The Henson Journals

[38]

6th Sunday after Trinity, July 11th, 1926.

After a hot stuffy night, a brilliant morning leading in a hot day. I received the Holy communion in the Chapel at 8 a.m. Lionel celebrated. We numbered altogether 10 communicants, including Frau Körsteiner, who is, I suppose, a member of the Swiss Church i.e. a Calvinist in creed, & a Presbyterian in discipline. Cosin would have approved.

After breakfast I read Taylor's Essay, "The Vindication of Religion". It is an excellent piece of work, fairly reasoned and admirably written. He makes much use of Otto's "The Idea of the Holy", and applies its argument rather boldly to the justification of the distinctive Anglo–Catholick devotional practices. For myself I have not yet succeeded in making up my mind as to the merits of Otto's theory of the numinous. Has he got hold of a philosophical mare's nest? Or, has he stated an important and illuminating truth? The eager welcome which every variety of superstitious fanatick gives to his book inclines me to the former view! Later I read the Essay on Authority which is in two parts by two authors viz. 1. Authority as a Ground of Belief by A. E. J. Rawlinson, 2. The Authority of the Church by Wilfrid L. Knox. These are not quite easy to harmonize. Knox's note on "the Holy Roman Church" is illuminating. He suggests that the Papal Primacy is "Divino jure" in the same sense and measure as the Episcopate. The whole argument is Roman, and the Roman conclusion would seem to be required. It is not without suggestiveness that the whole question of Authority as historically treated in the Church of England – the rights of a national Church, the written standards of doctrine subscribed by the clergy, and their official interpretation – is absolutely ignored. The discussion takes the very form which it took in the xvth century in Europe or the xviith century in France when the measure & nature of the Pope's authority were the salient points. Yet both these writers hold office in a church, whose very raison d'être is a frank repudiation of all papal authority whatsoever, and both have repeatedly declared their own acceptance of that repudiation. Yet their Anglicanism is proclaimed on the title–page.

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