oEsteemed and Beloved Brothers, — I am ashamed and thankful, — ashamed for the place which is given to me after my brother and friend, Dr. Schaff, and thankful that I can express here a thought which has occupied my mind since the moment I heard of this great Assembly — a thought which links itself closely with the remarkable report which you have just heard.
o – Allocution donnée au Conseil général des Églises presbytériennes; Édimbourg, juillet 1877 ; paru dans Report of Proceedings of the First General Presbyterian Council (Edimburgh, 1877). Le titre de l’article est de nous.
It seems to me, while our Confessions of Faith of the sixteenth century have for their central point the election of grace and justification by faith, the main point of our profession in the present century should be the real, personal, pre-existential divinity of our Lord and Saviour; and that, if our Presbyterian Churches shall to-day give out one of these great signs of life which are called Confessions of Faith, this point must be the centre of it. That is the summary of what I have to say.
The Synodical constitution, which is the characteristic feature in the organisation of the Presbyterian Churches, is not an end, but a means. This organisation is designed, on the one hand, to preserve the purity of Gospel preaching; and, on the other, to adapt with ease Christian teaching to the requirements of every time. And, in fact, is anything more fit for the attainment of this double end than a Synod concentrating in itself all the living strength of a Church, which recruits herself unceasingly by the free evangelical confession of her members?
What is, in our day, the main point of evangelical truth, to the service of which our Synods ought, before all else, to devote the authority which the Church confers upon them, our schools of theology their science, and our preachers the energy of their testimony? It appears to me that there is no question more important for this assembly than this. May I be permitted to lay before you, in a few moments, the reply that my conscience leads me to make to it.
Dr. Schaff has this instant recalled it to your memories. In the sixteenth century it was justification by faith which became the centre of Protestant confessions, especially of those of our Presbyterian Churches. On this point there was no sensible difference between Luther, Calvin, Knox, and Farel. Throughout the middle ages this fundamental truth of the Gospel had been undermined by the doctrine of meritorious works. It was necessary, before all things, to re-establish this foundation; otherwise the Christian edifice was doomed to crumble away. Gratitude to the Reformers who acquitted themselves of this task ! Special honour to him in whose heart the Spirit of God then wrote in letters of fire, as he had before written in the heart of St Paul, this luminous word, — « The just shall live by faith » If the work of the Reformer has endured, if it is that which assembles us here to-day, from all parts of the earth as we might say, this proves that it was the work not of man, but of God.
But there is, at the same time, one thing which we must not forget; justification by faith, which has been the soul of this work, is not the whole of Apostolic teaching, it is not the whole teaching of St. Paul himself. A well-known scholar of the present time, Dr. Baur of Tubingen, has pretended to show that all St. Paul’s teaching reduces itself in some manner to this point, justification by faith, and consequently all those epistles attributed to the Apostle, which have not justification by faith as the dominant thought, cannot be from him.
But St Paul himself was not of this mind. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians, an epistle received by Baur, St. Paul plainly declares that beyond the elementary teaching which he had given to the Corinthians — that of justification by faith, there existed a higher Christian teaching which he possessed and expounded to those who were perfect; that is to Bay, to those who were already in full possession of justification by faith, and who had decidedly rejected all admixture of works. « Howbeit, » says he to the Corinthian scorners, who reproached him with not being able to raise himself above the first elements, — « Howbeit, we speak wisdom among them that are perfect » This wisdom he soon after names « meat » for well-grown men as opposite to « milk » for children.
To sinners who were yet in a state of condemnation, it was naturally of no avail to communicate wisdom; to such salvation must be offered. But to believers, reconciled and justified, a wisdom was to be taught, corresponding to the fresh needs to which the new spiritual life within had given birth.
Would St. Paul have left this higher teaching, destined for more advanced Christians, quite unexplained in all his Epistles, even in those addressed to such Churches as had been founded the longest ? That is difficult to believe. Such reticence would be wholly inexplicable, and it is here that those Epistles to the Colossians, to the Ephesians, and to the Philippians, which the scholar of Tubingen has unadvisedly discarded, take their natural and necessary place among the Apostle’s letters.
If we desire to understand what St. Paul meant by the wisdom which he preached to the perfect, let us open one of these Epistles and we shall there gain some idea of it He had explained and demonstrated in the preceding letters, those to the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians, the work of salvation. In the three which I have just mentioned he mounts up from the work to the Worker. He occupies himself essentially with the person of Christ, and with his union to the Church.
