Literature and Dogma

MATTHEW ARNOLD
ARNOLD devoted his energies for many years to combating English indifference to
1\. ideas in literature, politics, and religion. In literature his chief attack on the intellec-
tual apathy of the public was made in the essays entitled Culture and Anarchy, published
in 1869. A more scientific method in politics was advocated in Friendship's Garland
(1871). Of the books embodying his views on theological subjects, one of the best known
is Literature and Dogma: An Essay towards a Better Apprehension of the Bible, published
in 1873. It is mainly for the value of Arnold's proseconsistently dignified, calm, lucid
and felicitousthat his essays will be read and remembered.
IINTRODUCTORY
T
HE Churches and the Clergy are
unanimous in lamenting that re-
ligion, the religion of the Bible,
has little hold on the masses. We regret
the act as much as they do; but the time
has come when we must state definitely
that the religion of the Bible cannot be
made acceptable so long as it is identi-
fied with the current dogmatic theology
of the Churches and sects, and so long as
an equal and infallible authority is claimed
for all parts of the Bible alike. For what
the Bible itself presents to us is not the-
ology, not an abstruse intellectual sys-
tem scientifically elaborated on the basis
of an unverifiable axiom, but religion
which is morality touched with emotion,
and the expressions of it in the Bible
vary infinitely. It is not till we can
bring to bear upon the Bible a criticism
resting upon Cultureknowledge of the
best that has been known and thought in
the world, which is Literaturethat we
can get the power to estimate the pro
portion and relation in what we read in
the Bible. To understand that the Ian
guage of the Bible is fluid, passing and
1
literary, not rigid, fixed and scientific, is
the first step to a right understanding ot
the religion of the Bible.
IITHE OLD TESTAMENT
R
ELIGION is morality but with some-
thing superaddedemotion. Its lan-
guage is consequently not precise and defi-
nite, but poetic and imaginative. Both
morality and religion are practical, deal-
ing with conduct which is at least three-
fourths of life. Dogma is not practical,
not concerned with conduct; it is
theoretic. 'Live as you were meant to
live'; that is morality. 'Lay hold on
eternal life'; that is religion. 'The Holy
'Ghost is not made, nor created, nor be-
gotten, but proceeding from the Father
and the Son'; that is theology.
The Hebrews were the people who
were possessed with the supreme im-
portance of religion, of the sense of
righteousness, the joy of righteousness,
the Eternal Righteousness, the something
not ourselves that makes for righteous-
ness; of righteousness as the fulfilment of
our being. The Eternal was necessarily
presented anthropomorphically, poetically
personified, not metaphysically defined.
Other peoples arrived at a morality; onlyi
the Hebrews so concentrated upon it that
their morality, touched with emotion,
their emotional realization of the Eternal 1
Something not ourselves that makes for
righteousness, became a religionthe re-
ligion of the Bible.
From beginning to end of the Old Tes-
tament, that is the religion their prophets 1
constantly proclaim in the plainest terms,
Israel goes astray when Israel forgets to
follow after righteousness; the way of I
peace is the return to righteousness,
righteousness is the way of happiness, the
way of salvation. Holiness and Power are
all the attributes of the Eternal; there
is no license of defining Him, no Great
First Cause, no 'moral and intelligent gov-
ernor of the universe,' no 'consubstantia-
tion of persons.' Imaginatively, poeti-
cally, the Eternal is personified, for 'man
never knows how anthropomorphic he is.'
Imaginatively, poetically, the law of
righteousnessthe original intuition, or
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perception of Israel, Righteousness tend-
eth to lifeis expressed as a Covenant,
'righteousness shall inherit a blessing.'
The affirmation of this in the face of the
apparent contradiction that the ungodly
flourish and the earth is given into the
hands of the wicked is the first and the
last words of the prophets: 'Unto you
that fear my name shall the sun of right-
eousness arise with healing in his wings.'
Our Hebrew speakers in fact do plainly
mean by Godwhatever the name by
which they designate Himthe enduring
not-ourselves which makes for righteous-
ness ; and beyond this they will not probe
into His nature. 'To him that ordereth
his conversation right shall be shown the
salvation of God'; but beyond that is the
insoluble, unexplored and inexpressible
' It is more high than heaven, what canst
thou do? Deeper than hell, what canst
thou know?'
