Christ, faith and language in the religious thought of Matthew Arnold

Chapter One: Introduction:
The introduction begins by explaining that the thesis sets out to examine three areas of Matthew Arnold's religious thought - his attitude towards materialism and his early attempts to overcome the difficulties which he believed were caused by it, his ideas on religious language, and his attitudes towards the figure of Christ. By examining these three areas and relating the ideas discussed in them to each other, the thesis examines what Arnold meant by "faith" and at the same time attempts to show how Arnold's religious thought forms a coherent system. The introduction also contains a survey of previous scholarly work which has been done on Matthew Arnold's religious thought, and also a brief discussion of the source material which was made use of in writing the thesis.
PART ONE: IMAGINATIVE REASON:
Chapter Two: Matthew Arnold and Materialism:
Matthew Arnold belonged to a "common tradition" of antimaterialism which saw the cause of many of society's problems in terms of an "overbalance of the commercial spirit." The condemnation of materialism by John Sterling was typical of this tradition, while Coleridge was concerned at the subversion of Christian ethics to national expediency in matters of political economy. Coleridge believed that there was also a need for people to be concerned less with immediate, material ends, and more concerned with moral and spiritual ends. Matthew Arnold read some of Coleridge's works and was also indirectly influenced by Coleridge through Wordsworth. Wordsworth also convinced Arnold that materialism was a form of "idolatry" and that this "idolatrous world could not stand." Thomas Arnold shared many of Coleridge's and Wordsworth's views, although he took a more sympathetic view towards industrial development, and he was another influence upon Matthew Arnold's attitude towards materialism. A study of John Keble shows a surprising agreement between the Broad Church and High Church views on materialism, and Keble, like Wordsworth and Coleridge, objected to the subordination of Christian principles to utilitarian ends, and advocated "plain living and high thinking." Matthew Arnold was influenced at an early age by Keble's The Christian Year. Thomas Carlyle's book, Past and Present may also be viewed as belonging to this tradition, although Carlyle ceased to exercise an influence upon Matthew Arnold after 1849. John Henry Newman, who objected to the "triumph of Sight over Faith," was another important influence in Arnold's life.
Matthew Arnold objected that many Puritans believed in a God of Free Trade, Free Church, Free Labour and Free Land, and felt that one of the main problems of his society was that it placed too much reliance upon machinery, viewing it idolatrously as an end in itself, rather than as a means to an end. Furthermore, because Arnold believed that the individual must be freed from the world in order to be happy, he advocated modest living and a concern with spiritual ends. Like Newman, Arnold was opposed to muscular Christianity, which he believed placed too much emphasis upon medial ends. Materialism extended for Arnold even to Christian doctrines religious language had become hardened into mere "jargon."
Chapter Three: The Holistic Principle:
An over-concentration on the senses, Arnold asserted, rather than upon the imagination, creates disharmony in the individual. Arnold saw a need to embrace both past and present experience within a single sensibility in order to bring about an "intellectual deliverance." Arnold's view is compared with Newman's idea that reason requires one to make abstractions, and this means that an analytic society may become fragmented. Arnold therefore sought a "holistic principle" which would enable aspects of experience to be reunited. This led to Arnold's belief that a poem must make a single, organic, imaginative impact upon the individual. Thus, poetry may come to inspirit and rejoice the reader, and should help him to live a complete and satisfying life. His position that poetry "calms and satisfies" the individual was akin to the poetio theory of hie godfather, John Keble, the idea of poetry as catharsis. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how far Arnold's poetry succeeds in applying Arnold's poetio theories successfully. Poems such as "The Scholar Gipsy," "Lines Written in Butler's Sermons," "Empedocles on Etna" and "The Church of Brou" are considered, and the conclusion is reached that Arnold was not altogether successful, although he was perhaps more successful in "On the Rhine."
PART TWO: RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE:
Chapter Four; The Erosion of Belief:
Man is finite and relative, while God is infinite and absolute, so that human concepts of personality cannot without grave philosophical difficulty be applied to God. Arnold concluded that too much of traditional religious language had been nothing more than an anthropomorphic projection of legal and economic concepts: man had made God in his own image. Arnold asked whether natural theology might be used as a support for traditional Christian language, but concluded that Butler's arguments from natural theology are open to philosophical objections. Arnold also objected to Paley's argument from design, although his grounds for doing so were philosophically incorrect. However, like Mill, Arnold failed to appreciate the implications of Darwin's theory of evolution for the argument from design. Arnold also discussed the application of the word "being rigorously to God. His argument, in spite of its shortcomings, sheds interesting light on the influence of philological ideas upon Victorian intellectuals, including Arnold and Max Müller.
If there are no satisfactory grounds in philosophy or natural theology for accepting traditional religious analogues, Arnold argued, perhaps this language was given by direct revelation. This idea has much in common with Hansel and Newman. The problem then reduces to finding an authority upon which to say that a revelation has occurred. Arnold considered a number of evidences for revelation - miracles, prophecy, biblical inspiration and the infallibility of the church - but concluded that none of these can be used to provide satisfactory grounds for asserting that a revelation has taken place.
