word” in the matter? Or shall we say that God, who knows all about creation from being the Creator, has given us a version of creation which is undependable and must be revised by “the astronomer, the physicist, and the chemist”? In other words, must we, in order to be “American Protestants,” accuse God of deliberate and premeditated falsehood, and choose for ourselves human guides, better informed than God or more truthful, to lead us out of the wilderness of doubt and uncertainty and ignorance into which they thus charge God with having led us? There is no escaping that dilemma once we have accepted the hypothesis of the higher critic in reference to creation.

Another statement of Dr. Matthews deserves notice. He affirms that “the new type of theological instruction [higher criticism] in pulpit and Sunday-school is steadily shifting interest from metaphysics to psychology.” And psychology, as taught in the higher institutions of learning to-day, is but the ante-room to Spiritualism. This statement of Dr. Matthews is no doubt correct. The higher criticism, having captured the federated churches, Spiritualism will reap one side of the field while Roman Catholicism reaps the other.

Another element that enters very largely into this remodeled gospel for which the federated churches stand is the social and political work of the church. Concerning this Dr. Matthews says:—

This new social interest of Protestant Christianity in America, as in Great Britain, is radically different from that of charity. It cares less for good Samaritans than it does for good policemen. It wants to save men into heaven by embodying the principles of the kingdom of heaven in the state. It is less concerned in rescuing people than in educating them to keep out of danger.

But the great Author of the gospel is the one who gave us the lesson of the good Samaritan. He gave it for a purpose. He gave it as an example for us in Christian kindness, love, and tenderness toward those in need or in distress or in affliction. Is the higher critic wiser than Christ? Is the gospel as remodeled by evolution and the higher criticism an improvement upon the gospel as set forth in the teachings and the life of Jesus Christ? The higher critic considers it so; and still we pin our faith to that gospel as Christ gave it and lived it. What is this substitute gospel of the higher critic and the evolutionist but another effort to exalt the human above the divine, to put man in the place of God, to do for man what Satan promised to do for him when he taught man that he could become like God by disobeying God. Higher criticism discredits the Word of God, creates a substitute for the gospel of God, and, in so doing, stamps itself indelibly as the enemy of God.

Where Dr. Matthews and his fellows stand in reference to the gospel work of soul-saving is readily discerned from these words:—

Men filled with this new social passion will have little patience with a Protestantism that waits to throw out life-lines. They will choose a new ship and a new crew and a captain that knows his course.

It is difficult to detect in this excerpt any sympathy with the work done by Jesus and his disciples in their day, or by the true soul-winners of the gospel in our day. Such a movement is not a promulgation of the gospel, but an attack upon the gospel, and is the more dangerous because it professes to be Christian.

With Dr. Matthews at the head of the Federal Council of the Churches, we must conclude that the Federal Council stands for the principles Dr. Matthews advocates. His principles are the platform of that body. They chose him because of his principles, and, in so doing, took those principles as the guiding star of their organization.

This movement, which has remodeled the gospel and set aside the original as obsolete, does not profess to be seeking the oneness of the Spirit or oneness in belief, but to be working for the social and political betterment of men. It expects to be able to throw the weight of all Christendom into the political scales of the nations to force men and nations into compliance with its mandates. When that union in endeavor has been accomplished, we may expect to see a repetition of the tyranny of the dark ages, and not in one or two nations only, but in all the nations of the world. The warning of the American Congress ought to be sounded in the ears of every advocate of those principles: “Extensive religious combinations to effect a political object are, in the opinion of the committee, always dangerous. . . . All religious despotism commences by combination and influence; and when that influence begins to operate upon the political institutions of a country, the civil power soon bends under it; and the catastrophe of other nations furnishes an awful warning of the consequence.”

Such a combination under such a leadership, with such an object in view, creates the most dangerous situation that has ever faced the church or the world.

C. M. S.