THE BIBLE
In terms of the definition of religion given in the last chapter, we may
describe the Bible as the record of the progressive religious experience
of Israel culminating in Jesus Christ, a record selected by the
experience of the Jewish and Christian Church, and approving itself to
Christian experience today as the Self-revelation of the living God.
The Bible is a _literary_ record. It is not so much a book as a library,
containing a great variety of literary forms--legends, laws, maxims,
hymns, sermons, visions, biographies, letters, etc. Judged solely as
literature its writings have never been equalled in their kind, much
less surpassed. Goethe declared, "Let the world progress as much as it
likes, let all branches of human research develop to their utmost,
nothing will take the place of the Bible--that foundation of all culture
and all education." Happily for the English-speaking world the
translation into our tongue, standardized in the King James' Bible, is
a universally acknowledged classic; and scarcely a man of letters has
failed to bear witness to its charm and power. While most translations
lose something of the beauty and meaning of the original, there are some
parts of the English Bible which, as literature and as religion, excel
the Hebrew or Greek they attempt to render.
The Bible is a record of _religious experience_. It has but one central
figure from _Genesis_ to _Revelation_--God. But God is primarily in the
experience, only secondarily in the record. All thought succeeds in
grasping but a fraction of consciousness; thought is well symbolized in
Rodin's statue, where out of a huge block of rough stone a small finely
chiselled head emerges. With all their skill we cannot credit the men of
faith who are behind the Bible pages with making clear to themselves but
a small part of God's Self-disclosure to them. And when they came to
wreak thought upon expression, so clear and well-trained a mind as
Paul's cannot adequately utter what he feels and thinks. His sentences
strain and sometimes break; he ends with such expressions as "the love
of Christ which passeth knowledge," and God's "unspeakable gift."
The divine revelation which is in the experience has been at times
identified with the thought that interprets it, or even with the words
which attempt to describe it. "Faith in the thing grows faith in the
report"; and fantastic doctrines of the verbal inerrancy of the Bible
have been held by numbers of earnest Christians. Certain recent
scholars, acknowledging that no version of the Bible now existing is
free from error, have put forward the theory that the original
manuscripts of these books, as they came from their authors' hands, were
so completely controlled by God as to be without mistake. Since no man
can ever hope to have access to these autographs, and would not be sure
that he had them in his hands if he actually found them, this theory
amounts to saying with the nursery rhyme:
Oats, peas, beans, and barley grows,
Where you, nor I, nor nobody knows.
We have not only to collate the manuscripts we possess and try to
reconstruct the likeliest text, but when we know what the authors
probably wrote, we must press back of their language and ideas to the
religious experience they attempt to express.
As writers the Biblical authors do not claim a special divine
assistance. Luke, in his preface to his gospel, merely asserts that he
has taken the pains of a careful historian, and Paul and his various
amanuenses did their best with a language in which they were not
literary experts. The Bible reader often has the impression that its
authors' religious experience, like Milton's sculptured lion, half
appears "pawing to get free his hinder parts." Or, to change the
metaphor, now one portion of their communion with God is brought to view
and now another, as one might stand before a sea that was illuminated
from moment to moment by flashes of lightning.
The Bible is the record of an _historic_ religious experience--that of
Israel which led up to the consciousness of God in Jesus and His
followers. The investigation of the sources of Hebrew religion has shown
that many of its beliefs came from the common heritage of the Semitic
peoples; and there are numerous points of similarity between Israel's
faith and that of other races. This ought not to surprise us, since its
God is the God of all men. But the more resemblances we detect, the
greater the difference appears. The same legend in Babylonia and in
Israel has such unlike spiritual content; the identical rite among the
Hebrews and among their neighbors developed such different religious
meaning. This particular stream of religious life has a unity and a
character of its own. Its record brings into the succeeding centuries,
and still produces in our world, a distinctive relationship with God.
The Bible is a record of _progressive_ religious experience. As every
poet with a new message has to create his own public, so it would seem
that God had slowly to evolve men who would respond to His ever higher
inspirations. When scholars arrange for us the Biblical material in its
historical order, the advance becomes much more apparent. Its God grows
from a tribal deity to the God of the whole world; from a localized
divinity dwelling on Sinai or at Jerusalem, as the Greeks placed their
gods on Olympus, into the Spirit who fills heaven and earth; from "a
man of war" and a tribal lawgiver into the God whose nature is love. "By
experience," said Roger Ascham, "we find out a short way by a long
wandering," and it took at least ten centuries to pass from the God of
Moses to the Father of Jesus Christ.