Chapter Five: Morality Touched by Emotion:
Arnold believed that God does not stand for a single clearly and distinctly ascertained idea, but is an emotive word, used in different ways by different people. Religious language is emotive and opaque, not scientific and exact, liven Arnold's "definitions" of God are not rigid, but vague and emotive phrases. In trying to describe God in new language, Arnold was attempting to clear away "dead sign-posts" and create new ones which were "growing, living trees." Arnold belonged to the old Latitudinarian tradition within the Church of England which stressed the moral aspects of religion, and his idea of religion as "morality touched by emotion" was inherited from his father. Arnold believed that good conduct motivated by a properly ordered emotional structure creates a feeling of wholeness in the individual, and in this way Arnold believed that religion could solve the problem of providing a "holistic principle." Since it was not possible for Arnold to speak of the being of God, he found it more satisfying to speak of a "power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness." Revelation was for Arnold an awareness of something coming forth in the individual's mind which he knew not to be of his own making, rather than something given down from heaven. Only by conforming to righteousness can men, Arnold believed, achieve happiness, although it is necessary to understand happiness in a special Arnoldian sense in this context. Happiness was for Arnold a feeling of unity and harmony which came about through the finding of the "holistic principle."
Because Arnold accepted a Spinozistic view of the universe and did not look outside the system for the cause of any event within it, Arnold's God is in one sense immanent, but Arnold's metaphysical agnosticism does in some ways leave open the option of transcendence. Arnold rejected, however, Wordsworth's notion of a God immanent in nature. These ideas are discussed in relation to other nineteenth century religious thinkers, including William James and J.R. Illingworth.
It is concluded that faith was for Arnold that energy which gives motivation to the individual's religious perceptions in order that they may affect his conduct - the way in which the individual "locks in," as it were, on "the power which makes for righteousness."
Arnold's views on life after death are ambivalent, but he does leave a place for hope of immortality, although this must always arise out of the individual's present religious experience. This suggests how Arnold might, like F.D. Maurice, have found a place for the hope that God was responsible for creation and immanent in nature, although this hope would have to arise from the individual's experience of God.
PART THREE: CHRIST AND CULTURE:
Chapter Six: Jesus of Nazareth:
Perhaps because of a general feeling of dissatisfaction with the canonical gospels, Lives of Christ became popular in the nineteenth century, although Matthew Arnold was rather dubious of their value. Arnold was attracted by Jesus's epieikeia, whiCh was not (as has been generally assumed) Jesus's temper of mildness, but his total imaginative impact upon the individual. This consisted of three elements - Jesus's method of inwardness, his secret of self-denial, and his temper of mildness. The Cambridge Platonists were a major influence on Arnold's views on the first and third of these elements. Arnold was aware of the differences between Jewish and modern culture, and how this must affect our appraisal of language about such biblical concepts as the Kingdom of God. He believed, however, that Jesus had given a new interpretation to such language, and that his disciples had partly misunderstood the meaning of their master.
Chapter Seven: The Place of Christ:
For Arnold, faith in Christ was an attachment to and identification with the example of Jesus, who provided the key to righteousness. Because of his effect upon the imagination, his epieikeia, Christ could be an object of faith. Thus every duty could be ordered in its rightful place, and the individual was freed by following Christ's example from the temptation of materialism and oould achieve happiness (in Arnold's sense of that word). Conversion was the removal of dryness of heart and the giving of emotion to conduct. This could be described as dying to sin and rising to a new life, a phenomenon which was both individual and corporate.
Arnold believed that the church should be in a constructive equilibrium with the secular culture in whioh it found itself. He also believed that the church of the future would be a modernized and revitalized Roman Catholic Church. There were two aspects of faith for Arnold - "thought and speculation" and "worship and devotion" and Arnold saw therefore a need for the truth of Christianity to be verified in the collective experience of the community. Although Arnold considered that Christianity's role in the shaping of western civilization had not always been an entirely happy one, he felt that the power of Christianity was so "divine" and "indestructible" that it would always be able to transform itself in accordance with the maxim, "the letter killeth, the spirit giveth life."
Arnold was prepared to admit that other religions possessed a power to affect people religiously, but was also prepared to argue for the superiority of Christianity according to what he considered to be the best canons at the disposal of the modern intellectual.
Chapter Eight: General Conclusion:
Matthew Arnold's religious position belonged to a nineteenth century tradition which rejected materialism and placed much stress upon the ethical side of Christianity. His view of religious language as a form of literary language belonged to a conservative tradition which can be traced back to before the seventeenth century. Arnold was concerned that religious concepts had become "materialized" and wished to leave open the way for recovering their spiritual meaning. He felt that religion could only be verified in the life of the believer, and in the life of the community, by being shown to bring about righteous conduct. The way in which the imaginative impact of Jesus was able to bring order to the conduct of the individual and bring his powers into a harmonious equilibrium made Christ both the key to righteousness and the "holistic principle" for which Arnold had earlierbeen searching in his poetry. Western civilization could be organized round this "holistic principle," resulting in an atmosphere of harmony which pervaded the culture and which could be thought of as a collective aspect of faith.
It is shown how the individual features of Arnold's religious thought fit together to form a coherent system, and also how Arnold's thought fits naturally into the backgroud of nineteenth century religious thought in general. It is suggested that Arnold's ideas may provide a valuable indication of the sorts of beliefs held by certain influential laymen in Victorian England. Although Arnold's theology contained radical elements, and was widely misinterpreted by conservatives in his own day, Arnold's religious position was in some ways a surprisingly conservative one. The need to begin with beliefs which are wisely accepted and the importance of religious culture are two aspects of Matthew Arnold's theology which might be of evangelistic use today.