Witnesses to the Word

Introduction

Churches, as well as civic communities, have been judged by their literature. A Church whose doctrines and experiences are virile and with which the cause of education and general culture is a living concern will naturally and healthily express itself in a literature of pertinency. The tendency in this literature will be toward theology, apologetics, and technical discussion; but it will carry a mark and flavor suggestive of the standards and spirit of that intellectual culture which is always humanity's best expression of itself. In all past times intellectual skill has been the servitor of religion and its doctrines. Education in its highest form has always been thought of as religious and ethical. Hebrew culture — its literature, its science, and the slender but perfectly developed canons of its art — went into the mold with Hebrew religion to bring forth one result : the lively and enduring oracles of Scripture.

The medieval masterpieces are the best repositories of medieval doctrine, and the surviving religious meditations and discussions of those ages furnish some of our best models of the art of composition. All this is to emphasize the thought that the Church has a literary work to do which is not merely that of engrossing its creeds, glossing its doctrines, and recording the proceedings of its assemblies, but is also that of giving to its official and subsidiary writings a dress and savor of grace which will both attract and challenge the wider world. Theology and religious teaching in general need to be written more certainly in the terms of the humanities and more certainly flavored with the insistency of that which we call literature. It was art in painting and architecture which preserved the forms of Christianity through an age in which its spirit was well-nigh dead. The Renaissance and the Reformation awoke together and then went hand in hand. When Methodism can put the interpretation of its old-time doctrines in the new forms of a literature that commands the living emotions and sympathies of the race, it will begin a new advance upon the world.

A new time has come, a time of opportunity for the writers and thinkers of our country. This new time is bringing larger opportunities to the writers of Methodism. From these opportunities we of the South, Church and State, are by no means excluded. The invitation to participate is rather a special and a direct one. The world, crushed by war, now looks to those strong and self-nourished peoples who have preserved themselves whole both in body and thought. Indeed, the world's literary and thought primacy is now on a journey. It will settle with those people who prepare for it a place.

That the present volume, coming from the pen of one of the younger representative men of the Church, is a distinct contribution to our denominational literature is the mature judgment of the writer of this introduction. It is a fresh, sound, and well-reasoned treatment of the fundamental element in our religion, the integrity of that revelation upon which rest our faith and all things related thereto. With equal confidence it is held that this volume is distinguished by such taste and discrimination in the use of language

Introduction. 3

and by such classic sympathies and touches as will serve to put it in the class of literature. It cannot fail to become a stimulus to a wider study of the transcendent matters which it discusses and an incentive to other of our denominational writers to cultivate the field of serious and effective authorship.

Horace M. Du Bose.

Nashville, Tenn., June 6, 1916.

SYNOPSIS OF THE BOOK.

The First Chapter.

THE first chapter seeks to trace the trial of the Word as Providence has kept it through all the emergencies of the past. The Hebrew Scriptures were preserved through the three destructions that came upon Jerusalem ( i ) under Nebuchadnezzar, (2) under Antiochus Epiphanes, (3) and under Titus. The same Providence kept the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures through the persecutions under the Roman emperors, then under the literary and critical attacks, as well as through the Gnostic controversies.

The contest with traditionalism in the Church did not "choke the Word" except for a season. Then deism and the "illumination" of the eighteenth century tried the Word. The collapse of the Baur criticism is then referred to and the belief expressed that the Bible will always vindicate itself as the Word of God.

The Second Chapter.

The second chapter introduces a copy of the Bible as evidence and asks what impression is made on the mind by this volume if it is allowed to speak for itself and make its own impression. The relations that exist between revelation, inspiration, and literature are studied; and it is seen that infallibility is a quality that belongs to the revelation rather than to the Book. The Church fixed the canon, but did not create the revelation. She herself was created by the revelation, and both she and it were created by the Spirit of the Master.