Obviously we must interpret, and at times correct, the less developed by
the more perfect consciousness of God. The Scriptures, like the land in
which their scenes are laid, are a land of hills and valleys, of lofty
peaks of spiritual elevation and of dark ravines of human passion and
doubt and cruelty; and to view it as a level plain of religious equality
is to make serious mistakes. _Ecclesiastes_ is by no means on the same
level with _Isaiah_, nor _Proverbs_ with the _Sermon on the Mount_.
Doctrines and principles that are drawn from texts chosen at random from
all parts of the Bible are sure to be unworthy statements of the highest
fellowship with God.
Nor does mere chronological rearrangement of the material do justice to
the progress; there was loss as well as gain. All mountain roads on
their way to the summit go down as well as up; and their advance must
be judged not from their elevation at any particular point, but from
their successful approach towards their destination. The experiences of
Israel reach their apex in the faith of Jesus and of His immediate
followers; and they find their explanation and unity in Him. In form the
Jewish Bible, unlike the Christian, has no climax; it stops, ours ends.
Christians judge the progress in the religious experience of Israel by
its approximation to the faith and purpose of Jesus.
The Bible is a _selected_ record of religious experience. Old Testament
historians often refer to other books which have not been preserved; and
there were letters of St. Paul which were allowed to perish, and
gospels, other than our four, which failed to gain a place in the Canon.
A discriminating instinct was at work, judging between writings and
writings. We know little of the details of the process by which it
compiled the Old Testament. The Jewish Church spoke of its Scriptures as
"the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings"; and it is probable that in
this order it made collections of those books which it found expressed
and reproduced its faith. In the time of Jesus the Old Testament, as we
know it, was practically complete, although there still lingered some
discussion whether _Esther, Ecclesiastes_ and the _Song of Songs_ were
sacred books. We should like to know far more than students have yet
discovered of the reasons which Jewish scholars gave for admitting some
and rejecting other writings; but, whatever their alleged reasons, the
books underwent a struggle for recognition, and the fittest, according
to the judgment of the corporate religious experience of the devout,
survived.
The first Christians found the Jewish Bible in use as containing "the
oracles of God"; and as it had been their Lord's Bible it became theirs.
No one of the first generation of Christians thought of adding other
Scriptures. In that age the Coming of the Messiah and His Kingdom in
power were daily expected, and there seemed no need of writing anything
for succeeding times. Paul's letters were penned to meet current needs
in the churches, and were naturally kept, reread and passed from church
to church. As the years went by and disciples were added who had never
known the Lord in the days of His flesh, a demand arose for collections
of His sayings. Then gospels were written, and the New Testament
literature came into existence, although no one yet thought of these
writings as Holy Scripture.
Three factors, however, combined to give these books an authoritative
position. In the Church services _reading_ was a part of worship. What
should be read? A letter of an apostle, a selection of Jesus' sayings, a
memoir of His life, an account of the earliest days of the Church.
Certain books became favorites because they were most helpful in
creating and stimulating Christian faith and life; and they won their
own position of respect and authority.
Some books by reason of their _authorship_--Paul or Peter, for
instance--or because they contained the life and teaching of Jesus,
naturally held a place of reverence. This eventually led to the
ascription to well-known names of books that were found helpful which
had in fact been written by others. For example, the _Epistle to the
Hebrews_ was ultimately credited to Paul, and the _Second Epistle of
Peter_ to the Apostle Peter.
And, again, _controversies_ arose in which it was all important to agree
what were the sources to which appeal should be made. The first
collection of Christian writings, of which we know, consisting of ten
letters of Paul and an abridged version of the _Gospel according to
Luke_, was put forth by Marcion in the Second Century to defend his
interpretation of Christianity--an interpretation which the majority of
Christians did not accept. It was inevitable that a fuller collection of
writings should be made to refute those whose faith appeared incomplete
or incorrect.
