Painted Windows: Studies in Religious PersonalityBegbie, Harold
Religion
Painted Windows: Studies in Religious Personality
Begbie, Harold
Clergy -- England
The growth of morality is twofold. It is partly a growth in
content, from negative to positive. It is partly a growth in
extent, from tribal to universal. And in both of these forms of
growth it is accompanied, and as a rule, though my knowledge would
not entitle me to say always, it is also conditioned by a parallel
development in religious conviction.
We are all aware that early morality is mainly negative; it is the
ruling out of certain ways of arriving at the human ideal, however
that is to be defined, which have been attempted and have been
found failures. Whatever else may be the way to reach the end,
murder is not, theft is not, and so on. Thus we get the Second
Table of the Decalogue, where morality commits itself to
prohibitions--this is not the way, that is not the way; then
gradually, under the pressure of experience, there begins to emerge
the conception of the end which makes all this prohibition
necessary, and which these methods when they were attempted failed
to reach.
And so we come at last to "the Kingdom of God as proclaimed by Christ,
and the supreme law of ethics, the demonstrably final law of ethics, is
laid down--Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
Of course the words come from the Old Testament. Some critics used
to say: "You will find in the Rabbis almost everything, if not
quite everything, which you find in the teaching of Christ." "Yes,"
added Wellhausen, "and how much else besides." It was the singling
out of this great principle and laying the whole emphasis upon it
that made the difference.
To a man who believes that Christ came to set up the Kingdom of God,
clearly neither the Conservative nor Liberal Party can appeal with any
compelling force of divinity. How far the Labour Party may appeal must
depend, I should think on the man's knowledge of economic law. As Dean
Inge says, Christ's sole contribution to economics is "Beware of
covetousness"--an injunction which the Labour Party has not yet quite
taken to its heart. But Dr. Temple has a right to challenge his clerical
critics for Christ's sanction of the present system, which is certainly
founded on covetousness and produces strikingly hideous results.
His theological position may be gathered from the following reply which
he made, as a Canon of Westminster, to a representative of the _Daily
Telegraph_ nearly two years ago. I do not think he has greatly changed.
He was asked how far the Church could go in meeting that large body of
opinion which cannot accept some of its chief dogmas. He replied:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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