In the Colossians he unveils the divine pre-existence of Christ. Christ, the express image of the Father, existed before all things. He is the author of all creation, celestial and terrestrial; the whole universe subsists but in him, the Redeemer of man, the Head of the Church.
In the Ephesians St. Paul makes us contemplate the beauty of the Church. Elected from eternity by the Father, the predestined bride of the Son, she is the body that Christ fills with the fulness of God, even as he possesses it in himself; composed here below by the union of Jews and of Heathen, to that end she associates to herself the whole hierarchy of heavenly spirits, under the sovereignty of Christ, the universal Head.
At last in the Philippians the Apostle shows us the mysterious act by which the Son came to seek his bride here below, and to unite himself to her for ever. He unrobes himself willingly of the « form of God, » of his glorious heavenly estate; he renounces all power and knowledge, and all attributes constituting the divine Being, to take upon him the form of a servant, the form of a purely human being, subject to the conditions of the dependence, the poverty, and the infirmity which constitute our earthly existence. And after having undergone all the phases of this truly human condition, he ended by giving himself voluntarily even to the death of the cross. But God, who is Love, and who loves above all love, returned to him all that he had freely sacrificed, his human life by the resurrection, and his divine glory in the ascension, in such manner that the Lord of all things, before whom every knee shall bow, is now Jesus, the Son of man, our Brother.
What light and what new strength flow to believers from this higher teaching of the Apostle! All that the faithful can need for their illumination and their sanctification is included in it. The connection between the two divine works of creation and of redemption, the relation between the universe and the Church, radiate with brightness, and the source of divine strength is open for each member by union with this divine Head. So this higher teaching crowns that of justification by faith.
At the same time, how much does this teaching lift up the elementary preaching of the Cross! How propitiation gains in importance and value by this revelation of the person of Christ the propitiator! It is in contemplating the divine nature and grandeur of the Crucified One that we are able to begin to measure, according to St. Paul’s expression, all the dimensions of the Cross — its length, its breadth, its depth, and its height.
If Christ be not the eternal Son of God, as Paul teaches it in the Epistle to the Colossians, God has given us, in his coming, nothing of his own (ἐκ τοῦ ἰδίου). It is the love of the man for the man that we admire there, not that of God for us. But if Christ is really the One who existed before everything, the beloved of the Father, then we possess in him all that God himself possessed of what was dearest and most precious, and we can say to God what God said to Abraham after Isaac’s offering: « Now I know that thou lovest me, for thou hast not spared for me thy Son, thy own. » (Romains 8.31.)
If Christ be not the eternal Son, he has cast off nothing in being born, and his death is no more the free gift of his human existence. It is one of the grand tragedies of human history, but it contains nothing more that concerns me personally. If, on the contrary, his human life is the result of the greatest act of self-denial, the renouncement of his divine state, and if his death is a second voluntary sacrifice, crowning the first, then he can ask all of me. What sacrifice on my part were too great in answer to such a sacrifice ! I am wrested from myself and transplanted into him. As one died for all, all are dead to themselves, and are living for him alone. (2 Corinthiens 6.14)
If Christ is only a saint more perfect than other men, I have in him a sublime pattern. Only where is to be found the strength to imitate him? But is it so, as says St. Paul, that there lives the whole fulness of divinity bodily in him, then I have incessantly all in him, and it is he who transforms me to his resemblance, and who realises in me, as in himself, the sublime type of the Man-God. Thus the greatness of the work can only be felt if we have understood the divine greatness of the Worker.
Honoured brothers, this supreme point of the gospel, the eternal divinity of Christ, has not been especially marked in the confessions of faith of the sixteenth century. And that for the simple reason that the whole Church was of one mind on this matter. There was no difference on this matter between the Catholic and the Protestant conscience. It is otherwise now. A large party of the members of the Protestant Church abandon the faith of their fathers on this point. The breath of denial which reigns to-day has penetrated even to the most elevated regions of Christian dogma. The Christological question has taken in the preoccupation of the century, the place of the Soteriological problems. The sixteenth century demanded of Jesus, « What hast thou done? » The nineteenth asks him, « Who art thou? » or, even as Pilate, « Whence art thou? »
In many circles where even the gospel is honoured, and salvation in Christ preached, one hears but obscure and indecisive answers to this chief question. Men speak of a purely ideal pre-existence of the Lord Jesus. They recognise in him the Elect of God, but the Elect in the same sense as the Church; Elect in the divine purpose. The personal pre-existence which is the characteristic of his real divinity, and in the thought of which the teaching of Paul and of John, and in reality the whole Scriptures, converge as in a sublime summit, is discarded or evaded.
