CHAPTER I

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THE MENDENHALL LECTURES, THIRD SERIES DELIVERED AT DEPAUW UNIVERSITY

UNDERSTANDING THE SCRIPTURES

BY

FRANCIS J. McCONNELL

Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

I. PRELIMINARY

II. THE BOOK OF LIFE

III. THE BOOK OF HUMANITY

IV. THE BOOK OF GOD

V. THE BOOK OF CHRIST

VI. THE BOOK OF THE CROSS

FOREWORD

The Mendenhall Lectures, founded by Rev. Marmaduke H. Mendenhall, D.D.,

of the North Indiana Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, are

delivered annually in De Pauw University to the public without any

charge for admission. The object of the donor was "to found a perpetual

lectureship on the evidences of the Divine Origin of Christianity and

the inspiration and authority of the Holy Scriptures. The lecturers

must be persons of high and wide repute, of broad and varied

scholarship, who firmly adhere to the evangelical system of Christian

faith. The selection of lecturers may be made from the world of

Christian scholarship, without regard to denominational divisions. Each

course of lectures is to be published in book form by an eminent

publishing house and sold at cost to the faculty and students of the

University."

Lectures previously published: 1913, The Bible and Life, Edwin Holt

Hughes; 1914, The Literary Primacy of the Bible, George Peck Eckman.

GEORGE R. GROSE,

President De Pauw University.

CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARY

The problem as to the understanding of the Scriptures is with some no

problem at all. All we have to do is to take the narratives at their

face meaning. The Book is written in plain English, and all that is

necessary for its comprehension is a knowledge of what the words mean.

If we have any doubts, we can consult the dictionary. The plain man

ought to have no difficulty in understanding the Bible.

Nobody can deny the clearness of the English of the Scriptures.

Nevertheless, the plain man does have trouble. How far would the

ordinary intelligence have to read from the first chapter of Genesis

before finding itself in difficulties? There are accounts of events

utterly unlike anything which we see happening in the life around us,

events which seem to us to contradict the course of nature's procedure.

There are points of view foreign to our way of looking at things. More

than that, there seem to be actual contradictions between various

portions of the books. And, above all, the way of life marked out in

the Book seems to lead off toward mystery. To save our lives we have to

lose them. All the precepts of common sense seem set at defiance by

some passages of the Book. How can we explain the hold of such a book

on the world's life?

When once the problem of the understanding of the Scriptures is raised,

various solutions are offered, all of which contribute a measure of

help, but most of which do not greatly get us ahead. For example, we

are told that the Book is translated literature, and that if we could

get back to the original narratives in the original languages, we would

find our perplexities vanishing. There is no question that a knowledge

of Greek and Hebrew does aid us in an understanding of the Scriptures,

but this aid commonly extends only to the meaning of particular words.

One who knows enough of Greek or Hebrew to enter sympathetically into

the life of which those languages were the expression is prepared to

sense the scriptural atmosphere better than one who has not such

equipment. Very few Scripture readers, however, are thus qualified to

understand Greek and Hebrew. Very few ministers of the gospel are so

trained as to be able to pass upon shades of meaning of Greek or Hebrew

words against the judgment of those who teach these languages in the

schools. With graduation from theological school most ministers put

Hebrew to one side; and many pay no further attention to Greek. Even a

trained biblical student is very careful not to question the authority

of the professional linguistic experts. Apart from sidelights upon the

meaning of this or that passage, there is very little that the biblical

student can get from Greek or Hebrew which is not available in

important translations. We cannot solve the greater difficulties in

biblical study by carrying our investigations back to the study of the

original languages as such. The fact is that emphasis upon the

importance of mastery of Greek and Hebrew for an insight into

scriptural meanings rests largely upon a theory of literal inspiration

of the biblical narratives. It requires only a cursory reading to see

that the narratives in English cannot claim to be strictly inerrant, so

that the upholder of inerrancy is driven to the position that the

inerrancy is in the documents as originally written. No doctrine of

inerrancy, however, can explain away the puzzles which confront us, for

example, in the accounts of the creation as given us in the early

chapters of Genesis, or throw light upon the possibility of a soul's

passing from moral death to life.