The Bible so studied as a whole will impress us as follows:

i. It is a unity. This unity is not factitious, but inheres in the very history itself. The book of Genesis is conscious of being the beginning; the book of Revelation is just as conscious of being its close. Two Testaments form one volume; sixty-six pamphlets make one book.

2. The Old Testament is fulfilled in the New. The outlook of the Old is toward the New. The New is conscious of having fulfilled the Old. Not only many prophecies were fulfilled, but the mission and scope of prophecy itself.

3. There is evidence of purpose in Israel's history. Only what concerns this purpose is told. Covenant follows covenant; age follows age; election grows more definite, the future goal more clearly seen — the purpose is never lost. This thread binds creation, Noachian age, patriarchal age, Mosaic age, tribal age, prophetic age, etc., all together. "Israel has the idea of teleology like a kind of soul." The whole Old Testament is provisional and preparatory for the glory and the goal yet ahead.

4. Israel's idea of God is her chief glory. He is

Synopsis of the Book. y

a God of promise and keeps his word. He is a God of character and demands character of his worshipers — e. g., Micah vi. 8.

5. The Bible claims to be inspired. This claim is consistently maintained throughout. The revelation makes the history, and the history holds in trust the revelation. The historical character of this revelation must never be lost sight of.

The chapter closes with an illustration of how many stones make one building in obedience to the builder's art, because the architect is one. The Bible is stamped like bond paper with the features of its one divine Author.

The Third Chapter.

This chapter is based on the assumption that the whole Bible bears witness to Christ. The Bible, taken as a whole, presents the fact of redemption and the features of the Redeemer. This bird's-eye view of revelation is the method of Jesus, who uses it in his talk on the way to Emmaus. Thus seen, the entire Old Testament is a provisional order, a prophetic preparation for the coming King and the coming kingdom. Such prophecy as this is peculiar to Israel's religion. It is not the marvel-mongering of the pagan predictions, but a moral movement bound up always with the prospects of the kingdom of God. Such prophecy was needed to make history the medium of the revelation. The prophet was the interpreter of God's will to men. To the study of the past he brought insight ; to the future, foresight ; and based both in the will of God.

The predictive element is an inseparable part of Hebrew prophecy. These predictions ran in three great lines of thought:

i. The oracles against the heathen nations: (i) Nineveh, (2) Moab and Ammon, (3) Edom, (4) Egypt, (5) T Y re > ( 6 ) Babylon.

2. The oracles against the Jewish nation. The various destructions of Jerusalem and captivity foretold; the final dispersion of the Jews foretold; the restoration from Babylon foretold and the final redemption of the race.

3. The Messianic prophecies. The Messianic hope begins in the protevangelium, runs through the covenants, the patriarchal promises, the Mosaic age, and comes to flower in the writing prophets and the Psalms. Many of these are cited. The suffering Servant and reigning King seem contradictory until both fuse in Jesus Christ. Messianic prophecy gives to the Old Testament its marvelous unity, self -consistency, and comprehensiveness, as Professor Flint remarks.

The Fourth Chapter.

The title is, "The Witness of Jesus to the Bible." It is stated that the Old Testament throws the most light on Jesus, and Jesus is the best possible authority on the matter of what the Bible is. This is shown to be, not a vicious circle, but mere fact.

Synopsis of the Book. 9

It is shown that Jesus puts his imprimatur on the Old Testament, taken as a whole and in its broad divisions, and passages are cited to show that Jesus stamps it all and each general division of it as divine.

The relation of Jesus to the Old Testament is then studied, and it is seen that Jesus handles the Old Testament in a free and creative way. He says in the presence of the old law and modern duty, "I say unto you," and assumes the task of Supreme Legislator and Judge.

It is then shown that Jesus not only indorses the Old Testament by direct appeal to it and by putting his own authority back of it, but he indorses the New Testament by anticipation. He took more pains to provide for the record of revelation than to shape the outlines of his Church, and he stamps the apostolic recollection of what he said and the apostolic expositions of the gospel as inspired and divine.

