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INTRODUCTION

THE modern world is asking questions. Christianity and its traditional theology have come down to us from an age very different from our own, an age when the sun and the stars moved round the earth, when the meaning of natural law and evolution was only dimly apprehended, when the psychology of religion, the historical method and the critical study of ancient documents were yet unborn. These things touch the foundations of the old beliefs, and it is about the foundations that the world is asking.

The world is calling for religion; but it cannot accept a religion if its theology is out of harmony with science, philosophy, and scholarship. Religion, if it is to dominate life, must satisfy both the head and the heart, a thing which neither obscurantism nor rationalism can do. At such a time it seems most necessary that those who believe that Christianity is no mere picturesque survival of a romantic past, but a real religion with a real message for the present and the future, should set themselves to a careful re-examination, and if need be re-statement, of the foundations of their belief in the light of the knowledge and thought of the day.

The present volume, the outcome of an Oxford friendship, is due to the conviction that such a task might be more successfully attempted by a corporate effort than by the labours of separate individuals. The majority of us on many occasions, and all of us more than once, have been able to meet together in conference for mutual criticism of the essays previously circulated in draft form. Four times these conferences have been of the nature of a retreat continued during three or four days, and each essay has been thus discussed at more than one stage before it assumed its present form.

We came to the study of the subject from points of view which differed widely with our differing temperaments, interests, and ecclesiastical associations, but from our various conferences there has resulted a far greater measure of agreement than we had originally anticipated. Differences, some of opinion, others rather of emphasis, of course remain. It is neither possible nor desirable that seven minds should think exactly alike on so many complex problems. In a few cases the differences concern points which some of us would regard as of the first importance. But nevertheless the book is put forward not as a collection of detached studies but as a single whole, and as, in the main, the expression of a corporate mind; and the essays are intended to read as a connected series in the order and context in which they stand.

Throughout our discussions we have kept in view the fact that the problems we are attacking are felt keenly as such far beyond the circle of professed theo

logians. Hence we have made a special effort by the avoidance, so far as possible, of technical terminology, to present our conclusions in such a way as to be of interest to the educated layman, or to the cleric who makes no claim to be a theological specialist. We hope, however, that we have not fallen into the error of being "popular" in the bad sense, and that some of the things we have written may be considered not unworthy of perusal even by theologians.

A word may be added as to the principle which has determined the arrangement of the essays in the book.

The fundamental question for religion, and one of which our own age is by no means inclined to take an answer for granted, is that of the existence of God. But the idea of God, in the sense in which the Christian speaks of God, was not given to mankind all at once, nor was it arrived at by processes of pure philosophy or abstract reasoning. It came through the direct spiritual apprehension of the Hebrew prophets, the explicit teaching of our Lord Himself, and the interpretation of the Person of Christ by the inspired writers of the New Testament and in the long history of the Church. It would seem, then, that an examination of these sources of the belief in the light of modern knowledge should precede an examination into the validity of the belief itself. And it is this consideration which has determined the order in which the various subjects have been treated.

In every department of thought advance is only made when men will make experiments and put forward

suggestions, some of which after due consideration may win their way to acceptance while others will be rejected. In theology this task must always be the special duty of the younger generation. The men whose position in the Church is such that they cannot speak at all except with authority can rarely venture on experiments outside the sphere of practice. It is otherwise with us. We fully recognise the obligations of loyalty to the traditions of the Church to which we belong, we make no claim to irresponsibility; but we are young men, and our responsibility is of a different kind. It is the responsibility of making experiments.

At the Reformation, the last great crisis in the history of the Church, the principle deliberately adopted by the Church of England was to "keep the mean between the two extremes of too much stiffness in refusing and of too much easiness in admitting variation." The principle of combining continuity and progress is one which underlies all sound development, and we write in the hope that what we have to say may be found to be an application of this principle to the needs of the present situation.

We do not profess to have covered the whole field, and some important problems we have left untouched. We have confined ourselves to those which seemed to us the most fundamental, or those on which we felt we had something to offer. Still less do we profess to offer a final Theology. A final Theology means a complete account of the ways of God in relation to the universe and to man. It will not be reached till Nature has

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