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CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS (1945)
Some of you are priests and some are leaders of youth organizations.1 I have little right to address either. It is for priests to teach me, not for me to teach them. I have never helped to organize youth, and while I was young myself I successfully avoided being organized. If I address you it is in response to a request so urged that I came to regard compliance as a matter of Obedience.
I am to talk about Apologetics. Apologetics means of course Defence. The first question is – what do you propose to defend? Christianity, of course: and Christianity as understood by the Church in Wales. And here at the outset I must deal with an unpleasant business. It seems to the layman that in the Church of England we often hear from our priests doctrine which is not Anglican Christianity. It may depart from Anglican Christianity in either of two ways: (1) It may be so ‘broad’ or ‘liberal’ or ‘modern’ that it in fact excludes any real Supernaturalism and thus ceases to be Christian at all. (2) It may, on the other hand, be Roman. It is not, of course, for me to define to you what Anglican Christianity is – I am your pupil, not your teacher. But I insist that wherever you draw the lines, bounding lines must exist, beyond which your doctrine will cease either to be Anglican or to be Christian: and I suggest also that the lines come a great deal sooner than many modern priests think. I think it is your duty to fix the lines clearly in your own minds: and if you wish to go beyond them you must change your profession.
This is your duty not specially as Christians or as priests but as honest men. There is a danger here of the clergy developing a special professional conscience which obscures the very plain moral issue. Men who have passed beyond these boundary lines in either direction are apt to protest that they have come by their unorthodox opinions honestly. In defence of these opinions they are prepared to suffer obloquy and to forfeit professional advancement. They thus come to feel like martyrs. But this simply misses the point which so gravely scandalizes the layman. We never doubted that the unorthodox opinions were honestly held: what we complain of is your continuing your ministry after you have come to hold them. We always knew that a man who makes his living as a paid agent of the Conservative Party may honestly change his views and honestly become a Communist. What we deny is that he can honestly continue to be a Conservative agent and to receive money from one party while he supports the policy of another.
Even when we have thus ruled out teaching which is in direct contradiction to our profession, we must define our task still further. We are to defend Christianity itself – the faith preached by the Apostles, attested by the Martyrs, embodied in the Creeds, expounded by the Fathers. This must be clearly distinguished from the whole of what any one of us may think about God and Man. Each of us has his individual emphasis: each holds, in addition to the Faith, many opinions which seem to him to be consistent with it and true and important. And so perhaps they are. But as apologists it is not our business to defend them. We are defending Christian-ity; not ‘my religion’. When we mention our personal opinions we must always make quite clear the difference between them and the Faith itself. St Paul has given us the model in 1 Corinthians 7:25: on a certain point he has ‘no commandment of the Lord’ but gives ‘his judgement’. No one is left in doubt as to the difference in status implied.
This distinction, which is demanded by honesty, also gives the apologist a great tactical advantage. The great difficulty is to get modern audiences to realize that you are preaching Christianity solely and simply because you happen to think it true; they always suppose you are preaching it because you like it or think it good for society or something of that sort. Now a clearly maintained distinction between what the Faith actually says and what you would like it to have said, or what you understand or what you personally find helpful or think probable, forces your audience to realize that you are tied to your data just as the scientist is tied by the results of the experiments; that you are not just saying what you like. This immediately helps them to realize that what is being discussed is a question about objective fact – not gas about ideals and points of view.
Secondly, this scrupulous care to preserve the Christian message as something distinct from one’s own ideas, has one very good effect upon the apologist himself. It forces him, again and again, to face up to those elements in original Christianity which he personally finds obscure or repulsive. He is saved from the temptation to skip or slur or ignore what he finds disagreeable. And the man who yields to that temptation will, of course, never progress in Christian knowledge. For obviously the doctrines which one finds easy are the doctrines which give Christian sanction to truths you already knew. The new truth which you do not know and which you need, must, in the very nature of things, be hidden precisely in the doctrines you least like and least understand. It is just the same here as in science. The phenomenon which is troublesome, which doesn’t fit in with the current scientific theories, is the phenomenon which compels reconsideration and thus leads to new knowledge. Science progresses because scientists, instead of running away from such troublesome phenomena or hushing them up, are constantly seeking them out. In the same way, there will be progress in Christian knowledge only as long as we accept the challenge of the difficult or repellent doctrines. A ‘liberal’ Christianity which considers itself free to alter the Faith whenever the Faith looks perplexing or repellent must be completely stagnant. Progress is made only into a resisting material.