Great help is promised us by those who maintain that the modern methods

of critical biblical study give us the key to scriptural meanings.

There is no doubt that many doors have been opened by critical methods.

Now that the flurries of misunderstanding which attended the first

application of such methods to biblical study have passed on, we see

that some solid results have been gained. In so far as our difficulties

arise from questions of authorship and date of writing, the critical

methods have brought much relief. Even very orthodox biblicists no

longer insist that it is necessary to oppose the teaching that the

first five books of the Bible were written at different times and by

different men. In fact, there is no reason to quarrel with the theory

that many parts of these books are not merely anonymous, but are

documents produced by the united effort of narrators and correlators

reaching through generations--the narratives often being transmitted

orally from fathers to sons. There is no reason for longer arguing

against the claim that the book of Isaiah as it stands in our

Scriptures is composed of documents written at widely separated

periods. It is permissible even from the standpoint of orthodoxy to

assign a late date to the book of Daniel. No harm is wrought when we

insist that the book of Mark must have priority in date among the

Gospels, and that Matthew and Luke are built in part from Mark as a

foundation. It is not dangerous to face the facts which cause the

prolonged debate over the authorship of the fourth Gospel. It is not

heresy to teach that the dates of the epistles must be rearranged

through the findings of modern scholarship. There is not only no danger

in a hospitable attitude toward modern scholarship, but many

difficulties disappear through adjusting ourselves to present-day

methods. If contradictions appear in a document hitherto considered a

unit, the contradictions are at least measurably done away with when

the document is seen to be a composite report from the points of view

of different authors. The critical method has been of immense value in

enforcing upon us that the scriptural books were written each with a

distinctive intention, apart from the purpose to represent the facts in

the method of a newspaper reporter or of a scientific investigator. In

a sense many of the more important scriptural documents were of the

nature of pamphlets or tracts for the times in which they were written.

The author was combating a heresy, or supplementing a previous

statement which seemed to him to be inadequate, or seeking to adjust a

religious conception to enlarging demands. The biblical writers are

commentators on or interpreters of the truth which they conceive to be

essential.

Making most generous allowances, however, for the advantages of the

critical methods, we must use them with considerable care. Results like

those suggested above seem to be well established, but there is always

possibility of the critic's becoming a mere specialist with the purely

technical point of view. Suppose the critic holds so to the passion for

analysis that for him analysis becomes everything. We may then have a

single verse cut into three or four pieces, each assigned to a

different author, the authors separated by long periods. Even if the

older narratives are composite, the process of welding or compression

was so thorough that detailed analyses are now out of the question.