That is the original intuition to which
always the prophets recall Israel. But as
we pass from the earlier to the later
books, a distinct feature appears. In spite
of the Covenant, Israel is far removed
from peace and happiness. In place of
the first realization that the way of right-
eousness is the way of happiness grows
the idea of a postponed fulfilment of the
covenant when the seed of Abraham shall
inherit the earth; an Aberglaube, extra-
belief, not precisely a superstition in our
sense, but an imagined fulfilment upon
which expectation centres. The words of
the prophets are translated into a literal
foretelling of the coming triumph of
Israel; as the idea of the chosen people,
the seed of Abraham, predominates over
the idea of righteousness'in thy seed all
the nations of the earth shall be blessed,'
over 'righteousness shall inherit a bless-
ing'; the poetic expression acquiring a
literal interpretation which again finds a
fresh poetic expression in the imagined
Messianic kingdom. Jesus Christ was un-
doubtedly the very last sort of Messiah
whom the Jews expected.
F
OR the Aberglaube expected the Son
of Man coming in clouds of glory,
the Branch of Jesse re-establishing Da-
vid's kingdom with unexampled splendour.
The ordinary Hebrew conception of right-
eousness regarded it rather on its social
and national than on its individual side,
expressed in a theocratic polity; the right-
eousness formulated by the priesthood,
the carrying out the letter of precise
regulations, a conventional morality un-
touched by emotion, not the fervent indi-
vidual righteousness of the poets and
prophets. The Messiah who came dis-
carded, even denounced the conventional
morality as a positive hindrance to right-
eousness. He came to proclaim a new
ideal of righteousness, the prophetic ideal
with fresh elements in itelements fore-
shadowed in the prophetic presentments
not of the Messiah, as later misinterpre-
tations have assumed, but of Israel re-
turning to his allegiance to the 'Eternal
who loveth righteousness'; a conception
incompatible with the Messiah of the
popular Aberglaube; though the popular
mind, disappointed of the immediate
fulfilment of its Aberglaube, retained the
expectation of it but postponed its
fulfilment till a second advent which
should inaugurate the reign of the
Elect.
IllTHE NEW TESTAMENT
E Messiah's function was to bring
JL in everlasting righteousness and the
reign of righteousness; not the reign de-
picted by the Aberglaube, not the right-
eousness of the Scribes and Pharisees;
'the kingdom of God is within you, render
therefore to Caesar the things that are
Caesar's,' the righteousness is the old
emotionally touched righteousness in a
new development which especially insists
on its inwardness. To justice and judge-
ment are added mercy and humbleness,
of which even in the prophets only a dim
foreshadowing can be found, though it is
there.
The new presentment is indicated in
that quality in Christ's teaching, epieikeia,
of which the best rendering is 'sweet
reasonableness.' The meaning of right-
eousness is to be learnt through Christ
himself; 'Whoever will come after me, let
him renounce himself and take up his
cross daily and follow me' ; 'Learn of me
that I am mild and lowly in heart, and
ye shall find rest unto your souls.' Thus
only comes the true inward happiness
which is the sanction of righteousness
following not because we have sought it
but because we have sought and found
righteousness through Christ. It is not
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the teaching of Jesus but human weak-
ness that will presently re-impose the
Aberglaube.
The authority of Jesus is in his Truth,
his restorationas we shall presently see,
of the intuition. We do wrong in seeking
other warrant for his authority; yet per-
sistently we ask for a sign; orthodox di-
vinity answers us with the proof from
prophecy, the proof from miracles, and
the dogmas of theology; and we are told
that if any of these signs are questioned
we destroy the basis of Christianity. Yet
all are adventitious, none essential. If
they all go, the basis and the structure of
Christ's teaching stand unshaken; and it
is best not to shut our eyes to the plain
fact but to recognize that all are doomed
to go; knowing also that salvation through
Christ has no need of them, and that they
stand in the way as stumbling blocks to
the acceptance of the religion of the
Bible.
ND the stumbling block of prophecy
\ crumbles when scholarship is the
interpreter, showing us that the so-called
prophecies never bore the distorted mean-
ing which orthodoxy, straining the texts,
forced into them; even the orthodoxy of
Jewish evangelists; which may be proved
passage by passage.
With even more advantage the 'proof
from miracles' must be set aside. If we
must accept religion and miracles together
or not at all, the modern mind will in-
evitably reject both. By discarding the
idea of and the insistence upon a neces-
sary connexion, we are set free to insist
upon one while rejecting the other. We
have come to regard the religion as bound
up with thaumaturgy only because it was
overlaid with thaumaturgy in an age when
miracles were expected and accepted as
matter of course. To-day if we find it
possible to accept miracles at all we must
do so either from the Catholic point of
view which admits them on any Catholic
evidence, or from the Protestant point of
view which will acknowledge only those
to which the Bible bears witness. Yet
there is nothing in the character of the
evidence which gives any more warrant
for believing in these than in the miracles
recorded in pagan history and legend, in
Herodotus or in Plutarch or elsewhere
which Catholic and Protestant alike reject
as mere fiction and superstition, the nat-
ural product of the mythopoeic tendency
in man. To profit fully by the New Tes-
tament, the first thing to be done is to
make it perfectly clear to oneself that
its reporters both could and did err, both
on matter of fact and on matter of the-
ory; but that their errors detract nothing
from its religion.
