REASONABLE AND REVERENT

Reasonable and Reverent

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(Publicatieserie Stichting Oud-Katholiek Seminarie; nr. 39)

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© 2006 Stichting Oud-Katholiek Seminarie, Amersfoort

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REASONABLE AND REVERENT

The critical orthodoxy of Charles Gore and Lux Mundi

Ineke Smit

Publicatieserie Stichting Oud-Katholiek Seminarie

Vol.39

Amersfoort / Sliedrecht 2006

Merweboek

Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht

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PREFACE

This study was originally written in 2003 as a master’s thesis in Church History at the Faculty of Theology of Leiden University. For the present publication I have chosen to retain the original approach, which was that of a close reading of one representative original text, and an investigation into its background and reception based on secondary literature. Extending my study of Gore’s theological position to include more of his own works and other original sources would have meant a largely new, major undertaking, completely outside the scope of my current research. However, with an eye to the series of which this booklet is part I have added a few references to Old Catholic history that were not in the original Dutch text.

I am grateful for the decision by the editorial board of the Publicatieserie Stichting Oud-Katholiek Seminarie to include this study in their series. Many thanks are due to Drs. M. Ploeger, Prof. Dr. A. K.H. Berlis, Prof. Dr. J. J. Hallebeek and Prof. Dr. E.G.E. van der Wall, whose comments have enabled me to clear up some muddy passages, avoid putting the wrong labels on religious groups, and generally tailor the English text to the intended readership of the Old-Catholic Seminary series. Any remaining errors and inconsistencies are entirely my own.

Leiden, April 2006

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 THE THEOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL

BACKGROUND, 1820-1889

Introduction

Theology and philosophy in Britain

Immanuel Kant

The British Plato: S.T. Coleridge

A practical theologian: Frederick Denison Maurice

Idealism and immanence: Thomas Hill Green

The British Rousseau: Matthew Arnold...............

Anglo-Catholicism: the Tractarians

Doubt

Doubts among the clergy

Controversies on creed and confession

A radical manifesto: Essays and Reviews

Incarnation or deliverance?

Reactions

CHAPTER! THE HOLY SPIRIT AND INSPIRATION

Charles Gore: a modern traditionalist

Theology and philosophy in Oxford 1870-1890

Critical orthodoxy: Lux Mundi

The Holy Spirit and Inspiration

Christianity is life

Experience

Reason

Immanentism

Sin

Gore’s concept of development

Church and authority

Gore and truth

The miracles

7

Real but limited knowledge by revelation

The inspiration of Holy Scripture

Gore’s view on the Bible

Gore’s view on inspiration

Modern science and modern criticism

The kenosis theory

Style and argumentation

Conclusion

CHAPTER 3 THE RECEPTION OF LUX MUNDI, 1890-1930

Reactions in 1889-90

Criticism arising from the first edition

Gore’s answer

Effects after 1890

Liberal Catholicism

Liberal and Catholic

Gore’s via media

Gore and the Roman Catholic Church

Differences with the Anglo-Catholic tradition

Liberal Catholicism 1890-1930

Conclusions on the position around 1890

Gore after J889

One holy, Catholic and apostolic Church

Gore, the scourge of Modern theologians

Protestant and Catholic Modernism 1890-1930

Points of conflict

The kenosis theory

Sin

Creeds and confessions

The man Gore: paradoxes and inconsistencies

Conclusion

CONCLUSIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

8

INTRODUCTION

The year 1889 saw the appearance of Lux Mundi, a collection of essays written by a group of young theologians within the Anglican Church. The book created an enormous furore. It demonstrated that conservative Anglo-Catholic theologians, as all these authors were, were willing to accept the new historical Bible criticism, and marked the beginning of the Liberal Catholic movement in Britain. Until about 1925 this movement was closely linked with the name of Charles Gore (1853-1932). Not only was Gore the chief editor of Lux Mundi, but he also wrote the most controversial essay of the book, namely “The Holy Spirit and Inspiration”. Moreover, he was to become one of the greatest leaders of the Anglican Church in the twentieth century. To mark the centenary of Lux Mundi, in 1989 two collections of articles and a modest monograph were published, but since then the figure of Charles Gore, who was such an influential theologian and Church leader during the first half of the twentieth century, has vanished from sight. Yet, there is a clear continuity in the subsequent currents within liberal Anglo-Catholicism that stretches to the present day. This study intends to show that an investigation into Gore’s contribution to Lux Mundi, and the Liberal Catholic movement to which it gave rise, are still worthwhile in the twenty-first century.

Gore’s specific form of Anglo-Catholicism covers only a modest piece of the religious spectrum. However, an analysis of his essay in Lux Mundi inevitably leads us to the contemplation of bigger issues. Not only is Gore’s time characterised by crucial developments, which are reflected in his work, but Gore’s personality was such that writing about his essay is equivalent to writing about Lux Mundi, while the position of Lux Mundi in 1889 is exactly the same as Gore’s stance at his death in 1932 — when the world around him had changed beyond recognition and he himself had survived as a lonely, but still influential representative of the period around the turn of the century.

The primary aim of this study is to analyse Gore’s ideas on the basis of a close reading of “The Holy Spirit and Inspiration” — a method that does not seem to have been applied before. The subtitle presents Lux Mundi as “Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation”. In his preface to the volume. Gore states that the authors’ aim was to defend the Christian creed. Gore’s own contribution focuses on the Holy Ghost and inspiration. As a matter of fact, one could argue that concepts such as the Holy Spirit, incarnation, and inspiration, which play a central part in Lux Mundi, are essential elements of the Christian faith, and that a thorough analysis of Lux Mundi must necessarily cover the entire field of Christian theology. However, such an undertaking falls outside the scope of this study. Starting from the questions whether there was an immediate cause for the publication of Lux Mundi (Chapter 1), and exactly which aspect of the book caused such an uproar (Chapters 2 and 3), the main emphasis in this study lies on the position of the

9

creed in Gore’s thought and in the religious life of his time in general, Gore’s views on Church and office, and the revolutionary ‘kenosis theory’ he presented in his essay. It was this theory that proved the biggest stumbling block for the acceptance of Lux Mundi in 1889 and the period immediately following.

Another ground for this restriction lies in the fact that Gore was a practical rather than a systematic theologian. Although many theological and philosophical concepts will necessarily be touched upon in the description of the spiritual background of Gore’s time, and the controversies arising out of the publication of Lux Mundi, these will only be sketched briefly here.*

In spite of these self-imposed restraints, this study aims at positioning Gore’s work within the theology of his time and of the twentieth century. For us, too, the period in which Gore lived is interesting, not least because of the clear parallels between the debate on ‘modern’ theology then, and the discussion about belief and unbelief exercising the media at the present time. The nineteenth century in Europe saw a fundamental change in attitude towards Jesus, the Bible, and Christianity — the inevitable result of the revolutionary developments in the sciences and the new Bible criticism. Theology had to steer its course on these turbulent seas. Protestant and (Roman) Catholic Modernism, born on the Continent and subsequently crossing the Channel to Britain, constituted a progressive and sometimes radical reaction to all these developments. The more conservative groups of course took another line. Although they wanted to retain the traditional beliefs, they, too, felt the need to accommodate the new historical Bible criticism. Of this the Lux Mundi group is a representative example. With their publication, these High-Church Anglo-Catholics, the direct heirs of the strongly sacramental Oxford Movement, wanted to demonstrate that reason and faith could form a viable and fruitful partnership.

Gore’s conviction that this is possible was reflected in the phrase from “The Holy Spirit and Inspiration” that forms the title of the present study, “Reasonable and Reverent”. The question whether Lux Mundi actually succeeded in its aim is immediately linked to the question of Gore’s position in twentieth-century church history, and seems to have been at least partially answered by the course of events. In any case, as we shall see. Gore did not take historical criticism to its extreme consequence. Another question is how it was possible that Gore’s critical orthodoxy, based on an essentially arbitrary assumption of the historical infallibility of the New Testament, during forty years determined the face of Anglo-Catholicism, at the time the mainstream of Anglican theology.

I Space did not permit the investigation of intriguing matters such as the effect of the Platonic aspects of High-Church Anglican theology on Gore’s view of the Trinity, or an extensive analysis of Gore’s citation behaviour. Other, more historical aspects also had to be left aside, such as Gore’s socialism and his positive attitude regarding the role of women in the Church.

10

When ascertaining the relevance of a study of Gore’s thought to the twenty-first century, with all the weaknesses and inconsistencies to be signalled below, we will have to keep in mind the following statement by the church historian Bernard Reardon. His description of philosophic idealism, of which much is found in Gore’s work, ends as follows: “[...] its exponents were not always very rigorous in their arguments and in retrospect their systems emerge as not much more than individual statements of faith. As philosophies they are type-products of their time and now chiefly of historical interest”.^

No annotated edition of Lux Mundi is available as yet. For this study the texts of the first (London, 1889) and twelfth (London 1891) editions were used, the latter identical to the tenth. Unless otherwise stated, page numbers without further reference are those of the text of the twelfth edition.

2 Bernard M.G Reardon, From Coleridge to Gore. A Century of Religious Thought in Britain, London 1971 (hereafter ‘Reardon’), 319.

11

12

• CHAPTER 1

THE THEOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND, 1820-1889

Introduction

In a sense, the publication of Lux Mundi on 29 September 1889 marked the end of a development that had started on the Continent, and which Britain, in its ‘splendid isolation’ apparently at first did not want to have anything to do with.'

The landscape of British theology has always resembled the friendly hills around Oxford and Cambridge rather than the craggy dogmatic peaks found on the European continent.^ Although nineteenth-century Britain saw many religious crises, these made few waves in the rest of Europe. The real revolution came from Germany. As we shall see, philosophers and theologians such as Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Strauss and Baur provided new answers to the old questions; What do we know about God, and what can we know? How do we know God exists? Is God in or above the world? Can a rational world view be combined with faith in the revelation of God through the Bible?

In their objective, critical approach to Bible and religion, the Germans now confronted the world with the thesis that the Bible was not the result of supernatural inspiration, the literal word of God, but literature like any other, which could be analysed with the tools of literary and historical criticism; that the biblical miracles should be seen as metaphors or myths, so that one could be a Christian without believing these literally; that Jesus could (and should) be seen as a historical person. As early as 1840, many Christians on the Continent had already had the traditional basis of their faith knocked from under them. Although quite a few believers welcomed the new theology, many more people felt their old security threatened. In the form of Protestant and later also Roman-Catholic modernism, the new theology stirred up enormous resistance and had a strongly polarizing effect.

At the time when Schleiermacher published The Christian Faith (Der Christliche Glaube, 1821-22), and even in 1835, when Strauss’ Life of Jesus (Das Leben Jesu ) appeared, Britain was still living in the “century of reason’’.’

• 1 This paragraph is based on Ieuan Ellis, Seven Against Christ. A Study of ‘Essays and Reviews’, Leiden 1980 (hereafter ‘Ellis’). 1-5 and 259-260.

2 The ‘dogmatic peaks’ are an image used by M. Stol, Langs ‘s Heeren Wegen (s.1. 1997). And in Apologia pro vita sua (1864) Newman already sighed: “it is not at all easy (humanly speaking) to wind up an Englishman to a dogmatic level”. Quoted in Basil Willey, Nineteenth-Century Studies. Coleridge to Matthew Arnold (hereafter ‘Willey’), Pelican, 1949, 90.

• 3 Por this description cf. Alec R. Vidler, The Church in the Age of Reason. 1789 to the Present Day (hereafter ‘Vidler’) [The Penguin History of the Church, Vol. 5], Penguin 1961, 22-27.

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After the bloodshed of many religious wars, the idea introduced by the Enlightenment that all the religion and morality people need could be simply found through reason, had been welcomed with great relief. Old doctrines and institutions should be brought before the court of reason; the little that was judged acceptable was then called ‘natural religion’. This was a simple abstraction, and completely different from the traditional ‘positive’ religions, considered to be born from ignorance and naivety or from the ambitions of priests and kings. The sober and practical British mind, which in the eighteenth century had escaped the upheaval of a revolution such as took place in France, had proven a fertile ground for this no-nonsense empiricism. In Evidences of Christianity (1794), the theologian William Paley (1743-1805) had said that the truth of Christianity could be objectively proven by the miracles. Moreover, Paley’s Christian ethics were strictly utilitarian: whatever is useful, is good. This exactly fitted the common-sense attitude of this period, which also embraced Jeremy Bentham’s social utilitarianism. As late as 1865, J.B. Mozley in his Bampton Lectures“ still preached Paley’s view of Christian revelation as a matter of ‘proof’. Not until the publication of the fifth edition of Mozley’s lectures, in 1880, had the idea taken root that the miracle stories in the Bible should first of all be interpreted in a metaphoric sense, and that people acknowledge the existence of God primarily through heart and conscience.

Yet Britain was not without its own original and ground-breaking thinkers in the fields of philosophy and theology. The revolutionary German ideas were received, interpreted and further disseminated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a man of letters, and the idiosyncratic clergyman Frederick Denison Maurice, more about whom below. Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby and later Professor of Modern History at Oxford, was hailed by the Prussian Ambassador in London, the learned Baron Christian von Bunsen, as the true inspiration of the new age in Eng-land;5 Bishop Thirlwall produced a translation of Schleiermacher’s work in 1825. However, these new impulses remained marginal. For the time being nobody was interested in the new-fangled foreign theories, for reasons of either smugness or distrust, so that during the larger part of the nineteenth century there was among the great majority of British theologians a profound ignorance of, and resistance to, German theology. Whether the former was the cause of the latter or vice versa is unclear; in any case, the fact that Queen Victoria had married a German prince did not do much to alter this situation.

The relative peace was disturbed in 1860. That year saw the appearance of Essays and Reviews, a collection of essays by seven progressive Oxford theologians who intended to introduce the new theology, more specifically literary-

4 Named after John Bampton, canon of Salisbury, who at his death in 1751 left a sum of money to the University of Oxford for a yearly series of eight lectures, intended to stimulate Catholic faith and refute heresies. The first series was held in 1780. They continue to the present day.

5 Ellis, 1.

14

historical Bible criticism, to Britain. The book caused great commotion and even led to legal procedures against some of its authors, as we shall see below, but when after four years the dust had settled, the net effect for the moment proved only slight. It took almost thirty years until the appearance of Lux Mundi in 1889 showed that the new Bible criticism and the historical approach to the life of Jesus had been incorporated into the mainstream of British theology, albeit in slightly diluted form. Two snapshots, a sketch of the situation in 1855 and a description from 1887, clearly show this fundamental shift within the Church of England.

In 1855 William J. Conybeare, author of, among other works, ‘conversion’ novels, drew up the balance of the various streams within the Anglican Church at that moment.* The anti-intellectual Evangelicals (the ‘Low Church’ party) were numerous and active. The descendants of the Oxford Movement, although then slightly less prominent in that city than they used to be, had in their strongly ritualistic and sacramentalist High Church party “some of the best minds in the Church”.’ And then there was the recently risen Broad Church stream, containing everybody who did not belong to either of the first two. The term ‘Broad Church’ had already been used in a sermon in 1847 by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster, its most prominent exponent, but Conybeare now seemed to present it as the label of a veritable party or movement. This liberal middle field in the Anglican Church also included the theologians responsible for Essays and Reviews — who ironically enough were very radical at the time. The other two parties within the Church of England had their radicals, too.

Each of these streams reacted differently to the new discoveries in the sciences epitomized in Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859). Both Evangelicals and High-Churchmen relapsed into an absolute literalism; the liberal Broad Churchmen began to deny miracles and prophecies.® As the most extreme consequences society now saw clergymen leaving the Church, and a great increase in publicly professed atheism. Conybeare thought that the middle way represented by the Broad Church was a better answer to the new developments than the extreme reactions represented by either a reactionary attitude or disbelief.

Thirty years later the name ‘Broad Church’ had disappeared. Around 1870 evolution theory had already become generally accepted in educated circles, if only because there was no sensible alternative.’ In a commemorative volume from 1887, written on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Silver Jubilee, the liberal theologian Edwin Hatch sketches what the liberals might expect from the future. In his picture of the status quo, the High Church party occupies the largest and most im-

• 6 In an article “Church Parties, Past and Present”, quoted in Ellis, 2-3. Of course, there were also religious groups outside the Anglican Church: the Dissenters, the Roman Catholics, and the Jews.

• 7 Quoted in Ellis, 2.

• 8 Ellis, 9.

9 O. Chadwick, The Victorian Church (hereafter ‘Chadwick’), Part II, Oxford/New York 1970, 5.

15

portant place within the Church of England. Hatch briefly mentions the Evangelicals; in-between, there is the liberal stream, which by then had gained its place but was still under fire: liberal, ‘Modern’ theologians were often still excluded from important posts. Hatch himself had great problems acquiring a reasonable position in Oxford. Thus it is not surprising that in his book Seven against Christ, A Study of Essays and Reviews, Ieuan Ellis concludes that the mission of the controversial book of 1860 had failed. The appearance of Lux Mundi in 1889 showed that the ideas of the Oxford Movement, against which Essays and Reviews had reacted so strongly, had gained a firm foothold, as an enlightened traditionalism in which modern Bible criticism was largely accepted.

In order to present an adequate picture of the context in which Charles Gore and his group lived and worked, the following paragraphs will highlight some aspects of the nineteenth-century background. The focus will be especially on the philosophical ideas then current, and the influence of the High-Church Oxford Movement, whose members were also called ‘Tractarians’ or ‘Puseyites’.

Theology and philosophy in Britain'®

Immanuel Kant

The influence of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) on nineteenth-century religious thought has been crucial. Kant questioned the notion of common sense that had been so highly extolled in the eighteenth century, by trying to answer the question what ‘reason’ is exactly, and what are the possibilities and limitations of human knowledge. He caused unrest among theologians by stating that in principle the supernatural cannot be known: the ‘things-themselves’, the noumena behind the visible phenomena, are beyond human experience. With Kant, this separation did not result in scepticism and materialism; exactly by renouncing the possibility of knowledge of the supernatural he created room for faith, the only basis of religion. Kant saw faith as originating from man’s moral nature, through which the existence of God and our own freedom and immortality are experienced as fundamental values. These are a priori assumptions; although they cannot be proven, our clear experience of these ethical principles makes them true.

The British Plato: S.T. Coleridge

The bridgehead for Kant’s ideas in England was Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).quot; Coleridge, sometimes called “the British Plato’’, was no ‘proper’ philosopher or theologian, and may best be described as a visionary. His affinity with

10 This survey of contemporary philosophy, and especially Green’s idealism, is largely based on Reardon 10-14 and 305-320.

11 The paragraphs on Coleridge and Maurice are based on Willey, 9-58, and Vidler, 79-90.

]6

Hegel’s philosophical idealism and his indebtedness to Kant are reflected in the distinction he drew between reason and understanding: reason is the ‘eye of the mind’, a faculty characteristic of man, and yields ‘real’ insight; understanding is what we would call scientific or empirical knowledge, and exclusively relates to the spatio-temporal realm. Thus, at the peak of British utilitarian empiricism, Coleridge stated that a ‘higher’ form of knowledge is possible. Unlike other British theologians Coleridge was acquainted with the developments in Germany, especially the early work in Bible criticism. He began to resist the idea, still current in Britain at the time and harking back to Paley, of the Bible as a sort of storehouse of external evidence for the truth of Christianity. Coleridge thought the Bible should be read without preconceived notions, in the same way as other, ‘profane’ literature; if one did that, the Bible would be found to be different from all other literature. The holiness was not in the letter, but in the spirit. To Coleridge, faith is an ‘energy’ of the whole being; against the prevalent urge to ‘prove’ Christianity, he states:

Make a man feel the want of [Christianity]; rouse him, if you can, to the self-knowledge of his need of it; and you may safely trust it to its own Evidence

and also

In short, whatever finds me, bears witness for itself that it has proceeded from a Holy Spirit?^

Yet on the other hand, Christian truth is not a matter of one’s own judgement; one can only be truly critical if Church and tradition are also taken into account. Many of Coleridge’s ideas — the self-evidence of the Gospel, the value placed on Church and tradition, and faith involving the entire human being — are also found in Gore (see Chapter 2).

Coleridge’s view of the Church was also to prove influential. He distinguished between, on the one hand, the Church of England as a ‘national’ church, one of the three estates, and an essential part of the Constitution of which the King is the head. This church is responsible for the diffusion and development of the cultural heritage, which makes it the concern of all intellectuals, not only the clergy. It need not be exclusively Christian. On the other hand, there is the Church of England as part of the Sancta Catholica Ecclesia, the counterpart to the State. This church is distinguished from the ‘world’ as its conscience, and is the adversary of evil. It is ‘catholic’ in the true sense of the word: universal, but not invisible, with Christ as its head. Coleridge never worked out the relationship between these

12 Both quotations from Aids to reflection (1825), quoted in Willey, 49.

17

two church forms in detail, but it is obvious that the latter type is what the Anglo-Catholics, and Gore, have in mind when they speak of ‘the Church’.

A practical theologian: Frederick Denison Maurice

The impact of Coleridge’s characteristic mixture of religion and politics is difficult to map out exactly. His work On the Constitution of Church and State (1830) may have influenced the Tractarians’ church view.'^ It is a fact that Coleridge’s ideas are also found in a number of younger theologians, among whom Stanley, and especially Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872). During his studies in Cambridge, Maurice had been a nonconformist. After entering the Church of England he went to Oxford. Because of his High-Church leanings, the Tractarians first viewed him as an ally, but divergent views on baptism caused a break-up. Maurice’s Theological Essays (1853-4) may be seen as an attack on Christian orthodoxy. Especially the essay on eternal life and eternal death touched on one of the most sensitive issues in nineteenth-century British orthodoxy. The typically Victorian preoccupation with life after death was accompanied by an equally firm clinging to the concept of eternal damnation. Maurice thought that this idea was contrary to biblical revelation. ‘Eternal’ there does not mean ‘forever’, but ‘eternal life’ is the knowledge of God and Christ. Conversely, eternal death is the separation from God. Also in What is revelation? (1859) Maurice stated that reconciliation with God can only be reached through direct and conscious participation in the life of God. The Bible shows us that this eternal life may be realized in the here and now.

Maurice was first of all a theologian, not a philosopher in any scholarly sense. He did, however, think that theology was related to all aspects of life, in the same way as the Bible. This conviction was also reflected in his practical attitude: among other things, he was involved in the Christian Socialist movement, in which Gore was also to become active.

Idealism and immanence: Thomas Hill Green

At first, Kant’s ideas were only taken up in Britain by Coleridge, but in the second half of the nineteenth century they became very influential through the philosophical idealism of Thomas Hill Green (1836-1882). Strictly speaking, Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893), rector of Balliol, and one of the authors of Essays and Reviews, was the first to introduce German idealism and Hegel’s thought to Oxford.’“* Yet, it was Green, Jowett’s younger colleague, who in fact received the credit when he was described by Henry Scott Holland, one of the authors of Lux Mundi, as follows: “He it was who shook us all free from the bondage of cramping philosophies and sent us out once again on the high pilgrimage towards Ideal Truth”.’’

13 Gore quotes Coleridge’s Remains (249) when he points to the danger of separating Scripture and Church.

14 Avis, 56.

15 Quoted by Reardon, 305.

18

On account of his influence in Gore’s circle, Green largely determined the face of Anglican theology in the last quarter of the century.

Many aspects of Green’s idealism reflect the Platonic ideas that have always had a special position within Anglican theology. They were already found with the seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonists, and in the current period with Coleridge and Maurice, Westcott and the Lux Mundi group.'® Green was a follower of Hegel, but in fact Kant’s name is found more often in his work. He turned against the empiricism, naturalism and agnosticism of his time, and adopted Kant’s principle of the synthesizing action of the mind (i.e., the experience of the supernatural as ‘facts’, mentioned earlier) by stating that experience and reality are one; the process of experiencing cannot be separated from the facts experienced. The central aspect in Green’s thought was the idea that relations form the key to reality. All reality is determined by relations, but these only exist for the thinking consciousness. Thus, the real world is a universe created by the mind: God’s mind in the first place, and as a derivative from this, the human mind. Green did not go as far as Hegel by postulating an ‘infinite mind’ as the sum of all finite, human minds, but on the other hand he did not want to place the essence of God opposite the world and the finite minds: the life of the mind is participation in the divine. This should not go too far; God is the embodiment of the perfection humankind can only strive after.

In this way, idealism inextricably links God to the world, and the appeal to experience results in an immanentist theology: God is as much in as above the world. This is a constant bone of contention across the many factions within the new theology, but notoriously harbours the danger of heresy. Immanentism easily leads to pantheism: God is everywhere. In this, Green went further than Gore and Scott Holland were willing to follow him, “even in their most immanental moods’’.'’ Thi.s issue will come up again in the discussion of Gore’s essay in Chapter 2, and of the reception of Lux Mundi in Chapter 3 of this study.

