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CONTENTS 2. MODERNISM: OR EXPERIENCE AND FAITH. STEPHANE HARENT. THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND. ARTHUR J. O’CoNNOR.

A PRIMARY CIVIC DUTY. J. KEeLLeHER. SUNDAY-SCOOLS. Very Rev. CANON COSGROVE. SOCIALISM. Cares S. Devas, M.A.

SCIENCE AND HER COUNTERFEIT. J. GeRarp, S.J. UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN IRELAND.

v10. PLAIN WORDS ON SOCIALISM, I, I.

CuHARLEs S. Devas, M.A. CATHOLICS AND THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT. RigHt Rev. Mcr. Parkinson, D.D. THE MAKING OF A SAINT. MR. BIRRELL’S UNIVERSITY BILL. STATUS AND PROPERTY RIGHTS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTION ON THE ROMAN CURIA. THE ROMAN COURTS. THE CHURCH-—-THE STRONG SAFEGUARD OF THE REPUBLIC. Most Rev. Wo. H. O’ConneLL, D.D. EXHORTATION OF PIUS X TO THE CATHO- ~LIC CLERGY. THE GENIUS OF CARDINAL WISEMAN. Witrrip Warp. THE MASS AND THE REFORMATION. J. CANon Moyes. CHRISTIAN KNIGHTHOOD. Josepn G. ANpERSON. REVISING THE VULGATE. F. A. Gasguet, Abbot, O.S.B. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. Rosert HuGu BENSON, THE CRUSADE AGAINST TUBERCULOSIS. LAWRENCE F. Fiick, M.D.

Modernisn Or, Experience an

ae he he

From the Etudes, October 20, 1907 Note—The English of the Encyclical is taken from the translation that appeared in the October number of the American Catholic Quarterly.

Wirt# the fuller development and ciearer definition of the controversies which have divided Catholics on the questions of the new apologetics and the method of im- manence, on the reform of the methods of theology and of exegesis, on Newmanism, on the nature and evolution of dogma, the conviction has come. home to me with greater force that at the root of these discussions there has often lain concealed a fundamental disagreement on the very meaning of Christian faith, its act and its object. It was time for light to be thrown on the subject, and in order to do so the Sovereign Pontiff has employed a considerable portion of his profound and luminous Encyclical.

He tells us that faith, the principle and foundation of all religion, has its seat according to the Modernists, “in a certain inner sentiment which originates from a need of the divine.” (1) We do not mean by this a mere senti- ment devoid of all thought, for the Catholics in question,

(1) Encyclical on the doctrines of Modernism, Part I, Vital Immanence. :

1

2 MODERNISM.

in spite of their opposition to intellectualism, would cry out against their doctrines being exaggerated. Indeed one of those most liable to the accusation of holding such theories has made his protest: “I have written many pages to do away with the deception of sentimentalism. Making faith consist in sentiment, undirected, aimless, and unenlightened, would be a piece of childishness with which I would not dare to charge any serious thinker. I have always recognized its intellectual character. For my own part, therefore, I accept in its full signification, the proposition that faith is the assent of our mind to a truth.” (1)

The Encyclical itself formally recognizes in their re- ligious sentiment intellectual elements, viz., intuition, ex- perience and certitude: “ This is their manner of putting the question: In the religious sentiment one must recognize a kind of intuition of the heart which puts man in immediate contact with the very reality of God, and in- fuses such a persuasion of God’s existence and his action, both within and without man as to excel greatly any scien- tific conviction. They assert, therefore, the existence of a real experience, and one of a kind that surpasses all rational experiences. If this experience is denied by some, like the rationalists, it arises from the fact that such per- sons are unwilling to put themselves in the moral state which is necessary to produce it. It is this experience which, when a person acquires it, makes him properly and truly a believer.” (2)

We have, therefore, a common and undisputed ground from which to start, being at one in considering faith as

(1) G. Tyrrell in the Revue pratique d’apologétique, July 15, 1907, p. 504. ; ‘ (2) Encyclical. Part I. The Modernist as a Believer.

