Volume XXIII
July, 1925
Number 3
/ O
The Princdtoh Theological Review
CONTENTS
The Judicial Decisions of the General Assembly of
1925 353
Benjamin M. Gemmill
The Authority of the Holy Scriptures 389
Clarence Edward Macartney The Incarnate Life of Our Lord from the Point of
View of His Moral Character 397
F. D. Jenkins
The Evangelical Faith and the Holy Spirit 422
Harmon H. McQuilkin
Old Testament Emphases and Modern Thought 432
Part I. Oswald T. Allis
Notes and Notices 465
“The Reformed Principle of Authority,” C. W. Hodge
Reviews of Recent Literature 476
Survey of Periodical Literature 523
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LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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BOOKS REVIEWED
Allen, E. F„ Who’s Who in the Bible
Ballard, F., Reality in Bible Reading
Bevbridge, a. J„ The Art of Public Speaking
Boreham, F. W^, a Casket of Cameos
Boullaye, H. P., de la, L’Stude Comparee des Religions
Charles, R. H., The Adventure into the Unknown
Dickson, V. E., Mental Tests and the Classroom Teacher
Earp, E. L., Biblical Backgrounds for the Rural Message
Evans, S., The Currency of the Invisible
Garrett, W. O., Church Ushers’ Manual
Grose, H. B.. Never Man So Spake
Howard, H., The Peril of Power and Other Sermons
Jefferson, C. E., Five Present-Day Controversies
Jones, E. D., When Jesus Wrote on the Ground
Kennedy, E. R., The Real Daniel Webster
Kuyper, a., To Be Near Unto God
Kyle, M. G., The Deciding Voice of the Monuments
Loisy, a.. My Duel with the Vatican
Lorenz, E. S.. Church Music
Macfarland, C. S., International Christian Movements
Magary, A. E„ Character and Happiness
McKeehan, H. D„ Great Modern Sermons
More, L. T., The Dogma of Evolution
Nes, W. H., The Breach with Rome
Norton, F. E., Parent Training in the Church School
Noyes, C., The Genius of Israel
Price, E. S., Elements of Hebreiv
Roberts, W. R., The Ravages of Higher Criticism in the Indian
Mission Field
Royden, .\. M., Christ Triumphant
ScHWEiZER, J., AJcolaus de’ Tudeschi
Simpson, J. Y„ The Spiritual Interpretation of Nature
Sinclair, J. S., Rich Gleanings After the Vintage from “Rabbi”
Duncan
Smith, J. M. P„ The Religion of the Psalms
Strickland, F. L., The Psychology of Religious Experience
Stroh, G.. God’s Program
Walker, P., Sermons. for the Times by Present-Day Preachers ...
Wallace, O. C. S., Looking Toioard the Heights
W^anamaker, O. D., With Italy in Her Final War of Liberation ..
Ward, T. W. G., The Master and the Twelve
W EST, R., Purposive Speaking
W'hitley, M. T., a Study of the Junior Child
Wood, B. D., Measurement in Higher Education
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Copyright 1925, by Princeton University Press
The Princeton Theological Review
JULY, 1925
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1925
The most dramatic moment in the sessions of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., is the report of the Judicial Commission. The members of the Commission, fifteen in number, file solemnly in and take their places behind the Moderator. The Assembly is then constituted a “court of Jesus Christ” by prayer offered by the Moderator; and sitting as the supreme court of the denomination, it hears the preliminary judgments of the Commission and decides whether its decisions shall become the final judgments of the Assembly.
There was more than usual interest this year in the cases^ brought before the Assembly because of the importance of the matters under adjudication. The doctrine of the Virgin Birth, with all that it involves as to the sinlessness of Christ and His Deity, the authority of the Holy Scriptures which record it, especially the credibility of that pervasive superna- turalism which is characteristic of the Scriptures and of which the Virgin Birth is an outstanding illustration, and the authority of the Confession of Faith in which this doctrine is expressly stated; the right of the Assembly to review the acts of Presbyteries, the obligation of Presbyteries to be faithful to the standards of the Church, the right of direct appeal to the Assembly in cases involving doctrine — all this was involved in the cases decided by the Columbus Assembly.
The cases were the following: Case No. i was known as
1 These cases were six in number. But two of them (Nos. 2 and 5 on the docket) were apparently withdrawn, since the Commission presented no preliminary judgment to the Assembly regarding them.
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that of Albert D. Gants et al vs. the Synod of New York. This was originally a complaint against the Presbytery of New York in licensing two candidates to preach the Gospel. It had been taken to the Assembly of 1924 and was remanded to the Synod of New York for hearing and appropriate action. The Synod heard the case, but in doing so, made itself liable to a complaint because of certain irregularities in the proceedings. Mr. Gantz, thereupon, complained to the Gen- eral Assembly. Cases Nos. 3 and 4 were complaints of Buchanan et al vs. the Presbytery of Nezv York for licensing a student and receiving a minister who “failed to aflhrm” belief in doctrines declared to be essential by the General Assembly. Case No. 6, known as the Fosdick Case, was a complaint of Buchanan et al vs. the Presbytery of New York for allowing the First Presbyterian Church of New York to retain Dr. Fosdick as special preacher for some months after his refusal to accept the creed and to come into the Presbyterian Church.
Taking up the cases in the order in which they were pre- sented to the Assembly by the Commission we find that they pass upon the following important questions : i ) Promptness in obeying the mandates of the Assembly — Case No. 6. 2) Direct appeal to the General Assembly — Cases Nos. 3 and 4. 3) The right of the Assembly and the right of Presby- teries in the matter of Licensure — ^^Case No. i.
I. Promptness in Obeying Mandates of Assembly The “Fosdick Case,” although it had aroused the greatest popular interest was not as last year the most important case before the Assembly, since as far as Dr. Fosdick was con- cerned it had become a moot, or settled, question, by his withdrawing from the Pulpit of the First Church of New York; and the complaint was filed largely to prevent his return to that pulpit. The complainants, therefore, anticipated that the complaint would be dismissed; but they expected that the dismissal would be accompanied with instructions to the New York Presbytery that when the Assembly issues an
THE JUDICIAL DECISIONS
355
order, mandate or decision to a Presbytery, the Assembly expects immediate obedience. This was, in fact, the gist of the decision in the Fosdick case. The decision, of course, sets forth in historical recital the facts leading up to the complaint, and quotes from the decision of the Assembly of 1924 and from the letters of the Committee of the Presbytery of New York advising Dr. Fosdick of the action of the Assem- bly of 1924, and from the reply of Dr. Fosdick repudiating all creedal subscription. It then set forth the reasons why an earlier date for the withdrawal of Dr. Fosdick could not be fixed, including a statement from Dr. George Alexander, and recommends that the complaint be dismissed.^ It is to be noted, however, that despite the fact that the complainants were not sustained in their specific charges against the Pres- bytery of New York, the decision very clearly presents and upholds the principle for which the complainants contended. It declares that “It is of the utmost importance that the authority of our highest court should be resp>ected and maintained. ... in the absence of a definite time fixed by the judgment the action of the Presbytery should have been reasonably prompt and not unduly delayed.” The Presbytery of New York fixed March i, 1925 — nine months after the decision of the Assembly of 1924 — for the termination of the relations of Dr. Fosdick and the First Presbyterian Church of New York. Regarding this the Commission expresses the judgment “that the date fixed was not as early as it should have been to comply properly with the decree of the court.” But in view of all the circumstances, the Commission recom- mended that the complaint be dismissed. In this decision the Assembly concurred and it became the final judgment of the Assembly.
There is one paragraph in this otherwise excellent decision that mars its unity and is not based upon facts. The Com- mission said :
* The decision which is a lengthy one is given with some abridgement as an Appendix to this article. See p. 385.
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A preliminary matter must first be disposed of. On the argument of the case a motion was made to suppress the brief filed on behalf of complain- ants, because of some of the language used. While we do not grant the motion, the Commission desires to suggest that in the future, care should be exercised by litigants not to use violent language or to make charges as to the good faith of parties which are not justified by the facts.
This paragraph might well have been omitted. In the hearing of the Fosdick case an effort was made to have the complainants “censured,” not “to suppress the brief”; and the language objected to was not in the complainants’ brief, but in the complaint itself, and the words objected to were words used last year by the Commission itself :® as the word “anomalous” and such other words as “dishonest” and “un- ethical.” This surely was not “violent” language, and in the judgment of many was not half strong and expressive enough ; and such terms were based upon facts. The Commis- sion might well have omitted that paragraph or, at least, have been more guarded in its own statements ; for that paragraph mars the symmetry and clearness of an otherwise very lucid decision.
II. Direct Appeal to the General Assembly
In the cases Nos. 3 and 4, being complaints against the Presbytery of New York in receiving Mr. Fuller, a Baptist minister, and in licensing Mr. Hall, both of whom failed to affirm their faith in certain doctrines of our Confession, the Commission remanded these to the Synod of New York for appropriate action. But as these cases are practically settled by the decision in the Gantz case, i.e., since that decision is a precedent by which these two cases must be determined either by the Synod of New York, or by the General Assembly upon further complaint to that court, they are of interest chiefly because the “passing by” of the Synod was not approved by the Assembly. The Judicial Commission held, in remanding them, that no reasons had been assigned for passing by the Synod of New York and coming directly to
s Minutes (1924), p. 195.
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the Assembly.^ Certain reasons were assigned, but apparently these were not deemed sufficient. The writer understands now that the Commission desired at first to treat the three cases dealing with licensure and reception as one and to make one decision cover these cases, but this was overruled.
This decision raises the question as to the circumstances under which a direct appeal may be made to the General Assembly. The following is quoted from a statement of the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly prepared for the guidance of the Judicial Commission :
Prior to the revision of the Book of Discipline in 1820, no discrimina- tion was made by the General Assembly between appeals and complaints,
* The two decisions, almost identical in form, were as follows ;
Case No. 3 — Walter D. Bwchanan et al. vs. the Presbytery of New York.
This is a complaint that the Presbytery of New York received into its fellowship as a PresbjTerian Minister, the Rev. Carlos G. Fuller, a Baptist Minister ; although his examination showed, it is alleged in the complaint, that he did not believe certain doctrines of the Presbyterian Church alleged by the complaint to be essential. The complaint is made direct to the General Assembly against the Presbytery passing by the Synod of New York. No reason is alleged by the complainants for passing by the Synod. Paragraph 84 of Chapter 9 of the Book of Discipline requires that complaints against an inferior judicatory must be made to the next superior judicatory in a non-judicial or administrative case. This case is in that class. The case must be remanded to the Synod of New York for appropriate action and is so ordered.
Case No. 4 — Walter D. Buchanan et al. vs. the Presbytery of New York.
This is a complaint that the Presbytery of New York licensed to preach the Gospel Mr. Cameron Parker Hall; although his examination showed, it is alleged in the complaint, that he did not believe certain doctrines of the Presbyterian Church alleged by the complaint to be essential. The complaint is made direct to the General Assembly against the Presbytery of New York, passing by the Synod of New York. No reason is alleged by the complainants for passing by the Synod. Para- graph 84 of Chapter 9 of the Book of Discipline requires that complaints against an inferior judicatory must be made to the next superior judicatory in a non-judicial or administrative case. This case is in that class. The case must be remanded to the Synod of New York for appropriate action and is so ordered.
By the Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., convened at Columbus, Ohio, May 26, 1925.
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the two designations being indifferently used to express the carrying of any decision, whether judicial or otherwise, to a higher court, by whatever parties. The common formula was, “We appeal and complain.” . . .
After 1820, and until 1884, a complaint w^s defined as “a representation to a superior judicatory by any member or members of a minority of an inferior judicatory, or by any other person or persons, respecting a decision by an inferior judicatory, which in the opinion of the complain- ants, has been irregularly or unjustly made.” While the words “a superior judicatory” are indefinite so far as defining whether a complaint could go directly from a presbytery to the General Assembly, nevertheless the principle guiding the General Assembly during those years was that where there was no sufficient reason for passing by the next superior court (the Synod) the case should go there. But where good reasons for carrying a case directly to the General Assembly were assigned, the complaint was entertained. In this the usage was the same both as to appeals and complaints. Examples of this practice may be found on Page 666 of the New Digest.
In 1884, the Book of Discipline was revised, and a complaint was defined as “a written representation by one or more persons, subject and submit- ting to the jurisdiction of an inferior judicatory, to the next superior judicatory.” Since that time the General Assembly has repeatedly® declared that complainants cannot pass over the next higher judicatory, and in accordance with Presbyterian law and usage must not eliminate any of the judicatories of the Church in addressing their complaints. Examples of the deliverances of the General Assembly upon this matter may be found in the New Digest, Page 557, and in the Minutes of the General Assembly, 1924 page 193. ... In this connection, an exception to the regular mode of procedure is to be noted in the action of the General Assembly of 1924 which received and heard a Complaint of certain mem- bers of New York Presbytery protesting against the action of that Presbytery in its report in compliance with the directions of the General Assembly of 1923. See Minutes, General Assembly, 1924, page 195.
This definition of a complaint, however, must be inter- preted by the statements of our Form of Government which permit complaints involving doctrine and the constitution to go directly to the Assembly and in the light of the decision of the Assembly not to permit or remand a case involving doctrine or the constitution to a Sjmod.® The Constitution
® The word “repeatedly” is used here unadvisedly as the practice of the Assembly has been the very reverse of this.
* See case of complaint from India {Digest, Vol. i, p. 272), where it is declared that the Assembly cannot remand to a Synod a case involving doctrine or the Constitution.
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permits complaints to come directly to the Assembly and the practice of the Church has accorded with these provisions.
a. The ConsHtutiotial Provisions regarding Complaints.
In Chap. 12, Sec. 4, of the Form of Government the General Assembly is given power of receiving and issuing complaints, and in Sec. 5, power of deciding in all contro- versies respecting doctrine and discipline. Sec. 4 confers an authoritative power and Sec. 5, an advisory. The question before us is one that relates to a single point — that of power. It is not what is wise, nor what is best for edification but what is the power of the Assembly in receiving and issuing complaints. This can be determined by reference to the Con- stitutional provisions and to the practice of our Church courts. The Presbyterian Church is a constitutional body. No judicatory has any legitimate functions save those which the Constitution confers either expressly or by clear impli- cation. The question is, What is the power of the Assembly in respect to complaints? The only correct answer is, The function of the Assembly in regard to complaints is of two kinds, authoritative and advisory; and between these there should be a careful discrimination. The advisory function is of very wide scope. This is set forth in Chap. 12, Sec. 5, “Of deciding in all controversies respecting doctrine,” &c., “Of reproving, warning, &c.” This power may be exercised with reference to any grave evil, nor is it an unimportant function. The testimony of such a body as the General Assembly must needs have great weight. In Chap. 12, Sec. 4, is conferred the authoritative power, which function can only be exercised by the Assembly in the forms and methods marked out by the Constitution. The methods by which this power may be invoked appear from the Book of Discipline to be four : by reference, by appeal, by complaint, and by general review and control. The three processes first named do not originate in the Assembly. Their beginning is in a lower judicatory. But where a lower judicatory neglects its duty then general review and control is invoked, as in the case of any important
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delinquency or unconstitutional proceeding, or the spread of heretical opinions or corrupt practices.
The complainants came directly to the Assembly with complaints against the Presbytery of New York for the following reasons, the first of which applies specifically to the Fuller Case: (i) Because they believed that this was an “exceptional case,” if we may use the words of the decisions of last year. They held that it was outside of the usual cate- gory or class of complaints in that it concerned the reception of a minister from another denomination who failed to affirm or deny certain doctrines declared to be essential, and excep- tional in that the Presbytery of New York by the conduct of the case hindered or precluded the taking of the complaint to the Synod of New York. (2) The complainants passed by the Synod of New York in both cases because Chap. 12, Sec. 3, of the Form of Government gives the Assembly power to receive and issue complaints “regularly brought up,” and these words have always been understood to refer to the method of procedure, as reference, complaint, or appeal, and never to “gradation of courts,” as in civil law. The Form of Government confers power on Presbyteries to receive and issue complaints from Sessions, upon Synods to receive and issue complaints from Presbyteries, but when it states the power of the Assembly, it does not say “Synods” but “inferior judicatories,” and that means Presbyteries as well as Synods.'^ (3) “The next superior judicatory” has always been held to mean the one that has to do with the matter at issue, or to which it can be appropriately taken; namely, matters of doctrine and constitution go to the Assembly and matters of administration or non-judicial questions to Synods. This has been the rule of procedure since our Church began in America and has always been the rule for the guidance of the Judical Committee of the Assembly. Why reverse it now ?®
^ See discussion of this whole matter in Biblical Repertory for 1835. 8 Minutes (1924), p. 107.
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h. The Practice of the Church regarding Complaints.
The practice of the Church in the matter of the Assembly’s receiving- and issuing complaints, before and after the revi- sion of the Book of Discipline in 1884, accords with the Constitutional provisions that certain classes of complaints may come directly to the Assembly.® It would be necessary to transcribe almost our entire judicial history were all the precedents to be cited illustrative of the rule that where doctrine and constitution is concerned the Assembly takes up and issues complaints which come directly to it. Also, there are numerous cases, which have been dismissed since no doctrine or constitutional question was involved; but these need not be cited. The following reasons were ofifered, there- fore as “urgent and substantial” for asking the Assembly to issue these cases :
(a) The Assembly itself has passed upon that question in finding the Complaint in order and remanding it to the Judicial Commission for hearing and determination.
(b) “The next superior judicatory” is that which has jurisdiction of the matter in question or to which it is appropriately taken and in this case it is the General Assembly.^®
(c) It is important to have the questions involved in this case finally determined by the representatives of substantially the entire Church, apart from all other reasons mentioned and would seem to require, in
® Complaint of certain members of a Presbytery vs. a Decision (1823 Digest) ; Complaint of Minority of Philadelphia Presbytery in Barnes case (1831) ; Complaint of an Individual vs. The Decision of a Superior Judicatory (1827) ; Complaint of Minority vs. The Decision of a Majority of Same Court (1831); Six complaints directly to the Assembly (1832) ; Appeals and complaints (1835) ; Several complaints (1839). Then omitting the hundreds of such complaints to the Assembly in the years which follow and coming down to more recent times we have: Hoberly vs. Presbytery of So. Oregon {Digest, Vol. i, p. 248) ; Eagleson vs. Presbytery of Steubenville {Digest, Vol. i, p. 247) ; Barker vs. Presbytery of Neosho {Digest, Vol. i, p. 247) ; in 1915, McMordy vs. Presbytery of Rio Grande {Digest, Vol. i, p. 169) ; in 1919, Ellis vs. Presbytery of Indianapolis {Digest, Vol. i, p. 180) ; in 1922, First Italian Church of Detroit vs. Presbytery of Detroit {Digest, Vol. i, p. 179) ; and finally last year the Assembly heard and issued the complaint of Cremonesi vs. Presbytery of Carlisle.
1® Minutes (1924), p. 107.
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the interest of fairness and justice to all concerned, that the Complain- ants should take their Complaint directly to the General Assembly and that the Assembly should entertain and determine the said Complaint. The Assembly has no right to remit the decision of any matter that effects the doctrine or constitution of the Church to an inferior judica- tory. Minutes of General Assembly 1896 p.p. 149, 150; Digest p. 272. Memorial from Synod of India. McLane vs. Presbytery of Steubenville, Digest p.p. 664, 665.
(d) The Book of Discipline and the Form of Government do not absolutely prohibit the carrying of a Complaint to the Assembly when it says “Either of the parties to a Complaint may complain to the next superior judicatory,” (Book of Discipline p. 92), except as limited by Chapter xi. sec. 4. Form of Government.
(e) It is important that a final settlement of this case should be reached. Such settlement has been delayed by the action and conduct of the Presbytery of New York, as shown by the following:
At the meeting of the Presbytery in June, the Committee on Examina- tion and Licensure said Mr. Fuller had been examined by the Committee, whereupon he was examined in open Presbytery. As he did not affirm his belief in the Virgin Birth, and as there seemed to be doubt as to what course of action should be taken, the matter was referred to the Committee to report at the October meeting of Presbi’tery for final action. During all the interval until the October meeting the Committee was never called together, .^t the October meeting of Presbytery the Chairman of the Committee stated that it had seemed impracticable to hold a meeting of the Committee, and after consultation with certain parties, he had decided, especially in view of the crowded condition of the docket, not to bring the matter up. Asked with whom he had consulted, he said he had conferred with the Stated Clerk of Presbytery, because he thought the Stated Clerk knew more about the matter than anyone else. Asked with what members of the Committee he had consulted, he replied, “I took counsel with myself.” This delay excluded the possibility of a Complaint to the Synod of 1924, thereby delaying the settlement of the case for another year.
(f) We believe that there is no hope for an impartial decision of this case in the Synod of New York, because in the Complaint to the Synod of New York by the Rev. A. D. Gantz et al against the Presbytery of New York in licensing two candidates who refused to affirm belief in the Virgin Birth, the Synod dismissed the Complaint, stating that “They cannot feel that the Deliverances of 1910 and 1916 were of equal weight with the former set of Deliverances.” See Minutes, Synod of N. Y. 1924, Case
In view of these reasons which were duly presented to and argued before the Commission, the language of the decision,
See The Complaints and Complainants’ Printed Briefs.
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“No reason is alleged by the Complainants for passing by the Synod,” is singular. A number of reasons were alleged but the Commission clearly did not regard them as adequate and so recommended the remanding of the case to the Synod — which decision was adopted by the Assembly.
III. The Right of the Assembly and the Right of Presbyteries in the Matter of Licensure
The questions involved in Case No. i, known as Gants vs. the Synod of New York were two. The Commission in its decision clearly defined the issue when it said “This case presents for decision two serious questions involving the constitution of the Church — the right of the General Assembly to review the action of a Presbytery in licensing candidates for the ministry; and the necessary requirements for licensure.”
a. The Right of the Assembly.
It was contended by the respondents that the Assembly has no right to review the acts of Presbyteries, that its testimony against error is of no binding authority unless concurred in by the Presbyteries, and that each man is to judge for himself how far he will respect the deliverances of the highest court. The complainants on the contrary showed from the origin, the Constitution and the practice of the Church that the theory of Presbyterianism advanced by the respondents was religious anarchism, that it was false, and that it had no countenance in the history of the Church.
The facts are these. First, as early as 1788, the Synod^^ in adopting a Constitution, said, that they “having fully consid- ered the draught of the Form of Government and Discipline did, on the review of the whole, and hereby do, ratify and adopt the same, as now altered and amended, as the Constitu- tion of the Presbyterian Church in America; and order the same to be considered and strictly observed, as the rule of
The Synod was the highest judicatory at that time.
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their proceedings by all the inferior judicatories, belonging to this body.” Here we find the Synod, as the highest court, not only making laws, but adopting a Constitution by their own authority and ordering all inferior judicatories to obey it. They went further and fixed the Constitution unalterably, unless two-thirds of the Presbyteries should propose changes, and they could only propose, and the alterations were to be enacted by the highest court. This is an act of the highest power and authority, and is to be commended to the consider- ation of the sticklers for the “securit}- of religious freedom.” This is not mere advice, but the exercise of the greatest power.
This Constitution of 1788 remained unchanged until 1804, when some verbal corrections were made. In 1821, some changes were made in the phraseology of certain parts and in the forms of process. But not a single principle of our system was altered. It seems like a waste of time to call attention to the powers of the Assembly, since they are so obvious and since the burden of proof so clearly rests upon those who call these powers in question. Let them tell us if they can when and where the Assembly was ever divested of its original powers to legislate for the whole church.
As recently as 1911 the General Assembly said, in making a deliverance as to the authority of the General Assembly over congregations :
This General Assembly declares and re-affirms that the authority of superior judicatories in the Presbyterian system of government over congregations is an authority based upon New Testament warrant, has also been acknowledged for centuries as an integral principle of govern- ment by the Presbj-terian Churches of Great Britain and the Continent of Europe, and has always been, from 1706 down to the present time, a cardinal feature of the government of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. -A
That decision also said : “It pertains to the eldership to take heed that the Word of God be purely preached within their bounds.”^®
13 Minutes (1911), p. 245.
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Secondly, the Constitution clearly teaches that the General Assembly is more than an appellate court or an advisory council. In Chap. 31, Sec. 2, of the Confession of Faith, we find these words :
It belongeth to. synods and councils, ministerially, to determine con- troversies of faith, and cases of conscience ; to set down rules and directions for the better ordering of the public worship of God, and government of his church; to receive complaints in cases of mal- administration and authoritively to determine the same; which decrees and determinations, if consonant to the Word of God, are to be received with reverence and submission, not only for their agreement with the Word, but also for the power whereby they are made, as being an ordinance of God, appointed thereunto in his Word.
This is clear and explicit language. “With regard to matters of faith and conscience, their power is ministerial; but with regard to matters of discipline and government, it is legislative.” To set down rules is to make laws ; “to determine controversies of faith,” is to interpret and re-affirm the doctrines of the Confession. This power is inherent in the Assembly. It is not delegated. The General Assembly is the highest judicatory of the Presbyterian Church, and “represents, in one body, all the particular churches of this denomination.” Its power is limited only by the Word of God and the Constitution of the church ; but its power reaches the whole church, and it is especially charged with the duty of “superintending the concerns of the whole church,” and with “suppressing schismatical contentions and disputations.”
In Chap. 20, Sec. 4, of the Confession of Faith, we read :
And because the powers which God hath ordained and the liberty which Christ hath purchased, are not intended by God to destroy, but mutually to uphold and preserve one another ; they, who upon pretense of Christian liberty, shall oppose any lawful power, or the lawful exer- cise of it, whether it be civil or ecclesiastical, resist the ordinance of God. And for their publishing of such opinions, or maintaining of such prac- tices, as are contrary to the light of nature; or to the known principles of Christianity; whether concerning faith, worship or conversation; or to the power of godliness ; or such erroneous opinions or practices, as either, in their own nature, or in the manner of publishing or maintaining them, are destructive to the external peace and order which Christ has estab-
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lished in the church ; they may lawfully be called to account and pro- ceeded against by the censures of the church.
Such is Presbyterianism as laid down in the Confession of Faith and the Form of Government. The only question, then, before us is. Did the Assembly exceed its powers in making the doctrinal deliverances of 1910, 1916 and 1923, and the decision of 1925 in the Gantz case, by re-affirming what is in the Standards of the church? Surely no one can say that the Assembly transgressed any right or exceeded any power in so doing. The Assembly did not erect new tests of ministerial communion, but only re-affirmed what was already in the Standards. No one questions the right and authority of the Assembly to do this except those who do not believe the doctrines announced to be necessary and essential. These doctrines had been assailed, and the Assembly came to their defense. The evidence that the Assembly has power to re- affirm the doctrine of the church is overwhelming. No one can read the records of the church since 1706, without agreeing with the interpretations of the power of the Assem- bly which have been given above and without being convinced that the modern theory of “advisory power” is unsustained by the practice as well as by the Standards of our church.^*
In 1787, the Synod said: “The Synod take this opportunity to declare their utter abhorrence of such doctrines as they apprehend to be subversive of the fundamental principles of religion and morality.”
The General Assembly has declared : “In some parts of our land, attempts are made to propagate the most pernicious errors with a zeal worthy of a better cause, and under lofty pretensions to superior rationality and to deeper discoveries in religion, some are endeavoring to take away the crown from the Redeemer’s head ; to degrade him who is the mighty God and the Prince of life to a level with mere men and to rob us of all our hopes of redemption through his blood.” (1822) Again, “The General Assembly are deeply impressed with the evidence of an improper spirit and an evil tendency in this sermon, are of the opinion that Mr. Craighead ought to retract or explain his sentiments, as to afford reasonable satisfaction to his brethren.” (1824)
Again, “Mr. Barnes has published opinions materially at variance with the Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church and with the Word of God.” To refuse to sustain this complaint, the Assembly said.
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h. The Right of Presbyteries in Matters of Licensure.
The second question involved was the right of a Presbytery in licensing candidates for the ministry. It follows from the right of the Assembly, which we have been considering, that no Presbytery has exclusive control of admitting men into
would be a “direct avowal that great and dangerous error may be published and maintained with impunity in the church.” (1836)
“And this Assembly disavows any desire, and would deprecate any attempt, to change the phraseology of our Standards, and would disap- prove of any language of light estimation applied to them ; believing that no denomination can prosper whose members permit themselves to speak slightly of its formularies of doctrines ; and are ready to unite with their brethren in contending earnestly for the faith of our Standards.” (1836)
There are many decisions and deliverances on doctrines. The Synod pronounced against Universalism and Socinianism ; it condemned the doctrines in a book entitled. The Gospel Plan; it issued a letter to the Churches under its care on the maintenance of doctrinal purity which ought to be republished as it suits the discussion of today. On this I quote from Dr. Hill’s Institutes, the highest authority on the discipline and government of the Church of Scotland. Dr. Hill says. “In the exercise of these powers (judicial, legislative and executive) the General Assembly often issues peremptory mandates, summoning individuals and inferior courts to appear at its bar. It sends precise orders to particular judicatories, directing, assisting or restraining them in the exercise of their functions and its superintending, controlling authority, maintains soundness of doctrine, checks irregularity and enforces general laws throughout all districts of the Church.” It must be admitted that the Assembly had a right to make doctrinal deliverances. This is not a question whether it was wise to do so or whether there was any adequate ground or reason for so doing. Both of which questions are not now argued but only the power of the Assembly and the binding authority of such deliverances.
The wisdom and adequate grounds of such action on the part of the Assembly are not open to discussion when we reflect upon the challenge hurled at the very heart of the Church’s doctrines. It would be necessary to transcribe the records of the Church almost in tolo if we were to give all the evidence which they contain on doctrinal deliverances. “The origin, the constitution, the uniform practice of our Church, therefore, prove that our judicatories are not independent of each other ; that the higher bodies are not mere courts of appeal and advisory councils : but that it belongs to them to set down rules for the government of the Church, which, if consonant with the Word of God and our written Constitution, are to be received with reverence and submission, out of regard to the authority of these courts. It is their duty to take effectual care that the Constitution is observed in all parts of the Church.”
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the ministry. The Assembly of 1874 made this deliverance, “That it has no power over the functions of the Presbytery in granting and continuing licenses save that of review and control,”^® but in such review, the Assembly shall examine whether the proceedings in such cases have been constitution- al and regular, and whether they have been wise, equitable and for the edification of the Church,^® and the Assembly has the power to examine into the use and abuse of the discretion of the Presbyteries. Furthermore the exercise of this review and control over the acts and proceedings of a lower court can only be secured by complaint or appeal or reference inasmuch as the minutes of the Presbyteries do not come before the Assembly for review. The complainants contended that the individual Presbytery is not independent ; that it has no power to declare what the doctrines of the Church shall be. They also maintained that the power to grant licenses implies the power to recall them ; that all rights vested under an unconstitutional act are null and void — this was the position taken in the abrogation of the plan of union in 1837 and in the opinion of Chief Justice Marshall in the Yazoo land cases in the State of Georgia — and that, therefore, if the Commission held that a license procured by failure to affirm certain doctrines was unconstitutional, the license of these young men was automatically recalled, and they would be preaching without license or authority.
The decisions of the Assembly in relation to licensure are many and explicit. The above views are upheld by the Constitution and the deliverances of the Assembly, some of which it may be well to cite :
The Synod do now declare that they understand these clauses that respect the admission of intrants or candidates in such a sense as to oblige them to receive and adopt the Confession and Catechisms at their admission in the same manner and as fully as the members of the Synod did that were then present — which overture was unanimously agreed to by the Synod.
Digest, Vol. i, p. 379.
Book of Discipline, Section 73.
Minutes 1730, p. 98.
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. . . that no Presbytery shall license or ordain to the work of the minis- try, any candidate, until he give them competent satisfaction as to his learning and experimental acquaintance with religion and skill in divinity and cases of conscience; and declare his acceptance of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms as the confession of his faith, and promise subjection to the Presbyterian plan of government in the Westminster Directory.!®
In 1910 the Assembly enumerated certain doctrines — inspiration of the Bible, virgin birth, atonement, resurrection, miracles — and then said :
These five articles of faith are essential and necessary, others are equally so. We need not fear for God’s truth as it is revealed in the Holy Scriptures and contained in our Westminster Standards. We bless God for the doctrines of His Word shining in our Standards. They stand firm like the towering beacon on the shore, casting a beam across the dark wave of this world’s sin. Foolish birds and bats dart out of the night and dash themselves against the lenses of the lighthouse only to fall back senseless at its base. So heretics and skeptics have hurled themselves against the Word of God and against the Westminster Standards, only to fall back baffled and broken.
And it further declared ;
Reaffirming the advice of the Adopting Act of 1729, all the Presby- teries within our bounds shall always take care not to admit any candidate for the ministry into the exercise of the sacred function unless he declares his agreement in opinion with all the essential and necessary articles of the Confession.!®
The Assembly of 1896 made the following deliverance :
While fully recognizing the constitutional right of Presbyteries in the matter of licensing candidates for the ministry (Form of Government, Chap. 14) we are nevertheless urgent that Presbyteries have special care of their examinations in subjects required by the Form of Government, Chap. 14, Sec. 4, and that due respect be given to the deliverances of the General Assembly in the matter of the education of students for the Gospel ministry.
We are equally urgent that the same care be taken by Presbyteries in their examinations of ministers coming to us that is urged upon them in the licensure of candidates already under the care of Presbyteries.®*
!® Minutes 1758, p. 285. !® Digest, Vol. I, p. 276. 20 Minutes 1896, p. 161.
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In 1895, i” answer to an overture from the Presbyter^' of. New York the Assembly said :
Therefore, inasmuch as obedience to the Constitution of the Church is obligatory on all Presbyteries, we recommend that, in accordance with the provisions of the Form of Government above cited, the Presbytery of New York be instructed and enjoined not to receive under its care for licensure, students who are pursuing or purpose to pursue their studies in theological seminaries respecting whose teaching the General Assembly disavows responsibility.®^
In 1896, the word “enjoined” was explained to be “an emphatic repetition in the expression of its response to the Presbytery of New York, touching the specific question in- volved.
In 1837, the Assembly in condemning certain disorders and irregularities bore its testimony against
. . . the licensing of persons to preach the gospel, and the ordaining to the office of the ministry such as only accept of our standards merely for substance of doctrine and others who are unfit and ought to be excluded for want of qualification, but of many even who openly deny fundamental principles of truth and preach and publish radical errors as already set forth.®®
®i Digest 1922, Vol. i, p. 363.
21“ The word “enjoin” implies more than mere advice. The old Sjmod and the General Assembly claimed more than advisory powers, “direct,” “order,” “enjoin,” are terms used from the beginning of our Presbyterian history. These orders relate to all manner of subjects. In the records, too, of the New School Assembly we find the word “enjoin” used to mean to “require,” and to “direct” in the most pointed manner. In 1795, 1799, 1809, 1810, there are cases where the General Assembly exercised its power of superintending the concerns of the whole Church by enjoining certain things to be done. According to the Constitution, the General Assembly is the bond of union and confidence among the churches. It makes our Church a denomination. But according to the theory of mere advice, the Church is an aggregate of a number of independent Presbyteries. The whole Church then is at the mercy of one Presbytery. Suppose such a Presbytery should admit a dozen men who were Unitarians, according to the “mere advice” theory the Assembly could only look on in silence, and give advice. This is not Presby- terianism and those who maintain the “mere advice” theory are not Presbyterians.
®2 Digest 1873, p. 231.
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The Assembly has, also, directed that the theological course should be taken in approved institutions :
That the Assembly calls attention to the judgment already frequently expressed, that candidates for our ministry should be educated, so far as possible, in institutions of our own Church, or those in hearty sympathy with it, and in particular hereby direct all Presbyteries to require that the theological course be taken in institutions approved by the General Assembly.^®
In 1911, the Assembly instructed New York Presbytery to see to it that its “modus vivendi” be so carried out that “purity of doctrine shall be maintained, and the peace of the Church be not disturbed.”®^
In 1912 in answer to an overture from the Presbytery of Minneapolis, in the matter of “licensing and ordaining to the ministry of our church men who doubt or deny the teachings of God’s Word, as interpreted by our Standards,” asking the Assembly to “take such action as will put an end, both to this flagrant defiance of rightful authority, and to this forcing upon the Church teachers of doubt and unbelief,” the Assem- bly adopted the following answer :
The Constitution fixes the authority and responsibility for the licensing and ordaining to the ministry of the Presbyterian Church in the Presbytery. Any Presbytery that licenses and ordains to the ministry men who deny the teachings of God’s Word as interpreted by our Standards, is guilty of perjury in violating the Constitution of the Church, and such violation should be remedied, but the remedy, to be effective on the part of the Assembly, must be upon protest, complaint or appeal, upon specific charges giving names and dates and whatever is needful in proof of the offense charged.®®
In 1916, certain overtures and papers were received by the Assembly, complaining of the action of New York Presbytery, “in receiving and licensing candidates for the ministry, whose theological beliefs do not accord with the doctrinal standards of our church.”*® It was admitted on all
2® Digest 1907, p. 1071 or Minutes 1904, p. 82.
2* Minutes 1911, p. 183, and Minutes of New York Presbytery for 1906.
25 Minutes 1912, p. 192.
2« Minutes 1916, p. 132.
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hands that such practice was bringing reproach upon the Church and was hindering the cause of Christ and that something must be done effectually to stop it. Those con- cerned met together and agreed to the adoption of a paper, which the Assembly intended to serve as a warning to all Presbyteries against receiving and licensing any candidates for the ministry who cannot give their assent to all the fundamental doctrines of the Church. This paper was as follows :
Whereas, the records of the Presbytery of New York, show that on April lo, 1916, that Presbj’tery licensed three candidates for the ministry,
who neither affirmed nor denied the doctrine of the Virgin Birth
Whereas, it is admitted that by the Constitution of the Church each Presb>-tery is the judge of the qualifications of candidates for the ministry, but each PresbjTery in licensing these candidates should strictly observe the declarations of the Confession of Faith in doctrinal matters.
The General Assembly calls attention of the Presbj-teries to the deliverance of the General Assembly of 1910, which is as follows :
1. It is an essential doctrine of the Word of God and our Standards that the Holy Spirit did so inspire, guide and move the writers of Holy Scripture as to keep them from error.
2. It is an essential doctrine of the Word of God and our Standards that our Lord Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary.
3. It is an essential doctrine of the Word of God and our Standards that Christ offered up “himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and to reconcile us to God.”
4. It is an essential doctrine of the Word of God and of our Standards concerning our Lord Jesus Christ that on the third day he arose again from the dead with the same body with which he suffered, with which also he ascended into heaven and there sitteth on the right hand of his Father, making intercession.
5. It is an essential doctrine of the Word of God as the supreme standard of our faith that our Lord Jesus showed his power and love by working miracles. This working was not contrary to nature, but superior to it.
Presbyteries, therefore, are hereby enjoined not to license or ordain any candidates for the ministry whose views are not in accordance with this deliverance of 1910. This General Assembly renews its positive mandate with full expectation of loyal compliance by all our Presby- teries; and directs when a candidate appears who is found to be not clear and positive, on any one of the fundamentals of our faith that his licensure be deferred until such time as in the judgment of the Presbytery he has become so.^"
27 Minutes 1916, p. 132.
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This Assembly emphasizes the fact that all the Presbyteries of the Church are under one Constitution, and that what is lawful in one is lawful in all, and that what is unlawful in one is unlawful in all. And the Presbyteries in the exercise and discharge of their rights and obligations are subject to the constitutional powers of the higher judicatories. 2®
The Assembly of 1910 said :
The complainants are right in attaching the greatest importance to such wide departures from the faith as they allege — departures which if allowed not only would dissolve the foundations of the Presbyterian Church, but equally would destroy historic Christianity in all the Protestant Evangelical Churches throughout the world — .... This church stands today as she has stood in all her history for the inspira- tion, integrity and authority of the Holy Scriptures, and confesses the virgin birth of our Lord, and his actual, bodily, resurrection as component parts of the faith once delivered to the saints and most surely witnessed to in history. These doctrines have been confessed in the immemorial testimony of the Church, and the facts involved are the facts upon which among others Christianity rests. No one who denies them or is in serious doubt concerning them should be either licensed or ordained as a minister.^®
This same Assembly, also, said :
It has had brought to their attention the fact of the deep concern in the Church in regard to the induction of young men into the ministry whose views on fundamental facts of the Scriptures and our Standards are sometimes immature or unsound, therefore we deem it timely to suggest to the Assembly that it set forth a public deliverance enjoining all Presbyteries under its jurisdiction to use great care in the examina- tion of candidates and that men of immature or unsettled views be placed under Presbyterial oversight until their views are matured and brought into full harmony with the Word of God as interpreted by our Standards.®®
The General Assembly has often borne its testimony against any unfaithfulness in these matters. It has enjoined on the Presbyteries, on the one hand, to abstain from making anything a condition of ministerial communion which the Constitution does not prescribe, and on the other to be firm and faithful in demanding everything which the Constitution enjoins. In giving this injunction the Assembly has required
Digest, Vol. i, p. 365. 2® Digest, Vol. i, p. 155. ®® Digest, Vol. i, p. 156.
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nothing that is unjust or unreasonable. No man has the right to join any voluntary society or organization unless he is willing to submit to its rules, much less has any man the right to assume the ofihce of teacher, ruler or steward in a church unless he fully assents to its doctrines. All those who approve of the doctrines which the Church is pledged to sustain, and who are otherwise qualified for the work, are cordially welcomed to its fellowship ; but all should protest against the unfairness of any Presbytery forcing upon the Church men who, by examination, show their unbelief in the Presbyterian standards, as dishonest and an injury against which the Presbyteries or if not they, then the Assembly, are bound to protect the Churches, and against which the Churches should both watch and pray.
The Presbyteries should remember that they are not independent bodies, each acting for itself alone, and therefore at liberty to receive any candidate whom they may suppose to be qualified to do good. The Presbyteries are coordinate members of an extended communion bound together by a written constitution. When, therefore, they admit a man who is unsound in the faith they are guilty of a breach of faith. So also the churches and sessions are not at liberty to desire or urge the continuance of any men as preachers unless they are known to be men who hold fast the form of sound words and show in doctrine uncorruptness. The truth of the Word of God as interpreted by our Standards is a sacred deposit which we are bound to treasure and transmit uncorrupted. It is the fire upon God’s altar which we are to watch, without which there can be no acceptable offering, and which, if once extinguished, can hardly be rekindled. The sanctuary remains dark and desolate for ages. The history of the Church is one solemn admonition on this subject. Indifference to truth is a sure sign of a decline of vital godliness in any Church. Every loyal Presbyterian should deplore any manifestation of such indifference. It may put on the guise of liberality or assume the name of charity, but its nature is not thereby altered. It is only the more dangerous from these false assumptions.
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It is gratifying to observe that in the “Gantz Case” the Commission rendered a decision that leaves no further room for debate upon the binding authority of the deliverances of the Assembly and the right of the Presbytery under the Constitution in licensing candidates for the ministry. The decision made clear that the Assembly has the right to review and control; that the Church is not a mere confederation of Presbyteries, but each Presbytery is subject in all its acts to the higher judicatories; that the General Assembly has the constitutional right to review the acts of the lower courts ; that a candidate’s affirmation of the constitutional questions is qualified by his replies in his examination ; that no one who is in serious doubt concerning the doctrines of the Church should be licensed or ordained as a minister; that the Assembly has repeatedly declared that clear and positive views must be held by the ministers of the Church, and therefore that the Presbytery of New York erred in the licensure of Van Dusen and Lehman. It therefore remanded the matter to the Presbytery “for appropriate action, in con- formity with the decision herein rendered.”
The following is the full text of the decision which we give because of its far-reaching importance, and significance ; and because, as pointed out above, it ably discusses the two great questions involved, namely, “the right of the General Assembly to review the action of a Presbytery in licensing candidates for the ministry ; and the necessary requirements for licensure.”
DECISION OF PERMANENT JUDICIAL COMMISSION
This is a complaint against the action of the Synod of New York in dismissing the complaint of Albert D. Gantz and others against the action of the Presbytery of New York in licensing one, Henry P. Van Dusen, and one, Cedric A. Lehman to preach the gospel. The parties agree that during the examination of these applicants each was interro- gated as to his belief in the Virgin Birth of our Lord, and each applicant declined to affirm his belief therein, stating he could neither affirm nor deny the Virgin Birth. This is the sole question of doctrine at issue and the respondent says both sides seek a decision upon constitutional lines.
This case presents for decision two serious questions involving the
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constitution of the church — the right of the General Assembly to review the action of a Presbj-tery in licensing candidates for the ministry; and the necessary requirements for licensure.
It is the contention of the respondent that the jurisdiction of a Pres- bj-tery in the matter of licensure is exclusive, that its action therein is not subject to review; and respondent moved the complaint be dismissed for want of jurisdiction.
Chap. lo, sec. 7 of our Form of Government says, among other things, “The Presbytery has power ... to examine and license candidates for the holy ministry.” This power is original in the Presbj-teiy. This, however, does not imply power not subject to review, otherwise each Presbytery would be a law unto itself. The Church is not a mere confederation of Presb3-teries — it is a united church, with a well defined politj' that order and S3'stem and unit3' prevail rather than confusion and disunion. Chap. 12, sec. I, of the Form of Government provides that the General Assembl3' “shall represent in one bod3% all the particular churches of this denomination.” In 1874 the General Assembly, in answer to an overture, declared “the General Assembl3' has no power over the functions of the Presb3-tery' in granting and continuing licenses, save that of review and control.” (See i Dig. 154.)
