The kind of study that I have just been recommending is strictly
critical; but the theory of which I have been speaking carries us out
beyond the narrower ground of criticism into the wider field of history
and teleology. I may just for a moment in conclusion touch on this. It
may supply us with a warning that there is at least a strong presumption
that the theory which fathers the teaching of St. John upon that of St.
Paul, and St. Paul’s teaching upon itself, with no higher sanction
behind, cannot well be true. Such a theory would mean that quite a half,
and the most important half, of the fundamental theses of historical
Christianity, were a mere human invention which those who have had the
wit to discover them to be a human invention may go on to treat as
nothing better,—to bestow on them perhaps a certain amount of praise in
relation to their time, but to regard them as something that the world
has outgrown. This is a view that in the present day, avowedly or
unavowedly, is very largely taken. On this view there is a real nucleus
of truth in biblical Christianity, but that nucleus in the light of
modern science is seen to be very small indeed; all the rest is
surplusage. The misfortune for the theory is that it is not only on the
nucleus of truth, but very largely upon the surplusage, that nineteen
centuries of Christians have lived.
Now I am quite prepared to believe that most great truths that do not
come under the head of Mathematics or Physical Science have had a
certain amount of surplusage attached to them; there has been husk and
kernel, flower and sheath. I quite believe that men do
‘rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.’
But I cannot help thinking that, on the theory of Wernle and his
friends, the surplusage is too great, the dead self too large. The
course of history, as this theory would describe it, seems to me
contrary to the analogy of what we otherwise know of the dealings of God
with man. If we look, for instance, at the Old Testament, we see a
gradual preparation for the coming of Christ, a gradual elevation and
expansion of religious ideas, on the whole a nearer approximation to
truth. All of us, critics and non-critics, would give substantially the
same account of this; we should all of us at least see in it progress.
But when we come to Christianity, Wernle and his friends see in it a far
larger proportion of what is not progress but depravation and
corruption, not the gradual expansion and purification of true ideas,
but the wider dissemination of ideas that are false. There are nearly
fourteen centuries of the dissemination of these false ideas; then comes
a sudden spasmodic effort of partial relief; and at last, in the latter
half of the nineteenth and in the twentieth centuries, there is some
sort of approach to a rediscovery of truth. It seems to me difficult to
describe this view of history as anything else than a systematic
impeachment of Divine Providence.
I do not wish to press the point. As I have said, we have left behind
the region of criticism, and entered upon another that is not only very
wide but that some of you may think rather outside my subject. The
Christian, it seems to me, ought to have a comprehensive view of the
purpose of God in history; he ought to be able to adjust this to his
fundamental beliefs. And I would only ask you to consider how far this
can be done on the theory I have been discussing.
Footnote 64:
A few sentences here are repeated from my article in Hastings, _D. B._
iv. 575.
Footnote 65:
_Atonement and Personality_, p. 194. Compare the important and
detailed exposition, pp. 154-9, 168 f., 180-2.
Footnote 66:
I do not doubt that the most active period for the putting together of
material for Gospels was the decade 60-70 A.D. At the beginning of
this period St. Mark had not yet taken up his task; and his Gospel
forms the base of the other two Synoptics. The Matthaean _Logia_
perhaps by this time were collected.
Footnote 67:
I cannot regard this argument as at all invalidated by Dr. Drummond’s
three sermons, _The Pauline Benediction_ (London, 1897). At the same
time I can quite accept the view that the Apostle’s words are ‘the
seed rather than the final expression of Christian theology.’
Footnote 68:
With the above may be compared Dr. Hort’s comment (ad. loc.) on 1 St.
Peter, i. 1, 2, and other Trinitarian passages referred to in
illustration: ‘In no passage is there any indication that the writer
was independently working out a doctrinal scheme: a recognized belief
or idea seems to be everywhere presupposed. How such an idea could
arise in the mind of St. Paul or any other apostle without sanction
from a Word of the Lord, it is difficult to imagine: and this
consideration is a sufficient answer to the doubts which have, by no
means unnaturally, been raised whether Matt. xxviii. 19 may not have
been added or recast in a later generation.’
Footnote 69:
Compare the Fifth of the Oxyrhynchus _Logia_.
Footnote 70:
_L’Évangile et L’Église_, p. 78 f.
Footnote 71:
H. J. Holtzmann, for instance, points to Is. xiv. 3; xxviii. 12; lv.
1-3; Jer. vi. 16; xxxi. 2, 25, but especially Ecclus. iii. 6; vi. 24,
25, 28, 29; li. 23-30.
Footnote 72:
Contrast the treatment of the passage by M. Loisy with the way in
which it is singled out by Matthew Arnold (_Literature and Dogma_, p.
214 f.). Indeed the course of the most recent criticism has borne in
upon me more and more that, far from being a stumbling-block, it is
really the key to any true understanding of the Christ of the Gospels.
If we had not had the passage, we should have had to invent one like
it!
Footnote 73:
I do not of course mean to deny all influence of St. Paul upon St.
John in the shaping or formulating of Christian ideas. But the
ultimate origin of those ideas goes further back than to St. Paul.
LECTURE VIII
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE GOSPEL