MODERNISM. 3

knowledge, as an assent of the mind to truth, and also in leaving out of consideration, without at the same time denying, those feelings, which it may imply, but into the examination of which the necessarily incomplete character of this study forbids us to enter. The question then is: To what kind of knowledge does Christian faith belong? To experience, to intuition, the Modernists answer; to a kind of knowledge absolutely different from experience and intuition and based on the testimony of God, answers the Church. It is on this antithesis that I should like to insist after having first investigated the reasons and influences which have succeeded in bringing certain Catholics to this theory of intuitive and experimental faith.

These reasons and influences are many: the desire of a system of apologetics at once more easy and more strik- ing, the influence of contemporary psychology extending its observations beyond abnormal phenomena, beyond the realms of dreams, of hallucination, of suggestion, even to religious experiences ; the ideas appropriated from a false mysticism and from Protestantism, as the Encyclical points out in passing: “The Modernists differ from the Rationalists only to fall into the opinion of the Protestants and pseudo-mystics.” (1) The systems of up-to-date philosophy have exercised an especially strong influence ; a philosophy that has no use for anything except experi- ence and intuition, be they never so confused, and holds in contempt all abstract thought, such as is found in dogmas and in faith as the Church understands it. We deem it necessary, therefore, to begin with a little philosophy he- fore entering on the theological question.

(1) Encyclical. Part I. The Modernist as a Believer.

4 MODERNISM.

Does there exist in us, as is the opinion of the “ new philosophy,” a sort of intuition, an “ immediate taking hold of the real,” which is anterior to the knowledge gained by abstract ideas and is its foundation, and not a mere element in its acquisition? It would seem so, at least in the case of certain objects of cognition, as M. de Tonquédec has admitted in our pages.(1) For example, in my knowledge of my own existence, I do not begin with the abstract ideas of existence and myself, nor with a formal judgment which compares and unites these two ideas: the whole process, consisting of the abstract con- cepts and of explicit judgment, merely serves to convey to me in analytical concepts followed by a synthetical judgment a primitive intuition, less clear but quite certain ; a simple perception which discovers in a concrete manner my personal self as existing and acting; a virtual judg- ment already implying certainty and truth. Modern philosophers have long been calling attention to this in connection with Descartes’ “ cogito,” and the exponents of scholasticism, at least as a body, are not against it.

But we cannot allow to pass without censure the ex- clusivism, which regards as worthless all acts of cognition with the single exception of this vague experimental in- tuition; which sees in it alone “action” and “life;” which denies to all others an objective value, and dis- qualifies all abstract thought, all mind-products built up upon this primitive gift of intuition; and, what is worst of all, preaches this exclusivism in dissertations that are filled with abstract reasonings, which, on the very prin- ciples of those who employ them, should be without value.

(1) Etudes, May 20, 1907, p. 433 sqq.

MODERNISM. 5

Such bold statements will never do away with the nature of the mind. Not only does it spontaneously proceed to express its primitive intuitions in abstract concepts, and to combine them into distinct and certain judgments, but it also perceives, together with its experimental perception, general and necessary principles which lie wholly outside the sphere of experience (for instance, the principle of causality), but which makes it possible to deduce from ex- perience many scientific conclusions. For example, the scholar, knowing that every phenomenon must have an adequate cause, will say: “ These flint implements can- not be explained by chance; they can have but one ade- quate cause, an intelligent being, such as man; therefore, man existed at the period corresponding to that of the geological stratum in which these flints were found.” Similarly from certain signs, all very indirect in character, the earth’s movements of rotation and translation are de- duced, movements by no means within the range of im- mediate experience. Finally all the laws of the physical and natural sciences are obtained by induction, and in- duction is a mind-product, nor can there be offered a‘ reasonable explanation of this passage from the particular to the universal, unless it be based on a principle which does not rest on experience, but is, of its nature, necessary truth. And so experience is of itself insufficient, and if it is to produce truly scientific results, it cannot dispense with the assistance of other kinds of knowledge. To exalt experience, at the expense of the rest of human knowledge, as the nineteenth century so often has done, is to prepare the way for the destruction of the certitude of the experimental sciences. A day had to come, and it has come, when these privileged sciences, though our fathers thought them inviolable, were themselves to re-

6 MODERNISM.

ceive harsh handling, being subjected to a criticism both excessive and unjust: so much so that the new “ criticism of the sciences ” has lost credit by the extravagance of its conclusions.