And meanwhile all these Christian facts, as we have seen, lose their striking grandeur, all evangelical truths are diminished, and the whole of Christianity deprived of its spiritual efficacy, from the moment that a veil is thrown over the divinity of the Redeemer.
« Who is he that overcometh the world, cries St. John, at the end of a long Christian experience, « but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God; » this faith is the victory which overcometh the world. The old witness of the first triumphs of the Church over the world, over its seductions even as over its hatred, saw and shows just in this point the victorious power of the gospel; and, in fact, where otherwise will the believer find the full enjoyment of the divine love? What power could still succeed in wresting him to himself? and where shall we find the bread of Heaven which gave life to the world? There remains of the gospel only an inefficacious residue; the power is gone.
Esteemed brothers, shall we abandon to the Church of the Pope the honour of upholding in the face of Protestant unbelief the two pillars of gospel salvation, the incarnation and the expiation? That would be to condemn it to life, and ourselves to death. Let the Presbyterian Churches — which, since the sixteenth century, have so gloriously defended the basis of the gospel, justification by faith, against the papacy — unite themselves to-day against Protestant rationalism, and become the immoveable support of that which makes the crown of the gospel — the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ.
St. John said to the Church of Philadelphia, « Hold fast thy crown. » Our crown, beloved brothers, is that the Son of God became man like unto us, and will glorify humanity in us as he glorified it in himself, and make it the free organ of divine life, of divine thought, of divine will, of divine love. Let us hold fast this crown, and wherever we cast it, let it not be into the hands of the enemy, but at the feet of him who has placed it upon our head.
I do not, in closing, ask from you any outward demonstration. I only claim from you, in your names, in the name of the Churches which we are here to represent, an inward act of adoration and consecration to Christ as our Lord and our God.
St. Paul said, « No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. »
May the Holy Spirit, who glorifies Jesus only, rest on this assembly at this moment, and work in each of our hearts, there to form this cry of adoration, that shall arise even to His throne, —
Jesus, my Lord and my God!
During the closing address of the council, Professor Godet said:
Honoured add Beloved Brothers, — Many of my co-delegates from the Continent have intrusted me with a most agreeable message to you — the message of gratitude. It is a rich subject; but I must be brief. St. Paul in Athens — for we are in the Athens of the north; your Castle, the Acropolis; the Calton Hill, Lycabettus; Leith, the Piræneus; the beautiful Firth of Forth, the Gulf of Salamis; even the Island is not wanting. St. Paul in Athens took his start-point from a word he has just been reading in this city. Let me introduce my few remarks by a word I have not ceased to hear since I have set my foot upon British soil: All right!
Constantly hearing this All right of yours, I have said to my self: Happy the people whose motto is — All right! Happy the country of righteousness!
In the railroad from Newhaven to London, I admired on each side of the road large and beautiful buildings standing on the hills, and I said within myself: This must be the castle of some English lord. But when I put the question, I received the answer, This is an Asylum for the blind, and that for the widow, and this other for the deaf and dumb. Then I thought: Happy the country where the afflicted are lordly treated! Happy the nation of Christian love!
The first day I set my foot on Scottish soil, it was with a feeling of deep reverence. It seemed to me that I stood on sacred ground, and surely God has consecrated this land by the power of his Word and by the blood of the martyrs.
On the second day, another feeling added itself to the first: I felt at home. Scotland — Switzerland; the two names are not unlike. May the same be said of the two nations! I mean of course: May the Swiss become more like the Scotch! May the country, which has been our home for ten days, become more and more, by the Lord’s grace, Light in the World! May the United Kingdom become indeed the Kingdom of God!
Dear inhabitants of the beautiful city of Edinburgh; venerated Churches of Christ in Scotland; devoted brothers, who have so admirably organised this great Christian festival, accept our most heartfelt thanks. May God give you back tenfold all the good you have done to us!