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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
In his study of the development of Anglican theology in the years 1889–1939 Archbishop Ramsey observes that R. C. Moberly's Atonement and Personality ‘stands apart with a certain loneliness alike in achievement and in failure. To read it is still a searching experience. It belongs to the literature of spirituality no less than to the literature of dogmatics.’ So interesting a judgment suggests that Moberly's study is one of those books which deserve periodic re-assessment and it is the purpose of this article to attempt such a re-assessment, albeit in a brief and modest manner.
page 259 note 1 In the early stages of the writing of this paper I was greatly helped by conversations with the Rev. P. D. Ouzts (now of Clinton, South Carolina) whose S.T.M. thesis (in the library of the General Theological Seminary, New York) deals with the theological positions of R. C. Moberly.
page 259 note 2 From Gore to Temple; the development of Anglican Theology between Lux Mundi and the Second World War 1889–1939 (Longmans, London, 1960), p. 46.Google Scholar
page 259 note 3 Atonement and Personality (J. Murray, London, 1901), pp. 4ff and 382–396.Google Scholar Henceforth cited as AP.
page 260 note 1 The Nature of the Atonement (Clarke, London, 1959, 4th edn.), p. 117.Google Scholar
page 260 note 2 Moberly (AP, p. 405), regards Campbell as meaning to anticipate his (i.e. Moberly's), theory, whereby the content consists of that perfect penitence which is identical with perfect holiness.
page 261 note 1 Professor T. F. Torrance has pointed out to me that it is a real question whether Moberly appreciated McLeod Campbell properly. I am inclined to agree though I am not here concerned to assess Moberly's criticisms of Campbell but, rather, to use these criticisms, as Moberly himself did, as a starting point.
page 262 note 1 cf. ‘We dare not explain away the awful word “Hell”, as meaning only a purgatory. We dare not, until the possibility of Hell has been authoritatively explained away, deny the ultimate possibility of the idea of a punishment which is not restorative’ (AP, p. 12).
page 262 note 2 ‘The facts of religion address themselves to the whole nature of man; and it is only by the whole nature of man that they can be ever fully apprehended’ (Lux Mundi, p. 229).
page 262 note 3 Was it H. R. Mackintosh who said that we fail to understand the Atonement, not because we are not wise enough but because we are not good enough?
page 263 note 1 Ministerial Priesthood (J. Murray, London, 1910, 2nd edn.), p. xliii.Google Scholar
page 263 note 2 ‘Historic theology comes with me to the text, if not simply as a voice of authoritative interpretation, yet as a hypothesis which offers to interpret; and a hypothesis which has at least a presumption in its favour’ (ibid., p. xv).
page 263 note 3 Moberly laid great stress on the existence, influence, and necessity of having, though also examining, one's presuppositions. He discusses the matter most fully in the preface to Ministerial Priesthood.
page 264 note 1 Lux Mundi (J. Murray, London, 1890, 9th edn.), pp. 245ff.Google Scholar
page 264 note 2 A History of the Doctrine of the Work of Christ, vol. II (Hodder and Stoughton, London, n.d.), pp. 435–436.Google Scholar Commenting on the influence of Idealism on the Lux Mundi school, Ramsey says: ‘They are, broadly speaking, akin to Green in their concept of the world as having a “spiritual” as opposed to a “materialistic” interpretation, and in their frequent use of the category of “personality” for the understanding of man's place in the world and God's relation to it. But otherwise it is possible to exaggerate the dependence’ (op cit., p. 10).
page 265 note 1 There is also a chapter entitled ‘Recapitulation’; another entitled ‘Our Present Imperfection’, the latter setting out what may loosely be called the devotional power of the theory advanced in the book as a whole; and a final, supplementary chapter which gives a brief survey of the historical forms of the doctrine of Atonement.
page 266 note 1 There is a curious inconsistency in Moberly's thought, detected by Rashdall, and exposed by him in his review of Moberly's, book in Journal of Theological Studies, vol. 3 (1901–1902), pp. 178–211.Google Scholar Moberly says that the retributive aspect of punishment belongs to the imperfection of human justice and yet, that if punishment does not achieve the aim of reformation, we yet continue to punish (AP, pp. 11–12). Rashdall observes: ‘It requires some boldness to maintain that punishment is not originally retributive, and yet that, when punishment is known to be useless for its true purpose, we should go on punishing’ (JTS, vol. 3, p. 187). It is Rashdall's view that Moberly, whose respect for traditional belief was great, desired to safeguard the traditional doctrine of Hell. This seems as good an explanation as any and is suggested also by some of Moberly's own remarks (AP, pp. 12, 15, 24).