It is thought that experience alone can enable us to make a strong stand against scepticism. But why? Unless we adopt an incredible idealism, and admit with the new philosophy an absolute identity between thought and object, so that knowledge has no other object than itself, and being is nothing else than thought—an identity that is asserted, not proved, is contrary to the testimony of our own consciousness and is, to say the least, unintelligible— scepticism can always make the objection, that in the matter of experience, no less than in other kinds of cogni- tion, the perception may not, perhaps, be in conformity with its object, and that this conformity cannot be proved, etc. And our final appeal against such an objection can only be made to evidence. But the criterion of evidence guarantees other cognitions besides experience: if we re- fuse to accept it in proof of the former, how can we ac- cept it proof of the latter? We do not concede all that scepticism assumes.

We cannot, therefore, allow the sacrifice of the neces- sary truths for the purpose of better upholding experi- mental truths, as in the following declaration of principles: “ Necessity and truth are the two opposite poles of science, and vary in inverse ratio, one to the other, accord- ing to one’s point of view. If one chooses to make for the necessary, he turns his back on the true, he strives to eliminate all experience and intuition.” (1)

Among the kinds of cognition which are quite distinct

(1) M. LeRoy. Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 1901, p. iz.

oe MPS.

MODERNISM.

from experience and intuition, but whose objective value is, notwithstanding beyond all question, there is one which, from the very nature of our subject calls for a special consideration: “hearsay ” knowledge as it is called, that in which the testimony of another is our ground for be- lief. A general denial of the value of this source of knowledge means historical scepticism, and with it his- tory whose progress is the glory of our age vanishes into thin air. Kant wished to avoid such a necessity; he de- sired to put historical knowledge on a solid basis, such as should be in harmony with his system, and so he was forced to reduce history to experience. To mark off the domain of science, and that of faith or belief, which for him is without objective value, he calls a “ matter of fact ” every known object whose objective reality can be es- tablished: this is his object of science. And what does he embrace under this term? “ Those things and qualities which can be known by experience either one’s own, or that of another if proved by testimony.” (1) It follows that the act by which I believe a fact on the testimony of another is not an act of faith. “ Although we ought,” he says, “ to believe things of which we can have knowledge only from the testimony of others, it does not follow that such things are objects of faith, because at least one of the witnesses has had knowledge of them by his own experi- ence, and the objects in question are matters of fact or supposed to be such. Furthermore, it must be admitted that scientific knowledge may be gained by this means of historical certitude. The subject matter therefore of his- tory and geography do not belong to faith.” (2)

Ollé-Laprune has pointed out the whimsical character

(1) Kant. Critique of the Power of Judgment, sec, 91, n. 2. (2) Ibid, n. 3.

8 MODERNISM.

of this doctrine: “Kant,” he says, “excludes from the domain of belief (and places in the domain of experience) the information received from the testimony of men like ourselves, on the pretext that such information started from a matter of fact. But surely this is to refuse the name of belief to the very type of belief. Doubtless that which I affirm because you give me your word for it, may have been seen by you, and the present object of belief must in the first instance have been an object of experi- ence. The whole chain of testimonies, no matter what its length, hangs from a first perception. But what difference does it make? For my part, I, who have not seen the thing, affirm it only because you tell me it is true: for me, therefore, it is an object of faith.” (1)

These just reflexions were in turn attacked by a disciple of Kant, who tries to prove his master’s utterly arbitrary statement. “ The objection urged against Kant,” he says, “by M, Ollé-Laprune, seems to have little weight. It is not because the witness affirms, but because he affirms that he saw, that we believe. It is our own experience that we consult in that of the witness; he takes our place, is our substitute, and the testimony he gives only serves to ex- tend into the past the sphere of our personal experi- ence.” (2)

Thus before I existed, I was already having experiences. I was extending my sphere of experience among all nations, and the old chronicles were all my substitutes. A pleasing thought; but unfortunately for Kant’s theory the whole world is of the opinion that experience is a per- sonal kind of cognition, which finds its characteristic note and the peculiar pleasure it gives, precisely in this, that it

(1) Ollé-Laprune, De la certitude morale, p. 159, 1880. (2) Victor Brochard, Revue Philosophique, Nov., 1880.