Green’s philosophy also includes the Kantian postulate of the immortality of the soul: thought is eternal, and cannot be destroyed.'® Equally essential to idealist philosophy is the concept of personality (actually, the Latin persona, or the Greek hypostasis, would be better terms). In this respect Green was strongly influenced by the ‘personal idealism’ of the German philosopher Rudolf Hermann Lotze.'’ As the highest category of existence this philosophy postulates the concept of a conscious personality, the only possible subject of the spiritual activities, knowledge and goodness that we value most highly, and hence the only adequate

16 Avis, 54.

17 Avis, 55-6.

18 Reardon. 307.

19 Also mentioned by Gore, 248n. In 1887 the English translation of Lotze’s Mikrokosmos had been published.

19

revelation of the ultimate reality we call God?° As Carpenter puts it:’’ “the idealist argument for personality as the highest category of thought must [...] have seemed a heaven-sent vehicle for the dissemination of faith”. It offered a justification of the theistic idea of a personal God against the advancing hordes of scientists with their accompanying threat of materialism and atheism.

Green followed Hegel in his assessment of the historical process interpreted in Darwinian fashion as evolutionary. The idea of ‘development’, a progressive revelation, is no less essential to modern Bible criticism than the concept of Jesus as a historical person. In this way, it is possible to combine a spiritual philosophy with empirical science.

The British Rousseau: Matthew Arnold

A prominent figure in the continuation of Coleridge’s ideas in the generation after Maurice was the author Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)“ to whom we owe the famous dictum on the Christian religion, “men cannot do without it, but they cannot do with it as it is”.

Our main source for Arnold’s ideas on religion is Literature and Dogma (London 1873). Arnold wanted to provide religion with a basis that would allow it to withstand scholarly inquiry, yet preserved its ethical side in full. At the same time, he was also responsible for the statement “religion is science”; by this he meant that religion is based on verifiable moral experience (a clear echo of Kantian thought), defining ‘science’ as a search for truth, an enquiring mind. Religion cannot do without science, in the sense that the proved facts of religion are the proved facts of moral experience. Unlike the Tractarians and their descendant Charles Gore, who clung tightly to the creeds as historically sound précis of the ‘facts’ of faith, Arnold wanted to be rid of “the barren definitions of credal metaphysics”. In his opinion, the phrases of the creed do not refer to historical facts, but to the ‘extra-belief’ (Aberglaube) that was added to the central religious truths by the people of Israel in the Old Testament period, and by the faithful at the time of Jesus Christ. The essence of religion is moral-, the Bible is literature; literature is emphatically not dogma. There is a difference between scientific and religious truth; the truth of Christianity is that of the imagination. We should retain our articles of faith, contained in the credal formulas, as poetry — which is essential to religion.

Still, Arnold proves to have a conservative side, too: he saw the Bible as a handbook for righteousness, and unlike the ‘real’, liberal iconoclasts, certainly did not want to replace the Bible readings in church by positivist texts by Herbert Spencer or John Stuart Mill, or, in the style of the popular new discipline of com-

20 Cf. James Carpenter, Gore. A Study in Liberal Catholic Thought (hereafter ‘Carpenter’), London 1960, 71. 21 Carpenter, 148.

22 Cf. Willey 261-294.

23 From the preface to God and the Bible (1875), quoted by Willey, 273.

24 Literature and Dogma, quoted by Willey, 286.

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parative religion, readings from Confucius or the Upanishads?^

Much of what Arnold advocated is also found in Lux Mundi, especially his view on the difference between scientific and religious truth, and of the Bible as a guidebook to moral behaviour. In the Netherlands a long review of Literature and Dogma appeared, written by the Leiden Modern theologian L.W.E. Rauwenhoff “ In Arnold’s naive, undogmatic ‘nature gospel’, and his freedom from tradition and convention, Rauwenhoff detected a similarity to Rousseau. He described Matthew Arnold as the British counterpart of what in Holland was called the ‘ethical-modern’ school. Like his father Thomas, Matthew Arnold was also a liberal middle-of-the-road man, and he, too, was willing to accept enlightened views on modern Bible criticism. Thomas Arnold had been proclaimed by Baron Von Bunsen to be the “true inspirer of the new era in England’’ (see above); thirty years later, Matthew was called the “founder of British modernism”.Gore’s relations with this school were not exactly smooth, and will be discussed in Chapter 3 of this study.

Anglo-Catholicism; the Tractarians

The Tractarians have already been mentioned, and their name will often appear in the discussion of the ideas of their spiritual descendant Charles Gore. Between 1833 and 1845 the label ‘Tractarians’ was used to indicate the members of the Oxford Movement, the most prominent reaction to the religious indifferentism, especially regarding the position of the Church within the State, that prevailed from the end of the eighteenth century to the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837.^^ The Oxford Movement ruled the stage from 1830 to 1845, with as main characters John Henry Newman (1801-1890), John Keble (1792-1866), and Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882). They attacked the current ignorance regarding the divine origin, mission, authority, and structure of the Church. Newman c.s. saw the Church primarily in terms of Coleridge’s second option, as part of the Sancta Catholica Ecclesia. They objected on principle to State control over the Church, and wanted to denounce and correct it by means of a series of tracts. Of these Tracts for the Times ninety instalments appeared between 1833 and 1841, and it was these treatises that earned the authors the nickname ‘Tractarians’. The tracts were something entirely new: products of a High-Church theology, and written by academics for the educated and cultured stratum of society.

During a short, sharply defined period the group was extremely influen-

25 Willey, 287-8.

26 ‘Matthew Arnold’, Theologisch Tijdschrift, vol. 7 (1873), 287-347. Recently, the first biography of Rauwenhoff was published: P.L. Slis, L.W. E. Rauwenhoff, 1828-1889. Apologeet van het Modernisme [Theologie en geschiedenis], Kampen 2003.

27 Willey, 276.

28 The following paragraph is based on Vidler 45-56.

21

liai — possibly the result of its roots in the university town of Oxford. Its leaders were highly charismatic. The fact that the movement was a reaction to a crisis may also have accounted for its success: the fervour was “impelled by a threat of calamity and a sense of urgency”.As regards Church structure, Newman and his group emphasized the principle of the apostolic succession; they wanted to maintain the apostolic order in the Church via the episcopate. This struck a totally new note in episcopal circles. Not only by means of tracts, but also through sermons (Newman) and poems (Keble), the Tractarians gave a new meaning to long-discarded rites. The principal factor in their charisma was the unobtrusive but intense spirituality in the leaders and many followers. Even their adversaries were moved by their erudition and the high-minded ‘holiness’ that emanated from them, in a society in which faith and religion took the form of merely practical rules for moral behaviour. The Oxford Movement marked the beginning of the nineteenth-century ‘Anglo-Catholic’ stream within the Anglican Church. Its principles were stated by Newman in his Prophetical Office of the Church (1837), citing a group of seventeenth-century theologians including, among others, Andrewes, Laud and Wilson. They turned against the ideas of the Puritans, and are in the literature usually called the ‘Caroline Divines’. The group also counted George Herbert and Jeremy Taylor among its adherents. As essential aspects of Anglo-Catholicism Newman mentions the focus on dogma and sacrament, and anti-Romanism — by which he means that the Church of England claims true catholicity, against the objections by the Church of Rome.^°

The movement had its limitations, possibly resulting from a certain Oxford ‘ivory tower’ mentality. Unintentionally on the part of the leaders, the first response came from the educated part of society; not until 1845 did a general Anglo-Catholic revival take place. Moreover, the Oxford Movement was decidedly conservative. In 1839, Pusey wrote to a young vicar:

Do not think you have possession of a new thing (which is apt to puff people up). What you have which is true has been taught quietly and unostentatiously by many in all times before you: it is in the Catechism and Liturgy: it has only been brought out into open day and seems new to those who had forgotten it. Do not act or think as though you were the Apostle of some new doctrine.’'

The Tractarians set great store by tradition, and with the apostolic succession they appealed particularly to the original, earliest Christian church. Yet, they certainly also recognized a dynamic and progressive element, in this case the preferment of true holiness above Church structure, however apostolic. The foremost example was Newman himself. He and the other progressives, among whom his pupil Wil-

29 Vidler. 49.

30 Reardon, 96.

31 Quoted in Vidler, 53.

22

Harn George Ward (1812-1882), transferred their gaze away from the Anglican Church to Rome; they saw the Roman Catholic Church as the true keeper of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. For this ‘left wing’ of the Oxford Movement Newman wrote the famous Tract XC in 1841. This was an attempt to interpret the Reformational Thirty-nine articles, the confession of the Anglican Church of 1563, in a ‘catholic’ sense. It was the end of the tracts: the treatise caused a storm of indignation, and this reception only strengthened Newman’s suspicion that the cherished concept of the Anglican Church as the perfect via media between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant churches was no more than a paper theory. Not the Roman Catholic Church, but the Church of England had strayed from the path of true Catholicism.

A short digression on the idea of the via media is in order here. This view of the Anglican Church as the ideal ‘middle road’ between Rome and Geneva dates from the time of Henry VIII, and found its classical expression in the Book of Common Prayer and the writings of Richard Hooker (1554-1600). As the enfant terrible of the Oxford Movement, Hurrel Froude, put it: “We are Catholics without Popery, and Church of England men without Protestantism”.In The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity Hooker presented the ‘triple cord’ of reason. Scripture, and tradition, by which the Anglican Church distinguishes itself from on the one hand the Protestant Church (whose adage sola Scriptura limits its basis to the Bible and the believer’s own judgement, i.e., reason), and on the other hand the Roman Catholic Church, which sees itself as founded on the Bible and tradition. This Anglican triad plays a crucial part in Gore’s essay “The Holy Spirit and Inspiration” (see Chapter 2).

In 1845 Newman drew the consequences from his views and entered the Roman Catholic Church. Newman’s example was followed by many other Tractar-ians. Ward and Manning being two of the most well-known. Others fell victim to religious doubt. In 1918 Lytton Strachey wrote:

...while in Froude’s case the loss of his faith turned out to be rather like the loss of a heavy portmanteau, which one afterwards discovers to have been full of old rags and brickbats, [A.H.] Clough was made so uneasy by the loss of his that he went on looking for it everywhere as long as he lived; but somehow he never could find it. On the other hand, Keble and Pusey continued for the rest of their lives to dance in an exemplary manner upon the tight-rope of High Anglicanism; in such an exemplary manner, indeed, that the tight-rope has its dancers stilL’

After Newman’s defection a new phase began. From then on, the Tractarians were called ‘Puseyites’, and under the leadership of Keble and Pusey became more and

32 Quoted in Reardon, 95.

33 Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians (hereafter ‘Strachey’), London 1918', ill. edition New York 1988, 27.

24

more influential. Although their Anglo-Catholicism was always controversial, it still lent a new meaning to the universal idea of the Church of Christ as a divine community and a holy mystery, ready to receive both saints and sinners — ‘catholic’ in the original sense of the word.

DouB'b’'*

Darwin and the new theology definitely brought a new climate: that of serious doubt. From 1860 onwards, ‘unbelief’ began to play a serious part in the theological discussions. The concept itself was not new, but unlike the situation in the first half of the century, agnostics and atheists now did get treated with respect, and the discussion about faith or unbelief had become such a normal part of life that in any case the more intellectual among the younger generation confidently expected to choose their own faith, rather than just adopting that of their parents. The numerous people whose spiritual development passed through various affiliations and denominations illustrate the intellectual and religious doubts of the middle of the nineteenth century; these include famous names such as Thomas Arnold (see above), the political activist Beatrice Potter (later Webb), and Mrs. Annie Besant. The poets Tennyson and Browning came to faith through doubt; Swinburne, on the other hand, came to hate Christianity from the bottom of his heart.

An example of the new tolerance, specifically a new Christian attitude towards Victorian unbelief, is that of Richard Holt Hutton (1826-1897), who from 1861 was editor of the influential journal the Spectator. Hutton was a modern, liberal Anglican, influenced by Maurice, but with a great respect for Newman, too. Via the Spectator he defended science and Bible criticism as useful tools by which man might get to know a transcendental God. Hutton was always reasonable, and always tried to present political, literary, and religious opinions in their proper context. His rare outbursts of wrath he saved for Matthew Arnold, whom he saw as one of those liberals who would continue to strip the Christian Gospel until it was no longer Christian.

The less strict the orthodoxy became, the more man’s moral purpose was seen in terms of individual growth. The school of Green in Oxford (see above) presented a theory of ethics in terms of self-improvement. The novelist George Eliot’^ also wanted to be rid of the shackles of Christian morality and the accompanying feelings of guilt. In her novels she investigated the question whether a decline in religion leads to a decline in moral standard. She replaced the Christian exhortation “serve God” by “serve society”, and has been called “the first great godless

34 This paragraph based on Chadwick, 112-150.

35 Pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880.

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writer of fiction” in England?® It was thanks to George Eliot that at least a part of the British intellectuals began to develop the idea that morality could be separated from religion; however, by far the larger part of Victorian society continued to cling to the notion that ethical behaviour was inextricably linked with the Christian faith.

In the 1880s the faith-unbelief discussion reached a climax, reflected for example in the commotion around the atheist Bradlaugh’s election to Parliament; it took six years to decide which oath on what he should swear at his installation. During this period most Christians were apparently conservative. Although new ideas on the Bible did become more accepted among both Anglicans and nonconformists, people did not openly express them. A discussion in 1882 on the question whether an agnostic should be encouraged to go to Church resulted in an affirmative answer. Maurice’s disciples were always willing to learn from the agnostics (including such celebrities as T.H. Huxley and Herbert Spencer), but these unbelievers were reproached with a lack of nerve by Hutton c.s.: “they confined themselves to their corner of knowledge, and then rested anxiously or cynically, in a few watery axioms”^’—an attitude which Hutton naturally blamed on Matthew Arnold.

The tone in the 1890s was milder. The intellectual climate changed under the influence of the Oxford idealist philosophy. Materialists such as John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer were hostile towards religion, but Green and the other idealists were prepared to give it a lot of room. Atheists and agnostics had more breathing space, and as a result became less violent and fanatic. In the middle of the nineteenth century the word ‘atheist’ was still suspect, and at the end of the century still not quite respectable. But by that time it was possible to be an agnostic, non-theist or even an anti-theist.

Via educated laymen the new ideas percolated through to the people in the pews only slowly. Regular churchgoers were reluctant to accept the new Bible criticism. What exactly the man in the pew thought at any given moment is hard to determine. Erom the reminiscences of a vicar’s son of his school days in the years 1875-1891 we learn that in any case in schools religion was a matter of course, and that nobody objected to the obligatory attendance at the services in the school chapel.^® The famous historian G. Trevelyan was in 1892-1893 ‘the agnostic’ in the last year at Harrow, and felt distinctly isolated.

Doubts among the clergy

The clergy, too, had their doubts. Of course, many priests were by now convinced that the story of Jonah and the whale was a legend, and not factually true; however.

36 Chadwick, 120.

37 Chadwick, 124.

38 Cyril Alington, quoted in Chadwick, 130.

26

the question now became whether they could state this from the pulpit, where they were supposed to speak in the name of the Christian Church. Every member of the clergy in the Church of England was duty bound to preach in conformity with the Thirty-nine articles. The terms of this obligatory subscription had in 1865 already been considerably relaxed and replaced by a formula in which priests declared themselves in agreement with the confession ‘as a whole’, rather than with every detail of it. It was still impossible for priests of the Church of England to preach anything they wanted, but as from now the decision was largely left to the individual conscience. To be sure, there was some additional security in the form of an episcopal check of the ‘soundness’ of a candidate’s faith. Although there were some rejections (in his period as Bishop of Worcester Gore demanded the resignation of a member of the clergy whose opinions he considered incompatible with the doctrines of the Church of England), on the whole there were few difficulties. This was in part caused by the fact that the new theology did not become generally accepted until after Lux Mundi, partly because many clergy were conscientious enough to resign of their own accord when they felt serious doubts. A notorious case was that of the London vicar Stopford Brooke, who left the ministry in 1880 because he did not believe in the biblical miracles. The many different reactions to his plight reflected the various positions people could take in this intellectual conflict. Most clergy respected Brooke’s integrity, but there were those who considered his resignation an anachronism: was it not enough to declare only a ‘broad’ adherence to the credal formulas?

The liberal clergyman Edwin Abbott, a follower of Maurice’s, thought that the only way to give people an enduring religion was to revise the accepted pronouncements of the Church — or the accepted explanation of these pronouncements. He himself saw no reason to leave the Church, and presented his views in a novel he published anonymously in 1886, The Kernel and the Husk: Letters on Spiritual Christianity. Young people start off by believing far too much; as they get older, they try to relieve religion of its superfluous ballast (the husk), but their teachers will not let them: the students have to swallow the whole, or nothing. This either-or principle makes the pupils go for the nothing-option, but by choosing this they unfortunately also lose the precious core {kernel) of the faith. Although the tone of the book was reverent enough, the last part proved highly controversial. Abbott denied that there was an inevitable connection between the Christian faith and acceptance of the miracles. A doubting priest need not leave the Church; it was the general attitude that counted. Separate phrases in the Nicene or Apostolic creeds could be taken as metaphors or poetry.

Controversies on creed and confession

To many, this was unacceptable: in June 1887 Charles Gore, who had come to the forefront of the Anglo-Catholics, launched a vehement attack on Abbott’s book

27

from the pulpit in Oxford. The heirs to the Tractarians considered the confessions indispensable summaries of the ancient faith. The two leading dogmaticians of the Puseyites at the time, Gore and Scott Holland, thought that someone who doubted the factual truth of the texts of the creeds should not be ordained.’’ Not unexpectedly, the theologians of the liberal centre adopted a slightly more permissive attitude on this point. A prominent bishop from these circles, William Boyd Carpenter, in 1887 criticised “the eager and shallow dogmatist who worshipped not God, but clung vehemently and immorally to his creed [... and] made it possible for men to say [...] with a measure of truth, that orthodoxy was a sin against the Holy Ghost”.'*® Carpenter thought that priority should always be given to the ethical criterion for the truth of Christianity.

This was the start of a new wave of discussions on the position of the creeds and the Thirty-nine articles, the ‘Credal Controversy’ of the late 1880s and early 90s. Traditionally, the Athanasian Creed had always occupied a special position. Many believers found it incomprehensible, and many members of the clergy objected to its speculative character and the damnatory clauses it contained. On the other hand, those who doubted the miracles preferred the Athanasian creed above the Nicene and Apostolic creeds.'*' In 1871-3 attempts had been made to abolish the obligatory reciting of the Athanasian creed (prescribed thirteen times per year by the Prayer Book), or at least make this voluntary. Stanley, Broad Churchman par excellence, thought that the creed should be left out of the Prayer Book;*quot; H.P. Liddon, after Pusey’s death the most prominent figure of the Anglo-Catholic party, threatened to withdraw from public life if even one of the thirteen obligatory recitations should be scrapped.'*’ Twenty years later, during the second instalment of the credal controversy, Charles Gore was one of those who wanted to make the recitation of Athanasius’ voluntary — a sure sign that attitudes within the High-Church movement were changing.'*'* Yet, R.C. Moberly in Lux Mundi was still defending the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed. In The Incarnation as the basis of Dogma he says that these maledictions may easily be misunderstood, but that they are an obvious and necessary consequence of the fact that the creed represents Christian life; with this proviso we can accept all phrases in the creed as rational.

Laymen on the outer margins of the Church, as for instance the novel-

39 Chadwick, 148.

40 Quoted in Reardon, 458.

41 Matthew Arnold summarized the relations of the three creeds as follows in Literature and Dogma: the Apostolic creed is the popular-scientific version of Christianity, the Nicene creed is the scholarly and learned version; add to the latter a dash of violence and vindictiveness and you have the Athanasian creed (Reardon, 390).

42 Chadwick, 134.

43 Henry Parry Liddon, 1829-1890, There is a connection with the Old Catholic Church here: Liddon attended the Bonn Conferences in 1874 and 1875.

44 Chadwick, 150.

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ist Mrs. Humphrey Ward (Mary Augusta Arnold, 1851-1920, granddaughter of Thomas and niece of Matthew Arnold), wanted to go further and also abolish the Apostolic and Nicene creeds, but that had never been the intention of the Broad Churchmen. However, Benjamin Jowett, one of the central figures in the Essays and Reviews controversy, did stop using the Apostolic creed at Balliol College. Liberals such as Hastings Rashdall and Edwin Abbott, the author of The Kernel and the Husk, valued historical continuity and had no problems with the use of the creeds as poetical representations of reality.

A RADICAL manifesto: Essays and Review^^^

The book that first tried to bridge the gap between faith and honest doubt was Essays and Reviews, already mentioned. In this groundbreaking publication of 1860 the results of modern scientific and literary research were applied to Christianity in a positive way.'*^ This work, too, deserves more than summary treatment here: some of the ideas first presented there, very revolutionary at the time, are found as accepted doctrines in Lux Mundi, so that in addition to the inheritance of the Oxford Movement the echo of the Essays and Reviews controversy also becomes a factor in the appreciation of Lux Mundi.

The idea for essays on critical Bible studies came from the Anglican theologians H.B. Wilson and Benjamin Jowett and received warm support from Stanley, who however did not write a contribution himself. Eventually, the book contained seven essays: besides the contributions by Wilson and Jowett there were essays by Frederick Temple, rector of Rugby; Rowland Williams, a Hebraist;'*’ Baden Powell, a mathematician; C.W. Goodwin, the only Cambridge author in the Oxford company and the only non-Churchman, and Mark Pattison, “the most learned clergyman in England”.'”*

In spite of the fact that Wilson was cited as ‘editor’, the collection seems rather haphazard, and the level of the contributions is extremely varied. The short preface laconically states that the contents of the essays are the sole responsibility of their authors. Yet, a number of ideas may be distilled that are found with all or most writers. First: a gap has appeared between Christian doctrine and the honest convictions of educated people. It is time to find a way to reconcile Christianity

45 This paragraph mainly based on Ellis; cf. also M. Ploeger, High-Church Varieties. Three Essays on Continuity and Discontinuity in Nineteenth-Century Anglican Catholic Thought (hereafter ‘Ploeger’) [Publica-tieserie Stichting Oud-Katholiek Seminarie, Vol. 36], Amersfoort/Sliedrecht 2001, 73-77; and Chadwick, 75-97.

46 Ploeger, 73.

47 Intriguingly always called ‘Roland Williams’ in J.W. Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism in the 19th Century, Londen 1984 (hereafter ‘Rogerson’).

48 Chadwick, 167.

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and the modern mind. Secondly: all truth is from God; people need not be afraid of a responsible investigation of the truth. Thirdly: the truth of Christianity should not be linked to the historical factuality of every detail of a biblical story; the story of Creation, for instance, is a myth, and offers religious truth.“*’ Finally: we should not try, as Paley did, to demonstrate the truth of the Christian revelation by appealing to miracles and prophecies.

All authors of Essays and Reviews belonged to the movement that Cony-beare had labelled ‘Broad Church’, but they were more radical than liberal. They unequivocally rejected the ideas of Newman, Pusey and the other Tractarians, whom Pattison accused of “medieval obscurantism’”“. In addition to their embracing of the ‘new’ theology and historical Bible criticism, this is also reflected in their views on the Church and revelation.

Wilson wrote on the equality of Church and State. The authors of Essays and Reviews preferred a broad, ‘national’ church, without caring much about the aspect of beauty, mysticism, and historical uniqueness that the Tractarians had valued so much. In his essay on the periodization of Christian history, Pattison introduced the idea that the Church, as a historic institution, is subject to evolution — a thought completely the opposite of the Catholic, High-Church view of the Church a.s the keeper of Scripture.