In 1910 complaints were lodged against the S3Tiod of New York in sustaining the action of a Presb3-ter3' in licensing and ordaining certain candidates. The General Assembly took jurisdiction of the complaints and heard and determined the issues therein, (i Dig. 155; 156)
Chap. 12, sec. 3, of the Form of Government says, among other things, “The General Assembl3' shall receive and issue all . . . complaints . . . that affect the . . . Constitution of the Church, and are regularly brought before it from the inferior judicatories.” Sec. 5 of the same chapter gives to the General Assembb' “the power of deciding in all controversies respecting doctrine.” In 1912 the General Assembly, in answer to an overture, said : “The Constitution fixes the authority and responsibility for the licensing and ordaining to the ministry of the Presbyterian Church in the Presb3'tery” and says, further, “that any violation of the Constitution by the Presb3'tery in so doing should be remedied ; but the remedy to be effective on the part of the Assembly must be on protest, complaint, or appeal, etc.” (i Dig. 278.)
Even where matters are left to the “satisfaction” or “discretion” of Presb3-ter3' this “satisfaction” or “discretion” is not an arbitrary one and must be exercised in a constitutional manner; otherwise it is subject to the review and control of the General Assembly, (i Dig. 564-)
As far back as 1835 the General Assembly defined the extent of such terms as “satisfaction,” “satisfactory” and “discretion” in the question of the admission of ministers and showed that while it is the Presb3'tery that is to be “satisfied” 3'et the General Assembly said “it being alwa3'S understood that each Presb3'ter3' is in this concern, as in all others, responsible for its acts to the higher judicatories.” (i Dig. 174.)
Hence this “satisfaction” and this “discretion” are not arbitrar3’; but must be exercised constitutionally, and are subject to review. This power
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of the General Assembly to review and control cannot be said to infringe the constitutional power of Presbytery in licensing candidates for the ministry. It is conferred by the constitution itself. The constitutional power of both judicatories must be considered in determining the con- stitutional power of either. That the General Assembly has the right to review this matter complained of has been practically determined before. This case was brought before the General Assembly at Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1924, upon direct complaint against the action of Presby- tery; but the General Assembly, while taking jurisdiction of the case, deemed it advisable that the usual constitutional procedure be followed in having the matter presented to Synod first; not deeming such emergency existed as to justify ignoring the power and position of the Synod. Accordingly, the complaint was presented to the Synod, and against the judgment rendered by the Synod this complaint is filed. It is the judgment of your Judicial Commission that the General Assembly has supervisory power to review and control the action of the Presbyteries in issuing and continuing licenses to preach, and therefore the complaint against the action of Synod for dismissing the complaint against the Presbytery can be heard and determined by the General Assembly. The motion to dismiss is overruled.
Having determined the constitutional power of the General Assembly in such matters, we come to the next question presented. In this case it is conceded the applicants for licensure were amply qualified in education, training, and character. However, in their examination as to the doctrines of the church and their fidelity thereto, they were questioned as to their belief in the Virgin Birth ; and each stated he was unable to affirm or deny the truth of this doctrine. It is claimed that as the applicant did not deny the truth of this doctrine the Presbytery was justified in licensing him.
Constitutional Rule No. 3 requires Presbytery to examine candidates under its care concerning their fidelity to the doctrines of the Church ; and Chap. 14, sec. 4 of the Form of Government requires the Presbytery to continue the educational exercises “until they shall have obtained satisfaction as to the candidate’s . . . aptness to teach in the church.”
It must be remembered this is an application for leave to preach the Gospel. This license is a guarantee on the part of Presbytery that the candidate is qualified to preach the doctrines of Holy Scripture and that he is not uncertain as to the Truth. The Presbytery must be satisfied that the applicant is clear and positive in his belief as to the doctrines of the church, and unless he is thus clear and positive it is the duty of Presbytery to defer licensure until he becomes thus clear and positive, (i Dig. 284.)
It is not a question as to the character of the applicant, his education, amiable qualities, or even his piety. It is a question as to the positiveness of his belief. Bearing this in mind, was it necessary the candidates affirm their belief in the Virgin Birth?
When the constitutional questions were propounded to the applicants, after the examinations were completed, each candidate answered all of
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them in the affirmative and without qualification, despite the uncertainty of mind expressed. These constitutional questions, however, must be interpreted in the light of the Constitution of the Church. Without this they mean nothing; and the affirmation of these constitutional questions is qualified by the views expressed or statements made by the candidate in setting forth his belief.
The candidate was not required to state his views as to the mystery therein contained. He was not required to attempt to explain it. He was asked whether he believed in the Virgin Birth — his attention being called to the narratives as contained in the Gospels of Matthew and of Luke, and he declined to affirm, stating he could neither affirm nor deny. He was in doubt as to the truth of these portions of the Holy Scriptures. Hence, he was unable to affirm his belief in positive, definite statements in the Gospels regarding the Virgin Birth. Constitutional question No. I, regarding belief in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, means the Scriptures as defined and described in Chapter i of the Confession of Faith. Constitutional question No. 2, requiring the candidate to receive and adopt the Confession of Faith of this church as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures means the Confession of Faith including Chapter 8 thereof dealing wdth the Incarnation. Thus, while he answered these constitutional questions in the affirmative, his affirmation is qualified by his doubt hereinbefore set forth. He gave his assent knowing he could not affirm his belief in the Virgin Birth and the narratives thereof as contained in the Gospels and as declared and defined in the Confession of Faith, and knowing the Presbytery knew he could not so affirm.
The General Assembly, under the Constitution of the Church, has the power, and it is its duty to review the action of lower judicatories. In the discharge of this duty, in a case regularly brought before it, the General Assembly is exercising its power as a Court, and as the highest judicatory in the Church; and its decision regarding doctrinal matters in such a case is therefore binding until modified or reviewed, or until the Constitution is amended. In 1910, the General Assembly, in an action on a complaint against the Sjnod of New York in sustaining the action of a PresbjTery in licensing candidates who, while not denying the Virgin Birth of our Lord, failed “to affirm it with the same positiveness as for some other doctrines” said that “no one who is in serious doubt concerning this doctrine should be licensed or ordained as a minister.” (i Dig. 156.)
The General Assembly has repeatedly passed upon the importance of clear and positive views regarding this doctrine. It is the established law of the church. The church has not seen fit to alter it and your judicial commission sees no reason for amending the constitution by judicial interpretation.
The above sentence of the decision “The church has not seen fit to alter it (the law of the church) and your judicial commission sees no reason for amending the constitution by judicial interpretation”
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The applicants, being each uncertain as to his belief and being unable to affirm his belief in the Virgin Birth of our Lord as set forth in the Gospels and declared in the Confession of Faith, the Presbytery erred in not deferring the licensing until the candidates were certain and positive; no matter how amiable, educated, or talented the candidates may have been.
The action of the Synod in failing to sustain the complaint against the Presbytery is reversed and the complaint against the Presbytery is sustained.
This matter is remanded to the Presbytery for appropriate action, in conformity with the decision herein rendered.
The meaning and significance of this clear and cogently argued decision should be unmistakably plain to everyone, as well as the fact that it is merely a reaffirmation of what has been the fixed policy of the Presbyterian Church throughout its history. As to polity it affirms the right and duty of the General Assembly to require of the Presbyteries that they strictly conform to the constitutional requirements in the matter of licensing candidates. As regards these constitution- al requirements it lays down the great essential principle that a candidate cannot truly answer the constitutional questions, if he is unable to affirm his belief in essential doctrines of the Scriptures and the Confession of Faith. The decision finds that the Virgin Birth is in the Confession of Faith, Chapter 8, and makes faith in it a part of the belief of all ministers who enter our Church. It thus declares the doctrine of the Virgin Birth essential and a belief in it a requisite for minis- terial standing in the Presbyterian Church. The Church has been troubled a long time by rationalists who could not or would not affirm faith in this doctrine. This has been the cause of all the controversy and debate within recent times. This decision settles the matter, and makes it clear that any man who cannot accept this cardinal doctrine has no right in the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. This decision is to be
is a rather infelicitious statement because the Constitution can not be amended by judicial interpretation. It can be amended only in a constitu- tional manner by the submission of amendments to the Presbyteries. The declaration that the Virgin Birth is a part of the Confession of Faith is not an amendment.
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a guide for the future. It is sent to the Xew York Presbytery for “appropriate action,” which means that that Presbytery and all Presbj-teries are to act accordingly. If any Presbytery' licenses any one who does not affirm this belief, it is in open rebellion and is liable to discipline.
This decision, it is important to observe, makes no new tests whatsoever. It finds the doctrine of the \"irgin Birth in the Scriptures and the Confession of Faith and so states and stands by the Constitution, and demolishes the unethical and dishonest acts of men who assert that they believe the doctrines of the Church while their examination discloses that they do not. It is not a new test or added requirement to require what the Constitution requires. We can do no less and remain a Constitutional Church. This decision does not “bind the conscience with any commandment of men.” The liberals who lay stress upon this fundamental principle of Presbyte- rianism quote only so much of the language of the Confession as suits them, but leave out the words “which are in any thing contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship.”®^ The declaration of the doctrine of the Virgin Birth is consonant with the Word of God, and, therefore, does bind the conscience. It is in the Bible, and in our Confes- sion of Faith, and to declare this by judicial decision is no new test.®®
®- In full it reads : “God alone is Lord of the conscience and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any- thing contrary to his W'ord, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship” {Form of Government, Chap, xx, Sec. 2.)
Of course it is the imperative duty of everj- inferior court to obey the direction and mandate of the superior, and such obedience, if necessarj-, should be enforced by the superior court. {Digest 1922, Vol. I. P. 57i). hen the General Assembly adjudicates a case or orders it adjudicated, its orders are to be carried out by the lower judicatories {Minutes 1919, p. 180). Xo minister is entitled to maintain his status as a minister and teach doctrines fundamental in character, which are con- trary to the doctrines of the Confession of Faith. The doctrines specifically named are the Deity of Christ, the sacrificial death of Christ and the inspiration of the Scriptures (Grant Case, 1911, p. 138). All ministers in our Church are to refrain from giving utterance to sentiments which unsettle the Church, and which are in conflict with the Standards of
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This decision of the Assembly of 1925 is more than a mere “warning to be more careful and not do it again.” It is claimed that the decision is a “mild decision,” and yet in the same connection it is said to be “dogmatic” and “un- Protestant and Roman, which seems to imply that the decision is not self consistent. But, despite cavilling critics, the decision is final, and binding upon all Presbyteries and upon the ministry of the Presbyterian Church, until the Constitu- tion of the Church is changed in a constitutional manner. To reverse a judicial decision is to declare it erroneous and to render it inoperative. This decision being the decision of the
the Church (1911, p. 140). The troublers in the Church are those who deny or assail the doctrines and constitution of the Church and not the loyalists who stand for these.
*■* “The decision on the Complaint against the licensure of Mr. Van Dusen may be called a mild decision. The Assembly might conceivably have ordered the Presbytery of New York to put him on trial for heresy, and if he could not positively affirm his belief in the virgin birth of Jesus have ordered that he be deposed from the ministry or it might easily have censured the Presbytery for having licensed him. But it did neither. It did not attempt to touch his standing as a Presbyterian minister, nor did it censure the Presbytery. It merely said that the Presbytery had made a mistake in licensing him. It had erred. It was in the nature of a warning to be more careful, and not do it again.
“But despite the practical mildness of the decision if it once be allowed to become a binding interpretation of the law of the Church, there is no safeguard for the freedom of any minister, elder or deacon. The very language of the decision suggests the rigor of a dogmatism which one had hoped that the Church had outgrown. It places the emphasis so plainly not on religion but on theological exactness. Hear it : ‘It is not a question as to the character of the applicant, his education, amiable qualities, or even his piety. It is a question as to the positiveness of his belief.’ There speaks the voice of the dogmatist of every age. It is so plainly un-Protestant and Roman in its demand that a man accept what the Church teaches whether he understands it or not : ‘The candi- date was not required to state his views as to the mystery therein contained. He was not required to attempt to explain it. He was asked whether he believed in the virgin birth — his attention being called to the narratives as contained in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and he declined to affirm.’ Open your mouth and swallow, or you should not come in. Is that Protestant Christianity, or the voice of papal Rome?’’ (Extract from a Sermon by Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin, preached in the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, May 31, 1925.)
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judicatory of last resort, is of necessity final. A decision of one Assembly in a judicial case can not be reviewed by a subsequent Assembly. There can be no remedy after the last, a judicatory higher than the highest. The only question here is. Did the Assembly decide judicially the case before them. A judicial decision, in the sense here intended, is a judgment of a judicatory' in a decision of a case. This was a complaint. The Assembly heard it. The Assembly resolved itself into a “court of Jesus Christ” for that purpose. The Judicial Commission, after reading all the record, and hearing the parties, presented a preliminary judgment to the Assembly which, on motion, became the final judgment of the Assembly. This was not a recommendation, or mild advice but a judicial decision, and in accord with the provisions of the Constitution of the Church. Such a decision can not be brought up and re-examined by any subsequent Assembly, or ad interim committee. Such a decision is final and irreversible. It can not be reversed on review, nor by an administrative act.®"" Obedience to the voice of the whole Church as expressed by the Assembly is the truest liberty. “Obedience to lawful authority is fundamental and essential to the maintenance and prosperity of our beloved Church. Our Constitution provides ample remedies and procedure for determining the lawfulness of all authority exercised thereunder, and until the same is set aside or reversed pursuant to the Constitution, it is in full force and effect and merits the obedience of all subject thereto.”®® We may not like the decision and it may cost some of us the lowering of our haughty spirits, but nevertheless, the decision remains final and as loyal Presby- terians we are bound to obey it until by a vote of the Presbyteries and approval of the General Assembly the Constitution of the Church is so amended as to eliminate the
35 Digest (1907), p. 1091. Digest (1898), p. 686— “If an inferior court has authority to declare that its own decisions are in force, after they have been reversed by a superior court, then all appeals are nugatory, and our system, as it relates to judicial proceedings, is utterly subverted.” 3« Digest (1898), p. 754-
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doctrine in question from the Confession of Faith, which will be a very difficult, we hope an impossible, task. Against the decision of the Assembly a protest was admitted to record. When this protest is signed and published we shall see who in the Church do not believe in the Virgin Birth.
The Presbytery of New York had memorialized the General Assembly as to the status of a Presbytery in licensing candidates for the ministry, and the First Presbyterian Church had asked to have its good name vindicated. These memorials were laid upon the table and thus ended. However, when the decision in the Gantz case became the final judgment of the Assembly an attempt was made to offer several papers as protests. These were ruled out, but the next day a protest v/as admitted to record which assigned certain reasons why the decision was in error: namely, (i) It violates Chap. 31, Sec. 3, of the Confession of Faith which provides “All Synods or Councils since the apostles’ times, whether general or particular, may err, and many have erred ; therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice but to be used as a help in both.” This objection is based upon the pure assumption that the General Assembly erred in its decision. It certainly is rash for a few men to set up their views as to a mistake being made when fifteen picked men sat night and day and went over the entire case with all the facts before them and rendered a decision that accords with Scripture and the Constitution of our Church. It would be well if the objectors had studied the scriptural proof texts appended to the section of the Con- fession of Faith which they quote, i. Cor. ii. 5, 2 Cor. i. 24, Eph. ii. 20.
(2) The second objection was that it violated the “historic policy” of our Church in allowing each Presbytery to judge for itself as to the satisfactory examination of candidates. This is a half statement of the Church’s policy and is ably answered by the decision itself which shows that no Presbytery has the exclusive right but only such rights as the Constitution gives under review and control.
(3) The third objection relates to liberty of conscience. Chap. 20, Sec. 2, and here again we must call attention to the misquotation of the objectors, when they omit the words “which are contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship.” The doctrine in dispute is neither contrary to nor beside the Word. It is in it and a part of it. We would again call the attention of the objectors to the Scriptures, Acts xvii. II, John iv. 22, i Peter iii. 15. “The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken; lo, they rejected the word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them.” — Jer. viii. 9.
(4) Another objection contained in the protest is that it adds to the constitutional vows of a minister which can only be done by a two- thirds vote of the Presbyteries. It is no new test nor addition to the constitutional questions asked a minister to affirm what already is in the Constitution. If this was a new, extraneous doctrine then the contention of the brethren that it was a new test would have some
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Conclusions
In view of the Constitution of the Church and its doctrinal standards, and the frequent deliverances and instructions of the Assembly in the matter of licensing candidates for the ministry and the actions of New York Presbytery in openly defying the Assembly and becoming a law unto themselves, the complainants held that the Presbytery of New York was chargeable with ( i ) disorders and irregularities in receiving men from other denominations and licensing candidates who do not measure up to the doctrinal standards of our church,
(2) disobedience to the voice of the whole Church as ex- pressed by the General Assembly in the deliverances quoted,
(3) nullification and revolutionary conduct in setting up its will above that of the General Assembly. Which is the ultimate authority in the Church? The Presbytery of New York rejects the authority of the deliverances of the Assembly and rejects her judicial decisions making them null and void, thus arresting the legislature, executive and judicial power of our church, and elevates another power to supreme domin- ion, namely itself, and surely this is revolutionary.
That this decision expresses the convictions of the great majority of the members of the Presbyterian Church, there can be no serious question. It accords fully with the Scriptures and the Confession of Faith, and with the great creeds of Christendom and the belief of the Church until recent times; it upholds the Constitution of the Church and its doctrinal standards; it maintains the right of review and control by the Assembly and secures the rights and liberties of each member of the Church. The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church is founded upon equality and liberty and is repre- sentative in character. The Presbyterian Church is a great
weight. The decision makes it clear that the doctrine of the Virgin Birth is in the Confession of Faith, Chapter 8, and is a component part of the Presbyterian faith. There surely can be no sane objection to that.
(5) Other objections were that it violates the spirit of certain reunion movements. This cannot be tenable, because these reunions took place on the basis of the Standards which included Chapter 8 of the Confession of Faith.
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denomination among the various branches of the Church ; glorious in her history; our Church has trodden down no man’s liberty; it has crushed no beneficent hopes and has gone on and will go on with youthful vigor, enterprise and courage throughout all time.
Hartsville, Pa. Benjamin M. Gemmill.
APPENDIX (see p. 355 supra)
Decision in Case of Dr. Fosdick and First Church
The Judicial Commission of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the U. S. A., as to the complaint of the Rev. Dr. W. D. Buchanan et al, protesting as to the action of the Presbytery of New York in matters relating to the First Presbyterian Church, beg leave to report.
The complaint is as to the action of the Presbytery of New York respecting the adoption and sanctioning of the arrangement of the First Presbyterian Church of New York, continuing until March i, 1925, the preaching and teaching of Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, in face of and in insubordination to the judicial decision of the General Assembly of 1924. It is alleged that the action of the Presbytery of New York was a con- tempt of court, and various grounds are assigned as to the impropriety of the action taken by the New York Presbytery.
A preliminary matter must first be disposed of. On the argument of the case a motion was made to suppress the brief filed on behalf of complainants, because of some of the language used. While we do not grant the motion, the commission desires to suggest that in future, care should be exercised by litigants not to use violent language or to make charges as to the good faith of parties which are not justified by the facts.
When the subject matter of this complaint was considered by the Judicial Commission during the session of the General Assembly in 1924, the Commission reported that the relation then sustained between Rev. Dr. Fosdick and First Presbyterian Church was “anomalous,” because he was not actually connected with the Presbyterian Church and had been known as a “guest preacher” for a period of five years. The Commission recommended to the General Assembly that the existing relations should no longer continue, and said that if Dr. Fosdick “can accept the doctrinal standards of the church, as contained in the Confession of Faith, there should be no difficulty in receiving him. If he cannot, he should not continue, to occupy a Presbyterian pulpit.”
This report of the Judicial Commission became the final judgment of the General Assembly after the same had been presented to it. On June 9, 1924, the minutes of the Presbytery show that the action of the General Assembly had been efficiently communicated to the Presbytery.
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This action of the General Assembly was then referred to a committee of which the Rev. Dr. E. W. Work was chairman.
Dr. Fosdick was at that time abroad and did not return to this country until September. On September i, 1924, Dr. Work wrote Dr. Fosdick as follows :
Your absence in Europe, prolonged into the summer and the subsequent vacation-time separations have made difficult such intimate discussion as might have been desired on the subject that is uppermost in our minds. Nevertheless, you have, I think been fully advised of the action of the General Assembly, and there have not been lacking as you know correspondence and personal conference on the subject.
At this time, however, in view of the approaching meeting of New York Presbytery, I am laying the matter formally before you in order that you may consider carefully the proposal of the Assembly and give your formal answer to it.
The letter then proceeds to advise Dr. Fosdick fully of the action of the General Assembly. In response to this letter, under date of September 7, Dr. Fosdick wrote Dr. Work as follows :
The proposal of the General Assembly calls for a definite creedal subscription, a solemn assumption of theological vows, in terms of the Westminster Confession.
In answer to this proposal I must in all honesty set my long-standing and assured conviction that creedal subscription to ancient confessions of faith is a practice dangerous to the welfare of the Church and to the integrity of the individual conscience.
There are many creedal statements, such as the Augsburg Confession, the Westminster Confession, the Thirty-nine Articles, which express in the mental formulas of the generation when they were written, abiding Christian experiences and convictions. I honor all of them; they represent memorable achievements in the development of Christian thought, but for me to make a creedal subscription in terms of any one of them would be a violation of conscience.
♦ * ♦
The decision of the General Assembly was clear to the point that if Dr. Fosdick could not accept the doctrines and the standards of our church he could not continue in a Presbyterian pulpit, and that his connection with First Presbyterian Church must then cease. It is of the utmost importance that the authority of our highest court should be respected and maintained. Were there no other facts and circumstances to be considered than that Dr. Fosdick declined to accept the conditions imposed and to enter our church, unquestionably it would have been a violation of the decree of the Court for him to continue in the church
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for such a length of time, but as we have seen there are other facts necessary to the proper consideration of the case. Is the Commission justified in holding that the failure of the Presbytery to terminate the relation immediately was in contempt of the Court and that the com- plaint must be sustained: The final judgment of the General Assembly did not fix any definite time at which Dr. Fosdick must relinquish his position if he could not accept the conditions imposed. Of necessity, this could not be fixed because it was dependent upon the submission to Dr. Fosdick of the conditions which had been imposed and until it was learned whether he would accept those conditions, the Assembly could not determine in advance when the relation should terminate. Necessarily some latitude was permissible but in the absence of a definite time fixed by the judgment, the action of the Presbytery should have been reason- ably prompt and not unduly delayed. The respondent urges that the peculiar conditions surrounding the case and all the circumstances, demanded that the action should not be hastily taken. Dr. Fosdick had been a minister for a period of more than five years. He had attracted large congregations. The people of the church were devotedly attached to him and deplored the necessity which had arisen for severing his relations with the church.
At the meeting of the Presbytery, the venerable Dr. Alexander, Pastor of First Church, said:
You will certainly appreciate what the problem has been.
It has been difficult for everybody. It has been difficult for the church because it has been considering the two loyalties — loyalty to the Presbyterian Church of the U. S. A., and loyalty to a minister who, for five or six years, has served them with marvelous acceptance and power. It is not perfectly easy to reconcile these two loyalties, and it might be difficult to induce the church to confess its major loyalty if it had not been permitted at the same time to express its love and loyalty for this associate minister.
It was, therefore, a situation requiring the exercise of great tact and caution. The members of the church, not by their own volition but by a decree of the highest court of the church were obliged to give up a minister to whom they were warmly attached. Unless the matter had been handled with delicacy there was danger that many of them might be alienated.
The majority of the Presbytery decided that it would be wisest and would work less harm to the interests of the First Church if they did not insist upon the immediate retirement of Dr. Fosdick. The Commission believes that the date fixed was not as early as it should have been to comply properly with the decree of the Court, but if this be an error on the part of the Presbytery it was an error of judgment.
Contempt of court is a wilful and deliberate disobedience of its decrees with the intent to defy the authority of the court. The action of the Presbytery does not reveal in the records above quoted any evidence
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of an intent to deliberately disobey the mandates of the General Assembly, nor to do anything in defiance of its decree. The stenographic report of the debate in Presbytery submitted by the complainants and not objected to by the respondents does not show any disposition on the part of the Presbj^tery which would lend color to the charge that any disrespect to the General Assembly was intended.
This Commission, therefore, recommend that in view of all the circumstances, the complaint be dismissed.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES*
The liberal Protestant churches are slowly losing their faith in the Scriptures, and as they lose their faith in the Scriptures they are slowly losing their religion. The Protes- tant churches came into existence as a sublime witness to the Bible as the only rule of faith and practice. That was many centuries ago. But now it has come to pass in the strange revolutions of the wheel of history that some of the Protes- tant churches and many Protestant scholars and theologians are the most determined and dangerous enemies of the Bible. It is four centuries since our noble pioneers of the Reformed Churches gave to the world the Bible as the only rule of faith. Today no one will deny that at a meeting of representatives of the churches throughout the world holding to the Presby- terian system the question of the authority of the Bible is timely and critical.
The whole issue of Christianity and the spiritual destiny of mankind depend upon the answer to this question, Has God spoken to man? This fundamental question of religion is admirably stated by Bishop Gore in his book. Belief in God : “This then is the question — Has the Divine Mind, or Spirit, taken action on His side to disclose or reveal Himself to those who are seeking after God?”
From the very beginning the unfaltering answer of the Christian Church has been that God has spoken to man, and that we have an infallible record of that revelation in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. This has been the ground upon which the Church, Catholic as well as Protestant, has stood from the very beginning. The only alternative for an infallible record of a divine revelation for our salvation is human reason, and human reason is as the eloquent American agnostic, Robert Ingersoll, declared it to
* An address delivered at the Quadrennial World Convention of the Alliance of Reformed Churches holding the Presbyterian System, Car- diff, Wales, June 2Q, ig2S.
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be, “a flickering torch, borne on a starless night, and blown by the winds of prejudice and passion.”
Enemies of the Bible today within the Protestant Church are trying to create the impression that the idea of an infal- lible Bible goes back only to the Reformation, and was foisted upon Christianity by extreme Protestants who set up an infallible Bible in the place of an infallible Pope.
Nothing could be more preposterous. The Roman Catholic view of the Scriptures is summed up by the declaration of the Vatican Council of 1870, which, having named the books of the Bible, declares them to be sacred and canonical, not because approved by the Church, nor because they contain a revelation with no admixture of error, but “because having been written by the Inspiration of the Holy Ghost they have God for their author.” In his Bampton Lectures of 1893 Dr. Sanday says of the traditional Protestant view of the Bible, as expressed in the great confessions of Protestantism ; “This was the view commonly held fifty years ago. And when it comes to be examined it is found to be substantially not very different from that which was held two centuries after the birth of Christ.”
This idea of a true Bible, of course, only with the greatest difficulty can be made to agree with the view that although the Bible contains high moral and spiritual truth, even revelation, it is also a mass of scientific blunders, historical inaccuracies and low moral views. The difficulty as between the Bible and science is probably not so acutely felt today as it once was. Men are beginning to realize that we know very little about the beginnings of life and of human history, and that while we talk learnedly about the Rhodesian man and the Pithecanthropus, we are merely decorating the impenetrable veil of silence and mystery with the trinkets of human fancy.
At the same time, although the so-called war between religion and science has abated, we must face the fact that a Bible which is childish, grotesque and absurd as to its astron- omy, geology and biology can never exert the moral authority over the minds of men that the Bible did exert over those
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heroic souls who established the Reformed Churches and built up the civilization of the Protestant nations. You can never open the door to the reception of the Bible as a spiritual authority and guide by first of all describing it as a collection of fnyth and folklore, silly notions of the earth and of man, with here and there very low ideas of God. Yet this is the impossible task that many of our so-called “liberal” Protes- tants are attempting. But it can never be done until the east meets the west.
The solution of the scientific difficulty lies elsewhere. What we are so sure is experimental and established fact today, may assume a different aspect tomorrow, and the last word will be God’s. The remarkable thing is that in a book written so many ages ago there should be any ground for a dispute as to whether or not this book is in agreement with the latest findings of physical science. The grand steps in creation outlined in the Bible are so in keeping with those outlined by science that, as a President of the British Association, Sir William Dawson, once put it, “It would not be easy, even now, to construct a statement of the development of the world in popular terms so concise and so accurate.”
The most dangerous attack on the Bible is made by those within the Churches who claim that only by such reinterpre- tations can we mediate between the Bible and the “modern mind,” that terrible monster which now threatens to destroy Christianity after it has survived the shocks and the storms of the ages. Perhaps the best key to the whole liberal and modernistic method with the Bible is what is called “Pro- gressive Revelation.”
That has a good sound. We all believe in progress and we all believe in revelation. Therefore, Why not Progressive Revelation? But as used by the modernists. Progressive Revelation is not the true Biblical teaching that God has revealed His will successively and increasingly through patri- archs, prophets and the Gospel, culminating in Jesus Christ. On the contrary, it is an idea of revelation and inspiration which has been invented to give the Bible some shadow of
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divine authority after it has been convicted of scientific blunders, historical inaccuracies, and low moral views.
How does this theory of the Bible work? It claims to save the Bible for intelligent faith. But how? In brief it is this:
We find in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, conceptions of God that are crude and low, narratives of impossible transactions, and statements about the world and its physical history which even a child in the grammar school knows to be absurd. But we are not to let this shake our faith in the Bible as the revealed will of God. The solution of our difficulty is “progressive” revelation. It is the philosopher’s stone which transmutes the base metal in the Bible to purest gold.
Apply this stone to Genesis, and the whole difficulty is gone, for now we see how God could, for good and sufficient reasons, reveal Himself as the Creator of the world, and at the same time permit man to imagine and to record a way of creation which is childish and absurd. But we must not let that trouble us. What God had in mind was to tell us about Himself, not about the heavens and the earth.
The Bible says that God commanded Abraham to offer up Isaac on Mt. Moriah. But God was only adapting Himself to the prevailing low ideas of God and of what pleased Him, and only by the medium of a contemplated sacrifice could God reveal Himself to Abraham. The stupendous miracles of Moses, Elijah and Elisha did not really take place. But God did speak to and through these prophets, and after genera- tions added the miracles. The Old Testament attributes to God the sanction and approval of acts which are repugnant to the conscience of this generation, such as the judgments upon the Canaanites. But these commands and sanctions were put in God’s mouth by men whose moral ideas were those of their own age only, and to whom God Himself, apparently, could not give any higher ideas.
Such is the modernistic idea of the Bible. As one of their most popular preachers has phrased it, “To take a trip through the Bible is to move from the presence of primitive religion
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to the noblest expression of the religious spirit that the mind of man can take.” But we fear that this tour through the Bible, personally conducted by the Modernists, proves too expensive. What the average man wants to know is this ; “Where does your primitive religion come to an end in the Bible and where does your true and divine revelation com- mence?” Does primitive religion end with Genesis, or with Judges, and true religion commence with the Psalms, or with the Prophets ? Evidently not, for all that is taken exception to is scattered through the Bible, and not the most expert of reinterpreters and restorers can reconstruct the history of revelation showing where the human stratum of misinforma- tion is succeeded by the strata of divine truth.
In short, this popular theory of progressive revelation gets rid of the difficulties in the Bible by getting rid of the Bible. These learned men are simply saying in high sounding terms what the child said in its naive comment, “I suppose God wrote the Old Testament before He became a Christian!” Why use the word revelation at all, progressive or otherwise? For what such an interpretation of the Bible means is that the Bible is largely made up of the guesses or opinions of fallible men about God, and is not the Word of God.
There is a true and Scriptural idea of revelation, but it is remote from what I have just sketched. The true revelation in the Bible marks a progress from the partial to the complete, from the transient to the abiding, from what was suited for a people hardly touched by the gracious rays of revelation to what could be received by a people who had been trained for centuries to hear the voice of God, from the law to grace, from patriarchs and prophets to Jesus Christ Himself.
This is the progressive revelation to which John referred when he said the Law came by Moses, but grace and truth by Jesus Christ. And this was the progressive revelation the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews had in mind when he said in the sublime prologue, “God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son.”
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But the progressive revelation of the modernist would compel a revision of the passage in Hebrews, making it read some- thing like this : “God who at sundry times and in divers manners deceived mankind in times past, giving them false and cruel and ridiculous notions of Himself, of man, of the history of the earth, finally decided to tell the truth in Jesus Christ.”
But has He told the truth in Jesus Christ and in the New Testament? Progressive revelation at once raises that question. Does progressive revelation stop with the New Testament? Or will it go on indefinitely? And will the unknown revelation of centuries hence make obsolete the revelation of the New Testament as, according to this theory, the revelation of the New Testament has negatived the reve- lation of the Old Testament?
Let no one imagine that the Old Testament difficulties are the only ones which are to be treated with this theory. The idea of Abraham offering up Isaac is disposed of ; but so also is the idea of God offering up His own Son for the sins of the world. The great New Testament idea of the Atonement, as explained and proclaimed by St. Paul, and the other ajxistles, is just as repugnant to the modernist as the sacrifice of Abraham. One distinguished theologian goes so far as to brand the Pauline idea of the satisfaction of Christ for our sins as comparable to a “frame up” in the criminal courts, where, for evil purposes, or to satisfy the demand for the punishment of a crime, the perpetrator of which has not been apprehended, the police “frame” an innocent man !
And so this theory would deal with other New Testament facts and doctrines. The story of the Incarnation is not a revelation, but just man’s way of trying to account for the preeminent personality of Jesus; the story of the Resurrec- tion does not represent an actual historic fact, but merely represents the only way in which the minds of that day could account for the continuing personality of Christ; and so His Second Advent is only the phrasing of man’s hope for the triumph of righteousness. Thus the glory of revelation fades
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from the pages of the New Testament as well. That great and tremendous music, “Thus saith the Lord!’’ shaking the earth with its echo, casting down kingdoms and empires, ushering in the glory of redemption in Christ, dies out of the Bible, and in its place we hear only this : “Thus saith the mind of man.”
We go back to the question with which we started, with which all discussion of religion must start, Hath God spoken to man? And if He has, do we have a true record of what He has said? All the hopes of mankind depend upon the answer. The Scriptures say that God has spoken, spoken through men who were moved by the Holy Ghost, and for centuries the Christian Church has dared to speak to human- ity only upon this ground, that it possessed and declared the Word of the Living God.
But now, if we adopt the idea of the Bible that is rapidly and fatally gaining ground in the Protestant Church, then the Church can no longer arrest the attention of a fallen race with that ageless cry, “Thus saith the Lord !” At first hearing, it seems very easy to take a trip through the Bible and mark when we leave the territory of primitive religion and pass into the true religion. But what is to be our guide? If some parts of the Bible are false, and others true, if this is only tribal religion and stone-age morality, and this the highest and the purest, what is to be our guide in judging, and in distinguishing the one from the other? Ah, there is the fatal question, and the fatal answer must be, “Man’s reason 1” And this, in turn, means that ultimately we depend not upon reve- lation, but upon human reason. The final authority is not the Word of God, but human reason. Thus the world is plunged back into the abyss of human ignorance and despair where we can hear only the taunting, mocking echoes of our own cries in the darkness.
As to the practical effect the “new view” of the Holy Scriptures is having upon the Christian Church, there could be no more striking evidence than the sad subsidence of re- demptive teaching and preaching in the Protestant Church.
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The great question of the Reformation was this; What shall I do to be saved ? and the great answer went with it, Through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Wherever a Protestant church lifts its spire towards the heavens it stands as a monument to the doctrine of salvation by faith. Historically, this is so. But alas! if we enter the churches and hear the message and read the sermonic output of the pulpits, we must conclude that in many churches there are now more important ques- tions to be answered than the old c[uestion which rang out on the midnight air at Philippi so many years ago, “What shall I do to be saved ?”
A deleted Bible means a diluted Gospel. The Bible as the Word of God and the proclamation of the Cross as the power of God unto salvation, stand or fall together. Men and brethren, what shall we do? What can we do but pray that the Holy Spirit who gave the Scriptures to our fallen humanity, and who has used them through the Church unto the salvation of souls and the glory of God in Jesus Christ, may again be pleased to revive in the Church a great faith in the Bible as the Word of God. Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live! Awake, O north wind, and come, thou south, and blow upon our garden that the spices thereof may flow forth!
I conclude with these noble words from the hymnal of the Lutheran Church :
God’s Word is our great heritage,
And shall be ours forever.
To spread its light from age to age Shall be its chief endeavor.
Through life it guides our way,
In death it is our stay.
Lord, grant while worlds endure,
W’e keep its teachings pure Throughout all generations.
Philadelphia, Pa. Clarence Edward Macartney
THE INCARNATE LIFE OF OUR LORD FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF HIS MORAL CHARACTER
The usual mode of approach in proving the sinlessness of Jesus’ character is to review the evidence furnished by (i) His own consciousness, (2) His disciples, (3) His enemies, (4) His teaching, prerogatives, and conduct. This a poster- iori method will suffice for general apologetic purposes, and these arguments will be found amplified in any treatise on apologetics. But as there is a general consensus of thought among all but the more crassly thinking theologians of the nineteenth century,^ regarding Jesus’ sinless character, it is no longer a serious point of issue. But while Jesus’ actual sinlessness is not such a theological or historical problem, the more ultimate question of the possibility of His sinning, produces a real and a most delicate dilemma — one which has divided the most conservative of theologians.*
It is, therefore, to this more ultimate question, that we shall direct our attention. If it should be shown that Jesus was impeccable in the abstract sense, then the more concrete question of Jesus’ actual sinlessness is antecedently settled.*
Our first postulate is pure theism — a God who is infinite in wisdom and power, who not only has eternal purposes but is
1 Even writers whose general principles would lead one to imagine the converse affirm Christ’s sinlessness: Marheineke, Rosenkrantz, Vatke of the Hegelian school (v. Dorner Person of Christ, pp. 121-131) ; the Mediating school, all types — Schleiermacher (Der Christliche Glaube, II: 83, 108) and Ritschl (Unterricht, p. 191) ; liberals like Hase (Ge- schichte Jesus, p. 248: but Hase only regards Christ as sinless from his entrance to his public career. Sinlessness was won by struggle, cf. Men- ken) and Schenkel. Even though these last two unite in denying overt or actual sin, they all diverge inter se on the question of the abstract possibility of sinning.
2 Eor example Augustine and Anselm against Theodore of Mopsues- tia : Shedd against Hodge and Schaff.
® But the converse would not be true, i.e., if the posse peccare were provable, perchance, the actual sinlessness would still be an open question. The familiar phrases non potuit peccare, and potuit non peccare express the alternatives before us.
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sovereign in effectuating them; all of which rests not only upon a knowledge of all possibilities,* but upon a foreknowl- edge of the actual eventuation of His purposes in space and time.® The Trinity also must necessarily be postulated, for, as the Reformed theologians so much emphasized, the Holy Spirit with His sustaining, sanctifying and presenting office was one of the chief factors in rendering certain the non potuit peccare in all of Jesus’ temptations, for just prior to them the Spirit descended ovk he fierpov upon Him, and then led® Him to the encounter. On such theism and Trinitarianism the plan of salvation, from which the doctrine of Christ’s impeccability flows, is to be founded. Christ, in this plan, is called the ^ between God and His people, and as such
He is not the mere internuntiiis that Moses was® but a plenipotentiary®; nor is He the ineffective Old Testament High-Priest, but one unique in effecting once for all the atonement by sacrifice.*® He is further the eyyvo<: or surety of the covenant by virtue of His priestly and kingly functions. Now infallibility and unchangeableness are the basal no- tions in the idea of eyyvo^. In a double capacity the whole weight of the execution, and responsibility for success of the olKovoiiCa ^eoO** reposes in Christ as the Redeemer in the Covenant of Redemption, and in Christ as the iMediator and “surety” representing the people of God in the Covenant of Grace. That the “surety” will remain sure we must rest confi- dent, not only because of the nature of the underlying theism and Trinitarianism already indicated, but because of the ex-
* Scientia siviplicis intcUigentiae or scientia iudefinita, according to Reformed Theology.
® Scientia vision's or defiuita.
® Matt, and Luke state it as avgydgv and r)ycro respectively.
^ Applied three times in Scripture: Heb. viii. 6; ix. 15; xii. 24.
® Gal. iii. 19.
® Matt, xxviii. 18.
Rom. iii. 25.
I Tim. I. 4.
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plicit Scriptural declaration of the eternal purpose of God/^ that an accomplished salvation will be offered sinnersd® Secondly, the manifold promises of God, unless their validity be doubted, assure the success of the messianic and mediatorial work. That these can be doubted is impossible for “if ye can break my covenant of the day and my covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their season, then may also my covenant be broken with David my servant, that he should not have a son to reign upon his throne. Again, “God cannot break an oath”^® for it is said, “God, willing more abundantly to show to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation.’’^® His promise is as immutable as His decree; His covenant is an “everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure.’’^^
These promises are not only general ones made to the Church regarding the Messianic work,^® but very specific ones that God would give the Church a righteous, sinless Saviour, described variously as a “righteous branch” who shall be called “the Lord of Righteousness” d® and of whom it is declared, “Righteousness shall be the girdle of His loins, and faithfulness the girdle of His reins” ; “He had done no violence, neither was deceit in His mouth.
More specifically, God promises such aid by the Spirit that the “surety” cannot fail : though He is a “tried stone,” He is a “sure foundation”^^ for, “Behold my Servant whom
The hidden things which irpowpicnv 6 6e6s wpo tu>v aldtvoiv tts S6$av ■^piwv (i Cor. ii. 7).
1® Eph. I. 4; iii. g, lo, ii ; i Pet. i. 19, 20.
Ter. xxxiii. 20.
“By myself have I sworn,” Gen. xxii. 16.
Heb. vi. 17, 18.
2 Sam. xxiii. 5.
Gen. xxii. 16, 17, 18; Ps. Ixxxix. 3.
Jer. xxiii. 5, 6.
Is. xi. I, and liii. 9; cf. ix. 6, 7.
Is. xxviii. 16.
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I Uphold : . , . I have put my spirit upon Him . . . He shall not fail nor be discouraged till He have set judg- ment in the earth” f~ again, “I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand,” and, “in a day of salvation have I helped thee and I will preserve thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, to establish the earth.” The Messiah on His side expresses assurance and a deter- mination to overcome His temptations : “I was not rebellious nor turned away my back : I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair ; I hid not my face from shame and spitting. For the Lord God will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded; therefore have I set my face as a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed. He is near that justifieth me; who will contend with me? let us stand together : who is mine adversary? let him come near to me. Behold the Lord God will help me ; who is he that shall condemn me? lo, they shall all wax old as a garment; the moth shall eat them up.”'®** We have here not only a remark- ably detailed prophecy of the earthly testing of the Messiah, but one couched in the “perfect of certainty,”^* a tense expressing inevitableness of futurition.
This already apparent non potiiit peccare may be further corroborated by promises of the permanence of the media- torial office, “The Lord hath sworn and will not repent. Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” and by the promises pertaining to the rewards of the Mediator**
22 Is. lii. I, 2, 3.
230 Is. xHx. 7, 9.
23*> Is. i. 5-9.
2^ A tense where “actions depending on a resolution of the will of the speaker or of those whose mind is known’’ or which appear inevitable from circumstances, or which are confidently expected, are conceived and described as having taken place’’ (Davidson, Hebrew Syntax, p. 62; cf. R. D. Wilson, Hebrew Syntax, p. 3).
23 Ps. cx. 4ff; Ps. ii. 7, 8; Ps. xlv. 3, 4; Is. lii. 13, 14; liii, 10-12, xlix (passim).
26 Exaltation (Ps. xlv. 7, cf. Phil. ii. 6-1 1), universal dominion (Ps. cx. i).
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which rewards the New Testament represents as achieved and by the subjective benefits sequent to, and contingent upon the certain mediatorial success.^®
In the days of His flesh the Mediator said before the last of His two^® most exhausting trials, “The prince of this world cometh, and he hath nothing in me and with equally clear prescience and serene composure He predicted His impending sufferings and death, not once doubting the successful eventuation of the divine mission.
In fine, to deny the impeccability and actual sinlessness of Jesus is not only to subvert the reality of theism and Trinitarianism, but to crumble away the far-reaching system of the divine mediation “which God, who cannot lie, prom- ised before the world began.
Considerations issuing from the pecularity of the thean- thropic being cannot be thrown up against this conclusion. Because the Theanthropos possesses a finite nature He is not therein necessarily peccable, unless finitude be considered sin in itself, as Leibnitz (and Fairbairn) maintains. This finitude of Jesus in poiver, is to be offset by the facts that ( i ) as God is both aTrelpa(no<i^^ and tempts®® no man,®^ the tempting power must be finite, either man or fallen angel: (2) a temptation by a finite power, when met by infinite (and finite) power in an infinite-finite person, must result in the defeat of the tempting finite power, to state it abstractly. We must posit the omnipotence of the Theanthropos.
John V. 22; Phi!, ii. 6-1 1.
