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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 77

III. — The New Zealand Articles and a United New Zealand Church

III.

The New Zealand Articles and a United New Zealand Church.

Are the proposed Articles fitted to serve as a basis for the contemplated Union of the Churches in New Zealand?

The reply to this question will depend entirely upon what kind of a Union is contemplated. If it is desired to include in one fold the Pauline and Judaistic Christian, the Augustinian and the Pelagian, the Calvinistic and the Arminian, the Unitarian and the Ritschlian, the Higher Critical and the Traditional, the Rationalist and the Evangelical, the Evolutionist and the Creationist, then I fancy the proposed doctrinal symbol will do fairly well, because it appears to me that all these could honestly enough shelter themselves under such a collection of theological propositions.

1. Under that relating to sin might comfortably repose the professing Christian who believes that man was originally evolved from the lower animals, that the story of the fall was a myth; that Adam stood in no representative relation to his descendants; that orignal sin is only a figment of the theological imagination; and that men are not born in a state of sin and condemnation, but innocent and well pleasing to God; equally, the person who holds that God's will has never been made known to man in any other way than by the light of nature, and certainly in no exceptional manner by the sacred Scriptures, might subscribe this article, inasmuch as the person accepting it is under no obligation more than to confess that somehow or other God has made known his will to man. It is not certain whether, under sanction of this article, one might not maintain that only death physical was the penalty of sin, and not death spiritual and eternal, or vice versa, that death physical was no part of sin's penalty, but only death spiritual was. Perhaps all this is intended by those responsible for the Article; if so, then I have no hesitation in asserting that it will exactly suit their aim.

2. Under the article about the work of Christ, as altered by substituting for "divine justice" the words "the demands of the divine nature," it requires no large penetration to see that any view of Christ's mediatorial work will be admissible; that of Paul, Augustine, Calvin, Knox, the Scottish Reformers, page 39 and the Westminster divines, that Christ acted as the substitute and surety of sinful men, and by His obedience unto death upon the Cross, rendered complete and final satisfaction to the Law's claims against them, for pure, perfect, and perpetual obedience to the Divine Law, and for the penalty of death, which they had incurred by their inherited and personal guilt; that of the theologian who repudiates the legal or judicial aspect of Christ's death, and considers that Christ has satisfied the demands of the divine nature, by His spotless obedience to the divine will, by His representing before God what man should have been, or, in other words, by His example of perfect holiness; that of him who understands Christ's bearing our sins to signify His enduring their penalty and His bearing them away by being made a sin offering on their account, so that by the shedding of His blood the penalty attaching to them was, in the eye of the Divine Law, satisfactorily met, and full atonement made for their guilt; and that of those who interpret Christ's bearing our sins as meaning nothing more than that He bore the weight of them as of men's sicknesses and sorrows upon His heart; that He died through coming into collision with men's sins, and that in order to satisfy the demands of the divine nature He maintained His obedience to the divine will, even though involved the sacrifice of His life upon a Cross.

Again, I repeat, if the purpose of the article is to include these different views, that purpose has been pretty fairly met.

3. Under the Article concerning Justification by Faith, which has been truncated by omitting the words "solely on account of Christ's perfect obedience and atoning sacrifice," it is no less obvious that theologians of various schools may lovingly embrace each other—he who considers that a man is justified by his good works, by and on account of his repentance and faith, his confession and forsaking of sin, or in other words, by and on account of his evangelical self-righteousness; and he who disclaims each and all of these together as a ground of acceptance before God, and finds this alone in the perfect obedience and atoning sacrifice, or, in other words, in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. There is little room for doubting that under this Article ministers and elders might find shelter who, while not altogether discarding Christ's death as an example of self-sacrificing love, yet assign to it no value whatever as an atonement or expiation.

4. Through the absence of any Articles on election, Re-generation, and Perseverance, it will, of course, be possible for the same Church to embrace Calvinists and Arminians, those who believe that salvation is all of grace, and those who consider that it is partly of divine grace and parly or human effort, co-operating with one another, but acting independently; those who hold that a soul which has been truly regenerated, though it may fall away for a time, cannot fall away finally, but through grace will be recovered and renewed to repentance; and those who assert that a man may be a page 40 Christian to-day and not a Christian to-morrow, a renewed man one moment and an unrenewed man the next, in Christ and therefore safe, a forgiven man and an heir of Eternal Life now and after was out of Christ, and therefore under condemnation and in danger of Eternal Death. Without question, if the contemplated union designs to embrace theses varieties of doctrine, it will demand a creed wide enough, loose enough, and flexible enough to admit of the disciples of these contradictory views living harmoniously together; but an important question at this point naturally presents itself, whether such a union would not be happier without a creed at all, since with such diversity of sentiment under almost every Article it is doubtful if any sort of theological opinion could in the long run be excluded.

5. What is written about the Last Judgment is so true that one may easily be regarded as hypercritical should he attempt to find fault with it; and yet, by excluding the words of Christ—"When the wicked shall go away," etc.—anyone can see that a door is opened for all ideas current in religious circles with regard to the destinies of men—for those of Roman Catholics, who believe in purgatorial fires; for those of Conditional Immortality men, who believe in the annihilation of the wicked; for those of Second Probation theorists who believe that the unconverted dead will receive another chance of salvation beyond the grave; and for those of Universalists, who believe that all will ultimately be saved. How a Church will get along whose pulpits may be filled by men of such varied theological hues is not easy to see, and how hearers in the pews are to be kept from becoming bewildered when they listen, say, on five successive Sabbaths to discourses on the Future Life from an Orthodox Preacher on Eternal Punishment, from a Roman Catholic Father on Purgatory, from a Conditional Immortality Divine on the Annihilation of the Wicked, from a Second Probationist on a Second Chance hereafter, and from a Universalist on the Restoration of All to happiness beyond the Grave, it will puzzle the wit of man to say. If the experiment is to be tried in New Zealand without doubt it will be watched from this side of the world with interest, but I fear not with much hope of its turning out a success.

Yours sincerely,

Thomas Whitelaw.