From this there follows a corollary about the Apologist’s private reading. There are two questions he will naturally ask himself. (1) Have I been ‘keeping up’, keeping abreast of recent movements in theology? (2) Have I stood firm (super monstratas vias)2 amidst all these ‘winds of doctrine’ (Ephesians 4:14)? I want to say emphatically that the second question is far the more important of the two. Our upbringing and the whole atmosphere of the world we live in make it certain that our main temptation will be that of yielding to winds of doctrine, not that of ignoring them. We are not at all likely to be hidebound: we are very likely indeed to be the slaves of fashion. If one has to choose between reading the new books and reading the old, one must choose the old: not because they are necessarily better but because they contain precisely those truths of which our own age is neglectful. The standard of permanent Christianity must be kept clear in our minds and it is against that standard that we must test all contemporary thought. In fact, we must at all costs not move with the times. We serve One who said, ‘Heaven and Earth shall move with the times, but my words shall not move with the times’ (Matthew 24:35; Mark 13:31; Luke 21:33).
I am speaking, so far, of theological reading. Scientific reading is a different matter. If you know any science it is very desirable that you should keep it up. We have to answer the current scientific attitude towards Christianity, not the attitude which scientists adopted one hundred years ago. Science is in continual change and we must try to keep abreast of it. For the same reason, we must be very cautious of snatching at any scientific theory which, for the moment, seems to be in our favour. We may mention such things; but we must mention them lightly and without claiming that they are more than ‘interesting’. Sentences beginning ‘Science has now proved’ should be avoided. If we try to base our apologetic on some recent development in science, we shall usually find that just as we have put the finishing touches to our argument science has changed its mind and quietly withdrawn the theory we have been using as our foundation stone. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes3 is a sound principle.
While we are on the subject of science, let me digress for a moment. I believe that any Christian who is qualified to write a good popular book on any science may do much more good by that than by any directly apologetic work. The difficulty we are up against is this. We can make people (often) attend to the Christian point of view for half an hour or so; but the moment they have gone away from our lecture or laid down our article, they are plunged back into a world where the opposite position is taken for granted. Every newspaper,
film, novel and text book undermines our work. As long as that situation exists, widespread success is simply impossible. We must attack the enemy’s line of communication. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects – with their Christianity latent. You can see this most easily if you look at it the other way round. Our Faith is not very likely to be shaken by any book on Hinduism. But if whenever we read an elementary book on Geology, Botany, Politics or Astronomy, we found that its implications were Hindu, that would shake us. It is not the books written in direct defence of Materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materialistic assumptions in all the other books. In the same way, it is not books on Christianity that will really trouble him. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science, the best work on the market was always by a Christian. The first step to the reconversion of the country is a series, produced by Christians, which can beat the Penguins and the Thinkers’ Library on their own ground. Its Christianity would have to be latent, not explicit: and of course its science perfectly honest. Science twisted in the interests of apologetics would be sin and folly. But I must return to my immediate subject.
Our business is to present that which is timeless (the same yesterday, today and tomorrow – Hebrews 8:8) in the particular language of our own age. The bad preacher does exactly the opposite: he takes the ideas of our own age and tricks them out in the traditional language of Christianity. Thus, for example, he may think about the Beveridge Report4 and talk about the coming of the Kingdom. The core of his thought is merely contemporary; only the superficies is traditional. But your teaching must be timeless at its heart and wear a modern dress.
This raises the question of Theology and Politics. The nearest I can get to a settlement of the frontier problem between them is this: that Theology teaches us what ends are desirable and what means are lawful, while Politics teaches what means are effective. Thus Theology tells us that every man ought to have a decent wage. Politics tells by what means this is likely to be attained. Theology tells us which of these means are consistent with justice and charity. On the political question guidance comes not from Revelation but from natural prudence, knowledge of complicated facts and ripe experience. If we have these qualifications we may, of course, state our political opinions: but then we must make it quite clear that we are giving our personal judgement and have no command from the Lord. Not many priests have these qualifications. Most political sermons teach the congregation nothing except what newspapers are taken at the Rectory.
Our great danger at present is lest the Church should continue to practise a merely missionary technique in what has become a missionary situation. A century ago our task was to edify those who had been brought up in the Faith: our present task is chiefly to convert and instruct infidels. Great Britain is as much part of the mission field as China. Now if you were sent to the Bantus you would be taught their language and traditions. You need similar teaching about the language and mental habits of your own uneducated and unbelieving fellow countrymen. Many priests are quite ignorant on this subject. What I know about it I have learned from talking in RAF camps. They were mostly inhabited by Englishmen and, therefore, some of what I shall say may be irrelevant to the situation in Wales. You will sift out what does not apply.
(1) I find that the uneducated Englishman is an almost total sceptic about History. I had expected he would disbelieve the Gospels because they contain miracles: but he really disbelieves them because they deal with things that happened 2,000 years ago. He would disbelieve equally in the battle of Actium if he heard of it. To those who have had our kind of education, his state of mind is very difficult to realize. To us the Present has always appeared as one section in a huge continuous process. In his mind the Present occupies almost the whole field of vision. Beyond it, isolated from it, and quite unimportant, is something called ‘The Old Days’ – a small, comic jungle in which highway men, Queen Elizabeth, knights-in-armour, etc., wander about. Then (strangest of all) beyond The Old Days comes a picture of ‘Primitive Man’. He is ‘science’, not ‘history’, and is therefore felt to be much more real than The Old Days. In other words, the Prehistoric is much more believed in than the Historic.
