Dreher, William C.

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FOR MODERNISTS AND FUNDAMENTALISTSBY WILLIAM C. DREHERYOUR controversy, which is now filhng the coknnns of our Mon-day newspapers, begins to weary that growing class of peoplewho regard all theological questions from a still more modern stand-point than that of the "Modernists." For from whatever standpointwe view your little scrimmage—whether from that of anthropology,historical sociology, history of dogma, comparative religion, or cos-mical and evolutionary science—it remains but a little scrimmagestill, and the smaller the longer we look! And we are tempted oftenenough to turn away and say : "A plague o' both your houses." TheFundamentalists v;e can understand, they being such familiar speci-mens, and they reproducing their kind with such unfailing similitudeand in such vast numbers. That even men and women of high ethi-cal ideals are able to convince themselves that those ideals are insep-arable from the cosmological and dogmatic conceptions of primitiveman is an extremely ancient phenomenon ; and that these people areable to suppress intellectual curiosity about the latest achievementsof science tmd even regard these with feelings of intense hostility asattacks upon higher spiritual interests—all this is easy enough tounderstand for anybody that knows something of the inertia of thehuman mind.But the Modernists, while almost equally familiar to us, are notso easy to understand and are certainly less attractive as human spec-imens than the Fundamentalists. For what can be a less attractivemanifestation of human idiosyncrasy than a mind which, feeling op-pressed by a certain set of beliefs, makes a weak compromise by cast-ing off a few minor propositions of its creed and then settling backinto smug self-content. Think of learned doctors of divinity reject-ing the virgin birth, yet holding fast to the incarnation ! And yet wemen who began as Fundamentalists and have passed on beyond thehalf-way standpoints of the Modernists, are bound to look with sym-FOR MODERNISTS AND FUNDAMENTALISTS 205pathy upon the stirrings that are going on within the ranks of thelatter ; for it is chiefly from them that our recruits must come, andthey at least recognize the possibility of intellectual motion. Thatthere is enough vigor of conviction in the two parties to the contro-versy to have a quarrel at all is certainly to be recognized as a gain,however unimportant be the points around which the battle rages.But from another standpoint it is certainly a loss. It is a dis-tinct loss to have this tiny tempest around lost positions stirring upthe dust and preventing thousands of people from seeing the realbattle of our age. The same eiTect is produced by many of the booksabout the Bible which are now occupying public attention. Thusthousands ?re reading Papini's Life of Christ because it appeals totheir religious feelings : but these outpourings of a devotee, whilethev mav add to the comfort of believers, have no effect whatever inestablishing the historical facts involved in the origin of Christianity.Other thousands, some degrees higher up in the intellectual scale,are reading Van Loon's liberal reconstructions of Bible history ; buthis readers will hardly be made aware of the most fundamental ques-tions at issue, and many of them will not venture much further awayfrom the safe paths of tradition than Signor Papini's followers.One of the most vital questions from which Fundamentalists andModernists alike are thus drawing away attention is that of the his-torical elements in the Gospels. How far may their records be takenas true history? The Fundamentalist is ready with his answer—always has been ready. He can swallow everything whole— eventhe conflicting narratives of the nativity given by Matthew and Luke ;and the more miracles, the better! But is the position of the typicalUnitarian clergyman so vastly superior, who casts overboard all themiracles, only to assert that all that remains of the Gospels is verit-able history? But this is such a non-sequihir, such a patent case ofthe pathetic fallacy, that it is bound to pass into the realm of thingsoutlived and forgotten—and perhaps very soon.That the Fundamentalist-Modernist wrangle and books like thosementioned i.re detracting attention from far more vital theologicalliterature becomes evident if we consider the fate in this country ofM. Alfred Loisy's latest venture in New Testament criticism, whichcame out i.i Paris about the end of 1922, under the title : Les Livresdu Nouvea'^v Testament. Although it is undoubtedly one of the mostimportant and significant books of its class that has appeared formany a day, it has probably not even attracted a bare mention in theAmerican press. That is a noteworthy fact. Think of the foremost206 THE OPEN COURTNew Testament scholar of his time bringing out a book in which hesurrenders nearly every shred of history in the Gospels, and in acountry that flatters itself as standing in the very vanguard of civili-zation that fact does not call forth the merest mention ! Verily thesmoke-screen created by the Fundamentalists and Modernists is anefifective one. My object in writing this article is to drag out Loisy'sbook from behind that screen.M. Loisy makes a new translation of the New Testament intoFrench, and in printing it he makes two changes which, thoughmerely mechanical, should facilitate the right understanding of thetext. In the first place, he rearranges the books according to dateof composition, so far as this can