THE BOOK OF GOD
We have remarked upon some points of view from which the student must
start in order to reach a sound understanding of the Scriptures. It is
time for us to ask ourselves, however, as to the dominant notes of the
Scriptures which make the Book so dynamic. The purpose of this chapter
is to show that the essentials of the Book are, after all, its
teachings about God. The Bible is the Book of God. Due chiefly to the
ideas about God are its uniqueness and its force.
Before advancing to the consideration of the Bible as a book about God
it will be well for us to glance for a moment at other grounds on which
supremacy for the Scriptures is sometimes claimed. There are those who
maintain that the value of the Bible lies in the wealth of information
which it gives us concerning the first days of the world's life. The
Bible helps us to regard sympathetically the view of the universe by
the ancient Hebrews. It is a repository of knowledge as to early
science and philosophy. Now, all this is true, but relatively
unimportant. Had it not been for the religious teachings of which the
old-time view of the world was the vehicle, that vehicle itself would
long since have been forgotten. Only archaeologists are to-day greatly
interested in ancient theories of the world as such.
There are, again, those who avow that the Bible deserves all praise
because of the literary excellence of its style. There are, indeed,
sublime passages to be forever cherished as entitled by their very
sublimity of expression to permanent place in the world's literature.
All this we most gladly admit. Oratory like that of the book of Isaiah,
some of the sentences of the patriarchs, passages from the Psalms or
from the Sermon on the Mount, the parables, the thirteenth chapter of
Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, are sure of permanency in
literature no matter what may be anyone's opinion of their religious
content. Nobility of conception is very apt to tend toward nobility of
phrase. The expression may be admired for its own apart from the
substance; but to say that the Bible holds its throne as the Book of
books simply because of the superiority of its artistic form is
woefully aside from the mark. Lamentable as it may be, masses of men do
not rank artistic literary skill as highly as they ought. While a lofty
idea is not likely to make its full impression until wrought into lofty
beauty by a master of style, the worth must nevertheless inhere in the
substance rather than in the form if the statement is to make lasting
effect upon the passing generations. Moreover, it is very easy to
overemphasize the literary excellence of the Scriptures. There are
scores of passages which, as we say, "go through one," but this
marvelous effectiveness is quite as likely to belodged in the idea
itself and in the associations which that idea arouses as in the form
of the passage. In some instances the literary mold in the Authorized
Version is such as to hinder rather than to help; so that the prophet
who seeks to add to the force of the idea breaks the mold for literary
recasting.
Still another may declare that the Scriptures are valuable because they
abound in hints which make for practical success--shrewd moral maxims
which aid all classes of men in avoiding pitfalls, axioms for daily
conduct which ought to be accepted by everybody, even by those who care
not for the religion of the Bible. All this, again, is true, but hardly
sufficient to explain the grip of the Bible on mankind. So far as the
more conventional morality goes, men are likely to be ruled by the
sentiment of the community in which they move. They adapt themselves to
the demands of the situation at a particular time rather than to a set
of precepts.
Still others maintain that the human ideal itself which we sketched in
a previous chapter is the determining factor in giving the Bible power.
The greatest study of mankind is man. The erection of such an ideal as
that of the Scriptures for man cannot fail to secure for the Book
mighty power through all the ages. And yet it must be replied that if
we take the Bible merely as portraying a human ideal without reference
to the idea of God involved in the same process of revelation, we cut
asunder two things which properly belong together. We must not forget
that in the history of Israel the prophets grasped at every new insight
concerning human character as at the same time a new insight concerning
the character of God. Attributing a profoundly moral trait to God made
it of more consequence forthwith for man, and thus the conceptions of
man and God went along together reenforcing each the other. To separate
the ideal of God from the ideal of man leaves everything at loose ends
for the human ideal. It is true that there are individuals here and
there of intense intelligence and of immense wealth of moral endowment
who do not seem to require any ideal of God to sustain and strengthen
their ideal of man; but for the most of us the ideal of man cannot grow
to any considerable size without growth of our notion as to the
character of God. What man is now depends somewhat on our thought of
where man came from, and what his place in the universe essentially is.
One of our deepest yearnings is to know whether our exalted belief
about man has any validity before the larger ranges of the activity of
the universe itself. It is very common, for example, for those who go
forth to social tasks with a passion for humanity to lose that passion
if they do not keep alive a passion for God. Disappointment with some
phases of human nature itself and despair over the failures of men are
apt to be so trying that the passion for humanity dies down unless
familiarity with actual human life is reenforced by communion with an
ideal which reaches up toward the Divine. We would ourselves insist
that the loftiest human ideal in all literature is that of the
Scriptures, but we must insist also that this ideal lacks driving force
if it does not keep back of it the biblical doctrine of God.