(2) He has a distrust (very rational in the state of his knowledge) of ancient texts. Thus a man has sometimes said to me, ‘These records were written in the days before printing, weren’t they? and you haven’t got the original bit of paper, have you? So what it comes to is that someone wrote something and someone else copied it and someone else copied that and so on. Well, by the time it comes to us, it won’t be in the least like the original.’ This is a difficult objection to deal with because one cannot, there and then, start teaching the whole science of textual criticism. But at this point their real religion (i.e. faith in ‘science’) has come to my aid. The assurance that there is a ‘science’ called ‘Textual Criticism’ and that its results (not only as regards the New Testament, but as regards ancient texts in general) are generally accepted, will usually be received without objection. (I need hardly point out that the word ‘text’ must not be used, since to your audience it means only ‘a scriptural quotation’.)
(3) A sense of sin is almost totally lacking. Our situation is thus very different from that of the Apostles. The Pagans (and still more the metuentes5) to whom they preached were haunted by a sense of guilt and to them the gospel was, therefore, ‘good news’. We address people who have been trained to believe that whatever goes wrong in the world is someone else’s fault – the Capitalists’, the Government’s, the Nazis’, the Generals’, etc. They approach God Himself as His judges. They want to know, not whether they can be acquitted for sin, but whether He can be acquitted for creating such a world.
In attacking this fatal insensibility it is useless to direct attention (a) to sins your audience do not commit, or (b) to things they do, but do not regard as sins. They are usually not drunkards. They are mostly fornicators, but then they do not feel fornication to be wrong. It is, therefore, useless to dwell on either of these subjects. (Now that contraceptives have removed the obviously uncharitable element in fornication I do not myself think we can expect people to recognize it as a sin until they have accepted Christianity as a whole.)
I cannot offer you a water-tight technique for awaking the sense of sin. I can only say that, in my experience, if one begins from the sin that has been one’s own chief problem during the last week, one is very often surprised at the way this shaft goes home. But whatever method we use, our continual effort must be to get their minds away from public affairs and ‘crime’ and bring them down to brass tacks – to the whole network of spite, greed, envy, unfairness and conceit in the lives of ‘ordinary decent people’ like themselves (and ourselves).
(4) We must learn the language of our audience. And let me say at the outset that it is no use at all laying down a priori what the ‘plain man’ does or does not understand. You have to find out by experience. Thus most of us would have supposed that the change from ‘may truly and indifferently minister justice’ to ‘may truly and impartially’6 made that place easier to the uneducated; but a priest of my acquaintance discovered that his sexton saw no difficulty in indifferently (‘It means making no difference between one man and another’ he said) but had no idea what impartially meant.
On this question of language the best thing I can do is to make a list of words which are used by the people in a sense different from ours.
ATONEMENT. Does not really exist in a spoken modern English, though it would be recognized as ‘a religious word’. In so far as it conveys any meaning to the uneducated I think it means compensation. No one word will express to them what Christians mean by Atonement: you must paraphrase.
BEING (noun). Never means merely ‘entity’ in popular speech. Often it means what we should call a ‘personal being’ (e.g. a man said to me ‘I believe in the Holy Ghost but I don’t think He
is a being’).
CATHOLIC means Papistical.
CHARITY. Means (a) alms, (b) a ‘charitable organization’, (c) much more rarely – indulgence (i.e. a ‘charitable’ attitude towards a man is conceived as one that denies or condones his sins, not as one that loves the sinner in spite of them).
CHRISTIAN. Has come to include almost no idea of belief. Usually a vague term of approval. The question ‘What do you call a Christian?’ has been asked of me again and again. The answer they wish to receive is ‘A Christian is a decent chap who’s unselfish, etc.’
CHURCH. Means (a) sacred building, (b) the clergy. Does not suggest to them the ‘company of all faithful people’.7 Generally used in a bad sense. Direct defence of the Church is part of our duty: but use of the word Church where there is no time to defend it alienates sympathy and should be avoided where possible.
CREATIVE. Now means merely ‘talented’, ‘original’. The idea of creation in the theological sense is absent from their minds.
CREATURE. Means ‘beast’, ‘irrational animal’. Such an expression as ‘We are only creatures’ would almost certainly be misunderstood.
CRUCIFIXION, CROSS, ETC. Centuries of hymnody and religious cant have so exhausted these words that they now very faintly – if at all – convey the idea of execution by torture. It is better to paraphrase; and, for the same reason to say flogged for New Testament scourged (Matthew 27:26; Mark 15:15; John 19:1).
DOGMA. Used by the people only in a bad sense to mean ‘unproved assertion delivered in an arrogant manner’.
IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. In the mouth an of uneducated speaker always means Virgin Birth.