2® Tit. i. 2; I Cor. i. 30.
2® “And angels came and ministered unto Him” is spoken of Him only after the ordeals of the wilderness and Gethsemane.
John xiv. 30.
Tit. i. 2.
®2 Jas. i. 13.
®® He only “tests,” “proves,” as irtipaJ^tn indicates, (i) by etymology, and (2) by context. Jesus quoted “Thou shalt not tempt,” from Deut. vi. where HDJ is used as a “test,” a trial of the attitude of heart of the Israelites; cf. “that He (God) might humble thee and so put thee to the test, and thus know what is in thine heart.”
Heb. vi. 18.
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Finitude in intelligence certainly does involve the possi- bility of sinning in man for it renders him subject to deceit,®® but the infinite knowledge of the Theanthropos precludes this possibility for Him. We posit Jesus’ omniscience over against His peccability.
We posit above all, the immutability of God as Thean- thropos in the attribute of holiness. He is the iryevixa 6<TL0Tn<t^^ in His divine nature, a irveviia and has become
the “author and finisher of our faith,’’®* for His nature as the heavenly high priest is ocno<;, uKaKos, aixlavro<; K^-gcopicr- fi4vo<i airb rwv afiapTco\S>v If the Theanthropos is thus Himself the author of holiness He cannot possibly have sinned, or entertained the least proclivity to it.
Behind this principle of immutable holiness we wish to place the general psychological principle of self-determina- tion of character to good or evil respectively according to its quality, and this regardless of the rank of the intelligence, be it angel, man, God or God-man. For the most urgent gainsayers of Jesus’ immutable holiness have been those who proclaim the theory of a voluntas in equilibrio and freedom of choice ad utrumque, as Dr. Whitby originally phrased it,^“ in the supposed interest of moral freedom and responsibility. They say that “to advocate Christ’s impeccability is to be in active co-operation with necessitarianism,” and that “we must hold to Christ’s peccability or forever abandon the doctrine of human accountability and moral agency.”^’^
To hold, however, that God can choose to sin or not sin is
“The woman [i.e., Eve] being deceived was in the transgression’’ (i Tim. ii. 14).
36 Rom. i. 4.
3' I Cor. XV. 45.
33 Heb. xii. 2.
39 Heb. vii. 26.
^6 A cardinal historical issue between .\rminians and Calvinists. See Episcopius in particular.
W. Jones, Methodist Review, 77 : 126.
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403
to posit a power of divine will that is pure fiction/^ If we ascribe to Him self-consciousness, self-determination and moral discrimination we will have the desiderate of “moral agency.” Self-determination exclusively to eternally holy acts is the liberty of felix necessitas boni (Augustine), which the Theanthropos, respecting His Godhead, must possess.^® But as there is no Nestorian duality of persons in His nature this must also be predicated of the entire God-man, of His human nature as well as of His divine nature. For it is the divinity and not the humanity that forms the deeper base to the whole personality, and dominates the whole complex, especially in such crises as the temptation must have been. If this principle of the self-determination of the divine nature by the divine character {felix necessitas boni) is unreservedly accepted we have reached the very heart of the non potuit doctrine. The reality of Jesus’ temptability is not affected by the conclusion of Jesus’ impeccability.
But if Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday, today and forever” in holiness, does this mean that His nature is so hermetically sealed from sin, as it were, that he remained “unappalled in calm and sinless peace,”^^ before temptation? If not, how far, and in what sense is Jesus tempted “like as we are” ? This is now to be determined by His relation to sin.
Jesus was baptized as sinless, as John recognized, though
For if we ask what it is that determines character, they say the acts of the will. But what determines these acts of the will? Other acts of the will ; and these are determined by others until we reach the absurdity of an infinite regressus — a completely detached voluntas, or else a more ultimate fatalism such as H. G. Wells’ “Veiled Being,’’ which limits even God.
That the God-man must have the libertas ad utrumque because the first fallen angel and Adam chose evil, though sinless by nature, is a non sequitur in that it disregards the fact that the solicitation and entrance of evil in these two cases is an inscrutable mystery.
** “Infernal hosts and hellish furies round
Environed Thee, some howled, some yelled, some shrieked.
Some bent at Thee their fiery darts, while Thou Sattest unappalled in calm and sinless peace.’’ — Milton.
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John’s formal baptism was for sin. This baptism was that he might “fulfil all righteousness,” the righteousness which Israel owed; and it was only for a time, as shown by the statement “suffer it now.” It thus appears that He bore our sins before the law vicariously.^® But as He bore our sins vicariously He did not possess them as part of His nature.
Concerning His relation to sin as corruption we presuppose the fact of the incarnation, which describes how the Word became flesh by supernatural immaculate conception : how Jesus though He was found in the form of a servant partook ( (lericrxev ) of “flesh and blood” that He might “in all things be made like unto his brethren,”^® yet with all this He remained This partaking of “flesh and blood” is to be interpreted in the sense of Rom. viii. 3,eV ofiocdoixan crapKo^ dfj,apTLa<{, with the emphasis upon the 6p,oia)p.aTi. The following theories overlook the force of 6p,ouop.ari (i.e., mere similitude) and the fact that it qualifies crapK6<; chiefly dp>apTia<i by position. The crdp^, which Jesus assumed was not that un fallen <rdp^ of Adam, for the 6p,oi(o6rjvai kuto, irdvra would therein be falsified. This 6p,oi(op.a consisted rather in the inheritance of those effects entailed in Adam’s sin but which are not entailed from possession of a sin-vitiated body, namely death and physical and psychical “sinless in- firmities,”*® which effects are incident to generic, and not individual human nature.*® But the “sorrowfulness unto
*^’Aipt» and ava<j>(po) (Heb. ix. 28; i Pet. ii. 24) nowhere mean, it is said, that Jesus “bore” sin; but they involve this most certainly, for the figure of “debt” (Matt. xxvi. 28) and “load” (Heb. ix. 28; i Pet. ii. 4) are implied. ''Aipw is used as the Greek equivalent for NUtj consistently. The terms ttoAAwv and Koarfjioiv indicate that which is substituted for. The mode is that of ‘7rpo(T(f>eptiv eirt to 6v(ria<TTi^piov, Jesus being considered now the victim, now the high priest.
Heb. ii. 17.
This preposition denotes utter and complete separation as is abun- dantly manifested by its consistent usage throughout this epistle, Heb. vii. 21 ; ix. 18, 22.
Called by John of Damascus, ra <f>vcriKa nal aSid^Xrjra vaOijpaTa.
Henry Alting states it, “Infirmitates et defectus, non huius vel illius individui, ut lepra (Matt. viii. 2), caecitas (John ix. i) scd totius
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death,” the “strong crying and tears,” pain, despair or joy, or the pangs of hunger, are emotions and appetencies that are not to be identified with xaxCa arising from the iTrivoia of the heart,®® nor with iSiat iTriOv/xiai^^ which give vent to “worldly ambition, selfishness, pride, malice, voluptuousness, idolatry, hatred, emulation, envyings, murder, wrath, un- cleanness, drunkenness” and such like, called “concupis- cence.” Were the nature of Jesus like ours, we fallen natures would indeed ask, “art thou also become weak, as we? art thou become like unto us?”, as the kings in the state of the dead called unto the King of Babylon. These above- named sinless natural infirmities when carefully considered will be found to constitute a sufficient fulcrum to make morally real the temptation, especially when it is considered that the purity of His holy constitution made Jesus more highly sensible to these sinless passions®^ than the average human nature.
naturae, ex eiusdem per peccatum corruptione suscept. Examples given are tristitia, dolor, timor, ira, as physical infirmities. According to the Confession of Faith, “he endured most grievous torments immediately in his soul (Matt. xxvi. 37, 38 “sorrowful” and “heavy” “unto death,” Luke xxii. 44 ; “agony,” “bloody sweat” ; Matt. xxvi. 46, the cry of forsakenness) and most painful sufferings in the body” (Matt xxvi. and xxvii.). Owen (The Holy Spirit, II 13) states it more fully: “Although Christ took upon Himself those infirmities which belong to our human nature as such, and are inseparable from it until it be glorified, yet He took none of our particular infirmities which cleave unto our persons, occasioned either by the vices of our constitutions or irregularity in the case of our bodies. Those natural passions of our mind which are capable of being the means of affliction and trouble, as grief and sorrow and the like. He took upon Him : and also those infirmities of nature which are
troublesome to the body, as hunger, thirst, weariness and pain
But as to our bodily diseases and distempers which personally adhere to us upon the disorder and vice of our constitutions, He was absolutely free from them.”
-A.S the avarice of Simon, see Acts viii. 21, 22.
Cf. Gen. vi. 5 : "'If' Sd arising from the 3b as source. The formally defined basis of man’s temptation is given in Jas. i. 14, “Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own desires.” “Then iniOv/Mia begets afjLaprtav and dfiapria when it is finished, brings forth Odvarov.”
To disallow that Jesus was subject to even these infirmities is to make the temptation a docetic “useful pretense” as Cyril says.
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THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Attempts to order these simple Scripture facts so as to constitute a basis for a temptation “in all points” like ours has resulted in a two-fold errancy, ( i ) anthrop>omorphic extension of the sinless infirmities into the sphere of vitia so far as to make Jesus in a most crass fashion, a sinner — somewhat of the “feeling, struggling, working, praying ‘Ich’ ” that Harnack styles Him: (2) attenuation of these facts to a docetism that transfigures the temptation into a phantasmagoria.
Regarding the former, the most shame-faced theory under this head is that which hides behind such compromising words as “taint of,” and “tendency” to sin, e.g., “we may not believe that in transmission of the human nature of Jesus a miracle prevented the transmission of an evil taint. That would make Jesus’ victory over sin the result of a mechanical miracle of moral filtration.”®® Next, we have the theory that Jesus partook of a sinful nature, but was successfully sus- tained by the Holy Spirit in His temptations. Thirdly, the adoptionist view held that Christ belonged to the “mass of perdition,” “wearing a body half-burned by the transgression of his first parents,” over which “the shuttle of the cross wove for Him a tunic of innocence,” and which “by His virtue He was able to rescue from being utterly consumed in the flames of hell.”®* Likewise we have the theory" of “re- demption by sample” which held that in Jesus’ nature “all infirmity, sin and guilt gathered into one.”®® Having assumed the o-a'l/3 of our corrupt race He ethically hacked and hewed His way to the cross. By a titanic struggle with temptations arising from the “fragment of that perilous stuff” in Him, which struggle extended even to a fearful conflict in hell. He finally presented this diseased and infirm body of His, now
Stewart, Temptation of Jesus, p. 227. See also Guericke (Stud. u. Krit. II, p. 261) who makes room for a hereditary corruption, but only in the slightest degree. This sinful incentive in Him was kept subordi- nate by the divine principle until it was abolished by death.
Bruce, The Humiliation of Christ, p. 251.
55 Irving, The lncarnatio7i Opened, p. 188; v. Bruce, p. 256, op. cit.
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externally sinless, as a first-fruit of redemption, to the Father. These several views proceed upon the wrong theory of the relation of sin to sins, or of being to conduct, which is based, in turn, upon misinterpretation of Rom. viii. 3
( €V OfLOUOfiaTL) ,
The docetic types of view veer off to the other extreme. For Hilary, Jesus’ sufferings with “strong crying and tears” were but an economic accommodation to the fiop<f>Tj SovXou which He had assumed. These sufferings had to be mani- fested in order to evince the supposed reality of His assumed nature, or to evince the divine power, or as a gratuitous conformity to the habits of ordinary men. Such a bloodless shnulacruni He is likewise made out to be by the historic Aphthartodoketists who made Jesus to suffer thirst and die by special acts of the will.®’^
In place of Jesus’ being impeccably temptable as we shall uphold, we have in these views a being on the one hand untemptably impeccable — Jesus “repelled and dissipated the assaults of the enemy like smoke,” says John of Damascus — , and so temptably peccable on the other, that it is nothing but tour de force which prevents us ascribing to Jesus high flown commission of sins — for “all sin , . . nestled in Him.”
We have made above the deduction from theism, Scripture and psychology that Jesus was impeccable. We are now ready to put the question : was Jesus, on the basis not of these two extreme types of theory, but of these innocent, natural affections and infirmities of His, temptable? and the involved question, if He was temptable, does this disannul His impec- cability, which we have already established as Scripturally axiomatic? and if not, how reconcile temptability and im- peccability?
Vide Ullman, Sinlessness of Jesus, p. 125, note i.
Similar docetism is found in the Apocrypha, but inwrought with a most fantastic speculation involving a weird and unrestrained use of the supernatural.
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THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
In opposition to our opening line of Scriptural proof for impeccability we find the following apparently contradictory statements. Jesus is called a “tried stone,”®® and in God’s promises to Him that He will “not fail” there is the vague implication of a possibility of failing. Though in Hebrews the high-priest is called oo-to?, a/fa/co?, a/itan'o?, Kexo}picrfj,ei^o<: aTTO T<ov dfiapT(o\(i)Vy he is also TreTreipta p,ivo<; Kara irdvra Kad' opoLOT-qra. In Luke xxii. 28, 29 Jesus says that His disciples had continued with Him in His temptations. This not only assumes that Jesus had temptations, but that they were so appreciably close to those of sinful disciples in identity that they could suffer His and He theirs and gain the same rewards.®® Again, Jesus was promised rewards*® which im- plied that they must be attained in and through trial and conflict. Twice Jesus was tempted so fiercely that He required angelic sustentation. In the second instance — in Gethsemane — though Jesus says “the Prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me,” yet we hear Him cry at the same time, “now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say; Father, save me from this hour.”®^ Finally, even the idea of reXeiWt? implies within itself an antecedent imperfection of some kind.
These suggestive passages as they patently imply the doctrine of temptability call forth treatment of two questions : (i) \\’hat was the mode of temptation if it was dpapTi'a^? ( 2 ) in what sense or what degree was the tempta- tion KardvavTa like ours? For it is the chief objection raised against the doctrine of impeccable temptation that such a temptation cannot be equivalent to ours Kara Travra.
The concept first, of the mode of the temptation must be dominated by the true etymology and thought-content of the terms originally used by the inspired writers. They state
Is. xxviii. 16.
59 “Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations; and I appoint unto you a Kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me.’’
®9 Is. liii. 10-12, Pss. ii. and cx. Is. xlix. 7-9.
John xvi. 32.
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that, “then Jesus was led up” vy^^o), that is, by
rational deliberate consciousness of the divine purpose, and in pursuance of the next momentous step in the divine plan, all of which the significant word elra marks out.®^ Then follows the phrase so misleadingly translated by the A. V. and R. V., “to be tempted” {ireipaa-Oi^vat.) . The English word “tempt” bears in its bosom all of those illicit suggestions of “seduction,” “deception” and sinful allurement which are only predicable of the experience of ignorant and sinful man, but not of a sinless and omniscient*® God-man. The proper translation is “put to proof, ”®^ or “test” just as Abraham was “proved” by God in respect to his love, faith and obedience in the sacrifice of his son,®® or, more specifically, just as Israel whose attitude of humility,®® faith, and depend- ence was “tested.” The purpose of Jehovah was to “know what was in thy (Israel’s) heart,” viz. : to try their attitude: it was His “chastening” of His Son Israel.®^
So far, then, from this being a seduction of Israel it was a disciplinary and educative training; the same is true mutatis mutandis, with Jesus. Jesus’ quotation from the Old Testa- ment showed that He deliberately assimilated His position and experience to that of Israel in the wilderness. The points of analogy distinguishable are two : first, the “test” pertained to the conception held by Israel of the relation of God to the subject, and of the subject’s relation to God. Israel
Vide Trench, Studies in the Gospels, in loco.
For it seems necessary to allow full margin for the presupposition that the ir«ipacr/xds was faced by Jesus with the foreknowledge of His possession of the divine nature, which He at other similar crises exhib- ited. The supposition is vital to the doctrine of impeccability.
®^ Vide Meyer, in loco. He properly makes the term depend upon the context for its particular application, which context in this case is that of Deut. viii. cited by Jesus, where the idea is “prove.”’ In Jas. i. 13 the term 7r«pd^«v involves depravity of nature in the one tempted. This is decided by the context just as clearly.
®® Gen. xxii.
66 Cf. “That he might humble thee.”
®^ Deut. viii. 5, “as a man chasteneth his son, so Jehovah thy God chasteneth thee.”
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is repeatedly called Jehovah’s “son” who is “chastened” (Deut. viii. 5) that he might “keep the commandments of God” and be “humble.” This same filial relation of Jesus is tested by Satan’s mocking play on the word “Son.” “If (note the very hypothetical air) thou be the Son of God” is repeated twice and is antiphonal to the allocution, “thou art my beloved Son.” It plainly tests out our Lord’s conception of this allocution as to whether that conception rang true, and measured high enough.®* If He Zixus the Son of God, He would faithfully manifest this in the strict humility, faith, obedience®® and open-eyed submission, that He might live out the length, breadth, depth and height of that creaturely dependence which He had determined in the counsels of eternity to assume.
Hence the second point of analogy is the test not of the filial conception but of the filial spirit involved in this con- ception.'^® If He were the Son of God he would restrain immediate use of His supernatural power, which Satan consequently would taunt Him with not having. He would turn away from outright apostasy from God as in the third temptation. IMore positively. He would, for the joy that was set before him — the joy of the exercise of Kingdom power at “the right hand of the throne of God” — endure the cross‘d despising the shame, and sit down at the right hand of the
The conception of the filial relation showed itself back at twelve years of age in the nascent form, “I must be about my father’s business.” ^^v-rraKorjv ifuiOev Hebrew says. Rom. v. 20 makes obedience the summ.ary characteristic of the Second Adam.
Jehovah’s purpose was to “prove thee to know what was in thy heart, whether thou wouldst keep his commandments or not” (Deut. viii. 3), in the case of Israel.
The so-called “passive” temptations as opposed to the “positive” ones in the wilderness. The latter solicited active and immediate use of Kingdom power, while the former required patience in endurance of afflictions, and delay of the use of the Kingdom power. This is only a convenient and general distinction, however, for even in the Tra^ij/xara we must consider that the moral strain upon a natural and innocent propensity to immediate!}' exercise His divine power to escape suffering was just as great. The tendency was just as positive.
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throne of God.” And this spirit Jesus did undauntedly maintain throughout all the “days of his flesh,” which were a perennial temptation^^ in the sense of “test,” an unceasing via crucis in which the tension between the use or non-use of Kingdom power, the present or the future Kingdom-rule, never relaxed. By evincing this spirit of submission and restraint Jesus proved that His original conception of Son- ship was the true one as opposed to that of Satan.
Returning more specifically to the original question, viz., the mode of the temptations, we can now more clearly understand it. We now have a God-man who is “tested,” not “tempted,” by God, and by Satan only as the agent of God. The “testing” focusses upon the concept and spirit of His relationship to God. The transferring of the attention from the devil as the dominating personality with the sinister associations of a possibility of a collapse resulting from his finding vulnerable contacts in Jesus’ nature (all implied in the infelicitous translation “tempt”) to God as “testing” the attitude of an already approved’’® Son, through the subject instrumentality of Satan — this transfer gives the key to the matter. It not only secures the fact that God, Himself airei- pacrfio’i'’* and not allowing us to be tempted above that we are able, will not suffer His “test” to overcome Jesus; but it presupposes that the test in the divine purpose will not be di- rected to the tSiat iTrcOvfjLiac, nor even necessarily to the sinless infirmities primarily,^® but to the highest nature of the
^2 This is despite the statement that Satan left him “for a time,” which is falsely interpreted as a very long period (an Italian MS. inserts ad usque passionis based on the fact that Jesus predicts Satan’s coming a second time, “Now the Prince of this world cometh,” John xiv.) and the fact that there are two times only when it is recorded that “angels came and ministered unto him.”
Viz., at the time of the Baptism.
Jas. i. 13.
^5 These infirmities were secondary causes that entered in and made more acute the “test” of the higher nature, as the gnawing hunger made more exigent the necessity of exercising divine Messianic power, yet the terminating point was always in the higher sphere as witnessed by the fact that twice Satan explicitly attacked here, i.e., “If thou be the Son
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God-man and to the most characteristic element in that nature, the power and right of Messianic rule. Further, we may find a basis in this highest nature for temptability afiapria<i in the fact that the object presented is per se de- tached from sin, or neutral, i.e., the exercise of Messianic power. As regal power was a most natural and inherent function of Jesus’ pre-existent and exalted mode of being, the thought of its present exercise could enter into Jesus’ mind without in that act itself contaminating it. It would only become sin when the thought was actually carried out. This is not the idea of “worldly Messiahship” that A. B. Bruce proposes,^® for this would involve Jesus in the lust of a vaulting ambition. Stated otherwise, the principle of the first three and ultimately of all “tests” was the innocent desire of Jesus to usher in the spiritual kingdom and power immedi- ately instead of patiently delaying it till His appointed time — a desire made more intense by the contrasting weaknesses, sorrows and afflictions of the humiliation.
According to this view we may conceive a “temptation” so dynamically real that it not only transcends our power of conception, but enables us to get a suggestion of the sense in which Kara rrdvra rreTreipaafievof; should be taken. Certainly the quality and the intensity of the regal “joy that was set before him” and of the “enduring the cross and despising the shame,” and of the tremendous conflict of these two
of God.” The secondary provoking causes or the sinless infirmities varied in number and quality and intensity throughout His life, but always the true concept of Sonship involving the restraint of Messianic power remained as constituting the ultimate point of possible weakness, if the term is permissible. This is strikingly seen in the fact that Jesus betrayed His consciousness of the point of Satan’s attack by shifting the attention of Satan from the higher nature and its divine prerogative to the human nature by Old Testament quotations concerning the necessity of crea- turely humility and dependence.
’'® “So Jesus was tempted to choose the path of the worldly Messiah- ship.” “Two ways were set before His view, the way of popularity, and the way of the cross,” (p. 265, op. cit.). This Jewish Messiahship was connected with such earthly and sensual notions that its very presence in Jesus’ thoughts would betray His sinfulness.
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extremes when placed side by side in Jesus’ actual experience, is beyond our power to enter into. Jesus’ moral character must in this way be vindicated regarding its sinlessness.
But the next question is, can the temptation of a sinless character be real? or if so, like ours “in all points’’ ? Tempta- tion dfxapTia^ is SO alien to our plane of ethical exper-
ience that modesty in face of what is essentially unknown prevents us from forming any dogma as to the quality and degree of the resemblance of the two planes of experience. We must rest content with the fact of this 6/j,oc(op,a, recogniz- ing that it is, in some inscrutable sense, and not reasoning too far into just what it is. How a sinless being can be tempted from without, by means of a neutral thought- object, intensified by the duress of sinless infirmities and passions, in such a wise as to produce no wavering, no conflict of concupiscent impulses, no harassing debate and qualms of conscience — and how such a “test” can be equivalent Kara irdvra to our temptations, is difficult to comprehend. We illegitimately tend to assimilate our sin-colored and sin- dominated experiences to this mystery the instant we attempt to psychologize into it. We possess no sinless human nature to be “tested,” and we do not share in the divine nature. Any attempt, therefore, to homologize the experiences would be impossible. The safer procedure is to leave the widest margin for any and every dissimilarity as opposed to similarity as we envisage this but partially known mystery.^^
We venture then, only to make some suggestions drawn from the analogy of human experience.
First, in view of the form of Jesus’ temptation, as above stated, being different from ours, we must say that Dr. Bruce gives his case away when he attempts to explain the onotdofia
It is a matter of balancing over against each other the weight to be relatively assigned to kuO' o/xotoTj^ra and Kara rravra on the one hand and Xd)/3t5 d/xa/OTias on the other. It is evident that the importance of the latter phrase cannot be sacrificed in any circumstance. Therefore the former phrases must not be taken literally as Ullman and others tend to do.
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by the principle that the “same temptations may arise from different causes.” The analogy holds good respecting the possibility of “different causes” operating — for our above conclusions postulate this. But it gives the case away when it comes to the point of the analogy intended, the similarity of the temptation. He transforms the similarity fairly into an identity of temptation by deliberately assuming that these are the “same temptations.” The homicide of the malicious Joab, and that resulting from the religious “Aberglaube” of the Hindu mother flinging her child into the Ganges River, though diversely motived are identical in the essence of the act, and both proceed from sin-perverted hearts: they are “the same temptation” in that the external act in both cases is per se sinful, however different in praiseworthiness the causes may be. From this analogy we could only conclude that Jesus was solicited to the same evil acts as we, only His motive would be higher. It must be considered that the qualitative disparity of the causes or motives is so great as to require not the same, but a different order of temptations in our case and that of Jesus.
To begin with the lowest element, the natural physical infirmities, temptations arising from these may be far fiercer than those arising from sinful proclivities, e.g., the pampered appetite of an epicure compared with the ravenous hunger of a famished man, or the craving of an intemperate palate for wine, with the natural thirst of the parched traveller in the desert. Jesus’ hunger after the forty days and His thirst, may conceivably have been still more acute because of the immeasurable contrast of this demeaning physical weakness with the pleroma of his Messianic power and glory. The physical pain of the crucifixion is itself, regardless of the accompanying soul-anguish, the height of human suffering: and when we add to this the horror of death, no greater strain could be put upon human instinct to resist it all. The psychical infirmities of “sorrow unto death,” weeping, and the Gethsemane grief over the infidelity of His followers and unrequited love shown to men, and the final awful
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sense of dereliction on the cross, together with the dread apprehensions that arose from Jesus’ foreknowledge (for the forebodings of suffering are often worse than the sufferings in themselves), and finally all those physical and spiritual sufferings in their concentrated form on the cross where the dread of death still further intensified them, — all these con- stitute a curriculum of temptation of immeasurable power and poignancy and one incomparably more intense than ours.
In addition to these circumstances we must consider the fact that because Jesus was impregnable in holiness, Satan’s assault was correspondingly the fiercer; as W. G. T. Shedd puts it, a heavier piece of ordnance will be brought up against Gibraltar than against a packet-boat. In fact the actual power of the temptation would seem to increase in proportion to the degree of Jesus’ impregnability and im- peccability. The most vital and vulnerable points in Jesus are tried, e.g.. His conception and spirit of Sonship.
Still further, the more steadfastly the temptations were resisted the more acute became the conflict. Bad men whose natures are steeped in the habits of sin feel no temptation, no struggle : for they offer no resistance. Like attracts like. An external presentation or solicitation is but the signal for immediate and automatic moral capitulation. The man of integrity who resists, is the man who endures struggle and suffers poignant spiritual conflict. Now Christ “resisted unto blood, striving against sin, and offered up prayers and sup- plications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death.” But His people “have not so resisted.”^® The more the resistance, the more the perfection ; the more the perfection the more there is to lose by a fall : the more there is to lose, the greater the tension of the conflict. Satan increases the power of his assaults pari passu with the moral hardihood developed by the will resistance of the one tempted.
A further consideration of the holy constitution of Jesus,
Heb. X. 4, V. 7.
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viz: His spiritual sensitiveness, will afford another line of approach/®
An innately innocent and holy man must experience none of the attraction and all of the repulsiveness of sin. He has a nature more sensitive and delicate to which objectively presented sin is painful and offensive, causing instinctive recoil and revulsion. Many virtuous persons have been known to break into tears at the mere proposal of a wrong act. The vile sinner more deeply and intimately acquainted with sin’s corruption has become so calloused morally, and so seared in conscience that the presentation of sinful alternatives produces no such inner recoil : it has become so naturalized in his being that even though he sees and strives for the transcendent ideal of perfection, and even though he hates sin in his best moments, yet in his unconscious and unvigilant moments, and even in his entire subconscious life, he is relapsing toward or compromising with it and indulging in it. It is not an alien enemy. His hatred of it is not instinctive and spontaneous.
If the attractiveness of sin becomes increasingly repul- siveness and inspires a constitutional sensitiveness to its presentation as we proceed from the more sinful individual to the more holy, we may safely assume at the level of the perfectly sinless being that not only does the attraction de- crease and the sensitive repulsion increase, but that the attraction passes totally over into repulsion ; and further that the intensity of this feeling of repulsion and sensitiveness infinitely increases. In a perfectly sinless being, the mere objective presentation to mind, the mere presence of sin, must be incomprehensively painful. Why was Jesus so exhausted that He had to be ministered unto by angels after His initial temptation? It was very”^ conceivably the fact that there in
Bengel well puts it: "Quomodo autem sine peccato, tentatus, com- pati potest tentatus cum peccato. In intellectu, multo acrius aninia Salvator percepit imagines tcntantes, quam nos infirmi; in voluntate, tani celeriter incursum eariun retudit, quam ignis aquae guttulam sibi objectam.”
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the unbroken silence and solitude of the wilderness Christ came into the immediate presence of, as well as into the most painful and harassing face to face encounter with, this un- hallowed power and personality. The term used
by Mark plainly indicates that Jesus’ very entrance into the wilderness was not entirely sua sponte, but probably with an instinctive premonitory recoil and inner shrinking such that the Holy Spirit must needs not only lead, but more directly “drive” Him. The instinctive recognition of the approach of the Holy One of Israel by the demon shows how acutely spiritually sensitive of the mere presence of the Spirit of Holiness he was. That Jesus’ spirit was equally sensitive of the devil’s presence follows by converse reasoning. In anticipation of the return of the presence of His mortal enemy, Jesus says®^ “the prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me.” He loathed all contact with and proxim- ity to this harrowing personality. If we could receive some more intelligible insight into, or intimation of this poignancy of Jesus’ feeling and the intensity of His spiritual sensitive- ness and pain beyond our childlike analogical reasoning, we might apprehend how the Kara irdvra held true, if not in precise extension, at least in intension and concentration.
Finally, we must realize that the focus of the temptation during the whole earthly via criicis was not specifically upon the physical or psychical infirmities of the human nature in themselves but upon the higher divine nature, for Satan chooses the strongest and most characteristic point for his assault. Jesus’ conception of Sonship, and its implications and its requirements upon Him (as already descrilied) was the ultimate battle-ground : and the physical-psychical suffer- ings and trials were only subordinate factors that sharpened and rendered poignant the real issue of whether He should now exercise His legitimate Kingdom-power which the deep- est currents of His divine being favored, or whether He
8® “The Spirit driveth him into the wilderness.” John xiv. 30.
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would patiently postpone it. We can believe that even had He had no provocative sufferings, there would have been a real temptation in this respect. Hence in whatever respects Jesus’ temptation is like ours, it is unfathomably different from, and above ours at this point.
The conclusion remains that the ireTreipaa iievo<; Kara irdina cannot be taken literally. While there are certain principles in common to the two planes of experience such as the strict maintenance of the religious attitude of creaturely faith, dependence, and obedience, despite suffering and sorrow, yet the fact of the divine nature and all it implies makes the temptations tower infinitely above ours; and the fact of these all being in quality a/tapria? transfigures them into a
mystery and gives them an unsearchable significance. We can allow a qualitative similarity only in respect to the part played by sinless infirmities. We can allow a similarity in intensity only in the sense that we experience part of the intensity of his “trial.” His were not only more intense per se, but their magnitude becomes inconceivably greater when we consider that He successfully resisted them all. A successfully “tested” man will receive infinitely more intense and even qualitatively different temptations than the fallen man. It serves the purpose of the divine mission and priestly office that Jesus was thus tempted more severely than we even though in extent it was not “in all points” as we are tempted.
It will be easily recognized from these considerations that though the term Kara rravra cannot be taken literally, at least in terms of quality, yet the intensity of the trial was so transcendingly great as to stop the mouth of any who should rise up and say that the temptations of Jesus were not real.
A serious and extended discussion, beyond the determina- tion of these limits, of the question of the abstract possibility of sinning is futile. For as Archbishop Trench well says, “This question would never have been so much as started except in a Nestorian severance of the Lord into two persons, and thus in the contemplation of a human person in Him as at some moment existent apart from the divine.” And “when
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we ascribe to Him two natures, but these at no time other than united in the one person of the Son of God, the whole question falls to the ground. And such is the church’s faith.”®* The solution of the question, therefore, depends upon our perfectly realizing and powerfully welding this intimate bond of union, as is decreed as early as Chalcedon®* by the word aBiapeTO)'} over against the Nestorians, by Peter Lombard®'^ and by our Westminster Confession — “two whole perfect and distinct natures, the Godhead and Manhood were inseparably joined together in one person.” Bishop Martensen too is to be numbered among the prophets when he says that the non posse peccare obtains “in virtue of the indissoluble union of the human and divine natures in Him ; a bond which might indeed be strained and shaken to the greatest apparent tension and contrast of the two natures, but which never would be broken.”®® It was because of the very strength of the bond and of the divine nature that Jesus was subjected to a severer strain than we.
Positing such a personal bond it follows that the resources of infinite knowledge and power are at the immediate disposal of the God-man : and that the resistibility to temptation is to be measured, not by the weakest, but by the strongest resources of the total complex person. A following of the events in Jesus’ earthly life shows how the infinite resources of power and knowledge do govern and impenetrate the humanity of Jesus especially in exigent situations or crises.
*2 Studies in the Gospels, p. 27.
*2 Also the Athanasian creed, without any heretical provocation, says “One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person, for as the reasonable soul and flesh are one man, so God and man are one Christ.” Jesus is God and man (i) aTpcVroDs, as opposed to the Arians, (2) aKtpia-Tiof, as opposed to the Apollinarians, (3) acrvy\vT(t><: , as opposed to the Eutychians, and (4) dSiapcTous, as opposed to the Nestorians. These are the keywords of the four councils.
Peter Lombard’s statement is of more value as being explicitly directed to the non posse peccare controversy; “Non est ambiguum, anima illam entem unitam verbo peccare non posse, et eandem, si esset et non unita verbo, posse peccari.” {Lih. Sent. III:i2).
Christian Dogmatics, p. 285.
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It is to be asserted then that the impeccability of the Thean- thropos is to be gauged in the whole curriculum of temptation by the divine energy and intelligence.
The inadequate types of theories on this point are as fol- lows : ( I ) the humanitarian and the kenotic theories which, ex hypothesi, advocate full peccability; (2) Adoptianism; (3) the Nestorian views which tend toward abscission of the two natures and their vital bond. This is the type of view that originated the whole historical discussion centering in the person of Abelard (4) the finiteness view ; “Limitation is no physical evil, and imperfection no moral wrong, but they involve possible error in thought and sin in action” again, “whatever is less than infinite is temptable and pec- cable: Christ was less than infinite: therefore His humanity might have been overthrown”;®** (5) the development view, peculiar to Schaff, posits a progress from a relative (posse non peccare) to absolute (non posse peccare) sinlessness. This view posits such an initial indeterminism of the will in the imperfect stages, that it is impossible to safeguard Jesus’ actual sinlessness, in which case the projxDsed “absolute impeccability” could never be attained: (6) The theory of voluntas in aeqnilihrio. This is the most commonly held basis for the denial of the impeccability, and it was also the basis on which the first historical denial of the non posse peccare rested and it in fact underlies every such theory. Abelard, assuming that free will to sin or not to sin is the true charac- teristic of the individual, asserts the posse non peccare when the matter is considered “in abstracto.” But when the matter is considered “in concreto” Abelard concludes that Jesus “nullo modo posse peccare.” To this Anselm replied, “Christ could have sinned had He willed to : but He did not, and He could not will to. Such a will would have stood in contradic- tion to His holiness.”
For refutation of the objection that the non posse peccare
Neander, Dogmengeschichte, p. 98.
A. M. Fairbairn, Expository Times, 111:323.
Ecce Deus, p. 56.
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invalidates the reality of the temptation, we simply refer to what has been said regarding the “mode” of Jesus’ temptation and the 6/jLoi(a/j,a Kara irawa . This is as far as we can go in the direction of analysis of the possibility of sinning. There is at most only a severe strain or tension placed on the bond of union of the two natures; if there be any remote possibility of breaking, it “serves only as a dark and obscure background to show forth His perfect holi- ness.”®*
Princeton. F. D. Jenkins.
Martensen, op. cit. p. 285.
THE EVANGELICAL FAITH AND THE HOLY SPIRIT
We have in the title above two facts and their correlation. The one fact is a great body of truth, living and life-giving; the other is a divine agent. The correlation is intimate, vital, organic.
By the evangelical faith is meant the system of Christian belief, which, centering in the redemptive entrance of Jesus Christ into the life of a world sunk in sin and despair, bases itself on the historic transactions in this earthly career which took place on Calvary and in the Garden of Joseph. “Crucified for our sins and raised for our justification.” These are the culminating steps in that redemptive ministry of our Lord which is the very heart of the evangelical faith. They neces- sarily imply antecedent and subsequent forces, and processes which are infinite in meaning and importance. It is not so much that there were a death and a resurrection, for these there might have been without any redemptive power or results. The fact which elevates the death which took place on the cross and the resurrection which occurred in the garden into a gospel of salvation is that it was God the Son who died and rose again and that He died and rose with the express intention of thereby restoring a race of sinners to the favor of an infinitely holy God. The emptying of Himself which was involved in His incarnation and sacrificial death, the reexaltation which came to Him when He rose triumphantly from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Majesty on High, and the as yet unfulfilled determination to return in glory to consummate His Kingdom — all are involved in the fact and meaning of the death and resurrection which stand at the center of the evangelical faith. Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of the Father; conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary ; suffering under Pontius Pilate ; crucified, dead and buried; descending into Hades; rising again from the dead on the third day; ascending into Heaven; seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, whence He shall
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come to judge the quick and the dead — this is the glorious catena of redemptive facts that forms the Christian faith.
But this does not exhaust all that is included in this historic faith of “the Holy Church throughout all the world.” There are included as concomitant facts these two among many others, viz., the fact of the record of the preparation, execu- tion, and processes of working of this redemptive ministry on the part of Jesus Christ in a divinely infallible, authoritative and final form in the Sacred Word, and the fact of the divinely revealed and applied glory and power of this redemp- tive work of Christ by the Holy Spirit to all believers so that it becomes effectual to their complete salvation forever. It is justification by faith in the vicarious atonement of Jesus Christ as it is authoritatively set forth in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and effectually brought into contact with the heart of the believer by divine agency that constitutes the “good news” of the Christian religion.
Having tarried to specify what is connoted by the evan- gelical faith, let us turn to the consideration of the correlation between it and the Holy Spirit. And in doing this let us first incjuire as to what the Holy Spirit owes to the evangelical faith, and, second, as to what the evangelical faith owes to the Holy Spirit.
When we come to think of what the Holy Spirit owes to the evangelical faith we recognize at once that the debt is a relative one, in that all that the evangelical faith has to give to the Holy Spirit it first received from Him. Nevertheless, for the purposes of our thinking, it is profitable to remark this relative debt. And the debt is incurred in the recognition and proclamation which the evangelical faith gives to the Spirit and His work. It is the great creeds of evangelical Christian- ity which solemnly chant the sublime declaration, “I believe in the Holy Ghost.” The teachers, preachers, and writers who have all along exalted the Holy Spirit to His proper place are the evangelicals. A Kuyper among the theologians and a Spurgeon among the heralds have led the way where the unnumbered hosts of the Church Catholic have bowed in
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humble adoration and dependence before God the Spirit, and have recited His wonderful works to the children of men.
The recital is drawn primarily from the self-revelation which the Spirit gave through holy men of old whom He moved by mighty dynamic impulse to pen the words of Holy Writ. We say primarily, advisedly, for while every other recital is to be tested by this Holy Depository of the Word, there is nevertheless a secondary source from which a living witness arises to the blessed operations of the Spirit, viz. the the experience of the believer. New chapters are being daily added to the Acts in the transformations of character wrought through grace, the wondrous answers which come to earnest, believing prayer, and the sacrificial service rendered by men and women who have been saved through Christ and who gladly spend themselves in turn for their Saviour, subordi- nate chapters they are, derivatively authoritative, yet genuine.
In the self-revelatory recital of the being, offices and works of the Holy Spirit, we find as a cardinal feature His person- ality. Our Lord, the supremely authoritative spokesman of God, the Word, the Incarnate Message from the Father to man, pours into the New Testament depository of evangelical truth the oft reiterated personal pronouns and verbs that fix beyond all debate His recognition of the Spirit as essentially personal in nature. They are the pronouns and verbs that be- long only to personality, that is, to an entity which thinks, feels, judges and purposes. Intelligence, sentiency, judgment, volition — these are the qualities which mark the life of the Spirit as the Son of God knows Him. We must never confuse personality with corporealty. The former has a priority in time, power and importance which may amount to complete independence, certainly to determinativeness in relation to the latter.
But not only is the Spirit believed in as personal, the third Person of the blessed Trinity, and exercising all His hallowed and hallowing ministries as we shall see later; He is also accorded a place of equality with the Father and the Son, “the same in substance, equal in power and glory.” And it comes to
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pass necessarily that He is accepted as indispensable both to the perfection of the Godhead and to the whole redemptive work in behalf of men. Joseph Cook in one of his great lectures points out the fact that no two of the Persons of the Godhead are God without the third. Thus for our thinking now the Father and the Son are not God without the Spirit. But it is the evangelical faith blazing and burning, like the bush in the wilderness, on every page of the Sacred Word, that reflects the Spirit thus in His full-orbed glory as “very God of very God.” And for this reflection the Spirit is rela- tively indebted to the evangelical faith in and out of the New Testament.
But let us pass now to the far more profound and important question of what the evangelical faith owes to the Holy Spirit. Here we are face to face with an absolute debt. The Spirit performs a threefold ministry for the evangelical faith.
First there is the ministry of provision. It was the Holy Spirit who gave us our redemptive gospel. The mystery of divine cooperation within the Holy Trinity in the work of redemption must of necessity forever transcend the compre- hension of the finite mind. But the infinite mind of the Spirit Himself has thrown out fragmentary statements by which we may steer our course in seeking to learn somewhat of the mighty working within the Godhead whereby we sinful men have been redeemed. And those statements, preserved for us in the sacred writings which the Spirit inspired, make it clear that He the Spirit was an indispensable agent in pro- viding that redemption. There is an emphasis in the working of the Trinity by which the Father stands out conspicuously in creation, the Son in redemption and the Spirit in regenera- tion and sanctification. But it is only an emphasis. There is cooperation everywhere. The Son and the Spirit collaborate with the Father in creation, the Father and the Spirit with the Son in redemption and the Father and the Son with the Spirit in regeneration and sanctification. The pages of Scripture abound with this emphasis and cooperation. And so it is that while the Son stands forth as “the Lamb of God that taketh
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away the sin of the world” and will forever be worshipped as Redeemer, yet the Holy Spirit may truly be said to have provided us with the evangelical faith.
In the first place the mystery of the incarnation of our Lord was accomplished through the power and activity of the Holy Spirit : “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee and the Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore also the holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of God.” The significance of that “wherefore” may well hold us in perpetual wonderment and adoration. It binds as with a divine rivet the deity of our Lord with His conception by the Holy Spirit. “And in Jesus Christ, our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost” — run the majestic words of the venerable creed of Christianity which has stood through many centuries like some storm-beaten lighthouse on the rocky shores of time throwing its beneficient beams of light out across the dark waters of mystery and error. Could the incarnation have been effected without the intervention of the Spirit? We may not know, but this we know that it was not. And God chooses the best way. But we must never forget that we owe our divine-human Christ, of the seed of Abraham, son of David, sympathetic and faithful High-Priest, to the mighty genera- tive ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Then we are told again by the Spirit that Christ’s mighty works were somehow dependent on the fact that the Spirit had been poured out on Him without measure. Another sublime mystery of great light! We may well bow and wor- ship before it. But this much stands out clearly before us and that is that our Christ would not have been what He was had it not been for that immeasurable outpouring. It simply means all through the life of Christ Jesus our Lord that He was not God without both the Father and the Spirit, as we have before remarked. And so all the wonderful words He spoke in parable and sermon and interview issued somehow from that effusion of the Spirit, and all His wonderful works of healing and raising the dead likewise, and all His mighty influence in the world until this day !
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And then at last when that precious life had been laid down on the Cross, and the cry “It is finished” had fallen from the parched and dying lips, and the lifeless body had been tenderly laid away in the tomb, there to rest until the resurrection at the last day, as the disciples thought ; what power was it that wrought the crowning miracle in all the miraculous life of the Christ, who was Himself the Miracle of God, when He was raised triumphant over death and the grave and thus declared to be the Son of God with power? Was it not pre- cisely the power of the Spirit which wrought without measure in Him? Turn over the pages of the self-revelation of the Spirit until you come to the eighth chapter of Romans and you find there these stupendous words, “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” What does that mean? Just this — that the Holy Spirit is the immediate minister of resurrection, operating under and with the authority of the Father, and that both in believers and also in their Saviour. What else can the sublime move- ment of the utterance signify?
Well, we begin to realize our incalcuable debt to the Spirit for our Redeemer and redemption. All that enters into our evangelical faith has come to us through His divine co- operative ministry of provision. Incarnation, enduement, resurrection — all are effected through His instrumentality.
Following the ministry of provision let us note the ministry of application, whereby the Spirit brings the redemptive work of Christ into effectual contact with the mind and heart of man.