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MODERNISM. 9

is I and not another who is in touch with reality. On this very truth has the “ new philosophy ” thrown much light. If, on the contrary, experience could be had by proxy, it would have to be admitted that a man born blind, knowing luminous rays, somewhat as I know the X-rays, by learn- ing from reliable witnesses that there exists a scale of colors analogous to that of sounds, that these colors are visible to the eye, that they seem to clothe objects, and that they serve to distinguish them one from another—it would have to be admitted that the blind man, by means of such explanations, has experience and vision of colors instead of the darkness of faith.

No, the assent given to a witness, even an eye-witness, cannot be regarded as an experience of our own. He cannot make us sharers in his experience, although he can give us its abstract result, to which we must add our own reasoning, the efforts of our own mind: furthermore, this special kind of reasoning is based on a proof altogether extrinsic to the object it enables us to know: it is based on the competence and free veracity of the witness, a medium that is artificial rather than natural, that is general and common, and not restricted to the special activity of the object in question, but such as can be employed, with- out distinction, on all sorts of objects, no matter what their nature may be. How can there be in such an act any ex- perience on our part of the reality, seeing that we know it only by means of another who stands between us and it?

A second argument urged by the same defender of Kant, to prove that our personal experience enters into play in the experience of the witness is: “ that if the wit- ness reports to us what contradicts our ordinary experi- ence, we at once begin to distrust him.” Yes, our past ex- periences do help us, to a certain extent, though very in-

10

MODERNISM.

directly, to control the veracity of the witness, in as far as we subject his veracity to a stricter examination, and demand of it more rigorous proofs whenever the matter attested passes out of the limits of past experience of our own. But, when there is question of deciding on the ex- perimental character of an act, it is experience, present and direct, which, alone has any weight: to call in past ex- periences is out of the question. Besides, this distrust of what has not already been seen, is, at most, a mere pre- sumption and should not be absolute: otherwise the man born blind could never conceive and admit the existence of colors, nor I, that of wireless telegraphy.

It will be said that the concepts which I employ when [ believe something on the testimony of another, have been acquired by an experience similar to that of the witness; that if he tells me, for example, of the existence of an im- mense city in a distant land, I form a concept of this city by the aid of the largest cities I, myself, have ever seen, and that, without the aid of some past experience, I never could understand what he tells me. This is true: only here again there is question not of a past but of a present experience. We are not concerned with the concepts taken by themselves, which are the previously acquired matter, as it were, of my judgment; we are concerned with the form itself of the judgment and with the motive which leads me to actually join the concepts, “ an immense city ” and “ existence in a distant land,” and to admit that an ob- jective reality corresponds to my subjective synthetic judg- ment. This motive is not my own experience, but the knowledge I have that my witness is both competent and truthful.

This is what we learn from a careful analysis of the process by which we get knowledge from testimony. But

Be Sete at

MODERNISM. 11

since Kant juggled with the process and made it depend on experience, it has remained enveloped in discreet shadows, and people have given up bothering about its analysis or the study of the peculiar characteristics of its nature. And yet testimony plays a very important part, not merely among ordinary people who live on the knowl- edge of their neighbors, but among scholars as well: and this, not only in the historical sciences, but elsewhere too, for example, in the physical and natural sciences ; be- cause there are a great many experiments and difficult observations which cannot be repeated by every learned man, but have to be accepted with confidence; and the wider the field of the sciences becomes, and the more sub- divided, the more does belief in the testimony of specialists become a necessity.

