“Well, take my own case,” said Hoppart. “In the last few weeks, I've been reading not only in the Bible but in the Fathers. I've read most of Athanasius, most of Eusebius, and--I'll confess it--Gibbon. I find all my old wonder come back. Why are we pinned to--to the amount of creed we are pinned to? Why for instance must you insist on the Trinity?”
“Yes,” said the Eton boy explosively, and flushed darkly to find he had spoken.
“Here is a time when men ask for God,” said Hoppart. “And you give them three!” cried Bent rather cheaply. “I confess I find the way encumbered by these Alexandrian elaborations,” Hoppart completed.
“Need it be?” whispered Lady Sunderbund very softly.
“Well,” said the bishop, and leant back in his armchair and knitted his brow at the fire. “I do not think,” he said, “that men coming to God think very much of the nature of God. Nevertheless,” he spoke slowly and patted the arm of his chair, “nevertheless the church insists that certain vitally important truths have to be conveyed, certain mortal errors are best guarded against, by these symbols.”
Hoppart showed by a little movement and grimace that he thought the bishop quibbled.
“In every sense of the word,” the bishop hastened to explain, “the creeds are symbolical. It is clear they seek to express ineffable things by at least an extended use of familiar words. I suppose we are all agreed nowadays that when we speak of the Father and of the Son we mean something only in a very remote and exalted way parallel with--with biological fatherhood and sonship.”
Lady Sunderbund nodded eagerly. “Yes,” she said, “oh, yes,” and held up an expectant face for more.
“Our utmost words, our most elaborately phrased creeds, can at the best be no better than the shadow of something unseen thrown upon the screen of experience.”
He raised his rather weary eyes to Hoppart as if he would know what else needed explanation. He was gratified by Lady Sunderbund's approval, but he affected not to see or hear it. But it was Bent who spoke.
He spoke in the most casual way. He made the thing seem the most incidental of observations.
“What puzzles me,” he said, “is why the early Christians identified the Spermaticos Logos of the Stoics with the second and not with the third person of the Trinity.”