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problems of religion in our moment.
Well, it is true that even in the Protestant culture no one who counts
would tolerate the serious discussion of such rubbish on lines familiar
only half a lifetime ago; yet it must be admitted as a Survival--though the
most exhausted of them all--because its effect, in the English-speaking
world at least, is still felt.
I will give three examples:
Dr. Gore, a man of the highest cultivation, was lately careful
to distinguish between the story of Jonah and the whale, and the
miracles of Our Lord. The first he reverently abandoned--the
second he deferentially admitted. We must recognize that the
mere existence of such an attitude is a serious proof that
Literalism still has some vitality even in Europe, or, at any
rate, in this country. It seems that in the eyes of men of the
first rank in the Anglican Hierarchy the Literalist is still a
figure to be reckoned with.
My second example is from a recent article by Mr. Arnold
Bennett. That deservedly popular writer is perhaps in closer
touch with his contemporary fellow-countrymen than any of his
colleagues in the province of letters, wherein he has achieved
such eminence. Well, in discussing the causes for the breakdown
of religion he says that it was successfully attacked at its
"only vulnerable point" the Bible. These words are not
applicable to the Catholic, for whom the Bible depends on the
Church, not the Church on the Bible. But they are full of
meaning to those who, though no longer Bible- Christians,
remember Bible Christianity as identical with religion.
Mr. Bennett makes no such confusion. He knows the world too well
to err on the nature of Catholicism. But here he rightly takes
it for granted that his vast English audience have a universal
tradition of a Religion based on the Bible. And he is right.
My third example shall be from another writer of high standing
in our time, thoroughly representative of modern English thought
and also in close sympathy with his great audience; skeptical in
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SURVIVALS AND NEW ARRIVALS 25
profession, though as Protestant as Dr. Gore in morals and
tradition--I mean Mr. H. G. Wells.
Mr. H. G. Wells has been at great pains to discuss the fall of
man, in which considerable catastrophe he puts no faith. But
when he discusses the fall of man he always has in mind the
eating of an apple in a particular place at a particular time.
When he hears that there is no Catholic doctrine defining the
exact place or the exact time--not even the name of the apple,
he shrewdly suspects that we are shirking the main issue. He
thinks in terms of the Bible Christian--with whom he disagrees.
The main issue for European civilization in general is whether man fell or
no. Whether man was created for beatitude, enjoyed a supernatural state,
fell by rebellion from that state into the natural but unhappy condition in
which he now stands, subject to death, clouded in intellect and rotted with
pride, yet with a memory of greater things, an aspiration to recover them,
and a power of so doing by right living in this world of his exile; or
whether man is on a perpetual ascent from viler to nobler things, a biped
worthy of his own respect in this life and sufficient to his own destiny.
On that great quarrel the future of our race depends. But the inventors of
Bible Christianity, even when they have lost their original creeds, do not
see it thus. They take the main point to be, whether it were an apple--who
munched it--exactly where--and exactly when. They triumphantly discover
that no fruit or date can be established, and they conclude that the
Christian scheme is ruined and the Fall a myth.
It is clear then that the most eminent writers in the Protestant culture
can still be concerned with Literalism. It is almost equally clear that
they have never grasped that full doctrine of the Fall--the sole doctrine
explanatory of our state--upon which, coupled with that of the Incarnation,
the Catholic Church bases all Her theology.
To put the thing in epigram (and therefore, of course, quite
insufficiently), they are certain that we are animals which have risen.
They have not met the idea that we may be a sort of angel who fell.
Now I submit that if men of this eminence take the Literalists thus
seriously--one solemnly arguing with them, another not understanding that
there has been any other kind of believer--there must be trace of life in
Literalism still.
There are, of course, innumerable other instances. You can hardly find an
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