It is then shown that the New Testament as we have it is this primitive apostolic body of doctrine.

The Fifth Chapter.

This chapter asserts that Christianity must have a cause and that Christ is the only adequate explanation. This is the explanation the New Testament offers. It considers the Person of Jesus as the supreme credential of Christianity. It is shown that the life that is sketched in the Gospel is different from all human lives. It is unique in the story of his birth, life, works, death, and resurrection.

io Witnesses to the Word.

His method, manner, spirit, habits of thought and speech are shown to be different. It is shown that the character consistently exhibits a more than human ideal of life, conduct, love, and sacrifice. This character is worked out and not described. The question, "Who is this character ?" is answered by an appeal to the self -revelation which Jesus makes in word and deed. It is shown that the Church's attitude toward Jesus is justified by the New Testament attitude toward him and that this in turn is justified by the estimate Jesus has o*f himself and of his work. This is shown by an appeal to his consciousness as manifested in such crises as the baptism, temptation, calling of disciples, giving of law, forgiving sin, revealing God, teachings concerning himself, his Sonship to the Father as Son of God and himself as the Son of man, as well as his work as Redeemer of the race.

The question is then raised, "Is this character real ?" It is shown that Jesus could not be a literary creation. There are four Gospels, but one Christ. Four independent forgers could never have made the one Christ ; and four confederate forgers would never have left the four Gospels with their synoptic difficulties, minor discrepancies, etc. No one existed who could have created the Jesus of the Gospels without making him Jew or Greek or Roman. The Jesus of the Gospels is universal, is the Son of man.

His character is not mythical. The laws of

Synopsis of the. Book. 1 1

myths are cited, and it is shown that the Gospels are not mythological.

The Gospels are not legendary, for Luke begins to write histories and Paul to write letters in the lifetime of eyewitnesses. There is no room here for legends, even if legends could have made such literature as the New Testament.

The Sixth Chapter.

The sixth chapter is a study of the resurrection. It is shown that belief in the resurrection was the foundation of the Church and the subject of apostolic testimony. It binds together all the New Testament as the Messianic hope does the Old Testa^ ment.

Three lines of argument are followed : i. Direct testimony. This is considered in each Gospel and in the case of Paul.

2. Indirect evidences, which are all the more important because they are unintended.

3. Circumstantial evidence, such as the existence of the Church, the change of the day of rest, and the transformation in the character of the apostles.

Naturalistic explanations do not satisfy the facts. Jesus did rise from the tomb.

The Seventh Chapter.

This chapter traces the influence of the Bible in the Roman world, in the migration of the races, in the Dark Ages, in the Middle Ages, in the Reformation period, and shows that this Book has been the hope of the world in the past. Then the modern pagan world is studied, and it is shown that only the religion of the Bible can meet the moral and spiritual needs of the race.

Chapter I

The Witness of History ; or. The Trial of the Word.

THE Bible is as solitary among books as Jesus is among men. Each bears witness to the other, and both together complete the revelation of redemption.

The Bible is solitary in its origins, for it grew together as no other book has ever done. It is solitary in its history; for no book has ever been read, copied, translated, persecuted, and preserved like the Bible. It is peculiar in the imperishable message that it brings, for it reflects humanity and reveals God.

The written and the incarnate Word have both had to meet the contradiction of sinners, to face a generation faithless and slow of heart to believe, and to gain ascendancy over the mind and heart of humanity by the message and life they bring. This fiery trial of our faith 1 is not peculiar to one age, nor is our generation the first to challenge the Bible to give a reason for its claim to be the inspired Word of God. This is a "tried stone," like that foundation stone laid in Zion, 2 and we need not fear that in believing this we shall ever be put to shame. 3

*i Peter i. 7. 2 Isaiah xxviii. 16. 3 i Peter ii. 6.