The approach used in Essays and Reviews was strictly historical, and so cast a new light on the traditional doctrine of the Revelation.^' Unlike the Puseyites, who abided by their idea of the creed as ‘facts’ and hence by the Virgin Birth and the bodily Resurrection, the radicals held that the Revelation should be separated from the miracles. Jowett said the revelation of God in the Scriptures was progressive: belief in the miracles belonged to an immature stage in the development of mankind. According to Goodwin, the Galileo controversy (to which Gore also refers in Lux Mundi, 261) had shown that discoveries for which man was especially suited (i.e., scientific facts) were no suitable objects of divine revelation. The concept and definition of ‘revelation’ had to be adapted. Mankind possessed its own faculty by which to make moral and spiritual judgements on what was presented as revelation. The essayists placed the individual judgement above any ‘law’, but did not want to go as far as concluding that reason would eventually reveal all. The goal of history was to uncover the nature of the revelation — something human faculties could not do. According to Jowett, historical study showed that human nature contained one unchangeable element, included among the fundamental hu-

49 D.F. Strauss (1808-1874) extended the theory to the New Testament with his mythical interpretation of Jesus’ life. Strauss did not deny that Jesus was a historical person, but contended that he had been transformed into the divine and supernatural Son of God by the imagination of his followers. Gore was of a completely opposite view: he thought that Renan, Strauss, Harnack and Schweitzer (about whom more in Chapter 3) were ‘less than Christian’ in their fundamental denial of the miraculous. (Carpenter, 109)

50 Ellis, 24.

51 Ellis, 90-97.

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man instincts: the personal conscience. To Jowett, Christ was the most complete revelation of this eternal truth. In order to find the way back to this truth, man should return to the basis: in Jowett’s view this was the Bible, freed by the new Bible criticism from all accrued superstitions. The fact that the truths of the Revelation are eternal and unchangeable, and human nature always remains the same, was an additional ground for abandoning the exclusive revelation as professed by Christianity; the moral nature of man was everywhere and always the same. In this kind of doctrine there is no place for any idea of original sin: all authors of Essays and Reviews rejected the Calvinist idea of the essential depravity of man.

Incarnation or deliverance?

In Essays and Reviews the focus of the Revelation was moved from God to man.’^ God was ‘Eternal’ and ‘Universal Parent’ rather than ‘Lord’, immanent rather than transcendent. In Christology, too, the accent was moved from the divine to the human aspects. In this respect the essayists did follow the line of Coleridge, Maurice and the Tractarians, who in their turn had revitalized the ideas of the seventeenth-century ‘Caroline Divines’ (see above). The balance between the two central doctrines of Christian faith, i.e. the incarnation of God in man (Christ), and the atonement through Christ’s death, now shifted to the former. This became an essential point of difference with the Evangelicals, who put particular emphasis on atonement and forgiveness.

Hence, although Essays and Reviews lacks an essay on Christ, the book does present a radical Christology. In an earlier article Rowland Williams had already stated that Christianity meant the worship of Christ as a person, not as a divine power. Against the current theology Wilson said that Christ’s awareness of his own status had only grown experimentally, i.e. during his life, and had not been infused into him by God. This meant that Christ’s consciousness was similar to that of ‘normal’ people. To Liddon’s dismay. Gore was later to express roughly the same thought in a controversial way in Lux Mundi.

Jowett doubted the Virgin Birth, and like Rowland Williams advocated a purely ethical view of atonement; in this so-called ‘exemplary’ view Christ functions as an example, illustrating the utter wickedness of sin. Especially Jowett’s thought shows this shift “from Easter to Christmas’’”, from Christ the Redeemer to Christ the preacher of expiation, appealing to the spiritual faculty of man’s own conscience. From 1865 onwards Jowett no longer accepted the physical Resurrection. This view of Christ was a crucial point of difference with the Anglo-Catho-lics, who saw the Incarnation as the self-revelation of God in Christ, sanctifying human nature and Creation by becoming man.

Wilson reassured his readers that these sort of doubts were no mortal sin.

52 Ellis, 95.

53 Ellis, 97.

31

Christian living was just as valuable as Christian doctrine. Jowett thought that the Christian truth did not depend on fixed dogmatic formulas. To the authors of Essays and Reviews, fact was more important than dogma. It was also these scholars who pointed out that the Thirty-nine articles contained no basis for the Anglican doctrine of the Bible as the ‘Word of God’: the sixth article does not say anything about a supernatural source for the Bible, and does not attempt in any way to define ‘inspiration’.Their rejection of “the old verbal orthodoxy’’^’ started a movement away from the credal formulas to the ‘facts’ of religious experience. This aspect, too, was later to return in Lux Mundi.

Reactions

Essays and Reviews was ground-breaking not only because it introduced the Kantian separation between the physical and the spiritual to British theology, but also, and especially, because it had been written by clergymen: could they think like this and still function as priests in the Anglican Church? The reactions were overwhelming. In an anonymous article, the positivist Frederic Harrison, an apostate High-Churchman, stated that the only possible conclusion for the authors to draw was that they should leave the Church; the Church, bound to traditional systems, could never adapt to the new scientific developments. A remarkable effect was that a shared distaste of the controversial book threw Evangelicals and Tractarians together: both groups took refuge in a reactionary position.’®

After an episcopal letter to reassure believers, the decision was eventually taken to prosecute. Although Jowett also came in for a lot of criticism, only Rowland Williams and Wilson could be tried in an ecclesiastical court.’^ Both were accused of denying the inspiration of the Bible, and Wilson also of denying eternal damnation, that favourite dogma of Victorian orthodoxy. They were convicted, but the sentence was revoked in 1864. Subsequently, Essays and Reviews as a whole was condemned by the Convocation (i.e.. Synod) at Canterbury in April 1864. Pusey, too, had been active, and together with the philanthropist Lord Shaftesbury’^

54 This article reads: 'VI. Of the Sufficiency of the holy Scriptures for Salvation: Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary for salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the holy Scripture we do understand those Canonical Book.s of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church: [follows a list of the OT canon]. And the other books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine: such as these following: [follows a list of the Apocrypha]. All the Books of the New Testament, as they are commonly received, we do receive, and account them Canonical.’ From: The Book of Common Prayer, Cambridge University Press.

55 Ellis, 216.

56 Ploeger, 75; see also the first paragraph of this chapter.

57 Chadwick, 78: Baden Powell had just died; Temple’s essay was reverent enough; Pattison’s essay did not contain any real heresies either; Jowett was a classical scholar, not a theologian.

58 Anthony Asley Cooper, 7quot;' Earl of Shaftesbury, 1801-1885.

32

had persuaded many clerics to sign a petition against the Essays, stating that the Bible was the Word of God, and that reward as well as punishment were eternal. The end of the storm came in 1869, when Temple was surprisingly nominated bishop of Exeter by the then Prime Minister Gladstone. Although at first this created an enormous stir, and his ordination was boycotted by many. Temple proved an excellent bishop who in 1896 even became Archbishop of Canterbury.’’ In the middle of the tumult over the book, Newman’s reaction was surprisingly positive: “We must react to these German theories’’.“

59 In this function he ordained Charles Gore Bishop of Worcester in 1901.

60 Quoted in Ellis, 141.

33

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CHAPTER 2

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND INSPIRATION

The reaction did come, with the result that by the end of the nineteenth century, many decades after it had been accepted in Continental Europe, the new Bible criticism had largely been incorporated into British theology. The publication of Lux Mundi in 1889 was a sign of this. Building on the background sketched in Chapter 1, this chapter is largely devoted to a close reading of “The Holy Spirit and Inspiration”, the flagship essay of the book. First, however, a short biographical sketch of the author of the essay, and editor-in-chief of the collection, will be provided.

Charles Gore: a modern traditionalist’

Charles Gore was one of those scholars whose life is difficult to separate from his ideas.2 He was born in 1853 as the third son of aristocratic parents. The family lived in Wimbledon. At a very early age Charles was already attracted to the Oxford Movement. When he was eight or nine years old, he read a book by a Protestant author about the conversion of a Roman Catholic priest to Protestantism.^ On the young Gore, this book had the opposite effect of that intended by its author: the descriptions of confession and absolution, the presentia realis, the smells and bells opened his eyes to the fact that he much preferred this type of sacramental religion over the rather Low-Church services that the Gore family usually attended. “I was what people call a ritualist from the time I was a boy”.'* Throughout his life, part of Gore’s struggle with modern developments was always inextricably linked to his (Anglo) Catholic views. After his years at Harrow, where B.F. Westcott, later to become a well-known New Testament scholar, was one of his teachers, he gained a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1870. There he read Classics, with Benjamin Jowett as one of his professors.’ From 1875 to 1880 he was Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, during which period he prepared for the ministry, a long-cherished dream. Gore was ordained in 1878.

I This paragraph is largely based on Crosse, Charles Gore: A Biographical Sketch (hereafter ‘Crosse’), Mowbray 1932, and on Carpenter, 21-37. The complete text of Crosse’s biography is available at http;// justus.anglican.org/resources/pc/gore/; for this reason, quotes from Crosse’s text are given without page references.

• 2 Carpenter, 23.

• 3 Probably Grace Kennedy’s Father Clement: A Roman Catholic Story, Edinburgh 1823.

• 4 Crosse.

• 5 Judging from a note on pp. xvi/xvii of Lux Mundi, Gore also read German. His Oxford environment may have had something to do with this: “The use of German became almost a Balliol affectation” (Geoffrey Faber, Jowett. A portrait with background, London 1957, 179).

35

At Trinity he was befriended by colleagues who were generally a little older, all theologians, and all striving for a reconciliation of reason and Revelation — efforts that were to result in the publication of Lux Mundi. This group consisted of Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918), a friend from Gore’s youth, and also a close friend of T.H. Green’s; Aubrey Moore (1848-1890), lecturer at Magdalen and Keble; John Richardson Illingworth (1848-1915), then Fellow of Jesus College and also a lecturer at Keble; E.S. Talbot (1844-1934), Warden of Keble, and later Bishop of Winchester; R.C. Moberly (1845-1903), student at Christ Church; Arthur Lyttelton (1852-1903), then at Keble and later the only member of the group to be based in Cambridge; W. Lock (1846-1933), later Warden of Keble and Fellow of Magdalen; F. Paget (1851-1911), later Canon of Christ Church and Regius Professor of pastoral theology; W.J.H. Campion (died 1892), lecturer at Keble^, and R.L. Ottley (1857-1933), student at Cuddesdon Theological College. After an ironic suggestion of Scott Holland’s, the group called itself the ‘Holy Party’.

In 1881 Gore entered the public arena for the first time with a controversial attack on the Church view presented by Edwin Hatch in his Bampton Lectures of that year. Meanwhile, he had become vice-principal of Cuddesdon Theological College; Ottley was among his students. In 1883 Gore was asked to

become principal of the recently founded Pusey House. This was a theological institute established in memory of one of the founders of the Oxford Movement, Edward Bouverie Pusey, who had died in 1882 (see Chapter 1). The idea for Pusey House came from his devoted pupil Edward Liddon. Primarily, the centre was intended to house Pusey’s extensive library, but the new institute was also meant to serve as a meditation centre and meeting place of kindred souls. Liddon saw Gore as the heir apparent of the Puseyites. On his acceptance of the appointment Gore made it clear that he did not

Edward Bouverie Pusey

6 Campion is missing from Ramsey’s list (11), and from Carpenter’s Index.

36

intend to adhere to Pusey’s teaching in every detail, but it is unlikely that Liddon realised the full implications of this statement. He must, however, have begun to have some inkling when shortly after his accession Gore gave a controversial sermon for the entire university, in which he stated that the latest results of science were not incompatible with religious truths.

The years 1888-1889 were a busy period for the Holy Party. The members founded a Society of the Resurrection, with the intention that this would result in a new religious order, the Community of the Resurrection. This order, officially founded in 1892, still exists: it is the largest religious order for men within the Church of England, and has flourished in Mirfield, Yorkshire since 1932. The establishment of this order was connected with two other matters close to the heart of the Holy Party: their focus on the doctrine of the Incarnation, an inheritance from the Oxford Movement that had also been continued in Essays and Reviews (see Chapter 1), and its ethical and social implications.’ This social commitment is also reflected in the fact that Gore, Scott Holland, and Westcott, then Bishop of Durham, in 1889 founded a branch of the Christian Social Union in Oxford, as part of the Christian Social Movement led by, among others, F.D. Maurice. The fact that the constitutive meeting was held in the conservative Pusey House of all places brought down storms of protest on Gore and his group. Finally, 1889 of course saw the publication of Lux Mundi, a collection of essays by the members of the Holy Party, intended to bring the Catholic faith into line with contemporary intellectual and ethical problems.

Lux Mundi caused an uproar. In 1890 Gore offered to step down as principal of Pusey House because of the often vicious criticism, but Liddon did not dare to accept this offer for fear of being inundated by declarations of support for Gore. Yet, in a sermon on Whitsunday 1890 Liddon criticized the controversial work, though without mentioning it by name. In 1893 Gore did step down, in order to devote himself to a monastic life as Brother of the Community of the Resurrection in Radley, near Oxford. After a year, however, he was appointed Canon of Westminster. This proved the turning-point in Gore’s life: not only did it become clear that the Lux Mundi controversy had not harmed his reputation, but the position also provided him with a platform from which to put forward his ideas. Thus, the path was prepared via which Gore was to become the most influential voice in the Church of England, and remain so for the next forty years. After 1889, the Holy Party lived on as the ‘Lux Mundi Party’.

For Gore, Westminster was the start of a steady series of appointments that via the sees of Worcester (1901) and Birmingham (1904) culminated in the bishopric of Oxford (1911). He left this post in 1919 in order to move to London and devote all his time to writing. This resulted in an impressive stream of publi-

7 Carpenter, 34.

37

cations. The bibliography of his articles, monographs, addresses, and sermons in Carpenter’s Gore, A Study in Liberal Catholic Thought covers more than fifteen pages.’ He still found time, however, for a post as lecturer in Theology at King’s College, London, and for a short time was even principal of the Theological Faculty of London University. He was also editor-in-chief of the New Commentary on Holy Scripture, published in 1928.

Until the end of his life Charles Gore remained one of the most influential figures in the Church of England. His zeal was untiring. In addition to his innumerable other activities he also took a keen interest in the missions. He travelled to the USA, and several times visited India, the last time in 1930-1931. This strenuous journey took its toll. In May 1931, whilst serving at the altar, he suffered a stroke from which he never recovered; he died in January 1932.

Gore’s personality was not an easy one. He had great confidence in his own opinions, which were already completely fixed before his ordination in 1878. He had little patience with ‘honest doubt’ — it was necessary to make clear-cut choices. An unpleasant aspect of his self-assurance was a rigid adherence to dogma that became especially prominent during his Oxford episcopate, when he showed himself extremely inflexible in a number of conflicts. However, the authority he claimed for himself he also was willing to accept of others. When during a congress Gore was reading a paper and the chairman’s buzzer went off before he was finished, he sat down in the middle of a sentence as if hit by a bullet.

In spite of everything, appreciation for Gore has always been considerable. This is undoubtedly also due to his pastoral talents. His writings, speeches etc. were primarily intended for the educated laity rather than his fellow-theologians, and his clear and inspiring sermons also possessed the ‘common touch’. Like other Anglicans, Gore reacted in the first place to the practical questions of his time, and was certainly no systematic theologian. This partly explains the contradictions and occasional vagueness in Gore’s ideas, which will be discussed more fully in the conclusion to this chapter. In addition to this. Gore’s popularity among non-An-glicans, notably Roman Catholics and nonconformists, also shows that Gore at least partly succeeded in being a builder of bridges, and represented a synthesis of orthodox and new theology: his ‘Liberal Catholicism’ will be discussed in Chapter 3.

Theology and philosophy in Oxford 1870-1890

At the time when Gore started out as a student, Oxford was no longer the exclusive domain of the Church of England. As from 1854, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge had been open to students and lecturers from all denominations, not

8 From Gore’s London period dates the remark of a bookseller: “We look on Bishop Gore as the Ethel M. Dell of the Church” (Crosse).

38

only confessing members of the Anglican Church. The atmosphere was totally different from what it had been when Newman, Pusey and Keble laid the foundations for the Anglo-Catholic revival. Scott Holland brought Gore into contact with the philosophy of T.H. Green. The influence of Green’s idealism on specific social and epistemological aspects of Gore’s thought will be part of the discussion of his essay “The Holy Spirit and Inspiration”, further on in this chapter.

Also, at the time of Gore’s arrival in Oxford, around 1870, the question of the relationship between historic fact and Christian dogma was beginning to emerge as one of the main theological battlefields. In England, this battle did not properly start until around 1900, and lasted until well into the 1930s’ — it dominated the larger part of Gore’s working years. On this point, too. Gore shows himself a bridge between the old times and the new. He set great store by reasoned thinking, but remained reverent: Gore always stuck to his Catholicism, and always maintained that the Revelation, i.e., the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, was a firm historic fact.

Critical orthodoxy: Lux Mundi

Like that other controversial Oxford publication. Essays and Reviews (see Chapter 1), Lux Mundi, too, proved a milestone in the history of British theology. Lux Mundi was the manifesto of the High-Church representatives of the orthodoxy. Although they had Pusey’s favourite in their midst, the members of the Holy Party were much more revolutionary than the older generation had been. The younger High Churchmen were keen to adapt traditionalism to the changing times.”

The book appeared in 1889, but had been long in the making. The upheaval created by Essays and Reviews during the period 1860-1864 was followed by a relative quiet on the theological front. It is hard to say whether, after years of preparatory discussions among the authors, there was a specific event that triggered the publication of Lux Mundi. Developments since 1860 had undoubtedly had a cumulative effect, and the faith-unbelief discussion had gained momentum after 1880.quot; Perhaps the following circumstances should also be considered. In 1881 a revision of the King James Bible had appeared,” which had been supervised by a committee of eminent Bible and classical scholars, among whom the New Testament scholars Westcott and Hort. The committee also included nonAnglicans. The resulting text was considerably less conservative than the original commission had stipulated, and caused nationwide discussion; ordinary believers

9 Carpenter, 94.

10 Reardon, 19-20. Reardon discusses Lux Mundi in a chapter entitled “Critical orthodoxy”.

• 11 See Chapter 1.

• 12 Chadwick, 43-4.

39

were never troubled by esoteric hair-splitting among theologians, but the fact that the words of the Lord’s Prayer were suddenly different (reflecting current critical scholarship) affected everybody who went to Church on Sundays. Another stone in the pond was Edwin Abbott’s The Kernel and the Husk (see Chapter 1). Although the tone of the book was reverent enough, Gore attacked it in 1887 in a sermon at Oxford University. Probably even more significant is the fact that in Lux Mundi Moberly several times explicitly took a stand against the novel in his essay “The Incarnation as the Basis of Dogma’’.'^ Finally, in 1888, shortly after Abbott’s book, Mrs. Humphrey Ward’s novel Robert Elsmere was published, which also described a crisis of faith caused by the new Bible criticism.’'*

The title Lux Mundi, “Light of the World”, is a phrase from the Bible occurring in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5:14) and in John 8:12,9:5. Together with the subtitle A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation this choice reflects the trend in British theology, revived by the Oxford Movement, to stress the Incarnation rather than salvation (see the paragraph “Incarnation or deliverance?” in Chapter 1).” The book has as its motto an Italian quotation from Dante’s Divina Commedia)^ The preface to the first edition of Lux Mundi is dated “Michaelmas 1889”.” Reprints followed in quick succession: the preface to the tenth edition was written less than a year after the first.

Gore introduces Lux Mundi by the pragmatic statement “This volume is primarily due to a set of circumstances which exists no longer”. This refers to the fact that during the years 1875-1885 the authors were all together at Oxford, and through many discussions worked towards a common and urgent goal:

to attempt to put the Catholic faith into its right relation to modern intellectual and moral problems (vii)

This short sentence manages to list almost all key aspects of the position and ideas of the Holy Party. We note the word ‘Catholic’, referring to the Anglo-Catholic spirituality. The phrase “right relation” reflects Gore’s absolute idea of what is true and correct. The authors do not present themselves as “seekers after truth” (viii), but as servants of the Catholic creed and of the Church (in that order). The word ‘modern’ refers to the more or less immediate cause of the publication of the essay

13 193, 195,196.

• 14 Mary Augusta Arnold, also mentioned in Chapter 1. Robert Elsmere plays a central part in E.G.E. van der Wall, Het oude en het nieuwe geloof. Discussies rond 1900, Leiden 1999.

• 15 Strangely enough, the book does not pay much attention to the Incarnation itself as a dogma (Reardon, 433).

• 16 Paradiso. Canto xxxiii: in the English translation by Longfellow:

In presence of that light one such becomes, That to withdraw therefrom for other prospect It is impossible he e’er consent;

• 17 29 September. Lytton Strachey notes (Strachey, 21) that it was “typically Tractarian” to date letters by the saint of the day.

40

collection: the latest developments in modern science, more specifically the new Bible criticism. Finally, the “intellectual and moral problems” are taken up in the discussions of dogma and ethics in the twelve essays making up the book.*’

It is interesting to compare Gore’s extensive justification of this first edition with the rather meagre six lines that launched Essays and Reviews on its journey into the world in 1860. They may be quoted here in full:

TO THE READER

It will readily be understood that the Authors of the ensuing Essays are responsible for their respective articles only. They have written in entire independence of each other, and without concert or comparison. The Volume, it is hoped, will be received as an attempt to illustrate the advantage derivable to the cause of religious and moral truth, from a free handling, in a becoming spirit, of subjects peculiarly liable to suffer by the repetition of conventional language, and from traditional methods of treatment.*’

One may wonder whether Gore might not be explicitly distancing himself from this text in the ending of his own preface:

.... so that without each of us professing such responsibility for work other than his own [...], we do desire this volume to be the expression of a common mind and a common hope, (vii)

True enough. Lux Mundi stands out by a great unity of viewpoint, undoubtedly also the result of a common indebtedness to the idealist philosophy of TH. Green.^“ Observations on Gore almost always also hold true for the Holy Party as a whole. Although the essays do not necessarily build on one or more of the others, there are frequent references to the contributions by the other authors.

Lux Mundi claims to be a justification and explanation of the Christian creed (“this collection of essays represents an attempt on behalf of the Christian creed in the way of explanation”, x). Although by ‘creed’ Gore refers to ‘faith’ in general, rather than one particular creed, the subjects of the essays do reflect almost exactly the order in which the corresponding articles of faith are mentioned in the Nicene Creed. This is undoubtedly what Gore means when he says that these studies “will be seen to cover, more or less, the area of the Christian faith in its

• 18 All of which are sound, but not controversial like Gore’s. The Table of Contents lists, in order: “Faith” by Scott Holland; “The Christian Doctrine of God”, by Aubrey Moore; “The Problem of Pain”, by Illingworth; “The Preparation in History for Christ”, by Talbot; “The Incarnation in Relation to Development”, by Illingworth; “The Incarnation as the Basis of Dogma”, by Moberly; “The Atonement”, by Lyttelton; “The Holy Spirit and Inspiration”, by Gore; “The Church”, by Lock; “Sacraments”, by Paget; “Christianity and Politics”, by Campion; “Christian Ethics”, by Ottley.

• 19 Available in facsimile at http;//justus.anglican.org/resources/.

• 20 Reardon, 434.

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natural order and sequence of parts” (viii). The book follows ‘Nicea’ closely; only the last two essays seem added as afterthoughts, no. 11 on “Christianity and Politics” by W.J.H. Campion, and no. 12 on “Christian Ethics”, by R.L. Ottley. In his preface to the tenth edition (1890), Gore has replaced the phrase “intellectual and moral” from the first preface by “politics and ethics” — these happen to be exactly the subjects of these last two essays, which remain outside the strict pattern of the text of the creed. The tenth edition also contains an additional appendix “On the Christian doctrine of Sin”, a sermon preached by Gore in March 1889. In a note Gore comments that, accepting the various critical comments about the lack of an essay on sin, it seemed better to use a text that had not been written because of the criticism.

As stated earlier, in spite of all its High-Church elements. Lux Mundi also reflects the influence of the radical Essays and Reviews. Although it does not seem very plausible that after thirty years Gore c.s. should still be explicitly attacking Essays and Reviews (but see the comparison of the two prefaces above), and of the Essays and Reviews authors only Mark Pattison is quoted in Lux Mundi, there is some continuity after all. Curiously enough it is Benjamin Jowett who seems to form the link between both controversial publications. Jowett had Gore among his students at Balliol, and had a considerable international reputation. In 1875, for instance, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Leiden on the occasion of its tercentenary.^' He was known as an inspiring teacher; Gore had a portrait of him in his study at Cuddesdon House.

Compared to the radical Essays and Reviews the Anglo-Catholic Lux Mundi seems understandably mild. Yet, the adoption of modern Bible criticism by a rather conservative group, the emphasis on the Incarnation, and Gore’s theory about the kenosis (‘emptying’) of Christ, created quite an impression — albeit not always a positive one. Jowett’s criticism of Lux Mundi, the reception of the book, and its place in the whole of nineteenth-century Anglican theology will be discussed in Chapter 3 of this study; it is now time to become acquainted with the contents of Gore’s essay.

The Holy Spirit and Inspiration

When Lux Mundi appeared in 1889 Charles Gore was 36 years old. He belonged to the progressive Holy Party in Oxford, but was at the same time expected to don Edward Pusey’s mantle as the ‘leader’ of the conservative High Church party. Gore’s paradoxical personality and the ambiguity in his thought are clearly reflected in his contribution to Lux Mundi. In “The Holy Spirit and Inspiration” we already note to what extent the Anglo-Catholic Gore wants to be both reasonable

21 Dictionary of National Biography, Supplement vol. Ill, London 1901, 55.

42

and reverent, and so keep all his options open: he presents a global, non-literal view of biblical inspiration (fitting the modern idea of a gradual Revelation) as an argument to support the surprising conclusion that the statements in the creed are rational and true, and hence should be taken literally.

