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Volume XXV October, 1927
Number 4
The Princeton Theological Review
CONTENTS
The Integrity of the Lucan Narrative of the Annunciation 529
J. Gresham Machen
Echoes of the Covenant with David 587
James Oscar Boyd
Popular Protest and Revolt against Papal Finance in
England from 1226 to 1258 610
Oscar A. Marti
The Sign of the Prophet Jonah and its Modern Confir¬ mations 630
Ambrose John Wilson
Is Christianity Responsible for China’s Troubles? 643
Courtenay Hughes Fenn
Reviews of Recent Literature 664
Survey of Periodical Literature 690
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON
LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1927
The Princeton Theological Review
EDITED FOR
THE FACULTY OF PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
BY
Oswald T. Allis
Each author is solely responsible for the views expressed in his article Notice of discontinuance must be sent to the Publishers ; otherwise subscriptions will be continued Subscription rate. Two Dollars a year, single copies Sixty Cents Entered as Second Class Mail Matter at Princeton, N. J.
BOOKS REVIEWED
Bishop, W. S., The Theology of Personality . 683
De Korne, J. C., Chinese Altars to the Unknown God . 687
Gaedner-Smith, P., The Narratives of the Resurrection — A Crit¬ ical Study . 667
Hamilton, F. E., The Basis of Christian Faith . 664
Hickman, F. S., Introduction to the Psychology of Religion . 665
Martindale, C. O., What It Means to Be Christian . 682
Merrifield, F., Modern Religious Verse and Prose. An Anthology 68 7
Ramsay, W. M., Asianic Elements in Greek Civilisation . 671
Stebbins, G. G, George C. Stebbins: Reminiscences and Gospel
Hymn Stories . 685
The Sacred Scriptures, Concordant Version . 680
Wardle, W. L., Israel and Babylon . 674
Williams, W. W., and Millis, B. V. R., eds., Select Treatises of S. Bernard of Clairvaux . 683
Copyright 1917, by Princeton University Press
The Princeton Theological Review
OCTOBER 1927
THE INTEGRITY OF THE LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION1
The Lucan narrative of the birth and infancy in Lk. i. 5- ii. 52 is strikingly Jewish and Palestinian both in form and in content.2 That narrative contains an attestation of the virgin birth of Christ. But according to the prevailing view among those who deny the historicity of the virgin birth, the idea of the virgin birth was derived from pagan sources. If so, the question becomes acute how such a pagan idea could have found a place just in the most strikingly Jewish and Palestinian narrative in the whole New Testament.
This question has been answered by many modern scholars by a theory of interpolation. It is perfectly true, they say, that Lk. i. 5-ii. 52 is of Palestinian origin ; and it is perfectly true that an attestation of the virgin birth now stands in that narrative; but, they say, that attestation of the virgin birth formed no original part of the narrative, but came into it by interpolation.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of this question; indeed we may fairly say that if the interpolation theory is incorrect the most prominent modern reconstruc¬ tion proposed in opposition to the historicity of the virgin birth falls to the ground. The view as to the origin of the idea of the virgin birth which has been most widely held by those modern historians who deny the fact of the virgin birth stands or falls with the interpolation theory.
1 This article contains part of the manuscript form of the lectures on the Thomas Smyth Foundation which the author delivered at Columbia Theological Seminary in the spring of 1927.
2 Compare “The Hymns of the First Chapter of Luke” and “The First Two Chapters of Luke” in this Review, x, 1912, pp. 1-38, 212-277.
530
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
The interpolation theory3 has been held in various forms. A classification of these various forms is possible from two points of view.
The first point of view concerns the sense in which the supposed interpolation is to be called an interpolation. A three-fold division is here possible. In the first place, the interpolation may be regarded as an interpolation into the completed Gospel — a gloss introduced into the Third Gospel at some point in the manuscript transmission. In the second place, the interpolation may be regarded as an interpolation made by the author of the Gospel himself into a Jewish Christian source which elsewhere he is following closely. In this case the words attesting the virgin birth would be an original part of the Gospel, but would not belong to the un¬ derlying Jewish Christian narrative. In the third place, the in¬ terpolation may be regarded as an interpolation made by the author himself, not into a source but into the completed Gospel — that is, the author first finished the Gospel without including the virgin birth, and then inserted the virgin birth as an afterthought. This third possibility has been suggested — for the first time so far as we know — by Vincent Taylor, the author of the latest important monograph on the sub¬ ject.4
The second point of view from which a classification is possible concerns the extent of the supposed interpolation. Whether the interpolation is to be regarded as an interpola¬ tion into the completed Gospel by a scribe, or into the source by the author of the Gospel, or into the completed Gospel by the author of the Gospel, how much is to be regarded as interpolated ?
With regard to this latter question, there have been vari¬ ous opinions. The earliest and probably still the commonest view is that the interpolation embraces verses 34 and 35 of the first chapter. That view received its first systematic
3 Compare “The New Testament Account of the Birth of Jesus,” in this Review, iv, 1906, pp. 50-61.
4 Vincent Taylor, The Historical Evidence for the Virgin Birth, 1920.
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION
531
grounding from Hillmann in 1891. 5 6 It has since then been advocated by Usener, Harnack, Zimmermann, Schmiedel, Pfleiderer, Conybeare and others. A second view was sug¬ gested by Kattenbusch8 and defended by Weinel.7 It is to the effect that only the words, “seeing I know not a man”8 in Lk. i. 34, 35, are to be eliminated. A third view includes verses 36 and 37 with verses 34 and 35 in the supposed interpola¬ tion.80
With regard to the former classification — that is, the clas¬ sification according to the sense in which the supposed inter¬ polation is to be taken as an interpolation — it may be noticed at the start that the first view, which regards the interpolation as an interpolation made by a scribe into the completed Gos¬ pel, is opposed by the weight of manuscript attestation. There is really no external evidence worthy the name for the view that Lk. i. 34, 35 or any part of it is an interpolation. Manu¬ script b of the Old Latin Version, it is true, does substitute verse 38 for verse 34, and then omits verse 38 from its proper place. But that may either have been a mere blunder in trans¬ mission, especially since the two verses begin with the same words, “And Mary said”9; or else may be due to the desire of a scribe to save Mary from the appearance of unbelief which might be produced by her question in verse 34. 10 At any rate the reading of this manuscript is entirely isolated; as it stands, it produces nonsense, since it represents the angel
5 Hillmann, “Die Kindheitsgesohichte Jesu nach Lucas,” in Jahrbiicher fiir protestantische Theologie, xvii, 1891, pp. 213-231.
6 Das Apostolische Symbol, ii, 1900, pp. 621 f., 666-668 (Anm. 300).
7 “Die Auslegung des Apostolischen Bekenntnisses von F. Kattenbusch und die neutestamentliche Forschung,” in Zeitschrift fiir die neutesta- mentliche Wissenschaft, ii, 1901, pp. 37-39.
Njrtl (LvSpa ov yiviixrKoi.
80 Clemen ( Religionsgeschichtliche Erklarung des Neuen Testaments , 2te Aufl., 1924, p. 1 16) includes in the supposed interpolation even verse 38 as well as verses 36 and 37.
9 So A. C. Headlam, in a letter entitled, “The ‘Protevangelium’ and the Virgin Birth,” in The Guardian, for March 25, 1903, p. 432.
10 So, apparently, Zahn, in loc. See also especially Allen, “Birth of Christ in the New Testament,” in The Interpreter, i, 1905, pp. 116-118, who discusses the reading of b with some fulness.
532
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
as continuing to speak (verses 35-37) after he has already- departed; and certainly it cannot lay the slightest claim either to be itself, or to enable us to reconstruct, the true text. As for the testimony of John of Damascus in the eighth century to the omission of the phrase, “seeing I know not a man,” in some Greek codices, that is clearly too late to be of importance.11
Thus the unanimity of manuscript evidence for the inclu¬ sion of Lk. i. 34, 35 is practically unbroken. And it is dif¬ ficult to see how such unanimity could have arisen if the verses were interpolated in the course of the transmission. In view of the many widely divergent lines of transmission in which the text of the Gospel has come down to us, it would be surprising in the extreme if the true reading should in this passage have nowhere left even the slightest trace.
This argument, of course, applies only to that form of the interpolation hypothesis which regards the supposed inser¬ tion as having been made into the completed Gospel. It does not apply to the view that the author of the Gospel himself made the insertion into the narrative derived from his source or into the Gospel which he had already written but had not published. But possibly these forms of the hypothesis may be found to be faced by special difficulties of their own.
At any rate, what we shall now do is to examine these three forms of the interpolation hypothesis so far as possible together — noting, of course, as we go along, the cases where any particular argument applies only to one or to two of the three forms rather than to all. In other words, we shall ex¬ amine the question whether or not Lk. i. 34, 35 is an original part of its present context or else has been inserted into that context either by the author of the Gospel into a source or by the author of the Gospel into his own completed work or by some scribe.
The first consideration which we may notice as having been adduced in favor of the interpolation theory is of a
11 Compare “The New Testament Account of the Birth of Jesus,” in this Review, iv, 1906, pp. 50 f.
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 533
general character. The rest of the narrative, it is said, out¬ side of Lk. i. 34, 35 is perfectly compatible with a birth of Jesus simply as the son of Joseph and Mary, indeed it is even contradictory to the notion of a virgin birth; if, therefore, we accomplish the simple deletion of these two verses, all inconsistence is removed and the story becomes perfectly smooth and easy.
With regard to this argument, it should be noticed, in the first place, that the simple deletion of Lk. i. 34, 35 will not remove the virgin birth from the Third Gospel in general, or from the infancy narrative in particular; for the virgin birth is clearly implied in several other places.
The first of these places is found at Lk. i. 26 f., where it is said : “And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee whose name was Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David, and the name of the virgin was Mary.” Here Mary is twice called a virgin, and in what follows nothing whatever is said about her marriage to Joseph. This phenomenon is perfectly natural if the virgin birth was in the mind of the narrator, but it is very unnatural if the re¬ verse is the case. Advocates of the interpolation theory are therefore compelled to offer some explanation of the lan¬ guage in Lk. i. 27.
Two explanations are open to them. In the first place, it may be said that verse 27 has been tampered with by the same interpolator who inserted verses 34, 35, and that originally Mary was not here called a virgin. But against this explana¬ tion may be urged the fact that the word “virgin” occurs twice in the verse, and that if that word was not originally there the whole structure of the verse must have been different. The second possible explanation is that although the form of verse 27 which we now have is the original form — that is, although Mary was really designated there as a virgin — yet the mention of her marriage to Joseph has been omitted, by the interpolator of Lk. i. 34, 35, from the subsequent nar¬ rative. But it may be doubted whether this explanation quite
534
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
accomplishes the purpose for which it is proposed. Even if the writer of Lk. i. 27 were intending to introduce later on a mention of Mary’s marriage to Joseph, his designation of her as a virgin would seem to be unnatural. In the Old Tes¬ tament narratives of heavenly annunciations, the annuncia¬ tions are represented as being made to married women ; and if the narrator of Lk. i, ii intended the promised son to be regarded as having a human father as well as a human mother, as in those Old Testament narratives, why did he not, as is done there, represent the annunciation as being made to a married woman? Why does he insist so particu¬ larly, by a repetition of the word, that it was made to Mary when she was a “virgin”? It must be remembered that ac¬ cording to all or nearly all of the advocates of the interpola¬ tion theory, the narrative is quite unhistorical ; so that the narrator, according to their view, was not hampered by any historical consideration from placing the annunciation either before or after the marriage, exactly as he pleased. Why then does he insist so particularly that it took place before the marriage, or while Mary was still a “virgin,” instead of representing it as taking place after the marriage? Surely this latter representation would have been far more natural, as well as more in accord with Old Testament analogy, if the narrator really intended the promised son to be regarded as being, in a physical sense, the son of Joseph.
A possible answer to this argument of ours might be based upon Lk. ii. 7, where it is said that Jesus was the “firstborn son” of Mary, and upon Lk. ii. 23 where there is recorded compliance in the case of Jesus with the Old Tes¬ tament provisions about the firstborn. Perhaps, the advocates of the interpolation hypothesis might say, the emphasis in Lk. i. 27 upon the virginity of Mary at the time when the an¬ nunciation was made to her, is due only to the desire of the narrator to show that she had not previously had children. But we do not think that this answer is satisfactory. Isaac was the firstborn son of his mother Sarah, in accordance with the Old Testament narrative; and yet the annunciation
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 535
of his birth is represented as having come to his mother when she was already married. Similar is the case also with the birth of Samson and of Samuel. Why could not these models have been followed by the narrator of the birth of Jesus? Surely he could have represented Jesus as the first¬ born son without placing the annunciation, in so unnatural and unprecedented a way, before instead of after his mother's marriage.
At any rate, whether we are correct or not in regarding this second explanation of Lk. i. 27 as inadequate, it should be noticed that both the two explanations result in an over¬ loading of the interpolation hypothesis. Whether it be held that Lk. i. 27 has been tampered with, or that something has been removed by the interpolator at a later point in the nar¬ rative, in either case the activities of the interpolator must be regarded as having extended farther than was at first maintained. What becomes, then, of the initial argument that a simple removal of Lk. i. 34, 35 will suffice to make the narrative all perfectly smooth and easy as a narrative repre¬ senting Jesus as being in a physical sense the son of Joseph?
Moreover, Lk. i. 27 is not the only verse which requires explanation if Lk. i. 34, 35 be removed. What shall be done with Lk. ii. 5, which reads: “to be enrolled with Mary who was betrothed to him being great with child.” How could Mary be said to be only betrothed to Joseph, when she was already great with child? Certainly this form of expression, coming from a narrator who of course intended to record nothing derogatory to the honor of Mary, implies the virgin birth in the clearest possible way.
It is true, the matter is complicated in this case, as it was not in the case of Lk. i. 27, by variation in the extant manu¬ script transmission. The reading “who was betrothed to him” appears, indeed, in the best Greek uncials, including the typical representatives of the “Neutral” type of text, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus. It also appears in the Codex Bezae, which is a representative of the “West¬ ern” type of text, and in a number of the versions. But
536 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
certain manuscripts of the Old Latin Version and the “Si- naitic Syriac” manuscript of the Old Syriac Version read “his wife” ; and a number of the later uncials with the mass of the cursive manuscripts, representing what Westcott and Hort called the “Syrian Revision,” read “his betrothed wife.”
This last reading is generally rejected as being a “conflate reading” ; evidently, it is held, some scribe combined the reading “betrothed” with the reading “wife” to make the reading “betrothed wife.” But what decision shall be reached as between the other two readings ?
The external evidence certainly seems to favor the reading “betrothed,” which appears in the great early uncials, repre¬ sentative of the “Neutral” type of text, whereas the reading “wife” appears in no Greek manuscript at all but is attested only in Latin and in Syriac. Despite all that has been said in criticism of Westcott and Hort’s high estimate of the Neutral text, recent criticism has not really succeeded in in¬ validating that estimate.
Nevertheless, the combination of important Old Latin manuscripts with the Sinaitic Syriac in favor of the reading “wife” shows that that reading was in existence at a rather early time. It must, therefore, at least be given considera¬ tion.12
At first sight, transcriptional probability might seem to be in favor of it. If Mary at this point was in the original text spoken of as Joseph’s “wife,” it is possible to conceive of some scribe, who was eager to protect the virginity of Mary from any possible misunderstanding, as being offended by the word “wife” and so as substituting the word “betrothed” for it.
But it is possible also to look at the matter in a different light. If the word “betrothed” is read in this verse, then at least a verbal contradiction arises as over against the Gospel
12 The reading yvvaud , “wife,” is favored by a number of recent scholars — for example by Gressmann ( Das Weihnachtsevangelium, 1914, pp. 10 f.). It was favored by Hillmann, op. cit., 1891, pp. 216 f.
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 537
of Matthew; for without doubt Matthew lays great stress upon the fact that when Jesus was born Mary was in a legal sense not merely betrothed to Joseph but actually his wife. The contradiction need not indeed be anything more than formal; for there is no reason why Luke may not be using a terminology different from that of Matthew, so that by the word “betrothed” he is designating the extraordinary relationship which according to Matthew prevailed after Joseph had obeyed the instructions of the angel — that is, the relationship in which Mary was legally the wife of Joseph but in which he “knew her not until she had borne a son.”13 But although the contradiction may not actually be more than formal, it might well have seemed serious to a devout scribe. The change from “betrothed” to “wife” may there¬ fore fall into the category of “harmonistic corruptions.”
This hypothesis, we think, is more probable than the alter¬ native hypothesis, that “wife” was changed to “betrothed” for doctrinal reasons. Transcriptional considerations are thus not opposed to the reading of the Neutral text, and that reading should in all probability be regarded as correct.
But if the reading “betrothed” at Lk. ii. 5 is correct, then we have another overloading of the interpolation hypothesis with regard to Lk. i. 34, 35 : the advocates of that hypothesis must suppose that the interpolator tampered with Lk. ii. 5 as well as with Lk. i. 27 or with a supposed subsequent insertion mentioning the marriage of Mary to Joseph. Obviously the removal of all mention of the virgin birth from Lk. i-ii is by no means so simple a matter as was at first supposed.
There is of course still another place in the Third Gospel where the virgin birth is clearly alluded to — namely Lk. iii. 23. The words “as was supposed” in that verse — “being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph” — clearly imply that Jesus was only “supposed” to be the son (in the full sense) of Joseph, and that really his relationship to Joseph was of a different kind.
In this case there is no manuscript evidence for the omis-
13 Mt. i. 25.
538 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
sion of the words; the words appear in all the extant wit¬ nesses to the text, the variants (of order and the like) being unimportant for the matter now under discussion. The verse, therefore, constitutes an additional weight upon at least one form of the interpolation theory regarding Lk. i. 34, 35 ; it constitutes a weight upon the hypothesis that those verses are an interpolation into the completed Gospel. For if Lk. i. 34, 35 is an interpolation, the words “as was supposed” in Lk. iii. 23 must also be an interpolation ; and the more numerous such interpolations are thought to be, the more difficult does it become to explain the disappearance from the many lines of documentary attestation of all traces of the original, unin¬ terpolated text.
Of course, this verse, Lk. iii. 23, has no bearing against the other principal form of the interpolation hypothesis, which supposes that the interpolation of Lk. i. 34, 35 was made by the author of the Gospel himself into his source; for Lk. iii. 23 does not stand within the infancy narrative. But even that form of the hypothesis is faced, as we have seen, by the difficulties presented by Lk. i. 27 and ii. 5. Thus it is not correct to say that if the one passage Lk. i. 34, 35 were deleted, the attestation of the virgin birth would be removed from the Lucan infancy narrative. If that passage is an interpolation, then at least one and probably two other passages must also be regarded as having been tampered with. But obviously every addition of such ancillary sup¬ positions renders the original hypothesis less plausible.
Nevertheless, the advocates of the interpolation hypothe¬ sis may still insist that although one or two verses in the infancy narrative outside of Lk. i. 34, 35 do imply the virgin birth, yet the bulk of the narrative proceeds upon the op¬ posite assumption that Jesus was the son of Joseph by or¬ dinary generation. The arguments in favor of this contention may perhaps be classified under three heads. In the first place, it is said, the narrative traces the Davidic descent of Jesus through Joseph, not through Mary, so that it must regard Joseph as His father. In the second place, Joseph is actually spoken of in several places as the “father” of Jesus, and
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 539
Joseph and Mary are spoken of as His “parents.” In the third place, there is attributed to Mary in certain places a lack of comprehension which, it is said, would be unnatural if she knew her son to have been conceived by the Holy Ghost.
The fact upon which the first of these arguments is based should probably be admitted ; it is probably true that the Lucan infancy narrative traces the Davidic descent of Jesus through Joseph. Whether it does so depends to a consider¬ able extent upon the interpretation of Lk. i. 27. Do the words “of the house of David,” in that verse refer to Joseph or to Mary?14 It seems more natural to regard them as referring to Joseph. This is so for two reasons. In the first place, the words come immediately after the name of Joseph; and in the second place repetition of the noun, “the virgin,” would not have been necessary at the end of the verse if Mary had just been referred to in the preceding clause ; if “of the house of David” referred to Mary, the wording would be simply “to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David, and her name was Mary.”
Some modern Roman Catholic scholars have indeed argued with considerable force against this conclusion. The repetition of the word “virgin” instead of the use of the simple pronoun “her,” they argue, is to be explained by the desire of the narrator not merely to mention, but to em¬ phasize, the virginity of Mary; and since Mary is evidently the chief person in the narrative, it is natural, they say, to take the three phrases ; ( 1 ) “betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph,” (2) “of the house of David,” and (3) “the name of the virgin was Mary,” as being all of them descrip¬ tive of Mary. These arguments are certainly worthy of con¬ sideration — more consideration than they have actually re¬ ceived. And yet they are hardly sufficient to overthrow the prime facie evidence. It does seem more natural, after all, to refer the words “of the house of David” to Joseph.
14 Verses 26 f. read : bvSb r<p p-yvl t<2 Hkt p a-rreaTdX-q 6 AyyeXos Taf3pi.T)\ airb toC 0eaO e/s irbXiv rfj s I’ aXiXa/a s 6vopa Nafap^d, irpos irapdtvov ipvqarevpevqv av8pl tp 8vopa 'l(i><T-ti<f>, /£ oCkov Aave/5, (cat t6 6vopa rijs trapdevov Maptdp.
540 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
If so, the Davidic descent of Mary is not mentioned in the narrative. There is indeed nothing in the narrative to pre¬ vent us from holding, if we care to do so, that Mary was descended from David. Certainly her kinship with Elisabeth15 does not preclude such an opinion; for intermarriage be¬ tween the tribe of Levi, to which Elisabeth belonged, and the other tribes was perfectly permissible under the law. No positive objection, therefore, can be raised to the view, which is held even by some scholars who reject the reference of the words “of the house of David” in Lk. i. 27 to Mary, that the narrator means to imply in his account of the annuncia¬ tion to the virgin that Mary as well as Joseph was descended from David. But certainly the Davidic descent of Mary, even though it be held to be implied (which we for our part think very doubtful), is at any rate not definitely stated.
If so, it looks as though the Davidic descent of Jesus were traced by the narrator through Joseph. But how can that be done if the narrator regarded the line as broken by the fact that Joseph was not really the father of Jesus?
In reply it may be said that some persons in the early Church certainly did regard the two things — ( 1 ) the Davidic descent of Jesus through Joseph and (2) the virgin birth of Jesus — as being compatible. Such persons, for example, were the author of the first chapter of Matthew and the man who produced the present form of the first chapter of Luke, even though this latter person be thought to have been merely an interpolator. But if these persons thought that the two things were compatible, why may not the original author of the narrative in Lk. i-ii have done so? And if the original author did so, then the fact that he traces the Davidic descent through Joseph does not prove that he did not also believe in the virgin birth ; so that the tracing of the Davidic descent through Joseph ceases to afford any support to the interpo¬ lation theory.
It is another question, of course, whether the virgin birth is really compatible with the Davidic descent through Joseph.
15 Lk. i. 36.
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 54I
All that we need to show for the present purpose is that it may well have been thought to be compatible by the author of the infancy narrative. However, it would be a mistake to leave the question, even at the present point in our argument, in so unsatisfactory a condition. As a matter of fact, there is, we think, a real, and not merely a primitively assumed, com¬ patibility between the Davidic descent through Joseph and the virgin birth; the author of the first chapter of Matthew and also (if we are right in rejecting the interpolation theory) the author of the first two chapters of Luke had a perfect right to regard Jesus as the heir of the promises made to the house of David even though He was not descended from David by ordinary generation.
We reject, indeed, the view of Badham that, according to the New Testament birth narratives, although Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born, yet in some supernatural way, and not by the ordinary intercourse of husband and wife, Joseph became even in a physical sense the father of Jesus.18 This suggestion fails to do justice, no doubt, to the meaning of the narratives. In the first chapter of Matthew, and also really in the first chapter of Luke, the physical paternity of Joseph is clearly excluded.
Yet it ought to be observed, in the first place, that the Jews looked upon adoptive fatherhood in a much more realistic way than we look upon it. In this connection we can point, for example, to the institution of Levirate marriage. Ac¬ cording to the Old Testament law, when a man died without issue, his brother could take the wife of the dead man and raise up an heir for his brother. Evidently the son was re¬ garded as belonging to the dead man to a degree which is foreign to our ideas. Because of this Semitic way of think¬ ing, very realistic terms could be used on Semitic ground to express a relationship other than that of physical paternity. Then so eminent an expert as F. C. Burkitt, who certainly cannot be accused of apologetic motives, maintains that the word “begat” in the Matthaean genealogy does not indicate
18 E. P. Badham in a letter in The Academy for November 17, 1894 (vol. xlvi, pp. 401 f.).
542 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
physical paternity but only the transmission of legal heir¬ ship, so that even if the genealogy had ended with the words “Joseph begat Jesus,” that would not have afforded the slightest indication that the author did not believe in the virgin birth.17 The truth is that in the New Testament Jesus is presented in the narratives of the virgin birth as belonging to the house of David just as truly as if he were in a physical sense the son of Joseph. He was a gift of God to the Davidic house, not less truly, but on the contrary in a more wonderful way, than if he had been descended from David by ordinary generation. Who can say that this New Testament representation is invalid? The promises to David were truly fulfilled if they were fulfilled in accordance with the views of those to whom they were originally given.
In the second place, the relation in which Jesus stood to Joseph, on the assumption that the story of the virgin birth is true, was much closer than is the case with ordinary adop¬ tion. By the virgin birth the whole situation was raised be¬ yond ordinary analogies. In an ordinary instance of adop¬ tion there is another human being — the actual father — who disputes with the father by adoption the paternal relation to the child. Such was not the case with Joseph in his relation¬ ship to Jesus, according to the New Testament narratives. He alone and no other human being could assume the rights and the duties of a father with respect to this child. And the child Jesus could be regarded as Joseph’s son and heir with a completeness of propriety which no ordinary adoptive re¬ lationship would involve.
Thus the fact that in the Lucan infancy narrative Jesus is presented as the descendant of David through Joseph does not at all show that the narrative in its original form con¬ tained no mention of the virgin birth.
Moreover, in refuting the first supposed proof of contra¬ diction between the verses that attest the virgin birth and the rest of the narrative, we have really already refuted the second supposed proof. The second argument, as we ob-
17 Burkitt, Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, 1904, ii. pp. 260 f.
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 543
served, is based upon the application, in the second chapter of Luke, of the term “father” to Joseph and of the term “parents” to Joseph and Mary.18 Of the instances where this phenome¬ non occurs, Lk. ii. 48 clearly belongs in a special category ; for there the term “father” is not used by the narrator in his own name but is attributed by the narrator to Mary. Evidently, whatever may be the narrator’s own view of the relationship of Joseph to Jesus, it is unnatural that even if the virgin birth was a fact, Mary should have mentioned the special nature of that relationship in the presence of her Son. Thus in at¬ tributing the term “father” to Mary, in her conversation with Jesus, the narrator, if he did know of the virgin birth, is merely keeping within the limits of historical probability in a way which would not be the case if he had endeavored to make the virgin birth explicit at this point. But even the other occurrences of the term “father” or “parents” are thoroughly natural even if the narrator knew and accepted the story of the virgin birth. For, as we have just observed in connection with the matter of the Davidic descent, such terms could well be used on Semitic ground to describe even an ordinary adoptive relationship — to say nothing of the altogether unique relationship in which, according to the story of the virgin birth, Joseph stood to the child Jesus. Thus those manuscripts of the Old Latin Version which sub¬ stitute in these passages the name “Joseph” for the term “father” and the phrase “Joseph and his mother” for the term “parents” are adopting an apologetic device which is altogether unnecessary. The absence of any such meticulous safeguarding of the virgin birth in the original text of Lk. ii shows not at all that the virgin birth was unknown to the author of that chapter, but only that the chapter was com¬ posed at an early time when naively direct narration had not yet given place to apologetic reflection.
18 Lk. ii. 33, “And his father and his mother were marvelling at the things which were being spoken about him” ; verse 41, “And his parents ( yovels ) were in the habit of going year by year to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover” ; verse 43, “And his parents did not know it” ; verse 48, “behold, thy father and I seek thee sorrowing.”
544 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
The third supposed contradiction between Lk. i. 34, 35 and the rest of the narrative that has been detected by advocates of the interpolation theory, is found in those places where Mary is represented as being puzzled by evidences of the high position of her son. How could she have been surprised by such things, it is asked, if from the beginning she knew that the child had been conceived by the Holy Ghost ?
With regard to this argument, it may be said, in the first place, that the argument proves too much. If the wonder, or lack of comprehension, which Mary is represented as dis¬ playing at various points of the narrative shows that she could not have been regarded by the narrator as having passed through the experience predicted in Lk. i. 34, 35, it also shows that she could not have been the recipient even of the other angelic words. If Mary had had promised to her a son who was to be called a Son of the Most High19 and of whose kingdom there was to be no end,20 why should she have been surprised by the prophecies of the aged Simeon or have failed to understand the emergence in the boy Jesus of a unique filial consciousness toward God? Surely the angel’s words, even without mention of the virgin birth, might have provided the key to unlock all these subsequent mysteries. Logically, therefore, the argument with which we are now dealing would require excision, not merely of Lk. i. 34, 35, but of the whole annunciation scene. But such exci¬ sion is of course quite impossible, since the annunciation is plainly presupposed in the rest of the narrative and since the section Lk. i. 26-38 is composed in exactly the same style as the rest. Evidently the argument with which we are now dealing proves too much.
But that argument faces an even greater objection. Indeed it betokens, on the part of those who advance it, a woeful lack of appreciation of what is one of the most beautiful literary touches in the narrative and at the same time an im¬ portant indication of essential historical trustworthiness.
19 Lk. i. 32.
20 Verse 33.
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 545
We refer to the delicate depiction of the character of Mary. These modern advocates of mechanical consistency seem to suppose that Mary must have been, or rather must have been regarded by the original narrator as being, a person of a coldly scientific frame of mind, who, when she had passed through the wonderful experience of the supernatural con¬ ception, proceeded to draw out the logical consequences of that experience in all their minutest ramifications, so that thereafter nothing in heaven or on earth could affect her with the slightest perplexity or surprise. How different, and how much more in accord with historical probability, is the picture of the mother of Jesus in this wonderful narrative! According to this narrative, Mary was possessed of a simple and meditative — we do not say dull or rustic — soul. She meets the strange salutation of the angel with fear and with a perplexed question; but then when mysteries beyond all human experience are promised her says simply : “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” Then she journeys far to seek the sympathetic ear of a woman whom she can trust; and, when she is saluted in lofty words, she responds with a hymn of praise which is full of exultation but also full of reserve. Then when the child is born, and the shepherds come with their tale of the angelic host, others marvel, but Mary “kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.” But when Simeon uttered his prophecy about the light which was to shine forth to the Gentiles, Mary, with Joseph, marvelled at the things which were spoken about her child. No doubt, if she had been a modern superman, she would have been far beyond so lowly an emotion as wonder; no doubt, since her son had been born without human father, she would never have been surprised by so comparatively trifling a phenomenon as an angelic host that appeared to simple shepherds and sang to them a hymn of praise. But then it must be remembered that according to this narrative Mary was not a modern super¬ man, but a Jewish maiden of the first century, nurtured in the promises of the God — the recipient, indeed, of a wonder-
546
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
ful experience, but despite that experience still possessed of some capacity for wonder in her devout and meditative soul. And surely in the Palestine of the first century such a Jewish maiden is a more natural figure than the scientific monstros¬ ity which some modern scholars seem to demand that she should be.
Finally, when she saw her twelve-year old son in the Temple, in the company of the doctors of the law, she was astonished, and when her son said, “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business,” she actually failed to under¬ stand. Truly that was unpardonable dullness — so we are told — on the part of one who knew that the child had been con¬ ceived by the Holy Ghost.
We can only say that if it really was dullness, that dull¬ ness has been shared from that day to this by the greatest minds in Christendom. Has the utterance of the youthful Jesus ever fully been understood — understood, we mean, even by those who have been just as fully convinced of the fact of the supernatural conception as Mary was convinced if the experience actually was hers? There are depths in this utterance which have never been fathomed even by the fram¬ ers of the Nicene and Chalcedonian creeds. It will be a sad day, indeed, if the Church comes to suppose that nothing in this word of the boy Jesus can be understood; but it will also be a sad day if it supposes that all can be understood. Mary can surely be pardoned for her wonder, and for her failure to understand.
She had indeed passed through a unique experience; her son had been conceived in the womb without human father as none other had been conceived during all the history of the human race. But then when He had been born, with the mother’s very human pangs, He was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger; and then He grew up like other boys, in the Nazareth home. No doubt from the point of view with which we are now dealing His lowly birth and childhood ought to have caused no questioning or wonder in Mary’s heart; no doubt she ought to have deduced from
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 547
these things, when they were taken in connection with the miracle of His conception, the full Chalcedonian doctrine of the two natures in the one person of the Lord ; no doubt she ought to have been expecting the emergence, in the human consciousness of her child, of just such a sense of vocation and divine sonship as that which appeared when she found Him with the doctors in the Temple; no doubt she ought to have been far beyond all capacity for perplexity or surprise. But then we must reflect, from our modern vantage ground, that Mary was just a Jewish woman of the first century. It is perhaps too much to expect that she should be a representa¬ tive of the “modern mind.” Perhaps she may even have re¬ tained the now obsolete habit of meditation and of quiet communion with her God; perhaps, despite her great ex¬ perience, she may never have grasped the modern truth that God exists for the sake of man and not man for the sake of God ; perhaps God’s mercies had to her not yet come to seem a common thing. Perhaps, therefore, despite the miracle of the virgin birth, she may still have retained the sense of wonder; and when angels uttered songs of praise, and aged prophets told of the light that was to lighten the Gentiles, or when her child disclosed a consciousness of vocation that suddenly seemed to place a gulf between her and Him, she may, instead of proclaiming these things to unsympathetic ears, have preferred to keep them and ponder them in her heart.
So understood, the picture of Mary in these chapters is profoundly congruous with the verses that narrate the virgin birth. By the contrary argument modern scholars show merely that even for the prosecution of literary criticism something more is needed than acuteness in the analysis of word and phrase ; one must also have some sympathy for the spirit of the narrative with which one deals. And if one ap¬ proaches this narrative with sympathy, one sees that the supernatural conception is not only not contradictory to what is said about the thoughts of Mary’s heart but profoundly congruous with it. The words that recur like a refrain —
548 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
“Mary kept all these words and pondered them in her heart,” “Mary kept all these words in her heart” — place Mary before the readers in a way that is comprehensible only if she alone and not Joseph is the centre of interest in the narrative. And what made her the centre of interest save the stupendous wonder of the virgin birth? How delicate and how self-consistent is this picture of the mother of the Lord ! Others might pass lightly over the strange events that oc¬ curred in connection with the childhood of her Son; others might forget the angels’ song; others might be satisfied with easy solutions of the problem presented by the consciousness of divine vocation which the youthful Jesus attested in the answer which He rendered in the Temple to His earthly parents. But not for Mary was such superficiality sufficient, not for the one who had been chosen of God to be the mother of the Lord. Others might be satisfied with easy answers to questions too deep for human utterance, but not so the one who had been overshadowed by the Holy Ghost. No, what¬ ever others might do or say, Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.
We are, indeed, as far as possible from accepting the Roman Catholic picture of the Queen of Heaven. But we also think that Protestants, in their reaction against Mariola- trous excesses, have failed to do justice to the mother of our Lord. Few and simple, indeed, are the touches with which the Evangelist draws the picture; fleeting only are the glimpses which he allows us into the virgin’s heart. And yet how lifelike is the figure there depicted; how profound are the mysteries in that pure and meditative soul ! In the narra¬ tive of the Third Gospel the virgin Mary is no lifeless autom¬ aton, but a person who lives and moves — a person who from that day to this has had power to touch all simple and child¬ like hearts.
Whence comes such a figure into the pages of the world’s literature? Whence comes this lifelike beauty; whence comes this delicacy of reserve? Such questions will never be asked by those historians who reconstruct past ages by rule of
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 549
thumb; they will never be asked by those who know the documents without knowing the human heart. But to his¬ torians fully worthy of that name, the picture of Mary in the Third Gospel may seem to possess a self-evidencing power. Was such a picture the product of myth-making fancy, an example of the legendary elaboration which surrounds the childhood of great men? Very different, at least, were certain other products of such fancy in the early Church. Or is this picture drawn from the life; is the veil here gently pulled aside, that we may look for a moment into the depths of the virgin’s soul ; is the person here depicted truly the mother of our Lord?
Whatever answers may be given to these questions, whether the picture of Mary in these chapters is fiction or truth, one thing is clear — an integral part of that picture is found in the mention of the supernatural conception in the virgin’s womb. Without that supreme wonder, everything that is here said of Mary is comparatively meaningless and jejune. The bewilderment in Mary’s heart, her meditation upon the great things that happened to her son — all this, far from being contradictory to the virgin birth, really presup¬ poses that supreme manifestation of God’s power. That supreme miracle it was which rendered worth while the glimpses which the narrator grants us into Mary’s soul.
Thus general considerations will certainly not prove Lk. i. 34, 35 to be an interpolation; no contradiction, but rather the profoundest harmony, is to be found between these verses and the rest of the narrative. The Davidic descent could clearly be traced through Joseph, and was elsewhere traced through Joseph, even if Jesus was not by ordinary generation Joseph’s son; the term “father” as applied to Joseph does not necessarily imply physical paternity; the wonder in Mary’s heart at various things that happened during the childhood of her son does not exclude the greater miracle of His conception in the womb, but on the contrary contributes to the picture of which that greater miracle is an integral part. It certainly cannot be said upon general prin-
550
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
ciples, therefore, that the writer of the rest of the narrative could not have written Lk. i. 34, 35.
But if such general considerations — such considerations based upon the central content of the verses — will not es¬ tablish the interpolation theory, what shall be said of the two verses considered in detail and in the immediate con¬ text in which they appear ? Is it possible to discern elements of style in these verses which designate them as foreign to the narrative in which they now appear ; or else is it possible to exhibit between them and their present context imperfect joints which would disclose an interpolator’s hand?
The former of these questions must certainly be answered in the negative. Harnack, it is true, discovers in the use of two conjunctions in the verses evidences of a hand other than that of Luke. One of these conjunctions,21 he says, oc¬ curs, indeed, a number of times in Acts, but nowhere in the rest of the Third Gospel (unless it is genuine in Lk. vii. 7210) ; and the other22' according to the best text of Lk. vii. 1 (where it is probably not genuine) occurs nowhere else in the Lucan writings.23
But surely the facts with regard to the former of these two words are rather in favor of Lucan authorship than against it; the word, on Harnack’s own showing, does occur a number of times in Luke’s double work. And with regard to the other word, it may simply be remembered that an author’s choice of such words is seldom completely uniform. Bardenhewer24 gives a list of other particles beside this one that occur only once in the Lucan writings. In general it is significant that Zimmermann25 and, more recently, Vincent
21 816.
210 In Lk. vii. 7 the words Sib oboe i/Mvrbu r/^tivcra ir pbs ere i\deiv are omitted by the “Western” text. They are no doubt genuine. The omission may be a harmonistic corruption to make the passage conform to Mt. viii. 8.
12 in el.
23 Harnack, “Zu Lc. i. 34, 35,” in Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche IVissenschaft, ii. 1901, p. 53.
24 “Zu Maria Verkiindigung,” in Biblische Zeitschrift, iii, 1905, p. 159.
25 “Evangelium des Lukas Kap. 1 und 2,” in Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 76, 1903, p. 274.
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 55 1
Taylor26 can point to the Lucan character of the diction in these verses positively in support of their view that Luke himself, and not some scribe, was the interpolator.
The truth is that the arguments of Zimmermann and Vincent Taylor, on the one hand, and of Harnack on the other, at this point simply cancel each other : the language of the two verses displays exactly the same combination of Jewish character with Lucan diction which appears every¬ where else in the narrative. It is quite impossible to prove by stylistic considerations either that the verses are a Lucan interpolation into the source (or as Vincent Taylor would say into the original form of the Gospel) or a non-Lucan interpolation by a scribe. Nothing could be smoother, from a stylistic point of view, than the way in which these verses harmonize with the rest of the infancy narrative.
If then no support for the interpolation theory can be ob¬ tained from stylistic considerations, what shall be said of the way in which the thought of the two verses fits into the immediate context? May any loose joints be detected by which the verses have been inserted, or does the whole sec¬ tion appear to be of a piece ?
In this connection, some of the arguments which have been advanced by advocates of the interpolation theory are certainly very weak. Thus when Harnack says27 that the question and answer in Lk. i. 34, 35 unduly separate the words, “Behold thou shalt conceive,” in verse 31, from the corresponding words, “Behold Elisabeth thy kinswoman has conceived, she also,” in verse 36, surely he is demanding a perfect regularity or obviousness of structure which is not at all required in prose style. Even if verses 34, 35 are removed, still the two phrases that Harnack places in parallel are separated by the important words of verses 32 f. As a matter of fact, it is by no means clear that the parallelism is con¬ scious at all. But what is truly surprising is that Harnack can regard the content of this reference to Elisabeth as an
26 The Historical Evidence for the Virgin Birth, 1920, pp. 55-69.
27 Harnack, op. cit., pp. 53-55.
552
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
argument in favor of the interpolation theory instead of regarding it as an argument against it. The words in verses 36 f., Hamack argues, obtain a good sense only if no men¬ tion of Mary’s conception by the Holy Spirit has gone be¬ fore ; for if the most wonderful thing of all has already been promised, then it is weak and unconvincing, he thinks, to point, in support of this wonder, to the lesser wonder of Elisabeth’s conception in her old age.