At the very threshold of the Christian life stands an imper- ative work of the Spirit. To Nicodemus our Lord declares this work in biological terms : “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. ... So is everyone that is born of the Spirit.” The Apostle states the same necessity in
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different language, when he says that no one can call Jesus Lord but by the Holy Spirit, and just before the Saviour ascended to the Father, He told His disciples it would be when they were empowered by the coming of the Holy Spirit upon them that they would be enabled to bear witness to Him. It all comes to the same thing, viz., that there must be a change supernaturally wrought in the life of man by the Holy Spirit before he can appreciate and appropriate Jesus Christ as his Saviour and Lord. Our Lord’s figure for this super- natural work has passed into a word which must never be allowed to become obsolete in the vocabulary of the Church — a strong, vivid, comprehensive word — “regeneration.” And regeneration, without which no man can even see the kingdom of God, is the sole work of the Holy Spirit. No amount of culture can ever be a substitute for this supernatural trans- formation. There is no other door into a living fellowship with Christ, and they who do not enter in at this door, but climb up some other way, may gain an organizational connec- tion with the kingdom, but never a real relationship therewith. And it is doubtless the failure to enter in at the one true door of regeneration that has brought into the ranks of Christ’s disciples in every generation those who profess to know and follow Him but whose works betray the emptiness of their profession. The proud heart of the unregenerate may be attracted to Christ by the originality and beauty of His teachings or by the purity of His character, but it cannot be melted into contrition until by the agency of the Holy Spirit it bows in the dust before the Cross and cries with the Publican in the temple “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Alexander Whyte had a great sermon on “Knowing Christ Evangelically” in which he pointed out that it is one thing to know Him historically, or grammatically or exegetically or theologically ; but that it is quite another thing to know Him evangelically, when the heart is broken and contrite and cries out to Him for cleansing and pardon.
Christ lays great stress on this applicatory ministry of the Spirit in the life of the believer. In the Fourth Gospel we have
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explicit and extended teaching from Him on this aspect of the Spirit’s work. After declaring that there were many things which He had to say to them but for the reception of which they were then unprepared, He outlines to them the continua- tion work in this respect which would be carried on by the Holy Spirit : “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth : for he shall not speak from himself, but what things soever he shall hear, these shall he speak : and he shall declare unto you the things that are to come. He shall glorify me : for he shall take of mine and shall declare it unto you.” This predictive utterance of our Lord finds a higher and a lower fulfilment. The higher in the inspired teachings and writings of the apostles which are in part preserved for us in the books of the New Testa- ment; and the lower in the lives of all believers as their horizon of spiritual appreciation widens with every new experience of the grace of God in Christ. This fulfilment which belongs to the whole body of believers is wonderfully set forth to the Corinthian Church by St. Paul in the second chapter of his letter to them, in which, after declaring his deliberate purpose to confine his preaching and teaching among them to the evangelical limits of “J^sus Christ and him crucified,” he goes on to show them how utterly impos- sible it is for the natural man to appreciate this message of redemption. The eyes, ears and heart of the unregenerate man are unable to bring him into a knowledge of the things of salvation which God has prepared through Christ crucified for all who accept Him as their personal Saviour: “but,” he adds, “God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.” Then he goes forward with the delineation of this revelatory work of the Spirit, saying it has to do with the deep things of God. And he makes it perfectly plain that “the deep things of God” are the things that gather about the Cross of Christ. The “Cross of Christ” is “foolishness” to the cultured Greek : “the things of the Spirit” are “foolishness” to the natural man, by which correlation and identification it becomes apparent
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that “the things of the Spirit” are the things of Christ’s redemptive ministry, the very things Christ predicted the Spirit would declare to His followers.
And the utter dependence of men and women on the applicatory work of the Spirit is as great in the twentieth cen- tury as it was in the first. No one, no matter what his position in society or in the educational world or even in the Church may be, can, unaided, apprehend the divine glory that resides in the Son of God as the Saviour of sinners. And the clamor- ous denial of the things that enter into the glorious ministry of substitutionary atonement, and the labored attempts to substitute other plans of spiritual recovery may be traced, not to new knowledge or progress in culture, but to the spiritual blindness which is so emphatically declared by Christ and His apostles to belong to the life that has not passed under the gracious work of the Holy Spirit; and from whose eyes, as from those of the unregenerated Saul of Tarsus, the scales have not fallen. All such are blind leaders of the blind who are doomed to fall into the miry ditch of error and ultimate ruin and to lead their unwary followers with them in their dismal apostasy.
There is one more ministry in addition to that of provision and that of application which the Spirit performs in con- nection with the evangelical faith. It is the ministry of pro- pagation. Provision, application, propagation ! Pentecost with its three thousand converts in one day stands forth as the first great example of the Spirit’s propagational activity. Peter’s sermon and every other human instrumentality brought into operation were secondary influences. It was the supernatural power of the Spirit acting through all these that accomplished the results. The divine order was prayer, power, preaching, conversion. And it has been the order ever since. But it is tremendously significant that the message which was given that day under the divine impulsion of the Spirit was the evangelical message of Jesus Christ as Son of God, crucified and risen from the dead, and able to save all who repent and tum to Him in humble trust. Indeed it will be a most profitable
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Study to anyone to sketch through the Acts and see how uni- formly the message of the Spirit-filled apostles was this same message. If we start with Acts i. 8, “But ye shall receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you : and ye shall be my witnesses . . . and then follow these self-same men through the record in the book we shall find them testifying to nothing else than this, that the Crucified is the Son of God and the only Saviour of sinners.
With this message they shook the powers of darkness and turned great masses of men and women from lives of selfishness and sin to God. Fascinating indeed is the story of the conquest of the ancient heathen world by this Spirit- inspired, Spirit-endued Gospel. It is a conquering message just because it is God’s message and the Spirit works in and through it. And He will work through no other. So that while other gospels, so-called, may please the fancy of those who have never been spiritually “conceived by the Holy Ghost,” they work no transformations of character and bring not the peace of God that passeth all understanding. God is not in any other gospel. It follows necessarily that the conquering churches have been, and are, and ever shall be, the great evangelical churches whose leaders and people fall in adoring worship before the Lamb of God as the redeemed do in Heaven, and hasten, impelled by the Spirit, to publish the glad tidings to the ends of the earth. A Spirit-filled church, carrying the Spirit-given Gospel, moves “like a mighty army,” for it is the Spirit’s agency for the propagation of the evangel of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of the Father and the Saviour of the world.
Orange, N. J.
Harmon H. McQuilkin.
OLD testa:^ient emphases and
MODERN THOUGHT
Sometimes when the discussion of an important question has disclosed the fact that there is sharp difference of opinion between the disputants, a would-be peacemaker will remark that the difference is really only a matter of emphasis, or viewpoint, and that at heart both parties are in agreement. But such a remark is indicative of a disposition to overlook the vital importance of emphasis. A godless man need not be an avowed atheist; he is godless if God is not in all his thoughts. A selfish man may not dogmatically deny the rights of others; it is enough to stamp him a selfish man, that he puts the emphasis on self. And though the difference between the godless and the godly, the egotist and the altruist, may be called a matter of emphasis, the difference is not greatly lessened thereby. A marked difference in emphasis may and often does indicate a fundamental difference in character and lead to an equally fundamental difference in aim and end.
What is true of life is equally true of language which is the expression of life, the vehicle of communication between man and man. Next to a correct knowledge of the meaning of words and of the relation in which they stand to one another in the normal sentence, there is nothing more im- portant than the emphasis. A slight change in phrasing, a delicate intonation, and hidden meanings are suggested, which otherwise might pass unnoticed. “Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you” — is a matter of utmost importance if the meaning is to be correctly conveyed by the living voice. It is this which makes the study of elocution important. And the pains which are constantly taken to ex- plain the written word and safe-guard its meaning — italics, black-faced type, capitals and small capitals, the dash, the exclamation point, the piling up of words and phrases — these and other devices indicate how important it is to call atten- tion to the emphasis.
There are two ways of securing emphasis: by the manner of statement and by the repetition of the statement. Both
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have their place and both can be used very effectively by the accomplished stylist or orator to secure the end in view.
The Bible is a very emphatic book. It abounds in strong statements and in emphatic rei>etitions. This is natural in view of its nature and purpose. It is not an erudite theological treatise in which truth is stated with cold, logical precision and withdrawn from the masses by the abstruseness of its statement. Its writers do not assume an attitude of philo- sophic calm, of lofty indifference whether their message receives a hearing or not. It is intended for all men and it aims to make its wondrous message clear to all, so clear that the wayfaring men though fools shall not err therein. The Biblical writers leave us in no uncertainty as to the facts and doctrines which they regard as important. They em- phasize them by emphatic statement and by repetition. These emphases are consequently of great intrinsic importance; and they deserve very careful study for their own sake. But there is an additional inducement to such a study which is especially strong today. Certain of these emphatic repetitions have been seized upon and exploited by the “higher critics” as proof of the composite character and consequent unreliability of large portions of the Old Testament. A clear understanding of these repetitions and of the reasons for their presence in the Scriptures cannot fail to have an important bearing upon the validity of these conclusions. We shall, therefore, con- sider the following three topics: (i) the nature of Old Testament emphases; (2) the intrinsic importance of these emphases with especial reference to contemporary thought; and (3) the bearing of these emphases upon the conclusions of the “higher criticism.”
Old Testament Emphases — Their Nature
A good illustration of Biblical emphasis is found in the “watchman chapter” of Ezekiel (xxxiii. 1-20). Who can say how many men and women have been sent out to the mission field or into religious work at home because of its searching challenge? It is full of emphatic repetition. The words “warn” (8 times), “wicked” (8 times), “turn” (7 times).
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“righteous (ness)” (8 times), “die” (9 times), “live” (7 times), sound through it like warning bells. It is also distin- guished by emphatic statement; but this, as is frequently the case, is not nearly so clear in the translation as in the original. It is especially noticeable in vss. 7-9.^ In the AV they read thus :
So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel ; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth ; and warn them from me. When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die ; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it; if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.
The following rendering though not as smooth as the AV will help to bring out the emphasis of the Hebrew original :
So thou, son of man, a watchman have 1 set thee unto the house of Israel; and thou shalt hear at my mouth a word and thou shalt warn them from me. When I say to the wicked, “Wicked man, dying thou shalt die,” and thou speakest not to warn wicked man from his way, he,^ wicked man, in his iniquity, he shall die, but his blood from thy hand, I will seek. But thou, if thou warn wicked man from his way, to turn from it, and he turn not, he,^ in his iniquity, he shall die, but thou,- thy soul thou has delivered.
A very effective way of securing emphasis in Hebrew is by
1 These words are a nearly exact repetition of iii. 17-19, which stand in close relation to the call of the prophet. The closing words of the chapter, “then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them” which are an exact repetition of the words in ii. 5, make it clear that chap, xxiii does not speak of any “new departure” in the life or duties of the prophet : he was made a “watchman” for Israel, when he was called to be a prophet.
2 In Hebrew as in Latin and Greek the subject of the finite verb when a pronoun is omitted (as included in the verb) unless emphatic. In the instances indicated above it is expressed. This together with the arrange- ment of the words, the placing of the object before the verb, makes a very strong emphasis. This emphatic use of the pronouns in Hebrew is not unusual and it is very effective. Thus in Isa. liii. 4 it serves to throw into bold relief the antithesis between the popular misconception of the suffering Servant and the real meaning of His humiliation : “Surely, our griefs he bore, and our sorrows he carried them ; while we reckoned him plagued, smitten of God and afflicted.”
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using the so-called compound nominal sentence, in which the important word is emphasized by putting it at the beginning of the sentence (the place of emphasis), its place in the sen- tence being taken by a word of reference. Thus, “A river — its streams make glad the city of God” (Ps. xlvi. 4) sets the river which gladdens the heart of man with its unfailing, fructifying supply of living water, in contrast with the stormy, menacing and mysterious sea; “Man — ^his days are as grass” (Ps. ciii. 15), compares the brevity of humun life with the timelessness of the gracious purposes of God regard- ing him; “Jerusalem — the mountains are round about her; but the Lord is round about his people” (Ps. cxxv. 2) by con- trasting the Lord as Israel’s refuge with Jerusalem’s mountain barriers gives the believer an a fortiori reason for trusting in Him at all times.®
It would be interesting and instructive to examine other passages^ where the form of statement is emphatic. But in our present study of Old Testament emphases we shall devote ourselves more especially to the subject of emphatic repeti- tions.
To be repetitious is a serious fault. It suggests paucity of ideas and superficial thinking. For one to whom a primrose by the river’s brim is a yellow primrose and “nothing more” to talk much about yellow primroses would speedily become monotonous. It would be mere tautology. The first mention would exhaust the subject. But on the other hand it is most frequently by repetition that important matters are stressed and their true significance made plain. And a man’s mastery of his subject is on no wise made more clear than by his
^ Cf. also, “The wise man — his eyes are in his head ; but the fool walketh in darkness” (Eccles. ii. 14) ; “God — his way is perfect” (Ps. xviii. 31) ; “The Rock — his way is perfect” (Deut. xxxii. 3) ; “Their cattle and their substance and every beast of theirs — shall they not be ours?” (Gen. xxxiv. 23) ; “And I — this is my covenant” (Isa. lix. 21) ; “And these four children — God gave them knowledge” (Dan. i. 17) ; “Ephraim — their glory shall fly away like a bird” (Hos. ix. ii) ; “while the serpent — dust shall be its food” (Isa. Ixv. 25).
* An excellent New Testament example of the importance of emphasis is found in Luke xxii. 33 where the stress upon the words “with thee” is of prime importance for the correct understanding of the verse.
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ability to discuss it in all its phases and relationships without becoming repetitious. The poet to whom the
the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears;
finds more food for thought, more subjects of discourse, in the flower in the crannied wall which speaks to him of “what God is and man is” than an unappreciative visitor would find in the fabled garden of the Hesperides. Great themes are inexhaustible; they are like a mountain view, full of wonder and mystery and never twice exactly like. And the story that can never be told through is monotonous only when told by one v ho does not really know it, who has no growing, deep- ening appreciation of it, or listened to by one who is indiffer- ent to its meaning. It is because it contains such “wonderful words of life” that those that know it best are hungering and thirsting to hear it over and over again and ever beholding in it new wonders and increasing light. The Bible is full of repetitions, yet it is not repetitious. Repetition and emphasis may be rendered necessary by the difficulty, or magnitude or importance of the subject, or by the slowness or indifference of the hearer.
That the Bible contains many repetitions is too obvious a fact to require proof. This is most marked in the New Testa- ment. We have four narratives of the life of Christ, all of which cover the same ground in important particulars and three of which have been described as “synoptic” because their viewpoints are practically the same. We have four ac- counts in the Gospels of the witness of John the Baptist, of the feeding of the five thousand, of the triumphal entry, passion, death and resurrection of our Lord. Nearly half of the sections into which the Synoptic Gospels can be divided are found in all three of these Gospels.® Especially note- worthy is the fact that the three predictions of Jesus’ pas- sion are recorded by all three of the Synoptists. There is also common material in Gospels and Epistles. We have four
5 Angus-Green, Cyclopedic Handbook to the Bible (p. 629), gives the total number as 89 of u'hich 42 are common to all three. Of course there is considerable variation between these sections in the different Gospels.
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accounts of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, four lists of the Apostles. Furthermore a considerable part of the repe- tition in the New Testament consists of citation from the Old Testament.
The same tendency to repeat is found in the Old Testament though it is not quite so marked. Broadly speaking we have two histories of the Jewish people from David to the Exile. These may be compared to the Synoptic and Johannine ac- counts of the life of our Lord. Samuel-Kings is our chief source of information regarding the Northern Kingdom, and the Synoptic Gospels describe especially the Galilean ministry of Jesus. Chronicles and John are on the other hand pre- dominantly Judean. Furthermore in Chronicles the emphasis is placed upon the religious cultus, it is the “priestly” history as compared with Samuel-Kings. And in like manner John is often contrasted with the Synoptics as the “spiritual” gospel. Yet while there are marked differences,® there is much material that is common to both’^ of these Old Testa- ment histories.
But it is not only in these two great histories that repeti- tions— either exact or with more or less difference in content and phraseology — occur in the Old Testament. There are a number of other passages in the Old Testament which occur more than once. E.g., Ps. xviii.=2 Sam. xxii; i Chron. xvi. 8-33=Ps. cv. 1-15, xcvi. i-i3a; Ps. xiv.=Ps. liii; Ps. xl. i3-i7=Ps. Ixx; Ps. cviii=lvii. 7-11, lx. 5-12; 2 Kgs. xviii. 13-XX. 19 (cf. 2 Chron. xxxii.)=Isa. xxxvi.-xxxix, except that Hezekiah’s prayer is omitted; 2 Kgs. xxv. 1-21, 27-30= Jer. lii. 4-27, 30 -34; Jer. x. i2-i6=Jer. li. 15-19;® 2 Chron. xxxvi. 22, 23= Ezra i. 1-3 ; Isa. ii. 2-4=Micah iv. 1-3 ; Ezek.
® E.g. Chronicles is silent regarding Uriah, Tamar, Absalom (his name occurs three times), Elijah (except for 2 Chron. xxi. 12) and Elisha.
^ E.g. both record the bringing up of the ark, the promise to David, the incident of the well at Bethlehem, David’s census, Solomon’s prayer of dedication, the visit of the Queen of Sheba.
® Repetition is especially characteristic of Jeremiah, there being many instances where a phrase, a verse or even several verses are repeated (cf. Driver, Introduction, p. 276f).
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iii. I7-I9=xxxiii. 7-9; Ex. xx. 2-i7=Deut. v. 6-21; Ex. xxv.-xxviii., xxx.-xxxi.=xxxv.-xxxix. ; Ex. xxix.=Lev. viii.
Now what is the purpose of these numerous repetitions? Several answers may be given to this question. First, the repetition may be simply for the sake of convenience or com- pleteness. Thus, the nine chapters of genealogical material which stand at the beginning of Chronicles contain much material which is found in the earlier books. In view of the relative unimportance of Edom, we might perhaps have expected that the genealogy of Esau would either be omitted altogether or given much more concisely than it is. It is indeed considerably condensed, no mention being made of the different wives of Esau. But the list of the kings of Edom (i Chron. i. 43-54) is almost an exact repetition of Gen. xxxvi. 31-43.® Similarly the fact that three complete lists of the Twelve Patriarchs (Gen. xxxv. 22b-29, xlvi. 6-27, Ex. i. 1-5) and a partial list (Ex. vi. I4f) in addition to the elaborate birth narratives (Gen. xxix. 32-xxx. 23, xxxv. 16-20) have already been given, does not lead to the omission of the list in i Chron. ii. i, 2.^® The account in Chronicles is obviously designed to be complete in itself
® The long list of the high priestly line given in vi. 3-14 might seem to render unnecessary the long genealogy given in Ezra vii. 1-5. Ezra might have described himself as the “son” (i.e. descendant) of that Seraiah who was slain by Nebuchadnezzar (cf. the historical note re- garding Jehozadak in i Chron. vi. 15). But the giving of even this abbreviated list serves to tell the reader at once what a distinguished family "Ezra the scribe” belonged to. It also lends weight to his mission. Ezra was not merely the favorite of the Persian king; far more im- portant than this, he was of the high priestly line of Israel.
There is even repetition in these chapters themselves. Not merely is the list of Aaron’s sons, which is known from Gen. xlvi, ii. Ex. vi. 16, Num. iii. 17, given in vi. i ; but it is also repeated in vi. 16, and we find it again in xxiii. 6. Likewise the sons of Kohath are named in vi. 2 and again in vi. 18. And further the first part of the list of high priests given in vi. 4-15 is repeated in vs. 50-53. These repetitions would seem to be primarily intended to simplify the genealogies as much as possible. Yet we find on the other hand in v. 4 the name “Joel” following that of Carmi ; and the reader is left to infer that he is a descendant of one of the sons of Reuben mentioned in vs. 3.
This does not mean of course that it is equally full in all its parts.
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Secondly, it is to be noticed that while a tendency to repeat is not peculiar to, it is yet markedly characteristic of, the Hebrew mind. This shows itself in several ways. We observe it in the tendency to repeat a word or phrase for emphasis or to express the comparative or superlative.^' The most famil- iar examples are the Trisagion, “Holy, holy, holy,”^^ and the phrase “Holy of holies.”^^ Again, it is found in the custom in giving an affirmative answer of repeating the important word of the question or even the whole of it. E.g. “I will go”’^® (Gen. xxiv. 58) ; “My son’s coat” (Gen. xxxvii. 33) ; “He will come down” ( i Sam. xxiii. 1 1 ) ; “There is” ( Jer. xxxvii. 17) ; “It shall be unclean” (Hag. ii. 13).^®
The clearest evidence of this penchant for repetition is found in the poetry in which balance or parallelism (parallel- ismiis membrornm) is the outstanding characteristic. Thus, in the words “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the
The bare mention of Joshua (vii. 27) is in marked contrast to the elaborate lists which are given of the family of Caleb and shows clearly that the interest of the writer centers in the Southern Kingdom. No genealogies of Dan and Zebulun are given ; and Ephraim and Manasseh are quite meagre as compared with Judah and Benjamin. The prominence given to Levi shows the priestly emphasis.
The frequent appearance of the infinitive absolute with the finite verb (e.g. “dying thou shalt die,” Gen. ii. 12; cf. the AV rendering “thou shall surely die”) is one of the best illustrations of this tendency to repeat. But we also find examples of the repetition of other words. E.g. “full of slimepits” (Gen. xiv. 10) is in Hebrew “pits pits of slime” (i.e., bitumen) ; cf. “and they gathered them together heaps heaps” (Ex. viii. 14) ; “righteousness righteousness shalt thou follow” (Deut. xvi. 20) ; “by means of the prancing s prancings of his mighty ones” (Judges v. 22) ; “make this valley ditches ditches” (2 Kings iii. 16). Other examples are Isa. xii. 2, xxvi. 3, 4, 5, xxxix. 19; Jer. iv. 19; Joel iii. 14. To be noted are also the expressions: “exceedingly” (lit. “much, much,nt<D ntto) and “because even because” (l^r^l found 93 times in the Old Testa- ment). Two or more words are repeated in Pss. xciv. 3, xcvi. 13, cxv. 1 ; Isa. xxvi. 15, xxvii. 5, xxviii. lof ; cf. Ps. xciii. 3.
Cf. Jer. xxii. 29 and Ezek. xxi. 32; also Jer. vii. 4 where “the temple of the Lord” is repeated 3 times.
Cf. “song of songs,” “king of kings,” “a servant of servants,” “Lord of lords.”
The person is, of course, changed when necessary.
Cf. I Sam. XXX. 8, 2 Sam. v. 19, 2 Kings ii. 5, viii. 10. For a similar repetition in a negative reply cf. i Kings xviii. 18
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soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure; making wise the simple” the same thought is repeated in somewhat different form. In this way the two contrasted principles of repetition (sameness) and variation (difference) are brought together; and the task of blending them becomes a fine art in which the skill of the poet finds ample scope for its exercise. It is most frequently also in the poetry that the fondness for repetition shows itself in the form of a refrain.
Thirdly, there is to be noted the evidential value of repeti- tion. When we think of the tremendous significance of the Resurrection, for a world whose history is so frequently summed up for us in Scripture by those ominous words, “and he died,” it is reassuring to read that the risen Christ appeared unto His disciples during a period of forty days and was seen of above five hundred brethren at once. And if he appeared so often and to so many, four accounts of the resurrection are not too many. They are a distinct aid to faith. We read in the Old Testament how Gideon, although he had already been given clear proof that God was with him, requested a sign and then asked that the sign be repeated in a different way. In the New Testament we read that Peter’s vision at Caesarea was repeated three times. The purpose was clearly to make assurance doubly sure.
Fourthly, there is the didactic or homiletic value of repeti- tion. Why is the story of Paul’s conversion repeated three times in Acts ? Certainly not to prove that Paul could tell the story three times without contradicting himself. The object is clearly to show how epoch-making was the Damascus
An excellent illustration of refrain-like repetition even in prose is found in the phrase “Is it not (or, behold it is) written in the Chronicles of the kings of Judah (or, in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel) ?” Over thirty times this phrase occurs in the Books of Kings. A modern historian would prefer to explain his method in the preface, give a bibliography of his authorities, and then refer to them in footnotes to the text. Yet there is undoubtedly something impressive about the way in which this ancient historian repeatedly appeals to his sources — Is it not wTitten? Behold it is written! — as if challenging his reader to deny that there is full documentary evidence for what he has written as well as further evidence accessible to those that desire it.
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vision, what a revolutionary effect it had on Paul’s life, how constantly present it was in his thinking, how central in his preaching, how impossible it is to account for the Apostle Paul without accepting his account of his conversion as the explanation.
There is a definitely didactic purpose in the recurring ref- erences in Kings to David’s example and the promises which centred in his line (“he walked in the way of David his father” — “but not as David his father” — “for David’s sake”), and to the crime of Jeroboam the son of Nebat “who caused Israel to sin.” Nearly twenty-five times the sin of Jeroboam and its evil consequences; and as frequently the piety of David or the “sure mercies” promised to him are referred to and made a standard for estimating the lives of the kings. And the repetition is impressive and stresses the great lesson which the sacred historian would impress upon his readers that obedience and blessing, disobedience and dis- aster go hand in hand.
The necessity, yet at times futility, of repetition is plainly taught in Isa. xxviii. 9-13 :
Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to under- stand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts. For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little: For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people. To whom he said. This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest ; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear. But the word of the Lord was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line ; here a little, and there a little ; that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken.
And the urgency of it is suggested by the familiar phrase of Jeremiah “rising up early and sending.”
Fifthly, repetition shows the high value attached to what is repeated. This is illustrated with particular clearness by the great number of quotations in the New Testament. One of the greatest sermons ever preached was Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost ; and it was a most effective sermon — three thousand souls were converted. Yet when we read the abstract of the sermon as contained in the Book of Acts, we
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find that a large part of it, about half, consists of quotations from Joel and the Psalms. Why did Luke give so much space to quoting Old Testament passages, which any one could look up for himself instead of telling us more of what Peter himself had to say? Plainly the reason is that Peter’s sermon was largely an argument from the Old Testament; Peter con- sidered it important to rehearse exactly what the Old Testa- ment said, and Luke makes this clear in his summary. Peter’s attitude in this sennon is characteristic of the New Testament. There are more than 250 quotations from the Old Testament in the New, or about one on every page of the average size New Testament. And it is worthy of note that in the great argument of our Lord based on the noth Psalm not merely is the argument given by all three Synoptists, but the quota- tion appears in full in all three passages.^® This may be partly for the sake of convenience, but it serves to show the high esteem in which the New Testament writers held the Old Testament.
In studying the emphases of Scripture we cannot do better than begin with the first chapter of Genesis.
Genesis I.
As a study in emphasis by repetition the first chapter of Genesis is of very great interest. It is often referred to as the “creation story” — a modernist would say, “creation myth.” It should rather be called the story of “God, the Creator,” for the theme of the chapter is, God and His absolute monergism in Creation.
God, the Creator. — Turn to this chapter in our English version and what do we find ? “In the beginning God created . . . and the Spirit of God moved . . . and God said . . . and God saw . . . and God divided . . .,”etc. Thirty-two
On the other hand, the quotation from Ps. cxviii which is appar- ently given in full in Matt. xxi. 42 and Mark xii. 10, ii is reduced from two verses to one in Luke xx. 17. In the matter of quotation as in other repetitions the Biblical writers clearly allowed themselves considerable freedom.
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times^® in this chapter of thirty-one verses “God” is named and almost always as subject;^® “God created” (3 times), “God said” ( 10 times), “God saw” (7 times), “God divided” (once)®^ “God called” (3 times), “God made” (3 times), “God set” (once), “God blessed” ( twice ).^® What is the great central thought of this chapter? Plainly it is the Divine monergism in creation. God is the author of the universe and all that it contains. That is the great outstanding fact. Not hozv it was made, but zuho made it. Together with this there is emphasized the fact of the Divine complacence in this crea- tion. Seven times®® we are told of the satisfaction of the Creator with His handiwork, “and God saw that it was good” and the last time (vs. 31) this is especially stressed: “and God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” Furthermore He twice pronounced a blessing upon His creatures. Finally in the oft-repeated®* formula “and
there was evening and there was morning, (the) day ,”
whatever the exact meaning of the words, evening, morning and day, we have clearly an example of emphatic repetition as is shown by the fact that it finds its climax in the three-fold reference to the seventh day. The creative week of God with its six days of labor and its seventh day of rest was to be the norm and pattern of man’s life upon the earth.
Fiat and Fulfilment. — While, as we have seen, the primary emphasis is not on the method of creation but on the Creator, there is one point which it is very important to notice because as we shall see more fully later it is characteristic of many of the repetitions of the Bible. The story is told in terms of fiat and fulfilment. It might be summed up in the words of the psalm-
The word does not occur in vss. 13, 15, 19, 23, 30; but is found twice in 4, 10, 21, 25, 27, 28.
20 Exceptions: “in the image of God” (vs. 27), “Spirit of God” (vs. 2) is only an exception in the sense that “God” is genitive, and not nominative.
In vs. 7, the subject of “divided” is uncertain.
22 Cf. “the Spirit of God moved” (vs. 2) ; also “he called” (vs. 5), “called he” (vs. 10), “created he” (vs. 27 bis).
23 Vss. 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31.
2« Vss. 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31.
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ist ; “He spake and it was done ; he commanded and it stood fast.” The first example of this is in vs. 3. And God said, “Let there be light : and there was light.” And the work of each of the creative days is stated in similar terms. There are eight fiats (vss. 3a, 6, 9, II, i4f, 20, 24, 26),^^ all but one (vs. 9)‘® of which have a repetitive fulfilment (3b, 7, 12, i6f, 2if, 25, 27). And six times the words, “and it was so” are added, as if to emphasize the fact that the purpose of God had been fully realized.
Identity and Variety in Repetition. — The primary em- phasis in the chapter is secured as we have seen by the fre- quent recurrence of the word “God.” This is an example of identical repetition. There are a number of other Divine Names which might have been used to vary the language. But thirty-two times the same word “God” (Elohim) appears in this chapter. The eight fiats are likewise all introduced by the same formula, “and God said” : and in the case of the first and briefest of these creative words the language of the fulfilment “and there was light” (TS Vi'l) follows as closely as possible the exact form of the fiat, “let there be light” ( Ti'' "nx).\Ve notice also that in the seven verses which relate to the sphere of organic life (not including man whose distinc- tiveness is otherwise clearly stated) it is ten times laid down as the law of life that reproduction is to be according to “kind” And finally as we have seen the words “and
there was evening and there was morning, (the) day ”
constitute a kind of refrain, and serve to emphasize the idea of the creative week and the sabbath rest. Identical repetition is sometimes the most effective means of securing emphasis.
At the same time it is to be recognized that identical repetition may become monotonous. Consequently we observe in this chapter a ver}^ marked tendency to vary the language
25 The third day (vss. 9-13) and the sixth day (vss. 24-31) have two fiats each.
2® In vs. 9 the repetitive fulfilment is replaced by the confirmatory phrase “and it was so,” which elsewhere is only used to emphasize the fulfilment..
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of fiat and fulfilment more or less. And these variations are of no little interest. The following may be noted :
1) The most obvious difference is that while in every case except the last (vs. 26) the fiat is addressed to the creation either as commanded to “be” (vss. 3, 6) or to “do” (vss. 9, ii, i4f, 20, 24, 26), the fulfilment is usually (vss. 7, i6f, 21, 25, 27) described as an act of God.^’’ Thus, vs. 20 says “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly,” etc. ; but in vs. 21 we read “And God created great whales . . . which the waters brought forth abundantly. This seems intended to further emphasize the divine monergism, which is as we have seen the most prominent teaching of the passage.
2) The language is different:
a) Different verbs are used —
(1) In vs. II the verb “bring forth” is (used only here) ; in
vs. 12 it is ttyini (a verb of common occurrence).
(2) In vs. 26 the verb is “make” (•Tki'TJ) ; in vs. 27 it is “create” (N13'l).
b) Different persons are used ;
(1) For the subject: vs. 26 “let us make” (plur. verb) ; vs. 27 “and God created” (sing, verb) : cf. “our image” (vs. 26) with “his image” (vs. 27).
(2) For the object: the language of the fiat regarding the creature may be repeated in connection with the fulfilment as a fiat addressed directly to the creature. The “and let them have dominion” etc. of vs. 26 is repeated in vs. 28 in the direct command “Be fruitful . . . and have dominion . . .,” cf. vss. 20 and 22.
c) The definiteness of the language varies :
(1) It may be more definite: “luminaries” (vs. 14), but “the two great luminaries” (vs. 16) ; “male and female” is added in vs. 27.
(2) It may be less definite: “tree of fruit making fruit” (vs. ii), “tree making fruit” (vs. 12).
d) The order of statement varies : cf. vs. 24 “. . . the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth (yiN IH'n) after his kind” with vs. 25 “. . . the beast of the earth (yiKDD'n) after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after his kind . . .”
e) The corroborative words “and it was so” stand after the fulfil- ment in vss. 7 and 30, in vs. 9 they take its place; but in vss. ii, 15, 24 they come between fiat and fulfilment.
/) Different expressions are used :
(i) Vs. 26 “in our image after our likeness” (two different words) ; vs. 27 “in his image, in the image of God” (one word repeated).
The exceptions are vss. 3b and 12.
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(2) Vs. 28 changes the “every creeping thing that creepeth” of vs.
26 into “every living thing that creepeth.”2s
The reason for these variations is obvious. It is first of all to avoid the monotony of sheer tautology. The emphasis due to repetition is secured without the dull monotony of entire sameness. And besides this the variation in the language of fulfilment which at times condenses at times expands the language of the fiat tends to fix the attention of the reader upon it. Were it exactly the same we might be tempted to skim or to skip the repetitions."®
Emphasis upon details. — A further method of securing emphasis which appears to some extent in this chapter is by the elaboration of details. Thus in vs. ii the characteristics of vegetable life are described in some detail and these details are repeated in vs. 12. In vss. 14-15 the reasons for the exist- ence of the luminaries are given (notice the words “for signs and for seasons and for days and years”) and are briefly repeated in vss. 17, 18. And in the description of the work of the fifth and sixth days the details are given still more fully. Man’s dominion over the creature is made impressive by the details which are given in vss. 26 and 28 and which involve in large measure a repetition of the record of the fifth crea- tive day.
Our brief study of Gen. i consequently points us to several important principles of emphasis which are readily observable elsewhere in Scripture: (i) that repetition is frequent in the Bible ; (2) that it may be in the same or in different phrasing, the tendency with extended repetitions being toward variety ;
2* Variations are also observable between other parts of the chapter: “between the light and between the darkness” (vs. 4), “between waters and (lit., to) waters” (vs. 6) ; “seeding (I’nta) a seed” (vs. ii) is Hiphil, but in vs. 29 it is Kal (ynt); in vss. 26, 28, the marine life is summarized as “fish,” a word which does not occur in vss. 20-22.
29 While the relation between these repetitions of the Bible and the divisive theories of the critics will be discussed later, it may not be amiss to call the attention of the reader to the fact that the variations we have been considering occur in a document the unity of which is not disputed by the critics and which is claimed by them to have a distinctive and unmistakable stjde.
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(3) that repetition in terms of “fiat and fulfilment” is an effective way of securing emphasis; (4) that emphasis may also be produced by enumerating and especially by repeating details.
Before passing to the discussion of the intrinsic im- portance of such Biblical emphases as we have been consider- ing, it will be well for us to look at some further examples.
Identity in Repetition.
The emphasis secured by the repetition of the same word finds many illustrations in Scripture. The eight-fold “and he died” of Gen. v. is an eloquent commentary on the warning of ii. 17; and when we observe the fact that even in the case of Noah, the hero of the Flood, the rule finally applies (ix. 29), the exception (Enoch) becomes uniquely conspicuous. The “covenant” is only referred to in a few places in Genesis; yet in two of them the word occurs twenty times.®'’ The word “holy” occurs so frequently in Leviticus, especially the last ten chapters, that the latter part of the book has been called the “Holiness Code” by the critics of the Wellhausen school. The six mentions of “the Lord’s anointed” in i Sam. xxiv. and xxvi. are clearly emphatic. The frequent or prominent occurrence of the word “praise” in certain Psalms has caused them to receive the name Hallel or Hallelujah Psalms. It finds its climax in the 150th in which the word occurs twelve times, an average of twice to a verse. And it will be recalled that the Hebrew name for the Psalms is “Praises.”®’- “Vanity” occurs thirty-two times, alone or in combination, in Ecclesiastes. That the fourth book of the Law should have early received the name “Numbers” is not remarkable when we realize that the word “number” occurs nearly a hundred times in the first four chapters.®® And this frequent repetition receives an
3® Seven times in ix. 1-17; thirteen times in chap. xvii.
In speaking of the fitness of the Hebrew title Dr. Sampey remarks; “HjTOns of praise, though found in all parts of the Psalter, become far more numerous in Books IV and V, as if the volume of praise would gather itself up into a Hallelujah Chorus at the end.”
The noun (13DD, 19 times) is of a different root from the verfanpa (69 times) ; but it is the usual noun for “number.”
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ominous meaning when it is declared that the statistics so carefully recorded regarding the generation that came out of Eg)-pt represent the number of those finally doomed to perish for disobedience (cf. xiv. 29, xxvi. 63f) — numbered and found wanting, like Belshazzar.
Sometimes the repetition of the same word or phrase pro- duces a sjiecially strong impression. In Daniel iii. the nine mentions of the image which Nebuchadnezzar has “set up” are not accidental. So too the frequent occurrence of the title “son of man” in Ezekiel (c. ninety times) is significant. But one of the best examples is the “battle-axe” passage in Jere- miah (li. 20-24). In vs. 20 we read “Thou are my battle-axe” literally means “an instrument for breaking in pieces”) ; and the identical phrase “and I will break in pieces” ((‘'n:;2il) is then repeated nine times :
Thou art my battle-axe and weapons of war : for with thee will I break hi pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms ; .And with thee will I break in pieces the horse and his rider ; and with thee will I break in pieces the chariot and his rider ; With thee also®® will I break in pieces man and woman ; and with thee will 1 break in pieces old and young ; and with thee will I break in pieces the young man and the maid ; I will also break in pieces with thee the shepherd and his flock ; and with thee will I break in pieces the husbandman and his yoke of oxen ; and with thee will I break in pieces captains and rulers. And I will render unto Babylon and to all the inhabitants of Chaldea all their evil that they have done in Zion in your sight, saith the Lord.
Break! break! break! — the words sound like the stroke of doom, the doom of a world and its inhabitants. Here the exact phrase is repeated nine times and with most impressive re- sults.
There are many examples of repetition where the words repeated sound like, and in some cases are clearly intended to be a refrain. E.g. “For three transgressions of . . . and
®® It is noteworthy that in the AV (not in the ARV), vss. 22 and 23 change the phrasing to “with thee also” or “I will also.” This was proba- bly with a view to varying the monotony of this 9-fold identical repetition. The change has no warrant in the Hebrew which clearly intends the identical repetition to secure cumulative emphasis. The tense of the verb (whether future or past) has occasioned commentators much difficulty.
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for four,” etc., found eight times in Amos i-ii; “I am Jehovah” found nearly fifty times in Lev. xvii-xxvi ; “For his mercy endureth for ever,” repeated twenty-six times®* in Ps. cxxxvi.®“
Perhaps the best example of strictly identical repetition is to be found in Num. vii. In this long chapter of 89 verses the complete list of the identical offerings of the twelve princes of Israel is given each time in full. The formula used is the following :
On the day, prince of the children of , X the son of Y : his
offering was one silver charger, the weight whereof was a hundred and thirty shekels, one silver bowl of seventy shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary; both of them were full of fine flour mingled with oil for a meat offering: one spoon of ten shekels of gold, full of incense: one young bullock, one ram, one lamb of the first year, for a burnt offering: one kid of the goats for a sin offering: and for a sacrifice of peace offerings, two oxen, five rams, five he goats, five lambs of the first year : this was the offering of X the son of Y.
Except for slight variations at the beginning of the first two lists, the difference is only one of name and date. It is to be noted further that the name of the offerer is given twice, at the beginning and at the end of the list of his offerings; and that at the end of the chapter (vss. 84-88) the totals of the offerings are cast up. This might seem to be needless repetition. To read the list once is a little tedious; and we might argue that the account could have been greatly simpli- fied by only giving the full list after the name of Nahshon the son of Amminadab of the tribe of Judah and then adding: “in like manner offered the eleven other princes of Israel, each on his day.” But this repetition serves to emphasize two important matters : the great significance of the altar in the religion of Israel and the fact that all Israel through their official representatives®® had a part and an equal part in its
Note also that in this psalm the words “O give thanks” are thrice repeated at the beginning and appear again at the end; the eight times repeated “to him” is also emphatic.
Other examples of such repetitions are: Ps. viii. i, 9; xlii, ii ; xliii. 5; xlvi. 7, ii; xlix. 12, 19; Ivi. 4, 10, ii; Ixxx. 3, 7, 19; cvii. 8, 15, 21, 31.
It is noteworthy that the names of these twelve princes appear five times in Numbers (once in the lists given in chaps, i., ii. and x; and
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dedication. To treat this passage as merely the supreme illus- tration of that “particularity of detail” which is character- istic of P, and as intended to stress the liberality of the heads of the people,®^ is to overlook the significant fact that the occasion was the dedication of the altar.
Variety in Repetition.
While at times the intention of the Biblical writer to secure emphasis by identical repetition is so plain as to be unmis- takable, the tendency to vary the form or phrasing of the repetition more or less is very strong. Sometimes the change is only very slight. Thus in Ezek. xiv. 12-20 the four-fold refrain-like reference to Noah, Daniel, and Job, in vss. 14, 16, 18, 20, is never twice exactly the same, indeed the lan- guage seems to be varied intentionally; yet the cumulative emphasis is very strong. Similarly in Gen. xxiv. 34-48 which is intended to be a resume of what has already taken place, there is a certain variety of statement. The same is true of Pharaoh’s dream (Gen. xli. 1-7, 17-24) and of Ezekiel’s discussion of inherited guilt (xviii. 6-9, 15-17). In such passages there is more of similarity than variety in the repe- tition.
On the other hand the striving after variety, the effort to avoid repeating the same word is sometimes quite marked: e.g., “The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dis- solved, the earth is moved exceedingly’’ (Isa. xxiv. 19) “See I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and
twice in chap. vii). On the other hand we have only one list of the 12 spies (Num. xiii). The object would seem to be to point out how care- fully organized Israel was and how thoroughly representative were the acts of their leaders.
3" Driver, Introduction, p. 61.
3® It should be noted how'ever that the AV in rendering this verse overdoes the striving after variety w'hich is clearly apparent in the original. The adverbs “utterly” “clean” and “exceedingly” all represent in the Hebrew infinitives absolute which are added to their respective verbs for the sake of emphasis. Furthermore the fact that the verbs are all similar in form (Hithpoels or Hithpolels) shows a tendency to uniformity which is not apparent in the English translation.
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to throw down, to build and to plant” (Jer. i. 10, cf. xviii. yi). But it is hardly necessary to enlarge upon this tendency to variety here. The following paragraphs will give us other examples; and, as we have seen the outstanding feature of Hebrew poetry, parallelism, illustrates it very clearly.
Fiat and Fulfilment.
We have seen that the narrative contained in Gen. i is largely constructed in terms of fiat and fulfilment: God com- mands and He fulfils. This is a very common literary form in the Bible. It is natural that it should be so, since the great theme of the Scriptures is “the wonderful works of God” for the salvation of helpless, sin-cursed man. The fiat may be a command or a prediction, a threat, a warning or a promise ; the fulfilment is the natural sequel. It may be confined within the limits of a single verse or it may cover many chapters. We have seen it in parvo in Gen. i. 3 which is the first of a series of eight examples : “And God said “Let there be light : and there was light” — two words each in the Hebrew for fiat and fulfilment. We have it in magno, we might even say in maximo, in the account given in Ex. xxv-xl of the building of the tabernacle. Ex. xxv-xxxi is the fiat, it gives the “pattern” shown to Moses in the mount; xxxv- xxxix is the fulfilment, it relates the carrying out of the instructions. Similarly, the first half of xl records the com- mand to set up the tabernacle ; the second part describes its execution. Thus, xxv. 10-15 gives the instructions for making the ark. These instructions are caried out in xxxvii. 1-5. In xl. 3 the command is given to place the ark of the testimony in the tabernacle and cover it with the vail; the command is carried out in vss. 20, 21, which also record the placing of the testimony in the ark as commanded in xxv. 16. This may seem like unnecessary repetition. But it serves to emphasize the vitally important fact that the tabernacle and its equip- ment were oi'dained of God and that Moses carried out the instructions which he had received.
