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Handout #265 |
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The Gospel and the Church |
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The publication of Loisy's little red book,
The Gospel and the Church (1902), marks the beginning of the climax of the
modernist crisis. Mgr Mignot, Archbishop of Albi, had approved its main
outline. The Affirmations which seemed shocking then are much less so when
one reads them in the context of the work.
The message of Jesus consists in the proclamation of the nearness of the kingdom and an exhortation to repentance in order to be able to have a part I the kingdom. All that has entered into the Christian tradition. What is truly evangelical in the Christianity of today is not that which has never changed, for in a sense everything has changed, but that which, despite at external changes, arises out of the impulse given by Christ, is inspired by his Spirit, and serves the same ideal and the same hope. Jesus proclaimed the kingdom, and what came was the church. It came by broadening the form of the gospel, which it was impossible to keep as it was, since the ministry of Jesus had been brought to an end by the passion. It is natural that dogmatic symbols and definitions should relate to the general state of human knowledge in the time and place where they were formed. It follows that a considerable change in the state of science can necessitate a new interpretation of ancient formulae which, conceived as they were in another intellectual atmosphere, can no longer say all that they need to, or do not say it as they should. In that case a distinction is to be made between the material sense and the formula, the external image that it presents and which is in accord with the accepted ideas of antiquity, and its strictly religious and Christian significance, the basic idea, which can be reconciled with other views on the constitution of the world and the nature of things ... Truth alone is immutable, but not its image in our spirit. As a result of political and intellectual evolution, a great religious crisis has developed almost everywhere. The best means of remedying it does not seem to be to suppress all ecclesiastical organizations, all orthodoxy and all traditional worship, which would put Christianity outside life and humanity, but to make best use of what it is, with a view to what it must be; not to reject that which the Christian centuries have handed down to our own to appreciate duly the need and usefulness of the immense development which has taken place in the church, to gather its fruits and to continue it, since the adaptation of the gospel to the changing conditions of humanity is more important today than it has ever been. Alfred Loisy, The Gospel and the Church (fourth edition 1908). |