Surely this argument should be exactly reversed. The fact that in verses 36 f. the angel points, not to the career of Elisabeth’s son as the forerunner of Mary’s greater Son, but to something extraordinary in the manner of his birth, shows plainly that this example is adduced in illustration of something lying in the same sphere — namely in illustration of the greater miracle involved in the conception of Jesus entirely without human father in the virgin’s womb. If all that had been mentioned before was the greatness of a son whom Mary was to bear simply as the fruit of her coming marriage with Joseph, then nothing could be more pointless than a reference to the manner in which John was born. As a matter of fact, the plain intention is to illustrate the greater miracle (birth without human father) by a reference to the lesser miracle (birth from aged parents). It is per¬ fectly true, of course, that there could be in the nature of the case no full parallel for the unique miracle of the virgin birth. But what the angel could do was to point to a happen¬ ing that was at least sufficient to illustrate the general prin¬ ciple “with God nothing shall be impossible.”28
It is not surprising, therefore, that Hilgenfeld29 apparently makes the reference to Elisabeth an argument, not against, but in favor of, the integrity of the passage, and that Spitta30
28 Lk. i. 37.
29 “Die Geburts- und Kindheitsgeschichte Jesu Luc. i. 5-ii. 52,” in Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Theologie, 44, 1901, pp. 202 f. ; “Die Geburt Jesu aus der Jungfrau in dem Lucas-Evangelium,” ibid., pp. 316 f.
30 “Die chronologischen Notizen und die Hymnen in Lc. i u. 2,” in Zeitschrift fiir die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, vi, 1906, p. 289. Compare also Hacker, “Die Jungfrauen-Geburl und das Neue Testa-
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 553
and others make it an argument for including verses 36 f. in the supposed interpolation.
Against this latter hypothesis there are, indeed, the grav¬ est possible objections. Against the view that the whole pas¬ sage, embracing verses 34-37, constitutes an interpolation, the argument from the stylistic congruity of the supposed interpolation with the remainder of the narrative tells with crushing force. That argument was strong even if only verses 34 f. were regarded as interpolated. But in that case it might conceivably (though even then not plausibly) be said that the interpolation is too brief to disclose the stylistic variations from the rest of the narrative which in a longer interpolation might be expected to reveal the interpolator’s hand. But if the interpolator inserted so long a passage as verses 34-37, then it is truly a most extraordinary thing that he should have been able to catch the spirit of the infancy narrative so perfectly that nowhere in the whole course of his long insertion has he struck a single discordant note. In¬ terpolators are not apt to be possessed of such wonderfully delicate skill. Moreover, it may turn out that there are still other special difficulties in the way of this modified form of the interpolation hypothesis.
But unlikely though this modification of the interpolation hypothesis is, it does at least show a salutary feeling for the weakness of the more usual view. Certainly verses 36 f. are connected with 34 f. in the most indissoluble way; it is inconceivable that the reference to Elisabeth’s conception in her old age should be separated from the reference to Mary’s conception by the Holy Ghost. What we have here is a rather clear instance of the fate that frequently besets in-
ment,” in Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Theologie, 49, 1906, p. 52, and Montefiore, The Synoptic Gospels, 1909, ii, p. 351. In the second edition of his book (1927, ii, pp. 368 f.) Montefiore has ceased to follow the ar¬ gument of Spitta, and now holds rather that the reference to Elisabeth’s conception in her old age is not suited to the mention of the greater miracle in verses 34 f. In general, he has become doubtful about the in¬ terpolation theory. Hacker, Spitta, and the earlier edition of Montefiore are cited by Moffatt, An Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament, 3rd edition, 1918 (printing of 1925), p. 268 (footnote).
554
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
terpolation theories. The critic starts hopefully to remove something from a literary production. At first he thinks it is an easy matter. But then he discovers, to his consternation, that great shreds of the rest of the book are coming up along with the thing that he is trying to remove ; the book proves to be not an agglomeration but an organism. So it is with Lk. i. 34, 35. At first it seems to be an easy matter just to remove these verses and so get rid of the disconcerting attestation of the virgin birth in a Palestinian narrative. But the thing proves to be not so easy as it seemed. For one thing, as we observed above, something has to be done with Lk. i. 27 and probably with Lk. ii. 5 and iii. 23. And then here in the im¬ mediate context it is quite evident that if Lk. i. 34 f. is to go, verses 36 f. must go too. We may, before we have finished, discover connections with still other parts of the context. At any rate, it should certainly be disconcerting to the advocates of the interpolation theory that what Harnack regards as a loose joint showing verses 34 f. to be no original part of their present context, is regarded by equally acute observers as being so very close a connection that if what appears in one side of the connection is interpolated what appears on the other side must also go. If the interpolation theory were correct, we might naturally expect some sort of agreement among the advocates of it as to the place where the joints between the interpolation and the rest of the narrative are to be put.
Not much stronger, perhaps, though no doubt more widely advocated, than the arguments mentioned so far is the argument to the effect that verses 34 f. constitute a “doublet” with verses 31-33, and so could not originally have stood side by side with those former verses. In verses 31-33, it is said, Jesus is called Son of David and Son of the Most High ; in verse 35 he is called Son of God because of the manner of his birth. If — so the argument runs — the writer had had in his mind the “Son of God” of verse 35, he would not have written the “Son of the Most High” and the ■“David His father” of verses 31-33.
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 555
With respect to this argument, it should be remarked in the first place that there is clearly no contradiction between the representation in verses 31-33 and that in verse 34 f. Of¬ fense has indeed been taken at the grounding of divine son- ship in verse 35 upon the physical fact of divine paternity — “therefore also that holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of God.” How different, it is said in effect, is the Messianic conception of divine sonship in verses 31-33 !
But the question may well be asked whether the divine sonship of the child in verse 35 is grounded so clearly upon a physical fact of divine paternity as the objection seems to suppose. It is perfectly possible to take the word “holy” in that verse not as the subject but as part of the predicate. In that case, the words should be translated: “therefore also that which is begotten shall be called holy, Son of God.” On this interpretation it is not particularly the divine sonship but the holiness of the child which is established by the physical fact of the supernatural conception, and the divine sonship becomes merely epexegetical of the holiness. The decision between the two ways of construing the word “holy” is difficult. But even if the word is regarded not as predicate but as subject, still we do not think that there is the slightest antinomy as over against verses 31-33. Even if the meaning is : “therefore also that holy thing that is begotten shall be called Son of God,” we still do not see how such a grounding of the fact of divine sonship is contradictory to that which appears in the preceding verses. Certainly this verse does not intend to present the only way in which the divine sonship of the child is manifested. The verse says (in the construction that we are now discussing) that because of the supernatural conception the child shall be called Son of God; but it does not say that because of the supernatural conception the child shall be Son of God. We do not indeed lay particular stress upon this distinction. No doubt the distinction between “to be” and “to be called” is often not to be pressed; no doubt the passive of the verb “to call” in the New Testament some¬ times implies not merely that a thing is designated as this or
556 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
that, but that it is rightly so designated. So here, “shall be called Son of God” may be taken as meaning by implication, “shall be rightly called Son of God”, and the emphasis may be upon the fact that justifies the calling rather than the calling itself. But whatever stress may be laid or may not be laid upon the distinction between “to be called” and “to be,” it is certainly absurd to take this sentence in an exclusive sense, as though it meant that the fact of the supernatural conception is the only reason why the child should “be called” or should “be” the Son of God. All that is meant is that the activity of the Holy Spirit at the conception of Jesus is in¬ timately connected with that aspect of His being which causes Him to be called Son of God. One who was conceived in the womb by such a miracle must necessarily be the Son of God; a child who was conceived by the Holy Ghost could not be just an ordinary man. But clearly the verse does not mean that the supernatural conception was an isolated fact, and that it was the only thing that grounds the divine son- ship of Jesus.
Certainly the modern, exclusive way of interpreting such an utterance is quite foreign to the Semitic mind, which could place side by side various aspects of the Messiah’s person even before they were united in a systematic scheme. And at this point we are bound to' think that the Semitic mind is preferable to the “modern mind.” Nothing could be more consistent than the passage, verses 31-35, as it stands. First the greatness of the promised child is celebrated in general terms; then, in response to Mary’s question, the particular manner of His birth is mentioned, and mentioned in a way thoroughly congruous with the generally supernatural char¬ acter which has been attributed to Him before. How the divine sonship which appears in verses 31-33, can be re¬ garded as incongruous with the virgin birth, or as rendering superfluous the mention of it, is more than we can under¬ stand. Verses 34 f. are not a disturbing or unnecessary doublet as over against verses 31-33 ; but render more specific one point which is included in that more general assertion.
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 557
At any rate, it is quite incorrect to regard verse 35 as con¬ necting the divine sonship of Jesus with the supernatural conception in any anthropomorphic way. It is the creative activity of the Holy Spirit, and not any assumption of human functions of fatherhood, which is in view. The chaste language of verse 35 is profoundly congruous with verses 31-33, and in general with the lofty monotheism of the Old Testament ; and it is profoundly incongruous with the crassly anthropomorphic interpretation which has sometimes been forced upon it by modern scholars.
The arguments for the interpolation theory that have been mentioned so far are, we think, very easily refuted. Much more worthy of consideration is the argument with which we now come to deal. It is not indeed cogent as a support of the interpolation hypothesis; but at least it does call atten¬ tion to a genuine exegetical difficulty which must be exam¬ ined with some care.
We refer to the argument based upon Mary’s question in verse 34 : “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man ?” This question has been regarded as being inconsistent with the context for two reasons. In the first place, why did not Mary simply assume that the child who has just been promised was to be the fruit of her coming marriage with Joseph? Since she was betrothed to Joseph, the fact that she was not yet living with him constituted no objection to the promise that she should have a child. In the second place, why is it that Mary should be commended, in the sequel, for her faith, if she had uttered this doubting question, which is very similar to the question for which Zacharias was so severely pun¬ ished?
Of these two objections it is the former which most de¬ serves attention. The latter objection, despite the great stress that has been laid upon it by many advocates of the inter¬ polation hypothesis, can surely be dismissed rather easily. It is true, indeed, that in the narrative Zacharias is represented as punished for his question,31 whereas Mary, despite her
31 Lk. i. 20.
558 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
question, is praised.32 But are the two questions the same?
In form, it must be admitted, there is a certain similarity. Both Zacharias and Mary, instead of accepting the lofty promises of the angel without remark, ask a question be¬ tokening at least bewilderment; and both of them ground their bewilderment in an explanatory clause. But there the similarity ceases. Zacharias’ question reads : “According to what shall I know this?” That question can be interpreted as nothing else than a definite request for a sign; the wonder that is promised must be able to exhibit an analogy with something else before Zacharias will consent to “know” it. Mary on the other hand says simply, “How shall this be?”. She does not express any doubt but that it shall be, but merely inquires as to the manner in which it is to be brought to pass. Certainly she does not ask for a sign in order that she may “know” what the angel has told her will be a fact.
To the modern reader, indeed, Mary’s question may seem to indicate doubt. In our modern parlance, the words : “I do not see how that can be,” or the like, may often mean that we do not think that it will be. Politeness, at the present time, is often a very irritating thing. But we have no right to at¬ tribute such politeness to Mary or to the writer who re¬ ports her words. And her question, as it stands, attests not a refusal to believe without further proof, but only per¬ plexity as to what is involved in the angel’s words.
Even in its wording, then, Mary’s question is different from that of Zacharias. But still greater is the difference in the situation which the two questions respectively have in view. Zacharias had been promised a son whom he had long desired, a son whose birth would bring him not misunder¬ standing and slander (as Mary’s son might bring to her) but rather a removal of the reproach to which, by his child¬ lessness, he had been subjected. Moreover the birth of such a son, even in the old age of his parents, would be in accord¬ ance with the Old Testament analogies which Zacharias
32 Lk. i. 45. “And blessed is she who has believed ; because there shall be a fulfilment for the things that have been spoken to her from the Lord.”
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 559
knew very well. What except sinful unbelief could lead, under such circumstances, to the request for a sign? Mary, on the other hand, when the angel, prior to her marriage, spoke of a son, was promised something which seemed at first sight to run counter to her maidenly consciousness. Old Testament analogies, moreover, quite contrary to what was the case with Zacharias, could give her no help. Where in the Old Testament was it recorded that a son had been prom¬ ised to a maid? Surely it is small cause for wonder that in such bewilderment she should have asked the angel for light ?
Even, therefore, if the wording of the two questions were more similar than it actually is, the underlying mind of the two speakers may still have been quite different. Zacharias was promised that which was quite in accord with Old Tes¬ tament analogies and would mean the fulfilment of hopes that he had cherished for many a year ; Mary was promised a strange, unheard of, thing, which might subject her to all manner of reproach. And yet finally (and despite the strange explanation from the angel, which rendered the danger of that reproach only the more imminent) she said, in simple submission to the will of God : “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word.” It is surely no wonder that Zacharias was punished and Mary praised.
Much more worthy of consideration, we think, is the other one of the two objections to which Mary’s question has given rise. Indeed, the former objection, as has just become evident in the last paragraph, receives what weight it may have only from this objection with which we shall now have to deal. We have argued that if the angel’s promise to Mary seemed inconsistent with her maidenly consciousness, her question, unlike that of Zacharias, was devoid of blame. But, it will be objected, why should the promise have been inter¬ preted by her in any such way ; why should it have seemed inconsistent with her maidenly consciousness at all ? The angel in the preceding verses has said nothing about anything pecul¬ iar in the birth of her son ; why then did she not understand the promise as referring simply to her approaching marriage ?
560 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
If she was going to ask any question, surely it ought to have been — thus the objection runs — a question about the great¬ ness of her son rather than about the manner of his birth; the thing which ought to have caused surprise in view of the preceding words is not the mere fact that she was to have a son ( for in view of her approaching marriage that was to be expected) but that she was to have such a son — that the son of a humble maiden at Nazareth was to assume the throne of David, that He was to be called the son of the Most High and that of His Kingdom there was to be no end. Her question in other words ought in view of the context to have been : “How shall this be, seeing I am a humble woman?”, instead of: “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” As it is, verse 34, we are told, reveals clearly an interpolator’s hand; it is entirely unnatural in view of the context, and merely constitutes a clumsy device for the in¬ troduction of an idea (the virgin birth) that was quite for¬ eign to the original story.
To this argument, Roman Catholic scholars have a ready answer. The question of Mary in verse 34, they say, is to be explained by the fact that she had already either made a vow, or at least formed a fixed resolve, never to have intercourse with a man ; the present tense, “I know,” in the clause “see¬ ing I know not a man,” is to be taken in a future sense, or rather as designating what was already a permanent principle of Mary’s life. Thus the meaning of the verse is : “How shall this be, since as a matter of principle I have determined not to know a man?”
This solution certainly removes in the fullest possible way the difficulty with which we now have to do. And no objec¬ tion to it can be raised from a linguistic point of view; there seems to be no reason why the present indicative, “I know,” could not be taken as designating a fixed principle of Mary’s life that would apply to the future as well as to the present. But the question is whether in avoiding one difficulty this Roman Catholic solution does not become involved in other difficulties that are greater still. In the first place, this solu-
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 561
tion runs counter to the prima facie evidence regarding the brothers and sisters of Jesus, who are mentioned in a num¬ ber of places in the New Testament. Despite the alternative views — that these “brethren of the Lord” were children of Joseph by a former marriage or that they were merely cousins of Jesus, the word “brother” being used in a loose sense — it still seems most probable that they were simply children of Joseph and Mary. This conclusion is in accord with Lk. ii. 7, where Mary is said to have “brought forth her firstborn son”; for the word “firstborn” may naturally be held to imply that afterwards she had other children. The implication here is, indeed, by no means certain; for under the Jewish law the word “firstborn” was a technical term, which could be applied even to an only child, and in the sequel of this narrative stress is actually laid upon the fact that the legal provisions regarding the “firstborn” were ful¬ filled in the case of Jesus. Still, despite such considerations, the phrase does seem slightly more natural if Mary was re¬ garded by the narrator as having other children. Such an interpretation would agree, moreover, with Mt. i. 25, where it is said that “Joseph knew her not until she had borne a son.” Here again the natural implication of the words can con¬ ceivably be avoided ; it may be insisted that the author does not say that Joseph knew her after she had borne a son, but only that he did not know her before she had borne a son. And yet it does seem strange that if the narrator supposed that Joseph never lived with Mary as with a wife he should not have said that in simple words.
In rejecting the Roman Catholic solution of our difficulty, we are not merely influenced by the positive historical evi¬ dence for the existence of other sons of Mary. Equally co¬ gent is the negative consideration that if the narrator in the first chapter of Luke had meant that Mary had formed a resolve of perpetual virginity, he would naturally have in¬ dicated the fact in a very much clearer way. Such a resolve in a Jewish maiden of the first century would have been an un¬ heard of thing. Asceticism, with the later prejudice against
562 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
marriage and the begetting of children, was quite foreign to the Jewish circles that are depicted in Lk. i-ii in such a vivid manner. If, therefore, the narrator were intending to at¬ tribute so extraordinary a resolve to Mary, he would natur¬ ally have taken pains to make his meaning perfectly clear ; he might, for example, have been expected to tell of the special divine guidance which alone could have led a Jewish maiden to depart in such an unheard of way from all the customs and all the ingrained sentiments of her people. As a matter of fact, the narrator has done nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he has simply told us that Mary was betrothed to Joseph; and he has not hinted in any way whatsoever that the approaching marriage was to be a marriage in name only. Such a marriage is indeed set forth with great clearness in the apocryphal Protevangelium of James ; but there is not the slightest hint of any such thing in our Third Gospel.
If then the Roman Catholic solution is to be rejected, what shall be put in its place? If when Mary said: “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” she was not giving ex¬ pression to a resolve of perpetual virginity with which a child in her approaching marriage with Joseph would seem inconsistent, how shall her question be understood? Why did she not simply assume that the son whom the angel had promised would be the fruit of her approaching union with her betrothed ?
Some modern scholars find an answer in the hypothesis of a mistranslation, in our Greek Gospel, of a Hebrew or Ara¬ maic original of the angel’s words. If the future “thou shalt conceive” in verse 31, it is said, only were a present in¬ stead of a future, all would be plain ; in that case the concep¬ tion in Mary’s womb would be represented by the angel as taking place at once, so that Mary could not understand it as referring it to a marriage which still lay in the future, and so her bewildered question would be easily explained. Now al¬ though in our Greek text, it is said, the word translated, “thou shalt conceive,” is unequivocally future, the original of it in Hebrew or Aramaic would be a participle; and the participle might be meant to refer to the present as well as to the future — the decision in every individual case
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 563
being determined only by the context. In the present passage, it is said, the participle was intended, in the Semitic source, to refer to the present ; and the whole diffi¬ culty has come from the fact that the Greek translator, who gave us our present form of Lk. i-ii, wrongly took it as referring to the future. If, then, the Semitic original is here restored, M'ary’s question — since she could not explain a present conception in her womb by her future union with Joseph — becomes thoroughly suited to the context, so that there is no longer any indication of an interpolator’s clumsy hand.
This solution, of course, assumes the existence of a Se¬ mitic original for the first chapter of Luke. That assumption is by no means improbable. But the question might arise how the Greek translator came to make the mistake. Would a translator be likely — for no particular reason, since the par¬ ticiple in the source might be translated by a present, even though it might also be translated by a future — would a translator be likely to introduce such serious confusion into the narrative in its Greek form? Obviously it would be more satisfactory, if possible, to find an interpretation which would suit the Greek narrative as it stands.
Such an interpretation, we believe, is actually forthcom¬ ing, though it appears in a number of slightly different forms, between which we may not be able to decide. This true interpretation of the Greek text is not without affinity for the hypothesis of mistranslation which has just been discussed; indeed what it actually proposes is to find in the Greek words a meaning rather similar to that which the advocates of the theory of mistranslation have found in the Hebrew or Ara¬ maic original. The Greek word, “thou shalt conceive,” is in¬ deed future; but would it necessarily be referred by Mary to the time of her marriage with Joseph; might it not rather be referred by her to an immediate future ?
The latter alternative, we think, is correct. Annunciations, as they were known to Mary from the Old Testament, were made to married women; and when such an annunciation
564 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
came to her, an unmarried maiden, it is not unnatural that she should have been surprised. No doubt the influence upon her of the Old Testament narratives was not conscious; in the bewilderment caused by the angel’s greeting it is not likely that she reviewed consciously in her mind the stories of Hannah or of the wife of Manoah. But the unconscious effect of these stories may have been very great; they may well have served to create in her subconscious mind a close connection between angelic annunciations and the condition of a married woman as distinguished from that of a maid. Hence to her maidenly consciousness the promise of a son- may well have occasioned her the utmost surprise.
If, indeed, she had looked at the matter from the point of view of cold logic, her surprise might possibly have been overcome. She could have reflected that after all she was be¬ trothed, and that the annunciation could in her case, as was not so in the Old Testament examples, be taken as referring to a married state that was still to come. But would such re¬ flection have been natural; is it not psychologically more probable that she should have given expression, in such words as those in Lk. i. 34, to her first instinctive surprise?
We have, then, in the current objection to Mary’s question another instance of that failure to understand the character of Mary, of that attempt to attribute to her, as she is depicted in this narrative, the coldly scientific quality of the “modem mind,” which has already been noticed in another connection. Suppose it be granted that in her question to the angel Mary was not strictly logical; is that any objection either to the ultimate authenticity of the question as a question of Mary, or to its presence in the narrative in Lk. i-ii? We might almost be tempted to say that a certain lack of logic in Mary’s words is a positive indication of their authenticity and of their original presence in this narrative. This absence of an easy, reasoned solution of all difficulties, this instinctive ex¬ pression of a pure, maidenly consciousness, is profoundly in accord with the delicate delineation, all through this narra¬ tive, of the mother of the Lord.
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 565
But was maidenly instinct here really at fault ; was Mary wrong in not simply referring the angel’s promise to her ap¬ proaching marriage? Was she wrong in thinking that an immediate conception in her womb was naturally implied in the angel's words? We are by no means certain that this is the case. On the contrary the very appearance of the angel and his momentous greeting would seem clearly to indicate some far more immediate significance in that moment than could be found merely in a promise concerning the indefinite future. After all, it was really strange in itself, as well as an offence to the consciousness of the virgin, if a child to be born in the approaching union with Joseph should be prom¬ ised before instead of after the marriage. The future tense, “thou shalt conceive,” therefore, though not actually equiva¬ lent to a present, does refer most naturally to an immediate future. Thus the interpretation of the angel’s previous words which is implied in verse 34 is a very natural interpretation, and cannot possibly stamp verses 34 f. as an interpolation.
This view avoids one difficulty that faces that theory of mistranslation which we have rejected. If the Hebrew or Aramaic participle of which the Greek, “thou shalt con¬ ceive,” is a translation were intended in a strictly present sense, there would seem to be a contradiction with Lk. ii. 21, where the name Jesus is said to have been given by the angel before the child had been conceived in the womb. If the conception were represented as taking place at the very moment when the word translated “thou shalt conceive” was uttered, then the name was given not before, but at the very moment of, the conception. On our view, on the other hand, it is possible to take Lk. ii. 21 in the strictest way, and yet find no contradiction with Lk. i. 31. The conception was rep¬ resented by the angel as taking place in the immediate future, but not at the very moment when the word, “thou shalt con¬ ceive,” was spoken. It is impossible to say just when the con¬ ception is to be put. Many have thought of the moment when Mary said, “Be it unto me in accordance with thy word,”33
33 Lk. i. 38.
566 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
and this view has sometimes been connected with speculations about the necessity, for the accomplishment of the incarna¬ tion, of Mary’s act of submission. The salvation of the world, it has sometimes been held, depended upon Mary’s decision to submit herself to God’s plan; here as elsewhere, it has been held, God had respect to human free will. Such a way of thinking is contrary to ours. Of course our rejection of it does not by any means involve rejection of the view that puts the moment of the conception at the time when Mary uttered her final words. Yet on the whole we think it better to treat the question as it is treated by the narrator — with a cautious reserve. All that is involved in our view is that the “thou shalt conceive’’ in verse 31 refers to the near future, and would not naturally be taken by Mary as referring to her approaching marriage.
It is quite possible that at this point we have claimed too much ; it is quite possible that MSary’s question in verse 34 is not strictly logical; it is quite possible that she might well have taken the angel’s promise as referring to her approach¬ ing marriage. But that admission would not at all seriously affect our argument. Even if Mary’s question was not strictly logical, it was at least very natural; it was natural as ex¬ pressing her bewilderment ; like Peter at the Transfiguration, she knew not what she said. She was terrified at the angel’s greeting, and as a pure maiden she had not expected then the promise of a son. What wonder is it that her maidenly consciousness found expression in words that calm reflection might have changed? We are almost tempted to say that the less expressive of calm reasoning are Mary’s words in verse 34, so much the less likely are they to be due to an interpo¬ lator’s calculating mind, and so much the more likely are they to be due to Mary herself or to have been an original part of a narrative which everywhere depicts her character in such a delicate way.
So far, we have been considering the arguments that have been advanced in favor of the interpolation theory. It is now time to consider a little more specifically the positive argu-
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 56 7
merits that may be advanced against it. What positive indica¬ tions, as distinguished from the mere burden of proof against the interpolation theory, may be advanced in favor of the view that Lk. i. 34 f. was an original part of the narra¬ tive in which it now stands?
The strongest indication of all, perhaps, is found in the total impression that the narrative makes. We have been ac¬ customed to read Lk. i-ii with appreciation of its unity and of its beauty only because the virgin birth is in our mind. But if we could divest ourselves of that thought, if we could imagine ourselves as reading this narrative for the first time and reading it without Lk. i. 34 f., it would seem disorganized and overwrought almost from beginning to end. The truth is that the child whose birth was prophesied by an angel and was greeted, when it came, by a choir of the heavenly host, is in¬ conceivable as a mere child of earthly parents. No, what we really have here in this Christmas narrative is the miraculous appearance upon the earth of a heavenly Being — a human child, indeed, but a child like none other that ever was born. Not merely this detail or that, but the entire inner spirit of the narrative involves the virgin birth.
Only partially can this total impression be analyzed. Yet such analysis is not without its value. It may serve to remove doubts, and so may allow free scope at the last for a new and more sympathetic reading of the narrative as a whole.
Some of the details in Lk. i-ii which presuppose the virgin birth are of a subsidiary kind. But their cumulative effect is very great. Thus it has been well observed that Mary’s words of submission in Lk. i. 38 are without point if there has been no prophecy of the virgin birth in what precedes. If all that the angel has said is a prophecy that in her coming marriage Mary is to be the mother of the Messiah, why should there be this parade of submission on her part? These words are nat¬ ural only if what has been promised involves possible shame as well as honor ; then only do they acquire the pathos which has been found in them by Christian feeling throughout all the centuries and which the narrator evidently intended them to have.
568 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
It is such considerations, perhaps, which have led a few ad¬ vocates of the interpolation theory to suggest that verse 38, as well as verses 36 f., may be regarded as part of the interpo¬ lation. But this suggestion only heaps difficulty upon diffi¬ culty. Without Mary’s final words of submission, the whole annunciation scene is left hanging in the air. Let the reader just imagine that verse 39 originally followed upon verse 33, and then let him see what effect is made by such an account of the scene. It will be evident enough that an artistic whole has been subjected to mutilation. What point is there, more¬ over, in the praise of Mary’s faith in verse 45 — “Blessed is she who has believed; because there shall be fulfilment of the things that have been spoken to her from the Lord” — if Mary has not in what precedes given any expression to her faith? Evidently verse 45 refers to verse 38 in the clearest possible way.
But verse 45 presupposes far more than verse 38 ; it also presupposes the stupendous miracle the promise of which Mary had believed. How comparatively insignificant would Mary’s faith have been if all that had been promised her was that her son in her coming marriage was to be the Messiah ! Is it not perfectly evident that the faith for which Mary is praised is something far more than that ; is the reference not plainly to her acceptance of an experience that involved pos¬ sible shame for her among men and that was quite unique in the history of the human race. We have here a phenomenon that appears in the narrative from beginning to end. The truth is that this account of the birth and infancy of Jesus is all pitched in too high a key to suit a child born by ordinary generation from earthly parents. The exuberant praise of Mary’s faith, like many other features of the narrative, and indeed like the spirit of this narrative from beginning to end, seems empty and jejune unless the reader has in his mind the miracle which really forms the centre of the whole.
But this is not the only point at which the account of Mary’s visit to Elisabeth presupposes the virgin birth. Cer¬ tainly the account of the visit constitutes a clear refutation at
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 569
least of that form of the interpolation theory which includes in the interpolation verses 36 and 37. When the angel is rep¬ resented in those verses as pointing to the example of Elisa¬ beth, evidently the motive is being given for the journey that Mary immediately undertakes. “And Mary arose in those days and went with haste into the hill country into a city of Judah.” Why did she go at all, and especially why did she go in hasteH Is it not perfectly clear that it was because of the angel’s words? Without verses 36 f. the whole account of the visit to Elisabeth is left hanging in the air.
Verses 36 f., therefore, were clearly in the original narra¬ tive. But, as we have already pointed out, verses 36 f. pre¬ suppose verses 34 f. in the clearest possible way. As it stands, the narrative hangs together ; but when the supposed interpolation is removed all is thrown into confusion.
Hilgenfeld34 has pointed out still another way in which the account of Mary’s visit to Elisabeth presupposes Lk. i. 34, 35. Evidently at the time of the visit the conception is regarded as already having taken place. When Elisabeth says to Mary : “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me,”35 her words seem overwrought if the conception is still to come. But if the conception has already taken place at the time of Mary’s journey, how is the journey to be explained? Surely it cannot be explained if Mary is regarded as already married to Joseph. In that case, as Hilgenfeld has well intimated, what would have been in place for Mary, if there was to be any journey at all, would have been a bridai tour with her husband, not a hasty journey far away from her husband to the home of a kinswoman. Is it not perfectly clear that the whole account of Mary’s visit to Elisabeth presupposes the supernatural conception? If Mary has passed through the wonderful experience promised in Lk. i. 34, 35, then everything falls into its proper place; then it is the most natural thing in the world for the angel to
34 “Die Geburts- und Kindheitsgeschichte Jesw Luc. i. 5-ii. 52,” in Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Theologie, 44, 1901, p. 204.
35 Lk. i. 42 f.
57o
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
suggest, and for Mary to carry out, a journey to visit her kinswoman, who also has passed through a wonderful, though of course far inferior, experience of God’s grace. But if Lk. i. 34 f . is omitted, everything is at loose ends.
Even at the very end of the infancy narrative, the virgin birth seems to be presupposed. When it is said in Lk. ii. 51 that Jesus “went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them,” the sentence seems without point if Jesus was born of Joseph and Mary by ordinary gen¬ eration. Why should it be thought a thing so remarkable that a child of earthly parents, even if the child was the Messiah, should be subject to its parents? The very way in which the submission of the boy Jesus to His earthly parents is intro¬ duced in the narrative suggests that His relationship to them was such as to make the submission an extraordinary and noteworthy thing.
We should not, indeed, be inclined to lay particular stress upon this point if it were taken by itself. Perhaps one might say that if there was in the boy Jesus so extraordinary a consciousness of sonship toward God as is attested by His answer in the Temple, it was remarkable that He should subject Himself to earthly parents even if He were descended from them by ordinary generation. But that only pushes the difficulty in the way of an acceptance of the interpolation theory a step farther back. Is it likely that a son born of earthly parents by ordinary generation should have had such a stupendous consciousness of unique sonship toward God at all? We are really led back again and again, wherever we start, to one central observation. That central observation is that only a superficial reading of Lk. i-ii can find in this nar¬ rative an account of a merely human child ; when the reader puts himself really into touch with the inner spirit of the nar¬ rative he sees that everywhere a supernatural child is in view. There is therefore a certain element of truth in the view ad¬ vanced by the school of comparative religion to the effect that the child depicted in this narrative is a Gotteskind. That view is certainly wrong in detecting a polytheistic and mytho-
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 571
logical background for the stories of Lk. i-ii ; but at least it is quite correct in observating that what the narrator has in view is no ordinary, merely human child. The whole at¬ mosphere that here surrounds the child Jesus is an atmos¬ phere proper only to one who has been conceived by the Holy Ghost.350
But it is time to turn from such general considerations to an argument of a much more specific kind. The argument to which we refer is found in the remarkable parallelism that prevails between the account of the annunciation to Mary and that of the annunciation to Zacharias.38 This parallelism shows in the clearest possible way that the verses Lk. i. 34, 35 belong to the very innermost structure of the narrative. In both accounts we find (1) An appearance of the angel Ga¬ briel, (2) fear on the part of the person to whom the annun¬ ciation is to be made, (3) reassurance by the angel and pro¬ nouncement of a promise, (4) a perplexed question by the recipient of the promise, (5) a grounding of the question in
350 The central place of the virgin birth in Lk. i-ii was recognized with special clearness nearly a century ago by Chr. Hermann Weisse {Die evangelische Geschichte, 1838, i, pp. 141-232). The myth of the virgin birth, he said in effect, is the central idea of the Lucan cycle : the rest of the cycle is built up around it ; John the Baptist, for example, is brought in simply in order to make the importance of the birth of Christ clearer by the similarity and contrast over against the birth of John. Whatever may be thought of Weisse’s mythical theory, there can be no doubt but that in making the virgin birth the central idea in the Lucan narrative he is displaying a true literary insight as over against every form of the interpolation theory. Far from being an excrescence in the narrative, the virgin birth is really the thing for which all the rest exists. And that holds good no matter whether the narrative is mythical, as Weisse thought, or whether it is historical. If it is mythical, then the virgin birth explains the invention of the other elements ; if it is historical, then the virgin birth explains the choice of the facts which are singled out for the narrative and also explains the way in which the narration is carried through. A return to Weisse would certainly, from the literary point of view, be desirable. And there is a sense in which that return, so far as the interpolation theory is concerned, is actually being effected in the most recent criticism of the infancy narratives.
36 The parallelism was clearly recognized so early as 1841 by Gelpke ( Die Jugendgeschichte des Herrn, pp. 41-51, 167-169) and was exhibited by him by at least a rudimentary use of parallel columns.
572 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
a causal clause, (6) reiteration of the promise with reference to something which in both cases is in the nature of a sign. The facts may best be indicated if we place the two sections in parallel columns :37
Lk. i. 11-20
1
Verse n
And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.
2
Verse 12
And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.
3
But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias : for thy prayer is heard ; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth. For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink: and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
4
Verse i8a
And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this?
Lk. i. 28-38
1
Verse 28
And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee.
2
Verse 29
And she was troubled at the say¬ ing, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this might be.
3
And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.
He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest:
and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David : and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
4
Verse 34a
Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be,
37 The language of the following translation is for the most part that of the Authorized Version, corrected to conform to a better Greek text.
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 573
5
Verse 18b
for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years.
6
Verses 19-20
And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel that stand in the presence of God ; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings.
5
Verse 34b
seeing I know not a man?
6
Verses 35-37
And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come unto thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee ; therefore also that holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of God.
And behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be per¬ formed, because thou believedst not my words, which shall be ful¬ filled in their season.
And behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she also hath conceived a son in her old age : and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be im¬ possible.
It may be remarked in passing that even this exhibition does not fully set forth the connection between the two ac¬ counts. It does not show, for example, that in both cases the name of the angel is Gabriel, that the description of Mary in verse 27 is very similar in form to that of the parents of John in verse 5, that the Holy Spirit is mentioned in connection with the beginning of the earthly life both of John and of Jesus, and that the two accounts are specifically linked to¬ gether by the words “in the sixth month” in Lk. i. 39. But even in itself the parallelism, when the two accounts are set forth as above in parallel columns, is so striking as to render almost inconceivable the hypothesis that it came by chance. No one who really attends to the structure of both sections should doubt but that they came from the same hand. In both cases the narrative is cast in the same mould.
But if verses 34 and 35 were removed, this parallelism would be marred at the most important point. What, then does the interpolation hypothesis involve? It involves some¬ thing that is certainly unlikely in the extreme — namely the supposition that an interpolator, desiring to insert an idea utterly foreign to the original narrative, has succeeded in in-
574
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
serting that idea in such a way as not only to refrain from marring the existent parallelism — even that would have been difficult enough — but actually to fill up in the most beautiful fashion a parallelism which otherwise would have been in¬ complete ! We should have to suppose that the original nar¬ rator, though he did not include the virgin birth, left a gap exactly suited to its inclusion. And then we should have to suppose the appearance of an interpolator gifted with such marvellous literary skill as to be able, in the first place, to construct an interpolation that in spirit and style should con¬ form perfectly to the body of the narrative, and then, in the second place, to insert that interpolation in just the place necessary to complete a parallelism which, when it was thus completed, makes upon every attentive reader the impression of being an essential element in the original framework of the narrative.
Surely this entire complex of suppositions is improbable in the extreme. How, then, can we possibly avoid the simple conclusion that the parallelism between the two accounts, in¬ cluding the part of it which appears in Lk. i. 34 f., was due to the original narrator ?
At this point, however, there may be an objection. May it not be said that the very perfection of the parallelism that appears if verses 34, 35 are included constitutes an argument not for but against the originality of those verses? Have we not, in other words, in the inclusion of verses 34 f., some¬ thing in the nature of a “harmonistic corruption” ? May not an interpolator, observing the large measure of parallelism between the accounts of the annunciations, have decided to make that parallelism a little more complete than it actually was?
A little reflection, we think, will show that these questions must be answered with an emphatic negative. The analogy with what is called a “harmonistic corruption” in textual criticism would not hold in this case at all. To show that it would not hold, we need only to glance at the harmonistic corruptions that actually appear in the text of the Synoptic
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 575
Gospels. What is the nature of these corruptions? An ex¬ ample will make the matter plain. The verse Mt. xvii. 21, “Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting,” in the account of the healing of the demoniac boy after the descent from the mount of the transfiguration, is omitted by the so-called “Neutral” type of text as attested by the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus. It is universally recog¬ nized as a gloss. But if it were genuine it would not add any¬ thing to our knowledge of the incident; for in Mk. ix. 29 very similar words are certainly genuine. It is perfectly evi¬ dent that the text of Matthew has been made to conform to that of Mark. We have here, therefore, a typical example of a “harmonistic corruption.” But how totally different is this case from the case of Lk. i. 34 f., if these latter verses are really an addition to the original narrative ! In the case of Mt. xvii. 21, a sentence is taken over in a mechanical way from a parallel account ; in the case of Lk. i. 34 f ., all that would be derived from the parallel account would be the sequence of question, grounding of the question, and answer: and the content of the interpolation would be of a highly original kind. Such originality would be quite unheard of among “harmonistic corruptions.” What we should have here would be no mere obvious filling out of a narrative by the mechan¬ ical importation of details from a parallel account, but the addition of a highly original idea — by hypothesis foreign to the original narrative — and the expression of that idea in a way profoundly congruous, indeed, with the inner spirit of the narrative, but at the same time quite free from any merely literary dependence upon what has gone before or upon what follows. It is doubtful whether any parallel could be cited for such a phenomenon in the entire history of tex¬ tual corruptions.
It appears, therefore — if we may use for the moment the language of textual criticism — that “intrinsic probability” and “transcriptional probability” are here in admirable agree¬ ment. On the one hand, the verses Lk. i. 34 and 35 are really in the closest harmony with the rest of the narrative; but on
576 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
the other hand that harmony is not of the obvious, super¬ ficial kind that would appeal to an interpolator. Indeed the very difficulty that we found in the interpretation of Mary’s question in verse 34 may be turned into an argument not for, but against, the interpolation theory. The difficulty is of a superficial kind that would probably have been avoided by an interpolator; the underlying harmony is of a kind worthy only of such a writer as the original composer of Lk. i-ii. Shall we attribute to an interpolator the delicate touch that is really to be found in Mary’s question? Is not the question rather — we mean not the invention of the question but the preservation of it — to be attributed to the writer who has given us the rest of this matchless narrative?
In what has just been said, we have been using the lan¬ guage of textual criticism; we have been speaking of “in¬ trinsic probability” and of “transcriptional probability” as though this were an ordinary question of the text. Such language would, of course, apply in fullest measure to that form of the interpolation hypothesis which finds in Lk. i. 34 f. an interpolation into the completed Gospel ; for in that case we should actually be dealing with scribal transmission in the strictest sense. But the language could really apply in some measure also to the other forms in which the interpola¬ tion hypothesis has been held. In any case, we have in Lk. i. 34 f. an element that on one hand is in underlying harmony with the rest of the infancy narrative and yet, on the other hand, cannot be understood as being due to the effort of a later writer — whether the author of Luke-Acts or someone else — to produce that harmony by an insertion into this Pal¬ estinian narrative. Real harmony with the rest of the nar¬ rative, and superficial difficulty — these are the recognized marks of genuineness in any passage of an ancient work. And both these characteristics appear in Lk. i. 34 and 35.
At any rate, whatever may be thought of our use of the terminology of textual criticism, the parallelism with the account of the annunciation to Zacharias stamps Lk. i. 34 f. unmistakably as being an original part of the account
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 577
of the annunciation to Mary. The argument comes as near to being actual demonstration as any argument that could possibly appear in the field of literary criticism. It is very clear that the two verses in question were part of the original structure of the narrative.
But before this phase of the subject is finally left, it will be necessary to consider the alternative view as to the extent of the interpolation, which was suggested by Kattenbusch and has been advocated by Weinel and others.38 According to these scholars, not the whole of Lk. i. 34 f. constitutes the addition to the narrative, but only the four words translated “seeing I know not a man”39 in verse 34. If these four words are removed, it may be argued, there is in Mary’s question no reference to the manner in which her child is to be born; she is puzzled merely by the greatness of her promised son, and asks therefore, “How shall this be ?”, without at all thinking of anything other than the son that she was to have in her ap¬ proaching marriage with Joseph. In reply — so the hypothesis may be held to run — the angel in verse 35 points to an activity of the Holy Spirit securing the greatness and holiness of the son, without at all excluding the human agency in His con¬ ception in the womb ; the child will be in a physical sense the son of Joseph and Mary; but just as the son of Zacharias was to be filled with the Holy Spirit at the very beginning of
38 Kattenbusch himself ( Das Apostolische Symbol, ii, 1900, pp. 621 f.) did not insist upon the hypothesis of an actual interpolation of the words ind (LvSpa oi yivdxTKu into an underlying document, but contented himself with arguing that without those four words the narrative would not necessarily involve the virgin birth, and that the emphasis in the narra¬ tive is not upon the virgin birth but upon what he regarded as an inde¬ pendent idea — the activity of the Spirit in connection with the birth of the Messiah. Weinel (“Die Auslegung des Apostolischen Glaubensbe- kenntnisses von F. Kattenbusch und die neutestamentliche Forschung,” in Zeitschrift fur die neutest. Wissenschaft, ii, 1901, pp. 37-39) made the suggestion of Kattenbusch definitely fruitful for the interpolation hy¬ pothesis. J. M. Thompson ( Miracles in the New Testament, 1911, pp. 147-150) and Merx (Die vier kanonischen Evengelien, II. 2, 1905, pp. 179-181) advocate the same view. Compare the citation of the literature in Moffatt, Introduction, 1918 (1925), p. 269.