page 267 note 1 Summarising Moberly's position, Franks says: ‘…justification or forgiveness anticipates sanctification in order that sanctification may be possible, and is ultimately justified by the achievement of sanctification’ (op. cit., p. 430).
page 267 note 2 Rashdall states Moberly's position as: ‘Ideal forgiveness is simply the attitude of love (which includes due hatred of the sin) in the form which it assumes towards one who has done wrong but has repented of the wrong. The nature of that attitude and its exact manifestation, in the way of remitted penalty or otherwise, will depend upon the amount and the nature of the offender's penitence’ (op. cit., P. 195).
page 268 note 1 ‘There is, and there can be, no such thing as impersonal humanity…. The root and origin of his Personality may not be human’ (AP, p. 94). This displays the two sides of Moberly's Christology. There is much similar language, almost perversely paradoxical.
page 268 note 2 cf. ‘If Christ's Humanity were not the Humanity of Deity, it could not stand in the wide, inclusive, consummating relation, in which it stands in fact, to the humanity of all other men’ (AP, p. 90).
page 269 note 1 ‘We may conveniently distinguish two primary needs, and achievements, in the work of the Mediator. There is on the one hand, the sanctification of the present; on the other, the cancelling of the past’ (AP, p. 98).
page 270 note 1 Moberly tries to connect the two in the following passage: ‘If, from our point of view, the point of view of the imperfectly penitent, penitence must include meek acceptance of punishment, remember that punishment, so far as it ministers to righteousness, is only itself an element in penitence. What would have been punishment till it became penitence, is, in the perfectly contrite, only as penitence. It is true that penitence is a condition of suffering. The suffering of penitence may quite fairly be termed penal suffering. But whatever suffering is involved in penitence is part of the true penitent's freewill offering of heartwhole condemnation of sin. To the penitent, in proportion as he is perfected, there is no punishment outside his penitence’ (AP, p. 131).
page 270 note 2 We have here almost an anticipation of Barth's suggestion that Jesus Christ assumed fallen human nature, for Moberly thinks that Jesus was, in his human nature, so far affected by sin, that he could know the meaning of sinful separation, of what sin means from within a real experience of its effects in a human life.
page 270 note 3 ‘An objective fact that is not apprehended in any sense subjectively is to those who have no subjective relation to it, as if it were non-existent…. It (i.e. the Cross) is first a historical, that it may come to be a personal, fact’ (AP, pp. 141, 143).
page 271 note 1 This is reflected in a curious variation among theologians commenting on Moberly's doctrine of the Trinity. Ramsey (op. cit., pp. 182ff) is not harshly critical of the ‘social approach’ to understanding the doctrine of the Trinity; he finds Moberly's views congenial. But then so does Franks, R. S. (The Doctrine of the Trinity [Duckworth, London, 1953], pp. 197ff)Google Scholar, who stands opposed to such social views and sees Moberly as anticipating that Barthian ‘modalism’ which he (Franks), regards as the most satisfactory modern approach. Welch, , however (In this Name [Scribners, New York, 1952], pp. 29ff)Google Scholar, classes Moberly as being among those theologians who, by following out the ‘social approach’, ultimately fail to do justice to the monotheism of the New Testament.
There are, in fact, two sides to Moberly's language which, as always, so here, is difficult enough in itself. On the one hand there is a strong stress on the Divine Unity (pp. 154–5), and yet, within God, there is said to be an essential, threefold distinction which has its most adequate analogue in human relationships. To Moberly the essential characteristic of human personality is ‘relatedness’ and what he believes to exist in God is the possibility of relatedness without separation. But human relations are analogous only, since, whereas separation is to some extent necessary for a union of love between created personalities, Moberly envisages this necessity as not applying in the Divine order.
On pp. 174ff Moberly works out a very satisfying analogy from man, as he is in himself, as he expresses himself, and as he is in response to himself: this line of thought comes close to Barth's Revealer, Revelation, and Revealedness. The most misleading passages in a tritheistic direction are those in which Moberly uses the term ‘personality’ indiscriminately, both of the Divine Nature and of its ‘subsistent relations’ without indicating the difficulties in such a usage.
