Archives: All Bishops Affirm the Virgin Birth (1923)

For the Episcopal Church, like many others across the Western world, the 1920s were a time of intense controversy over traditional doctrine’s place in the life of the modern Church. “Modernists,” who approached the Bible with skepticism derived from historical criticism, and urged a more rational, moralistic approach, were openly criticizing touchstones of orthodoxy, especially the virgin birth and the resurrection. Different denominations issued rulings on how much dissent could be tolerated among the clergy.

The best-known response to modernism was The Fundamentals, a series of essays published between 1910 and 1915 by conservative evangelical leaders (including several English Anglicans), which gave its name to “fundamentalism.” The controversy reached a fever pitch in 1923, when prominent liberal Baptist minister Harry Emerson Fosdick preached his famous sermon, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” William Jennings Bryan, a three-time candidate for the presidency and a committed fundamentalist, narrowly lost election as moderator of the Presbyterian Church. His next major project would be leading the prosecution in the “Scopes Monkey Trial” of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee.

Episcopal Church leaders were generally suspicious of fundamentalism, but the Catholic party, which held wide influence in the House of Bishops, were uncompromising on creedal orthodoxy. The House of Bishops’ Pastoral Letter of November 1923, which firmly defended the virgin birth, was a high-water mark of the party’s influence in the Episcopal Church. Nearly all the letter’s authors were stalwarts of the Catholic movement, and the Episcopal Church’s preeminent Anglo-Catholic paper, The Living Church, praised the letter as “the most momentous pronouncement of the Church in many years.”

While F.C. Morehouse’s editorial said the letter treated “principles, not personalities,” it was at lest partly responding to a sermon given in October 1923 by the Rt. Rev. William Lawrence of Massachusetts, at a service marking the 30th anniversary of his consecration. In it, Bishop Lawrence said that the doctrine of the Incarnation has no essential connection with the Virgin Birth and expressed his general support for revisionist teaching. In the same issue, TLC printed a sermon, “The Faith Once Delivered,”  by the Rev. William Harlan Van Allen, longtime rector of the Church of the Advent, Boston, which strongly criticized Bishop Lawrence’s words.

Another unmentioned presence in the discussion was the Rt. Rev. William Montgomery Brown, second Bishop of Arkansas, who had resigned his see in 1912 after becoming a Communist. His Christianity and Communism, published in 1920, denied the existence of the historical Jesus and described the Creeds as “merely symbolical.” Brown would be tried for heresy by the House of Bishops, and eventually deposed and excommunicated in 1925, the only Episcopal bishop to ever be so condemned for heresy.

Editorial
On the Bishops’ Pastoral Letter
By F.C. Morehouse
The Living Church, November 24, 1923

The declaration issued by the House of Bishops concerning the “abuse” of “explaining away” any of the articles of the creed, and, explicitly, that relating to the Virgin Birth, seems to us the most momentous pronouncement of the Church in many years, while the fact that it was The Bishops’ Pastoral, adopted with no single vote in the negative, greatly enhances the moral value of the statement.

For it is a perfectly explicit declaration: “It is irreconcilable with the vows voluntarily made at ordination for a minister of this Church to deny, or suggest doubt as to, the facts and truths declared in the Apostles’ Creed.” “Honesty in the use of language — to say what we mean and mean what we say — is not least important with regard to religious language (and especially in our approach to Almighty God), however imperfect to express divine realities we may recognize human words to be.” “To explain away the statement, ‘Conceived by the Holy Ghost’ and ‘born of the Virgin Mary,’ as if it referred to a birth in the ordinary way of two human parents, under perhaps exceptionally holy conditions, is plainly an abuse of language.”

But the declaration — printed on another page — must be read in full. Every sentence adds to its value; and there is no redundant word. The statement involves principles and not personalities. We are informed that no single individual was named at any time in the discussion in the House of Bishops. We earnestly hope that it may everywhere be treated in the same impersonal manner. It is intended to relieve anxiety wherever that is felt and to embarrass no one.

Yet it is a declaration that means exactly what it says. To affirm the expression, “Conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary,” is to make a positive statement that cannot be made while one denies the fact of the Virgin Birth. The two are mutually exclusive and cannot be held simultaneously by the same person at the same time. And whoso is unable to affirm, and therefore to teach, explicitly each of the articles of the creed, becomes, ipso facto, ineligible to occupy any teaching office in the Church.