39 tLvSpa oi yivt&aKio.
578 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
his life40, so the son of Joseph will lie fitted by the same Spirit for a far higher function.
In comment upon this hypothesis, it may be said, in the first place, that the hypothesis hardly accomplishes what it undertakes to accomplish ; it hardly succeeds in removing the supernatural conception from Lk. i. 34, 35. Surely the mini¬ mizing interpretation which Weinel advocates for verse 35 is unnatural in the extreme. When Mary is told by the angel, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee : therefore also that holy thing which is begotten shall be called the Son of God,” it seems very improbable that no more is meant than a sanctify¬ ing action of the Spirit upon a child conceived by another agency in the womb. Why should it be said, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee,” if the activity of the Spirit terminates upon the child in the womb rather than upon Mary? Why should not some expression like that in Lk. i. 15 — “He shall be filled with the Holy Ghost” — be used if the work of the Spirit in both cases is essentially the same? Perhaps, indeed, the advocates of the hypothesis will maintain that on their view the work of the Spirit is not the same in both cases; perhaps they will say that in the case of John merely a sanc¬ tifying influence is meant, whereas in the case of Jesus the Spirit, though working indeed with the human factor, be¬ comes constitutive of the very being of the child. But when that is said we are getting back very close indeed to the view that the Spirit’s action excludes the human father altogether. The truth is that in verse 35 the human father is quite out of sight ; only two factors are in view — the mother Mary and the Spirit of God. “Conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary” is really a correct summary of that verse. Even without the disputed words in verse 34, therefore, the following verse, verse 35, still presupposes the virgin birth. But if so, all ground for suspecting the words “seeing I know not a man” disappears.
A second objection to Weinel’s hypothesis is found in the
40 Lk. i. 15.
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 579
parallelism with the annunciation to Zacharias to which at¬ tention has already been called. Weinel himself performed a very useful service by urging that parallelism as an objection to the ordinary form of the interpolation theory, which would remove all of verses 34 and 35. But he did not seem to observe that it tells also against his own view. If the words, “seeing I know not a man,” are removed from verse 34, then there is nothing to correspond to the grounding of Zacharias’ question in verse 18. Let it not be said that we are expecting too perfect a similarity between the two parallel accounts. On the contrary, we recognize to the full the freshness and orig¬ inality of verses 28-38 as over against verses 11-20; there are many details in one account that are not also in the other ; the parallelism is by no means mechanical. But the point is that if Mary’s grounding of her question be removed from verse 34, it is not merely one detail that is subtracted but an essential element in the structural symmetry of the passage. It is really essential to the author’s manner of narrating the annunciation to Zacharias that Zacharias’ question should not merely indicate bewilderment in general, but should point the way for the explanation that was to follow. It seems evi¬ dent that a similar plan is being followed in the case of the annunciation to Mary. But that plan is broken up if the words, “seeing I know not a man,” are not original in verse 34. Weinel’s hypothesis would force us to suppose that the original narrator left a gap in the structure of one of his parallel accounts, and a gap so exceedingly convenient that when by the insertion of four words an interpolator intro¬ duced into the narrative a momentous new idea, the most beautiful symmetry of form was the result. Surely such a supposition is unlikely in the extreme. It is perfectly evident, on the contrary, that the symmetry that results when Mary’s grounding of her question is retained is due not to mere chance or to what would be a truly extraordinary coinci¬ dence between a defect in the fundamental structure and an interpolator’s desires, but to the original intention of the author.
580 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
In the third place, Mary’s question in verse 34, in the short¬ ened form to which Weinel’s hypothesis reduces it, seems un¬ natural and abrupt even apart from any comparison with the parallel account. According to Weinel, Mary said merely, in reply to the angel’s promise: “How shall this be?” In that form the question seems to have no point ; it is a meaningless interruption of the angel’s speech. And it does not seem to prepare in any intelligible way for what follows in verse 35. No doubt there are narrators to whom such clumsiness could be attributed; but certainly the author of Lk. i-ii was not one of them. In this narrative, such banality would be singu¬ larly out of place. It is perfectly evident that in verse 34 the author is preparing for verse 35 in some far more definite and intelligible way than by the meaningless words, “How shall this be?”; Mary’s question is plainly intended to point the way to the special explanation that is given in the follow¬ ing verse. Thus on Weinel’s hypothesis the original narrator would at this point have suddenly descended to banality; and the beautiful naturalness and symmetry which now appears in the passage would be due not to the author but to an in¬ terpolator. Who can believe that such a supposition is correct?
Such objections would be decisive in themselves. But there is another objection that is perhaps even more serious still. It is found in the extraordinary restraint which Weinel’s hypothesis is obliged to attribute to the supposed interpolator. An interpolator, we are asked to believe, desired to introduce into a Jewish Christian narrative of the birth of Jesus a momentous idea — the idea of the virgin birth — which by hypothesis was foreign to that narrative. How does he go to work? Does he insert any express narration of the event that he regarded as so important? Does he even mention it plainly? Not at all. What he does is simply to insert four words, which will cause the context into which they are in¬ serted to appear in a new light, so that now that context will be taken as implying the virgin birth.
Where was there ever found such extraordinary restraint,
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 581
either in an ordinary interpolator who tampered with the manuscripts of a completed book, or in an author like the author of Luke-Acts who desired to introduce a new idea into one of his sources? Is it not abundantly plain that if an interpolator desired to introduce the virgin birth into the narrative of Lk. i-ii he would have done so in far less re¬ strained and far more obvious manner than Weinel’s hypothe¬ sis requires us to suppose. On the ordinary form of the interpolation hypothesis, which includes in the supposed in¬ sertion all of verses 34 and 35, we were called upon to admire the extraordinary literary skill of the interpolator, which enabled him to construct a rather extensive addition that should be highly original in content and yet conform so perfectly to the innermost spirit of the rest of the narrative. On Weinel’s hypothesis, on the other hand, it is the extra¬ ordinary restraint of the interpolator which affords ground for wonder. The surprising thing is that if the interpolator was going to insert anything — in the interests of the virgin birth — he did not insert far more.
We have enumerated four special objections to the hy¬ pothesis of Weinel. With the exception of the one based on the parallelism with Lk. i. 11-20, they apply only to this hypothesis and not also to the more usual view as to the ex¬ tent of the interpolation. That more usual view is in turn faced by some special objections that the view of Weinel avoids. But it must be remembered that some of the weight¬ iest objections apply to both hypotheses alike. All that we have said regarding the plain implication of the virgin birth in Lk. i. 27 and ii. 5, and regarding the subtler implication of it at other points in the narrative, tells against any effort to find in the original form of Lk. i-ii a narrative that presented Jesus as being by ordinary generation the son of Joseph and Mary.
What needs finally to be emphasized is that in holding the virgin birth of Christ to be an integral part of the representa¬ tion in Lk. i-ii we are not dependent merely upon details. At least equally convincing is a consideration of the narra-
582 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
tive as a whole. With regard to the results of such a general consideration, it may be well now to say a final word.
In what precedes, we have laid special stress upon the par¬ allelism between the account of the annunciation to Mary and that of the annunciation to Zacharias. That parallelism, we observed, establishes Lk. i. 34, 35 in the clearest possible way as belonging to the basic structure of the narrative; the (evidently intentional) symmetry of form between the two accounts is hopelessly marred if these verses, either as a whole or in part, are removed.
But what now needs to be observed is that the difference between the two accounts is at least as significant, in estab¬ lishing the original place of the virgin birth in Lk. i-ii, as is the similarity. In fact the very similarity finds its true mean¬ ing in the emphasis which it places upon the difference.
One obvious difference, of course, is that the annunciation of the birth of John comes to the father of the child, while the annunciation of the birth of Jesus comes to the mother. What is the reason for this difference ? Is the difference due merely to chance? Is it due merely to the way in which the tradition in the two cases happened to be handed down — merely to the fact that, as Harnack thinks,41 the stories re¬ garding Jesus were preserved by a circle that held Mary in special veneration and had been affected in some way by the impression that she had made? If this latter suggestion is adopted, we have a significant concession to the traditional opinion, which has always been inclined to attribute the Lucan infancy narrative, mediately or immediately, to the mother of the Lord. Such an admission will probably not be made by many of those who reject, as Harnack does, the historicity of the narrative. And for those who will not make the admission, who will not admit any special con¬ nection of the narrative with Mary or with her circle, the central place of Mary instead of Joseph in the annunciation scene remains a serious problem. But even if we accept
41 Harnack, Neue Untersuchungen sur Apostelgeschichte, 1911, pp. 109 f. ; English Translation, The Date of Acts, 1911, pp. 155 f.
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 583
the Marianic origin of the narrative — and do so even in a way far more definite than is favored by Harnack — still the unique place of Mary in the narrative requires an ex¬ planation. The point is not merely that Mary receives spe¬ cial attention — that her inmost thoughts are mentioned and the like — but that she is given an actual prominence that would seem unnatural if the child belonged equally to Joseph and to her.
The fact is that we find ourselves here impaled upon the horns of a dilemma. If, on the one hand, the narrative is quite unhistorieal, and not based upon any tradition con¬ nected with the actual Mary, then we do not see how the nar¬ rative or the legend lying back of it, ever came — since in this case it had full freedom of invention — to attribute such im¬ portance to the mother unless she was regarded as a parent of the child in some sense that did not apply to Joseph. Cer¬ tainly the narrative displays no general predilection in favor of women as over against men; for in the case of John the Baptist the annunciation is regarded as being made to Zach- arias, not to Elisabeth. If, therefore, it regards the relation of Joseph to Jesus as being similar to that of Zacharias to John, why does it not make him, like Zacharias, the recipient of the angelic promise? So much may be said for one horn of the dilemma. But if the other horn be chosen — if the narrator be regarded as being bound by historical tradition actually coming from Mary — still the prominence of Mary in the narrative remains significant. Are we to suppose that Mary attributed that prominence to herself without special reason? This supposition, in view of Mary’s character, as it appears in the narrative itself, is unlikely in the extreme.
Thus, whatever view we take of the ultimate origin of the narrative, the prominence in it of Mary as compared with Joseph, which is so strikingly contrasted with the prominence of Zacharias as compared with Elisabeth, clearly points to something specially significant in her relation to the promised child, something which Joseph did not share. In other words it points to the supernatural conception, which is so plainly
584 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
attested in Lk. i. 34, 35. The removal of these verses by the advocates of the interpolation theory has really deprived us of the key that unlocks the meaning of the narrative from beginning to end.
There is, moreover, another way also in which the relation between the two accounts of annunciations presupposes the virgin birth. What sympathetic reader can fail to see that the relation between the two accounts is a relation of climax? It is clearly the intention of the narrator to exhibit the great¬ ness of Jesus in comparison with His forerunner, John. But in the annunciation of the birth of John the manner of the birth is given special prominence. The child, it is said, is to be born of aged parents ; and around this feature a large part of the narrative revolves. The unbelief of Zacharias and the punishment of that unbelief are occasioned not by the pre¬ diction of later events in the life of the promised child, but by the prediction of the wonderful manner of his birth. Are we to suppose that in the parallel account there was nothing to correspond to this central feature of the annunciation to Zacharias ? Are we to suppose that after laying such special stress upon the unusual manner of the promised birth of John the narrator proceeded to narrate a promise of a per¬ fectly ordinary birth of Jesus ; are we to suppose that it is the intention of the narrator that while John was born of aged parents by a special dispensation of divine grace, Jesus was simply the child of Joseph and Mary? No supposition, we think, would more completely miss the point of the narrative. Verses 36 and 37 surely provide the true key to the relation between the two accounts ; the angel there points to the com¬ ing birth of John the Baptist from an aged mother as an example of that omnipotence of God which is to be mani¬ fested in yet plainer fashion in the birth of Jesus. In the light of this utterance, the whole meaning of the parallelism be¬ tween the two accounts of annunciations becomes plain. The very similarities between the two cases are intended to set off in all the greater plainness the stupendous difference; and the difference concerns not merely the relative greatness of
LUCAN NARRATIVE OF THE ANNUNCIATION 585
the two children that are to be born but also the manner of their conception in the womb. A wonderful, if not plainly supernatural, conception in the case of John followed by a merely natural conception in the case of Jesus, which the in¬ terpolation hypothesis requires us to find, would have seemed to the composer of the narrative to involve a lamentable anti¬ climax. The entire structure of the narrative protests elo¬ quently against any such thing.
At this point, however, an objection may possibly be raised. It is not an objection against our argument in itself, but an argimientum ad hominem against our use of it. We have insisted that there is a conscious parallelism between the account of the annunciation to Zacharias and that of the an¬ nunciation to Mary, and that the author evidently intends to exhibit the superiority, even in the manner of birth, that Jesus possesses over against John. But — so the objection might run — does not such a view of the author’s intentions involve denial of the historicity of the narrative? If the author was ordering his material with such freedom as to exhibit the parallelism that we have discovered, and if he was deliberately setting about to show the superiority of Jesus over John, must he not, in order to pursue these ends, have been quite free from the restraint which would have been imposed upon him by information concerning what actually happened to Zacharias and to Mary? In other words, does not the artistic symmetry which we have discovered in the narrative militate against any acceptance of its historical trustworthiness? And since we are intending to defend its historical trustworthiness, have we, as distinguished from those who deny its trustworthiness, any right to that particu¬ lar argument against the interpolation theory which we have just used.
In reply, it may be said simply that our argument has not depended upon any particular view as to the way in which the symmetry, upon which we have been insisting, came into being. It would hold just as well if the author merely repro¬ duced a symmetry which was inherent in the divine ordering
586 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
of the facts, as it would if he himself constructed the sym¬ metry by free invention. In either case, the symmetry would be intentional in his narrative. Moreover, even in a thor¬ oughly accurate narrative there is some possibility of such a selection and ordering of the material as shall bring certain features especially into view. A portrait, with its selection of details, is sometimes not less truthful but more truthful than a photograph. So in this case, the author, we think, was not doing violence to the facts when he presented the annuncia¬ tion to Mary as in parallel with the annunciation to Zacharias. That parallelism, we think, was inherent in the facts; and the writer showed himself to be not merely an artist but a true historian when he refrained from marring it.
But the point is that although the argument for the in¬ tegrity of the passage which we have based upon the parallel¬ ism holds on the view that the narrative is historical, it holds equally well on the hypothesis that it is the product of free invention. In either case — however the parallelism came to be there — it certainly as a matter of fact is there ; and an inter¬ polation theory which holds that it was originally defective at the decisive point is faced by the strongest kind of objections that literary criticism can ever afford.
Our conclusion then is that the entire narrative in Lk. i-ii finds both its climax and its centre in the virgin birth of Christ. A superficial reading may lead to a contrary conclu¬ sion; but when one enters sympathetically into the inner spirit of the narrative one sees that the virgin birth is every¬ where presupposed. The account of the lesser wonder in the case of the forerunner, the delicate and yet significant way in which Mary is put forward instead of Joseph, the lofty key in which the whole narrative is pitched — all this is incompre¬ hensible without the supreme miracle of the supernatural conception in the virgin’s womb. The interpolation hypothe¬ sis, therefore, not merely fails of proof, but (so fully as can reasonably be expected in literary criticism) is positively dis¬ proved.
Princeton.
J. Gresham Machen.
ECHOES OF THE COVENANT WITH DAVID*
No one can form a just estimate of the influence which the brief oracle of Nathan preserved in 2 Samuel chapter vii. has had upon the thought of later times, without going through the Old Testament (to say nothing now of the New) with an ear open for the many echoes which this one clear voice has awakened in the souls of hoping, believing men of Israel.
There is no question of priority here. All schools of criti¬ cism admit the priority and influence of our historical narra¬ tive in Samuel. Debate about it, therefore, turns not on the relative dating, but on the absolute dating, of the voice and its echoes. If Volz, Marti, Budde, Duhm, and the rest, whose pronouncements became more and more positive and sweeping during the two decades from 1890 to 1910, are right, then the entire type of mind which rested its hopes for Israel’s future on the coming of a glorious king of David’s line — a “Messiah,” as he is commonly termed — belonged to the period of the Exile or subsequent to it. In that case it be¬ longed to a time when the Davidic dynasty had played its historical part, and had already passed as truly into the realm of yesterday as had the Ark, Solomon’s Temple, or the twelve-tribe nation. But if these critics are wrong, then every passage in psalmody or prophecy, which reveals the practical use the people of Israel before the Exile made of this hope in David’s covenant, contributes to the cumulative proof that that covenant is an historical fact and that our account of it in Samuel is credible.
It would manifestly be impossible, within the limits of a single article, to state and answer the arguments relied on to prove that the many passages in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other prophets, and in the Psalter, which refer to the Davidic Cove¬ nant, are in reality exilic or post-exilic. We shall have to con¬ tent ourselves with rehearsing some of these echoes from prophet, psalmist, and historian, calling attention to their
* The substance of this article was delivered in Miller Chapel, October 13, 1921, as the fourth of five lectures on “The House of David,” consti¬ tuting the Stone Lectures for the year 1921-2.
588 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
number, distribution, and variety, and pointing out that the burden of proof — not assertion, or conjecture, but proof — rests upon those who would uproot the whole growth and transplant it to another age than the one from which it has come down to us on the authority of uniform and abundant testimony.
We begin with the Book of Amos, that prophet who, to¬ gether with his contemporary Hosea, belongs to the North¬ ern Kingdom and to the 8th century b.c. Amos sees the climax of his predictions in the coming of a “day,” when, as he makes Jehovah say, “I will raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof ; and I will raise up its ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old ; that they may possess the remnant of Edom, and all the na¬ tions that are called by my name, saith Jehovah that doeth this.”1
We notice here, in general, the figure of a building as the literary vehicle for the representation of a dynasty’s existence and fortunes, just as in the basic passage in 2 Sam. vii., where Jehovah promises to “build” for David a “house.” To be sure, the word sukkah, a booth or tabernacle, is used here in place of bayith, a house, which appears there, but this change is clearly due to the prophet’s desire to emphasize the idea of the dynasty’s ruinous condition — the same desire that prompted him to add to it the descriptive participle hannophe- leth, meaning “in a falling condition” or “about to fall to the ground,” as well as those other strong words in the subse¬ quent clauses, “breaches” and “ruins.” Note also the words “raise up” and “build” both here and in Samuel : the only difference is that here it is a repairing or rebuilding, while there it is a building ab initio. And finally, it should not escape our notice that Amos refers to “the days of old” as the stand¬ ard of comparison. Perhaps he uses this phrase in an absolute sense, in allusion to the centuries (roughly, two and a half) that had already elapsed since David’s day — as long a period
1 Amos ix. nf.
ECHOES OF THE COVENANT WITH DAVID 589
of time as separates our own day from, say, the settlement of Philadelphia by William Penn. Perhaps he uses it in a relative sense, as he in spirit places himself in “that day” of restora¬ tion of which he is prophesying. In either case the argument holds good : David’s age stands out in Amos’ time as an age in the past when a standard was set for the utmost future prosperity. Rebuilding will be a restoration of what was then built. Thus the impression which this entire prediction makes on us is that it was framed in an allusive fashion on the model of 2 Sam. vii., not only by a prophet who knew, but for a people who likewise knew — and cherished — the oracle of Nathan to David.
We turn to Hosea, and with him reach more abundant material. Amos was a man of Judah, sent to preach among the northern tribes. His acquaintance with, and zeal for, the Davidic House, and his association of it with the brighter side of his prophecies, may therefore be attributed to this fundamentally political circumstance. Indeed, Winckler has gone so far as to represent Amos as King Ahaz’ agent pro¬ vocateur, to stir up in the Northern Kingdom sentiment for the reunion of Israel under the Davidic line.2 While this view has not prevailed, even among radical critics, it may serve to remind us that we must place Hosea on a somewhat different basis from Amos : Hosea was a man of the North, and when he gives to Judah and Judah’s dynasty the pre-eminence, either in present rights or in future hopes, it means that a tradition of permanent Davidic supremacy over all Israel was a heritage of the entire nation.
What then does Hosea say? In predicting the ultimate blessings, which lie beyond the dark days impending over Israel, Hosea more than once makes his climax a reunion of Judah and Israel under one sovereign. The first time he does not name that sovereign : to the people he addressed this was obviously unnecessary. He says : “The children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they
2 Winckler, Hugo, Geschichte Israels in Einzeldarstellungen, Teil I, pp. 91-95.
590 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
shall appoint themselves one head, and shall go up from the land.”3 The second time he is specifying, in a list of some length, the things which God’s people shall enjoy in “the latter days,” succeeding upon those dark days in which they are to be deprived of all privileges, real or fancied, which they now enjoy. For those “many days” just ahead they shall be — among other things — “without king and without prince.” But, “afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek Jehovah their God, and David their king, and shall come with fear unto Jehovah and to his goodness in the latter days.”4
The significance of these passages is that they individualize the ruler of the House of David under the name of David, and that they place the return to David alongside the return to Jehovah’s House, as jointly constituting that renewed unity which marks the restoration of the old United Mon¬ archy, with its Davidic sovereign enthroned beside the Temple of Jehovah. In 2 Sam. vii. the building of that Temple and the building of David’s house are put side by side ; here in Hosea the place where Jehovah manifests His “goodness” as the objective of the nation’s return stands side by side with a throne, the occupant of which bears the name of David because the heir to all of David’s “mercies,” and belongs to the entire nation — “David, their king.”
Just as Amos and Hosea form a pair, both exercising their ministry in the Northern Kingdom near its fall in the 8th century, so Micah and Isaiah form a pair, belonging to the latter part of the same century, but preaching in the Southern Kingdom, and to it so far as the primary aim of their message is concerned. Apart from many other points of contact, as we should expect, Isaiah and Micah have in common that re¬ markable passage about “the mountain of the Lord’s house,” to which “all peoples shall flow in the latter days,” there to learn truth, practise righteousness, and enjoy prosperity.5 But inasmuch as no earthly Vicegerent of Jehovah is here alluded
3 Hos. i. 11.
4 Hos. iii. 4f.
6 Is. ii. 2-4; Mic. iv. 1-3.
ECHOES OF THE COVENANT WITH DAVID 591
to, we shall not insist upon the witness of this passage to the Davidic promise, even though Zion — at once “the city of David” and “the city of Jehovah” — is expressly made the scene and seat of the sovereignty there exercised.
But in Micah we are able to trace the progress of the prophet’s thought back from this “city of David,” Zion, to that earlier “city of David,” Bethlehem, whence the Davidic House took its rise. “But thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah,” says the prophet in a passage familiar to every reader of the Gospel of Matthew, “which art little to be among the thou¬ sands of Judah, out of thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.”6 The house of David, heir to the promise of eternal rule, started in a humble town; and it is God’s pleasure that, although the dynasty which sprung thence be humbled to a common station — such a station as Jesse, the pre-royal, private citizen of Bethlehem, held — it shall never¬ theless produce the ultimate Ruler after God’s heart (“unto me”). Great as the contrast was between the humble position of Bethlehem among the proud cities of Judah, and the ex¬ alted station of the line of kings it sent forth, greater still shall be the contrast between the humble, nameless, human parentage of that Coming One, Son of David, and the eternal background of His divine origin. For the “goings forth” (whether the word refers to place or to circumstance) of that Figure shall be of double character : a going forth out of Bethlehem because of the Davidic family; and a going forth out of his eternal pre-existence because divine.
This same double character appears in the following sen¬ tences, where Micah continues with his reference, first to the human motherhood of the Messiah (“until the time that she who travaileth hath brought forth”),7 and then to his divine prerogatives: “He shall stand, and shall feed (that is, rule, from the common metaphor of the flock and its shepherd for a people and its ruler) in the strength of Jehovah, in the majesty of the name of Jehovah his God : and they (his flock,
6 Mic. v. 2 (Heb. 1). Comp. Matt. ii. 6.
7 Ibid., ver. 3.
592 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
his people) shall abide; for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth. And this (Person) shall be peace” — as it were, peace incarnate.8 And although in the following verses Micah continues in a warlike strain, recounting the martial exploits of “the remnant of Jacob” — the future Israel, puri¬ fied and converted, under the leadership of this Figure — it is all simply an attempt to depict, in impressionistic strokes, with brilliant coloring and striking contrast and composition, the basis of the Messianic peace, won for Israel and by Israel in a world which divides into two camps — its enemies and its friends, the enemies conquered and annihilated, the friends saved and blessed.9
Even if the prophet Micah stood alone, and we had only this fifth chapter of his brief book, to carry the predictions of 2 Sam. vii. from the level of Flosea up to the level of Jere¬ miah and the New Testament, still we could not fairly question the word of revelation which Micah has transmitted to us out of the 8th century. Wonderful as it is, it belongs at just that point in the development of the implications of David’s covenant. Yet we have in fact a mighty confirmation, both of our interpretation of Micah and of the genuineness of his Messianic utterances, in the contemporary and kindred predictions of Isaiah. To attempt to cover these predictions adequately in the space at our disposal would manifestly be impossible. But we must look in turn, at least briefly, at three passages of Isaiah, which are of capital importance for this story of the House of David.
First, in his eleventh chapter, we find Isaiah describing the Messiah in His characteristics, personal and official, and in His merciful, just, victorious, and peaceful reign.10 The des¬ ignation he gives this Ruler, first at the beginning and then again at the end of that description, is “a shoot out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots” ; and again “the root of Jesse.” When we put these phrases alongside Micah’s
8 Ibid., vs. 4, 5a.
9 Ibid., vs. 5R9.
10 Is. xi. i-io.
ECHOES OF THE COVENANT WITH DAVID
593
address to “little Bethlehem” — the humble source of the glorious Monarch — we see the identity of thought underly¬ ing both. For it is not David, the king, but Jesse, the humble citizen of Bethlehem, who is singled out by the prophet to describe the source of the Messiah: Jesse is the root (and apparently the unsightly, cut-down stump or stock), which shall bud and branch and grow again into beauty and glory — a glory greater than anything yet realized — when He comes forth from it in whom Jehovah shall rule.
The second passage is in that seventh chapter of Isaiah, to which we have had occasion to refer more than once in the sketch of the history of David’s House.11 When Ahaz, threat¬ ened with dethronement, refused to accept God’s way of faith and relied on the King of Assyria, Isaiah gave to him, for a sign that his predictions were from Jehovah who is faithful, the birth of the child whom he names Immanuel — which means, “God with us.” Familiar to us in its wording on ac¬ count of Matthew’s quotation of it in his birth-narrative,12 it is not commonly grasped as clearly as it should be when it is known only from Matthew. One needs to study it in Isaiah vii., in its remarkable setting, and to compare it es¬ pecially with Micah, chapter v., in order to feel the force and import of its prediction about the Messiah.
“Hear ye now, O house of David,” cries the prophet, ad¬ dressing the whole “House of David” as the collective heir to the promise in 2 Sam. vii. — “behold, a virgin shall con¬ ceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”13 So reads our American Revised Version ; though the original calls for the rendering “ the virgin,” since the noun has the definite article prefixed, and the word is broad enough to mean any young woman whether married or not. Why is this young woman definite, not only to Isaiah, but equally, to all appearance, to his auditors, whereas to modern inter¬ preters she has been so very indefinite ? Clearly, because, like
11 See art. The Davidic Dynasty, in this Review, April, 1927.
12 Matt. i. 23.
13 Is. vii. 14.
594
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
the woman alluded to by Micah as “she that travaileth” (properly, the woman about to bring forth a child), this woman was definite precisely through what is said about her, both here and there : namely, that she is the mother of the Messiah. Her name ? Who knows ? Who cares, in comparison with what she does? This King of David’s line must have a mother : this is she. If the Gospel story seems to any to lay too great stress on the word parthenos, by which this Hebrew noun had centuries before been rendered into the Greek, we ought not to overlook the justification for this which lies here in Isaiah’s language, though not in the word we render “virgin.” It lies in the exclusive prominence of motherhood here, just as in Micah v., together with the absence of all reference to human fatherhood.
Strange, inexplicable circumstance, to such as are unwill¬ ing to see in this a pre-adumbration of a Gospel fact! It was precisely their descent in the male line, father to son, and father to son, through four and a half centuries, that con¬ stituted the proudest boast of the royal dynasty of Jerusalem. True, the mother of each heir to the throne was generally mentioned in connection with his accession, but this was because of the peculiarly proud position of the queen-mother at the Davidic court, from Bathsheba onward. Yet here there is something more and something different. That Son of David, whose name of Immanuel seems to stamp upon Him, with its symbolic significance, His divine origin, takes His human origin through “that young woman” who bears Him — the woman whom the divine purpose selects for this sole, supreme honor — to be (what Elizabeth calls Mary) “the mother of my Lord.”14
14 Luke i. 43. The most recent developments in criticism seem to justify the expectation that such exegetical vagaries as Duhm’s “any woman whatever that is about to bring forth” have seen their day. Kittel ( Die hellenistische Mysterienreligion und das Alte Testament, p. 7) does not hesitate to call such interpretations by Duhm, Marti, and their school, “ephemeral errors.” While Kittel’s thesis does not require from him a positive verdict as to the genuineness of all three “Messianic” passages of Isaiah, it is plain that the ideas with which he and Gressmann, Sellin, and
ECHOES OF THE COVENANT WITH DAVID
595
Rather than dwell longer on implications of the name Im¬ manuel, we turn to the third of the three passages in Isaiah which we are to consider, since in it we shall find the same implications more fully and unmistakably set forth. That is the passage in the ninth chapter, familiar to us, not like the seventh chapter from New Testament quotation, but from the marvellous — one is almost tempted to say, the in¬ spired — use made of it by Handel in his “Messiah.” “For unto us a child is born,” exults Isaiah, as he thus justifies all his extravagant predictions of light, joy, victory, and peace that precede, “unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from henceforth even for ever.”15
Again the birth of a child ! It is a son of David, born to sit on David’s throne. “For ever” — again that old refrain of 2 Sam. vii. rings out, as the climax of this prophecy by Nathan’s greater successor. The kingdom which David founded, this child shall establish and uphold. It shall go on increasing, for his mighty shoulder can bear the weight of a world’s government. And what He is shall be summed up in the symbolic name — His throne-name : for the four elements that make it up, consisting each of two words bound closely together, reveal the figure of the Messiah, a multum in paruo, a cameo of the Christ. “Wonderful Counsellor” — One unique in His ability to guide His people by means of His extra¬ ordinary, His superhuman wisdom. “Mighty God” — that divine Leader who in the past had striven for His people and would yet show Himself their champion against all foes in
the other comparative-religionists are operating find no obstacle in the Isaianic authorship of these passages; and as for their interpretation — they defend their “Messianic” character as stoutly as any of the older or younger conservative critics.
“Is. ix. 6f. (Heb. sf.).
596 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
days to come. “Everlasting Father” — none other, in essence, than the timeless, ageless, eternal God in human guise. “Prince of Peace” — exalted on a throne, of which Solomon, the peaceful king, once occupied the type, but before which shall come to bow, not only Sheba’s queen, but every prince of earth, since He is “King of them that reign as kings and Lord of them that rule as lords” and “the kingdom of this world shall become the kingdom of Jehovah and of His Messiah.”16
When we pass on from the age of Micah and Isaiah to that of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, we find the whole background changed — that background of their present upon which their predictions of the Messiah and His age are projected. Not¬ ably, the representatives of the Davidic dynasty on the throne of Judah during its last century of existence were, with the sole exception of Josiah, unworthy of the house to which they belonged, of the promises to which they were heirs, and, above all, of the God whose earthly vicegerents they were within His kingdom. Jeremiah’s ministry fell, in part, within the reign of Josiah, but most of it was exercised in the times of his miserable successors. It included the successive sieges of the city by the Chaldaeans, its final fall, the deportations, and the earlier years of the Exile. Ezekiel, himself among the earlier deportees, gave utterance to the prophecies in the firsf half of his book before the final fall of Jerusalem, to the re¬ mainder after the whole nation was sharing with him the ex¬ perience of exile. Since the Exile is the latest period to which criticism of even the most radical type has reduced the date of 2 Sam. vii., we not only need go no further than Jeremiah and Ezekiel in assembling the prophetic echoes of it, but even with these two prophets we find ourselves at a time admittedly influenced by “Messianism” — as that tendency is called which exalts the promised king of David’s line into the center of the national hopes. Yet inasmuch as this tendency, whatever its pre-prophetic source, is supposed to be found in the very process of absorption into prophetic doctrine precisely in
16 Rev. xi. 15; xix. 16, &c.
ECHOES OF THE COVENANT WITH DAVID
597
these two prophets, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, we ought to at¬ tend to their utterances also, if we are to have any fair notion of what pre-exilic Messianism contained.
Two companion passages in Jeremiah, xxiii. 5, 6 and xxxiii. 15-26, hold out to his people the promise that after the days of their punishment are over God’s changeless purpose of grace shall be accomplished, in spite of men’s faithlessness, in the establishment of His own righteous rule among them. In the former passage the promise comes at the end of a long series of prophecies concerning the successive princes of David’s line under whom Jeremiah had exercised his own ministry. In contrast to Josiah, who is praised for his justice and mercy, his successors are condemned as reprobates by their God ; and after a general statement that God will punish the worthless shepherds of His flock and substitute for them good shepherds, Jeremiah continues with more detail : “Be¬ hold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is his name whereby he shall be called: Je¬ hovah our righteousness.”
In the second passage, too long to quote here in its en¬ tirety, Jeremiah introduces his promise of the Messiah’s gracious, righteous rule as the climax to his predictions about the land and its fortunes. The symbolic action of burying the deed of sale, chapter xxxii., signified that even the Exile, which the prophet was announcing as imminent and ines¬ capable, was not to write finis across the history of God’s people in the Holy Land. And with this for his starting-point he goes on to comfort those who sorely needed comfort in this day of gloom — himself included. “Is anything too hard for me?” asks Jehovah of the despairing prophet, who ex¬ postulates with his God on the inconsistency of that symbolic act with all the rest of what has been revealed to him. I shall destroy as I have said; but I shall also build up. After the deluge, the remnant. This remnant I will Myself gather out
598 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
of the lands to this their ancient covenant-home, and there shall be “abundance of peace and truth.” Personal renewal for the repentant sinner, and national restoration for a chas¬ tened nation, will be followed by prosperity and the joy and praise that befit it. And, as the climax of all, that phase of My covenant which consists in the promise of a righteous Ruler for ever for My people, shall not be forgotten : “In those days, and at that time, saith Jehovah, will I cause a Branch of righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. . . . For thus saith Jehovah, David shall never want a man to sit upon the throne of the house of Israel. . . . Thus saith Jehovah, If my covenant of day and night stand not, if I have not ap¬ pointed the ordinances of heaven and earth ; then will I also cast away the seed of Jacob, and of David my servant, so that I will not take of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
Bearing the fundamental passage in 2 Samuel in mind, we ought to note two points in this prophecy. ( 1 ) Precisely that feature of the Messianic King is here emphasized, which connects Him with the House of David : He is a Branch (more properly, a Scion, or Shoot) of David’s stock. From this time onward the word branch came to have more and more the character of a technical term for the Messiah; Zechariah uses it as His actual name.17 Jeremiah himself, like Hosea. calls the Messiah directly by the name of his fore¬ father : “David.” He also gives him, as Isaiah does, a sym¬ bolic name, based not upon His origin but upon His character or office: “Jehovah our righteousness.” When we remember that the throne-name of the last king of David’s line in Jerusalem was Zedekiah, which means righteousness of Jehovah, we can hardly doubt that the name J ehovah-zidh- qenu was constructed by Jeremiah to suggest that the Mes¬ siah was to be all that Zedekiah should have been but was not. And if in chapter xxxiii. the prophet applies his svm-
17 Zech. iii. 8 ; vi. 12.
ECHOES OF THE COVENANT WITH DAVID
599
bolic name not to the Messiah but to Jerusalem or Judah,18 we should observe that the context is here concerned, as we have just seen, with the land and the city rather than with its kings, and that Isaiah had long before declared that Jerusa¬ lem in the day of its Messianic salvation should be called ’Ir-h-azzedheq, that is, “the city of righteousness.”19 The moral character of its king shall “in that day” become also the moral quality of His people : in New Testament phrase¬ ology, “We shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is.”20
(2) It is a covenant which binds Jehovah to the perform¬ ance of His promise of a Messiah, as surely as He has cove¬ nanted not to disturb the fixed order of Nature, the days and seasons and years. And this covenant, made with David, “His servant,” at an historical point of time, is parallel in every respect to the earlier covenant with the patriarchs that their seed should be His people “for ever.” (Compare Jer. xxxi. 35-37 with 2 Sam. vii. 24). And in connection with this latter comparison, which puts the relation of the cove¬ nant-keeping Jehovah on the one hand, and Israel and David on the other hand, upon an identical footing of election, of salvation, and of eternity, this further fact should not be lost sight of : that Jeremiah (xxx. 21 f.) expressly ascribes to this Messianic Prince a priestly function as Mediator: “Their prince,” he writes, “Shall be of themselves, and their ruler shall be from the midst of them; and I will cause him to draw near, and he shall approach unto me : for who is he that hath had boldness to approach unto me? saith Jehovah. And ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.” “Taken from among men,” as the author of Hebrews writes, in describing the high priest’s status and function,21 this Prince will repre¬ sent those men, sinners as they are, in their relation to God : for them, who dare not approach Jehovah’s holy majesty, he
1S Jer. xxxiii. 16.
19 Is. i. 26.
20 1 John iii. 2.
21 Heb. v. 1.
6oo
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
draws near to mediate, by divine appointment, with divine favor, and, as a result, a rebellious, reprobate nation again becomes Jehovah’s people, and an offended God becomes re¬ conciled and deigns to call Himself “their God.”
In Ezekiel there are two passages which demand mention, before we close this list of pre-exilic and exilic allusions to the Messiah's person and work. In his 34th chapter Ezekiel develops more completely than it is developed anywhere else in Scripture save by our Lord in the 10th chapter of John’s Gospel, that figure of the flock and the shepherds, so common in both Testaments in its briefer forms of application. It is Jehovah’s gracious purpose to destroy the evil shepherds who have neglected or abused His flock, and Himself to save and heal and tend the sheep that now are “lost” or “driven away” or “broken” or “sick.” But in verse 23 God announces His purpose to “set up one shepherd over them.” “He shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd. And I, Jehovah, will be their God, and my servant David prince among them. I, Jehovah, have spoken it.” Then the chapter closes with a figurative picture of the blessings that shall come to the flock under this bene¬ ficent treatment, and in its last verses expressly interprets the whole figure as a parable of Jehovah and Israel in their mutual relations.
Here again we find this kingly Figure called by the name of his father David. Again it is the whole nation over which he is to reign. Again, as repeatedly in 2 Sam. vii., David is termed by Jehovah “my servant.” And again we have the association of this figure of the shepherd with the Messiah : is it fanciful to trace this also to 2 Sam. vii? For there, in the words of Nathan, the judges22 who preceded David as Israel’s rulers were the “shepherds” commanded by God to “feed” His people; and as for David, “God,” says Nathan, “took thee, David, from the sheepcote, from following the sheep, that thou shouldest be prince (the word is leader — quite suit-
22 See marginal note on 2 Sam. vii. 7. The text in Chronicles is un¬ doubtedly correct.
ECHOES OF THE COVENANT WITH DAVID
601
able for the shepherd as leader of his flock) over my people, over Israel.”
Chapter xxxvii of Ezekiel is the familiar prophecy about the Valley of Dry Bones. Upon these dry bones descends the spirit of the Lord, so that the dead arise and live again. No more shall the scattered nation remain as in the grave of its exile : it shall come together and God’s Spirit will breathe into it the breath of life. It shall become one nation again. It shall return to its homeland. And over it — who is to reign over it? “My servant David,” says the prophet (ver. 24), “shall be king over them; and they shall all have one shep¬ herd . . . and they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers dwelt ; and they shall dwell therein, they, and their children, and their chil¬ dren’s children, for ever : and David my servant shall be their prince for ever. . . . My tabernacle also shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
This Messianic passage in xxxvii. leads up to Ezekiel’s climax — the vision of God’s sanctuary among His people — which occupies chapters xl-xlviii. And although it has been objected that the Prince of Israel who appears in that vision does not play a role quite worthy of the Davidic Messiah, but represents an altered attitude of Ezekiel, toward the end of his ministry, with respect to Messianic hopes, there is in fact no evidence that those chapters come from a date sub¬ stantially later than this 37th chapter. And in any case the prophet would hardly have left side by side in his published book such conflicting views — the evidence of a wavering at¬ titude on so important a subject as the Davidic dynasty and the Messianic King. We feel rather that the whole book should be taken together, the allusions to the Prince in xl.-xlviii. being treated as intended to deal only with this Person’s relation to sanctuary, sacrifice, and land, and the prophet’s entire volume being allowed to tell its whole story collectively. Certainly in chap, xxxvii. we have the old familiar features of 2 Sam. vii. repeated : the name “David,” linking the Messiah thus to the ancient dynasty
602 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
and its promises; “my servant,” as on the lips of Nathan and David; the unity of the whole people under one sovereign; the “shepherd”; the “covenant”; “for ever”; and, with no thought of such incongruity as critics have professed to see in Samuel, God’s permanent sanctuary “for ever” standing side by side with the Prince’s throne.
For the same reason that we stop with the Exile in this review of the prophets, we may dismiss the Psalms with but a few words. Everyone who knows and loves the 2nd Psalm, the 72nd, the noth, or any one of half-a-dozen more in the Psalter, which deal with the king who rules in Zion, is aware of the powerful influence which 2 Sam. vii. has had upon the imagination of Israel’s poets. With the depth and beauty of feeling which the poetic spirit lends to a surpassingly grandi¬ ose theme, all the elements of Jehovah’s promise to David through Nathan are embodied in these religious lyrics: the “sonship” of this king in Zion ; his divine throne, might, com¬ mission, prerogative, destiny; the universal scope and eternal duration of his dominion ; the moral basis on which his sway is founded ; the prophetic and priestly, as well as regal, func¬ tions he exercises; the absolute and indissoluble identity of his cause with the cause of Jehovah in the earth as well as in Israel.