Therefore, unless we are to destroy the historical sciences, and a great part of the other sciences as well, we must give up this fundamental idea of Kant’s, that the validity of cognition is bound up with experimental knowl- edge of its object. For knowledge derived from testimony can have an objective value, as Kant himself states, but, as we have proved, it cannot be reduced to ex- perience. If this is so, why deny the term of scientific knowledge to every conclusion whose object lies outside the limits of human experience? Why a priori relegate as unknowable to purely subjective belief every object which does not fall under the sense, for example, God? Indeed, the old distinctions between science and faith, such as marked out by Kant in the eighteenth century in spite of the long continued veneration accorded them by habit, cannot stand examination. And the recent Encyclical is justified in the eyes of both reason and philosophy, when it reproaches certain Catholics with saying (in obedience

12

MODERNISM.

to these old distinctions) that “ human reason is confined entirely within the field of phenomena . . . From this it is inferred that God can never be the direct object of science, and that, as regards history, He must not be considered an historical personage.” In consequence, ac- cording to them, “ science and history must be atheistic, and within their boundaries there is room for nothing but phenomena; God and all that is divine are utterly ex- cluded.” (1)

It is these same limitations of the fields of science and faith at which the papal document aims further on, when it reproaches Modernists with “the relations which they establish between faith and science, including history also under the name of science the object of one is quite extraneous to and separate from the object of the other. For faith occupies itself solely with some- thing which science declares to be unknowable by it. Hence, each has a separate field assigned to it: science is entirely concerned with the reality of phenomena, into which faith does not enter at all; faith, on the contrary, concerns itself with the divine reality, which is entirely unknown to science. Thus the conclusion is reached that there can never be any dissension between faith and science.” (2)

Let us, finally, call attention to the fact that these same Kantian distinctions of science and faith are the origin of the false maxims which are going the rounds to-day: “ The supernatural does not belong to history ; the super- natural cannot be demonstrated.”(3) And why? Because

(1) Encyclical. Part I. Agnosticism.

(2) Encyclical. Faith and Science. ; ;

(3) The case cited is not a complete proof. The risen Christ does not belong to the order of the present life, which is that of experience . . . The apparitions are an argument that is

tei M EA CMR LMS Rt tics 50. sk Sh aI

MODERNISM. 13

history is an experience, whereas the supernatural lies out- side the range of experience, and consequently can be the object of purely subjective faith alone. False and gratui-

tous statements: as we have seen, historical knowledge is

not an experience, nor is experience the only valid means

of knowledge and of proof. It is false, moreover, that the

miracle does not in any way belong to the world of sen-

sible experience ; the miracle is a fact, which can, like any

other fact, be verified by the senses. Of course, after the

fact has been determined we must have recourse to reason-

ing, to discover the miraculous character of the fact, that

is, to trace it to its real cause, by the elimination of every other hypothesis: but the same holds good for all physical

facts whose cause, or heat, or weight, etc., is determined by reasoning and elimination. We can certainly argue to its cause, whatever may be its inner nature, which may still remain a mystery. Thus we have seen that the recent decree of the Holy See has justly condemned proposition XXXVI, which runs as follows: “ The resur- rection of the Saviour is not, in the proper sense of the word, a fact of the historical order, but a fact of the purely supernatural order that has not and cannot be proved.” Besides, we should not picture to ourselves the supernatural as so far above nature that it can have noth- ing to do with it, so transcendent that, when God does what is supernatural, we cannot be sure of it: es- pecially when there is question of a miracle, of that super- natural which is less profound, less hidden, and which the theologians call supernaturale quoad modum.

uncertain in its significance; before entering on an examination of the narratives of them, one may reflect that impressions made upon the senses are not an adequate testimony of a reality that is purely supernatural. Is it not inevitable that every natural

proof of a supernatural fact should be incomplete and of little weight? M. Loisy, L’Evangile et l’Eglise, pp. 75-76.

14 MODERNISM.

II.