Three times have these sacred rolls survived the overthrow of Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar left neither wall nor temple nor palace nor any of the houses of the great. The flower of the population was carried captive, and only the poor of the land were left. Antiochus Epiphanes 1 took Jerusalem and endeavored to destroy the Jewish religion. He ordered every copy of the sacred books to be destroyed and the possessor to be put to death with utmost cruelty. Titus gave the whole city to the torch and sword and took away the "name and nation" of the Jew; but through each storm of blood and fire a divine Hand kept the Word.

One can but wonder how much valuable literature must have perished forever in these disasters. The Old Testament mentions books by Jasher, Nathan, Gad, and Iddo. One must equally wonder at the Providence that preserved out of the wreck these books which are sufficient to testify of Him and to trace through history the unfolding purpose of redeeming love.

For over two centuries the Roman Empire tried to destroy the Christian and his Holy Scriptures. When found together, Book and believer both perished. The silent lips of the martyred dead preached Christ in every city. Their witness was not in vain, for the Word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed.

^osephus, "Antiquities," Book XII., Chapter V.

The argument of force failed utterly to arrest the growth of the Christian religion, and there were some who resorted to the force of argument. Subtle and skeptical pagans of the second century left nothing unsaid to discredit this new and dangerous competitor of the senescent paganism of the empire, and even more threatening were the internal controversies that soon arose. Before the young Church had formulated her creeds or fixed her canon or gained toleration under the government, she was plunged into one of the most dangerous controversies of all her history. The Church has seldom, if ever, passed a crisis more critical than the era of the Gnostic heresies. Earliest among them was Cerinthus, of Alexandria, contemporary and opposer of the Apostle John at Ephesus. Basilides ( A.D. 130) and Valentinus (A.D. 150) were renowned Gnostic teachers and exercised great influence in their day. The name of Marcion has been dim in the memory of the Church for fifteen hundred years, but it was a name cut deep for a generation. He slashed the Gospels in pieces 1 and taught his numerous adherents that the Old Testament was the work of an inferior and immoral deity. He accepted only Paul among the apostles and only Luke among the Gospels, and this he mutilated to make it meet his philosophy. This Gnostic cult was a subtle Oriental theosophy blended with Greek philosophy, which threat-

1 Irenaeus, Cont. Haer.

ened for a time to penetrate Christianity. Had it prevailed, it "would speedily have dissipated historical Christianity into phantasies," 1 It was largely a controversy about Scripture and was one of the earliest offers of a. rationalizing philosophy to patronize Christianity if it would give up its Bible. But it was by means of her historical revelation that the Church discovered the true features of her enemy and measured the dimensions of the danger she faced'. It was her sacred Scriptures which showed her the one God, unfolding his purposes of redemp<- tion in a progressive revelation, where sin was seen to have its origin, not in natural necessity, but in a moral fall, and where redemption was seen to culminate, not in a phantom Christ, but in a real incarnation. These proved to be barriers too strong to be swept away.

More easily met, because from without, were the literary and critical attacks on the new religion and its historical foundations. Its books were subjected to the most searching analysis and at a time, too, when the latest surviving apostle had not been in his grave one hundred years. This second century was an intensely literary age and, to some extent, a time of religious and ethical revival. Vespasian provided for the support of lecturers throughout the cities and provinces, schools and universities flourished, and literature took on a new refinement.

1 Orr's "Bible under Trial," page 6.

Thought and speech ran in the prevailing forms of rhetorical and philosophical discourse and argument.

Seneca, the elder Pliny, and Plutarch take no notice of Christianity. Tacitus, Suetonius, and the younger Pliny pass it by with small notice and a kind of fatigued contempt. Marcus Aurelius calls the early Christians the victims of a blind and unthinking enthusiasm. Lucian, in the second half of the second century, wrote his "Peregrinus Proteus," a sarcastic caricature o>f Christianity, burlesquing their virtues and ridiculing their faith in a "crucified sophist," as well as their hope of immortality.

