The writing and correspondence of Hastings Rashdall: 1915 to 1924
HastingsRashdall.org.uk
Contemporary Reports on Rashdall's presentation of the Bampton Lectures
Oxford Magazine, 12th
February 1915:
A correspondent writes:
“The large congregation - including junior as well as senior members of the University - which assembled in St. Mary’s last Sunday to listen to the first of Dr. Rashdall’s Bampton Lectures on the Atonement was an evidence both of the deservedly high reputation of the lecturer and of the interest of his subject. Yet it must be confessed that the first lecture was disappointing. No new or original apercu of the subject was opened up. Divine forgiveness, we were told, followed at once upon human repentance - a statement with which few would be disposed to quarrel; but no attempt was made to analyse the conceptions of repentance and forgiveness, or to show how either process is possible. As for the Atonement, it is hardly too much to say that it disappears altogether from Dr. Rashdall’s reading of the Gospels - with the consequence that the development of Christian thought on the subject is divorced from its historical origins. No doubt the doctrine of vicarious suffering has frequently been presented in forms in which it is exposed to certain obvious criticisms on moral and rational grounds; but Dr. Rashdall’s attempt, nevertheless, to eliminate the conception entirely from the mind of the historical Jesus as reflected in the Gospels bore all the marks of special pleading. Perhaps the succeeding lectures, in which the lecturer is to trace the history of the doctrine of atonement in later Christian theology, will prove more sympathetic and constructive in treatment.”
Another correspondent complained that Rashdall did not thank the Founder of the Lectures in the required form.
A correspondent writes:
“The large congregation - including junior as well as senior members of the University - which assembled in St. Mary’s last Sunday to listen to the first of Dr. Rashdall’s Bampton Lectures on the Atonement was an evidence both of the deservedly high reputation of the lecturer and of the interest of his subject. Yet it must be confessed that the first lecture was disappointing. No new or original apercu of the subject was opened up. Divine forgiveness, we were told, followed at once upon human repentance - a statement with which few would be disposed to quarrel; but no attempt was made to analyse the conceptions of repentance and forgiveness, or to show how either process is possible. As for the Atonement, it is hardly too much to say that it disappears altogether from Dr. Rashdall’s reading of the Gospels - with the consequence that the development of Christian thought on the subject is divorced from its historical origins. No doubt the doctrine of vicarious suffering has frequently been presented in forms in which it is exposed to certain obvious criticisms on moral and rational grounds; but Dr. Rashdall’s attempt, nevertheless, to eliminate the conception entirely from the mind of the historical Jesus as reflected in the Gospels bore all the marks of special pleading. Perhaps the succeeding lectures, in which the lecturer is to trace the history of the doctrine of atonement in later Christian theology, will prove more sympathetic and constructive in treatment.”
Another correspondent complained that Rashdall did not thank the Founder of the Lectures in the required form.
Oxford Magazine, 26th February 1915:
Dr. Rashdall who put himself in order this time by remember- ing all his Colleges at length and “John Bampton, Canon of Salisbury, Founder of this Lecture” had not quite so large an audience last Sunday as a fortnight before, but the congregation was still a very good one for these times. The second lecture was clearer and better argued than the first. The lecturer continued to develop his attack in force on the Protestant doctrine of justification, following up the reconnaissance of his first lecture and making his approach from more sides than one. He asked how the doctrine of justification by faith had arisen. It was interesting to hear him quote Professor Goldwin Smith, now a very ancient name, as an authority for the view that it was the invention of St. Paul. This however, as he showed, St. Paul himself disproved beyond a doubt when he said that he preached was he had received.
The lecturer then suggested that the doctrine, which, as he argued, was neither taught by Our Lord, nor first discovered by St. Paul, found its origin in the brief period between the death of Christ and the conversion of the Apostle, and was derived by the Jewish Church from its own study and interpretation of Hebrew prophecy.
The Magazine is not the place, nor has it the space, to discuss these questions. It is sufficient to say that the position, as maintained and supported, shows not a little originality. It will be very interesting to see how the lecturer develops his thesis further.
Further contemporary reports