The Story of a Spiritual Pilgrimage
If ever a book was written to meet a precise historical situation, surely this book was written for the hour in which we live. As the author tells us, it is is a sense a product of the times through which we have been passing. But it s not merely timely in that sense, but in the deeper and more vital sense that it is a prophetic message, a positive contribution to an understanding of the present and a preparation for the future. It is not that it has anything new to say, or that it is the first of a series. It is in line, in general, with what has been written by Barth, Brunner, Niebuhr and others. But nevertheless there is that quality about it which makes it not only distinctive, but quite unique. Mr Davies does not merely repeat what he has read, or re-state the opinions and convictions of others. What he has written he has discovered and thought through for himself. As I read it, Onto orthodoxy constantly reminded me of Rosalind Murray's The failure of a good pagan the common feature being that both are written on the basis of personal experience and are avowedly personal confessions.
There is nothing doctrinaire or detached in the outlook of the book. It is intensely practical and vital; indeed, exciting. With the thoroughness of a true zealot, Mr Davies has invariably practised what he preached. He has staked his all on what he believed, and has suffered the consequences. His book therefore is an intensely human record, and when he writes with passion and with heat, one feels that he is entitled to do so. From his early days as a boy in South Wales, through to the period of his days as a working miner, and afterwards a student in college, and an ordained minister, to his subsequent experiences as a freelance journalist, life has been to him a fight and a struggle. And yet there is no bitterness here. The whole background of the book is stated perfectly in the following passage, which is also a good example of his virile, pungent style.
In journeying from Pacifism to Marxism, I may claim that I have fairly boxed the compass of modernist navigation. To change the figure, I have explored most of the areas of Humanism and Modernism. I have travelled the world in order to reach next door. It is true no doubt that I would have saved much time, and avoided much complication and acute suffering, if I had gone straight next door. But, in that case, the thought of what I would have missed oppresses me. I have journeyed the desert stretches of Christian Liberalism; I have trudged along the Arctic wastes of Pacifism, where everything was simple and remote - oh! so remote! Everything just plain white or black. I saw men as figures walking. ... I have groped my painful way in the caverns of psycho-analysis. I have known even the despair of atheism. And I have been under the thrall of Marxism. From every one of these explorations I gained something I am certain I would never have won if I had been a good boy and stayed at home. For good or ill, my wondering has been the world, not the back garden.
That being the story the author tells us what he thinks now of the various places he has visited in his pilgrimage. It is difficult to think of anything more devastating on the subject of Christian Liberalism and Humanism than what we find here; and in like manner with the social gospel of which he was ever a fervent advocate and preacher.
From what I have said it will now be plain that I regard preaching the gospel of the forgivene of sin as the distinctive, unique and certainly most important tasl of the Church. Whatever she does in the way of social services constitutes no substitute. However many cheap meals she provides for the unemployed; however many billiard-tables and tennis clubs she gives to young people; however many psychological clinics, even, she opens - all these are worse than useless without preaching.Though she gives her body to be burned and reach not of sin, and of man's powerlessness and of the grace of God, it shall profit her nothing
He insists that the message of the gospel is primarily and most essentially personal, that nations cannot be convicted of sin, and that "committees and classes cannot repent". As negative apologetic and preparation for the gospel I have rarely if ever read anything stronger or more convincing. The utter futility of all that has so often passed as gospel during the past hundred years is made terribly and tragically clear. Surely this is what is needed above all else at the present time. And especially, first and foremost, in the Churches. That complacent optimistic view of man and his nature that has so long controlled and directed thought and preaching must be given up, and must be replaced by the tragic view which is taught everywhere in the Bible. Those who are still uncertain of that can do nothing better than study the arguments presented so cogently in this book.
So much for the negative aspect of the case. What of the positive? Mr Davies chooses as his title On to orthodoxy and in his conclusion he says "I shall have every sympathy with the reader who feels that my recovery of orthodoxy is incomplete". As a reader who belongs to that class I may be permitted a few observations. I am not concerned to point out how, in his view of the Bible, his attitude towards the proof of the facts of the Resurrection, his interpretation of the judgement of God and his teaching of the larger hope, Mr Davies deviates, and at times seriously, from traditional Protestant orthodoxy. For there is something else which is still more important. The great central and all important question for both Protestant and Roman Catholic orthodoxy has always been how should a man be right with God? The saints were not concerned primarily about their incapacity to "create a just society" but about themselves and their utter hopelessness and helplessness face to face with God. And at that point their primary problem was not as to how they could overcome and conquer the power of sin but how o be delivered from the guilt of sin and its penalty. In a most significant passage Mr Davies says:
In the logical order of my recovery of orthodoxy, it was the problem of eschatology that that raised anew for me the whole question of the being and character of God. The reader, especially if he is a theologian, may argue that I ought to have begun with God. The fact is I didn't. I began with Europe and the world of political, economic and social events.
That statement, perhaps more perfectly than any other, states the essence of the difference between the new orthodoxy of Mr Davies and the school to which he belongs and traditional Protestant orthodoxy. The latter does not arrive at God as the only ultimate solution to the problem of society; it starts with God because its whole experience is that it cannot escape from God. The man has been apprehended by God, chased by "the hound of heaven" and is incapable of fleeing from His presence much as he has tried to do so. His crisis is not intellectual and philosophical, primarily, but spiritual and moral. Neo-orthodoxy does not count all its former achievements and experiences as "but dung and loss," it cannot say that "old things are passed away, behold all things are become new!. He does not believe in Revelation but decides rather on the basis of his own reasoning and understanding to adopt certain biblical ideas. In spite of itself, it is still tied to this terrible situation, and for that reason tends to forget the power and the activity of the Holy Spirit in the Church. Mr Davies suggests that the modern preacher knows too little about modern man and his problems. I would suggest that the trouble rather is ignorance of the power of God, especially in our own lives
I have, I trust, stimulated all who are concerned deeply about the Church in the world today to read this moving, challenging, thought-provoking book.