We come now to the theological question. Is Christian faith an experience, an intuition? This is the idea which dominates contemporary Protestantism. I open, for ex- ample, the Protestant Encyclopedia of Religious Sciences, and I read in the article on Faith, by Jean Monod: “ Faith is an intuition of the soul, by which we perceive truths which are outside the world of sense and the sphere of reasoning. Neither sight nor logic have ever sufficed for man. For the most part, we come to determinations, we act, we live without proofs. Faith is in a special way the organ of the spiritual life By an immediate per- ception it seizes upon that which is eternal and holy, and that which it affirms in the domain of religion (provided it confines itself therein and does not pretend to have ac- cepted as religious truths such propositions as belong to science or theology) has the same validity as the affirma- tions of the senses in the domain of physics, or of reason in the domain of philosophy.”(1) One cannot but notice this curious opposition between religion and theology: that which is “theological” is not “religious.” ‘ Re- ligious”” knowledge is made up exclusively of “ intui- tions” of faith: it excludes, as a consequence, theology which does not proceed by intuitions but by reasoning.

What can have given rise to this idea of intuitive faith, this “ experimentalism ” if we may so compress the idea?

The influence of a false contemporary philosophy has been at work here, and the older influence of a false Lutheran theology.

(1) Encyclopédie des sciences réligieuse, vol. v, p. 1, Publiée sous la direction de F. Lichtenberger, doyen de la Faculté pro- testante de Paris, 1878.

poner Si 2

MODERNISM. 15

In contemporary philosophy there is often found (we have given some examples) the apotheosis of experi- ence and intuition, together with a disdain for reasoning and abstract thought. But if experience alone is to be accepted, Christian faith must become an experience. Everything that is not intuition is indiscriminately to be put aside as outside of religion and faith, that is, theology, the development by deduction of revealed truth, abstract dogmas formulated by the Councils. Thus we shall have perfect experimentalism.

Let us hear a great opponent of scholasticism and dog- ma, M. Euchen, the present professor of philosophy at Jena: “ There is nothing certain except that which mani- fests itself directly by its own reality. That which has to be proved can always be questioned, and is necessarily only an amplification of that which is furnished us by the immediate reality ; whereas man in the depths of his heart finds himself in the immediate presence of the infinite divine, conformably to the word: The Kingdom of God is within us. By this we feel that there is living within us in a marvellous way that which is not ourselves.” (1)

These assertions, from the very fact of their being based on a philosophy, the inanity of which we have shown, fall of themselves. At the first glance they may seem to be of a nature calculated to exalt Christian faith (what is stronger than intuition?), but they have no effect what- ever on those thinking men who know the meaning of words, and who hold the old distinctions of Kant. Chris- tian faith is an intuition—to be sure—but an intuition of what? Not of what is truly and certainly real; this is

~(1) Cited by M. Decurtins, in a remarkable letter on Catholic Reform, and reproduced by the L’Association Catholique, August 15, 1907, p. 166.

16 MODERNISM.

reserved to science: of a reality, then, that is uncertain, imaginary, “ unknowable” to the believer as well as the scientists, as is noted in the Encyclical (in the conclusion to the first part). Christian faith is very certain—un- doubtedly—but with what kind of certainty? With cer- tainty that is purely subjective, for there is no kind of certainty but this outside of science. But is not this to turn the believer into a sort of victim of hallucination? The victim of hallucination himself has a kind of intuition, he believes that he sees realities and with a high degree of subjective certitude! This is Christian faith, as under- stood by the Modernists when they permit criticism, if it may so be called “to reject as false those facts which the Church believes to be quite certain ” (proposition XXII of the decree Lamentabili), when they grant that faith, “ the Christian conscience ” gets meanings out of the Scripture which are not in the Scripture, so-called apostolic dogmas, which exegesis ought not to deny directly (proposition XXIV), but which in reality are foreign to the teachings of Jesus and His Apostles: A Christ of faith who is not the Christ of history (propositions XXVII, XXIX, XXXI, LXI). It is useless to say that thus between science and faith, and history and faith, there can never be any possibility of conflict, for the condition is, that faith shall recognize itself as a poetic fiction, or an hallucination.