Psalms lxxxix. and cxxxii. are, in fact, paraphrases of Nathan’s oracle : the former as the basis for an appeal to God to deliver Israel from its afflictions; the latter to reflect greater glory thereby upon Zion, as at once the city of David, the seat of his perpetual dominion, and the city of Jehovah, where stood the sanctuary.
But other psalms are none the less footed in the same oracle. At the head of them all stands the brief, obscure, but charming lyric, contained, not in the Psalter, but in 2 Samuel, chapter xxiii., and entitled “the last words of David.” Criti¬ cism has no adequate internal ground for denying its Davidic authorship,23 which it claims, not in a separate prefixed title
33 The essay of O. Procksch, Die letsten Worte Davids, in the volume of Alttestamentliche Studien published in 1913 in honor of Kittel’s
ECHOES OF THE COVENANT WITH DAVID 603
merely, like the titles of the psalms in the Psalter, but in the body of the poem, bound there by the rhythmic structure of its first stanza, and stressed by the use of no less than three descriptive parallels. Thus,
David, the son of Jesse, saith,
And the man who was raised on high saith,
The anointed of the God of Jacob,
And the sweet psalmist of Israel.
In estimating the value of this song for the purpose of our inquiry, it is by no means necessary to establish the personal, strictly Messianic reference in the third and fourth verses, where David sings of
One that ruleth over men righteously,
That ruleth in the fear of God.
For even if this be merely an introduction to the poetic de¬ scription of those blessings which accompany the reign of such a pious and upright king — of any such king — as given in the succeeding verses, still we have in verse 5 an unmis¬ takable and universally admitted allusion to 2 Sam. vii.
For is not my house so with God?24
Yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant,
Ordered in all things, and sure:
For it is all my salvation, and all my desire,
Although he maketh it not to grow.
It is true, this language is obscure, because it is epigrammatic, allusive, lyrical in a high degree— though not more so than might be expected with the theme, the author, and the occa¬ sion. Nevertheless, there can be but one background for the association together of the ideas here assembled : “David’s
sixtieth birthday, may be regarded as a turning-point in the history of critical opinion on 2 Sam. xxiii. He introduces his sane and valuable critique of the poem with these words : “Today it is attributed to David by scarcely any exegetes and is transferred generally to the age of the psalms after the Exile; only Klostermann upholds its genuineness, and Gressmann advocates at least the Davidic age. In the following study the effort will be made to restore this wonderful poem as a gem to the crown of the poet-king.” At the conclusion he permits himself a short review of what he calls “echoes,” corresponding to the substance of this article, and finding their source in 2 Sam. vii.
24 This line according to the margin of ARV.
604 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
house,” God, a covenant, eternity; and, we may add, in view of the prophetic development — “make to grow,” since this is the same word as was to yield later the symbolic name of Messiah, “The Branch.”
This review of the Old Testament echoes of 2 Sam. vii. would not be complete, if we were to say nothing of the references to it in the historical books. We have seen how Wellhausen himself at first refrained from mutilating the orade of Nathan by exscinding verse 13 of the passage in 2 Sam. vii., because held back by the consideration of 1 Kings v. 5 (Heb. 19), as a witness to its genuineness.25 Later he was ready to do what all his followers have since done : to discredit the evidence of the Books of Kings and so to attain the desired end — the rejection of 2 Sam. vii. 13. But it is very important to realize that 1 Kings v. 5 by no means stands alone. It is merely one member of a series of passages, run¬ ning through all the Books of Kings and Chronicles, which testify not only to the view of their respective authors con¬ cerning David’s interest in the erection of a permanent Temple in Jerusalem, but also to the accepted tradition in Judah that on the occasion when David proposed to build such a Temple God promised to him perpetual sovereignty over His people. Let us rapidly scan this series.
At the time of Solomon’s accession the aged David, in his satisfaction that his will has been carried out and fratricidal war avoided in determining the succession to the throne, cries out, “Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Israel, who hath given one to sit on my throne this day, mine eyes even seeing it” (1 Kings i. 48). He marvelled at the unexpected pleasure of living to see with his own eyes the fulfilment in its first stage of that eternal covenant which Jehovah had made with his house. And when he addresses Solomon (ii. 2-4), he repeats in paraphrase (ver. 4) the substance of God’s promise to his house, as given in 2 Sam. vii. 14-16, saying, “that Jehovah may establish his word which he spake concerning me, say-
25 See art. The Davidic Covenant in this Review, July 1927.
ECHOES OF THE COVENANT WITH DAVID 605
ing, If thy children take heed to their way, to walk before me in truth with all their heart and with all their soul, there shall not fail thee (said he) a man on the throne of Israel.” Solomon’s own pronouncements, in the same chapter, after he is seated on his throne and is determining the fate of Adonijah and Shimei, show amidst their complacency a per¬ fect consciousness of the oracle on which his house rests its claim and confidence : note especially the phrase, “Who hath made me a house, as he promised” (ver. 24).
The exchange of messages between Solomon and the King of Tyre furnished the occasion for that distinct allusion to Nathan’s oracle which has already been referred to several times. “Thou knowest,” says Solomon to his father’s ally, “how that David my father could not build a house for the name of Jehovah his God for the wars which were about him on every side, until Jehovah put them under the soles of his feet. But now Jehovah my God hath given me rest on every side; there is neither adversary, nor evil occurrence. And, behold, I purpose to build a house for the name of Jehovah my God, as Jehovah spake unto my father, saying, Thy son, whom I will set upon thy throne in thy room, he shall build the house for my name.”26 This is an unusually full reference to the historical situation in Samuel, and even to its language and connection. Kohler observes with perfect propriety, “If Solomon says to King Hiram that his father had been hin¬ dered from erecting a temple by his continual wars, this is because he did not care to impart the more inward reasons to the heathen prince.”
After Solomon had begun to build, he was reminded afresh of the original connection between the proposal to build a Temple and God’s promise to the Davidic House through Nathan in these words: “Concerning this house which thou art building, if thou wilt walk in my statutes, and execute my ordinances, and keep all my commandments to walk in them; then I will establish my word with thee, which I spake unto David thy father” (1 Kings vi. 12).
26 1 Kings v. 3-5 (Heb. 17-19).
6o6
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
When the house was dedicated, Solomon’s blessing (viii. 15-20) rehearses much of what Nathan had spoken to David, and concludes with this complacent remark: “Jehovah hath established his word that he spake ; for I am risen up in the room of David my father, and sit on the throne of Israel, as Jehovah promised, and have built the house for the name of Jehovah, the God of Israel.” Then, immediately afterwards, in the dedicatory prayer, Solomon begins from the same starting-point of faith and praise: “O Jehovah, the God of Israel, there is no God like thee, in heaven above, or on earth beneath; who keepest covenant and lovingkindness with thy servants, that walk before thee with all their heart; who hast kept with thy servant David my father that which thou didst promise him : yea, thou spakest with thy mouth, and hast ful¬ filled it with thy hand, as it is this day. Now therefore, O Jehovah, the God of Israel, keep with thy servant David my father that which thou hast promised him, saying, There shall not fail thee a man in my sight to sit on the throne of Israel; if only thy children take heed to their way, to walk before me as thou hast walked before me. Now therefore, O God of Israel, let thy word, I pray thee, be verified, which thou spakest unto thy servant David my father” (vs. 23-26). And at the conclusion of the festival of dedication, we are told, the people “went unto their tents joyful and glad of heart for all the goodness that Jehovah had showed unto David his servant, and to Israel his people.”27 Why to “David his servant” rather than to “Solomon his servant,” unless with allusion to that covenant with David which was bound up in their minds with this Temple and which was regarded by all as on a par with the divine covenant with Israel ?
In the narrative of a special revelation of Jehovah to Solomon contained in the next chapter (1 Kings ix. 4, 5), Jehovah attaches directly to His promise of permanent ac¬ ceptance of the new Temple as His dwelling-place a promise
27 1 Kings viii. 66.
ECHOES OF THE COVENANT WITH DAVID 60 7
of eternal sovereignty for Solomon and his house, provided only that he and his seed shall be loyal and obedient — precisely the order of thought in 2 Sam. vii., and expressed in language reminiscent of that chapter when it does not actually quote it verbally.
When in his later life Solomon was rebuked for the idol¬ atrous practices tolerated for the sake of his heathen wives, the divine message of rebuke is tempered by reminiscences of the promise to David : “In thy days I will not do it, for David thy father’s sake : but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son. Howbeit I will not rend away all the kingdom ; but I will give one tribe to thy son, for David my servant’s sake, and for Jerusalem’s sake which I have chosen.” It is the sanctuary in Jerusalem, of course, to which the last clause refers: again there is the same association of the Temple and the promise to David.
The terms in which Ahijah the prophet announces to Jeroboam his distinguished future (1 Kings xi. 31-39) are not only full of allusions to the analogous promise to David in 2 Sam. vii., but the conditional character of the promise to Jeroboam’s house is almost as striking a witness to the content of the Davidic covenant as a quotation of that cove¬ nant could be. And after Jeroboam has written his record in sin the same prophet is sent to announce the doom of his short-lived house in language equally reminiscent of the Davidic covenant (xiv. 7-10).
All down through the long history of David’s royal line, allusion is constantly made to the special favor of Jehovah which the founder of the house had enjoyed, whether by way of contrast between the moral character and religious fidelity of David and some unworthy successor, or by way of a plea for deliverance or an explanation of deliverance at times when the fortunes of the house were at the lowest ebb. And it is the rule, rather than the exception, to find in such pas¬ sages that the author associates the persistence of the regnant dynasty and the inviolability of the city and sanctuary in the same way that they are associated in 2 Sam. vii. The Books
6o8
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
of Kings are full of these “echoes of the covenant’’ with David.
Although we should find the same testimony duplicated, or rather, multiplied and enlarged, in the Books of Chronicles, it is unnecessary for us to submit it separately as evidence, inasmuch as “the Chronicler” is admittedly a post-exilic writer. While he undoubtedly had valuable sources that were independent of anything now preserved to us, nevertheless he belonged to a time and a circle wherein everything Davidic was of peculiar interest, and his specific testimony to this oracle is swallowed up in the general witness he bears to David’s peculiar relation to Jehovah’s service and sanctuary. Inasmuch as every critic of the Old Testament has his own principial attitude towards that general witness, the evidence of the Books of Chronicles must be regarded in this matter as a question by itself.
We have now completed the review of what we have called the echoes of the Davidic covenant. Only such a review, lengthy as it must be even at the briefest, can leave on the mind the due impression of mass, variety, and wide distribu¬ tion. It is scarcely too much to say of it that it is scattered all through the Old Testament from the time of David down. Admittedly influenced by the narrative in 2 Sam. vii., which purports to give the historical setting of the covenant, all this mass of testimony has to be re-dated, if the narrative itself is brought down to, or nearly to, the Exile.
Say, for example, the historian of the Books of Kings lived in or just at the threshold of the Exile. That being so, a few decades at most separated him from the date of composi¬ tion of 2 Sam. vii. according to the majority of the Well- hausen school of criticism, and the interpolated verse 13 would be actually contemporary with him. Yet he is supposed to have written his story with constant recurrence to this oracle, of which his father and the fathers of his readers had never heard. Indeed, according to Volz half the story, according to H. P. Smith the whole story, was not even written until his own time.
ECHOES OF THE COVENANT WITH DAVID 609
For all such critics everything that has a touch of the dic¬ tion or phraseology of the Book of Deuteronomy, or that betrays a Deuteronomic way of judging history, must be later than b.c. 622, when that “book of the law’’ was “discovered” in the Temple in the reign of Josiah. Has 2 Sam. vii. such marks stamped on it? Some say, Yes. And some of these again account for such marks by a retouching subsequent to the original publication. Yet even for those critics who are free (in respect of literary considerations) to place that chapter as early as they please, there remains the need of coming down to Josiah’s reign in order to find any circum¬ stances which might give occasion to such enthusiasm for the Davidic dynasty as this chapter reveals. And Josiah did not reach the throne till 639, and was not of age till more than a decade later still.
Thus the margins left for all the developments presup¬ posed by such critics are quite too narrow. The law of de¬ velopment, instead of being respected, is outraged. If, on the other hand, the Bible’s own dates for its historical, prophetic and poetic witnesses are accepted, how fine is the develop¬ ment of the Messianic promise! Even from the beginning it is all there in seed — in principle. But with experience, na¬ tional and individual, with the varied lights of revelation cast upon it, that germ develops, till at length we admire the marvellous plant of promise as it stands forth in Isaiah and Micah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, in full bloom now and ready to yield the fruit that ripens in the New Dispensation — the age of fulfilment.
Princeton , N.J.
James Oscar Boyd.
POPULAR PROTEST AND REVOLT AGAINST PAPAL FINANCE IN ENGLAND FROM 1226 TO 1258
The middle period of the reign of King Henry III marked a protest against papal taxation in England that was of vital significance in relation to the ecclesiastical revolt of the 16th century.1 Between the years 1226 and 1258 issues arose over papal finances that at times threatened to end in schism, and although an actual split was avoided, certainly a definite de¬ cline of papal prestige was marked.2 The storm of bitter pro¬ test and dangerous discontent was never quite wholly calmed, but either worked in an undercurrent or broke forth openly, at times, until the ultimate breach with the Roman see in 1533-
A contributing cause of this 13th century opposition to papal taxation was the conflict between two well defined ideals. On the one hand, the papacy clung tenaciously to the vision of ecclesiastical imperialism. Especially after the sub¬ mission of King John in 1213, England, according to the current feudal interpretation, was looked upon as a fief of the papacy. Innocent III and succeeding popes openly claimed all the churches of England as papal property and England itself as a province of the Roman see.3 Innocent IV inso¬ lently alluded to Henry III as his vassal and on one occasion as his slave.4 With such an attitude the papacy assumed the right to collect the annual tribute money promised by King
1 See Perry, Hist. Eng. Church, I, 346 (London, 1895) I Capes, English Church, 85-86, 99 (London, 1900, Bohn Ed.).
2 Roger of Wendover, Flowers of Hist. II, 473 (London, 1849) I Mat¬ thew of Paris, Chronicles of England (London, 1850, Giles Trans.), II, 151, 153, 155, 156, 170-176, 190, 440, 474; III, 44-5°. I56, 173; Matthew of Westminster (London, 1852) II, 196, 226, 275b 277, 283, 284; Walter of Coventry, Rolls Series, II, 277-299; Speed, Hist. Gr. Brit., London 1614, 514(20) ; Perry, op. cit. I, 384!.; II, 463-4; Collier, Ecclesiastical Hist, of Gr. Brit., London, 1852, II, 463, 464, 490; Milman, Latin Christianity, N.Y., 1896, Book X, p. 317.
3 M. Paris, op. cit.. Ill (Giles Translation), 158; Milman, op. cit., Bk. X, 311, 314
4 M. Paris, op. cit., Ill, 38; Higden, Poly chronic on, VIII, 190 (Rolls Series) ; Stevens, English Church, London, 1900, 230.
PAPAL FINANCE IN ENGLAND 6l I
John and to impose dues and feudal obligations of various sorts. The action of the papal curia in this direction was a large factor in the misunderstanding between England and Rome during the period under consideration.5
Over against this vision of ecclesiastical imperialism was the spirit of English nationality. Henry III himself was an ardent churchman and quite submissive to the dictation of the papacy,6 but this was certainly not true of his subjects as a whole. The ideal of English nationality, long fostered by the fact of geographical isolation, had recently been given impetus through the loss of Angevin territories in the vic¬ tories of Philip Augustus. The rapid extension of commerce also, stimulated by the Crusading Movement, was shifting the center of political gravity from the feudal to the national unit. This consciousness of political individuality and isola¬ tion was plainly manifest in the time of Henry III. And it was a growing spirit of nationality with which the papal court came into contact when trying to impose its authority as a suzerain power over a vassal territory.
In three definite ways the Roman see brought upon itself the odium of the English barons, of the clergy, and at times even of the king himself during this period. These methods were the operations of the Italian bankers, the practice of papal provisions, and various forms of direct papal taxation.
I. The Operations of the Italian Bankers
The Coursines, as the Italian bankers were called, seem to have made their initial appearance in England about 1235. They came, evidently, as papal agents, but if they were not official promoters of the papal court, their presence was at least connived at by Rome and the papacy was looked upon as a participant in their nefarious business.7 They were in fact popularly alluded to as “merchants of the pope,” though the only “merchandise” they dealt with was bills of exchange and
5 M. Paris, II, 399.
6 Grosseteste, Epistles, No. 117, p. 338 (Rolls Ser.) ; M. Paris, II, 189L
7 M. Paris, I, 4; II, 450; III, 47. Gesta Mon. St. Albani, I, 381 (Rolls Ser.) ; Prynne, Antiquae, 105 (London, 1672).
6l2
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
ready bullion with which they carried on a disguised usury and an illicit banking system. Roger of Wendover alluded to them as pests, merciless debtors, the bane of the English people, who brought great sums of money into the kingdom and loaned it usuriously contrary to the canon law.8
The particular business of the Italian bankers was to furnish ready money, especially on the occasion of apapallevy or tax, to whomsoever would be forced to borrow of them. Priests, prelates, monks and laymen were time and again compelled to resort to them for the payment of tithes, dispen¬ sations, commutation of vows and other ecclesiastical obliga¬ tions.9 The king himself was at times heavily in their debt. At a later time this matter of royal indebtedness, indirectly at least, proved a factor in the Provisions of Oxford and the contest decided at the battle of Lewes in 1264. The king had borrowed largely through the agency of these bankers.
The form of contract used by the Italian money lenders in conducting business was binding because of the prestige and papal authority back of the agreement, and was made prac¬ tically ironclad by gilt-edged security.10 A high rate of in¬ terest was assured by the nature of the legal document drawn up. For each mark loaned, according to this contract, a pound sterling would be due at the end of a twelvemonth. If one reckons the old Anglo-Saxon mark of account at $3.23 in present day value with the pound sterling at $4.86, an interest rate of about 50% was charged. In case the loan ran over due, at the end of each bimonthly period one mark for every ten marks of the original debt was due the lenders. This would make an interest rate of about 60%.
Risk on the part of the lenders was reduced to a minimum for the two reasons already mentioned. In the first place, the prestige and fear of the papal authority guaranteed the ut¬ most effort of the borrower to pay, and in the second place, a gilt-edged collateral was provided. In regard to the latter,
8 R. Wendover, II, 532.
9 M. Paris, III, 143, 145, 174; Perry, op. cit., I, 321.
10 M. Paris, I, 2'f ; III, 47.
PAPAL FINANCE IN ENGLAND
613
churches and monasteries which did business with the papal money lenders were bound by the following agreement : “We bind ourselves and our church, and our successors, and all our goods and those of our church, movable and unmovable, ecclesiastical and temporal, in possession and hereinafter to be in possession, wheresoever they shall be found, to the said merchants and their heirs, until the full payment of the afore¬ said (debt), which goods we hereby recognize we possess from them by a precarious tenure.”
The Italian bankers were an important factor in the mani¬ fest discontent, protest and revolt of the period. They were present not to aid laymen and churchmen in times of finan¬ cial straits, but apparently to exploit them in case of usual and extraordinary papal demands. At any rate, both individ¬ uals and religious corporations were bled for what looked like selfish gain, and the papal court seemed to enjoy an effective means of controlling the purse strings of both king and people. Under color of losses and expenses, always secured against by a sound collateral surety, the Coursines collected excessive rates of interest illegally imposed. Above all, they were accused of being immoral in private life. They were openly denounced by churchmen and laymen as schismatics, heretics, usurers and traitors.11 They amassed fortunes and kept splendid residences in London. Official action was on one or two occasions taken against them, but with little success. As early as 1235 the bishop of London pronounced an anathema against them, but they successfully appealed to the papacy. In 1251 a prosecution of them was undertaken by the civil courts with some success, since many were arrested and others had to seek refuge. Yet by illicit use of their wealth they saved themselves from permanent expulsion from the realm.
II. The Practice of Papal Provisions
By the middle of the 13th century foreign influence was becoming a menace in England along different lines. The
11 Ibid., I, 4; II, 450.
614
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
French marriage of the king brought in a dictation by Frenchmen in political matters. The operations of the Italian bankers threatened the control of financial interests by a group of undesirable foreigners. And now a third danger loomed up in the shape of papal provisors that tended to place ecclesiastical affairs also under the power of aliens.
The practice of papal provisions presented a twofold evil as to the welfare of the realm. One was spiritual and the other was financial. Ecclesiastical livings were being filled by papal appointment with foreign incumbents, chiefly Italians. Some were non-resident prelates dwelling on the Continent out of contact and out of sympathy with their charges; others were resident priests ignorant of the vernacular, adverse to Eng¬ lish ideals, and indifferent to the welfare of the flock.12 They were odious to churchmen and laymen for these reasons and because they drained large sums of money from the country without adequate services rendered.13
Appointments of this sort were constant, and involved now and then a mass displacement of English priests and prelates by the alien favorites. In 1240 warrants came to the archbishop of Canterbury and to the bishops of Lincoln and of Salisbury to provide livings for 300 Italians at one time. When Martin, a papal agent, came to England in 1244, he was invested with power to suspend prelates and minor clergymen to make room for the clerks and nephews of the Pope as he saw fit. These Italians soon held some of the richest benefices in the kingdom. Pope Innocent IV was par¬ ticularly generous in this direction for he “impoverished the universal church more than all his predecessors since the first establishment of the papacy.” Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, complained that the foreign clergy was drawing an annual income of 70,000 marks.14 Others pointed out that their combined income exceeded that of the king. One of these Italian prelates was archdeacon of Richmond for fifty years,
12 Gasquet, Henry III and the Church, 340.
13 M. Paris, I, 29, 502; II, 226, 399, 400, 444; III, 260.
14 Grosseteste, Epistles, No. 131, p. 442 (Rolls Ser.).
PAPAL FINANCE IN ENGLAND 6l 5
amassing an immense fortune and keeping the papacy in¬ formed as to vacancies.15
Boniface of Savoy, as archbishop of Canterbury, was perhaps one of the most outstanding instances of the evil results of papal patronage along this line, and his career as such illustrates the unrest and popular discontent growing out of it. Elevated to the see in 1240, Boniface throughout his incumbency used the archiepiscopal office as a means of plun¬ dering his ecclesiastical province to maintain a sumptuous residence abroad and to carry out his foreign schemes. For a long time after his election he aided his brother, Philip of Savoy, in prosecuting a private war in Provence. To do so, under pretext of raising money to pay the debts of his prede¬ cessor, Boniface sold the wood on the lands of his see, levied fines and taxes on his people, and thus raised 15,000 marks to carry on a war in which Englishmen had no interest except that of opposition.
Boniface obtained permission of the pope to collect the revenues for a year of all the churches in his province that fell vacant. This “new and unheard of contribution” had to be paid immediately on pain of suspension, and the bishops “being unwilling as well as unable to kick against the pope’s mandate and authority at length consented, although with bitterness of heart and unwillingly.” Later, when the bishops further resisted, they were threatened with excommunication by the papacy. It was now that they began to cherish a secret malice in their hearts against the papal system.16 In an attempt to carry out a visitation of his province, “for a greedy love of money,” Boniface was met by a spirited resistance from his clergy. This he in turn met with physical force carried to a point of extreme violence. In the end he was attacked by a mob, and was finally forced to flee to the Continent.
Though Boniface of Savoy was an outstanding example of this sort of papal favoritism, he was by no means an isolated instance. To say that England was infested with alien priests
15 M. Paris, III, 162.
16 Ibid., II, 236, 279, 280.
6l6 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
holding benefices great and small is the statement of a fact. Their presence, their attitude and their methods were re¬ garded with hatred and suspicion. “The Romans and their legates lorded it in England, causing much injury to laymen as well as to ecclesiastics in the matter of the avowsons of churches, providing their own friends with vacant benefices at pleasure, setting themselves up in opposition to bishops, abbots, and other religious men, and involving them in sen¬ tences of excommunication.” This encroachment on their in¬ terests was not looked on passively by the English people, so that the result was a prolonged and spirited protest and even open revolt against the practice. In this respect three instances stand out prominently : the popular demonstrations of 123 1-2 ; the attitude of the English party at the Council of Lyons in 1245; and the protest of Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln in
1253-
The popular demonstrations that took place in 123 1-2 were due to a general and a well organized movement directed against the alien clergy.17 They were significant as to the nature of the protest involved, the methods used, and the social standing of some of the participants. Exasperated by the injustice and oppression of the system of papal patronage, its opponents organized into secret societies to rid the land of the foreign intruders. Such societies spread over a large part of England. Local units were made up of about one hundred persons having as leaders high officials of the Church, sheriffs, knights, and other prominent laymen. Hu¬ bert de Burgh was among them and actively assisted in the mob methods. So powerful was the influence of these asso¬ ciations that the soldiers sent to interfere were won over to the cause.
The organization resorted to propaganda, threat, and open violence. The Italian clergy were denounced as a menace. It was pointed out that avowsons were perverted and misused by the foreign incumbents. Appointments to benefices, it was claimed, belonged to the local bishops and not to the papacy.
17 Roger of Wendover, op. cit., II, 544ff.
PAPAL FINANCE IN ENGLAND
617
The societies posed as the saviors of the Church by attempt¬ ing to rescue it from foreign patronage. They addressed let¬ ters warning ecclesiastics not to interfere with them in their work. They forbade the payment of the farms to the Roman incumbents, essaying to force out the Italian clergy by de¬ priving them of their revenues.
But the association went even a step farther by actually seizing the goods of the foreign clergy already in possession, selling these goods and distributing the proceeds to the poor. An armed band of men took possession of the church at Wingham in this manner, opened its barns, disposed of the stuff therein, and distributed the proceeds to the wonted charities of that benefice. This was no isolated instance, but the work was carried on in various places and continued throughout the winter of 123 1-2. Sometimes the alien in¬ cumbents were kidnapped, abducted to places of security, and forced under threat to promise the proper administration of the charities involved in their livings. If this movement suc¬ ceeded little in doing away with the evils of papal patronage, and scarcely checked its growth even temporarily, it at least illustrates the spirit of the times and the extent to which Englishmen were willing to go in opposing the papal claims.
At the Council of Lyons in 1245, the English delegation voiced a protest and displayed a spirit of extreme dissatis¬ faction and resentment against papal patronage. It was here that Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, assailed the practice of filling English prebends with alien priests as not merely an imposition but as a crime against the English nation. The papal curia, he said, “appoints not pastors but destroyers of the flock; and that it may provide the livelihood of some one person, hands over to the jaws of the beasts of the field and to eternal death souls many, for the life of each of which the Son of God was willing to be condemned to a most shameful death.”18 In the same address he denounced all favoritism, nepotism, and selfish patronage of the Roman court.
William of Poweric, addressing the Council as a layman
is Perry, op. cit., I, 343.
6l8 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
and as spokesman for the English people,19 pointed out that papal patronage was not only unjust but no longer to be en¬ dured. He complained of various exactions which up to that time had been freely paid. The matter of papal provisions, however, was a specially serious matter. The practice was not only a great annoyance and an “intolerable injury,” but in¬ volved a serious legal problem. Avowsons of churches had been provided by their founders for the purpose of religious edification of the local community and for the support of the poor. That aim was being thwarted by spending these funds abroad to the neglect of the local interests. Turning to the pope directly, Poweric said : “But now by you and your pre¬ decessors having no consideration. . . . Italians (of whom there is an endless number) are enriched by the patron¬ age belonging to those very religious men, the rectors of the churches, leaving those who ought to be protected entirely un¬ defended, giving no care for the souls of the people, allowing rapacious wolves to disperse the flock and carry off the wool. . . . They neglect hospitality and the bestowal of alms. They receive the fruits and carry them out of the kingdom, impov¬ erishing it in no slight degree by possessing themselves of the revenues. . .
But the English party at Lyons did not end matters with a mere protest. It warned the pope that the oppressions must cease, for they would no longer be endured. The warning was couched in terms of deference but the spirit of revolt was plainly apparent. The pope giving fair promises merely played for time, but the English envoys demanded immediate redress. When this was finally refused, the delegation lost its temper departing “in great anger, giving vent to their threats and swearing with a terrible oath that they would never sat¬ isfy the detestable avarice of the Romans by paying the trib¬ ute, nor would they suffer any longer the produce and revenues of the churches to be exported from them as here¬ tofore.”
This was the mood in which certain of the English envoys
19 M. Paris, II, 73ft.
PAPAL FINANCE IN ENGLAND 619
left the Council of Lyons. They had come asking for redress and returned with no assurances of relief. They were now convinced of papal indifference and even antipathy to their grievances. Resentment was enhanced when the exactions did not cease, and when the year following the papacy, angered at the attitude of the English at Lyons, attempted an alliance with France to attack England, subdue it, and force upon it a spirit of greater deference for the Roman court. On the whole, indignation of leaders in England, lay and eccle¬ siastical, was stirred to the depths; and mumblings of seces¬ sion were apparent. Alluding to papal provisions, a contempo¬ rary chronographer wrote190 : “Here is the cause, here are the reasons why people secede in heart, though not in body, from our father, the pope, who is provoked to the austerity of a stepfather; and also from our mother, the Roman Church, who vents her fury with the persecutions of a stepmother.”
This was again apparent in the attitude of Grosseteste, who went to the extreme of advocating armed resistance and revolt.20 From what has already been said, it is evident that his voice was not a solitary one. In the absence of Boniface of Savoy, the bishop of Lincoln was the recognized leader of the English clergy, and his fight may be regarded as that of the national clerical party of which he was a representative. His protest at the Council of Lyons has been mentioned. Later, in 1253, he flatly refused to admit Frederick de La- vagna, nephew of the pope, as a canon in the cathedral church of Lincoln. In this episode he took a position that verged on open schism. In a letter answering the papal mandate for this appointment, Grosseteste said: “I, although with all desire for union and in filial obedience and affection, refuse to obey and oppose and resist the order contained in the aforesaid letters because it tends towards that which is most abominable in sin against our Lord Jesus Christ, and to what is most pernicious to the human race, is altogether opposed
19a Matt. Paris, II, 440.
20 Grosseteste, Epistles, No. 131, p. 443 (Rolls Series).
620
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
to the sanctity of the apostolic see, and is contrary to the Catholic faith.”21
At the Council of Lyons the bishop of Lincoln still re¬ garded disobedience as a heinous sin, now he looked upon it as a filial duty to defy the papal demand. A deathbed pro¬ nouncement of this influential leader of the national clerical party manifests a still further extreme of this spirit of re¬ sistance. There he pointed out that the English Church could free itself only at the “bloody point of the sword.” Some¬ time before his death he had come to this conclusion, for in a letter written about this time he advocated a resort to arms and attempted to justify such a step as a moral and religious obligation: “Let therefore the noble knights of England, the renowned citizens of London, and the whole kingdom take heed of the injury of their exalted mother and rise like men to repel it. . . . Let the secular power be effectually armed that, excluding altogether provisions of this sort, the priest¬ hood of the kingdom may be increased in the Lord, and the treasure of the English may be kept to supply their own land. This indeed, will tend not only to the unspeakable advantage of the kingdom and the people, to a glorious title of praise forever to be remembered, but also to the immense accumu¬ lation of merit in the sight of God.”22
III. Direct Papal Taxation
The third stumbling block as to papal financial methods came in the way of various sorts of direct taxation. To im¬ pose and collect these taxes, special agents of the papal court were sent to England. The most outstanding of them were Otho, Martin, and Rustand. They came as envoys pleni¬ potentiary to impose “new and unheard of taxes” and to collect old revenues. The presence of one of them precipitated a riot, another had to flee the realm for his life, and the third had to retire in disgrace. The pope complained in a letter to
21 Grosseteste, ibid.; see also M. Paris, III, 37, 46; Annals of Burton, 312 (Rolls Series).
22 Grosseteste, Epistles, No. 131, p. 443 (Rolls Series).
PAPAL FINANCE IN ENGLAND
621
the king that one of his messengers had been cut in pieces, another left half dead, and that their credentials had been tom up and their bulls trodden under foot.
Otho came to England as cardinal-legate with delegated powers that gave him the nickname of “second pope.”23 He made two visits, the first of which taking place in 1226 marked a new epoch in ecclesiastical taxation. The Roman curia tried through him to organize systematically benefices in England in such a way as to procure a regular and perma¬ nent revenue for the papal exchequer. To this end Otho came armed with letters demanding the use of two prebends of each cathedral church and the equivalent of the living of one monk in each English monastery. The scheme covered Europe as a whole, and by it Honorius III aimed to secure for himself and his successors a fixed, perpetual, and dependable annual income. The pope frankly stated that this collection was to serve in lieu of bribes and presents customarily ac¬ cepted by the papal court in suits of appeal. He hoped by it to remove the stigma of avarice that the latter practice had fixed.
When Romanus, a papal envoy, presented this proposition to an assembly of French prelates at Bourges, they not only raised a number of startling objections, but warned the envoy of imminent schism if the plan were carried out. The presentation of the scheme in England proved the beginning of a vigorous and systematic opposition to papal taxation. Stephen Langton, who led the opposition, declared that the execution of the project would be the ruin of religion. The prelates as a whole objected but played for time, being un¬ willing to commit themselves ; but the barons took a decided stand against the measure. They feared that money thus diverted from the kingdom would weaken its defence. The proposition utterly destroyed the influence of Martin, and at the request of the archbishop of Canterbury, the pope recalled him in haste. In this case, consciousness of geographical iso-
23 M. Paris, III, 56; Roger of Wendover, op. cit., II, 462L
622
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
lation and a spirit of nationality actuated both barons and king in resisting the papal claim.
Otho did not return for over a decade. In the meantime Stephen, a chaplain of the pope, attended to papal affairs in England. At a council of prelates and barons Stephen de¬ manded a tithe of all movable property throughout England, Scotland and Wales. The papacy wanted money to aid in the war against the emperor, arguing that the latter as the com¬ mon enemy of the Church Universal should be resisted by all Christendom. The assembly failed to see the situation in that light, for the barons bluntly refused to contribute. But the abbots, bishops, and priors, after much grumbling, finally submitted. Owing to pressing needs, the money had to be furnished at once, and Stephen efficiently organized the work of collecting it, exploiting his powers to the uttermost. He took “a tenth part of all incomes, yearly profits, produce of plowed lands, offerings, tithes, provisions for men and beasts, and of all revenues of all churches and other posses¬ sions, under whatsoever name they might be enrolled, on no occasion deducting any debt or expenses.” The prelates had to borrow on the altar furniture and secure money at high interest to make the payments. They even pledged the grow¬ ing crops to meet the extraordinary demand. The result was that “the country was filled with incessant, though secret maledictions, and all prayed that such exactions might never be productive of any advantage to their exactors.”
Thus by the second coming of Otho in 1247 the clouds had been gathered and the storm was ready to burst. The general purpose for his presence was to procure more money for the papal-imperial wars. This was already a very unpopular cause in England, and it was now made well nigh unendur¬ able by imposing a double tithe. The legate gathered addi¬ tional funds by absolving vows of crusaders. The result was violence against Otho from the beginning, and attempts at organized resistance to him throughout his stay.24 The barons
24 For the account of Otho’s second visit see: M. Paris, I, 5Sf ., 124-128. Higdon, Poly chronic on, VIII, 21 1 (Rolls Series) ; Annals of Burton, 107F (Rolls Series) ; Knighton, Chron., I, 227 (Rolls Series).
PAPAL FINANCE IN ENGLAND 623
criticized the king for inviting him into the kingdom “to make alterations therein.” At Oxford he was mobbed and his brother was killed in the fray, he himself barely escaping with his life. He found a refuge with the king, but “the clerks, be¬ side themselves with rage, did not cease to search for the legate in the most secret places, shouting and saying : ‘where is that usurer, that simoniac, that plunderer of revenues, that thirster for money, who perverts the king and subverts the kingdom to enrich foreigners with his spoil’ ” ! At a council held in London, Otho had to be guarded by armed soldiers. Before taking a trip into Scotland, he sent on ahead scouts to inform him concerning possible attempts to waylay him. The barons warned him to leave England, since he was regarded as a secret enemy of the realm. When Otho finally departed, none but the king regretted his going.
It was said that during Otho’s four year residence in Eng¬ land he absorbed a half of the yearly revenues of the clergy besides giving away prebends, churches, and some three hun¬ dred rich livings to the foreign friends of the papacy. When he left “the kingdom was like a vineyard exposed to every passer-by, and which the wild boar of the woods laid waste and made to languish in a miserable state of desolation. . . . Because he was sent not to protect the sheep that were lost but to gather in the money he could find.” Resistance to him had been marked by a failure to secure effective results. This was due to a number of causes. The fact that he limited his demands to the clergy saved him from violent opposition on the part of the barons. The king was in sympathy with the legate. Again, opposition, fervent as it was at times, lacked proper leadership and organization. Finally, when concerted action tended to threaten, Otho thwarted it with bribe and intrigue.
Three years passed before another special agent was sent to England. But in the interim the papacy was represented by two resident clerks named Peter de Supino and Peter le Rough, “indefatigable extortioners who held papal warrants for exaction of procurations, imposing interdicts, excom-
624 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
municating and extorting money from the wretched English . . . and amassed fresh heaps of money during this time.” But the advent of Martin opened a new phase of resistance to papal claims because he made the blunder of insisting on tallages, collections, and special contributions involving lay fees. This led the barons to a rigid resistance that brought about his speedy undoing and seriously menaced the cause of the papacy in England. Even the king failed to give him unstinted support such as he had given his predecessor.
The main object of Martin’s mission was again in the in¬ terests of the war against Frederick II. He seemed to have possessed unlimited powers, for the belief was current that he could write “according to his own mind,” over the seals of a large supply of blank papal bulls, any demand that suited his immediate purpose.25 His first demand was for 10,000 marks as a freewill gift to the papacy. This was refused him. He then laid hold on the revenues of vacant churches. He also ordered gifts from all the monasteries in the way of horses, food, and clothing, presumably for use in the papal- imperial war. He urged payment of the tribute money prom¬ ised by King John, but long in abeyance. This was the cause of a bitter protest. The stay of Martin was short, but he raised issues that stirred the nation and drove it to the verge of schism.26 His exit was sudden, precipitate, and very dramatic. An armed band of knights accosted him, hurled upon him threat after threat, and gave him choice between leaving the kingdom or being cut to pieces. When he made appeal to the king he got little consolation. The king told him that his barons were threatening insurrection because of the methods and demands of Martin. “The depredations and injuries committed by you in this kingdom” said the king, “exceed all measure of justice.” When Martin asked a free exit, the king replied : “May the devil take you and carry you through hell.” He was given a safe-conduct, however, and he seized the opportunity to leave with precipitate haste and in
25 M. Paris, I, 479; H, 13, 53, 75.
26 M. Paris, I, 501 ; II, 75-6, 108, 129, 141-144, 148-156, 168-175, 191-206.
PAPAL FINANCE IN ENGLAND
625
dire fear. The Romanophile king, no doubt, would have protected the agent in the end, but he feared insurrection. The exit of Martin “rejoiced the hearts of many.” The spirit of revolt was so acute that the Italian clergy were forced into hiding, and the Italian bankers had to flee the realm.
In this critical period of papal exactions, loud and violent complaints, long suppressed, now broke out everywhere. Direct taxation had been increased on a sort of graduated scale of a twentieth, a tithe, a double tithe, and finally to a third of the value of the goods taxed.27 There were cases in which a half of the revenues was sequestered.28 Even the king at last complained : “Among all other nations and king¬ doms, England is the most heavily trampled on by the op¬ pressions of the pope. . . . O, Lord God of vengeance, when wilt thou sharpen thy sword like lightning that it may be steeped in the blood of such people?”29 Grosseteste made a visit to Rome personally to appeal to the pope in 1250. He re¬ turned so disgusted over papal greed and maladministration, that he decided to resign his diocese and retire to private life. Only the good of the Church caused him, on second thought, to yield to a better impulse. Assemblies of nobles condemned the “irregular levies made contrary to the ancient customs, liberties, and rights of the kingdom.” Missions were sent to Rome pleading for mitigation of grievances. Abbots, bishops, barons, and even the king addressed letters to the papacy de¬ nouncing the exactions and asking for relief.30 Sentiment in¬ dicative of a rupture with Rome was rife, warnings were uttered, and threats were made that schism and secession were imminent unless relief came.
Matthew of Paris, a contemporary chronicler, pictures the situation thus : “The discontent which long had been con¬ ceived and rankled in the hearts of the English in conse¬ quence, now broke out in open complaints, as if in parturi¬ tion they spoke out openly being no longer able to contain
27 Ibid., I, 261, 262, 265, 282; II, 205.
28 M. Paris, II, 191, 205.
29 Ibid., II, 400.
80 Ibid., II, 148-156. Annals of Burton (Rolls Series), p. 265.
626
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
themselves.”31 . . . “The devotion of the Christians grew lukewarm, and the feeling of filial affection . . . towards the pope . . . died away; yea, indeed, was converted into exe¬ crable hatred and secret maledictions; for each and all saw that the pope . . . was insatiably intent on plunder of money, and many did not now believe that he held the power granted from Heaven to St. Peter.”32 Another chronicler confirmed these statements : “A murmur arose among the clergy and the people in general, so whatsoever they brought they con¬ tributed unwillingly and (that I may not suppress the truth) with curses and maledictions, enumerating afresh their griev¬ ances to the lord the pope, with complaints from the bottom of their hearts, and representing the intolerable oppressions to which they w^ere subjected.”33 “A lukewarmness came over the devotion which used to be felt towards the pope, our father, and the Roman Church, our mother. . . . For strange reports were spread about him, and preconceived hopes of the pope’s sanctity were extinguished.”34
The king addressed a letter to the pope, stating that the nobles were becoming more and more urgent in their de¬ mands that the king take steps to “procure their liberation from the oppressions” which were being more and more heavily imposed on them. To the cardinals the king also wrote, warning them that he could not “dissemblingly pass by the clamorous complaints of the nobles, clergy, and people who have become more than usually loud in their outcries against oppressions. . . Wherefore we humbly and devotedly entreat the pope that he will condescend to listen to the en¬ treaties which we have made to him through reiterated mes¬ sengers, that we may render them more favorable and de¬ voted to the said Church and to us, and prevent them from becoming estranged from their allegiance. We also earnestly beg you ... to interpose your efforts, that the messengers
31 M. Paris, II, 501.
32 Ibid., II, 199.
33 M. Westminster, II, 283.
34 M. Paris, III, 173.
PAPAL FINANCE IN ENGLAND 627
of the said nobles, now again sent, may be listened to with much favor by the pope and by yourselves, that the imminent peril which seems to hang over the said Church may not fall on us and it, although it is feared in no slight degree by each and all in our kingdom.”
