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Christian Unity, or the Kingdom of Heaven
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 September 2009
Extract
No one can doubt that, if the Christian Church were one in spirit, and one in organization for work, she would fulfil her appointed mission better than she does. Indeed, since the establishment of brotherly love is a chief part of that mission, so long as that love is wanting, so long she fails in her mission. It may be safely said that no single cause so effectually obstructs Christianity within the Church, and none so prevents its acceptance outside, as the schisms and enmities whereby she is divided against herself. While she thus offers a ready text to her critics, detractors, and opponents, how can she hope to conquer the world for brotherly love?
Whatever weighty reasons there may have been in days gone by for rending to pieces the Christian body; whatever advantages may have seemed likely to spring therefrom, that rending, being an absolute belying of the Christian spirit, was, in itself, an unmixed evil. The Church that had so far lost the spirit of Christian love, as not to be ready to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things, rather than fall to pieces, was not the Church of Christ. No corruption or abuse, however glaring, could ever constitute a sufficient excuse for schism or revolt. Schism may be allowable in every other institution: in the Church of Christ it is forever forbidden; for the reason that her very essence is the unity of brotherly love, and where that fails, she fails. As St. Ignatius says: “If any one followeth one that maketh a schism, he doth not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Philad., iii.)
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- Copyright © American Society for Church History 1892
References
1 It occurs only twice in the gospels, and both times in Matthew, —xvi., 18Google Scholar; xviii., 17.
2 “Kingdom of Heaven” occurs only in Matthew, who uses it very often. He uses likewise “Kingdom of God,” which is the ordinary expression in the rest of the New Testament.
3 Theories of evolution are nothing new. We find them in the Hymns of the Veda, in the Ionic philosophers, in Æschylus, Empedocles, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius; in the Neo-Platonists, in the Arab Aristotelians, in the Liber de Causis et Process Unius, in Nicholas Cusanus, etc., etc.
4 See Aristotle, , Metaphysics, i., 3sqq.Google Scholar
5 Tennyson, , In MemoriamGoogle Scholar, closing words. It appears to me that the future of the Christian religion will depend upon whether it can succeed in grafting itself upon the theory of evolution, and in showing itself to contain the meaning and aim of all development. If it does not, in fact, contain these, it is no finality, and must give place to something higher and truer; if it does contain them, it must, sooner or later, assert this. Nor need it fear the result. Christianity has been forced, so to speak, before now, to graft itself upon a prevailing philosophy, and has greatly gained by so doing. In the thirteenth century, for example, the Church, after doing her best to put down the philosophy of Aristotle, which the Arabs had made popular in the West, was compelled to make terms with it, and finally adopted it so far as to recast her whole dogmatic system in the light of it. In this way she turned Aristotelianism, from being an enemy, into the most powerful auxiliary, making possible the magnificent theology of Thomas Aquinas and the greatest of Christian poems. I am persuaded that an equally splendid result would follow, if the Church, instead of opposing evolution, should heartily adopt it, and claim that her ideal is precisely what it all tends to. True Christianity must be able to absorb all future true philosophies, just as it has absorbed all past ones. In a recent Roman Catholic work we read: “In pre-Christian times, Socratic philosophy attained a high degree of perfection, and became the foundation upon which Christian philosophy was built. The Fathers recognized in this fact the Hand of God preparing the way for the science of the Gospel. By Socratic philosophy, we mean the due combination of its two forms, Platonic and Aristotelian. These too correct and supplement each other, and should not be separated. Christian philosophy blends them together, although it has sometimes given more prominence to one than to the other” (A Manual of Catholic Theology. Based on Scheeben's Dogmatik. By Joseph Wilhelm, D.D., Ph. D., and Thomas Scannell, B.D. With a Preface by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. London, Kegan Paul, 1890, p. 149).
6 Aquinas, Thomas, Sum. Theol., II2, 4, i.Google Scholar
7 Clement, , Epist. to the Corinthians, ii.Google Scholar
8 Epist. to Diognetus, x.Google Scholar
9 See an article on The Present Condition of German Universities, in the first number of The Educational Review, pp. 28 sqqGoogle Scholar.