In the last quarter of the Second Century we find established the
conception of the Bible as consisting of two parts--the Old and the New
Covenant. This meant that the Christian writings so acknowledged would
be given at least the same authority as was then accorded to the Jewish
Bible. Early in the Fourth Century the historian, Eusebius, tells us how
the New Testament stood in his day. He divides the books into three
classes--those acknowledged, those disputed, and those rejected. In the
second division he places the epistles of _James_ and _Jude_, the
_Second Epistle of Peter_ and the _Second_ and _Third_ of _John_; in the
first all our other books, but he says of the _Revelation of John_, that
some think that it should be put in the third division; in the third he
names a number of books which are of interest to us as showing what some
churches regarded as worthy of a place in the New Testament, and used as
they did our familiar gospels and epistles. By the end of that century,
under the influence of Athanasius and the Church in Rome, the New
Testament as it now stands became almost everywhere recognized.
The reason given for the acceptance or rejection of a book was its
_apostolic authorship_. Only books that could claim to have been written
by an apostle or an apostolic man were considered authoritative. We now
know that not all the books could meet this requirement; but the
Church's real reason was its own discriminating spiritual experience
which approved some books and refused others. Canon Sanday sums up the
selective process by saying: "In the fixing of the Canon, as in the
fixing of doctrine, the decisive influence proceeded from the bishops
and theologians of the period 325-450. But behind them was the practice
of the greater churches; and behind that again was not only the lead of
a few distinguished individuals, but the instinctive judgment of the
main body of the faithful. It was really this instinct that told in the
end more than any process of quasi-scientific criticism. And it was well
that it should be so, because the methods of criticism are apt to be,
and certainly would have been when the Canon was formed, both faulty and
inadequate, whereas instinct brings into play the religious sense as a
whole. Even this is not infallible; and it cannot be claimed that the
Canon of the Christian Sacred Books is infallible. But experience has
shown that the mistakes, so far as there have been mistakes, are
unimportant; and in practice even these are rectified by the natural
gravitation of the mind of man to that which it finds most nourishing
and most elevating."
In their attitude towards the Canon all Christians agree that the books
deemed authoritative must record the historic revelation which
culminated in Jesus and the founding of the Christian Church. A Roman
Catholic may derive more religious stimulus from the _Spiritual
Exercises_ of Ignatius Loyola than from the _Book of Lamentations_, and
a Protestant from Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_ than from the _Second
Epistle of John_; but neither would think of inserting these books in
the Canon. He who finds as much religious inspiration in some modern
poet or essayist as in a book of the Bible, may be correctly reporting
his own experience; but he is confusing the purpose of the Bible if he
suggests the substitution of these later prophets for those of ancient
Israel. The Bible is the spiritually selected record of a particular
Self-disclosure of God in a national history which reached its religious
goal in Jesus Christ.
Romanists and Protestants differ as to how many books constitute the
Canon, the former including the so-called _Apocrypha_--books in the
Greek translation but not in the original Hebrew Bible. And they differ
more fundamentally in the principle underlying the selection of the
books. The Roman Catholic holds that it is the Church which officially
has made the Bible, while the Protestant insists that the books possess
spiritual qualities of their own which gave them their place in the
authoritative volume, a place which the Church merely recognized.
Luther, in his celebrated dispute with Dr. Eck, asserted: "The Church
cannot give more authority or force to a book than it has in itself. A
Council cannot make that be Scripture which in its own nature is not
Scripture." The Council of Trent, answering the Reformers, in 1546,
issued an official decree defining what is Scripture: "The holy,
ecumenical and general Synod of Trent, legitimately convened in the Holy
Ghost ...receives and venerates with an equal piety and reverence all the
books as well of the Old as of the New Testament ...together with the
traditions pertaining both to faith and to morals, as proceeding from
the mouth of Christ, or dictated by the Holy Spirit, and preserved in
the Church Catholic by continuous succession." Then follows a catalogue
of the books, and an anathema on all who shall not receive them "as they
are contained in the old vulgate Latin version."
Over against this the Protestant takes the position that the books of
the Scripture came to be recognized as authoritative exactly as
Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth have been accorded their place in
English literature. It was the inherent merit of _Hamlet_ and _Paradise
Lost_ and the _Ode on the Intimations of Immortality_ that led to their
acknowledgment. No official body has made Shakespeare a classic; his
works have won their own place. No company of men of letters officially
organized keeps him in his eminent position; his plays keep themselves.