The abbots, the bishops, and the nobles each as a group likewise sent letters to Rome. The abbots and the bishops pictured the discontent of the people as having reached such a point that it could no longer be appeased by mere promises for relief. Papal exactions must cease or revolt would result. The abbots asserted that the English Church was intent upon her divine duties, but the exactions, oppressions, and mani¬ fold tribulations had raised a storm of protest that threatened to crush it in at the four comers like the house of Job. “See¬ ing that manifold perils are impending over it, unless in many points a remedy be applied by you, there will be reason to fear that a disturbance will occur among the people, scandal will arise, and manifold schisms will be produced.” The bishops wrote in a similar vein.35
Most significant and outspoken of all was the letter of the nobles. In plain, though guarded, language they demanded immediate relief and threatened revolt and resistance by force, unless the papal exactions were mitigated : “It will be neces¬ sary for us, unless the king and the kingdom are soon released from the oppressions practised upon them, to oppose our¬ selves as a wall for the house of the Lord and for the liberty of the kingdom. This we have out of respect for the apostolic see hitherto delayed doing; but we shall not be able to dis¬ semble after the return of our messengers who are sent on this matter to the apostolic see, or to refrain from giving succor to the clergy as well as to the people of the kingdom of England, who will on no account endure these proceedings. And your holiness may rest assured that unless the aforesaid matters be speedily reformed by you, there will be reasonable grounds to fear that such a peril will impend to the Roman
« Ibid., II, 150.
628
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Church, as well as our lord, the king, that it will not be easy to apply a remedy to the same. Which God forbid.”
The climax of affairs growing out of the papal financial oppressions beginning as early as 1226 finally came in the Provisions of Oxford in 1258. It was largely complications in papal finance, due to the Apulian succession, that caused the barons in the end to revolt and reorganize the govern¬ ment under the leadership of Simon de Mont fort. The blow that for a time menaced the papacy fell on the king. This was due to his vacillation and his ultimate unwillingness to offend the papal authority. When popular feeling was ten¬ sioned to the breaking point with Rome, the king who was the natural leader of the movement drew back. Had he not wavered, the break with Rome which seemed imminent might have been consummated. Several times Henry III had screwed up his courage to resistance, but his opposition was half-hearted, for he feared interdict. Contemporaries la¬ mented this “womanly fickleness of the king” which thwarted the barons and bishops in the fight with the papacy. This fail¬ ure to break with the papacy finally led the nobles to break with the king. At least it may be said that the political crisis of 1258 was closely bound up with the ecclesiastical situation.
In the Apulian episode the obvious intention of the papacy was to make use of English money to help drive the last of the Hohenstaufen out of Southern Italy. Henry was inordi¬ nately gullible, for he sent to the pope for this visionary purpose permission to borrow practically unlimited sums through the Italian bankers. With the aid of these resources the pope carried out a series of campaigns against the Ger¬ man claimant of the Apulian crown. These expeditions proved a fiasco, but the English king was held to the pay¬ ment of the money. As a climax to the affair, the papacy in¬ duced the king personally to lead an army into Italy to gain that which had been lost. Of course the king did not go, but his promise complicated the situation.
In the interests of this project and of the payment of the debt incurred by the king, Alexander IV sent Rustand as spe-
PAPAL FINANCE IN ENGLAND
629
cial representative to England. The first act of Rustand was to order a crusade preached against Manfred. This raised bitter opposition. He also demanded “immense sums of money. ... If this money had been collected, the Church of England, indeed the whole kingdom would have been af¬ flicted with irremediable poverty and reduced to abject slavery.” At first the bishops stubbornly refused to pay, but a compromise was finally effected in favor of the Apulian cause.
The Apulian affair in the end involved the king in a debt of some 140,000 marks.36 The interest on this was said to have amounted to 100 pounds sterling a day.37 It was estimated that the king spent altogether a sum of 950,000 marks for this visionary scheme.38 This extravagance and mismanage¬ ment of funds helped precipitate the political crisis. Three times the barons refused to accede to the wishes of the king to subsidize a Sicilian expedition, and on each occasion they were supported by the prelates. The third time this matter came up, the barons appeared in armor at the council and imposed the Provisions of Oxford on the king. Later the breaking of this contract brought a rupture between the king and the national party, led by Simon de Montfort. The Barons’ War, indirectly at least, was an armed protest that involved arbitrary papal demands for money.
Kirksville, Mo. Oscar A. Marti.
36 Ibid., Ill, 225. The Annals of Burton gives this sum as 135,000 marks. The Gesta Mon. St. Albani sets the sum as high as 250,000 pounds sterling. See Annals, p. 390; Gesta, vol. I, p. 383.
37 M. Paris, III, 203. Gesta Mon. St. Albani, I, 383.
38 M. Paris, III, 228.
THE SIGN OF THE PROPHET JONAH AND ITS MODERN CONFIRMATIONS
There are few stories in the Bible which have been sub¬ jected to more adverse criticism than that of Jonah and the “great fish,” rightly interpreted, no doubt, to mean the great¬ est fish of all, the whale. In its simple directness it reads like a fable. The bare suggestion that a man could be swallowed by a fish and yet survive seems so unlikely in the face of our or¬ dinary experience as to amount to an absurdity. We are pre¬ pared readily to welcome evidence against it. There is also probably another rather more subtle reason. When Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, who tried to base all virtues on selfishness, claimed that pity consisted in imagining how we should feel, if we were in like evil case to the object of pity, he was touching upon an undoubted natural instinct. Pity apart, we cannot help putting ourselves in Jonah’s place, con¬ dition most repellent even in the imagining. As a result the story is widely discredited, jeered at by some, treated by others as a myth or fable improvised for teaching purposes, and by the more believing sort as a miracle, once enacted under divine interposition, and never, it is hoped, to be repeated.
It is suggested that these views need regularising. If Mod¬ ernism requires that Revelation shall be tested scientifically, it is obvious that the science so applied must be itself above suspicion. When such an event is recorded as a fact in serious literature as part of a sequence of historical events, it de¬ serves to be treated seriously, not by impressionism, or sen¬ timent, but by reasonable tests of physiological and historical experience. It is proposed in this article, to weigh the story by these two kinds of tests.
But before doing so it is necessary for purposes of clear¬ ness to examine more closely the common objection that the event was miraculous and therefore impossible. By this it is probably intended to imply that it was due to divine inter¬ position in breach of natural law. This suggests a distinction which it is well to keep in mind. If, as is probable, the com¬ mon acceptation of miracle does presuppose divine inter-
THE SIGN OF THE PROPHET JONAH 63 I
position — in so far as it is truly Scriptural it must do this — there are yet two different ways in which this interposition could be exercised. It need not be in breach of natural law. It may equally well be through use of laws of nature, which are beyond the range of human knowledge or if known are beyond human power to use, or through laws of God which transcend the laws of nature as constituted by Him.
The modern revolt against the miraculous is probably di¬ rected in considerable measure against interposition contrary to nature. And there is consequently a tendency in orthodox circles to find the account of the miraculous in the employ¬ ment of natural forces outside the range of human knowl¬ edge, of which it is obvious there must be a vast array, or beyond the reach of human power. But it should be clearly understood that any attempt to include these miracles, these “signs” or “powers,” within the limits of laws of nature and to treat them as special providences, by no means excludes the miraculous in the more specific sense of a direct and unmediated divine interposition. Scripture clearly recognizes both.
In the present case we seem to be dealing with a miracle in the broader sense. When in language suited by its primitive simplicity to readers of those early records the Biblical ac¬ count says “The Lord prepared a great fish,” “The Lord spake unto the fish,” it ignores second causes and attributes to the Creator a direct, and, in that sense, miraculous, control of His creatures of the sea, which is continuous with the several instances in the Gospel narrative in which our Saviour exercised a similar control over the fishes. In both cases it is apparently natural forces only which are set in motion, but in a fashion which was miraculous, because it was quite outside the range of human power.
I
We come then, to the application of the two tests before mentioned. In the first place the physiological test.
The great fish in question would be the sperm whale or cachalot, the species which inhabits the southern waters
632 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
where Jonah was voyaging “being met with ... in all tropical and subtropical seas”1 and “in summer occasionally visiting the Shetlands and even Iceland.”2 It differs from the “right” or “whalebone whale” of northern seas by having teeth on its under jaw instead of whalebone, fitting into sockets on the upper jaw.3 It “attains a very large size and may measure from 50 to 70 or 80 feet in length.” “The head is about one-third of the length of the body, very massive, high and truncated in front.”4
It will not therefore be considered exorbitant, if we postu¬ late for Jonah a whale 60 ft. long (9 ft. shorter than the model in the South Kensington Museum), with a mouth “20 ft. in length,” also “15 ft. in height and 9 ft. in width,” says Sir John Bland Sutton.5 When one compares this with an actual house-room one would be inclined to agree with his further estimate, “Such a chamber would easily accom¬ modate twenty Jonahs standing upright.” To this it has been objected, however, that it “has also an enormous tongue.” But this idea is due to the common confusion between sperm whale and “right whale.” It is the tongue of the latter which is very large. Whereas Herman Melville, that working whaler, with his unique and minute knowledge of practical cetology insists that “the sperm whale has no tongue or at least it is exceedingly small”6 — “Scarcely anything of a tongue,” — “quite small for so large an animal. It was almost incapable of movement, being somewhat like a fowl’s.” Any¬ how Jonah had no opportunity of making the experiment of standing, as he passed speedily into the whale’s belly.
Now here we face one of the most prevalent popular criticisms of the story. Again and again impossibility is
1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, art., “Whale.”
2 E. G. Boulenger, Queer Fish, p. 183.
3 Frank T. Bullen, Cruise of the Cachalot, pp. 53, 221.
4 Popular Encyclopaedia, art. “Oesophagus” ; and Encyclopaedia Bri¬ tannica, art., “Sperm Whale.”
5 A Lecture on the Psychology of Animals Swallowed Alive by Sir John Bland Sutton, President Royal College of Surgeons.
6 Herman Melville, Moby Dick, pp. 401, 415 ; also Cruise of the Cacha¬ lot, p. 54.
THE SIGN OF THE PROPHET JONAH
633
urged, on the ground that the “whale’s oesophagus or gullet is too small.” This misapprehension is due no doubt once again to the false analogy of the right whale which7 “has a very small throat and feeds on small animalculae” on “minute crustaceans and tiny molluscs” which abound in the Arctic seas.8 But biologists tell us that as a general rule “in fishes the gullet is small, short, wide and distensible.” It is like that of a serpent, able to swallow “prey of large bulk.” Sir John Bland Sutton in his lecture illustrates the “black swallower” ( Chiasmodon nigrum ) which has “swallowed a fish larger than itself,” just as a boa constrictor will readily gorge itself with a kid, which is larger than its undistended mouth. The right whale has little reason to develop a distended oesoph¬ agus. The sperm whale has constant reason. “It swims about with its lower jaw hanging down — and its huge gullet gaping like some submarine cavern.”9 Only too easy to be swallowed by it !
Anyhow this is not a question of calculated possibilities but of recorded facts. The sperm whale subsists for the most part on the octopus, “the bodies of which, far larger than the body of a man, have been found whole in its stomach.”10
7 Robert Kinnes and Sons, Dundee ; so also Officials at S. Kensington Museum ; and Queer Fish, p. 182.
8 “The contrast between the two animals (sperm whale and Mysticetus or right whale) is most marked, so much so in fact that one would hardly credit them with belonging to the same order.
“Popular ideas of the whale are almost invariably taken from the right whale, so that the average individual generally defines a whale as a big fish which . . . cannot swallow a herring. Indeed so lately as last year [this was written in 1898] a popular M.P. writing to one of the religious papers allowed himself to say that ‘Science will not hear of a wh-^le with a gullet capable of admitting anything larger than a man’s fist’ — a piece of crass ignorance which is also perpetrated in the appendix to a very widely distributed edition of the Authorized Version of the Bible. This opinion, strangely enough, is almost universally held, although I trust that the admirable models now being shown in our splendid Natural History Museum at South Kensington will do much to remove it” ( Cruise of the Cachalot, p. 191 ; cf. similar statement in Queer Fish, p. 182).
9 Cruise of the Cachalot, pp. 221, 342.
10 S. Kensington Museum Records. “Guide to Whales,” etc., p. 20 (publ. 1922).
634 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
"Great masses of semi-transparent looking substance of huge size and irregular shape — portions of cuttlefish — massive fragment — tentacle or arm as thick as a stout man’s body,’’ "capable of devouring large animals whale,” "almost ele¬ phantine cuttle fish.” Frank I. Bullen has given dramatic eye¬ witness accounts of the titanic struggle when "a . . . cachalot meets a cuttlefish of almost equal dimensions.” The manager of a whaling station in the extreme north of Britain stated that the largest thing they had found in a whale was "the skeleton of a shark 16 feet long.”12 When confronted with the difficulty about the oesophagus he smiled and explained that “the throat of a sperm whale can take lumps of food 8 feet in diameter.” Asked if he believed the story of Jonah and the whale he replied “Certainly. It is of course a miracle how Jonah was kept alive, but as to the possibility of his being swallowed there can be no question.” — “One may rea¬ sonably question the prophet’s survival after being swal¬ lowed, but there is no doubt that certain species of whales could swallow a man without the least inconvenience to them¬ selves.”13
Was there then after all a miracle? This is the next point to be “reasonably questioned.” Could a man live in a whale? The answer seems to be that he certainly could, though in circumstances of very great discomfort. There would be air to breathe — of a sort. This is necessary to enable the fish to float. The heat would be very oppressive. 104-6° Fahrenheit is the opinion of one expert; a provision maintained by his “blanket”14 of blubber “often many feet in thickness” which is needed “to enable him to resist the cold of ocean,” and “keep himself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times and tides”; “for the same reason that a Channel swimmer covers himself with grease”; but this temperature, though high fever heat to a human being, is not fatal to human life.
11 Cruise of the Cachalot, p. 77 ; see also p. 342, and Queer Fish, p. 182.
12 Sixty-Three Years of Engineering by the late Sir Francis Fox, p. 295. Cruise of the Cachalot says “Fifteen feet,” p. 276.
13 Queer Fish, pp. 181 and 186.
14 Moby Dick, p. 368; Queer Fish, p. 181.
THE SIGN OF THE PROPHET JONAH
635
Again the gastric juice would be extremely unpleasant, but not deadly. It cannot digest living matter, otherwise it would digest the walls of its own stomach.
How long then could one live?15 “Until he starved” was James Bartley’s estimate based, as we shall see presently, on his practical experience.
So far the physiological test.
II
This brings us in the second place to the historical. Such an amazing experience as that of Jonah, almost universally be¬ lieved to be unique, even when it is shewn to be consistent with natural laws, is greatly corroborated and illuminated if it can be compared with another similar case. Such is that of James Bartley, as recently as 1891, recorded by Sir Francis Fox, in his book already referred to. But before giving details let it be clearly understood that the whole story was carefully investigated, not only by Sir Francis Fox, but by two French scientists, one of whom was the late M. de Parville, the scientific editor of the Journal des Debats of Paris, “one of the most careful and painstaking scientists in Europe,’’ who concluded his investigations by stating his belief that the account given by the Captain and crew of the English whaler is worthy of belief. “There are many cases where whales in the fury of their dying agony have swal¬ lowed human beings; but this is the first modern case in which the victim has come forth safe and sound.” After this modern illustration he says, “I end by believing that Jonah really did come out from the whale alive, as the Bible re¬ cords.”
Outlines of the story can best be given by means of quota¬ tions from Sir Francis Fox’s account, which are quoted by his kind permission.
15 Sixty-Three Years of Engineering , p. 300. So far from fatal to animal life is it to be swallowed by a fish that the porcupine fish ( diodon ) not only has been found floating alive in the stomach of a shark, but has been known to eat its way out through the greater fish’s side. See Sutton’s lecture ; also Queer Fish, p. 43 : “None the worse for his Jonah- like experience.”
636 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
In Feb. 1891, the whaling ship “Star of the East” was in the vicinity of the Falkland Islands and the lookout sighted a large sperm whale three miles away. Two boats were launched and in a short time one of the harpooners was enabled to spear the fish. The second boat attacked the whale but was upset by a lash of its tail and the men thrown into the sea, one man being drowned, and another, James Bartley, having disap¬ peared could not be found. The whale was killed and in a few hours was lying by the ship’s side and the crew were busy with axes and spades removing the blubber. They worked all day and part of the night. Next morning they attached some tackle to the stomach which was hoisted on the deck. The sailors were startled by something in it which gave spas¬ modic signs of life, and inside was found the missing sailor doubled up and unconscious. He was laid on the deck and treated to a bath of sea water which soon revived him. . . . He remained two weeks a raving lunatic. ... At the end of the third week he had entirely recovered from the shock and resumed his duties.16
Now let him comment on the possibility of living in such surroundings.
Bartley affirms that he would probably have lived inside his house of flesh until he starved, for he lost his senses through fright and not from lack of air. He remembers the sensation of being thrown out of the boat into the sea. . . . He was then encompassed by a great darkness and he felt he was slipping along a smooth passage of some sort that seemed to move and carry him forward. The sensation lasted but a short time and then he realized he had more room. He felt about him and his hands came in contact with a yielding slimy substance that seemed to shrink from his touch. It finally dawned upon him that he had been swallowed by the whale ... he could easily breathe-, but the heat was terrible. It was not of a scorching, stifling nature, but it seemed to open the pores of his skin and draw out his vitality. . . . His skin where it was ex¬ posed to the action of the gastric juice . . . face, neck and hands were bleached to a deadly whiteness and took on the appearance of parchment . . . (and) never recovered its natural appearance . . . (though other¬ wise) his health did not seem affected by his terrible experience.
These details in their vivid realism seem to bear the stamp of truth upon them, even apart from the verification of M. de Parville’s careful scientific research. But still further corrob¬ oration is forthcoming in the accident recorded by Sir John Bland Sutton as having happened rather more than a century earlier to Marshall Jenkins in the South Seas. “The Boston Post Boy, Oct. 14th, 1771, reports” as it says “upon un-
16 Sixty-Three Years of Engineering, pp. 298-300. The possibility is suggested also in The Cruise of the Cachalot.
THE SIGN OF THE PROPHET JONAH
637
doubted authority”17 that an Edgartown (U.S.A.) whaling vessel after striking a whale had one of her boats bitten in two by the whale, which “took said Jenkins in her mouth and went down with him.” On returning to the surface the whale had ejected him on to the wreckage of the broken boat, “much bruised but not seriously injured.”18
We may gather from each of these accounts parallelism in part to Jonah’s experience. In the latter case it was the whale which reproduced its victim. In the former there is a very interesting similarity in chronology. It should be noticed in the account, that James Bartley’s detention “in durance vile” was — similarly to Jonah’s — for one complete day coming between two nights and two parts of days. What are the words? “A few hours passed after the whale was secured.” But part of the preceding day and part of the night had al¬ ready been spent in killing and securing it. After this, with dawn of the second day the work began. “All that day and part of the night” (the second night) “they worked with their axes and spades” at the main body of the labour. Then, this second night being over, “next morning they took the further action which led to the man’s release.”19
17 A copy of the Massachusetts Gazette Boston Post Boy and Adver¬ tiser No. 738, Boston. Monday, Oct. 14th, 1771, can be seen at any time in the Public Library at Boston, U.S.A. That is to say it is contemporaneous history undisputed at the time. The actual quotation verified in 1926 from the original on the spot by thoroughly reliable public authority is as follows: “We hear from Edgartown that a vessel lately arrived there from a Whaling Voyage, and that on her Voyage, one Marshal Jenkins with others, being in a Boat that struck a Whale, she turned and bit the Boat in two, took said Jenkins in her mouth and went down with him; but on her rising threw him into one Part ; from whence he was taken on board the vessel by the crew, being much bruised; and that in about a Fortnight after, he perfectly recovered. This account we have from undoubted authority.”
18 This is the regular method by which the sperm whale is accustomed constantly to rid itself of awkward and indigestible objects that it has swallowed, as for instance the horny beaks of giant cuttlefish which, if retained, it covers with a waxy substance called ambergris. See Queer Fish, p. 185: “When dying the cachalot always ejects the contents of his stomach.” Cf. also Cruise of the Cachalot, p. 77.
19 The first part of this period can be clearly visualized by comparing
638 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
So far then the historical test seems to be amply satisfied in the two similar though more modern cases of James Bartley and Marshall Jenkins.20 Is there any further diffi¬ culty as to the historicity of the story of Jonah?
Now that the central event is established on scientific grounds as in itself quite possible, the Bible story takes its place as an ordinary historical record, claiming to be sub¬ jected to the usual tests of history. There is one line of modern criticism which would reject it on the assumption that the Book of Jonah was written some 700 years later than the date assigned for the events. Of this there is no proof. It is mere conjecture. As however, it bears not only on this but on many questions of history of the distant past, it is worth careful consideration how far lapse of time tends to vitiate the truth of historic records.
There are two sources from which a late writer could draw the facts for his history, (a) public records, (b) tradi¬ tion. In both cases the persistence of the story would be in proportion to the startling nature of the event.
(a) As to the existence of such early records, long before the days of Jonah, the following statement by Professor A. H. Sayce, the celebrated Egyptologist, will be accepted as conclusive. He says under date July 7, 1927 :
The “critical” assumption about the late date of literary works and
Herman Melville’s description of the method usually followed : “When a captured sperm whale after long and weary toil is brought alongside late at night ‘the vast corpse’ has to be ‘tied by the head to the stern and by the tail to the bows’ with ‘heavy chains’ and then ‘It is not customary to proceed at once to the exceedingly laborious business of cutting him in.’ ‘The common usage is to . . . send everyone below to his hammock till daylight’ ” ( Moby Dick, chap. LXIV. and beginning of chap. LXVI).
20 Others, though less plausibly, have supposed that the “great fish” in question was the “Sea Dog” ( Carcharodon carcharias) , which “is found in all warm seas. It is said to reach a length of 40 feet and to be the most voracious of all sharks” ( Records of British Museum (Natural History) South Kensington). There is a record of one caught that had swallowed a sea lion. And Oken and Muller, quoted by Keil, state that in the year 1758 a sailor fell overboard from a frigate in the Medi¬ terranean and was swallowed by one of the sea dogs, and that the captain of the vessel ordered a cannon on the deck to be fired at the fish, which being struck by the ball, vomited up the sailor alive and not much hurt.
THE SIGN OF THE PROPHET JONAH
639
codes of law in the ancient East are long since dead. Besides the great Babylonian Code of Khammurabi or Ammurapi (= Amraphel) which was based on the earlier Sumerian laws, we now have the Assyrian and Hittite Codes, in both earlier and later forms, the latter dating about 1400 B.C.
As for literature, women as well as men were writing to one another on every day matters long before the Abrahamic age ; the chief cities of Western Asia had their public libraries ; and “chronicles” similar to those represented by the Book of Kings (or Genesis) had been compiled for “popular” reading from the early annals. I have just been translating some letters written by members of a “Company” representing one of the Babylonian firms who worked the silver, copper and lead mines of the Taurus, b.c. 2300. They came from the banks of the Halys, not far from Kaisariyeh in Cappadocia, and might have been written today so far as the wording and enquiries about domestic affairs, etc., are concerned.
(b) Tradition also offers a fascinating study. Could a tra¬ dition survive 700 years? Now the average generation, father to son, is roughly 30 years; and the generation for purposes of tradition, grandfather to grandson, is therefore 60 years ; needing no more than twelve successive genera¬ tions to carry any notable tradition seven hundred years along; and, if the event be sufficiently startling, it is a uni¬ versal tendency to perpetuate in this manner even local hap¬ penings generation after generation. One typical instance will probably suffice. There is on the verge of the New Forest in Hampshire “Tyrrell’s Ford’’ on the river Avon, and a village, Avon Tyrrell, nearby. Few events in English history made a greater stir in their time than the sudden, accidental (?) demise of the Red William in the centre of his own and his conquering father’s tyranny. Whether or not popular belief as to the hand that shot the arrow is correct, the tradi¬ tion that it was Walter Tyrrell still survives in the name and the minds of the people though 827 years have passed away.21
To sum up. The story of Jonah occurs in Hebrew litera¬ ture and tradition as an historical record. It can hardly be
21 The tradition appears to pervade the locality. Close to “Tyrrell’s Ford” are also Avon-Tyrrell Farm and Avon-Tyrrell Cottage; and a disused forge where it is said that Tyrrell had his horse shod on his flight to the coast. Further till within very recent years the village of Avon-Tyrrell had to pay a fine (say three pounds per annum) to the Crown ever since the death of Rufus, for allowing Walter Tyrrell to escape his deserts by crossing the Avon at the ford.
64O THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
disputed that the tests applied to it are in fairness bound to be the most careful, accurate and dispassionate that science and history can supply. Physiological tests entirely disprove the alleged impossibility of the story. It is shewn by study of the structure of the sperm whale and its habits that it is perfectly possible for a man to be swallowed alive and after an interval vomited up again, also for him to remain alive for two or three days within the whale. Historical tests shew that a sim¬ ilar event has happened in later times in at least one case, and that it is quite possible for an authentic record to have sur¬ vived over even a much longer period than 700 years.
It is obvious that this whole subject has a direct reference to Christology. Our Saviour refers to it in the course of His most solemn teaching. If it is not true, then how was He using it? Did He know it for a fiction or did He not? He is a teacher, whose whole attitude is confessedly one of ab¬ solute and unique devotion to Truth.22, How flagrantly un¬ likely that He would have fathered a story so unique and im¬ probable without careful verification. “But if He was ig¬ norant or mistaken,” so runs the common argument, “what does it matter? He was using the well-known story simply as a parable.” Now supposing the story were impossible, this view would offer a reasonable resource. But the impossibility having been removed, the Master’s use of it in His teaching obviously demands deeper and more careful investigation. If a parable, then what is the lesson it was intended to convey? The folly of rebellion against God? The duty of self-sacri¬ fice for the advancement of His kingdom? Nay, but the Old Testament writings teem with warnings on so rudimentary a theme.
On the contrary He himself declared what His purpose was. It was not parable but prophetic parallel. The sea-burial and resurrection of Jonah, a very unique event, foreshadowed another event still more unique and momentous: “as Jonah . . . so the Son of man.” As Jonah’s experience at God’s hand was the guarantee of his divine mission to the Nine-
22 Matt. xxiv. 16. John i. 14, viii. 40, xiv. 6, xviii. 37.
THE SIGN OF THE PROPHET JONAH
64I
vites, so in his great Antitype’s resurrection lay the power and appeal of His Gospel of salvation. What solemnity was there not in the thought for Him, who was foretelling the very crisis of the World’s salvation, and by means of the past event in a measure guaranteeing the future one. It is the method of this guarantee which claims our careful con¬ sideration. The link between the two is the period of “three days.”23
Our Saviour used it repeatedly as an integral part of His prophecy about what lay before Him. “In three days,” on “the third day,” and it may have escaped the notice of stu¬ dents of the Greek Testament that every mention of it is marked by emphasis as of a period of gravest significance. Being such a teacher as He was it seems inconceivable that He should have used for such a purpose what He knew to be nothing more than myth or fable.
What then as to the other alternative, the assumption of His ignorance? To put this to the test it is well to reverse the usual process of reasoning. There was in Him such a super¬ human insight that prophetically He could foretell His own death and resurrection. It was little likely to fail Him in the lesser task of judging the truth of the record of Jonah in the past.
Or again as to the particular criticism commonly advanced about the accuracy of this very estimate of “three days and nights.” Was He mistaken about it in reference to Himself? But if He foreknew the days of His resting “in the heart of the earth,” it were folly to refuse Him the equal knowledge of the hours of its duration, especially as it was under His own control and determination, who had “power” over His own life “to lay it down and to take it again” : but it is this,
23 In His direct prophecies of His death the phrase used in Matt., Luke and John is “the third day” (Matt. xvi. 21, xvii. 23, xx. 19. Luke ix. 22, xviii. 33, xxiv. 7. John ii. 19). In Mark, according to the R.V. readings it is “in three days” (Mark viii. 31, ix. 31, x. 34), the two phrases being obviously intended to be identical in meaning. In all the passages about “destroy this Temple” the phrase used is “in three days” in Matt, and John alike.
642
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
stated in the comprehensive phraseology of the East, which He gives as the identical measure of Jonah’s imprisonment in the past with His own in the future, so that however many hours it implied in the one case it implied equally in the other. The weapon turns in the critic’s hands. Christ’s “Jonah-word” emerges not as any evidence that He was ig¬ norant, but contrariwise that when He drew the historic parallel He was “speaking that which He knew, and testify¬ ing that which He had seen,” having before Him the vision of past and future alike and knowledge of Nature’s secrets and the secrets of the Underworld. Truly, we can say, this was no ignorant peasant man. Truly this was the Son of God.
Queen’s College, Oxford. Ambrose John Wilson.
IS CHRISTIANITY RESPONSIBLE FOR CHINA’S TROUBLES?
Christianity’s claim to a unique position among the faiths of mankind as the one absolute and universal religion has inevitably aroused the opposition not only of other mission¬ ary religions with which it has come into competition and conflict, but also of purely national or racial religions which have resented the assumption that if Christianity be true, they themselves are, perforce, untrue. Throughout its his¬ tory, of course, Christianity has presented the double appeal of its reasonableness and its results. While not at all vulner¬ able in the former appeal, yet by far the more generally ap¬ pealing is the visible evidence of the effect of the religion of Jesus Christ upon human character, upon social conditions, and upon national and international relations.
In awakening China, during the present decade perhaps more than any previous period, serious questions have been raised as to the validity of this experimental evidence for Christianity; and this question has assumed two forms, viz., “If Christianity be the true religion, with the dynamic which it claims, why does it not transform the life of ‘Christian lands’?” and, “If Christianity be the universal religion, why has its coming to China provoked strife and revolution and been responsibile for so many of China’s troubles?” With the former question the present paper does not deal, save incidentally. The latter question, which is our theme, in¬ cludes one of fact and one of interpretation. Its considera¬ tion is appropriate to a Theological Review because it re¬ lates to the claims of Christianity itself as a system of faith and ethics, and not merely to the influence of the Christian Church, its methods or its missionaries.
That the China of the Twentieth Century has troubles is manifest to all the world. Is Christianity responsible for them? From the very beginning of Christian missionary labors in China an affirmative reply to this question has been voiced by some commercial interests, by certain diplomatic representatives of western nations, by numerous flitting
644 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
tourists and cursory correspondents, and by anti-foreign, anti-religious, anti-Christian Chinese of various classes and ranks, in usually intemperate criticism of that of which they know little, for which they care less, but which they find, in one way or another, inimical to their own special interests or reprobatory of their own manner of life. An emphatic nega¬ tive reply is frequently voiced by other men of commerce, less prejudiced diplomatists, more observant tourists and news¬ paper men, and not only by Christian Chinese but by thou¬ sands of others who though they have not themselves broken loose from inherited allegiances to other systems, yet can¬ not close their eyes to the immense benefits which Christian¬ ity has brought to their land; as, for example, the eminent Dr. Hu Shih, who, in a recent number of The Forum, ac¬ knowledging himself an “agnostic materialist,” and confi¬ dently predicting Christianity’s failure, yet pays grateful tribute to modern China’s great debt to Christian missions. The former attitude is well illustrated by a recent article in The English Review, by an ignorant and virulent Chinese who styles himself “Mencius Junior,” but whose spirit is quite antipodal to that of the ancient philosopher, Mencius. The same Review publishes the antidote to this screed in an able reply from a learned and temperate Chinese, Dr. T. T. Lew, whose article, however, indicates that he would probably not render his answer to our question in the form of an abso¬ lute negative. Indeed, few of those who best know China and the history of Christianity in China for the past century and more would think of entering an unqualified negative in reply to the question as to Christianity’s responsibility for China’s troubles; but, on the contrary, if the question should read, Is Christianity responsible for many of China’s present troubles? they would reply unhesitatingly in the affirmative, and would even add, “Her responsibility for many of China’s troubles, so far from being Christianity’s shame, is one of her greatest glories, for these troubles have been the birth- pangs of China’s new life.” To no land has Christianity’s coming been all joy. In the first coming of the Prince of
IS CHRISTIANITY RESPONSIBLE
645
Peace to Judea, He brought “not peace but a sword,” and set men at variance against many of those who had been nearest and dearest in the past. His coming to the Jews and His re¬ jection by them led to the final overthrow of the Jewish commonwealth. His coming through His Apostles to Greece and Rome precipitated strife which continued through many centuries, and a ferment which transformed the nation. And so it has been through all the ages since, and is today, in China as in the rest of the world. Christianity has, by degrees, assimilated all that is good in every civilization with which it has come into contact; but it has never been absorbed by and lost in that civilization, save when it has come in impure form or has lost its own savor through the unfaithfulness of its representatives. Being “salt,” it must, of its very nature, disagree with and destroy impurity and corruption. Being “light,” it must inevitably dissipate or drive out intellectual and moral darkness. Then, and only then, is true peace se¬ cured, true and permanent progress possible. In so far as this result has not yet been achieved in China, we may readily admit, even exultingly assert, that Christianity is responsible for many of China’s present “troubles.”
What are China’s present troubles? A by no means ex¬ haustive enumeration would include :
1. Her occupation of a position of political inequality among nations, many of which do not possess a tithe of her area or population, or of her venerable history.
2. The exercise of extraterritorial rights in China by the nationals of most foreign lands.
3. The existence of “foreign concessions” upon Chinese territory at various points of chief contact with the outside world.
4. The presence of the military forces and gunboats, of many nations, on Chinese territory or in Chinese waters.
5. Lack of freedom to adjust her own customs tariffs upon foreign goods for the protection of her own industries and commerce.
6. The development of large industrial establishments,
646
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
with the resultant emergence of all the perplexing and irri¬ tating industrial and social problems of the West.
7. The wide extension, at the psychological moment, of both overt and covert communist and bolshevist propaganda.
8. Civil strife over the whole land between numerous military chieftains, struggling among themselves for selfish preeminence and preying upon the common people, on the one side, and armies of patriotic Nationalists zealous for a constitutional government, of the whole people, by the whole people, and for the whole people, on the other side.
9. The increasingly abject poverty of nine-tenths of the people.
10. An awakening realization of national weakness in the well-nigh universal illiteracy of China’s people.
11. An increased consciousness of the failure of her sud¬ den nominal change from a monarchical to a republican form of government to actually “proclaim liberty through¬ out the land, to all the inhabitants thereof,” much less to es¬ tablish such liberty as the possession and heritage of all her people.
12. A reluctant recognition of the family or clan system as an inadequate center or unit for Chinese society, of the family loyalty as too narrow a support for a modern nation either in individual integrity or in right relations with other nations.
13. The decay of the spirit of reverence throughout China, especially among the younger generation.
14. The introduction, along with the best that the West has to offer, in science, ethics and religion, of much that the West has outgrown of pseudo-science, much that the Chris¬ tian West repudiates of moral corruption, and much that the conservative West refuses to recognize as “pure religion and undefiled.”
15. The resurgence of the production and consumption of opium and other narcotics.
16. The residence and varied occupation in China of hun¬ dreds of mis-representatives of “Christian civilization.”
IS CHRISTIANITY RESPONSIBLE
647
17. The largely undeveloped state of most of the national resources, and the impossibility of developing them under the above conditions and without foreign capital.
18. The establishment in China of a Christian Church, which, in creed, organization, ritual and method, is largely foreign.
19. A wide-spread opinion that the loyalty of the Chinese is being undermined by the large number and size of Chris¬ tian educational institutions, and the fact that they all prop¬ agate the Christian religion.
20. Divided counsels as to the Christian message, the function of the Church, the education of its ministry, and the aim of Christian education in general.
Rather a formidable array of troubles in itself, and doubt¬ less others could be added to the list ; but our question is, for how many of these, and to what degree, is the coming of Christianity to China directly or indirectly responsible ? and, secondly, to what degree is that responsibility a culpability? Let us consider these twenty troubles one by one.
1. The first trouble is, perhaps, the rawest of China’s re¬ cent irritations, the outstanding point of expostulation or vituperation in all anti-foreign articles published recently in China or the West. Half a century ago, China, in her ig¬ norance of herself and of the world, did not care what the rest of the world thought of her, and felt quite capable of returning in good measure any contempt or injury meted out to her. A quarter of a century ago, after awaking to the realization that retaliation was vain and resistance impos¬ sible, China settled down to learn of the West all those things which made the West strong and the lack of which left the East weak, things already rapidly acquiring by her neighbor, Japan; and, having at the same time, through the agency of the World War, come to clearer understanding also of the weaknesses of the West, China has recently determined to assert her right to deal and negotiate with other nations as her equals and not as her superiors. Still realizing that, by the criterion of arms and of finance, she has not yet attained
648
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
to an equality with the Great Powers of the world, she would base her claims upon the natural and inalienable right of every nation to maintain its sovereignty within its own bor¬ ders and over its own people, to determine its own internal ad¬ ministration according to its own laws, and to conduct its own foreign relations according to the laws of civilized nations, without forcible hindrance by other nations which may happen to have larger armies or navies. For such laud¬ able aspirations the Christian Church has only praise, and rejoices to be entitled to credit for having endeavored to cultivate this sort of patriotism in all Chinese to whom she has taught the Christian religion. From the beginning of Protestant missionary history, Christian missionaries have deprecated the selfish aggressions of western powers; and after the Boxer upheaval of 1900 were the first, not only to forgive the atrocities which bereaved them of those dearer than life, but to urge lenient judgment upon the Chinese be¬ cause of the great provocation they had received through the aggressions of western nations and the actual beginning of a cold-blooded partitioning of the Chinese empire. With few exceptions, missionaries have been advocates of the prompt return to China of all aggressively or punitively appropriated territories, of the early withdrawal of foreign garrisons, and of the universal application of the Golden Rule to interna¬ tional relations. They have had neither part nor sympathy in the “imperialistic” policies of western nations. The same principle has held true of personal relations : the representa¬ tives of the Christian Church being less affected than any other class of foreigners with the “superiority complex” in relation to China, and refraining consistently from all vio¬ lent and contemptuous treatment of the Chinese people. This is not saying that no missionary ever felt or exhibited an attitude of superiority toward the Chinese, but such cases have been the very rare exception, and increasingly so as the Chinese have disclosed and developed qualities worthy of admiration and emulation. That there should have been, in the beginning, some feeling of superiority of privilege or of
IS CHRISTIANITY RESPONSIBLE
649
attainment, will appear inevitable when one compares for a moment the Chinese and western civilizations at the close of the nineteenth century; but in so far as Christians have failed to treat the Chinese as at least potential equals, they have failed to live up to the Christianity which declares that God has “made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth,” and to the example of the Master, who made it clear that in Him there should be no distinction of “male and female, Barbarian, Scythian, bond or free.”
2. A closely related trouble is the exercise by foreigners of extraterritorial rights throughout China, demanding the trial of all judicial cases involving foreigners by their own consular authorities and not by the Chinese courts, thus im¬ plying a lack of confidence in those courts and asserting a measure of sovereignty over Chinese territory. Although these rights have been claimed at times by missionaries and for them, yet it has not been as Christians but as citizens of foreign nations, for whom these rights have been insisted upon by their own governments, and will be insisted upon, regardless of the occupation of these citizens or their con¬ sent, until such time as the Chinese courts can assure a fair equivalent of the justice afforded to Chinese in our own courts. Christianity did not demand the right in the first instance, and is by far the most eager pleader for its early relinquishment. Of certain special privileges of residence and purchase of property in the interior, early demanded by cer¬ tain nations on behalf of Roman Catholic missionaries, Pro¬ testant missionaries have also availed themselves, but only for the advantage of the Chinese people ; and these privileges they are willing to surrender at the request of these people.
3. In several port cities of China, such as Shanghai, Can¬ ton, Hankow and Tientsin, there exist municipal “conces¬ sions,” certain areas over which China has, from time to time, sometimes under insistence, sometimes asking a special favor, yielded all authority of control to one or another foreign nation, or to several in combination. Even the Chinese living in the concession pass under the control of the
65O THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
foreigner, except as the concession may itself constitute mixed courts for the trial of Chinese. These Chinese resi¬ dents usually largely outnumber the foreigners, and prefer foreign municipal administration to that maintained in their own cities. That is why they are there. Yet these concessions form “cities of refuge” for China’s political offenders and for many criminals, fugitives from Chinese justice, whose extradition from the foreign concessions is rarely accom¬ plished. Foreign minds and foreign money have created these great cities out of former sand-flats and swamps, and pro¬ vided in them far better sanitation and other conditions of labor and business, for myriads of Chinese, than any Chinese city affords, greatly facilitating industry and commerce; yet the constant exercise of foreign authority on Chinese terri¬ tory, and the shielding of Chinese offenders, are naturally irritating to an intensely awakened national consciousness. As Christianity is in no way responsible for the evils of the concession principle, so she can claim no credit for its ad¬ vantages to the Chinese people, except in so far as she has established churches in the concessions, which do some¬ thing to relieve the darkness of any oriental city, and as she has made the concessions headquarters of missionary propaganda for the whole nation.
4. Closely connected with these troubles is the presence, in such concessions, along certain lines of railway which con¬ nect the capital with the sea-coast, and at the foreign lega¬ tions in Peking, of considerable foreign military forces for the protection of the foreigners living in these areas ; also the presence, along China’s coast and in several interior rivers, of foreign gunboats for the protection of foreign life and property. Inasmuch as the Christian missionary is a foreign citizen, and cannot cease to be such, his own country holds itself responsible for his protection, whatever the missionary may think of the matter. Had these forces not been available in many parts of China in 1900, and even at Nanking dur¬ ing the present year, hundreds more of foreign lives would certainly have been sacrificed to the frenzy of unreasoning
IS CHRISTIANITY RESPONSIBLE 65 1
mobs or the barbarity of deliberately anti-foreign soldiery. Nevertheless the Christian missionary prays for a China which shall require neither guards nor gunboats.