From the preface to the first edition we learn that Lux Mundi was explicitly intended to be a sort of vindication of the creed (for this, and for the wide discussion on the compulsory reciting of the creed that had raged shortly before, see Chapter 1). In the order of Lux Mundi, Gore’s essay comes between Lyttelton’s “The Atonement’’ and Lock’s “The Church”—exactly corresponding to the contents of the Nicene Creed, in which the passage on the Holy Ghost comes between the Kingdom of God that is without end, and the phrase “I believe one holy, catholic and apostolic Church”.

Of the twelve contributions Gore’s has proved the most controversial, or rather, was the only one to prove truly controversial. As he himself says in the preface to the tenth edition, this was mainly due to “some twenty pages on Inspiration” (x). The ‘close reading’ of Gore’s essay presented here follows his own division into three sections; the controversial twenty pages are discussed in the paragraph “The inspiration of Holy Scripture” below.

Christianity is life

Experience

The carefully balanced opening sentence of Gore’s essay could almost have been written by Jane Austen:

The appeal to ‘experience’ in religion, whether personal or general, brings before the mind so many associations of ungoverned enthusiasm and untrustworthy fanaticism, that it does not easily recommend itself to those of us who are most concerned to be reasonable. (230)

Two core concepts from Gore’s argument are presented here: ‘experience’ and ‘reason’. The first term, repeated in the “current appeals to experience” in the next paragraph, places Gore in the liberal mainstream of the theology of the second half of the nineteenth century (see Chapter 1).

Gore challenges a view of ‘experience’ as an excited, ecstatic, individual state of mind. His position fits his (typically Anglo-Catholic) loathing of enthusiasm and fanaticism, and the view of the inspiration of Holy Scripture he unfolds later. This is no trance in which someone visited by inspiration speaks in ecstasy, as a passive, unconscious instrument of the Spirit. That may be the Low-Church view of inspiration, but Gore considers such an idea almost un-Christian: “the metaphors which would describe the Holy Spirit as acting upon a man ‘like a flute

43

player breathing into his flute’ or ‘a plectrum striking a lyre’ have always a suspicion of heresy attaching to their use” (251).

Experience is to feel, but also to know: the word ‘feel’ is often used to denote an experience tantamount to conviction. In Gore’s view, the experience of the divine is expressed in a permanent transformation of man’s entire moral, intellectual and physical being (230) — an echo of Coleridge’s notion of faith as an energy of the entire being.^^ In this sense, ‘experience’ is no unacceptable subjectivism, but essential to Christianity. The Church Fathers appeal to it, as does even Christ himself (230)! Christianity is life, and life is experience.

Reason

Although the word is missing from his own Synopsis, reason and rationality are, to Gore, as essential to faith as ‘experience’. Its opposites are arbitrariness, irrationality and an ‘uncritical’ attitude. Gore’s emphasis on reason links him first of all to the ‘triple cord’, introduced by Hooker in the seventeenth century. It is this cord, consisting of the intertwining strands of reason. Scripture and tradition, that distinguishes the Anglican Church from the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches.^'*

Not only does Gore link ‘reason’ with Scripture — the Bible should be interpreted by means of modern, rational criticism — but he gives the word ‘rational’ another connotation as well. The term is also found in the Athanasian Creed, in the phrase “perfect God and perfect man, of a rational soul and human flesh subsisting”. The parallel construction of the sentence suggests that “rational soul” constitutes the divine element in this combination. And true enough, in Gore’s text we find statements such as: “where life is most penetrating, profound, invincible, rational [italics IS], conscious of God, there [...] is the Holy Spirit (231); “it is in rational natures, which alone are capable of holiness, that [the Spirit] exerts His special influence” (232). “Human activity is [...] free, conscious, rational, because the Spirit inspires it” (251). Reason also has a dark side, indicated by the term ‘rationalistic’, and used by Gore in an obviously pejorative sense. In the preface he scathingly refers to “men thoroughly rationalistic in temper and tone”, whom he sees as “personally opposed to the Christian faith” (xvi).

Immanentism

The divine may be experienced in various places: in man, in nature, in Christ, and in the Church. The Spirit consecrates all of nature, both the material and the spiritual. Following Maurice and Green (see Chapter 1), Gore says that the Spirit

• 22 See Chapter 1.

• 23 The ‘Synopsis’ in Lux Mundi is a table of contents of truly nineteenth-century proportions, and offers a bird’s eye view of every essay in the form of short ‘headlines’ that are not given in the texts themselves.

• 24 For this, see also the paragraph “Anglo-Catholicism: the Traetarians” in Chapter 1. In Lux Mundi (xix) Gore quotes from Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity.

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will eventually bring about a synthesis between the material and the spiritual, two opposites that he equates to the contrasting pair ‘experience’ and ‘faith’:

But the unity of the spirit and the flesh, of faith and experience, of God and the world, is certainly not an accomplished fact. (240)

Gore here addresses the perhaps more obvious, dualist idea that these pairs of concepts are mutually exclusive: experience then represents (empirical) certainty, and faith represents what cannot be proven. This opposition, however, is only an apparent contrast, which, like the contrast between mind and body, is cancelled by the life-giving work of the Spirit — irrespective of seductive dualist theories (240). The unity of the material and the spiritual postulated by Gore demonstrates that he sees nature as one comprehensive entity, inspired by God’s breath: the Spirit. There is a strong immanentist tendency in Lux Mundi, which becomes especially clear in the essays by Illingworth and Aubrey Moore, but Gore’s ideas also seem to veer towards Moore’s “higher pantheism”.“ Gore, however, does stick to the reality of the supernatural.

[.„I the facts and relationships introduced into the world by the Revelation of the Son represent eternal realities, if under great limitations yet still truly, and thus make possible a real security up to a certain point on what lies beyond unassisted human knowledge. [...] The relations manifested in the Incarnation in terms of our experience between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, express transcendent and eternal relations [...].(245)

To Gore, ‘nature’ and ‘grace’, ‘the world’ and ‘God’ are relative terms with regard to a human observer. All refer to the one domain in which God acts; the distinction is epistemological rather than ontological.^®

Sin

The apparent antagonism between nature and grace has been introduced into the world by sin (239), the corruption that is by definition part of experience — experience belongs to the realm of what is not (yet) perfect. The shortcomings of the clergy, for instance. Gore describes as “facts of personal experience”, which sometimes impede the claims of the Church (242). The topic of sin is not given a separate essay in Lux Mundi. In the preface to the tenth edition. Gore admits, under the pressure of criticism, that a separate contribution should have been reserved for the subject. This has now been added, in the form of an existing sermon by himself.^’ In “The Holy Spirit and Inspiration” he does, of course, refer several times to the

25 Quoted in Reardon, 437.

26 Avis, 63.

27 Appendix II, “On the Christian doctrine of Sin”, 387-395.

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concept of sin. Following 1 John 3:4, Gore defines ‘sin’ as a “violation of the law”, a corruption of man’s true nature. This view is primarily practical; it is a postulate that enables us to successfully deal with sin. However, since the concept of sin is verified and justified by its results, and tested by experience, it changes from a hypothesis into an accepted truth in the Christian consciousness (xiv). Exactly this is also what Illingworth says in his essay, to which Gore further refers the reader for this subject: sin is not a dogma, but a fact. Moreover, in the sermon added to the tenth edition. Gore demonstrates that this Christian concept of sin can be reconciled with the latest scientific discoveries (xv, n.) — just as with his essay, in fact with the book as a whole, he wants to demonstrate that Christianity is ‘true’ in a scientific sense.

Gore’s concept of development

Experience is by definition flawed but is constantly striving for perfection, embodied in God and revealed in the Incarnation. This aspiration is supported by the Spirit, whose work however takes place gradually (240). The concept of ‘development’ is almost a leitmotiv in Lux Mundi. Development can take various forms; development is not the same as progress; progress should always be continuous with preceding stages of development.

Firstly, there is ‘development’ in faith and religion: this is always a movement back to a former ideal (xxix). From time to time especially gifted individuals are needed in order to bring about a more or less instantaneous return to the original model (238). To Gore, it goes without saying that this ideal is the Early Church. Gore took the idea of a reversion to type from the biological sciences, adapted it to theology, and gave it a new meaning.^®

Secondly, the spiritual history of mankind, too, ha.s been a development (232), and this is also best described in terms of ‘restoration’ rather than ‘progress’. Man was not meant for “merely natural evolution” (233); the purpose of the Spirit’s work is to restore the original ideal, perfect man: Christ (234). This is the fulfilment of the law of development, taught us by divine reason and reflected in the development process of the Bible, embodied in the Old Testament.

Finally, there is ‘development’ outside religion: in the sciences, politics, and society, to which Church and theology must react. This is the “merely natural evolution” mentioned earlier, and it is here that we note the influence of the evolutionism of T.H. Green’s philosophy (see Chapter 1). The progress of knowledge is always the result of the natural processes of intellectual enquiry. Since this is a natural process, the Church can also be part of it (xxiv). To Gore, it is absolutely essential that every form of development should leave the ideal image of creed and Christian Church intact, and should not merely solidify and reduce theology. As he puts it in the preface to the first edition:

28 Carpenter, 127.

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The real development of theology is rather the process in which the Church, standing firm in her old truths, enters into the apprehension of the new social and intellectual developments of each age : and because “the truth makes her free” is able to assimilate all new material, to welcome and give its place to all new knowledge, to throw herself into the sanctification of each new social order, bringing forth out of her treasures things new and old, and shewing again and again her power of witnessing under changed conditions to the catholic capacity of her faith and life, (viii)

Gore clearly holds an absolute view of ‘truth’ (more about which below): the unchangeable, permanent, perfect core underneath ever-shifting forms of social order and human knowledge. It is then essential to see and preserve continuity (xviii). In this, too, Gore is a typical liberal theologian (see the paragraph “Controversies on creed and confession” in Chapter 1). A breach in religious continuity should be avoided, and the responsibility for preventing this rests with those who are most impressed by the valid aspects of modern criticism: Gore himself and his party (xix). The historical-critical approach to the Bible does not interfere with this. If one is convinced of the truth of inspiration in a general sense, the evidence will prove coherent in detail. When the expectations of the Messiah or the Righteous Servant in such passages as Ps. 22, Is. 53, 7:14 or 9:6,7 are compared with the fulfilment of these in Jesus Christ, we recognize a special action of the Holy Spirit that reflects the continuity of its method down to the smallest detail (253n.). The great difference between the Old and the New Testaments points to continuity rather than to a crucial gap:

The reason is of course obvious enough why what can be admitted in the Old Testament, could not without results disastrous to the Christian creed, be admitted in the New. It is because the Old Testament is the record of how God produced a need, or anticipation, or ideal, while the New Testament records how in fact He satisfied it. The absolute coincidence of idea and fact is vital in the realization, not in the preparation for it. (260)

The development brought about by the Spirit is first of all gradual. Emphasizing this gradualness is the only option for the Church if it wants to maintain the ultimate unity of all things (mind and matter, faith and experience) (240). As examples Gore cites the gradual unfolding of God’s intention regarding the Jews, reflected in the development of the Mosaic institution of the Law (259), and the fact that Christ also revealed his divinity only slowly (265). The immediate implication of this gradual development is the notion that at each stage of the Revelation God adapts Himself to the situation of the world and man as it is then. This is the so-called ‘accommodation theory’, more about which below.

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Church and authority

The work of the Holy Spirit in the Church affects both the community of the faithful (it is social or ecclesiastical, 235), and the individual, through the sacraments and the educational effect of the community on each believer. The work of the Spirit within the Church is to keep alive the receptiveness to faith. To Gore, the Church is the first authority: it is the keeper of a tradition (but does not coincide with it) of which the creed is also an expression. The Church preserves the ideal image of Christian life (which of course is realized only very imperfectly in actual experience and visible life, 243), and as the body supporting the Holy Spirit it is the first and foremost place, though not the only one, where the Holy Spirit is active. The Church is the home within whose walls people are reconciled with God in love and knowledge (264); we should be as loyal to the Church as to the Lord (266). The authority of the Church is also based on the unique authority of the apostles as the witnesses of Christ (xxviii/xxix); Gore considers the apostolic succession crucial (235). Yet, the apostles in turn are serving a tradition to which they themselves are also subjected (248).

In Gore’s thought there is an unexpected correspondence between reason and authority: part of the nurturing work of the Spirit consists in our judgement being formed via authority. This is the authority of the collective, the Christian community, which draws up the “rule of faith”. We have to be taught the tenets of faith until our own judgement has been illuminated, and we understand what at first we accepted on trust (238). It is the task of the tradition within the Church to reproduce the original ‘witness’, and recommend it to everybody’s conscience and reason (248). Gore’s frequent appeal to the Church Fathers shows that he himself is also very much occupied with assessing the original testimony. He says, for instance, that the Church’s judgement can at times be fairly irrational, especially on the question of what should and should not be included in the canon (249); most rational on this point was the Early Church.

The Church should also come to terms with the developments in modern criticism. On this point, it should act rationally and accept evidence, provided this evidence is supported by the assumption of the inspiration of the Bible (255). The Church accepts that the Letter to the Hebrews was not written by Paul, and our own judgement confirms this (248). Unfortunately, what the Church lacks at the end of the IÇ“* century is persuasiveness: the moral authority of Christianity, of Christian lives and persons, does aid the propagation and restoration of faith, but people do not easily accept the creed on the theological authority of the Church. There is now too much doubt as to the foundations of the creeds (xii). With this last remark Gore probably refers to the general spirit of the age, rather than to a specific controversy.

Gore and truth

The goal of the Spirit’s coaching of the individual judgement is to attain the truth.

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‘Truth’ is a word appearing often in “The Holy Spirit and Inspiration”. Gore’s view of truth as something absolute has been mentioned earlier, and this attitude is even reflected in his writing style (see “Style and argumentation” below).

The hallmark of truth is the “seal of approval” of the Holy Spirit, and includes everything that reaches us through inspiration. Curiously enough, however, tradition also fulfils this requirement; it represents truth (238), and thus coincides with the communis opinio presented in the creed. The creed reflects the Catholic judgement, the highest knowledge of God, and the spiritual life man was granted in the divine Revelation. The creed is “rational and true” (239) and “asserts the reality of certain historical facts” (249) — facts for which the evidence is found in the Bible (247). Among these is the fact that the Bible was divinely inspired, a doctrine which on the same page is called a truth “less familiar” than some other aspects of the work of the Holy Spirit. Experience, too, may be a test of truth: a postulate tested by experience becomes an accepted truth (xv; cf. also the ‘fact’ of sin, discussed earlier).

Grace and truth together are the two gifts that represent the essence of ecclesiastical life. Grace refreshes the individual character, and is received through the sacraments; truth is preserved in the apostolic tradition, the common judgement (235). A characteristic or consequence of truth is that it sets free: only the liberated (= restored!), free individual is a true human being (237).

Just as there are types of development, there are different kinds of truth. A discussion of Gore’s views on ‘truth’ will inevitably lead to the issue of the historicity of the Old Testament, of the New Testament, and of the possibility of miracles. Gore is keen to prove the ‘truth’ of Christianity (xxviii), but as it turns out, he does not use the term in the sense of exact factual truth; this is found in modern historiography (258), an area where historians are motivated by “a mere interest in fact” (252), and of course in the strictly empirical sciences. As regards faith, the situation is different. In its quality of ‘evidence’. Scripture contains the report of historical facts that form the basis of the Christian creed. Consequently, for those facts we cannot dismiss the importance of historical evidence, although the extent to which the mere proof oï facts from antiquity can compel belief should not be exaggerated (247). In the name of the Church we claim to accept the historicity of these facts, albeit not in the sense of their being completely infallible, but rather in the more general sense of ‘reliable’

Gore here makes an essential distinction between the Old and the New Testaments: the latter is the final stage in the development of the account of the gradual Revelation that started with Genesis 1:1. For this reason, the New Testament is fully historical, in the Gorean sense of ‘reliable’ mentioned above. The facts in the Old Testament, however, are of a different nature, and have a more indirect character: the truth of the Creation story is the truth belonging to the mythical sta^e of human spiritual evolution, before a differentiation into history, poetry

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and philosophy had taken place. “[A myth] is all of these in the germ, as dream and imagination, as thought and experience, are fused in the mental furniture of a child’s mind” (262). Does the chronicler’s inspiration guarantee the exact historical truth of what he writes, and may his rendering, taking into account legitimate historical criticism, be pronounced factually true? As to this last point: there is no reason why we should doubt that the accounts relating to the period after Abraham are in substance historical in the strict sense of the word. Of course, the battle for the historical truth of the Old Testament cannot be fought in the same way as in the case of the New, because the material is so extensive and uncertain, and because only very few of the oldest stories may be dated with any certainty. This means that the Church cannot maintain the historical character of its earliest documents down to the smallest detail in the same way as it can guarantee the historicity of the Gospels or the book of Acts (258).

The miracles

Gore seems loath to let the miracles go. He does safeguard the belief in inspiration by saying that inspiration is not dependent on miracles. Facts that can only be known through a miracle are not found in the Bible; it remains within the natural conditions for knowledge (260). Nor did Christ reveal Himself via a miraculous show of omniscience (265); He conformed to the state of knowledge at the time. However, Gore hedges his bets, and even gets into a dangerously circular argument, when he says that the possibility and reality of miracles should first and foremost be proven for the New Testament. If we accept them there, we cannot reasonably exclude the possibility of miracles in the case of the earliest history. The question should be investigated by the methods of literary criticism (261). The forgiveness of sins intruded in our experience as something totally new with the Incarnation. However, since we experienced it, this supernatural event has been proven true (cf. also what was said above about experience as a test of truth).

Real but limited knowledge by revelation

There are different kinds of truth, and different kinds of knowledge. The knowledge we derive from the Revelation is limited, because “nothing [...] was further removed from the Fathers than the easy-going assumption that because we are the subjects of a Revelation, therefore we are able to speculate with tolerably complete information about the mysteries which lie beyond experience” (244). How do we know that knowledge is ‘real’? Gore does not say very much about that; apparently, the fact that these “facts and relationships” (245) have been introduced into the experiential world by the Revelation of the Son is sufficient guarantee of reality (see the quotation above). We here find ourselves up against the same circular argument as in the case of the miracles: Gore seems a priori to assume that the Revelation itself is ‘real’. The thought that possibly everything said by Christ could be an illusion (245)

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he regards as purely hypothetical. Apart from this, there are various ways to view and present truth, of which the myth is the earliest form (262; see also above). In the case of the Old Testament, the spiritual meaning is the true meaning (253).

The short second section of Gore’s essay is a simple presentation of the orthodox view of the Holy Spirit,^’ in which Gore is not overly explicit on the concept of ‘revelation’. Of course, the Incarnation is a revelation; Gore talks about “God’s self-Revelation” (254) in the context of the New Testament. This revelation is essential to the Christian faith. Not only is Lux Mundi subtitled “The Religion of the Incarnation”, but on pp. xxvii/xxviii Gore also contradicts critics such as TH. Huxley who view Christianity as the religion of a book — a book that the faithful believe is divine in all its aspects and should be believed literally.On the contrary, Gore says, Christianity is the religion of a person. The catechism does not ask “Do you believe in the Bible?” but “Do you believe that Christ is the son of God?” The New Testament is the religion of the Incarnation, or, as Gore puts it: “the Revelation of the being and action of God made once for all in the Person of Jesus Christ and recorded in the New Testament” (244).

At this point we may return to a text quoted earlier: “The relations manifested in the Incarnation in terms of our experience between the father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, express transcendent and eternal relations...” (245). Here, Gore introduces the topic of a correct understanding and expression of the relations within the Trinity between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and it is here that we see TH. Green’s personal idealism reflected in Gore’s use of the terms ‘personality’ and ‘relations’. Gore’s view of the Trinity is summarized as follows in the Synopsis in Lux Mundi', “the Spirit is (a) distinct in person but very God, (b) proceeding from the Father and the Son, (c) one in essence with the Father and the Son.” The ‘persons’ of the Trinity should not be imagined as three separate individuals. Undoubtedly, in everyday language ‘persons’ refers to separate, mutually exclusive beings. But even then, closer reflection shows that our personalities are not nearly as separate from each other as they seem to be from a superficial standpoint. The Church only spoke of the Divine Three as three persons because of the imperfection of the human language. Unfortunately, the word ‘person’ is the only word that expresses what Christ’s language implies about Himself, the Father, and the Spirit. If we use it, we should however understand that it expresses mutual inclusion, not exclusion (246). In a long footnote. Gore discusses the Church Fathers’ attempts to define the function of the Holy Spirit in the relationships within the Trinity.^'

29 Reardon, 445.

30 Gore reacts to Huxley’s essay “The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science”, 1890, in: Collected Essays, Vol. IV, Science and Hebrew tradition, London 1893. The title may in fact be a reference to Lux Mundi.

31 Later, Gore was criticized heavily for his use of the terms ‘person’ and ‘personality’, especially during the conflict with Rashdall in 1921 (see Chapter 3).

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After that, we read how exactly according to Gore the Revelation enters into the realm of experience. Against the German idealist Lotze, who saw the Revelation as either implied in a divine action or residing in people’s hearts. Gore states that the power of the Christian creed is that it is both (248). Apart from a phrase such as “The humanity of Christ was a true humanity” (251), Gore’s ideas on the human or divine nature of the Son are only revealed at the end of his essay. However, there they have the effect of a landmine: “the Incarnation was a self-emptying of God” (264). Gore’s theory on this subject is discussed in the next paragraph.

The inspiration of Holy Scripture

In the third section of his essay, by far the longest. Gore emphasizes that a doctrine of inspiration should be interpreted in relation to the rest of the Spirit’s work in the Church.

Gore’s view on the Bible

In Holy Scripture the Church possesses the ultimate expression of Christ’s thinking (238). It does not become quite clear how Gore sees the exact relationship of Bible and Church. We read that we should see the Spirit’s work in the Church against the background of the belief in the general action of the Holy Spirit on the Christian community and the individual soul. “It is [...] becoming more and more difficult to believe in the Bible without believing in the Church” (248). On the one hand, the Bible is the account of the proclamation of the Revelation, and its reception, and as such it is a criterion and a touchstone for the Church, rather than a teacher (xxviii, n.); on the other hand, we have to “put ourselves to school” with the inspired writers (256), and the Bible is a guide for “faith and moral conduct”’^ (257). Gore’s proposition that the Church’s faith is not based on the Bible or its infallibility (since the Bible is not itself the Revelation, but only the account of it [xvi, n.]), but that the Church feels justified by both tradition and Holy Scripture (245), might throw some light on this apparent contradiction: one may of course also learn from a criterion or touchstone. In the first section of his essay. Gore has explained that it is also part of the Spirit’s work in the Church to explain the meaning of Scripture (249). Interpretation is always necessary! (viii, xviii). Gore agrees with Thomas à Kempis, who in De Imitatione Christi wrote that “every scripture must be read in the same spirit in which it was written” (257). A nineteenth-century reader might consider this compatible with the ‘mythical’ view of the Old Testament mentioned earlier, and see possibilities here for the new Bible criticism.

Gore’s view on inspiration

The paragraph on inspiration forms the major part of Gore’s essay. His view on

32 Cf. Matthew Arnold’s view, Chapter 1.

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the subject fits his High-Church background, and is the complete opposite of the evangelicals’ very literal view (see earlier in this chapter). Basically, inspiration is a gift (255). It is also clear that Christ and his apostles believed and taught that the Old Testament writings were the result of divine inspiration (250). Gore often uses the word ‘illumination’ to denote the act of inspiration, a word that in this context is not directly linked to ‘reason’: this sort of illumination is always caused by the touch of the Holy Spirit. Inspiration is also an important factor in the propagatio fidei, the dissemination of faith.- religion is not propagated as an abstract doctrine, but through subtle, penetrating personal influence. Illuminated individuals in turn become centres of illumination (236).

To believe in inspiration means to accept the Bible as a teacher (256, 257). Gore quotes Cardinal Newman on the practical meaning of inspiration, and its necessary consequences: the goal and promise of inspiration is faith and moral conduct. The more we accept this, the more we actually experience inspiration, so that to deny or doubt inspiration ultimately boils down to denying or doubting something that is eminently clear to all our senses. (257).

The inspired nature of the New Testament is obvious because of its internal cohesion, but how do we recognize inspiration in the Old Testament? We should take into account the context, i.e. those presuppositions that the Church has taught us, and then we will see that it is exactly in the deviations from the overall pattern that inspiration shows itself in the Old Testament. Only now does Gore reveal a hidden agenda: the purpose of his essay is not to investigate to what extent the concept of ‘inspiration’ may be expanded without entering the realm of irrationality, but rather how much of it may legitimately be given up without real loss. We should exercise caution when devising dogmas; it is good that the Church did not yet have one on inspiration (xviii).