The books of the Bible have gained their positions because they could
not be barred from them; they possess power to recanonize themselves.
Some are much less valuable than others, and it is, perhaps, a debatable
question whether one or two of the apocryphal books--_First Maccabees_,
or _Ecclesiasticus_, for instance--are not as spiritually useful as the
_Song of Solomon_ or _Esther_; but of the chief books we may
confidentially affirm that, if one of them were dug up for the first
time today, it would gradually win a commanding place in Christian
thought. And it is a similar social experience of the Church--Jewish
and Christian--which has recognized their worth. The modernist Tyrrell
has written: "It cannot be denied that in the life of that formless
Church, which underlies the hierarchic organization, God's Spirit
exercises a silent but sovereign criticism, that His resistlessly
effectual judgment is made known, not in the precise language of
definition and decree, but in the slow manifestation of practical
results; in the survival of what has proved itself life-giving; in the
decay and oblivion of all whose value was but relative and temporary."
In a sense each Protestant Christian is entitled to make up a Bible of
his own out of the books which record the historical discoveries of God.
He is not bound by the opinions of others, however many and venerable;
and unless a book commends itself to his own spiritual judgment, he is
under no obligation to receive it as the word of God to him. As a matter
of fact every Christian does make such a Bible of his own; the
particular passages which "grip" him and reproduce their experiences in
him, they, and they alone, are his Bible. Luther was quickened into
life by the epistles of Paul, but spoke slightingly of _James_; many
socially active Christians in our day live in the prophets and the first
three gospels, and almost ignore the rest of the Bible. But individual
taste, while it has preferred authors and favorite works, does not think
of denying to Milton, or Wordsworth, or Shelley, their place among
English classics; a social judgment has assigned them that. A man who is
not hopelessly conceited will regret his inability to appreciate a
single one of the great authors, and will try to enlarge his sympathies.
The Christian will, with entire naturalness, be loyal to so much of the
Bible as "finds him," and humbly hope and endeavor to be led into ampler
ranges of spiritual life, that he may "apprehend with all saints" the
breadth, length, depth and height of the historic Self-revelation of
God.
The Bible is thus _a standard of religious experience_. If there is any
question as to what man's life with God ought to be, it can be referred
to the life recorded in these books. But men have often made the Bible
much more; confusing experience with its interpretation in some
particular epoch, they used the Bible as a treasury of proof texts for
doctrines, or of laws for conduct, or of specific provisos for Church
government and worship. They forgot that the writers of the early
chapters of _Genesis_, in describing their faith in God's relationship
to His world and to man and to history, had to express that faith in
terms of the existing traditions concerning the creation, the fall, the
deluge, the patriarchs. Their faith in God is one thing; the scientific
and historic accuracy of the stories in which they utter it is quite
another thing. They did not distinguish between Paul's life with God in
Christ, and the philosophy he had learned in Gamaliel's classroom, or
picked up in the thought of the Roman world of his day. Paul's religious
life is one thing, his theology in which he tries to explain and state
it is another thing. They read the plans that were made for the
organization of the first churches, and hastily concluded that these
were intended to govern churches in all ages. The chief divisions of the
Church claim for their form of government--papal, episcopal,
presbyterian, congregational--a Biblical authority. The religious life
of the early churches is one thing; their faith and hope and love ought
to abide in the Church throughout all generations; the method of their
organization may have been admirable for their circumstances, but there
is no reason we should consider it binding upon us in the totally
different circumstances of our day. Latterly social reformers have been
attempting to show that the Bible teaches some form of economic theory,
like socialism or communism. It lays down fundamental principles of
brotherhood, of justice, of peaceableness, but the economic or political
systems in which these shall be embodied, we must discover for ourselves
in each age. It is the norm of our life with God; but it is not a
standard fixing our scientific views, our theological opinions, our
ecclesiastical polity, our economic or political theories. It shows
forth the spirit we should manifest towards God and towards one another
as individuals, and families, and nations; "and where the Spirit of the
Lord is, there is liberty."
