gospels at any rate leave no room for the intrusion
of theology, and at the same time to detect a
corresponding sense of resentment when that con-
viction is challenged or modified. Nearly forty
years ago a German critic published a rather bitter
and despairing monograph upon what he called
Die Christlichkeit der heutigen Theologie. ¹ His thesis
was that theology had invariably played the traitor
to Christianity, that no theology could be called
Christian, and that theology had, in fact, destroyed
the Christian religion. The spirit of this protest
is shared by many who would not agree with its
arguments or objects. So far as the New Testament
is concerned, they would be perfectly willing to
let Paul's theology go, but they would claim the
gospels as documents of religion and not of theology,
documents of the faith in its pure, pre-theological
phase. Theology is the theory of a religion; it
stands to personal faith as the theory of æsthetics
stands to poetry, as botany to life in the field or
garden. Theology is listening to what man has to
say about God; personal religion, on the other
hand, is man listening to God, and this is what the
gospels mean. To speak of 'the theology of the
gospels' is a contradiction in terms.

Nevertheless, it is reasonable to speak of the
theology of the gospels. There is theology behind
even their most spontaneous pages, and they do
not cease on that account to be gospels. We may
even add, it is because they mirror an experience
which tends to become conscious of its issues in
history and nature, that they are gospels.

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