The Henson Journals

[189]

Wednesday, September 28th, 1921.

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Christianity is Christ's Religion, that is, not the religion merely or mainly that Jesus of Nazareth professed, but the Religion in which He Himself is the central factor. The original & constituting creed of Christians was not some beliefs about God, or some laws of conduct, taught by Jesus, but the single, and sufficient affirmation – Jesus is Lord. No doubt that specifically Christian belief was built upon the foundation of theology and morals which the prophets of Israel had laid. We must never belittle or ignore the Jewish background of the Apostolic preaching. The New Testament pre–supposes the Old, and is really unintelligible without it. But this circumstance adds emphasis to the significance of the original Christian Creed: for the Jewish tradition which determined the Apostolic conception of God and the Apostolic version of morality was severely monotheistic, and, therefore, the affirmation "Jesus is Lord", could not have meant less to a Jew familiar with the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures, than an assertion of the proper Deity of Jesus. No doubt the term 'Lord' was current among the non–Jewish populations of the Roman Empire in lower senses, but the Church has received it from the lips of a Jewish Apostle, of that Apostle who, alone of the Apostles, had been a zealous and educated Pharisee, the least likely of men to mistake the significance of the words he used. "For the Greek speaking Jew", observes Mr Major, ^[phrase in Greek]^ would mean Jehovah, but for the Greek–speaking Gentile it would mean the Head of a mystery cultus." It is surely important to remember that the Church was led to give that name to Jesus by a Greek speaking Jew – S. Paul.

[190] [symbol]

S. Paul was engaged in almost continuous controversy with the Jewish Christians: the issue was directly concerned with the significance of Christ in the scheme of Divine Providence, and in the experience of individual believers. It would seem to be inevitable that from his opponents some protest would have proceeded against his Deification of Jesus: but no indication of any such protest has survived, & the Pauine epistles exhibit no trace of any. This creed, "Jesus is Lord", when it passed into the Gentile world was clearly exposed to great peril. Not a stern & exclusive monotheism, but an accommodating polytheism was then the background of Christian faith. It would have been natural, we might be disposed to think, that the converts from polytheism would (like the English Roedwald ) have given 'Jesus' a place in their Pantheon, and worshipped him as one God among many: at a later period when, under the stimulus of success the membership of the imperial church was swollen by numbers who had little hold on the essentials of Christianity, there was precisely such a tendency. Arianism itself was "a clear step back to heathenism", but in the crucial epoch, when the Religion of Christ first established itself, there is no sign of any disposition among the Gentile believers to misunderstand the unique & incommunicable quality of that Godhead, which they acknowledged in Jesus Christ. This often–quoted passage in which S. Justin Martyr seems to place the "Virgin birth" of Jesus on a level with such incarnations as the Pagan mythology contained, is explicable by his apologetic method, and implies little as to his personal belief. That belief is affirmed in many passages, & does not admit of question.

[191] [symbol]

Few will look to Arian doctrine as a source of Arian strength. Some attractions it certainly had. It seemed simpler than orthodoxy, and was more symmetrical than Semiarianism, more human than Sabellianism, while to the heathen it was very Christian–sounding. But as a system, Arianism was utterly illogical and unspiritual, a clear step back to heathenism, and a plain anachronism even for its own time. It began by attempting to establish Christian positions, and ended by subverting each & all of them. It maintained the unity of God by opening the door to polytheism. It upheld the Lord's divinity by making the Son of God a creature, and then worshipped him to escape the reproach of heathenism. It lost even his true humanity in a phantastic theory of the Incarnation which refused the Son of Man in a human soul. Above all, no true revelation of love could come from a God of abstract infinitude & mystery, condemned to stand aloof for ever from the world lest it perish at his touch: no true atonement from a created mediator, neither truly God nor truly man: no true sanctification from a subject Spirit far beneath the dignity even of the first of creatures. In a word there could be no intrinsic strength in a system which covered the whole field of Christian doctrine with the ruins of pretentious failures.

Gwatkin. "Studies of Arianism" p. 2, 3.

This is a brilliant indictment of Arianism: may it not stand with but a few verbal changes for a sufficient condemnation of this "Liberal Christianity", which is only Arianism revived?

[192] [symbol]

I worked at the Congress sermon all the morning but did not make much progress. It would be easy enough to write on the one side, or on the other, but to steer a middle course, affirming the orthodox position, but allowing the right to criticise it, is nowise easy. At every point I am tripped up by my own reasoning. In the end I shall please nobody, perplex many, and disgust some!

Lillingston called with his wife, brother–in–law, & his wife, and were shown over the Castle. He reports that poor Thomas is again hors de combat with his dreadful malady. It now seems probable that he is stricken fatally. Tolliday, of St Cuthbert's, is also reported to be on the sick list, menaced with blindness. Meanwhile, nothing has been arranged about filling Hughes's place at Pittington during the next six months. That tiresome man at Birtley is again at dagger's drawn with his parishioners. I determined to "bell the cat" in person, and announced that I would meet the Parochial Church Council next week at a special meeting, & there hear & determine the matter in debate. Two curates write to inform me that they have resigned their curacies, and are leaving the diocese, having been offered curacies elsewhere. The great shortage of clergy will have the fact of drawing away from Durham every unbeneficed man who is worth anything. There is no sign anywhere of any supply of Ordination Candidates.

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