The examples just cited are characterized at times by practical identity of phraseology; at other times there is
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considerable variation in language, order and content.®® As we have already seen in our study of Genesis i, the phrasing and relative length may both vary considerably. The fulfilment may contain details not included in the fiat. Thus, in Josh, xx, the fulfilment (vss. 7-9) records the names of the cities of refuge which were left undetermined in the fiat (vss. 2-6) and condenses very greatly the statement as to the reason for their appointment. The fulfilment may be of considerable length as compared with the fiat. The command to fight with Amalek (Ex. xvii. 9) is much shorter than the account of the execution of the command (vss. 10-13). On the other hand the fulfilment may do little more than certify to the execution of the fiat. Thus, in 2 Sam. vii. 4-16 we have the long instruc- tions to Nathan, phrased as a message addressed to David. But vs. 17 tells us simply “according to all these words, and according to all this vision, so did Nathan speak unto David.” In Jer. xix. 14 we are allowed to infer the fulfilment of the command to prophesy in Tophet from the words: “Then came Jeremiah from Tophet whither the Lord had sent him to prophesy.” In i Kings xix. 19-21 we have the record of only a partial fulfilment of the command expressed in vss. 15-18. In Ex. xvii. 15 we are allowed to assume that the command to write the curse on Amalek in a book was duly carried out. In I Kings xvii. 3-4 we have the divine command to Elijah to go to Cherith and “hide” himself there, coupled with the promise that the ravens will “sustain” him. In vs. 5-6 we are told that he went and “dwelt” in the brook and that the ravens “were bringing him bread and flesh in the morning and bread and flesh in the evening;” in vs. 16 the exact phraseology of vs. 14 regarding the meal and the oil is retained. In xxi. 20-22 the words which Elijah utters to Ahab are not at all the same as those commanded in vs. 19.
The most obvious difference is that the execution of the instructions given in xxix. 1-37 is not recorded in xxxv-xxxix, but in Lev. viii. This is apparently due to the fact that they specially concern the priests. “In the main, the narrative [xxxv-xl] is repeated verbatim from the instruc- tions in chap, xxv-xxxi. with the simple substitution of past tenses for future ; in two or three cases, however, a phrase is altered, and there are also some instances of omission or abridgement’’ (Driver, Introd., p. 41).
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It is hardly necessary to give many examples of a feature of the Biblical style which is so obvious as the one we are considering. But a few more may be cited. In Num. ii we have the command relative to the order of march of the tribes of Israel, in x. 14-27 its fulfilment. Three times we read of the command to Moses to die outside the land of promise (Num. xxvii. 12-14, Deut. iii. 27, xxxii. 48-52) and Deut. xxxiv. 1-7 records its fulfilment. In Joshua the narratives dealing with the crossingofthejordan, the fall of Jericho, the sin of Achan ; in Kings the healing of Naaman, the lifting of the siege of Samaria, the anointing of Jehu, the crowning of Joash, the destruction of Sennacherib’s army — these and other examples prove how constantly the Biblical writer is concerned to tell his readers that the word of the Lord shall surely come to pass. Particularly instructive examples of it are : the flood, the plagues, the crossing of the Red Sea. These we shall later consider in detail.
EmpJiasis through the Elaboration of Details.
Jer. li. 2of has been cited above as a remarkable example of identical repetition in that the words “and I will break in pieces” occur nine times in it. It also illustrates this principle of emphasis by the elaboration of details which is really a form of variety in repetition:". . . nations . . . kingdoms . . . the horse and his rider . . . the chariot and his rider . . . man and woman . . . old and young . . . the young man and the maid . . . the shepherd and his flock . . . the husband- man and his yoke of oxen . . . captains and rulers. . . The destruction is to be a comprehensive one; and the illus- trative details which are given serve to impress this upon the mind."“
In Isa. iii. i the fact that the Lord will deprive Jerusalem and Judah of ez^ery conceivable help or support is expressed by the words: “stay and staff, the whole stay of bread and the whole stay of water.” The words, “stay” and “staff,”
Cf., e.g., Isa. xxiv. 2, Jer. viii. 1-3, xxv. 10, xxxii. 10, ii, Ps. cxv. 12, 13.
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differ in the Hebrew only in gender, the one being masculine the other feminine. Since the Semitic languages recognize only two genders, to say “stay (masc) and stay (fern)” is equivalent to saying, every possible support, and to emphasize this still further a reference to bread and water is added, since without them life cannot be sustained.
One of the most striking illustrations of this method of securing emphasis is the detailed account of the dress of the women of Jerusalem given us by Isaiah (iii. 16-24). it shows an intimate knowledge of the fashions of the Jerusa- lem of his day which would entitle him to be called the M. Worth of antiquity, were it not that he speaks with the de- nunciatory accents of an Elijah or John Baptist. Yet Isaiah is clearly not concerned to. prove his expert knowledge of feminine finer>\ His aim is to show how utterly worldly and superficial the women of Jerusalem were ; and by enumerating the details of their adornment, he indicates to us how momen- tous these minor matters were in their
The repetitions which we have been considering are not accidental ; they are in many instances clearly intended for emphasis and are therefore deserving of careful attention. They are important first of all because of their intrinsic value as showing us what the sacred writers regarded as of especial importance. We shall now pass on to consider some of these emphases with especial reference to the popular religious thinking of the day.
Old Testament Emphases — Their Intrinsic Value God in the Old Testament .
\\t have seen that in the first chapter of Genesis the pri- mary emphasis is on the Creator, God the First Cause, and on the fact that the creation was by fiat. It is important to
Still more striking is the detailed picture which Ezekiel gives of Tyre under the figure of a mighty ship (chap, xxvii.). The elaboration of particulars serves of course to fill in the details of a very vivid picture. But it also serves to emphasize the might of Tyre as the great trading nation of antiquity. The detailed description is continued under a different figure in xxviii. iif.
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notice that the emphasis of this chapter is the emphasis of the Old Testament and of the Bible as a whole. Thirty-two times the word “God” appears in the thirty-one verses of this first chapter of the Bible; and we read of what God has com- manded and what He has done. And ten thousand times^“ in round numbers the Divine Name appears in the twenty-three thousand verses of the Old Testament and again and again we are told what God has decreed and what He has brought and will yet bring to pass. What a testimony this is to the all- important fact that the great pervasive theme of the Scrip- tures is God, God in His relations to this universe which He has created, and to man whom He has formed in His own image! As in the first chapter of the opening book, so throughout the sacred volume we find God speaking and working, the central, commanding Figure in human history.
The emphasis which the Bible thus places on “God” is a most impressive one, especially because of that tendency to secularize human life which has been characteristic of man ever since he hid himself from the presence of God among the trees of the garden and which is the direct result of sin. Consequently the aim of that divine redemption which is the central theme of the Bible is to restore man to communion with God, to restore the lost emphasis in man’s thought and life. Nowhere, probably, is the contrast between the ideal and the actual more marked than in the cultured paganism of modern times. With all their tragic misconceptions of God, many of the ethnic cults which we call heathen make the reality and potency of superhuman powers and agencies very
Were we to add the number of times in which the pronouns are used to refer to the Deity, the proportion would be greatly increased.
Needless to say the frequency varies very much in different parts of the Old Testament. In Zechariah the average is once in a verse; in Haggai it is as in Gen. i slightly greater. On the contrary one of the stock objections to Esther has been that the name of God does not occur in it. It is also absent from the Song of Songs unless it is to be found in viii. 6 (cf. the elaborate discussion of “The Names of God in the Old Testament” by Professor R. D. Wilson, in this Review (July, 1920), pp. 460 ff).
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impressive to their devotees. The missionaries sometimes re- mind the Christians of our Western world how really pagan our conversation is as compared with that of the oriental, who is constantly embellishing his sentences with such phrases as “if God wills,” etc. We sometimes hesitate even to spell Providence with a big “P,” lest we be regarded as queer or pious. We keep our religion well covered up. We thank God in church or in the closet for His care over us ; and in public we speak of luck and chance and fortune like the veriest pagan. But this tendency reaches its extreme in the philosopher who like Comte has advanced beyond the “religious stage,” in the unbelieving scientist who knows only matter and motion and a law of continuity and will explain everything in terms of naturalistic evolution, and in the “red” socialist who is determined to own “no master below and no master above.”
We realize how serious the situation is when we read such a statement as the following, coming as it does from the pen of one of the most eminent of living biologists;
Mankind is such a mongrel race, good and bad qualities are so mixed in us, marriage is such a lottery, the distribution of the germinal units to the different germ cells and the union of particular germ cells in fertilization is so wholly a matter of chance, the influence of even bad hereditary units on one another is so unpredictably good or bad as is shown in many hybrids, even the minor influences of environment and education which escape attention are so potent in development, that the chances were infinity to one against any one of us, with all his individual characteristics, ever coming into existence. If the Greeks or Romans had known of the real infinity of chances through which every human being is brought to the light of day not only would they have deified Chance but they would have made her the mother of gods and men.'**
It is hardly necessary to jxjint out the vast difference between such an attitude and that of the Psalmist when he sings of the omniscience and omnipresence of God :
My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.
** Conklin, Heredity and Emdronment, ed. 5, p. 306.
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And that this latter conception is the truly Christian one is proved by the fact that it is emphatically the viewpoint of the Founder of Christianity, as is shown by His statements in the Sermon on the Mount.
Behold the fowls of the air : for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Con- sider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin : And yet I say unto you. That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
The evolutionist may assert that he recognizes God’s creatorship and God’s guiding hand in the affairs of men.^* And the theistic evolutionist may even claim that the vast- ness of the evolutionary process as taught by modern science has given him a much worthier and more adequate concep- tion of God than he formerly had. But the great tendency of the evolutionist is to think in terms of evolution and eugenics, to accept a law of continuity, which leaves no room for God and the supernatural,*® as both the explanation of the past and the hope of the future, and to forget or deny that God has made the world by His power and that He has re- deemed it by His grace. Is there any conflict between science and religion? Yes and No. Between a true science, which is seeking at all times to read the thoughts of God after Him,
Professor Conklin assures us that he believes in God, that God is back of the evolutionary process.
A most significant statement of this tendency and one which illus- trates how readily it may become a dogma is the following; “Immense gaps in our knowledge are immediately apparent when we inquire into the origin of living organisms upon the earth, the beginnings of intelli- gent behaviour, the origin of Vertebrates, the emergence of Man, and so on. We know very little as yet in regard to the way in which any of the ‘big lifts’ in evolution have come about, and yet we believe in the con- tinuity of the process. That is implied in our ideal conception of evolu- tion, which we accept as a working hypothesis. It is not very easy to say what it is that is continuous, but we mean in part that there is at no stage any intrusion of extraneous factors” (J. Arthur Thomson, The Wonder of Life, p. 639).
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and the Bible which is the word of God, there can be no real conflict. The Book of Nature and the Book of Revelation cannot contradict one another though finite wisdom may mis- read the message of one or both of them. But the moment the scientist centres his attention upon second causes, upon the processes of nature, and ignores or rejects the First Cause there is an irrepressible conflict. And the great task of the Church in its conflict with science today is to restore that lost emphasis which is so marked in Genesis : to exalt God, the First Cause, in all things, in creation, in providence and in redemption, to teach the wise of this world that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
The fact that this secularizing of human life, this ignoring of God, has been enjoying a quasi-scientific vindication, that it is spoken of as the Greek, the Western, the rational, the scientific, the modern viewpoint and contrasted with the Bib- lical conception which is characterized as the Semitic, the superstitious, the religious, the old-fashioned conception, makes the task of restoring the Biblical emphasis in modern thought and life a very arduous one. But what has made the task of the Church particularly difficult is the fact that the opposition of the world to God, to the recognition of His primacy in human life, this tendency toward secularization, has reached its climax in a persistent attempt to secularize the Bible, to eliminate from it that which is most distinctive of it, “God,” the Creator, Saviour and Sovereign, and make it the history of human progress and achievement. One of the most striking things about the books which are being written by “modern” scholars dealing with the Old Testament is the alarming degree to which sacred history is secularized by them. Let us glance at a couple of illustrations.
A good example of the old-fashioned, or as it should rather be called. Biblical conception is found in the story of Joseph. The religious interpretation of the singular career of that Jewish boy who became the viceroy of a great nation, is given to us by Joseph himself in his words to his brethren after the death of his father: “And Joseph said unto them.
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Fear not: for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye thought evil against me ; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass as it is this day, to save much people alive.” (Gen. 1. 19). The emphasis is here placed most properly on the re- ligious factor, the hand of God in human history. Yet this is the way these words are secularized by the professor of Bibli- cal Literature in one of the largest women’s colleges in this country ; “ ‘Forgive ?,’ he said, ‘you were forgiven long ago. It has all worked out for good.’ Here the religious meaning of the statement is eliminated : “it” is substituted for “God.” Yet the author of this volume does not hesitate to assure the reader in his preface that “every statement in dia- logue or narration is intended to reproduce the Hebrew text or its implications.”
Let us look at another example. The government of Israel before the days of Samuel is expressly described in the Old Testament as a theocracy. It was Israel’s great distinction that Jehovah was her king. Moses, Joshua and the Judges were His representatives. He was the king of Israel. Yet this is the way Gideon’s refusal to be made king is described in a recent textbook: “On his return, when the men of his tribe sought to make him king, with true democratic spirit he de- clined, taking instead the earrings that his soldiers had stripped from the slain — 1,700 shekels of gold (about seven- ty pounds’ weight).”^® This is a “modem” way of putting it. But do you recall what Gideon really said ? “And Gideon said unto them, I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you : the Lord shall rule over you.” This shows us plainly what political party Gideon belonged to. He was an old-fashioned theocrat, who with all the crudity of his faith — and Gideon was far from an ideal figure — believed that Jehovah was Israel’s king and that Israel was a theocracy. These modern scholars see in him an early advocate of a democratic form of government. But between theocra.t and democrat there is a tremendous difference. And the nemesis
Irving F. Wood, The Heroes of Early Israel, p. 69. Bailey and Kent, The Hebrew Commonwealth, p. 79.
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of modern democracy is that it has lost or is fast losing the theocratic spirit, the recognition that all authority is of God, without which neither democracy, nor monarchy is “safe for the world.”
In the Bible the religious factor is constantly to the fore ; and it is this religious “coloring” of history as they regard it that the critics of the Bible object to most seriously. It is largely because it is especially prominent in Chronicles that the “critical” estimate of Chronicles is such a very low one. \\’’ellhausen in commenting upon it in his Prolegomena re- marks: “In the kingdom of Judah it is not a natural and human, but a divine pragmatism that is operative.” He speaks of the prophets as “setting before their hearers prosperity and adversity in conformity with the stencil pattern.” And he adds with a sneer: “Of course their prophecies always come exactly true, and in this way is seen an astonishing harmony between inward worth and outward circumstance. Never does sin miss its punishment, and never where misfor- tune occurs is guilt wanting.” It is a “natural and human” history of Israel that the rationalistic critic of the Bible wants, in short, a secularized Bible. The emphasis oh God and His sovereign control over the affairs of men offends him and he seeks to “rewrite” or “interpret” in terms of natural- istic evolution what the Bible so clearly states in terms of “God” and “fiat and fulfilment.”
Sin — the Fall and the Flood.
If a person reading the Bible for the first time should turn directly from the first chapter of Genesis, with its highly favorable conclusion : “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good,” to the fifth verse of the sixth chapter: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,” he would be impressed with the tremendous change which had come over that world which God had pronounced “good.” Seek- ing for an explanation, he would find it in the intervening
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chapters, in the fall of man. He would read that man who was made in the image of God, enjoyed communion with God, and had the divine will made known to him, dis- obeyed the will of God, became conscious of fear and shame, was expelled from the garden, sent to toil in an unfriendly world, a world cursed because of his sin, and that he was made subject to death. He would also learn of a promise of deliverance, the protevangel; yet he would see in the sin of Cain and the revengeful spirit of Lamech evidence of the rapid growth of sin; and he would realize also that the world had become, or was certain to become, a vast cemetery — “and he died.” He would then be measurably prepared to under- stand the climax of which he had read in vi. 5.
As an illustration of emphasis the story of the flood is most impressive. It begins, as we have seen, with one of the most emphatic statements in the Bible :
And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil con- tinually.
“God saw the wickedness of man, that it was great.” That is a strong statement and a sweeping one : it speaks in generic terms of man who was created in Gen. i. But it is only intro- ductory to the far stronger declaration : “every imagination (yeser) of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continu- ally.” What a heaping up of words like Ossa on Pelion : every — imagination — thoughts — heart — only evil — all the day ! God had “fashioned” (ydsar) man in His image. And now man uses all his faculties, even his God-given creative imagi- nation, only for evil, and that continually. What stronger picture could be drawn of the absolute dominion of sin — uni- versal, all-engrossing, all the time. In this verse and the three which follow we have a brief summary of the flood, a kind of miiltum in parvo, a statement of its raison d’etre. We read of the universal sinfulness of man (vs. 5), of the divine dis- pleasure and purpose to destroy all flesh (vss. 6, 7) and of the remnant of grace (vs. 8). As we examine the story carefully we find that the points which are emphasized are the ones which are set forth in this summary.
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1. The cause of the flood was the sinfulness of man. As we have seen this is tremendously stressed in the opening statement (vi. 5-8). There the fact of man’s sinfulness is not only stated most emphatically; but it is further emphasized by the three references to the Divine sorrow and anger which stand in sharp contrast to the words of satisfaction repeated- ly found in Gen. i, and also by the reference to Noah’s ac- ceptance, which in vii. i is explained as due to the fact that he was “righteous.” But as if this were not enough, in vss. 1 1-13 we have a further emphatic statement, that the earth was corrupt (vs. ii), that God saw that it was corrupt (vs. 12), that God told Noah that it was corrupt (vs. 13). Repetition could hardly make it more clear that sin was the cause of the flood.
2. The purpose of the flood was to destroy “all flesh.” This is made very clear in several ways : (a) By the frequent references to it (vi. 7, 13, 17, vii. 4, 21-23, viii. 21) which are expressed in the most comprehensive terms, words being used repeatedly which are clearly reminiscent of the creation. As we have seen, the language of vi. 5-7 is comprehensive : “man” had sinned (vs. 5), God repented “that he had made man” (vs. 6), he declares, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth” (vs. 7) • ^.nd then the animals are mentioned in similarly comprehensive terms “beast and creeping things and fowls of the air,” all words found in the account of Creation.^® And as if to make the vastness of the destruction unmistakably plain, it is stated three times over in vii. 21-23 that everything not in the ark died. And then finally the matter is stated the other way around: “and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark,” as if to check up on the preceding state- ments and leave no question of doubt, (b) It appears also
A further reason for supposing that the language used here is reminiscent of the Creation and therefore to be construed in terms of the first chapter of Genesis is found in the fact that the phrase after his (their) kind” which is used there ten times in the description of plants and animals is here repeated seven times (three times in vi. 20 and four times in vii. 14).
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from the emphasis placed upon the extent and duration of the flood. The rain was to continue “forty days and forty nights” (vii. 4, 12, 17); the waters “prevailed” (vs. 18) they “prevailed exceedingly” (vs. 19) ; “fifteen cubits up- ward” they prevailed and “the mountains were covered” (vs. 20) ; they prevailed “one hundred and fifty days” (vs. 24). Equally gigantic was the abatement. The waters abated slozvly: “assuaged” (viii. i), “stopped,” “restrained” (vs. 2), “returned continually” (vs. 3), “abated” after one hun- dred and fifty days, ark “rested” on Ararat (vs. 4) ; “de- creased continually,” “tops of mountains seen” (vs. 5); “abated” (vs. ii) ; “dried up,” “dry” (vs. 13) ; “dried” (vs. 14). Noah was more than a. year (vs. 14) in the ark!
3. The saving of a thoroughly representative remnant of grace. In the introductory summary it is stated that “Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord” (vi. 8). In vss. 21-22 it is made clear that Noah and his family and representative animals are to be saved in the ark which Noah is commanded to build. We might think that one reference to the animals would suffice. But this is not the case. In connection with the command to enter the ark (vii. 2-3), in the brief description of the entrance (vss. 8, 9) and in the fuller description (vss. 13-16), in the command to leave the ark (viii. 16-17), and in the execution of the command (vss. 18-19) — six times in all the animals are referred to, and always with some detail.®” Now what is the lesson of all this repetition? Clearly this, that in the ark there was saved a thoroughly representative remnant of “man” and “beast.” We read the terrific descrip- tion of the destruction :
And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth; and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.
And then as if to make assurance doubly sure there are added the words : “and the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days.” We have the picture of a waste of
In vii. I Noah’s family is referred to simply as “all thy house’’; the animals are never so briefly summarized.
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waters, typifying the universal sway of death, death the pun- ishment of sin. But upon the waters there floats an ark and in that ark as we are six times assured there is a remnant of grace. Grace is prominent in this story of punishment and destruction. Outside the ark the death-dealing waters hold undisputed sway. But there is safety in the ark and only there: “extra arcam nulla salus” is the great lesson of the Flood.
Now it is significant that the features which figure most prominently in the Biblical account of the Flood and which are most strongly emphasized are the very ones which are most questionable in the eyes of the “modern” man. That there was any such tragedy in human history as we describe by the word “fall,” any such dislocation in man’s moral nature as would account for or do justice to the tremendous contrast between Gen. i. 31 and vi. 5; that the flood, if there was a flood, had any ethical significance ; that the flood was universal and all land animals and birds perished except those saved in the ark — all these Biblical emphases are elements in the story which are minimized or rejected as myth or legend. Man has not fallen, he has developed and progressed; the flood was a purely natural phenomenon with no ethical sig- nificance; the flood was local and did not destroy all life — such is the “modern” interpretation. Yet the Bible emphases are there. They are plain and unmistakable. And the Bible student should seek to do full justice to them, and not to ex- plain them away.
Princeton. Oswald T. Allis.
{To Be Continued)
NOTES AND NOTICES “The Reformed Principle of Authority''’
This is the title of a recent book which deals with the all important question of the seat of authority in religious knowl- edge.^ The author, very properly, seeks to discuss the matter in its fundamental and underlying principles and to keep this dis- cussion to these principles by showing how mediating standpoints are inconsistent. It is a vindication of the principle of external authority against the subjective principle of Rationalism. To put it more concretely, the author vindicates the Reformation prin- ciple of the authority of Scripture over against Modernism which he classes as a form of Rationalism. Mr. Hospers goes to the bottom of the matter and perceives at once the issue when he says that without external authority, without the Bible, we could have natural religion because man is naturally religious, but we could not have the redemptive religion of historical Christianity. The attack on the objective side of redemption and the factual basis of Christianity, when logically carried out, will leave us with natural religion just because Christianity is the product of an objective and authoritative Divine revelation in the Scripture, and is the product neither of reason nor feeling.
We believe that Mr. Hospers is right on this point. Of course Modernism so-called is of an infinite variety of types, and con- sequently many mediating modernists will object at once to being called rationalists, and their objection, no doubt, will be based upon the fact that they appeal not to the human reason, but to Christ and the experience of the “Saviourhood of Christ,” as their authority in religion. This sounds plausible. Their principle of authority is Christian feeling or the Christian con- sciousness “refracted,” as Dr. Kuyper would put it, in the light of modern knowledge. This goes back to Schleiermacher, the father of modern theology. It is claimed that Schleiermacher’s great work was to overcome Rationalism. It is true that he did attempt to overcome the rationalism of his day. But it is also true that the “Christian consciousness” gives no norms of truth, but results from faith, a faith whose doctrinal content must be derived either from the Word of God, or from that Word sub-
^ The Reformed Principle of Authority. By G. H. Hospers. Grand Rapids : The Reformed Press. 1924. 8 vo. Pp. XVI, 245.
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jected to the test of reason or the “modern consciousness.” This latter method gives not a “pure” and unmixed principle of authority, but an impure or mixed species of Rationalism. It must also be stated that our author is not dealing with the myriad forms of Modernism, especially not with its so-called more “evangelical” types, but with its more logical and radical expression which he derives largely from The Christian Century where it finds its more consistent and radical expression. We have not space to give examples of his many quotations, but if any one will refer to them he will see that they subject the Bible to reason, not simply in the sense that reason must judge the evidences of Revelation, but that it must pass upon its content, and this is Rationalism.
Dr. Kuyper insisted that a true theology, being the science which deals with the knowledge of God, must rest upon an objective revelation from God, and consequently that any so-called theolog}^ which denies supernatural revelation is really a “philosophy of religion,” and with this view The Christian Century apparently would agree, because it calls itself “A Journal of Religion.” Also Professor Kirsopp Lake in an ad- dress before the Harvard Divinity School asserted that the term “theology” presupposed a divine revelation which “we” (the Unitarians) do not accept, and proposed the term “philosophy” in its place.
Mr. Hospers rightly concludes that theology rests on revela- tion, that Christianity as a redemptive religion depends on the New Testament, and that the Scripture is the Reformation principle of authority in religious knowledge.
In the following chapter he discusses the divine origin and unique character of the Scripture. He takes the position of the Reformers that the ground of belief in the divine origin of Scripture is that it itself bears the marks of its divine origin because God speaks to men in it, but that the natural man is spiritually blind, and that the witness of the Holy Spirit is necessary to produce in the heart the conviction of the divine origin and authority of the Scripture. So far we agree with the author, and although his statement of the nature of this witness of the Spirit appears to us lacking in clearness of definition, we agree with what he appears to maintain as to its nature. It is not the revelation to the Christian of a proposition that the Scripture
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is God’s Word. This is the misconception upon the basis of which Strauss attacked this doctrine, though Mr. Hospers does not refer to this attack. This conception of the witness of the Spirit is a form of mysticism and this supposed revelation would itself need to be validated and so we would be involved in a regressus ad infinitum. Neither is the witness of the Spirit the cause of the emergence in consciousness of an ungrounded con- viction of the divine origin of the Scripture, because the regen- erate heart sees the mark of divine authorship in the Bible. On the other hand the witness of the Spirit is not to be reduced to the argument for the divine origin of the Bible from Christian experience. On this point the author might have been more explicit. There is such an argument. It has been developed by such theologians as Frank, Kdstlin, and Ihmels, and has been identified with the witness of the Spirit by H. Cremer^ and by Wiesinger.® Our author does not distinguish his view sharply enough from the one to which we have alluded. But that he has not fallen into this mistake is sufficiently clear from his idea that the witness of the Spirit is a witness of God to the Chris- tian, and not an inference from the witness of the Christian’s heart to the Scripture. In speaking of it as a deep mysticism of the heart, however, he might give rise to such a misconception of the doctrine. It simply expresses the truth that in Regenera- tion the Holy Spirit removes the spiritual blindness of the natural man so that he apprehends the marks of God’s hand in the Scripture. It is thus that the doctrine was developed by Calvin and received full recognition by Ursinus, Piscator, Zan- chias, Wollebius, Wendelin, Maresius, Maccovius, and Heideg- ger.
But this conception of the nature of the witness of the Spirit to the Bible necessarily determines two further questions con- cerning which our author seems not to be entirely clear. These questions are the object of this witness of the Spirit or to what the Spirit witnesses and the relation of this witness of the Spirit to the grounds of belief. Concerning the former point he seems to include not only the divine origin of Scripture but also the questions of Canonicity and Inspiration. Concerning the latter point, he states and accepts Dr. Kuyper’s view of the Inspiration
2 Realency, f. prot. Theol. u. Kirche, vi. p 760.
3 Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift, ix. pp. 778, 779.
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of Scripture, and then follows him in saying that we obtain divine certainty because the Holy Spirit guarantees the truth of the contents of the Bible and also produces assurance of its truth in the heart. This, we think, confuses the question of the divine origin and truth of Scripture with that of the nature of Inspiration. We cannot agree with our author that the Bible gives no data for a definite view of the nature of Inspiration. We do agree with him that the truth of Scripture rests ultimately on the fact that God speaks in it, and we agree that the Spirit produces assurance as to this truth. But all this, we believe, con- cerns the divine origin of Scripture, not the nature of Inspira- tion or of the divine influence under which Scripture was written. The latter is an exegetical question and is to be deter- mined exegetically, just as any other Scriptural doctrine. When it has thus been determined, we must then raise the question as to our grounds of belief that the doctrine thus ascertained is true. These grounds are, in a word, all grounds of belief in the divine origin and truthfulness of Scripture. The witness of the Spirit enables us to see their force and be convinced by them. It is thus indispensable, but it does not include matters of exegesis. The witness of the Spirit, then, is not to the inspiration of the Bible, since this witness of the Spirit is not the revelation of a truth to the mind or heart. An examination of the doctrine in the old Reformed theologians we have cited will show that they did not conceive the witness of the Spirit as a testimony to the in- spiration of the Bible. It is true that Piscator used the term deoTTvevaroq in speaking of that to which the Spirit bears wit- ness ;■* but the passage shows that he did not refer to a doctrine of Inspiration, but to the divine origin of the Scripture. In this he agreed with the other theologians above referred to who con- stantly spoke of the “divinity of Scripture” and said that this shone forth from it like the rays from the sun.
Neither does the witness of the Spirit have reference to the question of the Canon, as Mr. Hospers seems to imply in his chapter on the divine origin of the Scripture. He objects to American theologians reasoning from “historical criticism” and asserts that this is going over to the “liberals” and to the principle of rationalism. Here again we think there is some confusion of the matter. Mr. Hospers is correct in his criticism of those who
* Explicat'w Aphor. Doct. Christ. Aph. vi, p. 94.
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contend that this necessitates a change of view as to the author- ity of Scripture. Any so-called historico-critical discussion which does this must be predetermined by an anti-supernaturalistic bias. On the other hand Mr. Hospers’ comment on a quotation from B. Weiss’ Manual of Introduction to the New Testament appears to us to go over to the enemy and land us in subjec- tivity. He quotes Weiss’ statement to the effect that a judgment on the Canon based on historical research is “dependent on the doctrinal construction of the conception of the Canon, that is to say, on the question whether such construction makes the crite- rion of Canon to consist in that which is genuinely apostolic, or in a wider sense memorials of apostolic times, attesting each in- dividual writing before the tribunal of the religious conscious- ness of the ancient Church or of the present.” And he adds “It will be noticed that the last clause of this quotation virtually recognizes the testimony of the Holy Spirit.” This is not the fact at all. Mr. Hospers here gives adherence to the view that the Church was inspired to select certain books as Canonical from a mass of ancient literature. The Canon would, therefore, be an in- spired collection of books instead of a collection of inspired books with apostolic sanction. Also the testimony of the Spirit is reduced to the witness of the consciousness of the Church. This is a misconception both of the nature of Canonicity and of the witness of the Spirit. As to the question of the Canon, we must distinguish between the principle of Canonicity which is apostol- icity or apostolic sanction, and the question what books come under this principle. The latter is an historical question, and is to be determined by asking what books were imposed by the apostles upon the infant Church to be its rule of faith. This latter ques- tion can be determined by actual New Testament evidence in some cases, and in others by asking what books were thus re- ceived by the Church. But their canonicity does not depend on the fact that they were received. On the contrary this fact war- rants the inference that these books had apostolic sanction. Mr. Hospers seems to accept the subjective view that the Christian consciousness of the Church is the test of the Canon.
Moreover the witness of the Spirit, not being a mystical communication of knowledge, does not inform the Christian what books had apostolic sanction. Of course Mr. Hospers realizes this ; it is specifically for a mystical view of Canonicity
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that he is arguing as against rationalism as he supposes. But the appeal from historical and objective considerations to either the Christian consciousness or to the testimony of the Spirit in this matter is not only vain ; it has been used in the interests of a rationalistic and subjective view of the Canon. It is true that the old Protestant theologians did sometimes speak as if the Holy Spirit bore witness to the Canonicity of the books of Scripture, as does also the Galilean Confession (Art. 4), and the Belgic Confession (Art. 6), which our author cites, not however the Westminster Confession (Chap, i. Sec. 5) which is also cited. In regard to the latter it is the “infallible truth” and “divine authority” of Scripture which is explicitly stated to be the object of the Spirit’s testimony. As regards some statements of the Reformers and the Galilean and Belgic Confessions, two things should be noted. First, this is not their prevalent way of stating the matter. They almost invariably conceive of the witness of the Spirit as being to the “divinity,” i.e., to the divine origin of Scripture. Secondly, when they em- ploy the terms Canon and Canonicity, they use them in a twofold sense to denote both the idea of the extent of the Canon, and the idea of the divine origin and authority of Scripture. And when they speak of Canonicity as the object of the witness of the Spirit, it is the latter idea to which they usually refer. This is true of Quenstedt the Lutheran theologian and of the old Reformed theologians. Calivn has been supposed to have taught that the Spirit testified concerning what books are canonical, but this supposition rests upon a misapprehension. Reuss® and Pannier® have misapprehended Calvin on this point, owing to their misunderstanding of two passages from Calvin, as Dr. B. B. Warfield clearly showed. In the Institutes (I, 7, i), attack- ing the Romish idea that the Scripture has only such weight as the Church gives it, Calvin says, “For thus dealing with the Holy Spirit as a mere laughing stock, they ask, who shall give us confidence that these (Scriptures) have come from God — who assure us that they have reached our time safe and intact — who persuade us that one book should be received reverently, another expunged from the number — if the Church should not
® History of the Canon, Chapter 16.
® Le Temoinage du Saint Esprit, p. 252. 7 This Review, viii. pp. 283fT.
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prescribe a certain rule for all these things. It depends, there- fore, they say, on the Church, both what reverence is due Scripture, and what books should be inscribed in her catalogue.” Thus the Romanists argued that the Church assures us of the contents and even the integrity of Scripture. But Calvin does not say that we are assured of the Canon by the Holy Spirit. He says that the Romish view is wrong, but does not imply that the witness of the Spirit assures us of all that the Church pretends to determine. This is made clear from the concluding sentences of this section where Calvin asks what will be the condition “of those wretched consciences seeking assurance of eternal life” if the claims of the Romish Church are valid. Evidently he is speaking of the “assurance of faith,” not of canonicity, though he does deny that the latter rests on the witness of the Church. The following section (§4) also bears this out. Since the Church is “built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles,” this prophetic and apostolic doctrine “has preceded” the for- mation of the Church. Hence Rome is wrong in contending that “the power of judging of the Scriptures belongs to the Church, so as to make the certainty of it dependent on the Church’s will.” It is evidently certitude as to the divine origin of the Bible of which he is speaking. This is put beyond doubt by his conclud- ing sentence of this section when he says of the original, to ask how we can be “persuaded” of the “divine original” of Scrip- ture without resort to the decree of the Church, is “just as if any one should inquire. How shall we learn to distinguish light from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter? For the Scripture exhibits as clear evidence of its truth, as white and black things do of their colour, or sweet and bitter things of their taste.” Evidently he is speaking, not of Canonicity, but of the marks of divinity in the Bible, and of the Christian’s assur- ance of them.
The other passage is in the Confession of La Rochelle, and does apparently attribute to the witness of the Spirit the deter- mination of what books are Canonical. But this article was not written by Calvin ; it was added to a draft of his which did not contain this idea. Calvin’s whole discussion shows that he takes the Scripture as a whole, conceives it as given on historical grounds, and conceives that the Spirit witnesses to its divine origin.
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The other point concerning the doctrine of the witness of the Spirit in respect to which we differ with the author concerns the relation of this witness to the grounds of belief. He appar- ently regards it as a “proof” of and ground of belief in the divine origin of the Bible. Here again, it is true, he might appeal to one statement of Calvin (I, 8, 13) where, after enumerating reasonable “proofs” for the divine origin of Scripture, he speaks of the witness of the Spirit as “that first and principal proof.” But this is a mere mode of speech. He devotes this entire chapter to setting forth reasonable grounds of belief in the divine origin of Scripture, and his idea as expressed at the close is that these proofs though numerous and objectively valid, will not be convincing to the sinner apart from the wit- ness of the Holy Spirit in removing the spiritual blindness from his heart.
We are following Calvin, then, when we regard the witness of the Spirit as the removal of the spiritual blindness due to the effects of sin and hence as giving the spiritual discernment nec- essary for one’s being convinced by the grounds of belief. These grounds of belief, it is true, were regarded by the Reformers as within the Bible. But these internal evidences of its divine origin are the grounds of belief, and the witness of the Spirit simply enables us to apprehend them and appreciate their force. If this is so then we may extend these grounds of belief in the existence of God, the divine origin of Scripture, and the super- natural origin of Christianity, so as to include the rational grounds of theistic belief and the historical evidences of the supernatural origin of Christianity and the divine origin of Scripture. In a word the doctrine of the witness of the Spirit does not dispense with the necessity for philosophical and historical Apologetics. The author’s view is that of Drs. Kuyper and Bavinck. The latter is discussing the “certitude of faith.”® His argument is that Christian certitude does not spring from Christian experience but that the latter springs from the former which is the product of a faith due to the work of the Spirit. Also rational and historical arguments cannot produce true faith. With all this we agree heartily. But because arguments cannot produce the conviction of a Christian, it does not follow that rational and historical grounds of faith can be dispensed
* Cf. Zckerheid des Geloofs pp. 63ff.
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with. Dr. Kuyper worked these principles out fully in his Encyclopaedie der Heilige Godgelecrdheid? It is a profound discussion. The unregenerate and the regenerate form two classes, distinct in kind and hence totally separate in their in- tellectual processes and results. The one class is thinking under the obscuring effects of sin, the other class under the illumina- tion of the Spirit. Hence no arguments for the science of the regenerate can be regarded as universally valid. Apologetics is for the benefit of the Christian and for the purpose of defend- ing Christian faith, not for grounding it.
But we do not think that the Reformed doctrine of the wit- ness of the Spirit implies this attitude to the arguments for the divine origin of Christianity and the Bible. It is true that saving faith cannot be produced by arguments, nor even by the revela- tion of God in Christ, because faith and unbelief depend on the condition of the heart. The source of faith is the Spirit of God working in the heart. But faith is not blind trust, and reasonable grounds may underlie saving faith. Without grounds valid at least for the subject of faith, it cannot arise. The grounds of belief and even of Christian certitude ought to be universally valid ones, since the trouble is not in these grounds, but in the blindness of the sinful heart. Furthermore the subjective condi- tion of these two classes of men is not absolute. In the unregener- ate no faculty of the soul has been destroyed and some religious sense has been preserved by Common Grace. In the regenerate the blinding effects of sin have not been removed altogether and ' all at once. This does not imply that there is any passage from one class to the other except by Regeneration. We are fundament- ally at one with Mr. Hospers and Dr. Kuyper. It is only intended to indicate that the evidences for the divine and supernatural origin of Christianity are universally valid and indispensable, and that we believe that the doctrine of the witness of the Spirit does not involve the minimizing of the importance of Christian Apologetics, nor relegate it to the function allotted to it by Dr. Kuyper. Neither does it involve any concession to Rationalism to take the position of certain American Reformed Theologians. Charles Hodge in his Way of Life showed that since the Bible makes an absolute demand on faith from every- one to whom it comes, learned or unlearned, the Scripture
8 II Afd. I pp. 52-129.
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must contain in itself the marks of its divine origin. Also he showed that the witness of the Spirit is necessary to enable the sin blinded man to see these marks. At the same time he set forth fully the rational basis of theistic belief in his Systematic Theology and gave great importance to historical criticism and historical evidences. The same is true of Dr. B. B. Warfield who magnified both the Reformed doctrine of the witness of the Spirit and at the same time held that Apologetics is a distinct discipline from Dogmatics and that it lies at the foundation of the theological sciences.
We have used far too much space in speaking of our points of difference with Mr. Hospers. We do it only because we believe that the task of Christian Apologetics is vital and fundamental against the very attack on Scripture by modern forms of rationalism which he is combatting. We agree with him fully as to the absolute necessity of taking our stand on the Scripture as the Word of God, as to the absolute necessity of the witness of the Holy Spirit to the Bible, but we would add the need of a full grounding of the principle of Christian Supernaturalism, and we believe, as our author doubtless does, that this Supernaturalism can only be successfully vindicated against Modernism by an adherence to its consistent and thor- ough expression in the Reformed Faith.
We wish we might give an account of the remaining chapters of this book and express our agreement with its fundamental positions. There is a chapter on the significance of creeds. A creed is simply an expression of Scripture doctrine. Does Christian life precede and determine Christian doctrine or is truth the condition of life? If the former, then doctrines or truths can have no permanent or objective validity, and we end in utter scepticism as to any valid truth. This is the logical result of modern pragmatism and modern mysticism. Some who call themselves Modernists do not carry out this logic, but Mr. Hospers is right in his contention that to take this position will do away with historical Christianity. But if Chrstian truth conditions life, then the Bible and the Christian creeds based on it are of essential importance. We think he is right also in his agreement with The Christian Century that the differences in the Modernist-Fundamentalist controversy are deep seated, involving two world-views, two religions, two attitudes to the
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Bible. Christianity is a historical, supernatural, redemptive re- ligion with a basis in great redemptive facts authoritatively recorded and interpreted in the Scripture. Modernism, in its pure and principial expression, in abandoning the authority of the Bible and the historical and doctrinal basis of Christianity, must end in natural religion only. Even the theistic basis of natural religion cannot be maintained if Modernism adopts the agnostic position involved either in pragmatism, or in the view that truths are but symbols of a preceding life.
Consequently in the chapters on the Nature of Christianity, the Ministry of the Word, and the Program of the Reformed Churches, the author makes it perfectly clear that two opposite views are in conflict in each case.
The merit of this book consists in the fact that it starts out with the exhibition and discrimination of two opposite principles of knowledge — the Bible, and the human reason, and then shows that each principle in its pure and unmediating expression must lead to opposite results. With the Bible as our authority we have the redemptive religion of Christianity and its purest ex- pression in the Reformed Faith ; with reason as our source and norm of truth we have only natural religion. Types of thought which are mediating will not like this book because they are regarded as impure mixtures and passed over without much discussion.
Princeton. C. W. Hodge.
REVIEWS OF
RECENT LITERATURE
APOLOGETICAL THEOLOGY
The Dogma of Evolution. By Louis Trenchard More, Professor of Physics, University of Cincinnati; Author of “The Limitations of Science.” Louis Clark Vanuxem Foundation Lectures delivered at Princeton University, Januarj^, 1925. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1925. Price $3.50 net.
The Spiritual Interpretation of Nature. By James Y. Simpson, D.SC., F.R.S.E., Professor of Natural Science, New College, Edinburgh. New Edition Revised and Rewritten. New York: George H. Doran Company. Price $2.25 net.
While the evolutionist and the anti-evolutionist are striving with might and main to capture our public schools, one in the interest of freedom of thought and the other in the interest of freedom of religion ; and while the now celebrated “monkey bill” trial in Tennessee is occupying the front page of the newspapers, and the cartoonists are representing the counsel for the defense, Mr. Darrow, as saluting a monkey with a deferential “Papa,” and the counsel for the prosecution, Mr. Bryan, as passing by his alleged poor relations with haughty disdain, it is illuminat- ing to read a discussion of the subject, calm and dispassionate so far as lies in human nature, and written by one who is a distinguished scientist and a prominent educator.
It has been a weakness of the anti-evolutionary critique that it has been carried on largely by laymen in science whose testimony could be dismissed as incompetent and as warped by theological bias, but Professor More is a specialist in physics, the author of scientific monographs and articles, and his invitation to deliver the Vanuxem Lectures at Princeton is a sufficient evidence of his standing in the world of science. The title of his book puts the evolutionist on the defensive at the outset and the delivery of his lectures is understood to have created something of a flurry in academic circles. He repeatedly charges the biologist with looseness in thought and expression and as standing in need of the more rigorous mathematical training of the physicist. To express a doubt of the genetic connection of man in both body and soul with the lower animals has been regarded as almost the unpardonable sin in well-informed circles, and the experts of the American Association for the Advancement of Science officially declared in December, 1922, that “the council of the association affirms that the evidences of the evolution of man are sufficient to convince every scientist of note in the world.” It is now disconcerting to find Professor More saying bluntly that “the evolution of man from the lower animals” is “purely a matter of guess” (p. 331).
It is clear that Professor More’s book is of enough importance in the present discussion to warrant an examination in some detail of the positions he maintains. He is an evolutionist in some sense for he declares that “the evidence available supports our faith in a general law of
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evolution. We accept it as we accept the law of the conservation of matter, not because it can be proved to be true from experience, but because without it natural law is not intelligible. The only alternative is the doctrine of special creation which may be true but is irrational” (pp. 21, 22). Again he says: “I accept the general doctrine of the evolution of organisms as a deductive theory on the same grounds that I subscribe to the atomic theory of matter. It is the most satisfactory rational theory to account for those relations between existing flora and fauna which undoubtedly exist. But this is not equivalent to accepting the metaphysical hypotheses which attempt to give the causes and methods of evolution, nor does it mean that the biological theory of evolution can be applied with success to the problems of man’s mental and spiritual nature” (p. 163). Again he says that according to biological science “species are mutually related in such a way that those forms now in existence are modified forms of previous species. Since this law is capable of statement as a scientific generalization which can be supported by observation and experimentation it is a thoroughly justifiable assump- tion and one with which we have no quarrel” (p. 303).
Aside from the guarded admissions in the three passages just quoted, the lectures in their whole tone and animus might have been written by Mr. Bryan or the most convinced creationist. The whole book in fact, with the three exceptions noted, is a slashing critique of the evolution theory in its popular forms, and Professor More is equally severe upon the classical writers such as Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel, Spencer and Fiske and upon modern protagonists such as Bateson, Osborn and Conklin. He contends that the hypotheses of natural selection, inheritance of acquired characters, mutations, etc., “are not proved and are really metaphysical and unverifiable in character”; that these hypotheses “inevitably lead to a mechanistic philosophy in which the phenomena of life are to be explained by physical and chemical processes,” and that “the facts are against this mechanistic view of life and the hypotheses are unjustifiable assumptions”; and finally that the expansion of biological evolution to include the realm of consciousness and social and ethical life is based on metaphysical assumptions rather than on the scientific foundations of biology, and that “it is this phase of evolution which has created confusion and disaster” (pp. 303, 304). In its religious applica- tion, “the real tendency of evolution is to be found in the philosophy of Nietzsche and not in the life of Christ” (p. 383).