Modern science and modern criticism

As indicated earlier, to Gore “being reasonable’’ implies interpreting Scripture with the tools of historical Bible criticism. He thinks this is an aspect of current developments that Church and theology simply have to react to, and a fact of life that must be accepted. Gore himself does seem to take these developments into account, given phrases such as “due regard to legitimate historical criticism’’(258), and “historical criticism assures us...’’ (259). Hence it is not surprising that in the last part of his essay Gore addresses some issues raised by Old Testament criticism in relation to the meaning of ‘inspiration’: if the Old Testament is truly and really historical, as is the New, is it yet possible for Old Testament stories to contain idealizing elements? Is ‘inspiration’ compatible with a literary presentation, or with the use of primitive myths?

Modern Bible criticism is part of modern (empirical) science. Gore has a positive opinion of modern science, albeit with some reservations. He refers to

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other essays in Lux Mundi, for instance that by Moberly, who in “Incarnation as the Basis of Dogma” states (167-169) that there is a difference between theological truth and the truths of “material science”?^ Theology and science use different kinds of proof (167). In any case, the meaning of the term ‘evidence’ where religious truths are concerned is necessarily vague: when accepting religious truths, faith is indispensable, and cannot be replaced by empirical demonstration (169). Gore says roughly the same in his preface to the tenth edition: “faith in the Godhead of our Lord is very far from being a mere matter of “evidences’” (xxviii). Modern scientific discoveries are, however, compatible with a Christian view of sin (xv; see also above).

The aim of the work of the Holy Spirit is to reach a synthesis between facts of experience and facts of faith. As the account of the historical facts with which the Christian creed is inextricably linked, the Bible can be a source of ‘evidence’. Christians who know what they are doing (i.e., rational Christians) should take the historical evidence for these facts seriously (247). The overwhelming proof for the truth of the New Testament, based on the unity of the apostles’ testimonials (see above), guarantees that the leap of faith required of us in order to accept inspiration on the part of the apostles is in any case a rational leap of faith (255).

As Moberly had already stated in his essay, the ‘proof’ in this case is of a special nature. Gore repeatedly mentions the “self-evidencing power” of the New Testament (xxix), and the “internal evidence” that forces us to accept the stories about the patriarchs in the Old Testament as generally historical.^'’ What exactly he means by this internal evidence, which should immediately convince us of the truth of inspiration, does not become quite clear. We are told of the necessity of having presuppositions regarding God, sin and salvation: only then can the facts in the gospels appear credible to us, or parts of an intelligible universe, correlating elements in a rational whole (247). This last phrase seems to echo the unity and continuity mentioned by Gore (xvii) as an essential characteristic of the “divine books”.’’

Gore is convinced that the new Old Testament criticism is a veritable step forward as regards literary-analytical method (262). Characteristically, he quotes an authority for his opinion, the then Bishop of Oxford, Stubbs (xvi).“ If based on the acceptance of the Bible as an inspired book, applying reason to the Bible will always result in the confirmation of the truth of the creed. Although the new criticism does require us to adapt our literary image of Scripture, these adjustments are no more drastic than the changes to our image of the world we were required to make at the time of Copernicus (261). The results of modern Bible criticism can be as sure as those of modern science:

33 Another echo of Matthew Arnold? Cf. Chapter 1.

34 Cf. the quotations from Coleridge’s work, Chapter I.

35 For this continuity, see also the discussion of Gore’s concept of development above.

36 In spite of (or perhaps because of?) the fact that Stubbs had been critical of Lux Mundt, see Chapter 3.

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In spite of the arbitrariness and the irréligion which have often been associated with the modern development of historical criticism in its application to the Old Testament, the present writer believes that it represents none the less a real advance in literary [!] analysis, and is reaching results as sure, where it is fairly used, as scientific inquiry, though the results in the one case as in the other are often hard to entangle from their less permanent accompaniments. (262)

However, like all things temporal, modern criticism also has its imperfections; there are arbitrary and extreme aspects. Moreover, many of its practitioners are distinctly anti-Christian, and even outright rationalistic, an adjective used by Gore in a clearly pejorative sense, as we have seen earlier. Consequently, in his preface to the tenth edition of Lux Mundi Gore hastens to back down regarding his statement on the “sure results” of modern criticism, which had caused a storm of protests. He writes that people should have realized that of course he would speak so positively only of the moderately conservative among modern theologians — witness n. 3 on p. xvi/xvii, in which he recommends the Old Testament criticism of the German scholars Riehm and König rather than that of “more rationalistic scholars”. Unsurprisingly, on p. xvi he clearly distances himself from Wellhausen.’’ In the later editions Gore also made several changes in the main text of his essay (for an inventory of these changes, see Chapter 3).

Gore’s essay reflects how far the acceptance of modern criticism had progressed (or how far modern criticism had progressed) by that time. Gore assumes that the Letter to the Hebrews was not written by Paul, but on the other hand seems to think that 2 Timothy was (256). He distinguishes between historical and literary criticism. Historical criticism tells us that we should interpret the books of Jonah and Daniel as dramatisations; these may then be subject to literary criticism. The motive of a modern historian is “a mere interest in fact” (252), but the problem of the miracles may be dealt with “on literary and evidential grounds” (261).

Finally, Gore says that we may expect the Bible criticism of the Old Testament, like that of the New, to augment and deepen our reverence for God’s Word, not impede it. In his conclusion on p. 265 Gore starts off by quoting those critics who have warned against putting too much faith in criticism that often shows great arbitrariness, much enthusiasm for new ideas just because they are new, and “a great lack of that reverence and spiritual insight which is at least as much needed for understanding the books of the Bible, as accurate knowledge and fair investigation”. Gore agrees with the necessity to be “reasonable and reverent” (266), but contends that if the Christian Church has proved able to fend off the critical attack on the historical basis of the New Testament, this was not by appealing to dogmas, but by addressing the issues raised in an open and honest discussion. A similar ap-

37 Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918) was a German Bible critic and orientalist. His thesis concerning the relative dating of the documents of the Pentateuch became a standard in Old Testament scholarship.

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proach to the Old Testament problems will show what is reasonable and reverent, and what is arrogant and irreligious in modern Bible criticism. Gore does not agree with the Roman Catholic Church, which condemns free enquiry as ‘rationalistic’ (239, where he disapprovingly quotes Cardinal Manning).

The Church may freely admit that the issues Gore raises with respect to the inspiration (see the beginning of this paragraph) are open questions. The Church is not slowed down by an existing dogmatic definition of ‘inspiration’, because, being part of imperfect temporal life, it simply could not have been confronted with the problems of modern Bible criticism before now. The undivided early Church never took action against allegorical interpretations of Scripture; patristic theology leaves ample room for a ‘modern’ view on the first chapters of Genesis; since the Reformation no dogma on inspiration has yet been developed.

The kenosis theory

When accepting the issues surrounding inspiration as open questions, the Church is not impeded either by the way in which Jesus, in the New Testament, speaks about the Old Testament — appearing less than omniscient. Gore describes the Incarnation as a “self-emptying” of God (264). This theory, i.e., that Christ on earth has temporarily divested Himself of certain divine attributes, created a storm of indignation.’’ This is surprising, since the doctrine was nothing new. In 1832 the concept of ‘kenosis’ was first used by the German Lutheran theologian Ernst Sartorius (1797-1859), and quickly acquired wide support among Lutherans. In the Anglican Church the idea had been used before Gore by the Old Testament scholar T.K. Cheyne and the evangelical A.J. Mason.” In Essays and Reviews, Jowett of all people implied that Christ might have been wrong in seeing the Old Testament as inspired. In 1889, the radical Hastings Rashdall in a sermon anticipated Gore’s discussion of the limitation of Christ’s knowledge.“® It was Gore, however, who, probably because of his reputation and position, put the concept on the map in Anglican circles.

Theories about God’s adapting to man’s limited knowledge (‘accommodation’) had existed since the earliest period of theology: on p. 241 Gore himself quotes Gregory of Nazianze and Chrysosthom. Curiously enough, none of the monographs I consulted explicitly links the accommodation theory to the kenosis doctrine; it would surely be obvious to see the latter as a more specific form of the former. Only Paul Avis mentions both concepts on one and the same page, but does not relate them to each other.“' He calls the accommodation theory part of traditional Catholic Christology, and six lines further down describes the kenosis

38 This paragraph is largely based on Carpenter, 156-173.

39 Carpenter, 160. Gore mentions both theologians in his essay, on pp. 252 and 251, respectively, but in a different context.

40 Reardon, 460.

41 Avis, 87.

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doctrine as ‘controversial’. Ramsey states that the kenosis theory arose in reaction to specific problems of the modern Church, especially the preoccupation with historicity, and thus seems to make a temporal distinction between accommodation theory and kenosis theory.'*^

The locus classicus for all theories on a limitation of knowledge at the Incarnation is Mk 13:32, “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man [..neither the Son, but the Father”. From this verse Liddon deduced Christ’s ‘self-humiliation’,'*’ but to him this implied, in the line of Catholic tradition, a sort of double consciousness. Gore reaches a different conclusion on the basis of his exegesis of especially Heb. 5:7-8 and Phil. 2:5-11 — namely, that Christ’s self-sacrifice at the Incarnation consisted in voluntarily renouncing the use of His divine attributes (which of course he does possess), in order to fully live as a human being. The fact that Jesus sometimes does demonstrate supernatural knowledge Gore explains as an ‘illumination’ of the same order as that granted to prophets and apostles from time to time. Thus, on this point Gore seems to turn against the Church Fathers, and against Catholic tradition (see earlier in this chapter). It is possible that Gore adopted this theory out of a desire to couch the doctrine of the Incarnation in psychological terms, and so adapt it to contemporary thought. He certainly believed that he had in this way provided the solution to a problem that modern Bible criticism had introduced into Christology: in Mt. 22, Jesus apparently assumes Psalm 110 to have been composed by David, whereas historical Bible criticism reaches different conclusions.

In his emphasis on the kenosis Gore primarily had the moral aspect of the Incarnation in mind, rather than its metaphysical implications. Carpenter writes that from an intellectual point of view Gore’s theory is full of holes, but from the perspective of piety and moral conduct it is very attractive: Christ’s enormous sacrifice proves the vastness of God’s love (171). Later, Gore further elaborated his ideas on this point, and contributed much to the preoccupation with the Incarnation in Anglican theology during the first half of the twentieth century.'*'*

Many critics have expressed surprise that Gore presents this apparently shocking theory — which is said to have hastened Liddon’s death — so nonchalantly. Throughout the essay, there are references to the accommodation theory: Gore quotes Irenaeus on the subject, who describes the Holy Spirit as “accustoming Himself in His case to dwell in the human race and repose in man” (234); Gore describes how the Holy Spirit stoops to human frailty (240), and he even talks about the “simple and untechnical” character of the language of the Bible (245). However, the real venom is in the tail. At the end of his essay, after a long discourse on Christ’s use of analogies in the New Testament and His discussions with the Pharisees on David’s authorship of Ps. 110, Gore writes the following:

42 Ramsey, 31.

43 Bampton Lectures, 1867.

44 More on this in Chapter 3.

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It is contrary to [the Lord’s] whole method to reveal His Godhead by anticipations of natural knowledge. The Incarnation was a self-emptying of God to reveal Himself under conditions of human nature and from the human point of view. [...] He revealed God, His mind, His character, His claim, within certain limits His Three-fold Being [..] All this He revealed, but through, and under condition.s of, a true human nature. Thus He used human nature, its relation to God, its conditions of experience, its growth in knowledge, its limitation of knowledge. (264-5)

Gore expands this idea in a note, and says, among other things, that Christ never showed omniscience in the area of natural knowledge; he did not anticipate the results of modern criticism. We should realize that this self-emptying of God’s in the Incarnation is no failure, but a continuous self-sacrifice (265, n. 2). This explanation was apparently not enough, because in the tenth edition of Lux Mundi Gore added another note in order to assure his readers that by “limitation of Christ’s knowledge” he did not mean fallibility, or susceptibility to human error (265, n. 1). In his preface to that edition he defends himself even more: the entire Old Testament represents God’s condescending to a low level of human development; this principle was already recognized by the “early Christian authorities” (xxi). He also uses the term ‘self-limitation’ of Christ again (xxvi).

Gore was severely criticized for the Bible references he used to support his kenosis theory (265n.), especially his use of Phil. 2:7 (“But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men”): this was poetry, not metaphysics. The reception of Lux Mundi in general, and of Gore’s essay in particular, will be discussed in Chapter 3.

Style and argumentation

Gore’s style of writing also shows his idiosyncratic blend of conservatism and liberal progressiveness. His orthodox attachment to the creed as the ‘facts’ of Christian faith is for instance reflected in the formulaic phrases he often uses to summarize tenets of faith:

...as justifies belief that our Lord was actually born of the Virgin Mary, manifested as the Son of God “with power according to a spirit of holiness” [Rom. 1:4, IS], crucified, raised the third day from the dead, exalted to the right hand of the Father, the founder of the Church and the source of the informing Spirit. (249)

There is a similar passage on p. 252:

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... to reveal certain fundamental religious principles: that everything as we see it was made by God; that it has no being in itself but at God’s will; on the other hand, that everything is in its essence good, as the product of the good God: that man, besides sharing the physical nature of all creation, has a special relation to God, as made in God’s image, to be vice-gerent : that sin, and all that sin brings with it of misery and death, came not of man’s nature but of his disobedience to God and rejection of the limitations under which He put him : that in spite of all that sin brought about, God has not left man to himself, that there is a hope and a promise.

On p. 244 we read of “the Revelation of the being and action of God made once for all in the Person of Jesus Christ and recorded in the New Testament”. That one of Gore’s basic goals is also to explain the creed becomes clear in the passage on the function of the Church, in which he says:

This is what S. Thomas Aquinas means when he says “that to believe in the Church is only possible if we mean by it to believe in the Spirit vivifying the Church” (243).

Gore’s absolute idea of ‘truth’ is reflected in his use of words or phrases expressing certainty. Often, the mere mention that people, or Gore himself, are ‘convinced’ of something, or that something is ‘clearly’ the case, is enough to serve as incontrovertible proof. Christian religion has a ‘manifestly’ authoritative character (xii). Gore is ‘convinced’ that modern criticism is an important step forward (xv). The word ‘feel’ is also often used to express a conviction equal to experience, rather than an opinion: we attain true freedom when we can ‘feel’ that our faith is not dependent on how exactly the modern problems are solved (xiv).

The facts regarding God’s self-abasement are ‘manifest’ (xxiii). Especially the passages at the end of Gore’s last preface (xviii-xxix) are exemplary for Gore’s argumentation. True, the external testimony of the apostles (based on facts, xxix) supports and justifies a traditional faith, but internally, too, this is recommended to us by the “self-evidencing power” of the New Testament. In answer to the criticism of his kenotic theory Gore thinks it enough to state that “undoubtedly the whole Old Testament does represent a condescension of God to a low stage of human development” (xxi; repeated on xxiii as “the manifest facts of God’s condescension”). The answer to the objection that if he allows so much doubt in the case of the Old Testament, why not also allow it in the case of the New? is simply: “it will be apparent that the starting point as of enquiry, so of security, lies in the New Testament [...]” (xxx).

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Gore sets great store by authority, and by the power of numbers: in addition to his own conviction and experience he likes to appeal to the unanimous or near-unanimous testimony of experts, a Tractarian characteristic (cf. also Chapter 3). Just because much in modern criticism has not been proved yet, we should not think that there is no good in “the successive labours of many generations of students” (xvii); the new theories on the origins of the Old Testament are offered by modern scholars “with a great deal of unanimity” (xviii); also, it is now “almost universally recognised” that in the Old Testament God appeals to the human conscience in an earlier and lower stage of its development; we should not reject the results of modern criticism, because these “are certainly accepted by many critics” (xxiv).

Conclusion

From the preceding analysis, the reader may be left with the impression that with Gore everything depends on everything, even to the extent that some of his arguments definitely appear to be circular. This impression is confirmed when we summarize Gore’s ideas once again. The prefaces to the first and tenth editions of Lux Mundi, which have often been referred to in this chapter, are here especially helpful as resumes of what he himself considers the essential message of the book.

Gore’s primary supposition is that belief in God may be rationally justified. The Christian religion derives its manifest authority from its essence as a divine Revelation. Apparently, Gore bases himself on the a priori assumption of the historical truth of the statements of the creed: the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, and the Resurrection. This, however, is a global historical truth. Applying reason to the Bible, if proceeding from a view of the Bible as an ‘inspired’ book, will always result in the confirmation of the truth of the creed.

The position of the Bible in the fabric of Christian faith is summarized by Gore on p. xxix. The Christian belief is belief in a Person, Jesus Christ (cf. the subtitle of Lux Mundi, “Religion of the Incarnation”). In order to justify this faith only the testimony of some so-called ‘historical’ New Testament documents is necessary; logically speaking, faith in the Bible as an inspired book follows faith in Christ, and even, if we take the New Testament into account, comes after the belief in the Church as the body of Christ.

Here we come up against a curious reasoning in Gore’s thought that has been noted by many critics, then and later. The authority of the Church is verified by the Bible, which in turn is verified by reason, which (in Gore’s case) in turn is based on the authority of the creed = tradition = the Church. By his a priori assumption that the results of Bible criticism will always confirm the creed. Gore knits the three strands in the ‘cord’ of the Anglican Church — Scripture, tradition

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and reason — into a sort of hermeneutic circle. Theologians outside the Catholic tradition, who have a completely different idea about the position and relevance of Church authority, might call Gore’s reasoning on this point a petitio principii or a fallacy.

A second inconsistency in Gore’s essay is the fact that on the one hand he seems to put the authority of the Church above that of Scripture (this was Jowett’s criticism, as we shall see), an impression supported by numerous references to the Church Fathers, but on the other hand places biblical inspiration in the wider context of the Spirit’s work in the world. Gore recognizes that the Bible, too, was made by men; it is not his aim to disqualify the inspiration of the biblical writers, but to characterize the nature of this inspiration and make it more ‘normal’. This relativizes the infallibility of the Bible.“*®

Two other seemingly incompatible statements by Gore are his requirement of the necessary presuppositions concerning God, sin and salvation (only then can we recognize the facts of the Gospel as elements of a coherent, rational whole [247]), and the much-acclaimed “self-evidencing power” of the New Testament. If everything is so immediately clear “to the senses” (257), we surely should not need presuppositions.“*’

Gore’s distinction between Old and New Testament criticism has also been often criticized as inconsistent. The distinction is partly based on Gore’s assumption of the Revelation as a process of gradual development, culminating in the Incarnation described in the New Testament, which as a consequence is true in the full historical sense. One could say that this dependence on a philosophy of development, and the related fact that Gore’s main argument and proof in favour of inspiration is the coherence of the biblical story, weaken his reasoning. His strict separation of the Old and the New Testament dates his ideas, and creates a wide gap between Gore’s views and the later biblical and philosophical theology.“*®

45 Cf. Ploeger, 82-3, who also uses the term ‘hermeneutic circle’ for Gore’s argumentation.

46 Ploeger, 90/91.

47 Leaving aside the question what Coleridge would think of this; see Chapter 1.

48 Ploeger, 88. On Gore’s battle against the later Modern theologians, see Chapter 3.

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LUX MUNDI

J SLUUES OF STUDIES

IN

THE RELIGION OF THE INCARNATION

EDITED

By CHARLES GORE, M.A.

PRINCIPAL OF PUSEY HOUSE

FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD

TWELFTH EDITION

A quella Luce cotai si diventa, Che volgersi da lei per altro aspetto È impossibtl ehe mai si consenta.

LONDON

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1891

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CHAPTER 3

THE RECEPTION OF LUX MUNDI, 1890-1930

Upon its appearance in 1889 Lux Mundi created such a furore that Gore’s biographer Prestige referred to it as Stupor MundU By rephrasing the doctrines of immanence and transcendence, nature and grace, it cast a new light on the old question of the relationship between God and the world. The authors wanted to enter into a dialogue with modern thought, and contended that historical Christianity, if interpreted rationally, would be acceptable to reasonable people. The evolution theory was accommodated within theology by means of the idea of progressive revelation. In this way, the new Bible-critical methods and their results could be accepted: the first chapter of Genesis was a myth; the history of Israel was a slow progression to ethical monotheism, culminating in the Incarnation. The subtitle, A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation, indicates that the authors returned to the line taken by seventeenth-century English theologians by focusing their theology on the Word made flesh.^ Gore developed this further in his ‘kenotic’ Christology: Christ ascribed the Pentateuch to Moses because His knowledge was limited by the situation as it then was. In the Incarnation, Christ shed all divine attributes.

Although Lux Mundi evoked much protest, the majority of Anglo-Catho-lics welcomed it. The work represented a new and liberal orientation within the nineteenth-century Anglo-Catholic revival in England, called ‘Liberal Catholicism’ (a term introduced in England by Gore). Largely thanks to Gore this form of critical orthodoxy determined the face of Anglo-Catholicism, and by extension Anglican theology, until long after the Great War.

The two decades after 1889 saw numerous developments in Bible research and religious philosophy, which will be discussed in this chapter: Adolf von Harnack’s liberal-Protestant manifesto and the parallel phenomenon of Roman Catholic Modernism; the eschatological view of the Gospel propagated by, among others, Albert Schweitzer (1875-1865) and Alfred Loisy (1857-1940); the focus on the mystical experience in Christian theology by the neo-platonist William Inge (1860-1954) and Baron Friedrich von Hügel (1852-1925). At the time Lux Mundi appeared, a “critical approach to the Bible” actually only included the Old Testament. Gore and his fellow-authors assumed that the New Testament was fully historical, and that it was essential for the Christian faith to retain this assumption. As critical work on the New Testament progressed, however, the conviction grew that in these accounts of the origin of Christianity the relationships between facts and interpretation, and between history and theology, were more complex than first

1 Mentioned by Carpenter, 35. This introduction is largely based on Vidler, 190-200.

2 See the paragraph “Incarnation or deliverance?” in Chapter 1.

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assumed. The authority of the Catholic faith rested not only on historical proof, but on the entire continuum of Christian experience. Gore did not deny experience, as we have seen, but yet stuck to the historical reliability of the New Testament.

The generation of Liberal Catholics that followed Gore wanted to go further than he did. In a collection of essays of 1921, Foundations, Burnett Hillmann Streeter (1874-1937) doubted the physical Resurrection, and was the first prominent Anglican theologian to try and interpret the life of Jesus in the light of the eschatological view presented by Schweitzer. Alfred Edward John Rawlinson (1884-1960) wanted a freer attitude towards the definitions in the creed, which Gore still saw as infallible. Rawlinson thought that authority was necessary, but should not be confused with infallibility or legal despotism. The real authority is with the saints; Rawlinson defined Christianity as the formulation of the experiences of especially ‘the spirituals’ in the apostolic era. This empirical approach was totally alien to the generation of the Holy Party. There were other developments that they found hard to follow: although of course they were familiar with the liberal ideas of the Broad Church, for instance Edwin Hatch’s,’ they later found themselves confronted with an extreme form of it, the ‘New Theology’, propagated between 1900 and 1910 by Reginald John Campbell. Campbell was harshly attacked by Gore, who on this point was supported by all Anglicans.

Gore elaborated further the ideas presented in embryonic form in Lux Mundi during the rest of his life. Remarkably enough, he never deviated from his standpoint. Gore always remained at the stage he had reached in 1889, and eventually found himself a reactionary.

Reactions in 1889-90

In the preface dated July 1890, written on the appearance of the tenth edition of Lux Mundi to be published within one year. Gore complains about two things: the disproportionate attention and criticism directed towards twenty pages on inspiration, and the apparent failure of the Lux Mundi authors to make their position and goal sufficiently clear. This has prompted him to state that goal again, but in slightly different words than eight months earlier:

[..] to “succour a distressed faith” by endeavouring to bring the Christian Creed into its right relation to the modern growth of knowledge, scientific, historical, critical; and to the modern problems of politics and ethics, (x)

In a footnote he briefly discusses the criticism on the phrase in the original pref-

3 For Hatch, see also Chapter 1 and the beginning of Chapter 2. He anticipated Harnack with his theory that the original Gospel had been corrupted by Hellenism.

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ace, “to put the Catholic faith [now replaced by ‘Christian Creed’!] into its right relation to modern intellectual and moral problems’’ — readers have interpreted this to mean that the Holy Party put the problems of modern science before faith. Gore hastens to rectify this misunderstanding: it is necessary for us to relate that with which we identify ourselves, i.e. faith, to the intellectual and practical claims made on us by the outside world. From this misunderstanding, according to Gore, all other misunderstandings regarding Lux Mundi have sprouted.