Apart from its broader contentions, the method of the critical school

must be used tentatively and without dogmatism. Moreover, we must

always remember that the critical student comes to his task with

assumptions which are oftentimes more potent with him from his very

blindness to their existence. Assumption in scientific investigation is

inevitable. Suppose a critic to be markedly under the influence of some

evolutionary hypothesis. Suppose him to believe that the formula which

makes progress a movement from the simple to the complex can be traced

in detail in the advance of society. He is prepared to believe that in

practically every case the simple has preceded the complex. He will

forthwith untangle the biblical narrative to get at the ideal

evolutionary arrangement, ignoring the truth that except in the most

general fashion progress cannot thus be traced. In the actual life of

societies the progress, especially of ideas, is often from the complex

to the simple. Many evolutionists maintain that movement is now

forward, now backward, now diagonal, and now by a "short cut"; but if

the evolutionary critic sticks closely to his preconceived formula

about progress as always from the simple to the complex, he can lead us

astray. Again, almost all great prophetic announcements are ahead of

their time. They seem out of place at the date of their first

utterance--interruptions, interjections hard to fit into an orderly

historic scheme. Or suppose the critic to be a student of the

scientific school which will not allow for the play of any forces

excepting as they openly reveal themselves, the school that will not

allow for backgrounds of thought or for atmospheres which surround

conceptions. Such a student is very apt to maintain, for example, that

Paul knew only so much of the life of Jesus as he mentions in the

epistles. Such a student cannot assume that Paul ever took anything for

granted. We can see at once that a method so professedly exact as this

may be dangerously out of touch with the human processes of the life of

individuals and of societies. Or suppose still further that the

biblical student holds a set of scientific assumptions which are

extremely naturalistic; that is to say, suppose that he assumes that

nothing has ever happened which in any way departs from the natural

order. We have only to remind ourselves that the natural order of a

particular time is the order as that time conceives it; but it is

manifestly hazardous to limit events in the world of matter to the

scientific conceptions of any one day. To take a single illustration,

the radical student of the life of Jesus of a generation ago cast out

forthwith from the Gospel accounts everything which suggested the

miraculous. The conceptions of the order of nature which obtained a

generation ago did not allow even for works of healing of the sort

recorded in the Gospels. At the present time radical biblical criticism

makes considerable allowance for such works. Discovery of the power of

mental suggestion and of the influence of mind over body has opened the

door to the return of some of the wonders wrought by Jesus to a place

among historic facts. This does not mean that the radical student is

any more friendly to miracles than before. We are not here raising the

question of miracles as such, but we do insist that an assumption as to

what the natural order may or may not allow can be fraught with peril

in the hands of critical students of the Scriptures. We say again that

while, in general, the larger contentions of the biblical school can be

looked upon as established beyond reasonable doubt; and while, in

general, the methods of the school are productive of good, yet, because

of the part that assumption plays in the fashioning of all critical

tools, the assumptions must be scrutinized with all possible care. A

good practical rule is to read widely from the critics, to accept what

they generally agree upon, to hold very loosely anything that seems

"striking" or "brilliant." This is a field in which originality must be

discounted. There is so little check upon the imagination.

It is but a step from the consideration of the critical methods in

biblical study to that of the historical methods in the broader sense.

Many students who are out of patience with the more narrowly critical

processes maintain that the broader historical methods are of vast

value in biblical discussion. Here, again, we must admit the large

measure of justice in the claim. We can see at once that the same

reservations must be made as in the case of the critical methods. The

assumptions play a determining part. If we are on our guard against any

tricks that assumptions may play, we can eagerly expect the historical

methods to aid us greatly.

We have come to see that any revelation to be really a revelation must

speak in the language of a particular time. But speaking in the

language of a particular time implies at the outset very decided

limitations. The prophets who arise to proclaim any kind of truth must

clothe their ideas in the thought terms of a particular day and can

accomplish their aims only as they succeed in leading the spiritual

life of their day onward and upward. Such a prophet will accommodate

himself to the mental and moral and religious limitations of the time

in which he speaks. Only thus can he get a start. It is inevitable,

then, that along with the higher truth of his message there will appear

the marks of the limitations of the mold in which the message is cast.

The prophet must take what materials he finds at hand, and with these

materials direct the people to something higher and better.

