THEOLOGY UNDER ITS CHANGED CONDITIONS. 171 

 THEOLOGY UNDER ITS CHANGED CONDITIONS. 



Br Eev. CANON FEEMANTLE. 



A PROFESSOR of divinity who has been thought at times to be 

 by no means insensible to a reputation for orthodoxy, preach- 

 ing in the University of Oxford a few days ago, said : " The field of 

 speculative theology may be regarded as almost exhausted ; we must be 

 content henceforward to be Christian agnostics." It is probable that 

 these words, had they been uttered in the same place twenty-five years 

 ago, would have excited an alarm comparable to that which was raised 

 by Bishop Colenso or the "Essays and Reviews." In the present case 

 they appear to have been accepted without a murmur ; so great is the 

 change which has come over the conditions of theological thought in 

 England in a quarter of a century. It will be the object of the pres- 

 ent paper to make clear what are the new conditions of which theol- 

 ogy has to take note, to point out what they involve either certainly 

 or by probable inference, and to show what we may expect theology 

 to be under these new conditions. 



It is very necessary that such an attempt should be made, so that 

 illusions should cease, and also unnecessary alarms ; and that theo- 

 logians should strike boldly into the new paths, not reverting to un- 

 fruitful methods which separate theology from other parts of human 

 knowledge. For it is to be observed that such utterances as that just 

 quoted are met with again and again, even when least expected, in 

 theological literature, but that this has by no means prevented the 

 prevalence of dogmatism. St. Augustine wrote, in his treatise on 

 " Christian Doctrine " : 



God is unspeakable ; yet what we say of him would not be spoken at all 

 if it were unspeakable. Even when we say God is unspeakable, we hardly 

 speak rightly ; for even in saying this we make an assertion. By pronouncing 

 the word Deus, we do not make him known as he is. Only when that sound 

 strikes the ears of men who know Latin, it moves in them the thought of a 

 certain most excellent and immortal nature. 



Yet this did not hinder him from repeating the language in which he 

 had suddenly checked himself, and his methods have so enchained the 

 study of theology that we are only now beginning to free ourselves 

 from them. The melancholy experience of the sixteenth century 

 which turned the Reformation from a great act of emancipation into 

 a renewed scholasticism must not be repeated in our day. 



The conditions which it is necessary to notice may be taken under 

 four heads : 1. Those imposed by the advance of science, and 2. Of 

 criticism ; 3. Those made by the altered state of church-life ; 4. 

 Those caused by social and democratic progress. 



1. Under the head of Science we may notice as specially bearing 