Criticism arising from the first edition

What misunderstandings were these? The main objection to Lux Mundi was that the acceptance of the new Bible criticism amounted to a proclamation of resistance against the spirit and principles of Pusey and Keble.“* It was this area in which Gore distanced himself most outspokenly from his Tractarian predecessors. Bible criticism was anathema to the earlier generation of Anglo-Catholics, who had never been overly curious and lacked the temperament for critical investigation.^ The Tractarians had always had a rather romantic attitude towards theology — Avis calls their view of the Reformation, for instance, “heavily biased and fundamentally unhistorical’’.^ In academic discussions they followed the scholastic method, i.e., appealing to authorities. Liddon was irritated by Gore’s suggestion of a limitation of Christ’s knowledge, and accused the Holy Party of betraying the Tractarian heritage to “Darwinian and Hegelian errors’’ by accepting the principle of evolution.’ It had been a difficult half-century for Liddon: already in 1863 he had felt compelled to discontinue his sermons in Westminster Abbey when Stanley invited some of the contributors to Essays and Reviews to come and preach there,’ and now he was confronted with the “rationalizing and pelagianizing’’ in Lux Mundi? Liddon was bitterly disappointed, and thought that the way in which Gore manifested himself in Lux Mundi robbed him of all credibility as an Anglo-Catholic; he feared the worst for the future of Pusey House. As Crosse puts it:

When the ‘new scepticism’ seemed to threaten [the traditional attitude towards Holy Scripture] he comforted himself with the thought that his revered master’s memorial in Oxford would prove a strong tower of defence. And now the very man whom he had chosen to command the garrison had not only gone over to the enemy but was actually leading the

4 Avis, 39.

5 Ramsey, 7.

6 Avis, 25.

7 Avis, 65.

8 Ploeger, 75.

9 Pelagius was Augustine’s opponent in the debate on the nature of grace; he was accused of heresy, because he held that man can take the first step towards salvation by his own efforts, apart from divine grace. Pela-gianism has continued to play a part in theological discussions until the present day. What exactly Liddon meant by ‘pelagianizing’ is not clear; for a possible answer, see later in this chapter.

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assault. He had recognized Gore’s high character, his learning and his strong Church principles, and “did not suspect that he had constructed a private kennel for liberalizing ideas in theology within the precincts of the Old Testament, and so much of the New Testament as bears upon it.”

Liddon could have foreseen this, because Gore had already voiced many of his ideas in sermons and addresses, but:

From Liddon alone, living in seclusion and hearing little of what was going on in Oxford, these things were hidden. Consequently the shock was all the greater. To his mind Lux Mundi involved the abandonment of the whole Oxford Movement position on authority as against private judgement. Naturally he felt that “the world at large thinks it piquant that such a book should have issued frqm the Pusey House,” and blamed himself for not having made more careful inquiries before recommending Gore for Principal.

Both Gore and Liddon were extremely unhappy with the situation; as we saw earlier, Gore even offered to stand down as Principal of Pusey House. It is the general conviction that, in spite of a reconciliation with Gore in 1890, the Lux Mundi episode hastened Liddon’s death. His position in the Oxford Movement was taken over by George Anthony Denison (1805-1896), Archdeacon of Taunton. At the time, Denison had also led the attack on Essays and Reviews'.

“The militant Archdeacon of Taunton,” G. A. Denison, was, as usual, in the forefront of the battle. In private he talked of “the Gorian heresy” and held its author “the most dangerous man I have lived to see”; in Convocation he moved for a committee to examine the book “as alleged to contain grave and dangerous error”; accused it of teaching “a revised faith and a new theology”; and declared that “the book worships reason, but it does not reason, it assumes.” Finally, when his efforts failed, he resigned from the English Church Union as a protest against its refusal to condemn “the New Criticism.”

The remark that Lux Mundi did not reason, but assumed, shows that Denison, too, recognized the peculiarity in Gore’s argumentation pointed out in Chapter 2 above. Denison is also quoted as saying that “its rationalism was another symptom of the decadence of England under Mr. Gladstone”.quot;

Other Anglo-Catholics also expressed criticism. The chorus of protests against Gore’s kenosis theory — as incompatible with the divine authority of Christ as a teacher, inconsistent with the doctrines of the Church Fathers, and

• 10 Crosse.

• 11 In addition to universal suffrage and the Channel Tunnel. Vidler, 193.

• 12 This paragraph based on Avis, 65-67 and Ramsey, 8-16.

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leading to metaphysical absurdities — was joined by William Stubbs, then Bishop of Oxford?’ Another attack came from Darwell Stone (1859-1941), later Gore’s successor as Principal of Pusey House. Stone was the author of an anonymous article in the Church Quarterly Review (1890) entitled “Theology and Criticism”, in which, besides criticism on the kenosis doctrine. Gore’s view on the relationship between nature and grace was also attacked. Stone maintained the strict separation between human knowledge and revelation, and accused Lux Mundi of presenting the difference as purely gradual. Here, the book erred. Within the Revelation, there are no gradations of truth; these are a feature of human, limited knowledge. It was exactly the gap between nature and grace that was essential to Stone’s view of the infallibility of Scripture and Church. Stone also anticipated criticism that became more prominent later: in their concentration on the Incarnation, the authors of Lux Mundi were in danger of losing sight of the Cross, the Judgement and the eschatological aspect of the Gospel.

Later, in 1892, Stone repeated roughly the same accusations in an article in the same journal, in which he attacked Gore’s Bampton Lectures of 1891. In this lecture series, entitled The Incarnation of the Son of God, Gore had again presented his ideas clearly, showing that his position was the same as in Lux Mundi. The discussion was not limited to academic journals, as reflected in the fact that Stone also wrote a letter to the Guardian about his objections.’'*

Remarkable were the comments on Lux Mundi and its theology made by the old liberal Benjamin Jowett, the veteran of Essays and Reviews, who in May 1890 wrote to a friend:

I have read a considerable portion of Lux Mundi, but am a good deal disappointed in it. It has a more friendly and Christian tone than High Church theology used to have, but it is the same old haze or maze — no nearer approach of religion either to morality or to historical truth.”

He saw that the issue on which the High Church party was inclined to give way was that of the status of the Bible, especially the Old Testament. Now that the Bible was seen more and more as a book like all other books, they accorded more weight to the Church, “an aspect of the question which is not wholly displeasing to them”. Jowett was convinced that the High Churchmen could serve the world better, without losing the basis of their own faith.

There were also positive reactions.’® All Broad Churchmen backed Gore, but this often did his cause more harm than good: it increased the fear among

13 In Ordination Addresses, 1890; mentioned in Ramsey, 8.

14 Whether this is the same article that Chadwick (425) is referring to when he says “The Manchester Guardian printed a long, technical and expert review of Lux Mundiquot;, I have not been able to ascertain.

15 Quoted in Ellis, 263.

16 This paragraph based on Chadwick, 103-104.

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conservative theologians that Gore was on the same line as Wellhausen. Slowly, wide hacking for Gore emerged in the form of declarations of support from reputable theologians such as the Old Testament scholar Samuel R. Driver (1846-1914), and Herbert Edward Ryle (1856-1925), the son of the Bishop of Liverpool, one of Gore’s most implacable opponents. The best defence came from the Bishop of Lincoln, Edward King (1829-1910), who was generally considered a devout follower of Pusey and a conservative theologian: he urged the clergy to approach Lux Mundi with sympathy and an open mind.

Gore’s answer

The attacks were not without success. Gore’s reaction in his preface to the tenth edition has already been quoted. The editor of Lux Mundi even went as far as to change the original text in some places. In the short preface to the fifth edition, and at the end of the preface to the tenth. Gore lists errors corrected,’^ and “the chief changes of any importance” in the new edition. A comparison of Gore’s own essay in the twelfth edition with the text of the first shows that a note has been added on the inspiration of the prophets (253). There, Gore emphasises that he is only referring to a ‘broad’ view of inspiration. On p. 262, Gore’s original sentence “the present writer [believes] that the modern development of historical criticism is reaching results as sure, where it is fairly used, as scientific enquiry”,'^ has been considerably adapted, and now runs:

In spite of the arbitrariness and the irréligion which have often been associated with the modern development of historical criticism in its application to the Old Testament, the present writer believes that it represents none the less a real advance in literary analysis, and is reaching results as sure, where it is fairly used, as scientific enquiry, though the results in the one case as in the other are often hard to disentangle from their less permanent accomplishments.

The most rigorous adaptations have been made in the passages on Christ’s omniscience. On p. 359 of the first edition. Gore says of Jesus’ discussion on Psalm 110 with the Pharisees:

But the point of His argument is directed to convincing the Pharisees that they did not understand their own teaching, that they were not true to their own premises. It is surely pressing His words unduly to make Him

17 Apparently, these major changes did not include a small phrase in note 3 on p. 235, where a reference to Veni Creator by H.C.G. Moule (1890) has been inserted. On the other hand, the mistake in n. 4, on the same page (should be John 3:8), has not been corrected. On p. xxx we read that an Appendix on the doctrine of sin has been added — which would mean that the Appendix “Some aspects of Christian Duty” was already included in the first edition, but was omitted from the Table of Contents.

18 Lux Mundi, first edition 1889, 357.

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maintain that the relation of sonship to David was inconsistent with lordship over him: or, as in another place, it is monstrous to argue that “Why callest thou Me good? there is none good but God” is a general repudiation of the claim to goodness. To reason ‘ad hominem’, to reason with men on their premises, was, in fact, a part of our Lord’s method. Further than this, it may be fairly represented that if Christ had intended to convey instruction to us on critical questions which are within the scope of natural knowledge. He would have made His purpose plainer.

From the fourth or fifth edition onwards, there is here considerably more emphasis on the Socratic aspect of Jesus’ method, but the term ‘natural knowledge’ has disappeared. Instead, the word ‘literary’ is introduced:

but it must be noticed that he is asking a question rather than making a statement - a question, moreover, which does not admit of being turned into a statement without suggesting the conclusion, of which rationalistic critics have not hesitated to avail themselves, that David’s Lord could not be David’s son. There are, we notice, other occasions when our Lord asked questions which cannot be made the basis of positive propositions [at this point, a note has been added giving some examples: Mk 10:17-18, and John 10:34-36, IS]. It was in fact part of His method to lead men to examine their own principles without at the same time suggesting any positive conclusion at all. It may also be fairly represented, on a review of our Lord’s teaching as a whole, that if He had intended to convey instruction to us on critical and literary questions. He would have made His purpose plainer. (264)

Finally, Gore seems to have made a concession to Liddon in his adaptation of short passage on p. 350 of the first edition. There, we read:

He shews no signs at all of transcending the science of His age. Equally He shews no sign of transcending the history of His age. [...] His true Godhead is shewn in His attitude towards men and things about Him....

However, from the fourth edition the text runs as follows;

He willed so to restrain the beams of Deity as to observe the limits of the science of His age, and He puts Himself in the same relation to its historical knowledge. [...] He made His Godhead gradually manifest by His attitude towards men and things about Him.... (265)

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Also, Gore has added a note here, in which he stresses that this intentional limitation of knowledge should not be confused with fallibility or receptiveness to human error. Christ’s ‘self-emptying’ was part of the divine purpose (265n).

In spite of all criticism, the conclusion has to be that the Holy Party carried the day, and, in view of later developments, that Lux Mundi heralded the eclipse of the first generation of Anglo-Catholics. These later developments, for Gore personally as well as for Anglican theology, are the subject of the next section. The last word on the storm in 1889-1890 may be given to Crosse, who quotes the memoirs of one of Gore’s school friends from Harrow:

“Eventually,” says Mr. Russell, “the controversy ebbed away as such controversies generally ebb, in a more or less unsatisfactory series of replies and rejoinders, dissertations and explanations.”

Effects after 1890

Liberal Catholicism”

Gore wanted a faith that could be embraced wholeheartedly by thinking people. From the same year 1889 dates Gore’s extensive mission statement about his theology:

The God-given vocation of the Church of England to realize and offer men a Catholicism which goes behind the Reformation in real and unimpaired connection with the Catholicism of the past... which is Scriptural and represents the whole of Scripture; which is rational and can court the light of all genuine enquiry; [...] which acknowledges the authority of its ministry, but an authority constitutional, not absolute; scriptural, not arbitrary.

The appearance of Lux Mundi marks the beginning of this so-called ‘Liberal Catholicism’, which Gore was always to champion passionately. The word ‘liberal’ has been used by many people to mean many different, often even completely opposite, things; so also in conjunction with ‘Catholicism’. At the time of Lux Mundi the term did exist, but referred to the political movement in France between 1800 and 1850 of which Félicité de Lamennais (1782-1854) had been the main exponent.

19 This paragraph is largely based on Carpenter, 42-61 and Vidler, 146-156.

20 From “Orders in the Church of England”, 1889; quoted in Carpenter, 43.1 have not been able to ascertain when Gore himself used the term ‘Liberal Catholicism’ for the first time.

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Germany, too, had its Liberal Catholics, but these had an intellectual rather than political orientation. The foremost figure there was Ignaz von Döllinger (1799-1890)2‘.

This German stream reached England via Lord Acton (1834-1902), a student of Döllinger’s, who made the journal The Rambler the literary organ of the movement. In Bernard Reardon’s words: “The story of English Liberal Catholicism is virtually that of The Rambler and its encounters, increasingly serious, with ecclesiastical authority”.The movement was temporarily silenced by the encyclical Quanta Cura in 1864, and definitely suppressed, as it was thought, by the First Vatican Council, 1869-70. However, the Roman-Catholic liberals emerged again in the decade between 1890 and 1900, when Pope Pius IX had been succeeded by Leo XIII. In 1900, the anonymous author of an article in The Pilot, a jour

nor dying”.^^ According to Gore’s biographer Prestige, he himself claimed great spiritual affinity with Döllinger and Acton, but no concrete evidence for this statement has ever been found.^quot;* Such a feeling on Gore’s part seems plausible, and would be compatible with his anti-Roman Catholic attitude (see below), but on the other hand, his constant attempts to identify Anglicanism with Liberal Catholicism show that he was mainly concerned with the mission of the Church of England. At this point it will be useful to trace the denotations and connotations of the term ‘Liberal Catholicism’ and its separate components, as used by various people in the discussions in Gore’s time.

Liberal and Catholic

As stated earlier, the word ‘liberal’ has many connotations. In his chapter on Gore in Essays in Liberality, Vidler mentions its political, ecclesiastical, theological and personal aspects. The meaning of the word rather depends on the context: we saw in Chapter 1 that it was exactly the ‘liberal’ Broad Church that manifested

• 21 Döllinger entertained close links with England; he visited the country several times, and was also visited in Munich by Benjamin Jowett, among others, in 1875. He was also the spiritual leader of the Old Catholic movement in Germany. The extensive correspondence between Döllinger and Acton has been published by Victor Conzemius: Briefwechsel, 1850-1890, Vols 1-111, Munich 1963-1971.

• 22 Reardon, 478.

• 23 Quoted in Vidler, “Bishop Gore and Liberal Catholicism” (hereafter: “Bishop Gore”) in: id.. Essays in Liberality. London 1957, 130.

• 24 Carpenter, 44n.

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itself with the very radical (as it was then thought) Essays and Reviews. Newman used the word ‘liberalism’ to refer to relativism (a concept introduced by Schleiermacher). Vidier also says that the type of liberalism Gore wanted was something completely different from the utilitarian liberalism that the Tractarians had objected to.“ The connotation ‘radical’ again became prominent around 1900, when Harnack’s ‘liberal Protestantism’ became influential and started a movement within the Church of England that on the Continent would have been classed under Protestant Modernism. Its representatives, among others, were Hastings Rashdall (1858-1924), R.J. Campbell, William Inge, and Herbert Hensley Henson (1863-1947).“ To Gore, ‘liberal’ primarily meant ‘free’ (but not ‘arbitrary’!), and he used the word to indicate a rational and unbiased Bible interpretation. Liberal Catholicism aims at minimizing the dogmatic function of the Church; in Gore’s own definition: “... a Catholicism which limits its properly dogmatic authority carefully and thankfully by the blessed restriction of Scripture”.

‘Catholic’, to Gore, refers to ‘tradition’. He uses the word in the sense of ‘general’, giving it the classical meaning of the famous phrase by the Church Father Vincent of Lerins (died c. 435): “what all men have at all times and everywhere believed to be true” {quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus credit um est).'^^ Gore’s generation protested against the rather mediaeval church view and piety of their predecessors. They were more restrained and more apologetic; these progressive Tractarians no longer wanted to be called ‘Anglican’ but preferred the label ‘Catholic’, and even started to refer to their opponents as ‘Protestants’. In a later publication. Gore also quoted Friedrich von Hügel with approval, who claimed that Catholicism accords as much room to the institutional element of faith as to the mystical and the intellectual.’® In fact. Liberal Catholicism was to Gore synonymous with Anglicanism: a Catholicism without Rome. Hence, Gore thought that it was exactly the Anglican churches, with their felicitous combination of reverence for Scripture and total lack of “obscurantist fear of historical enquiry” {Lux Mundi xii) whose conclusions on inspiration may be of service to all of Christianity. To Gore, Catholicism meant a feeling of solidarity, a receptiveness to Christian history, and a sense of the visible Church as an organized institution that spans the ages from the Apostles until the present day.

25 “Bishop Gore”, 137; Avis, 43. On utilitarianism, see Chapter 1.

26 Bishop of Hereford 1918-1920; because of Henson’s radical views, this appointment was just as controversial as Temple’s in 1869 (see the end of Chapter 1). Bishop of Durham 1920-1939.

27 The Mission of the Church. 1892; quoted in Avis, 32.

28 In the 1889 statement by Old Catholic bishops this phrase is also quoted. On its prominent position in the Old Catholic tradition, see J. Visser, “Die Alte Kirche als Hermeneutisches Prinzip”, Internationale kirchliche Zeitschrift 86 (1996), 45-64.

29 From an essay by William Inge on the changes over three generations of Catholic movement; quoted in Avis, 102.

30 Carpenter, 46.

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Gore’s via media

Gore was always looking for a middle way between the Christianity of his spiritual predecessors Pusey and Liddon (which he thought could no longer be believed literally), and that of the radical Jowett (whose views reduced religion to a timeless moral ideal that Gore did not think worth believing)?* Consequently, Gore’s Liberal Catholicism is composed of both Catholic and Reformational elements. Catholic aspects are his appreciation of ‘tradition’, his emphasis on the Church as a visible community, and on the authority of the Church Fathers — his essay in Lux Mundi reflects an extensive knowledge of patristics (see Chapter 2). From the same essay, we also know that Gore valued the concept of the Apostolic succession (about which more below), and saw grace as mediated via the sacraments (236).’^ Gore thought that the Church had totally lost sight of the ethical and social meaning of what he thought was the true Catholicism (“Why has ‘ecclesiastical’ come to mean something quite different to ‘brotherly?”’^’) and wanted to stress this again: tolerance and patience, true brotherliness, missionary zeal, and an active interest in contemporary knowledge and culture.^'*

Gore and the Roman Catholic Church

This might be the place for a brief discussion of Gore’s attitude towards the Roman Catholic Church. As Crosse puts it. Gore was “ineradicably anti”. His main criticism was directed against the Roman Catholic claims to absolute and infallible authority. Gore considered such an authority both historically indefensible, and undesirable from a religious point of view.’’ He saw the Roman Catholic Church as a one-sided distortion of the original Catholic tradition. As early as 1884 he had published Roman Catholic Claims, a book intended for “Catholic-minded members of the Church of England,” in which he set out to encourage a “positive, non-Roman Catholicity”.’® In spite of his anti-Roman stance. Gore was always appreciated by the Roman Catholics because of his moderate tone. In 1923 the Archbishop of Canterbury even delegated him to the ‘Malines Conversations’, periodical talks on the possibility to reunite the Anglican Church with Rome, which took place in Mechelen (Belgium) between 1921 and 1925.

Differences with the Anglo-Catholic tradition

Although Gore would have been shocked to be classed as a Protestant, he does distance himself on some points from the Anglo-Catholic tradition. In the first place.

31 Avis, 12.

32 Carpenter, 233-34.

33 From his commentary on Ephesians, 1898; quoted in Carpenter, 54.

34 Carpenter, 54-55.

35 Carpenter, 122.

36 In various references various years of publication are cited for this book. In his extensive bibliography Carpenter gives the year as 1884, “new enlarged edition 1889, 1 Ith edition 1920”.

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there is his adoption of historical Bible criticism. Secondly, the kenosis doctrine was probably of Lutheran origin (see Chapter 2). In his views on the authority of Scripture, Gore is on the one hand more ‘Tractarian’ than Liddon or Pusey in his rejection of the infallibility of Scripture, but on the other hand goes further than many Protestants when he presents the Bible as “the final court of appeal in all matters which concern the faith and morals of the Christian church”.Yet, Gore remains Catholic in that he does not want to separate the Bible from the creed and the traditional confessions. There are also ‘Protestant’ elements in Gore’s views on the doctrine of justification and on the ministry. As regards justification. Gore found it difficult, especially at the time when Lux Mundi was published, to accept the idea of the imputation of righteousness (cf. Lux Mundi 242n.). Later, he adopted a more Lutheran view, i.e., of grace and forgiveness freely given. From Anglo-Catholicism Gore inherited a tendency towards sacerdotalism, but under the influence of Maurice and the New Testament scholar Gordon Lightfoot’’ he developed a doctrine of representative priesthood that is both Catholic and Protestant. Gore’s ideas on Church and ministry will be discussed in more detail below.

Gore’s attitude towards the Reformation was ambivalent. In this respect he seems to have been what was always a Tractarian stereotype: unhistorical and biased. He knew little about Luther, and reproached the Reformers for rejecting any principle of priestly succession. He valued the Reformation principles of the priority of the Bible and the restoration of the teaching function of the Church, but on the other hand reproached the Protestants for being schismatics and literalists: in his view, setting the Bible apart as a repository of infallible proof texts amounted to a denial of the interpretative function of the Church.

Liberal Catholicism 1890-1930

Although Gore was of course the figurehead of the Liberal Catholics, other names stand out as well. After Aubrey Moore’s death at the age of 41, shortly after the publication of Lux Mundi, J.R. Illingworth became one of the standard-bearers of the movement, a function that was taken over by William Temple (1881-1944). A milestone in the later Liberal Catholicism was Essays Catholic and Critical (1926), a collection of articles explicitly presented by editor Gordon Selwyn as a continuation of the tradition of Lux Mundi. The difference between these two books is visible in the greater emphasis in 1926 on the supernatural element in religion, whilst the critical approach was taken further. Essays Catholic was an apologetic work, whereas Lux Mundi was systematic; Essays Catholic was also less coherent than its predecessor. The merit of Essays Catholic was that it proved that a search for the supernatural was compatible with critical integrity.

37 Quoted in Avis, 32.

38 Professor at Cambridge from 1861-1879. Together with Westcott and Hort he formed the so-called ‘Cambridge Triumvirate’; he also collaborated in the revision of the King James Bible that appeared in 1880 (see Chapter 2).

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[Our claim is] not that Anglo-Catholicism gives a final and exclusive expression of the truth, but that it represents the best expression at present available, in thought, worship and life, of the principles necessary to an ultimate synthesis.

This exactly expressed the difference between the younger and the older Anglo-Catholics. It was an encouragement to the many who did not want anything to do with Protestantism, but who thought Gore’s position too rigid.’’

Conclusions on the position around J890

To what extent did the Holy Party see itself as heralding a second Reformation? Gore himself certainly did.quot;*® Yet, Avis’ verdict on the effect of the ideas of the Oxford Movement is rather damning, when he states that the Catholic movement was largely responsible for the loss of discipline in, and the fragmentarisation of the Church.““ The paradoxical situation arose that the movement that had re-discovered the doctrine of the one, holy and Catholic Church, now also caused a re-definition of party boundaries within the Church of England and a hardening of positions. At the time of the Tractarians this had driven the old-style Evangelicals, who around 1830 were distinctly High-Church, into the arms of the Low Church (see Chapter 1). In this way, the Anglo-Catholics damaged internal relationships. They widened the gap between the established Church and the dissenters, and between the Anglican Church and the other European Reformation churches. Whereas on the one hand the Anglo-Catholics emphasised the unity of the Catholic Church, on the other they were very individualistic, and revived a fanaticism that had been dormant since the days of Methodism. This development started with Newman and Keble, and went on until the time of Gore. Gore’s theology, and his later rigidity and intolerance, especially regarding the English Modern theologians, are the subject of the next paragraph.