From the very outset the Hebrew Scriptures deal with God. "In the
beginning God," at the end God, and God at every step of the journey
from the beginning to the end. There are other scriptures besides the
Hebrew Scriptures that deal with God, but the kind of God set before us
in the Hebrew revelation gives the Bible its supreme merit.
Since we often hear that there are other sources for the idea of God
than the Scriptures, it may be well for us to appraise the
contributions from some of those sources before we look at the kind of
God drawn for us in the biblical writings. After allowing as high
excellence as is possible to the theologies obtained outside the
Scriptures, the moral and spiritual superiority of the scriptural ideal
shines forth unmistakably.
Many a scientist tells us that we do not further need the biblical idea
of God in view of the vast suggestions concerning the Divine which
science places before us. The world in which we live has broadened
immeasurably since the days of the Hebrew prophets and seers. The idea
of God, broadening to correspond, has to expand so overwhelmingly that
we ought no longer pay heed to the imaginations of the biblical
writers. Large numbers of scientists to-day avow themselves devout
theists. Materialism is decidedly out of fashion, and agnosticism is
less in vogue than a decade or two ago. The reverent scientist affirms
that he believes in a God whose omniscience keeps track of every
particle of matter in a universe whose spaces are measured by billions
of miles, a God whose omnipresence implies the interlacing of forces
whose sweep and fineness seen through the telescope and microscope
astonish us. Moreover, the modern doctrine of evolution shows us that
the entire material system is moving on and up from lower to higher
forms. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be," but we shall clearly
be something great and glorious.
Now, far be it from us to belittle the splendor of this scientific
vision. Modern scientific searchers are, indeed, finding innumerable
illustrations of the greatness of God. There is every reason why the
scientific investigator should rejoice in a calling which enables him
to think God's thoughts after him; but when a scientist will have it
that his belief in God arises only from his technical investigations,
we must declare our suspicion that he is employing his findings to
confirm a faith already held, though that faith may be part of his
unconscious spiritual possessions. Many times the scientist is
determined that the scientific discoveries shall look in theistic
directions just to satisfy the imperious though unconscious demands of
his own soul. Some scientists are theists just because they are bound
to be so, for the close contemplation of the entire situation in the
material realm does not make for any adequate theistic verdict. It is
hard indeed to believe that the nice adjustments of matter and force
occur without the governance of a supervising intelligence. There are
too many facts which suggest skill to make it easy to believe that the
natural world is just the outcome of a fortuitous concourse of atoms.
Science itself very likely establishes a presumption in favor of a
governing mind, _but the deeper question is as to the character of that
mind_. Is it a moral mind? At this point the hopeful evolutionist will
break out that the progress is so definitely from lower to higher that
no one ought to doubt the benevolence of the Power moving upward
through all things. Evolution is, indeed, full of promises to one who
already trusts in the goodness of God; but the progress from lower to
higher is not always unmistakable. Often the survival of the fittest is
just a survival of those fittest to survive, and not the survival of
those who ought to survive. There are too many things which survive
which ought to be killed off. Simple good can give way to complex evil
without at all violating the requirements of the evolutionistic
formula. But even if we concede all that the scientist claims for his
conception of God; if we grant that terms like "omnipresence" and
"omniscience" and "progress" clothe themselves with new force in the
Copernican and Newtonian and Darwinian terminology, we must
nevertheless insist that none of this rises to the moral height of the
biblical teaching. Nor are we willing to admit that the biblical
doctrine is to be discounted because it grew up amid small theories of
the material universe. The old Hebrew views of the physical system,
outdated as they are now, are nevertheless full of sublimity on their
own account. But even if they were infinitesimal as compared with the
vast stretches of modern scientific measurements, the moral grandeur of
the idea of God of which they were the framework stands forth
unmistakably. We must not permit the quantitative bigness of modern
scientific notions to obscure the qualitative fineness of the biblical
ideal of God. Modern philosophy comes also and announces that it has a
better God than that of the Scriptures. The most imposing modern
philosophical systems are those which proclaim some form of idealism.
