ABSTRACT
It is clear … that the general Christian consciousness is by itself a vague and fluctuating mass of individual opinions, approximating in each case to the truth, yet perhaps in no case fully grasping the whole truth with no admixture of error. Even in the most rigidly orthodox body of Christians different individuals will base their religious life more definitely on some elements of the whole Christian system than on others. A Christian who could grasp not only in theory but in the practice of his life the whole system of Christian teaching in all its fullness and with no admixture of error would obviously be a perfect saint and a perfect theologian; he would indeed see the truth as it is present to the mind of God and correspond with it perfectly: for moral failure inevitably carries with it failure to apprehend the truth. The whole sum of the Christian experience of the Church at any given moment must be an inarticulate mass of opinion comprehending in general the whole body of divine truth as revealed in Jesus; its only way of articulating itself will be its power to express approval of some particular statement of the faith as put forward by an individual theologian, unless the Church is to have
the ages of persecution the Church should find some means of articulating her teaching and putting into a coherent form the sense in which she interpreted in the light of Christian experience the original deposit of faith which she had received from her Lord.