5. China’s lack of freedom to fix her own import tariffs, increase her own revenue from this source and protect her own industries, is another serious trouble ; but it is one for which Christianity is in no way responsible, and one which foreign Christians are eager to have relieved, at the earliest possible date, whatever increase of the expense of their own living and working may be involved, as they believe that the spirit of Christianity demands that each nation shall be free to determine for itself, or in equal negotiation, the terms on which it will purchase the commodities of other nations.
6. The emergence in China of the now world- wide indus¬ trial problem, hitherto comparatively unimportant as each farmer worked for himself and concentrated industries were almost unknown, is an increasingly serious trouble. With the establishment of large cotton mills, factories and depart¬ ment stores, all the industrial problems of the West have pre¬ sented themselves and are demanding answers with all the insistence to which the West has become accustomed. A pitifully low wage-scale is no new trouble for China, but is made the more pitiful by recent large increases in the cost of living. A seven-day labor week is no innovation in that land which has not known a Sabbath, but it is made the more murderous by the exaction of twelve to sixteen hours of labor per day. Labor by women and children has been a com¬ monplace of Chinese life through the centuries, but it now reaches its limit of atrocity by its removal from the open field to the dark, dirty, ill-ventilated factory. The Chinese themselves are the least merciful employers, but foreign - owned and operated industries set few good examples. Christianity is not responsible for the emergence of the prob¬ lems, but is devoting more and more sympathetic attention to their adequate solution, as it is in all the world, thus demonstrating that it is no more “capitalistic” than it is “im¬ perialistic.” Various Missions, the Young Men’s and Young
652 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Women’s Christian Associations, the National Christian Conference of 1922 and the National Christian Council at its annual meetings and through its officers and standing com¬ mittees, have earnestly called attention to the problems, to the unique sufficiency of Christian principles for their solu¬ tion; and have sought in every way to bring to bear law, Gospel and public sentiment for the practical application of those principles.
7. Unfortunately, another trouble has emerged in the at¬ tempt to solve these industrial and social problems in a moment, by the revolutionary and anarchistic processes of bolshevism and communism. As in Russia, these doctrines have been propagated in China largely by anti-religious, or anti-Christian, agencies, advocating class hatreds rather than universal love as the solution of existing social evils; and the Christian Church bears only the responsibility of afford¬ ing, in certain of her higher schools, freedom and encourage¬ ment for the perversion of her own social principles by certain misguided teachers and their students. Christianity itself must stand acquitted of any part in this perversion, and stands four-square in opposition to all arraying of class against class.
8. A most acute trouble, during the past few years, is the prevalence, over the whole land, of civil strife between numerous self -constituted military chieftains, who with a high hand appropriate the government’s revenues which should go to communications, education and other popular benefits; conscript the people, confiscate their chattels and crops, devastate the land, render commerce impossible by commandeering railways and steamships, and make bandits out of honest citizens, almost altogether for selfish ends. It might be admitted at once that Christianity is free from re¬ sponsibility for this trouble, were it not for the fact that one of the most noted of these military leaders is “the Christian General,” Feng Yu Hsiang. That he is truly a Christian the present writer thinks abundantly witnessed by the unparal¬ leled discipline of his army, from which all liquor, tobacco
IS CHRISTIANITY RESPONSIBLE
653
and immoral practices have been actually excluded to a degree known in no other army in the world ; by his engage¬ ment of scores of Christian workers, evangelists and perma¬ nent chaplains, for the thorough Christianization of his army; by the widely diversified industrial training of every soldier in camp, “that he may be able to support his family and serve the community in case he ceases to be a soldier” ; by his preference for peace instead of war whenever possible; by the simplicity of his own life and that which he requires of every soldier; by his lack of self-seeking, as compared with other militarists in the wars in which he has engaged ; and by his consistent helpfulness to the Christian Church wherever he has gone. That General Feng’s Christian knowl¬ edge has its limits; that he has been greatly deceived by Russian counsellors, and that, through ignorance and heat of patriotism, he has made serious mistakes in his attitude toward the British and other foreigners, may readily be conceded ; but that he is a “renegade Christian,” or a “rascally turn-coat,” may not. He has had to choose, more than once, between loyalty to a superior officer and loyalty to his country’s good, between the usual military indifference to the people’s wrongs and the bearing of arms against military despots; and there is good prospect that the world may yet reverse its present unfavorable judgment of the final effect upon Christianity’s reputation of the stormy career of this remarkable man. For his outstanding patriotism, and for that of the moderate nationalists who have had to contend with the radicals in their own party in order to establish peace instead of bitter class strife as China’s future, Chris¬ tianity rejoices to accept the credit which is her due.
9. For the poverty of China’s people almost the only responsibility of Christianity is for her sympathetic efforts toward its amelioration. In certain cases the profession of Christianity has doubtless impoverished individuals through ostracism by family and society, or through the necessity of abandoning unchristian employment ; but in many other cases the social and economic condition has been improved through
654 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
the training afforded in Christian schools; so much so, indeed, that the Church has been compelled to increase its vigilance as to admissions to membership, in order to guard against unworthy motives. The industrial schools and work¬ shops established by the Church have saved thousands from starvation in ordinary times, while the porridge kitchens and manifold forms of direct relief in famine times, the initia¬ tion and most of the administration of which have been by the Christian Church, have saved the lives of millions.
10. For the age-long and nation-wide trouble of illiteracy, Christianity, of course, is not only free from all culpable responsibility, but is both primarily and secondarily respon¬ sible for the awakened realization on the part of the people of its well-nigh universality, its humiliation, and its handicap ; and also for the efforts thus far put forth toward its remedy. Christianity is fundamentally opposed to ignorance. Chris¬ tian compassion for the three hundred and eighty or more million of China’s four hundred million people unable to read and write has led the missionary and the Chinese Chris¬ tian to establish schools of all grades, to publish simple text¬ books at cheapest price, to devise systems of phonetic script, Romanization, and other alphabetic substitutes for the thou¬ sands of complicated Chinese characters, to form educational associations for the discussion of methods, and especially to stress literacy for the girls and women of China, who had been almost entirely despised and neglected in such paltry educational provision as had been made by government or private interest in the past. And today Christian Chinese trained in America are the prime-movers in the Mass Educa¬ tion Movement, which, through its “Thousand Characters” bids fair to create before many years not only a “Bible- reading Church,” but also a literature-loving people. Other agencies, of course, have joined in and contributed mightily to the revolt against illiteracy, some of them being in posi¬ tions in which they could accomplish speedier results than the Church ; but one moment’s comparison between the China of thirty years ago, with almost no modern education, no news-
IS CHRISTIANITY RESPONSIBLE
655
papers and no literature for no readers, with the China of today, with schools of all grades, hundreds of newspapers and magazines, quantities of current literature in the ver¬ nacular, for millions of readers, will give some conception of China’s debt to Christianity for fathering and cherishing this great uplift to her people.
11. It is in part owing to this intellectual awakening that the Chinese generally are increasingly conscious of the failure of their new republic to function in anything like the degree anticipated at its beginning in 1912. A republic of illiterates is almost, if not quite, a contradiction in terms. When the change from empire to republic came, three-fourths of the people knew nothing of what was going on ; nine-tenths of the other fourth had no part in it, but were simply told that republicanism meant liberty, and inferred from the very term which expresses it in Chinese, — tzu-yu = self-following or originating, — that liberty meant licence, “every man doing that which was right in his own eyes,” with consequences comparable to those in the Book of Judges, where Israel did the same thing. We may truly say that Christianity was largely, but not culpably, responsibile for the revolution and the republic, but she had done her best in previous years to prevent those misconceptions of liberty which have played so large a part in the failure of the republic to function properly. Christianity has stood for liberty first and last, but only for that liberty which is found in “perfect obedience to a perfect law,” the liberty which comes from “knowing the truth,” the liberty which finds its highest expression in the love of God and the service of fellowman. If Christianity had been more vigorously propagated, more truly lived, in China during the century previous to 1912, though the revolution might not . have come any earlier, it would have come much more ade¬ quately. No factor had contributed more largely than Chris¬ tianity to the unrest, the discontent, which finally led to the revolutionary outburst of 1911-12, and most of the leaders of that movement were either Christians or men who had been educated in Christian schools, or lived long under
656 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Christian influences. Of course there were political and social factors apart from these, such as realization that the M&nchu dynasty was utterly effete and impotent, and selfish ambi¬ tion ; but dissatisfaction with the progress made by the slowly awakening rulers and desire for a larger freedom to catch up with the West in all the elements of modern civilization, that “divine discontent” which always regards “the good as a great enemy of the best,” had laid hold of many strong men; and they proved strong enough to accomplish the revolution on paper, though not strong enough to preserve harmony among themselves for the successful administration of the republic. It remains to be seen, — and the present writer is very optimistic, — whether Christianity, having started the republic, will be strong enough to save it from itself.
12. China has been driven inevitably to a reluctant recog¬ nition of fundamental weakness in her social and political fabric through age-long over-emphasis on the family (per¬ haps clan is the better word, for the Chinese “family” is not limited to father, mother and children, but includes all living generations, the wives of all the males, and in a certain sense also the generations departed, for China knows more of the power of “the dead hand” than any other people, per¬ haps). Not only does the individual lose himself in the clan, but the community and the nation also are inferior interests, subservient to the clan. It is this which lies at the basis of two great lacks of the Chinese people in times past, the lack of patriotism and the lack of public spirit. Men sought edu¬ cation and public office normally for personal fame and gain, but even more for family fame and gain; seldom and inci¬ dentally for the benefit of the country. Most young men shunned military service because it would be degrading to the family, and the defence of the nation was thus left to hire¬ lings. Anything which would simply be of advantage to the community, while not directly benefitting the family, like the improvement of roads, joint draining of fields, etc., aroused little interest. Thus it came about that neither China’s an¬ cient racial consciousness, nor her equally ancient clan loy-
IS CHRISTIANITY RESPONSIBLE
657
alty, had succeeded in making a nation of her; and it was necessary for the Twentieth Century to introduce other in¬ fluences for the development of a genuine national conscious¬ ness. Even yet it is not unified, but it is hopefully developing in the midst of confusion and strife. The otherwise-to-be- regretted foreign aggressions have had at least this good effect; not merely have they awakened China to a sense of her own weakness, but also to a perception of one of the chief sources of that weakness in the fact that, not only does she consist of numerous rather independent provinces, but also of more numerous somewhat independent and self-centered clans. But another large influence in this awakening of China’s na¬ tional consciousness has been the one which we have held, in good measure, responsible for several other of China’s troubles, namely, the educational influence of Christianity’s impact upon China. Increased intelligence among the people, knowledge of the strong nationalism of other peoples and the internationalism for which it is a prerequisite, and in which it finds its highest perfection, realization that while the family is the unit in forming the community, it is not the ultimate unit nor yet the whole, comparison of the results of solidarity and individualism in history, and all these things related to, and finding their power in, loyalty to the One God of all nations, Christianity has brought to China, as the secret of highest prosperity, “rendering to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and to God the things which are God’s.” Chris¬ tianity teaches no man to despise or neglect either himself or his family ; but it also allows no man to think his whole duty done when he has looked after the interests of self and family. He still has a duty to perform to the nation and to the world which may take precedence over either or both of the others.
13. Yet another of China’s troubles grows in part from this very disturbing yet wholesome awakening of national consciousness, namely, the decay of the spirit of reverence. A foreign-educated Chinese, resident in Peking, remarked to the present writer a year or two ago, that one of China’s
658 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
greatest historic weaknesses was the lack of a spirit of ab¬ stract reverence. Concrete reverences for individual persons, places and ideas had been many, but the spirit of reverence in the abstract was lacking ; hence concrete reverences, and their outgrowing allegiances, easily broke down. While quite con¬ trary to the prevailing impression with reference to the Chinese, yet the accuracy of this statement is revealed es¬ pecially in recent history. Twenty years ago, a sudden access of zeal for Confucius, whose pedestal seemed to be tottering under the impact of the new education, led to the sage’s canonization by imperial authority as a Divine Being, “the equal of Heaven and Earth.” Yet it was but a few years be¬ fore Confucius, his books and principles, were practically thrown into the discard and Christian schools were almost the only ones which continued to teach the venerable classics. Twenty years ago, the Emperor was regarded as the “Son of Heaven”; now, “none so poor to do him reverence.” Twenty years ago, the elderly man was the honorable man, and the teacher was bowed down to by the taught ; now, the elderly man is discredited and despised, while the teacher is directed by his pupils as to what he may teach them and when, and they give him such attention as they please. No one would have supposed, twenty years ago, that the Chinese had it in them to grow so iconoclastic; but the reason lies not only in the advent of superstition-destroying science, but even more in the fact that, for thousands of years, they have had no one, supreme, infinite and eternal, divine object of reverence in their hearts ; consequently their minds have been the buffet of shifting winds. Neither Confucianism, with its worship of an impersonal heaven and earth, nor Buddhism with its awe for Gautama’s avatars, nor Taoism with its fear of multi¬ tudes of evil spirits, has provided a worthy object of rever¬ ence. Mohammedanism has never borne such witness to Allah or his prophet as to call out general reverence. Even ancestor-worship, so powerful in preserving the race through millenniums, has called for too great strain of the imagina¬ tion, — or ignored it altogether, — and it has remained for
IS CHRISTIANITY RESPONSIBLE
659
Christianity to make manifest the insufficiency of minor rev¬ erences, to inspire a rather violent rejection of them, and to offer in their place a reverence for Almighty God, which leads to the right allocation of all other reverences in the re¬ lations of human society. Christianity, of course, is not re¬ sponsible for the propagation, by agitators, by translation of western books, by superficial observations in Europe and America, of wrong conceptions of democracy or of the ele¬ ments vital to western civilization, which have had large part in destroying reverence; nor has it ever countenanced the now almost universal declension of the spirit of reverence, both abstract and concrete, which marks the Twentieth Century.
14. China has also received certain other unfortunate im¬ portations from the West, both material and intellectual. So- called “Christian nations,” as well as Shintoist Japan, are largely responsible for the introduction and perpetuation of the death-dealing traffic in opium, morphia and highly spirit¬ uous liquors, and the, at least wasteful, cigaret; but it has been in spite of their “Christianity,” not because of it. The same thing may be said of translations of eighteenth and nineteenth century philosophy and science, long discarded in the West, and twentieth century radicalism of all stripes. National and provincial universities have invited the extreme agnostics and materialists of Europe and America for months or years of lectures, while even Christian universities have welcomed as exchange or visiting professors and lec¬ turers the most liberal theologians. For this last fact, unfor¬ tunately, the Christian Church cannot disclaim all responsibil¬ ity; but it is not her Christianity which has rendered China this disservice.
15. Not all of the responsibility for China’s opium curse, however, can be laid to other nations, for another of her troubles is the fact that, after a heroic and magnificently suc¬ cessful effort to relieve herself of both the importation and the domestic cultivation of opium even before the time agreed upon with the importing nations, China’s military leaders,
66o
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
and others coveting large incomes regardless of the common welfare, have not only permitted but even compelled the cul¬ tivation of the poppy, the consumption of which has recently returned to approximately the figures of pre-prohibition days. Fortunately, for none of this retrogression can Christianity be held responsible, for missionary and Chinese Christian alike have been leaders in the denunciation of the traffic and the education of the people as to its evils.
1 6. Of the same order of troubles is the presence in China, at all times, of hundreds of mis-representatives of Christian civilization. So much has been written on this subject that it will suffice to say here that one of the greatest of all hin¬ drances to the progress of genuine Christianity in China, therefore a serious bar to the development of the “New China” along right lines, is the fact that, not only in the capital and the great port cities, but here and there through¬ out the country, are to be found many who boast of their citizenship in “Christian” lands, yet live lives the very op¬ posite of all which Christianity represents. One of the chief inspirations of the “Anti-Christian Movement,” which at¬ tained considerable proportions a few years ago, and has by no means yet subsided, was the presence of these false witnesses for Christianity in so many places. In so far as missionaries or Chinese Christians have been guilty of preaching what they do not practice, or practising what they do not preach, they have made themselves culpably respon¬ sible for one of China’s real and great troubles.
17. Among China’s material troubles is the fact that so large a proportion of her material resources is as yet unde¬ veloped, and is at present being developed but slowly. For this, of course, Christianity is not responsible; but, on the contrary, to her is due, in large measure, that increased en¬ lightenment which has dissipated age-old superstitions pre¬ venting the opening of mines, and has made possible such de¬ velopment of resources as has already taken place, the pace of which development was accelerating every year until China fell on the present troublous times of civil strife. Fear
IS CHRISTIANITY RESPONSIBLE 66l
of offending the spirits of earth and air and water had de¬ prived the Chinese, through all ages, of most of their ma¬ terial heritage ; but now Science and Christianity are cooper¬ ating to bring them into their own.
18. The basis of China’s fear of the establishment of a foreign Church under foreign control is much more imagin¬ ary than real. If the Christian missionaries from Europe and America were to fulfill their Master, Christ’s, commission and take to the Chinese, as well as to all other nations, the Gospel of a Divine Saviour, it was inevitable that they should personally direct, for those who accepted the Gospel as true and became new men and women in Christ Jesus, the laying of the foundations of their new organization for service. It was at the earnest entreaty of those to whom they ministered that they formulated the first creeds, introduced the first polities, erected the first buildings, and assumed superintend¬ ence for a time; and it was inevitable that all these things should be formed somewhat after the pattern of the West. In one respect a serious mistake was often made, which has been carefully avoided in fields of later opening; namely, the pro¬ vision of churches, schools and other buildings beyond any probable ability of the Chinese Christians to sustain when eventually left to their own resources. Yet it was the mistake of kindness, not of desire to rule, and the missionary of today is eager to yield all authority and to transfer all responsibility to Chinese Christian leaders, himself continuing to cooperate, with funds and force, as long as the Chinese Church needs and desires such help, insisting only that, so long as this support and cooperation continue, the Church shall be a gen¬ uinely Christian Church ; but the more indigenously Chinese the better. The Christian, like his Master, conies “not to be ministered unto but to minister.”
19. The fear of a denationalization of the Chinese people by Christian educational institutions, most of which have always had foreign principals, numerous foreign teachers, and a majority of foreigners on their boards of management, and all of which have taught Christianity, most of them re-
662
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
quiring its study in the regular curriculum, has an equally imaginary basis. The anti-religionists, who would do away with all religion as “superstition,” and the anti-Christians, who object to Christianity both on account of its alleged “unscientific superstitions” and its exclusiveness, have con¬ vened conferences, distributed literature, stirred up educa¬ tional authorities and agitated among the people, for the closing of Christian schools, the prohibition of religious teaching in all schools, or at least insistence upon govern¬ ment registration and regulation of Christian schools to the exclusion of all required study of Christianity. In the first two aims they have largely failed, and the decision of the third is still suspended during these months of civil strife. In these days when “patriotism” and “nationalism” are the chief words in China’s vocabulary, it is not strange if the majority of Chinese Christians advocates the acceptance by the schools of almost any conditions of government recogni¬ tion, especially as the failure to register a school means the disqualification of its graduates for entering any registered school and for securing government attestation of their diplomas. But many Missions and Boards are justly appre¬ hensive of relinquishing the distinctively Christian character of their schools in accepting the conditions of such registra¬ tion. Certain it is that neither Christian Church nor school is denationalizing the Chinese people; on the contrary, all Christians are seeking to build up a sturdier patriotism than China has ever known. Christianity has always made better citizens.
20. We conclude the consideration of China’s chief pres¬ ent troubles by referring to a serious disturbance of the Church itself, both directly and indirectly affecting the entire Chinese people. The existence of divided counsels, primarily among the foreigners who have gone from their home lands to help China, but latterly also among Chinese Christian leaders, serious divergences of opinion as to the Christian message, the missionary motive, the function of the Church, the education of its ministry and the aim of Christian edu¬ cation in general, interferes sadly with unity of plan and
IS CHRISTIANITY RESPONSIBLE
663
harmony of effort toward the Christianization of that great land. This cleavage is far more serious, in its fact and in its portent, than any of the old differences between the denomin¬ ations, which have always been less sharply marked on the foreign mission field than in the home lands, and of late years have yielded to many union movements. But now the tend¬ ency in China is for the young Chinese leaders, held back by none of the foreign inheritance of reverence for Christian tradition or early associations, to carry the radical theories brought to them by their foreign teachers, ruthlessly to their logical conclusion, throwing out of the way any venerable articles of faith which seem to stand in the way, and calmly planning an all-inclusive, practically creedless, “Christian” Church. The present emphasis on nationalism and autonomy and on the religious values of ancient Chinese culture, tends to accentuate this tendency and lead to the apprehension that either there will be one Church in China so liberal as hardly to merit the name of Christian, or else two Churches so sharply contrasted in faith and aim as to have little in com¬ mon. Several union movements have already been halted by these conditions, while others already consummated have been dissolved because of the increasingly wide divergence of views, of policies and of methods. There have been partings of chief friends, reluctant organizations for the defense of the Bible, grief over the trend of large institutions, many heart-burnings, some heart-breakings. The fearless, self-sac¬ rificing preaching of the simple Gospel has played so large a part, during the last century, in awakening China, in produc¬ ing her growing-pains and providing their remedy in every sort of progress, that it is strongly to be hoped that the Chris¬ tian Church will not revert to compromise methods simply because “a scientific age demands the abandonment of the supernatural.” Nothing but the supernatural would have suf¬ ficed to produce Christianity’s record in China in the past : nothing less than the supernatural is capable of regenerating the troubled “Land of Sinim.”
Princeton, NJ. Courtenay Hughes Fenn.
REVIEWS OF
RECENT LITERATURE
APOLOGETICAL THEOLOGY
The Basis of the Christian Faith. A Modern Defense of the Christian Religion. By Floyd E. Hamilton, A.B., B.D., Th.M., Professor of Bible, Union Christian College, Pyengyang, Korea. New York: George H. Doran Company. 1927. Pp. xiv, 335.
In his preface to this book Professor Hamilton informs us that he has attempted to write a defense of the Christian Religion that will not presuppose too much knowledge on the part of the reader, nor on the other hand be so brief and superficial as to fail in power to convince those who have real doubts concerning the points in question. The con¬ tent of the book is as follows : Chapter I opens with an account of Reason, and the way in which it functions in the acquisition of knowl¬ edge. The author’s presentation is clear and careful, but one might be disposed to question the Kantian epistemology, defended on p. 23, as af¬ fording an adequate support for the theistic arguments presented later in the volume. Chapter II considers the External Universe, refutes Materialism and Pantheism, and establishes Theism, for which in the following chapter the arguments are given in more detail. In order to avoid the errors of Materialism Professor Hamilton thinks it best to adopt what he terms Personal Pluralistic Idealism. While in full sym¬ pathy with the purpose of the author, the reviewer feels disposed to doubt either the necessity or the expediency of supporting any form of Ideal¬ ism for such a purpose, since, even if Idealism is contrary to Materialism, it nevertheless tends logically towards Pantheism, and involves those who accept it in difficulties on the problem of evil, personal responsibility, and the reality of the external universe. Chapter IV, one of the best chapters in the book, is a long and skilful argument against Evolution as a theory of the world’s genesis. Chapter V argues the Reasonableness of Supernaturalism, and with it the probability and possibility of special revelation. Chapters VI and VII contrast the ethnic religions and Chris¬ tianity with a view to demonstrating the absoluteness of the latter. This brings us to the Bible and the arguments in support of its unity, his- orical trustworthiness, integrity, genuineness, and authenticity (Chapters VIII to XI). Thereupon follows in Chapters XII and XIII an excellent and interesting account of the historical and literary criticism of the Old and New Testaments. Chapters XIV and XV discuss the more notable alleged discrepancies and doctrinal difficulties of Holy Scripture. Chap¬ ter XVI is an orderly and convincing statement of the arguments for the bodily Resurrection of the Lord, and Chapter XVII gives a com¬ prehensive demonstration of the fulfilment of prophecy. The final Qiapter XVIII contains a brief outline of the argument from Christian experience. It would have added to the usefulness of the book for more
RECENT LITERATURE
665
advanced students of the topic if notes showing the continuity of the arguments with the historic proofs for Christianity as the evangelical scholarship of the past has developed them had been added along with a wider selection of collateral readings. But the volume as it stands is scriptural, scholarly, comprehensive and readable. Every pastor should read it himself and recommend it to his co-workers in church and sab¬ bath school.
Lincoln University, Pa. George Johnson.
Introduction to the Psychology of Religion. By Frank S. Hickman.
New York and Cincinnati: The Abingdon Press. 1926. Pp. 558.
This book is one of the college series of the Abingdon Religious Edu¬ cation Texts. Its contents are as follows : Part I deals with the origin and method of the psychology of religion, and with the definition of re¬ ligion and of religious experience. Part II considers the major factors in religious experience, with special emphasis on the structure, racial roots, and function of the personal factor. Part III takes up the genesis and growth of religious experience; describes normal religious development; defines and explains conversion ; examines the struggle against sin ; and shows how and why religion functions as a control of conduct. Part IV is devoted to a study of worship, prayer, and the various kinds of inter¬ mediaries in worshipful activities. Part V, the concluding portion of the book, is a psychological study of belief in general and belief in God and in Inspiration in particular. The volume has many excellences. The style is clear; the information given is comprehensive; the quotations from the literature of the subject are abundant and well-selected; each chapter ends with a summarizing paragraph that should prove enlight¬ ening to the most hurried reader ; there are at frequent intervals interest¬ ing and thought-provoking questions for study and discussion; there are carefully chosen and specific reading-lists ; the paper, printing and binding conform to approved text-book standards. The student who wishes an interestingly written and instructive survey of the present state of opinion concerning psychology of religion in the United States, may be safely advised to read this work.
The author is cautious and moderate in most of his statements. Never¬ theless those who make it their ideal to combine loyalty to evangelical Christianity with devotion to painstaking and accurate scientific method will find the present volume unsatisfactory in many respects. The evan¬ gelical Christian must believe in the supernatural as other than the natural. He cannot be satisfied with the efforts of those who urge as a substitute “the spiritualizing of the natural” and who would replace the old defence of the faith with an “immanence apologetic.” He must see therefore in Christian religious experience a series of conscious states the author of which in a very definite sense is the Holy Spirit. He will not be satisfied when efforts are made to equate Christian religious ex¬ perience with non-Christian religious experience, and to find in each the same causative factors. He will never agree that the work of the Holy Spirit should be ignored or shoved into the background in favor of the
666
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
so-called natural factors with which we are advised science can alone deal. But in these respects the book under review takes the well known position of modernism. Thus the conversion of St. Paul is traced back to previous experiences that were operative in his subconsciousness and that emerged with startling suddenness on the Damascus road, but what Paul himself tells us was the real cause, the actual objective vision of Jesus Christ, is practically left out of account. Again the tremendous conversion experience of Martin Luther is accounted for by such factors as “strains of inheritance in Luther’s blood,” and “mystical sensitivity in¬ herited through his mother’s line,” and “streams of suggestion” from German mystics. Nothing is said about the Holy Spirit as the personal agent to whom, as efficient cause Luther and his church assign such ex¬ periences. But the Christian who accepts the authority of the Apostles and their teaching as normative can never afford without loss to abandon his sturdy faith in the supernatural as they conceived it, in favor of any materializing or pantheizing substitutes such as the modernist of the day offers him in such abundance.
We believe that the evangelical standpoint sketched in the foregoing is not in any respect impossible of combination with a rigid scientific method of getting the facts and a valid method of arguing from the facts as ascertained. The volume before us contains less than the usual treatise on the subject of that miscellaneous and undocumented information that passes current as psychology of religion in England and America. By this we mean heterogeneous details drawn from other sciences: sociology, anthropology, medical psychology, biology, physiology, com¬ parative religion and theology, folk-lore, etc., etc., that do not help but merely confuse the picture. But it does not exclude them. To our way of thinking psychology of religion should be an empirical science of the forms of religious experience, and its efforts should be by exact experi¬ mental methods to isolate the particular complex that figures in such experiences. But this is not the method of the treatise before us. It intro¬ duces such metaphysical entities as subconsciousness, unconscious cere¬ bration, suggestion, etc., and the fantastic paraphernalia of the psycho¬ analysts by which the sober and steady advance of normal psychology has been retarded. It gives us the mythologies of the biologists in place of the painstaking ascertainment of the actual facts. It tells us much about the religious experiences of the insane, the primitive, the savage, the abnormal, and the individuals who belong to what Prof. James called the “lunatic fringe,” but not so much as we could wish about the normal religious experiences of the Christian men and women, young persons, and little children, with whom the Christian pastor and teacher is in contact and whom he should understand in order to give them help and joy when they ask for it and need it.
May we not hope that our universities will some day produce some one who combines a warm hearted evangelical faith with devotion to scientific ideals, and who in addition is so expert in the science of mind that he can give the pastor and educator a book in psychology of re¬ ligion that conserves the ideals without which Christianity is impossible.
Lincoln University, Pa. George Johnson.
RECENT LITERATURE
667
EXEGETICAL THEOLOGY
The Narratives of the Resurrection — A Critical Study. By P. Gardner- Smith, M.A., Dean and Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. Lon¬ don : Methuen & Co. Pp. 196, 8 vo.
This volume is vigorously written, and the argument, such as it is, is well sustained from start to finish. The author owes much to Professor Kirsopp Lake, and makes the amplest acknowledgment of his indebted¬ ness. True it is that he lays aside certain extravagances to which Dr. Lake lends himself, but, to draw on the vocabulary of the Higher Critics, Mr. Gardner-Smith’s The Narratives of the Resurrection and Dr. Lake’s The Resurrection of Jesus Christ are properly doublets of one vision.
The material of Mr. Gardner-Smith’s volume is distributed into, In¬ troduction, The Witness of Paul, The Sepulchre, The Appearances, The Johannine Account, Uncanonical Sources, The Growth of Tradition, The Facts and their Significance ; but, to the discussion of three ques¬ tions — (1) What, broadly speaking, did the Christian Church of the New Testament period hold as true concerning the Resurrection of Jesus Christ? (2) When the evidence, on which the early Christian Church seems, in this regard, to have relied, is critically tested, how much re¬ mains there of historical fact? (3) How much are we now justified in professing, as the truth of God, in connection with this Article of faith? — may the gist of the volume for substance be reduced.
With regard to the first of these questions, we get the impression that it is the author’s belief that, broadly speaking, the Church of the New Testament period believed that Jesus, on the third day after He was crucified and was buried, rose out of His tomb in the same body in which He had suffered, although, doubtless, that body had experienced a change. That, of course, is the Evangelical belief to this hour, and it is some satisfaction to be again, in this way, assured that Evangelicals are now found in the goodly fellowship of the Apostolic church. The only de¬ duction one would be disposed to make, under this head, is in regards to what our author says in connection with Paul’s estimate of the manner in which Jesus appeared to himself on the way to Damascus. The im¬ pression we get in reading the New Testament is tfyat Paul was con¬ vinced that he had with his very eyes seen the glorified body of Jesus. He never gives us the impression that he regarded the visions that were vouchsafed him in the temple (Acts xxii. 18), or when he was caught up even to the third heaven (2 Cor. xii. 2), as being of like evidential and and apologetic value with the appearing of Jesus to him on the way to Damascus. The fact, that Paul’s companions (Acts ix. 7) are said to have seen no man, surely suggest by way of contrast that a being, who was in the full sense human, not a spirit or ghost, stood before Paul. That Jesus in person was in the flash of light from heaven visible to Paul, while He remained invisible to Paul’s companions is in entire keeping with His manner of making Himself known to His chosen wit¬ nesses after He rose from the dead. The thought with which our author, following Lake, seems to credit Paul, in the sense that the historical
668
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Jesus was transubstantiated into pure spirit finds no support from the New Testament.
But it is in his investigation of the second of the two questions into which, taking our cue from the author, we divide this discussion that we meet with the greatest disappointment. As in the case of Lake, the effort is made to produce upon the mind of the reader the conviction that the first believers had no evidence, of really historical character, that the tomb of Jesus was found empty on the third day, or that He actually rose in the body in which He suffered. This conclusion is, with our author, apparently a foregone one, and the method pursued in the seem¬ ingly careful investigation is, in the judgment of the reviewer, simply reckless :
(i) So far as the Gospels are concerned, the testimony of Matthew, and of Luke, and of John, really counts for nothing. Mark, now that the last twelve verses of his Gospel are lost, has little to tell us of what Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, the pri¬ mary witnesses for the empty tomb, actually saw or heard. In fact, if somewhat daring, we throw out the word vy *p0V from Mark xvi. 6, the sum of it all appears to amount only to this : Three women went early in the morning to the place where they supposed Jesus to have been buried. There met them there a young man who sought to assure them that what they seemed to take as the burying place of Jesus was not His sepulchre at all. The poor women fell into such a panic that they ran away in the greatest consternation, and, for a long time, never made mention to anyone of their having gone out to visit Jesus’ tomb. We are asked to take that as illustrative of what should henceforth be regarded as an approach to historical problems with a mind unbiassed by ante¬ cedent assumptions ! To our mind the method pursued by our author ought rather to be taken as an instance of what Dr. Swete meant by “the stubborn scepticism that is born of unworthy presuppositions.”
For, to begin with, is it, psychologically speaking, a likely thing that three women, who had the courage to visit a burying-place at dawn would have lost their heads in the manner which this theory supposes, merely because a young man, so far as appears, civilly pointed out to them that they were mistaken as to the place where Jesus had been laid? We think not. And, further, we reckoned that the interpretation which we are now asked to put upon the words of Mark — “neither said they anything to any man” — in the sense, that for a long time they made no mention to anyone of their having visited the tomb that morning is less natural than, say, J. A. Alexander’s paraphrase — “they did not stop to speak to anyone, but hurried to convey the message committed to them.”
But the excision of Jr/tpOr) (Mk. xvi. 6) for no reason save that it stands in the way of a foregone conclusion, is, as I have already said, sheer recklessness. And scarcely deserving of less severe castigation is the mentality that finds satisfaction in the evaluation that counts the testimony of Matthew, Luke and John, in the present regard, as prac¬ tically nil. Surely, even if the proof that Matthew made use of Mark were more compelling than a scholar of Zahn’s calibre allows it to be, it
RECENT LITERATURE
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would not immediately follow that the author of what has, not without some ground of reason, been called the most important book in all the world, has no weight independently of Mark. And what shall we say of Luke, who professes to have made the most careful examination possible of all that he recorded before he submitted aught to public gaze, and whose averments, wherever they could be tested by means of otherwise ascertained bed-rock facts, have been found worthy of the utmost cre¬ dence? Or, of John, whose sublime Gospel, if not the testimony of an eye-witness, is morally blurred ?
(2) It is argued by our author that if we start from the simple and altogether natural story of the young man, who, according to an im¬ aginary Ur-Markus, pointed out to Mary Magdalene and her companions their failure to identify the true tomb, we can give an easy and natural account of the legend of the angels and of the empty tomb, as that is met with in our canonical Gospels. The reply to that is, that the earliest verit¬ able and actual witness to whom in this particular connection it is pos¬ sible for us to appeal is the Apostle Paul, in 1 Cor. xv. and that, in that very earliest testimony, we have all that is needful, in order to establish the Evangelical doctrine respecting the resurrection of our Lord, in a bodily sense, from the dead, so that there is no occasion to speak of de¬ velopment as between the earliest and latest New Testament reports of this central doctrine of our faith. Paul (1 Cor. xv. 3-1 1) gives it not only as his own belief, but as the well established belief of the whole Christian church, as far as he knew it, (a) that Jesus died — which surely involved the separation of soul and body; (b) that He was buried — which must surely be understood with a reference to his body; (c) that He rose (from the dead) — of course in the only sense in which He could be said to have been dead; (d) that His resurrection took place on the third day (after He was buried) — an expression that would be meaning¬ less, if all that were meant were merely the survival of his Personality in spite of death. We have the whole Evangelical doctrine of the resur¬ rection there, from the very first, and, as it was the universal doctrine then, so John, our latest witness, adds nothing to it, as doctrine.
(3) Our author makes, or tries to make, capital, in the interest of his own point of view, of supposed discrepancies and disharmonies which are discoverable in the several accounts of the resurrection of our Lord wherewith the New Testament supplies us. (a) The Synoptists, it is said, think of tomb as a cave in a rock, John thinks of a mausoleum. The ground upon which this idea is ascribed to John seems to be his making use of the verb atpu (xx. 1) I lift up, in reference to what Mary Magda¬ lene saw when she visited the sepulchre — “she seeth the stone taken away ( -tippivov ) from the sepulchre” — But while “I lift up” is the primary meaning of ittpw, a good and common secondary meaning of the same verb is “I carry away.” Thus Homer ( Iliad xvi. 678) says : “Apollo straightway bore ( ielpas ) Sarpedon out of the darts.” And Mark, with a similar usage, says (ii. 3) : “And they come, bringing unto him a man sick of the palsy, borne ( alpPperoy ) of four.” Thus there is no reason to think of a mausoleum, (b) Matthew's account of how our Lord ap-
67O THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
peared to Mary Magdalene, it is said, is diverse from John’s account. But it has to be borne in mind that, according to the reading now com¬ monly accepted, in Matt, xxviii, Matthew does not say that it was when the women were on the way from the tomb to the abode of the disciples that Jesus met them. For the rest, it suffices to say with Westcott: “The main difficulties are due to the extreme compression of St. Matthew’s narrative, in which there is no clear distinction of points of time. The incidents and the spectators are brought together in a general picture.’’ (c) Matthew, it is said knows nothing of appearances to the Apostles in Jerusalem, Luke knows nothing of appearances in Galilee. But Matthew, as B. B. Warfield puts it, differs from the other Synoptists in the greater richness of Jesus’ own testimony to His Deity which he records. If, then, Matthew was determined to close his record on the great Trinitarian oracle (xxviii. 18-20), it was what was most in keeping with his concep¬ tion of Immanuel, and, in view of the extent of his roll, that might de¬ termine his treatment of the post-resurrection appearances of our Lord. An analagous reason might be given for the method of treatment of this theme, adopted by Luke. It is in no wise necessary to think that Matthew was ignorant of the ascension from Olivet, or Luke of the appearances in Galilee.
How much then are we in our time justified in professing as the truth of God in regard to this central Article of our faith? On the one hand, our author reckons that, as the Christian movement could not have origin¬ ated causelessly, so some credence must be given to some at least of the several appearances of our Lord recorded in the New Testament, al¬ though the statement, that He appeared to five hundred brethren at once, puts too great a strain on our author’s faith. On the other hand, these appearances must be construed, thinks our author, in a manner acceptable to the modern mind, and that excludes the idea of a miraculous resur¬ rection in the body in which our Lord suffered. One would have thought that the latest doctrines of the nature of matter would, if anything, have made belief in the bodily resurrection easier than ever before. But, for Mr. Gardner-Smith as for Dr. Lake, nothing remains but proofs, or what may be regarded as proofs of the Personal survival of Jesus in spite of death. Have not Myers and Oliver Lodge helped us (Dr. Lake ex¬ pressly) to accept this much as in accord with psychical science? The phrase, “survival of Personality” sounds well, but it is not that belief that gave the impetus to the great movement which we speak of as Christianity. Indeed, Plato, in his Phaedo, has taught the doctrine of the survival of Personality more convincingly than our Spiritists have done. And what an easy thing it will be for the man that comes after Lake and Gardner-Smith to say plainly, that the Christian faith is based on what, in the vulgar, are called ghost stories ! For my own part, I shall believe that the Christian movement is to be accounted for in the manner of Mr. P. Gardner-Smith when I can believe that it was a dead horse that won the Derby last year.
It will be seen that, in our judgment, Mr. Gardner-Smith adds very little to the knowledge of one who has made the acquaintance of Dr.
RECENT LITERATURE
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Lake’s volume on the Resurrection. Probably the most useful purpose which Mr. Gardner-Smith’s volume serves is that as against historic Christianity, it makes the deplorably un-Christian attitude of the Modern English Churchmen clear as a sunbeam.
Edinburgh. John R. Mackay.
Asianic Elements in Greek Civilisation. The Gifford Lectures in the University of Edinburgh , 1915-16. By Sir William M. Ramsay, D.C.L., LL.D. (London, John Murray, 1927.) Price 12s net.
This is a volume of exceptional interest. If, indeed, one comes to the book expecting to find a validation of natural theology, or, a vindication of the usual theistic proofs, the kind of discussion that one not unnat¬ urally associates with the Gifford Lectures, one will assuredly be disap¬ pointed. The volume is concerned with just the subjects which its title indicates — Asianic Elements in Greek Civilisation. That civilisation is not, of course, to be understood in a sense exclusive of the Greek or Graeco-Roman religion, and the volume has a good deal that is interest¬ ing to say of the indebtedness of the Greek civilisation, in the religious sense, to Asia ; and particularly to Anatolia, that is, broadly speaking, to Asia Minor, or, at least, to what of Asia Minor lies north of the Taurus Range. The primal deity to the inhabitants of Anatolia would seem to have been none other than the Earth, variously named the Great Mother, Cybele, Demeter, with other names besides. But the Great Mother is a general and comprehensive term ; and thus, not unnaturally, in different districts of Asia Minor, a perverted religious sense focussed differently upon different parts of the earth’s productiveness, it might be, the goat, or it might be, the ox, as the form under which the Great Mother was thought of. In Ephesus the particular form which stood for this general object of reverence, the Great Mother, was the Queen Bee. To this cor¬ responds the Greek Artemis and the Roman Diana.
The fact now stated explains one or two phenomena. It explains how, in ancient sculpture, the image of Artemis is hideous, not human. To be¬ gin with, it was not intended to be human, but to represent the Queen Bee, with the ovary occupying the greater part of the body. This the Greeks mistook for the human mammai, and the results were bound to be, as they actually proved to be, grotesque to a degree. The same fact explains how certain Anatolians were known of old as Dardanoi. For dardu is an old Anatolian term for bee, and from dardu comes Dardanoi, and, from that, the Dardanelles. It is not too much to say that from Anatolia came almost all the ritual and religious forms of Greece.