But ‘when Protestants repeat that Christian faith is a sense of the divine, a religious experience, an intuition of the infinite, they are not merely obedient to a philos- ophy, they reflect, above all else, the influence of the theology of Luther, who among his many definitions of faith has given the following: “ Agnitio experimen- talis.”(1) It was not the path of philosophy, which he

(1) Luther, Opera exegetica latina, t. xxiii, p. 522.

:

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MODERNISM. 17

despised, that led him to this definition, but the path of a false mysticism. Seeking, as is known, some balm for his remorse of conscience, he could find nothing better than to close his eyes to his own conduct, to give up all personal good action, and cast himself desperately upon faith in Christ, who is just and holy in our stead.(1) And from this religious experience he formed his universal doctrine of justification: a doctrine that is profoundly im- moral, since it condemns all free efforts to observe the moral law, and also good works, with which one should not be preoccupied; a doctrine which is opposed to the gospel, since it contradicts so many of the words of Jesus (see for example, Matt. xix, 16 sqq., which passage Luther despaired of explaining) ; a doctrine which is the foundation of Protestantism, but which happily, at least as far as its contempt for good works or the seeking for good works is concerned, was rejected long ago by a great many Protestants, although they have continued to hold that faith is an experience. Thus the founder of a new sect, Swedenborg, himself one of the patrons of religious experience, saw in one of his “experiences” Luther, Melanchthon and Calvin, in the depths of Hell, because of this doctrine. “The reformed doctrine on justifica- tion caused both his head and heart to revolt; he believed it no less contrary to truth than fatal to virtue. ; He fought against the Protestant doctrine of justification, with all sorts of arms, at all times, and in all places, in order and out of order, without truce, without respite, and it may be said that this constant preoccupation, this fixed idea, was the mother of his system of Christianity.” (2)

(1) Cf. Doellinger, La Reforme, trad. fr. t. iii, p. 170 sqq. Cf. Denifle, Luther und Lutherthum, 1904, 3 partie, p. 374, sqq. (2) Moehler, Symbolique, trad. fr. t. ii, sec. 76, p. 323.

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18 MODERNISM.

But by what logical connection and by what historical development has the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith ended by making Christian faith an experience? It came about as follows: The faith which gives salva- tion, according to Luther, is a very firm belief that my sins are pardoned for Christ’s sake, and this pardon, ac- cording to him, is revealed to me by the feelings of con- solation which I experience; faith, then, is a clinging to this intimate, present revelation, an experience of these feelings and of the divine pardon, of which they are the interior manifestation. We should call attention, how- ever, to the fact that Luther still retains under the same name of faith the firm clinging to quite a different revela- tion, which is past and not present, which is without and not within my conscience, that is to say, the revelation which is contained in Scripture. Hence, a dualism which the leaders of the Reformation, while still maintaining the twofold sense of the word “ faith,” strive in vain to reduce to unity. It is for this reason that Melanchthon is forever changing his definition of faith, as is seen in detail in Herzog’s Protestant Theological Encyclo- pedia.(1) Thus, in the first edition of his Loci Com- munes Rerum Theologicarum, Melanchthon defines faith as “a confidence in the divine mercy,” and “ affection of the heart,” “a sense of the mercy of God within the heart; ” this is what he means by his “ assent;” and yet at the same time, he declares that faith is “an assent given to the whole word of God,” to the whole Scripture. How can these two definitions combine to form a single definition? So, too, in the third form he gave to the same work, he frees the “assent” from the element of

(1) Hauck, Realencyclopadie, 3d edition t. vi, p. 678. Leipsic, 1899,

Rose

MODERNISM. 19

feeling with which he had identified it, and becoming once more an intellectualist, says that the assent of faith is “a function of the power of thought,” and that it embraces a knowledge of all the articles of faith.