Furthermore, in the successive stages through which the idea grows we

must expect to find it affected by all the important factors which in

any degree determine its unfolding. The first stage in understanding

the Scriptures is to learn what a writer intended to say, what he meant

for the people of his day. To do this we must rely upon the methods

which we use in any historical investigation. The Christian student of

the Scriptures believes that the Bible contains eternal truths for all

time, truths which are above time in their spiritual values. Even so,

however, the truth must first be written for a particular time and that

time the period in which the prophet lived. When the Christian speaks

of the Scriptures as containing a revelation for all time, he refers to

their essential spiritual value. The best way to make that essential

spiritual value effective for the after times is to sink it deep into

the consciousness of a particular time. This gives it leverage, or

focus for the outworking of its forces. No matter how limited the

conceptions in which the spiritual richness first took form, those

conceptions can be understood by the students who look back through the

ages, while the spiritual value itself shines out with perennial

freshness. Paradoxical as it may sound, the truths which are of most

value for all time are those which first get themselves most thoroughly

into the thought and feeling of some one particular time. Let us look

at the opening chapters of Genesis for illustration. The historical

student points out to us that the science of the first chapters of

Genesis is not peculiar to the Hebrew people, that substantially

similar views of the stages through which creation moved are to be

found in the literatures of surrounding peoples. A well-known type of

student would therefore seek at one stroke to bring the first chapters

of Genesis down to the level of the scriptures of the neighbors of the

Hebrews. He would then discount all these narratives alike by reference

to modern astronomy, geology, and biology. But the difference between

the Hebrew account and the other accounts lies in this, that in the

Hebrew statement the science of a particular time is made the vehicle

of eternally superb moral and spiritual conceptions concerning man and

concerning man's relation to the Power that brought him into being. The

worth of these conceptions even in that early statement few of us would

be inclined to question. Assuming that any man or set of men became in

the old days alive to the value of such religious ideas, how could they

speak them forth except in the language of their own day? They had to

speak in their own tongue, and speaking in that tongue they had to use

the thought terms expressed by that tongue. They accepted the science

of their day as true, and they utilized that science for the sake of

bodying forth the moral and spiritual insights to which they had

attained. The inadequacy of early Hebrew science and its likeness to

Babylonian and Chaldean science do not invalidate the worth of the

spiritual conceptions of Genesis. This ought to be apparent even to the

proverbial wayfaring man. The loftiest spiritual utterances are often

clad in the poorest scientific draperies. Who would dare deny the worth

of the great moral insights of Dante? And who, on the other hand, would

insist upon the lasting value of the science in which his deep

penetrations are uttered? And so with Milton. Dr. W. F. Warren has

shown the nature of the material universe as pictured in Milton's

"Paradise Lost." In passing from heaven to hell one would descend from

an upper to a lower region of a sphere, passing through openings at the

centers of other concentric spheres on the way down. Nothing more

foreign to modern science can be imagined; yet we do not cast aside

"Paradise Lost" because of the crudity of its view of the physical

system.

Assuming that the biblical prophets were to have any effect whatever,

in what language could they speak except that of their own time? Their

position was very similar to that of the modern preacher who uses

present-day ideas of the physical universe as instruments to proclaim

moral and spiritual values. Nobody can claim that modern scientific

theories are ultimate, and nobody can deny, on the other hand, that

vast good is done in the utilization of these conceptions for high

religious purposes.

A minister once sought in a sermon on the marvels of man's constitution

to enforce his conceptions by speaking of the instantaneousness with

which a message flashed to the brain through the nervous system is

heeded and acted upon. He said that the touch of red-hot iron upon a

finger-tip makes a disturbance which is instantly reported to the brain

for action. A scientific hearer was infinitely disgusted. He said that

all such disturbances are acted upon in the spinal cord. He could see

no value, therefore, even in the main point of the minister's sermon

because of the minister's mistaken conception of nervous processes. I

suppose very few of us know whether this scientific objection was well

taken or not. Very few of us, however, would reject the entire sermon

because of an erroneous illustration; and yet sometimes all the

essentials of the Scriptures are discounted because of flaws no more

consequential than that suggested in this illustration. The Scriptures

aim to declare a certain idea of God, a certain idea of man, and a

certain idea of the relations between God and man. Those ideas are

clothed in the garments of successive ages. The change in the fashions

and adequacy of the garments does not make worthless the living truth

which the garments clothe. Jesus himself lived deeply in his own time

and spoke his own language and worked through the thought terms which

were part of the life of his time. Some biblical readers have been

greatly disturbed in recent years by the discovery of the part which

so-called apocalyptic thought-forms play in the teaching of Jesus. The

fact is that these conceptions were the commonest element in all later

Jewish thinking. Jesus could not have lived when he did without making

apocalyptic terms the vehicle for his doctrines. We have come to see

that the manner of the coming of the kingdom of Jesus is not so

important as the character of that kingdom.

Not only must a prophet speak in the language of a definite time, but

he must speak to men as he finds them. This being so, we must expect

that revelations will in a sense be accommodated to the apprehension of

the day of their utterance. The minds of men are in constant movement.