Gore after 1889

Gore’s theological development stagnated after Lux Mundi. One of the many theories about Gore’s shift from pioneer before 1889 to defendant of the status quo from 1890 onwards suggests that the intense conflict in his early Oxford days, not least the clash with Liddon, had made such an impression on his sensitive and nervous nature, that

his mind latterly tended to run into fixed gladiatorial attitudes suitable, let us say, to a battle with a Traditionalist, an encounter with a Darwinian, a deadly grappling with a Papist, and so on. He had been fighting so intensely and

39 Ramsey. 106; the quotation is from the preface to the third edition of Essays Catholic and Critical.

40 Avis, 27.

41 Avis, 30-31.

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on so many different fronts that the alignments almost became established frontiers/^

It is certainly true that the positions Gore takes up in his later theological writings on the ‘big’ points relating to inspiration and Incarnation, i.e., historical Bible criticism, immanence versus transcendence, the kenosis doctrine, and his view on Church and office, differ only in nuance from what he said about them at the time of Lux Mundi. This leaves us with the peculiar situation that in order to illustrate Gore’s ideas one might just as well quote from his earlier as from his later works. It will nevertheless be useful to present a summary of the criticism of, and changing notions about. Gore’s viewpoints.

One holy, Catholic and apostolic Church

It is appropriate to start a presentation of selected points from Gore’s theology with his ecclesiology, as Gore had inherited the tightly-knit Tractarian dogmatics in which many doctrines in practice depended on ecclesiology. A specific view of the Church generated a specific view on authority, and this authority then determined what else to believe.

Gore’s view on the Church proved influential.'*’ Within Anglo-Catholicism he developed a doctrine on the ministry that was both Catholic and Ref-ormational. To the Tractarians, the apostolic succession had been the first and foremost criterion for the visible Church, anywhere in the world. The Holy Party, and especially Charles Gore, slightly revised this doctrine, on the basis of a better knowledge of Scripture and the Early Church. To Gore, the status of the apostolic succession was related to other matters: the character of Christianity as the religion of an institutionalised Church, the role played by the members of this institute, and the way in which they formed a unity with Christ and with each other.

Christ is prophet, priest and King, and hence the Church, as the body of Christ, is those same three things. Gore liked to describe the Church in a phrase that the seventeenth-century theologian Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) had used for the Eucharist: “the extension of the incarnation”.'*'* In the essay by Gore’s co-author Moberly this view was expressed through an emphasis on the ministry as part of the priesthood of the entire Church; Gore himself joined the movement that favoured more lay participation in the government of the Church. Still, to the Holy Party it was in the end the Apostles and their successors who teach and govern in the name of Christ. From the gospels we can learn that the Apostolate was established by Christ; the authority of the Apostles is derived ‘from above’. In this way, the Church, provided it has this structure, is the means and place of salvation.

42 J. Conway Davies, quoted in Vidler, “Bishop Gore”, 144.

43 This paragraph based on Ramsey, 11 l-l 16 (who refers to Gore’s Order and Unity, 1908, and The Church and the Ministry, tcN. 1918) and Avis, 25-39 and 97-100.

44 Ramsey, 115.

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The Anglican Church especially has been called to represent true Catholicism, by safeguarding the institutions of the Church, in combination with intellectual freedom and commitment to the moral authority of Scripture — here we again see the elements of the familiar triple cord (see Chapter 2). The Roman Catholic Church has distorted this concept by replacing the paternal and moral authority of Christ and the Apostles by a suffocating concept of authority, and by arbitrarily adding to the dogmas necessary for salvation. The Eastern Church did retain the essence of true Catholicism, i.e., the continuity with the early and undivided Church, but has no intellectual contact with the modern world.

By renouncing the idea that the ministers of the Church derive their authority only ‘from above’, the churches of the Reformation, according to Gore, also rejected an essential principle of continuity in the life of the Church. Of course, they did accept some elevated principles (the supremacy of the Bible over corrupt tradition, and the necessity for individual judgement), but this led to a rebellious attitude, which in turn prevented a correct Church view. Gore points out that although the Holy Spirit did bless these Protestant groups and used them as witnesses, in the same way as, for instance, the Quakers, the churches based exclusively on Reformation principles fragmented into more and more sects, schisms and divisions. He also notes the decline of classical Reformation theology; “What force in Europe to-day is dogmatic Lutheranism, or the definite religion of Calvinism?’'*’ Gore saw the diminishing acceptation of the infallibility of the Bible as the coup de grâce for what had been the primary source of power for Protestantism. Paradoxically enough, his dream of the Anglican Church as the true Liberal Catholicism was based on the liberal form of Protestantism that had been prominent in the first decades of the twentieth century (more about this below). Karl Barth’s Protestant neo-orthodoxy (in England represented by Peter Taylor Forsyth, 1848-1921), which for instance brought a revaluation of the doctrine of the visible Church, took him unawares.

However influential Gore’s views of Church, succession and the mission of the Anglican Church were to prove, there was criticism as well. Many people thought Gore painted too one-dimensional a picture of the Early Church. Lightfoot, for instance, was considerably more cautious in his conclusions about the transition of the primitive apostolate to the later episcopate. Gore himself admitted that the doctrine of the apostolic succession could not explicitly be derived from the New Testament. He appealed to the historical process to support the doctrine: the forms that were found dominant in the course of history should de facto be recognized as God’s wilL*^ Of course, the weakness of this argument was that it went against Gore’s own principle of the supremacy of Scripture in matters of doctrine. He refused to acknowledge that the continuity of the ministry and handed-down

45 Quoted in Ramsey. 115.

46 Avis, 99.

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authority could be guaranteed in other ways than via the episcopal apostolic succession (for instance via a synod), and saw himself forced to appeal to tradition rather than the Bible.

Around 1920 there was a discussion on the meaning of the term ‘succession’: on the one hand, there was Irenaeus’ view of succession as the correct handing-down of doctrines from one bishop to the next; on the other hand, there was the view held by Augustine and, in his wake, the Church, according to whom ‘succession’ specifically referred to the link between ordaining bishop and ordinand via which the grace of the ministry was passed down. This last concept became very influential under the name ‘pipe-line theory’, but already in Gore’s time ordination was important: through this, the bishop could exercise his apostolic function.

The main objection to Gore, however, was that he used his own norm for what was a true Catholic and apostolic church structure to determine the status of churches within divided Christendom. When he was bishop. Gore — citing the indispensability of the doctrine of succession — excluded non-episcopalian Christian churches from the Church, resisted closer relations with the British Free churches, and forbade his clergy to participate in services of those churches. On this point, prominent theologians and church leaders were against him, for instance the ‘Modern’ Sanday and Henson. They appealed to the authority of influential Anglican theologians from the past, among whom Richard Hooker, who had stated that the fact that the Church of England conformed to the definition of the apostolic ministry given in the missal did not invalidate the ministry of nonepiscopalian Reformational churches. This type of argument cut no ice with Gore, who did not find his authority in Anglican history but in the appeal to the Early Church. To him, the canon, the creed and the episcopate were the norms for the one, holy Catholic and apostolic Church. Henson blamed the Tractarians for a shift from ‘old’ exclusivity based on social prejudice and party politics, to a ‘new’ exclusivity based on religious principles. These principles, Henson said, were foisted on the Church by a theory that was Catholic in name but essentially sectarian — a reproach that Gore could certainly take to heart.'*’

Gore, the scourge of Modern theologians

In the previous paragraph the radical Sanday and Henson were mentioned as opposing Gore. Gore always strongly resisted Modernism, although ironically enough this was a manifestation of the same alliance of idealist philosophy and Bible criticism that had produced Lux Mundi.'^^ The Modern, radical theologians of the first decades of the twentieth century attacked Gore’s critical consensus; the controversies between them and Gore actually cover all essential aspects of his theology.

47 Quoted in Avis, 99.

48 Avis, 61.

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Protestant and Roman Catholic Modernism 1890-1930

Like ‘liberal’, ‘Modernism’ is a many-sided and confusing term. There are many kinds of Modernism. Not only do we have to determine whom Gore himself is referring to when he speaks of ‘Modernists’, but also in the literature on Gore it is not always clear which of the many schools an author has in mind when writing of ‘Modernism’. Reardon is explicit enough with his Index entry ‘Modernism, Catholic’, but Carpenter’s remark about H.D. Major, who wrote a necrology of Gore as a ‘Modernist’, raises questions. When he writes that Major puts Gore as ‘English Modern theologian’ in the same category as Maurice, Jowett, Westcott and Rash-dall we must conclude that Carpenter is explicitly not referring to Roman-Catholic Modernism.“’

The greater part of Gore’s working life coincides with the rise and considerable popularity of, in Vidler’s words, “the reduced versions of Christianity’’’® that had started with Harnack in Germany. In the Anglican Church this liberal-Protestant stream was represented by the successors of the Broad Church-party, a group of theologians including, among others, Streeter, Inge, Henson, Rashdall and Sanday. In this heterogeneous company one could find not only contributors to Essays Catholic and Critical (see above), but also the mystical neo-platonist Inge, and the extreme Campbell, who with his ‘New Theology’ was the main target of Gore’s attacks, and probably represented the nearest thing to what on the Continent was called ‘Protestant Modernism’. It is this radical stream that Gore has in mind when he attacks “romanists and Modernists’’.” Yet, at the same time Ramsey can state that Modernism stimulated the orthodoxy to the further development of Liberal Catholicism, at first in Gore’s later works, after that in the younger generation of Liberal-Catholic theologians.’^

In addition to the parallels between the Broad-Church Modernism sketched above and the Continental liberal Protestantism, there was also an affinity between these British Modern theologians and Roman-Catholic Modernism. In his Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (1906)” Albert Schweitzer interpreted Jesus as a teacher proclaiming the imminent apocalypse. This view was adopted in France by the Roman Catholic scholar Alfred Loisy,’“ who had already irritated the Roman Catholic authorities by his critical Bible studies. Loisy’s ideas were one of the contributing factors in the start of Roman Catholic Modernism, which was to have a profound influence on Anglican thought. This movement also included the Irish Jesuit (a former Anglican priest) George Tyrrell (1861-1909), and “with some reservations” as he himself said, Baron Von Hügel. Essential to Roman Catholic

49 Carpenter, 8/9.

50 “Bishop Gore”, 135.

51 Carpenter, 133n.

52 Ramsey, viii.

53 An English translation. Quest of the Historical Jesus, was published in 1910.

54 This paragraph based on Ramsey, 63-65.

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Modernism was the idea of ‘development’. In L’Évangile et l’Église (1902), a reaction to Harnack’s Wesen des Christentums, Loisy stated that the gospels described only the first part of the Kingdom of God; this was to be further realised within the Catholic Church, which had developed from the Gospel. Loisy’s evolutionary approach was accompanied by considerable scepticism about the historical character of the New Testament, and shifted the core of faith from the historical truth of the original events to the religious experience of the Catholic Church. In the Modernist movement, too, there were huge differences between theologians. Von Hügel agreed with the importance of an uncompromising, critical approach to the Bible, but rejected the immanentism he suspected Loisy of; his own faith was rooted in the conviction of the divine transcendence.

Roman Catholic Modernism was influential outside the Roman Catholic Church as well. The emphasis on religious experience fitted in well with the rising interest in mysticism in England, of which Inge was an exponent. It is necessary to look more closely at Gore’s position regarding the Roman-Catholic Modernist movement. An interesting question, which for reasons of space can only partially be answered here, is that of the degree of overlap between Gore’s critical orthodoxy and Roman-Catholic Modernism.’^ In Von Hügel’s views, for instance, there is a lot of what we also find in Gore. Yet, Gore felt no affinity with the ‘mystical’ approach to religion as propagated by Von Hügel. Gore saw great danger in the separation of religion and morality;^* in Crosse’s words:

To him Baron von Hugel was “a dear old thing,” but the Baron’s view of mystical religion as in essence independent of ethical considerations seemed to him fundamentally antagonistic to his whole conception of Christianity.

Gore’s fellow author Scott Holland was a great admirer of Tyrrell, who especially in Anglo-Catholic circles had a great following.^’ However, Scott Holland did not accept Tyrrell’s radical historical scepticism and philosophical pragmatism — a reservation that is also found in Gore’s self-imposed limitation of the critical attitude: he was firmly convinced that Bible criticism was necessary, and should be carried out as rigorously as possible, but should leave intact the a priori assumption of the historicity of the facts of the creed.’® Reardon sees a wide gap between the mood of Roman Catholic Modernism, which in essence belongs in the twentieth century, and Liberal Catholicism, which, as he sees it, was definitely extinguished by the

55 Ramsey, 122.

56 Carpenter, 203.

57 Reardon, 436.

58 In this respect. Gore shows himself the type of theologian scathingly criticised by the Dutch nineteenthcentury minister and satirical poet P.A. de Gcnestet (1829-1861), in one of his Leekedichtjes (“Laymen’s Poems”), no. XXX: Kritiek mag alles onderzoeken, Want grensloos is haar rechtsgebied, Zelfs de ’ inhoud der gewijde Boeken — Alleenig maar 't kritiekste niet.

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first Vatican Council in 1869-1870: “the Modernists [...] derive little or nothing from the ideas of the Liberal Catholics”?® Vidler does see a link between Roman Catholic Modernism and the later liberal Anglo-Catholics of Essays Catholic and Critical (Spens, Selwyn, Knox):

This empirical approach [as opposed to Roman Catholic ultramontanism, IS] was further worked out in later books [...] by other liberal anglo-catholics [...] who realized that they were going considerably beyond what the Lux Mundi school had intended. It would be true to say that they were following up lines of thought that had been adumbrated by some of the Catholic modernists.®“

Points of conflict

In the preceding paragraph, several points have been raised that formed the spearheads of Gore’s conflicts with the Modern theologians. In spite of all the different currents and forms in Modernism, a clear common denominator is the idea of the ‘uniformity of nature’, the synthesis of the natural and the supernatural, the essential identity of nature and grace, God and man: a monism bordering on pantheism.®' In Chapter 1 we have seen that such a pantheism is the result of im-manentism taken to its extreme. Especially at the end of Gore’s life, immanentist thinking was at its peak, as the culmination of a development that had started in the Romantic period. In the sacramental incarnation theology of the Oxford Movement this development had been combined with the revolution in the study of history: scholars now tried to find a certain significance in the course of history. There was the evolution theory, with its idea of progress as inherent in the course of things, and there was also the impetus of Hegelian thinking on the iminanentist trend, reflected in the preoccupation of idealists such as Green with a view of reality as one synthetic whole.

Much of this is also reflected in Lux Mundi. Moore gratefully used the evolutionary principle in his essay “The Christian Doctrine of God”. In Avis’ words, the concept of evolution was “a friend whose providential arrival on the scene has saved theology from an exaggerated transcendentalism which was about to pass over into a lifeless deism.”®^ Although Avis credits Gore with having restored the doctrine of immanentism in Anglican theology, remarkably enough it was precisely the issue of immanence that formed a crucial breaking point with the Modern theologians. In this respect, the Lux Mundi Party did not want to go as far as Green, who saw in everything the expression of one spiritual, conscious being. Gore tolerated a certain amount of duality, as he clearly shows in “The Holy Spirit

59 Reardon, 486/87.

60 Vidler, 198.

61 Avis, 56; the Dutch theologian Karel Hendrik Roessingh (1886-1925) also emphasizes this in Het modernisme in Nederland, Haarlem 1922, 229.

62 Avis, 70; this paragraph based on Avis, 92-96.

8]

and Inspiration” (see Chapter 2). Highly immanentist theologies imply a radical re-interpretation of the Christian doctrine. With Gore, doctrine served to reinforce Catholic theology, but in extreme Modernism the entire corpus of Christian doctrine was re-written from a reductionist perspective, starting from the principle that there is no essential separation between God and the world. An example of this is Campbell’s New Theology, which included, among others, Hastings Rash-dall and H.D. Major. Gore always insisted on maintaining the separation of Creator and Creation — which makes Darwell Stone’s criticism (see above) appear less than justified. As stated earlier, the issue of immanence versus transcendence also has its repercussions on Gore’s view of the Trinity. Although this subject falls outside the scope of this study, I will just note that the doctrine of the Trinity was the cause of a bitter clash between Gore and Rashdall during the Girton Conference of the Modern Churchman’s Union in 1921, during which Gore accused Rashdall — unfortunately, on the basis of misinformation — of a totally wrong concept of the person of Christ.

The kenosis theory

Gore contributed to a great extent to the focus on the Incarnation in Anglican theology in the first half of the twentieth century. The ideas he presented in Lux Mundi he elaborated further in for example his Bampton Lectures of 1891, and in the Dissertations (1895). The Anglican Church has always clung tightly to the Incarnation, and exactly this focus made the ‘kenotic problem’ such a sensitive issue during the last decade of the nineteenth century. In spite of differences in emphasis, with his spotlight on God’s humility Gore stands in the line of, among others. Hooker and Liddon. Criticism during the first years of the twentieth century was fierce.^^ In Christologies, Ancient and Modern (1910) the radical Sanday criticized the extreme language in which Gore presents his theory, something which had also irritated Liddon. Does the Lord only ‘impose limitations’ on himself, or does he ‘abandon’ or ‘surrender’ Himself? In the latter case, Jesus would cease to be divine. The ‘kenoticists’ tried to fend off this attack by distinguishing between Christ’s ethical and metaphysical attributes, and by claiming that in the Incarnation the ethical qualities remain intact, but the metaphysical are shed. Elsewhere, however. Gore does say that the divine attributes cannot be separated, and that Christ can ‘forget’ His divine consciousness. Rashdall quickly put his finger on the problem: “it is surely a difficult doctrine to maintain that such a colossal loss of memory [...] was consistent with what we commonly call personal identity”.^'* Of course, Rashdall was ‘Modern’, but the Anglo-Catholic William Temple, too, rejected the kenotic doctrine because it came dangerously close to mythology.

In spite of the criticism from various directions on the lack of thought

63 This paragraph based on Carpenter, 166-173.

64 quoted in Carpenter, 169.

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given to the metaphysical implications and the dubious scriptural basis, Gore’s kenosis theory stood up for fifty years, in a ‘restrained and imprecise Anglican form”.®’ Ironically, it was Rashdall, of all people, who in his controversial contribution to the Girton conference (see above) maintained that the Incarnation did not necessarily imply omniscience on Jesus’ part, a fact “widely accepted since Lux Mundi '!''' The Anglo-Catholic Bishop of Zanzibar, Frank Weston, stated in The One Christ (1907) that it was not disloyal to question the way in which the Church Fathers imagined the unity of the human and divine natures in Christ, but that when it was assumed that divine glory was shed during the Incarnation, there was no possibility any longer to glorify the human nature in Christ, culminating in the splendour of the Ascension.®’

Sin

In Chapter 1 we have seen how the shift in emphasis in Anglican theology “from Easter to Christmas”, from reconciliation and salvation to the Incarnation, resulted in the concepts of sin, grace and pardon being somewhat relegated to the back-ground.®* Only in second instance was an essay on sin included in Lux Mundi. Nevertheless, Gore’s entire Catholic theology was steeped in the themes of sin and salvation, and his conviction of the seriousness of sin constituted the essential difference between his view of the Incarnation and that of many liberal contemporaries.®’ Besides the Evangelicals, who supported a strictly vicarious doctrine of atonement (presenting Christ as bearing the punishment due to man by voluntary substitution), and the Anglo-Catholics, who presented reconciliation in terms of a sacrifice, there was also the exclusive ‘human’, exemplary doctrine (presenting Christ as an example to be followed), that had already been put forward in Jowett’s article in Essays and Reviews (see Chapter 1), and was also held by the Modern theologians.™

In his chapter “The Fall and Original Sin in Anglican Thought”’*, Ramsey states that the doctrine of sin might well be the point on which the Anglican Church attains the best synthesis between science and tradition — which would mean that Gore’s theology has won the day on this score. By giving up the belief in a historical Adam and Eve, it became the task of theology to demonstrate that belief in a Fall is compatible with evolutionist principles.

65 Ramsey, 42.

66 Ramsey, 71.

67 Ramsey, 36-37.

68 In a work of 1950, The Coherence of Doctrine, the then Bishop of Oxford, Kirk, says that Lux Mundi should really have been called Salvator Mundi (and have a corresponding message); quoted in Carpenter, 185n.

69 Ramsey, 49.

70 As shown, for instance, by Rashdall’s Bampton Lectures, The Idea of Atonement in Christian Theology, 1915.

71 Ramsey, 175-178.

83

In his essay on sin in Lux Mundi, Gore says that the Christian religion presents man as beginning in a state of grace, and gradually degenerating; science, on the other hand, presents man as starting out in a completely uncivilized state and slowly ascending. Man’s original perfection, according to Gore, should be seen in relation to a specific stage of development. Those elements of sin that are independent o/evolution are the responsibility of each individual, and of the underlying collective trend in which we all share. Sin is a misdirection of the will, but no one starts with a clean slate; new sins are specimens of what has been going on for a long time. Already before the beginning of history, man’s moral obstinacy had caused an alienation from ethical ideals. This, in short, is sin, with its dual aspect of inherited tendency and individual responsibility. The Fall is not a fall from original perfection, but should rather be seen as a deviation from the straight path ahead. During the period 1902-1912, a plea by F.R. Tennant to limit the term ‘sin’ to the individual responsibility evoked much resistance. The Church of England stuck to Gore’s presentation of ‘Adam’ as a symbol of both everyone’s individual guilt (needing repentance), and humanity’s earlier alienation from its moral ideal (needing salvation by the new Adam, Jesus Christ).

This meant a departure from the Augustinian concept of sin.’^ Augustine’s view had in fact been only partially accepted by the Church of the Middle Ages, so that it certainly did not conform to the criterion of semper, ubique, ab omnibus. After the Reformation some of it did find its way into the Thirty-nine Articles, but not nearly as extensively as the Calvinists had wished. This was probably one of the reasons why Gore never thought much of these Articles;^’ he, too, undoubtedly agreed with Newman’s distinction between the creed as part of the church dogma, and the Thirty-nine articles as imperfect, time-bound interpretations of it.

Creeds and confessions

Mentioning the Anglican confession brings us to the issue of the subscription to the creeds.’'* In Chapter 1 Gore’s position in the credal controversy around 1890 has been set out. In 1920, William Inge reproached Gore for being willing to allow a global, ‘symbolic’ subscription to the Thirty-nine articles and the Old Testament, but refusing this in the case of the creeds.’’ Of course, Inge’s criticism highlighted the fact that Gore obviously thought the Thirty-nine articles too Protestant, and in his essay in Lux Mundi had already explained why the Old Testament was ‘true’ in a different sense than the strictly historical factuality of the New Testament. Gore’s insistence on a literal subscription to the creeds is a crucial point of difference with the Modern theologians. The latter wanted to carry the historical-critical approach

72 This may have been what Liddon meant by ‘pelagianizing’ (see earlier in this chapter).

73 Ramsey, 168.

74 Paragraph largely based on Avis, 80-86.

75 Avis, 80.

84

to the Bible to its extreme. Gore, on the other hand, did accept the principles of historical criticism, but denied that these had affected the historical truth of the Virgin Birth and the physical resurrection. In Lux Mundi he already wanted to set limitations to criticism, and in 1920 his ideas were still exactly the same.’®

His arguments, however, had probably changed a little. In the first place. Gore thought that the ‘Moderns’ had an incorrect interpretation of the term ‘symbolism’. Symbols could only refer to events that fell outside human knowledge and experience; a criterion that did not apply to the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection! Secondly, the rejection of the supernatural elements in the creed reflected, according to Gore, an essentially un-Christian concept of God, and an inadequate Christology. “In what kind of God do we believe?” Thirdly, Gore thought that the low level of faith and confession in Modern theology had a destructive effect on the ’synthesis’, the wide umbrella of the Anglican Church that brought together many different points of view on a solid foundation of shared principles. Finally, Gore was sceptical about the results of Modern criticism {Lux Mundi 262; see also Chapter 2) and critical of unfounded presuppositions, hidden assumptions and invalid conclusions — although, as we have seen, he himself had his share of those. On the other hand, he did stress that the Bible should be approached with the correct frame of mind (cf. the desired ‘presuppositions’. Lux Mundi 247). Gore thought that a critical reading was incompatible with the naive language of the gospels.

The Modern theologians came back with convincing counter-arguments. Ironically, it was Liddon who already in 1889 saw things clearly: “My fear is [...] that in these matters there is an inexorable logic which we may keep at bay for some time but which, unless it is barred out by a thick wall of fact, will insist sooner or later on having its say”.” Not only hard-core Modern theologians such as Spens, but also the more moderate churchmen such as Rawlinson and Selwyn criticized Gore’s view of the credal formulas: theology should be rooted in the Christian experience. Of course. Gore would agree with this, but the Moderns justly asserted that the creeds were an expression of the life of the Early Church, and that logically speaking in 1920 AD this expression would be different from that of 381. Rawlinson, in Essays Catholic and Critical, stated that dogmas only enforced through discipline lack all true authority. H.M. Gwatkin reminded Gore that the creeds do not have an independent authority but are based, as is also asserted in the Thirty-nine articles, on evidence from scripture.