The gist of the idealistic argument always is that the world itself is
nothing apart from thought; that thought-relationships rule in and
through all things; that there are no things-in-themselves; that there
can be no hard-and-fast stuff standing apart from God. Things must come
within the range of thought or go out of existence. There is no
alternative. Now, thought implies a thinker, and this implication
carries us at once to God. Here, again, we have no desire to question
the cogency of the argument. We are ready to admit that this is the
strongest theistic argument that has thus far been built. To be sure,
there are some questions that inevitably suggest themselves: What is
the thinker? Is it impersonal thought, as some have maintained? Is it
just the sum of all forms of consciousness--our consciousnesses being
organs or phases of the Supreme Consciousness? Or is the thinker
strictly personal, carrying on a thought-world by the power of his will
and calling into existence finite thinkers in his own image? Assuming
that the world is the expression of the thought of a Personal Thinker
who acts in the forces of nature and creates men in his own image, the
further question arises as to the character of that Thinker. While
returning the heartiest thanks to the idealist for his argument--full
as it is of aid for the Christian system--we have to protest that the
argument does not lift us to the full height of the ideal of God
inculcated in the Scriptures. And if this is true of the majestic
systems of idealism, how much more is it true of the other and less
convincing systems which are just now having their day! We have already
spoken of pragmatism as possessing validity as a method, but pragmatism
can hardly cherish pretension of being itself a system of religious
philosophy.
Some very strenuous searchers after divine treasures have professed to
discover value in various non-Christian religions. They have patiently
studied the great Indian world-views, for example, which are admittedly
the most important religious creations outside of Christianity. These
students come back to us with fragments of doctrines, gems of ethical
wisdom, traces of sublimity from the Indian sacred books. It would be
foolhardy not to receive any genuine treasures, no matter what the mine
from which they have been quarried. We are all eager to admit the
immeasurable possibilities of the Oriental type of thinking for the
development of Christianity, but Oriental systems thus far have been
chiefly significant as indicating what stupendous religious powers can
do when they are off the track. The Indian systems of religion have run
loose in India. As a result, nowhere in the world has religion been
taken more seriously and more sincerely than by the Indian peoples. It
is simply impossible to bring the charge against the Indian races that
they have not made the most of their religion. The final indictment to
be passed upon the Indian systems is that while the Indian peoples have
made the most of those systems, the systems have made least of the
Indian peoples; and this because of the defects in the conception of
the Divine itself. It is doubtful whether the Indian could call his
highest gods personal. If he declares them personal, he can hardly make
them moral in the full sense; that is to say, in the sense of exerting
their force on the world in favor of justice and righteousness and love.
Now, it is just in the quality of moral force that the God of the
Scriptures shows his superiority. The entire revealing process can be
looked upon as one long story of the moralization of the idea of God.
Let it be granted that the biblical idea was at the beginning marked by
the naïve and the crude. Personally, we have never been able to see the
pertinency of the reasonings which make the Hebrew Jehovah as imperfect
as some students would have us believe. Nevertheless, for the sake of
the argument we will admit limitations in the early Hebrew conception
of God. Even with such concession, however, the outstanding
characteristics of that God were from the beginning moral. Suppose that
Jehovah was at the beginning just a tribal Deity. The difference
between Jehovah and other tribal deities was that the commandments
which were conceived of as coming from him looked in the direction of
increasing moral life for the people, and these moral demands upon the
chosen people were conceived of as arising out of the nature of Jehovah
himself. To be sure, the early narratives employ expressions like "the
jealousy of God," but even a slightly sympathetic reading of the
Scriptures indicates that the jealousy was directed against whatever
would harm human life. In the mighty pictures of the patriarchs the
heroes speak to their God as if the same moral obligations rested upon
God as upon themselves. There is nothing finer in the Old Testament
than Abraham's challenge, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do
right?"
We are not specially interested in the growth of the ideas as to the
power of God, though we repeat that it is difficult for us to believe
that the early Hebrews thought of their Deity as so narrowly limited in
power as some modern students seek to prove. The conception of the
might of Jehovah grew through the centuries and followed upon the
extension of the knowledge of the Hebrews about the world in which they
lived. If tomorrow morning some revolutionary astronomical discovery
should convince us that the solar system is much vaster than we have
ever imagined, the theist would, of course, extend the thought of the
sway of God to all that solar system. If there were some method of
becoming aware that the bodies of the entire astronomical system are
millions of times more numerous than scientists ever have dreamed, the
theist would, of course, maintain that the righteous purpose of his God
reaches to all of these bodies. The growth of the Hebrew idea was
somewhat parallel to this. Even when the Hebrew thought of the outside
peoples as having gods of their own; he believed that as soon as his
God came into conflict with the other gods, he would shatter them with
his might. By the time the first chapters of Genesis were written the
Hebrew conceived of God as creator of all things, and thereafter the
growth of the belief in the power of God kept pace with the enlarging
view of the world.
