58 



KEY. A. R. WHATELY, D.D., ON THE DEMAND 



the historic formulas of his religion, it should be impossible for 

 him even to conceive that that religion, so formulated, had its 

 origin otherwise than in the experience of fact ; and this fact 

 must be, in the nature of the case, at once historical and super- 

 natural. If the experience be real, it cannot be merely 

 incidental. It must have created on the plane of history those 

 doctrinal propositions that create it in the individual. 



The clear recognition of a corporate experience in the Church 

 as the foundation and essence of her creed, is the outstanding 

 feature of Loisy's much controverted L'Evangile et VEglise. 

 Certainly that treatise is open to radical objections. But I 

 think this ought not to lead us to forget the importance of the 

 foundation which he lays. He regards, like the Modernists in 

 general, Christian doctrine as the creation of the experience of 

 the Church, symbols whereby faith makes real to itself its own 

 spiritual objects. But still the question remains : what is the 

 relation of the Church's experience to that of the individual 

 Christian ? Can the individual, troubled — like the Modernist — 

 with modern criticism and thought, find a centre, or core, 

 in that system of doctrine, whereby he can separate the 

 essential and the unessential, and be true alike to reason 

 and to faith ? Or is this system delivered to him to put 

 his own meaning into it, according to a standard furnished 

 by his own instincts and needs ? Of course there is always 

 the visible institution, its life, and its sacraments, to anchor 

 him to historical, social, concrete religion. But is that 

 sufficient ? Has religious truth no absolute centre ? Is our 

 own life, as the authors of the Programme of Modernism 

 affirm, " the only absolute of our direct experience ? " (p. 134). 



Had Loisy started with the consciousness of Eedemption as 

 the foundation both of personal belief and of the Church's 

 existence, he would have held a key to the interpretation of 

 the whole system of doctrine : he would have found a principle 

 upon which form and substance could be distinguished, not 

 arbitrarily and subjectively, but by bringing to expression the 

 immanent rationality of the creed itself. 



I think this is a fair interpretation of the real drift of the 

 Modernist thought in the Church of Kome. And indeed it is 

 rather to emphasise what seems true and valuable in it, than 

 the reverse, that I have brought it into the discussion. For it 

 stands in sharp contrast — even though sharing some of its faults 

 — with an immensely influential trend of thought, dominant in 

 modern philosophy, which is designated by the terms " Eational- 

 ism " or " Intellectualism." 