Much of what Modernism championed — the right to free and unbiased enquiry; the idea of development in the understanding of Christian faith; the use of

76 Avis (82) says “at the time of the modernist crisis”, another example of the loose sense in which various authors use the word ‘Modernist’. The term ‘Modernist crisis’ usually refers to Roman Catholic Modernism, which Avis does not mean here; he is talking about Gore’s conflict with Rashdall in 1921 (see above).

77 Avis, 86.

85

the results of Modern science — was also found in theologians who would certainly not label themselves ‘Modern’. Of these, Gore was one. Two major points that separated him from the Modern theologians were his horror of rigorous monism and his view on sin and atonement. The crucial breaking point, however, between Gore and the ‘radicals’ remain the limitations Gore posed to free, historical-critical Bible enquiry. Hence Ramsey’s statement that Gore marred his modernity by his appeal to ecclesiastical authority.™

Just as on the Continent, Modern theology was in the end unable to carry the day in Britain. Avis concludes that Gore’s restoration of immanentism in Anglican theology enriched Liberal Catholicism, but undermined Modernism.™ Ramsey says that Modernism, although an unavoidable development, was too noncommittal and non-partisan to succeed.®® And true enough, in the event it was Gore who for half a century dominated Anglo-Catholicism, a period during which this was the major stream within the Anglican Church.

The man Gore: paradoxes and inconsistencies

Gore’s influence had much to do with his personality, and not always with the agreeable sides of it. In Chapter 1, his aversion to doubt and his rigidity have been mentioned; other adjectives that come to mind are ‘fanatical’ and ‘intolerant’. Avis starts his book by characterizing Gore’s life as controversial.®' Certainly, there is a great deal of paradox and inconsistency. Gore wanted to set limits to critical reforms, which earned him the jibe from Streeter that he forbade others what he himself had done at the time of Lux Mundi. Henson, Gore’s most implacable opponent, considered Gore a sophist.®^

How liberal was Gore himself? In his article “Bishop Gore and liberal Catholicism” Vidler takes Gore’s measure on four aspects of liberality.®’ Politically, he was definitely a liberal, and supported the separation of Church and State (‘disestablishment’). He considered this especially beneficial to Church and religion. His view on the Church, too, can certainly be called liberal: not only did he want freedom for the Church, but also in the Church. Based on consensus on the most important principles, the Church should pose as few boundaries as possible, and welcome people of widely divergent opinions. Gore saw this freedom assured in the emphasis the Church of England put on the authority of Scripture. He also opposed the Roman Catholic idea that it is the task of the priestly hierarchy to pro

claim the truth, and the task of the faithful to accept it passively. “All are to know

78 Ramsey, 75.

79 Avis, 96.

80 Ramsey, 74.

81 Avis, 1.

82 Avis, 102.

83 Vidler, 132 and 138-151. This paragraph is based on Vidler’s article and on Avis, 101-108.

86

for themselves. [...] They must not depend on any class of scribes.”*'* Gore not only wanted freedom of thought and enquiry, but also freedom of speech, especially freedom of prophecy. In every era, prophets are necessary “to recall men to some forgotten aspect or element of the word of God.”*^ Bishops should show themselves tolerant towards prophets.

This takes us to those aspects of liberalism that are certainly not found in Gore: a tolerant attitude in matters of theology and in the personal sphere. There is no doubt that at the time of Lux Mundi Gore saw himself as a prophet and reformer. Especially in the area of church order he suggested many changes, already early in his career. However, when he had become a bishop himself, it turned out that he wanted to impose far stricter standards regarding church membership and discipline than had been observed until then. His statement “We must prefer reality to numbers”*® reflects his principle, already presented in his essay in Lux Mundi, that God attains His goal through a small group of elect. Gore thought that a Church with strict conditions for membership would be far more useful for the state, and would offer better facilities for the sort of freedom revealed in the New Testament. Henson, Streeter and Rashdall considered Gore unacceptably egoistical in his claim that his own position represented the authentic Anglicanism, and his dismissal of everyone who thought differently as ‘deviants’. The sincerity of Gore’s convictions was not questioned, but they were considered rather rude and high-handed. Vidler concludes that, paradoxically. Gore’s view of the Church was neither High-Church, nor Catholic, nor liberal.

As regards doctrine, too. Gore was at first a prophet, but after Lux Mundi he became almost from one day to the next a ruthless enemy of other reformers. Gore wanted a Church with a strict discipline — doctrinally, liturgically, and morally. The methods he used to enforce this, when he was a bishop, were anything but liberal. Many of Gore’s actions were viewed by his contemporaries as tactless at best, and at worst totally unacceptable. Although he never actually persecuted individuals for heresy, he still in an offensive manner forced clergy in his diocese whom he thought ‘unsound’ to resign. Undoubtedly led by his principle that “God works through minorities”, he had difficulty accepting democratic decisions. In Convocation meetings, too, he applied unacceptable pressure by threatening to resign if a decision was taken with which he did not agree. In 1908, after an appendix operation, he even had himself carried in on a stretcher at a session of the Lambeth Conference, and tried to prevent the recognition of the non-episcopal ministry by falteringly announcing his resignation, should this motion be carried.*’

His way of immediately accusing opponents in polemics or debates of

84 Quoted in “Bishop Gore”, 140.

85 Quoted in “Bishop Gore”, 140. In Lux Mundi Gore also says that the prophets speak in order to “recall the people to something they know, or ought to know” (251).

86 “Bishop Gore”, 143.

87 A reminiscence of Henson’s, quoted in Avis, 101.

87

prejudice or insincerity was also often unjustified, and always intolerant. This technique was especially prominent in the discussion about a literal versus a general subscription to the creed. Gore reproached the ‘symbolists’ with being insincere. Inge’s recriminations to Gore on this subject have already been mentioned. Gore received unexpected support in 1896 from the unbeliever Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900): ministers should either believe everything, or resign. Rashdall, one of the ‘symbolists’, answered Sidgwick by pointing to the great tolerance within the Church of England, and was clearly referring to Gore when he stated that those members of the clergy who most rigidly clung to a literal adherence to certain other ecclesiastical formulas, nevertheless at the same time utterly despised the Thirty-nine articles. Rashdall claimed that he simply followed Gore’s example. In this way, Rashdall and Inge demonstrate the vulnerability of Gore’s position: he could always be beaten by his own arguments.

Henson considered Gore’s rigid obstinacy a threat to the moral and intellectual integrity of the ministry; it was the first task of a clergyman to tell the truth. Francis Newman, brother of John Henry, had already in 1850 come to the same conviction, and from this had drawn the conclusion that theological enquiry is incompatible with institutionalised religion.^^

Conclusion

A comparison of Gore’s position within Anglican theology in the last decade of the nineteenth century with his views forty years later shows little development in his thought: the times change. Gore does not. In itself it is not unusual to remain at the spiritual and intellectual point one has reached between one’s thirtieth and fortieth year. What is remarkable, though, is that someone who in his own words wanted to reduce the position of dogma in the Church and was at the same time accused of too rigid a view on doctrine, has had such a considerable influence and prestige. The critical orthodoxy of Lux Mundi represented by Gore has in unchanged form dominated Anglo-Catholicism during the forty years when this was the dominant stream within the Church of England. In spite of the sharp criticism of the kenosis doctrine and the vehement attacks of the Modern theologians on Gore’s reverence for ecclesiastical authority and tradition — a lack of rigorous scepticism that fitted his Catholic outlook — , it was exactly these ideas that to a great extent determined the face of the Anglican Church. Amid the many currents and movements arising between 1890 and 1930 there are some constant factors.^’ Firstly, there is the Platonism that since the sixteenth century has been characteristic of Anglican theology, although there was still a great difference between the pragmatist Gore,

88 Avis 106.

89 Mentioned in Ramsey. 164-166.

88

for whom Platonism was a minor element, and the mystic Inge, for whom it was the primary medium of theology. Secondly, there was the Anglican receptiveness to spirituality and prayer, corresponding to a growing interest in the part played by religious experience and in mysticism. Thirdly, the constant focus on Scripture and the Church Fathers should be mentioned. Last but not least, there is the Anglican commitment to the via media, which is reflected not only in the desire to steer a middle course between Rome and Geneva, but also in the aversion to rigid theological systems. All these aspects suited Gore, although not all of them to the same extent. However, his strong personality will undoubtedly have contributed to maintaining the dominant tone of Liberal Catholicism in the Anglican Church.

89

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CONCLUSIONS

If there was one intriguing figure in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain, it was undoubtedly the Anglo-Catholic bishop Charles Gore. In all areas of Gore’s life and work contradictions play an important part, starting with his wish to be “reasonable and reverent” — the course of history in theology and Church shows that these two concepts are never easy to reconcile.

The analysis of his essay “The Holy Spirit and Inspiration” in Chapter 2 shows that Gore was a scrupulously systematic thinker and an excellent classical scholar. It is no surprise to hear him say that “it has been my business to read the fathers more, I suppose, than any other part of human literature except the New Testament itself.”' Yet here, too, we find an intriguing ambiguity. Gore’s essay, however systematic and erudite, is based on the a priori assumption of the total historicity of the New Testament, and proceeding from this, the assumption that the Bible will always confirm the creed. To Gore, this was the limit that reverence set to reason: he wanted to maintain the historical truth of the doctrines of the Virgin Birth and the physical Resurrection.

The course of events after the publication of Lux Mundi in 1889 shows that this paradox returned to plague the editor like a boomerang. We are probably justified in stating that Gore never belonged to a specific ‘movement’ within Anglo-Catholicism. In spite of his abhorrence of doubt and his love of categorical statements, we nevertheless get the impression that he wanted to keep all his options open — a desire that was probably the cause of various unclear points in his theological thought.

If Gore’s position in Lux Mundi was too guarded for some, for others it went much too far. The members of the Oxford Movement saw the cautious adoption of the principles of new Bible criticism in Lux Mundi as treason by somebody whom they considered their leader, but the liberal (i.e., the former Broad-Church) theologians, who saw Gore as just such an angry young man as they themselves had been at the time of Essays and Reviews, considered Gore’s reasonable criticism not nearly progressive enough. In first instance, the middle road as then represented by Lux Mundi won the day, but after the first decade of the twentieth century there were more and more Liberal Catholics (among whom also ‘Modernists’) who wanted to take the path entered by Lux Mundi to its extreme consequence, and did not allow themselves to be stopped by the barrier that Gore had put there. When in 1917 the Lux Mundi Party met for the last time, their influence was already waning. Around 1910, many of the rebels of 1889 had become, from their respective episcopal sees. Liberal Catholic pillars of the Anglo-Catholic establishment. Gore

I A statement from 1901. quoted in Avis, 20. After Lux Mundi it comes as no surprise to read that Gore classifies the New Testament under 'human literature’.

9]

himself did not want to follow the Modern theologians either, and obstinately remained at his post — guarding a barrier that had long been removed.

The fact that valid conclusions about Gore’s thought may be drawn from a minimal part of his vast oeuvre has everything to do with Gore’s rigid personality, and his ideas which remained unchanged over fifty years. The same consistency may also explain why Gore dominated the Anglo-Catholic stage for forty years (see Chapter 3).

Another unavoidable question raised by this study is that of Gore’s position in his own time and in the whole of twentieth-century theology, seen from the perspective of the present day. When determining people’s positions in history it is always tempting to focus on their (often numerous) similarities to earlier or alternative movements and to other figures from the same period — see Chapters 1 and 3. Of course, no movement or person emerges out of nothing. Yet it is the contrasts that make a picture, and exactly the contrasts between Gore and his contemporaries are essential. This is also demonstrated by Lux Mundi. The thesis of the subtitle Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation (referring to the idea that all doctrines of the Christian faith should be viewed in their relation to the Incarnation as the centre of faith), which was taken up in almost all essays, was for instance not revolutionary in itself; it largely continued an existing line in Anglican theology.^ The departures from this line, however, were crucial. Although Gore shared the Tractarians’ passion for mystery, the sacraments and the incarnation, he was rational where Newman was romantic. Undoubtedly, Gore was strongly influenced by Green’s philosophical idealism, although the Lux Mundi authors themselves thought that they derived their immanentism from scripture, the Church Fathers and the medieval scholastics.^ Certainly, there are similarities between Essays and Reviews and Lux Mundi, but Gore’s position differed on essential points from that of Jowett, whose radical rejection of the dogma of the Virgin Birth he would never have agreed with.

More research is necessary to develop a clear picture of these relationships and dependencies, and their development over the period 1890-1930, especially the link between Roman-Catholic Modernism and Liberal Catholicism (see Chapter 3). For the moment, it seems probable that if one were to draw theological ‘landscapes’ for the years 1890-1900-1910-1920-1930, the area occupied by Gore would in successive decades become smaller and smaller and move more and more to the right. Is it true that Gore’s ideas in 2006 have no more than a strictly historical value, and that his strict separation of Old and New Testament criticism completely sidelined him as from the middle of the twentieth century?* In 1989, Avis could still write:

2 This section is partly based on “Lux Mundi”, Theologische Realenzyklopaedie, XXI, Berlin/New York 1991, 621-626 (article by Christoph Schwöbel).

3 Ramsey, 10; Avis, 71.

4 See Chapters 1 and 3, respectively.

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[..] the polarity of nature and grace is fundamental. Here, I believe, lies the value of Gore’s theology — obsolete in some ways — for us today: he bears witness to the richness of Christian theism, to the basic grammar of theological method, to the coherence and rationality of the Christian position.’

What present-day essayists, in the current preoccupation with secularisation, would say of proposing the “coherence and rationality in the Christian position” is all too easy to guess. Avis wrote more than fifteen years ago. We should take into account that he himself is part of a fairly orthodox Anglican stream, and that his book contains a preface written by Lord Ramsey of Canterbury, so that in a certain way it has the stamp of approval of someone who has heard Gore himself read Psalms.

Is there a remnant of a Gorean line in the Anglican Church at the moment? In 1991 Christoph Schwöbel wrote about the tradition within Anglican theology, “continued until the present” of the kenotic Christology initiated by Gore.^ In one of the most recent monographs on this subject we read that Liberal Catholicism is currently represented within the Church of England by the movement ‘Affirming Catholicism’. This stream had perhaps best be labelled ‘Classical Anglican’, and seems to constitute a return to Gore in its aim “to revere scripture, affirm tradition and champion reason”.’ In a recent article,^ Mark Chapman briefly discusses kenoticism in relation to the crisis of authority in contemporary Anglicanism. In his view, the idea of the emptying of power in Christ leads to insecurity and powerlessness for the faithful, rather than the apostolic ministry as a guarantee of the Church’s authority. This alternative model, he thinks, may have been Gore’s ideal church, composed of committed followers of a Christ who took the form of a slave. The question is of course whether this actually was what Gore had in mind, or whether this view is the result of a century of Anglo-Catholic elaboration on Gore’s thought.

However this may be. Gore’s “reasonable reverence” is hardly as dominant in the Church of England now as it was a hundred years ago. Born in the relatively minor stream of the High-Church party. Liberal Catholicism next became part of the Anglo-Catholic revival and heyday in de first half of the twentieth century. Nowadays, this “classical Anglican” stream does not have the mass-appeal we find in the more Evangelical movements. Of course, this would not have surprised Gore: God works through minorities. It seems, then, no more than fair to give the last word to Gore himself: quot;Real Christianity has never been popular, and probably never will be’.®

5 Avis, p. 67.

6 “Lux Mundi”, TRE, 624.

7 Ploeger, 104.

8 ‘Charles Gore, Kenosis ands the Crisis of Power’, Journal of Anglican Studies Vol. 3(2), 2005, 197-218.

9 Quoted in Carpenter, 258.

93

BIBLIOGRAPHY

When searching for literature on Gore and Lux Mundi, one finds that until the middle of the 1960s much has been published on this subject. Then follows a gap of twenty-five lean years, until 1989, the centenary of the publication of Lux Mundi. Paul Avis’ short monograph is among the modest number of publications that marked this milestone. After 1989 silence seems again to surround the topic of Lux Mundi. Besides a number of articles on Liberal Catholicism in general, the study by Mattijs Ploeger on the continuity (or lack of it) in various types of High-Church spirituality, in which Lux Mundi receives a good deal of attention, is the only recent work of any length that is available. In 2005, Mark Chapman published an article on Gore’s idea of kenosis, approached from the viewpoint of church and community building rather than the church-historical perspective used in this study.

The bibliography below has intentionally been kept to a modest length. Taking my cue from Carpenter’s critical discussion of the literature available in 1960,1 have not consulted Prestige’s biography of Gore (1935), and the dissertations by Ekström (1944) and Page (1955). Carpenter’s book contains an excellent and exhaustive bibliography of Gore’s works, and of the secondary literature on Gore from 1890 until about 1960.

Andresen, G., (Hrsg.), Handbuch der Dogmen- und Theologiegeschichte, Bd III (G. Hornig), Göttingen 1984

Avis, Paul, Gore: Construction and Conflict: Published to mark the centenary of the appearance of LUX MUNDI, Worthing 1988

Bakhuizen van den Brink, J.N., J. van den Berg, W.F. Dankbaar, Handboek der Kerkgeschiedenis, Deel IV, De kerk sedert de zeventiende eeuw, Leeuwarden 1985

‘Benjamin Jowett’, in Dictionary of National Biography, Supplement Vol. III, Sydney Lee (ed.), London 1901

Carpenter, James, Gore. A Study in Liberal Catholic Thought, London 1960 Chadwick, O., The Victorian Church, Part II, Oxford/New York 1970

Chapman, Mark D., ‘Charles Gore, Kenosis and the Crisis of Power’, in Journal of Anglican Studies Vol. 3 (2), 2005, 197-218

‘Charles Gore’, in Dictionary of National Biography, 1931-1940, L.G. Wickham Legg (ed.), Oxford 1949

Crosse, Gordon, Charles Gore: A Biographical Sketch, Mowbray 1932 (integrally available at http;//justus.anglican.org/resources/pc/gore/)

Ellis, Ieuan, Seven Against Christ. A Study of ‘Essays and Reviews’, Leiden 1980 Faber, Geoffrey, Jowett. A portrait with background, London 1957

“Gore”, in Theologische Realenzyklopaedie, XIII, Berlin/New York 1984, 586-588 (article by Bernard M.G. Reardon)

94

Gore, Charles, ‘The Holy Spirit and Inspiration’, in Lux Mundi, A series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation ed. Charles Gore, M.A., 12th edition, London 1891

Id., Prefaces to the first, fifth, and tenth editions, in: Lux Mundi, A series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation ed. Charles Gore, M.A., 12th edition, London 1891

Id., ‘On the Christian Doctrine of Sin’, in Lux Mundi, A series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation ed. Charles Gore, M.A., 12th edition, London 1891

Grane, Leif, Die Kirche im 19. Jahrhundert (UTB 1425), Göttingen 1987

Hinchcliff, Peter, God and History. Aspects of British Theology 1875-1914, Oxford 1992

Huxley, Th. H., ‘The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science’, Collected essays, Vol. IV, Science and Hebrew tradition, London 1893

“Lux Mundi” in Theologische Realenzyklopaedie, XXI, Berlin/New York 1991, 621-626 (article by Christoph Schwöbel)

“Modernismus”, in Theologische Realenzyklopaedie, XXIII, Berlin/New York 1994, 129-138 (article by Bernard M.G. Reardon)

Morgan, Robert (ed.). The Religion of the Incarnation. Anglican Essays in Commemoration of Lux Mundi, Bristol 1989

Newman, John Henry, Apologia pro Vita Sua, ed. Ian Ker, 1864', Penguin 1994

Pijper, F., Het modernisme en andere stroomingen in the katholieke kerk, Amsterdam 1921

Ploeger, M., High-Church Varieties. Three Essays on Continuity and Discontinuity in Nineteenth-Century Anglican Catholic Thought, Publicatieserie Stichting Oud-Katholiek Seminarie no. 36, Amersfoort/Sliedrecht 2001

Ramsey, M., From Gore to Temple, London 1960

Rauwenhoff, L.W.E., ‘Matthew Arnold’, Theologisch Tijdschrift, 7, (1873), 287-347

Reardon, Bernard M.G., From Coleridge to Gore. A Century of Religious Thought in Britain, London 1971

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Rogerson, J.W., Old Testament Criticism in the 19th Century, London 1984

Id., The Bible and Criticism in Victorian Britain : profiles ofF. D. Maurice and William Robertson Smith, Sheffield 1995

Stol, M., Langs ‘s Heeren wegen. Notities van een voorbijganger. Kampen, 1997.

Störig, Hans Joachim, Geschiedenis van de filosofie, dl. 2, 1959', 23rd edition. Aula 1996

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SSquot;S-' b

Id., ‘Bishop Gore and liberal Catholicism’, in: Essays in Liberality, ed. Alec R. Vidler, London 1957

Visser, J. “Die Alte Kirche als Hermeneutisches Prinzip” Internationale kirchliche Zeitung 86 (1996), 45-64.

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Internet sources

E. Cobham Brewer, The Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable, new and enlarged edition of 1894: www.bibliomania.com/Reference/PhraseAndFable/

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Project Canterbury: http://justus.anglican.org/resources/pc/gore/

The Catholic Encyclopedia: www.newadvent.org/cathen

96

heden verschenen delen in de serie:

Drs F Smit, Dr J. Visser en Mgr A.J. Glazemaker

250 jaar Oud-Katholiek Seminarie

Dr J Visser

De kandelaar van het licht

Drs M.A. Haitsma

De Rooms-Katholieken te Leiden van ongeveer 1650 tot de tweede helft van de achttiende eeuw

Mr G.Chr. Kok

Beknopte bibliografie van de geschiedenis van de Oud-Katholieke kerk van Nederland

Dr P J Maan

Chiliastische en charismatische stromingen en de Clerezy in het begin van de 19e eeuw

Mr J.J. Hallebeek

Communis omnium possessio et omnium una libertas (Twee opstellen over Thomas van Aquino)

H J W Verhey

Naamlijst der pastoors van de Oud-Katholieke kerk

Dr J. Visser

Het ideaal van de ‘Ecclesia Primitiva' in het Jansenisme en het Oud-Katholicisme

Drs F. Smit

Franse oratonanen en de Clerezy in de jaren 1752-1763

Mr J A.C de Jonge

Eenheid in conciliariteit

Dr P.J Maan en Dr J. Visser

1931-1981 : Vijftig jaren full communion tussen de Anglikaanse en Oud-Katholieke kerken

Drs F Smit

Het hofje van Buytenwech te Gouda in de jaren 1684-1713

(Bijdrage tot de katholieke armenzorg in de 17e eeuw)

Dr P J Maan

1054 in het spanningsveld van Utrecht, Rome, Constantinopel en Canterbury

C.E Schabbing

Verzuilingstendenties in de Oud-Katholieke kerk van Nederland

Drs K Ouwens

De theorie van de pentarchie en het primaatschap in de kerk (niel meer leverbaar)

Drs F Smit

De fundaties van Sasbout en Pieter van der Dussen (1622-1752)

Mr G.Chr. Kok

Uit de geschiedenis van de Synode

Lie. G. Theys

Van Van ‘t Sestichhuis tot college van de hoge heuvel, 1633-1752 (niet meer leverbaar)

C Tol

Concelebratie, aftcheidscollege 28 september 1985

Dr M F G Parmentier

Vincentius van Lerinum, de beide Commonitoria

Angela Berlis

Gottes Haushaller - Der Bischof im Alt-Katholischen Kirchenrecht Deutschlands

Dr M.F.G Parmentier

Het pastoraat aan katholieken tussen Vecht en Eem (1638-1646)

Dr J.J. Hallebeek

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Drs F. Smit

Batavia Sacra

Idelette Otten

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Joris Vercammen

Vrouwen, mannen en macht in de kerk

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Referaten en beschouwingen op de studiedagen ‘Vrouw en kerkelijk ambt’, 18-20 januari 1994

Koenraad Ouwens

Het Stukjesboek, Missen en Gezangen 1745-1803 N

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Jan Hallebeek

Alonso “el Tostado” (c- 1410-1455)

His doctrine on junsdiction and its influence in the Church of Utrecht

Christoph Schuler

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in the context of Anglican-Old Catholic relations between 1902 and 1925 (niet meer leverbaar)

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Jan Visser e.a.

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Liturgievernieuwing in de Oud-Katholieke Kerk

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Reasonable and Reverent, the critical orthodoxy of Charles Gore and Lux Mundi

De publicatieserie van de Stichting Oud-Katholiek Seminarie wordt uitgegeven onder verantwoordelijkheid van docenten en leden van het curatorium van deze stichting

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