This brings us to the question of the _authority_ of the Bible. There
are two views of its authority; one that it contains mysteries beyond
our reason, which are revealed to us, and guaranteed to us as true,
either by marvellous signs such as miracles and fulfilled prophecies, or
by the infallible pronouncement of the official Church; the other is
that the Bible is the revelation of self-evidencing truth. The test of a
revelation is simply that it reveals. The evidence of daylight lies in
the fact that it enables us to see, and as we live in the light we are
more and more assured that we really do see. Advocates of the former
position say: "If anything is in the Bible, it must not be questioned;
it must simply be accepted and obeyed." Advocates of the latter view
say: "If it is in the Bible, it has been tried and found valuable by a
great many people; question it as searchingly as you can, and try it for
yourself, and see whether it proves itself true or not."
These two views came into collision in the struggle for a larger faith
which we call the Reformation. Augustine had stated the position which
became traditional when he wrote, "I would not believe in the Gospel
without the authority of the Church." But Luther insisted on the
contrary: "Thou must not place thy decision on the Pope, or any other;
thou must thyself be so skilful that thou can'st say, 'God says this,
not that.' Thou must bring conscience into play, that thou may'st boldly
and defiantly say, 'That is God's word; on that will I risk body and
life, and a hundred thousand necks if I had them.' Therefore no one
shall turn me from the word which God teaches me, and that must I know
as certainly as that two and three make five, that an ell is longer than
a half. That is certain, and though all the world speak to the contrary,
still I know that it is not otherwise. Who decides me there? No man, but
only _the Truth_ which is so perfectly certain that nobody can deny it."
And Calvin took the same ground: "As to their question, How are we to
know that the Scriptures came from God, if we cannot refer to the decree
of the Church, we might as well ask, How are we to distinguish light
from darkness, white from black, bitter from sweet."
The truth of the religious experiences recorded in the Bible is
self-evidencing to him who shares these experiences, and to no one else.
The Bible has, in a sense, to create or evoke the capacities by which
it is appreciated and verified. It is inspired only to those who are
themselves willing to be controlled by similar inspirations; it is the
word of God only to those who have ears for God's voice. There is a
difference between the phrases: "It is certain," and "I am certain." In
other matters we appeal to the collective opinion of sane people; but
such knowledge does not suffice in religion. Our fellowship with God
must be our own response to our highest inspirations. The Bible is
authoritative for us only in so far as we can say: "I have entered into
the friendship of the God, whose earlier friendship with men it records,
and know Him, who speaks as personally to my conscience through its
pages, as He spake to its writers. The Spirit that ruled them, the
Spirit of trust and service, controls me." This is John Calvin's
position. "It is acting a preposterous part," he writes in his
_Institutes_, "to endeavor to produce sound faith in the Scriptures by
disputations. Religion appearing to profane men to consist wholly in
opinion, in order that they may not believe anything on foolish or
slight grounds, they wish and expect it to be proved that Moses and the
prophets spake by divine inspiration; but as God alone is a sufficient
witness of Himself in His own word, so also the word will never gain
credit in the hearts of men, till it is confirmed by the testimony of
the Spirit."
If, then, the authority of the Bible depends upon the witness of the
Spirit within our own souls, its authority has definite limits. We can
verify spiritually the truth of a religious experience by repeating that
experience; but we cannot verify spiritually the correctness of the
report of some alleged event, or the accuracy of some opinion. We can
bear witness to the truthfulness of the record of the consciousness of
shame and separation from God in the story of the fall of Adam and Eve;
we must leave the question of the historicity of the narrative and the
scientific view of the origin of the race in a single pair to the
investigations of scholars. Our own knowledge of Jesus Christ as a
living Factor in our careers confirms the experience His disciples had
of His continued intercourse with them subsequent to His crucifixion;
but the manner of His resurrection and the mode in which _post mortem_
He communicated with them must be left to the untrammelled study of
historical students. The religious message of a miraculous happening,
like the story of Jonah or of the raising of Lazarus, we can test and
prove: disobedience brings disaster, repentance leads to restoration;
faith in Christ gives Him the chance to be to us the resurrection and
the life. The reported events must be tested by the judgments of
historic probability which are applied to all similar narratives, past
or present. The Bible's authority is strictly _religious_; it has to do
solely with God and man's life with man in Him; and, when read in the
light of its culmination in Christ, it approves itself to the Spirit of
Christ within Christians as a correct record of their experiences of
God, and the mighty inspiration to such experiences. Surely it is no
belittling limitation to say of this unique book that it is an authority
_only on God_. Every fundamental question of life is answered, every
essential need of the soul is met, when God is found, and becomes our
Life, our Home.
