Painted Windows: Studies in Religious PersonalityBegbie, Harold
Religion
Painted Windows: Studies in Religious Personality
Begbie, Harold
Clergy -- England
I can speak freely, because I happen to hold two of the dogmas
which most people quarrel about--the virgin birth and the physical
resurrection. There are other heresies floating about! One of our
deans is inclined to assert the finitude of God, and another to
deny anything in the nature of personality to God or to man's
spirit! Rather confusing! Philosophic questions of this kind,
however, do not greatly concern mankind. To believe in God the
Father is essential to the Christian religion. Other doctrines may
not be so essential, but they must not be regarded as unimportant.
Personally I wish the Church to hold her dogmas, because I would do
nothing to widen the gulf which separates us from the other great
Churches, the Roman and the Eastern. The greatest political aim of
humanity, in my opinion, is a super-state, and that can only come
through a Church universal. How we all longed for it during the
war!--one voice above the conflict, the voice of the Church, the
voice of Christ! If the Pope had only spoken out, with no reference
to the feelings of the Austrian Emperor!--what a gain that would
have been for religion. But the great authentic voice never
sounded. Instead of the successor of St. Peter we had to content
ourselves with the American Press--excellent, no doubt, but hardly
satisfying.
Let me tell you a rather striking remark by an Italian friend of
mine, an editor of an Italian review, and not a Roman Catholic. He
was saying that every Church that persisted for any time possessed
something essential to the religion of Christ. I asked him what he
saw in the Roman Church that was essential. He replied at once,
"The Papacy." I was surprised for the moment, but I saw presently
what he meant. The desire of the world is for universal peace,
universal harmony. Can that ever be achieved by a disunited
Christendom? The nations are rivals. Their rivalry persisted at the
Peace Conference, disappointing all the hopes of idealists. Must it
not always persist, must not horrible carnage, awful desolation,
ruinous destruction, and, at any rate, dangerous and provocative
rivalries, always dog the steps of humanity until Christendom is
one?
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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