Mr. Harnack, although a Lutheran, passes severe judg- ment on the equivocal dualism of Luther’s faith. He de- clares the great man, being wholly occupied in freeing faith from the law and from works, allows himself to con- fuse, under the name of faith, any elements whatsoever, provided that they seemed to be independent of works. At times faith is merely confidence in God, at times it is “ pure doctrine,” and “ the intellectualism of scholasticism which was a drag on faith is not wholly uprooted.” At times the doctrine of the gospel is simply the good tidings of pardon, at times it is the whole body of dogmas formu- lated by the ancient councils and even new speculations. “His idea of the Church became as equivocal as his idea of the doctrine of the gospel”: sometimes the Church is the “ community of faith,” that is, of all the elect who feel within themselves the confidence of pardon and of salva- tion; sometimes it is the “ community of pure doctrine.” Finally, in the old Protestantism, “the notion of faith be- came more and more a thing of the exterior, until at last it meant nothing more than going to church.”(1) The same admissions occur in a more recent work: “ Luther

has introduced into the Gospel the old doctrine of the Trinity, and that of the two natures in Christ (it was out of his power to prove them historically), from them he has formed new doctrines, and above all, he has found it impossible to draw an exact line between dogmas and Gospel. . The consequence was that intellectual-

(1) Harnack, Precis de histoire des dogmes, pp. 442, 444, 448, Paris, 1893.

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MODERNISM.

ism did not disappear, that scholastic dogma took a new shape, and made claim to be necessary to salvation. Luther was convinced that the word of God by which man is created interiorly anew, is but the message of grace be- stowed gratuitously by God in Christ. . . . How came it then that he could not distinguish between Law and Gospel, between the Old and the New Testament; how came it that he was not able to apply the knife to the New Testament itself? His aim was to allow only such parts of these books to continue to exist, as were illuminative and exercised a powerful influence upon souls. But he did not do his work thoroughly; he de- mands submission to the written word wherever the literal sense is important for him, and peremptorily too, forget- ting, meanwhile, his own declaration that one need not submit to that which is written.(1) (To be continucd.)

o* — " ee ene,

ae One

(1) Harnack, L’Essence du Christianisme, trad. franc., p. 307, Paris, 1902.

Modernism Or, Experience and Faith

by ae Me

IT. EXPERIENCE AND FAITH.

The liberal Protestants of the nineteenth century felt the need of freeing themselves from this ambiguity and this arbitrary chaos, and so have interpreted and cor- rected Luther, but how? By ridding themselves of all the dogmas which the master had retained and which are still admitted, at least in part, by the conservative or “orthodox” Protestantism. They will not have it that the Lutheran certainty of pardon and personal salva- tion is a “ special faith ” as it were, deduced from a “ gen- eral faith,’ in the abstract dogma of the “ remission of sins,” such as it is formulated in the Credo, and pro- posed by the old Lutherans(1) in their efforts to reduce to unity Luther’s dualism of dogmatic faith and experi- mental faith. No, say the Liberal Protestants, not even the dogma of the remission of sins: for a “ general ” faith of such a character, resting, as it does, on an ancient reve- lation, would be nothing more than a “ faith of authority,” an abstract conviction of the truth and inspiration of the Scripture, founded on general arguments and not on personal, concrete, immediate experience; further, the “special” faith itself, the assurance of my

(1) Cf. the celebrated Lutheran theologian Jean Gerhard, Loci theologici, in the article “ De Justificatione,” n. 67 saa.

21

22 MODERNISM.

pardon and my salvation, being the result of deduction, would not be the agnitio experimentalis, which it ought to be.(1) Besides, this ancient revelation once admitted, brings with it a complicated system of apologetics, and involves dogmas with regard to which Protestants are by no means in agreement. Is it not simpler to do away with the ancient revelation by a single stroke of the pen, together with apologetics and dogmas, “to use the knife on the New Testament iself,” as Harnack says, and to put unity into the void, by reducing to personal experience the essentials of revelation and faith in spite of the pro- tests of conservative Protestantism? In this a priori theory, in which experience alone has a place, the Gospel (and this is asserted before the Gospel is studied) cannot contain revelations demanding belief; it is the mere rec- ord of the religious experiences of Jesus, edifying read- ing adapted to spur on the Christian to seek similar ex- periences, in which his faith will consist.