The Church had! small reason to fear an attack like this, however brilliant it may have been. A far more formidable antagonist was Celsus, who lived about the same time. Fisher calls him the "ablest of its assailants" ; and Baur says, "He stands behind no opponent of Christianity" 1 in "acuteness, in dialectical aptitude, in many-sided culture, at once philosophical and general." This Celsus may very well be called the Voltaire of the second century. His book, "The True Word," is "a masterpiece of attack upon the evangelic record." 1 It shows the author to have been a master antagonist. It reveals a minute analysis of the Christian writings and evinces a deliberate purpose to undermine and overthrow Christianity by every resource of wit, argument,

^'Christian History of the First Three Centuries," Volume II., page 141. Quoted by Dr. Orr.

2 "Bible under Trial," Dr. Orr, page 25.

and information. "The work of Celsus was written in a spirit of intense hatred and spares no thrust which criticism, calumny, and sarcasm could supply." 1 He mercilessly sifts the resurrection stories and attributes the "myth" to the hallucination of a "half-frantic woman."' Celsus was followed in this by Renan in his "Life of Jesus."

The book called out an elaborate refutation from the mighty Origen in his "Reply to Celsus." The book itself has perished and would probably have been forgotten but for the extracts preserved in Origen's great defense. "So far as we can see, it had not the slightest effect in stopping the triumphant progress 'of Christianity in the empire."' Porphyry also is preserved to us only in fragments. He made it his special effort to invalidate Scripture and to disparage the apostles as compared with Christ. He was the first to utter the cry, "Back to Christ"; and long before Baur he claimed that the disagreement of Paul and Peter at Antioch invalidated the authority of both.

These subtle attempts of the Gnostic theosophy to undermine the historical foundations of the faith and the searching analysis of its documents by learned and literary pagan critics called forth from the Christian community a noble literature of apology, much of which has perished. In the second

1 Sheldon, "Early Church," page 169. 2 Ibid., page 171. 8 Orr, "Bible under Trial," page 26.

century and in the Roman Empire the whole ground was gone over. Christian documents were sifted, Christian doctrines were analyzed, and Christian foundations were tested. A powerful government, a proud philosophy, and a learned array of literary talent combined the forces of persecution, ridicule, argument, and literary analysis to crush the Christian community and to discredit forever the foundations of its faith. Out of it all the Church came with a deeper consciousness of the doctrinal wealth of her message and more than ever convinced of the worth of her Scriptures as a historical revelation. With a logic born of history and led by the instincts of her inner life, she moved forward to formulate her creeds and fix her canon.

Again we are impressed with the fact that the Bible has been a tried Word in all ages. "The past is a great instructor as to the power that resides in the Bible to survive the assaults made upon it even by the most skillful adversaries." 1

With the coming on of the Dark Ages, after the break-up of the Latin civilization, the Bible found a new foe, this time in the bosom of the Church. Such an age was favorable to the growth of tradition. At first its voice was pure and vital, and its later corruption is one of the tragedies of Christian history. It hardened with the centuries into sacerdotalism and stiffened into papal pretensions, which

1 "Bible under Trial," James Orr, page 25.

soon rivaled the authority of the rarely read and dimly understood Bible, written, as it was, in the dead languages. It was portable in the hands of the living priesthood and pliant in the hands of the papacy, not slow to divine its importance as an instrument of power. It had the added advantage of being brought "up to date." It boasted of unbroken continuity. It had a living voice behind it, together with the pomp and pretensions of the papal office. The papacy guaranteed the purity of the tradition, and the tradition exalted the pretensions of the papacy. The Dark Ages were just the playground for such a game. As the tradition grew more and more away from the written Word, it began to be seen that either the word of Scripture or the word of tradition must be the supreme rule of faith. In an age when the Scriptures were little known, it was easy for the living voice of tradition, calling itself the voice of .the Church, to assert and exercise supreme authority over the conscience. The written Word passed largely out of the knowledge of the Church. The very monks that possessed the manuscripts must in many cases have known little about the value of the treasures they possessed. Many a precious parchment must have met the fate which the Sinaitic manuscript barely missed when rescued by Tischendorf even so late as 1859. When the young scholar Luther first saw a copy of the Bible, it made an epoch in his life.