The Greek religion cannot, of course, be dissociated from Greek civ¬ ilisation. Yet it will be evident to a reader of the volume before us that it is not the ancient Greek religion that makes the strongest appeal to Sir W. M. Ramsay. Rather is it the Greek civilisation, in the narrower sense of Greek literature and art that makes that appeal. For Hellenism, in this restricted sense, he has the sincerest admiration — “that fine and delicate product which survives through, and is teacher of all subsequent ages.” Sir William is, in fact, mainly concerned in this volume with
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THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
what may be called the natural history of Hellenism, and he is particularly interested in tracing it to its roots. Those roots he finds in Anatolia, at the point of contact of east and west, of Asia and Europe, in a word, in what is the bridge between the two continents, Asia Minor.
Sir William thinks that modern scholarship, in its studies in Hellen¬ ism, has thought too exclusively in terms of the Greek tragedians, and, so too exclusively of Athens also, “the eye of Greece, Mother of Arts and Eloquence”; and that it has not sufficiently taken into account the sig¬ nificance, for Greek civilisation, of Ionia, that is, of the western and southern seaboard of Asia Minor, and of the adjacent islands in the Aegean Sea. One has only to recall that Ionia can claim, in Epic poetry, Homer; in Lyric poetry, Sappho; in History, Herodotus; in Medicine, Hippocrates; in Philosophy, Thales; in Physics, Heraclitus, in order to be awakened to a consciousness of the significant fact that just in this region we find Greek literature in that form which is most deserving of being described as creative. And yet not even Ionia can have all the credit. The spark was kindled by the contact of non^Greeks, whose home was in Anatolia proper, and the old Ionians. Speaking out of an ac¬ quaintance with Anatolian data, modern and ancient, that is almost unique, Sir William, in this volume, shows us that Anatolia holds the key that solves many problems that perplex, it may be, the lover of literature, or the historian, or the economist, or the philologist, that has Greece in the broadest sense for his theme. Thus, we are helped to give the true answer to such questions, as, Why is it that the Iliad opens with a plague, and ends with a funeral and a grave? What was, in terms of Economics, the true cause of the Trojan War? Why should it have lasted for ten years? Greek Tragedy, comparable to a stream, must, if we are to understand its natural history, be studied not only in Athens, where it chiefly flourished, nor yet exclusively in Ionia, which serves as a bond of union, but in the religious and funeral customs of Anatolia. Even Plato’s Republic gains in luminosity, if studied in the light of what Anatolia may be said to have contributed to it.
Sir William M. Ramsay, together with such fellow-princes in scholar¬ ship as the late E. Naville, and Sir Flinders Petrie, and Prof. A. H. Bryce, and others, are to be regarded as a fine school whom experience has taught to take the conclusions of the Destructive Higher Critics, in the fields of both secular and sacred literature, with a grain of salt. Thus, Sir William, in what concerns secular literature in the volume before us, ascribes at once the Iliad and the Odyssey to Homer as their author. He dates the Trojan War somewhere in the neighborhood of 1200 b.c. and is disposed to think that some 400 years intervened between the war and the epics that have kept educated men interested in that war ever since. The war is historical. But the Anatolian and Greek imaginative powers are, as might be expected, responsible for exaggerating, in the course of centuries, many of its details, and for creating innumerable myths, re¬ specting Gods and Heroes, that are incredible to us, but were quite credible to the people of that age. ‘Then the great poet gathered up this floating legend into his own mind, and poured it forth into one of the greatest poems of the world.”
RECENT LITERATURE
673
But naturally some of us are most interested in the bearing of discus¬ sions of this kind upon the historicity of the Biblical narrative. And here it falls to be said, that if this handsomely got up volume of 300 large octavo pages makes its profoundest appeal to classical scholars, the volume will not be unwelcome to believers in the trustworthiness of the Biblical record. I note one or two places where this interest and pleasure will be very great.
(1) Sir William makes Genesis x, particularly in what that chapter tells of the genealogy, on the one hand, of the sons of Javan, and, on the other hand, of the house of Ashkenaz, his principal instrument of dis¬ covery, in what concerns the earliest history of Asia Minor. It is not difficult, broadly speaking, to locate the sons of Javan (the Ionians), “Kittim and Dodanim, Tarshish and Elishah.” These, with the greatest probability, are identified with the inhabitants of Crete, of Rhodes (cf. 1 Chron. i, 7), of Tarshish, and of the plain of Alesion which belongs to Cilicia. This Ionian settlement on the seaboard of Asia Minor, and in the adjacent islands, came very early in human history in contact with an¬ other and a diverse people, a people for whom in Genesis stands Ashkenaz, a son of Gomer. Ashkenaz is to be regarded as standing for the earliest inhabitants of the Anatolian plateau. All the evidence looks that way: Jeremiah li. 27, according to the only natural interpretation, places them there. Askania is a geographical name widely spread in Anatolia. Readers of the Iliad are at home in that region with Askanios and Men Askaenos, leading Anatolians. Thus Asia Minor would seem in pre-Christian days, to have been penetrated of, first of all indeed, Ashkenaz, then, of the Hittites, then, of the Phrygians, then, of the Gauls, then, of the Greeks, then, of the Romans. But the first contact, in what is of interest to Greek civilisation, takes place between Ashkenaz and the sons of Javan. That contact is very early. It gave rise to a great culture, first in Ionia, then, through an Ionian migration in Greece, and finally, in the civilized world. But the fundamental document, Genesis x, on which this thought is based, cannot, putting it at the lowest, be later than the Phrygian In¬ vasion of Anatolia.
(2) One of the most interesting chapters in the volume before us has for its title Epimenides. Sir William M. Ramsay as an archeologist, who has made Asia Minor peculiarly his own, has learned the value of dig¬ ging deep, and, on all sides, of any monument that carries any promise of an inscription, that will throw light on the ancient history and geograph¬ ical boundaries of that region, until, in the end, the immediate object of study stands out legible in the clear light of day. That method, using a metaphor, he carries into his studies of personalities, in regard to whom it might be said that, to the ordinary reader, one foot seems standing in the historical, and, the other foot to be lost in the clouds of the myth¬ ological. By deep digging, and digging all around, Sir William, in deal¬ ing with such personalities, makes us feel confident that our object of historical study stands out quite firmly and clearly before us. That is the impression one gets of Epimenides, after one has read the chapter which has that interesting personality for its theme. Epimenides, who was a
674
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
native of Crete, and who, in his own person carried elements, some of which were Anatolian, and others purely Hellenistic, appears to be cor¬ rectly dated about 550 b.c. He was at once a “medicine man,” a philos- other and a poet. Athenians never quite forgot that he it was that was in¬ strumental in saving their city from a most destructive plague. Even the altars of the heathen gods, whose presence in Athens impressed Paul, as we know in a lively manner, were largely there as due to Epimenides’ methods of cleansing. There is reason to think that Paul quotes Epimeni¬ des twice, once in his speech on Mars Hill, and again in his letter to Titus. How natural all this, if we consider that, in the Athenian mind, Epimenides was associated with those altars, and that Titus was likely to know that Epimenides was a Cretan ! The suggestion is that the historic¬ ity of Acts xvii, and of the Epistle to Titus, finds in these data circum¬ stantial corroboration.
We thank Sir William for the fresh grounds he brings forward in support of the Mosaic authorship of, and Mosaic responsibility for, the year of Jubilee in Israel; for the fresh reasons he gives for concluding that Paul did actually visit Spain; and for his explanation of the cir¬ cumstance that, with the remote exception of Pliny, other historians are silent on the subject of the census of the Roman Empire, inaugurated, according to Luke ii. 2, in the time of Augustus Caesar; and for the new light which he throws on the enigmatical inscription on the wall of Bel¬ shazzar’s palace (Daniel v. 25). And all this digged out of Anatolian soil !
Of this volume as a whole, one is disposed to say, as Sir William says of Bywater’s Heraclitus, it is of the pure gold of learning. Publishers and printers and proof-readers are to be complimented on producing a volume that, in all that concerns format and letterpress, is in keeping with the contents of the volume.
Edinburgh. John R. Mackay.
Israel and Babylon. By W. Lansdell Wardle, M.A., D.D., Tutor in Hartley College, Manchester; Sometime Scholar of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 8vo., pp. xvi, 343.
The author of this volume believes “it is generally accepted that, even though we may regard the Bible as a unique book, we can no longer study it satisfactorily in isolation,” and he holds that of the whole series of problems which develop out of this “extended view” of the Old Tes¬ tament “none of them is so important as that raised by a comparison of the religion and traditions of Babylon with those of Israel.” And since the literature dealing with the subject is so “extensive as to be almost intimidating” it has been his aim to prepare a volume which will enable the reader who is not an expert archaeologist to form an intelligent opinion upon this important question. Dr. Wardle does not claim to be an expert Assyriologist ; but it is clear that he has sufficient linguistic equip¬ ment to enable him to study many of the problems at first hand, and it is also clear that he has made use of the standard works upon the subject. That the discussion is a comprehensive one is indicated by the titles of the chapters : Introduction ; Palestine, Egypt, Babylonia ; Israel’s An-
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cestors ; Some Features of Babylonian Religion (The Deities; Cult, Divination, Magic; Religious Poetry; Life after Death; Prophecy?); The Origins of Hebrew Monotheism; Creation Stories; Paradise and the Fall; The Ante-Diluvians ; The Deluge; Sabbath and Yahweh; Leg¬ islation ; The Pan-Babylonian Theory ; Retrospect.
The two major problems with which this book is concerned are the in¬ fluence of Babylon upon Israel and the nature of the religion and culture of Israel itself. We shall briefly discuss these two topics. As regards the influence of Babylon upon Israel, our author tells us in the introductory chapter : “It may seem that the conclusions reached in the several dis¬ cussions are so grudging in what they allow to Babylonian influence as to suggest that the writer is prejudiced against the admission of such in¬ fluence at all” (p. 8). Consequently he takes occasion to inform the reader that “he began his studies with the general impression that the extent of dependence was greater than a closer scrutiny of the evidence leads him now to suppose.” That this closer scrutiny of the evidence has been conducted in a careful and scholarly way will be abundantly evident to the reader, who will be impressed many times by the thorough and impartial way with' which Dr. Wardle presents the relevant data, and because of this the conclusions reached are of especial interest. Thus our author tells us with regard to the religious poetry of the Babylonians :
"In its form it reaches great heights of beauty, and not infrequently ap¬ proaches very closely the -poetry of the Old Testament. But, while we gladly recognize the evidence that in Babylonia there were yearning souls stretching out faltering hands to God, we cannot regard these penitential psalms as being on the same level with the hymns of the Hebrew temple. Over the best of them hangs the obscuring cloud of polytheism. They may at times equal the Hebrew psalms in their expression of the poig¬ nant sorrows of humanity. But they lack that note of supreme confidence in a righteous and all-powerful God to which the Old Testament Psalmist will rise even from the depths of his despair. And above all we miss in them the bracing ethical atmosphere in which the poets of the Old Testament lived and loved and had their being. . . . Therefore, so far from regarding, with some enthusiastic admirers, the Babylonian psalms as worthy to stand beside those of the Bible, we cannot see that in this respect the Old Testament is in any important sense a debtor to Baby¬ lonia” (pp. 93 f.).
Dr. Wardle is of the opinion that “such ‘latent monotheism’ as we find in Egypt or Babylon is quite different from the Old Testament monothe¬ ism” (p. 139). Regarding the Babylonian creation stories he declares: “On the whole the evidence seems to warrant the conclusion that enuma elish was known to the authors of the early chapters of Genesis, but that their position is not so much one of dependence upon as of revulsion from it” (p. 166). His conclusion with regard to the Deluge is that “even the very striking coincidences between the Biblical and the Babylonian records of the deluge fall short of demonstrating that the former bor¬ rowed from the latter” (p. 234). He holds that “at present no evidence has been produced to show that the Babylonians had any real equivalent of the Hebrew Sabbath” (p. 247). He also tells us that “even if it be true that the name Yahweh was known to the Hebrews in pre-Mosaic times, the great leader certainly filled the name with a new content for
676
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
his people. There is not the least reason to suppose that the name came to Israel from Babylon” (p. 251). While believing that Canaanite laws “may certainly have been influenced” by the Babylonian codes, and that in this way the Code of Hammurabi may have exercised an indirect influence upon the Book of the Covenant, our author thinks that “the evidence falls far short of demonstrating any direct dependence” of the one upon the other (p. 288). He holds with Cook “that those who would derive Israel’s ethical conceptions from Babylon or Egypt are making ‘an as¬ sumption which is entirely unreasonable and without support’ ” (p. 301). The general conclusion reached by Dr. Wardle is that while “we are bound to admit that there are good grounds for supposing that the culture of Israel may have been influenced by Babylon, both directly, and also indirectly through the older inhabitants of Canaan” (p. 331), it is easy to exaggerate the extent of this influence on Israel’s religious traditions, and he rejects the view that the distinctive features of the re¬ ligion of Israel have been derived from Babylon. In view of the pains¬ taking and judicious handling of the intricate subjects which he dis¬ cusses, these conclusions will be gratifying to those who hold to the distinctive character of the religion of Israel.
Turning now to the second and more fundamental question of the nature of the religion of Israel, we observe that Dr. Wardle accepts, though with some exceptions and reservations, the conclusions of the at present dominant school of Old Testament criticism. That this is the case is indicated at the outset by the dedication of the volume to Pro¬ fessor Arthur S. Peake, and it is especially apparent in the chapters which deal particularly with Israel. Thus, in discussing the origins of Hebrew monotheism our author assures us that the “traditional solution” that this great truth was revealed to Adam and Eve and that the subse¬ quent ages of darkness are to be regarded as “times of degradation and corruption” cannot be accepted: “Our fuller understanding of the ways in which the Old Testament came into being, and of the history of man¬ kind, makes it impossible for us to accept this simple solution” (p. 107). While prepared to maintain that “Abraham was an historic person, and that the story of the migration from Ur of the Chaldees by way of Harran to Canaan rests upon a sound tradition” (p. 40) we find him accepting the dictum of Causse “'Religious individualism was the final stage of evolution towards universalist monotheism” (p. no). Since he accepts the view that it was Jeremiah who developed the conception that “religion is a matter for the individual” it would seem to follow that the marked individualism of the patriarchal narratives of Genesis cannot be regarded by Dr. Wardle as forming a part of that “sound tradition” to which we have just referred. While disposed to be somewhat critical of what may be called “the orthodox critical view” that the tradition which makes the patriarchs monotheists is “untrue to historic probabilities,” Dr. Wardle’s scepticism, if we may call it such, is apparently not due to willingness on his part to accept the express statements of the Old Testa¬ ment narratives as true, but because he feels that “the accepted [critical] view took its shape under the dominating influence of the doctrine of evolution, at a time when the tendency was to think of evolution as
RECENT LITERATURE
6 77
taking place almost exclusively by means of small variations” (by which he of course means Darwinism) ; and he goes on to say, “Since then it has been recognized that sudden springs, and also retrogressions, have played a much more prominent part in the scheme of evolution than had been allotted them by the earlier theorists” (pp. 112 f.). The extent to which Dr. Wardle’s view of the Old Testament is dominated by the crit¬ ical-evolutionary theory is indicated by such a statement as the following: “Yet it may be an exaggeration to speak of Elijah as a monotheist in the full sense of the word” (p. 114). At the same time we note that Dr. Wardle considers it probable that “the real source of Hebrew monothe¬ ism” (p. 1 16) is to be found in the religious experience of Moses, and that it is not an impossible hypothesis that Moses may have prohibited the use of images. Other examples might be quoted, but in view of the length to which this review has already attained, the examples already given will suffice to show that the author may be described as a cautious and conservative “higher critic.”
While the markedly conservative conclusions of Dr. Wardle with regard to the influence of Babylon upon Israel are in one respect particu¬ larly interesting because of his acceptance of a theory with regard to the origin and development of the religion of Israel which would dispose him to be hospitable toward any indication of borrowing, we cannot close this review without expressing our regret that the scholarly author of this volume has not shown the same caution with regard to the higher critical reconstruction of the Old Testament and the evolutionary theory which lies back of it, as we observe in his study of Babylonian influence. Were he to do so, we believe that he would reach the conclusion that the Wellhausen hypothesis is much more vulnerable than he is apparently aware.
One of the clearest indications of this is found in the chapter on the Ante-Diluvians. There we find that Dr. Wardle takes the three lists given in Gen. v., iv. 17-22 and iv. 25 f., respectively, and lists them as (A), (B), and (C). (A) he assigns to P, (B) to J, (C) to “a different stratum within J,” and he tells us that “the interrelations of (A), (B), and (C) provide a most delicate and intricate problem, into which we can hardly enter here” (pp. 193 f.). He continues, “It will be observed that the six single names of (B) are essentially the same as the names from the fourth to the ninth of (A), with slight variation of order.” With a view to testing the correctness of this statement which Dr. Wardle makes with considerable positiveness and which is essential to the theory widely current in critical circles that the two lists were originally the same, we shall put (A) and (B) side by side giving the Hebrew form wherever there is a variation.
A B
Adam
Seth
Enosh
Kenan (pip) Cain (pp)
Mahalaleel Enoch (“pjn)
678
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
A
B
Jared (-n’t) Enoch (“jun) Methuselah Lamech (^0^) Noah
I rad (TVJ?)
Mehujael (^WinD) Methushael Lamech (*p^)
Jabal; Jubal; Tubal-Cain
Comparing these lists we fail to see how so careful a scholar as Dr. Wardle can say that “the six single names of (B)” are “essentially the same” as “the fourth to ninth in (A).” It is obvious that two of the names (Enoch and Lamech) are not merely essentially but identically the same (this does not prove of course that they may not be homonyms of diverse origin and meaning). But of the rest we cannot see how any Semitic scholar, unless he has a theory to prove, can seriously maintain that any of them are essentially the same. True Jared and Irad look a good deal alike in their English form. But the latter has an ‘Ayin, a strong guttural, at the beginning. Is that not essential? Mahalaleel and Mehujael have three consonants alike; but the others are different, and of the latter one word has where the other has n- Is this difference not essential? Methuselah and Methushael are more alike, but is the difference between shelah and sha’el not essential ? Is the fact that Kenan has the ending (?) -an while Cain does not, clearly immaterial? Are all these differences so minor that the “essential” identity of these six names can be simply assumed as the basis for further discussion? Dr. Wardle’s careful discussions of Hebrews and Habiri (pp. 41 f.), of tiamat and “the deep” ( Q)nn » Gen. i. 2; pp. 148 f.), would lead us to expect that he would be more cautious about accepting a critical theory which, how¬ ever popular it may be, is open to very serious objections. Dr. Wardle is of course in very good “critical” company when he asserts the essential identity of these lists. We even find Dr. Barton making the astonishing statement that “The close parallelism of these two lists of names is really greater than it appears to the English reader to be” ; and Barton assures us that “Cain, which means ‘artificer,’ is in Hebrew the same word as Kenan, lacking only one formative letter at the end,” that “Irad and Jared differ in Hebrew only by the wearing away of one consonant,” etc. ( Archaeology and the Bible, p. 269). Such assertions are unworthy of a careful scholar. For it is to be remembered that in asserting the identity of these lists the critics are not endeavoring to vindicate a claim made by the document itself, but rather to establish a theory which the docu¬ ment itself flatly contradicts, as if for example the fact that the Cain of the one list is represented as the first born of Adam while the Kenan of the other list is stated to be the grandson of Adam’s third son, Seth, were a matter of no moment whatsoever.
Apparently the reason that Dr. Wardle is not more critical of the theories of the critics is to be found in the fact that, as indicated above, he accepts the theory of evolution which has been one of the most im¬ portant factors, if not the most important, in producing them. This ap¬ pears quite clearly in his closing chapter. In summing up he points out
RECENT LITERATURE
679
that in the Babylonian religion we do not find “the ethical sense of sin” which is so characteristic of the Old Testament, that, “the magical ele¬ ment” which is so prominent in Babylon was ‘‘utterly abhorrent” to the writers of the Old Testament, and that “the claims made for the exist¬ ence in Babylonia of anything comparable with Hebrew prophecy have no sound basis, and even in its highest developments the religion of Babylonia falls far below the level of Old Testament prophecy,” and he concludes the paragraph with these words : “Above all, our investigation into the origins of Hebrew monotheism seemed to discredit the asser¬ tion that they are to be found in Egypt or Babylonia, and to show that this great truth was developed among the Hebrew people” (p. 332).
The word “developed” in the sentence last quoted is significant. If the religion of Israel was a development, and if this development was due, as the critics are fond of asserting, to the genius of the Jew for religion, then the comparative study of religions and especially of Semitic relig¬ ions, is very important. But if the express statements of the Old Testa¬ ment are to be trusted, if the religion of Israel is a revelation made to an insignificant people (Deut. vii. 7, ix. 4 f.), if it be true that God called Abraham and made a covenant with him, that He renewed the covenant to his seed at Sinai, and that He spake to their descendants through His servants the prophets, then the word development is obviously inadequate to express the real genius of the religion of Israel. It may be true to say that “From all comparison the Old Testament emerges with an enhanced splendor” (p. 9). It will do this if its own testimony is allowed to be ■heard. But it is equally true that the more fully its testimony is accepted, the more clear will be its unique superiority. The closing paragraph of Dr. YVardle’s introduction reads as follows, and he ends it with a quo¬ tation from Gunkel : “Nor, indeed, if it should be proved that the eternal light which streams from the pages of the Old Testament has been in¬ creased by rays reflected from Babylonia or Egypt should we feel in the least disconcerted. We should rejoice rather to know that the knowledge of God was wider spread than we had hitherto supposed. For we believe that God is Light, and that all the light which shines from human souls is but a reflection of the divine light. ‘If we really believe in God, who manifests Himself in history, we must not prescribe to the Almighty how the events must happen in which we are to find Him ; we have only humbly to kiss the prints of His feet and reverence His government in history’.” Beautifully put ! But, we ask, who is it who prescribes to the Almighty how events must happen, or, since we are dealing with Old Testament history, how events must have happened, the higher critic who, like Gunkel, seeks in the interest of a theory of evolution more or less naturalistically conceived, to reconstruct Old Testament history and derive much of Israel’s culture and religion from Babylon, or the ortho¬ dox believer who accepts the statements of God’s own Word with regard to “His government in history” and especially with regard to His unique dealings with a peculiar people? The sentiment contained in the quota¬ tion from Gunkel is very admirable, but it must be remembered that it comes from one who has made it perfectly plain that he is not prepared
68o
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
to accept the statements of the Old Testament regarding Biblical history as true.
As a study of the influence of Babylon upon Israel we feel that this book can be commended as a clear, scholarly and reliable presentation of the facts. We regret that we cannot commend it as reliable in its presen¬ tation of the religion of Israel itself. And we close this rather extended review by repeating our wish that the scholarly author would subject the conclusions of the critics of the Old Testament to the same careful scrutiny to which he has subjected the views of those who have sought to find the secret of its power in Babylonia.
Princeton. Oswald T. Allis.
The Sacred Scriptures, Concordant Version. Pocket Edition. Concordant Publishing Concern. Los Angeles, Cal., U.S.A.
This “pocket edition” of the New Testament is a condensed edition of a version of the New Testament which is described as “conforming to the basic laws of language, in that, as far as possible, each English expression constantly represents its closest Greek equivalent, and each Greek word is translated by an exclusive English rendering.” The unabridged edition contains a quite extensive apparatus consisting of “a Restored Greek Text, with various readings, a uniform sub-linear, based on a standard English equivalent for each Greek element, and an idiomatic Emphasized English Version (with notes), which are linked together and correlated for the English reader by means of an English Concordance and Lexicon and a complementary list of the Greek Elements, with a Grammar.”
As a specimen of the Concordant Version which will indicate to the reader some of its salient characteristics, we shall quote the familiar passage John xxi. 15-19, according to this version :
When, then, they lunch, Jesus is saying to Simon Peter, “Simon, of John, are you loving Me more than these?” He is saying to Him, “Yes, Lord. Thou art aware that I am fond of Thee.” He is saying to him, “Be grazing My lambkins.” Again, a second time He is saying to him, “Simon of John, are you loving Me?” He is saying to Him, “Yes, Lord, Thou art aware that I am fond of Thee.” He is saying to him, “Be shepherding My sheep.” He is saying to him the third time, “Simon of John, are you fond of Me?” Peter was sorry that He said to him a third time “Are you fond of Me?” and he is saying to Him, “Lord, Thou art aware of all things. Thou knowest that I am fond of Thee.” And Jesus is saying to him, “Be grazing my little sheep. Verily, verily, I am saying to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked whither you would, yet whenever you may be decrepit you will stretch out your hands, and another shall be girding you and carrying you whither you would not.” Now this He said signifying by what death he will be glorifying God. And, saying this, He is saying to him, “Be following Me!”
We note in the first place that the version is so painfully literal that it is not good English. An adequate translation from the Greek should be just as good English as the Greek is good Greek. The distinction be¬ tween a literal and an idiomatic translation can be a very mistaken one.
RECENT LITERATURE
68 1
A literal translation may do such violence to English idiom as to be mis¬ leading, while an idiomatic rendering should give as exact an equivalent of the original as possible. Syntax is no less important than etymology in the making of a reliable translation. Thus, we cannot see that anything is gained by the rendering : “Now this He said signifying by what death he will be glorifying God,” since the future indicative in Greek may describe what “may or should take place (ethical possibility).” To ren¬ der future indicative by future indicative in this passage is literal in a sense, but it is not grammatical.
In fact, one of the most noticeable things about this translation is the rendering of the verb. We fail to see why the English present is not sufficiently accurate as a rendering of the Greek present: why “Jesus saith” (or says) must be changed to “Jesus is saying.” Still, since the Greek present describes “action going on in present time,” we cannot call the rendering wrong, though it seems to us pedantic. But what shall we say of the “when, then, they lunch,” of vs. 15? Certainly the aorist ( IpUm/aav ) refers to past time, and is equivalent to a pluperfect (cf. the “So when they had dined” of the AV) yet here it is treated as a present (being followed by the words, “Jesus is saying”). We might regard this as a slip. But the aorist is rendered as present in other pas¬ sages (e.g., John ix. 26: “They said, then, to him, again, ‘What does he do to you? How does he open your eyes?’”). This rendering is clearly unwarranted.
Since it is claimed that in this version as far as possible “each Greek word is translated by an exclusive English rendering,” the rendering of </>i\civ in vss. 15-17 is noteworthy. Aside altogether from the question whether “to be fond of” is an adequate rendering (It does not do jus¬ tice to that love of “personal heart emotion” [Meyer] of “personal at¬ tachment” [Westcott] which seems clearly present in it [cf. B. B. War- field, “The Terminology of Love in the New Testament,” in this Review, Vol. xvi, p. 196]) it would seem that it ought to be obvious to even the most ardent advocate of the “single word” method that “For the Father is fond of the Son and is showing Him all that He is doing,” is a simply preposterous rendering for John v. 20. Since this version elsewhere recognizes the impossibility of always rendering <t>i\eiv by the same word (when used by Judas, the familiar rendering “kiss” is retained), it seems clear to us that the author or authors of this version should either have used more pains in the choice of the English equivalent or else have held less rigidly to their theory.
Recognizing the sincere attempt which is made in this version to enable the English reader to get as close as possible to the original Greek of the New Testament, we are loathe to criticize it too severely. It seems to us to illustrate very clearly the following facts : first, that there is no royal road to knowledge, that the best way to master the Greek New Testament is to study New Testament Greek; second, that the direct way of approach is likely to be the easiest in the end : we believe it would be easier for most men to get a reading knowledge of Greek, than to master the intricacies of the Concordant Version, even were it
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THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
fully reliable which we do not believe it to be ; and finally, that an ex¬ amination of the modern versions, the number of which is rapidly in¬ creasing, should lead the discriminating reader to appreciate more fully the admirable qualities of the Authorized and Revised Versions.
Princeton. Oswald T. Allis.
SYSTEMATICAL THEOLOGY
What It Means to Be Christian. By Charles O’Neale Martindale, B.A., L.I., M.D., Ph.D., D.D., Minister of Presbyterian Church in U.S. Chicago : Neely Printing Co. 1927. Pp. 136.
The author has written a useful and Scriptural little book which at¬ tempts to answer in a popular way the question which forms the title of the volume. He bases his views on the Bible considered as the Word of God, and makes no attempt to dilute Christianity to make it tasteful to the so-called modern mind.
Anything, he tells us, that will heighten and deepen the significance of the term “Christian” is worth while because “its use ranges all the way from a very earnest matter to a very diluted amiability.”
The question what a Christian is, however, is answered in the third chapter because the author realizes that trust in Christ involves some knowledge of who Christ is and what He has done for the salvation of sinners. Accordingly chapter one seeks to answer the question “Who and What Christ Is,” and chapter two shows how Christ reveals God.
Christ, according to the teaching of the Bible, and we agree with Dr. Martindale, is truly God and completely man in two Natures and one Person. He died as the sinner’s substitute bearing the guilt and penalty of sin and satisfying divine justice. He revealed God in His Incarnation, teaching, life, and death. A Christian, then, is a convicted sinner who trusts Christ as his Divine Saviour from sin. A man becomes a Chris¬ tian, as we are told in chapter four, by faith and repentance, by accept¬ ing Christ as He is offered in the Gospel, and by repenting of sin. This he does under the influence of the Holy Spirit given by Christ.
All this, we believe, is the Scriptural answer to the questions “Who and What Christ Is,” “How Christ Reveals God,” “What a Christian Is” and “How to Become a Christian.”
In six succeeding chapters the author answers the questions why one should be a Christian, when to become a Christian, how to know that one is a Christian, why a Christian should unite with a Church, and dis¬ cusses briefly the topics “Young People and Christianity” and “Helping Others to Become Christian.”
We think that the book is in the main a correct representation of the Biblical teaching. Naturally when so many Biblical passages are cited and expounded, we would differ with the author in some details of his exegesis, and we do not find as clear a statement as we could wish as to the relation between Regeneration and Faith. We would have wished to see the constantly evangelical features of Christian belief — by which we mean the Calvinistic features — more distinctly stated and emphasized.
Princeton. C. W. Hodge.
RECENT LITERATURE
683
Select Treatises of S. Bernard of Clairuaux : De diligendo Deo, Edited by Watkins W. Williams; and De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae, edited by Barton V. R. Miixis. Cambridge, at the University Press. 1926. Pp. xxiv, 169.
This addition to the Cambridge Patristic Texts will be of service to all who know by experience the rich treasure of thought and expression to be obtained by diligent and sympathetic study of the mediaeval mystics. We have in this volume the two treatises by St. Bernard which scholars agree contain the beginning of the mysticism, which in the sermons on the Song of Songs composed shortly before his death in 1 1 53 found their complete expression. Here we find the thoughts which we sing in the three hymns: “O Jesus, King most wonderful,” “Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts,” and “Jesus, the very thought of Thee.” The editors have spared no pains in the effort to secure a correct text. In this respect they think that they have surpassed the work of Mabillon, who edited the text at Paris in 1690, since they had the good fortune to discover two manuscripts in the town library of Troyes which Mabillon apparently had overlooked. At the foot of each page are printed explanatory notes that give all the help needed for the understanding of any unusual Latin terms that occur, the grammatical structure, and the difficult thoughts. The careful perusal of a work like this will, we are convinced, yield far more return than the careless reading of so much of the superficial re¬ ligious books that pour from the press so abundantly in these days to be lightly skimmed — and deservedly forgotten.
Lincoln University, Pa. George Johnson.
The Theology of Personality. By William Samuel Bishop, D.D., author of “The Development of Trinitarian Doctrine” and “Spirit and Per¬ sonality.” $1.50.
The author writes from the standpoint of Anglican Christianity, with some evident leanings toward Anglican Catholicism. However the really important parts of the book concern the doctrines of the Trinity and the Person of Christ. On these subjects he is no amateur, having thorough familiarity with, and profound knowledge of the theological positions involved. Not all the positions taken will command assent, not all are entirely clear and some are quite unscriptural.
The discussion of the relation of the Holy Spirit to the risen Christ is one of these. At times Son and Spirit are so identified as to suggest a dual Godhead rather than a Trinity. But from other expressions we are persuaded that the Author is a trinitarian. More care in distinguishing Spirit from spirit, and person from influence would be desirable.
The discussion of the “filioque” controversy, historically considered, is happy and informing. But Dr. Bishop raises the question how the incarna¬ tion affected the procession of the Spirit from the Son, and takes the posi¬ tion “that if as Spirit of God he is Divine, as Spirit of Jesus he must no less be acknowledged as human, that in the Person of the Risen and glori¬ fied Lord the Divine Spirit has now become humanized.” Since in the in¬ carnation Christ assumed a human nature, and since there is unity in the Godhead, the author asserts that “if the Holy Ghost has literally assumed
684
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
into personal union with himself the ‘mind’ or human spirit of the Risen and glorified Christ, then it follows that the Holy Spirit must be recog¬ nized as now possessing a human consciousness, the very consciousness of the glorified Jesus Himself.” “The Holy Spirit has appropriated that perfected human spirit of Christ so as to make it personally one with Himself,” and “it is under His human aspect, as the created spirit of Jesus that the Holy Ghost is revealed and communicated to us as our own very Life, in order that sharing this Life we might be in Christ and Christ in us.” Prior to the incarnation there was a Trinity of pure Godhead; since the glorification of the Theanthropos the Father is a Divine Person, the Son and Spirit are Divine-human Persons. “While the personalities of God and men are never confused, while the human remains ever human and the Divine ever Divine, yet men are taken into the very life of God Himself through being partakers of the Divine-human Spirit of Jesus Christ. A triplicity, which is in a sense an extension of the original and eternal Trinity, may here be recognized. The Holy Spirit as Christ’s Spirit is recognized as the personal Principle of this Divine-human life.” As to this we remark: I. The contention is entirely too speculative; suppositions are not facts. 2. The language is obscure. No definite mean¬ ing is given to “the Life of God.” 3. “Humanizing the Holy Spirit” seems to add some attribute to the Trinity. 4. We deprecate the clause, “an extension of the original and eternal Trinity.” 5. Efforts to humanize God and deify man are definitely anti-theistic. 6. Because procession is from the Son, it does not follow that the human nature of the Thean¬ thropos is incorporated into the Holy Spirit. There is no sense in which we can conceive of any substantial incorporation, nor any reason for such a hypostatical union as is found in the two natures of the incarnate Son. Old Sabellianism had a doctrine of absorption now quite ignored or forgotten.
A subject which is admirably and satisfactorily discussed is the doc¬ trine of the Person of Christ. The modernistic objection to Chalcedonian Christology, i.e. the two natures in one person, is traced to the modern tendency to identify creature and Creator, Immanence pushed to Panthe¬ ism. The author is loyal to Chalcedon and able to give a reason for the faith that is in him. The topic is treated with ability and learning.
A lengthy discussion ensues on the terms ousia, hypostasis, prosopon &c. with rather uncertain results even with the help of Harnack. It is doubtful if the usage of the Greek fathers was uniform, or what growth of meaning took place in the connotation of succeeding centuries. We think a sound metaphysic would hold that substance is that in which attributes inhere, and exists in two known aspects, matter and spirit; that substance and attributes are inseparable except in thought and definition : that person consists in substance with certain attributes, such as intelligence, feeling, will; that substances are differentiated by their attributes; that attributes are primary and essential, or secondary and accidental. Clear distinctions as to substance, attribute and function might save confusion in the discussion of the Godhead and the hypostatical union of two natures in the person of Christ.
RECENT LITERATURE
685
Whether hypistasis connotes substance or subsistence is a fine point in philology, perhaps usage was not uniform and discriminating, but our preference lies with the former, the Latin equivalent being substantia, though perhaps used in both senses. Further we think the term ‘essence’ properly covers both substance and attributes though often used to con¬ note subsistence or personality.
This book is a tribute to the ability and industry of its author, who shows himself at home in all this range of discussion, and thoroughly familiar with the terms and bearings of patristic debate. It is well worth careful reading however much we may differ on certain assumptions.
Philadelphia, Pa. David S. Clark.
PRACTICAL THEOLOGY
George C. Stebbins : Reminiscences and Gospel Hymn Stories. With an Introduction by Charles H. Gabriel. By George C. Stebbins. Illus¬ trated. East Northfield, Mass. Record of Christian Work. New York: George H. Doran Company. 1924. Pp. 327. Price $3.00 net.
There are few books that would be more welcome to lovers of the fine old gospel songs than these reminiscences and stories. So far as we know, Mr. Stebbins never lowered the standard of first class composition. He never wrote trash or near-trash. He never descended to the bizarre. To him irreverent jazz has no place in Christian praise. All his melodies are the expression of a high refinement combined with beautiful simplicity. He wrote music somewhat as Holmes and Whittier wrote poetry, always aspiring to the charm of an expression that has dignity without artificial¬ ity, producing deep impressions that abide through the years. Ordinarily, a good hymn must first be a good poem. We think that Mr. Stebbins has truly immortalized some fine poems by the exquisite melodies which he has set them to. Can words and music be more delicately blended than in the solemn, thoughtful Evening Prayer ? And when you read Green Hill, singing his tune with its rich refrain :
“Oh ! dearly, dearly has He loved,
And we must love Him too ;
And trust in His redeeming blood And try His works to do,”
it seems indeed as if the love of God in Christ had “broken every barrier down,” and done it through the cross of Calvary.
One of the unanswerable testimonies of Christian Missions is the poem In The Secret Of His Presence, by Miss Goreh, a converted Hindoo. But could there be anything sweeter and more adapted to bringing the be¬ liever into that Presence than Mr. Stebbins’ rapturous setting? Nor can one miss the appealing notes of There Is Never a Day So Dreary, The Shepherd True, and Jesus Is Calling. The soul coming out of its “bond¬ age, sorrow and night” to its Saviour could scarcely be more sweetly melodied than in Jesus, I Come; while the music set to Fanny Crosby’s Saved by Grace is so beautiful that it arrests attention wherever sung.
The first sixteen chapters (pp. 27-182) are biographical, the remainder
686
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
of the book (pp. 183-327) containing reminiscences of celebrated writers and singers of gospel songs. This second section lists a splendid array of composers whose gospel songs left a deep impression over a generation ago. Dr. George F. Root, P. P. Bliss, Ira D. Sankey, Philip Phillips, James McGranahan, Robert Lowry, Dr. William H. Doane, Dr. Daniel B. Towner, Hubert P. Main, H. R. Palmer, Edwin O. Excell, Major D. W. Whittle, Fanny Crosby Van Alstyne, John R. Sweney, William J. Kirk¬ patrick, down to Charles H. Gabriel, Charles M. Alexander, and Homer A. Rodeheaver. There is also a touching reference to the author’s faithful wife (pp. 304-305).
Naturally, much of the book dwells on Mr. Dwight L. Moody, with whom Mr. Stebbins was so long and so intimately associated. His picture of Mr. Moody is both authoritative and attractive. The theology which lay behind Mr. Moody’s preaching was very evidently that of evangelical Reformed Protestantism. Every evangelist, as every preacher and teacher, has some theological background. Perhaps that of Mr. Moody is well summed up in the “Three R’s” (p. 318) which someone wrote in one of his Bibles:
“Ruin by the Fall,
Redemption by the Blood,
Regeneration by the Spirit.”
In 1912 Mr. Stebbins published a collection of his compositions, Favorite Sacred Songs (The Biglow and Main Co., Chicago and New York). It is a worthwhile booklet. Now comes this Autobiography with its fine recollections of voices now still yet never to be forgotten. The stately church hymn will always have first place in the house of wor¬ ship. It has no substitute. It breathes truths which no other form of writ¬ ing can so well express. But alongside of it, the simple gospel songs, such as those written and sung in the great evangelistic mission of Mr. Moody and his successors will not be easily discarded from the better thoughts of Christian people. Of these Longfellow’s lines are true:
“Such songs have power to quiet The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction That follows after prayer.”
By their warmth and beauty, by their artless simplicity, and by their direct appeal to the soul in need of atonement, these songs were very def¬ initely used by the Spirit of God, and they never failed to bless. The Church should not lose them. We shall do well to sing them over again in our own time, whatever be our modern evangelistic approach. To the hymns of George Coles Stebbins the Christian Church today is under lasting obligation. That obligation it can best fulfill by continuing to sing them and to propagate the evangelical truths which they so beautifully express.
Lancaster, Ohio. Benjamin F. Paist.
Modern Religious Verse and Prose. An Anthology. By Fred Merrifield, Assistant Professor of New Testament History and Interpretation in the University of Chicago. New York. Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1925. Pp. xiv, 471. Price $3.50.
RECENT LITERATURE
687
This book contains about four hundred poems and prose passages by one hundred authors. They are arranged in nine groups as follows : The Irrepressible Yearning after God; The Upward Urge of Life; God — the Infinite Life of the Universe; The Divine Possibilities of Man; Jesus in Every-Day Life; Service and World-Brotherhood; Co-operation with God; The Spirit of True Worship; and The Eternal Value and Continu¬ ity of Life. Each of these main groups is divided into sub-groups at the close of which are aptly worded notes explaining the sentiment of each of the poems. The standpoint of the compiler is expressed in the Foreword as follows: “This book of verse and prose is an offering laid upon the altar of our dreams. Running through its pages one may feel the heart-throbs of millions of desperate, longing souls seeking light.” No poet of note in the last hundred years is left unrepresented, although, as the title indicates, most prominence is given to recent writers. The net result is an extraordinarily rich and varied anthology, from which one may learn the range of the religious imagination and emotion of our times. Professor Merrifield has chosen the extracts to exemplify the thoughts which he has expressed in the titles of the nine divisions, but it is permissible to doubt whether in every case the poem voices the views of the moderns as explicitly as the notes would lead us to expect. After all what is the function of religious lyricism ? Is it to teach us the monot¬ onous iterations of a theology that prides itself upon being always “new,” or is it to give forth the music of the heart that is seeking for God? It should be noted that this anthology is not called “Modern Christian” but “Modern Religious Verse and Prose.” The former title would be a mis¬ nomer. For while the anthology contains many of our most cherished treasures of Christian literature, there are other selections to which the name Christian would be clearly inapplicable.