be ascertained. Of this rearrange-ment he writes : "By means of this grouping one may follow in largeoutline the evolution of Christianity from the time of its birth tothe period when the canon of the New Testament was fixed." Asthe oldest books are what he regards as Paul's authentic epistles,Loisy begins his New Testament with these, after which follow theGospels, with Mark in the first place. While this rearrangement isin strict accord with the best scholarship and is thus abundantly jus-tified by that fact alone, it has the further advantage of suggestingto the reader that Christianity was at first a dogma and only later ahistory ; and it also suggests the probability that the dogma createdthe history. Loisy, in fact, almost consciously leads us up to thatconclusion when he writes that the "first epistles show the pointof departure, the first outlines of the nascent faith"—the import ofwhich words will be apparent to anyone who has noted the absencein the epistles of any mention of Jesus as a man. Loisy furtheremphasizes the meaning of his rearrangement by saying that theearly church found it "necessary to make a place for the life ofJesus, and not merely of his death, in the legend of the Christ" ; andagain that the "myth of the Christ and the legend of Jesus was inlarge part constructed because of the necessity of defining and de-fending its position against Judaism, and of showing how the econ-omy of Christian salvation was announced in the Bible and justifiedby the prophecies."But M. Loisy gives the reader further ocular help by a secondinnovation ; he sets up in the form of vers-libre all those passageswhich in the original are written with a rhythmical swing. Thereader of our version, unacquainted with the Greek Testament, willbe surprised to find how much of it was thus written. About one-half of the text takes this form—in some books less than that, inFOR MODERNISTS AND FUNDAMENTALISTS 207others, much more. In choosing it— in itself a wholly legitimateproceeding—Loisy is again suggesting something to the reader: heis intimating that the writer is here mounting his Greco-JewishPegasus and no longer feels himself greatly encumbered with theburden of historical responsibilities ; that he is in the exalted moodwhere faith is able to make its own history.But far more important than these merely mechanical changesis what Loisy himself contributes to the work. He writes a gen-eral introduction to the whole volume and then each book receivesits own special introduction, in which its contents are set forth fromthe angle of Loisy's scholarship. These introductions are w^eightedwith deep-cutting thoughts, embodying his latest critical conclusions.Even the liberal school of New Testament critics, who hitherto num-bered Loisy as one of their brightest lights, wnll hardly follow himin his newest conclusions, for he has practically deserted the liberalsand advanced to radical ground. One is reminded at times of theviews of our own Prof. William Benjamin Smith, a scholar whosework has attracted widespread attention in Europe, although in hisown country he still hves behind that smoke-screen. For Loisyadopts at least two of Smith's positions, and that without credit!He adopts the symbolical interpretation of the miracles and muchother matter : and Smith's view that the first preaching of Christi-anity was a crusade for monotheism and an onslaught upon idolatry,takes with Loisy a slightly different form : it is the "evangelizationof the pagans."AA^ith Loisy it is a fundamental proposition that Judaism finallyclothed itself in the form of a mystery religion, like the other orien-tal cults, and that this new mystery religion was Christianity in itsearly form. But in proportion as the cult of the dead and risenMessiah expanded it ceased to be a simple variation of the Jewishreligion. In fact, it was precisely the opposition of the young off-shoot to its parent that later on proved of vital importance in shap-ing the Christian tradition. The singularity of early Christian liter-ature he finds to "consist precisely in the circumstance that it soughtto present as the authentic fact of Israelitish faith and hope theHellenistic religion, the mystery of universal salvation which Chris-tianity had become." That Paul knew little or nothing about theearthly life of Jesus is emphasized, without pushing this fact to anextreme conclusion ; "Paul and the author of the Epistle to theHebrews appear to know much more about the actions of the Christin heaven before and after his epiphany than about the life of Jesus."208 THE OPEN COURTThese columns are not the place to attempt a complete exposeof M. Loisy's views as set forth in his Nouveau Testament. Only afew points must suffice. It is not that the miracles are surrendered/;/ toto that the present work has any significance ; Loisy had donethat long ago ; its significance lies rather in the practical surrenderof the whole Gospel story as history—except at one point, to bementioned later. The miracles become "symbolical miracles" or"apologetical fictions," and at times whole narratives embracing achain of events are treated as symbolical or as fictional. Nowheredoes Loisy undertake to lay his finger upon a fact or word and say:this really occurred as stated, this was really spoken as narrated.The nearest approach that he makes to such certainty is in connec-tion with the trial scene, where Jesus speaks of destroying this Tem-ple and rebuilding it in three days ; this, says. Loisy, "has a chanceof being authentic." Never a closer