Only one group of the so-called mira-
cles is on a distinct footing as a class (not
in respect of details); the healing of the
sick is not to be counted as thaumaturgic
but as the natural effect of a deeper ap-
prehension in Jesus of the relation be-
tween moral evil and physical suffering.
Now when we turn to the New Testa-
ment record, we findnot in the words of
Jesus but in the commentary of the re-
cordersmuch of the Aberglaube display-
ing itself; and in the one called St. John's
Gospel, which unquestionably presents
Jesus with a closer fidelity than the rest,
the metaphysical foundations upon which
the subsequent theological structure was
built. But there is no difficulty in dis-
tinguishing between the words of Jesus
which are the essence of the religion and
the words of the reporter which are his
gloss, a metaphysical interpretation or
superstructure for which John, not Jesus,
was responsible, and which was his an-
swer to metaphysical criticism. John's
metaphysical hypotheses are without the
authority of Jesus himself, and are in no
way essential to his teaching. There is
no warrant whatever for requiring accep-
tance of the dogma as a necessary condi-
tion or accompaniment of acceptance of
the religion taught by Jesus.
Moreover, when we come to the words
recorded as having been spoken by Jesus
himself, we have to bear in mind that
they are the words as remembered by
the recorders and unconsciously coloured
by their own particular preconceptions;
just as St. Paul s appeals to the Law and
the Prophets are coloured by his own
Rabbinical training; though the colour-
ing is unconscious. And this is precisely
what orthodox divinity fails to grasp; in-
stead of distinguishing the teaching of
Jesus from the comments and glosses of
the recorders, its proper task, it treats
the whole literally, as having an identical
value. Whereas, when we have reached
the religion of Jesus freed from the
glosses, we have found something accepta-
ble, convincing the salvation of the Eter-
nal, the glosses are more often a stum-
bling block than a help to the finding; for
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which the very highest form of literary
criticism is therefore the first essential;
and this is precisely what orthodoxy re-
fuses to the study of the Bible.
T
HE function of the Messiah was to
restore the intuition of righteous-
ness, clearing it of glosses and formalism
which concealed or deadened it, and re-
newing its promises of the salvation of
God, the Eternal that loveth Righteous-
ness, by transforming the idea of right-
eousness; and to do this Jesus brought
a method, 'Repentance unto Life,' meta-
noia, the searching of the heart and the
change of the inward man; and a secret,
'Peace through Jesus Christ,' to know the
happiness of God in reality (terms pref-
erable to 'grace and truth' in their hack-
neyed acceptation); that renunciation of
the lower self, which gives life to the
higher self. 'Take up thy cross daily and
follow me. He that hateth his life in this
world shall keep it unto life eternal'; no
dogma but the statement of a fact veri-
fiable and verified by experience; method
and secret blending in the sweet reason
ableness of Christ. The Aberglaube be-
comes itself not fiction but truth, because
the kingdom is not external but within
you. 'Follow me who am sent from God,'
and ye shall attain; but there is no other
Way. ' I am the Way, the Truth, and
the Life.' The language is the language
of religious emotion, not of scientific defi-
nition. 'Believe on me,' is not 'believe in
a metaphysical theory concerning me.'
The key to the words 'death' and 'life'
as used by Christ is not in physical death
and life, but in the salvation of the higher
life by laying down the lower. And all
this we can see reappearing in the dis-
ciples; in the first Epistle of St. Peter, the
first Epistle of St. John, and many pas-
sages of St. Paul: 'If ye live after the
flesh ye shall die, but if through the spirit
ye mortify the doings of the body, ye
shall live.'
IVTHE APPLICATION
"VTEVERTHELESS, the disciples them-
JLN selves were not wholly liberated
from their own prepossessionsthe Aber-
glaube common to the Jews, the meta-
physical aptitudes of the authors of the
fourth Gospel and the Epistle to the He-
brews, St. Paul's Rabbinical education.
Then as the personal impression of Jesus
faded and the apostolic age itself passed,
the prepossessions were more and more
thoroughly embodied in the orthodox con-
ception, not obliterating but overlaying
the fundamental perception. A popular
science, so to speak, of religion formu-
lated the Apostles' creed, learned science
developed the Nicene creed, and the cli-
max was reached with the Athanasian
creed; this whole attempt to apply science
with no real data to a subjectreligion
which is not at all concerned with sci-
ence necessarily produced only an inade-
quate and false science.