More in detail, it is contended that Osborn misinterprets Aristotle, Augustine and other early thinkers in his zeal to make them out evolu- tionists, that he reverses the true meaning of Lamarck, and that in his mechanical explanation of life he gives four different and incongruous definitions of his fundamental term of energy; that Bateson’s statement that the mystery of the origin of species may be solved tomorrow suggests that “the tomorrow of the biologist may be as long as the million years or so necessary for the horse to eliminate his four toes” (p. 29); that Conklin’s “irritation under fire seems to have confused the clarity of his scientific reasoning,” so that he fails to distinguish between evolution as a scientific theory to be tested in the biological
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laboratory and as a metaphysical hypothesis to guide the social and religious affairs of men (p. 24).
Professor More directs the shafts of his argument and his satire against three points in the evolutionary armor : ( i ) against the attempt to give a naturalistic account of the origin of species, (2) against the- attempt to carry evolution downward into the realm of physics and thus to give a mechanical explanation of life, and (3) against the attempt to apply evolution in the spheres of morals, of society and of religion. At all these points, while not a fundamentalist or Biblical literalist. Professor More gives abundant aid and comfort to the creationist.
The positive evidence for evolution, he maintains, is to be found in the existence of fossil remains, but palaeontology cannot be translated into chronology, and the study of the records emphasizes the breaks rather than the continuity of development. For example, “when the Silurian vertebrates appeared they did so without any transitional form having been preserved” (p. 154). Of the birds it is said that “the appear- ance of feathers as an apparatus for flying is as nearly impossible a fact to explain by evolution as can be imagined. By no known theory can a feather be accounted for. — Evolutionists have wisely and persistently avoided the solution of this problem” (pp. 156, 157). The sudden and abrupt appearance of the higher plants (angiosperms) is an analagous case in the vegetable world. “The more one studies palaeontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone. — The evidence from palaeontology is for discontinuity; only by faith and imagination is there continuity of variation” (pp. 160, 161). Speaking of Darwin Professor More says that the physicist, trained in exact phrase- ology and rigorous logic, is discouraged by “the loose language and the still looser reasoning of the evolutionist and of the biologist” (p. 236). W'hen Darwin is extravagantly praised for dispensing with a superna- tural factor in the explanation of living forms. Professor More is willing to admit that “if it is degrading to man to depend ultimately on divine intervention when no other explanation is attainable, Darwin has the glory of avoiding it” (p. 237). Professor More has evident sympathy for Lamarckism both because the importance of Lamarck has been belittled by Darwin and his followers and because Lamarck’s doctrine, if it could be proved, points to a non-mechanical principle as the distinctive factor of life. He believes that the influence of Darwinism is rapidly waning, and that the collapse of the theory of natural selection leaves both the philosophy of mechanistic materialism and the applications of it in the spheres of social polity and ethics in a sorry plight.
Professor More is plainly at one with the creationists in his theory of the origin of life and of mind. The mechanical theory of life ignores the difference between a dead man and a living man. After a lifetime spent in investigating the phenomena and laws of physics he confesses that he can find no meaning in the statements of those who correlate biological and psychological with physical phenomena. To make out his case, it is maintained, even Professor Osborn is guilty of a “reckless disregard of physical law,” and “either willingly or through inability to comprehend the elementary laws of physics, invents his own physics” (p. 269).
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Under the influence of a galaxy of thinkers which included Darwin, Huxley and Spencer, the supreme effort of the Victorian age was, accord- ing to Professor More, to establish a rational monistic philosophy which would embrace the entire universe. “In such a grandiose scheme, the spirit of man, with its element of free-will or choice, shrivelled to insignificance in comparison with the inexorable majesty of natural law” (p. 307). Professor More points out that the evolutionists based their doctrine on the laws of physics, but “were pathetically ignorant of the facts and laws of physics” (p. 323). He thinks it inconsistent to rage against the doctrine of free-will and to make man a mere cog in the machine, and yet to curse him for not acting otherwise than he does. The evolutionary sociologist cannot predict the movements of human society any more than the evolutionary biologist can predict the appearance of a new species.
Professor More is not an alarmist but he fears the effect of the evolutionary teaching upon the youth of today. “Our debauch of evolution, aethers and electrons is fast carrying us back into the state of mediaeval absurdities” (p. iii). And again, “The youth of today are replying in no uncertain tones, that their teachers have failed to show them a standard other other than to obtain out of life what pleasure and success can be snatched” (p. 380). His own religious attitude is not exactlj stated, but he can say of the Bible story of creation : “In spite of the speculations of centuries we have not advanced a step beyond the noble and dignified description of the creation as imagined by the Hebrew Prophet in the Book of Genesis. We can dismiss his story of the Garden of Eden as an allegory, but when he stated that man was created out of the dust and that God breathed into him the Breath of Life, all was said of that supreme mystery, as an eminent philosopher pointed out to me, which can be said” (pp. 242, 243).
On the whole Professor More has made an important contribution to the present-day discussion of evolution and his lectures contain an instructive historical survey of the rise and progress of evolutionary theories and perhaps also in part of their decline and fall.
Professor Simpson’s new edition of his Spiritual Interpretation of Nature, first published in 1912, is much enlarged in its scope and is offered as supplementary to his later work on Man and the Attainment of Immortality, (noticed in this review, XXI, 3, July, 1923, pp. 463 ff.). For his views in their mature expression both books should be consulted.
The significance of Professor Simpson’s work lies in his attempt to combine the outlook of Christian theism with a thoroughgoing evolution- ary view of the universe. It must be confessed that he is signally qualified to attempt such a synthesis of evolution and religion because of his evangelical sympathies and training, because of his wide scholarship and high standing as a scientist, and because he is a master of a forceful and graceful literary style. If Professor Simpson cannot “put over” this synthesis it will go far to prove that he is attempting a combination of incongruous elements.
As a Christian with strong evangelical leanings Professor Simpson would admit no difference in personal attitude toward the Founder of
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Christianity in the way of reverence, loyalty or affection between himself and believers in the older orthodoxy. He says that “the personal attach- ment to Jesus Christ that is at the heart of any genuine Christian endeavor, whether individual or social, is unaffectable by theories of His life and work” (p. 8). As an evolutionist, however, he gives up creation, both special and general (except “creation by evolution” which is not creation at all), and his doctrine both of man and of the Son of Man is far different from that of traditional Christianity. To avoid admitting a break in the evolutionary series between man and the animals. Professor Simpson holds that man is not immortal but is capable of achieving immortality; and for a similar reason the virgin birth of Jesus is denied and Jesus is allowed to have only an historic not a cosmic significance.
The tension between the two tendencies in Professor Simpson’s mind is apparent throughout the book. He would like to accept the credibility of the Gospel miracles but to do so unreservedly would be out of harmony with evolutionary principles. His conclusion as to the Resurrection — “Something at any rate happened which convinced them (the disciples) that He whom they had known in the flesh was still alive and had triumphed over death” (p. 306) — is as hackneyed as it is weak. Of miracles in general he finely says : “If the aversion to miracles is simply an expression of belief in a purely mechanical self-contained world, then the human spirit must hail them in defense of its liberty. For if God be so bound by His laws that initiative is no longer His, much more are we. And if He cannot intervene in the physical realm, still less can He in the spiritual, for the two stand in close relationship. The miracle is the sign of the Divine freedom” (p. 308). A directive factor in evolution is recognized in opposition to an ultra-mechanical conception, and the Ultimate Environment (capitalized) is allowed to influence the course of events provided that continuity is maintained and there are no “breaks” in the succession.
Of the two books, Man and the Attainment of Immortality and The Spiritual Interpretation of Nature, evolution is more prominent in the former and Christian theism in the latter; but in neither volume do the two ingredients readily mix. Xo one, we are convinced, can improve on Professor Simpson’s attempted synthesis, but we are left with the suspi- cion that evolutionism will gravitate toward that monistic naturalism which is proving to be the home of leading evolutionists in the twentieth as it was in the nineteenth century, and that Christian theism will reaffirm its great categories of Creation and Design as well as great doctrines of the Deity of Christ and the immortality of man, made in the image of God.
Lincoln University, Pa. Wm. Hallock Johnson
Psychology of Religious Experience. Studies in the Ps3chological Inter- pretation of Religious Faith. By Francis L. Strickland, Professor of the History and Psj'chology of Religion in Boston University School of Theology, New York and Cincinnati: The Abingdon Press, 1924. Pp. 320. Price $2.00 net.
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In these days books on the psychology of religion are becoming numerous, and yet no one seems able to say what psychology of religion means and what topics it should include. What is offered is an abstract of contemporary psychological method and tendency as understood and selected by the author, followed by a discussion, influenced more or less by the principles chosen, of certain religious topics. The book before us conforms to this description. In an “Introduction” the author explains the “Fundamental Standpoints and Method in Psychology of Religion.” His desire is to be “scientific” (p. 59, 73) but psychological description in terms of behavior only is fallacious. Introspection must also be used, and in the psychological study of religious experience, analysis into elements must be followed by interpretation or determination of meaning. This methodological device is, however, little used by the author in the studies that follow. The topic then is religious experience, and by experience is meant all that takes place in our conscious life, which becomes religious when it involves an attitude towards God : “the Divine Being who not only rules the universe but also determines many things in our lives.” From this viewpoint our author proceeds to the discussion of such topics as religion in childhood and adolescence, conversion and evangelism, the subconscious, faith in God, worship, mysticism, and belief in immortality.
Because of the lack of a clearcut conception of what present psychology demands, the discussion frequently takes on the character of philosophy of religion or apologetics. This is especially so in the last chapter where an elaborate attempt is made after abandoning the concept of the soul to prove the plausibility of the survival of a “self” after death : a self without body, nerves, substance, or anything else associated with endurance. How this can be called psychology is not clear, and yet the book contains much that is interesting and instructive. Without enumer- ating these in detail, it may be more profitable to examine the general standpoint and what it implies with reference to the psychology of religion.
Psychology of religion should be scientific. This means that its task is to search for the functional relation between two or more variables. What these variables are depends of course on the views of the psychologist, but if we take (although it is not exclusively necessary to do so) the psychology current in our colleges today, the variables will be the stimulus, the resulting mental states and the responsive behavior. In religion the stimulus is, speaking generally, God as He has made himself known, and this knowledge evokes mental states and behavior of a certain character which it is the business of religious psychology to describe and explain. For the conservative Protestant the revelation of God is the Holy Scripture, and his interest as psychologist is in attempt- ing to understand the functional relation between this stimulus and the various mental states and activities it causes. But our author is a Protestant who has made the transition from the conservative to the modern way of thinking. The Bible is no longer the stimulus that calls out the Christian thought and action. He places the Bible in the same class with the Vedas, the Buddhist books, the Zend-Avesta, and the
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Koran (p. 64). The religious prayers and hymns of the Rig-Veda and the Hebrew Psalter are mentioned in the same sentence as valuable because they are spontaneous expressions of religious feeling usually on a fairly high level {ibid.). But the priestly writers set back the dates of institutions, customs, and laws, in order to gain for them the authority of great age (p. 65), and although the prophets of the seventh century B.C. in Israel represent a high water mark in religion, nevertheless the modern historical view of the Bible has had its effect in making biblical theology obsolete (p. 281). What replaces the Scripture as stimulus, or as the author would probably prefer to call it, situation, is the immanent activity of God in the world. The old-fashioned distinction of natural and supernatural disappears or if retained means that the natural is the usual and the supernatural the unusual (to us) mode of divine activity, or the natural is what is presented to sense, the supernatural the hj^to- thetical atoms, electrons, ions, colloids, etc., invented to account for it (p. 293). God’s great method of making Himself known is incarnation (P- i/3)> and while the author does not say so, the usual modern view is expressed by adding the words not exclusively and uniquely in Jesus Christ. Inspiration is a state of mind that arises in the subconscious, and therefore “If it is his (the prophet’s) habit of thought to ascribe all things not clearly classified as under his own conscious direction to the direct agency of God, he may say that his inspiration was from God — that God helped him” (p. 147). The Resurrection of Christ does not mean that His body rose. The Gospel testimony “which goes even so far as to allege that he called their attention to the fact that he had flesh and bones” (p. 288) is dismissed by our author with the remark that “the farther we get away from the days of Christ the greater becomes the tendency to interpret the ‘resurrection life’ in terms of the physical and material,” due to the wish to conserve the reality of the risen Jesus in the thought of people whose only reality was materiality (p. 289). The Scripture clearly teaches that God can answer prayers for material changes, but our author refuses this teaching. “To affirm that natural forces may be influenced and changed by prayer is either to make prayer essentially a form of physical energy or else is to suppose that prayer can divert divine activity from its regular and ordinary ways of manifesting itself. Religious belief may accept such a thing as possible under some conditions. But it is belief for which scientific justification cannot be offered” (p. 213). We might multiply examples, but let these suffice to show that if, as our author says (p. 20), “in its essential nature religious experience is religious faith,” the Scripture which evoked faith in the old-fashioned Protestant, is but the stimulus for unbelief in the modem Protestant. The latter, however, finds the stimulus for faith (p. 56) in God “as he reveals himself to us. This revelation is made progressively through the experience of our common life as well as directly and immediately (as we may believe) in individual experience.” But we submit that this was not the situation that evoked Christian experience in the apostles and in those who have followed them. It may be religious, but it will not remain Christian. At least it has never remained such in
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the past, and there is no good reason to believe that it will remain so in the future. In saying this we may be in the ranks of the fundamentalists who, as our author remarks (p. 281) “reiterate the formulas of a theo- logy now pretty well discarded in the circles of scholarship,” but at least it is our desire to think clearly and in our psychology of religion to understand by patient observation and experiment the relations that exist between the complex masses of responses called Christian experi- ence and the only stimulus or situation that as we believe can arouse them; the Word of God as contained in the Scriptures of the Old and Nezv Testament.
Lincoln University, Pa. George Johnson.
L’Ltude Comparee des Religions. Essai critique par H. Pinard de la Boullaye, S.J. I Son Histoire dans le Monde Occidental. Paris : Gabriel Beauchesne. 1922. Pp. xvi, 515.
This is not a history of the various religions on earth nor of religion in general, but of the study of comparative religions from antiquity to the present day. It is not the first book on the subject — on page xv. of the preface is a list of eleven, among them the late L. H. Jordan, from 1876 to 1878 a student in Princeton Seminary, who have written on the same topic — but it is probably the most thorough, especially in the biblio- graphical material cited. The author had three great libraries from which to draw: that of the Scholasticat des jesuites franqais at Enghien, the Bibliotheque Royale at Brussels, and the Library of the British Museum, London. It would seem as if every work on the subject of comparative religion is here mentioned in its proper class and duly appraised.
The contents are as follows : Chap. I. considers the study of compara- tive religion so far as it existed in antiquity to the Christian era. Chap. II. treats the same topic from the appearance of Christianity to the Middle Ages. Chap. III. details the speculations of Arabs and Jews and scholastic theologians concerning religion. Chap. IV. carries the story through the Renaissance and Reformation. Chap. V. outlines the views of religion held by Rationalists, and Chap. VI. does the same for the Agnostics. Chap. VII. presents the period from Positivism to Pragma- tism. Chap. VIII. and Chap. IX. review the various modern “schools” of comparative religion, and Chap. X. epitomizes the “course of the ages” and summarizes the “present currents.”
This last chapter is probably the most interesting for the ordinary reader. What is the origin of Christianity? Our author divides the answers into naturalistic and supernaturalistic. Among the “naturalists” are the followers of Herbert Spencer, the Ritschlians, the symbolo- fideists, and the many tribes of pantheists, who are convinced that the basic support of the real by whatever name it may be called — Force, the Unknowable, the Absolute, or God — merges its activity in the activity of things. This doctrine of immanence enables them to keep the words supernatural and revelation, but in new meanings, since for them the activity of the divine is now the normal order, the very law of nature itself. The supernaturalists comprise the Roman church, and the minority of the Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican churches who have not gone
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over to the naturalistic view. These also think of God as immanent, but they emphasize His personality and the infinite distance by which His being and essence are separated from the being and essence of the creature. He has the power to modify by exceptions or miracles the order He has Himself established, and in particular He can rouse in men’s minds definite ideas, of which He can convince men He Himself is the’ author. This is the meaning of revelation.
The naturalists must perforce explain Christianity as the outcome of normal and natural evolution. This is the common ground of all of them from the sj-ncretism of Dupuis to the latest nuances of Gunkel, Wendland, and those who follow them. The supernaturalists, without denying the fact of progress, reject all rigid evolutionism, and would account for Christianity by special revelation, and for the “analogy of doctrines’’ between Christianity and non-Christian religions by providential prepara- tion. So far we go with our author. But w'hen he passes to defend certain of the Roman dogmas, liturgy, and the adoration of the saints, against the attacks of the syncretists, by asserting that in them is the development of the germ evangelique, and that they are the great tree that our Lord in Mark 4:31 said would come from the tiny mustard seed, we regretfully part company with him.
Lincoln University, Pa. George Johnson.
EXEGETICAL THEOLOGY
The Deciding Voice of the Monuments in Biblical Criticism: An Intro- duction to the Study of Biblical Archaeology. By Melvin Grov’e Kyle, D.D., LL.D., President of Xenia Theological Seminary, Editor of Bibliotheca Sacra, Archaeological Editor of the Sunday School Times. Revised Edition. Bibliotheca Sacra Company, Oberlin, Ohio. 1924. 8 VO. ; Pp. xix, 364.
The first edition of this work was issued in 1912, and received favorable comment in the Princeton Theological Review, January, 1913. “The exhaustion of the first large edition and the undiminished demand for the book now used in a score of universities, colleges and theological seminaries calls for a second edition.’’ The opportunity has been taken to add important material. Otherwise the original text remains as first printed, almost without change save as the spacing of the type has sometimes been altered in the resetting. Very happily, however, merely by the removal of a single “not” and “but,” and the change of “yet” to “now,” a long paragraph on ceramic art has been brought up to date (p. 247). The new material in the book consists mainly of wise caution regarding two “bugaboos of interpretation,” tradition and evolution (pp. 184-187) ; “canons of research,” where Dr. Kyle’s common sense is in evidence (pp. 189-218) ; an account of the Xenia Seminary expe- dition to the Cities of the Plain (pp. 253-255) ; and additional reasons for assigning the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt to the nineteenth dynasty, and for the exemption of Israel from interference by the Egj’ptians betw'een Meremptah and Shishak.
Princeton. John D. Davis.
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The Genius of Israel. A Reading of Hebrew Scriptures Prior to the Exile. By Carleton Noyes. Boston ; Houghton Mifflin Co. 1924. Pp. 433. Price $5-00
A paragraph from the preface furnishes the key to an appreciation of this volume : “An interpretation rather than a history, this book aims to portray the Israelites as they were in the flesh, at work and at play, in the actual circumstances of their everyday experience, and in their relations with contemporary nations. The genius of Israel was supremely a genius for religion. But beneath the passion for God and His right- eousness beat the urge of human striving for the merely human goods of life. If it was granted this people to mount the heights, the path thither led along the ways of men.” (p. viii).
The social and religious life of Israel is neither adequately nor correctly portrayed in the Scriptures and must be recreated by projecting the discoveries of “scholars,” travelers, and archaeologists back to Biblical times. “For the desert, niggard, harsh, and inaccessible except to its own sons, does not change ; and in the isolation imposed by environment, but accepted by the loyal tribesman as his primary obligation to his group, the strain of race continues pure. So in the nomad Arabs of today live again the ancestral Hebrews” (p. 4).
The approach to the religion of Israel is made not by the acceptance of the Biblical record of God’s self-revelation to man, but by way of natural religion. Israel reached the heights of monotheism only after she had trod the path of animism, no worse and no better than her Canaanite neighbors. When Jacob pours oil upon the stone that had served as his pillow during the remarkable dream — he “offers a libation to the deity resident in the stone, who had vouchsafed the portentous dream. That these traces of early Semitic belief and ritual have been preserved is due to the fact that the compilers of the narratives have transformed the original local numen of spring or tree or stone into Yahweh, and they impute to the ancestors the orthodox practices of the Mosaic religion” (P. 17).
The author adopts the Documentary Hypothesis as true and in the chapters entitled Scripture in the Weaving, and Justice and Law sets forth the growth of J, E, D, and P. Little credence is placed in the trustworthiness of the records of events of pre-Mosaic times. “Whatever authentic material the Hebrew narratives supply in illustration of this earliest period of Israelite history is at the most fragmentary; and the result is chiefly negative” (p. 27).
The author of The Gate of Appreciation and The Enjoyment of Art could not do otherwise than write an intensely interesting book. The literary style gives it a charm possessed by few books in this particu- lar field : a brief quotation may suggest something of this charm. “In the multitudinous life of Egypt this little group of rude shepherds was but the foam of a wave breaking on a farther shore. They felt, perhaps, the momentum of the sea of empire that surged by them, as they lingered and drifted on its edge” (p. 41).
In the prophets of Israel are to be found the true representatives of
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its genius. “The visions of the prophets were of the essence of Israel’s genius” (p. 235). “In so far as Israel was impelled to forms of art expression, its culture found permanent embodiment only in its literature. Its influence in shaping social conditions was exercised in the drafting of laws, fused in the passion for righteousness which kindled the prophets to fiery speech. Illumined by their vision, tempered in their ardor, the genius of Israel uttered itself supremely in religion” (p. 261).
In the chapter on The Great Prophets we have a naturalistic conception of prophecy clearly set forth ; as for example in the statement, “working from general truths, won not by supernatural foresight, but by intuition, reflection, experience, they rested their case on logic and necessity ; given certain conditions, certain consequences must result” (p. 342). How different is the testimony of the prophets themselves ! They base their message, whether it be doom or comfort, history or prediction, not “on their own sure knowledge of Yahweh’s character and purpose” (p. 381), but on a supernatural revelation from God Himself. “The Spirit of Jehovah fell upon me and he said unto me. Speak. Thus saith Jehovah” (Ezek. 11:5). “The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me; because Jehovah hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek” (Isa. 61 :i). Jeremiah’s call and protest of natural inability evokes God’s reply “to whomsoever I shall send thee thou shalt go, and whatsoever I shall command thee thou shalt speak” (1:7).
The genius of Israel was indeed a genius that expressed itself in religion, but it was born and grew not out of Israel’s natural talents, but out of the love of God who chose Israel for His own, and then in spite of her weakness and failure made Himself known unto her.
Glenolden, Pa. Charles F. Deininger.
Reality in Bible Reading. By Frank Ballard, D.D. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Price $2.25.
This interesting little volume has been put forth by Dr. Ballard with an eye to the gain that accrues to Christian faith from critical accuracy. Weymouth’s and Moffatt’s versions, and the Twentieth Century New Testament, have been freely consulted. The general merits of the Revision are acknowledged, but 400 examples are furnished of passages which ought, in the estimation of the author, to be rendered more clearly. The work of the English Revisers is had in view throughout, and many of the suggestions offered will be found incorporated in the American Standard Version.
Dr. Ballard writes with competent knowledge of New Testament Greek, and the general result is a work which will prove a helpful addition to the shelves of the scholarly pastor. His rendering of Luke 19:26 — “In fellowship with (wapd) God, all things become possible” — is probably correct. In Luke 22:31, he translates, with Dr. A. T. Robertson, “Satan has demanded permission to winnow you all as wheat.” The “all” is not in the text, but the Revisers, in failing to supply it, leave the lav-man under the false impression that Peter alone was the object of Satan’s attack. In Phil. 3:11, he rightly calls attention to the fact that the word for “resurrection” is a special form (e^avdo-racris) , not elsewhere used in
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the New Testament. He makes no millenarian suggestion, but does say that the word should be treated as though printed in capitals. In II Peter 1:1, as in one or two other 'passages, he holds — as we think with good reason — that apery should be rendered “courage.” In John i ;i8, he adopts the reading p.ovoyeyr}<; Oeos, which seems well enough warranted ; but his translation — “The only-begotten One, Himself divine,” is un- doubtedly too feeble. Indeed, in quite numerous instances we are offered paraphrases — often, to be sure, bringing out the true sense very accurately, but paraphrases nevertheless. At times, they even surprise us. Is it really repellant (p. 205) to hear read from the pulpit, “If she have washed the saints’ feet”? Doubtless the inner meaning is, “If she has shown a kindly spirit,” only the Apostle did not write this. As to I Peter 3 :g, there is not a shred of evidence to justify the audacious emendation proposed by Drs. Harris and Moffatt: “It was in the Spirit that Enoch also went and preached,” etc.
The Old Testament passages touched are comparatively few, nor does the author seem quite as much at home in this field. In Isaiah 1:18, he follows Dr. Cheyne and Sir G. A. Smith, and renders ; “Let us have done with talk — however grievous your sin, if you really repent, there is free and full forgiveness.” To us, this seems rather too brusque and dictatorial, considering the appended to the —“Come ye.” In Isaiah 52:15, “sprinkle,” with its apparently unwelcome Levitical implications, is dis- posed of by a quotation from Dr. Davidson : “It is simply treason against the Hebrew language to translate ‘sprinkle.’ ” This is one of those sweep- ing statements of the critics for which there is no adequate warrant. That the verb usually means “sprinkle” in the Old Testament is certain. Whether on the ground of this passage and Isaiah 63; 3 a meaning “spring up” and so “be astonished” can be arrived at is by no means certain. The chief argument for “be astonished” is the LXX rendering of this passage. The argument that if the correct meaning were “sprinkle,” it would be necessary to say “sprinkle (blood) upon many nations” is far from convincing. And the parallelism is a too uncertain guide to enable us to infer the exact meaning. As Alexander pointed out years ago, “The real motive of the strange unanimity with which the true sense has been set aside (by the majority of modern writers) is the desire to obliterate this clear description, at the very outset, of the servant of Jehovah as an expiatory purifer . . . .”
What may be called the background views of the author are much in evidence. Without being a left-wing Modernist, he has nevertheless travelled far more than a Sabbath-day’s journey on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. He seems (p. 192) to believe in the Incarnation, but in most respects — e.g., in his view of inspiration, foreordination, atoning blood and the Second Advent — stands frankly with the radical school. We have only space to add that if Dr. Selbie’s quoted estimate is reliable — that nine-tenths of the adult population of England are quite out of touch with all Christian churches — the English clergy are due to give themselves to very serious thinking.
Lincoln University, Pa.
Edwin J. Reinke.
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Never Man So Spake. By Howard B. Grose, D.D., New York: George H. Doran Co.
These studies, we are told by the author, are the outcome of a long- continued effort to get at the real teaching of Jesus with reference to life, death and destiny. The book is divided into two parts — The Teacher and' His School, and The Teaching of Jesus. The latter is presented under nine captions — Concerning God Himself, The Holy Spirit, Character, Sin, Salvation, Prayer, Life Here, and Life Hereafter. While the presentations are in large part made by verbal quotation, the result is by no means a mere paraphrase. One meets with real analysis, and no small amount of genuine insight. The appeal to recorded utterances also has the effect of safeguarding the bulk of the great Gospel verities, which are accepted at their face value. The weakest chapter is the sixth — Concerning Salvation. W'e miss the Redeemer’s words in reference to His laying down His life for the sheep, the pouring out of His blood unto remission of sins, the eating of His flesh and drinking of His blood that minister eternal life. “If God, in Paul’s phrase,” says Dr. Grose, quoting from Professor Glover, “hath shined in our hearts, it was Jesus Who induced men to take down the shutters and to open the windows.” Such a superficial conception — however widely advocated and popular — can never be squared with the acquiescence of Jesus in the tremendous proclamation of His great forerunner: “Behold the Lamb of God!”
Lincoln University, Pa. Edwin J. Reinke.
Elements of Hebrew. By Enoch S. Price, Th.B., M.A., Professor of Sacred Languages in the Academy of the New Church. Bryn Athyn, Pa. : The Academy Book Room, 1922. 8vo., pp. 122.
The opening sentence of the Preface is calculated to awaken misgiv- ings in the mind of the thoughtful reader: “There has long been felt the need of a usable beginners’ book for those who are to take up the serious study of the Hebrew language in our schools.” That the ideal Hebrew grammar for beginners, or for the advanced scholar for that matter, has yet to be written, no one will deny. But such wholesale con- demnation of existing handbooks is surprising. It at least suggests that Professor Price has only a very slight acquaintance with them. We do not have to read far in this volume to find this inference amply justified. Mistakes, inexcusable mistakes, begin to appear even in the discussion of the alphabet. It is difficult to understand how one who acknowledges indebtedness to “Green, Harper, and Gesenius, especially to the last,” could speak of cholem as both “long” and “short” and omit qamets chatuph from the list of short vowels, apparently because as he informs us a little later “qamets chatuph ... is any qamets standing in a tone- less closed syllable.” That “defective writing” of cholem does not indi- cate that it is short, and that qamets and qamets chatuph, though repre- sented by the same sign, are entirely different in origin, such matters as these are fundamental to a correct understanding of Hebrew orthogra- phy.
The reason alleged by Professor Price for regarding all hitherto published beginners’ books as unusable is that they “plunge” the student
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immediately into the difficulties of the Hebrew as they appear in the text of the Old Testament instead of approaching the subject “in some gradual and consecutive order.” Such a charge is rather difficult to un- derstand. It does not seem probable that it is aimed specifically at the “inductive method” employed by Harper. Yet, on the other hand, it apparently ignores completely the fact that there are grammars, and good grammars — e.g., that of Davidson — which approach the subject in gradual and consecutive order. Were this not the case Hebrew would be a strange exception in the modern study of language. Whatever the exact scope of his criticism, it may be noted that Professor Price flagrantly violates his own canon of the “usable.” Almost the first verbal form to which he introduces the student is the most anomalous form of one of the most irregular verbs in Hebrew, the 3. f. s. perfect qal of the verb “to be” (nn'n). If this is gradual approach, it would be dif- ficult, we think, to convict any of those arraigned by Professor Price on the charge of “plunging” too quickly into the intricacies of Hebrew.
It is to be regretted that Professor Price who shows a real interest in language study and an earnest desire to prepare a manual which will be helpful to students beginning the study of Hebrew has made so little use of the work of his predecessors in this field that this book instead of marking a real advance must be regarded as a backward step, far less suited to the use of the serious student of Hebrew than the books which Professor Price stigmatizes as unusable.
Princeton. Oswald T. Allis.
The Religion of the Psalms. By J. M. Powis Smith, Professor of Old
Testament Language and Literature in the University of Chicago.
The University of Chicago Press. i6mo ; pp. ix, 170.
In this little volume Professor Smith discusses the Psalms under five captions: The Hymn Book of the Second Temple; the Sweet Singer of Israel; Suffering and Song; The Psalms and Immortality; the Idea of God. The first of these titles indicates with sufficient clearness the gen- eral position of the author. “The Hymn Book of the Second Temple” — is a phrase which expresses the estimate placed upon the Psalter by critics of the Wellhausen School. This estimate is in their opinion one of the most assured results of criticism. And it must of course be recog- nized that those who believe that all or nearly all of the documents of the Pentateuch are later than the time of David, that the religion of Israel did not reach the level of ethical monotheism until the 9th century or even later, and that David was a “rude warrior” whose life reflected the standards and ideals of a semi-barbarous age, must consider it absurd to attach any real value to a “Davidic tradition” which makes David the writer of half the psalms of the Psalter and the founder of the liturgical worship of the First Temple.
It is of course impossible to go very deeply into either critical or theo- logical questions in the brief compass which our author has allowed him- self. Nor can we in the course of our review discuss more than a few of the problems which emerge. Therefore, since David figures so prominent-
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ly in connection with the Psalter, we will examine several of Professor Smith’s reasons for holding not merely that the “Davidic tradition” must be rejected, but that ‘‘it is little more than a waste of time to attempt to discover the original Davidic elements in the Psalter” (p. 6i).
Our author discusses two aspects of David’s life, the ethical and the theological. Under the first we have the “Bathsheba episode,” the deceiv- ing of Ahimelech, the duping of Achish, the bequeathed vengeance upon Joab and Shimei, and the fact that David was a polygamist ; under the second, his dancing before the Ark, the slaying of Rizpah’s sons, the tak- ing of the census, his use of the “oracle,” and his belief in a “tribal god.” In discussing these matters Professor Smith is never at all generous in his estimate of David and in some cases he is grossly unfair. For exam- ple, he implies that David’s words to Abiathar, “I knew on that day, when Doeg the Edomite was there that he would certainly tell Saul. I have brought about the death of all the members of thy father’s house” (i Sam. xxii. 20-22), should be taken to mean that David foresaw all the terrible consequences of the deceit which he practised, but was willing to save his own life at any cost. For this there is absolutely no warrant in the narrative.
That David should be criticized for being a polygamist is quite re- markable. The Law of Moses does not prohibit, though it does restrict polygamy ; and according to the critics the Pentateuch was not completed until the days of Ezra or later. If the Psalter is the critics’ “Hymn Book of the Second Temple,” the Pentateuch is their “Law Book of the Second Temple.” Have they any right to require a higher standard of their psalmists than of their priests and jurists? And if they reply by saying that the prophets were proponents of monogamy, would we not be justi- fied in asking how much interest the prophets who are regarded by them as the arch enemies of priestly ritual and of the Law should be expected to take in the preparation of a Temple Hymn Book? Certainly they will not maintain that the Psalter is an exclusively “prophetic” collection ! But is the fact that David was a polygamist really an objection to his being thought of as a psalmist ? Let us take an extreme illustration. The 128th Psalm is not attributed to David by the Hebrew Text or the Sep- tuagint Version. We have no thought of asserting that he composed it. But, when we think of the tragedies of David’s life which were the direct result of the sins and mistakes which marred it in its most intimate relationships, can we not realize what a wonderful attractiveness the sim- ple, peaceful, beautiful life pictured in this psalm might have for him especially in his declining years? The Song of Song is attributed to Solo- mon and certainly he would be a very foolish critic who would cite the Grand Monarch’s polygamy as a proof that he could not have written it. A man who had seven hundred wives, but no wife, might be just the one to write it!
Another element in our author’s indictment of David is that David’s God is “restrained within certain geographical boundaries.” This is as- serted on the basis of i Sam. xxvi. 19 where David complains of the effort which is being made to drive him forth “from abiding in the in-
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heritance of Yahweh.” Since this charge that David believed in a “tribal god” is often made, it is important to notice the witnesses that are cited by our author as proving that “for that age and in that part of the world, there were as many gods as there were people.” The witnesses are Jephthah, the foreigners brought into Samaria by the king of Assyria, and Absalom. Let us consider the value of this evidence, a) Jephthah was an illegitimate son who was disowned by his father’s family and became the leader of a band of wild spirits in the mountain fastnesses of Gilead. His early religious training and manhood faith were probably as vague and meagre as that of many a typical “bad man” of our Western frontier of fifty years ago. In a contest of wits with the king of Ammon he draws a comparison between Jehovah as the national God of Israel and Chemosh as the god of the Ammonites. Just how much he meant by it we cannot say. It may have been an ad hominem argument, and Jephthah may not have been entirely ignorant of the superior claims of Jehovah. b) “The men from Babylon and Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath and from Separvaim” — is it not perfectly plain from the narra- tive that they were heathen, who did not know the Lord? And is it not equally plain that the religion which they adopted was a mixed and hybrid affair, — “they feared the Lord and served their own gods”? What right have they to appear as witnesses as to the faith of a true Israelite, of a king of Israel? c) Absalom is the third witness. When he was plotting to overthrow his father, he gave as an excuse for going to Hebron a vow which he had made while at Geshur : “If Yahweh will indeed bring me back to Jerusalem, then I will serve Yahweh.” “Why not serve Yahweh in Jerusalem?” — asks Professor Smith. “Because,” he tells us, “the Yahweh of Jerusalem was not the Yahweh of Hebron.” But this inference is not at all necessary. Absalom’s desire to pay his vow at Hebron (supposing of course that there was any truth at all in the story which he told) may readily be accounted -for by supposing that the vow had some special reference to Hebron, for which as the home of his childhood he felt perhaps an especial attachment. When a Christian today expresses a desire to be buried in the old grave- yard in the little country village vChich he has not seen for years, does that prove that he believes in a tribal and localized deity, who might lose sight of him if his bones were laid to rest in a place remote from the home of his youth? We do not think so. Superstition and ignorance show themselves in many ways. But such a desire as this is not incon- sistent with the best and truest religious faith. Furthermore Professor Smith’s interpretation seems to prove too much. If Absalom believed in several Yahwehs, David must have done the same since Absalom was using an excuse which would appeal to his father, not offend him. If so, should he not have been more explicit in his complaint to Saul and in- stead of speaking of being “driven out of Yahweh’s land,” have told us which Yahweh he referred to ?
Yet these are the witnesses which Professor Smith introduces — Jeph- thah, heathen immigrants from Assyria, and David’s unnatural son, Absalom — to prove that David could not have written the 139th Psalm,
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some verses of which he at once proceeds to quote. He ignores the i8th Psalm, which the Book of Samuel definitely attributes to David, the 31st verse of which (“For who is God save the Lord? or who is a rock save our God?”) certainly has a pronounced monotheistic sound, and like Samuel’s words at Mizpeh (i Sam. x. 18) shows clearly that the power of the God of Israel extended far beyond the limits of his own land and that the great lesson of the Exodus was not allowed to pass entirely out of the national consciousness (even Jephthah alludes to it). He also insists on placing an interpretation upon the words “Yahweh’s land” which is forced and unnecessary. The fact that Palestine is fre- quently declared to be in an especial and peculiar sense Jehovah’s land, does not necessarily involve the limitation of His presence or power to it; the contrary had been frequently proved by his dealings with other nations, notably Egypt. And that David’s reference to being cast out of it and being told “Go serve other gods” should not be so understood is made abundantly plain by other passages of Scripture which are only ruled out of court by the arbitrary methods of the critics.
This leads us to cite in closing a few sentences which indicate Pro- fessor Smith’s estimate of this Hymn Book in the preparation of which he is so unwilling to permit King David to have a part. In the chapter on “The Idea of God in the Psalms” we read as follows ; “The psalmists carry their personification of God so far as not to shrink from assign- ing even human limitations to him. Of course, personality itself is a limitation, but they go far beyond that. He shares some of the frailties of human personality, and is presented in a thoroughly anthropomorphic way. He has a face, with eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. He has arms, hands and feet. He breathes, swallows, and talks. He grows weary and may take a nap. He becomes angry and executes vengeance upon the wicked ; but his anger may come and as quickly go. On one occasion, in- deed, I.Ioses actually turned back Yahweh’s wrath. Appeals are con- stantly made to his pride; he must intervene in his people’s behalf for the sake of his name, i.e. his reputation among men. He needs and is provided with a house ; sometimes his dwelling-place is in the heavens and again it is on earth, in the Temple at Jerusalem. He is credited with a great love of praise. This characteristic appears in the name of the Psalter which is ‘Praises.’ It is shown by the great amount of praise that is expressed in the Psalms. The last five psalms, each beginning with ‘Hallelujah,’ i.e., ‘praise ye Yahweh,’ are nothing but ascriptions of praise from first to last. This weakness is made use of in a fine argumentative way by some of the psalmists. Yahweh is not thought of as being above considerations that affect his own advantage; he is a God that may be reasoned with. Loving approbation as he does, he will naturally not wish to act in any way so as to diminish the volume of his praise” (p. 141). Here we have an elaborate sketch, fortified by references to one or more verses in 45 different psalms (these references are added in foot- notes), of a god who is merely a magnified man and who shows a whole- some regard for “public opinion” which many a popular demagogue might take example by. It would seem as if the thought of the necessity
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for the democratization of deity was not a modern but an ancient con- cept ! We do not accept this sketch as correct. In fact we believe that a well trained Sunday School scholar who knew his Bible and Catechism ought to have no difficulty in perceiving its utter falsity. (The critics charge the conservatives at times with being too literal in their interpre- tation of Scripture ; but when it suits their purpose they can show them- selves the most extreme of literalists.) The point which we would raise is this. If this were a true picture of the God of the “Hymn Book of the Second Temple” as Professor Smith would have us believe, might not even so inept a theologian as David have had some very definite part in its preparation? There is nothing in it of theological subtlety which a “rude warrior” such as David could not grasp. Even an African savage understands the value of flattery, if that is all the Hallelujah Psalms amount to.
Professor Smith’s method of criticism as illustrated in this volume can be summed up in general by the word “disparaging.” He disparages David with a view to proving him incapable of writing psalms ; and then he disparages the Psalms to show, it would seem, how far short they fall of our modern standards. Yet the opening sentences of our author’s preface are these: “Books about the Psalms come and go; the Psalms go on forever. They belong to the permanent literature of the race.” That this statement will prove itself true as regards this and other volumes which have been and are being written from the same viewpoint and in similar spirit, we are prepared to admit. But how in view of all the crudities he finds in them Professor Smith can account for the obvious fact that “the Psalms go on forever” we are at a loss to understand.
Princeton. Oswald T. Allis.
Who’s Who in the Bible. A Directory of Scriptural Characters. By Rev.
E. Fletcher Allen, M.A. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York &
London. 1925.
“This collection of brief biographies,” the author tells us in the Foreword, “does not pretend to include every name that was mentioned in the Scriptures or in contemporaneous history. It has been compiled on the basis that is laid down in present-day dictionaries of biography : the individual mentioned must have some claim to inclusion. He (or she) must have counted in some particular manner in the historical develop- ment of religious history or religious thought. The contribution may have been small or isolated, and, for the immediate moment, have been seemingly inconsequential — ^but little happenings have frequently blos- somed into a great magnitude when time has passed and the judgment of centuries has been formed.”
The above statement will impress the reader as a fair and judicious one, but when he comes to examine the practical application of the prin- ciples stated he will notice some very strange omissions and inclusions. Thus, the omission of the name of Cyrus, Ahasuerus, Shalmaneser among foreign kings is surprising. Certainly no one of the world rulers had greater importance for Israel than Cyrus the Great, and if Darius, Sargon and Necho are to be included the three rulers we have mentioned should
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not be overlooked. Again, it is surprising to find the name of Jehoiada omitted (except in connection with Joash) when we remember what a conspicuous role he played in the history of Judah. The omission is all the more remarkable when we find so inconspicuous a figure as Bukki, son of Jogli, mentioned whose only claim to distinction was the fact of his being “one of ten to whom was entrusted a division of Canaan among the twelve tribes.’’ Other omissions are Haman, Mordecai, and among the minor prophets Joel and Malachi. If Joel is omitted because nothing is known about him except his name, should not the prophet Obadiah be excluded for the same reason?
“So far as is possible, the subject matter in this book is drawn from the Scriptures ; where that is not so, it has been made obvious ; and, for the commerce of the spirit, no other sources were necessary. By taking the great men and the great movements of the Scriptures through their various courses, the inevitability of Christianity stands out plainly” (p. vii f). As is indicated by this quotation the data contained in this book is in general a simple summary of the Biblical data. There are, however, occasional indications that the author has been influenced to some extent by “critical” theories regarding the Scriptures. Thus, the paragraph which immediately follows the one just quoted reads as follows : “It ceases to matter whether, as some say, Moses found his idea of God during his sojourn in Midian and came back to his people with the God of the Midianites, or whether he was driven into exile in order to appre- ciate the virtues of the God of his own people. Wherever Moses got the dominating inspiration is somehow insignificant, academic. The great fact is that he returned capable of welding his people into a spiritual unity first, and then to bring about their coalition into a nation. But the spiritual unity preceded the national unity and has persisted long after the national unity disappeared under economic pressure.” Here we have an example of the attempt which is so often made to distinguish between the facts and the religious ideas of the Old Testament. The Old Testa- ment record tells us very plainly that Moses did not borrow his idea of God from the Midianites, but that during his sojourn in Midian the God of his fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, revealed Himself to him and commissioned him to deliver His people from the bondage of Egypt. This is clearly stated and the facts and the religious ideas are so closely interwoven that to discredit the one cannot fail to reflect upon the reliability of the other. The fact that it is an historical religion, a religion whose facts are true and whose doctrines are derived from the facts is the prime excellence of the religion of Israel.
It may be noted also that the sketches which Mr. .Allen gives us are at times decidedly “sketchy” and one-sided. Thus, in the biography of David (it is four pages long, the longest in the book) we read of “David as a wanderer, David as king, David’s declining years.” The fact that according to the Scriptures he was the author of many Psalms, the sweet singer of Israel, is alluded to only in the following sentence: “The inspired Psalmist, the great warrior, the wise king, yet had to reckon with forces which he himself had loosed in his youth.” Surely this is a very inadequate reference to David, the Psalmist. If the author does not
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believe that David wrote the Psalms attributed to him, the phrase “the inspired Psalmist” is decidedly misleading. If, on the other hand, he accepts the traditional view of David, this brief reference in a four page sketch is utterly inadequate.
Princeton. Oswald T. Allis.
HISTORICAL THEOLOGY
My Duel mith the Vatican. The Autobiography of a Catholic Modernist. By Alfred Loisy. Professor in the College de France. Authorized Translation by Richard Wilson Boynton. New York; E. P. Dutton & Co. 1924. Pp. xiii, 357.