Lincoln University, Pa. George Johnson.
Chinese Altars to the Unknown God, An Account of the Religions of China and the Reactions to them of Christian Missions. By John C. De Korne, Missionary in China of the Zeeland Classis of the Chris¬ tian Reformed Church in America. Grand Rapids, Mich. Crown 8vo. Pp. xiii, 139.
This attractive book, well illustrated and bound in leather, contains a series of lectures delivered in Grand Rapids, Mich., to the students of Calvin College and Theological Seminary. The subject matter is divided into twenty-eight short chapters; the first three being introductory, the next fourteen discussing the religions of China, and the last eleven chapters giving what the author conceives to be the Christian approach to the mind and heart of China. These chapters are followed by a list of the books referred to in the lectures, and by an index of subjects. The author is one of the younger China missionaries, an esteemed representa¬ tive of the Christian Reformed Church, working in the province of Kiangsu north of the Yangtze River, and is to be congratulated on the interesting, and in the main discriminating, presentation of the religions of China which he has given. We rejoice that in these days when there is so much loose thinking and compromise, he rings true on the subject
688
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
of the Gospel of Christ as the only hope of the heathen world. The author gives full credit to Chinese religions for any good found in them, but sometimes allows his generosity to run away with his sober judgment, as when he speaks favorably of a special Mission to Buddhists in Nan¬ king (p. hi) where incense, acolytes, bells, and Buddhist symbolism are used, which the majority of conservative missionaries and Chinese Christians are forced to consider a ruinous compromise. It is difficult to see where incense burnt before the picture of the Saviour differs from other forms of idolatry. Regarding ancestral worship, it ought to be mentioned that the chief motive, as the Chinese themselves acknowledge, is fear — fear that if the worship is not performed, the dead ancestors will bring down calamity upon the family. As to non-Christian religions is it not putting the matter too mildly to say that they have “limitations” ? As systems — and we must judge them as systems, not by isolated features which we approve, — are they not radically false and destructive? They lead the soul away from God, and make every man his own Saviour. The Apostle Paul evidently took this view — he said the worship of the Gen¬ tiles was a sacrifice to devils, and not to God. It was not a “quest after God,” as advocates of Liberalism are so fond of representing (i Cor. x. 20).
We are glad to note that the author calls attention to the fact that later or Mahayana Buddhism is indebted to Christianity (p. 72) ; in fact, it has plagiarized and copied Christianity wholesale — the orthodox Buddhists bitterly denounced the fraud, and complained that the new school “had destroyed” Buddhism. Even foreign advocates of Buddhism acknowl¬ edge this, for they call the Mahayana or Modern Buddhism Mythical Buddhism. This fact ought to be made more prominent if one is to get a right conception of that gloomy faith. What men admire now as Buddhism is really an imitation of Christianity, borrowed from Nes- torianism.
We are glad that in more than one place the author shows not only the utter insufficiency, but the falseness of non-Christian faiths. He says that while recognizing the good elements in ethnic religions, “we feel we must be on our guard against an overemphasis. There are elements of truth in these religions, but the religions as such are not true. We must protest against that excessive appreciation of heathen religions that al¬ most, and sometimes entirely, ignores that which makes them essentially different from the Christian religion.” Taken as a whole the book is a thoughtful one. It gives in brief compass a clear account of the Chinese systems of belief, and is calculated to do much good.
Ventnor, N.J. Henry M. Woods.
Gereformeerde Homiletiek. Door Dr. T. Hoekstra. Wageningen, (Holl¬ and). Gebr. Zomer & Keuning’s Uitgeversmaatschappij. 1926. Pp. 472. FI. 12.75.
This book is an encyclopedic and fully documented treatise on homi¬ letics as developed by the theory and practice of the Calvinistic churches. It consists of twenty-six sections divided into four heads. The introduc¬ tion comprises 145 pages that treat of the name and meaning of homi-
RECENT LITERATURE
689
letics, its place in the theological curriculum, its relation to rhetoric and psychology, its history and divisions. Part I in 60 pages deals with the principles of homiletics, and explains the meaning of the ministry or service of the Word, the essential nature of this service, its chief con¬ tent, “the will of God for our salvation in Jesus Christ,” the official character of this ministry, to whom this ministry is directed, its aim, and by whom. Part II in 164 pages considers the material which the preacher must use in his ministry of the Word. This is the entire Holy Scripture as means of grace. The parts of Holy Scripture which the preacher uses are his texts, and here Dr. Hoekstra advises the student how to choose a text, and how to exegete it and apply it to the needs of the congregation. Then follows a section on the divisions of the sermon, and another on the different sorts of material that may be used, such as the Bible histories, the parables, the catechism, etc. Part III, the con¬ cluding portion of the volume, in 82 pages, is devoted to the “form” of preaching, by which is meant such matters as the structure of the ser¬ mon, the outline, language, style and delivery. The book is carefully printed on non-glazed paper in large clear type, and in spite of its size is very light and easy to hold.
An excellent method of testing any volume devoted to the theological disciplines and intended for use as a text is to put to it a few of the questions that naturally arise in our minds and find how it answers them. Let us question Dr. Hoekstra’s treatise and certify to ourselves how accurately and beautifully it develops in its historical continuity the Calvinistic view' of the preacher’s art. What is the relation of the Holy Scripture to preaching? The relation is of the most intimate kind. Where the Word is, there works the Holy Spirit, opening the way into the closed heart, making the human soul capable of receiving the truth, and by means of the preached Word of God bringing into existence the most glorious activities of regenerate life. This influence of the Holy Spirit is not explicable as any conscious or unconscious part of man’s per¬ sonality. He is the creative cause of all that belongs to the new life in Jesus Christ. How He does it, no one can say, that He does it, all Cal¬ vinists must believe (p. 193). What is the place of the preacher? He is the official servant of the Word of God. In conformity with the Re¬ formed view of the principium cognoscendi, i.e. the Holy Scripture, this service consists in the explanation and application of the truth of God revealed for our salvation. Those who, like Schleiermacher and the Modernists generally, reject this view of the principium, must arrive logically at another view of preaching. As an artist represents his ideas in his art-work, so the religious community objectifies in cultus what it religiously experiences. Preaching is an element of cultus, and its subject matter is not some “thus saith the Lord,” but a rhetorical representation of more or less ideal religious or ethical experience (p. 157). What is the Calvinist’s view of the sermon? Let Andreas Gerhard (15x1-1564), whose name Latinized is Hyperius and who wrote the first book on homiletics from the Reformed standpoint (De formandis concionibus sacris seu de interpretatione sacrae scripturae populari, 1553), give the
690
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
answer. A sermon is a “popular” explanation of Scripture, i.e. in con¬ trast with the scientific exegesis that has its place in the schools and is in accord with scientific aims, the sermon should be clear to all and applicable practically to each life. The preacher and the secular orator have many things in common. Both must deal with inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, pronuntiatio ; both aim at the threefold end of public speech, docere, delectare, flectere ; both must recognize the three divisions of style, genus sublime, genus humile, genus mediocre. But in his search for materials and in his aim, the preacher differs from the orator. In the former his field is the Scripture, and in the latter his aim is the edifica¬ tion of his hearers in the grace of God (p. 150). Should the sermon be read or spoken ? It should always be spoken, since reading is not in ac¬ cord with the words used for the proclamation of the Gospel nor with the character of the ministry of the Word. Calvin, in a letter to Lord Somerset, October 22, 1548, remarked that a good and apt minister of the Word will pronounce, never read his sermon. Dr. Kuyper also affirmed that it is a correct deduction from the nature of the proclamation of the Gospel that it is not an essay, but an address ; therefore, not to be read but spoken (p. 454). How far may a preacher appropriate the materials of another? The Calvinist answer is that bare borrowing does not de¬ velop one’s own individual charism. He who cannot compose his own sermons gives a testimonium paupertatis and is unfitted for the ministry of the Word. Far better the humble and simple matter that one has him¬ self discovered by prayerful study and searching of the Scripture than stolen sublimity and fictitious invention. In the former case one is a min¬ ister of the Word, in the latter one is an actor using words not his own and simulating what he has not felt (p. 444). These questions and answers might be indefinitely extended, but let these suffice to give an idea of the rich material that is here presented to the student. Dr. Hoekstra’s volume demonstrates that true progress in homiletics as in all other branches of the theological encyclopedia consists neither in purblind adherence to our paternal treasure nor in fickle loyalty to the “something newer” of each passing day, but in the use of the ever fresh Providence of God under the guidance of the eternal principles of His Word.
Lincoln University, Pa. George Johnson.
PERIODICAL LITERATURE
American Church Monthly, New York, July: J. G. H. Barry, Wine and String Drink; William A. McClenthen, Basis of our Ceremonial Development; George P. Christian, Inevitability of Viae Mediae. The Same, August : C. H. Palmer, The Religion of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex ; E. Sinclair Hertell, Medieval Friars; Louis Foley, Miracles of Hume; A Plea for the Religious Life. The Same, September: Wilfrid E. Anthony, Church Architecture ; Ross R. Calvin, In Praise of the Brevi¬ ary; George L. Richardson, Preaching that Penetrates; George H. Richardson, Science and the Clergy.
RECENT LITERATURE
69I
American Journal of Philology, Baltimore, June: Tenney Frank, Naevius and Free Speech; W. H. Kirk, Observations on the Indirect Volitive in Latin; Clyde Phaar, The Testimony of Josephus to Chris¬ tianity; Samuel E. Bassett, The Single Combat between Hector and Aias ; Edith F. Claflin, Nature of the Latin Passive in the Light of Recent Discovery. The Same, September: Grace H. McCurdy, Queen Eurydice and the Evidence for Woman-Power in Early Macedonia; Max Radin, Freedom of Speech in Ancient Athens ; T. Callander, In¬ scriptions from Isauria; E. H. Sturtevant, Hittite Katta(n) and Re¬ lated Words; Harold H. Bender and Stephen J. Herben, English Spick, Speck, Spitchcock, and Spike.
Anglican Theological Review, Lancaster, July: Frederick C. Grant, The Outlook for Theology; F. W. Buckler, The Re-emergence of the Arian Controversy ; F. J. Foakes-Jackson, Professor Moore’s Judaism ; J. F. Springer, No Mistranslation in Luke 1:39; George L. Richardson, The Jealousy of God.
Biblical Review, New York, July: J. Stuart Holden, Teaching of the Christian Faith concerning Sin and its Remedy ; W. Graham Scroggie, Diligence in the Cultivation of Christian Character ; H. H. Horne, Jesus as a Philosopher; David R. Breed, Bible Institutes of the United States ; George Brewer, The Christian Ministry.
Bibliotheca Sacra, St. Louis, July: John V. Brown, The Book in Greek; Walter Asboe, The Kingdom of Heaven on the Roof of the World; John E. Kuizenga, Roots of Religion; Robert C. Hallock, The Innermost Thinking of Jesus, the Perfect Norm of Truth; Wil¬ liam S. Bishop, Sin, Righteousness and Life.
Canadian Journal of Religious Thought, Toronto, July-August: J. Lewis Paton, A Niche without a Saint; Theophile J. Meek, Trials of an Old Testament Translator; M. B. Davidson, Bernard Shaw, Theo¬ logian and Church Historian; A. J. Johnston, The Making of John Wesley; John Line, The Johannine Doctrine of the Sacrament; Harold C. Rowse, Tendencies in Modern Psychology; F. G. Vial, A Modern Approach to Christian Doctrine.
Catholic Historical Review, Washington, July: James J. Walsh, Catholic Background of the Discovery of America; M. Mildred Curley, An Episode in the Conflict between Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair.
Church Quarterly Review, London, July: Arthur C. Headlam, A Defence of the New Prayer Book; F. E. Brightman, The New Prayer Book Examined; J. E. MacRae, The Scottish Liturgy; H. N. Bate, World Conference of Faith and Order; Arthur Chandler, Christian Experience; Edgar Vincent, The Early Latitudinarians ; T. E. Robin¬ son, The Seventh Century Prophets ; Frederik Torm, Note on the Synoptic Problem; J. H. Beibitz, Lockton’s Three Traditions in the Gospels.
Congregational Quarterly, London, July: H. T. Andrews, Teaching of Jesus concerning the Future Life; B. L. Manning, Some Character¬ istics of the Older Dissent; A. Le Marchant, The Church and the Ministry; J. W. Poynter, The Reformation and Christian Unity; John
692 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Phillips, Have We a Gospel Big Enough for Today?; A. Landon, Ambassadors of Immortality.
Crozer Quarterly, Philadelphia, July: Woodman Bradbury, Wanted: a “New Humanism” ; Albert C. Lawson, The Gospel within the Gospel ; Spenser B. Meeser, The Doctrine of Salvation ; John M. Moore, A Formula for Church Union; Henry C. Vedder, Whither Bound in Missions?
Expository Times, Edinburgh, July: J. O. F. Murray, Yhe Messiah- ship of Jesus — iii. Evidence of St. John; H. Wheeler Robinson, Pres¬ ent-Day Faiths — The Baptists; Adam C. Welch, Psalm 81: a Sidelight into the Religion of North Israel. The Same, August: A. E. Garvie, Doctrine of the Holy Spirit; Archibald Main, Present-Day Faiths — Presbyterianism; P. J. Beveridge, Doctrine of Atonement. The Same, September : Hermann Gunkel, The ‘Historical Movement’ in the Study of Religion ; A. H. McNeile, The Holy Spirit in the Individual ; Camp¬ bell N. Moody, Spirit Power in Later Judaism and in the New Testa¬ ment.
Harvard Theological Review, Cambridge, July: Martin Dibelius, Structure and Literary Character of the Gospels; Campbell Bonner, Traces of Thaumaturgic Technique in the Miracles.
Homiletic Review, New York, July: Worth M. Tiipy, The Simplified Chancel; C. A. Beckwith, Fifth Century Orthodoxy; John E. Mac- Fadyen, The Mid-Week Prayer Meeting; William L. Stidger, The New Era in Church Bulletins. The Same, August: The New Church of Scot¬ land Moderator — Norman Maclean ; William J. Mutch, Construing the World Spiritually; In the Physician’s Place; W. H. Raney, America’s Oldest Manuscript ; Fred Smith, The Preaching that Counts ; Preach¬ ing in Medieval England; William B. Forbush, Summer Outdoor Services. The Same, September: The Divinity of Toil; Robert C. Francis, One Minister’s Solution for Sunday Evening ; Edith L. Wynn, What the Church Means to me ; Charles M. Adams, When does an Illustration Illustrate?; Leslie F. Duncan, Writing Church News.
Jewish Quarterly Review, Philadelphia, July: Solomon L. Skoss, Arabic Commentary of ’Ali Ben Suleiman the Karaite on the Book of Genesis; Joshua Finkel, An Eleventh Century Source for the History of Jewish Scientists in Mohammedan Countries; Israel H. Levinthal, Survey of Recent Works on Jewish Jurisprudence.
Journal of Negro History, Washington, July: Spring Conference of the Association to Study Negro Life and History; L. P. Jackson, Free Negroes of Petersburg, Virginia.
Journal of Religion, Chicago, July: Gerald B. Smith, An Overlooked Factor in the Adjustment between Religion and Science; Morton S. Enslin, Paul and Gamaliel; Shailer Mathews, Development of Social Christianity in America during the past Twenty-five Years; R. P. Rider, Pioneer Period of Baptist History in Missouri; William C. Graham, The Modern Controversy about Deuteronomy ; Daniel C. Holtom, State Cult of Modern Japan.
Journal of Theological Studies, Oxford, July: M. R. James, The Yen-
RECENT LITERATURE
693
ice Extracts from the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs; C. H. Turner, Notes critical and excgetical on the Second Gospel, viii; H. N. Bate, The ‘shorter text’ of Luke 22: 15-20; S. A. Cooke, Theophanies of Gideon and Manoah; H. J. Rose, St. Augustine as a forerunner of Medieval Hymnology; F. C. Burkitt, Jesus and the ‘Pharisees’; J. G. Sikes, Conflict of Abailard and St. Bernard; M. Frost, Te Deum Laudamus; F. C. Burkitt, Yahweh or Yahoh.
London Quarterly Review, London, July: C. Ryder Smith, Admis¬ sion of Women to the Christian Ministry; Arthur E. Bateman, Spir¬ itual Genius of William Blake; Henry Bett, Resurrection of the Body: Edward Thompson, Prohibition of Widow-Burning in British India; Wilbert F. Howard, Study of the New Testament: Retrospect and Prospect; John Telford, Dean Hutton on John Wesley.
Lutheran Church Review, Philadelphia, July: Charles M. Jacobs, Inaugural Address ; Carl H. Kraeling, The Odes of Solomon and their Significance for the New Testament; Henry Offermann, Studies in Matthew : Practice of Religion ; G. H. Bechtold, Inner Mission Work in the American Church.
Lutheran Quarterly, Gettysburg, September: J. A. W. Haas, The Nature of the Church; Alfred C. Garrett, The Nature of the Church; J. M. M. Gray, The Unity of Christendom and the Relation thereto of the Existing Churches; George W. Richards, The Ministry and the Sacraments ; Walter J. Hogue, The Church’s Common Confession of Faith ; T. B. Stork, As a Layman Sees if : the Evolution of Religion ; L. A. Vigness, Is Continued Preservation of Denominational Identities Justifiable?; Andreas Helland, The Lutheran Free Church; W. Arndt, What the Missouri Synod Stands for.
Missionary Review of the World, New York, July: George E. Tilsley, Dan Crawford and His Work ; Anna B. Stewart, Intimate Glimpses of a West Virginia School ; Stanley High, Can we Dispense with Foreign Missions?; Webster E. Browning, Trekking from Canada to Paraguay; W. H. Oldfield, The Bible through Chinese Eyes; A. T. Robertson, St. Paul’s Missionary Statesmanship; E. M. Wherry, Why it is Difficult to lead Moslems to Christ; Robert E. Speer, China and the Christian Church. The Same, August: John McDowell, Essential Character of the Christian Message; Helen B. Montgomery, Interest in Foreign Missions; A Chinese Message to Missionaries; Chinese Christians in the Present Crisis; J. C. R. Ewing, Why a Brahmin Became a Christian; E. M. Wherry, Why it is Difficult to Lead Moslems to Christ, ii. The Same, September: Jonathan Goforth, Outlook for Christianity in China; Harvey Brokaw, Llnfinished Task in Japan; E. C. Hennigar, Battle for Purity in Japan; Samuel M. Zwemer, What Creed do Mis¬ sionaries Need?
Monist, Chicago, July: Eugenio Rignano, Finalism of Psychical Pro¬ cesses; Coriolano ALBERiNr, Contemporary Philosophic Tendencies in South America; Arthur E. Murphy, Alexander’s Metaphysic of Space- Time, i; G. E. C. Catlin, Is Politics a Branch of Ethics; A. K. Sharma^ Psychological Basis of Autosuggestion.
694
THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Moslem World, New York, July: Raymund Lull's “Tree of Love”;
R. C. Hutchison, Ministry of Unrequited Love; H. French Ridley, Through the Gobi Desert; An Epoch Making Book in Turkey; John Walker, Who is Idris ? ; G. Everard Dobson, The Opium Habit in Persia; J. Ali Bakhsh, An Ahmadiya Conference; Abraham Moor- hatch, Islam for Christ.
New Church Life, Lancaster, July: N. D. Pendleton, The First Res¬ urrection; Robert Hindmarsh, Institution of the Ministry of the New Church. The Same, August: Stanley E. Parker, China and Great Tar¬ tary; Gutzlaff, The Mantchoos and their Conquest; C. T. Odhner, Greater and Lesser Tartary; H. G. de Geymuller, Catholic Prohibition of Bible-reading. The Same, September: Wilfred D. Pike, The Science or Law of Correspondences ; R. J. Tilson, The New Church and the Old ; Hugo Lj. Odhner, Paranoia versus Revelation.
Open Court, Chicago, July: Henry Lanz, Logic of Emotions; Victor
S. Yarros, “Meaning of Meaning” — Words and Ideas; Axel Lunde- berg, Sweden’s Contribution to Philosophy. The Same, August: Howard W. Outerbridge, Foundations of the Early Buddhist Scriptures; Victor S. Yarros, Ethics — with or without Religion; J. V. Nash, Some Seven¬ teenth Century Cosmic Speculations ; Birger R. Headstrom, Scientism of Goethe; Daljit S. Sadharia, Future Possibilities of Buddhism; Curtis W. Reese, Theism Distinguished from Other Theories of God. The Same, September: Maximilian Rudwin, The Supernatural of George Sand; Howard W. Outerbridge, Historicity of Sakyamuni; A. Kampmeier, The Actual History of Judaism and Christianity in a Nutshell; Amos L. Dushaw, Soul of Islam; W. P. McGehee, Primi¬ tive Remainders in Religion.
Review and Expositor, Louisville, July: James Cannon, iii, Trans¬ migration and Karma in Hinduism ; H. T. Flowers, Christ’s Doctrine of God; L. E. Barton, Gospel of the Resurrection; Sally N. Roach, Power of His Resurrection; John A. Heid, Intolerance in Relation to Radicalism; W. E. Davidson, On the Atonement; John Moncure, Lost Ten Tribes of Israel; William H. Williams, Can the Seminary Justify her Existence?
Yale Review, New Haven, July: Gabriel Hanotaux, The Recovery of France; Edwin D. Harvey, Resurgent China; Robert M. Hutchins, The Law and the Psychologists; Silas Bent, Two Kinds of News; William B. Munro, Modem Science and Politics; Howell Cheney, Manufacturing as a Profession.
Biblica, Roma, Julio: M. J. Gruenthaner, Chaldeans or Macedon¬ ians? a recent theory on the Prophecy of Habakkuk; J. G. Fonseca, SiadrjKr) Foedus an testamentum? ; J. Sonnen, Landwirtschaftliches vom See Genesareth; P. Jouon, Aba “vouloir” en hebreu, “ne pas vouloir” en arabe ; H. Wiesmann, Die Textgestalt des 5 Kapitels der Klagelieder; A. Deimel, Amrapheel, rex Sennar . . . Thadal, rex gentium.
Bilychnis, Roma, Giugno : V. Solovjov, La Risurrezione di Cristo ; A. V. Muller, Jesuitica. The Same, Luglio: M. Maresca, La funzione della religione nell’economia dello spirito ; C. Formichi, II Nirvana non e il nulla; M. Vinciguerra, II cantrasto tra Wirth e Marx nel centro catto-
RECENT LITERATURE
695
lico tedesco. The Same, Ag.-Sett. : E. Lo Gatto, L’idea filosofico-religiosa russa da Skovoroda a Solovjou; F. A. Ferrari, Idealismo implicito nel Logos degli stoici; P. Chiminelli, Studi sulla Riforma religiosa.
Ciencia Tomista, Madrid, Julio-Agosto : Alberto Colunga, Adan en el Paraiso; Vicente Beltran de Heredia, La herencia literaria del maes¬ tro fray Francisco de Vitoria. The Same, Septiembre-Octubre : Venan- cio D. Carro, El maestro fray Pedro de Soto; Luis Getino, Nuevas poesias de fray Luis de Leon ; Vicente Beltran de Heredia, La herencia literaria del Maestro fray Francisco de Vitoria (conclusion).
Estudis Franciscans, Barcelona, Juliol: Miquel d'Esplugues, Una bibliotheca de grans filosofis; II de fonse de Vuippens, Darius I, le Nabuchodonosor du livre de Judith; Romualdo Bizzarri, Della falsa originalita ; ossia arte, religione e filosofia ; Hubert Klug, Joannia Duns Scotus doctrina de sacrificio.
Etudes Theologiques et Religieuses, Montpellier, Juillet: Alexandre Westphal, La discipline intellectuelle et l’enseignement religieux dans nos Eglises ; Louis Dallierf., La Realite de l’Eglise ; H. Clavier, Les Beatitudes et la cure d’ames contemporaine.
Foi et Vie, Paris, Juillet: Paul Doumergue, “L’heure tranquille”; Pierre Chazel, Les Idees et les Livres: Les cahiers de Sainte-Beuve; Henri Lauga, Samuel ou l’apprenti prophete. The Same, Aout : Paul Doumergue, Le sang des humbles; G. Bouttier, L’Exercise de la foi: “Je crois en Jesus Christ”; G. Debu, Vers l’Union des Eglises. The Same, Septembre: Paul Doumergue, Sur un jour de pluie; Henri Monnier, L’oeuvre du pastor Rambaud ; Caperdoque, Les grands romantiques et le christianisme : Lamartine, Hugo, Musset.
Gereformeerd Theologisch Tijdschrift, Aalten, Juli: J. Ridderbos, Algemeen karakter van Hosea’s zondeprediking ; Verlags van de i6« Algemeene Vergadering der vereeniging van Predikanten ; van de Gere- formeerde Kerken in Nederland. The Same, Aug.: Recensien. The Same, Sept.: H. W. Van der Vaart Smit, De Scheppingsweek.
Kiriath Sepher, Jerusalem, September: J. N. Epfstein, Rabbi Jom Tow Ben Abraham’s Glosses to “Sabbath”; B. Dinaburg, Letters of S. J. Rapaport.
Logos, Napoli, Gennaio-Giugno : G. Carlotti, II Concetto della Storia della filosofia ; P. Reginaldo Fei, Che Cosa e l’anima ; L. Bandini, Bene, virtu e “senso morale” nello Shaftesbury ; A. Baratono, II pensiero come attivita storicaj-A. Mochi, Le basi, i-limiti e il valore della psicologia scientifica.
Nieuwe Theologische Studien, Wageningen, Stptember : A. Klinken- berg, De Handelingen der Apostelen ; Th. L. W. van Ravesteijn, Nieuwe opgravingen in Palestina.
N ouvelle Revue Theologique, Paris, Septembre-Octobre : Abb£ Groult, Saint Jean de la Croix, docteur de l’figlise; P. Demade, Note de medecine pastorale — la therapeutique des passions ; Actes du Saint-Siege.
Onder Eigen Vaandel, Wageningen, Juli: J. Willemze, Een groot gevaar; Tn. L. Haitjema, Persoonlijk Geloof en Kerk; P. J. Kromsigt,
6g6 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
Het kerkbegrip van Calvin ; Th. L. Haitjema, Plaatselijke en Algemeene Kerk; A. B. te Winkel, Kroniek.
Recherches de Science Religieuse, Paris, Juin-Aout: Fernand de Lanversin, Esquisse d’une synthese du sacrifice; Paul Jouon, Quelques aramaismes sous-jacents au grec des Evangiles; Paul Dudon, Bossuet a-t-il viole le secret d’une confession de Fenelon?
Revue d’Ascetique et de Mystique, Toulouse, Juillet: J. de Guibert, L’appel a la contemplation infuse: Tradition et Opinions; A. Wilmart, Les Meditations vii et viii attributes a Saint Anselme ; L. E. Rabussier, Quelques notes sur le “Mariage Spirituel” ; P. Dudon, La Gnose de Clement d’Alexandrie interpretee par Fenelon.
Revue d’Histoire Ecclesiatique, Louvain, Juillet: P. Galtier, Le ver¬ itable edit de Calliste ; G. Mollat, Episodes du siege du palais des papes au temps de Benoit xiii; M. Dubruel, Les Congregations des affaires de France sous Innocent xi.
Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie religieuses, Strasbourg, Mai-Juin: A. Causse, Quelques remarques sur l’ideal ebionitique dans les Testa¬ ments des douze patriarches ; Maurice Goguel, Jesus et la tradition relig¬ ieuses de son peuple; Anton Fridrichsen, “Accomplir toute justice; Ch. Guignebert, Contribution a l’etude de l’experience chez Paul. The Some, Juillet-Aout : Adolphe Lods, La chute des anges; E. Lohmeyer, L’idee du martyre dans le Judaisme et dans Christianisme primitif ; T. Ziel¬ inski, La morale chretinne troiseme morale de l’antiquite.
Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Theologiques, Paris, Juillet: A. Lemonnyer, L’Esprit-Saint Paraclet; G. Lacombe, Les doctrines des Passagiens d’apres Prevostin.
Scholastik, Freiburg, 2:3: Joh. B. Umberg, Absolutionspflicht und altchristliche Bussdisziplin ; Hermann Lange, Alois v. Schmid und die vatikanische Lehre vom Glaubensabfall ; Emmerich Raitz, Bedeutung, Drsprung und sein Gefiihle.
Zeitschrift fur katholische Theologie, 51 : 5: A. Landgraf, Grundlagen fur ein Verstandnis der Busslehre der Friih — und Hochscholastik ; C. A. Kneller, Um das Vatikanum ; L. Feutscher, Die naturlich Gotteser- kenntnis bei Tertullian. The Same, 51 : 3: J. Stufler, Ergebnis der Kon- troverse uber die thomistische Konlcurslehre ; F. Schlagenhaufen, Der geistige Charakter der jiidischen “Reichs” — Erwartung.
Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte , Gotha, 46 : 1 : E. Barnikol, Bruno Bauers Kamp gegen Religion und Christentum und die Spaltung der vormarzlichen preussischen Opposition ; G. Peradse, Die Anfange des Monchtums in Georgien ; I. Pusino, Der Einfluss Picos auf Erasmus; K. Bauer, Symbolik und Realprasenz in der Abendmahlsanschauung Zwinglis bis 1525. The Same, 46:2: Paul Kalkoff, Die Stellung der deutschen Humanisten zur Reformation; P. M. Baumgarten, Berner - kungen zu v. Pastors Papstgeschichte 10; E. Kochs, Das Kriegsproblem in der spiritualistischen Gesamtanschauung Christian Hohburgs.
Zeitschrift fur Theologie und Kirche, Tubingen, 8:4: Th. Haering, Zur Frage der Heilsgewissheit ; Karl Thieme, Zur Trinitatsfrage; Friedrich Traub, Zur Interpretation Ritschls ; Theophile Steinmann, Systematische aus der historischen Theologie.
The Princeton Theological Review
EDITED FOR THE
FACULTY
J. Ross Stevenson Wm. Brenton Greene, Jr. Robert Dick Wilson Charles R. Erdman J. Ritchie Smith J. Gresham Machen Finley D. Jenkins
Francis L. Patton Geerhardus Vos William P. Armstrong Frederick W. Loetscher Caspar Wistar Hodge Oswald T. Allis . Joseph H. Dulles
by
Oswald T. Allis
VOLUME XXV
192,7
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON
LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
ARTICLES
The Names of God in the Psalms. By R. D. Wilson . i
Does the Behaviorist Have a Mind? By Wm. Hallock Johnson. . . 40
Holy Scriptures and Imaginal Contexts. By George Johnson. ... 59
Christ in the Light of Eschatology. By L. Berkhof . 83
On the Hebrew of Daniel. By R. D. Wilson . 177
Hegelianism and Theism. By Clarence Bouma . 200
The Davidic Dynasty. By James Oscar Boyd . 215
The Present Status and Outlook of Protestantism in Europe.
By Sylvester W. Beach . 240
The Blessing of Abraham. By Oswald T. Allis . 263
Evidence in Hebrew Diction for the Dates of Documents. By
R. D. Wilson . 353
The Virgin Birth of Our Lord. By W. H. Guiton . 389
The Davidic Covenant: The Oracle. By James Oscar Boyd . 417
The Second Coming of Christ in the Thessalonian Epistles^
By Edgar M. Wilson . 444
The Integrity of the Lucan Narrative of the Annunciation.
By J. Gresham Machen . 529
Echoes of the Covenant with David. By James Oscar Boyd . 587
Popular Protest and Revolt against Papal Finance in England
from 1226 to 1258. By Oscar A. Marti . 610
The Sign of the Prophet Jonah and its Modern Confirmations.
By Ambrose John Wilson . 630
Is Christianity Responsible for China’s Troubles? By Courtenay Hughes Fenn . 664
iii
NOTES AND NOTICES
Inspiration and Islam. By H. E. Anderson . 103
The Founding of the Second Temple. By W. E. Hogg . 457
BOOKS REVIEWED
Allen, F. E., Evolution in the Balances . 31 1
Arnett, E. A., Psychology for Bible Teachers . 169
Bell, B. I., Postmodernism and Other Essays . 166
Berg, L. S., N ontogenesis, or Evolution Determined by Law . 119
Bishop, W. S., The Theology of Personality . 683
Boreham, F. W., The Crystal Pointers . 168
Brandes, G., Jesus a Myth . 314
Brunner, E., Erlebnis, Erkenntnis und Glaube . 334
Budden, C. W., and Hastings, E., The Local Colour of the Bible,
Vol. Ill . 345
Budge, E. A. W., Babylonian Life and History . 325
Burrell, D. J., Life and Letters of St. Paul . 156
Burrell, D. J., The Golden Parable . 156
Burton, E. D., A Short Introduction to the Gospels . 321
Churchward, A., The Origin and Evolution of Religion . 464
Clarke, J. E., IV hat is a Christian ? . 498
Close, U., The Revolt of Asia . 510
Coffin, H. S., The Portraits of Jesus Christ in the New Testament 161
Cooke, R. J., Did Paul Know of the Virgin Birthf . 519
Darms, J. M. G., With Christ Through Lent . 341
De Korne, J. C., Chinese Altars to the Unknown God . i... 687
De Wulf, M., History of Mediaeval Philosophy . 299
Doumergue, E., Jean Calvin, Vol. VI . 492
Easton, B. S., The Gospel According to St. Luke . 130
Gadd, C. J., A Sumerian Reading Book . 346
Gaebelein, A. C., The Angels of God . 135
Gaebelein, A. C., The Gospel of John . 134
Gaebelein, A. C., The Healing Question . 135
Gaebelein, A. C., The Holy Spirit . 135
Gaebelein, A. C., The Return of the Lord . 135
IV
BOOKS REVIEWED V
Gager, C. S., The Relation between Science and Theology . 114
Gardner-Smith, P., The Narratives of the Resurrection — A Crit¬ ical Study . 667
Gillie, R. C., and Reid, J., The Bible for Youth . 125
Grose, G. R., The New Soul in China . 512
Guiton, W. H., Introduction a la Bible . 122
Haldane, Viscount, The Pathway to Reality . 466
Hamilton, F. E., The Basis of Christian Faith . 664
Herbert, C., Twenty-five Years as Bishop of London . 157
Hering, J., Phenomenologie et Philosophie religieuse . 108
Herrmann, W., Systematic Theology (Dogmatik) . 333
Hickman, F. S., Introduction to the Psychology of Religion . 665
Hodges, J. S., George Hodges . 491
Hugel, F. von, Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion 462
Inge, W. R., Lay Thoughts of a Dean . 341
Ingram, A. F. W., The Sword of Goliath . 157
Johnson, W. H., Can the Christian Now Believe in Evolution? . . 112
Kennedy, G. A. S., The Sorrows of God . 344
Keyser, L. S., A System of Natural Theism . 502
Klausner, J., Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times and Teaching . . 317
Lodge, O., Evolution and Creation . 309
Loewe, H., Catalogue of Wright Collection of MSS. in the Hebrew
Character . 484
Macalister, R. A. S., A Century of Excavation in Palestine . 162
Martindale, C. O., What It Means to Be Christian . 682
Matthews, W. R., God and Evolution . 115
McFadyen, J. E., Key to Davidson’s Revised Hebrey Grammar _ 141
Merrifield, F., Modern Religious Verse and Prose. An Anthology 68 7
Moffatt, J., The Holy Bible — A New Translation . 484
Morgan, W., The Nature and Right of Religion . 505
Moulton, R. G., The Modern Reader’s Bible for Schools — The Old
Testament . 138
Murdock, V., Constantinople the Challenge of the Centuries . 513
Murry, J. M., The Life of Jesus . 320
Newton, J. F., The Truth and the Life . 158
Oman, J., Grace and Personality . 149
Otto, R., West-Ostliche Mystik . 477
Pasma, H. K., God’s Picked Young Men . 160
Paterson, W. P., The Nature of Religion . 467
Pieters, A., The Facts and Mysteries of the Christian Faith . 333
Vi BOOKS REVIEWED
Ramsay, F. P., The Virgin Birth . 519
Ramsay, W. M., Asianic Elements in Greek Civilisation . 671
Rhinelander, P. M., Think Out Your Faith . 343
Rice, W. N., Science and Religion . . 117
Simpson, D. C., Ed., The Psalmists . 322
Simpson, D. C., Pentateuchal Criticism . 479
Slotemaker de Bruine, N. A. C., Eschatologie en Historic . 509
Socin, A., Arabic Grammar . 483
Soper, E. D., W hat May I Believe ? . 503
Squires, W. A., Psychological Foundations of Religious Education 340 Stebbins, G. G, George C. Stebbins: Reminiscences and Gospel
Hymn Stories . 685
Stewart, A., A Plea for a Positive Evangel . 144
Stidger, W. L., Finding God in Books . 169
Stone, D., The Faith of an English Catholic . 502
Taylor, C. F., Everlasting Salvation . 168
Taylor, Mrs. H., Borden of Yale ’09 . 514
The Sacred Scriptures, Concordant Version . 680
Verde, M., New Realism in the Light of Scholasticism . in
Vrooman, W. A., Progressive Christianity . 338
Wardle, W. L., Israel and Babylon . 674
Whitehead, A. N., Religion in the Making . 336
Will, R., Le Culte . 303
Williams, W. A., The Evolution of Man Scientifically Disproved 313 Williams, W. W., and Millis, B. V. R., eds., Select Treatises of
S. Bernard of Clairvaux . 683
Workman, H. B., John Wyclif: A Study of the English Mediaeval
Church . 328
Yakdley, T. H., Was Christ Really Born of a Virgin ? . 519
Yates, K. M., A Beginner’s Grammar of the Hebrew Old Testa¬ ment . 324
CONTRIBUTORS
Allis, O. T., 122-130, 138-144 162-166, 263-298, 324-328, 346-347, 479- 490, 674-682.
Anderson, H. E., 103-107.
Berk hof, L., 83-102.
Beach, S. W., 158-160, 240-262.
Bouma, C., 200-214, 464-476.
Boyd, J. O., 215-239, 417-443, 587-609.
Clark, D. S., 149-156, 338-340, 683-685.
Corum, J. M., Jr., 160- 161.
Craig, S. G., 157-158, 161-162, 166-168.
Downs, F. S., 514-518.
Erdman, C. R., 341.
Fenn, C. H., 643-663.
Gage, D. S., 108-111, 299-309, 462-464.
Guiton, W. H., 389-416.
Hamilton, F. E., 114-119, 309-314.
Hodge, C. W., 112-114, 144-149, 333-334, 498-505, 682.
Hogg, W. E., 457-461.
Hutchinson, S. N., 156-157.
Jenkins, F. D., 505-509.
Johnson, G., 59-82, m-112, 169-170, 334-336, 34«, 464-465, 477-478, 664- 666, 683, 687.
Johnson, W. H., 40-58.
Loetscher, F. W., 492-498.
Machen, J. G., 529-586.
Mackay, J. R., 130- 134, 314-320, 667-674.
Marti, O. A., 610-629.
McIntyre, D. M., 322-324.
Montgomery, R., 168-169.
Paist, B. F., 341-345, 491-492, 513-514, 685-686.
Price, G. M., 1 19-122.
Reincke, E. J., 134-137, 519-522.
Thomson, S. H., 328-333.
Van Til, C., 336-338.
Welmers, T. E., 321-322, 345-346.
Wilson, A. J., 630-642.
Wilson, E. M., 444-456.
Wilson, R. D., 1-39, 177-199, 353-388.
Woods, H. M., 510-513, 687-688.
Articles are indicated in black-faced type; Notes and Notices in italics.
vii
THE 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 HOLY SPIRIT IN THE GOSPELS
By J. Ritchie Smith, D.D., Professor of Homiletics in Prince¬ ton Theological Seminary. Author of “The Teaching of the Gospel of John”; “The Wall and the Gates.” New York: The Macmillan Company, 1926.
“Throughout the entire volume one finds unmistakable evi¬ dences of broad and accurate scholarship, a courageous facing of difficulties and objections and a determination to think things through, a catholicity of spirit even where the widest differences of convictions enter, and a deep and vital devotion to Jesus Christ. It is with an inexpressible satisfaction one rises from the reading of such a work.” — The Presbyterian.
WHAT IS FAITH?
By J. Gresham Machen, D.D. New York : The Macmillan Company, Pp. 263. London : Hodder & Stoughton.
“If we had the resources we should provide a copy to every minister and lay preacher in the British Isles” — The British Weekly.
“Professor Machen has written a strong and courageous book . . — Christian World (London).
CHRISTIANITY AND LIBERALISM
By J. Gresham Machen, D.D. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1923.
“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 Selected Writings
of
BENJAMIN BRECKINRIDGE WARFIELD
Late Professor of Theology in Princeton Theological Seminary
IN TEN VOLUMES
At the time of his death in 1921, the late Dr. Benjamin Breck¬ inridge Warfield was the leading Calvinistic theologian in the English speaking world. An Editorial Committee proposes to publish through the Oxford University Press, in a series of vol¬ umes, Dr. Warfield’s contribution to theological thought by re¬ printing the important articles which he contributed to the vari¬ ous Bible Dictionaries and Encyclopedias and to the theological reviews, especially The Princeton Theological Review.
The first volume, entitled Revelation and, Inspiration t contains two articles on the Idea of Revelation, and a number of exegeti- cal and critical articles on the Biblical idea of Inspiration and the grounds of belief in the plenary inspiration of Scripture.
The second volume will contain Dr. Warfield’s major articles on several Biblical doctrines, such as The Trinity, Predestina¬ tion, Faith, The Person of Christ, etc.
The third volume will comprise the historico-critical articles on the Person and Work of Christ.
Volumes four, five and six will contain articles on Historical Theology. They will include the articles on Augustine, Calvin, and The Westmnister Confession. These articles are authori¬ tative on their respective subjects.
The seventh and eighth volumes will contain the articles on Perfectionism.
There will be a ninth volume of miscellaneous articles and a tenth volume containing the most important of Dr. Warfield’s book reviews.
Volume I, now ready, may be ordered through your book¬ seller, or direct from the publisher. It is bound in cloth, 8vo (9^x614), pp. xiii-t-456, price, $3.00.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
AMERICAN BRANCH NEW YORK