In spite of it, however, the medieval
church retained its hold on the secret of
Christ, renunciation; whereas Protestant-
ism re-energised his method, the searching
of the heart, personal responsibility; each
failing in respect, of that which the other
emphasised, while both have remained ob-
sessed with the prepossessions which were
never properly speaking a part of the re-
ligion of Jesus at all. From these it must
be released before we can see it recover
its hold.
The dogmas in actual fact present to
the popular imagination the idea of God
as a Trinity of infinitely magnified and
improved Lord Shaftesburys, related to
each other in a complex and unconvinc-
ing manner. In the Bible, God is the
Eternal that loveth righteousness; the
Power, not ourselves, which makes for
righteousness; whatever we find more
definite is what we ourselves read into the
Bible conception. The conception itself
is absolutely simple and convincing. It
verifies itself by experience; but you can-
not by experience verify the Great First
Cause, the moral and intelligent Governor
who thinks and loves. Such language
must be discarded altogether if you are
to carry emotional conviction, and the es-
sence of religion is emotional conviction
of the joy of righteousness which all ex-
perience confirms.
No other book concentrates upon and
expresses that vital idea with the same
force as the Bible; and it is the most vital
of all ideas, because it is concerned with
that which constitutes three-fourths of
life-conduct. The Bible inspires to right-
eousness as no other book doeswhen-
ever it is not obscured by the pseudo-
interpretations, allegorisings, systematis-
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ings, however plausible, with which in-
tellectual subtlety has overlaid it. So
long as these unverifiable glosses are
pronounced essential, so long as they
are not swept aside, we shall never
restore the study and the religion of the
Bible.
What is essential is the vivid percep-
tion of the Eternal not-ourselves which
makes for righteousness and the method
and secret of Jesus. In spite of all ob-
scuring glosses, these never have been
and never can be entirely obscured to
students of the Bible; but it is time to
sweep the glosses aside altogether, be-
cause now, until they are swept aside, the
people refuse to be students of the Bible
at all; whereas it is only through study-
ing the Bible that those essentials are
revealed to us, while the test of their
validity is universal experience. Try, and
you will find, as men always have found,
that it is so. The Hebrews elevated con-
duct above all else; they fell because they
misconceived right conduct. For peoples
as for individuals, to elevate something
else, whether it be science or art, above
conduct, must be ultimately fatal, no less
than to misconceive right conduct. What
the Bible does is to make conduct con-
vincingly supreme, and show us how to be
righteous, if we will but understand it.
To peoples as to individuals righteousness
is the way of salvation; and in the Bible
is its inspiration.
Finally, and above all. As for the right
inculcation of righteousness we need the
Bible, so for the right inculcation of the
method and secret of Jesus, we need the
epieikeia, the sweet reasonableness of
Jesus; and it is only in the Bible records
that we can get at his epieikeia.
Fragments of an Intimate Journal
HENRI FREDERIC AMIEL
P
ARTS of the Journal Intime of Henri Frederic Amiel were published in 1882-84 with
an introduction by Amiel's friend Edmond Scherer, and an English translation by Mrs.
Humphrey Ward appeared in 1885. The book has the interest which attaches to all
genuine personal confessions of the interior life; it is also the signal expression of the spirit
of its time. The work renders perfectly the disillusion, languor and sentimentality of a
self-centred scepticism. It is the record of a morbid mind, but of a mind of extraordinary
acuteness and the utmost delicacy of perception.
THOUGHTS ON LIFE AND CONDUCT
O
NLY one thing is needfulto pos-
sess God. The senses, the powers
of the soul and all outward re-
sources are so many vistas opening upon
Divinity, so many ways of tasting and
adoring God. To be detached from all
that is fugitive, and to seize only on the
eternal and the absolute, using the rest as
no more than a loan, a tenancy! To wor-
ship, understand, receive, feel, give, act
this is your law, your duty, your heaven!
After all, there is only one object which
we can study, and that is the modes and
the metamorphoses of the human spirit.
All other studies lead us back to this one.
I have never felt the inward assurance
of genius, nor the foretaste of celebrity,
nor of happiness, nor even the prospect of
being husband, father, or respected citi-
zen. This indifference to the future is
itself a sign; my dreams are vague, in-
definite; I must not now live, because I
am now hardly capable of living. Let me
control myself; let me leave life to the
living, and betake myself to my ideas;
let me write the testament of my thoughts
and of my heart.
Heroism is the splendid and wonderful
triumph of the soul over the flesh; that
is to say, over fearthe fear of poverty,
suffering, calumny, disease, isolation and
death. There is no true piety without this
dazzling concentration of courage.
Duty has this great valueit makes us
feel the reality of the positive world,
while yet it detaches us from it.
How vulnerable am I! If I were a
father, what a host of sorrows a child
could bring on me! As a husband, I
should suffer in a thousand ways, because
a thousand conditions are necessary to my
happiness. My heart is too sensitive, my
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