Despite the statement of Professor Loisy in his Preface that the present work “is in no sense an apologia,” careful reading discloses the fact that this is exactly what it is. It is an apologia pro vita sua all through ; perchance not intentionally as much of one as the author could have written, but the kind of an autobiography in which the fact of self-defense bulks conspicuously large. How could it be otherwise? How could Professor Loisy portray the struggles through which he passed without setting up some defense of his career? Some autobiographies are from their very nature apologiae. This is one of that kind.
We pass over the translator’s introduction of over forty pages, re-printed from the Harvard Theological Review of January, 1918. It is on “The Catholic Career of Alfred Firmin Loisy,” and is especially valuable as giving a biographer’s setting to the autobiography which follows. If we understand it correctly, however, perhaps few will agree with the statement (p. 38) that “What Loisy hoped and desired of the Roman Catholic Church was nothing excessive or unreasonable.” Indeed, it was the enormity of his expectations and desires that utterly dislocated his relationship in the Roman Church, and probably would in any other church outside the extreme wing of rationalistic Protestantism.
As a unique venture within the Roman fold, this life is full of thrills. It has all the tense situations and brilliant encounters that make the novel a read book. A Marie Corelli or a Hall Caine could take Professor Loisy and make a capital hero out of him. There is plenty of material, background, character, theme-stuff — all leading out to a climax, and no trace of any anti-climax. Even in Mr. Boynton’s translation there is every evidence of a fine piece of work that cannot fail to lay hold of the theological imagination, wherever that is found. From beginning to end, this story is full of human interest. For the sake of an orderly view. Professor Loisy, as he here unveils himself, leaves upon us a fourfold impression.
I. He was wonderfully persevering in the face of the obstacle of poor health. His delicate physical endowment was constantly before him. For seven years (1899-1906) he was granted the official Indult or privilege of saying Mass in his own room. He writes (p. 277), on Nov. 27, 1905: “Physically I have not much to go on, and morally I am pretty desolate.” Repeated hemorrhages in 1906 and 1907 reminded him again that his
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health was, as ever, undependable. Notwithstanding this, his pen was busy bringing out one book after another in his chosen field. This indomitable energy, ever battling against the odds of physical weakness, seldom fails to elicit our admiration, whether we see it in a John Calvin, a Robert Louis Stevenson, a Sidney Lanier, or an Alfred Loisy.
2. He was a man of scholarly habits. He made it a duty, he tells us (p. 102), each year to read through the Bible in the original tongues. A glance at the titles of his books shows how far he had gone into the fields of exegesis. Biblical criticism, and Christian theology. In all his many works he dealt with themes that demand the intellectual equipment of the scholar and the zealous application of the devotee.
3. Professor Loisy was, however, dominantly rationalistic in his method and thinking. This autobiography ought to make this plain to an unbiased reader. He not only broke with Rome. The logical trend of his mental attitude was farther and farther away from a sound evangelicism in the direction of a bold rationalism. This is not to say that he went as far in this direction as he might have gone. But the fact itself is too apparent to require very much debate. His confessions in this book are so exceedingly frank that they are almost blunt. His Latin thesis for the Th.D. degree was too radical for publication. He admits that Renan was truly his master (p. 327). “It will some day,” he says (p. 126), “be cause for astonishment, even in the Church of Rome — at least so I should hope — that a Catholic University professor should have been judged highly reprehensible for having said, in the year of grace 1892, that the narratives of the first chapter of Genesis are not to be taken as literal history, and that the alleged agreement of the Bible with natural science is a rather shabby subterfuge.” In a letter of April 22, 1906, he told a friend that “theology never has been and never can be anything but a more and more purified mythology” (p. 279). Under date of June 7, 1904, he writes (p. 275) : “I feel myself in close enough communion with the intelligent and moral portion of mankind in these days to desire no other support. It will get me nowhere to believe firmly that Jesus Christ descended into hell and that he rose again to the skies. Neither do I find any spiritual solace in thinking that there are really three persons in God, or in considering Him a person at all. For a long while I have not found it possible to pray to God as one beseeches an individual from whom some favor is anticipated. My prayers consist of retiring into the depths of my own consciousness and there gathering my best impulses together to determine what for me is right and lawful.” One could scarcely find a bolder and more sadly self-sufficient subjectivism than this. When a man’s prayers disclose nothing deeper and more reassuring than his own self-consciousness, he is of all men most pitiable. All this was but the subsequent confirmation of an earlier suspicion : “W'hat I was beginning to believe regarding the Bible, Jesus, the Christian principles and their origin, was the absolute negation of any supernatural character for religion whatsoever” (pp. 102-103). A summer vacation’s check-up convinced him that since 1881 the traditional idea of an inspired Bible must be “charged among the losses” (p. 95). During his five years
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at the Convent in Neuilly he says he endeavored to “adapt Catholic doctrine to the exigencies of contemporary thought,” and makes the blunt confession ; “On my part, I never regained the simple faith of my child- hood, nor could I accept literally a single article of the creed, unless it were that Jesus was “crucified under Pontius Pilate”; yet religion appeared to me more and more in the light of a tremendous force that had dominated, and still was dominant, in the whole of human history” (p. i68).
While these quotations have been taken from different sections of the book, they are sufficiently related, not only to each other, but to the contexts out of which they are selected, to show the main trend of their author’s thinking, his Weltanschauung in these matters. They speak for themselves. They could be weakened only in the interest of an equivoca- tion against which Professor Loisy had all too often to struggle.
4. It would be unfair to the author of this autobiography to think of him as irreligious. Indeed, he was very religious. There was no real desire to break with the Roman Church. He could not, as he said, destroy in himself the result of his labors, yet he could wish to live and die in the communion of the Catholic Church. Here was an irreconcilable conflict (p. 262!), which he clearly saw. The issue was clear-cut. He could not remain a Catholic priest outside the Church, or even a Catholic despite the Pope (p. 286). And so his ecclesiastical doom was progressively sealed. Expelled from the Catholic Institute of Paris in 1893, his books were put on the Index in 1903, he said his last Mass in 1906, and was excommunicated by Pope Pius X. on March 7, igo8, an act which he felt had been decided on four years before, and which came twenty years too late (pp. 319, 322). As professor in the College de France, where he was promptly received, and where Renan had taught, Professor Loisy had the intellectual freedom which he had sought in vain in his church.
The impression closes in upon us, however, that this hunted heretic was also at times haunted with his own misgivings as to the success of his own life. On April 9, 1904, he writes in his journal : “I have given myself a lot of trouble in this world with small result. I took my own life and the Church seriously, and the consequence is that I have wasted the one and disturbed the other ... I have strewn my intelligence and my activity to the four winds of an empty ideal. That has made for me an aimless life, a career that has led nowhere. I am gathering up my fragments of life and strength to carry them to Marmouse, old before my time, suspected by the Church, abandoned by the world, destined to quick oblivion” (p. 272f). This was more than temporary depression. It is the honest confession of one who certainly knew that he was fighting a losing battle, and that therefore much of his effort could only be “barren gain and bitter loss.”
From this standpoint we are forced to take a final view of Professor Loisy. There are those who will, of course, see in him a prophet far ahead of his day. But is not a “Roman Catholic Modernist,” after all, a contradiction in terms? The logical place, it would seem, for men like George Tyrrell and Alfred Loisy is not in the Roman Catholic Church,
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but somewhere out of it. And if they are not out of it, it must be because of silence on their part, or a toleration on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities inconsistent with the fundamental tenets of the Church. It is of little avail to speak of “his willing captivity within Catholicism” (p. vi.). Radicalism is one thing; Romanism is another. They don’t mix; They never have. And the human mind being constructed as it is, they never will. Nobody knew this better than Professor Loisy. Through all those years he labored in an atmosphere altogether uncongenial to his own conclusions. Those conclusions inevitably made enemies for him. They would do so in many Protestant communions today. He blames the Church. But his case would rest on the assumption that his conclusions are fundamentally sound, which they are not. You cannot harmonize Christianity and the antisupernaturalism of Rationalism. That has been tried too often, and failed just as often. Professor Loisy was a disturber of the peace. His church eliminated him because, from her point of view, valuable in many ways as he undoubtedly was, he was too great a risk. And who can blame an institution for maintaining its own integrity? Professor Loisy wanted more than it was safe to give. There is a safety zone, in which the Church, both Protestant and Roman, is justified in taking and maintaining its stand.
Lancaster, Ohio. Benjamin F. Paist.
The Breach with Rome. A Defense of the Continuity of the Church of England during the Reformation. By The Reverend William H. Nes, B.D. With an Introduction by The Rt. Rev. J. H. Darlington, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of Harrisburg. Morehouse Publishing Co., Milwaukee, Wis. A. R. Mowbray & Co., London. 1924. Pp. vii, 62. Price $1.
This booklet is another defense of the Anglican theory of succession, though, as Bishop Darlington says in his Introduction, it aims not to provoke needless offense. From the very nature of the essay, however, it is polemic and controversial, being a reasoned disavowal of the old contention that the Anglican Church was really a new sect created by Henry VIII. Events between 1534 and 1570 are hastily reviewed, specific instances of ordinations are given necessary (so the author believes) to establish the historic continuity of the Church of England. The whole matter is finally reduced to the question of the validity of one man’s ordination, that of the consecration of Bishop Matthew Parker over the see of Canterbury. “Upon this turns the whole question of the Anglican episcopal succession, and, by inference of the organic continuity of the English Church.” “If Parker was truly and validly made Archbishop, the old Church still survives” (pp. 33, 34)- Data are summoned to prove that this consecration took place in Lambeth Chapel on December 17, 1559. And as this was the supposedly (on the part of Romanists) absent or at least weak link in the chain, its presence and strength being established, the much desired succession follows. Which was the thing to be proved.
From this brief survey of the argument it is plain that this book is especially addressed to Roman Catholics, who brand the Anglican Church
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as schismatic, lacking a true succession in its ministry. The argument of Mr. Nes should be taken seriously by all such. But to the Non-conformist, who has never had much zeal for what Dr. Samuel Miller called “a regular ecclesiastical genealogy from the apostles,” this essay will prove interesting, but scarcely one of any great moment. It is a theory of the ministry which is bound to take Romanism more seriously than Non- conformity. To the latter it has ever been a comfort that the true succession is not necessarily tied up with ordination links historically validated according to certain prescribed ordinals.
To be sure, the question is one worthy of all the light which historic investigation can shed upon it. Much has already been written. On the Non-Conformist side, two books surely deserve the careful perusal of all open-minded students in this field : one, very old ; the other, compara- tively recent. They are: The Primitive and Apostolical Order of the Church of Christ Vindicated, by Dr. Samuel Miller (1840) ; and The Historic Episcopate, by the late Dr. Robert Ellis Thompson (1910). And those who cannot accept Mr. Nes’s High Anglican position or even agree wholly with his argument, can nevertheless be favorably impressed with his spirit and the compact presentation he has made of an issue old, yet ever new.
Lancaster, Ohio. Benjamin F. Paist.
Nicolaus de' Tudeschi. Seine Tatigkeit am Easier Konzil. By Julius ScHWEizER. Strasbourg; Imprimerie Alsacienne, 1924. Pp. 194.
In the year of our Lord, 1432, when the Renaissance was still young, the University of Padua called to its halls a brilliant professor of canon law named Nicolas de Tudeschi. But the University of Florence refused to let him go, alleging that if they did, “they would be forced to close their university.” Nevertheless, not long after, he did leave, in order to serve as envoy for the pope Eugene at the council of Basel. The council of Basel was based upon the same principle as its predecessor the council of Constance, namely, that a council was superior to a pope. Since the emergency created by the papal schism no longer existed to give power and usefulness to this principle, it became instead a source of controversy, making the council of Basel a stage for unending and vicious intrigues.
Tudeschi was well-fitted to represent the pope at such an assembly of wranglers, for he was a prince of opportunists. While he ascribed to the pope as head of the church almost unlimited powers, including the right to ignore the decrees of a council — if he were right — he denied that the pope was infallible. Likewise, to an oecumenical council Nicolas attrib- uted the chief pow'er in the church, if it did not err. But only the church, with which neither pope nor council was identical, had the gift of infalli- bility.
Holding such beliefs a man could fight with equal zeal for either pope or council, and this Tudeschi did without scruple as the occasion made it advisable. Ehiring his first stay he employed technicalities, long speeches, and similar methods to prevent a trial of the pope. In Decem- ber 1436 he came to the council again, but this time as archbishop of Palermo and representative of King Alfonso of Aragon who sought to
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win the throne of Naples from the pope and the Duke of Anjou. This time Nicolas served his royal master by opposing the pope’s attempt to transfer the council to Italy, and by advocating the suspension of Eugene. At one time the excitement ran so high that only the presence of soldiers in the cathedral kept the “holy fathers” from shedding each other’s blood. As soon as the pope was suspended, Tudeschi, who had won high honors as a champion of the council, changed his policy and worked equally hard to prevent the final deposition of Eugene. This he did because Alfonso could gain more from a pope precariously situated than from a pope dethroned. But the wily intrigues to which he resorted were of no avail. Eugene was deposed by the council, and it was regarded as highly significant that during a thunderstorm the houses of Tudeschi and other papal defenders were struck by lightning.
When Nicolas came to the council a third time, he wore the cardinal’s hat, bestowed upon him by the schismatic pope, Felix V. Again he championed the council and was rewarded with high offices. On one occasion he spoke for three days and was answered by Nicolas of Cusa in a speech of equal length. Tudeschi also seized an opportunity to display his piety by assisting in the condemnation of a “wicked heretic” who cried out against the riches of the clergy and announced a new dispen- sation of the Holy Spirit. Soon after, the new cardinal was recalled by King Alfonso, who had shown such great military superiority that pope Eugene decided that he must be the rightful heir to the throne of Naples after all. But Nicolas, since no reward was in view, refused to submit to Eugene, or to lay aside the cardinal’s hat ; and when he turned to his royal master for support, he received the reply that no aid could be given to a man who had deserted his lord the pope so faithlessly. Such was his reward. Soon after this he died of the plague, little comforted by the riches and honors he had gained so dishonorably.
This, in brief, is the story of Nicolas de Tudeschi, as told, and well told, by Julius Schweizer. The work is scholarly and accurate, based on an exhaustive investigation of the sources, and is consequently a real con- tribution to historical knowledge. It might be remarked, however, that the account is not well balanced, being unduly full where the sources are full. More explanation of important and not commonly familiar matters, such as the most common reference “M. C.” would be helpful to the reader. The most serious fault in the monograph is a weakness in characterization, culminating in the concluding sentence, “Thus we can draw his portrait with few lines: he was one of the greatest legal scholars and one of the most zealous diplomats of his time.” A fuller and franker statement than this of the author’s estimate of the man might properly be expected.
May the wish be expressed that Dr. Schweizer will soon employ his exceptional abilities on some more worthy subject than an unscrupulous Italian ecclesiastic, and a selfish, worldly, mercenary, contentious council, which could do anything rather than speak the mind of Jesus Christ.
Delaware, Ohio. Hastings Eells.
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PRACTICAL THEOLOGY
Looking Toward The Heights. By O. C. S. Wallace, M.A., D.D., LL.D., New York: George H. Doran Company. Pp. 174.
This volume consists of a series of sermons, preached before the students and faculty of the College of William and Mary, by the pastor of Eutaw Place Baptist Church, Baltimore, together with a foreword by President J. A. C. Chandler and an introduction by Professor William A. R. Goodwin.
It is not often that one is privileged to read a series of sermons, especially a series of sermons preached in an academic atmosphere, so soundly evangelical as those that Dr. Wallace has given us. Dr. Wallace has not fallen into the mistake of supposing that he must empty Christianity of its content before it can be preached in college circles. It is not even a pared-down or diluted Gospel that is found in these pages. Christ is presented, not as the flower of humanity but as the “Incarnate Son of God, God in human form.” Moreover He is presented not merely as a teacher and not merely as an example but as one who bore our sins in His own body on the tree. It is as refreshing as it is rare to read in a sermon preached before students such a passage as this : “It is not primarily the Christ of peerless wisdom who stands at the door and knocks, nor the Christ of loving service, but the Christ of redemption. Knowledge brings light to the intellect, and loving service brings the light of joy and peace to the burdened, shadowed heart ; but it is redemption by the blood of Christ, symbolized by the pierced hand, that hand which was fastened to the cross, when he became obedient unto death, which alone can dissipate all the darkness of the soul, all darkness, all gloom, all foreboding for time and for eternity.”
These sermons speak to the heart and will as well as the mind. Excellent alike in form and in content, they present, in the words of Professor Goodwin, a challenge to high courage, to noble ideals, and to the sacrificial life. We are not at all surprised when he tells us that these sermons produced a profound impression upon the students and faculty before whom they were preached; and we share the hope of President Chandler and himself that they may be widely read by the general public and particularly by college and university students.
Princeton. S. G. Craig.
Christ Triumphant. By A. Maude Royden. New York and London : G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1924. Pp. 150.
This little book consists of two series of sermons by a woman who has won eminence as a preacher. The book receives its name- from the first series ; the second series deals with “The Meaning of the Cross in the Twentieth Century.” These sermons are not lacking in elements of power and distinction but from the viewpoint of evangelical Christianity they must be judged sadly defective. Miss Royden shows a marked tendency to ignore the dividing lines between the Christian and non-Christian religions. She says, for instance, “I believe that the cross of Christ is really the cross of all great religions.” While she says much that is
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Striking, and quite a little that is true, in her discussion of the meaning oh the cross today, yet she is wholly silent concerning that which alone makes the cross a solid ground of hope for sinners, viz., that there Christ offered up Himself as an expiatory sacrifice for the world’s sin. More- over in her discussion of Christ as triumphant she is concerned almost exclusively with showing that the principles that Christ laid down for our guidance are right principles from a common-sense point of view' and that if followed they will lead to success in business, industry, in social and international relations. It is well that this fact should be emphasized but not that it should be emphasized to the neglect of the fact that the bond that binds real Christians together is not primarily their common lo}-alty to the principles and ideals taught and exemplified by Christ but their common lo3’altj' to His person. It maj- also be mentioned that Miss Royden speaks of our Lord as a Mj-stic in a sense that finds no warrant in the New Testament. We sj-mpathize with her desire to do justice to both Easter and Good Friday — ^both to Christ as risen and Christ as crucified — but that can be done only by those who share the presuppositions of the New Testament.
Princeton. S. G. CiLua
International Christian Movements. Bj’ Charles S. Macfarland, D.D., New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. Pp. 222.
This book by the General Secretary of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America is an informing one and meets a real need. It provides a useful reference book that contains a mass of dependable information concerning the main organizations within Protes- tantism that are international in their character and influence not elsewhere readily accessible to the general reader. In addition it indicates the sources to which we may go if we desire fuller information in regard to any of these movements. It will be surprising to many to learn how many such organizations there are in existence. Dr. Macfarland deals particularh' with some thirty-five such bodies and movements and then in his closing chapter, entitled “Other Organizations and Movements’’ confesses that he “has by no means exhausted the list of the Evangelical Christian organizations which are either directly or indirectly contributing to the cause of world brotherhood and evangelical unitj-.’’ Just why Dr. Macfarland should regard “The International Congress of Religious Liberals” as entitled to consideration in such connections we are at a loss to understand.
Princeton. S. G. CR.-MG.
Sermons for the Times by Present-Day Preachers. Edited by Peter W.\lker with Introduction by Thom.^s L. Massox. Fleming H. Revell Co. Price Si. 50.
This volume consists of thirteen sermons by as many prominent American preachers. In selecting the preachers who should be asked to contribute to its make-up the editor was evidently guided by the desire to produce a volume of sermons representative of the American pulpit both denominationally and theologically. Its contributors include four
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Congregationalists, three Baptists, three Presbyterians, two Methodists, and one Lutheran. Moreover they include about an equal number of “Fundamentalists,” “Modernists,” and those who seek to steer a middle course between the Scylla and Charybdis of what they regard as two extreme positions. None of the sermons are polemic in nature; all of them are excellent of their kind ; as a whole they are doubtless thoroughly representative of the best preaching to be heard in the American pulpit of today. The names of the contributors follow : David J. Burrell, S. Parkes Cadman, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Newell Dwight Hillis, Chas. E. Jefferson, Leander S. Keyser, Bishop McConnell, W. P. Merrill, Bishop Quayle, W. B. Riley, Frederick F. Shannon, John Timothy Stone, Cornelius Woelfkin.
Princeton. S. G. Craig.
A Study of the Junior Child — For Junior Teachers. By Mary Theodora Whitley. Printed for The Teacher Training Publishing Association by The Westminster Press. Philadelphia. 1923. Pp. 155. Price 60 cents.
A striking feature of present day church work is the increasing activity of non-professional or lay workers. In this there is possibility of good and evil, especially evil, for we have good authority for believing that if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. Therefore in addition to the fundamental requirement of sincere faith in Jesus as Lord and Saviour, there is need of expert knowledge of the What and the How of the teaching task of the Christian religion. The book before us aims to tell the facts concerning the Junior child, i.e., the child of nine to twelve years of age. It is one of the textbooks of the Standard Course in Teacher Training, outlined and approved by The International Sunday School Council of Religious Education. In successive chapters we are told in bright and concise language how the Junior child reveals himself in play, at home, and in the day school, and the physical and psychological facts that the teacher of the Christian religion should keep in mind. At the close of each chapter is a number of discussion questions, and the book ends with a brief bibliography.
Lincoln University, Pa. George Johnson.
Parent Training in the Church School. By Florence E. Norton. Phila- delphia : Board of Christian Education of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. 1923. Pp. 96. Price 60 cents.
This little book is intended for those who would teach parents how to proceed with the spiritual training of their children. It is written under the conviction that the home should be the main agency for the education of children in the truths of the Spirit, but that many parents are today woefully ignorant how to go about the task. Therefore we are told how to reach the parents through the Cradle Roll Department, the Children’s Division of the Sunday School, and the Parent Teacher Association. In addition there are well selected programs for Mothers’ Clubs and for Evening Meetings. There is here a wealth of suggestive material for all who are interested in this much needed work.
Lincoln University, Pa.
George Johnson.
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To Be Near Unto God. By Abraham Kuyper, D.D., LL.D. Former Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Translated from the Dutch by John Hendrik DeVries, D.D. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1925. Pp. 679.
This is a great book by a great man. In the midst of gigantic labours as a profound theologian — possibly the greatest of modern times — and as a statesman of the first rank. Dr. Km-per always kept before him the ideal of communion with God as man’s highest destiny, privilege, and duty. To make this ideal his own and to stamp it on the life of his Fatherland, this great theologian wrote more than two thousand devotional medita- tions. This book gives us one hundred and ten of them, each from a different viewpoint and a different Scriptural passage, but all on the single thought from Psalm 73 : “As for me, it is good to be near unto God.’’
The translator has said too little in classing them with the best works of Dutch mystics. We think they will rank with the best devotional literature of all lands and ages. With powerful imagination and profound theological insight. Dr. Kuyper has written with the heart of a child and in language that a child can understand and yet in which a grown man will find all his powers engaged to drink from this rich spring of living water. We have here the humility of a great Christian heart in the presence of the majesty of the Infinite God.
Dr. Kuj’per knew that in the deeps of religious mysticism there ever lurks danger. The soul that seeks God, as he says in the Preface, involun- tarily inclines to step across the boundary that separates the Infinite and the finite, defined by the word “near,” and to force an entrance panthe- istically into God’s Being. Another danger is that “spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism.” Still another danger is to forget the estrangement from God caused by sin and lose sight of the historical Christ and His historical work of redemption. Each of these dangers Dr. Kuyper has studiously avoided. No trace of pantheism can be found here, no “sickly m}-sticism” for underlying all is the author’s clear apprehension of the Reformed Faith which colours and sustains every thought, imagination, and devout emotion, no neglect of the awfulness of sin, for all fellowship with God is for Dr. Kuj-per through Christ and by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the heart of God’s child. Yet it is a true “mysticism,” nevertheless, which the author gives us. “Stress in creedal confession,” he says, “without drinking of these waters (of communion with God), runs dry in barren orthodoxy.”
Here, then, there is nc barren intellectualism, no stopping short with thoughts about God, and at the same time no bathing of oneself in “experience” and “life” which has no roots in the Divine revelation in the Bible. What we find is not knowledge about God, but that knowledge of God and Christ by the Spirit which is eternal life. Religion for Dr. Ku>-per is not thought, feeling, or activity, but back of all a vital fellow- ship with God which flows out into all spheres of human life, enriching science, controlling feeling, and bringing to every human task a nobility which springs from this deep source and which renders all human life
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something which is for the purpose of manifesting the glory of God.
It is difficult to give any adequate idea of the rich thought content which gives form to these religious meditations. It is, first of all, deeply Christian. The guilt and power of sin, the mediatorial work of Christ, the renewal of the Holy Spirit, are all given full recognition as condi- tioning the communion of fallen man with the Holy God. The Trinitarian conception of God comes to its full expression, and the saving work of each Person is clearly seen to underlie the whole conception of nearness to God. It is not only Christian, each meditation is from the standpoint of the Reformed Faith. To be near to God is not only man’s chief end, it is for the purpose of manifesting God’s glory and giving Him the honor due to our Maker. God is our Maker, our Fountain of life, our Sun and Shield, our Rock and Fortress, Almighty Saviour, our loving heavenly Father. As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth the soul after the living God. In this nearness to God, He is sovereign. He draws us into communion with Himself, and only so can we enjoy it. He can hide his face for a time if He will, either to test our faith or because of our sin. Yet He is ever near and encompasseth us with His presence even when we faint spiritually and fail to be conscious of His presence. We are dependent on Him for everything, and this highest gift of conscious nearness to Him is His gracious gift. He has provided the means. He gives us the power. His is all the praise and glory. It is also in accordance with the Reformed point of view that it is no cloistered “mysticism” which is here portrayed. We are to be near to God in our vocation, and to bring every calling in life, whether statecraft, business, art, or science, under this walking near to God. We are to make our refuge in the covert of God’s wings, and then to face the world and its tasks and to bring all life near to God. Perhaps we can sum it up by saying that Almighty God has created man in His image and for communion with Himself, and as Almighty and gracious Saviour has re-established com- munion with fallen man. God has thus made possible the attainment of man’s chief end which is “to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever.”
This volume forms a fitting climax to the labours of its author. After graduating from the University of Leyden, he took his Doctorate there in 1863. A year later he began his ministry at Beesd, from whence he went to Utrecht, and in 1870 to Amsterdam. In 1872 he became Editor of De Standard, a daily paper, the organ of the anti-revolutionary party. Soon after this he became editor of De Heraut, a Christian weekly paper. For more than forty-five years he filled these positions with power.
When he left the University of Leyden, he had advanced liberal ideas, having studied under Scholten and Kuenen, among others. But in his pastorate he learned the need and felt the experience of the Gospel of Grace, through his contact with the simple people of his Church. Liber- alism could not satisfy their spiritual needs, and so it came about that their minister himself felt his own soul cry out for the bread of life. He studied the mediating theology of Germany, but found no rest for his soul in it. When he came to study Calvin he found both intellectual and spiritual satisfaction. Here he found what the uneducated people of his
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congregation had been telling him of and asking from him. From now on Dr. Kuyper became a foremost expounder of the Reformed Faith.
In 1874 Dr. Kuyper was elected as a member of the Lower House of Parliament, serving until 1877. In 1880 he was active in establishing the Free University of Amsterdam where for many years he taught the Reformed Theology. Five large volumes, Dicfaten der Dogmatiek, con- tain his lectures as taken down by his students, though he left no Dog- matic Theology from his own pen. His Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology is probably his most important work, part of which is obtainable in an English translation published by Scribners. His Stone Lectures at Princeton Seminary on Calvinism made him better known in America. Also his popular articles on the work of the Holy Spirit have been translated and published in a volume in English.
After his return to Holland from America in 1898 he continued as leader of the anti-revolutionary party until 1901, and from then until 1905 he was Prime Minister of The Netherlands. During his last years he resided in the Hague as Minister of State, an outstanding figure on the Continent. At the age of seventy-five he wrote a series of articles on The End of the World, and was planning a work on The Messiah at the age of eighty-two, but in November 1920 he died.
We have attempted no complete list of Dr. Kuyper’s works, nor any estimate of his significance as a theologian. These brief references to his works drawn partly from the translator’s Preface, have been given simply because he ought to be better known in America. His labours were prodigious, his learning profound, his exposition and defense of the Reformed Faith unsurpassed in modern times. But it is his humble and deep piety which is shown in these devotional meditations. It is our hope that they will find a large reading public, which by them may be drawn near to God by the Gospel of Grace as exhibited in its pure form in the Reformed Faith which Dr. Kuyper made a living force in Holland.
Princeton. C. W. Hodge.
Biblical Backgrounds for the Rural Message. By Edwin L. E.aiRP, Pro- fessor of Christian Sociology, Drew Theological Seminary. New York: Association Press, pp. 77.
The book shelves of country manses are more or less cluttered with volumes that rural pastors buy, from time to time, and by making many quiet sacrifices, in order to increase their own usefulness to their people. Necessarily, such books must as a rule be bought on the recommendation of title and advertisement; — and many a bitter disappointment follows the reception of volumes ordered in haste and repented at leisure.
In this little work the reader is treated to nothing but platitudes, amplified into outline lessons. If the purchaser happen to have a well developed sense of humor, he may feel repaid by reading the book. We offer one little gem : “It is useless for the people of the land to seek to change the climate in general by listening to professional rain-makers” (p. 10). The booklet is full of equally helpful “backgrounds.”
Delaware City, Del. Robert Claiborne Pitzer.
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Church Ushers Manual. By Willis O. Garrett. D.D., Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, Miami, Fla. New York: Fleming H. Revell Co. Board. 12 mo. pp. 64. Price 50c.
This manual is designed as “a hand-book for church ushers and all others who would promote the spirit of worship in the house of God.” It is the work of a pastor who has had long experience in dealing suc- cessfully with audiences far exceeding the capacity of his church and containing a very large proportion of strangers and visitors. The advice given in the manual for the guidance and instruction of “the Ushers,” “the Head Usher,” “the Ushers’ Association,” “the Pastor and Governing Bodies” is wise, practical and important. Every pastor realizes how vital to the success of his work is the assistance of a trained corp of efficient and faithful and consecrated ushers, and all who are concerned with making church activities more efficient will do well to place copies of this little book in the hands of those who are attempting to serve in the capacity of ushers.
Princeton. Charles R. Erdman.
God’s Program, God’s World-Program, God’s Plans for Men and Their Consummation. By the Rev. Grant Stroh, Professor in Church History, History of Doctrine and Biblical Criticism, Moody Bible Institute. The Bible Institute Colportage Association, Chicago, 111.
This is an interesting, reverent and scholarly discussion of the object, scope and consummation of God’s program for the race as indicated in human history and progress and interpreted by the Scriptures. The author starts with the presupposition that things do not “happen, but centre in the wisdom, power and personality of God ; and that the nature and possibilities of men indicate a definite goal — ‘the one far off divine event to which the whole creation moves.’ ” The book emphasizes the value of the Scriptures, the Divinity of our Lord and His Atoning Sacrifice.
Elkins Park, Pa. Richard Montgomery.
A Casket of Cameos. More Texts that made History. By F. W. Boreham. Abingdon Press. 1924. Pp. 271. $1.75 net.
This latest volume from the prolific pen of Mr. Boreham displays all the characteristics which have won for him a host of readers, and estab- lished his reputation as a writer of rare skill and charm. Here is the power of discovering and portraying the spiritual in the daily course of life; the apt and striking illustrations, always fresh and vivid, drawn from a wide range of reading, observation, and experience ; the devout and reverent treatment of the Word of God ; the worship of Christ as the only Lord and Saviour. It is shown by examples taken from biogra- phy and fiction how great a part the Scripture has played in shaping the lives of men and the course of history. Thus the volume upon a smaller scale though with wider range attempts a work like that which Prothero has so finely accomplished in his Psalms in Human Life.
It is an interesting series of pictures which the book presents, with
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that mingling of pathos and humor which life everywhere exhibits. Noble and stately figures move before us, men who have filled the earth with their fame, like Whitefield and Newman and John Bright and Thackeray and Lord Shaftesburj'. And side by side with these men of renown are others whose names are strange to us, as in the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews the true servants of God, great and small, receive equal honor. The characters drawn from fiction are in general less interesting than those drawn from real life, and happily there are not many of them. It is difficult to see why in such a great company a place should be accorded to Mark Sabre, the hero, if so inappropriate a term may be applied to him, of If Winter Comes. Sound judgment ordinarily, controls the natural impulse to paint the picture in colors brighter than those which nature has employed ; but surely it is not necessary to exaggerate the importance of Lady Huntington by affirming that she “stands absolutely alone in history. Her extraordinary achievement is without precedent and without parallel ; in all our annals there is no record that we can compare with hers. Since the world began, no one person of either sex has done for any nation what she did for ours” (p. 212). We need look no further than her friend John Wesley to find an answer to this extravagant claim on her behalf.
Princeton. J. Ritchie Smith.
Church Music. What a Minister Should Know About It. By Edmund S. Lorenz. Author of “Practical Church Music.” Editor of the “Choir Leader” and the “Choir Herald.” Fleming H. Revell Co. 1923. Pp. 466. $3.50 net.
This is a book of marked interest and value to the minister, and to all who recognize the importance of music in the worship of the Church. The Preface indicates that other volumes are contemplated by the author, one on “practical efliiciency in church music,” and the other on “methods of efficiency in the use of h}Tnns in the church service” — though it is not clear how these themes are distinguished.
It is suggested that the book might be used in the classroom of the theological seminar}-, and with this in mind each chapter is followed by a number of questions.
A glance at the Table of Contents suggests the thoroughness with which the work is done. Introduction : Ideas Underlying the EHscussion of Church Music. Part I. The Philosophy of Musical Sounds. Part H. The Psycholog}- of Music. Part III. The History of Church Music. Part IV. The Pipe Organ.
The treatment of the History of Church Music to most readers will probably be the most interesting and instructive section of the book, as it is much the longest, covering nearly one-half of the volume. The origin of music, pre-Christian music, and the development of various kinds of Christian music from the beginning to our own time are treated in an attractive and illuminating fashion. It is well to be re- minded that “modem music is the child of the Christian Church” (p 36). “The ancient did not cultivate harmony, but sang and played only the
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melody in unison. Harmony is a comparatively modern form of music, not much over four hundred years old” (p. 80).
Parts of the book are of necessity somewhat technical, as in the closing section, but in general it will prove of interest to any intelligent reader; and a study of it would be of great value to our ministers, and to all who are charged with the conduct of the musical part of the church service. Many suggestions of value are made regarding features of church worship which sometimes receive scant attention.
It is singular to read of the Psalms that “There was no self-conscious- ness in them” (p. 283). There are a few typographical errors and slips in grammar which are so obvious as to cause no difficulty.
The review of this excellent volume may be fitly concluded by two quotations from the standards of our Church to which attention is often called in the classroom. “As one primary design of public ordinances is to pay social acts of homage to the most high God, ministers ought to be careful not to make their sermons so long as to interfere with or exclude the more important duties of prayer and praise ; but to preserve a just proportion between the several parts of public worship” (Directory for Worship, VII. IV.). “The proportion of the time of public worship to be spent in singing is left to the prudence of every minister; but it is recommended that more time be allowed for this excellent part of divine service than has been usual in most of our churches” (Id. IV. IV).
Princeton. J. Ritchie Smith.
Character and Happiness. By Alvin E. Magary, Minister, First Pres- byterian Church, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1924. Pp. viii, 264.
This is a volume of decided interest. The style is excellent, and there is a blending of wisdom, humor, and good judgment in the treatment of the practical questions with which life is concerned that arrests and holds the attention and moves persuasively upon the will. It must be added, however, that the religious element of life is sometimes obscured, or even studiously ignored, as in the first chapter, entitled Self-making, where man’s power of making character is pressed to the point of virtually ruling God out of the life, instead of presenting Him as the most potent force by which the life is shaped. We miss Paul’s great words, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” Generally speaking the author is happier in his treatment of ethical than of theological or philosophical themes. It is curious to read in the chapter on Purpose that “Whatever it may be, trying to get it will bring happiness, even though we never succeed in possessing it. Men who have tried and failed are seldom miserable.” In the chapter on Happiness again the element of religion is thrust into the background.
But this happily is not the prevailing tone of the book, and in general the dependence of the soul upon God is fully recognized.
The style and mode of treatment remind us at times of Boreham. Much is said well and wisely in essays. Between Dreams and Visions, and a Look in the Mirror, on the perils of middle age, which indeed are
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more serious than those of youth, as its errors are harder to retrieve. Yet here too we crave a deeper religious tone, a clearer representation of God as the refuge and the strength of men at every age. There are times when the fondness for epigram leads to half truths. We are told “that the man who sought for the pearl of great price would have had an interesting and satisfying life even though he never found it. In these higher reaches of the soul we are enriched by what we seek more than by what we find. We are fed by our own hunger when we hunger for the things of God” (p. 47). That is surely not the thought of Jesus. There is a single instance of bad grammar (p. 48). Twice we read spirit of God (pp. 123, 125).
The illustrations are fresh, apt, and admirable. For example: “It is related that at the inauguration of a President, a certain Bishop was observed sitting on the platform with an expression of deep profundity on his face. ‘The Bishop seems to be thinking,’ remarked a by-stander to his companion. ‘The Bishop is not thinking,’ was the reply. ‘The Bishop never thinks: the Bishop is simply rearranging his prejudices.’” (p. 64). But it is not true that “the people in the books of George Eliot seem all to deteriorate as they grow older” (p. 74). In her novels as in the life which they depict with such power there are those who grow better and those who grow worse with the flight of years.
It is a good book, and answers well the purpose indicated in the Preface : “These chapters have been drawn from the daily labor of a preacher in a down-town church. They present no plan for the re- formation of our social order, no criticism of international politics, nor any theological innovation whereby the world may be quickly saved. They are addressed to men and women who would find happiness and continuing usefulness in the pursuit of those ordinary practices of good common sense by which more of us must find the solution of our problems.”
Princeton. J. Ritchie Smith.
The Master and the Twelve. By Rev. J. W. G. Ward, Minister of Im- manuel Church, Montreal; formerly of New Court Church, Tolling- ton Park, London. George H. Doran Co. 1924. Pp. 255. $1.60 net.
This is a book of very moderate value. The portraits drawn of the several members of the apostolic company are often too fanciful to be convincing. The picture drawn of their inner life, their thoughts, feel- ings, motives has in many cases no warrant in the Scripture narrative, and is in itself highly improbable. That Peter was reluctant to believe the witness of Andrew, and even suspected that his brother might be out of his mind; that James, and perhaps Jesus himself, were suspicious of the motives of Jairus when he sought the help of the Master; that James was afraid to ascend the Mount of Transfiguration because he believed that spirits haunted the hills ; these are illustrations of the manner in which fancy is suffered to stray not only beyond the limits of the Scripture but beyond the bounds of probability. And there are not wanting instances in which the plain indications of the Scripture
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narrative are wholly disregarded. “It is unthinkable,’’ we read, “that Christ had favorites in the band of his disciples’’ (p. 32), and then we are told immediately how the three were chosen to be his bosom friends. We are told that when the Greeks sought to see Jesus, Philip stands aside while Andrew tells Jesus ; but John informs us the “Andrew cometh, and Philip, and they tell Jesus.’’ That the question of Judas, “Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?” provoked the anger of the disciples cannot be maintained in face of the Scripture record that there were those among them who agreed with Judas (Mark xiv. 4), while Matthew intimates that the disciples generally were of the same mind : “When the disciples saw it, they had indignation,” and the question which John puts in the mouth of Judas is echoed by the whole company of the twelve (xxvi. 8). Lincoln is said to have signed the Treaty that set the slave free (p.28).
These few examples may serve to illustrate the lack of thoroughness which the book evinces. While much is said that is true, there is little that is fresh or striking, and no new light of history or historic imagi- nation is shown upon the life and character of the Twelve.
Princeton. J. Ritchie Smith.
The Adventure into the Unknown and Other Sermons Preached in Westminister Abbey. By Ven. R. H. Charles, D. Litt., D.D. 'London : T & T. Clark.
This volume consists of twenty sermons preached on various occasions by a distinguished modern scholar. They are all sermons of a high order but scarcely meet their professed aim, viz., “to set forth the great truths of the Christian Faith in their bearing on the individual and corporate life.” Dr. Charles moves almost wholly in the realm of ideas and ideals and has little to say of the factual basis of Christianity. In harmony with this he defines theology as the expression in formal terms of religious experience rather than the expression of the objective facts and truths of revelation. It is not surprising, therefore, that he rejects all external authority in religion, except for those “not come to age, morally and intellectually,” and that he is very severe on those who demand any strict subscription to creeds. It is also not surprising, perhaps — though it involves the rejection of the very heart of Christi- anity— that in the four sermons he devotes to the subject of forgive- ness there is a running and at times concentrated attack on the con- ception of Christ’s death as expiatory. The essential condition of for- giveness, we are told, is repentance. All satisfaction theories of the atonement are rejected and we are told that “the object of Christ’s life and death is not to placate, to pacify, to reconcile God to man, but to reveal God’s infinite love to man and so to redeem and reconcile man to God.” It is idle to expect any adequate setting forth of Christian truth by any man, no matter how distinguished, who rejects the Bible as authoritative and who is repelled by the thought of the cross as an expiatory sacrifice for sin.
Dr. Charles devotes one sermon to Origen as the typical scholar of
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the early Church. He compares him with .Augustine — much to the latter’s disadvantage. We are told that “whereas every advance in thought and theology serves to render untenable leading doctrines in the theology of St. Augustine, the same advancing thought of Christen- dom tends to reaffirm the main positions of Origen.’’ “St. Augustine,” Dr. Charles goes on to say, “is, in fact, in many respects the master mind of the dark ages of the Church and of kindred obscurantist tendencies of the Church of the present, but Origen is the forerunner of the nobler theology of the times that have been and of the times that are yet to be.”
Princeton. S. G. Cr.mg
Great Modern Sermons. Edited by Hob.^rt D. McKeeh.\n. S.T.!M. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company.
This volume consists of thirteen sermons by as many living preachers. W'hile the editor, guided by what he regards as “the consensus of opinion, the verdict of scholars, and of a world that loves inspired preaching” exercised his own judgment in selecting the thirteen “supreme preachers of this generation,” yet he permitted these preachers them- selves to decide which of their sermons were representative of their best pulpit efforts. The preachers thus honored by the editor are Canon Barnes, Dean Inge, and Drs. Hutton, Kelman and Norwood among British preachers and Drs. Burrell, Cadman, Fosdick, Gordon, Hillis, Jefferson, Newton, and Shannon from among American preachers.
While the editor anticipates that these sermons will prove profitable to the lay reader yet it is the student of homiletics whose interests he is most concerned to further. “Here,” he tells us in his preface, “are perfect models open to analysis and review. . . . No formal rhetoric or other rule of homiletic art will have half as much force as the power of example, of good models. These splendid creations of our modern preachers are not intended to dazzle or to be slavishly imitated or to submerge one’s individuality. They are meant rather to create new thought and fresh devotion to the ministry, and to stimulate to a higher order of effort.”
We do not share the editor’s high opinion of these sermons. Some of them are excellent, notably that of Dr. D. J. Burrell, but as a whole they scarcely deserve to be called great. What is worse most of them contain little that is distinctively Christian. One might listen to a great deal of such preaching without obtaining a clear answer to the question. What is Christianity? or What is a Christian? We fear it is only too true that these sermons are representative modern sermons. They may as a whole be commended to the student of homiletics for their style but not for their content. After all what we say is more important than the way we say it. Since that is the case only a few, at most, of these sermons are “really great sermons.” In as far as such sermons are representative it is not strange that the fortunes of the Church are not at flood tide.
Princeton S. G. Craig
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Five Present-Day Controversies. By Charles E. Jefferson, D.D., LL.D., Pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle, New York. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. Pp. 175.
This little book is made up of five sermons or addresses delivered on successive Sunday mornings in the Broadway Tabernacle, together with a brief preface. Brief as is the preface, however, it is perhaps the most valuable feature of the book because of its defense of the right and duty of controversy. No doubt it is an easy task to point out how foolish it is for Christians to disparage or fear controversy, in view of the example of Christ and His apostles. It is a task, however, that needs to be done and, in view of the fact that it is so customary to disparage controversy in liberal circles, it is a matter of satisfaction to have so distinguished a representative of liberalism as Dr. Jefferson point out that such disparagement “shows a strange ignorance of the way in which the Church has advanced and added new dimensions to her life.”
The five controversies in which Dr. Jefferson seeks to play his part are indicated by the titles to his addresses: “Two Views of the Bible”; “Evolution and the Book of Genesis”; “The Virgin Birth”; “The Use of Creeds” ; “Roman Catholicism and the Ku Klux Klan.” He appears to best advantage, it seems to us, in his treatment of the Ku Klux Klan issue — due to the fact, we suppose, that he treats it as a question of policy rather than religious conviction. While he con- demns the Ku Klux Klan he points out that there has been and is much in the Roman Catholic attitude to justify the rise and spread of this organization. This address contains much food for thought for Roman Catholic and Klansman alike.