Moberly was probably anxious to avoid suggesting that God is dependent on Creation, and felt that the Johannine statements of Jesus's relationship to the Father and the Spirit required a ‘social approach’. On this, see Ramsey, op. cit., p. 181, where it is suggested that this latter consideration has weighed with those Anglicans who have followed out a ‘social’ line of interpretation.
page 272 note 1 cf. ‘Here this pantheistic tendency becomes evident, for human personality is in danger of being lost in the Spirit, while the Spirit himself is attentuated into an influence or identified with divine grace’ (Hughes, T. H., The Atonement: modern theories of the doctrine [Allen and Unwin, London, 1949], p. 155)Google Scholar. If grace be conceived as Oman did in Grace and Personality, what is wrong with identifying the Spirit of God and the Grace of God?
page 272 note 2 Problems and Principles (Longmans, New York, 1904), pp.Google Scholar
page 272 note 3 Two other, less important criticisms, are sometimes made. Hughes (op. cit., p. 147), complains that Moberly has no real discussion of the nature of sin though its reality is assumed and Moberly writes with fine insight of its reality and power. It might be retorted, half-seriously, that there is quite enough in Moberly's book without adding to it. If the criticism be taken to suggest that Moberly thought in terms of ‘sins’ rather than of sin as, basically, the attitude of un-faith, this would seem unfair. In interpreting the Atonement Moberly thinks, above all, of the restoration of a personal relationship.
Other writers have pointed out that Moberly does not explain why Jesus actually had to die. It may well be true that Moberly never quite explains how death is the consummation of the penitence of Jesus but then, as Rashdall sees very clearly, Moberly never quite made up his mind whether it was a theory of vicarious penitence or vicarious suffering that he wished to advocate. Moberly does, however, as Franks especially notes (A History of the Doctrine of the Work Christ, vol. II, p. 433), view the death of Jesus as the consummation ‘of the discipline by which he (Jesus) learned obedience’.
page 273 note 1 Rashdall, op. cit., pp. 201–2. See also Baillie, D. M., God was in Christ (Faber and Faber, London, 1948), pp. 86–87.Google Scholar
page 273 note 2 It was pointed out by critics that Moberly's view is untrue to the New Testament in two senses: (1) whether Jesus shared in our fallen human nature, or not, he betrays no personal consciousness of sin (some might want to say—the New Testament records that he betrayed no such consciousness), and, (2) the New Testament writers do not even hint at Moberly's way of interpreting the work of Christ. In an appendix to AP Moberly surveys New Testament teaching but does not cite any passages or leading ideas which offer direct support to his theory.
page 274 note 1 Hughes (op. cit., pp. 135ff), seeks to shift the stress of obedience and to explain this aspect of the Atonement by means of the idea that there is ‘a sum of moral values’ in the universe to which every righteous act contributes something and so adds to the wealth and potency of the moral order. Yet this sort of philosopher's treasury of merit is hardly a necessary accompaniment of a theory of the Atonement which employs obedience as a key category.
page 274 note 2 The Christian Experience of Forgiveness (Nisbet, London, 1927), pp. 244–245.Google Scholar
page 275 note 1 This is not to deny, of course, that such application raises questions and requires justification, but so large a question cannot be entered upon here.
page 275 note 2 On the trinitarian and christological issues see C. Welch, op. cit., pp. 252ff. On christological issues, it is interesting to note that the thought of K. Rahner stresses very strongly the humanity of Jesus. Cf. ‘We have constantly to remind ourselves that human-being is not some absolutely terminated quality, which, while persisting as a quite self-contained whole indifferent to all else, is combined with some other thing (in this case the Logos) by a wholly external miracle. Human-being is rather a reality absolutely open upwards; a reality which reaches its highest (though indeed “unexacted”) perfection, the realization of the highest possibility of man's being, when in it the Logos becomes existent in the world’ (Theological Investigations, vol. I, [Helicon, Baltimore, 1961], p. 183; cf. pp. 161–164, 172).
page 276 note 1 How many sacraments are in mind here? Clearly the two, of Baptism and the Holy Communion which occupy a special place, by reason of their special connexion with those central revelatory events which lie at the heart of Christianity. Tillich, P. (Systematic Theology, vol. 3 [Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1964], p. 124)Google Scholar remarks: ‘The definitive selection of great sacraments from the large number of sacramental possibilities depends on tradition, evaluation of importance and criticism of abuses. However, the decisive question is whether they possess and are able to preserve their power of mediating the Spiritual Presence.’ The readiness of some Protestants to re-open the question is evidenced by, e.g., Thurian, M., Confession (S.C.M. Press, London, 1958)Google Scholar, and, from the point of view of a Liberal Evangelical within Anglicanism, by Moule, C. F. D., The Sacrifice of Christ (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1956), p. 55.Google Scholar
page 276 note 2 Bouyer, L., Rite and Man (Univ. of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1963), PP. 55, 208.Google Scholar
page 277 note 1 Tillich, op. cit., p. 122.
page 277 note 2 No Cross No Crown (Archon Books, Haraden, Conn., 1962), p. 179.Google Scholar