If the prophet were to have before him minds altogether at a

standstill, he might well despair of accomplishing great results by his

message. He would be forced to think of the intelligence of this day as

a sort of vessel which he could fill with so much and no more. But

whether the prophets have through the ages had any theoretic

understanding of human intelligence as an organism or not, they have

acted upon the assumption that they were dealing with such organisms.

So they have conceived of their truth as a seed cast into the ground,

passing through successive stages. Jesus himself spoke of the kingdom

of God as moving out of the stage of the blade into that of the ear and

finally into that of the full corn in the ear. This illustration is our

warrant for insisting that in the enforcing of truth all manner of

factors come into play and that the truth passes through successive

epochs, some of which may seem to later believers very unpromising and

unworthy. The test of the worth of an idea is not so much any opinion

as to the unseemliness of the stages through which it has passed as it

is the value of the idea when once it has come to ripeness. The test of

the grain is its final value for food. The scriptural truths are to be

judged by no other test than that of their worth for life.

In the light of the teaching of Jesus himself there is no reason why we

should shrink from stating that the revelation of biblical truth is

influenced by even the moral limitations of men. Jesus said that an

important revelation to man was halted at an imperfect stage because of

the hardness of men's hearts. The Mosaic law of divorce was looked upon

by Jesus as inadequate. The law represented the best that could be done

with hardened hearts. The author of the Practice of Christianity, a

book published anonymously some years ago, has shown conclusively how

the hardness of men's hearts limits any sort of moral and spiritual

revelation. It will be remembered that William James in discussing the

openness of minds to truth divided men into the "tough-minded" and the

"tender-minded." James was not thinking of moral distinctions: he was

merely emphasizing the fact that tough-minded men require a different

order of intellectual approach than do the tender-minded. If we put

into tough-mindedness the element of moral hardness and

unresponsiveness which the prophet must meet, we can see how such an

element would condition and limit the prophet.

Again, Jesus said to his disciples that he had many things to say to

them, but that they could not bear them at the time at which he spoke.

Some revelations must wait for moral strength on the part of the people

to whom they are to come. Suppose, for example, in this year of our

Lord 1917, some scientist should discover a method of touching off

explosives from a great distance by wireless telegraphy without the

need of a specially prepared receiver at the end where the explosion is

desired. Suppose it were possible for him simply to press a button and

blow up all the ships of the British Navy, or all the stores of

munitions in Germany. What would be the first duty of such an inventor?

Very likely it would be his immediate duty to keep the secret closely

locked in his own mind. If such a discovery were made known to European

combatants in their present temper, it is a question what would be left

on earth at the end of the next twenty-four hours. With European minds

in their present moral and spiritual plight it would not be safe to

trust them with any such revelation. And this illustration has

significance for more than the physical order of revelation. There are

principles for individual and social conduct that may well be put into

effect one hundred years from now. Men are not now morally fit to

receive some revelations. All of which means that any revealing

movement is a progressive movement in that it depends upon not merely

the utterances of the revealing mind, but upon the response of the

receiving mind. In the play back and forth between giver and receiver

all sorts of factors come into power. The study of the interplay of

these factors is entirely worthy as an object of Christian research. We

may well be thankful for any advance thus far made in such study and we

may look for greater advances in the future. For example, the historic

students thus far have put in most of their effort laying stress upon

similarities between the biblical conceptions and the conceptions of

the peoples outside the current of biblical revelation. The work has

been of great value. Nevertheless it would seem to be about time for

larger emphasis on the differences between the biblical revelations and

the conceptions outside.

Still when all is said the mastery of historical methods of study is

but preliminary to the real understanding of the Scriptures. If we come

close to the revealing movement itself, we find that before we get far

into the stream there must be sympathetic responsiveness to biblical

teaching. The difficulties in understanding the Scriptures are, as of

old, not so much of the intellect as they are of conscience and

will--the difficulties, in a word, that arise from the hardness of

men's hearts.