Declaration of the House of Bishops

We are aware of the widespread distress and disturbance of mind among many earnest Church people, both clerical and lay, caused by several recent utterances concerning the Creeds. Moreover, we have been formally appealed to by eminent laymen as the Chief Pastors of the Church, solemnly pledged to uphold its Faith, for advice and guidance with regard to the questions thus raised.

We, therefore, put forth these words of explanation and, we trust, of re-assurance.

1. A distinction is to be recognized (as in the Catechism) between the profession of our belief IN, i.e., of entire surrender to the Triune God, and the declaration that we BELIEVE certain facts about the operation of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. The former is far more important as expressing our relation and attitude towards the Personal God. But the affirmation of the facts, declared by Holy Scripture, and a part of the belief of the Christian Church from the beginning, is of vital importance to faith and life. The Christian faith may be distinguished from the forms in which it is expressed as something deeper and higher, and more personal, but not by contradicting the terms in which it has always been expressed.
2. The Creeds give and require no theories or explanations of the facts which they rehearse. No explanation is given of the Trinity, HOW God is at the same time absolutely One in His Spiritual Being, and yet exists in a three-fold manner; nor concerning the Incarnation, of the MANNER in which the Divine and Human natures are linked together in the One Person of our Lord Jesus Christ; nor of the nature of the resurrection body, Christ’s or ours.
3. The shorter Apostles’ Creed is to be interpreted in the light of the fuller Nicene Creed. The more elaborate statements of the latter safeguard the sense in which the simpler language of the former is to be understood, for instance with reference to the term: “The Son of God.”
4. Some test of earnest and sincere purpose of discipleship, for belief and for life, is reasonably required for admission to the Christian Society. Accordingly, profession of the Apostles’ Creed as a summary of Christian belief, stands and has stood from early days along with renunciation of evil and the promise of obedience to God’s Commandments as a condition of Baptism.
5. A clergyman, whether Deacon, Priest, or Bishop, is required as a condition of receiving his ministerial commission to promise conformity to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of this Church. Among the offenses for which he is liable to be presented for trial is the holding and teaching, publicly or privately and advisedly, doctrine contrary to that of this Church. Individual aberrations, in teaching or practice, however, are regrettable and censurable but should not be taken to supercede the deliberate and written standards of the Church. It is irreconcilable with the vows voluntarily made at ordination for a minister of this Church to deny, or to suggest doubt as to, the facts and truths declared in the Apostles’ Creed.
6. To deny, or to treat as immaterial, belief in the Creeds in which at every regular service of the Church both minister and congregation profess to believe, is to trifle with words and cannot but expose us to the suspicion and danger of dishonesty and unreality. Honesty in the use of language—to say that we mean and mean what we say—is not least important with regard to religious language, and especially in our approach to Almighty God, however imperfect to express divine realities we may recognize human words to be. To explain away the statement, “Conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary,” as if it referred to a birth in the ordinary way, of two human parents, under, perhaps, exceptionally holy conditions, is plainly an abuse of language. An ordinary birth could not have been so described, nor can the words of the Creed fairly be so understood.
7. Objections to the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, or to the bodily Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, are not only contrary to the Christian tradition, but have been abundantly answered by the best scholarship of the day.
8. It is not the fact of the Virgin Birth that makes us believe in our Lord as God; but our belief in Him as God makes reasonable and natural our acceptance of the fact of the Virgin Birth as declared in the Scriptures and as confessed in the Creed from the earliest times.
9. The Creed witnesses to the deliberate and determined purpose of the Church not to explain but to proclaim the fact that the Jesus of history is none other than God and Saviour, on whom, and on faith in whom, depends the whole world’s hope of redemption and salvation.
10. So far from imposing fetters on our thought, the Creeds, with their simple statement of great truths and facts without elaborate philosophical disquisition, give us a point of departure for free thought and speculation on the meaning and consequences of the facts revealed by God. The Truth is never a barrier to thought. In belief, as in life, it is the Truth that makes us free.

Set forth as a Pastoral Letter by the House of Bishops in special session at Dallas, Texas, Nov. 14th and 15th. Presented to the House by a special committee consisting of the Bishops of Vermont [the Rt. Rev. Arthur C.A. Hall], Tennessee [the Rt. Rev. Thomas F. Gailor], North Carolina [the Rt. Rev. Joseph Blount Cheshire], Fond du Lac [the Rt. Rev. Reginald Heber Weller], and New York [the Rt. Rev. William T. Manning], and adopted by an unanimous vote.