approximation to certainty!Li fact everything floats in a glorified haze of faith and religiousenthusiasm. "Inspired men attributed to Christ discourses that henever pronounced, actions that he never performed, but which theythemselves saiv. Others were well able to write in the name ofPeter and Paul, putting themselves into their places in another kindof vision, giving themselves almost no thought of what we shouldcall a fraud." "Others scnv in the same way other instructions andother pretended facts in the life of Jesus. Here, for us, vision andfiction coalesce, and they are such fictions as were suggested byan apologetic motive." And our narratives of the passion "repre-sent much less an historical tradition than the ritual drama com-memorating that passion, a drama conceived in accordance with OldTestament texts which were thought to have prefigured it."In connection with such Old Testament texts Loisy advances atheory that seems to promise valuable results for understandinghow little critical the New Testament writers were in their methodsof composition. Every careful reader of it must have observed thesingular use made there of Old Testament passages—a certain arbi-trary twist of words, wrenching them from their context and apply-ing them without scruple to events which could not have been inthe minds of the authors. Loisy assumes that there existed collec-tions of Old Testament messianic texts and motivates this theory asfollows : "The existence of such collections, which continued infavor during the first centuries of the Church, appears as a guaran-tee also for the Apostolic age. For not only the language of thethird Gospel and the Acts, that of the fourth Gospel, and the sys-FOR MODERNISTS AND FUNDAMENTALISTS 209tematic procedure in the first one of making citations give occasionfor believing that the texts regarded as Messianic formed collec-tions for Christian edification and practice from the earliest period;but also when we find the same series in the discourses of the Acts,in the Epistles and even in the Gospels employing the same form,. . . with the same variations from the original texts cited, wemust admit that the authors of the New Testament had no longerto glean from the scriptures the passages that might serve for theirpurposes of demonstration, and that they had at their disposal testi-mony collected beforehand for the use that they made of it."Loisv is more conservative in assigning dates to the New Testa-ment writings than some other critics more radical than he. Thushe places the major Epistles of Paul in the fifth and sixth decadesof the first century. The Gospels are placed for the most part thirtyor forty years later. But this does not end the matter, for all thebooks had to run the gauntlet of one or more redactors. What thework of such editors might mean is shown by Loisy's opinion ofwhat they did to the Acts. Assuming that the original book waswritten about A. D. 80, he concludes that it underwent its final re-daction about 120-30. This was an "abominable sabotage, madewithout art, well-meant, with pious gestures, ... a veritable recast-ing which put it on the level and into the tone of mediocrity ... bywhich its success could be assured."Loisy's destructive criticism reaches its height perhaps in treat-ing of the trial and crucifixion. He says of ]\Tark's narrative ofthose events as "touching in its naivete," and of the trial beforePilate, "nothing is consistent, unless it be the charge of pretensionsto messianic royalty" ; and his rejection of this trial held "on theholy night of the Passover" is registered with an exclamation point.Of the charge that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, Loisy says,"that divine quality was not assigned to him except in the Chris-tian Mystery" ; and the whole passion and trial is summed up thus:"Our narratives represent much less an historical tradition than theritual drama commemorating that passion."After this the reader is prepared to conclude that Loisy has sur-rendered the historicity of Jesus altogether : but that is not the caseand this is the exception referred to above. In the present workindeed. Loisy's belief in the historical reality of Jesus is nowhereroundly asserted : he only refers to it here and there as a given fact,but perfunctorily and without the slightest attempt to substantiateit. Here the strongest statement of his view shapes itself thus : "It210 THE OPEN COURTremains nsvertheless very probable that Jesus came to Jerusalemfor the Passover, and that he was crucified before the week calledthat of unleavened bread."And yet we know from other writings by Loisy published in1922 that he still insists upon the historicity of Jesus. In one of hisarticles he replies to those who urge a mythological explanation ofthe whole Gospel story: "We have something better to do thanrefute them. If they become too pressing we shall simply demand,'where is the match'?" He is here alluding to a dictum of Nietsche's,who says somewhere of Jesus : "A founder of a religion may be in-significant—a match, nothing more." Loisy accordingly still holdsfast to the historicity not because he finds any convincing recordson which to build, but merely upon the assumption that Christianityitself necessarily presupposes a single great personal founder—anassumption which can by no means be regarded as valid.

For Modernists and Fundamentalists.

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For Modernists and Fundamentalists.

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