And with such _self-evidencing_ authority in the books of the Bible, it
is a question of minor importance who were their authors and when they
were written--the questions which the literary historical criticism
undertakes to answer. Luther put the matter conclusively when he said in
his vigorous fashion: "That which does not teach Christ is not
apostolic, though Peter or Paul should have said it; on the contrary
that which preaches Christ is apostolic, even if it should come from
Judas, Annas, Pilate and Herod." Some persons have been greatly troubled
in the last generation by being told that scholars did not consider the
conventionally received authorships of many of the books of the Bible
correct, but thought that Moses did not write the Pentateuch, or David
the _Psalms_, or Solomon the _Proverbs_ or _Ecclesiastes_, or Isaiah and
Jeremiah more than parts of the books that bear their names, or John and
Peter all the writings ascribed to them. We are not to judge of writings
by their authors, but by their intrinsic value. Suppose Shakespeare did
not write more than a fraction of the plays associated with his name, or
that he wrote none of them at all; the plays themselves remain as
valuable as ever; their interpretation of life in its tragedy and
humor, its heights and its depths, is as true as it ever was. Whatever
views of their composition or authorship may be reached by literary
experts, the Scriptures possess exactly the same spiritual power they
have always possessed. The Lord has been "our dwelling-place in all
generations," whether Moses or some other psalmist penned that line; and
Jesus is the bread of life, whether the apostle John or some other
disciple whom Jesus loved records that experience. Scholars may make the
meaning of the Scriptures much plainer by their searching studies; and
they must be encouraged to investigate as minutely and rigorously as
they can. To be fearful that the Bible cannot stand the test of the
keenest study, is to lack faith in its divine vitality. To found a
"Bible Defence League" is as unbelieving as to inaugurate a society for
the protection of the sun. Like the sun the Bible defends itself by
proving a light to the path of all who walk by it. The only defence it
needs is to be used; and the only attack it dreads is to be left unread.
And in speaking of the authority of the Bible we cannot forget that it
is not for Christians the supreme authority. "One is your Master, even
Christ." We must be cautious in speaking of the Bible, as we commonly
do, as "the word of God." That title belongs to Jesus. The Bible
contains the word of God; He is for us _the_ Word of God. We dare not
overlook His untrammelled attitude towards the Scriptures of His people,
who let His own spiritual discernment determine whether a Scripture was
His Father's living voice to Him, or only something said to men of old
time, and given temporarily for the hardness of hearts that could
respond to no higher ideal. As His followers, we dare not use less
freedom ourselves. We test every Scripture by the Spirit of Christ in
us: whatever is to us unchristlike in Joshua or in Paul, in a psalmist
or in the seer on Patmos, is not for us the word of our God: whatever
breathes the Spirit of Jesus from _Genesis_ to _Revelation_ is to us our
Father's Self-revealing speech.
Nor do we think that God ceased speaking when the Canon of the Bible was
complete. How could He, if He be the living God? "Truth," said Milton,
"is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow
not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of
conformity and tradition." The fountain of God's Self-revealing still
streams. Religious truth comes to us from all quarters--from events of
today and contemporaneous prophets, from living epistles at our side and
the still small voice within; but as a simple matter of fact, its main
flow is still through this book. When we want God--want Him for our
guidance, our encouragement, our correction, our comfort, our
inspiration--we find Him in the record of these ancient experiences of
His Self-unveiling. When near his death, after years of agony on his
bed, when he himself had become a changed man, Heinrich Heine wrote: "I
attribute my enlightenment entirely and simply to the reading of a book.
Of a book? Yes! and it is an old homely book, modest as nature--a book
which has a look modest as the sun which warms us, as the bread which
nourishes us--a book as full of love and blessing as the old mother who
reads in it with her trembling lips, and this book is _the_ Book, the
Bible. With right is it named the Holy Scriptures. He who has lost his
God can find Him again in this book; and he who has never known Him, is
here struck by the breath of the Divine Word."