As the Middle Ages drew to a close and pious scholars began to translate the Word into the vernacular of the various nations, the spirit of tradition, seeing its kingdom about to be taken away, in a voice vibrant with passion and persecution said, "No !" The Bible was not to be given into the language of the laity and was not to be read by them. The right of private interpretation of Scripture was bitterly fought, which means that the authority of the Bible was contested in the name of tradition. When the Church herself sought to muffle the Word, when the Roman cross was succeeded by Roman fagots and Rome of Caesar was rivaled by Rome of Peter, the Bible began to be again a tried Word, as in the ages of the past. But the Reformers, aided by the printing press, multiplied copies of the Scripture faster than they could be destroyed. They succeeded at last in flinging open the gates to the knowledge of Holy Scripture, and joyfully the enfranchised Church entered on its inheritance. Again the Word came forth like silver tried in a furnace, purified seven times.

The Renaissance awakened the mind and soul of Europe, and the Reformation effected the emancipation of the human intellect. "Philosophy and science made rapid strides, and erelong the seeds of a new rationalism began to be sown in the bosom of the Church with effects disastrous to reverent faith in the Scriptures/' 1 This "older rationalism" made

*Dr. Orr, "Bible under Trial," page 7.

the eighteenth century its special field and found a scholastic Protestantism ill prepared to resist.

In Germany it took the form of the "Illumination." In France Voltaire was its "very eye." Moved by a "vehement and blinding antipathy" to the Christian faith, he attacked the Scriptures with a fury confident of success. This oracle of literature, this "eye of the eighteenth century illumination," has passed with his sixty books out of the life of men ; but the Bible lives on because it has a message for the world.

In England this eighteenth century rationalism took the form of a proud and all-but-triumphant deism which for a time "made Christianity almost a name of mockery in cultivated circles." 1 Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham, says in the advertisement prefixed to his famous "Analogy" : "It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons that Christianity is not so much a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly they treat it as if in the present age this were an agreed point among all people of discernment; and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals, for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world."

Archbishop Seeker says : "Christianity is now ridiculed and railed at with very little reserve and the

'"Bible under Trial," Dr. Orr, page 8.

teacher of it without any at all." "A Proposal for a National Reformation of Manners," published on the eve of the eighteenth century (1694), says: "Our light looks like the evening of the world." This exultant deism was served by wit and defended by logic. It captured literature, colored the magazines, stained the common speech, and drenched the very altars of the Church. 1 The satire of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who reports a plan on foot to take the "nots" out of the Ten Commandments and put them in the Apostles' Creed, 3 well represents the tone of English society in this deistic century. What brought deliverance to the forces of revealed religion in that age? What explains the distance between the England of that century and the England of the nineteenth century, with Tennyson and Browning bringing the breath of the Spirit into literature, with its social and po^ litical reforms, its evangelical awakening, its missionary era, its Bible diffusion, and its home evangelization? It is useless to multiply testimonies to the fact that it was the Wesleyan Revival, a revival of Biblical preaching and of Scriptural religion, that furnished to England the forces of spiritual ascendancy. 3

This revival gave evangelical Christianity the vic-

1<< Wesley and His Century," Fitchett, page 142. 2 Ibid., page 146.

3 Macaulay, Southey, Buckle, Leckey, Green, Birrel; quoted by Fitchett, "Wesley and His Century," page 2.

tory over unbelief more than the learned confutations of Bishop Butler, who could write the "Analogy" to prop a falling Church and forbid John Wesley to preach to the depraved miners of Kingswood. The history of unbelief shows that the spell of infidelity is broken in any age when the Bible gets a fresh grip on the hearts and consciences of men. "The owls vanish when the daylight reappears." Thus passes the imposing deism of Morgan, Bolingbroke, and Hume.