We repeat that we are not much concerned with the growth of the idea of
the power of God. We are, however, interested in the manifest teaching
or direct implication of the Scriptures that from the beginning the
Hebrews thought of God as under obligation to use his power for moral
ends. What the moral ends were depended upon the growth of the moral
ideal. At the very beginning it was believed that since God had chosen
the people of Israel to be his people, he must fight their battles for
them. It is from this point of view that we must deal with the early
idea of God as a God of battles. God was wielding his force for a moral
purpose. Moreover, if God had chosen a people to be the channel through
which he was to reveal himself to the world, he must be very patient
with that people. How sublime is the Old Testament belief in the
patience of God toward Israel! To use the phrase of our later days, God
accommodated himself to the progress which the people could make. When
the prophets called upon the people to walk with God, they implied a
willingness on God's part to walk with the people. If they must
lengthen their stride, he must shorten his; he must bear with them in
their inadequate notions; he must judge their efforts by the direction
in which they were tending rather than by any achievement in itself.
It is from the point of view of their growing apprehension of God as
moral that we can best understand the ferocity of the Israelite toward
the so-called heathen peoples. The boasting of the Israelites over the
slaughter of outsiders must be understood from the faith in the moral
destiny which the prophets conceived the God of Israel to hold in store
for his people. The reason assigned for cruelties and warfares upon
heathen peoples was the abominations practiced by those peoples. Of
course it is possible for a student obsessed with the modern doctrine
of the economic determinism of history to say that we have in the story
of the Hebrew development just the play of economic forces with moral
aims assigned as their formal justification. Assuming that the
narratives of the conquest of Canaan are true, what the Hebrews
desired--these economists tell us--was the milk and the honey. They
made their so-called advance in obedience to God an excuse for taking
possession of the milk and the honey. Now, he would be blind indeed who
would deny that economic values do play their part in wars of conquest;
he would be foolish who would deny that wars always do justify
themselves by appealing to lofty religious motives, but nevertheless
the impact of the Hebrew history upon the life of the world has been a
moral impact, due to the belief of the Hebrews that they were
instruments in the hands of a moral God. If we could behold the
abominations in heathenism upon which the old prophets looked, we would
sympathize quite readily with an impulse which might seem to call for
outright destruction. A friend of mine, a man of the most sensitive
Christian feeling, once stood on the banks of the Ganges and watched
people by the hundreds and thousands going through religious
ceremonials, some of which were defiling and others silly. In the midst
of the reeking vileness of one scene in particular he said that he felt
for the moment an impulse like that of the old prophets to cry out for
the destruction of the entire mass. The situation seemed so dreadful
and so hopeless! All this passed in an instant to the loftier feeling
of compassion, but the stirring of the more primitive impulse was
really moral in its foundation. In any case, the old Hebrew notion was
of a God who would put a growing moral ideal in the first place.
It is not necessary for us to attempt to trace the steps of the growth
of the moral ideal for God. As we have said, that ideal kept pace with
the growth of the ideal for man. We must call attention, however, to
the fact that the growth of the ideal was in the direction of
increasing emphasis upon the responsibilities that go with power. The
Hebrew may not have definitely phrased the responsibility, but he
nevertheless shows his increasing realization of the obligations
resting upon God. When we reach the later prophets we discern that his
moral obligation upon God himself becomes more and more a determining
factor. There appear glimpses of belief that God must not only fight
for his people, but that he must suffer in their sufferings. It is of
little consequence for our present purpose whether the suffering
servant of Jehovah of the later Israelitish Scriptures is a group of
persons or an individual. The implication is that the suffering is a
revelation of Jehovah himself. Moreover, there appears a widening
stream of emphasis on the tenderness of God's care for his people. The
Hebrew writers comparatively early broke away from the thought of God
as merely philanthropically inclined toward Israel. They did not think
of him as bestowing gifts which were without cost to himself. They show
him as deeply involved in the life of the nation and as caring for his
people with an infinite compassion. This enlarging revelation was made
clear to the people through the utterances of prophets, the decrees of
lawgivers, the songs of psalmists, the interpretations of historians,
and the warnings of statesmen. Slowly and surely, moreover, the people
attained grasp on the doctrine that the greatest revelation of God is
the revelation in human character itself. They began to look forward to
the coming of one who would in himself embody the noblest and best in
the divine life, who would gather up in himself all the ideals and
purposes toward which the law and the prophets had looked. New
Testament revelation as such we leave to the later chapters, but we
have come far enough, we think, to warrant us in saying that only he
can understand the Scriptures who sees that the chief fact about the
Scriptures is the emphasis on the moral nature of God. Other Scriptures
besides that of the Hebrews--we might say scientific, philosophical,
extra-Christian Scriptures--have stood for the existence of God; but
none have stood for the existence of such a God as the God of the
Bible. The salient feature of the Bible is its thought of God.