MODERNISM AND TRADITIONAL CHRISTIANITY. 



or, 



The Christ of Criticism — Tyrrell's View. 



Christ Ls here presented as believing Himself to be the "Son 

 of Man," "the Messiah," the Centre of His own apocalyptic 

 teaching. His mission was to warn His fellow-countrymen of 

 the end of the dispensation as being close at hand. His moral 

 teaching, he considers, with Schweitzer and againsl Liberal 

 Protestantism, as an insignificant feature — subordinate alto- 

 gether to the coming cataclysm — after which ethics would be 

 superseded. Christ's ethical teaching was, moreover, he con- 

 tends, not His own — " there is nothing original in the righteous- 

 ness preached by Jesus " (p. 51). Tyrrell interprets even the 

 Lord's Prayer as having its chief bearing on the celestial 

 cataclysm and its sequel (p. 54). " Pessimism is the verdict of 

 experience. Whether in himself or in the world: if a man has 

 ideals tor both, he is bound to find not only failure, but an iron 

 law of inevitable failure " (pp. 117, 118). Christ had no hopes 

 of an amelioration of the lot of humanity on earth. His Gospel 

 was to be good news to those who despaired of the world (p. 119). 

 He supposed Himself to be the Central Figure in a tremendous 

 cataclysm — which never occurred. 



Tyrrell's Symbolism. 



Although he adopts the " Apocalyptic Jesus " of Schweitzer, 

 Christ's eschatological teaching, he says, " was not the 

 Creation of His Spirit : He found it at hand" (p. 102). It was 

 our " duty, however, to abandon the Apocalyptic form and 

 retain what it stands for " (p. 1 02). " The idea of Jesus remains 

 symbolic," and " the only remedy lies in a frank admission of 

 the principle of Symbolism." " What each age has to do is to 

 interpret the Apocalyptic Symbolism into terms of its own 

 Symbolism." "When we realize," he says (p. Ill), "how 

 purely symbolic even our best and most fruitful scientific 

 hypotheses must be . . . we can see that revelation involves 

 no violation of the usual processes of thought, nor calls for any 

 special faculty." Here we see at one and the same time how 

 " human " revelation has become to him, and how protean and 

 elusive also has Symbolism. For symbols have to be interpreted 

 into new symbols by each passing age. 



From the foregoing summary of the views of Loisy and 

 Tyrrell we can form some kind of idea of the impassable chasm 

 between Modernism and the Roman Church. No possible 



F 