The pivotal address of those dealing with more strictly religious issues is, of course, the one entitled, “Two Views of the Bible.” As Dr. Jefferson himself says : “The Bible is the storm center of the religious world in our generation. All the great controversies which are now raging are rooted in the Scriptures.” It is because Dr. Jefferson has been led to accept a view of the Bible that prevents him from looking upon it as the authoritative and infallible Word of God that he is led to minimize the importance of what the Bible says as to both the origin of the world and the origin of Jesus Christ. Here also we find the ex- planation of his estimate of the value of creeds. For while a man who does not regard the Bible as the “Word of God” may place a high value on creeds — as Dr. Jefferson does — ^yet it is evident that at most they can have for him only a relative value, no matter how accurately they ex- press the system of doctrine taught in the Scriptures. If Dr. Jefferson had a truer view of the Bible it is certain that the contents of his chapters on Evolution, the Virgin Birth and the Creeds would be quite different.
In view of the pivotal significance of the Bible in present-day religious controversy it is to be regretted that the address dealing with the Bible is perhaps the most unsatisfactory of all. Dr. Jefferson champions the “illumination theory” of inspiration, contrasting it with what he calls the “dictation theory.” The impression his words are fitted to make on the reader is that they must choose between these two theories. Such
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plausibility, however, as attaches to his representation is due almost wholly to the fact that the “dictation theory’’ as set forth by him is little more than a caricature of the view of the Bible held by intelligent advocates of an infallible Bible. If Dr. Jefferson had a more accurate conception of the view of the Bible which he tells us was that of “our fathers and mothers or at least of our grandparents” probably even he would not imagine that so little can be said in its defense.
Dr. Jefferson manifests at times an almost child-like ignorance of current conditions. For instance he tells us that “everybody” accepts all the statements of the Apostle’s Creed except those having to do with the Virgin Birth and the resurrection of the flesh. As a matter of fact there is scarcely an article of that creed that is not rejected by many calling themselves Christians. Many are as hesitant about saying, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth” as they are to say that Jesus was virgin born. He is also guilty, it seems to us, of a good deal of loose thinking, as when he defines evolution as God’s method of creation and supposes that a person can properly be called an evolutionist who believes in any happenings that can rightly be called miracles.
We share Dr. Jefferson’s hope that what he has written may stimulate his readers “to think more earnestly and fruitfully on these high and perplexing themes” — because we are certain that in proportion as they do so they will arrive at conclusions other than those presented in this book.
Princeton. S. G. Cr.mg.
The Ravaffes of Higher Criticism in the Indian Mission Field. By Wat- kin R. Roberts, Honorary Treasurer of The Bible League of India, Burma and Cejlon. Fourth edition. London; Protestant Truth So- ciety; Philadelphia: Wm. S. Wills, 1214 Pennsylvania Building. Paper, Crowm 8vo. Pp. 27.
This pamphlet contains a telling array of facts backed by documentary evidence as to the presence and harmful effect of modernism in India. The organization which the author represents corresponds to the well- know Bible Union of China. The spread of anti-supernaturalistic pro- paganda in India has led to the banding together of many of those who hold the conservative and evangelical position into a League for the furtherance of the Gospel of salvation from sin and the defence of the faith once for all delivered. Mr. Roberts, the Hon. Treasurer of this Society has gathered data as to the presence and spread of destructive teaching in Theological Seminaries, Colleges, Schools and Sunday Schools; he has shown its effect upon w'ork among non-Christian students, upon Indian Christian thought, its entrance into the columns of Christian periodicals and its result in compromise wdth idolatry. The condition here portrayed in barest outline is serious enough to demand the attention of all true lovers of Christ’s cause in this Mission field.
There are many missionaries in India who do not hold to the inerrancy of the Word of God, the Virgin Birth of our Lord, His substitutionary death on the Cross to atone for sin. His bodily resurrection and actual
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return. Some believe in certain of these truths while rejecting others. A president of a leading college when preaching to a group of missionaries proclaimed Mahatma Gandhi, a Hindu, to be a better Christian than may professing believers. Such a statement evinces a surprising vague- ness of conception as to what constitutes a Christian. One young man had not been in the country a year before he publicly decried the Apostles Creed as being inaccurate in statement. A committee of representatives from three Missions went on record as being neither conservative nor liberal, thus priding itself in taking the middle-of-the-road position in questions relating to eternal life. A number of missionaries joined to- gether in writing a letter to one of the former moderators of the Pres- byterian Church in the U. S. A. in which reference was made to the theological discussion in the home church as something distressing and detracting from the full measure of evangelical zeal, and praying that under his leadership the Church as she then existed, part loyal and part disloyal, might be held unbroken. One missionary of many years of service disparaged the miracles of Christ while lauding the efforts of the Mohammedan to gain merit by going without so much as a drink during fast days, although his business was to carry water up a steep hill to others. He told a group of ministers that one day while reasoning with a young Hindu regarding the ugliness of the elephant-god as an object of worship, he was startled by the reply from this mentally alert non- Christian that to him the elephant-god was no less ugly than the form of a dying god suspended from a gibbet. And the missionary felt the posi- tion of this young man was a reasonable one to hold. Thus the extent of confusion as to what is the Christian’s object of worship; thus the range of wandering from the proclamation of the Good News of the only Saviour from sin.
One group of loyal missionaries finding conditions in their former society intolerable have organized themselves into a new body known as the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society with headquarters at 14 Victoria Street, London. Their action is a striking testimony as to the existence of modernism on the Indian mission field. But still there are individuals who attempt to deny this fact.
A certain medical college in the north of India met with the most severe opposition from missionaries and Christian workers when at- tempting to insert into its constitution a definite basis of belief. The cry was for union under no creedal banner whatever.
Most subtly is the influence of the modernist movement showing itself in a gradual losing sight of the supreme and controlling aim of all mis- sionary endeavour. Many regard the enterprize as a co-operative under- taking to raise the tone of a community, a joining of hands across the sea for mutual betterment, a spreading of a leaven of influence, in- stilling within the masses ideas and ideals that will lift them to a higher civilization. It is held to be a great educational movement stimulating and developing innate tendencies to the higher life. But innate tendencies do not trend in that direction. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own ; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” That is exactly as true on one side of the world
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as on the other, in India as in America, and no matter what the religion, caste or status of India’s millions, she is suffering both collectively and individually from the sting of the serpent, and only “He whose heel shall bruise that head can ever save.’’ “And in none other is there sal- vation : for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved.”
With India in her restless state politically there is much talk of co- operative method. The zeal of westerners to decrease that easterners may increase has resulted in some quarters in compromise. Christ has been regarded as the “Crown of Hinduism,” the highest point of all towards which the Hindu religion trends. We have been urged to build with India. But there can be no building with India while India is building on the sand. There can be no sharing in construction upon a false founda- tion. The foundation must first be fixed upon the rock, and that rock is the Rock of Ages. “For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, wdiich is Jesus Christ.”
Ludhiana, India. How.\rd E. Anderson.
Rich Gleanings After the Vintage from “Rabbi” Duncan. Being Evan- gelical Sermons, Lectures and Addresses by the Late Rev. John Duncan, LL.D., Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages, New College, Edinburgh. (Hitherto uncollected and in part unpublished). Edited, with Biographical Sketch, by the Late Rev. J.\mes Steven Sinclair (Glasgow), Author of “Letters on Roman Catholicism,” etc. London : Chas. J. Thynne, Ltd. Whitefriars St., Fleet St., E.C. 4. 1925. Pp. 397. Price 5 shillings, net.
To some this work may appear a belated appreciation of the life and talents of the venerable Dr. John Duncan, who died in 1870. A post- script, signed “A. R.,” and dated, December, 1924, says that it was pro- jected for many years, the material for it was collected by 1920, and delayed by providential circumstances. The biographical notice is fol- low-ed by eight sermons, six Communion Table addresses delivered in the Free St. Luke’s Church, Edinburgh, 1864-1869; twelve public exposi- tory lectures on i Peter i; 1-2:6, and one on Psalm 85; three theological lectures, and seven addresses before the Free Church Assembly, most of them on Jewish Missions in Hungary and the Christian future of the Jews.
The theology of these deliverances is explicitly Calvinistic. W’e pur- posely say “explicitly,” because there is no attempt, by any circuitous exegesis or over-cautious interpretation, to sidestep or mollify the bold truths of many New Testament passages. Verbal Inspiration, Predes- tination, Total Depravity, Human Inability, Irresistible Grace, Sub- stitutionary Atonement, and Eternal Punishment are all definitely taught. The premillennial view appears to be espoused (pp. 369-370, 385-386), and belief is expressed in the near approach of the final consummation. And now over sixty years have passed since this was written.
In all these addresses there is plenty of “solid meat.” The one on “Preaching the Gospel,” although very brief, lays stress on the truths that ought to be emphasized in preaching. Conversion, for instance.
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which is not a mere turning from one thing to another, but the turning of an absolutely lost sinner to the God of a free and sovereign grace. Do not tell sinners, says Dr. Duncan, that they must come to God and therefore they can come. That is Arminianism. Tell them that they can’t come, and yet must come. That will vindicate the Divine honor and shut them up to God. (p. 392). It is clear that in material of this sort the promoters of a diluted gospel and of a superficial theology will find little sympathy, but for mental and spiritual nourishment it could hardly be improved upon.
Lancaster^ Ohio. Benjamin F. Paist.
When Jesus Wrote on the Ground. Studies, Expositions and Meditations in the Life of the Spirit. By Edgar DeWitt Jones, D.D., Minister of Central Christian Church, Detroit. Author of “The Inner Circle,” “The Wisdom of God’s Fools,” “Fairhope,” etc. With an Apprecia- tion by Dr. Charles Clayton Morrison, Editor of “The Christian Century.” New York: George H. Doran Company. 1922. Pp. 234. Price $1.50.
Any one who reads these seventeen sermons will be repaid. They disclose variety of themes, breadth of worthwhile reading, aptness of illustration, and depth of tenderness sure to reach the hearts of those who hear or read them. It is the constant freshness and warmth of these discourses that make them real messages of the Spirit. The book is named from the subject of the second sermon, on the famous passage, John 8:i-ii, from which today one does not hear many sermons. Each subject has a sub-title which very aptly condenses the main thought of the sermon. A rather unusual feature (for an American preacher) is the lengthy texts chosen.
There are at least two mistakes in English, as unpardonable as they are surprising, coming from the pen of one who has such a choice style as Dr. Jones. “Who have we in training to receive the standard,” etc. (p. 87). “It is impossible to say which has accomplished the most good, the preach- ing or the singing of the gospel” (p. 159). It will not do to reply that such criticism is pedantic; certainly not in this day, when we are rapidly un- learning the English language, and by sheer carelessness pulpit and platform are repeatedly guilty of the most shocking perversions and abuse of our own Muttersprache. It is time to have a care.
The Appreciation, covering almost eight pages at the beginning, is somewhat fulsome. It is enough to say that the sermons do not need it.
Lancaster, Ohio. Benjamin F. Paist.
The Peril of Power and Other Sermons. By The Rev. Henry Howard, Minister of the Australian Methodist Church. New York: George H. Doran Co. 1925. Pp. 258. Price $2.00 net.
The seventeen sermons in this collection represent a certain homiletic type. There is almost a total absence of any definite distribution of material; illustrations are meagre; and in some of the sermons there is a tendency to wander somewhat afield from the thought of the text. Indeed, some of them might not be judged by homiletic experts as sermons at all. Nevertheless the substance is distinctly religious and
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spiritual, the thought is virile and stimulating, and the style forceful and beautiful.
Mr. Howard argues for some views presumed by many to have been outdated in our day. In the first sermon, from which the book takes its title, he shows that the employment of physical force in home and state is not the abandonment of moral purpose, because the morality of the - situation is not in the instrument used, but in the person, and remains the same whether he uses his tongue, his pen, or his sword. This is the difference between the surgeon’s knife and the assassin’s dagger, (pp. 9- ii). In the seventh sermon, on “Mental Unity and Moral Stability” (James i :8), the answer is given to the superficial and popular cry of the modern pragmatist that what one believes is of little moment (pp. 104-107). “The thing, then, that is not theoretically sound, that is not correct in the realm of thought, cannot possibly be correct in the realm of practice” (p. 107). Again, in a day when the social aspect of sin is in danger of blinding men to its personal heinousness and guilt, it is refreshing to have a preacher remind us that we have forgotten that the social order is made up of persons; that society “is becoming over- organized into so many sections and sub-sections, that the personal equation is threatened with submergence and obliteration. The indi- vidual is being lost in the universal, the unit engulfed in the mass” ; that “We may sin jointly but our accounts will be rendered severally and must be settled individually”; that “Every social evil in its last analysis is an individual evil, and every individual evil in its last analysis is an evil of the heart” (pp. 138, 142-144).
Often the author’s thought is uncompromising and his presentation exceedingly vivid. “If we do not want the devil’s wages, then we must quit the devil’s service” (p. 171). “When a man sins he not only releases the brakes, he accelerates speed” (p. 157). “The teachers of the nation are the true rulers of the nation” (p. 33). The man of a godless Kultur is described by the following powerful accumulated simile; “He becomes as destitute of conscience as an earthquake, as void of feeling as a volcano, as pitiless as a blizzard, as relentless as an avalanche, as remorseless as death, as insatiable as the grave” (p. 26). The statement; “It is doubtful whether the pulpit has much to say to those who are succeeding” (p. 1 14), impresses us as unfortunate and open to a construction far more serious than this thoughtful author would care to espouse.
Of these messages, we recommend especially; “The Peril of Power,” “The Solvent of Doubt,” “Mental Unity and Moral Stability,” and “The Back-fire of Sin.” In only one is there a specific reference to the cross of Christ (p. 137). This is an outstanding defect in a series of sermons otherwise noted for so many qualities splendidly essential.
Lancaster, Ohio. Benjamin* F. Paist.
The Currency of the Inz-isible. A Spiritual Interpretation of Stewardship. By Silas Evans, D.D., LL.D., President of Ripon College, Ripon, Wisconsin. Introduction by David McConaughy, Director of the Stewardship Department of the General Council, Presbyterian
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Church, U. S. A. New York and Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Co.
1925. Pp. 96. Price $1.
Here are six brief chapters setting forth a helpful philosophy of spiritual values in relation to the visible facts of life. We behold the unseen in terms of the material world, human society, the Visible Church, personal experience, and Christian stewardship.
Dr. Evans has his own way of putting things : a very happy way. Vital Christian truths are compressed into epigrammatic expressions. So evident is this, that those who have heard him. would easily recognize him in these pages. It makes such a difference the way we say things these days. Indeed, it always did; but especially so just now, when so many voices are speaking. Many a much-needed truth goes down uncherished, loses charm, fails to attract, because of its shabby dress. All through this book the reader’s interest is held by some striking sentence giving forth the kind of truth that does the soul good to feast upon because we know that it is true.
To take only a few of many examples that might be quoted. “Men organize, Jesus regenerates.” “God is always contemporary.” “To a withered soul all is dry.” “Let Christ proportion the world’s budget and He will in fact be remaking its civilization.” “The closed mind and the constricted sympathies are no less lonely and belittling than the unopened hand.” “The only money I have certainly never lost, never can lose, is that which I have wisely given to Christ’s Kingdom and in His name.” (pp. 35. 39, 79.87, 91, 93).
Moreover, some things are here said that need to be spoken, not only because they are true, but because they are truths particularly in need of stress today. If the author has committed any sin in these discussions, it is not the sin of misplaced emphasis. We know that “Vital personality is everywhere chafing against the bondage of apparatus” (p. 7). That is a hopeful sign. “Personality must be central in history” (p. 31). We surely do need to learn that “Only spiritual unity is unity” (p. 44). Any other kind is mechanics. It is true that a church “stands or falls with the vitality and truthfulness of the message that is entrusted to it. Its organization is only a matter of course.”- (pp. 55-56).
A book, however big or little, that leads through the tangle and glare of the material back into the reality of the spiritual, and holds one there, has done well by its reader. This service Dr. Evans has performed in this spiritual revaluation of the commonplace data of life. ’Tis thus we help to refresh God’s people “on their toilsome way.”
Lancaster, Ohio. Benjamin F. Paist
GENER.VL LITERATURE
Mental Tests and the Classroom Teacher. By Virgil E. Dickson, Ph.D., Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York: World Book Company. 1923. Pp. XV, 231.
Measurement in Higher Education. By Ben D. Wood. Yonkers-on- Hudson, New York : World Book Company. 1923. Pp. xi, 337.
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These two volumes in the “Measurement and Adjustment Series” edited by Professor Lewis M. Terman are written for teachers, principals, supervisors, and school administrators in general. Although they do not have in mind specially the problems of teachers of religion, they contain much information of value to such teachers, since it cannot be gainsaid that scientific method in the educational work of the churches should be as helpful as in any other part of the educational field.
Dr. Dickson’s book is a sober and common-sense treatment of its topic. He is fully aware of the extravagant claims made for mental tests and of their misuse by extremists, and he points out a safe and sensible path for teachers to take. His opening chapters discuss the present trends of American education. The law compels all types of children to attend school, and requires that each without regard to capacity or probable destiny be given opportunity for such development as will enable him to realize his best possibilities and satisfy the requirements of good citizenship. To attain this end instruction must be adjusted to the varying degrees of ability, and this at once raises the question of grading. Mental tests are designed to answer this question. They are of two sorts : individual tests that measure the ability of one person at a time, and group tests that measure an entire class. These tests are constructed in accord with the fundamental psychological principles involved in reasoning, judging, and thinking, but to be of value must follow standardized procedures of giving and scoring. If so conducted, their results may form a basis both for grading and prediction of school success or failure. A description then follows of the use of the tests in the various grades from the kindergarten to the high school. The problem of the inferior child, the one who cannot show results in the type of work required in the elementary school, is then discussed, and also the problem of the most neglected child in our school system, the superior child. Dr. Dickson then explains how teachers may be trained for mental testing and how the school principal may use the results obtained. The book closes with an argument in favor of mental testing in a modern educational and social program. Democracy means equality of opportunity for achieve- ment, but education cannot create intelligence. It can merely recognize the individual differences in children and give them the training that will enable them to fill their places in the world, each according to his ability. To diagnose this capacity, mental tests may prove useful.
The author of Measurement in Higher Education is a “Thorndike man,” i.e. he believes that all human characteristics exist in some degree and can therefore be measured provided the proper units of measure- ment can be found. One such method for measuring intelligence is the Thorndike Examination, the “non-coachable” general intelligence test devised by Professor Thorndike to estimate the mental capability of aspirants for entrance to college. The author gives a lengthy description of the correlation between this test and the five group grading system in use at Columbia University, and follows this with an interesting discussion of the meaning of college success and the principles by which it may be measured. The closing chapters tell the advantages and
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limitations of a new method of content examination — true-false, comple- tion, and recognition tests — in Physics, Government, Zoology, Economics, Philosophy, Greek Art, History, English, and Civil Engineering.
As previously noted neither of these books is written specially for those who teach in our church schools, and yet there is much material here that could be adapted to make such teaching more effective.
Lincoln University, Pa. George Johnson.
The Art of Public Speaking. By Hon. Albert J. Beveridge, A.M., LL.D. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1924. Pp. 67. Price $1.00.
Mr. Beveridge has from a boy been a student of oratory, and is himself one of the best speakers of the day. He has had abundant opportunity to listen to other speakers, and to watch the effect on the audiences of their speaking and his own ; and he here presents the principles which in his judgment form the basis of the most effective speaking. He states his rules under two heads :
Matter.
Speak only when you have something to say.
Speak only what you believe to be true.
Prepare thoroughly.
Be clear.
Stick to your subject.
Be fair.
Be brief.
Delivery.
Speak quietly and naturally.
Be serene and never pompous.
Enunciate distinctly.
Control emotion — never get excited.
Dress well ; neither negligently nor with ostentation.
Suppress the craving for applause.
Stop when you are through.
The book is a reprint of a magazine article, and necessarily so many subjects must be treated very briefly, and in an interesting, popular manner. None of the suggestions are novel. Indeed the article is not intended for those who have had proper instruction in the subject of public speaking; and yet the manner in which each rule is explained and enforced is so original and convincing that most public speakers would be well repaid for reading it.
Princeton. Henry W. .Smith.
Purposive Speaking. By Robert West, Assistant Professor of Speech in the University of Wisconsin. New York: Macmillan Co. Pp. 180. 1924. Price $1.25.
This book, as its title suggests, deals with all speaking that has a definite purpose, whether addressed to one person or to many. It is thor- oughly practical, not through rules, but by a discussion of principles. Speech is concerned with human thought and action, and effective speaking depends largely on a knowledge of fundamental human reac-
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THE PUIXCETOX THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
tions ; and the first part of this book discusses these reactions on the basis of modern behavioristic psychology. That naturally puts much stress on the subconscious mind and the emotions. Without accepting all the conclusions of physiological psychology, one maj" be greatly helped by its teachings, both in developing his own personality, and in influencing others. With these principles as a basis, the author next discusses the fundamental purposes of the speaker, his immediate aims, and the plan of the speech, under these heads; The Functions of the Purposive Speaker, Persuasive Speeches, Impressive Speeches, Argumentative Speeches, Speeches that Organize Public Opinions and Customs, Enter- taining and Instructive Speeches, and The Plan of the Speech. The book closes with the application of these principles to the personality of the speaker as shown by body and voice, the chapters on Suggestion and Imitation, and Posture and Gesture, being especially helpful. The book is original and practical in method, founded on a teacher’s experience, and will be especially helpful to those who are not familiar with the present methods of teaching public speaking.
Princeton. Hexry W. Smith.
With Italy in Her Final War of Liberation. By Olin D. Waxamaker. With an Introduction by Professor Allan C. Johnson, Ph.D. Flem- ing H. Revell Company.
.\ spirited account and interesting throughout, of the wonderfully useful work done by the Y.M.C.A. in Italy during the World War. It is a sufficient answer to the unjust criticism of the “Y,” partly inspired and partly ignorant. Xot the least value of the book is the thrilling story of the achievements of the Italian army.
Elkins Park, Pa. Richard Moxtgomery.
The Real Daniel Webster. By Elijah R. Kexxedy, Author of “General John B. Woodward,” “The Contest for California in i86i,” etc. With a Foreword by Frederick Evan Crane, Judge of the Court of Appeals of the State of New York.
The author’s father was a life-long friend of the great statesman and Webster’s name was a household word in his boyhood home ; and this explains the fact that this book is a defense and loving tribute rather than a complete history. Indeed the author refers to the monumental “Life” by George Ticknor Curtis for the full details of Webster’s busy life.
Webster belonged to the formative period of the Nation. In Congress as Secretary of State and especially before the Supreme Court of the United States, he established the Constitutional law. He belongs with Story and Marshall. The age to wffiich Webster belonged and to which he contributed so much, practically ended wdth his death. Eight years after he died, the great struggle between the States began. A new chapter in the history and development of this country was to be written, new leaders appeared and new issues had to be met. When the history of the years from the adoption of the Constitution to the Civil War is written — surely we do not need to wait much longer — then will the
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supreme value of Webster’s work appear. He prepared the people to face the great issue that was finally settled at Appomattox. The ex- planation of “The Seventh of March Speech” is well worth studying and is probably correct. Why is it that moral reformers are so prone to attack those who cannot agree with their methods ?
Elkins Park, Pa. Richard Montgomery.
PERIODICAL LITERATURE
American Church Monthly, New York, April; William H. van Allen, The Resurrection; W. J. Sparrow Simpson, Liberalism in Religion; Frank Gavin, Limitations of the Documentary Method in Historical Investigation ; Clarence A. Manning, Sobornost and Catho- licity. The Same, May: Frank L. Vernon, Prayer; Chauncy B. Tinker, Ritual or Gloom; Herbert H. Gowen, Dr. Moffatt’s Transla- tion. The Same, June: Clarence A. Manning, Patriarch Tikhon; Robert S. Chalmers, Training Children in Worship; William Y. Webbe, Necessity of Ritual; Hamilton Schuyler, Betting and Games of Chance.
Anglican Theological Review, Gambler, May: Lester Bradner, Edu- cational Conviction in Religion; Cyril Hudson, Personality and the Devotional Life; A. Haire Forster, Sidelights on the Life of an Egyptian Working Man in Days of Jesus of Nazareth ; William S. Bishop, The Chalcedonian Decree as an Interpretation of Our Lord’s Person.
Biblical Review, New York, April: Henry C. Swearingen, “Rachel Weeping for her Children”; E. G. Sihler, The Hasmoneans and Herod the Idumean; Robert P. Wilder, Re-creating of the Individual; Samuel M. Zwemer, New World of Islam.
Bibliotheca Sacra, St. Louis, April : W. T. McConnell, Christ and Christianity; Leander S. Keyser, Problem of Man’s Origin; C. B. Hurlburt, Ontological Interrelationship of the Persons of the Trinity; J. L. Kelso, Three Major Themes of the Old Testament; Christopher G. Hazard, Why Jesus was called the Son of God and the Only Be- gotten Son; Charles E. Smith, Book of Ruth; William S. Bishop, Genesis.
Catholic Historical Review, Washington, April: Henry J. Ford, A Change of Climate ; E. J. Mahoney, Gregory Sayers a Forgotten English Moral Theologian; James J. Walsh, The Church and Cures; John A. Foote, Child Care in the Church ; Francis J. Siegfried, Historical Criticism and Philosophy; John M. Cooper, Content of the Church History Course in College and High School.
Church Quarterly Review, London, April : Arthur C. Headlam, The Four Gospels ; W. Lockton, Age for Confirmation ; L. S. Hunter, Morality and Mysticism ; Ibn Sabil, Genesis : the book of Bedouin ; W. C. De Pauley, Man : the Image of God. A Study in Clement of Alexandria; W. R. Matthews, Three Philosophers on Religion.
Congregational Quarterly, London, April : H. Wheeler Robinson,
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The Old Testament Approach to Life after Death; H. M. Paull, Ethics of Hj-mnology; H. I. Bell, Athanasius: a Chapter in Church Historj-; William Robixsox, Some Reminiscences of a vagrant Mis- sionarj-; Paul Sabatier, St. Francis of Assisi and Today; W. J. Paylixg Wright, Beware of Internal Evidence ! ; C. H.vrold Dodd, Present Position of the Synoptic Problem; Fred Smith, Sacramental Trend in Modern Protestantism; Jeffrey Browx, Congregationalism in Aus- tralia.
East & fFest, London, April : T. Z. Koo, War on Opium and Narcotics ; Bertram L.vsbrey, The Church in Nigeria; H. H. He.\tox, Archbishop Cranmer and the Indian Peasant; Disabilities of Christianitj* in India; W. S. M.vltox, Study of the Preparation of Native Candidates for the Sacraments.
Expositor, London, May: H. J. Flowers, The Third Commandment; T. H. Robixsox, Ten Best Books on Book of Job; H. R. M.\ckixtosh, Grouping of German Theologians; P. Thomsox, “Know” in the New Testament; How.a.rd T. Kuist, Philippians 3.
Expository Times, Edinburgh, April: F. J. Rae, Religious Education in the Day School; J. Courtex.\y James, Son of Man: Origin and Use of Title; Nicol M.\cNicol, Hinduism and Christianity-: Some points of Contact and Divergence. The Same, May: Carey Boxner, The Sunday School and the Child ; A. T. Robertsox, When the Western Text is Right; Nicol MacNicol, Hinduism and Christianity: Some points of Contact and Divergence, ii; Johx Lexdrum, Into a Far Country; T. Grah.ame B.mley, Note on Two Passages in Dr. Moffatt’s ‘Old Testa- ment’
Harvard Theological Reziew, Cambridge, January: George F. Moore, Rise of Normative Judaism : ii. To the Close of the Misnah ; Robert P. Casey, Clement of .Alexandria and the Beginnings of Christian Platonism; J. Rexdel Harris, Was the Diatessaron .Anti-Judaic? The Same, .April: Campbell Bonxer, Papyrus Codex of the Shepherd of Hermas; Gust.w Kruger, Literature of Church History, 1914-1920: iv. The Church in Modern Times : 2. Nineteenth Centurj- and the Beginnings of the Twentieth; Edwix R. Goodexough, The Pseudo-Justinian “Oratio ad Graecos.”
Homiletic Reziezv, New A'ork, April : W. N. Schwarze, The Easter Morning Moravian Service at Bethlehem ; H. L. L.ath.am, Spiritual Healing; Albert G. M.\ckixxox, The House of Hermes; J. B. Reeves, Easter Hj-mns of the Church; Worth M. Tippy, The .Art of Preaching. The Same, May: Johx Moore, The Preacher as .Artist; F. Watsox Haxxox, Pastoral Calling; Johx R. Scotford, The Minister and Women ; Edward C. B.aldwix, .A Layman’s Protest against a Form of Clerical Illiteracy; Johx B.^rlow, Preachers of Today and Tomorrow; Worth M. Tippy, A Country Cure of Souls. The Same, June: Hugh T. Kerr, Training the Child in Religion ; Conscience of a Three-year Old ; Edwin R. Robixsox, The Churches and the Colleges ; J. H. Bodgexer, Harness- ing the Dramatic Instinct of the A’oung; \\ illi.\m J. M.\y, Telling Stories to Children; Mrs. Lioxel .A. Whistox, Pageantry’s Place in the Church.
RECENT LITERATURE
525
Jewish Quarterly Review, London, April : Cecil Roth, Rabbi Menahem Navarra, his Life and Times; Leo Jung, Fallen Angels in Jewish, Christian and Mohammedan Literature; Israel Davidson, Note to “The Amidah of the Public Fast Days” ; Solomon S. Cohen, Rosenzweig’s Translation of Jehudah Halevi; I. M. Casanowicz, Works on Religion.
Journal of Negro History, Washington, April : Frederick Starr, Liberia after the World War; L. P. Jackson, The Origin of Hampton Institute; C. S. S. Higham, Negro Policy of Christopher Codrington; Letters of Negroes addressed to the American Colonization Society.
Journal of Religion, Chicago, March : Henry N. Wieman, How do we Know God?; Durant Drake, Critical Realism and Theism; James T. Addison, Chinese Ancestor Worship and Protestant Christianity; Fred- erick R. Tennant, Recent Reconstruction of the Doctrine of Sin: ii. Original Sin; J. M. Powis Smith, Some Difficulties of a Translator; Edward S. Ames, Religion of Immanuel Kant; Gerald B. Smith, What Does Biblical Criticism Contribute to the Modern Preacher? The Same, May: Eldred C. Vanderlaan, Modernism and Historic Christianity; Enola Eno, Modernism in India; Ernest B. Harper, Individualizing Sin and the Sinner ; i. Causes ; A. J. William Myers, Content of Religious Education ; Archibald G. Baker, Afterthoughts on the Washington Conference; Marion H. Dunsmore, An Egyptian Contribution to Book of Proverbs.
Journal of Theological Studies, London, April: C. H. Turner, Marcan Usage : Notes Critical and Exegetical on the Second Gospel ; G. H. Dix, Influence of Babylonian Ideas on Jewish Messianism; P. R. Norton, Biographical Form of the Vitae Sanctorum; A. V. Billen, Classification of the Greek MSS. of the Hexateuch.
London Quarterly Review, London, April : Alfred Faulkner, Is the Historic Episcopate Historic? ; Daniel Wiseman, Philosophy of Anatole France; Thomas Stephenson, Origin of Civilization; Ivan D. Ross, Mencius’ Doctrine of Human Nature; H. Reinheimer, Forests and their Allies; A. Marmorstein, Learning and Work; Basil St. Cleather, A Scotch Diary of the Sixteenth Century; John Telford, The Treasure House of Belgium.
Lutheran Church Review, Philadelphia, January: Emil E. Fischer, The Apocalyptic Background of Jesus’ Ethical Teaching; Luther D. Reed, Church Architecture in America ; Paul Z. Strodach, The Collect : a Study; Charles M. Jacobs, The Background of Modern History.
Monist, Chicago, April: Edward L. Schaub, Legacy of Kant; G. T. W. Patrick, Need and Possibility of Imperativistic Ethics; Martin Schutze, Cultural Environment of the Philosophy of Kant; Joseph A. Leighton, Kant, the Seminal Thinker; Edward S. Ames, The Religion of Immanuel Kant ; S. G. Martin, Kant as a Student of Natural Science ; J. H. Farley, Kant’s Philosophy of Religion ; E. L. Hinman, Kant’s Philosophy of Law; J. F. Crawford, Kant’s Doctrine Concerning Per- petual Peace; E. F. Carritt, Sources and Effects in England of Kant’s Philosophy of Beauty; Frank Thilly, Kant’s Copernican Revolution.
Moslem World, New York, April: H. Bjerrum, Moslem Literature in Tamil; J. E. Graefe, Islam and Christianity in Guntur; D. A.
526
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Chowdhl’ry, Mohammedans of Bengal; Duncan B. MacDonald, Out- line of the History of Scholastic Theology in Islam ; J. H. Linton, Cost of Victory to a Convert ; George K. Harris, On the Borders of Thibet ; S. Ralph Harlow, Morn of Song in the Near East; N. Kuzmany, Notes on the Moslems of Bosnia.
New Church Life, Lancaster, April: R. J. Tilson, State of the Christian World as Viewed in Spiritual Light; Theodore Pitcairn, Heredity and the Future of the New Church. The Same, May: Hugo Lj. Odhner, The Magic of a Name; Colley Pryke, Swedenborg in His Maturity. The Same, June: E. E. Iungerich, Theosophy; Wilfred How.\rd, Some Educational Problems of a Scientific Age; R. J. Tilson, The Cross, as a Symbol in Public Worship.
Open Court, Chicago, April: Dudley Wright, Burnings of the Tal- mud; Victor S. Yarros, Telepathy — Science and Mysticism; Hardin T. McClelland, Man’s War with the Universe; Ch.\rles Kassel, Herald of Emancipation. The Satne, May: M.aynard Shipley, The Sesquicenten- nial of Ampere ; Martin Schutze, Coming Changes in Cultural Relations; Wilu.am Nathanson, The New Culture Concept and Marxian Socialism ; Antonio Ll.ano, Bias, Inconsistency and Herme- neutics ; George B. Bowers, In Defiance of the Gods.
Reformed Church Review, Lancaster, April: John L. Barnhart, The Project ^Method of Religious Education; Paul J. Dundore, Evangelism and the Scientific Attitude; D.wid Dunn, The Fatherhood of God in the Light of World Conditions ; A. S. Zerbe, Scientific, Philosophical and Theological Faith; Harry Hibschman, What is the Matter with the Liberal Church? ; J. F. Kauffman, The Lasting Armistice — Christianity; Albert G. Peters, Aim of Religious Education ; H. L. Lath.am, Old or New Motives for Social Action.
Review and Expositor, Louisville, April : Alexander McLaren, Coun- sels for the Study of Life; John F. Purser, Founders; W. W. Ei’ERTs, Paul’s Contribution to the Vocabulary of the New Testament ; John A. F.aulkner, Paul as Church Organizer; O. P. Eaches, The Self-Emptied Christ ; Albert D. Belden, The Spirit of Expiation.
Union Seminary Review, Richmond, January : C. L. King, A Trilogy of New Testament Studies ; W. W. Moore, James Sprunt ; D. P. McGeachy, Jesus and War; A. T. Robertson, W’hy the Revised Version?; Edward Mack, New Translation of the Old Testament; M. R. Turnbull, Studying the Bible by Books ; Russell Cecil, Resurrection of Christ ; S. M. Tenney, Presbyterian Historical Society of Synod of Texas. The Same, April : L. A. Weigle, Christian Education of American Children ; A. H. Barr, The Great Day of the Preacher; J. Ritchie Smith, Motives that Inspire God’s Service ; W. W. Moore, Centennial Celebration of the Church of Nottoway: T. C. Johnson, Work of the Church; H. W. McLaughlin, The Challenge of the Country Church; C. H. Pratt, Effective Evangelism in the Life of the Church.
Yale Reinew, New Haven, April : James R. Angell, Democracy and Education ; Henry N. Russell, The New Physics and the Stars ; Bro.\dus Mitchell, Southern Spindles; William H. Gardiner, Insular America ; Andrew E. Malone, The Plays of Lady Gregory.
RECENT LITERATURE
527
Bilychnis, Roma, Genn.-Febbr. : P. Sabatier, S. Francesco d’Assisi e il protestantesimo odierno ; G. Tucci, La preghiera nella Cina; J. Evola, £. Coue e I’ “agire senza agire.” The Same, Marzo : A. Pincherle, L’ar- ianesimo e la chiesa africana nel IV secolo; D. Provenzal, Un avventuriero eretico del seicento; S. Vitale, Teorie antiche e problem! modern! : La dottr!na de! don! sp!r!tual!. The Same, Apr!le: R. Murri, Stor!a sacra e stor!a profana ; D. Provenzal, Que! che va d! notte ; R. Nazzari, I potenz!ament! della volonta.
Bulletin de Litterature Ecclesiastique, Toulouse, Mars-Avr!l : Louis Saltet, Insolement et association dans les etudes eccleslastlques ; Andre WiLMART, Une curleuse expression pour designer I’oralson secrete; Z. Carriers, La transmutation des metaux au moyen age et au xx slecle; Ferdinand Cavallera, Revue d’hlstolre de I’anclenne litterature chre- tlenne et de la theologle.
Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift, Aalten, Maart : G. Keizer, Korte schets van de geschledenls der Belglsche Chrlstelljke Zendlngs- kerk en onze Correspondence met haar; F. W. Grosheide, Van “vrlj vertalen”; H. Kaajan, Jublleum Prof. Dr. H. H. Kuyper; J. Waterink, Kronlek. The Same, April : G. Keizer, Korte schets van de geschledenls der Belglsche Chrlstelljke Zendlngskerk en onze Correspondent^ met haar; E. D. J. De Jong Jr., Het tweede gebod en de verslerlng der kerken; J. Waterink, Kronlek. The Same, Mel; J. Ridderbos, Jesaja en Achaz; G. Keizer, Korte schets van de geschledenls der Belglsche Chrlstelljke Zendlngskerk en onze Correspondents met haar; J. Wat- erink, De strljd over “De gemeene gratle” in Amerika.
Recherches de Science Religieuse, Paris, Avril: Jules Lebreton, La Theologle de la Trinite d’apres saint Ignace d’Antioche, 1; _\ndre Bremond, La “Theologle” d’Aeschyle ; Gustave Bardy, Boanerges.
Revue Benedictine, Abbaye de Maredsous, Octobre : Van Hoon-
ACKER, Deux passages obscurs dans le chap. xix. d’Isaie; D. A. Dold, Le texte de la “Missa catachumenorum” du cod. Sangall. go8; D. A. WiLMART, Un lecteur ennemi d’Amalaire; W. B. Sedgwick, Origin of Rhyme; L. F. Smith, Note on the Codex Toletanus; D. Anger, Les preseances dans I’ordre de Cluny.
Revue d’Ascetique et de Mystique, Toulouse, Avril: M. Viller, Le Martyre et I’Ascese; F. Cavallera, Livres d’Autrefois — I’autobiographie du P. Surin ; J. de Guibert, L’Emploi de Methodes dans la vie spirituelle — Comment se pose la question?
Revue d’Histoire Ecclesiastique, Louvain, Avril: P. G. Thery, Le texte integral de la traduction du Pseudo-Denis par Hilduin (concluded) ; Paul O’Sheridan, Ce qui reste de la plus ancienne Vie de Ruysbroeck (concluded) ; E. Tobac, Le Christ nouvel Adam dans la theologle de St. Paul ; P. Demeuldre, Une contribution a I’histoire des martyrs.
Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie religieuses, Strasbourg, Janvier- Fevrier; A. Causse, Les Origines de la Poesie hebralque; J. Pommier, Renan et Strasbourg (Documents inedits) ; Maurice Goguel, Note sur Apocalypse 14:14; Ch. Bruston, Une parole de Jesus mal comprise; F. Menegoz, Albums d’autographes : souvenirs de trois theologiens stras-
528 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
bourgeois du xviii* siecle. The Same, Mars-Avril: J. Pommier, Renan et Strasbourg (Documents inedits, suite) ; M. Halbwachs, Les Origines puritaines du capitalisme ; Edmond Grin, Charles Secretan et le philos- ophic de Schelling.
Revue de Theologic et de Pliilosophie, Lausanne, Janvier-Mai: Charles Dombre, Les grands mystiques et leurs directeurs ; Auguste Lemaitre, La pensee theologique de Georges Fulliquet ; Aloys Berthoud," La Lutte du supranaturalisme et du rationalisme au dix-huitieme siecle ; Alexandre Lavanchy, Echos de la Societe vaudoise de theologie.
Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et TIteologiques, Paris, Avril: A. Barrois, Le sacrifice du Girist au Calvaire ; F. A. Blanche, Le vocabu- laire de I’argumentation et la structure de I’article dans les ouvrages de Saint Thomas ; M.-D. Roland-Gosselin, La valeur relative de I’intuition.
Zeitschrift fiir katholische Theologie, Innsbruck, 49:2; C. A. Kneller, Zu den Kontroversen fiber den hi. Ignatius v. Loyola, ii. Quellen der Exerzitien ; Johann Stufler, Das Wirken Gottes in den Geschopfen nach dem Heil. Thomas II; Lud\v. Hertling, Literarisches zu den apokryphen Apostelakten ; Joseph Stiglmayr, Pseudo-Makarius und die Aftermystik der Messalianer.
Zeitschrift fiir Theologie und Kirche, Tfibingen, 6:2: Hinrich Knittermeyer, Das Grundproblem des Sittlichen; Friedrich Tr.\ub, Die christliche Lehre von den letzen Dingen (schluss) ; H. R. Mackintosh, Systematische Theologie in Grossbritannien wahrend des letzten Viertel- jahrhunderts ; Wilhelm Bruhn, Die Kantliteratur des Jubiliiumsjahres und ihr religionsphilosophischer Ertrag.
THE PASTORAL EPISTLES OF PAUL By Charles R. Erdman. The Westminster Press, Phila- delphia. $1.00.
“This book is a new addition to a very goodly number of commentaries on the New Testament. It is characterized by the same sound, helpful, evangelical character as his former commentaries. It is a real satisfaction to-day to read a com- mentary which, while showing all thoroughness, careful scholarship, and practical helpfulness, yet one can read with- out finding those injections of personal unbelief which appear in so many such works.” — The Presbyterian, Philadelphia.
CHRISTIANITY AND LIBERALISM
By J. Gresham Machen, D.D. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1923. Price $1.75.
“This is a book that should be read by every thinking man, whether he calls himself a conservative or a liberal. While evi- dently the product of a thorough scholar, it is written through- out in simple, non-technical words.” S. G. Craig in The Presby- terian.
THE ORIGIN OF PAUL’S RELIGION
By J. Gresham Machen. The James Sprunt Lectures delivered at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. New York: The Macmillan Company, Second Printing, 1923. Price $1-75
“Professor Machen’s work commands respect. It is worthy of a high place among the products of American biblical scholar- ship.”— B. W. Bacon, in The Evening Post (New York).
“This is a book which it would be difficult to overpraise.” — The Church Quarterly Review (London).
NEW TESTAMENT GREEK FOR BEGINNERS
By J. Gresham Machen, D.D. New York; The Macmillan Company, 1923. Price $2.20.
This textbook is intended both for students who are begin- ning the study of Greek and for those whose acquaintance with the language is so imperfect that they need a renewed course of elementary instruction. The book does not deal with classical Greek, but presents simply the New Testament usage.
A DICTION.^Y OF THE BIBLE
By John D. Davis, Ph.D., D.D., LL.D., Professor of Ori- ental and Old Testament Literature in the Theological Seminary at Princeton, NJ. With Many New and Original Maps and Plans and Amply Illustrated. Fourth Revised Edition. Philadelphia : The Westminster Press, 1924.
“The Dictionary has been subjected to a revision, perva- sive yet unobtrusive, in order to incorporate material gath- ered by biblical research during the past decade and a half. Purposely the book has not been increased in size, nor has the pagination been changed.”
IS THE HIGHER CRITICISM SCHOLARLY.?
By Robert Dick Wilson, Ph.D., D.D., Professor of Semitic Philology and Old Testament Criticism in Princeton Theo- logical Seminary. With a Foreword by Philip E. Howard. Philadelphia: The Sunday School Times, 1922. Price 25 cents. London : Marshall Bros., 1923. Price i sh.
"The book is a veritable arsenal of ammunition with which to demolish the critical theories.” — Howard Agnew Johnston, in Scientific Christian Thinking for Young People.
TtlE WORK OF THE PASTOR
By Charles R. Erdman, D.D., LL.D. The Westminster Press, Philadelphia. 1924, 8vo, pp. vii. 257.
“This volume is intended to serve as a handbook to pastors and as a textbook for students of theology. It should be found helpful, however, to many others who are concerned with the organization and activities of the Christian Church. . . . Large portions of the last five chapters have been furnished by other writers, who are recognized as specially trained and qualified for their tasks.”
THE LORD WE LOVE
By Charles R. Erdman, D.D., LL.D. New York : George H. Doran Company. Pp. 138. $1.50 net.
This series of studies deals with the most important events in the life of Christ from his birth to his ascension. The studies are expository in character, and while affirming the central verities of Christian faith they are devotional and practical in spirit and aim.